A few more days passed. We were still suspended, and running out of things to do with our free time.
Kael announced at breakfast that he needed a river for machine testing purposes and asked if anyone would like to come.
Tessa said yes before he finished the sentence.
I said sure.
Even Alara agreed to go. She must have been supremely bored.
Through the city gates and into the world we went.
The journey was rather uneventful. Perfect weather, clear sky, no looming threat of a dungeon job. Just four people walking to the river on a day off.
The Brackenflow was worth the hour and a half that it took to get there. It was wider than I expected — not a creek, not quite a proper river, something comfortable in between that had clearly decided its own classification was nobody else's business.
The water was clear enough to see the bottom in the shallows and moved serenely.
The banks were grassy and flat on our side, lined with old trees that provided shade without blocking the sun entirely. Someone had left a rope hanging from one of them over the water at some point in the distant past and it had stayed.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a perfect day.
Tessa had her boots off before we stopped walking. "LAST ONE IN IS A ROTTEN EGG!"
She was on the rope and in the water before anyone could respond. Kael was already releasing SCRUB from his pack. Alara stood at the bank and looked at the water like she was in the midst of an intense internal debate.
I sat down in the grass, took my boots off, and put my feet in.
The water was perfectly cold. I decided that Kael had made an excellent suggestion.
Within twenty minutes, he had set up what appeared to be a small engineering station on the riverbank. Tools laid out in precise order on a cloth. Notes. A diagram that I couldn't read from where I was sitting, but that appeared to be very detailed. SCRUB sat beside him, freshly polished, looking alert in the way he did when Kael was about to do something to him. "Okay," Kael said, mostly to SCRUB. "The port flotation device deploys on my mark. The starboard deploys automatically on water contact. We're testing buoyancy calibration and lateral stability. This should be completely straightforward."
SCRUB beeped.
"Yes, I know I said that last time. This time, I mean it."
Another beep. Shorter. Skeptical.
"SCRUB."
One more beep. Final.
"Fine. Noted. Deploying on three."
Tessa had migrated to a flat rock in the middle of the river and was lying on it face up like a very small, very content lizard. She had her notebook out and appeared to be writing something, which impressed me given that she was also using it to shield her eyes from the sun. "What are you writing?" I called.
"Observations."
"About what?"
"The clouds. That one looks like SCRUB."
I looked up. It did, a little.
Alara had made a decision regarding the river and was sitting on the bank with her feet in the water, her braid over one shoulder, reading. She had produced a book from somewhere. I hadn't seen her bring a bag. I chose not to examine this. "What are you reading?"
She turned the cover toward me briefly without looking up.
I couldn't read the title from where I was sitting. "Is it good?"
"Evidently."
I accepted that.
From somewhere behind me, I heard Kael say "deploying on three" again, followed immediately by a loud bang.
I looked up just in time to see the small robot launch out of the river, propelled through the air by a burst of air from a punctured flotation device, his mechanical shriek echoing in every direction.
He splashed back down into the water about a hundred feet away. Despite knowing that SCRUB could safely submerge in water and also didn't need to breathe, I watched the river nervously.
Kael was standing at the riverbank staring at a point somewhere above the treeline with the expression of someone whose experiment had produced data, just not the data he was looking for.
SCRUB surfaced approximately fifteen feet downstream.
He was covered in weeds.
He was beeping continuously in a register I had not heard before.
Tessa sat up on her rock.
Alara looked up from her book.
There was a beat of complete silence.
Then Alara laughed.
Not a polite sound. Not a controlled exhale. An actual laugh — sharp and sudden and completely unguarded, the kind that arrives before you can decide whether to allow it. She caught herself almost immediately, composure snapping back into place, but it was too late. It had happened. We had all heard it.
She looked back at her book.
SCRUB had reached the bank. He climbed out with the dignity of someone who had not just been launched through the air by a malfunctioning flotation device. He shook himself once. A piece of waterweed fell off.
He looked at Kael.
He looked away from Kael.
He walked to where I was sitting and settled beside me with his back pointedly toward his creator.
Kael opened his mouth.
SCRUB beeped once.
Kael closed his mouth.
It was in that moment of awkward silence between a man and his robot that the river exploded.
It erupted from the river in sections — first the broad, flat head, scaled in deep grey-green with patches of something darker at the jaw, then the neck, thick as a tree trunk, then the body, wide and low and covered in a texture that was more moss than scale in places, as though the river had been growing things on it for years. Water cascaded off in sheets. Its eyes — amber, ancient, the size of dinner plates — fixed on us like it was sizing up a meal.
It was easily thirty feet from nose to tail. Maybe more.
It opened its mouth.
The sound that came out was not a roar. It was a deep, resonant vibration that I felt in my chest before I heard it with my ears, the kind of sound that communicated something very simple to something very old in the back of my brain.
Leave.
I was already moving. "Kael — distance, left flank, get SCRUB ready for interference. Alara — barrier, now, wide as you can make it. Tessa — mana sight, tell me what we're dealing with."
The words came out before I'd finished thinking them. Some part of me had already assessed the situation and started giving orders and the rest of me was catching up.
Nobody questioned it. They just moved.
Kael grabbed his pack and was already pulling something out, circling left with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been doing this long enough that thinking was optional.
SCRUB, grudge apparently suspended for the duration of the emergency, fell into position beside him.
"Tinkering Art: Homunculus Defense, activate!"
"BEEB, BOOP, BEEP-BEEP, BRRRRRT, BOOP!"
Alara's hands were already moving, the mana gathering between her palms. "Protection Art: Mana Barrier, activate!"
"By the Third Principle of Arcane Revelation –"
"TESSA!"
"Right, sorry! Cleansing Art: Mana Sight, activate!"
Her eyes went the way they did when Mana Sight was active, but in the sunlight it looked like only she could see the mana in the air.
The creature took a step forward. The riverbank shook.
Another step. The water around its legs churned white.
It opened its mouth again and that sound came out again and I became briefly convinced that we were going to die here, on a day off, because Kael needed to test flotation devices.
I wasn't sure what my own plan was. I didn't have my mop or any of my tools. I had no weapon. I was equipped only with the power of hindsight. I grabbed a heavy looking stick off of the ground. I didn't have much faith in it.
I didn't feel like I had a choice: I was going to have to use my Night Step ability. But did I even know how? Would it work in broad daylight?
If I could get on its back…
I spoke quietly, so as to not alert the others. "Shadow Art…"
The monster gave another deep bellow. "Night step…"
"STOP!"
The voice came from the treeline, high and sharp. I stopped. The monster did too. It seemed to slump backwards, settling into the water.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
A girl emerged from the trees.
She was perhaps twelve years old. Small, dark haired, wearing the practical clothes of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. She had a smear of mud on her cheek and an expression of complete exasperation directed at all of us equally.
She walked directly between us and the creature without hesitating.
She put her hands on her hips. "What do you think you are doing?!"
Her voice carried the authority of someone much older.
She was looking at me specifically.
I opened my mouth.
"You were going to fight him."
It wasn't a question. "All four of you. Against Mossback."
She looked at the thirty-foot river lizard behind her. She looked back at us. "Do you have any idea how embarrassing that would have been for you?"
Kael lowered whatever he'd been holding.
Alara let the gathered mana dissipate.
Tessa, Mana Sight still active, shut her notebook and stared.
I became aware that I was still in a combat stance. I straightened up. "Who are you?" I asked.
She squared her shoulders. "I'm Wren. And that—"
She gestured behind her at the enormous lizard, who had stopped advancing and was now making a low, unhappy sound that was considerably less threatening than the previous one. "—is Mossback. And he is not having a good week. So if you could please stop pointing things at him, that would be very much appreciated."
She looked at Kael's device. "You can put that down."
Kael placed it into his belt. SCRUB scuttled behind me, apparently remembering that he was mad at Kael.
"Thank you."
The river creature lowered its head to the young girl, and she patted its lizard-like snout. "It's alright, big guy. You don't have to eat them."
She turned back to us. "What are you doing here?"
I stepped up. "We were swimming."
"Dangerous time to go swimming."
"Apparently."
Wren sighed. "I guess I'm sorry about Mossback. The poor creature is sick, and it's making him a little grouchy."
I stared at the river beast. Its head was bowed, and I could hear a squelching grumble from its stomach. But even like this, I could tell that we could've likely wound up dead had the girl not shown up.
Tessa spoke up. "His mana is misaligned."
Wren cocked her head. "How do you know that?"
"It's my job to know."
Wren looked over at Mossback with a sad look. "Can you help him?"
I shrugged. "We probably can. Is he going to eat us?"
"Only if I tell him to."
She said it so matter-of-factly that I was lost for words.
Eventually, I found my tongue again. "Alara, can you heal him?"
She sized the monstrous creature up and down. "Possibly. If Tessa helps. She can untangle his mana, and I can heal the physical damage."
Her tone was the clinical and detached one she normally used on a job.
Tessa nodded. "It could take a while. But I could do it."
Wren clapped her hands excitedly. "Yay! Okay!"
She spoke to Mossback. "Okay, Mossy. These nice people are going to help you. No biting."
A rumble came from the beast in response.
Mossback laid his head on the riverbank and settled in. Tessa and Alara got to work immediately.
Kael spoke for the first time since Wren had appeared. "What is Mossback in the river for? He's a monster. He should be in a dungeon."
Wren glared at him. "Mossy escaped a dungeon a long time ago. He was hurt by some mean old adventurers. My village found him and healed him. He protects us now."
Kael blinked. "You healed a monster?"
"Some of us value all life."
"...fair enough I guess. But how has the Empire not found him yet? Monsters on the loose are always handled by adventuring teams."
Wren puffed out her chest. "We protect Mossy too. He doesn't hurt anyone unless they try to hurt us. So when adventurers come sniffing around, I drive them off or convince them to leave. As the village elder, that's my job."
"You? The village elder?"
The disbelief in Kael's voice matched my own. Wren was just a child.
"Looks can be deceiving," she said, simply.
That was a fair point, I supposed. Considering that my foreman was at least five hundred years old, I couldn't be that surprised.
Tessa's voice came from the riverbank. "Wren? Has anything weird been happening since Mossy got sick?"
The girl nodded furiously. "Yep. He's been pooping a lot. Why?"
Tessa shook her head. "And has that been…affecting things?"
Wren snapped her fingers, as though remembering something. "Oh yeah! Whatever he poops on, it turns into a monster!"
I was gobsmacked. "Wait…his poop…makes monsters?"
"Well not normally. But something is wrong with him."
"His mana is really weird, Lorne. It's being affected by something."
An external factor… "Wren, has anything strange been happening before Mossy got sick?"
She looked at me thoughtfully. "We've been seeing a strange light at night coming from Lake Fortescue, and some weird noises…for about a week now."
"Is that the lake this river flows into?"
"Yes. It's where Mossy has his den."
I sighed internally. We had to help. I could tell the others agreed. So much for a day at the river.
I looked at my companions, then to Wren. "Can you show us the way to the Lake?"
Lake Fortescue was smaller than I expected and considerably closer to civilization than its name suggested.
We followed Wren along a footpath that ran parallel to the Brackenflow for the better part of an hour, the river narrowing as we went, until the trees opened up and the lake appeared all at once — dark water, perfectly still, ringed by reeds and overgrown brush. It seemed that nobody came here on purpose very often.
The far shore was thick with trees. The near shore, where we stood, sloped gently down to a muddy bank churned with what I gathered were Mossback-sized footprints.
Across the water, I saw a small road through the trees. Not one of the proper trade routes of the empire, but a meandering dirt path that looked about as well trodden as the land around the lake.
Wren stopped at the edge of the water and pointed. "The light has been coming from out there. Near the middle. Mossy's den is just past the deep part."
The water gave nothing away. It just sat there, dark and still, keeping whatever was down there to itself.
Wren started forward along the bank, completely unbothered by the lake's general air of foreboding. "Watch where you step. Oh, also — "
A patch of reeds near my left boot jolted upward.
It happened too fast to process properly. One moment, there was a perfectly ordinary clump of waterlogged grass. The next, there was a writhing tangle of green limbs, vaguely humanoid, vaguely furious, latching onto my ankle with what I can only describe as enthusiasm.
"— watch out for the grass."
I shook my leg. The grass thing held on as if it were unaware it was supposed to be a plant. Whatever approximation of a face it had was definitely snarling, the noises high-pitched and non-threatening.
Kael had already drawn something from his belt. Alara's hand was glowing faintly. Tessa was just staring, delighted. "Is that — "
"It's a grass monster,"
Wren said it like she was identifying a species of bird. "They're harmless, mostly. Just annoying. Here."
She walked over, grabbed the thing by what I assumed was its head, and yanked it off my leg with the casual competence of someone who had done this many times before. It went limp in her hand. "You have to grab the root cluster; otherwise, they just keep regrowing wherever they land. It's a whole thing."
"Are they…?"
"Oh. Yeah. Mossy pooped here."
She said it the way you'd explain that water was wet. "You get used to it."
I looked down at my ankle. At the faint green smear where it had been gripping me.
I had several follow-up questions. I asked none of them.
She tossed it into the lake, where it sank without complaint.
She started walking again. "Don't worry, the fence ones are worse. They've got the posts."
"You said anything Mossy poops on –"
"Yup."
"Awesome."
As we walked around the edge of the lake, this happened a few more times: more grass creatures, a snake that looked like it was made of cattails, even a strangely mutated frog that made me glad I hadn't eaten since we left.
On the other side of the lake, I got a better look at the road through the trees.
It ran close to the water here — closer than I'd realized from across the lake — and the bank between the path and the shoreline sloped down at a steep, uneven angle, the underbrush along it disturbed in a way that didn't look old.
That was when I noticed the wheel.
It was half buried in the mud near the base of the slope, splintered along one side, the iron rim barely rusted at all. A few feet further up, gouged into the dirt, were two long ruts — the unmistakable track of a cart that had gone somewhere it wasn't supposed to go, and gone there fast. The grass hadn't grown back over them yet. "Wren."
She came over, looking unbothered. "What's this from?"
She shrugged. "Some cart went off the road. Few weeks back, maybe? Real late at night — woke half the village up. Nobody ever came looking for it. There's junk all down the slope if you look."
A few weeks.
I followed the ruts down toward the water. The slope was steeper than it looked from a distance, slick with mud, and it was easy enough to see that something heavy had gone down it fast and stayed down. Near the bottom, half submerged in the shallows, were the broken remains of a wooden crate — waterlogged, the slats cracked but still mostly together, whatever it had once held long since spilled or sunk.
Except for one thing.
Something in the mud beside the crate caught the light — a dull, uneven yellow glow.
I crouched down.
I knew that color. I'd spent the better part of a year staring at it embedded in cave walls.
Elginarium. Crudely fragmented, half-buried in the lakebed exactly where the cart's cargo would have spilled when the wheel gave out. There was only one place in the empire it could have come from. "Kael…"
"Yup, I see it."
He was already on one knee beside the crate, SCRUB booping beside him. Tessa activated her Mana Sight.
Kael reached out with a metal tool and gave the shimmering metal a tentative poke.
As he did, a sound emanated from it. It was a level drone, a tone with no real edge to it.
Wren clapped once. "That's it! That's the sound we've been hearing."
Kael looked thoughtful. "Elginarium makes a low hum in the Ebon Maw, but I've never heard of it making this sound…maybe it does this outside of the dungeon."
Tessa spoke up. "Its mana is slightly different too. Could be the same root cause."
"How is it different?"
"Well, it's not super clear because it's outside and not concentrated…but it looks like it's a different color."
I stared at the ore. "What does a different color mana mean?"
"Could be a million things. We'd have to bring it to an expert."
An expert. That got me thinking: I knew elginarium only existed naturally in the Ebon Maw. That meant someone took it from there. The dungeon hadn't reopened. Which meant nobody should have had legal access to it at all. So it seemed likely that this had been smuggled…
I knew exactly who would smuggle it. And Dandy Dan said that coin would buy me one more conversation… "Let's take some with us."
Kael and Tessa both glanced at me. Alara was focused elsewhere – she didn't seem to like the waste monsters very much and was probably keeping an eye out.
Kael queried. "Tessa…if we remove this elginarium, would that help Mossback return to normal?"
She shook her head. "That's not enough ore to alter the mana of something of his size. There's probably more near his den, under the water."
Wren gave a small gasp. "Poor Mossy! Can you help him?"
I pondered the question before nodding slowly. "I think so. Tessa, is it possible to scrub the mana out of the ore?"
"Not without my cleaners, no."
"Okay…then we have to remove the ore completely. And we don't know how much is down there."
I stopped to ponder exactly what I was doing here. I had taken complete control of the scenario. Not to mention that this was also not technically my problem. But this felt like the right thing to do, and the other three seemed to agree and were willing to take my lead.
I stopped the self-reflection there and snapped back to the present. "Kael. Do you have breathing devices with you? Like the ones we used in the Maw?"
My memory jumped back to that first dungeon. The lower level that had been nothing but an endless expanse of water.
Kael searched through his pack. "I only brought one. Just in case I had to go under, at the river."
"Just one…well, that's unfortunate. We might need all of us to haul up the ore that's down there."
Wren interrupted. "That wouldn't be a good idea. Mossy is super territorial over his den. Even if he's sick. One person might be able to get down there without triggering him, but four people would send his instincts into a frenzy, and even I wouldn't be able to stop him."
I sighed. This was a serious conundrum. But I was committed. "Okay. Well, I'll take the breather and go down by myself. See what we're dealing with. If there's too much elginarium, I'll come back up. I can go home and grab more breathers or something."
Kael nodded. "Sounds like a plan. In the meantime, I'll take SCRUB and –"
He was interrupted by a loud beep.
SCRUB was planted firmly at my feet, his robotic head pointed toward the water.
Kael's face fell. "I guess he wants to help you."
I felt bad for Kael in that moment. The little bot was clearly determined to be useful, but it felt like he was taking that as something else.
I didn't draw attention to the moment.