Almost a full day passed since Otto and Abel decided to stay by the river and await the best opportunity to cross it.

Otto lay on the ground reading the magic book, his head was propped up with a piled of soft grass.

“Light magic…” Otto began.

Abel’s face lit up; he turned towards Otto as if he was listening to someone discuss his favourite TV show.

“…is completely useless, don’t bother with it…” the book explained.

“Just in case, the element name is Glafi… it’s really just an inefficient lamp spell…”

All colour left Abel’s face as a polite smile was replaced with a look of shock.

“What do you mean?!” he demanded.

“Of course, it’s useful!” he exclaimed.

Otto updated his variable list; he set ‘Glafi’ to ‘ElementLight’.

“I mean, in games and stuff, light was the thing that did damage against undead…” Otto began.

As both, his and Abel’s minds processed the implications of this their expressions became more anxious.

“S-say… you don’t think… resurrection would make you undead?” Otto asked doing his best to keep a very forced smile on his face.

“Of course, not! I used the flash spell back in the capital!” Abel explained breathing a sigh of relief as if he was about to believe Otto’s theory.

Otto leaned back onto the grass.

“Oh yeah, I forgot…”

He pondered the idea for a second before sitting back up.

“Now that I think about it…”

“Are there undead in this world?” Otto questioned.

Abel shook his head.

“The schools of necromancy and healing were long since disbanded after their teachings failed to be passed on since the current Murlin saw them as a threat they weren’t granted the same longevity as myself,” Abel explained.

“A threat?” Otto asked.

Abel couldn’t help but laugh a bit as he spoke.

“The current Murlin was paranoid that the old Murlin was still alive or had a plan to be resurrected,” he explained.

“Well, his concerns turned out to be justified,” Otto laughed.

He stood up and approached the water.

“I think we should cross now…” he said looking at the water which would reach their bellybuttons at this point.

“Are you sure? It’s still pretty deep,” Abel replied getting off the grass and approaching the water.

Otto nodded.

“If we stay here much longer it’ll be dark and I wouldn’t want to cross a river in the dark,”

“And if we want to stay here for the night, we’d need a fireplace, any patrolling enemies could spot us from the road…” Otto replied.

Abel shrugged.

“We could always just wait the night out without a fireplace,” Abel suggested.

“We could, and comfort aside it seems like a decent idea, but if we cross the river now, we’ll have the advantage of travelling through the east side of the river under the cover of night!” Otto explained.

“Then we could head into the woods and make a fire for the night!”

Abel considered the idea and nodded.

“Alright, how do we go about this?” Abel asked.

“We’ll need to cross one-at-a-time,” he began.

“The buoyancy of two people would negate all the rocks in the sack…” Otto began.

He handed Abel the sack.

“You should go first, I’m not strong enough to throw the sack of rock back to this side,” Otto explained as Abel took the sack.

“I see…” he looked to the other side of the river not totally sure he could throw the sack back over.

“I’ll give it a try!” Abel exclaimed before jumping right into the water.

Otto’s face practically screamed: “GO SLOWLY!”

“Hold on! You should acclimate to the cold water!”

Abel continued walking through the slightly chilly water.

“It’s alright! I’m used to cold baths, this is nothing!” he said slowly shuffling his feet along the bottom of the river.

“Move diagonally with the flow of the water!” Otto instructed practically shouting over the sound of sloshing waves as Abel’s head suddenly disappeared below the surface of the water.

“What the hell?!” Otto was about to consider a very reckless rescue when he saw a hand giving him the thumbs-up sticking up from the water.

Otto breathed a sigh.

After a slow, uncomfortable twenty seconds, Abel’s head slowly emerged from the other side of the river.

“It’s pretty deep over here!” he exclaimed.

Otto could barely hear Abel at this point.

As he climbed his way to dry land again Abel took a few breaths before holding the sack out by the rope and spinning it with both hands.

After reaching a sufficient speed Abel let go of the rope sending the sack an overly-long distance away from Otto.

“I wonder if I could catch it…?” Otto thought not moving from his spot as he saw the sack smash into the soft soil with a rumble that shook the earth.

“GUESS FUCKING NOT!” he noted before running over to the makeshift anchor and slowly bracing himself for the journey.

He coiled the rope around his wrist, holding its end with his hand as he slowly stepped into the water.

Slowly he dipped his foot in the water.

“Oh god it’s cold…” he remarked feeling a shiver making its way up his back.

Carefully, Otto moved deeper and deeper into the water, taking occasional breaks to breath and get used to the temperature that felt like burning needles coming from all directions.

He prodded the bottom of the river with his foot as he walked.

“I think I’m getting close to the deep p-” he was cut off when he reached the deep part, he fell down into the water that was a decent head deeper than required to submerge him fully.

The shock was the first thing he had to get under control, the urge to gasp for breath was a great way to waste oxygen, so was the option to struggle or thrash around.

Carefully he continued making his way forward.

“Almost there…” he thought as he began feeling the burning in his lungs.

He didn’t open his eyes in the flowing water for fear of a stray piece of wood or a sharpened rock would be thrown into his eyes.

If he was looking around, he would have seen that he was merely half a meter away from the other end of the river.

That’s when Otto did start to panic, not because of the lack of air or the cold water, but because of the cold, slimy hand that grabbed his leg, burying its claws so deep Otto was certain he was bleeding.