I tried to rub a greenish slime off on my arm – the undine was still gripping my other hand – but it only spread. It crept up my arm. I tried to pull my hand away from the undine so I could get the stuff off me but our hands seemed welded together. Turning to her, I saw that she was also covered in the chalky green silt. Her face was frozen in a silent scream of horror. Only her moss-green eyes remained and the silt was seeping over them … only it wasn’t silt. In the glow she gave off I saw that the dust was actually composed of tiny creatures knitting together some kind of hard shell. All around us the undines, coated with the nacreous shells, were sinking onto the body heap. I heard the undines’ terrified cries in my head as they sank – one hit the bottom and cracked in two, half her face falling away – but even worse, I heard the tiny minds of the shell-creatures. Once they sealed my limbs inside a shiny hard carapace that bore my shape, they would feast on my flesh. Slowly. They enjoyed a feast of live human flesh … Mmmm, even better than undine … and they intended to make it last.

I heard a silent scream inside my head and knew it was the undine whose hand I held. She was still alive under the chalky carapace, but wouldn’t be soon. I felt her consciousness flicker …

Raspberry, I said silently to her. Remember the taste of raspberry. Then I squeezed her hand and directed my energy toward the hard shell encasing her. If a spell worked for opening doors, maybe it could break other barriers. Ianuam sprengja! I commanded.

The shell burst into a million brittle shards.

Swim up! I screamed to her and to the rest of the undines. Shake it off!

I tried to swim upward but my limbs were weak. Already the shell creatures were re-gathering on my skin. I made one last desperate stroke upward … and felt something grab my hand. Above was a dark swirl, some other predator, perhaps come to tussle over my bones with the shell creatures. But this creature was at least pulling me toward bright gold that looked like sunlight. Anything was better than spending the next hundred years as the shell creatures’ live snack.

I called out the opening spell again to break the shell creatures’ grip on the undines and then sent a message to the undine whose hand I held to grab one of her sisters. Their hive mind still worked even half-encased in shell-goo. By the time we reached the surface, I was trailing two dozen undines behind me. They wriggled out of the water, shucking the last shell fragments off like last year’s dowdy hand-me-downs – and shucking their tails as well. Somehow in the journey their tails had split into two legs. They jumped up and ran along the grassy bank showing off their slim calves and long, trim thighs with nary a thought for the poor undine who had died in the Borderland. Thoughtless.