A whirlpool formed, spinning faster as each moment passed. Spinning closer to Stix too. Back away. Back away. The first kicks of air reached Stix. Her body flipped and spun, and she squeezed her eyes even tighter. Back away, back away.

Then it was done. She was fully exposed; the water had parted; a column of air surrounded Stix.

She opened her eyes. Gray light beamed in, and with it came the crowd’s roars—the foxes’ too. They had been thwarted. Two howled from within the water, a piercing yip that shivered through the sand beneath her feet.

The third thrust its head into the empty column and bayed. A tragic, ferocious sound.

Stix grinned at it. Her chest heaved. She was soaked through, salt coated her tongue, and her muscles quivered with power. She couldn’t hold this column forever, but Noden, it felt good. No one was as powerful as she. And now, to reach the other side of the Ring, all she had to do was walk.

“Water Brawler, Water Brawler!”

She lifted her foot. Then her other. Right, left, right, left, a muddy slog that tried to hold her down. “I’m here,” she told the voices. “I came this way and kept coming.” She lost track of the foxes, circling around the column with predatory rage. She lost track of the crowd, screeching and stamping and clapping their glee.

“Where are you?” she asked again and again. “Talk to me, please. Show me why the hell-waters I’m here.” But the memories never came, and when Stix was halfway across the Ring, the first body fell into the pool.

Stix’s heart broke in two.

She should have seen it coming, of course—it was the one thing she had desperately prayed would not happen, so therefore Lady Fate would have to make it so: a prisoner sacrificed to the Ring.

The person was still alive when they toppled into the pool, and Stix felt the person sinking. They were weighted by stone, prey for the sea foxes. Bait to draw Stix away. And bait she was going to take because she would never leave another human to die.

With a strangled scream at Noden and his Hagfishes, Stix let her column vanish. Instantly, the water stopped pushing. Instantly, the water slung toward its siblings in a joyous reunion that tidal-waved over Stix. Crushed her, beat her, shoved her back into a swim.

The sea foxes didn’t notice. They were charging for the weighted prisoner, now struggling upon the pool’s floor. Stix loosed more water, cannonballs of power to pummel the foxes. But she was too slow and the foxes too fast. She felt their jaws snap into bone, felt blood unravel through the water, strands of heat that sang with an ended life.