The water was much deeper than it'd looked. Liya opened her eyes, bubbles streaming past her face, to find that she could not see the bottom. The water merely stretched down, quiet, cold, and black.

There was a light, though, somewhere very far below her. It was so far down, and so dwarfed in the darkness, that it was nothing but a pale pinkish smudge.

She shot to the surface, gasping for air. Her breath clouded immediately in the cold night, and her clothes hung drenched and heavy around her. She made for the stone edge of the pool, pushing strands of dripping hair out of her face. Her voice shook as she called Hawk's name, searching the darkness for him.

The thump of huge wings beating the air answered her, and she froze. Several feet away, where the monster had hit the cobblestones--and she was not moving now, covered in spots of lurid orange blood, her snake neck curled oddly and her jaws hanging open--something was landing.

The fog slipped to each side around the figure--a huge bird with weird human-like proportions, all pale bluish in the light of the statue. On its back was a more human-shaped figure wearing a blanched yellow shirt beneath a black tunic, a quiver of arrows strapped to their back. Both of them, Liya saw, were wearing black hoods and eerie, slightly bird-like white masks.