I felt smooth pebbles between my fingers and dug them in. The water sapped warmth from my body and all my extremities hurt, from cold even more than from impact. My arms shook and seized up, then I collapsed on the pebble shore. Instinctively, I drew my arms and legs close and rolled around.

There was nothing to see except an orange glow flickering weakly in the distance, then a figure stood up from the orange glow and approached me, making wet sounds on the pebble shore. It retrieved a moonlight crystal and held it aloft to see me better. In its dim light, I saw a round head, free of almost any features. The figure’s eyes were huge, sitting tight together in the face and leaving no space for a nose. Their iris was silver speckled in bronze and golden spots, with copper green between them. Instead of a nose, beneath the eyes sat holes that opened and closed as if gasping for air. Again below that sat a mouth covered by a flap playing in unknown emotions. There was no hair or scales on its skin, instead there were thin streaks of brown and dull green, running like veins beneath the pale, translucent upper layer of skin in a way that seemed to exaggerate the few features in shape and size, growing broader, bolder and more numerous as they led away from the face.

The figure knelt down and I tried to get up, still shivering and weak. From its moving mouth came odd sounds of squelching and rasping. Its body was almost completely featureless, safe for the arms, legs, the muscular membranes spanning between elbow and knee of each and the colourful streaks, that like those on the face, grew as they led away from belly and chest. As far as clothing went, the figure seemed to have only some sort of garment that did not wrap around the sides, instead being a single colourful cloth that ran from the shoulder down between the legs and over the other shoulder.

Again, the figure spoke in some rasping and sputtering sounds that I did not even attempt to understand at first, but then it felt to me as if it was familiar. Finally, I understood that it was indeed the common speech, expressed as best as possible from a mouth that might have no teeth, tongue or vocal cords. I put the different sounds together and my head and finally thought to understand.

“Are you well?”

I shook my head. I immediately doubted that the figure understood me, but then it answered me. “Come with me.”

I tried to stand up. My staff was gone and seeing that I was obviously looking for something, the figure reached me its hand. His skin was wet but not slimy. Beneath the skin I could feel rings and strands of muscle push the boneless fingers into the shape they were supposed to assume. It was an odd sensation. He led me to the fire, which burned on the shore next to something one could call a house. It consisted of two joined spheres of a white and spotless material, possibly plaster. One of the spheres sat above the water on stilts. Next to the house, on the shore lay a long, narrow boat without keel, instead being flat-bottomed like those punts used in the swamps and bogs of Botreland, ideal for passing shallow waters.

The person introduced himself as Issrakrand said that he was of a people called the zapad. He told me to take off my wet clothes and gave me a blanket instead. He put my clothes to dry on a smoking rag for fish and moved it close to the fire, then added some more wood. I took the opportunity to inspect what I had left of my belongings. My trusty knife was still there, as was that half-eaten ration of vrata biscuit, no longer dry and hard. My small spellbook was ruined. I had always used lampblack ink rather than the water-resistant iron gall ink, not that I could afford or justify the use of the latter. All my spells were gone, a few notes scribbled in graphite remained, now I had to get along with what I could remember by heart or construct from memory alone.

I decided to eat the ration right there before it could go completely bad. Issrakr also gave me a bowl of tepid stew of fish and something reminding me of that pickled kelp the people of Botreland were so keen on. Its taste was not great, but in the situation I had found myself in, the comfort of something even remotely warm in my belly was enough to make me happy. I understood Issrakr's manner of speech well enough after just a short time of getting used to it.

He called himself a simple man and said that he made a living away from other zapad with fishing, and ferrying people across the “spotted lake”. He was accompanied by two creatures I at first took for dogs, but their short legs, broad snouts and thick tails made them seem much more like otters. They were deeply intrigued by me, sniffed me, squeaked and barked as they hopped and scurried around me, eager to receive any treats or other attention I might have for them. Issrakr told me to disregard them.

I told Issrakr of my travel in the world and of being separated by my companions. He said that we had most likely followed a specific arm of the river that flowed into the spotted lake, undoubtedly the lake our Urshog companion had talked about. Issrakr told me that we were in a small side chamber only accessible via water. A small but powerful torrent flowed into the chamber, which had most likely picked me up from the main stream. Outside the chamber, it joined the spotted lake, where he caught his fish or took travellers across it for a fee. He had not met any group fitting my description, but he was also not the only ferryman. Across the lake was an inn and a throughway, where we would be able to continue our journey. If we wished to stay off the throughway, we could instead take the streams and rapids leading from the calm spotted lake further down, where we would engage his home community of zapad, who would most likely refuse them passage, for his was an isolationist and wary kind.

When I inquired further about his kind, he acknowledged, that many people did not know much about them due to their seclusion. The zapad lived both on land and in the water. They were expert swimmers and unlike the Yuupalwa, did not have to come up for air. Unlike all other peoples of that world below, they did not carry their young inside their body or hatched them from hard-shelled eggs, but rather from soft eggs that needed clear and protected water to hatch. This made it necessary for them to build their own communities in secluded chambers with clean waters. The community further down the stream from the spotted lake – the one Issrakr himself came from – was a series of chambers housing small villages, connected by a system of canals, all dug artificially. Many such communities connected two important tunnels or chambers, requiring exorbitant tolls to allow travel of people and ware through what was often the only way between those places.

I was deeply intrigued by his people, but my clothes were soon dry and I had to find my companions. He said he would take me to the inn for free, seeing how I would not be able to leave the chamber without his help or truly freezing to death. I showed great gratitude and promised him pay of some sort, if we were to find my companions, but he denied, he had little time to search for someone all around the spotted lake and its tributaries.

I got dressed again and Issrakr pushed his boat into the water. Both of us scraped our moonlight crystals anew and in the brighter light, I could finally see the full extent of the chamber I was in. It was less than ten yards tall and very flat, at least thirty yards in circumference. One of the walls discharged the powerful torrent from a hole that was barely bigger than I was, which explained the mangled state my body felt to be in. An arching hole in the wall reaching barely above the waterline on the farside of the chamber was the outlet.

I sat down in the boat, which was long enough to carry possibly seven people, if they huddled together. The two otters gleefully joined Issrakr as he entered the water, pulling the boat on a line behind him. He stepped further in until the water reached his hip, then leapt forward. Upon doing so, I saw a remarkable display. What I had previously seen as a ridge of bumps from his skull all the way down his back unfolded now, turning inside out in the water and unfurling hundreds, thousands of tiny, fleshy appendages in marvellous colours from orange like fire to green like forests in spring. They swayed softly in the water and it seemed to bring Issrakr great relief and ease. His swimming motions were like the undulating colourful cloth streaming in parades in the streets of Northrbidge, against the white and grey background of the hard stone.

As we reached the low arc above the water, I ducked down all the way into the boat and still felt the rock scraping my clothes.

On the other side, I saw myself in a huge hall full of natural pillars running from floor to ceiling. “This is the spotted lake.” Issrakr said as he hopped onto the boat with ease, then stood up to steer the boat with a long pole. “It stretches far into many different chambers, the longest route from one far end to another is at least ten miles long, with many side chambers contributing to it.” He lifted his pole out of the water and pointed to one of the natural pillars nearby. A symbol had been cut into the soft limestone. “These are way markers us ferrymen use to navigate. I made that one myself, but everyone contributes, some pillars even bear boards to write warnings for the others.”

Almost completely without sound, we traversed through the chamber, occasional drips of water or creatures stirring the water’s flat surface only on occasion. At one point, Issrakr noticed a large rock that had apparently fallen from the ceiling just recently. The water was at points too deep to fathom even in the light of my moonlight crystal, at other points, the boat scraped across the bottom, needing and especially strong push with the pole to get across. Quite a few low stalagmites poked up through the water and in places they were so many that it truly seemed as if the lake was spotted and dotted with hazards for the ferryman.

They came by a pillar that someone had nailed a large wooden board to. On it, with a piece of chalk, Issrakr scrawled two odd symbols, one unfriendly and dangerous, the other geometrical. “It is a warning that the Hochon-Yi is stalking a tributary of the lake. Such information is important to us ferrymen.”

Despite Issrakr talking much about other ferrymen, they did not encounter any signs of them, until finally another shore came into view. It was wide and similar covered in pebbles. “There’s the inn.” he said and pointed to a house further back against the wall, partially dug into the rock. On the shore, two other punts had already landed, with no ferrymen in sight.

“Is it abandoned?” Issrakr remarked and I noticed then too that there was no light in the inn. The windows seemed barricaded from the inside and no movement was inside. The hair on the back of my neck stood up straight and a sudden irk came over me. I heard a sound like a thousand pebbles being pushed apart under immense weight. I turned to my left, where from behind a rock wall, came the Hochon-Yi, glaring at us with greedy eyes.