Shara crossed her arms as she stood in the air and stared down at the Okenlock River.

“Well, shit,” she said.

When Neela had asked her to go check on a report of one of the monsters being spotted on the other side of the river, Shara had hoped the man was just seeing things. And, well, in a way maybe he was. Because that was a lot more than one monster.

And more kept appearing out of the woods.

So far, they hadn’t found a way across the river, but if they did, then there wasn’t much between them, the small town, and the entrances to the portal bunker. A few gently rolling hills and some tall grass wasn’t going to slow them down – void snakes or not.

“Guess I should report this,” she finally said. “Wish I could count. And I can’t believe I just said that.”

With a shake of her head, she spun around and jogged back towards the town, pink butterflies splashing with every step. It didn’t matter if the creatures could see her, they were obviously here for the portal.

“Well?” Neela asked as Shara jogged up to them a short time later.

“It wasn’t a monster,” Shara said, and Neela breathed a sigh of relief. “It was a shitload of monsters.”

Neela choked on her own sigh then glared at Shara. “That many?”

“Way more than I have fingers, and probably toes,” Shara said. “More than we saw on the road, by a long shot. The river is blocking them, for the moment, but I have no idea if they can swim or not.”

“That river isn’t swimmable,” Born said from behind Neela. “Believe me. I tried.”

“And smelled like wet dog for the rest of the day,” Neela grumbled.

Shara mostly ignored the comments, looking back the way she’d come. “So, why are they there?” she asked, pointing at the river. “Instead of there?” she added, pointing back towards the path she’d taken to get to the town.

“Great question,” Neela said. “Maybe they know something we don’t?”

“Could there be another entrance to the bunker over there?” Shara asked. Damn, if they could go under the river, that would be a real pain.

“No, definitely not,” Neela said. “There are only the two entrances. The one by the river and the one in the forge.”

Born gave Neela a strange look at that, and she gave another small sigh. “Right, there is a third entrance, but it’s out on one of the Isles. No way the monsters can get to it if they can’t cross the river.”

Shara nodded at that and turned her attention briefly back to the small town. It’d been a little surprising to find people actually living there. And not just a few people. A whole town’s worth of them.

…which of course didn’t include her mother or aunt.

Shara clenched her fist at her side. Of course the women had moved on before she’d arrived.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” Neela said quietly, as if reading her mind. Then again, it probably wasn’t hard to guess what Shara was scowling about. “I really had no idea she wouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t worry, I actually believe you,” Shara said. “This is just what she’s like… and not the first time I’ve almost caught up to her. It’s like she knows when I’m getting close and makes herself scarce. At least this time I know where she’s going. I’ll catch up to her after we figure this out,” she said, waving towards where the monsters were massing.

“I’m surprised you didn’t flitter up into the air and run after her as soon as you found out she was gone,” Born said with a chuckle.

“First off, I don’t flitter,” Shara said.

“And she wouldn’t leave Tel behind,” Neela said.

Shara scowled at Neela, but didn’t say anything. For better or worse, it was true. She’d gotten kind of used to having the quiet Clocksmith around. And, if what he said was true and there were Tailcoats coming – on top of the monsters – then he’d need her to pull his ass out of the fire.

“We sure could’ve used your aunt’s help though,” Neela said, bringing them back to more serious topics. “The Insurmountable is practically a one-woman army.”

“Just the opposite,” Shara said as she shook her head. “This is exactly the type of fight she struggles with the most. Put her up against any one enemy and she won’t lose. But she’s still just one person. She can get blindsided or ambushed just like anybody else in a group.

“No, what we need is Count down there by the river booby-trapping every inch of ground. Where is he, anyway?” Shara asked.

“As soon as Tel said Tailcoats were coming, we got him down in the tunnels,” Neela said.

Shara tapped the cudgel stuck through her belt with her finger – she’d given up on hiding it after the ambush on the road – and watched Neela. “You’re planning to flood the bunker if we can’t hold it, aren’t you?”

Neela nodded. “We’ve already begun evacuating the townsfolk.”

Shara looked back towards the path they’d come from. Nobody there. “Boats?”

“Yes. Fishing boats. They’ll get the people down the coast where it should be safe. They’re used to going pretty far,” Neela explained.

“I bet the people aren’t happy we came along,” Shara said. “Being forced to move isn’t fun.”

“Most of them are sorcerers, minor ones,” Neela said. “This isn’t anything new for them.”

“Still isn’t fun,” Shara said. “Wait, if you flood the bunker, how is the portal going to stay sealed? Do you think that’ll destroy it?”

“Tel said he had a solution. He’s working on it right now. I don’t know. I was… hesitant… but he hasn’t let us down yet,” Neela said.

“Yeah, somewhere along the way he went and became moderately reliable,” Shara said.

“Moderately?” Neela asked.

“You should’ve seen him at the beginning. Anyway, that still leaves our biggest problem. I didn’t see any Tailcoats, yet, but those monsters are coming one way or another. Can we get Count up here to set some traps? Do you have anybody else we can use for this kind of thing?”

Neela shook her head. “Including us and Count, we have maybe a dozen sorcerers who can handle themselves in a fight. We don’t dare use the Whistler, not that I’m even sure his magic will work…”

“The Whistler?” Shara asked. The name sounded familiar. “Oh? Is he the one who can make people blind?”

“Not just blindness,” Neela said. “He can turn off a sense of anybody who hears his whistle. Usually takes sight, since everybody relies on it. But, he can’t control who it affects. Him, us, we’re all taken by his magic.”

“Any sense?” Shara asked. “He can do hearing?”

“Yes,” Neela said, eyes narrowing. “What are you getting at?”

“The monsters don’t have eyes. Just huge ears,” Shara said, pointing at the side of her own head. “Tel said something about them relying on those to find us back in the woods. If the Whistler could make it so they couldn’t hear, that could be a huge advantage.”

Neela nodded as Shara explained. “You’re right. Okay, look, I don’t know how long we have, but I’ll go get Count and have him start setting up traps by the river. Born, go find Whistler and explain what we’ll need to do, then warn the others we won’t be able to hear anything once this starts.”

“What about me?” Shara asked, then shrugged when Neela gave her a look. “What? I figure I’m here and I’m in this, I might as well help as much as I can.”

“I may’ve misjudged you,” Neela said.

“No, probably not,” Shara said quickly. “So don’t let me change my mind. What do you need?”

“We need more intel on what those things are doing across the water. Keep an eye on them. Maybe do something to distract them if they start doing anything suspicious,” Neela said.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Everything about them being here is suspicious,” Shara said. “But I catch your drift. Just get Count back here as soon as you can. I may be good, but even I can’t stop that many by myself.”

“Right,” Neela said, turning to face the standing stones that hid one of the entrances to the bunker. “Oh, Born, get everybody ready for this. Not just the sorcerers.”

“Already planning on it,” Born said and started trotting towards the town.

“And, Shara, don’t do anything too risky. I don’t want to have to explain to Tel if you die,” Neela said, then exploded in a shower of pink butterflies.

“Don’t do anything too risky, she says, after telling me to go stall an army of monsters?” Shara deadpanned, but jogged back towards the river. With her fist-chain, stalling was something she actually could do pretty risk free, but it still nagged at her the things were on the other side of the river.

They’d ambushed the sorcerers on the road, which meant they should’ve been able to come up the same path she had. Why had they gone further down the road and across the bridge, only to double back and find themselves blocked by that same river?

And, on top of that, why were there so many of them?

There was definitely something she was missing.

“One thing at a time,” she said out loud, gaining altitude with every step until she jogged higher than the treetops and looked down at the river. There were more of the things swarming on the other side than when she’d left, but that wasn’t the only things different – they’d cut down some of the trees. A pile of fallen trunks crisscrossed the ground, and as Shara watched, the creatures tore down another by repeatedly ramming their spiked appendages through the wood.

Shara took her cudgel out of her belt and casually started rotating her wrist, the chain slightly extending and gathering energy as she eyed the creatures. Whatever they were up to, it couldn’t be good. Time to get started on stalling.

Ignoring the few creatures milling about at the edge of the river, Shara picked out one working as a lumberjack. Then, without any further consideration, stepped forward and whipped her arm around. Pink energy raced up the chain that grew link by link faster than a racing horse, and infused the metallic fist. Without the aid of the magic, not even considering the need for the lengthening chain, Shara never would’ve been able to make the throw.

Somehow, though, the fist seemed to know exactly where Shara wanted it to go, and several long heartbeats later, it smashed into the targeted creature with a whomp. Shrubs and debris blew back from the impact in a circle an arms-width around the creature, and the thing itself shot sideways to careen awkwardly off the tree trunk with a crack that reached Shara’s ears a second later.

The magic chain vanished as Shara stood up straight again – her wrist already rotating – and appeared spinning in the air beside her. “Now, let’s see what you do,” she said even though the things couldn’t possibly hear her.

The creature she’d hit with her fist struggled up to its feet, wobbling for a moment, then returned to stabbing at the tree trunk it’d collided with as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, a few of the monsters along the shore seemed to turn their heads in her direction, their strange chest-tongues wiggling, but otherwise ignored her.

“Not enough to get your attention, huh?” she said. “Guess I need to try a bit harder.”

Shara lifted her arm above her head, the fist-chain growing in length and spiraling around as she looped her hand around and around. With each rotation, more and more pink energy gathered in the fist and along the chain until a whirlpool of pink swirled above her.

Sure, a simple hit from her weapon couldn’t really put one of those things down for long, but she’d proven during the ambush on the road that a little bit of effort on her part could change that.

“Take this,” she said and whipped her hand down and forward, the fist following suit with a whistle as it cut through the air towards the same creature she’d hit before. A sphere of pink energy the size of a small dog glowed around the fist, and it almost seemed like her target looked her way as the weapon raced in its direction.

Too late.

Like it had a life of its own, the fist curved down towards the ground well on Shara’s side of the river, then leveled out and raced straight above the ground, blowing aside the tall grass and leaving a long divot in the ground. The surface of the water parted in a rush as the fist passed over it, and then the shore exploded in a burst of rock and earth while the pink sphere cut between two surprised monsters who flew in opposite directions from the glancing blow.

A giggle at the comical ejection of the two creatures started in Shara’s throat but didn’t have a chance to make it any further as the fist hit its target.

WHOMP, the concussive blast erupted in a pink sphere bigger than a horse-drawn wagon, shredding nearby trunks and causing a cascade of toppling trees. Monsters who’d been standing near the point of impact were hurled away, their bodies twisted and broken, while the unfortunate one who’d been the target was simply gone.

“Hah!” Shara said with an arm pump and straightened up, the fist already back at her side and lazily spinning. That should slow them down.

Wood chips and broken monster bits fell from the sky for several long seconds, while more trees slowly toppled from the damage done to their trunks, to fill the newly formed crater. More creature heads turned in her direction, but only for a second, until even the ones lined up along the shore moved back towards the treeline.

Huh. Was that it? Had she actually chased them off?

“Maybe I can take them all on by myself,” she said, but then narrowed her eyes as two of the creatures picked up one of the fallen trees. “What are you doing?”

Hefting the tree over their shoulders, the two monsters walked over to the shore, and then unceremoniously tossed the log – branches and all – into the river.

“Trying to build a raft?” she asked quietly, but, no, that didn’t seem right.

White water ripped the tree away from them and carried it down the river where it bounced off one rock, spun around another, and then finally slammed into the teeth-like line of slick stones.

Shara stared at that fallen tree, water pressing it hard against the stones, then back to the creatures. Two more pairs of the monsters deposited logs into the water, which quickly followed down the river to join the first.

“Not a raft,” Shara said as realization dawned on her. “A dam. They’re building a damn dam.”

And she couldn’t let them succeed, her pink fist already spinning at her side. Her second attack on the creatures had knocked down a bunch of trees, and they were already moving to toss them into the water. She’d have to be careful if she attacked them again.

Except… she didn’t have to attack them. Her role was to stall them, and she turned her attention to the fallen logs pressed against the stones. Out snapped her arm, and the pink fist quickly followed. This whomp hit the three fallen trees with enough force to blast them apart, the resulting pieces fitting between the rocks and slipping over the lip of the waterfall.

“Toss as many logs in as you’d like,” she told the monsters. “I’ll make kindling out of them.”

She said that, but the fact they were building a dam at all sent a shiver down her spine. Weren’t they just mindless killers?

Apparently not.

She’d need to watch out for…

A sound like cloth tearing, and a spike twitched into existence right in front of her, inhumanely fast, and Shara’s breath caught as it shot for her face.

And stopped barely an inch from the bridge of her nose, then dropped straight down as gravity pulled on the Twitcher who’d appeared just out of reach. The tip of the spike sliced neatly across the end of her nose, the pain of it snapping Shara out of her shock, and she threw herself to the side in a splash of pink butterflies.

Not a second too soon, the Twitcher appearing right above where she’d been standing and driving both of its spikes straight down into the now empty space.

“Shit!” Shara exclaimed and kicked off to scurry away, the supportive butterflies only able to appear where her hands and feet touched.

Again, the Twitcher appeared where she’d just been, entirely too accurately, and stabbed where she’d been with one spike while the other lashed out sideways.

Catching the air in her left hand like she held onto a horizontal bar, Shara let the magic vanish from her feet, and she swung down with gravity’s help to scarcely evade the wide slash. It wouldn’t be enough though, and she immediately pushed the magic into the soles of her feet and dashed ahead.

The now-familiar sound of cloth tearing echoed just behind her, and she kicked up to flip into the air while bringing the fist-chain around. Either through sheer luck, or the magic of the incredible weapon, the chain intercepted the lunging spike and deflected it just enough to pass over her spinning waist.

Still alive for the moment, Shara landed and dashed off at a sharp angle from her original direction, then quickly cut to her left and let the magic fade from her feet. Her stomach shot into throat as she fell the length of her own body and re-ignited the magic in her feet. Knees bending to absorb the impact like she’d hit a floor, she doubled over and used her free hand for extra balance, then shot forward like a sprinter.

Tearing sounded above and behind her, and she cut sharply to the right while she jerked her hand out and to the side. The magic fist shot out in that direction, but she’d misjudged the Twitcher’s location from the sound, so she activated the combination of her magic and the weapon’s – rebounding the fist off an invisible surface.

A small whomp tossed the Twitcher to the side mid-air, but it vanished again, and Shara leapt forward, dispelling all her magic.

Gravity again quickly told hold of her body, pulling her uncomfortably fast towards the ground, and in her prone position, it wouldn’t be easy to get her feet under her. Still, she had some forward momentum, and she twisted her left hand slightly out to her side and squeezed her fingers like she’d grabbed onto a vertical bar. Shara’s legs swung out wide, torquing her shoulder, but she held on as pink butterflies sprayed from between her fingers and she whipped around the invisible pole.

Okay, she’d stopped moving in one direction, but the dangerous one – down – was still going far too fast.

“No helping it,” she grimaced, letting go of her cudgel, and put her right hand on top of her left, more pink butterflies sparking as she squeezed. It still wasn’t enough, the ground racing up to meet her. Flexing her shoulders, arms, and stomach, she pulled her legs in and somehow got the soles of her feet under her hands to activate her magic there in a blinding shower of butterflies.

“Aaaaaaaah!” she screamed, fiery pain ripping across the palms of her hand. “Aaaaaah,” she continued screaming. “Aaaaah?” she trailed off and opened eyes she must’ve closed at some point. She wasn’t splattered on the ground. She’d stopped.

She glanced down, the tips of the tall grass just barely swaying in the breeze against her legs.

“Barely,” she whispered, then threw herself to the side as the reason for her desperate tactics sprung up in her mind.

But nothing happened. No tearing sound. No spike for her face. No ugly Twitcher.

Had she lost it?

Shara tentatively got to her feet with a glance at the angry red lines running down her palms, and looked back towards the river.

One of the creatures stood on her side of the rushing water, not moving, while the rest continued to work on the other side, throwing fallen tree after fallen tree into the Okenlock.

“Damnit,” Shara said, tearing her eyes away from the monsters. And how was she going to find her cudgel in all this stupid grass? A line of pink butterflies floating up from the ground seemed to answer her question, and Shara carefully walked over to spot her weapon. As if it knew it had been found, the butterflies vanished. “Huh,” she mumbled, picking up the weapon, and looked again towards the river.

The Twitcher didn’t seem to be following her for now, but it was obviously standing on guard to prevent her from interfering further. Not to mention how accurate it’d been in the air. Last time she’d seen one of those things, it hadn’t been able to control where it appeared.

But, hadn’t one done that back with the clocks in the wagons? Suddenly they could control where they wanted to go?

“Not good,” Shara said and started back towards the town. Neela and Born needed to know.

And Shara needed to consider if she really wanted to wait to go looking for her mother.