The mist did not peel back; it detonated.
Ozone stung the gills. The sound was silk tearing, multiplied until it became a scream.
Yellow bodies, needle-sleek and crackling, burst out of the white in a braided sheet. The first wave stitched the air with lines of light; the second turned those lines into a net; the third dragged the net tight. Branches smoked. Static made the world a maze of lightning written too fast to read.
"Hold—!" Brandon's order tore in half. Frostwing pivoted, frost feathering across the closest cluster. Bees faltered, joints kissed by rime—then recovered with insulted fury. The next volley hit the sling.
The bowl hummed like a tuning fork. Hairline fractures curved, elegant as handwriting. Then glass chose to become pieces. The koi spilled with his water, slammed against leather, and hit moss that had not agreed to be a sea.
"Bowl!" Brandon lunged, but bees bit at wrists and cheek, the hinge of his elbow—everywhere a weapon couldn't reach. Frostwing swept her good wing to cup him back; sparks crawled the feathers like ants. Instinct screamed catch. Lightning wrote don't.
"Scatter!" Brandon barked. Togetherness had become a way to die. He vanished left into strobing white. Frostwing slid under roots, vaulted a stone.
"Koi!" Brandon's thought cut through the bond.
Alive. Go! the koi flung back, clipped and hard. Don't look for me. Kill bees, meet at the first dry creek. He didn't know where the creek was. Saying it made it true enough to aim at.
The swarm re-formed not as a cloud but as math: wedges, arcs, bodies turned to conductive bridges. Blue tongues leapt along them and spilled into anything foolish enough to be there.
The koi went small and fast.
Bounce is obedience to timing; he obeyed. Ricochet off stone, twist through a fern's ribcage, slide under a lichen-slick root. Stings raked his back; two found his flank, writing noise into his ribs. Harden ate the pain and made structure out of it.
Six peeled down. He met them with Bite—short, ugly, jaw work. One bee died, two spun out, three scored him. He flared Blood Scales. Red edged plates numbed, smeared onto wings. Six more tripped into bark and regretted it.
"Frost—status," he pinged.
Cold, cut, on foot. We meet.
"Brandon—"
Fighting. Left forearm compromised. Still good. Meet at creek.
The swarm wrote a fence and assumed he'd obey. He went through a knot: Bounce off stump crease, off leaf-water, off memory of a river. A sting hit his mouth. He bit the bee out of spite and spat halves still sparking.
He reached for Ice Scale Spikes and found absence.
The System whispered a cruel reminder: hybrid techniques lived or died on proximity. Without Frostwing's aura close enough, the koi's scales were just scales again.
[HYBRID SKILL: ICE SCALE SPIKES — unavailable]
[Reason: source ally out of field]
[Advisory: do not attempt pattern at range]
"Noted," he snarled.
The swarm slowed its front rank. The middle fired into them; arcs ran forward, a sheet of blue. Muscles locked. He dropped onto moss, jaw jammed, gills fluttering wrong.
[Host integrity: 64% → 33%]
[Arc exposure: cumulative / Neural conduction: impaired]
[Recommendation: retreat — Feasibility: 0]
He laughed with his throat because his mouth couldn't. Great advice.
He sniffed for water. Mist drowned every sense. He felt only himself, folded and refolded. "Luck," he asked the bond. Brandon's field pressed back—warm, stubborn, the hand on your back that doesn't push, just refuses to let you stop.
He darted into a gully where stones smelled smooth. Bees filled the space behind him; arcs zipped where his tail had been. He burst through fern into hotter mist. Wrong way. He corrected. Bounce isn't jumping. It's refusing to accept floor.
They fenced him again, clever triangle, blue hammering yellow. The shock wanted to use him as ground. He wasn't ground. He bounced wrong-footed. Teeth rang, red leaked. Blood Scales flared. Bees tripped.
[Host vitality: 12% → 10%]
[Projected collapse: < 90s]
[System: initiate "long sleep" to avoid Task penalty?]
No sleep. Not under bees. Save that for mountains.
Numbness spread. Vision flickered. Words like alive fell into silence.
[Host vitality: 9%]
[Projected time: < 60s]
[Last resort: "long sleep" — Consent?]
He would have signed refusal in blood if he had a pen.
And then—gentle, cutting across static:
Come on, my little fish.
Not a plea. Not command. A smile with syllables. Mari.
He remembered how to be a bowl that holds a voice.
[Affect surge: detected]
[Vector: love (grief + faith + vow memory)]
[Cross-resonance: Sense, Bounce, Luck]
[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: LEVITATE]
He didn't understand the word. He felt the shape: Bounce without steps, refusal to belong to down.
"Okay," he told gravity. "Negotiate."
He rose a finger. Then two. Chain arcs passed under, bit moss, bit themselves. Bees overshot.
Not flight—levitation. A refusal made continuous. Every twitch wanted to drop him. He managed it the way you keep a promise: shake, adjust, shake, adjust.
The creek found him. Arcs spent themselves in the water instead of him.
[Levitate — drain: high → moderating]
[Stability: fragile → improving with micro-corrections]
Frostwing's cold stitched bees into statues. Brandon's iron voice threaded through the bond: On you.
The mountain, offended, began inventing its next trick.