Awakening of the Shadows [COMPLETE]

Coordinates

But he was breathing. That was all I needed to know.

Now I just had to make sure he stayed that way.

So, I thought to myself. How, by all the gods, am I going to drain the water from this thing?

I'd patched all the exits that I could have Hydrokinetically funneled the water in the bubble through. I realized then that I'd essentially shot myself in the foot by shutting the only routes of exit of the chilling liquid.

Starfire. I grumbled internally, cursing myself and the urgency that my brain had projected to keep myself and Eldernova alive, given that it had been the cause of my mistake.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

Wrapping myself and Eldernova in heat-resistant bubbles of energy - a spell based off of raw Mana, since it didn't conform to any type of magic - I superheated the water to its boiling point (Actually, far beyond it, but that's beside the point), and it quickly turned to steam around us, floating to the top of the bubble. Once it had, I carefully slung Eldernova's unconscious form over my shoulder and waved a hand at the steam, quickly teleporting it outside of the bubble. Where it went, I couldn't care less - as long as it went away from there. I did not want to accidentally kill (Or at least severely injure) one or both of us with a bout of scalding hot steam.

Once I'd secured that issue, I still had to deal with the matter of Eldernova's possible dying of exposure to the extreme cold of the hadalpelagic zone. And my exposure, actually, but his was more important. Again, I was a Hyperian and could survive. It wouldn't be comfortable, but my need for warmth paled in comparison to the need for warmth that Eldernova had at that moment.

I pulled Eldernova's seemingly lifeless body off of my shoulder and gently set him down on the floor of the oxygen sphere, leaning his head in a healthy posture against the somewhat-curved wall. Blinking my eyes in rapid succession to alleviate the last vestiges of blurring in them, I got my first complete look at the state of Eldernova's form.

His normally (extremely) light brown skin tone had chilled to a disturbing, icy blue coloration consistent with hypothermia. I extended one hand and gently felt along his neck to get a sense of his temperature and recoiled. He felt like an ice statue.

Starfire. Things are worse than I thought. I couldn't avoid the genuine fear that sprang up in my heart, making me sick with worry (That sick feeling might also have come from how cold I was, however), knowing that Eldernova's life was in danger.

I felt along my bandolier for my healing stimulant (I believed it still had a full dose left), feeling confident that I could use it to heal Elder...

But there was nothing there.

What? I was sure I'd brought it with me to the Paradise Vault.

Unless...

I looked down at the place where the stimulant should have been as best I could.

The strap was torn.

So that meant... the stimulant had fallen off, when Ovogoros had been about to break my neck before Elder had incinerated his tail end. And when I'd superheated the water...

I'd incinerated the one thing that I could use to heal Eldernova without overheating his body and sending it into shock.

Stars and moons, Eternity. What an amazing job you've done here.

.      .      .

Eldernova

 I was adrift. All that there was around me was darkness. Endless black, a darker, more powerful shade than even the Void had to offer. The complete absence of anything tangible.