Almost immediately, Damon recognized a bad idea for a bad idea. The ocean was a far cry from the peaceful, crystalline pool he’d peered out across over the past month. It wasn’t even on the level with the churning, chaotic waves of the storm which had rendered him a castaway.
It was as though he was being throttled by a giant, buffeted back and forth by furiously indecisive currents. One of his hands slipped from the anchor in nearly the first instant of him being underwater. He lost a small amount of the breath he was holding in his panic to find his grip again.
He froze his hands to the metal on reflex, but it was one of those solutions that created as many problems as it solved. The water was still thrashing around him, knocking him about in a manner that threatened to break his arms in multiple different places.
He tried a new strategy, unfreezing one hand and quickly repositioning to wrap himself tighter before freezing the entire arm, reducing his profile and the degree of leverage the water could put on his extremities. He repeated the process with his other arm and enjoyed half a second of relief before remembering how much he missed certain aspects of being on the surface. Breathing, truly an underrated, often underappreciated bodily process.
The anchor continued dropping, judging from his minor but noticeable sensation of being midfall. How long had it taken to touch the bottom last time around? Damon forced his eyes open, which he’d closed out of a doubt that he’d be able to see anything under the surging ocean’s surface.
He found that he could in fact see through the water, which was unfortunate. The whirlpool was visible in the distance ahead. It wasn’t simply a feature of the ocean, made solely of currents and water and hate. It fit into a bowl within the terrain of the sea floor itself, a hidden valley far underneath the water that disappeared into a deep blackness.
Looking down into it, he found himself fighting the obvious implication that the depths descended into a hole of nothingness, that this was somehow the point at which the ocean drained, here at the end of the world, a place of mystery.
The more unfortunately inescapable fact was that they’d already passed into that valley. The sea floor was far out of view below. There was no way the anchor would ever touch down, which meant he had nothing to push an ice pillar off of to bring himself back to the surface.
He turned his mind toward solving that problem with a ferocity that his life depended on. The anchor itself. He could use it as an anchor for his ice, given the tension between it and the chain and the ship. Doing so, however, would mean letting go of the anchor, which seemed a bad idea. In his original plan, he would have frozen it and the ship into place to make the process slightly more feasible.
He could climb the anchor, hand over hand, freezing and unfreezing his grip with each movement. Damon looked up and saw the ship as a blurry, smallish spot on the surface above, so far above him that he didn’t even care to guess at the distance. He stood no chance of making the journey before running out of breath.
He tried to think of a third idea, pulling from the dregs of his creativity. All he could think about was how much he needed to breathe. It was like trying to ignore a headache, the constant pulse of need and the ache of his burning lungs. Breathe, breathe, just breathe already, True Divine. Like a bad tune that just wouldn’t stop playing.
He couldn’t even feel his despair properly in the face of that need. He shut his eyes, clenched his teeth, pinched his lips closed. He used his magic to freeze a seal over his mouth, but unfortunately, didn’t include his nose, and couldn’t find the will to repeat the process.
The anchor suddenly jerked, and he surged upward at speed. Damon thrashed against the ice holding his arms. He tried to exhale through his nose, knowing that when he released that effort, his body would suck in automatically, water or air, it made no difference.
It might have only been seconds, but it felt like an entire year before he finally broke through to the surface, sucking in a breath so violently that it made his eyes bulge outward. The anchor’s chain clicked as the mechanism brought it the last of the way up.
Ria and Lilian seized him by the shirt, and Damon released the ice bonds holding him to his perch as they pulled him back aboard the ship. He lay on his back, shaking his head, alive but unsuccessful.
“It… didn’t work,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
Ria hugged him tight. “You are alive. That is all that matters.”
“For now,” said Lilian.
It hardly needed pointing out that they were still in danger. Damon forced himself to his feet, staggering along the rail toward the front of the ship just in time to watch the bow of The Reunion dip into the main current of the whirlpool.
The sudden acceleration was enough to knock him and everyone else onto their ass. Damon’s heart raced as he watched the world around them fly by in a blur of blue. He hung on to the railing, losing all hope, all sense of what could possibly save them now.
“No!” shouted Malon.
She rose to a standing position at the front of the ship. Her eyes burst into a deep crimson glow, along with her crest, which was occasional visible underneath her fluttering clothing. The crimson power surrounded the ship and everyone on it, and slowly, they began to rise.
She was lifting The Reunion with her magic. The absurdity of the scale of the spell stole Damon’s breath away. He watched her waver, one knee threatening to buckle under the strain of her casting. Damon ran to her, slipping his shoulder under her arm as she continued to work her power.
The Reunion floated over the ocean, perhaps ten feet above the surface, flying away from the whirlpool at a fair clip. Damon waved Ria over and leaned in to whisper, not wanting to break his aesta’s concentration.
“Tell Vel to have the ship ready to move forward at full acceleration the second it touches down!” he hissed.
She nodded and sprinted off. Damon hugged his aesta. Her face was pale, forehead beaded with sweat. She let out a low moan, pulling against him with her hips.
“Mmm,” she hummed. “Solas. Help me… focus.”
“Focus?” He thought he knew what she meant, given her crest, but he wasn’t sure. “Like this, aesta?”
He ran a hand up her body, lightly cupping one of her breasts. Malon sucked in a small breath, and the ship seemed to rise slightly higher in the air. That was enough of a sign, as far as he was concerned.
He didn’t want to risk doing too much. He was still holding her up and knew that he couldn’t move from his position without putting her spell in jeopardy. Damon kissed her neck, caressing her body with the arm he had wrapped around her, and sliding down with the other.
Malon sighed again, and the ship’s deck swayed a little less. Damon slid his hand into her girlshorts, feeling the heat and humidity of her womanhood before his fingers had even reached it. He softly stroked the trim, silky hair she had down there before beginning to caress her with sexual intent.
It was far more erotic than it should have been, teasing his aesta in full view of everyone, with their lives hanging in the balance as clearly as the ship. He slid a finger into her and felt her back arch and the ship suddenly waver. Too much, too fast? He slowed down, kissing her again, letting the moment burn without scorching.
“I can only do so much right now, aesta,” he whispered. “But when this is done… When we get back to the tower, I’m going to take you, over and over. Again… and again. Ruthlessly.”
He teased her again, setting two fingers at the edge of entering her. Malon rocked back and forth against his touch, biting her lower lip, holding her spell with so much control that it was as though she was in a trance, a sorceress savant.
“I wish we didn’t have to wait,” he whispered. “If no one else was watching, I’d bend you over the railing and give you my cock right here and now.”
If nobody else was watching and if their lives weren’t still hanging by the thread of a spell. Adding the latter seemed less sexy.
He kept at it, working his aesta to the verge of release and keeping her there. Torturing her, in a certain sense, to keep her spell flowing. He felt cruel and strangely powerful as he listened to the sounds she made, heard her occasionally mutter please or solas and knowing that she couldn’t have what she wanted most.
Well, second most, after saving their lives.
She finally set the ship down in calm waters. The Reunion surged forward as soon as it hit the water, now guided by Vel’s capable hands at the wheel. Malon collapsed against Damon, and he hugged her tight.
“Aesta,” he said. “That was brilliant.”
“You are… incredibly mean, solas.” She sank down to her knees and pulled her hands between her thighs. “I love you so much.”
“And I love you.” He kissed her, helped her up, and breathed a sigh of relief.