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The sea dragon and the Great Linnorm locked eyes and roared, their combined voices shaking the air and, for just a moment, overwhelming the the sound of the storm. The horde of Benthic clambered out of the surf and charged towards them across the beach. Cassian studied the forces arrayed against them and shouted, “Fall back! Don’t let them surround us!”

“Where are we going?” Marta yelled back, straining to be heard over the cacophony.

“Inland,” Cassian replied, dashing around the side of the dunes toward the center of the island. “Hopefully that dragon can’t follow us.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Verina said, struggling to keep pace with him. “Just because the dragon swims doesn’t mean it can’t fly.”

Behind them the sea dragon’s body tensed and rippled, swelling with terrible potential until it unleashed a massive torrent of rushing water on the Linnorm. The two headed spirit exhaled twin streams of pale green fire in response. The three blasts collided with an ear splitting shriek and an explosion of steam that hid the ocean from view. Steam did little to stop the sheer mass of the sea dragon’s attack. The rush of water swept past the twin dragon’s fire and slammed into the spirit’s flank, creating a second burst of steam and sending it rolling across the beach for a split second before the Linnorm vanished and Verina pitched face first into the sand.

“Zalt,” Cassian hissed, sliding to a stop then scrambling back to drag the yaga upright. Her eyes rolled in her skull like dice in a gambler’s cup and all her limbs hung limp so the Ironhand wrapped her arm around his neck, grabbed her waist then started to drag. Two or three steps later Marta caught up and took Verina’s other side.

Yet even with two of them to manage the Slav’s dead weight they were losing ground. The Benthic weren’t made for moving quickly over land but even they were able to close the gap and by the time Cassian and the others rounded the nearest dune the sea dwellers had closed to within two hundred feet. Adalai had waited for them to catch up and kept pace next to Marta as they withdrew. “What happened?”

“Linnorm. Overwhelmed.” Verina was starting to come around, though her feet still dragged limply behind her.

“I didn’t think Invokers worked that way.” Adalai clicked his tongue and pivoted to walk backwards while he watched the Benthic’s steady approach. “This must be another side effect of the yaga being bound to their spirit.”

“Just need a few seconds,” Verina panted. “Then I can walk. The Great One needs longer before he can show himself again.”

“Fantastic,” Cassian said. “The Linnorm was the only thing we had in a sea dragon’s weight class.”

There was a soft thud and a long, thin spear sprouted from the sand to their left. “They’ve got javelins,” Adalai reported. “Marta, switch out with me, we’re going to need your shield in pretty short order.”

“No, I can stand,” Verina said. She visibly gathered herself and got her feet under her. She swayed for a moment as the other two withdrew their support but remained upright.

Marta immediately turned around and began walking backwards as well. Adalai rummaged in his bag for a moment then held out the daggers he’d taken from the bandits the day before. “You’re our best long range worker, Cassian. You’ll need all the ammunition you can get.”

Cassian took the three knives and stuck them into his belt then tugged his left glove off and tucked it in there as well. With his other hand he directed his own sword forward to slash at the approaching Benthic. The weapon darted in and out of the approaching crowd, menacing them enough that their advance was slowed and occasionally scattering dark red blood on the sand. The Benthic weren’t wearing anything like armor but their scales were tough and they were quick to block most attacks with their sharp coral or bone spears. But every now and then he got lucky.

Adalai shot him a sideways look as they rounded another dune and put it between themselves and the Benthic. “You plan to Ironhand those things any time soon?”

“It’s not that simple,” Cassian said, taking one of the daggers in his left hand. “I don’t know this metal yet. I made the weapons and armor I brought with me so I already had a grasp of it but these things are new to me. It’s going to take a minute or two.”

“What happened to the knives you brought with you?” Verina asked.

“I didn’t get a chance to call them back before the sea dragon showed up,” Cassian said, splitting his attention between learning the dagger in his hand, controlling the sword harrying the Benthic and carrying the conversation. “They’re well out of my reach now.”

As if to drive that point home the sea dragon threw it’s coiling bulk up onto the side of the dune, sending an avalanch of sand rushing down towards them as the dragon’s belly churned the grains about, seeking purchase. They had yet to see more than it’s head and a half dozen feet of its body at any one time but, from the way its entire mass seemed to flex and sway with its movement, Cassian guessed it was one of those dragons that had no legs, just a worm like body. The pearl in its forehead flickered with a sinister internal light. In response the Benthic abandoned all efforts at defending themselves from Cassian’s darting sword, dropped to the sand and scrambled forward on all fours.

Or rather, all threes. Their new posture made it apparent that one reason they hadn’t overtaken Cassian and his party was how truly ill suited they were to moving about on land. Their bodies seemed to end in a long, tapering, eel-like appendage twice or perhaps three times as long as the legs of a comparably sized man. The tail alone clearly didn’t allow them to move very fast. However, with the added propulsion of their upper bodies they began to close the distance at an alarming rate.

Cassian felt a pang of regret. From the clear self destructive behavior and the glow from the pearls in their foreheads it was obvious the Benthic were not acting of their own accord. However he didn’t see much he could do about that. So he did his best to set them free painlessly, driving his sword’s point down through their backs quickly and ruthlessly as soon as they came within the distance his Gift could operate in. Very quickly the bodies of three, then four of the pitiable creatures lay twitching and dying on the sand, their arms and tails no longer possessing the strength to move them.

It wasn’t enough. The sea dragon seemed to have two or three dozen Benthic in its thrall and they were all pouring over the dunes towards the human quartet. They clawed their way across the sand with a manic intensity. When Cassian’s sword flew through the air over their heads they snatched at it with their bare hands, heedless of the danger. One lost a finger and others suffered deep cuts. Yet it was clear to Cassian that they were going to get ahold of it sooner or later and he didn’t want to lose the only weapon left he could use well with his Gift.

So he called the sword back to his hand. He weighed the new dagger in his off hand, feeling it’s strong buzz in the back of his head, and estimated how much control he could exert over it. Certainly not enough for anything delicate. He’d just have to settle for throwing the weapon and calling it back to his hand.

By the time they were off the dunes and climbing inland Cassian had managed to kill another Benthic and injured two more. As he started scrambling over scrub grass the Benthic were nearly in range to strike with the short spears they carried. Cassian was drawing back his arm for another throw when Manta yelled, “Hold!”

At first he wasn’t sure what she had in mind, since the Benthic had stopped throwing things at them when they got down to one spear apiece. The Hexton maid had continued to pace him in spite of that. Now she stepped forward, her shield glowing brighter than he had ever seen it, and thrust it forward until it almost touched the closest Benthic. A barrier in the shape of a half dome appeared, bright as the sun in the storming dark, and swept forward, throwing the creatures back in disarray.

Up until that point the sea dragon had watched its servants’ struggles with dispassion, doing little more than slither from dune to dune to keep them in sight. When Marta’s barrier swept over the Benthic it raised up again, the pearl in its head pulsing faster. As the barrier faded the dragon’s jaw gaped open and its throat swelled like a frog’s before spewing another enormous stream of water that smashed the remains of Manta’s glowing shield and cast her back several steps.

Cassian dropped his weapons and caught her, bracing himself against the torrent of water and doing his best to keep her from being swept away. The surge did catch his sword and dagger and he only had the focus and control to snag his sword out of the wave before it was swept away. Then the real danger of the dragon’s plan showed itself. They were going uphill and water naturally wanted to move downhill so, as the force the dragon had put behind it died away the wave turned around and swept past them again, this time full of rocks and driftwood that battered them as they swept past. A large piece of flotsam caught Cassian in the side and he would have been swept away if Adalai hadn’t grabbed his belt.

A loud croaking sound rose up over the din of combat and surussus of rain. Panicked, Cassian looked around for the source only to realize it was coming from the sea dragon. The creature had risen up like a snake about to strike and was booming out the wet, belching sound like a general barking out orders. Except the dragon ordered its thralls with the pearls in their foreheads. It didn’t need to make noise to communicate with them. It was just laughing.

The dragon was watching them struggle for its own amusement.

Two of its Benthic servants were gathering the receding wave up using their watery arts, massing it into one place. Whether their plan was to attack with it themselves or just return it to the dragon Cassian couldn’t begin to guess but whichever it was it spelled disaster for them. “Run,” he gasped, suiting actions to words. “Just get as far inland as you can, we’ll try to find some place their powers are less effective.”

In truth he suspected they’d gone as far as there was to go. Dragons often attacked caravans for the treasures they carried and, if this one had enslaved some Benthic to help it scout for desperate souls using the Drownway, that would explain what had happened to Cazador and his group. They’d been taken by the dragon to feed its appetite for treasure and food.

“There’s an old building on the south side of the summit,” Adalai panted as they sprinted uphill, pulling the still groggy Verina along as she began to lag. “I spotted it on our way here. It’s fairly large and sturdy looking. It might not stand up to multiple hits from the dragon but it will slow down the Benthic.”

“Lead the way.”

It was a harrowing three minutes getting up to the island’s summit and around to the building Adalai had described. There was a slight reprieve. Cassian suspected that, just like he could only use his Gift on metal within a certain distance, the dragon could only control the Benthic if they stayed close to it. He wasn’t sure why the serpent didn’t follow them immediately. Perhaps it was summoning more Benthic from the deep. Perhaps it was refilling some internal reservoir of water by returning to the ocean or drinking the liquid the Benthic had gathered. Perhaps it just liked watching them run.

Regardless, the dragon and its servants didn’t molest them along the way. It was almost more nervewracking to make the trip in safety than it was to be harried the entire way. Still, they arrived safely at the rundown ruins of a huge, simplistic rectangular building half buried in sand and scrub brush. Without hesitation they darted into the cavernous entrance to prepare for the next assault. It was only as Adalai sat Verina on a low sand pile and Marta fumbled to light a lantern that Cassian realized how bad an idea coming there really was.