He burst up and out flat and breathing, scrabbling across the surface, then thrust back in. The weight of the water was strange on him, the texture too. He fought under, unable really to swim; everything was wrong, everything was strange and irrational – he could laugh at that, laugh at himself for these thoughts. But glad he had them: that thought had returned, with his identity, glad that he knew who he was and that, in his desperation to breathe the reality that he was alive - momentarily at least, had been communicated to him.

He shattered the surface again and breathing, but– he was here, his other half, his other – his flesh, concepts that flooded through him the same pace as the river he fought/he couldn't/he couldn't swim its texture too strange, its weight too thick, its liquid

too -

Blood.

He was in a river of blood; Pheel cast around breathing, hardly any better but – where – he -

The cave's ceiling palpitated in the ripples running across it, from a source of light he couldn't see. He was underground; the river he fought against entirely blood, a profound red, a deep and inarguable sanguinary tract that he swam across. He cast around, for a surface, for an edge, for anything he could clamber upon or swim toward, aim for, anything, he had to live – he

had -

Then he saw it.

Two things simultaneously.

The second was Art[ion] Mlckk'n Inchance-rify, that was his name, Art, Art[ion], Prince Art[ion] of the Separate Living Organs; the Duke of Need and Purposeful Misapprehension, the Dream Slave, the Reality Boy, the Catcher of Pastel Irrealities, The Count of the Thing off his Throat and Flapping off his Lips and Face, and they were. His organs puffed, strange, distorted, and unrecognisable - but it was him, it was Art, he saw him, swimming too, fighting with the river of blood, and now, swimming toward – no it wasn't him.

It was the first thing.

Art fought toward it and now Cazzo had something too that he could orient himself in this reality toward; could try and think at least might be a temporary answer at least to his current temporary, in terms of this quest-reality-narrative he was inside - exigency –

He thought this stuff and in these terms as he drowned.

It was floating in the river of blood:

The thing he was swimming toward, Art too.

It was the Black Chest of the Scrolls of the Prophecies of the Queen of Waat.

He was swimming toward it.

“You're alive!” Art -

- He could only yell a strangled affirmation in his direction. Art was almost at the Chest; he swam harder, he'd need to, it was floating. - They could at least swim along with the thing until - his thoughts became more strangled and panicked as he realised he'd have to get there soon because all energy and life-force was quickly departing him.

Pheel swam. Tossed in the fat waves of that sanguine river; he fought towards his counterpart, closer to the chest and in fact nearly reaching it. Art flung his arms for the chest, reached an edge, missed it. Pheel swam the same way. Art flung himself again and grabbed a corner, the chest bobbing in that sanguine wake, floating still, heavy in the water. How could they even – a dim idea hazily born in him -

But they had to – the chest – it was – it was the point of it – wasn't it? He kept swimming.

Art reached once more and -

A garbled yell from Art as -

A black flash as a shadow-arm pulled him under.