We slowed our pace to look over what was presumably a narrow shelf of some sort, all of maybe ten feet wide. When it came to my initial thought, Tomas didn’t need any convincing. We’d use our short length of actual rope to tie off together, and I’d go first, using the walking stick to probe our path forward. He’d follow a short distance back, mostly with his eyes on the sky in case the skyferret was still around.

  The water ended up being remarkably cooler and clearer than I expected, but I reminded myself that this started as a spring miles away, probably from ground-filtered snow runoff or who knew what. Presuming the ground cover didn’t change much in that direction from what we’d seen coming in, it also cut primarily through rock so of course it’d be clear. Not that I was an expert hydrologist, river scientist, or whatever they were actually called. I mean, I was just happy the water was knee deep in most places, waist deep at the worst, and just short of fast enough to be a serious problem.

  “You don’t suppose punching a giant column of clear air in the endless fogbank would attract the beast, do you?” Tomas asked uncertainly when we’d reached a bit over half-way across. “Do you think it likes water?”

  I spared a glare for the half-elf. “Planning on just diving in if it shows up?”

  He shrugged. “Well, seems reasonable to me if it hates water, you know?”

  “Fair.” I turned my eyes back to the path and noticed some odd irregularities nestled between the stones poking up out of the riverbed in a shallow spot just ahead. “Huh. Mussels.”

  I vaguely remembered that these things were filter feeders and had the impression they were mostly open to be a good sign as to water quality. “Hey, I’m going to pick up some of these. Keep an eye out.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  When they were stuck to rock, getting the damn things off was annoying, but most of the ones I actually took were attached to smaller rocks that I just chucked in my dump pouch along with them. Most of them were relatively small, but I did grab a few that were close to the size of my fist. Having no illusion just how little meat was going to be in each one, I just filled the pouch as best I could.

  “Okay, let’s head out,” I said as I stood for the last time. When Tomas didn’t answer, I glanced over my shoulder to check on him and found nothing but open water.

  The rope was trailing limp atop the water, directly downriver from me. “Tomas?”

  With a tentative step back, in the direction of shore, I shouted his name while tugging on the rope. It came easily, clearly not attached to anything anymore. Fuck.

  When I was a kid, we visited a place on the coast in Florida that had a little “Swim with the sharks” attraction to complement the massive aquarium, which really was just a wading pool with a bunch of small, otherwise harmless sharks in it that parents used to terrify their already traumatized children with. That’s why, when something brushed up against my calf, I immediately identified the feeling and half levitated out of the water, soul leaving my body, with a single shrill thought shooting through my head: THIS IS WHY I DIDN’T JOIN THE FUCKING NAVY!

  Thankfully, while my conscious mind was firmly screeching, training kicked in and by the time I’d landed and turned to face whatever it was, I’d shifted the walking stick to sword and had my thumb braced to draw. The pristine water was clear and unshadowed. Nothing was there. Naturally. Why make it easy, right? I took one slow step back, closer to shore, and then another.

  As my foot settled onto the rock for my third step, I got quick flashback to watching some horror movie when I was a kid, one where the monster was an alligator. Despite understanding it was a memory, another part of me simply just knew what was going to happen next. And it did, just faster than I could react to.

  The next thing I knew, something yanked me off my feet, upstream. On the way down I reflexively jammed the sheathed sword into the river bottom where it fortuitously lodged between rocks just so, allowing me to cling with my head just above water for a single heartbeat while whatever had gripped my left leg pulled like it was one half of a wishbone.

  Instinctively, I kicked with my free foot at what now felt like impossibly strong, thin hands. On one hand, two heel strikes hadn’t managed a single thing, but on the third I felt the sudden cold of magic being worked. In the instant before the spell went off I had just enough time to mentally grin before sparks of electricity arced across the water surface around me. The hands vanished and I barely caught the shadowy form of what looked like the tail end of a large shark dart away.

  I quickly wrestled myself, pack and everything, up to my feet and hoped my hellbent break for the shore didn’t look like I was running like a bitch. Whatever had tried to drag me off was simply too fast for my liking. I didn’t have time to put the sword away, and I wasn’t confident I wouldn’t drop it either. My fingers tightened on my pistol just as something devious popped into my head.

  Deployment before last, one of the resupply bases we periodically visited had an individual augmentee I got to know. Guy was a Navy electronics tech who, as the story went, spent every minute bored off his ass when he wasn’t working on the radios and other electronics in the TOC. We’d swapped stories while smoking during one of my visits, and that was where I learned how the Navy dealt with enemy divers when their ships were tied to a pier. Every swinging dick cranked their sonars up to eleven and flipped the switch.

  Now, I hadn’t heard sonar in person, so that didn’t sound that bad to me when he told me. The squid laughed when I said as much and insisted it turned your insides to jelly if you were anywhere in the water near a ship. You simply got murdered by a wall of sound and somebody in a boat would come collect the remains. Even walking on the pier, he’d insisted, the experience was migraine inducing in seconds.

  That’s why, when those hands yanked my ass into the water a few feet from shore, my free hand held Fiachra’s ultrasonic cleaning artifact. The thing’s reaction was nigh instant, like watching a ten-foot-long bass jump into the air and fuck off back upstream, except bass didn’t have a shapely pair of tits and long, deeply green hair, nor did they shriek the entire time they were airborne.

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  I scrabbled backwards up the bank about as well as I could on my ass, for all of maybe ten feet before letting go of the sword and drawing my pistol. I sat there, wide-eyed and panting, pistol leveled at the water lapping at the bank in front of me for long enough for my breathing to even. And then I glared at the artifact keening its stupid little jack heart out because it was still wet. And so was I.

  “Goddamn, shut the fuck up already!” I grumbled at it. It only complied once I’d dug out a pair of socks I’d kept in one of many Ziplock bags and used them as improvised hand towels without ever diverting my attention from the water.

  Now bone-weary, I stumbled to my feet, knowing I didn’t have long before the adrenaline crash came and just how little I wanted to be near the water when it did. Sword now tied off to my pack, I glanced around.

  Fingers of fog were flowing down from the top of the fog wall and slowly inching their way down. If I didn’t find Tomas quick, I never would, and I certainly wasn’t going to make it to high enough ground before the fog settled in. Goddamnit. That said, this little stretch of desolation wasn’t barren. Another hundred yards upstream stood a relatively thin stone spire, the base of a tower that widened near the top.

  I studied the spire, periodically sparing quick glances at the river, all the while wondering why the tower had been built there. Perimeter defense for the city? Scouting tower? Mage tower? Who knows? Nothing about its construction gave me any impression for any particular use. I couldn’t be sure if it would be tall enough to stay above the fog when it finally settled, but I set off for it anyway. As tall as it was, I’d be able to see much better—and more importantly much further—from the top, which would make finding Tomas, or his remains, much easier.

  Soaked and dripping, I made my way to the tower. Halfway there, the adrenaline crash showed up, adding ‘exhausted’ to my list of complaints. The fact that the tower door was on the far side started the trend that followed, though the fact that initially appeared to be a stout, sealed door crumbled at a touch countered it a little bit. Unfortunately, on entry, the trend doubled and tripled down, firmly planting ‘irritated’ onto the list as well.

  Of course, the door was on the far side of the tower, why make it easy? Naturally, everything on the ground floor was a loss, and why did I even hope that the spiral stairs lining the inside of the walls would be different? Nope, they crumbled too.

  At least the builders had carved stone protrusions along the interior wall to help support and brace the stairs. A quick tug on my NVGs had shown the darkness above me wasn’t completely empty. Only the bottom thirty feet or so of the staircase had crumbled. I just had to find a way to traverse it all.

  So I stood there, gritting my teeth, until I figured it out. As much as I didn’t want to leave my pack, I couldn’t see how I’d get up there with it. As before, the crumbling wood let me know nothing had been through here in forever, but if I got to the top, if the fog was thin enough, I could stay up there overnight. Lots of ifs there. Maybe there’s some rope up there that’s still usable.

  I snorted and it wasn’t a happy one. Yeah, that’s exactly how my luck has been going. There will be fifty year old rope up there that’s magically usable. Who knows, maybe Tomas will be waiting up there with our tent and my shotgun, too. I closed my eyes, choked back the irritated sigh that followed, and did what’s expected of every Delta trooper: stop acting like a bitch and get the fuck to work.

  Or at least I tried, anyway. Half way up, I had to pause, perched on a stone square maybe two foot by one, leaning against the wall because I didn’t trust my balance, and the only thing running through my head was Jenna’s explosive rant when she’d first started playing Assassin’s Creed. She wasn’t wrong then; the first few games had remarkably bad camera angles for some of the platforming sections and the slightest mistake led only to death. Just like here, but to be fair, when the shattered legs were yours and not those of a video game character on screen, every camera angle was bad.

  Dimly, it occurred to me that I’d fixated on the goal, just like I did with the damn hillside up to the keep when I first arrived. I never should’ve started up. This was too dangerous. Bit late now, retard. Well, good luck! I mean, break a leg!

  “You were right, Jenna. Fuck jumping puzzles for everyone to hate,” I muttered to myself as I dug my fingers into the miniscule spaces between the stone, inched a little further on the tiny ass rim that extended to either side of the perch, and braced myself for trying to reach the next outcropping.

  When I was at the bottom, I’d only thought I was exhausted, but when I reached the first intact segment of stairs, I was revisiting levels of tired I’d only lived at Camp Dawson. I’d say it was purely willpower that got me that far, but it wasn’t. It was spite. Spite directed at myself for being stupid, spite directed at the tower for just existing, spite directed at the world itself because fuck you, that’s why. When the wood groaned as I first gingerly tried my weight on it, I added spite toward the goddamn stairs to the list as well.

  The only thankful moment I had on my journey up was when life got tired enough with dicking me that it finally let me reach stairs that didn’t bow or sag when I put weight on them. Naturally, life immediately stomped on that brief whiff of happiness with a little low-battery notification in the periphery of my monochrome green vision. I directed my eyes skyward, silently pronouncing the ‘f’ in the word that wanted to be belted out as I toggled off the NVG. Why? Because my batteries were where? That’s right! In my pack.

  I consoled myself with the fact I could vaguely, kinda sorta see dim light filtering down from above and hadn’t heard anything other than myself the entire climb up. Still recoverable. Keep moving.

  My irritation only grew as I climbed the stairs and the light filtering down through the cracks in the stairs above me grew brighter, which explains why, as I cleared the steps into the first room, just as I saw the final flight to open air above, I was muttering words to myself that must never, ever be spoken. In fact, I knew that. I knew even thinking them was tempting the universe.

  Nurses stare daggers at anyone who even considered using the q-word, because any time the word quiet reached someone’s lips, you knew that was the last time that word would apply to your life before your shift ended. Similarly, people in the shit never used this particular turn of phrase because the universe never passed on proving to you that things could, in fact, get worse. Much worse, as it turned out in my case.

  Just as the words left my mouth, I realized a rather salient point, foreshadowing as Jenna would call it: the stairs ahead that led to the roof were covered in blood and deep gouges. There was, in fact, a chewed-on leg belonging to something vaguely horse-like laying at the base of those steps. When I heard something enormous shuffle in the darkness to my left, the only thought that filled my mind in the eyeblink before my ears filled with what sounded like a hissing cat the size of a city bus was, “And there it is, the fuckening.”

  Instead of spinning and instinctively shooting like I probably would have at that moment if I had come up perfectly intact stairs as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I comparatively was before entering the tower, I simply sighed, lifted my pistol in that direction, and fingered the light on to reveal a remarkably unhappy skyferret that had been sleeping in the corner of the room.