David, you fool! We were warned what would happen if you spoke so much as a word in the Straits!

But you did not listen. Not even the witch’s most dire warning were enough to still your wagging tongue.

Now our party of five is two fewer.

…But despite your folly and lack of body, I will still honor you with a grave. The local graveyard will do as well as any. You deserve that much, at least.

And not all is lost…two is still enough. It has to be.

~<>~<>~

The trees changed, and my day got worse.

Brown and green shifted, patches of ash gray beginning to appear in the bark and needles.

The temperature plummeted until my breath came out in puffs of fog. Then the ground leveled out, and we came fully into the Straits.

A narrow stream bubbled up from the ground, stretching out ahead of us like a red carpet. The trees had changed completely. The pines were now ash white, and the needles a sickly violet that occasionally pulsed with light.

I took a deep breath, nodded to Blair, then stepped into the Straits. Not being able to talk is a strange experience. And I don’t mean not talking, that’s easy. But when you feel like staying quiet or just don’t have anything to say, that’s a choice.

You could still talk if you wanted to. Not being able to speak at all is a very different beast.

The most instinctual form of communication is cut off from you. Something so fundamental to our day-to-day lives that most of us don’t even think about it is suddenly something that will get you killed.

I hated this region.

Going through the Pass at all was hard. I didn’t handle being alone well. Sure, I liked to have some time to myself, but six days of isolation?

It brought back memories from before Rogers found me. Before I had a family.

The rest of the Pass made me feel alone, but I couldn’t even talk to myself in the Straits.

Blair bumped me, snapping my attention back to our surroundings. Fog had risen around us, adding to the eerie atmosphere. And I could see a few maple trees lining the stream, their ashen bark pulsing with violet light.

The air smelled like… nothing. And I don’t mean scrubbed clean like a hospital. That still smelled like disinfectant. The Straits literally had no smell to it. Once you crossed a certain point, the water, the trees, the dirt and leaves, none of it existed as far as my nose was concerned.

It was disorienting for me, but it had to be so much worse for Blair.

Humans used their noses plenty, but we practically didn’t have them compared to werewolves.

Many normal animals had senses dozens to hundreds of times stronger than ours, but werewolves’ senses of smell were literally supernatural. My brain couldn’t even process all of the sensory information their noses gave them.

Which was something I probably should have thought about when giving Blair the down-low about the Straights.

I winced as she stumbled. I had to fight the urge to apologize. She looked around and sneezed, then glared down at me. This probably isn’t surprising, but having a giant, red-eyed wolf glare at you is a little unnerving.

I gave an apologetic look, not wanting to risk even mouthing the words. Blair shook her head slightly, then turned back to the Straits. I felt terrible about not warning her, and I couldn’t help dwelling on it.

That had been so stupid of me! How could I have overlooked the lack of smells? Stupid! Stupid!

It would have been like suddenly going blind for her! I should apologize again.

I turned to Blair and opened my mouth, then froze.

Something was very wrong.

I shook my head, trying to step back from the direction my thoughts had been going.

It was only then that I felt it. Tendrils of magic brushing about my head. They felt cold and barren against my senses, and when I squinted my eyes, they appeared as streams of pink and violet mixing amongst the fog.

An icy pit that had nothing to do with the chill formed in my stomach.

The Straits had just tried to affect my mind. It had never done that before.

The region had an oppressive, cold weight to it, but it’d never attempted to touch my mind directly.

Now that I was thinking about it, I hadn’t felt that weight yet.

I shuddered.

The Straits had been laying low while trying to sink its tendrils into me…

I barely had time to realize just how close I had come to speaking before a cold weight slammed down on us.

I staggered and had to grab onto Blair just to avoid falling in the stream. Said stream began to flow faster, and the pulsing purple light spread into the water.

The weight pressing down on us was immense, and it reminded me of Grumpy’s aura if all of the malicious, irritable energy was replaced with unfeeling, unending cold.

The temperature dropped further, and I saw ice form on the ground.

Holy shit! What triggered this? The only thing I could think of was Blair; I’d never gone through the Pass with another person before. And I had only seen the aftermath from Old Tom.

The pulsing light started coming faster and faster until it reminded me of a pounding heart. The stream roared around us, and while my hiking boots were waterproof, I could feel the cold seeping into me regardless.

Blair started to move again, and I followed. But after only a few steps, I stumbled and almost fell. The stream had grown, and the current was strong enough to make walking tricky.

Blair stopped, then twisted to look at me. I met her eyes and didn’t see any of the panic I was beginning to feel, only calm focus. She twisted further to point at her back and then back to me.

I got the message.

I flung myself onto her back and wrapped my arms through several straps. Water sprayed, and the fog blurred as Blair took off like a rocket.

I immediately realized that I’d made a mistake.

My arms were thoroughly secured to the pack, and I had a death grip on two of the handles ...But I hadn’t clamped down with my knees.

My legs flew out from the sudden acceleration, and I was left flapping like a flag as Blair tore down the stream.

Pain lanced through my shoulder as I flailed, desperately trying to get my legs around Blair. Try as I might, I couldn’t get a grip as I was flung about. But, despite the pain, I wasn’t about to complain. I’d take just about any punishment over being left in the Straits right now.

The fog lit up with a sickly purple light, and I felt pressure slam against my mind. My head started to pound, and Blair staggered. She caught herself, but her gait was off, almost drunken.

The force was like having a psychic building fall on me, and it kept coming.

My mental defenses started to crack, and the pain in my head grew worse.

Blair stumbled again, and her pace slowed.

We weren’t going to get out in time. It was going to crush us first.

I pulled my attention inward, ignoring the pain from my shoulder and head, ignored the strain in my hands and the bitter cold against my skin. I shut out everything as I focused on the mental boulder that was beginning to crush us.

It was overwhelming, but I was no stranger to mental attacks. Ghosts attacked your mind as often as your body. Whether it was a murder victim wails of grief or a murderer's bloodlust, a psychic attack from a ghost was no joke.

There was a lot of variation in mind magic; some forms required magic to counter, while others could only be fought off with raw grit.

The attack from the Straits was both. It pushed against my magic along with my will, and I could feel myself giving ground. The pain in my head was a distant thing, but I felt it grow worse as I was pushed back. Pretty soon, I would run out of ground to give, and then we would die.

No. I wasn’t going down because of an eldritch sucker punch. I couldn’t outmuscle a werewolf or burn down a mage, but this place was attacking my mind.

It had picked a battle that I could fight, and by God was I going to fight.

I shoved against the mental weight. It was strong, stronger than any ghost I’d ever fought. But not that much stronger.

I stopped giving ground.

An outside emotion cut through the cold. Surprise. Then the force grew stronger.

It felt like gravity had doubled in strength and the pain in my head spiked with it. I started to slide back again, and Blair slowed to a stumbling crawl.

I reached deep, deeper inside than I ever had before. Then I pushed. The force stopped. But that wasn’t enough!

We needed to get out of here, and that wasn’t happening if Blair couldn’t move faster than a walk.

I kept pushing as I unveiled my aura. It barely left my body, the mental assault pressing down on my magic as much as my mind. So I pushed with that too.

My body spasmed as the pain grew worse, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the cold, the weight, and the struggle.

Straining until I felt like something was going to burst, I took everything I had. Every ounce of will, every trick I had learned from a lifetime fighting ghosts and hurled it against the freezing wall.

My aura surged, purple and green ballooning out against the mist, and the mental weight was blown back.

Blair stumbled again as the weight lifted, but a moment later, her unsteadiness vanished. The weight came crashing back, but I held it back as Blair took off at highway speeds. The weight continued to press down, and I continued to fight.

Finally, just when I thought I would pass out from the strain, the weight vanished. I gasped, then I did pass out.

It couldn’t have been for long because when I blinked awake, Blair was still sprinting like hell was leaning over our shoulders.

I glanced around at the maple trees that surrounded us. I could see the mountains looming above us, but I focused back in on the blessedly normal maple trees. Not a speck of purple to be seen. Perfection.

I shook myself. I needed to get Blair to stop. If she kept this up, we would be in the next region before we knew it.

“Blair, stop! We’re safe! We’re safe!” She didn’t slow down or give any sign she’d heard me. I leaned as close to her ear as I could get, then shouted. “We are safe!” She flinched but slowed, then stopped.

We stayed like that for several minutes before Blair finally relaxed.

I sighed and repeated myself, though I couldn’t say if the words were for Blair or me.

“We’re safe.”