Astrid had known since childhood that she needed air between herself and the world.
An ordinary room could press against her until her thoughts went thin and distant.
The helmet, the suit, the buoyant cushion around her, they were how she could move freely.
She could laugh with the others while remaining safely herself.
The Pricker did not puncture her helmet completely.
It did not have to.
A narrow leak was enough.
The blue readout blinked and disappeared.
Astrid gasped.
Her feet touched earth.
The world suddenly seemed heavier than it had any right to be.
“Too much earth,” she managed.
“Not enough…float.”
Edgar dropped beside her, one arm dented.
The black-haired witch knelt on the other side and tried to seal the leak with a spell, but the moving machines kept breaking her concentration.
The red-haired witch called Astrid’s name and swept a burning wand through the swarm.
Astrid could hear the old warning in her memory: she would always need air between herself and the world.
She had treated that as a limitation for so long that she had forgotten its other half.
Air was also the thing she understood better than anyone.
She pulled the joystick close.
Its red button flickered under her thumb.
Six bubbles.
Double spell.
Her hands remembered the sequence before the screen returned.
Astrid pressed down.
Light slipped around the crack in her helmet and joined itself into a new, elastic rim.
Breath rushed in.
The star on her suit lit up, and she rose an inch above the dirt.
“I’m back online, baby.”
The red haired witch let out a relieved laugh.
“She’s going full float-witch mode.”
Astrid spread both hands.
The circular seal expanded into a web of faint blue lines.
Every Pricker in the sky pulsed in response.
She could feel their network now, a string tugging at a hundred metal points.
“If I can’t breathe,” she said, “neither can your network.”
She closed her fists.
Across the forest, propellers stuttered.
The black-haired witch sent an electric spark through the web, and the red-haired witch picked off the machines that tried to flee.
“Pop this, you pin prunes!” she yelled.
Edgar caught a final pair between his palms and smashed them together.
The sky cleared for one heartbeat.
Then the Popper’s third command arrived.