And I was clinging to the middle, trapped between two sea monsters.
I’d barely finished the thought when one of them let out a pain-filled screech. I whirled, and my eyes widened at the sight of Oliver. Somehow, he’d clambered onto the iceberg and gotten between me and one of the oncoming cetus. His chest heaved, water clinging to every part of him, and he raised the bloody knife he must’ve used to stab it with the first time. The creature wasn’t dead, but it was slinking backward, lowering that long body into the sea. A trail of red stained the ice all the way to the edge.
The remaining cetus made that strange noise again. It sounded more incensed this time, as if it knew what Oliver had done to its companion. Knew and planned to have its revenge.
A strong hand grabbed mine, and I whipped my head around. Oliver looked back at me, his eyes bright and blue. “We need to swim for it,” he said calmly.
I darted a glance at that black, churning water. “I think I’d rather take my chances on—”
A third cetus surged out of the water, roaring so loudly the air itself trembled. Oliver and I leaped backward to avoid getting crushed by its massive body, but there was no more ice left to land on.
We tumbled into the water.
I’d never experienced such a shock of cold. I gasped without thinking, and pain tore through my lungs as I inhaled the sea. I kicked instinctively, fighting for the surface, for air. I was dimly aware of Oliver beside me, his arm around my waist. We fought together. Two or three seconds later, we both gasped as we reemerged into the night. I tried not to think about one of those creatures hurtling up from the depths and closing its jaws around my legs.
There was only one place to get out of the water, a crumpled piece of ice that made a ramp, of sorts. It would put us on the opposite side of the icy cliffside that was possible to climb, the way we’d come to get onto the ice. But every other ledge around us was too high without any way to climb it.
With no other choice, the two of us rushed toward it, neither of us making any effort to be subtle.
We heaved ourselves up, and then we were running. Our sopping backpacks thumped with every step. Behind us, there was a splashing sound, followed by a huff. Oliver and I glanced at each other, still breathing hard, and our eyes filled with silent agreement. Flee now. Reassess the plan once we got to safety.
We ran until we were well away from those broken spots in the ice, and though both of us slowed, we didn’t allow ourselves to fall into a walk. We still had a ways to go until we got to the spot where we could begin the ascent back to solid ground. Without faltering, Oliver turned his backpack around, putting it on his chest. He unzipped it and took out another kitchen knife, still secured in its plastic sheath. In a deft movement that made me blink, he flipped the handle in my direction.
“You packed weapons?” I asked, surprised. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask before now—this was the dreamscape, where the only danger we ever faced was the one we posed to each other.
Oliver raised his eyebrows and produced two handguns next. He held out one of these to me, as well. “I brought several.”
We were almost to the bottom of that icy outcropping, the makeshift path that would lead us up to safety. “Feel that?” Oliver said between harsh breaths.
The ice was rumbling. No, pulsing. But I could barely feel it past the pain of my burning lungs. It was so cold that every inhale felt like needles going inside me. The ceti were beating at the ice beneath us, I realized between bursts of agony. “That’s… why you wouldn’t… move earlier,” I managed, running even faster. “They hunt… by sound.”
They were smart, too, I learned an instant later as the ice beneath the path we’d been aiming for fell away. The ceti must’ve realized we were going in one direction, making a straight shot to a place they wouldn’t be able to reach. They’d been weakening the ice with every strike, hurtling at the same spiderweb cracks over and over from the depths below.
Oliver responded at the same moment huge, gray bodies emerged from the sea like ants. Dozens and dozens of them appeared, in both directions, forming a line. They came out of the ice with too much precision, too much organization.
This is tactical, I thought. That was when I noticed how hard my body was trembling. It made sense, considering I was wearing half-frozen clothes sopping with seawater, but that wasn’t why I couldn’t stop shaking. No, the shaking was from the abrupt jolt of fear that had wracked my frame as I readied myself, accepting the grimness of our situation. There was no other way—we’d either fight our way out of this or very possibly die.
Waking up wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t abandon Oliver.
He and I stood back to back now. When the ceti first started appearing, our eyes had met, and we’d moved in unspoken agreement. Communicating in a language all our own, just as we’d always been able to do, no matter what changes came our way. My grip tightened on the gun, and a single glance told me it was loaded and ready to shoot. But as I raised my weapon, I felt the painful clench of uncertainty.
Oliver felt no uncertainty whatsoever. His body jerked, again and again, a reaction to pulling the trigger. The noise of each shot bounced off my eardrums in painful bursts. I didn’t care; I was trying to figure out how to survive this and avoid harming these creatures.
The tide of ceti surged toward us now, looking like a wave of dirty water. It was as if they’d been waiting for a signal, and the first gunshot was it. Every cetus on the ice pierced the air with their shrieks. Combined with Oliver’s shots, the night was splitting apart with sound.
Still, I didn’t shoot—my mind told me these were animals. They were terrifyingly intelligent, maybe, but animals nonetheless. This fight felt similar to those petrifying minutes I’d been battling the Leviathan. Animals were like children. They were innocents, caught up in a war they couldn’t understand or hope to defend themselves in.
“Fortuna,” Oliver said over his shoulder, his voice deliberately calm, “stop hesitating. We’re inside your head, remember? These things aren’t real.”
By that logic, I wanted to point out, that meant he wasn’t real, either.
But he was right. At this point, it was kill or be killed. I let out a breath, squared my shoulders, and lifted my head.
And I shot an oncoming cetus in the face.
The creature’s head exploded, and the rest of it toppled slowly into the water. It was dead. I’d killed it. The ceti didn’t wait for me to process this—they kept coming. I struggled against the panic trying its claws in. With a snarl of resolve, I put all my focus into a rhythm, a violent pattern in my head that felt like music. The knife Oliver had given me was still in my other hand, and once the ceti got close enough, I put it to use. Aim, pull, slice, kick. Aim, pull, slice, kick. The pattern went on and on.
The ceti had numbers, but they were slower on land. In the time it took them to rear their heads back or swing a flipper, I was there with a cut or a jab. They didn’t like pain. Most of them put their heads down and retreated, sinking into the water as if it were a dog going off to lick its wounds.
But there were some that just got angrier. Some that retaliated as they bled.
Those were the ones that frightened me most. They acted like something more than an animal. Why should there be creatures like that within the dreamscape? Trying to hurt me?