HAZEL
Eugene was not the most well balanced of hippogriffs. Not that she had known too many, but she'd always imagined them to be pretty level-headed creatures - and, well, literally level too.
Long story short, Eugene tripped. Hazel was not sure over what, but all that really mattered was that ultimately, he went down and Hazel went with him.
There happened to be a rather large rock beneath them which made friends with her head and placed her in a crater which was hidden from the outside by an outcrop above it. (Had she had the chance to examine it, she would have seen that it was really quite complex) All she cared about however when she came to was the severe lack of company, hippogriff, and land.
What there was was water.
It was all of us, and we were in the middle of the ocean.
This all seemed very familiar.
She sat up carefully and collected her spatha which thankfully had fallen in beside her. Making her way to the edge of her little hideaway, her hands dipped into cold and she forced herself to not jump back.
A little water didn't mean it was the entire ocean.
It was still dark, though something told her it should have been daylight hours ago. It was pouring rain, wild thunder cracks shaking the sky. The others were nowhere in sight, at least from her present position, and she fought the urge to yell out for them.
Finally bringing herself up straight against the whipping wind, her vision became a little better and she was able to make out some of what she was faced with.
It was the entire ocean, or at the very least, a good chunk of it.
She was alone on her little outcrop, but off to her right, she could just make out another, and beyond that, she knew there had to be more.
The algae under her sneakers was slick from rain and salt water and they fought to gain purchase on any rough patch of rock they could.
Something flew over her head, whizzing by like an arrow - no, not like, it was an arrow. Standing on the next island over was Frank, just visible through the smoke and apparently saying something.
"Sorry!" she could just make out over the wind, but then he was pointing behind her and she turned around to a massive fin coming up out of the waves. It did not advance, rather hovered in one spot in the tumult for a few seconds before sinking back down and disappearing into the froth.
A shriek came from above and a battered Eugene swooped low across the water, clawing at the surface. He looked in Hazel's direction and turned like he was coming to get her, but he swerved at the last second and glanced back apologetically as the storm overtook him.
She would just have to hold her own for now.
Something shimmered in her peripheral and a harsh ripple echoed off her shore separate from the already broiling sea.
Hazel crouched down cautiously, sword at the ready and, peering into the whitewashed surface, was met by the image of a blue, female face.
It smiled up at her and a hand to match shot out of the surf, just missing her wrist as she pulled away, breathing hard. The nereid scowled and sank back down again, deciding that either Hazel wasn't worth the trouble or that she could get her later.
Why isn't anything happening?
It felt almost as if they were waiting for something and she hadn't been told what. Nothing was attacking them, at least not seriously, and for whatever reason they had been separated and not much else.
The water was still if she discounted the fact it was being whipped up by the storm. The others, from what she could see, seemed to have come to this conclusion as well, that something was not quite right. Well, not that it was ever right, but at the moment, it seemed especially wrong.
Jason was trying to calm the storm, at least in his little pocket of air, and her attention was drawn to a sudden boom that cascaded around them from far off in the distance but much too close.
A strange, black haze lingered on the horizon and suddenly shot up into the atmosphere where it dissipated again, adding to the already dark dark.
Watching distractedly where her brain knew the cloud line to be, Hazel became aware of a single spot on the night-scape that was brighter than the rest. It glowed a coppery brown and blurred into the clouds like a stain on old fabric. Somehow, she knew it would have been blood red on a clear night.
A single beam swathed the ocean in red and somehow, the water seemed to calm.
She knew what was coming next, she just didn't know what to do about it.
The ocean began to rise up in the distance and the same unearthly booming pulsed again through the night as the tidal wave grew from the sinking land.
She looked over to Frank again, and on a whim, dove headlong into the water.
It was colder than she'd ever felt before and she started to panic immediately. Forcing her head above the surface and taking long, harsh breaths, she flung her arms around her in a frantic freestyle towards Frank's little island. She had made eye contact with him before she'd jumped and knew he'd seen her. He probably thought she'd lost it. She thought she'd lost it.
The only good part about the cold was it prevented her from thinking about what was in the water beneath her. She focused on paddling and getting out as quickly as possible. If she could only get to Frankā¦
Her vision began to blur too quickly. She could hardly breath and her legs refused to move the right way. Nothing was working and she was only half-way there.
She could see him, he was saying something but her head was filled with cotton and the wind was too strong for her to hear. The waves kept brushing up over her head and made it impossible to get air.
She felt her eyes go soft and everything got fuzzy - she suddenly felt very warm and wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep. She was vaguely aware that she shouldn't do that, but couldn't think straight enough to convince herself why. Then, something crashed through the water next to her and wrapped itself around her waist and for a moment her eyes went black.
Frank pulled her shaking body up onto the rocks and shook her shoulders until she opened her eyes and coughed up the cold and the water.
He was soaking wet and breathing hard and hugged her close once she'd stopped.
"Don't," he whispered between ragged breaths.
She smiled and hugged him back before she remembered the wave. "Frank," she stuttered. "Frank we have to get out of here."
He nodded but didn't let go of her. He didn't understand.
She pushed away a bit and forced him to look at her. "No, we need to get out of here now."
