There was no escape from the charging predator as the boardwalk behind Richta and the soldiers had been demolished. Richta had no choice but to use his ability. He ripped the eye patch from his face and gazed at the oncoming monster. The giant croc’s massive head froze like a block of green ice, yet the tail continued to whip back and forth, propelling it forward at great speed. The creature was entirely too large to stop, but Richta counted his blessings. He was thankful that, at the very least, he’d sealed the mouth, of all things, shut. He replaced his eyepatch and braced himself for the attack.

The giant crocodile breached the water, its massive weight propelling it across the boardwalk. Richta lifted his sword, mostly out of reflex, and the creature slammed into him, its large head catapulting him upward into the air. It was as if the world’s largest cudgel had uppercut him. Richta tumbled end over end before gravity finally did its thing. He landed hard against the mansion’s roof on his side, his shoulder and elbow taking the brunt of the impact. He careened through the thin layer of wood paneling and straw thatching. Green flashes ricocheted about as bits of solar stone fell with him. What’s more, fate had determined that Richta would return to the main room via the hole in the second story floorboards.

Richta landed in the water with a smack. He floundered for what felt like minutes—really only two seconds—then raised up out of the water near the dead mayor’s feet. Glowing green waves warped along the walls as more solar stone fell all around him, illuminating the dark interior. He expected to hear fighting, but heard only a low growl. Richta twisted to find the crocodile man letting go of Tamerond Blake to approach him directly. It side-stepped the floating furniture, and its eyes shimmered against the new light.

“Get back. I’ve got no quarrel with you,” Richta yelled. However, it paid his command no heed.

Richta lost his longsword in the fall. He scrambled for anything to use defensively. A glint of metal shone through the black water and he recognized it immediately: the lightbow. He snatched it up and aimed it at the crocodile man, who snarled and bared sharp fangs. It was clearly injured, deep wounds running down the lengths of its arms and torso. Tamerond must have given it a good fight. However, to his horror, the wounds healed before Richta’s very eye; the cuts stitching themselves together as if there had been no damage at all.

After the wounds vanished, it stepped toward him again, but Richta raised the lightbow and fired. It made an empty click when he pulled the trigger. The crocodile man’s elongated mouth widened in what appeared to be a smile and crouched to pounce, then halted when a soldier charged from the hallway—the soldier that had dove off the dock to escape the giant croc’s initial intimidation. The crocodile man, still in its crouch, decided to flee by leaping up through the hole in the second story, its tail dangling behind for just a moment. The soldier swung in a wild arc at the hanging appendage, cleanly slicing it in half. A massive roar erupted from the second story as heavy footfalls thudded overhead before ceasing altogether. The severed portion of the tail floated over to Richta and he batted it away in disgust.

“Almighty above, the monster is real,” the soldier cried out.

“I told you, didn’t I? Good swing by the way.”

The soldier regarded Richta and nodded. “Thanks. You know how to use that thing?”

Richta got to his feet and lowered the lightbow. He didn’t think the soldier would be a threat any longer, not after seeing the creature in person. “Not really. Quick, help me find him.”

After tossing aside some floating debris, they found the deputy commander behind the couch, clinging to the window sill, his helmet missing. His entire face consisted of burn scars from the long-since healed injury he’d sustained in the terrorist attack on Blokravn—the one that had afflicted Richta’s eye. He’d heard a rumor that Tamerond had been injured in the attack but hadn’t known to what extent until now. When the fallen man looked up, there was no recognition in those haunted eyes, which subsequently snuffed out the last of the meager flame of revenge that had blazed within Richta for so long.

“You left me to die,” Tamerond whispered. At first, Richta thought he was talking about Blokravn, but realized he was referring to earlier with the creature. “You ran from an honorable fight, you coward.”

He didn’t reply. Tamerond’s words stung harder than they should have, but Richta tried to ignore it. He gestured to the soldier and said, “Help me pick him up.”

~~~

Amal couldn’t sleep knowing that Richta was out there risking his life for that mayor. Her daughter, Merai, nestled closer to her on the small guest bed, sweating from a possible nightmare. Amal knew she should wake her from it, but, at the same time, wanted her to sleep through the worst of the storm. It had been over an hour, according to the length of the wick that had burned in the candle.

A loud bang came from the front room. A man yelled for help. Yorn could be heard from the other bedroom scrambling to confront the intruder. Amal, too, leaped out of the sheets and moved to the bag that she’d prepared. Merai grumbled awake in response to the jostling of the bed frame.

“What’s going on, Mommy?”

“It’s okay, honey,” she said, not looking up at her. Amal was already fully dressed in slacks and a loose-fitting blouse. She pulled several flash bombs from the bag to tuck them in her pant pockets, before slinging the bag over her shoulder. Amal had made the bombs for Richta to ward off the crocodiles but there had only been so much material, so she’d kept these hidden for an emergency.

“Are you leaving me, too?” Merai asked.

“Nobody’s leaving you, Merai. I just have to step outside for a bit, okay?” Amal said, while listening through the door to the two male voices shouting.

Merai sat up in bed, her face shadowed. “That’s not true. The mangrove spirit is gone and she’s not coming back.”

Amal turned around at that. “What do you mean, honey? What mangrove spirit?”

“Remember Daddy told you about the lady that came into our house looking for Mr. Ian? Well, I think someone hurt her. Something much more powerful and angrier. I can’t feel her anymore. I think he tells me things in my sleep.”

“Who tells you things, baby? What are you saying?” Amal asked. She hadn’t noticed the footsteps coming down the hallway. Getting on her knees in front of her daughter, Amal ran a finger through the young girl’s hair to see her almond eyes. “Look, it was all a dream. Everything is going to be okay. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Amal could have sworn that her daughter’s eyes shone in the darkness, but she so desperately wanted it to be a trick of the candlelight reflecting off the tears. “Mr. Ian is back. So are the crocodiles. I hope he protects us from them,” Merai said. Amal wanted to shake the girl from whatever nightmarish trance had taken over her daughter. She’d do anything to have her care-free daughter back.

A heavy knock landed on the door. “Amal,” Yorn said. “Amal, are you awake? There is a man here asking for you.”

“One sec,” Amal shouted, before taking Merai’s face in both hands. “Look, baby, I’m going to go out and get Daddy, then we are getting out of this place. Does that sound good?”

Merai looked away. “I don’t want you to go outside, there’s monsters out there.”

“Amal,” Yorn said through the door again.

Amal stood and kissed her daughter on the head. There was no use trying to reach a compromise with her, she was scared but safe. Amal had to make sure her husband was safe as well. “Stay here, Merai. Listen to Melani and Yorn when they tell you to do things until I get back. I love you, honey.”

Amal opened the door to find the tall Yorn standing there awkwardly with one raised eyebrow. He was so large that he barely fit in his own house. When he turned to the side, he revealed the man who had barged into the cabin. It was William Yitlin. He was soaked and shaking, and his glasses were cracked.

“I’m sorry about your house,” William said, averting his eyes.

“Wait, what?” Amal asked, stepping into the hallway to close the bedroom door. She didn’t have a whole lot of space next to the large man. “What do you mean, William?”

“Let’s, uh, move into the kitchen,” Yorn said.

“Good idea, this hallway is a bit cramped,” Amal said.

“Ah, I meant because I’m hungry, but that makes sense, too.”

~~~

The crocodilian tried to keep up with the other crocodiles, but they were quick. They had spent their entire lives navigating these waters. While Ian, on the other hand, didn’t consider himself much of a swimmer. As the crocodilian, though, he glided through the murky water with no effort at all. He still needed to surface for breaths of air, but not nearly as often as he would’ve if he were still in his human form.

Underwater, he used his large tail to thrust forward at great speed. His eyes were protected by a thin, translucent film which allowed them to remain open as he swam, searching for signs of the others. Ahead, a spiked tail curled past the rope bridge that marked the town entrance and then was gone. Ian fell into a rhythm, curling his arms in and throwing his head to either side, his tail following suit like a giant fin.

The glow from the town’s solar stone rooftops illuminated the darkness underneath the flood waters, outlining the bottom of the cabins and the boardwalk above. He neared the sinking mansion and an entire section of the main boardwalk was missing, the broken chunks embedded in the sandy floor like skeletal remains. All was quiet in the bay’s sunken depths, the chaos of the storm above muffled to a dull roar that sounded miles away.

Ian stopped and floated below the mansion, looking up at it’s cracked base. He wondered if Richta was in there with the mayor, or had they vacated long ago? It was halfway underwater, the tide column ropes not able to provide assistance to the broken hull, if one could call it that. It had once floated, after all.

The water current shifted ever so slightly. Ian could feel it across his sensitive scales, the embedded pores there providing sensory accommodations unlike anything he’d imagined possible. He didn’t move, waiting to see if he could determine where the disturbance was coming from exactly. There, to his left. He turned and witnessed a school of fish emerge out of the darker regions of the bay, only to dart away in perfect unison toward a submerged tree. Something had spooked them, something much larger. He felt it approaching, but it was far too late to escape.

The giant croc broke through the shadowy veil at full speed with jaws opened wide. Each side of the creature’s massive mouth enveloped Ian and snapped shut. Ian screamed out a majority of his breath at the pain of the teeth breaking through his thick hide. The croc dragged him toward the mangrove forest on the outskirts of town. It likely intended to gift him back to the dark figure which Ian could sense patrolling the swamp for a way to reach him.

Ian tried to push outward with his arms but couldn’t manage any leverage against the gargantuan jaws pinning his sides. Plus, the more he moved, the further the teeth dug in. His lungs burned and his chest heaved with desperation for a full breath. His vision grew darker at the edges and he knew that it would be the end soon if he did nothing. Needless to say, he could teleport, but he’d want to keep the creature away from the others, if at all possible. Yet, with each passing moment, that possibility sped along like the sandy floor beneath him, never to be seen again. So he had to make a choice, and he made it rather quickly.

Tapping into his cup, Ian blipped out of existence and appeared in the first place he’d conjured up in his mind: the second story of the mansion. He gasped as the water pressure evaporated and the humid wind whipped past him instead. Ian felt the jaws release from him and he braced for another attack, but it didn’t come. The two halves of the massive mouth fell with a heavy thud to the wooden floor and lay limp to either side of him. Taking heavy breaths, he turned to realize his mistake. He hadn’t brought the whole crocodile with him, but merely the head.

“What in Burg is that?” someone asked from behind.

The crocodilian spun to find three men in armor at the staircase, one with a very distinct eyepatch. They stared at the crocodilian for a long time; flanked by the decapitated head of the massive beast. Ian tried to appear as unthreatening as possible while his wounds finished healing. Richta stepped forward slowly, hands out in front as if to keep everyone calm.

“This, I believe, is Ian Merstellar.”