Twilight had cast red across the sky, punctuated only by long, fluffy clouds, as we made our way north along the coastal road, still accompanied by Arnold Orellan and his elven guests.

  Lore, who did not share a single thing in common with any of our new elven friends, had been spending most of his time with the depth raider, which he had decided was definitely male, based on its “energy”. You might not have known it was a beast capable of levelling cities from the way that the barbarian kept tickling its belly. According to the information we had, the witchfinder’s clasp should have kept it from gaining any power from any particularly strong people around him, but Val was nervous about it. ‘Those things only go so far,’ she said.

  Corminar had grown distant from the other elves since their recognising of him last night. He seemed ashamed of his past, though these diplomats did not seem to see any reason he would, Urlwan in particular. With time, Corminar’s uncharged crimes had been… if not forgotten, then at least they seemed less important.

  We were running late for the stop that Arnold Orellan had planned for us, and if we didn’t get there soon, then we were going to be travelling in darkness. It wouldn’t matter how many of us there were, then—bandits would surely give robbing us a go.

  Arnold hadn’t spoken to Val really since the first night, and Val was starting to think his words about making amends had been just that—words. I had suggested to her that maybe there were some nerves on his side, but she disagreed, saying he wasn’t the kind of man to get nerves. Based on what I’d seen so far, I was inclined to agree. Maybe he really had just wanted protection through these increasingly dangerous lands, and was the type to say whatever he needed to to secure it. It was always those sorts that became rich and powerful, after all.

  Instead, Arnold Orellan had spent a lot of his time with Lore, interrogating him about the nature of the depth raider—it being “one of those few creatures I’ve never had the pleasure of dissecting”. Lore wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear this, and he always kept his swords nearby just in case, though it was hard to believe this otherwise mild-mannered old man had anything but academic discussion in mind.

  As we climbed over the crest of a sand dune, right on the beach, we finally spotted the inn we intended to stay at. And it was a good thing too, because the red sky had grown dark, and the last of the sun’s rays was just disappearing over the barren, deforested landscape to our left.

  It was almost peaceful, the sound of the waves lapping against the beach, but again I had this sense of something being wrong with the sound, something about the way the waves swept in that wasn’t quite right.

  Val was walking slower, too, her eyes on the shoreline.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Do you hear it?’

  ‘Hear it? No. I feel something.’

  We stopped, at the front of our party, causing the rest of the group to slow to a halt behind.

  ‘Let’s not dilly-dally, chaps,’ Arnold said, approaching us. ‘There will be dangers out on the road, this time of night. Bandits, and—’

  Val shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, almost under her breath. ‘Not—’

  We heard the unmistakable sound of something moving in the water. ‘Another cephalopor?’ I asked.

  The witch shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. Something else. Something…’

  We heard the sound again, and then a figure broke forth from underneath the surface. In the low light, I had to squint to make it out, and all I could see was the head and shoulders of—it seemed—a man. ‘Who…’

  Another figure pierced the surface. A woman, it looked like. Staring at the lot of us.

  ‘Not sure this good,’ Arzak said, joining Val, Arnold and I at the front of the pack.

  A third head, then a fourth, then three more, and more still all emerged from the water, each exactly the same distance from one another, all of them staring at us.

  ‘Get to the inn,’ Val said, softly.

  Arnold did not need to be told twice, and he began running forward, incredibly agile for his age, without sparing a glance for the elves he was supposed to be guiding.

  ‘Get to the inn!’ I shouted, echoing Val, waving the elven diplomats onward, drawing my blade with the other hand.

  The shapes in the Iron Sea charged at once, running through the water like it was air, not being slowed for a moment, their eyes fixed upon the members of the party who were standing their ground.

  Corminar loosed an arrow, then another, then another, each of them embedding in one of the figures’ chests, but not seeming to do any damage. ‘This gods-forsaken bow!’ the ranger roared, but still he kept firing.

  Val rushed forward, into the shallows of the sea before the creatures could reach her. She bent down, touching the water, and then summoned lightning magicks to ripple through it. The surface of the water sizzled from the spell, and Val was immediately shot backwards into the air by the very same magicks, but still the figures were undeterred.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I flinged a hand upwards, opening a portal behind Val as she flew through the air, and opened another near me so I could catch her. ‘You OK?’ I asked.

  Val didn’t reply, and hopped free of my grasp, ready to launch more attacks on the encroaching enemies.

  Meanwhile, Lore and Arzak were charging forth, weapons in hand. ‘Styk!’ Arzak shouted, and I got the message, opening a portal in front of her and its partner in the air above the closest of the enemies. The orc brought two swords down upon the manlike—manlike because it was clear, at this point, that they weren’t men at all—and the blades… passed right through it. It wasn’t like the spectres of the witchfinders that we’d encountered before—the blades still hit flesh, and cut through it, it was just that the wounds sealed up again the moment the sword was clear.

  ‘Guys? I think we might have a problem here!’ Lore shouted, still running into battle anyway, the depth raider’s cage strapped to his back and the creature within bouncing around.

  ‘The raider?’ I cried back to him.

  ‘No! The scary sea-people!’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘There’s magicks in the air,’ Val shouted. ‘Not just mine and Styk’s. Theirs too.’

  ‘Idea what they are?’ Arzak said, still swiping away with the blades but getting nowhere. One of the creatures flung the back of a limb into her, knocking the heavy woman into the air with ease.

  ‘I’ve not seen anything like it,’ the witch replied. ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Blade no work,’ Arzak grunted, lifting herself back to her feet. ‘Magicks no work. What left?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Running away?’ Lore suggested, and immediately took his own advice, sprinting, sword in hand, down the beach.

  The other four of us hesitated for a moment, before Arzak shouted, ‘Regroup!’ and that gave us all permission to flee. We quickly put distance between us and the enemies, as they were slower on land than in water, and a year ago I might have used that simply to run away. But we were supposed to be heroes now, of a sort, and besides—we’d been paid good money to protect the people currently in the tavern ahead of us.

  I opened a portal in front of me and Val, and we leaped through it, landing heavy on our feet at the door to the inn. The witch hurried inside, beginning to shout orders at whoever was inside, while I turned back to open more portals, bringing the rest of the team to the building. Behind them, I could see the creatures creeping steadily towards me.

  I heard a shrill, grumpy woman’s voice behind me, and suddenly I was barged out of the doorway by a short, stout barmaid with her hand on her hip. ‘Scare my customers, will you?’ she shouted at Val, back inside. ‘“Creatures attacking”? Good grief, there—’ The barmaid immediately trailed off when she looked around at the dozen humanoid figures running towards her inn. She turned back inside. ‘Creatures attacking! Merfolk attacking!’

  Merfolk, was it?

  ‘Do what the weird woman says!’ she continued. ‘Barricade the windows! Barricade the door.’

  ‘Not wait for us be inside?’ Arzak asked the woman as she hurried past me into the building. The barmaid ignored her.

  As soon as the last of our group was inside, I allowed the barmaid to slam the door closed, and Val and Urlwan were ready with an upturned table. They rammed it into place against the door.

  ‘Think it’ll hold?’ Val asked.

  Arzak responded by slamming one sword, then the other, into the floorboards just behind the table, helping to keep it in place. ‘It hold.’

  I nodded, then looked around at the other windows, where other customers were propping up tables in much the same way, or—in the case of a man in a cook’s hat and an apron—were hammering loose floorboards across the windows. When the last nail was used, the inn suddenly turned silent.

  ‘And now what?’ I asked.

  Nobody had an answer for me, and the enemy began to knock on the door.

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