Free PHANTASIA by R. Atlas Page A

realized it wasn’t flowing with water at all. The liquid was of a rich seal brown color and ebbed with an unusual heaviness. Umbriel he thought to himself. He remembered studying the liquid, specifically, an entire ocean of it in Karth, the eighth planet in their star system. Like water, it gave birth to its own set of lifeforms. Strange and intelligent species of bacteria that were so large they were visible to the naked eye. He took a step back from the falls after recalling the fact, and decided he could do without washing his face. He couldn’t remember reading anything about umbriel in Avalonia. I thought Karth was the only planet with umbriel, he mused.    
    He reached for his microAI but then gasped with a choking suddenness when he saw that stump again — a plain white block covered in a kaptcha. I lost my hand, he said to himself over and over again until the reality of the fact settled in. It seemed ages, not a few hours, since he had lost it. An urge to react traumatically, to maybe cry or scream still drifted somewhere in his conscience, but he fought it whenever it pried into his mind. This is combat he told himself, he didn’t join the Academy expecting a safe trip to the end. Even a single moment spent basking on an injury is a waste of time. This wasn’t his first calamity from combat, even if it was his worst, and it surely wouldn’t be his last. He closed his eyes again, repeating the counting procedure over and over until the realization that he had lost his casting hand washed over him like a cool bath rather than a desperate shock. Briefly he wondered if this was how all of life’s tragedies were overcome — not with the audacious courage he had imagined in members of WEAPON, but with a patient sort of complacency that refused to accept reality for less than what it was. Raven suddenly came to mind, and he imagined how indifferently she would react if the same thing had happened to her. Always cool and in control. ‘Focus, Red,” she would tell him now.He struggled to snap off his microAI with only his left hand to open its compass and check if she had landed somewhere nearby.  
    He tinkered with the settings of the compass so that it displayed altitude as well, and then saw that all four of his team members must have followed him and Raven into the whirlpool. Butz was at the same altitude as him, and only a few Tezras away. S and Magnus landed nearby each other, but far enough to be a day’s worth of traveling away from him and Butz. Ironically it was Raven who was the furthest from him. She seemed to have landed on a much deeper level, but judging by the speed of her dot - she was moving towards him as fast as she could, or running away from something he thought uneasily. He shuddered lightly, remembering that eyeless face and the crooked yellow smile twisted with sharp teeth, but knew that she wasn’t being chased by the bladed man. The eye was far away now, he could feel it, but something else told him that it was getting closer every passing moment. You’re just being paranoid he quickly told himself, and then forced the thought out of his mind.  
    Checking his compass again, he saw that Butz was heading towards him, and that Magnus and S were moving towards each other. He began hiking towards Butz, picking up the pace as much as he could to match the falconer. His loss of blood had left him with a permanent delirium, and the emptiness at the end of his right arm continuously threw off his balance. He tested the floor before every step as he went; some of the holes were covered with blankets of the coral foam, making it easy for a misstep to send him hurtling down to another level of the caverns. Twice he still managed to take a step too quickly, nearly falling through one of the many gaps on the floor. On the way to Butz he passed through a tunnel so narrow that it gave him the feeling the walls were closing in on him. The tunnel opened up to another chamber, but one with a low