Kedryn hit the iron gray waters of the bay like a rock, whatever breath he had left in his lungs exploding out of him in a burst of bubbles.
Overwhelmed, he floated in the darkness of the water for the briefest of moments as his mind struggled to comprehend what had just happened. His commanding officer had just thrown him off the ship. Not only thrown him but had knowingly thrown him into shark and who knows what other nightmarish sea monster infested waters. And had smiled while doing it!!!
That horrific thought settled into the center of his mind at the same moment his drive for self-preservation kicked in, panic overwhelming all other thought as he immediately began clawing toward the surface of the water as the burning need for oxygen took over his senses.
Long seconds dragged out until he finally breached the surface of the water, gulping in the salty air and sea water in equal measure before the weight of his heavy new clothing dragged him back down beneath the waves.
Forcing himself to think through the panic, Kedryn tore the heavy woolen shirt off him, the too large shirt easily slipping off his slim body. Next, he kicked off his pants, but as soon as he had one leg pulled out and was about to kick the pants off to sink into the dark waters below, the freezing cold of the bay struck him like a hammer.
Shoving his leg back into his pants was more of a reaction to the biting cold than anything consciously planned, but the moment he did the burning cold vanished, replaced with the mild warmth he had felt before.
It took a moment for his brain to catch up, but once it did there was only one explanation his adrenaline addled mind could work out that explained the utter bizarreness of the situation. The dagger! Glade had given him a temporarily enchanted dagger before throwing him into the water. Kedryn had assumed the enchantment was to blunt the knife’s edge so he and Glade could train in close quarters combat. The dagger must have been enchanted with cold resistance!
Kedryn kicked to the surface while holding onto his pants and the dagger for dear life, one of his coveted woolen socks coming off a foot in the process. As soon as his head broke through the water’s surface, he maneuvered himself so he was floating onto his back, his hands fumbling with his belt to fasten his pants tighter around his waist. It wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t trust himself to drop the heavy clothing and hold onto the life preserving dagger at his waist.
Glade’s perfect dive and resultant splash into the water heralded his arrival. It took him a moment to surface, but once he did, he gave Kedryn a wicked grin.
“What the…” Kedryn began, about to lay into the man with a bout of cursing that would have made Krazzik blush if not for the wave of salty water that washed over him, causing him to cough and splutter as he fought for air.
“We have 6 large something’s heading in our general direction that may or may not be interested in making us a morning snack,” Glade said with far too much excitement in the tone of his voice. “I suggest less talking and more swimming. That is, unless you want to meet the adjudicators in a most horrific manner?”
Screaming at Glade in his mind, and hoping the man could hear it, Kedryn took a deep breath before rolling onto his stomach. From there, he kicked out with his legs as he started crawling forward.
“A little more to the left!” Glade called out following behind.
Kedryn begrudgingly changed direction.
He tried to get lost in the rhythm of the swim like he had so many times before, adjusting course when Glade inevitably shouted at him to do so. But swimming in open water was nothing like the Olympic sized pools he was used to. For one, the open water of the bay tossed him to and fro, the mild current fighting him one moment and aiding him the next. It didn’t help that he was drinking as much sea water as he was breathing air, mostly due to what he attributed to his less-than-ideal swimwear, the clothing creating an almost insurmountable drag as he fought to breathe every other stroke.
Just as he was about to turn onto his back for a well deserved break, a prompt appeared. He had adjusted his notifications so that anytime Glade received something of importance, so would he.
Glade has attacked a level 18 Deep Lurker with a weak psychic attack and inflicted 17 points of metaphysical damage. The Deep Lurker is stunned for the next 170 seconds (10 seconds for every point of metaphysical damage).
Stolen novel; please report.
For the first time since making the change so he could read Glade’s prompts, Kedryn wished he was left in blissful ignorance. Something that high level was somewhere below him and had gotten close enough that Glade had thought it prudent to stun it.
Kedryn picked up the pace.
Two more notifications appeared, which he ignored, before he finally, blessedly, dragged himself onto the beach. He didn’t know how long he laid there, gasping for air, but he didn’t care. He was safe and he could breathe. Nothing else mattered.
A long, mournful note broke through the fugue of his pain as it sighed in the early morning light. Turning his head, Kedryn spluttered a laugh.
He had found Croon’s accordion.
Getting to his feet, Kedryn stumbled over to waterlogged instrument. The red and black accordion was soaking wet and had a few more marks where it looked as if something had tried to take a bite out of it.
As he stood, the light of a campfire further down the beach caught his eye. With one soggy sock hanging halfway off his foot, Kedryn stumbled toward the fire until he collapsed next to Bragden, Croon, and Riya, who welcoming him with two cheers and a growl.
“Found your accordion,” Kedryn got out.
“By the Mother! Ye found Windjammer!?!” Croon cried, leaping from the piece of driftwood he was sitting on to snatch up the instrument as if finding a long lost friend. “The Overseer be praised!”
“What madness came over ye that made ye think bringing that infernal thing back with ye was a good idea?” Bragdon growled, poking the fire with a stick as if he had a personal grudge against the flame.
“Where is Glade?” Riya asked, looking over Kedryn’s shoulder toward the bay, an anxious expression painted on her face.
“Don’t care,” Kedryn groaned as he tore the camp apart looking for a water skin. He may have drunk half the bay in his mad swim to shore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thirsty. “The man threw me off the ship! Grabbed me by the collar and everything! Who in their right mind does something like that?”
He was moving a pile of clothing that had been carefully set on a blanket when he noticed something familiar set carefully to the side.
“Are those my boots?” He asked, his mind grinding to a halt as the absurdity of seeing his things at the impromptu camp site ground his one-track mind to a halt.
“Aye, that they are,” Croon exclaimed proudly, shaking out the water from his accordion. “Glade asked us to bring it and some other things to shore so’s we could help with the second part of yer training.”
“Second part…?” Kedryn gulped, looking between the trio that had apparently been anticipating his arrival. There was even a fresh change of socks.
“Oh, yes,” Rita said, her eyes reflecting mischief and secrets in the light of the fire as she laid out strips of white gauze and other items he recognized as belonging in a first aid kit. There was even one of the healing potions readily available. “Didn’t you know? The swim was only the first part.”
Kedryn’s head shot back and forth between the three of them, his eyes widening as his mind spun a most troubling scenario.
“Why would he need you three here to support our training?” he stammered.
“I’m here for when you need a healer,” Riya chimed in a little too cheerfully. It didn’t escape his notice that she had said ‘when’ not ‘if.’
“I’ll be sticking around long enough to renew the enchantments on the blades,” Bragden growled, poking the fire again with his stick. “After that, I’m heading back to Storms’ Rest with Patch and Gent to grab everything we can use for trade. I know Crixus said he was Glade’s man till the breaking o’ the world, but I doubt we’ll be able to rely on him for that long. Better get what we can out of this trip now.”
Kedryn stared at the old dwarf, wondering exactly how long they were going to be out here if they needed their enchantments renewed. Afterall, they lasted for several hours at a time.
“I’m here to cook!” Croon cried happily.
“Where is the food?” Kedryn wondered aloud, not seeing anything around the fire.
“Glade said not to worry none and that he would figure something out,” Croon said, testing out his waterlogged accordion. It gave a flat, wheezing note, like it was giving him a not-so-subtle warning that he should flee while he had the chance.
Kedryn didn’t say a word as he slowly backed away from the group. It was an unconscious choice, his mind already racing ahead unchecked as he began cataloging the best avenues of escape before his commanding officer arrived. He didn’t know what was taking the man so long, but if he could get to the shrubs, he might be able to take cover and hide before…
A hand fell heavily onto his shoulder.
“Oh, good, you’re here. I was worried I’d have to come find you,” an all too cheery voice said from behind.
Kedryn turned, taking in Glade’s smiling face that looked like it belonged to some deranged lunatic rather than his normally emotionless commanding officer. What really put him on his back foot was the man was dragging a 7-foot-long fish that looked like a cross between a shark and a snake behind him, his dagger sticking out of the monster’s eye socket.
“It looks like you’ve had plenty of time to cool down, so I’ll give you 2 minutes to get a pair of fresh socks and your boots on before we start our run.”
“Run?” Kedryn squeaked out. It didn’t escape his notice that his voice had inadvertently risen by a couple of octaves.
“Yes, though running is only a small part of it. Bragden was kind enough to point us toward some ravines where we will be doing some climbing and basic lifting with rocks, a marsh where we’ll be doing sprints, and then we’ll swim back to the ship.”
Kedryn took an involuntary step back. The man was mad!
“We’ll count that as round one in our circuit training.”
A whimper escaped his lips.
“You have a minute and thirty-seven seconds left to get those socks and boots on before we go,” Glade said, dropping the snake-shark’s tail close to Croon so he could pull on his own socks and boots. “I suggest you don’t waste any more time.”