Our predicament traveled quickly up the line as soon as I pointed out the lack of wind. I couldn’t hear what was said between Mishtaw and Hattie or read their body language through the obscuring fog, but some information made its way back down the restless line. My hair might not have stirred since we left camp, but they had been successfully checking in with the commander and Hattie’s outpost subordinates until a half hour ago. However, it had gotten increasing difficult as we continued on, as if the wind was lessening. During the last round of messages, Hattie had been able to send hers out while Mishtaw didn’t have enough wind and they hadn’t received any in response.

Much like how the whisper women could gain different proficiency with using the shadow paths, apparently the same was true for conversing on the wind. Eliss quickly explained to Prevna and me that all whisper women were expected to learn how to direct their messages to their intended target even when the wind wasn’t blowing at full strength or was being unruly within a number of miles, but some trained to be able to send their messages over extraordinary distances or when the wind was barely a breath. It was said that the Beloved didn’t even need the wind; she could send a message anywhere she wanted even when the air was as still as it was now.

But the air was never supposed to be still. There was always some wind. And we weren’t the Beloved to ignore nature and do whatever we wished.

Tension built along with the unspoken questions as our squad leaders worked out our next move as quickly as they could. How and why did the wind stop? Would it return soon? What was going on back at camp and the other groups, similar to ours, spread across the coast? Had they noticed the problem? Were they being attacked? Should we keep going, hole up somewhere, turn back? Was a horde of sea monsters about to descend on us? Were they just as blind in the fog as we were?

On and on and on. I could answer some of the questions based on prior knowledge and guesswork, some of them were important to know but impractical to focus on while we were vulnerable out in the open.

Even with the same number of people we had before the risk of being near the water no longer felt as acceptable as it had when we first set off. Muffled fidgets of feet shifting on sand and rustle of clothing filtered through the fog as we all subtly kept a keener eye on the water and checked our weapons and protective gear.

Mishtaw and Hattie gave their verdict a couple of minutes later. Gaining distance from the water and finding cover was now our top priority. Namely, we were to get to the goddess’s forest without getting ambushed or turned around in the fog. We also switched from the line formation to a tight cluster with Melka and Idra in the center. If the first sensed that her blessing of terror hadn’t taken hold of potential enemies than the second would put up her protective barrier. Better safe than hobbled by injuries.

I ended up near the back again, placed between Creed, at the very back, and Mishtaw. Surprisingly, Petra was in the lead as our pathfinder. You wouldn’t think it’d be so difficult to find the forest given that it was a straight shot from the shore at any given point, but we had all heard stories of tribes going missing in the mist. They thought they were going straight when really they were weaving patterns into the ground and making no progress at all. Mishtaw’s main squad all vouched for her sense of direction and the tracking training she received.

From what I could tell Juniper and Prevna were also placed between the adults in Mishtaw’s squad on the left side of our group while Hattie’s group shored up the right side. No one openly said anything, but I didn’t doubt that it was for our protection as well as to make sure no one accidentally got in each other’s way because of unfamiliar fighting styles. I might have only been part of one fight with Mishtaw and Creed, but that was better than a fire starter I had no knowledge of before today.

I focused on keeping track of Mishtaw’s back in the fog as well as what I could make out of Melka as we moved forward. This definitely wasn’t the time for accidentally breaking away from the group. I knew from the Hunter’s Quarry game that I still wasn’t a match for multiple enemies on my own, especially when they had a trap of their own to spring.

The fog pressed in close as we moved over the uneven, snowy scrubland but now it was easier to keep the panic at bay. I had other worries to occupy my mind and when it didn’t disappear within what I judged to be two hours like Prevna had promised, I simply resolved that it would be gone within the next two hours and that she was a poor judge of time estimates. It helped, too, to feel Creed at my back and to know that Mishtaw was ahead. That made the space I was aware of feel larger rather than endless eddies of grayish white.

We didn’t make any quicker progress than we had by the shore and without the water as a benchmark there were moments when it was easy to question if we had made any progress at all. The lack of spotting our footprints in the snow eased some of the tension from that, but we couldn’t dismiss the doubt completely.

I kept expecting to hear the slap of fins against the ground or the grating sound of sand being shoved into a Shore Eater’s maw, but only the sound of my breathing and the crunch of snow underfoot broke into the silence around me.

Once, a rabbit startled away from Melka’s aura and the sudden scampering was enough to send us all into a crouch, spears ready, until the whisper woman told us the presence had been too small to be a fish. No one responded to the sliver of humor in her voice. We all knew the sound of a running rabbit and we weren’t eager to relive the embarrassing moment.

We walked and kept walking until I was really starting to question whether Petra truly had an impeccable sense of direction without the helpful guide of sun and stars. That’s when we hit the tree line.

We settled between two good sized pines, Melka keeping up her aura while Hattie and Mishtaw got together to discuss the plans they made during the walk. I kept my gaze toward where we had come from. Perhaps we had gotten away from the shore quick enough to avoid being attacked or the fish were prioritizing smaller groups. Perhaps we were lucky and the fog was natural and it ruined their sight and maneuverability just like it ruined ours.

I doubted it was as simple as that.

So I tried to place myself in the enemy’s position. What did they want? What opportunities did our interrupted communication and quick long distance travel afford them? What part of the battlefield would I focus on?

The Lady Blue wanted the goddess’s land for her own depraved waters, so it followed that the conch commander was working to fulfill that goal. Of course, having the area full of whisper women wouldn’t be helpful towards that goal, so they’d want to lessen our numbers or go elsewhere—which the fish obviously hadn’t done. The loss of two of the whisper women’s boons was a heavy blow that crippled our movements and ability to work together. It weakened both those out in field as well as the camp. However, the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced the fish would go for the camp first. The squads outside the root wall might be easier to overwhelm, but we would be harder to locate and it would be easier to take care of us if our position of power in the area was ruined.

There was also the fact that, as far as I knew, there was no way for those outside the camp to get back in without using the shadow paths or somehow climbing over the wall. If the fish somehow knew that as well then they could be confident that those in the camp weren’t going to get any meaningful support, not unless some came from the Seedling Palace. The whisper women might have been able to decimate the horde of fish from the top of the wall before, but it was another thing entirely to face that same horde when you were on the same level and they could surround and overrun you. Plus, it was likely that fewer of the whisper women with long range blessings would be in the camp this time given how many of the squads had left to help the others outside and take up their posts.

If another unnatural wave or thunderstorm came…I didn’t like the decrease in the camp’s chances. At the same time, it was nearly impossible to imagine the camp falling between the commander and the root wall. Either way, we weren’t in a position to help.

We had to prepare for the other possibility; that the squads stranded beyond the wall were being targeted first. That, at any moment, fish would come surging out of the fog and try to kill us. Never mind that I had never seen or heard of the sea creatures striking out farther than the edges of a beach—keeping uninjured and alive gave us the best basis for responding to any of the possible scenarios.

Looking around, I saw that the fire starters were hard at work trying to create a shadow from the trees without setting the forest on fire. Little flashes of fire kept lighting up the fog and I heard the rustle of fallen twigs and needles being gathered up. I wasn’t sure how well they would light up, being wet from the snow, but having a path to travel through was better than being sitting ducks.

And, of course, there was the last possibility that was slowly gaining traction in my mind the more I considered the enemy’s actions: we were not their main priority. I doubted we would be ignored completely in the fog, it provided too good an opportunity, but it also provided the Shore Eaters an unrivaled opportunity to gnaw at the goddess’s shores without interruption.

The Lady Blue wanted to hurt the goddess, take what was hers, and what better way to do that than steal her territory? Territory we wouldn’t easily be able to replace. Water might easily slip into the space the lost land made, but we could not make dirt and sand from nothing and land did not slip so easily into place as water.

We were fighting a defensive battle. The realization hit me then with the bitter taste of swallowed bile. Defensive battles were not won, not without great cost and concession, and I didn’t think at that point whatever victory came could be called that. If nothing else, my childhood had taught me that.

We did not attack the creatures in the sea, we waited for them to come to us. We didn’t search out their bases of power, couldn’t if they were further out in water. Our mobility ended at the shore.

This was a siege. Like in the story of the bone ring, only instead of a nearly impassible hill the enemy was entrapping us within the goddess’s territory. Unable to strike out without immediately being overwhelmed while also, slowly but surely, being forced to give ground. We didn’t have enough manpower, like in the story, and time wasn’t on our side.

It didn’t bode well for our ability to keep the Lady Blue and the goddess from clashing which boded even less well for tribes not becoming collateral damage.

But if this was such a battle of attrition why would the Lady Blue waste forces fighting us when she could take territory elsewhere? Again, the question that had bothered me since we came here came back to haunt me.

I mulled over the question as the others around me focused on our immediate concerns. Some part of me couldn’t let go of the thought that figuring out the answer to that question would stop us from continually being on the back foot when it came to this fight.

Shore Eaters and crawlers, dozens of skirmishes a day though the move with the storm and wave showed she had the capacity to use a far larger number of fighters. Why waste those numbers on the camp when we had been at full strength? Why not use them on the squads that had been out at the outposts? Why only harass those outposts when the crawler had seemed to know where to strike?

I could only come up with two reasons. The enemy was saving their forces for some other, bigger moment, perhaps like the mist today or we truly weren’t the focus and all the battles were there to keep us busy while they worked on something else.

The caves had yet to play a significant part in the fight.

Perhaps…perhaps they had been working on whatever they were doing with the caves first, something to expand their territory. But then some fool decided to burn one of the goddess’s trees and brought a large group of whisper women to the area. Rather than let us discover what they had been up to they started to attack or we discovered the side operation of beach eating and retaliated. Either way the fight started and they kept it up, a distraction here and a distraction there, so that we would focus on the battle until it was too late and they completed whatever they were working on. It was what we would expect after all. From what I heard, those types of fights over small bits of territory were what the whisper women were used to ever since the Thousand Cut Witch made her mark.

Of course we had discovered the caves, if that really was the hidden agenda, but not a lot of priority had been placed on them. If nothing else, the fact that taking care of them had gone to me proved that.

A chill ran down my spine. If the caves really were the main objective there was little we could do to stop now, encumbered by the fog and unable to contact anyone else. Even if the fog lifted in the next minute I doubted there was much that could be done in time. Who would listen to a seedling about some caves when there had been the unprecedented event of the wind falling still and fog threatening all our operations in the area?

I didn’t have access to the commander, not that she would have listened anyway, so Mishtaw was my best and only bet.