Gremlin Status: An unidentified, splashing object has been detected approximately 0.79 nautical miles from shore. Relevance to current events is almost certainly negligible. No doubt it's just a buoy. Or a squid. Or some item of equal insignificance.

  Proceeding with Report:

  Survival

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  Yenna tasted blood on the air.

  Not her own, not yet. Not in any identifiable quantity, at least—more a sort of metallic suggestion that something somewhere had gone terribly wrong.

  The persistent rain did little to wash away the scent of panic that clung to the salty air. Cries rang through the night, stumbling footfalls, and desperate struggles everywhere.

  For now, their haven was a wall of wet and sagging cargo, forming a damp barricade that muffled the horrors of the greater docks. Still, a mix of terrified and frenzied townsfolk kept trying to push through, and beyond, she could glimpse the bloodbath.

  Their bastion was a mere illusion of safety, and it wouldn’t last for long.

  “We need to get out of here,” Yenna yelled, voice low and taut as she sent a shrieking Spark Bolt to help Gami keep their flank from collapsing.

  The townsfolk weren’t nearly as afraid of blinding spells or sharp spears as they should’ve been. Then again, behind them, the horrors of the sea were rapidly closing in.

  “As hell we are leaving!” Alana snapped back, having been forced to crack a skull with the back of her crossbow as she worked on reloading it. “Jodi’s still out there. We are saving her!”

  Further down the docks, right on cue, the jetty exploded.

  Jodi was, indeed, still out there. And so was whatever had pulled Cassius under.

  Slimy tentacles kept rising out of the water, either wrapping themselves around the jetty, or slamming straight down onto it, reducing large portions of it into driftwood.

  For now, Jodi had managed to dance around the suckered limbs and splintering wood. Each step, however, each frantic roll, only pushed her further out at sea. That last destructive encounter between tentacle and jetty had demolished her only path back to land that didn’t involve swimming.

  And the churning waters was a death sentence.

  The Gullywag, never freed from its bonds as they were dragged under, had developed a lean usually reserved for drunks and condemned buildings. Its cargo, like all things held in place by apathy and luck, had begun to slide further and further to one side.

  All of it, separated from them by a large stretch of chaotic docks—fleeing villagers, blood-slick cobblestones, and gargling creatures of the depths, ripping into anything that got close.

  But Alana was already moving.

  With a thrown dagger to clear her path, she gave Yenna one last, utterly stupid look, the sort that said, “She’s my sister, you asshole!”

  Then she vaulted atop the nearest crate to set off in a sprint across a wobbling cascade of cargo, jumping over claws and slack ropes and the occasional jagged harpoon coming her way, diving straight into the bloody heart of the night.

  “Brilliant!” came a cry from Yenna’s left, where Alek, up until now, had been doing a surprisingly good job fending off the townsfolk Gami couldn’t cover. “True heroics lie at the heart of danger!”

  Now, however, with a sharp flourish of his rapier that cut down one townsfolk, only for his boot to cave in the chest of another, said rapier was promptly sheathed.

  “Come, Mari! History awaits!”

  Before Yenna could object or even form the beginnings of a useful sentence—like “Wait, are you clinically insane?”—Alek had sprung atop that same crate and bounded off as well, skipping across barrels and cargo as he eagerly followed in Alana’s footsteps.

  “Morons,” Yenna hissed, hurriedly sending two shrieking Spark Bolts to cover the gap the man had left in their formation. They collided mid air to an explosive shower of bright and fiery sparks.

  Out on the rapidly disassembling jetty, Jodi was already half-way out at sea. Tentacles punched clean through the boards at her feet, rapidly reducing the groaning construction into splinters.

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  She wasn’t going to make it.

  Meanwhile, without either Alek or Alana to fill in the gaps, their own defences were rapidly falling apart. Neither Mari nor Desmond were meant for direct combat. The two teenagers struggled taking on a single townsfolk between uncoordinated cudgel swings and panicked Wind Palms.

  Gami, panting and bruised, managed a yelled, “What do we do?” between gasps. Her violently twirling and swinging spear, forced to do the work of three people, was buying them precious seconds.

  Seconds, nothing more.

  The twisted creatures of the Depths were closing in. The sound of claws ripping into flesh and gurgling bloodthirst, rapidly getting closer.

  Damn those cursed idiots! Damn them.

  “We stick together!” Yenna yelled back and hated how unconvinced she sounded. But foolish or not, this was the only option.

  Cassius—their main tank, supposed brick wall with legs—was gone. Her own mana was rapidly running dry. And losing three more damage dealers would leave the party about as functional as a one-legged mule in a minefield.

  If they wished to make it out of Ashenmoor alive, they had to stick together.

  Jaw clenched, Yenna hauled herself atop the crate the other two had used as launching board.

  It wobbled slightly underfoot, but having found her balance, another of her precious few Spark Bolts shrieked into existence.

  “Hurry!” she shouted as she sent it ripping through the air, reaching out a hand to pull Mari up behind her. “We need to—”

  Crackle.

  Splinter.

  KABOOM.

  The bolt she’d sent into a cluster of tarred barrels did not, as she’d intended, merely knock them over to create a temporary barrier. The second their dark liquid started to spill out, it ignited.

  The detonation followed shortly behind.

  To a shower of splinters ricochetting through the air, a wave of heat rippled across the docks as the flames whooshed high.

  Yenna staggered, barely maintaining her perch as she was caught in the push of the blast.

  “Hurry!” came another shout—possibly hers, possibly someone else’s, it was hard to tell through the ringing in her ears—and then Mari was beside her, pulled up with a final heave.

  Desmond scrambled up onto another crate of his own, hurriedly retreating away from the spreading flames and screaming townsfolk.

  Gami remained, spear piercing through the smoke and surging splinters, buying them time against the scrambling shadows below.

  If the woman felt the need to retreat, she would manage on her own.

  So, through the haze and stench of burning tar, Yenna climbed higher onto the stacks of crates, sparing herself a precious glance across a night now ablaze.

  The docks were no longer a battleground—they were an experience.

  Whatever had been inside those barrels wasn’t just made to burn—it was made to consume. Flames raced hungrily along the dock’s warped timbers, licking at ropes, crates, and whoever was unfortunate to find themselves nearby. They tore through cargo stacks with focused intensity, and a good quarter of the waterfront was already glowing orange, rippling with heat and billowing smoke.

  The screaming, too, had changed. It was no longer just the high-pitched panic of townsfolk. Now, the shrieks had taken on a gurgling, inhuman quality—like something was choking on its own malice.

  Whatever the creatures of the Depths thought of her scorching gift, Yenna never paused to ask.

  She was already moving—running, leaping, skidding across rain-slicked crates and wobbling cargo.

  “This way!” she shouted, trusting that the others were behind her. Her own gaze was firmly locked ahead.

  By a swaying crane that the flames had yet to reach, Alek was locked in what could technically be called a duel, although “performance piece” might have been more accurate.

  He twirled, spun, and drew ambitious lines with his rapier, and occasionally—just occasionally—remembered to hit something. Several of the slimy sea creatures, looking like sentient seaweed with teeth, had accepted the challenge and were gamely attempting to claw their way up the crate he was standing on.

  Further down the waterfront, Alana had managed to swing herself aboard the Gullywag—a ship that was in the middle of listing like a bad alibi. Cargo had begun to tip over the ship’s side in protest. Crates, sacks, and one particularly jagged barrel struck the jetty with such force that it punched a hole straight through it and took several tentacles down with it.

  Amid the tumbling chaos, splashing water, and angered shrieks echoing from beneath the waves, Alana continued running along the ship’s tilted railing, loosing bolt after bolt at the writhing tentacles still converging on her sister.

  Whether any of them hit anything, or did any damage whatsoever, was impossible to tell. The darkness swallowed the projectiles without complaint, and the tentacled beast continued to slither after Jodi.

  Yenna’s eyes flicked between the two impending tragedies.

  And then—

  Critical Choice

  Even heroes can’t save everyone. Choose whose life you value higher…

  She skidded to a halt atop a slick crate, wind tugging at her jacket and flame-lit rain curling around her. Her pulse pounded, stomach twisting at the choice.

  Yet before she could make a decision—

  A tap on her shoulder.

  It was Gami, having caught up with her across crates and flaming cargo.

  “I’ll get Alana,” the woman said, her breaths strained and hair slick from the damp. Even so, she spoke with the calm certainty of someone who’d made peace with chaos years ago and now punched it on a first-name basis. “You save the other idiot.”

  And then she was gone—leaping across barrels and flaming debris with a speed Yenna could barely follow.

  With a relieved, “Thanks,” murmured into the rain and the echoing screams, she gave a quick glance over her shoulder.

  Mari and Desmond were barely keeping up; their faces streaked with soot and sweat and exhaustion. They wouldn’t do much good scrambling after Gami, but with her…

  “We are going after Alek!” she yelled as the flames roared higher; as the bloodshed continued to spread around them; and as a tentacle, having recently turned its attention inland, smashed straight through a crate up ahead, promptly reducing it to a wave of splinters.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake…