Jay waved to the six others, trying to encourage them to get closer to the edge. He was standing on the edge, diving-suit-booted heels hanging over into the gap. They had been reluctant at every step so far, clustering closer and closer to the glowing Aghed as the natural light dimmed.

  He’d been expecting to see more of the whip-like creatures this close to the trench but they hadn’t shown their faces. Jay’s only idea for why was that whatever they’d been doing the last time, something had changed to make it either no longer an attractive option or no longer a necessary one. It was better than what he’d expected; when Warinot had told him that he’d take the others who felt confident to the city and that one of them glowed, he’d braced for a swarm of them to come investigate the sudden new light source.

  Jay had even given himself a crick in the neck trying to shepherd the rest of his mini-group around at a rate that wouldn’t end in hyperventilation while keeping an eye out. But despite them supposedly being the confident half of the group, they hadn’t adjusted at all over the time it took to get this deep. He’d even had to resort to something very unpleasant to try to get them to the next step.

  “Look, I’m not even asking you to go down there. Just look at it,” Jay begged. “The sooner we do that, the longer it is before you’re going to have to see it again.”

  “But we will have to see it again?” Casaka asked.

  Jay could see her twin mouthing along with the question. He didn’t fully understand why they did that; it was something about their Origin, geminus, but it seemed like a bad idea to ask about. Or at least a rude one.

  “At some point, yes,” he replied. “Warinot mentioned that the city was a big target for our group to look at. But I don’t think he’ll put anyone into it before they’ve gotten comfortable with everything else.”

  He didn’t mention that he’d already gone down there. Soul projection or not, Jay knew he’d been stretching the limit and didn’t want word getting back to Warinot about it any more than he wanted details about the immediate aftermath getting back to him. Just because his health was now bottoming out every day before he went to sleep – sleep that was now inevitably haunted by the same dream, even – it didn’t mean he could get careless about letting information out.

  Especially if Agensyx was right that the Inquisitors were going to blame him for the Duke’s death and would hunt him for it. That didn’t seem quite fair, not in any real sense; attempted murder may have been a crime, but they’d have to prove he wasn’t there just to rob him first. Not like attempted regicide was a crime, right?

  Jay knew he’d be stupid to expect an actual trial if they found him. It was more likely a gigantic sword like the one the horseman had been carrying would take his head off immediately.

  He changed tacks. “Alright. Aghed, come here please.” The glowing drakekin had started to look annoyed with the others crowding him, even the ones that weren’t literally clinging to his arms, so it was worth a shot.

  The brightly backlit faceplate, bulged outwards to accommodate the relatively short snout, swung to the side to look at the people clasping onto him. Jay thought he wasn’t going to go for it at first, until the drakekin shook them off and moved forward. It wasn’t quick, but the more he walked, the more steady his bouncy steps became.

  He looked like he was going to propel himself straight off into the watery depths, so Jay shifted forward, braced himself on the now-solid footing, and pushed against the other man’s momentum until he stopped.

  Aghed nodded his thanks, helmet bobbing, and asked a question. “Why me specifically?”

  “You’re the light,” Jay said. “With you up here, the others have to either stay over there at the edge or come close enough that they get back into the illumination. Their choice, but there are some weird things out here.”

  “You know they can hear you?” Aghed checked.

  “If they weren’t, I’d have described the things that were out here the first time I was here. But an honest warning is an honest warning,” Jay answered.

  The others started looking frantically around themselves at that, Jay’s words seemingly forcing them to notice that they were out in the dark now. None of them made a move to join the pair standing on the edge, but they started nervously whispering in the background of the communication channel.

  “So what you’re saying is that it would help if I…” the drakekin trailed off and gestured out at the rest of the water.

  Jay lifted a hand and tilted it back and forth. “It could. I’m not going to ask you to do that, though.”

  The chatter died off as Aghed started laughing, a much grimmer noise than it had any right to be. “Too bad.”

  He pushed past Jay and off the edge, the whole group watching as their only source of bright light sank deeper and deeper under the influence of the enchantment on the boots.

  Jay just gave them all a flat look. “You all heard me not ask him to do that, right?”

  None of them responded, but the twins pushed off the ground and bowled straight past him, sinking down after Aghed. The others trickled past, ending with Lethen carrying the gem-encrusted Imni over the edge. It didn’t look to be entirely involuntary on either of their parts, but the big man did roll his eyes briefly.

  The necromancer watched them all sink, still surprised about the information that had come out over the shared dinner the night before. Apparently, other than Warinot, he was the oldest among their group and potentially the oldest of the entire non-expert population of their force. Most of the others were teenagers.

  It was horrendous, even if it gave him an understanding of why there had been crew on the ship ride over assigned to make sure no one was sleeping in the wrong cabin. Jay was determined to keep that from affecting anything else, even if it was giving him an odd sense of protectiveness over the others. He wasn’t sure how much that had affected Warinot’s decision to make him nominally in charge of the split group, but he hoped it wasn’t the only reason. Even for such a temporary thing, that was not a good way to choose a leader.

  Jay abruptly realized the others had all hit the bottom, meaning he was just standing at the top of the ridge without contributing to anything. He shook the introspective mood away and kicked off of the top of the ridge to join them.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  *

  “I dare you to go in the city,” Casaka said.

  Treviri shook his head.

  “What, are you scared?” she taunted.

  The gray-skinned man nodded.

  “Boring.”

  Jay touched down just as she turned to Lethen to presumably try to cajole him into the same thing. He really tried to resist chiming in but just couldn’t. It was too good of a chance to speak up.

  “You couldn’t even get yourself to jump down here first,” he said. “Stop trying to get people to make bad choices.”

  She made a brushing gesture at him; he wasn’t entirely sure about the meaning of the movement but it was something between a dismissive wave and the middle finger. It wasn't worth the fight either way, so he decided not to object.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to go into the city later,” Jay said to the group. “For now, we should stay as clearly out of it as possible. But get used to the light at this depth for when it does happen.”

  For a second, he lost his train of thought, trailing off like a bug had flown into his eye. A barely present System window tried to make itself known again and failed. The moment of distraction passed.

  “You won’t always have Aghed to cuddle up next to for extra illumination. Try to see if you can find something buried –”

  Lethen tackled him. That didn’t seem like the kind of thing that should have been possible underwater, but the big man did it anyway, shoving Jay several feet from where he’d been standing and nearly flattening him to the ground.

  “Sorry,” he grunted. “Needed to…” he trailed off, eyes going wide, then pivoted to face Treviri. He rocketed off again in a rush of bubbles that Jay hadn’t seen last time, shoving the pallid man the same way.

  This time, Jay saw why; a length of green metal, tipped by a curved, clawlike blade, shot through the water where Treviri had been halfway floating before grounding itself in a puff of the silty sand. He glanced back to where he’d just been and saw another one embedded in the rock wall of the shelf.

  “Where are they coming from?” Treviri asked. His voice broke out of its typical monotone, panic edging in.

  “Somewhere around us,” Jay said. He tried using [Venom Shot] to cover the general direction; instead of it actually spraying, the poison gently leaked out and diluted into the water. He shut the spell down before it could get out of hand. It was a disappointing obstacle to the use of the spell, but he knew he should have seen that coming. His Health ticked down several points despite how quickly he’d cut the spell off.

  The twins, in unison, spoke up while he cancelled the spell. Both spoke as if their words were being torn from them, System resonance flooding the incantations.

  “Let the source of bloodlust be revealed,” Casaka chanted.

  “Lighten my steps to speed my march.” Vasiles matched his twin for cadence perfectly, both spells finishing at the same time.

  A blue aura spun up around the male twin’s feet as a pulse of silvery light swept out from his sister. The first stayed contained around the boots of the diving suit, but the second spread until it bent around seven points. The metallic light enveloped the figures that had stopped it, outlining the lizard-like creatures in the same color.

  All but one had a spear in each hand and a pair of others strapped to their backs. The last only had two: one on its back and the other held in both hands, pointed downward directly at Lethen. The big man’s eyes were wide already, as if he’d known it was coming but not from what direction.

  “Goblins,” Imni hissed.

  Lethen whipped around as the spear got within a few inches of him, batting it off its course by the shaft. He used the push to move himself closer to the group from where he’d drifted out after shoving Treviri.

  “Those are fucking real?” Jay asked. He didn’t know why he was that surprised, but he was shocked anyway.

  “Yes, they’re real,” Imni said. “And they’re colossal dicks.”

  “I think we all understood that,” Aghed replied. “You know, with the ambush and everything.”

  Imni’s gemstone eyes – appearing quite literally as if they were carved from emerald, despite moving as if they were normal flesh – flashed visibly as she spat out a spell. A gust of yellow magic shot from her hands and sank into the rock. Her hands thrust upwards and a pillar erupted from that section of rock, slamming into one of the goblins to the side. Its bulk didn’t seem to hurt the thing at all, just pushing it back.

  Did they have Classes too? Jay had no idea what Health’s protection looked like from outside.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jay saw Vasiles push off the ground to keep attacking that one, but his focus couldn’t stay on anyone else. The goblins were gliding forward, each choosing a target, and one was heading directly at him. He really shouldn’t have been surprised that they were as fast as they were; they looked like marine iguanas, so each beat of their tails carried them a good distance in a short period.

  As his attacker approached, Jay ran through his options briefly. The Crystalband couldn’t shift within the diving suit. A lot of his spells needed touch to work; he wasn’t sure if they’d count just touching his clothes.

  He cast [Touch of the Shroud], a twist of darkness wrapping around the thing’s shoulders that it didn’t seem to notice. His health ticked barely below half with the cast, then dropped further as the glow of [Wither] welled up in his palms. Jay spared one final thought for Agensyx, shooting him a quick mental message to let the spirit know just how useful he could have been if he wasn’t still off sulking.

  Then the goblin was on him. [Wither], thankfully, transferred through the diving suit, sapping away bits of the lizard-like creature’s protection with each direct hit. The almost one-to-one transfer was a bit odd, given the difference between lizard biology and Jay’s own, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially with how fast the spells were siphoning it away.

  Most of Jay’s strategy relied on lightly tapping the lizard on any of the flesh left exposed by its scraps of leather clothing. It wasn’t perfect, and he was drawing more on his memories of boxing movies than he probably should have been, but it was mostly working. For a while, he was even gaining more health than he was losing, which he attributed mostly to the replenishing effect of [Wither].

  He was just starting to think he might have been better at hand-to-hand fighting than he had thought when the first spear snapped. The goblin didn’t miss a beat as it pulled one of the others from its back and went back to trying to skewer Jay. A few minutes later, that one broke too, and the lizard pulled the second one from its back.

  That one broke soon enough too. It was down to one, though whether it was by some fluke of their construction or some function that was being overloaded Jay wasn’t sure. The single spear was harder to dodge; the goblin almost seemed like it was speeding up.

  Jay let [Wither] stop, replacing it with another cast of [Touch of the Shroud]. The two layers of [Siphoning Frost] combined were more than enough to make up for the lack of direct contact draining. He adjusted slowly to the new speed, but he did adjust. Not before his health dipped back below half again, unfortunately, but it happened.

  The communication enchantment that had been filled with grunts and spell incantations was suddenly overwhelmed by a scream. Jay reflexively looked around, trying to see who it came from. He didn’t see it at first through the dust everyone was kicking up, but for the briefest of seconds it cleared and he caught a glimpse. Lethen had a spear through his thigh.

  Jay’s own scream joined the bigger man’s as the single spear his opponent had left rammed its way through his stomach. The moment of distraction had been enough for it to cut though the remainder of his health. It was well and truly through him, he could feel the frigid water and the even colder length of the spear itself within him.

  The goblin’s face split into a toothy grin, the teeth themselves oversized and viciously ready to cut. It growled out a single word that Omnilinguist translated for him even through the water’s muting effect: “Meat.”