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Frank and Hunter were the first to die post-landing, wasting away over a period of four days. It was how we discovered not to eat fruit with red spots. Buried them out in shallow graves by the glen, within sight of the busses. Centurion birds dug them up their corpses after a while.

By the end of the first week, everyone who was going to get over their various food poisonings did so. Bit more knowledgeable. Bit more cautious. Most of those who were sick walked away under their own power at least.

No amount of medical attention was going to bring Coach Murph’s fingers back. This left him with considerable downtime that he used to micromanage our survival attempts. With local fruit causing anything from digestion problems to explosive stomach ruptures, suddenly Richard’s fishing idea looked better and better. Of course, Murphy treated the plan like it was his own idea and sent most of the team westward looking for a viable fishing spot.

It was in this environment that Trevor first noticed Richard climbing up a tree by the riverside. Hector was there, on spotting duty at one of the scrawnier whitewoods. Of course, even the smaller whitewoods dwarf any other trees I’d ever seen up until that point. The tree is still standing, last I checked; you can go find some claw marks where they’d rigged up a modified claw out of some tire irons, and used nylon rope for ad-hoc safety purposes.

“What are you doing?” I asked, having brought my brother over towards the riverside.

“Hey, Cap, Trev.” Hector waved us over. “Trying to get our bearings.”

“It’s important,” Richard said from his high perch.

Rick pierced the whitewood’s thick bark with his makeshift climbing claw. He was maybe sixteen feet above the ground now.

“There’s no way that rope is going to keep you from falling for the entire climb,” I said. “Too scrawny.”

“It looks fun,” Trevor said all nonchalant-like.

I wisely dissuaded him from wanting his turn. He was so young – aside from the obvious issues of bare survival, he never did lose his sense of adventure.

Scrawny was relative; the whitewood still towered so high the top could scarcely be seen from the base.

“I’m not climbing the whole damn tree,” Richard said. “Just need to get up to that branch.”

Richard waved vaguely at the first major branch. It would be a suitable observation post.

“Alright, good luck,” I said. “I’m walking down the shore.”

This part of the shore was yet uncharted. At least by us. No contact with any other soul had yet to be made even now. No evidence of any other man-made structures, even, but only because we couldn’t readily identify years-disused Laval footpaths yet.

“If you see anything, shout,” I concluded.

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My stomach rumbled. Gave half of all morning rations to Trevor. A few bluegill-looking things had been found in a tidal pool, the only food we’d had all week once the trail mix and jerky ran out. Distilling water wasn’t so hard with even rudimentary scouting lessons, so the last of the Gatorade went without lamentation.

The team learned quickly to move during the early morning and late evening, when it was still light out and the heat wasn’t quite so oppressive.

We walked, Trevor and I, as I came to the dawning realization that this footpath was worn down over the course of years, and not by our paltry band. Still, it was made for a reason. It had to lead somewhere.

On a looping path south along the shore of a river so large the far side was barely visible; we encountered a wide-open clearing filled with tall grass. The path began to peter out, but not before it reached a stone wall twice my height.

Further evidence of habitation.

“Kwog!”

I nearly jumped out of my cleats. Trevor saw me panicking, then let out a shout as well.

Three triangular bird-beaked creatures peered out from over the tall grass. They chirped out some more “Kweh!” or “Kwog!” sounds, then angled their heads sideways to get a better look.

Biology class mentioned how predator’s eyes typically pointed straight ahead, to better focus on things they may need to run down. Herbivores and prey species, meanwhile, possessed eyes near the sides of their heads for a much greater cone of vision. Better to see creatures sneaking up on them.

Panic subsided. These creatures were not going to eat me, though I maintained my distance. Still, these were the largest animals seen so far.

“It’s okay, Trev.” I raised an open palm towards the birds tentatively. “They’re vegie-eaters. Y’know, like that scene in Jurassic Park.”

Trevor nodded, understanding. (It always was his favorite movie.)

A dozen more heads popped up and chirped “kwog!” With a thundering roar the herd ran off into the forest.

All roads led towards the temple at the water’s edge. Grey stone was weathered with years of disuse. The place was abandoned, possibly for centuries. Water flooded the central basin while the higher levels, perhaps once raised seating or higher aqueducts, crumbled into the pool.

Sitting there kicking at the water pensively was an androgynous figure in off-white robes. The figure wore a shawl, hiding twin braids near their cheeks.

This was the first person beyond our bus convoy that anyone had seen so far. With the shawl it was hard to make out any features, certainly not the ears. But then the figure looked at me with their own cyan blue eyes, same color as the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the river.

“Is it someone new?”

“Huh?” I emerged from my perch into the central temple. “You can understand me?”

“You all need my help.”

At my side, Trevor looked around the temple grounds.

“Who are you talking to?”

I looked at this mystery figure, then down to Trevor.

“You can’t see this guy?”

Trevor shook his head. He was confused. Anyone older would’ve thought I was crazy.

There was something about the way the figure spoke that beamed itself directly into my thoughts. Like a quiet, intimate whisper. I let it slide. Again, the idea that this was some entirely separate world still hadn’t quite internalized itself in our minds yet.

“Your brother? He… does not interest me,” said the figure. “Though, I believe this will benefit you both all the same.”

I frowned. Just what did that mean?

With a wave of the figure’s hand, the temple waters began to writhe with dozens of fish of all kinds. None of them poisonous, none large enough to eat a man. A regular bounty assembled itself, free for the taking. And all because this veiled, mysterious river waif had waved his hand.

“Uhhh…”

I waffled, not sure whether to thank the figure. Wasn’t even sure they’d done anything at all.

For his part, the figure removed his shawl. Brunett, braided hair spangled by kelp-pendant accessories were exposed alongside a preternaturally soft-featured face. Got enough of a look to determine he was male, just with an eternally youthful glow about him. At thereabouts twenty to twenty-two, he still appeared older than me at the time.

“Good luck,” he said with a warm, welcoming smile.

In the time it took to blink, the mystery man vanished. The fish remained, swarming into the temple grounds as if it were a sushi buffet.

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“Hey,” I called out to Hector and Rick back down the path.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Looks like there’s a structure further south.” Richard was up on the high branch, offering a view of the surrounding river in a wide cone from the south up towards the northwest.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Solved our food problem. C’mon, let’s round up the team.”

There was a sudden cry as Rick lost balance. He fell out of the tall branch.

“Grab it!” Hector struggled to keep the rope from sliding, painfully, through his fingers.

I grabbed on too, and together we broke Rich’s fall. He still had to land somewhere, though, and we sent him reeling in a slow, dainty arc into the river. Wasn’t helping Trevor’s conception of the rope system as a fun attraction.

“Well,” Richard helped himself up. “That was close.”

“No more climbing until we can build some proper safety equipment,” I said. “C’mon, let’s go round everyone up.”

Took four hours to gather the various bands out foraging. Three of that was from Murphy’s bellyaching.

Against the coach’s objections, we relocated to the river temple. The fish were still jumping. We could just wade out there and pick up a few, no hand-carved spears or makeshift fishing lines required. It truly was a blessing.

Nobody went hungry that night. First time in a week and a half.

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“We’re not staying here overnight!” Coach Murphy declared with a snarl.

“Why not?” Hector asked.

The temple was perfectly defensible. Our food was right there. Our water source was virtually unlimited. We could see anyone coming for us from miles away!

“This place is unnatural.” Coach eyed the temple’s stones warily.

There was fear in Murphy’s eyes. His right hand was still in a makeshift cast.

“But Coach,” I began. “This place is ideal. And it’s surely been abandoned longer than any of us have been alive.”

“You’ll take the fish to camp, Martinez!” Murphy snapped. “Gotta hide. There’ll be others. Enemies. Anything could be lurking out there.”

Coach ordered everyone to take the fish back to camp. It was no more than a few makeshift tents made of salvaged fabric and whatever palm leaves or pine branches we could find.

“You don’t want to do that.”

That voice in my head appeared again. I could sense a figure at my back, near the temple entrance. If I turned around, surely that figure would dissipate.

“Stay here,” the voice said. “Within sight of the Torrent. If not, disaster will soon strike.”

Regardless, I ignored this urge. Not without a heavy, resounding sigh. Yeah. Just knew listening to Coach Murphy was going to bite us in the ass at some point.

And again, Trevor looked at me. He couldn’t see our mystery guest, but he did seem to notice that I was seeing things that he could not.

Coach put double the necessary crew on watch that night, despite never being concerned about being discovered before. We had food leaping into our hands at all hours of the day, and it only caused him to eye the surrounding rainforest with a more paranoid eye.

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Such was the routine for the remainder of the first month or so.

The fish were not jumping quite as much as they had been at first, but the temple remained our primary food collection method. So convenient was it that even the Coach’s protestations to find another fishing hole were ignored.

A full cooking pit was dug at the edge of our makeshift camp. Properly dressed, a dozen fish could be impaled and cooked on a single fern branch. Cooking generated puffs of white smoke that disappeared into and dispersed itself in the forest canopy.

It was in this environment that we encountered our first elvan.

Nobody should’ve been able to see the smoke from our cooking fires. We neglected to consider that others may have possessed a better sense of smell than your average human. May have been able to hear the fish sizzling from miles away and home in on that.

So, one random day, our evening meal was interrupted when three preternaturally tall men wearing rags and bark wandered into camp.

“Yo, strangers. Someone new!” Hector managed.

Most of the camp viewed these new arrivals with trepidation. Some with curiosity. Only Hector invited them up to have a bite.

Immediately, the long ears ending in a sloped point stood out. The shortest among this new group towered over any of us – and we were all a bunch of athletes, taller than the average joe. Ears were an obvious tell that we weren’t in Texas anymore, in case anyone still needed convincing. They were unarmed, a fact immediately apparent as their clothes were the Stormheath equivalent of paper-thin rags.

The trio were emaciated, having not eaten in some time. Worse off than we were, really. Communication was stymied when they gave off high-pitched clicks. Again, first encounter. The idea that their language occasionally moved into a pitch beyond the human ability to hear didn’t register.

Hector prodded the new guests into sitting down.

There was enough fish to spare. Nobody would dispute that.

Coach Murphy had this look of existential dread in his eyes. Like a lobster just emerged from the sea and started talking to him. His nose twitched, especially when the starving subaltern took a seat by our fire.

“So, you boys from around here?” Hector tried.

The tallest Stormlander said something quick and hard to pronounce.

Coach kept running around to some particularly aggressive running backs on our team, whispering, gibbering.

Next, Hector pointed at one of the fish colloquially called a bass, though bass didn’t have razorback spines.

“What do you call this? Bass?”

As a response, the Stormlanders produced a more guttural sound more easily replicable by the human vocal box. Sounded like “Ba’as’ket.” In time, ‘ket’ would be known to be a common Stormlander root word for fish, but not the only one.

Further cross-cultural exchange was prevented when one of Coach Murphy’s loyal running backs caved the tallest visitor’s head in with a rock. Immediately, the Coach himself had another in a chokehold with his good arm. A third loyalist pushed the smallest visitor’s face into one of our campfires and held him there.

“Coach. Coach!” I yelled over the waning screams. “Fuck’re you doing?”

“If you’re not going to lead or follow.” Coach Murphy squeezed until he crushed our lanky visitor’s windpipe. “Get out of the damn way, Martinez.”

Our three guests were dead well before any further objections could be raised. Fiat accompli. Protestations rung hollow, and certainly wouldn’t bring back these wayward low-castes.

Across a campfire, Hector looked to me for some kind of instruction, wide eyed and yet not at all aware of his surroundings. He still sat right beside our guest whose face had been burnt down to the fat. Hector still held out a fish on a skillet, waiting for the youngest of these newcomers to take a bite.

“Gorman, Sanchez, Williams, and Atkins, take the bodies and put them up around the perimeter. Gotta set a warning. Gotta keep them out. Martinez, you and Claire can handle babysitting duty.”

Rita came running up to burry herself in Claire’s side, quivering. Not sure how much she remembers of that evening. Trevor hugged my side, glaring at Coach Murph.

“Uh, sir?” Williams asked, shaking.

“Gotta set a warning. Teach ‘em not to come here next time. Show of force! Keep the devil at bay.”

Richard Atkins had been drafted into helping with all this. He got up but made a point to bump me in the shoulder, then leaned in close to my ear to mutter:

“This is going to get worse. How many days until he’s beating one of us to death with a rock?”

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Three days passed without incident. Spent most of the time near the river temple, though the fish had died down a bit and no further signs from that mysterious voice could be heard.

The corpses were tied around whitewoods, far enough out so that they didn’t start to stink up the camp. With no bugs about, they were only touched by a few scavenger birds and natural decay from bacteria.

Our three victims belonged to some clan or another on this shore. Hardly remember the name. There was no way of knowing they were low-caste subaltern – but still property of a clan just over the river. No way of knowing that the Coach’s actions would still demand honor killing in retribution. Their higher-status cousins wouldn’t allow them housing beyond a subaltern pit, would hardly feed them more than necessary to perform some form of untouchable, unclean labor – but now that they were dead, the clan’s honor demanded tit-for-tat.

That third night after the murders, we slept soundly. Didn’t notice a thing. It was only in the morning when we awoke to an eerie silence did the first moment of dawning horror strike.

Our sentries assigned to watch were gone. Never seen again, not even a corpse. And within the camp, well…

I awoke first, later than usual. The sun was at about ten o’clock, when usually I trained myself to awake as the first light wafted through the canopy. There was a sticky feeling on my right shoulder. Clarissa was beside me, resting on my left shoulder, having yet to stir.

“God, what time is it? Anybody cooking breakfast?” I asked.

No response.

I lay there, Clarissa growing quite heavy on my shoulder. My left arm turned numb.

“Uh, Claire?” I nudged gently.

Then, Claire yawned and rolled over.

“What’s… what?” Came a voice from the other side of camp. “Where’s…?”

Maria emerged from the medical tent in a daze. “Is anyone still. It’s Sandy. She’s…”

Hector shot upright from a standing prone position. The student immediately to his right was deathly still, with a wide red gash running up his neck from ear to ear. Blood had splattered across Hector’s face in the act, though the man didn’t seem to notice it – not until he went for his glasses and found them with blood caked over the lenses.

“Claire, there’s a problem. Claire, get up. Trevor, keep your eyes closed… C’mon, we’ve got to…”

I forcefully nudged Clarissa, urging her up to her feet. Only as I went to do so, I noticed the figure to the right of me had yet to stir.

“Trev-“

Claire stared past me. “Oh God. Michael. It’s...”

That stickiness on my shoulder was long-dried blood. Lost track of time after that. Exact details of the next few hours escape me. Claire came to console me long after the others had fled our former campsite. I do recall burying him, and him alone, back in the glen. It was the only place we could think to retreat, with Murph still scared as hell of the temple. Camp was abandoned, everyone fleeing in all directions in a panic. The rest of the bodies remained there for about four days before we got around to burying them by the riverside.

Every eighth person in camp had their throats slit in the middle of the night. Claire was sixth in a row, I was seventh. Move our sleeping arrangements over just slightly and I would’ve been killed, while Clarissa and little Trevor would’ve awoken to chaos and panic. And move us two spots over and Trevor and I would’ve awoken to Claire’s… no, let’s not talk about this.

The clan responsible remains nameless. They were wiped out to every man, woman, and child by the Laval in an unrelated squabble, years later.

Regardless, the whole camp was awake now, flailing around and pushing dead bodies off them, fleeing for the river, or away from the river. Some trying in vain to perform CPR on friends who were missing a jugular.

Coach Murphy never emerged from his private tent. I established enough order to gather everyone back to our ruined camp and at least sort the dead bodies from those who were alive. There were no injured, nobody for Maria to try and resuscitate. Assumed the Coach was among the dead until we took a head count and realized that every eighth person was accounted for amongst the dead.

When we checked in on Murphy’s tent we found him sitting upright on his cot, hands clasped near his head as if in prayer.

“The Devil, the devil.” He repeated to himself. “Sent us to hell.”

It was all he would say for days afterwards.

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