Elayra fought hard against the darkness threatening to take her. She barely registered Ghent taking her dagger, or the new tug on the vine-like tongue as he started hacking away at it. The muscles of the deadly tether contracted and relaxed around her throat with the beast’s pain, refusing to let go even in the creature’s death throes.
	With one of her focus points taken from her, she tried to concentrate on something else, [i]anything[/i] else besides the heat coercing her to inhale. 
	She turned her thoughts to their mission. To Ghent. To Drust. She couldn’t protect them, couldn’t save her guardian from the Curse, if she was dead. But concentrating had become difficult. Lightheadedness made her mind feel more weightless than the water made her body.
	The darkness began to close in around her vision. One way or another, her lungs were going to get what they wanted.
	Then, what seemed like simultaneously all at once yet minutes apart, she felt the vine at her throat go slack, a hand grip her arm, and the rush of upward movement as Ghent pulled her to her feet. Toward the surface. Toward [i]air.[/i]
	The moment her head breached the surface, she gulped in a breath. Her angry lungs immediately expelled it in a series of coughing sputters, ridding themselves of what liquid had seeped into them. 
	Her oxygen-deprived muscles too weak to immediately hold her up, she stumbled and leaned against Ghent as he, too, sucked in the fresh air.
	It took her still recovering mind a second to register as Ghent took her shoulders and turned her so she fully faced him. A second more to articulate words.
	“I… I’m fine,” she said through shuddering breaths, her voice softer than she'd intended.
	She reached up for the lifeless tongue still wrapped loosely around her neck like a scarf, and carefully pulled it off. It splashed to the water as the last of the bubbles from the creature’s fiery core fizzled to the surface, fully snuffing out its life.
	A devastated, echoic yowl emitted form the nearby rock creature.
	“Get down!” Elayra hissed, the monster’s cry snapping her muddled mind back into focus. She tugged at Ghent’s arm as she dipped down in the water so only her nose up bobbed at the surface. 
	The beast’s tongues lashed out once, furiously, at the duo. Hiccuping cries burbled from its throat. It reeled in its tongues as quickly as they had shot out, it's glowing eyes locked on the spot its companion had fallen in. Then, with a mournful cry worse than a knife to a chalkboard, it sauntered away from the water toward the tree line.
	Once the creature had reached the first copse of trees, Elayra dared to straighten.
	“Breeding pair,” she began, the words breathless as if she was still trying to conserve air. “Luckily, you had the female. Take out the male, and the female’s self-preservation instincts kick in. She won’t be back.”
	She took another deep breath, relishing the feel of it, letting its life-giving powers seep back into her muscles. She waded carefully toward the bank. The water grew quickly shallower before coming to a tapering drop-off against the bank. 
	Elayra pulled herself up onto the riverbank, boots and legs still in the water. She flopped back into the muddy grass, arms splaying out beside her. Her soaked hair clung to her face. Watery red streaked from at least a dozen small, stinging puncture wounds from the tongue’s thorns.
	She laid there for a long moment, squinting up at the sky that looked far too bright after the dimness of being underwater. Soon, her heavy breaths slowed to a more relaxed, rhythmic pace.
	“You’re an idiot, you know that, Featherhead?” The soft words left her lips with less harsh conviction than her normal for him.