Monster Madness by Dean Lorey

freezing and his muscles were beginning to seize up. He swam toward where Theodore had gone under, but he was still many yards away.
    “I got him!” Violet yelled, and dived down into the murk.
    Find him, Charlie thought with growing panic. Please, don’t let him die.
    He counted seventeen endless seconds before, to his great relief, Violet burst back above the surface, holding an unconscious Theodore against her chest.
    “Wake up, Theo!” she shouted. “I can’t get a good grip on you!”
    Theodore’s eyes fluttered open. “Are we there yet?”
    “No, we’re nowhere,” Charlie shouted back, treading water. “We’re alone in the middle of the ocean on the 4th Ring of the Nether!”
    “Not alone,” Pinch said, staring grimly into the distance. “Not anymore.”
    Charlie looked up to see another Hydra rapidly approaching them. “Great,” he muttered, drawing his rapier.
    Within moments, the beast arrived and snapped at him with its six sets of pointy teeth. Charlie felt a familiar feeling of calm wash over him as his Banishing skill took over. He fended off attack after attack from those vicious jaws with a speed and grace that seemed almost supernatural—and, in fact, was—but he knew he couldn’t keep it up for forever.
    If only I could open a portal, he thought. Then the water would rush through and take us all out of here with it!
    But, even though he was a Double-Threat and could both Banish and Nethermance, he knew he couldn’t do both at the same time. If he stopped fighting for even a second to open a portal, he and everyone else would surely die. Theodore was too weak to help, and it took all of Violet’s strength just to keep Theodore from drowning. And Pinch…well, it had been decades since he had been able to open a portal—the Nightmare Division’s repulsive process of Reduction had stolen that from him.
    Charlie was still swinging his rapier to ward off the Hydra when he noticed two more of the vicious beasts swimming toward them.
    Now there were three.
    “Stop fighting!” Pinch shouted. “You can’t win this!”
    “What?” Charlie yelled back. “Are you crazy? If I stop fighting, they’ll eat me. They’ll eat all of us!”
    “Just do what I tell you!”
    “That’s suicide.”
    “Listen to me or you will die! Now put…your weapon…down!”
    What is he talking about? Charlie thought. Had Pinch just given up? Did he just want to end it all?
    “Listen to him!” a voice called out from somewhere behind Charlie. It was Violet. “We can’t beat them anyway! Do what he says—we don’t have a choice!”
    Fighting every instinct in his body, Charlie lowered his rapier.
    The moment he did, one of the Hydra’s mouths clamped down over him, swallowing him up to his waist. He could feel its sharp teeth pressing against his back and belly. It was wet in there and as black as a closed coffin. Charlie could smell the stink of the creature’s previous meal drifting up from its stomach—it smelled like spoiled fish and rotten seaweed.
    So this is how I die, he thought. This is how we all die.
    An image of his parents appeared to him then, smiling kindly, always loving. He hadn’t seen them in months—the Nightmare Division had hidden them away somewhere and given them new names and identities to protect them from the monsters of the Nether.
    He wished he knew where they were and if they were happy and safe.
    He wished he could hug them one more time.
    He wished—
    But then the darkness took him.

CHAPTER TEN
    TO MILK A HYDRA
    Charlie awoke to find himself lying on a large pile of bones at the bottom of a deep pit. Water dripped from the ceiling high above, and he could hear streams of it flowing on either side. He glanced over to see the others next to him, also beginning to stir. He had no idea where they were, exactly—some kind of cave, it looked like—but he knew they were alive, at least, and that was the most important thing. He lifted his shirt to find that the Hydra’s