The swarm screamed its fear, growing exhaustion, and general displeasure as it approached the banks of the river. I wanted to try to calm our approach to ensure there were none who drowned, but slowing would have been even more dangerous for our approach so we raced onward. The flora surrounding us grew more and more sparse as the soft earth beneath our feet transitioned to a looser, sandier soil. Footing became precarious, and my worries for the upcoming crossing surged.

Suddenly, there was the clarion call of a sentry’s horn in front of us. I looked, searched, and quickly found a confused looking sentry high in a tree on the riverbank, the horn previously being held at their lips replaced by a compact but thick bow.

“THROWERS! TREE, FIFTY PACES AHEAD!” Rulac’s voice echoed over the swarm before I could speak, and, after a moment’s delay, in response several dozen stones the size of a fist flew through the air towards the tree. Most of the stones flew wide, but enough of them struck true enough to knock the sentry from his post with a panicked cry of pain and fear.

Even from my distance I could hear the painful crunching of a body on unforgiving ground and the whumph of air forcefully expelled from the sentry’s lungs. The human quickly embraced their reality and began to try to get a shot off, but they were stunned from the fall and the pack’s advance was implacable and swift. There was only a moment or two before the swarm flooded over the prone body of the sentry, and his screams of pain and terror washed over the banks of the river as he was dismembered in passing by the swarm.

His body was not left whole–bites taken from wherever a passing keelish could reach, raking tears in his body from extended claws run over his prostrate form, and crushed flesh from the unforgiving feet of a panicked horde of creatures’ flight. The sight made me think more on what would happen to any keelish caught by the High Speakers behind us than about the fate of the unfortunate sentry–crushed by stone, scorched by flame, torn by wind… I could only hope there was no Waterspeaker to impede our crossing of the river before us, since they would rather easily be able to interrupt or even stop our passage long enough for there to only be a mountain of waterlogged reptile corpses.

The swarm began to cross the river.

We were fortunate that our feet’s design is meant to be just as effective in slippery conditions as in favorable ones, and the lead members of the swarm lead the way without incident. The water only reached about hip height at the deepest parts of this stretch, was fresh and drinkable, and plenty of fish ripe for the eating swam, undisturbed, between our legs. It would have been an enjoyable jaunt if not for the pressing and immediate deathly danger that stalked us.

It didn’t take long for our pursuers to get close enough for the bulk of the swarm to finally get a good look at them. There were eight humans and one tiny Scaled Deer sprinting after us. They all had their beralts fully worn, the coverings exposing only their eyes as they rushed forward into the river. Two of the High Speakers were almost certainly Earthspeakers going off of their builds, given that the more powerful a Speaker’s abilities, the more the Speaker began to resemble their specialization. Earthspeakers especially were easy to spot once they had truly become High Speakers–they would grow to look basically like a human mountain. The other vocational foci typically wrought more internalized changes than physical ones.

Anyways, there were two Earthspeakers, a Scaled Deer fawn, a child, and five other pursuers hot on our tails, maybe 200m away and gaining. We had nearly two complete miles of river to cross, and not much time to do it.

A sudden cracking, ear-shattering sound echoed out from behind us. I hazarded a look back and saw a massive stone beginning to sail out into the sky towards the main body of the swarm.

“SCATTER! FOCUS ON CROSSING AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!”

My words seemed to be swallowed up in the churning mass of bodies, but there was a slight response as members of the swarm began to scurry and spread out to attempt to escape the inbound meteor. Most did. Some were smashed into bloody paste. Flecks of flesh and blobs of blood spewed out of the impact site, diluted by the previously clear water flowing downriver towards the ocean.

That was when things went from bad to worse.

A scream of pain pierced the air from right by the fallen stone. A member of the swarm, still keening in agony, slowly succumbed to pain and began to sink into the water as what was afflicting her became clear. The previously docile and tasty-looking fish all around us changed immensely once the blood entered the water. I didn’t know what they should be called, and I didn’t care. They began to shred into any living thing they could reach–their fellow fish, sprouting greenery… and the legs of any nearby keelish.

The attacked keelish had no chance as the fish ripped the flesh from her bones in swarms, and other keelish began to scream in pain as well. The blood began to pool in the water, and I immediately saw the worst outcome. I pushed as much power as I could into my throat as I screamed out, “STAY AWAY FROM THE BLOOD! THE MORE THEY KILL THE WORSE IT’LL BE!”

All around me, the swarm tried to follow orders. The screams of the swarm began to diminish as the individuals beset by tiny murderous trout were brought under the water as their muscles and tendons were flayed from their bodies.

That was when the Waterspeaker made their existence known.

A wave suddenly pounded into the back of the swarm and the river itself began to try to rip our feet out from under us. I floundered, trying to get back to my feet, and finally exactly how bad the situation was for us began to settle into my bones with a deep chill.