Zephira dropped her mugand whipped out her daggers just as one landed on her back. Theattack on Zephira triggered Goth into action. It stood up, growingin size and weight as it unstrapped its mighty sword. The boatlurched with the sudden increase in weight. She felt the boat rockprecariously and realized what was happening. She spun around.‘No!’ she shouted to the construct. ‘I am not in danger. Sitdown.’
It was too late! Therocking boat caused the construct to stumble and fall. It grabbedfor the railing and its great weight flipped the boat over.Everyone went flying through the air into the water. Two crocodileswatching the calamity launched themselves off the bank into theriver.
The river water was abeautiful cool temperature for bathing but had a muddy smell andtaste to it. These were her background thoughts as she surfacedgasping for air. She quickly looked around, saw heads bobbing, armssplashing and heard a lot of really bad obscenities coming from hercompanions. The spawn still flapped around overhead, but soonrealized that their prey was too difficult to attack when immersedin water, and flew off to find lunch elsewhere.
Everyone except theboat owner swam for the shore about twenty paces away. He swam tothe overturned hull of the boat and slid aboard. She thought it waslucky that nobody was wearing armour as they might have sunk likeher construct. Unlike Goth, they would have probably drowned.
Suddenly, there was ascream and a splash in the water near her, and as she looked aroundshe saw the tail of a crocodile disappearing under the water.Seconds later, she felt a pair of jaws grab hold of her left legand she was lucky to get a quick breath before being dragged underas well. Bloody crocodile she thought sarcastically. That’s all Ineed to make this a perfect afternoon.
Zephira knew that thecrocodile’s bite was unlikely to kill her. The real danger wasdrowning. She let her body relax, calmed her mind and with her handtouched one of the gemstones on her necklace and thought of herlittle dog Tessa to release its power. Her body transformed into anewman-like creature covered with scales, with webbed fingers,sharp claws, and most importantly, gills and eyes that weredesigned for seeing underwater. She took a breath or two thenconsidered her predicament. The crocodile was unaware of herchange. It would just keep her under water until she ceased moving,and then it would take her somewhere to eat.
She twisted downgrabbing the crocodile’s jaw with one hand and drove the claws ofher other into one of its eyes. The crocodile jerked its head backand rolled, trying and succeeding in breaking her grip. She flowedwith the roll and when it stopped shaking her, she again swivelledaround, grabbed its jaw and stabbed at the other eye. The crocodilestill hung on. It jerked and pitched and dived for the bottom butwouldn’t release its grip on her. This was getting annoying shethought. If she was jerked around enough she might break a bone.It’s time for more drastic action.
Before she could doanything, she caught sight of a dark shape to the side. There was aflash of light and the crocodile’s head separated from its body asthe great sword of her construct cleaved through it. She sent amental signal to the construct that she was all right and that itshould grab hold of her and levitate upwards. She would change backto her normal body just before it brought her out of the water sothe others would not know of her shape-changing ability. This mightreduce the likely complaints against bringing it along.
The others staggeredout of the water and up onto the shore. One had noticed Zephirabeing dragged under but didn’t know what he could do to help.Chantalot had turned white with fear for her safety, but was unableto work out what to do. Belloe looked around shouting for everyoneto answer their names so that he might account for the group. Onenative boy, Zephira and her construct were missing. What a disasterhe thought. Not four hours into the trip and three lost already.What else could go wrong?
He was still standing,watching the overturned boat drifting slowly down river, when theconstruct rose out of the water with Zephira in its arms andeverybody cheered. She expected them to complain about theconstruct overturning the boat, but nobody seemed concerned. Theyhad survived, that was the most important thing. The main problemnow was to reclaim her and the boat.
Belloe had a quickdiscussion with Gaston the wizard, who promptly waved his handsabout, whispered arcane words and then flew from the shore over toZephira and Goth and towed them back to the shore. While thelevitate effect allowed Goth to go up or down, it didn’t allow itto go sideways.
The wizard then flewacross to the boat, landed on the hull and chatted with thecaptain, who promptly dived overboard and emerged with the bowrope. The wizard took it and headed for the shore, pulling to turnthe bow in the direction he was flying. The group moved downstreamalong the shore to meet up with the wizard, and took over the jobof hauling it in.
After a good threehours of arguing, swearing and much straining they managed to turnthe boat over, bail out the water and undertake an inspection todetermine what was missing. Fortunately most of their gear waseither stored in the small cabin or lashed to the sides of the boatwith short lengths of rope. Several weapons lying on the deck, aconsiderable number of loose items of varied nature, including thefire stone used for cooking, most of the cooking and eatingutensils and the wizard’s chair were gone. The small mast hadbroken off and the sail attached to it was lost.
Another hour later theyhad cut a
