A fire cart dashed along the river, heading downstream A cluster of engineers ran behind it at top speed, falling behind. Lidea used eir long legs to catch up to the group ahead of Sunny. 

“What’s happening?” Ey kept pace with one of the engineers. 

“Someone rammed a handcart into the railing of the bridge, and it gave way. A few people fell over.”

“Shit.” Sunny caught up with them, his shorter legs pumping extra hard to keep up. Another fire cart started coming up behind them, and Lidea leapt up on the back tailgate, threading eir arm through the ring grip. Sunny got smaller behind em as the cart picked up speed. 

They caught up to a section of river that had flattened out into a shallower region, and a crowd had gathered on either side. Four people had been dragged downstream by the flow of the water, and now they grappled on ragged rocks jutting out of the river.

The fire crew on the other side had a floating line with a slightly weighted end, and one of them was swinging it around by the head. It flew across the water, landing only three-quarters of the way across. 

“I’ve got it!” Lidea called out, skidding down the bank to get a littler closer to the water. Ey moved magic like a lasso on the end of eir staff, catching the other end of the floating line in a loop and dragging it all the way across. The fire team on this side of the river caught and anchored it. 

From here, the rescue should have been easy. One victim was local fishing stock, so she knew immediately how to hook her elbow over the line and pull herself to the nearest shore. The two engineers watched her and figured it out quickly. They would have gotten training on this sort of thing, but the difference in theory versus practice made them a little less sure of their footing. The fourth victim was stuck, unmoving, right in the middle of the river, clinging desperately to a rock, one quick burst of water away from being knocked free.

Hades. 

Damn it. 

The emergency situation training for administration was generally “don’t get into an emergency situation.” 

“Hades!” Lidea called. “Grab the line!” Hades spat the water out of her mouth and tried to lift her voice above the sound of the water. 

“My foot is caught!”

“Damn it,” Lidea muttered under eir breath. Ey turned to the fire and rescue next to eir. “How can I help with that?”

“How’re your fluid mechanics?” he asked. 

“Decent to good.”

He nodded. 

“Wait for these two to clear —“ the fisher and one of the engineers were slowly approaching the shore, two rescuers waiting for them with outstretched arms “—can you do a barrier bubble around her? Get the water off her back…” 

“...to see if she can dislodge herself. I know exactly what you’re thinking. Okay.” Lidea eased a little closer to the river while the rescuer shouted instructions to Hades.

Bubbles and fields were easy. Converting energy to force was the backbone of magical artifacting. Which also meant it was easy to be lazy. Ey focused in, pulling magic through the staff and forming it into a gently convex plate. From the shore, it wouldn’t have looked like anything except maybe an indiscernible glint of slightly refracted light. Ey cast it along the surface of the water, skimming the edge to get a feel for the speed of the flow. From the top, the field slid down into the water, forming an airgap between Hades and the water rushing at her. The river split around her, forming faster moving ridges of piled water. 

“Can you get your foot out?” The rescuer called. Lidea spread the field a little wider and pulled it back to give her more space, bearing down hard on the press of water beating at the shield. With a wriggle, though, Hades did it, yanking her foot free with her hands under her thigh. She gave a thumbs up and made to reach for the line. It was now on the other side of the field, though, and Hades’s arm wouldn’t pass through. 

“Grab the line from this side,” the rescuer shouted. “Grab it from this side and pass it around the field.” He made a motion with his arms, showing the repositioning of the float line.

Hades stood in the hollow of the river, thinking, hands clenching and unclenching in fear and agitation. She visibly mouthed a few words of encouragement to herself, then reached for the line. She managed to get it over the top of the field. She gripped it hard and nodded that she was ready to start pulling herself through the water. 

“I can move the force shield alongside her,” Lidea said. 

“Do it,” the rescuer nodded and gestured that Hades should move toward them. They went slowly but steadily, moving step by step along the slushy, slippery bottom of the river. Hades was only a yard away when she slipped. She went down hard, smacking her head on the side of a rock. Not quite enough to knock out but enough to daze. Enough for the waster that had washed around the side of the shielding to take her away again. 

Lidea dropped her staff and ran, dragging the bulb of magic behind em and letting eir shield break. The magic became a hook, and ey cast it out into the water, fishing, trying to find a body to stick to. It snagged a couple of large fish before finally finding Hades and pulling her back. 

Ey bared down, using everything ey had to lift Hades’s head above water. The pre-condensed magic was running out, and ey didn’t know how to make more while still keeping a hook wrapped around Hades. Time and energy was running low for non-magical rescue crew to figure out a solution, but ey could hold. 

Then the ground started to slip from under em, cracking at eir heel. The pressure of concentrated magic from above and riverlettes of ground-magic below were doing the very thing they were both worried about. The whole shoreline threatened to fall away into the water. 

Time was about to narrow to a fine, intractable point. 

It was a stupid play and ey knew it immediately. 

That was the thing about advanced titles, though. They were all too often rewards for doing stupid shit and living to tell the tale. 

“Clear the riverside,” ey shouted. Keeping one hand curled around the magic net that kept the still struggling Hades aloft, ey used the other to drag eir staff closer through the still attached rope of magic. It whipped up into eir hand and ey slammed it into the dirt. Like ey hoped, it hit a pocket of energy. The magic surged up through the staff, bursting out of the focus at the top. 

Ey pulled it down into the flow of magic and splashed the extra energy straight down into the water sloppily. Hades flopped in the crater of space. With the pressure of the rushing water gone, Lidea closed the net tighter around Hades’s body and yanked it toward em. The elf tumbled onto the riverside with a gasp and scrambled for higher ground. Arms came around her to drag her in. 

Lidea lost what happened after that as the ground gave way below her. The world became water and movement, one after the other in rapid succession.

“Lidea!”

Sunny felt the shift underground first, then traced back to the swell of magic above it, all as he crested the edge of the embankment. That elf-woman, Hades, was in the water, but Lidea snared her, body flowing through the movements lithely, drawing magic into graceful arcs that wrapped and ribboned em. Magic moved so fast when ey used it. He had never been able to keep up. 

Another rattle of magic, and then the elven woman was safe on the shore. Then Sunny watched as Lidea’s body lilted, thrown off balance by the counterweight of magic and the swell of water displaced by it. 

It was all too quick. He needed to think. To combine parts and pieces at a level where they could braid together to create structure. 

Fuck it. 

He sunk his hands into the ground, looking for the edges of the riverbed and the limestone underneath it. It was stupid. Everything he was about to do was stupid. 

The riverbed broke under his command and lifted, reaching upward past the surface of the water. Behind the line of rocks, the water rolled up on itself, foaming into a swath of whitewater. On the opposite side, the water slowed to a manageable stream. Lidea skidded to a halt, tumbling head over heels until ey flopped on eir side. Ey was breathing. 

A rescuer got to em first, dragging em back up to the embankment. Sunny let the magic go, and the riverbed settled back into place slowly. The water rushed forward, filling everything back in as it went. 

Sunny scrambled across the grass, trying to reach for Lidea. 

“Childress, stop.” 

An arm came around his chest, lifting him as he lunged forward.

“They need to stabilize eir spine and get em to the hospital.” The paramedic’s voice rankled at his ears, but he fell back panting. He dropped to his knees, elbows in the soil to compose himself. This was something that could ultimately be fixed with magic, just not the kind he could do.