6:5
“That is a tower,” Gwen declared, straddling the ground like it was going to go somewhere and planting her hands on her hips, all Paul Bunyon with Plunger. And looking up – way up – at the tower on the top of a small plateau, situated above a dark lake on which the full moon’s reflection rippled like a poetic verse. Or something.
You had to give it to the new guy. He pretty much stuck the landing on this thing. Rang the bell. Put his money where his mouth was. Pick your own phrase there.
“That is a… big tower,” Patti agreed.
“Peep!” Sass probably agreed. Or had to pee. Patti still hadn’t nailed down that whole “communicating with animals thing”. Or the “communicating with Magickal Animals thing” which seemed somehow bigger and yet felt like it should be easier than it was proving to be. The mouse had picked her. At least she was pretty sure the mouse had picked her. Anyways, you’d think said mouse would try to communicate with her, but no. Why make things easy on Patti, huh?
“With zero entry points – except that one.” Ben pointed way up to the top of the tower, which had to be, oh around seven stories high. So high, in fact, that clouds wreathed the top floor, partially obscuring the small window Ben was staring at.
Ivan looked to Dan. “Can you shoot a bolt that high?”
“No.”
“What if Kim put some wind behind it?”
“No.”
At Ivan’s sharp look Dan elaborated. “Put a wind behind a bolt and it will go off course. Probably. No,” he eyed the distance to the window, “Definitely.”
“Plus,” Kim shrugged, “No way I’m that accurate. Not with something small as a bolt. I barely manage to direct a wind under a person and that’s much more bulk.”
Siobhan tapped her chin with one finger, running an assessing gaze over the tower. “Then there has to be another way in.”
“Yeah, Magick.” Ben made a big ‘bibbidi bobbidi’ gesture with his hands.
Dan nodded. “We know our opponents can do some form of teleportation.”
“We do?” Dempsey made an aside to Patti who in turn shrugged. He pitched his voice to carry to the front of the group, “Our opponents can teleport?”
Dan nodded. “We’ve seen them do it. Or something so close it’s the same thing.”
Dempsey lifted his brows. “Well, that levels an extra level of difficulty to this.”
“More like three,” Patti countered. Sass ‘peeped’ and Patti added, “Explains how someone got into Nona’s place without being seen or stopped.”
“Also explains how Siobhan was taken,” Ben said. When Siobhan stiffened, he added, “Sorry, Siobhan. But facts.”
Siobhan rolled her lips and nodded. “Facts.” She drew a breath through her nostrils, then ticked off on her fingers. “I entered the foyer on Leo’s. I did not enter the pub proper. There is no exit besides the entry I entered and the door into Leo’s. Therefore, something else had to happen for me to disappear between the two doors. Could be teleport, shadow-walk, or possibly mirror-travel since the entry is lined with mirrors on one side. We can’t be certain which it is but can be certain that some form of Magick was used to enter and exit by abnormal means. But,” she turned to Dempsey and Patti, “Dan and Ivan witnessed the person they were chasing at the warehouse we found Nieve at appear to create a tear in the sky through which another location could be seen, then travel through it and close it behind them. So, we’re assuming some form of teleportation.”
“Never heard of anything like that.” Dempsey said. “Did they use a Magick item?”
Dan shook his head. “Uncertain. We were behind them and didn’t see what device or Magick they used to create the rift. It could have been an object. Or it could have been a ritual that they’d prepared in advance. Or it could be some form of Magick we’ve never encountered. Considering the weird Magicks we *have* run into up to now in this investigation I’m leaning towards that.”
“Do you have anyone looking into that angle?”
“No. It didn’t occur to me that it was relevant. Why, do you think it is?”
Dempsey shrugged. “Not sure. But it might be worth looking into. Maybe if you figure out how this weird thing works you might get to the root of the Magick that is making the other weird things work.”
Dan made a hum of interest, working his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Don’t have the connections to make that work.”
“I do.”
Dan’s look was calculating, a visual commentary on Dempsey’s character and the possibility someone of that character would do anything without some payout for themselves. Given who is brother was he always came at these kinds of things from that angle.
Carl’d help, for sure, if there was a payout at the end for him. Or if it amused him. Or if it might lead to dicking someone else over. It was a real crapshoot which side Carl would fall on in any situation and Dan had to consider that Dempsey might be of the same ilk. So, was it immediate benefit to Dempsey, eventual benefit in some bad befalling a competitor, or was it just that Dempsey needed a good, dark laugh that was leading to this implied offer?
“And you’ll do this out of the goodness of your heart?”
Dempsey gave a tiny little shrug. “I’ll do it because I want to.”
Ivan grunted. “Best we’ll get, I guess.”
“Maybe focus a little more on getting into that tower and a little less on getting into my business?”
“Oooh,” Kim pressed her fist to her mouth. “He has you there, Ivan!”
Ivan shot Kim a look. “Hush, you!”
This only made her chortle more. Ivan rolled his eyes and set his mind to the tower. Not as Dempsey suggested. Just, it was there. And they needed to get in.
Ivan started around the tower, looking high. Prairie followed behind him, looking low. Siobhan did the same in the other direction with Ben taking the high position. Meanwhile Kim sat down and started to systematically count the stones the tower was built out of. They were irregular, field-stone type that stacked together in a similar manner to a stone-wall, with some type of mortar between, and through counting them she was able to spread her attention wide enough to take in the entire mosaic and look for patterns.
Dempsey sidled up to Gwen. “What’s she doing?”
Gwen wrinkled her nose. “Sitting.”
“Okay. And?”
“Genius mathing? I don’t know. That isn’t what I do.”
“What do you do?”
Gwen turned and gave Dempsey her full attention. “Question shady people?”
Dempsey rolled his eyes. “Established. So, what are *they* doing?”
“Looking for a hidden entrance. D’uh.”
Patti plopped herself down next to Kim and stared at the wall too. Dempsey followed the movement. “And her?”
Gwen shrugged. “No damned clue. Something bardy?”
“Bardy?”
Gwen just rolled her eyes then stomped over to the tower where she proceeded to fall on her knees and begin to examine where the stones met the ground.
“Your friends are insane,” Dempsey muttered as Dan wandered over to stand next to him. Dan cocked a crossbow and nodded. “Yep.” He worked the toothpick then said, “But they get stuff done.”
Dan stared at the tower. Dempsey stared at the tower. As time passed Dempsey shifted his stance, then Dan did the same. Dan scanned the area around the tower with his gaze. No signs of danger. And time passed. Slowly. Dempsey scratched his arm. “Does it usually take this long?”
“Yep.”
“What do you do to ease the boredom?”
“Baseball stats.”
“Uh huh.”
Dempsey made clicking noises with his tongue. Dan scanned the area with his gaze again.
“Yup,” Dempsey said.
“Yep.” Dan echoed, working his toothpick with his tongue.
“Ever run into a situation where it wasn’t some Scooby Doo Mystery entrance hidden beneath fake moss or shit?”
“Nope. It’s pretty much ‘hello, door’ or we have to figure out where the door is. And then we have to figure out how to open it.”
“This the kind of stuff that blows your skirt up?”
“Nah.” Dan shrugged. “I’m an investigator. Mostly things don’t fall into my lap. I have to do a lot of tedious tasks to get results.”
“Maybe they’re overthinking it?”
“How so?”
“Could be that there is no entrance to the tower.”
“There’s a window and your card trick said our target is in there. So, there has to be an entrance.”
“But,” Dempsey’s smile turned cunning and he shifted to look down the hill, “it doesn’t have to be an entrance to the tower.”
Dan looked at him all intent like.
“The cards referenced the mountain, the trees, and the lake as well as the tower. Could be there was a reason for that.”
“The lake and the mountain are what helped us find the place.”
“Yes. But there’s almost always more to the cards.”
“Well, damn, son, why didn’t you say that?”
Dempsey cocked his head, his expression thoughtful. “I thought I did.”
“Ivan!” Dan called loudly towards the tower.
“Yeah?” Ivan’s voice came from around the side.
“Dempsey and I are going to go check out the area. He has an idea that the entrance to the tower may not be in the tower.”
Gwen turned and looked at them. “Why?”
“Because I’ve just watched your entire group do the equivalent of a simultaneous ass scratch and come up with nothing?”
Gwen braced her hand on the ground to push herself up to a stand. She dusted the butt of her pants off with her hand then looked at Kim and Patti. “I’m going to go off with Dempsey and Dan. If we die-”
“You’ll die with us.” Kim said, cutting off Gwen. With a clear effort she focused, shaking off the fugue state she got to when hyper-focusing on minutiae. “He’s right. I think we are barking up the wrong tree in looking for an entry point. Or the wrong tower.” Kim nudged Patti who had curled up on her side and fallen asleep. “Patti, want to take a walk?”
Patti flapped her hands in Kim’s direction. “Five more minutes, Mom!”
“We could leave you here. I’m sure your mouse will fend off any predators.”
That seemed to clear the fog from Patti’s mind. She cracked an eye open and glowered at Kim. “I’ll flinkin’ garble blarg.” She blew a raspberry then spit. “Bug!”
Kim reached down and offered Patti her hand, tugging her up to her feet where she wobbled for a moment before cracking a huge yawn. “All this country air is not good for my City Woman constitution.”
“I hear that.” Gwen picked a pine needle from her hair and threw it on the ground.
“If you ladies are done grooming yourselves, we’re going down the hill,” Dempsey said, jerking his head in that direction before putting actions to words.
Gwen frowned after him. “He really puts the ass in class.”
“Seriously,” Kim asked, “what do you have against him?”
Gwen shrugged. “I just get a bad feeling off of him.”
“Did you have cheese fries for lunch again?”
“What’s with cheese fries?” Patti asked, clearly not in on the joke.
“Cheese fries make Gwen see God. I mean, there are other things that make Gwen see god,” air-quotes, “but that’s not a conversation for polite company.”
“Polite company? Well, la di freaking da!” Gwen said then snickered and shook her head. Kim mouthed ‘cheese fries’ to Patti and started off in the direction Dan and Dempsey had gone with Patti and Gwen close behind.
“Anyone got a light?” Patti asked after she tripped over her second root.
“Uh,” Kim rolled her eyes and grinned. “Always?”
She made a flicking motion with her fingers as she rotated her hand on her wrist and a tumbleweed of fire formed in her palm. Patti smiled.
“I may never get used to that.”
“It does come in handy.” Kim grinned and gestured after the men who were already a short distance ahead of she, Patti, and Gwen.
Gwen stopped and stared at the water below. “Hey, Kim, damp the light?”
“Sure.” Kim pulled back on the fire, making the ball much smaller, “Better?”
Gwen nodded and squinted through the trees to where the dark lake nestled at the bottom of the hill.
“What you looking for?” Patti asked, stepping up next to Gwen to squint in the same direction.
“I thought I saw somethin-” Gwen stopped mid-word then said, “Ha! There!”
Patti looked at the spot Gwen pointed to. “I don’t-”
“Peep!” Sass ‘said’, leaning out the window of its house to poke its nose pointedly in the same direction.
Kim pulled the fire into a tight ball and closed her fist over it so the only light was a red, pink emanation making her skin glow along the edges of her fingers. “What is it?”
“There,” Gwen wobbled her finger left to right, “where the moon reflects on the water. See?”
“Not really. Maybe we should get a little closer?”
Opening her fist until the fire sat in a cage of her fingers and gave them subtle illumination which likely wouldn’t kill their night vision – likely – Kim started down the side of the hill with her hand held close to her side. She pointed out twigs and roots that could catch Patti and Gwen’s feet as she moved over the pine needles carpeting the ground.
About twenty-five feet from the water’s edge she drew to a stop. “I think you’re right. There’s something that just broke the moon’s reflection.”
Patti and Gwen peered at the water.
“Could be a beaver,” Patti shrugged. “Probably lives along the water’s edge.”
“But where is it coming from?” Gwen whispered.
“The water’s edge?”
Gwen, who had a slightly different angle on the water, pointed. “It came directly out of the side of the lake.”
“The shadows are probably playing tricks on your eyes.”
The little house on Patti’s belt swung wildly as Sass scampered over the window and dropped to the ground. “Sass!” Patti swung to try to catch the mouse but it was too late. Sass was already on the ground and darting for the water’s edge. Patti didn’t think twice before darting after the mouse, leaving Gwen and Kim to follow or not. Which, of course they did. Follow that was.
Sass ran right up where the reflection of the moon broke against the shore, then ran a few steps farther and disappeared. Patti cried out, “Sass!” and stumbled to the water’s edge in time to see Sass pop its head out of a tangle of twigs that had drifted up against the shore.
Patti crouched and held out her hand so Sass could scramble into her palm. “Ugh. Wet mouse.”
Sass shook itself hard, spraying water liberally over Patti. Patti gave it a look. Sass looked right back, then honest to Magick, smiled.
“Son of a biscuit! How can I resist that face?” Patti grumbled.
Sass’s response was to deepen the smile, scrunching its little mouse nose up and making Patti’s heart melt.
“Oh. You are too cute.”
“Also, smart.” Kim had crouched at the water’s edge and was poking at the twigs Sass had emerged from. “There’s more lake here. It appears to go underground.”
“Well, crap,” Gwen declared. “I’ll go get Dan.”
Kim lofted her brows. “And Dempsey?”
“I guess he can tag along.”
Patti tucked Sass back into its house and stood up. “I’ll go back to the tower and get the others. They probably don’t need to search anymore.”
Kim picked up a stick from the edge of the lake, cocked her wrist at an angle, and prodded backwards into the concealed opening that was almost at the same level as the water. “Probably not. We could be wrong, but I’d hate for half of us to explore this and then have to backtrack to get the others if it is the way in.”
Patti hurried up the hill and collected Siobhan, Ivan, Prairie, and Ben while Gwen wandered off along the hill to grab Dan and Dempsey. They couldn’t have been gone more than five minutes. Maybe eight. No time at all, really, unless you were Kim who got attacked about two minutes into her solitude.
At first it didn’t seem like an attack. When Patti and Gwen went off to collect the others Kim kept poking her stick into the concealed opening. It was an awkward thing with the opening being, basically, directly right under her body, but she managed it by crawling along the edge of the water with her arm protruding above the surface of the lake and her wrist cocked back so the stick jutted back at a roughly forty-five degrees angle. In this way she measured the potential opening they’d have to enter. In doing so she also kept her mind from considering that they would, in fact, have to enter the very small and probably almost entirely underwater opening to what might be a small and almost certainly underwater cave.
There was a reason Earth was her weakest element. The shit scared her. Not in a ‘oh, no, I might get sand in my shoe’ or ‘Lordy, lordy, I wonder what’s in that mud’ kind of way. That was, like, ridiculous. But the chance that the earth could open up under her and swallow her whole…? Oh yes that shit scared her.
She’d seen a sinkhole when she was younger that had dropped half a house into it. Half a house. Just gone. Sheared off and into a preternatural grave with the other half just standing like it was a dollhouse that’s front hinged forward to display the furniture and occupants within. And for months afterwards she’d wake from night terrors, those awful things you can’t remember as anything except something that shot your pulse through the roof and threatened to give you an aneurism from sheer unadulterated fear. She couldn’t remember what was in the dream, but they hadn’t started until she saw that maw of earth gulp down a street and a house. They said there were cars in there. And a truck. And she needed to stop there because the hairs on the back of her neck were threatening to leave her skin.
Shortly after seeing the sinkhole her family had gone to a funhouse. She’d been having a great time until she crawled into a tunnel which got narrower and narrower. And then she’d just collapsed, pretty much catatonic, and had to be pulled out by her ankles by her dad.
Since then she was not good in small spaces. The thought of being buried alive was- Yeah, she’d probably die of a heart attack long before the air run out in that situation. So, the thought of going into a hole in the ground, again probably a flooded hole in the ground, was pinging her defenses. Hence the careful measuring of the hole with the stick. And the counting she was doing under her breath as she guesstimated the length of the opening.
“Two feet. Two feet and six inches. Three fee-”
Something grabbed onto the stick and yanked, hard enough she toppled sideways and fell into the water. Then whatever it was that had grabbed her stick, like freaking IT in the storm drain, pulled and she went skidding along the slimy lakebed towards the hole. With a shout she released the stick and scrambled to her feet. The slime on the lakebed caused her feet to shoot out from under her, landing her squish on her ass in what was probably a fish nest. Hand in muck, she pushed up to a crouch and then her feet just in time to see a Giant Rat come scurrying out of the concealed opening.
It needed the capitals. Giant. Rat. Yes, she’d seen rats before. Yes, she’d fought rats before. Yes, she’d seen that movie (which was really well done and a credit to the genre). But that had been *fiction*.
The thing that emerged from the hole was something out of her nightmares and would now be added to her revulsion for dark holes in the ground. It had to be, at a guess (which admittedly she was scrambling through dark water on a dark night with a full moon’s light making shadows where none should be and stretching perspective in weird ways) three feet long. She made this guess because her leg was three feet long and that thing had to be *at least* the length of her leg. And she wasn’t even factoring in the tail which hadn’t slithered free of the hole yet.
She’d told Ben she had no problems with mice. Because she didn’t. But this thing was no mouse. This thing had teeth like daggers. No. No. Not like daggers. Like stakes, the kind that dispatched vampires, because the surfaces of the teeth were flat and broad but the bases were sharp enough they’d get the job done but boy would it hurt when those things broke the skin. Kim did not even want to think about the basic strength of jaws that…
Nope. Done. Not even going to consider the math on that.
All of this played through her mind as she Looney Tunes ran on water to get out of the lake. The rat-thing followed her. As it came up on the land after her its toes spread and she could see its feet were webbed. Not a mouse! Not a mouse! Probably not even a rat. This thing was… Echidna could claim this thing as a child.
And it apparently was not alone. Several more rat-thing heads popped out of the water which surged like a tide as large rodent bodies broke the surface and came boiling towards the land.
Motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker. Kim stumbled back, almost falling over her feet as the first water-rat-thing came galloping towards her. Its gait was odd, like feet made for paddling in water did less well on land, and it was that which allowed her to gain enough distance to react with something other than abject squick.
It wasn’t just that fire was her fallback – though fire was her fallback – but logic saying “fight water with fire” that had her pulling heat. She didn’t form a fireball or a flame, she just yanked heat from the air around her. The water on the rat-thing’s fur turned to ice as Kim sucked the ambient heat from the air.
So great was her panic, and therefore the surge of her Magick, that the water particles separated to form a fog around the rat-thing’s body. The fog swirled, thickened, became ice which hardened into a shell around the creature from one blink to the next. Then that shell thickened as the water from the air touching it adhered to it. Each individual whisker on its blunt muzzle froze, springing out like antennae.
If the rat-thing hadn’t been dripping water when it emerged from the lake the effect might not have worked. But it had been. And it did.
In less than ten seconds the creature was encased in a shell of ice thick enough to stop it dead less than three feet from Kim. She could tell it wasn’t dead – just stopped dead – because its eyes darted inside its ice tomb. Like Snow-freaking-White; her brain insisted on making the analogy.
Thanks, brain!
Something about the desperation in those eyes tweaked Kim’s conscience. With a small effort of Will she cleared the ice from around the thing’s nose so it could breath. Instinct had made her freeze it, but there wasn’t any *clear* evidence it had been attacking her. It felt wrong to let it suffocate in an ice tomb. Not so wrong she was letting it *go* because it still gave her the heebies, but she didn’t want it to suffocate.
The fog of ice did not stop at the single creature, but instead flowed out in a vaguely cone-shape from where the first rat stood frozen to encompass a good six feet of the lake’s edge. It caught the other creatures that had begun to emerge from the water, flowing over them and leaving ice sculptures with living cores in its wake. The fog probably only carried out about eight feet from the water’s edge before the water in it was reclaimed by the lake, but that was enough to catch three additional creatures within individual circles of ice like mega-creepy icebergs. Another application of Will and these creatures could breathe but not move.
The ice cloud flowed over Kim but instead of hardening it evaporated beneath the nimbus of heat surrounding her, rising as steam that painted the surrounds as a surreal landscape and made the statues that had moments before been creatures waver and dance. She was just pressing her hand to her mouth and muttering “I think I’m going to puke” when Gwen, Dan, and Dempsey came crashing through the underbrush.
They halted, taking in the scene with confused eyes.
Gwen was the first to break the silence. “What are those things?”
Eyes wide above the hand clamped over her nose and mouth, Kim shrugged. “Things.” Her words came out muffled. “Don’t know. Big. Things. Came out of the water.”
Dempsey walked right up to the one frozen mid-step in its approach to Kim. “Looks like a rat.”
“Yep.” Dan stopped right next to Dempsey. “A big rat.”
“A big frozen rat,” Dempsey expanded.
“Yep. A big frozen rat.”
Gwen shook her head. “Seriously, you guys should go on the road together.” She came up to Kim. “You okay?”
Kim shrugged. “Sure.” She’d have said more but just then Patti returned with the rest of the group. When Sass saw the frozen rat it gave out a mighty “squeak!”
“Do you think Sass is going to kick my ass for freezing its cousin?” Kim shot the question to Gwen from the corner of her mouth.
Gwen shrugged. “Maybe?”
Ben was bringing up the rear of the group, behind Prairie and Ivan, so didn’t immediately see the things Kim had frozen. It gave her a moment to call out, “Ben? I froze some rats. Some Big Rats.”
“Uh,” he called out from around Ivan’s bulk. “Okay.”
Nobody questioned why she chose to direct this comment to Ben. Any question they might have had about it probably was smothered by their first glance of the frozen garden of ick in front of Kim. Prairie was the first to speak. “Those are water rats. I’ve never seen any that big but those are definitely water rats.”
“Water rats,” Ben mumbled as he pitched his gaze subtly to the side so as not to actually look at the creatures. “That’s a thing?”
Prairie took this as a question directed at her. She nodded. “Yes. Water rats are a type of rodent.”
“You a zoologist?”
Prairie shook her head in the negative to Dempsey’s question. “Just a country girl.” She then picked up where she’d left off, “They are nocturnal, amphibious, and carnivorous. Most of the time they eat insects, snails, crabs, and crayfish but they’ll also eat frogs, turtles, birds, bats, and mice.”
At the ‘mice’ Sass gave a sharp ‘peep!’ and cowered back into its house.
Ivan tinked his finger on the ice encasing the creature. “Probably takes a lot of insects to fill up this bad boy.”
When the creature wrinkled its nose, taking a long sniff, Ivan jumped back with a muffled curse.
“It’s still alive!”
Kim nodded vigorously. “I… yeah…” she curved her shoulders in, “I sort of zapped first then thought after. I didn’t exactly mean to trap it, them,” she swept her hand towards the water, “like that but after I did I kind of felt… bad?” The last lifted on a question. “I’m not sure they were actually attacking. Maybe they were just curious? It just felt wrong to kill them once I started thinking.”
“Oh,” Ben announced, pulling a dagger from the interior of this jacket as he strode forward, “I don’t feel wrong killing them!”
Kim’s outthrust arm nearly clotheslined Ben. If he’d been an inch shorter, wham, right in the throat. As it was she very effectively slammed her arm into his chest, halting his forward movement.
“You aren’t killing them.”
“Oh! I’m killing them!”
“Ben!” The look Kim leveled on her friend was equal parts determination and understanding. “I am not letting you kill incapacitated creatures.” She pivoted, getting right in his face, then said very quietly. “I get it. I do. But,” she shook her head and curled her lips over her teeth. “no. Not happening.”
Ben slammed the palm of his hand into Kim’s upper-chest. She braced and swayed with the motion. “Not happening.”
Ben’s shoulders slumped. He lowered the dagger to his side and dropped his gaze. His “Fine,” was grudging at best.
Ivan, surprisingly, kept his place beside the water rat. Normally he’d be jumping all over protecting a woman, friend or not, but he understood the history so he just held himself separate. Though it was hard. Guess Kim knew the history too. Interesting. Ben usually didn’t share.
When Ben stepped back behind Kim, melting into the shadows with a muttered, “Gonna stand guard,” Kim gently massaged the spot below her collarbone. “Ouch.”
“Here,” Gwen pushed Kim’s hand away and pressed her fingers to the spot for the second it took to wipe away the minor injury.
Kim nodded. “Thanks.”
“I’d ask what that was about but guessing it’s personal?”
Again Kim nodded, but didn’t elaborate, to which Gwen shrugged and turned to squint at the nearest water rat. At her grunt, Kim asked, “What?”
“Things emotions are all over the place.”
“You often scan the emotions of rats?”
“No. But most animals have a rudimentary amount of emotional activity I can read. But it’s usually a decently small set. Love and loyalty, hunger and curiosity from dogs. Cats are weirder because they are more predatory, though dogs have that too depending. Patti’s mouse is,” Gwen shook her head, “completely different. I think it’s the Magick nature. And this creature here? I’m getting a similar read.”
“There’s Magick rats?”
Gwen lifted her brows. “You don’t question a Magick mouse but your stopper is a Magick rat?”
“What are we looking at here?” Ivan asked. “Besides frozen water rats?”
Carefully skirting the frozen water rat, Kim wandered over to the water’s edge, her gaze tracking for any other creatures. When she saw none, she stepped over to where she’d determined the underwater entry started and drew a line with her toe in the dirt. “There’s an entry here. I suspect it’s to a cave beneath the mountain. I tracked it along the water’s edge about three feet before Mr. Ratsicle over there,” she gestured back at the frozen water rat, “grabbed the stick I was using to measure and yoinked me into the water.”
“The rat yanked you into the water?” Dan’s gaze took on a level of assessment as he peered at the water rat.
“I do not, in fact, stutter.”
Dan gave Kim a look of mild censure.
“Sorry. That was rude. Right?” Kim gave a dismissive hand wave. “I blame stress. Anyhow, yes, the rat yanked me into the water.”
“Strong.” Ivan noted.
“Strong.” Kim nodded. “In case anyone is taking notes. Also, fast. Gwen says Magickal too. I’m not sure what other capabilities it has as I froze it pretty quickly, but I am going to go with ‘not immune to ice’.”
Siobhan nodded. “Solid assessment. So,” she clapped her hand together. “Who wants to go for a swim?”
Enter The Woods 