Book 7: Chapter 19 - What Lies Beneath (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 19 - What Lies Beneath

Ere the first kings set their names upon stone, Atarantu stood upon the lake, wrought of blue rock that neither rain nor age could mar. No road led unto it, for the waters bore only those whom the city suffered to approach.

Atarantu abideth, and that which dwelleth at its heart knoweth not abandonment.

- Transcribed from a stone tablet unearthed near Meridian, now held in the Barnesby Museum of Culture. 

The journey proved less eventful than expected. Meridian sank behind us beneath a rosy morning sky, canals and elegant vias gradually disappearing beyond vineyards, orchards, and cultivated fields where laborers paused to watch Theodore pass.

As the land rose, the farms became fewer and less prosperous. Neat hedgerows gave way to low walls of piled stone, then to scrubland and coarse grass clinging to uneven ground. The hills ahead were old, the bones of a land. There was little dramatic about them. No black clouds gathered overhead, no dead forests clawed at the sky, and no chorus of tortured souls warned us to turn back. In fact, the whole region looked disappointingly pleasant.

Vaska rode at the front beside Roberts, following a trail that narrowed steadily as it climbed. Jean and the lean bowman remained close to the packhorses, while Kristoff regularly vanished into the brush and reappeared farther ahead without explanation. The Mage kept near the center, her staff balanced across the front of her saddle.

I followed behind her upon Theodore, partly because the trail was too narrow to overtake the others and partly because Vaska had established a marching order. Following another man’s instructions remained a novel irritation, but I had agreed to indulge him for the time being.

Shortly before midday, we reached the old marker stones. There were five in all, although one had fallen and lay half buried beneath moss and yellowing grass. The remaining stones stood at uneven intervals along the ridge, each twice the height of a man and weathered almost smooth. Faint lines had once been carved into their surfaces, though time had reduced them to marks too shallow to read. 

Vaska dismounted and surveyed the ridge. “This is the place.”

I glanced around at the empty hillside. “It appears to be a collection of rocks.”

“Excellent observation, Bronze,” The Brawler remarked as he swung down from his horse.

“Thank you. I feared the distinction might escape you,” I shot back with an easy smile.

He gave me a long look but chose not to continue. It was encouraging to see that the man could learn.

The Crimson Blades began unloading their equipment while the horses were led into a shallow hollow sheltered from the wind. The bowman stretched a rope between two stunted trees and secured the animals there. I removed the Adamantine bow and its bolts from Theodore’s saddle, then studied the path ahead. It was too narrow for him, and wherever they were going was unlikely to have been built with a Lumashitu in mind. 

After dismounting, I took up my halberd and pointed toward the hollow.

“You will remain here,” I instructed Theodore. “Guard the horses, and try not eat them.”

He regarded me in silence and huffed.

Vaska watched the exchange while tightening the straps of his patchwork, but runed, armor. “Does he understand all that?”

“He understands the important parts.”

Vaska considered that before offering a noncommittal grunt.

Clara had already begun her work. She cleared a level patch of earth between the three central stones and removed a shallow brass dish from her pack. After pouring water into it from a small vial, she placed a sliver of dark metal upon a disk of cork and allowed it to float. The sliver turned slowly, drifting from side to side before settling toward the north.

The Magister knelt beside it and pressed her fingertips against the soil. For several moments, nothing happened. The wind moved through the thin grass, and somewhere down the hillside a bird called once without receiving an answer.

Then the sliver shifted. The movement was slight at first, followed by a second deviation as though something unseen had tugged at it. Clara turned the dish by a fraction, whereupon the metal corrected itself before being dragged sideways once more.

“There,” she murmured.

Vaska stepped closer. “You have found it?”

“Not yet.”

She carried the dish toward the nearest marker stone, watching as the sliver shifted with every pace. It always tried to settle toward one direction, yet something beneath or beyond the hillside continued to pull it away.

After placing the dish upon the fallen marker, Clara returned to the center of the formation. She held her staff upright and sighted along its length toward the northern horizon.

“The world possesses a fixed direction,” she explained. “Sailors use it, as do surveyors and certain Magisters. Most of the time, it is too broad and constant to be noticed.”

“And the Trial disrupts it?” I asked.

To me, it all sounded like so much mumbo-jumbo. Now that I was close enough to general vicinity of the Trial, my own plan was simply to use Improved Entropic Aura to tear apart whatever magic concealed the entrance. Still, the woman deserved her moment in the sun. 

“Not precisely. A Trial does not belong entirely to the land around it. It touches the world without resting properly within it, and that creates a deviation where the world’s natural direction bends around something that should not exist.”

“Like water passing around a stone,” Roberts offered.

Clara nodded. “Except that we cannot see the stone.”

Jean folded his arms. “An unnecessarily complicated way to hide a door.”

“The Divines have always enjoyed ceremony,” I replied sarcastically with no small amount of bitterness.

Clara lowered the end of her staff and struck the earth. The sound did not echo as it should have. The first impact produced the expected dull note of wood against packed soil, but its echo came from behind us. When she struck again, the answering sound emerged from the bare face of the hillside twenty paces away.

Suddenly, her expression brightened. “There you are.”

She drew a slow circle with the base of her staff, then traced a line through its center. The air above the hillside shimmered, resembling heat rising from sun-warmed stone. The distortion thickened, and the appearance of dirt, grass, and rock gradually peeled away to reveal a metal door set directly into the slope.

There was no masonry around it, nor any visible frame or hinge. One moment there had been a hillside, and the next a rectangular door of dark, weatherless metal stood before us as though it had always been present and the landscape had merely lied. Its surface bore no ornament except for a circular depression where a handle might ordinarily have been.

Clara exhaled and leaned lightly upon her staff.

Kristoff approached the entrance but stopped short of touching it. He crouched to examine the ground and then inspected the edges of the door with careful attention.

“No wire, plate, pressure catch, or mechanism I recognize,” he reported.

“Magical?” Vaska asked.

Clara tilted her head. “Everything about it is magical. But, it should be safe to open,” she added with a trace of annoyance. “Probably.”

Their leader turned to face the company. The humor had left his expression. Behind him stood the old marker stones, the waiting animals, and the open sky, while before him waited a doorway through which better-ranked companies had vanished. For the first time since leaving Meridian, every member of the Crimson Blades became entirely still.

Vaska pulled at a cord releasing the top part of his weapon from its scabbard, and drew his great sword. The enormous blade left its sheath with the dry sound of sharp metal passing through leather.

“Three companies crossed this threshold,” he began. “Good fighters and strong fighters, and some of them were our friends.”

Jean lowered his eyes, while Roberts remained motionless beside him.

“They did not return,” Vaska continued. “That is not a prophecy, nor is it a curse laid upon us. The Goddess has not chosen our graves before we have earned them. Their fate is a warning, and unlike those who went before us, we have listened.”

He rested the sword against one shoulder and allowed his gaze to pass over the party. “We know the Echo lies. We know it calls with familiar voices, and we know it wants us separated, frightened, and alone. Therefore, we give it nothing it desires. Trust the blade to your left and the shield to your right. If something calls your name, answer only the living. If the darkness closes around you, remember that the Crimson Blades have walked through darker places and returned carrying trophies,” he declared.

Jean struck his mace against the face of his shield, while Roberts raised his runed axe. Kristoff drew two knives and turned them once through his fingers, and Clara stood a little straighter beneath the weight of her staff.

Vaska’s grin returned, fierce and confident. “We enter together, and we leave together. When the Guild asks what became of the Echo of the Hills, we shall tell them that it had the misfortune of meeting us.”

“The Crimson Blades!” Jean roared.

The others answered him, their voices carrying across the ridge, and even the bowman joined the cry. But, I remained silent, for I was not one of them, whatever Vaska’s speech might have implied. Still, the declaration served its purpose. The tension within the company did not vanish, but it hardened into something more useful. Determination.

Vaska turned and placed one hand within the circular depression. The metal door opened without resistance, revealing not a tunnel but a plane of rippling darkness. Faint traces of blue moved beneath its surface like moonlight glimpsed through deep water, although the darkness neither spilled outward nor reflected the hillside. It simply waited.

Vaska glanced over his shoulder. “Jean follows me. Clara remains in the middle, with Roberts watching her back. Kristoff and Lorn take the flanks.”

So the bowman was called Lorn. It was useful information, acquired with minimal inconvenience.

Vaska’s attention settled upon me. “Bronze, you bring up the rear.”

“I thought we had established my name.”

“I prefer Bronze.”

“You will call me by my name, or not at all,” I insisted, giving him a flat look.

“Fine, Gilgamesh then,” he replied with a noncomittal shrug.

Without a second thought, he stepped, and the darkness accepted him without a sound. Jean followed with his shield raised, then Lorn, Clara, and Roberts. Kristoff offered me an exaggerated bow before passing through after them.

I looked back toward Theodore. The great beast watched from the hollow, surrounded by uneasy horses, and issued a low call that rolled across the hillside.

“Remain,” I ordered, before turning and stepping through the doorway.

It felt like entering liquid, although nothing touched me that could properly be called water. Pressure closed over every part of my body at once, passing through armor and my exotic underarmor to press against skin, eyes, and teeth. For one disorienting instant, I seemed to fall in every direction. Upward became forward, while the ground slipped away and then returned beneath my feet before I completed another step.

The sensation ended as abruptly as it began, and I staggered once before catching myself upon the butt of my halberd.

I noticed that cold blue light surrounded me.

Vaska stood nearby with his sword ready, while the others had formed a rough defensive circle. Clara examined the doorway behind us, which from this side appeared to be another metal door embedded in the cavern wall, closed and solid.

Vaska glanced in my direction. “How does it feel, Bronze, entering your first Trial of the Goddess?”

I looked at him evenly. “It was not my first.”

His grin faltered, and Jean slowly looked over his shoulder.

Vaska studied me for a moment before responding, “Of course it was not.”

I took a moment to search through my Status for a notification I might have missed, but there was no quest prompt waiting for me. That meant this was merely a side quest, a diversion, or something equally unimportant, which in turn meant I might actually be permitted to enjoy myself. 

The cavern around us was broad and uneven, and its ceiling rose high enough that the blue illumination did not immediately reveal its limits. Clusters of crystalline Zajasite grew overhead in jagged formations, some no larger than fingers while others resembled the teeth of a dead giant.

I knew enough of the rules of this world to know that the mineral absorbed the ambient Mana of the Trial and released it as cold blue light. Thousands of crystals glittered above us, turning the cavern ceiling into the semblance of a submerged night sky.

Moisture covered the floor, and shallow pools lay between raised shelves of stone. Somewhere beyond sight, water moved with a steady, distant rhythm, while the air carried the unmistakable smell of salt.

That seemed wrong. We had entered through a hillside leagues from the sea, but Trials had never shown much respect for geography.

Clara raised her staff. “Something is—”

The nearest pool erupted before she could finish.

A scaled creature launched itself from the water, long arms spread and a mouth opening vertically through the center of its head. Tentacles writhed around the opening, pale and muscular, with hooked barbs at their tips.

Jean intercepted it. His shield caught the creature in midair with an impact that rang through the cavern, folding it around the metal, and his mace rose from below to crush its jaw and drive broken teeth into its skull.

Then the rest came of them came. The foul creatures surged from every pool, crevice, and darkened passage: amphibious things with slick scales, hunched backs, and swollen limbs. Some crawled upon four legs, while others ran upright with webbed claws spread wide. Tentacles hung from their faces and shoulders, lashing through the air as they closed upon us.

I cast Identify, letting it settle upon one of them to produce a single name.

Tide Spawn.

Tidespawn - Waverider (Chimerae/Mer lvl.26)

Health: 838/838

Stamina: 79/85

Mana: 4/4

I did not bother wasting Mana on the rest. Finally, an enemy with a little bite to make for a respectable welcome.

“Circle!” Vaska called out.

The Crimson Blades moved before the final syllable had left his mouth. Jean anchored the front while Roberts took the right, his spear already driving through the throat of a scaled creature attempting to slip past the shield. Kristoff disappeared toward the left-hand wall, and Lorn retreated two measured paces before beginning to fire.

Clara struck her staff against the cavern floor. Stone rose around us in a ring of angled slabs just as the first water attacks arrived.

Several creatures spat narrow jets from distended throats, while others launched torrents thick enough to knock a man from his feet. The water hammered into Clara’s barriers and exploded into cold spray, cracking stone and sending chips across the cavern.

One jet curved around the edge of the nearest shield, but Clara twisted her staff and raised a smaller barrier directly before Lorn. The water struck hard enough to fracture its surface, although the bowman did not flinch. He released beneath its edge and drove an arrow through the eye of the creature responsible.

Vaska charged.

His great sword moved without any of the uncertainty he had displayed upon the King’s Road. This was his chosen ground, with his company behind him, and there were no other factors to complicate the intent of his blade.

The first Tide Spawn lost both arms to a sweeping cut, and the return stroke opened another from hip to shoulder. A tentacle wrapped around Vaska’s forearm, but he caught it in his free hand, dragged its owner forward, and drove his forehead into the creature’s face. Bone and cartilage collapsed, after which his sword completed the work.

Jean laughed somewhere to my left. “I could do this all day!”

His shield struck another creature and forced it backward onto Roberts’s spear. The axeman withdrew the weapon, allowed the body to fall, and then took up his rune-marked axe. The markings along the blade and haft flared with muted orange light as he swung.

The edge entered the shoulder of a broad, toad-like monster and passed through most of its chest. Steam burst from the wound, and the creature convulsed as its wet flesh cooked around the enchanted metal. Roberts kicked it free and turned toward the next.

Kristoff appeared behind another attacker without warning. One knife entered beneath its jaw, while the second found the softer line below its ribs. He withdrew both, stepped aside, and allowed the dying thing to stumble past before cutting the tendons behind its knees.

The Crimson Blades did not merely fight in proximity to one another. They fought as a unit, each man understanding where the others would be before they arrived. Jean created openings that Roberts exploited, while Lorn shot over Vaska’s shoulder without ever threatening him. Clara shifted her defenses before anyone called for assistance, and Kristoff killed whatever attempted to pass around the formation.

They were efficient, and I found the fact irritatingly admirable.

Taking the halberd in both hands, I joined them.

A Tide Spawn lunged toward Clara between two fractured barriers, but I caught it beneath the ribs with the spear point and lifted. Its webbed feet left the ground, kicking uselessly at the air, and I turned the haft before throwing it into two of its companions.

The axe blade opened the first across the neck, while the beak punched through the skull of the second. A third seized the shaft with both hands, possessing enough strength to halt the weapon for perhaps half a heartbeat, but I stepped inside its reach and drove the heavy counterweight into its face.

The creature ceased possessing one and a modicum experience flowed into me.

You have killed a Tidespawn. 9 experience gained.

You have killed a Tidespawn. 6 experience gained.

You have killed a Tidespawn. 13 experience gained.

Another came low and scraped its claws futilely across my greave. I brought the halberd down across its spine, and the combined virtues of black ironwood, an Adamantine core, and my overwhelming Strength cut its thread, its back broke beneath the haft before the axe blade completed the descent.

More experience.

A jet of water struck my shoulder and turned me a quarter step, while a second hit my breastplate and burst into blinding spray. I swept the halberd in a broad circle, caught one creature beneath the arm with the hooked blade, and tore it from its feet. My return thrust passed through the open mouth of another and emerged behind its skull.

Notifications continued to gather along the edge of my vision, reducing death to mere experience.

“Gilgamesh!” Clara warned.

I turned toward her voice.

A much larger creature had dragged itself onto a shelf of stone at the far end of the cavern. Its body was broad and low, protected by overlapping green-black scales, while six thick limbs supported its bulk. A crown of sensory tendrils unfolded around its circular mouth.

Its throat expanded as it drew water from the pool below, and the flesh beneath its scales swelled with unnatural pressure. Then it fired.

The torrent struck before I could evade. It was no narrow magical jet, but a river forced through a cannon, and it hit my armor with sufficient violence to drive me backward. My sabatons gouged twin trenches through the wet stone, while the halberd nearly tore itself from my hands.

A significant portion of my Health vanished.

I lowered my shoulder and attempted to brace, although the torrent continued without pause. Water filled my vision, hammered against my helm, forced itself through every gap, and reduced the world to noise and pressure. My weight and Strength slowed my retreat, but they did not stop it, and another few paces would have driven me against the cavern wall.

The Mimic stirred beneath my armor. Dark matter surged along my left arm, spreading from wrist to shoulder before unfolding outward. Black living plate widened and lengthened until a tower shield formed before me, taller than I was and curved enough to divide the torrent around its edges.

The pressure increased, and pain passed through our shared nerves as the shield groaned beneath the assault. Its lower edge altered shape, and a black spike erupted from beneath it before driving deep into the cavern floor. Stone fractured as the Mimic anchored us in place. My retreat stopped, and for a moment, the creature and I remained balanced against one another. It continued pouring stolen water forward, its throat distended and its entire body trembling from the effort.

Then I advanced, the anchor tearing free and gouging stone, before the Mimic drove it down once more. I took another step, and the torrent divided around the shield in walls of spray. The creature’s tendrils writhed, and although its attack did not weaken, neither did it grow stronger. I advanced again. Then again.

My left arm burned beneath the Mimic’s transformation, and each impact traveled through armor, bone, and flesh. Our Health dropped, but our natural Regeneration was more than enough to keep up with the creature’s damage output. The pain remained measurable, distant thing. And, anything measurable could be endured and repaid. 

The creature finally understood what was happening. Its six limbs scrabbled against the shelf as though it wished to retreat without interrupting its attack, but it could not accomplish both.

Ten paces remained, then seven, and finally five.

The torrent faltered. The Mimic withdrew the anchoring spike as I gathered force through my legs as I invoked Improved Rush Strike and Shield Crash together. An expensive move in terms of Stamina.

The final distance vanished, and the tower shield struck first, crushing two of the creature’s forward limbs beneath its body. Its torrent broke apart and exploded harmlessly across the cavern ceiling.

I swept the shield aside and brought the halberd through behind it one-handed. The hooked axe blade entered beside the circular mouth and severed the crown of tentacles, after which I dragged the weapon downward through scale, cartilage, and the softer tissues beneath.

The monster convulsed. I tore the blade free, reversed the weapon, and drove the beak between the armored plates at the top of its skull. The point passed through whatever served it as a brain, and its limbs collapsed beneath it.

You have slain a Tide Spawn ???. 27 experience gained.

By then, the rest of the battle was already ending. Vaska removed the head of the final upright creature with a clean turn of his great sword, Jean crushed one attempting to crawl back into a pool, and an arrow struck another through the spine before Roberts finished it with his spear.

Soon there was only the sound of dripping water.

Blue light shone over broken bodies, fractured stone, and dark blood spreading through the pools. The Mimic withdrew into my arm, while the enormous shield softened, folded, and disappeared beneath my armor. An unpleasant ache remained from shoulder to fingertips.

Vaska surveyed the dead. “Well done.”

He was not even breathing hard.

Jean lowered his shield as water streamed from its rim, while Kristoff emerged from behind a stone column and wiped his knives against the loose skin of a corpse. Clara leaned upon her staff and breathed somewhat faster than the others, although she remained unharmed. Several of her stone barriers still stood, but most had cracked or partially collapsed.

Vaska rested the flat of his sword across one shoulder. “If this is how the Echo welcomes its guests, then it is little wonder that no one returned.”

Jean’s expression darkened, and several members of the company glanced toward the tunnels beyond the cavern.

Vaska laughed, although there was little amusement in the sound. It was a challenge offered to the Trial itself. “But those who came before us were not the Crimson Blades.”

He raised his sword toward the blue-lit ceiling. “We have crawled from burning keeps, crossed the Mire of Teeth with half our supplies and twice our wounds, and killed the Red Widow after she swallowed Kristoff whole.”

“She spat me out,” Kristoff corrected.

“Even monsters have standards,” Jean observed with a grin.

Laughter passed through the company, breaking the tension.

Vaska grinned. “We have returned from places that buried better men. We have been outnumbered, surrounded, poisoned, cursed, and once forced to eat Roberts’s cooking.”

“That nearly killed us,” Lorn added stoically.

Roberts looked genuinely wounded by the accusation.

Vaska struck his breastplate with one fist. “The Echo sent its first welcome, and we answered in the only language worth speaking: steel, blood, and victory.”

Jean hammered his mace against the face of his shield. “The Crimson Blades!”

“The Crimson Blades!” the others answered.

Vaska turned toward the waiting tunnel. “We are all going to make it! Everything between this door and the exit belongs to us.”

Their response shook the cavern.

I remained silent, though not out of contempt. Vaska, I was forced to admit, was not a exactly poor leader.

***

We continued only after Clara had recovered enough Mana to satisfy Vaska. The first cavern narrowed into a descending passage where seams of Zajasite crossed the ceiling, bathing our armor and weapons in varying shades of blue. Water followed us through shallow channels along the floor, sometimes vanishing into cracks and emerging farther ahead.

The tunnels twisted continually, and at several intersections Clara repeated a lesser version of the method she had used outside, testing the hidden direction of the world and searching for whichever route the Trial distorted most strongly. Kristoff checked every opening before we passed through, while Lorn marked the walls with small cuts at shoulder height, although whether those marks could be trusted in such a place remained uncertain.

Time became difficult to measure without sun, wind, or any natural change in illumination. We stopped twice to drink and once to eat, and by my estimate several hours passed. But, this was not my first time in dealing with a challenge that lay underground. And this time, I was more than prepared.

Occasionally, sounds traveled through the tunnels: footsteps when none of us moved, the scrape of metal far behind us, and once the laughter of a woman somewhere beneath the stone. At another turning, I heard my own voice speaking too faintly to understand.

No one followed the sounds, and Vaska’s rules held.

Eventually, the passage widened and the air became warmer, carrying the heavy scent of vegetation and deep, stagnant water. The blue illumination ahead grew stronger until we emerged upon a broad stone shelf overlooking a cavern vast enough to contain a small valley.

An enormous lake filled most of it, its water stretching into luminous distance, dark beneath the surface while reflecting the brilliance overhead. A single Zajasite crystal of impossible size grew downward from the ceiling and shone like a blue sun, filling the cavern with cold radiance and casting sharp shadows across the lake.

Around the water grew a forest that had never known daylight. Pale ferns rose higher than buildings, reeds with trunks thicker than men crowded the shoreline, and broad leaves floated upon the lake, some large enough to carry a horse. Bell-shaped flowers hung from curling stalks, their interiors lined with small teeth, while other plants pulsed faintly as though breathing.

An island lay at the center of the lake. Blue stone rose from the water in worn terraces and broken walls, the remains of an abandoned city half claimed by silence and strange vegetation. Roofless halls and collapsed colonnades crowded its shoreline, their pale surfaces catching the light until the whole place seemed to glow through the lake’s blue glare. At its heart stood something taller than the rest, a central structure or tower whose true shape was obscured by distance, shimmer, and the faint haze hanging over the water. 

A path connected our shore to the island, although calling it a bridge would have been generous. It was a causeway of fitted stone, perhaps six paces wide, running straight across the lake. Most of its length lay beneath the surface.

Kristoff crouched at the water’s edge, dipped the point of a knife into the lake, and inspected the metal after withdrawing it. “Not acid,” he reported.

“Splendid,” Jean replied. “Then whatever eats us can do so without first softening us up.”

Kristoff pointed toward the causeway. “The water reaches the knee near this end, and it will likely be deeper toward the middle.”

“There is nowhere to maneuver,” Lorn added. “Nor is there anything to shelter behind. Anything within the lake could strike from either side.”

Roberts studied the distant island. “This may be where the others died.”

Vaska looked toward him. “The crossing?”

“The crossing and whatever guards the island,” Roberts clarified. “If I wished to kill anyone who entered this place, I would put the path there and something hungry beneath it.”

A slow ripple crossed the water far to our right, although nothing broke the surface.

Jean tightened his grip upon his mace.

Vaska turned toward Clara. “Can you raise the causeway?”

The Magister approached the water and pressed the base of her staff against the submerged stone. Her eyes closed, and a faint tremor passed through the ground beneath our feet before she recoiled as though the earth had struck her hand.

“No,” the Mage answered.

Vaska frowned. “You cannot, or you will not?”

She looked to the side. “I could move it.”

“That sounds very much like can.”

Clara shook her head. “The stone resists me. Everything within the Trial does. These places are shaped to deny easy mastery, and although the Earth hears me, it does not wish to answer.”

“How long would it take?” Roberts asked.

“To raise the entire crossing above the water?” She regarded the distant island. “Years.”

Jean stared at her. “Years?”

“If I worked carefully and remained myself.”

A brief silence followed.

“And if you did not?” I asked.

Clara tightened her fingers around her staff. “I could submit to Earth rather than commanding it, and allow the element to act through me. It might work more quickly, but eventually I would cease to understand why flesh should move while stone remains still. I would become very powerful for a short time.”

“And after that?” Lorn questioned.

“You would have to kill me, for I would no longer be myself. I would not wish that fate upon anyone,” she whispered softly.

Jean spat on the floor.

Vaska turned his attention back toward the lake. The submerged causeway waited beneath the blue water, too obvious to be anything other than a trap.

“We could build rafts,” Kristoff proposed, though without conviction.

“With what?” Roberts asked. “Those plants that probably eat people?”

“We have rope.”

“We would still be upon the water,” the bowman pointed out, “only slower and easier to overturn.”

Our leader rubbed his beard while studying the island.

“The crossing will not be a problem,” I informed them.

Every member of the Crimson Blades turned toward me.

Jean looked from the submerged causeway to my armor. “Do you intend to carry us?”

“No, but make no mistake, I probably could do,” I said, rolling my armored shoulders.

“Drink the lake?” chuckled Jean.

Kristoff smiled thinly. “Perhaps he left his miracle bridge tied to the saddle.”

“I have a solution,” I said nonchalently. “It is trivial really.”

Vaska regarded me with open suspicion. “So you claim.”

I smiled beneath my helm, for none of them believed me. I was beginning to enjoy this adventuring malarkey.