They rested another night in the grotto but were disturbed halfway through by a crab the size of a smart car investigating their camp. It was on the smaller size as the crabs inside the Dead Strand went, but it still managed to get a grip on Rory’s boot and drag him a few feet away from the camp while Jack was out searching for more driftwood. They’d run out that day, and they quickly discovered without a fire burning in the night, all manner of creatures had begun to poke around the grotto.

Jack agreed to stick around and keep watch for the rest of the night, and daybreak found them with little further trouble. When they awoke, Jack was cutting something into bite-sized morsels.

“Is that… a snail?” Rory rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah, he slimed into camp just before dawn. I figured I’d try a thing I saw on the food channel a while back,” he gestured at the cubed chunks.

“Do we have butter?” Rory stretched.

“Yeah, I’ve got a bit left in the supplies,” Jack rummaged through his pack.

“I’ve had escargot in a cream sauce, but it was rubbish. It’s better in garlic butter,” he smiled. “We still have tea?”

“Yep, I actually moved it to your bag when I was shuffling everything around yesterday. The little kettle is in there too,” he smiled.

“Thanks, mate,” Rory returned the smile.

Jack continued the prep for their meal while Rory set the kettle up.

“You know, we have to wait until Layla is up to cook any of this,” he chuckled.

“Yeah, but it’s easier to convince her to play firestarter if everything is already set,” Rory laughed.

Jack hesitated but decided to press, “You seem like you feel better. I was worried about you yesterday.”

“Big noodle apparently carried my soul back to Earth for a date with D,” Rory replied blithely.

“What?!” Jack gaped at him. “Nope. Nevermind. I’m not even surprised.”

“It was magical. New Orleans. Our first date. Back when Darius was still in the marines. God, you could have washed clothes on his stomach. Not that he’s not in great shape now, but…” Rory blew out a breath and shook his hand in front of his chest.

Layla abruptly sat up, eyes still glued shut with sleep, hair a mess.

“I smell sex,” she mumbled. She said something about bowling for kittens that was otherwise unintelligible, then fell back into her bedroll, releasing a snore a few seconds later.

Jack and Rory stared at her, then looked back at each other, finally bursting into laughter.

Erin stirred and rolled over, “Breakfast?”

Jack smiled, “Yes, breakfast. We just need the pyro to wake up and cook for me.”

Erin levered herself up and ambled on her knees to Layla’s bedroll. She heaved the succubus into a princess carry and stood up, then walked her over to the cold fire pit and sat down with the mage in her lap.

“Make fire,” she wiggled Layla around.

“Mmph?” the smaller woman replied.

“Fiiiiiiiiire. Breakfast. Meat. Biss-kits. Make fire,” she wiggled the succubus again.

“Mnnmnmnmmn. Sleeeeeeeeep,” Layla whined.

“Fire,” Erin replied firmly.

Layla turned her head and mumbled, then exhaled a thin stream of flame at Rory’s kettle until it whistled. The metal had grown red hot under the steady stream of dragonfire.

“One more,” Jack smiled at her and held up the saucepan.

“Right here,” he pointed at the bottom of the pan.

“Nnnnnnggghhhh,” Layla protested, but conjured a flame in her hand, then let the arm fall to the ground before snuggling into Erin’s shoulder.

The flaming hand continued to burn, and Jack made haste to pan-sear the chunks of snail flesh.

“Jack, what is that?” Erin eyed the pan suspiciously.

“Not telling you till you try it,” he smiled and added the rest of the butter and a handful of spices.

“That makes it even more suspect,” she squinted at him.

“Nope. Them’s the rules. You don’t get to know what kind of game it is till you try it,” he laughed.

“Those sound like Texas rules,” she grumbled.

“More like just backwoods southern rules,” he chuckled.

The snail quickly began to smell like seared scallops or oysters, overpowered with the scent of butter and sharp spices. Jack watched Erin swallow as her mouth watered. He picked a finished chunk out and fed it to her.

“Oh, my god. That’s so good,” she closed her eyes in bliss, then swallowed. She opened her eyes, narrowly, “What is it?”

He responded by pulling the giant shell from behind the stone he sat on.

“Is that a giant…” she swallowed convulsively. “... snail?”

Rory stabbed his fork into the pan twice and popped the cubed flesh into his mouth.

“Spot on, Jack. Needs garlic, but every bit as good as what I had at that French spot up the street,” he smiled.

“You fed me giant snail?” Erin frowned.

“Did you like it?” he smiled demurely.

She grunted.

“Sorry, I couldn’t hear that,” he grinned.

“Yes. Shut up. Give me more. With biscuits,” she groused.

-----

They finished breakfast, then packed up to head back to Mistelein. It turned out that Layla loved French food, and she destroyed the remains of the snail, then spent half an hour pleading for more. Jack told her they’d watch out for more giant snails on the way back, and if they could catch some, he would make her a seafood feast for dinner.

The trip back through the Dead Strand was largely uneventful, with the creatures of the font giving them little trouble. Only the largest of the giant crabs would try their luck with the Chosen now that the Heart’s guardian was dead, with nearly all the other inhabitants of the Strand slipping off into the water or further into the coral forest as the four approached. The giant crabs were beaten, burned, chopped, and butchered for their meat.

“It’s wild how much this one dungeon blew up our levels,” Layla mused as she chewed on a biscuit.

“Yeah, I think it has to do with how close together the fights have been,” Jack replied.

“Meaning, if we fought non-stop for twelve hours a day against stuff that actually challenged us, this leveling pace would stay consistent?” Erin jumped in.

“Most likely. Belgryn told us the first hurdle was thirty, and that getting to twenty would be easy, even back in the Fyrwood. I wonder how the Augrvein Forest shakes up against the Dead Strand,” Rory replied. “I suspect the issue is finding solid places to level as much as staying alive. This whole thing would already be over if the big noodle hadn’t resurrected us after that nutter blew up Isenmar.”

There was a moment of quiet as the four of them thought of the souls lost at Isenmar.

“Speaking of that, do you think he’d have done it again if we’d bit it against the shrimp?” Layla asked.

“Just based on the bits from our panels when it happened, I’m not sure that it’s not a normal part of us being ‘chosen’,” Rory replied.

“You think everyone he brings over here is immortal?” Erin had pulled her gauntlet and helm off and was scratching at her braid with a finger.

“Here, let me,” Layla plunged her pointed nails into Erin’s hair and started scratching. “I think probably so. I mean, it gives us a hell of a leg up on the whole ‘put out the sun’ quest. Do you think we age? The priest in Isenmar said the last Brother was still alive in cryosleep or whatever, under the capitol. Maybe some of the other Chosen are still out there? They’d be crazy strong by now, right?”

Erin heard nothing else of the conversation, stopping in her tracks as the succubus held her in thrall with the mind-numbing delight of head scritches.

-----

Elsewhere, thousands of miles from the coastline where the four stood, an ancient creature stirred among the massed hordes of alien monstrosities that slept within her den. The sensation of the serpent god’s vessels plucking on the strands of what passed for her remaining tenuous connection to Fate had roused her from her long sleep. She knew no one had spoken her name, regardless of how well warded or otherwise protected the speaker might be. Ages ago now, she had been worshipped by a third of the world, but she could still pick out her true name in a whisper from another continent. It was possible there was no one left on this planet that still knew that name, but someone was talking about her, in the most oblique of terms. Last time it had been those fools that worshipped the sun, speaking one of her titles outside their warded chambers.

She had spent a few months making sure that none of them would interrupt her hibernation ever again, and the ones that escaped her lesson had nevertheless learned it well. No one in Alabastris had mentioned the White Beast or any other of her names for decades.

She rose from the layers of dust and dirt that long slumber had accumulated atop her chitinous armor, pushing aside the great pale monsters that surrounded her with effortless, titanic strength. Her armored plates rippled and flowed, evaporating in a wave of power to reveal her pallid skin, naked in the formless dark.

She turned her senses inward, gripping the remaining strands of Fate connected to her soul, and flexed her monstrous will, causality screaming at the wretched abuse as she tore the information she sought from the skein of reality.

The voice of a young woman echoed in the lightless chamber, tasting the syllables of a language she hadn’t spoken in nearly a century. The four would still have immediately understood the lightly accented English.

“Is it that time already?” she mused.