89 - Into the Water

The memory passed over, through, and around her like a surge of stormy water sloshing through a ditch. It tossed Anzi around and spun her like a top, and an invisible force ripped her out of Tet’s body and consciousness like a slab of meat pulled off a hook. She came free with a gasping scream, every part of her utterly raw and freezing and vulnerable as if someone had taken a blade and flayed the skin off her bones before tossing her out into a wintry blizzard.

But the sensation of soul-deep coldness faded fast, and it wasn’t long before she stopped shivering as her body soaked up the rays of the hot Adaraat sun. So she was back here again. Whatever kind of magic Ash was using on her, it had pulled her across the land from place to place. She’d recognized the first one, her home village on the fringes of the desert when she had been but a child. The second was far from here, to the south where the flatlands began to roll up and down to meet the mountai