Morgan reached out to hover her hand over the ashes, and found that they were barely warm. The fire had burned hot and fierce and quick, but it had burned itself out just as quickly. There was probably some implication about the world she could draw from that, something about the physics of it all, the speed with which heat dissipated from the ashes indicating something important and terrifying about how quickly her body heat was being lost and how fast she would burn energy, but there wasn't anything she could do to solve any problems she might intuit from that line of thinking, so instead she walked forward a few steps. But before she could go more than those few steps, Liam let out a startled curse. It might have been the first time she'd ever seen him lose control of himself; of course Morgan turned to look. He stood clutching at his ears, expression distorted in the sort of way she was used to seeing when a speaker kicked out high pitched feedback, or a little baby shrieked unexpectedly. Her niece had been very good at unexpected shrieks. But more importantly, a golden tendril -- amorphous but still distinctly visible to her naked eye, somewhere between an octopus arm and the frond of a cucumber vine -- had to all intents and purposes wrapped itself around his head. Whatever it was, she didn't think Liam could see it. The angle was all wrong. But she could, and without thinking about it any more, she lunged for it. She might be proud of herself for that later, the instinctive way she had tried to help, quite unlike the full body cringe that overtook her whenever she saw a snake, or a caterpillar, or an eel, or millipede, or quite frankly the octopus at the National Aquarium, which she'd visited as part of one of the glad-handing tours and fundraisers on her father's campaign trail. For now though, she just swore when her hands went right through the ethereal stuff. “Stop,” Liam said. “It's talking to me, and we need the intel.” [i]What if it eats you?[/i] Morgan very carefully didn't say. If whatever it was could eat him, it wouldn't be talking to him, and there would be nothing to stop it from eating her too. She was enough the politician's daughter to know not to offend a greater power without cause. She waited. “The fire got its attention. It lives across the river. There are… people inside it? It's inviting me back.” “You.” His voice went flat, but she couldn't tell who he was addressing when he said, “I'm not going without you.” Which meant it did want him to go without her. Well that did wonders for her self-esteem. She tried to tell herself that it was probably talking to Liam because of his tether. She wasn't being personally rejected; she'd merely made the [i]entirely rational[/i] choice to stick to a dumb phone. “It says we're not safe here. We need to cross to the other bank. There's a… sphere? Bubble? Atmosphere? Nearby. Normally it would send someone, but the agent died.” “Let me guess” Morgan said. “It wants you to be its new agent.” “...yeah.” She decided that it wasn't worth it to ask [i]what about me?[/i] “What does that mean?” she asked instead. There was a brief pause; Liam's expression shifted from professional blankness to mild frustration. “I'm not entirely sure. It seems ridiculous. It wants to send me places, have me explore and see what I can bring back that is useful to it and the people it is protecting. I get the impression it's some kind of symbiote?” “Like Venom from the old comics?” Morgan asked, her voice tilting up sharply at the edges. “No." Another hesitation. "Like I said, hard to explain. It's still trying, but the important part is getting off this island. You were right, this isn't a planet. It's not even as stable as a turtle balancing on the back of an elephant. More like a pile of driftwood that has bumped up against a boat, and we're not on the boat. If a storm blows in, the driftwood is going to get washed away.” “So how do we cross the river?” "If I agree to be its agent, it says it can bring me to it from anywhere in the Void. And anything I want to bring with me. But I'm not enthusiastic about teleporting right now, and I'm not sure I trust it to bring you with me. It... it barely realizes you're here; I'm half afraid it would bring the boar corpse instead, even if it were [i]trying[/i] to help." Lovely. "If it noticed us because of the fire, it can't be far. We can swim, if we can dry off somewhere safe." "And there aren't monsters in the river." Morgan rolled her eyes. The water was murky enough tat she couldn’t make out much—just the occasional ripple that didn’t match the current. It might have been nothing. But with their current luck, it was probably something. "Of course there monsters in the river. But unless there's a bridge we haven't seen yet, we swim." "Give me your clothes,” he said. "Let's try to keep them from getting to wet. Obediently, she stripped down to her underwear. Her satin lingerie were less revealing than most of her bathing suits, but she still felt naked. Liam had a surgeon's disregard for nudity and didn't notice. She folded up her clothes and handed them to him. The river wasn’t wide, but it ran fast and rocky. The shadows cast by the tall trees on the opposite bank made it seem even more ominous under the increasingly indigo sky. “I'll be right behind you,” Liam murmured. She forced a brave smile before stepping into the water. It was colder than she'd expected, all but numbing her legs as she waded in. The current tugged at her, but she made decent progress. Smooth rocks in the riverbed, not too slimy with moss, kept her from falling too deep. She ignored the far shore, the dark mass of trees that hopefully hid shelter, and tried to focus on each steps instead of the prickle of unease crawling up her spine. She was about a quarter of the way across when she felt a sharp sting on her thigh, like a needle jab. She yelped and slipped, barely maintaining her center of gravity instead of plopping butt-first into the water. “What happened?” Liam asked, pulling her up onto a nearby flattish rock. “Something stung me.“ Her voice was pinched with pain and surprise. She looked down but saw nothing in the dark water. A moment later the river came alive with light. Tiny, pale glowing orbs appeared beneath the surface, pulsing softly at first, then brighter. Creatures -- invisible moments before -- revealed themselves, jelly-blob bodies illuminating the water around them. Dozens of them, maybe more, floated beneath the surface, bioluminescence casting eerie shadows in the patterns of the rapids. Her leg throbbed where she’d been stung, and after she reached down to touch the wound, blood smeared the water on her hand, which didn't make any sense -- she couldn't feel any torn flesh. The jellyfish things pulsed closer, fighting the current and mostly failing. “Out of the water!” Liam’s voice cut through her shock. “Great,” she muttered, staring to shiver. “Sanguivorous jellyfish.” “Don’t move,” he ordered, running his hands over her lower body. She didn't seem to be bleeding, but the skin was red like a chemical burn, beneath her goosebumps. “Damn it, why you and not me?” "Is your friend protecting you?" "It says no. But it could be anything." He hesitated, attention turning back to the creatures. Their neon blue lights flickered with predatory intensity, but thankfully they stayed in the water. "Maybe because I'm a guy?" Morgan rolled her eyes. "I would have told you if I was on my period before wading into a river filled with monsters, Liam." "I shouldn't have let you wade into a river filled with monsters in the first place." “If it wasn't jellyfish, it was going to be something else.” She winced as he poked and prodded her half-numb skin. “And you would have thought it was safe, if they didn't go after you. Look, forget about it. It could have been worse; it could have been sharks, I could be bitten all to pieces by an alligator." He winced. "Not exactly reassuring me." She shrugged; reassurance hadn't been her goal. "I'll be fine, or I won't. Either way, we need to cross."