Our plan was simple. The others would incapacitate the crawler and then I would come in for the final blow. That was what had caused at least half of the arguing when we were trying to come up with a plan. I wanted no question about whether I had completed my challenge and Juniper wouldn’t let go of her irritatingly good point that Breck, Ento, or even Prevna were more equipped to kill the flat fish than me, given their blessings. She didn’t point out that she also had me beat give the extra skill her pearl gave her at manipulating the water she conjured though the whole group thought it. Idra was the only who was on par with me in terms of only having normal weapons to attack with, but she was put on protection duty. After all, her blessing could protect multiple people rather than just making one person suffer through wounds they should have died from.

In the end, Prevna was able to mediate things and it was decided that I would have my chance, but if it went wrong then all bets were off, and whoever had the chance to kill the crawler, killed it. Which left us with the problem of how to get close to the creature in the first place.

Given that we had no reliable way to know which outpost the crawler would attack next or a way to get to the fight quicker than running, if we even somehow knew about it, we opted to be as obnoxious as possible. If we were recognized as an easy target hopefully the crawler would go after us rather than one of the actual outpost patrols.

We walked along the beaches and grassy shores, straying much closer to the waves than the other patrols did. Sometimes the others, Idra and Prevna especially, would enter the shallows on a dare—though I noticed that Idra or Ento always made sure one of them were always between Juniper and the water. We lingered in the ambush spots the crawler had used before and tried to make ourselves seem as easy to attack as possible. All in all, it felt like my earlier walk along the shore but now I had less quiet to think and just as much bored frustration.

I didn’t like leaving my future in the hands of some creature and whether or not it decided to attack me. I wanted to get the whole thing over with, not wander along the same predictable path for the fourth day in a row. In my head, I knew the longer recovery time before fighting again was beneficial and that I still had most of my alloted time before I needed the fighting to be done, but I couldn’t help but hate the passivity of the whole thing. Everyone else kept getting to show off with their blessings while my main contribution was falling off of high places.

My hand kept straying to my sling, which of course, reminded me of Fellen and her fidgety habit. I kicked a pebble out of my way on the beach and ignored the impulse to brush my hand against my poisoner’s pouch and the fabric leaf it protected instead. She was still better off without me.

“If you frown any harder your lips will fall off.” Prevna stepped up next to me on my right and leaving barely a step of space between our shoulders.

“Go away.”

She snorted and kept pace with me.

I waited for her to talk, waited for her leave, but she just kept walking uncomfortably close. Breck trailed behind us while Idra and Ento were playing a competitive game of catch with a grass stuffed pouch. Juniper kept track of the points between them.

I pursed my lips and refused to look directly at her. “What do you want?”

Prevna shrugged out of the corner of my eye. “To not be bored.”

I gestured sharply to the antics ahead of us. “You can join them.”

“I don’t think they’d appreciate the interruption.”

I glowered at her then.

Prevna smirked. “You’re too entertaining not to.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure.”

She kept silent for another minute or so before asking, “Have you ever played Recall?”

“Of course,” I snapped.

Prevna started to describe the shallow lake at Grislander’s Maw and I called her on it. She smiled back at me. “Just checking.”

Then she started describing an animal that took me slightly longer to place. Shaggy coat, short stature…the squashed nose was what gave it away.

“Shaggy coated boar,” of course she would start with the game her band had stolen from us when we first met.

I talked around the description of a snow berry bush but she still got it after a couple minutes. We went back and forth like that, though we didn’t have a lot of shared memories or places to draw on, so we fell to describing more common plants or animals. Once Prevna tried to trick me by describing a place out of legend and I caught her out on it so quick she wasn’t amused. As we wound our way up into that new argument about what was or was not allowed in the game the air changed.

Everyone noticed it. The close knit trio cut themselves off in the middle of their game and I heard Breck shift on the sand behind me. Even with the distractions, none of us had forgotten that we were out here to be attacked. We wore our protective coats and all our weapons were ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

That did not prepare us for what came next.

We were expecting a smaller creature, a single crawler.

That is not what we got.

A tentacle thicker than my waist snaked out of the ocean and wrapped around Idra’s waist. She was the closest to the water. Her scream cut off as the tentacle bashed her against the ground in the next instant. For a sickening moment I thought her neck was broken, but then I saw her feet kick against the air as she struggled to free herself.

Ento was already moving, her blessing of blades already spinning around her, as the tentacle lifted her friend again. Juniper was pulling her spear free—

I dropped to the ground and narrowly avoided being caught by a new tentacle. Prevna stabbed her eating knife into it at the same time. Something off the shore screeched and both tentacles recoiled, dripping yellow blood. I blinked making sure I had that right as I rolled to my feet.

A glance to the side confirmed that Idra was on the ground on her hands and knees, nothing around her waist.

Juniper made a firm beckoning gesture. “Run!”

We ran towards them, Breck on our heels. The wet slap of fin against sand also came from behind us and the side. Chancing another glance, I saw a dozen…no, two dozen fish coming after us all armed with spears. My throat went dry.

We had no whisper women, no true adults, with us, but just like the bane pack in Flickermark these creatures meant to kill us. Six barely trained seedlings against two dozen fish and the same kind of creature that attacked the wall separating the Seedling Palace from the lake. The creature it had taken two lightning strikes, a whirlpool, and a sand cloud to kill.

As soon as we were within ten feet of Idra a slight feeling of pressure pressed against me as her protective dome snapped into place. We stopped next to the other three, panting, as the fish chasing us slammed into the barrier and were sent sprawling back onto the sand. Another screech sounded and three tentacles lashed out from the water. The air shook as they pounded into the dome but it held.

“Hold long can you hold the dome?” I spat the question down at Idra.

“As long as we need,” she ground out through clenched teeth.

Juniper crouched in front of Idra and caught her gaze. “How long can you hold?”

Two tentacles slammed against the dome again as the fish tried bashing it with their spears. Idra’s gaze slipped to the sand between her elbows. “Like this? Five minutes.”

Juniper nodded and rose back to her feet. “Anything that goes out the dome while it’s up stays out. I suggest attacking what you can.”

I couldn’t resist adding in my own directions. “Breck, when the dome falls pull what fish are left to you. Ento, protect the others.” I turned to Prevna. “What poison do you have?”

She straightened her spine. “Black Root still, and two fingers of Asper’s Love.”

The Black Root could debilitate the creature though I doubted it would kill it. Asper’s Love was the venom of the Heart Backed Asper. In the tiniest of doses it could help slow the heartbeat and it mixed well with other ingredients, but obtaining it without receiving a full, deadly bite from the snake was rare and difficult. I didn’t know how she had gotten access to some and at that moment I didn’t care. All I knew was that Asper’s Love in large doses was deadly.

“You’re going to push it all into that large monster.”

Her eyes went wide. “But—”

I cut her off. “It might not kill it, but the damage should drive it away or weaken it enough we can take it out.”

I wasn’t entirely sure if the last part was a lie or not.

Prevna didn’t call me on it. “Okay. Fine, but this is crazy.”

The others were already readying their slings. Breck glanced over with a wild grin as she stepped away from the group and started to spin her sling. “The best fights are.”

She loosed the stone from her sling and it connected with a fish’s head. The fish went down and didn’t rise.

We all followed her lead. We got ten fish before they caught on to their trouble and fell back. Juniper, Breck, and I all got one more each before they slipped back into the waves. Idra had her arms wrapped around her head at that point and she groaned whenever a tentacle slammed into the barrier. Years of healer’s training made me want to check the gash on the back of her head that was staining the sand around her red, but there wasn’t time and too many eyes. Instead, I snapped at Juniper to press a clean cloth to the wound, readied my spear, and then the barrier fell.

Breck’s presence pressed against my mind for a moment as she listened to my plan and rushed forward, calling the remaining fish from the water. She hacked them as they came and they fell around her.

Then a tentacle came streaking over her head, aiming to slam her into the ground, and I realized my miscalculation. Her blessing was powerful enough that it could pull on all the creatures around her and despite her impressive accounts of her feats, I doubted she could handle eight fish attackers as well as the squid creature.

Prevna and I rushed forward to support her as she dodged to the side to avoid the blow. It placed her right in the way of one of the fish’s spear points. It sank deep into her side and Breck collapsed to one knee with a gasp of pain.

I battered one of fish out of the way before stabbing the one that had stabbed her. It fell and Prevna took another one through the eye with her spear. Breck’s hold over the fish seemed to break and three of the remaining six broke off to go after the others.

I did my best to hold off the rest with Prevna. We got one and then two more tentacles were whipping us. I shoved Breck down onto the sand, out of the way, with the heel of my foot before batting away a spear attack aimed for Prevna with my own.

“Poison it!”

The tentacles hit.

Prevna screamed and suddenly she was no longer beside me. The second one caught me in the hip and I went flying. A brief sense of weightlessness took me before sand ground along my face and hands. My coat protected me from the worst of the abrading impact, but my side threw a fit at being abused again.

I tried to get up, to see what was going on but nothing worked like it was supposed to. My arms felt like slush, my bruised side ached all the way to my bones, and my mind couldn’t do anything but scream at them to work.

Screeching filled the air, constant and high pitched and painful. Some part of me noted that Prevna’s poison must be taking effect. The realization was enough to give me enough strength to sit up.

The sight I saw was bitter sweet. All the fish were dead or gone along with the squid creature, but most of us were injured in some capacity and everyone was spread out all across the beach. Prevna had been flung in the opposite direction from me though it seemed she had hung on long enough to poison the creature. Breck was on the ground where I kicked her, hands clasped around the spear still sticking out of her, trying to stem the flow of blood. Juniper, Ento, and Idra were all huddled together, three new fish bodies flayed in front of them.

And it was only then that Eliss came rushing over the ridge that marked the edge of the beach. I didn’t comment on her lateness as she hefted Breck into her arms though I did want to scream her for disturbing the wound. She carried her to a shadow and disappeared. Minutes later she returned with two unfamiliar whisper women in tow. Between the three of them they were able to get the rest of us all back to the camp in one trip.

Back in the healer’s tent I couldn’t seem to escape from.