Scholarly Entry #B63-990-Ke4:

  The Nature of Gremlins

  Gremlins are, by and large, solitary creatures.

  However, a common misconception is that this is solely due to their views on socializing—views which can best be summarized by a violent allergic reaction to the word “plans”—or their philosophical stance on “going outside,” which ranks somewhere below “licking a doorknob” and just above “accidentally stepping in a puddle while wearing socks.” After all, the Gremlin, in its natural habitat (a nest of blankets, glowing screens, and an assortment of questionable carbs), can go weeks without encountering sunlight, conversation, or pants.

  But, as any reputable scholar—or at least any learned individual wearing a tweed jacket and the look of someone who once tried to hug a Gremlin—would tell you, these are merely the symptoms. The causes run deeper. Much deeper.

  Indeed, some experts suggest that Gremlins are the product of a once-hopeful creature soured by repeated encounters with society, much like milk left out in a thunderstorm of disappointment. Others speak of a general malaise toward life itself, in which friendships, like exercise or regular bathing, are seen as vaguely admirable but ultimately optional and horribly inefficient uses of energy.

  And then there are those—usually the brave or deeply foolish—who point out that the Gremlin’s social status is rarely a decision made by the Gremlin themselves: that prolonged exposure to a Gremlin’s presence is simply an exercise in social endurance few ever find worthwhile. For the Gremlin is a creature composed largely of sarcasm, snack crumbs, and decisions made at 3 a.m. under the influence of caffeine and misplaced confidence.

  Being in close proximity to one is much like trying to reason with a cat that has recently discovered it can open drawers: frustrating, baffling, and likely to end with broken furniture and someone storming off in a huff.*

  * Usually the other person. The Gremlin does not storm. It sulks with conviction.

  ***

  Rule One of Delving: Never Go Alone.

  These words were so deeply ingrained in Delving-culture that it had long since ceased being advice and become merchandise. It was printed on mugs, carved into commemorative daggers, and used to hawk everything from enchanted torches to disturbingly multifunctional weapons. “It’s dangerous to go alone,” the vendors would chant, “but for three easy payments of 49.99, you too can buy this collapsible sword-with-built-in-flashlight-and-selfie-stick? Available now in Goblin Green or Lich Black!”

  It was a warning, a proverb, a punchline. A cautionary tale wrapped around a product placement. And it was often followed by footage of some poor fool who had decided, for reasons only understood by the deeply sleep-deprived or terminally overconfident, to ignore it.

  Take Hank the Hunky, for example. A man so muscular he needed two mirrors just to contain his ego. Found tragically and quite undramatically face-down in a two-foot tar pit, his lonesome quest for protein bars ending in both death and a cautionary tale about slippery rocks. Volatile Vivian had earned her nickname by spontaneously combusting during an ambush—except no one realized it wasn’t her usual entrance. By the time the smoke cleared, there were applause, confusion, and only a small pile of ash where Vivian had once been.

  Lionel, for his part, knew the rule. He’d preached the rule. He’d cross-stitched it onto throw pillows for nervous examinees he once considered friends.

  And yet.

  Here he was, standing on a jetty that groaned like it would rather be anywhere else, surrounded by mist thick enough to qualify for its own personality—possibly one that smoked cheroots and growled its Rs—next to a girl whistling the unmistakable tune of “I didn’t do anything, you can’t prove it, and even if you could, it was probably your fault,” and seriously considered tossing every Delver’s golden rule aside like a soggy sandwich found at the bottom of an old schoolbag—once essential, now suspicious, slightly fuzzy, and very likely to do more harm than good if kept around much longer.

  Lionel stared at her. Then at the bell, hanging from a crooked post above the jetty like a question mark carved out of rust and doom.

  The sound still reverberated through the mist, doing its best to be foreboding in all directions. Even the fishing village seemed to shrink away from the sound.

  With a strained exhale that fought very, very hard not to be a yell, he asked, “Any System notifications about what you just did?”

  Much as it pained him to rely on her for anything, System access had apparently become Delver-exclusive for reasons known only to whatever committee of gods, algorithms, or blindfolded monkeys ran the back end of it all.

  “Nope! None at all,” the Pink Menace chirped. Her eyes flicked briefly upward and to the left in a way that suggested she had seen something, knew what it meant, and had decided it was better off being ignored.

  “None whaaatsoever.”

  That clinched it.

  Lionel’s survival chances weren’t merely plummeting by being in her presence—they were actively fleeing the scene.

  “Brilliant,” he muttered and turned toward the village—the only way with walkable land and, more importantly, the fastest path away from her.

  He strode down the jetty, his every step producing a groaning echo. Not just a sound, but a feeling—like the planks were complaining preemptively. Some groaned even when he wasn’t standing on them.

  He turned.

  The Pink Menace was, of course, directly behind him, hands clasped innocently, lips halfway pursed in another whistle that should’ve qualified as probable cause.

  “And what,” he said slowly, carefully, in the voice of a man trying very hard not to set off an explosion made entirely of personality, “do you think you’re doing?”

  She blinked.

  “Who? Me?” she said.

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  “Well, if you really must know.” She leaned to the side, pointing down the path directly ahead of them—the same way he had been walking. “I’m going that way.”

  Lionel gave her a strained smile. “Aren’t you better off waiting right here? Who knows, maybe some nice boat will come pick you up now that you’ve rung the bell.”

  “Boat?” she huffed, scandalized by the suggestion, “There’s no—”

  She paused.

  Her eyes flicked—just for a fraction of a second—up and to the side.

  “I mean: WhyEVeR woUlD I do ThaT whEn I cOUld go fOr a nICe walK instEAd?”

  Lionel turned to look down the path that cut through the village. Mud sloshed in every depression, the buildings loomed like badly constructed cardboard sets, and the mist blanketed everything with the thick, damp clinginess of a nervous ghost.

  “You have a very interesting definition of ‘nice’. But by all means, go ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”

  He stepped aside, gesturing her forward.

  “Maybe I will,” said the Pink Menace, chin raised like a duchess leaving a scandalous dinner party, and swept past him down the sodden path, not so much walking as declaring locomotion.

  “Good day, mister.”

  Lionel watched her go with the hollow stare of a man who’d just dodged a particularly vibrant meteorite. The moment she vanished around the corner; he turned sharply in the opposite direction.

  No matter what came of her ringing that bell, Lionel reasoned, it would almost certainly be heading straight for her. And even if, by some cosmic oversight, it wasn’t attached to her… well, he still liked his odds better without a living contradiction bouncing around at his heels.

  Of course, the universe—a noted practical joker—had other plans.

  The village shouldn’t have been a large one. A few dozen buildings at most. And yet, as Lionel pressed on, the mist began to play its old tricks.

  A few minutes of walking, and he swore he’d seen those same fishing cages repeated five times over. Nets hung in the exact same sagging posture no matter where he turned. And every shack looked like it had been constructed in that same dilapidated way.

  And then, just as he stopped to reassess his route—and sanity—there it was.

  A whistle.

  A jolly whistle. The kind of tune sung by someone who had never once read a warning sign all the way through.

  It slithered through the fog like a guilt-ridden memory and stopped the moment she spotted him, standing there at the fork in the path.

  The Pink Menace narrowed her eyes.

  “Well, well, well,” she said, hands firmly planted on her hips. “And who’s following whom now, mister? I’m looking for neither admirators nor desperate suitors. In case you were wondering.”

  Lionel gave her a look. From head to toe.

  “You wouldn’t find any even if you were,” he dryly replied, only to cast a glance down the alley he'd come from—a suspicious gap between two nearly identical shacks—and then back down her path, which might once have been called the main road before entropy got its claws into it.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” she huffed.

  “That you seem perfectly fine operating on your own,” Lionel said, eyeing the fog.

  In his mind, he was already flipping through his own mental copy of Lionel’s Field Guide to Dungeons, Traps, and Inexplicably Talking Statues, looking for anything that began with Mist, Mazes, or Mental Illusions.

  “Good,” declared the Pink Menace, puffing up like a toad in a top hat, “because I am!”

  “You and me both then,” Lionel muttered, eyes still scanning their surroundings. Same leaning shacks. Same unnervingly identical buckets and tackle boxes.

  Somewhere, something was narrating this entire scenario with a little too much enthusiasm.

  Lionel clicked his tongue.

  “Your notifications,” he began, “are they telling you anything... remotely useful?”

  The Pink Menace blinked, seemingly taken aback by his sudden change of tone. And then, her gaze did that same slide—casually, obviously, and completely guiltily—up and to the right.

  “My what now?” she said. “I have no—Oh…”

  “Oh what?”

  “Nothing! Nothing at all!” she said far too quickly, her feet shuffling in place. Then, with a sudden pivot, she jabbed a finger down the path she’d come from. “Tell you what! How about you go that way, and I’ll stay here? That seems like a good idea, no?”

  Lionel rolled his eyes.

  “Or how about I stay here, and you—”

  “Fine by me!”

  “...What?”

  Before the weight of his sarcasm could even hit the floor, she’d vanished back the way she'd come like an unusually pink thunderbolt.

  And then he heard it: a splash, a glug, and the mournful thunk of water meeting wood.

  He turned, stomach sinking several floors in protest.

  There it was. The lantern. The bell. The same jetty, still doing its best impression of a damp omen. Ten minutes of wandering through fog thick enough to knit with, and somehow, he’d managed to arrive precisely where they’d started.

  This time, alone.

  Well, not quite alone.

  Something shot out of the water.

  There was a whoosh, a thud, and a harpoon that abruptly introduced itself to the wall next to his head. It stuck there, quivering with menace.

  Lionel stared at it. And then, his eyes fell to the sea.

  A sea that, as of that moment, was actively churning and frothing, belching forth shapes—horribly mobile shapes, full of angles and carapace and barnacled intent. They dragged themselves from the water in clumps and slithers and splashes. Their bodies gleaming with seawater and malice, dragging along with them crude weapons of the Depths.

  Lionel stood alone before the jetty, which now creaked in that special way that wood does when it’s thinking of collapsing out of sheer panic.

  And somewhere in the mist, probably skipping along and whistling, was a girl who had absolutely no idea what she’d started.

  Or worse—every idea.

  ***

  Annabell saw him run past.

  Curled into a tight ball just inside one of the shacks that had long ago retired from the business of being structurally sound, she could hear his footsteps splashing through the mud, his breath coming in sharp, angered puffs, and the flurry of words that weren’t quite swearing but certainly had strong implications.

  He was fast. Faster than her, which meant he would probably be fine, or at least have a running start on misfortune.

  “Wallace,” she murmured, so softly that even dust barely paused to listen, “make it shut up, would you?”

  She wasn’t talking about the hissing, the clacking, or the unmistakable sound of too many legs moving with too much purpose—steadily getting closer.

  No. The plush bulldog clutched in her arms—patched, drooping, and inexplicably noble—was not the sort of companion built for those kinds of physical heroics. He was the sort made to be held during bad moments.

  Above her head, the System messages hovered like accusatory ghosts with clipboards. They blinked and pulsed. “Silting event imminent,” they said. “Please evacuate.” “Estimated survival rate: statistically discouraging.”

  Those were easy to ignore.

  It was the other ones, the ones that knew how to whisper just loud enough to reach the cracked places in her heart, that hurt.

  They circled like vultures in her peripheral vision, dripping venom disguised as caution:

  [Don’t get too comfortable.]

  [Friends aren’t meant for you, freak.]

  [Show him who you really are, and he won’t stick around for long.]

  [You are better off alone, Annabell…]

  Worst of all: they were right.

  She sniffled, wiped her nose with a sleeve that had long since surrendered any claims to cleanliness, and looked down at Wallace.

  “You ready, Wallie?” she asked, squeezing him tightly enough to compress existential dread into something marginally less squishy.

  “Can’t let him get hurt too. Not because of us.”

  Outside, the clacking grew louder. Claws on stone. Scales dragged through mud. The hiss of something with entirely the wrong number of teeth.

  She stood up, drew a quivering breath, and put on a smile. That usually made things better.

  Then, she stepped out of the ramshackle house.

  The shapes were there already—ugly, wet things dredged from the bottom of a nightmare. All sinew and barnacle and ill intent.

  Ringing that bell had been the quickest way to get away from someone who’d… who’d come back for her.

  She didn’t like that part.

  “Over here, you soggy sushi rejects!” she yelled, waving her arms as she ran the opposite direction from what he had. Away from the safety. Away from that tiny, treacherous possibility that someone might actually care.

  It would have been so much easier if he’d just left her there, bobbing in the ocean on her own.

  For Annabell Smith knew, with the clarity of someone who’d been through it all before, that nothing good ever came from people getting close to her. Everyone who tried ended up hurt, broken, or worse: involved.

  She ran faster.