The Great Lake was clear enough to betray them.
From the broken wharf, the water had looked deep blue and almost perfectly calm. Out upon it, with the fishing settlement shrinking behind them, the color softened until they could see farther beneath the surface than Fendor considered reasonable.
The little island waited ahead and to the north.
It was hardly an island at all. A low rise of dark earth and stone interrupted the lake perhaps a mile from shore, large enough for a few trees and three upright shapes that might have been pillars, markers or totems. From this distance the objects were too small to identify, but they matched the dead woman’s directions.
That was enough.
Kaylor looked at the island.
Then at the fishing boat.
Then at the lake.
“I’m not getting in that.”
Fendor was already stepping aboard.
“You were just swimming in armor during the last fight.”
“I know.”
“And that improved your opinion of boats?”
“No.”
Kaylor called his mount.
The Peryton returned in a rush of feathers, antlers and irritation, appearing beside the wharf as though summoned from somewhere it had been enjoying considerably more than the Great Lake.
Kaylor climbed onto its back.
Fendor looked up.
“You realize that thing was nearly eaten the last time you used it.”
Kaylor settled into place.
“It wasn’t.”
“An excellent defense.”
Nethnarel rose on flaming wings.
“I’m flying too.”
Fendor looked toward Hexen.
“Please tell me you’re taking the boat.”
Hexen stepped aboard.
“I like boats.”
“Thank you.”
“Sometimes.”
Fendor sighed.
The fishing vessel was built for six and smelled as though six fishermen had spent years proving it. Nets lay coiled near the bow. Two long oars rested beside the gunwales. A small mast could carry a sail when the wind cooperated, though today the breeze was mild enough that rowing was simpler.
Fendor took one oar.
Hexen took the other.
Above them, Kaylor and Nethnarel moved ahead.
For several minutes, nothing happened.
That was suspicious.
The village slowly became a dark line behind them. The bone-roofed hall stood crooked over the ruined shoreline where Hexen’s earthquake had nearly rearranged the settlement into geological history. Smoke no longer rose from the collapsed buildings.
Ahead, the island grew.
The three markers became clearer.
Tall.
Narrow.
Placed with too much regularity to be natural.
Fendor glanced down.
The lake bottom remained invisible, but the water itself was extraordinarily clear. Sunlight reached far beneath them, illuminating drifting strands of weed and pale flashes of small fish.
Something moved.
He stopped rowing.
Hexen noticed.
“What?”
Fendor pointed.
A shadow crossed beneath the boat.
Too fast.
It vanished.
Then another appeared.
Not a shadow.
A creature.
It passed beneath them perhaps ten feet below the surface, moving with astonishing speed.
Fendor saw a broad fin.
Then a pale underside.
Then several shapes trailing from the body that moved like—
“Tentacles.”
Hexen looked down.
The creature turned.
Others followed it.
One.
Two.
Three.
More shapes came from deeper water.
All of them were changing direction.
Toward the boat.
Fendor looked upward.
“Kaylor.”
The dragonborn heard him.
The Peryton banked.
Nethnarel stopped advancing and hovered thirty feet above the lake.
“What?”
Fendor pointed down.
The clear water made the answer obvious.
Six creatures were racing toward them.
They had bodies built for speed, though Hexen could not decide what they resembled. Part fish. Part ray. Part something that had learned to swim by watching nightmares. Wide fins folded and opened along their sides. Several flexible appendages streamed behind or beneath them, trailing like the arms of an octopus.
Their mouths were harder to see.
Then one opened.
Teeth.
Fendor reached for his bow.
“Of course.”
Hexen set down his oar.
“They’re fast.”
Kaylor drew Peacemaker.
“They’re fish.”
Fendor stared upward.
“They have tentacles.”
“Still fish.”
“That is not how classification works.”
One of the creatures accelerated.
Nethnarel attacked before it reached them.
She remained above the water, fiery wings beating slowly behind her, and formed a shard of killing cold between her hands.
The Ice Knife fell.
It struck the surface like a thrown star.
Water erupted.
The magical blade punched into the creature below and burst apart in freezing force. For an instant the lake became a white circle beneath Nethnarel.
The creature twisted.
Blood darkened the water.
It did not turn away.
Nethnarel frowned.
“I expected that to work better.”
Fendor had the new Icy Burst bow in hand.
“You attacked a lake creature with ice.”
“It hurt it.”
“Not enough.”
“That sounds like encouragement.”
“It wasn’t.”
The first creature reached the boat.
It did not attack from below.
It leapt.
The lake exploded behind Fendor.
A finned body cleared the stern, trailing water from its tentacles. The thing passed entirely over the fishing vessel in one smooth arc.
Hexen ducked.
Two tentacles snapped toward him.
Both missed.
The mouth did not.
Teeth closed on Hexen’s shoulder.
Pain came first.
Then something colder.
Not the cold of Nethnarel’s spell.
The cold of sickness.
The creature released him as its momentum carried it over the opposite gunwale. It struck the lake and disappeared beneath the surface.
Hexen pressed one hand against the wound.
The flesh around the bite burned.
He had experienced poison.
Venom.
Curses.
Diseases ordinary and magical.
This felt different.
Something had entered him.
Not merely infection.
A corruption that seemed to move outward from the bite as though searching for places inside him where it might become comfortable.
Fendor saw his expression.
“What?”
Hexen looked at the blood on his hand.
“I’m sick.”
Fendor glanced toward the creature already turning beneath the boat.
“From one bite?”
“Apparently.”
“That seems rude.”
The second creature struck.
Fendor abandoned the deck.
Magic caught beneath his boots as he stepped over the gunwale and onto the surface of the Great Lake.
The water held him.
He did not pause to question the enchantment.
He ran.
Behind him, the creature emerged exactly where he had been standing.
Its tentacles lashed empty air.
Fendor turned on the water and fired.
The first arrow struck a fin.
The second entered the creature’s side.
The third vanished through the spray as it crashed down again.
Kaylor drove the Peryton lower.
He waited until the next dark shape passed beneath him.
Then dropped.
Peacemaker struck the water first.
The black blade entered the lake with enough force to send a shining plume around Kaylor’s arm. He felt steel connect with something solid beneath.
The creature twisted.
Kaylor pulled the sword free.
It turned upward.
“Good.”
Fendor heard him.
“Why is that good?”
“It’s coming back.”
“That was the part I understood.”
The thing erupted beneath Kaylor.
Tentacles struck the Peryton.
One wrapped briefly around a wing.
Another snapped across its chest.
The mount screamed.
Kaylor cut through the nearest limb.
The creature bit for him and missed.
The Peryton beat its wings desperately.
Then another lake creature came from the opposite side.
Kaylor looked down.
“That’s more fish.”
Fendor loosed another arrow.
“Excellent classification.”
The battle spread around them.
Nothing stayed still.
The creatures used the lake as if the heroes were standing in open sky. They dove beyond reach, accelerated beneath the surface, then came upward in sudden bursts. Some passed completely over the boat. Others struck from below with tentacles before turning their jaws toward whatever they could catch.
Hexen moved to the stern.
Another creature came for him.
He waited.
The mouth opened.
Hexen stepped sideways.
The first tentacle missed.
He caught the second.
For half a heartbeat druid and lake creature were connected.
The thing pulled.
Hexen nearly went overboard.
He tightened his grip.
“Bad idea.”
The creature surged.
Hexen released it before the boat went with him.
Fendor shot it from behind.
Nethnarel remained above the chaos.
Thirty feet gave her enough distance to see the pattern.
Six creatures.
Boat at center.
Fendor standing impossibly upon the surface to one side.
Kaylor circling overhead on the Peryton.
Hexen trying not to be eaten.
She smiled.
This was manageable.
Magic gathered around her.
Small burning masses appeared.
Not ordinary flame.
Condensed magical force wrapped in heat, small enough to fit within her hands and violent enough that the air trembled around them.
She split the attack.
One meteor-like burst went toward the creature beside Fendor.
Another struck the one circling below Hexen’s boat.
Both exploded.
The lake flashed orange.
Steam rose.
Wild magic moved through Nethnarel.
She felt it before she understood it.
The familiar instability crawled along the edges of the spell, searching for somewhere else to go.
Something in the air changed.
Hexen suddenly became lighter.
He looked down.
His feet were no longer entirely touching the boat.
Fendor saw him rise several inches.
“Did you mean to do that?”
Nethnarel looked at her hands.
“No.”
“Good.”
Hexen floated slightly higher.
“This is inconvenient.”
“You can fly.”
“I’m on a boat.”
Nethnarel shrugged.
“You’re welcome.”
The creatures came again.
Hexen stopped worrying about flying.
He raised one hand.
The Great Lake became fire.
Not all of it.
Enough.
Flames appeared across the water in great blocks, each section placed with the deliberate precision of a man arranging stones in a wall.
Except the stones burned.
One cube of flame erupted beside the boat.
Another appeared farther north.
Then another.
And another.
Hexen built the Fire Storm across the battlefield without touching the fishing vessel, shaping the magic around his friends and through the paths the creatures were using beneath the surface.
The effect was enormous.
For several seconds the Great Lake appeared to burn.
The first creature swam into one wall of flame and emerged trailing steam.
A second tried to dive beneath another section and discovered that magical fire cared little about the ordinary behavior of flame upon water.
Two more were caught as Hexen shifted the pattern.
Fendor looked across the burning lake.
“You complained about my bow being cold.”
“I did not.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I’m currently diseased. Give me a moment.”
The fire hammered all six creatures.
Water boiled around them.
Several turned.
None escaped the entire storm.
Nethnarel hovered above the conflagration, her own firelit wings almost disappearing against Hexen’s spell.
“That,” she said, “was better.”
Hexen smiled.
The smile vanished when another creature leapt through the flames.
It struck the Peryton.
Both tentacles landed.
Kaylor heard the impact before he understood what had happened.
The mount jerked violently beneath him.
Magic failed.
The Peryton vanished.
One instant Kaylor was flying above the Great Lake.
The next he was not.
He fell.
Fendor saw him drop.
“Oh.”
Kaylor hit the water in full armor.
The splash was impressive.
He disappeared.
For several seconds there was no dragonborn.
Only bubbles.
Fendor lowered the bow.
“Kaylor?”
A scaled hand broke the surface.
Then Kaylor’s head.
He inhaled.
“I’m fine.”
Fendor stared.
“You’re swimming in plate.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Kaylor began moving toward the nearest creature.
Fendor stopped asking questions.
The lake beasts had survived Hexen’s storm, but badly.
Burn marks blackened fins.
Several moved more slowly.
One no longer dove cleanly and instead listed near the surface.
The heroes exploited it immediately.
Fendor fired.
The arrow struck.
Nethnarel followed.
The creature convulsed.
Hexen sent magic across the water.
It stopped moving.
“One,” Fendor said.
Kaylor was still swimming.
“One what?”
“Dead.”
“Good.”
Another creature came at Fendor.
He remained on the water.
The thing circled below him.
Fendor watched the shadow.
It accelerated.
He stepped sideways.
The jaws erupted exactly where his ankle had been.
The creature’s tentacles whipped outward.
One struck him across the leg.
The second missed.
The mouth turned.
Teeth found his side.
Fendor grunted.
Cold sickness tried to enter.
For one unpleasant moment he felt the same strange contamination Hexen had described pressing against him.
Then his body rejected it.
He ripped himself free.
“No.”
The creature submerged.
Fendor fired into its back.
Hexen looked over from the boat.
“You all right?”
“I’m not diseased.”
“Congratulations.”
“How does yours feel?”
“Bad.”
“Less congratulations.”
Another attack came for Kaylor.
He saw the creature beneath the water.
Barely.
The mouth opened.
Kaylor tried to move.
Swimming and armor disagreed about how quickly that should happen.
The jaws closed—
and failed to find purchase against his defenses.
Kaylor swung Peacemaker underwater.
The blow was slow but enormously strong.
The blade struck the creature across the jaw and forced its head away.
The thing circled.
Bit again.
This time teeth scraped between armor plates.
Kaylor felt the same foulness Hexen had described.
It reached for him.
Found nothing.
Disease had no claim upon him.
Whatever remained of the divine protection built into the paladin he had once been still recognized this kind of enemy.
Kaylor grinned.
“Try something else.”
The creature, disappointingly, did.
A tentacle wrapped around his arm.
Another found his waist.
Kaylor went underwater again.
Fendor watched the bubbles.
“Still fine?”
Kaylor did not answer.
“Taking that as yes.”
Nethnarel targeted two more creatures.
Sorcery split around her hands.
Two magical attacks crossed the battlefield at once.
One creature twisted aside.
The second took the full force.
The explosion threw it partly from the water.
Fendor shot it before it landed.
The creature hit the lake dead.
“Two.”
Nethnarel looked toward him.
“Mine.”
“I finished it.”
“You shot it after I nearly destroyed it.”
“That is what finishing means.”
Somewhere beneath them, Kaylor was still having a separate argument with the lake.
The boat lurched.
Hexen grabbed the mast.
A creature had struck from below.
Its head appeared beside him.
Tentacles slapped across the gunwale.
The jaws came next.
Hexen moved.
The bite missed.
Another creature hit the opposite side.
The fishing vessel rocked hard enough that one oar fell into the lake.
Hexen stared at it.
“That was our oar.”
Fendor called back.
“You have another.”
“That is not the point.”
A tentacle snapped toward him.
Hexen ducked.
Fendor put an arrow through the creature’s eye.
It disappeared beneath the surface.
“Better?”
“A little.”
The Great Lake had become smoke, steam and blood.
Hexen’s Fire Storm faded, leaving patches of water still boiling.
Nethnarel’s wings illuminated the haze from above.
Fendor moved over the surface beneath her.
Kaylor finally broke free of the creature dragging him under.
He surfaced beside the boat.
His armor streamed water.
His eyes found the island.
Closer now.
Not close enough.
He could not swim there before the creatures came again.
Kaylor vanished.
Misty Step tore him out of the lake.
He reappeared near the boat in a shimmer of magic, close enough that the creature climbing across the gunwale became the first thing he saw.
Peacemaker came around.
The black blade struck.
The thing fell back into the water.
Kaylor stepped onto something solid enough to support him and attacked again before it could dive.
Fendor glanced over.
“That was more efficient.”
“I was getting tired of swimming.”
“Finally.”
They were winning.
Not quickly.
Not cleanly.
But the rhythm had changed.
At first the lake creatures had controlled everything. They possessed the water, the speed and surprise.
Now the heroes knew them.
Fendor anticipated where the shadows would rise.
Nethnarel struck before they completed their leaps.
Hexen placed magic along the routes they used to circle.
Kaylor refused to remain disadvantaged by the lake simply because reality insisted he should.
One beast came for Fendor and died before touching him.
Another fled beneath the boat and surfaced into Hexen’s magic.
A third tried to drag Kaylor back into the water.
It regretted the attempt.
Four remained.
Then three.
The exact count mattered less than the growing patches of dark blood drifting through the lake.
Hexen felt the disease inside him every time his heart accelerated.
Something wrong traveled with his blood.
Later.
He would deal with it later.
Right now something with tentacles was trying to bite Fendor.
Hexen attacked.
The thing twisted.
Fendor finished it.
“Three,” he said.
Hexen looked at him.
“Stop counting.”
“No.”
The water beneath the boat darkened.
At first none of them noticed.
There had been too many shadows already.
Then Nethnarel did.
She was highest.
She saw the shape before the others could understand the change beneath them.
The surviving finned creatures scattered.
Not retreated from the heroes.
Scattered.
One turned so sharply that it nearly broke the surface.
Another dove.
A third vanished toward deeper water.
Nethnarel stopped casting.
“Why are they leaving?”
Fendor looked around.
“I choose to believe they’ve developed judgment.”
“No.”
Hexen felt it.
The lake itself moved.
Not current.
Weight.
Something displaced an impossible volume of water below them.
A shape passed under the fishing boat.
Not six feet long.
Not twenty.
Enormous.
The boat lifted.
Fendor’s boots rose with the swelling surface.
Kaylor turned.
“What was that?”
Hexen stared into the clear water.
For the first time since they left shore, he could not see the bottom of the shadow.
“I don’t know.”
The lake rose.
A broad dome broke the surface.
Stone.
Fendor thought it was stone.
Then the dome moved.
Water poured from ridges taller than a man.
Green-black armor emerged beneath.
A shell.
Kaylor looked upward.
And upward.
The head appeared last.
Reptilian.
Ancient.
Heavy jaws opened beneath a crown of horns and scales. Steam rolled between the teeth.
The creature’s eyes opened.
It was not a sea serpent.
Not a fish.
Not any ordinary turtle.
It was a dragon that had accepted the shape of the lake.
The enormous head turned toward the heroes.
Fendor lowered his bow slightly.
“No.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“No what?”
“No.”
Nethnarel hovered above them.
“I believe that’s a dragon turtle.”
Hexen watched the shell continue rising.
“Large one.”
Fendor stared.
“Were you concerned we might mistake it for a small one?”
The dragon turtle inhaled.
Steam gathered inside its jaws.
Every hero moved.
The breath struck the lake.
Boiling vapor erased the world.
Fendor threw himself sideways.
Hexen disappeared behind the boat.
Kaylor went into the water again.
Nethnarel climbed.
The fishing vessel vanished inside white steam.
The lake screamed.
Water boiled.
When the cloud opened, part of the boat was gone.
Not broken.
Gone.
Fendor surfaced twenty feet away, still held by the magic that refused to let him sink once his feet found the surface again.
He coughed.
“I liked the fish.”
Kaylor came up beside a floating piece of the boat.
“So did I.”
The dragon turtle surged forward.
The scale of it changed the battle.
The smaller creatures had attacked like wolves.
This thing attacked like weather.
Its head alone was large enough to overturn what remained of the vessel. One claw broke the surface, struck down and sent debris spinning.
Hexen barely avoided it.
Nethnarel attacked from above.
Magic struck the shell.
The spell exploded.
The turtle seemed to notice mostly because the light was irritating.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
Not the Icy Burst bow.
This was not prey for experimentation.
He named the creature.
The old enchantment accepted the oath.
Fendor fired.
The arrow struck the softer flesh where neck met shell.
The dragon turtle turned toward him.
Fendor immediately regretted becoming interesting.
“Good news.”
Kaylor swam toward the monster.
“What?”
“It noticed me.”
“That’s good?”
“No.”
Kaylor reached the shell.
He climbed.
The turtle shifted beneath him.
For a moment the dragonborn stood on the back of a moving island.
Peacemaker came down.
The blade struck between ridges.
Black magic and steel flashed together.
The turtle roared.
Its body rolled.
Kaylor disappeared into the lake.
Fendor stared.
“Why does he keep doing that?”
Hexen looked toward the place where Kaylor had vanished.
“Consistency.”
Nethnarel descended.
Flame surrounded her.
She attacked the exposed neck.
The turtle snapped.
Its jaws closed beneath her feet.
She climbed away.
Barely.
“Too close.”
Fendor fired again.
“Excellent scouting.”
“Do not start.”
The dragon turtle inhaled.
Hexen recognized it.
“Move!”
Steam came again.
This time the heroes were ready.
Mostly.
Fendor ran across the water.
Nethnarel climbed.
Hexen dove.
Kaylor remained underwater, which for once was exactly the correct place to be.
The blast struck the surface and transformed an entire stretch of the Great Lake into white fury.
When the steam cleared, the dragon turtle remained.
So did the heroes.
That seemed to annoy it.
The battle continued.
Later, none of them would remember every exchange.
Only pieces.
Fendor’s arrows vanishing into folds of scaled flesh.
Kaylor climbing the shell again because the first attempt had apparently not supplied enough evidence.
Nethnarel drawing fire across the creature’s neck while wild magic flickered dangerously around her.
Hexen fighting with the disease still burning through him, calling upon the lake and the life around it against something that seemed older than the shoreline.
The monster dove.
Rose.
Struck.
Breathed boiling death.
They answered.
Again.
Again.
The Great Lake became too large for a battlefield and too small for the creature occupying it.
Eventually even legends become tired.
So do monsters.
The final moments were not clean.
There was no single perfect arrow.
No great beheading.
No strike that allowed one of them to claim the victory while the others complained.
The dragon turtle’s head sank beneath the surface.
Its shell followed.
Dark water closed over the ridges.
For a time they could still see the enormous shape below.
Then deeper water swallowed it.
The heroes waited.
Fendor kept the Oathbow drawn.
Nethnarel remained aloft.
Kaylor floated beside a piece of the ruined fishing boat.
Hexen listened.
The turtle did not return.
Whether it had died somewhere beneath them or simply decided that four Heroes of Oxland were an unreasonable meal, the Great Lake offered no answer.
Fendor lowered the bow first.
“Are we counting that?”
Kaylor looked at him.
“As what?”
“A victory.”
“We’re alive.”
“That is a low standard.”
Hexen touched the bite in his shoulder.
Pain answered.
“Not low enough.”
Nethnarel descended until her boots nearly touched the water.
She looked toward Hexen.
“You’re still sick.”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
Hexen considered the question.
He could still feel the disease.
Whatever the lake creature’s teeth had put inside him had not disappeared when the creatures did.
“Bad enough.”
Kaylor looked at the ruined boat.
Then at the tiny island.
Then back toward the distant fishing settlement.
“We should deal with that.”
Fendor nodded toward Hexen.
“Before we investigate more cursed islands.”
Kaylor looked disappointed.
“There may be something on it.”
“There is always something on it.”
“Exactly.”
“That was not support.”
Hexen stared toward the island.
The three old markers stood there in the afternoon light.
Silent.
Unexplained.
Perhaps the dead woman had been using them.
Perhaps whatever she had tried to summon had been connected to them.
Perhaps the Dragon Turtle had been the thing she called.
Perhaps none of those ideas were true.
They had evidence for danger.
They did not yet have an answer.
For the moment, survival was enough.
They gathered around what remained of the boat.
Kaylor found a section capable of floating.
Fendor objected to calling it a vessel.
Nethnarel remained airborne.
Hexen kept one hand over the wound in his shoulder.
Behind them, the Great Lake grew calm again with astonishing speed.
That felt insulting.
No sign remained of the enormous creature beneath the water.
Only broken timber.
Blood.
Steam fading into the afternoon.
And four heroes who had traveled to the lake because nature had whispered that something was wrong.
Nature had been correct.
It had simply neglected to mention the size.