pushing through as if thousands of gallons weren’t pelting down on top of them.
Neither of us said anything, because neither of us understood what we were seeing. We just pulled farther back into shadow as something streaming with water came into the cave, stopping beside the remains of our shield.
There was no way that the wreckage could have been seen from the outside. The rocks that had trapped it were the only things that extended beyond the falls, and then only barely. The shield itself, now cracked like a giant egg, bounced back and forth behind them as it slowly filled with water.
They did have some way of tracking it, I thought, as Ray’s grip on my shoulder became painful.
I pried his fingers loose before he cracked a bone, and he shot me a startled look. “Sorry,” he mouthed.
I nodded, and went back to staring at the intruder.
Now that the water had mostly streamed away, I could see that it was similar in design to the craft we’d just found, with a slightly rounded top and a capsule-like body. But this one was made entirely out of polished wood, although it otherwise copied the metal version exactly. Right down to the wooden “rivets” in the sides and the indistinct, foreign words on the door.
Only this one was floating through the air.
It slowly rotated, the bluish lights on the sides strobing the rocks and sand, but missing us when we drew back behind the ledge of stone.
The flood of light reached past us, extending halfway down the little tunnel. But the craft didn’t seem to find the tunnel very interesting, either. After a moment, it withdrew, and when I checked again, peering out from near the bottom of the rock where the shadows were the thickest, I saw that it had settled onto the wet sand near the shield. The door lowered, and a contingent of silver haired fey poured out, their boots splashing on the waterlogged sand.
“What now?” Ray mouthed.
That was a good question, I thought, watching the fey. They looked eerie in the strange blue light, even more so than normal. It striped their faces and tinted their hair. But they seemed to see just fine, as some of them were already stripping off and wading over to the empty shell of the shield.
They appeared to be having trouble seeing the bottom, as it was partly flooded and the churning action of the falls was keeping it moving. They could probably tell that there were bodies in there, but not how many or what kind. But that would not last long.
Their craft was larger than the one we’d found, and there were a lot of fey. I counted fifteen, and there could be more inside. And unlike the ones who had taken me, these were well armed. While all Ray and I had was a knife I’d taken off of one of our attackers, a broken, tourist-grade scimitar, and a wrench.
“We shoulda taken that shin bone,” he whispered, and I silently agreed.
And then my eyes widened.
“Look,” I whispered to Ray, and pointed.
“What? I don’t—oh. Oh, shit.”
I seconded the comment. Because our footsteps were clearly visible on the wet sand, tracking first up the beach and then across the cavern. They would have been even more so, but the black color of the sand blended them into the shadows somewhat, and there were patches of rock here and there that broke them up. The fey had also landed on top of some of them, putting down on the biggest section of sandy soil.
But any moment now, they were going to be noticed. They had filled up with water, and the bluish light coming off the fey’s craft was highlighting them perfectly from this angle. That would likely be true from other vantage points as well.
As soon as one of the fey noticed, we were going to have to fight.
I tensed up, preparing—and then another capsule breeched the falls. It was as big as the last, and its shutters were down, exposing the interior and allowing it to immediately begin spewing forth fey. They leapt from the windows before it had even landed, calling out to their fellow warriors, although whether instructions or questions, I didn’t know.
I weighed my options. I had a stun ability that theoretically could take on this many, leaving them defenseless. But the fey were really spread out, and I needed them bunched into a relatively small area for it to work. And it only lasted about