“Holy-fucking-shit-I-am-so-God-damned-cold-my-tits-are-going-to-snap-off-like-icicles,” Alice said in a rush as we arrived on shore.

I was still riding the high of having punched out a shark so I wasn’t really aware of how cold the water had been. What I did notice was all the broken glass, cans and trash that littered the beach. The sand portion of the beach was thin, only about a few dozen feet before giving way to scraggly weeds and mud. About a hundred yards southeast of us was what looked like a sewage ditch that fed directly into the sea. Luckily I could see the ocean current taking the muck away from us so I don’t think we swam in it but holy shit this place looked like a Captain Planet villain’s lair.

Ida was already digging into the gym bag with our supplies, pulling out her rifle and gun belt and strapping it on over her shorts. “Come,” she said, tossing Alice’s shoes at her. “Put on your shoes quickly. There is a place nearby we can warm up and remain out of sight.”

I hesitated before summoning my Limbs of the Other Side. Yes they offered amazing protection and other abilities, but they kinda stained my hands and feet black and changed my nails? I’ve never worn them for extended periods before. Was it just wearing them for a long time that was doing it or was it the blood drinking thing that happens when I stab people?

I had a moment where I just wanted to cry. Not the sobbing, break down crying that I did when Ida and I first met or when I told the girls about when my friends died. It was more like I just wanted to curl into a ball and let emotions have their way with me. This… Fuck it, I’ll just say it: I’m not cut out for this daring heroics bullshit. I’m just not built for it. You know how you know John McClane is a fictional character? Fucker never once has a breakdown. And—

I took a deep breath. Okay, yeah, this is big. Get over it, Colm. You just punched out a shark. You’ve got otherworldly powers and can set things on fire with a word. You may not be Typical Action Guy but you’re one of three people standing in the way of a big fucking mass murder.

I summoned the cubby that stored my LotOS.

Once I finished the incantation, the Limbs leaped free of the cubby, like they were children with their faces pressed to the glass of the door to a room full of presents as it opened. I tried not to shudder as the shadow stuff slid over my limbs, and tried not to examine the relief I felt at their return all too thoroughly. I closed the cubby and started after the girls, who were waiting a short distance away. Alice’s expression was worried, while Ida’s was a weary acceptance that I felt mirrored my own.

“Are you sure?” Alice asked.

I shrugged. “Nothing’s changed,” I replied tonelessly. “Same thing as with my spell casting; we need all the help we can get. I’ll deal with whatever’s left if we survive.”

“Come,” Ida said, jerking her head in a vaguely southern direction. “It’s about a half a kilometer this way.”

“How big is the island?” I asked as we started hiking. Ida kept her head on a swivel and traveled in a half-crouch, so I endeavored to follow her lead.

“About six square kilometers,” Ida replied.

“How many is that in Bald Eagle?” I asked.

Alice suppressed a laugh while Ida rolled her eyes. “A little less than four square miles, I think,” Ida clarified.

Okay, so the island wasn’t huge. You could jog across it in an afternoon. So any staging area they planned to use to sacrifice—

“So that’s probably where they are going to do the sacrifice,” Alice said, pointing east.

I looked where she pointed and saw… what?

“Is that a fucking ziggurat?” I asked.

Ida glanced where we were looking. “Oui,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.

It took us a little over ten minutes to get to wherever Ida was taking us. Suddenly Ida had us stop and crouch down while she searched the area for something. Another minute or two and she slung her rifle behind her and pulled up a trap door in the mud that reminded me of the tunnels the Viet Cong would dig during the Vietnam war. She held the trap door open and waved us in ahead of her.

“I have been gone a long time,” she said as we began to descend into the four foot tall tunnel. “There might be animals or squatters.”

“Let me go first, Colm,” Alice said. I nodded and squeezed aside, as I had already descended almost a dozen feet. Alice squeezed by me, placing a hand on my knee to get by which only made me want to flinch a whole fucking lot in this cramped space. I kept my cool though and soon she was ahead of me.

Alice got a few feet ahead of me and then this wave of immense fear and irritation washed out from her. I could feel her shielding me from the worst of it but it felt like I was having a minor panic attack until it ended.

“Ca c'était quoi?!” Ida hissed.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“What?” Man I wish I had paid more attention to the one year of French I took.

“Sorry!” Alice said, glancing over her shoulder. “I should have warned you. I was just scaring away any animals in the area. There aren’t any people around besides us.”

Ida muttered in French, but she wasn’t swearing so I couldn’t pick up anything. With a final look around she backed into the tunnel and closed the trapdoor behind us.

After another ten feet we emerged into a pretty big room. Alice was fumbling around blindly as there was next to no light down here. I stopped her from running into a camp table by putting my hand on her shoulder. “Hold on, I’ll find a light,” I said.

Ida joined us by the time I found an old fashioned storm lantern. I lifted the cover and smelled the wick, detecting some kind of fuel on it. “Ljos,” I whispered, framing the spell in my mind and feeding it a tiny tendril of power. The wick sputtered to life and began to bath the room in a nice orange glow. I replaced the glass cover and set the lantern on the camp table.

The light revealed a narrow room, about five feet wide, ten long and five tall. I remained in a crouch, because if I tried to stand I’d have to nearly bend over double. Alice, while not as tall as me, is taller than most women and had a similar problem, standing in a slouch with her chin tucked to her chest. Ida, the shorted out of all of us, walked with a comfortable bent-knee gait that told me she’d spent a lot of time here.

Alice noticed, too. “This place yours?” She asked. “Did you dig it?”

Ida shook her head, placing our supplies on the camp table and began to distribute our change of clothing. “I took it over from… a previous owner.”

There was more she wasn’t saying, but I didn’t pry. Ida showed us a water barrel in one corner with a few towels where we could wash the salt off ourselves and we took turns staring at the walls while one of us washed and changed. They giggled while I changed.

“No peeking!” I said, regretting not peeking myself.

“Sorry!” Alice said, sounding not sorry. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Oui,” Ida said, her voice flat. “It was an accident.”

There was period where the only noises in the cramped room were being made by me quickly getting into my new jeans and T-shirt. The jeans fit my waist but the legs were too short by six inches, which made them shitty capris. The T-shirt fit, if you could call a circus tent that hung from my shoulders “fitting.” At least it had the 1989 Batman logo on it. Maybe I’ll be able to channel a bit of the old Bat mojo.

I turned to find the two women not facing the other direction. In fact, they were facing in the direction they weren’t supposed to. Alice had the good grace to look ashamed, if amused. Ida just had a small smile and a raised eyebrow.

“Nice butt,” Ida said.

“Mhm,” Alice agreed.

I glared.

Ida did her impressive snort and crossed to the camp table. “As if you weren’t looking at us in our swimsuits,” she said, pulling out her spare magazines from the gym bag and slotting them into her tactical vest.

“You weren’t even in a swimsuit,” I complained.

Her eyebrow grew more arch. “So you were looking.”

I sighed and half-crab walked to the table, pulling out a bottle of water and sipping from it. “Okay, I’m done pretending to be irritated at being ogled by two beautiful women.”

“Wasn’t really an ogle,” Alice said as she joined us at the table.

“Just a peek,” Ida added.

“For curiosity.”

Ida “Mmmmmm’d” deep in her throat.

I felt my face heat up. I was very flustered and wasn’t sure if I should be, which coupled with my general social anxiety to make me pleasantly uncomfortable with this situation. Which is probably what the ladies were hoping for. I didn’t want to rain on their parade, but the clock was ticking.

But hey, I have it on good authority that I have a good butt. Something to take home.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked Ida.

The mood suddenly soured as we all thought about what lie ahead.

“You ask me?” Ida asked.

“Who else?” I asked. “You know the island better than us. You have more familiarity with the... enemy… disposition? Don’t give me that look,” I said to Alice. “Army guys talk like that all the time in movies. The point is you know the area and the enemy,” I said, turning back to Ida. “Let’s start with the islands layout.”

Ida nodded and cleared a space on the table. She circled a big portion of it with her finger. “This is the island. This,” she took out a can of tuna from the bag and placed it on the right side of the “island.” “Is the ziggurat.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a loose rifle bullet, placing it northwest of the tuna. “We are here. This,” she placed a bag of chips north of the bullet, on the “beach.” “Is the bay village, where most of the population is. It is also where they keep most of the slaves.”

She regarded the “map” for a moment before meeting my eyes, then Alice’s. “I think they will hold the prisoners there for a time. They will take the prettiest ones for slaves and workers before moving the rest to the ziggurat. This will give me time to go there and meet with my friends, maybe give us a chance to organize a rebellion.”

She seemed to latch onto the idea as she said it. “Yes, that is… That is it. There have been rebellions in the past but they all failed as no one can leave, or fight the magic of the warlocks. But now we have you two,” her eyes lit up. “I will need one of you to come with me, to demonstrate to my friends that you can do magic and get us out of here.”

I pointed at Alice. She frowned. “What will you do?” She asked, seeing the look in my eye.

“Gonna try and find the ward that keeps everyone on the island and throw a big rock at it,” I said. “Maybe even two big rocks. Something that covers four square miles but doesn’t broadcast a huge amount of aura is either flimsy or so tightly engineered it’ll be easy to break anyway. You just gotta know where to throw the wrench. While I’m doing that I’ll also be setting up some traps like Ida suggested earlier.”

I reached into the gym bag and took out my prepared spells. I took out two and handed one to each of them. “This is a simple sending,” I said. “Tear the card down the middle, through that circle,” I indicated the big circle in the center of the card. “You’ll have five seconds to say something to me. Only works one way though so be succinct.”

“Will it work through whatever the warlocks have put up? It stops other communication.” Ida asked.

I threw up my hands in the classic “who the fuck knows” gesture.

Ida’s mouth was a hard line. “Right,” she said, sounding like she was suppressing a sigh. “In that case, we should meet up here after… two hours?”

“Sounds good,” I said, looking to Alice.

Alice frowned. “I don’t like splitting up,” she said.

“Yeah it’s usually when people start getting picked off,” I said with a shrug, in what I hope was a facetious manner. “But I kind of stand out, even without the claws, and the whole island is going to be looking for me. At least this way if I get spotted I can run away without worrying about dragging attention onto you two.”

Alice’s worried expression didn’t change but she conceded the point.

We all shared determined looks.

“Let’s do this,” I said.