The storage room was disorganised, so it took him quite long to find what he was looking for, and even longer to prepare it to try and pull the creature out of the water. Letting the brine spring get contaminated by the creature’s blood was a risk they couldn’t take.

  “That’s your plan?” Charles looked at him wide eyed. “I mean… fine, go ahead. Take as many people as you need, but I feel like you might need something sturdier than that.” He gestured at the sack in his hand.

  “It’s sturdy enough,” Alaric said. He wished he felt as confident as he sounded. He shook the large sack. The heavy ropes inside were vital. “We’ll make sure it’s out of the water.”

  “Good luck.” Charles shrugged helplessly.

  The next day at dawn, they loaded the sacks on Cinder and headed off towards the cave.

  “Sorry we left the cart behind.” Ava said apologetically. “I know it took you a long time to build it.”

  “It’s fine. It’s probably not too damaged anyways. Soaked, at most.” He forced a smile. His mind raced, going over his plan again and again. It had so many flaws, so many things that could go wrong.

  They arrived at the cave entrance and immediately got to work. Unloading the sacks from Cinder, they spread out the rope nets. Then, they tied two medium sized rocks to two corners. A rope was attached to each corner of the net. Jason and Reuban approached the brine spring and threw the rock-tied ends of the net into the water.

  The ropes slowly passed through their fingers, allowing them to gauge when the rocks hit the bottom. The net was now half submerged in the water. Then they tied four ropes each attached to one corner of the net to Cinder’s harness.

  “Are we sure this will work?” Lochlan whispered. “What if we can’t catch it?”

  Alaric grimaced. “It’ll work.” I hope. He didn’t have a second plan. He couldn’t come up with anything.

  With all four ropes attached to Cinder, the stallion calmly waited, facing the outside. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do.

  “Here,” he unsheathed his blade and gave it to Ava. “It was supposed to be yours. You got the kill.”

  Her eyes widened for a split second. “No, I-“

  “Besides, I’m the bait. You kill it.” He smirked, pushed the scabbed into her hands, then walked up to the edge of the water and dunked his hand in. “Cold!” he loudly exclaimed.

  Ripples formed on the water’s surface. Something moved just below the surface. He stood up and leaned forward to try and get a better look. It was fast, but quite large. Its white-pink coloration made it nearly impossible to see in the green and white tinted water.

  Something broke the surface of the water. A thin, long thing whipped at him. He felt something burn on his left arm before he could even understand what it was. Then the glittery appendage vanished underwater. The creature’s form seemed to twist around itself, then swell up.

  The wave appeared near instantly and crashed into him. He fell on his back with a grunt, his eyes wide open as he waited for it to break the surface of the water again. It did, a thin, white appendage with an almost razor sharp end whipped at him with impressive accuracy. He rolled to the side, allowing it to slam the ground next to him.

  As soon as it did, he got up on his knees to look at its main body. It was floating right next to the water’s edge.

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  “Now!” he shouted.

  Cinder kicked the ground, galloping outside. Alaric got back on his feet and rushed to the side, leaping over the quickly moving ropes seconds before the net came up. Drawn at such speeds, the net closed on the creature and dragged it out of the pool with force. Cinder continued to gallop for a few more dozen meters, dragging the creature out of the lake and cavern, into daylight.

  A deafening screech sounded as the creature thrashed around in the net. It’s razor sharp appendage – a ridiculously long and thin tail, freed itself from the net and whipped against the ground and the ropes.

  “It’s cutting itself free!” Lochlan shouted. He ran up to Cinder, undoing the ropes attached to its saddle. The Stallion neighed and pranced out of the range of the creature’s tail.

  Ava kicked the ground, blade in hand. She dashed towards it, watching the tail like a hawk. As soon as it lashed towards her, she leapt aside and swung the blade against the tail slamming the ground. Silvery, goo-like blood spewed on the ground as a second, deafening screech rang.

  The creature writhed in agony, having lost its only weapon.

  Ava didn’t pause. She quickly closed the distance, held the blade with both hands and struck down, cutting rope and flesh alike. She raised her weapon again, waited a second for signs of life, then slowly lowered her arms and turned around with a smile. “I think,” she breathed out, “we can get the damn salt now.”

  “What was that anyways?” Alaric mumbled as he approached the lifeless body of the creature. It had a relatively thin head that was now cut off, a much rounder body, and long tail that was now also cut off at a point. It’s fins were ridiculously long, and were what made it look pink.

  “You think it’s edible?” Ava asked with a smirk as she hesitantly handed the sword to him. “And Wyrdflame isn’t really my thing, I think.”

  “You know I’ll give it to you again next time we need to kill something dangerous.” Alaric clipped the scabbard to his belt.

  Ava shrugged, then opened a system window in front of her.

  As soon as he saw the blue box and bold, white text, his heart sank. If he never saw that bloody thing again he would be happy.

  “Oh.” She smiled. “I’ll take the increase to physical attributes, I think. You should have killed it – one of the rewards was an increase to my mana pool.”

  Alaric shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. You earned it.”

  “Well…” Ava shrugged, choosing not to argue about it. Though from her expression, it was clear she disagreed.

  The cart was pushed to the edge of the cave wall by the powerful waves the creature created. Alaric carefully inspected it. The wood was soaked completely. “Well, that’s unfortunate.” He mostly spoke to himself as he checked the wheels.

  “Is it usable?”

  He glanced at Avery. “Well, for now yes. It will rot sooner rather than later though.” It couldn’t be helped, not after all that brine. “We can use it now though. Let’s hurry.”

  They filled all six barrels that thankfully survived with brine water after loading them onto the cart. By the time they were done, it was well past noon. They attached the cart to Cinder and set off.

  “We’ll need a bridge and path.” Jason pointed at the shallow part of the river. “Or some other way to bring stuff up and down the cliff.”

  “It’ll be difficult in the winter, so we should alternate fresh water and brine days to have enough salt to last a while.” Lochlan added. “Cinder is a strong horse, he can carry a lot more than six barrels.”

  “A strong, magical horse.” Avery piped up. “But the cart is a normal cart. We can’t overload it.”

  “Please do be careful with it.” Alaric nearly pleaded. “I’ll start working on another cart, but I’d really like to be able to treat the wood first. Untreated wood will just end up rotting in a few months, at best.” The air was humid, and it was only going to get worse as months progressed.

  “How will you do that?” Ava steadied the cart with Lochlan as it Cinder gently pulled it over the shallow riverbed.

  “Tallow, pine resin.” Alaric scowled, trying to remember his history lessons. These were all things he had learned during his apprenticeship, but he never thought he’d actually need to resort to these ancient methods before. “Beeswax would have been great, but I doubt we’ll be able to get our hands on that.”

  “Tallow should be easy, once Robert hunts some game again.” Lochlan hesitated. “Pine resin… I mean, some of the trees we cut were pine trees. We can try and make it work.”

  “We’ll have to. We need to build our own stuff, and we can’t do it without treating the wood. Tallow will be the easiest.”

  “We can use the fat stripped from the meat we’ll dry.” Lochlan nodded. “Then just boil it, right?”

  “Yeah.” Alaric absentmindedly pet Cinder’s neck as he walked beside the stallion. “We’ll need a lot of water.” A part of him wished he could get a second horse. I’d rather never see the Profaned Legion ever again, but still… He could make a bigger, four-wheeled carriage if they had two steeds.

  With a shake of his head, he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. There were more important things to deal with now.