The true extent of his illness did not immediately make itself known beyond the slightly reduced vision and the squirming of his insides. Effects were gradual, the new ones introduced trivial at first as he rushed by and sank his claws into danger: a smoldering began in the folds of the brain, phantom lights twinkled in his periphery, and the edges of underwater waves seemed sharp and defined even in the dark. Following the Kraken's injury, these worsened, fever at last taking him as the metallic scent of blood flooded his nostrils. A mental stew rose to a boil, heat enveloping skull and travelling down vertebrae. The glint of waves transformed into an endless wall of whirlpools, portals that led into the void and promised no way out. He could barely glimpse his intended destination now, the ice spikes slim and wavering between the black spots that clouded his sight.

Everywhere his head turned, dim lights glowed, but their colors shifted as often as they blinked from existence; friends could not be distinguished from their single foe. Limbs morphed to outstretched tentacles. Faces grew too full of teeth. His thoughts rang out, confused and desperate, though they were fizzling static to his own mind.

'Partner? Where are you!'

The whirlpools were not empty, but gleaming with many eyes. Water was flesh, pulsating and riddled with sores. It, the Kraken, closed in on him. Lunged at him from every side. Screeches rattled his bones, and he could swear he heard mockery in their grating pitch.

No other direction could be taken but down, just as he'd been attempting, into the ice spikes. His swimming unsteady in the twisting environment, he plunged for what he thought was their refuge.