fast swimmer

Tilting my head, I watched as they reached the river side. Azure thrust a hand into the water and color spread from it to darken the surrounding liquid. She keep it up as the seconds ticked by, focusing on it for nearly a minute as her power spread both out and down. At last, she leaned back from the water’s edge, taking deep breathes as the new creature rose. It was much like any of her creations in that it was an amorphous blob with transitory eyes and mouths, but there was one thing that set it apart.

It was the size of a subway train.
***
Azure’s creations were hard at work. Though they’d had at most five minutes to build, they’d taken to it with their usual enthusiasm and with each moment I saw more and more of the creatures bring down materials from the surface, ferrying them to a massive, underwater dome made entirely of ice. Adjusting my vision again, I peered through the frozen water and glimpsed inside the dome and saw the massive creature Azure had made before filling much off it. What looked like a miniature city filled much of the remainder, built on top of the massive beast, to the point that I could see much of its giant mass flowing up and into the constructs, operating controls that weren’t designed for anything else. In the center of the dome, I saw Sienna and Azure standing inside of what looked like the cross between a snow globe and the control deck of some advanced space ship, seemingly coordinating the process in silence.
***

I brought up my arms and let Bai Hu rise around me once more. At once, I saw Azure’s creations turn their twisted attentions my way, but it was too late—Xihai thrust out a hand and the nearest of the gateways exploded inwards, water rushing through the opening. I felt the current pull me along and brought down my hands with all my might, Accelerating as I went and pushing myself through the opening the moment before Sienna reacted, freezing the areas over the gateways in response.

It was a bad move, made worse by being exactly what I expected. I reverted Xihai back to her spiritual state and drew her past the physical barriers before recreating her inside and then—

And then I began to swim.

I swam as fast as I could, drawing upon my Acceleration, Bai Hu, and every other speed booster I had. I made a score of laps around the dome’s circumference in a fraction of a second, starting high and going lower with every ten or so revolutions. The massive beast below us tried to react first, but Xihai turned the water in the dome against him, not so much using it to hold the beast down, but simply asserting control over several carefully picked regions of the interior. The dome was packed tight with water and with all the ways in or out sealed, there few places for the water to go and she simply reduced those options yet further.

It tried to rise, but the water refused to flow past or around it, pinning it down by simple refusal to move or be compressed. It tried to fight anyway, tried to lift the unspeakable weight above the boundary Xihai erected, and it wasted precious seconds on the futility, seconds where I continued to swim. The friction against my skin boiled the water on contact and Xihai split her focus to aid in the process as the ice on the inside of the dome swiftly began to melt. I heard Azure catch on to my plan at the sight, hissing something to Sienna about pressure cooking, but I didn’t stop swimming. Moving in steady circles, I raised the heat and pressure higher and higher, directing it with Xihai’s natural power even as my passage shattered buildings. In some places, I was gliding on steam more than I was swimming, which was actually kind of fun.

Well, for me that is. The rising temperature and my catastrophic displacement of water seemed to be wreaking havoc on the fine machinery within Azure’s city and the steam was making the massive creature squelch in displeasure. Abruptly, an impossibly solid wall appeared in front of me and I narrowly avoided running into it as ice gathered upon its surface and nearby structures. I merely adjusted my course around it, swinging sharply again as several more walls appeared to try and box me in, but I saw them as they form and twisted sharply out of the way. Seeming to have enough, Sienna brought both of her hands down and made two walls in the sphere, freezing everything from the center to the circumference as if marking out the area of a giant slice of pie, filling the area inside with ice in the process.

That seemed like my sign to leave, so I dove hard the moment I saw the structures forming, heading for the bottom edge of the dome before Sienna could start taking shots at me again. Xihai peeled the edge of the creature up as if lifting the corner of a rug—electing another squelch of displeasure in the process—and I hit the dirt full force, calling to Ereb as I did.

As easily as if I’d gone down a slide, I went right under the dome and continued upon my merry way, waving back at my sisters as I left, sure they could see me somehow. At the very least, I could see them—and I could see them pouting at me. Well, they probably thought they were frowning in displeasure, but really, Azure had never been able to get past a pout.