Elchanan caught by guile, cut down by lust
Elchanan has lost his breath. He can’t be sure if it’s the cold of the water seeping into his bones or the way the adrenaline rushes into him in one long whoosh as he recovers from the thrill of using his magic for the first time in weeks. It feels too good, unsettlingly good. Like the re-introduction of a drug he used to depend upon. And he has always been a man of simple pleasures. This is one of them—the unique opportunity to convince someone of whatever he’d like with no more than a well-placed smile and the right silver tone. Oh, he’d seen the look in his eyes, how Septimus had frozen like the prettiest deer at the bell-warning of his voice. How he’d been caught by no more than five words. Elchanan thinks—knows—that the power most invisible is the prettiest kind. And by far the most useful.
Anyway he shudders as he dives, a thrill of pain and pleasure both wandering up his spine. His wings are a dirty hindrance underwater. But he kicks and struggles, and slowly, so slowly, the bottom of the pool comes into closer view. The light is flickering brighter and brighter; it illuminates the stone at the bottom enough that Elchanan can see it’s ticked with little marks, and the curiosity that pulls him down only grows stronger. His lungs are starting to burn. But he can’t turn back, not now, not now. Panic blossoms like acid in his chest; he pushes harder and finally sinks close enough, deep enough, to see that the ticks are carvings are really drawings, made by careful hands. (He might have said loving, out of habit, but really there’s no evidence.)
The relic chooses its wielder.
Drowning is the worst way to die. That’s what he’s always thought. Now, as the seconds pass and the burning in his throat and chest grows exponentially worse, a disaster curve climbing ever upwards, he knows it’s true. Every fleeting moment stains his gaze a little darker. The scene carved into the stone is a bizarrely enchanting depiction of death, the always-still horses always-rearing against the thing that comes for them, which Elchanan can only describe as something like a giant serpent, snakelike and horrible even in carving. He wants to look at Septimus, wants to be reminded that he isn’t alone. But somehow he cannot move his gaze away. He is still drifting down, down, down, ever closer the clue, and for a brief moment he wonders if this is what it feels like to hear his magic—terrible and irresistble. Suddenly a shadow is thrown over the rock. The archpriest twists, and the blackness moves too. Cold fear slices through his throat as he realizes that the light is coming from behind him. Growing closer, brighter, purer blue.
He panics, and turns—
The fish is coming toward them—
And normally Elchanan wouldn’t be afraid of something that looks like an old swimming wizard, but this thing glows with power, pouring light out of that strange stone in its head, and even the way it moves is menacing, the slow twist from side to side and back again. The whiskers twitch like they have a mind of their own; Elchanan’s heart pounds in his chest; we have to go, he wants to say, but his voice would be lost in an instant. Fear floods him. The fish is swimming closer. The water is uncomfortably warm now, simmering with unnatural light. Closer and closer and closer it comes, and fuck this, he thinks, fuck this damn fish, and reaches for Septimus.
With a grimace of effort Elchanan rams his shoulder under the biologist’s front leg and pushes upward. His kicks are frantic as he moves toward the surface—cold hysteria rushes into his throat—his vision is starting to go deep-purple at the edges and oh, he wants to breathe, and neither of them can die here so Septimus, please breathe, please breathe—but the edge of the pool and the sun that shimmers through the water is still so far away, and Elchanan’s magic is no use here.
His muscles start to falter.
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