Author's Notes: As forewarned on my FF dot net profile, this will the last chapter you'll see for the next four weeks. Taking my Christmas break. You'll see chapter 9, in which we catch up with Jenna and get a look into Karst's history, on January 4. After that we'll be back to the usual biweekly schedule. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and don't forget to review; it's hard to get a good idea of what the readers think with an average of 1 review per chapter.

- Chapter 8: Why Can't I Die? -

Isaac woke up to find that his eyes were already open. They felt soupy, filmy, and his vision was blurred to the point where he could make out nothing but waves of color. He quickly closed them. Doing so, he became aware of an ache fading from them.

What happened? I remember... going down to the storage room for some reason. Then, pain, and Karst's face. Or was that part just a nightmare?

Chest feels so tight. Like I'm being suffocated.

He tried to take a breath - and found that he couldn't.

Panicking, he struggled with his whole body, kicking and struggling through what he now realized was not air but water. His lungs screamed, firing his limbs to reach all the more desperately for the surface, but something was gripping his left ankle, keeping him from getting anywhere. His futile struggles went on for a few moments, then abruptly halted as a thought hit him.

I'm not breathing... so why haven't I drowned yet?

Regarding the situation calmly, he realized that the water filling his mouth, throat, and lungs, while extremely uncomfortable, was bringing him no closer to death. Though his lungs continued to hoarsely demand oxygen, his body apparently didn't actually need it.

How... how is this possible? I could believe it if I had some psynergy to let me breathe underwater, but how can I live without breathing? And - I remember now! Karst got me through the heart! I should have been dead before I even hit the water!

The thought that he actually was dead crossed his mind briefly, but he rejected it. He didn't feel dead, and heaven couldn't possibly be so uncomfortable and confusing.

To get a better idea of his situation, he tried opening his eyes again. Some of the film had cleared from his eyes, and his vision was marginally less blurry. This time, he could make out Garet's limp form. He was attached to a hunk of the ship, the ropes Agatio had bound him with still holding him to the ladder. Not even a twitch came from him.

No. If I won't die, then there's no way Garet will either. I won't let him die.

In answer to his will, a bright glow surrounded Garet and carried him upward like a mother picking up her child. The ropes which had held him dissolved against its brilliance. The aura lifted him all the way to the surface, then stopped, but did not disappear. It remained around Garet like a protective shell.

All of this felt perfectly natural to Isaac, though he idly wondered why he'd never done something like this before. With Garet taken care of, he looked to his own situation. His wrists and ankles were still bound with rope, but the ladder he'd been tied to had apparently broken in the crash. One piece, however, had lodged into some coral, and that was what had snared his left ankle.

Having already willed Garet to survive, willing the inconvenient bindings to dissolve into dust came without a moment's thought. Freed, Isaac began to float towards the surface. There was no hurry, so he didn't bother with serious swimming. He just let his body rise until his head broke over the waves.

As soon as he reached air, his lungs began compulsively vomiting up sea water. After two heaves he managed to gather control of himself, and focused psynergy on squeezing his lungs as vigorously as possible, causing him to spew out bucket loads. After just a few more heaves, he found himself taking in the sweet ambrosia of oxygen. The scent and feel of it being drawn into his body overwhelmed him, filled him with a sensation of euphoria. After spewing out one last spritz of sea water, he let loose with a laugh. Superfluous or no, it felt good to be breathing again.

Eventually he chanced to look down, and was mildly dismayed to see blood in the water. At first he thought he might have been coughing up, but he shortly noticed that it was coming out of his chest, where Karst's scythe had pierced him.

Pierced clean through to the heart. He regarded the wound with a sort of morbid fascination. Oh yeah, that's definitely a fatal wound. No question about it.

He laughed again, this time more with mirth than with joy. The hilarity of being killed in multiple ways over the course of an hour or two and still not dying was too much, at least while he was on his oxygen high. Still, bleeding from the chest was a bit disgusting, so he focused on his wound and closed it up neatly in a matter of seconds.

Boy, I'm beat. So... how about a little raft?

He half-expected himself to be able to make a little craft of timbers lashed together with rope just by thinking about it, but he decided to go for a more realistic proposition and concentrated on a stretch of water, making it instantly freeze into a little ice raft. He slapped his arms over it and hoisted himself up.

Garet was still encased in the bright glow, so it took less than a minute to spot him again and bring him to the little chuck of ice. The little aura followed his will precisely, carrying Garet with it.

"So, Garet," he said. "Any idea what happened to Jenna and Piers?"

He could see the wreckage of the ship in the distance, but nothing else of real interest. If Karst had gotten both him and Garet, it made sense that she would have gotten Jenna and Piers too. But somehow Isaac doubted it. He didn't know what had made their ship crash, but it couldn't have been part of Karst's plan; obviously a snag had come in somewhere, and that might have given Jenna and Piers a chance to escape. And if Karst had gotten them, why didn't they end up near him and Garet? They had probably headed back to Prox to get help for the two of them.

That left him with only one concern: How did he live through all that? He was good with psynergy, sure, but that didn't make him...

"Oh gods," Isaac breathed aloud, an ironic invocation if there ever was one. The shock of his realization made his heart nearly stop. It was crazy, fantastic, and almost unbelievable, but now he had no choice but to admit that it was true. The words of a girl he'd once dismissed as delusional now rang in his head.

"Don't you realize who we are? ...Immortality. Great powers. What's that spell?"

"Sheba... Oh gods, Sheba, you were right all along."