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the energy to retaliate. I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone.
    And then it was quiet again and I could drift in the dark heavy peace that surrounded me.
    My eyes had a milky film over them when I pushed my lids open. I blinked but they didn’t clear. My hand, when I moved it to rub my eyes, brushed against a strange filmy substance that seemed to surround me and only came into focus when I pressed my hand against it.
    It had an odd leathery texture and was translucent enough to allow the light through but not enough to provide any real details of the environment outside of it. It gave a little with the pressure from my hand but held enough rigidity to keep it from stretching out of shape.
    My still confused mind was easily distracted by the unfamiliar texture beneath my fingers. I inspected my hand in horror, watching as the fine silvery net that encased each finger glittered in the faint light.
    I pulled at the fabric. It was strands of hair-fine steel woven into a mesh that had been sewn in intricate detail into a head-to-toe garment for me. It fitted my body skimming up my bare legs and arms, encasing each finger and toe before billowing slightly at my neck, allowing my hair to float in the water. The elegant robe I’d hurriedly dressed in before diving into the ocean had been replaced by two narrow strips of coarse fabric that encircled my hips and chest leaving the rest of me naked. I didn’t want to know who had dressed me in this revealing outfit that fit so perfectly to my body.
    I tried to turn around in the narrow space only to find the capsule I was in didn’t allow for that much movement.
    Claustrophobia clawed up my throat as I pushed at the capsule again, desperate to find a way out. I tried to rip the capsule open, my net-encased fingers clawing ineffectually at the smooth “skin” that surrounded me.
    I’d begun to panic when I saw the sliver of clear blue water above me. A narrow rubbery-lipped gap in the capsule stretched as I squeezed my stiff and sore body out into the water.
    The capsule was attached to the floor of my cell – that was the only way to describe the rock-encased room with finger-thin slits at the very top and very bottom of one wall – by a purplish umbilical cord and it swayed in the slight current as the water moved in and out of the cell.
    I examined the space in minute detail, which didn’t take very long as it was a box of stone only five paces wide, and deep and just a little higher than my head.
    Blasting my way out of it was my first thought, but as I tried to form a ball of energy between my palms, pressing them together expectantly, a shiver of fear replaced the power that had run through my veins only a short while ago, because nothing happened.
    I’d been confused trying to get out of the capsule, the absence of the strength I’d grown so used to a mere backdrop to the panic of being so tightly confined. Now though, when I needed to escape, I couldn’t seem to create the ball of energy that would ensure my release.
    I closed my eyes, focusing my mind intently. The only sound was the muffled hush of the water as it pressed in on my ears.
    It was my own fear in the end that forced me to face my vulnerability, because even as I felt it blossoming in my chest, thick with anxiety and panic, I couldn’t see any evidence of it in the colours of the water. Not a single wisp of
spiritus
drifted from my skin.
    I was completely ordinary and that, for the first time in my life, spelt disaster.
    How could this have happened? Since I’d discovered my gifting I’d been able to access any and all of them at any time except…
    The image of Qinn struggling helplessly in the net sent a sliver of ice down my spine. I hadn’t been able to wrench the net apart. As hard as I’d tried, as much as I’d focused on trying to get him out, nothing had happened.
    I lifted my hands, running my net-encased fingers over my arms.
    They had figured it out far faster than I had. I