Hexus

)30( Argent

[9:54PM, November 14, UTC +01:00]

Icy water rushed up Linus’ nose and addled his brain, heightening the already crippling panic.

I’m going to die.

I’m going to die.

“Help!”

He spluttered, trying to spit out the saltiness that poured into his mouth. He’d never learned to swim, despite how much Ian tried to force him to, and now it looked like he was going to pay for his stubbornness. He thrashed around, and somehow managed to keep his face above the water.

“Linus!”

Agnes’ scream was dampened significantly by the water sloshing around his ears. A large wave crashed on top of him, sinking him deeper. The saltiness stung his eyes, and in the weak moonlight he could barely see her concerned face wavering above, peering over the massive slab of ice that drifted inches in front of him. Her hand reached into the water and he fought to get to it. She grabbed firmly and tried to pull him up, but couldn’t handle his weight once he broke out of the water. He ignored the bite of the frost and gripped the edge of the ice sheet, and struggled to pull his quivering body out of the sea. His wet clothes clung to his body like a second skin, intensifying the stab of the cold winds.

“What…where are we?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, crouching and shivering. He activated a spell and began to emit infra-red radiation into the air from above their feet, trying to keep them warm without melting the ice below. Large waves knocked against the sides of the iceberg, every hit threatening to throw them off the small frozen surface. Ten people couldn’t fit on top of it, and cold as it was, he was happy to be out of the water. He adjusted his stance and looked around. Between figuring out their whereabouts and trying not to drown, he couldn’t wrap his mind around what was going on.

It all started with the weird behaviour. Esther and Augustus had become jumpy and authoritative, like they had somehow been wired to be cautious around everything. And then their energy auras began to fluctuate randomly; one moment, they seemed normal, and the next they were agitated, with Esther’s paranoia bombarding him through their core link. Agnes was just as confused about it all, and every attempt to find out what the problem was ended in someone getting upset, going mute or going ape.

The icing on the cake came around 7 this morning, when Augustus and Esther simultaneously said ‘Portia’ and before he could ask what they were on about, he was dumped in the middle of the freezing ocean.

“How the bloody hell did we get here?”
“I think Augustus teleported – Look out!”

She pushed against his legs, causing him to slip and fall forward. He twisted mid-fall and smacked his back on the ice, his head hanging over the edge. He was going to cuss out, but the words were trapped in his throat by the sight before him. Something black and massive blocked the sky, a glossy scaly surface rushing past, disappearing continuously in a turbid splash on the other side of their unsteady ice island. Every scale was as large as a dinner plate and looked as hard as steel armour, reflecting the moon and water with a dark blue sheen as it went by.