Page 9 - UnderEarth

bristling, as she filled her lungs and ducked underwater to take refuge beneath the boat.
She was in the Dolphin’s kingdom, but the Elemental seemed to have abandoned her. Disgusted, no doubt, at her ineptitude. A muffled drumming bubbled in her ears as a second shower of arrows plunged into the water around the boat. She watched the shafts wobble as they met the Element’s resistance, slow, turn to float to the surface. The third downpour came, and an arrow grazed her leg. Storm’s lungs began to burn hotter than her shoulder. All day long, she had seen sharks hunting these waters. Her blood would bring them. She must do something! The Dolphin and Albatross would not save her if she did not even try to save herself.
Storm made her body relax until she floated beneath the rowing boat as if already dead, head back, arms and legs drifting. The pressure in her lungs eased, and she found she could hear the music of Water at last – an endless surging, a flow-and-ebb, like the heartbeat of a leviathan. And through the beat came a wriggling- jumping-trickling thread of power. Her mind grabbed the thread and she felt its power flow into her. When Storm was shining-full of the Dolphin’s power, she focused a single thought and willed the magic to its work.
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