CHAPTER 3-7
Heinrich

Not far to go now.

Heinrich was hunched behind one of the boulders spanning the Drowned Channel over the land bridge, clinging to its side as he gasped for air as quietly as he could. His last dip underwater had gone on for a bit longer than he'd bargained for, and now he needed to catch his breath before moving closer to the dock.

He knew Fynn would be in position near the edge of the trees and awaiting the signal, which was nothing more elaborate than a raised hand from the very group of boulders Heinrich was now hidden behind.

He waited while his breathing settled, and was thankful for the waves. They were hardly thundering dramatically against Sidereal Isle's western shore, but they were loud enough to mask the sound of a boy's shuddering inhales as he sheltered behind a few boulders.

The plan was quite simple: he and Fynn had split up at the headland a ways north of the dock, with Heinrich taking to the water and Fynn continuing on through the forest. Fynn would provide a distraction, giving Heinrich time to swim silently up to the dock and grab the flag.

Heinrich had assumed that Fynn would be taking responsibility for the actual flag capture, but had been surprised when the older boy shook his head.

"No, it has to be you," he'd said.

"But why?" Heinrich wanted to know. He wasn't exactly the strongest swimmer, despite Phoenix's hours of patient lessons. Surely Fynn would be faster, not to mention have more stamina for a swim that didn't really look like much until one was underway.

Fynn's reasoning was this: "I saw how comfortable you were being underwater the other day. You were able to stay under for a surprisingly long time! Until the person gets up to that group of boulders over there that are really close to the dock, the only way to be well hidden from sight of any sentries they'll have posted is to stay underwater."

"But -"

"Don't worry, Heinrich. You'll do great." And Fynn had fixed him with such a magnificently confident smile upon saying so that Heinrich had had to agree.

Turned out, Fynn had been right. Heinrich had crawled out of the forest to conceal himself behind the low rocks, then moved out into the waves, deeper and deeper and deeper until the water was at about chest height, and when he sank below and all sounds in the world faded away except for a relaxing and continuous whooshing, he realized he felt right at home, and not afraid at all. Shallow water and the shore were very close, and he could retreat to them if he needed to. But he didn't need to, because he navigated his way easily along the coast, only his head briefly visible when he came up for a few breaths before submerging again. Anyone looking in his direction from the dock would have been able to spot him when he surfaced, of course, but they would only be looking in his direction if expecting to see a player approaching by sea and thus were attending to thorough visual sweeps of the area. "People usually don't see what they're not expecting to see," Phoenix had once told him, when describing the training he'd received in the Imperial Army for the type of combat he and Fuzzy had specialized in.

Evidently, whoever was guarding the flag did not, in fact, expect to see anyone approaching by sea, because Heinrich had been able to reach the larger boulders that approximately demarcated the land bridge without any cries of alarm from the dock.

Peering cautiously around the side of the boulder he was now hidden behind until the edge of the forest came into view, he watched and waited. Fynn should be in position and waiting for the signal by now, right? It very likely had taken Heinrich longer to get to the boulder line than it had taken Fynn to continue traveling south through the forest until arriving level with the dock, and so, with his breath now calmed, Heinrich decided to proceed.

Shifting his position so that he would be visible to anyone in the forest but not to anyone on the dock, he kicked his legs hard to raise himself out of the water as much as possible, and waved his arm a few times towards the forest. Hoping that this would be enough, he shifted back around to the western side of the boulder shielding him, and with one great inhale, went under.

A wondrous, near-complete silence greeted him as he sank into the turquoise shallows again and kicked off of the boulder. Thick beams of sunlight illuminated darting, silvery fish and the white sand of the seabed, and Heinrich swam towards the dock's pilings that he could see through the aquatic haze even from here.

Upon arriving at the piling furthest out into the water, he floated upwards as slowly as he could manage, even though his lungs felt fit to burst: he had again erroneously gauged the distance he would have to remain underwater.

None of it mattered once his mouth cleared the waterline and a particularly large and well-timed nearby wave smothered the sound of his great, desperate inhale. Carefully, he peered down the dock and towards the beach, where he saw two important things: one, Fynn had evidently seen Heinrich's signal, for he was engaged in something of a psychological dance with his opponent on the beach; and two, that opponent was Phoenix.

Each was sizing the other up, daring him to make a move. Fynn feinted right and then dashed off to the left, executing a smart pivot to do so, and Heinrich watched breathlessly as Phoenix nearly caught him. But he didn't, and Fynn was retreating now, perhaps temporarily, and Heinrich knew he was running out of time. With all four limbs clinging monkey-like to the wooden piling, he carefully shimmied the short distance upwards, hoping against hope that his brother was still distracted and that the waves would continue to drown out the sound of the water running off of his body as he emerged from the channel.

When he got high enough to do so, he switched his grip first with one arm, then the other, off of the post and onto the dock itself, then pulled himself up so that his upper body was now uncomfortably beached on the dock's seaward end, right next to where the flag was attached.

There was no sign of Fynn now, and Heinrich's stomach lurched with fear. Had he taken too long? His bright eyes found Phoenix again, who was a good deal closer to the dock now than he had been before, but his back was turned and he evidently had not yet noticed Heinrich's presence. Indeed, he seemed to be talking with Áthas.

Hmm.

"You've both been through so much," Heinrich heard her saying as he reached for the flag, and he paused, wondering who she was talking about. "And each of you is trying so, so hard to be the best brother you can be for the other. I think that's incredible."

Phoenix said something in response to this, but it was quiet and Heinrich couldn't hear it over the sound of the waves.

"I don't think it's a miracle that you found him at all, actually," Áthas replied. "Calling it a miracle implies that it was merely some extraordinary cosmic good luck. But that's not what it was, was it?"

Heinrich was so startled he nearly fell backwards off of the dock when Áthas' gaze suddenly flicked right to him. So she had known he was here all along! There was one panicked moment where their eyes were locked and Heinrich's breath died, but then she turned back to Phoenix. "You found Heinrich because you never gave up looking for him. Because he means the world to you."

Heinrich knew it wasn't safe to stay and listen in for any longer. With the flag firmly in his grasp and a swirling morass of feelings he didn't know how to decipher in his mind, he slid noiselessly off of the dock and under the water, kicked hard off of the piling he had scaled moments prior, and swam like hell.