Chapter Text
Mission 1: Beyond the Wind
Somehow, three years later, Tesh ended up standing on the same docks, staring at the same mist-wreathed island that had taken his mentors away. The boat was larger today, and the sun glittered brighter on the churning ocean between them, but when Tesh stopped and stared, he couldn’t help but remember himself younger, grinning, and taking snapshots of his professor and her colleagues as they set off for the monster-infested unknown.
He’d been jealous, then—that they’d be the first human beings to set foot on the island after it had magically popped into existence within sight of their university.
Now, Tesh couldn’t imagine any feeling beyond the dread.
Could anyone blame him? It wasn’t like he was the only one on the docks today eyeing the island with blatant wariness. Everyone studying the island would know about its first doomed expedition, of course. But Tesh had been the one standing here, waving goodbye, feeling all of his anticipation curl into unease as communications snapped off. They hadn’t needed to wait, to hope, to feel that hope falter as they were first declared missing, and then declared dead.
Though Tesh himself had been gone by that point. He’d abandoned the biology half of his double major, and found photography work in settings as far from nature as possible. He wasn’t unusual in that respect, either. Most of the student side of that research team had drifted away after their professors failed to return, and he’d have been surprised if he saw any of their faces here today.
Except for Arin, of course. He doubted this outing would’ve even been possible without her.
His old friend stood on the prow of the ship, talking with the captain. Tesh waited for her to notice him as he made his way up the gangplank, but her attention was elsewhere. She pointed to the screen of the tablet in her hand, then out towards the island. Tesh couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he thought he could guess well enough. She’d worked with the meteorology department while at school, and it was her professor who’d developed the technique to detect patterns in the wind wall that usually protected the island from unwanted intruders. She was probably telling the captain what to expect from the island’s impossible weather, and where any breaks in the barrier would appear.
Arin gestured up, to the clouds that circled the island. Tesh wondered what patterns she saw in them. Whatever they were, it was beyond his ken. Still, he undid the cap from his lens and focused a shot on her, with the clouds behind her like a halo. Sunlight illuminated her dark skin, and the coils of her hair bounced in the wind.
The shutter clicked. Arin’s eyes returned to earth, and met Tesh’s through the lens. Her eyebrows shot up.
Tesh let go of his camera and waved. They hadn’t spoken to each other since the aftermath of the doomed expedition. It would be nice to—
Arin looked away.
Tesh’s hesitant smile fell away entirely. Had she not seen him after all? “Arin?” he called out, over the general din.
Still nothing from her. The captain glanced his way, then nudged Arin and nodded in his direction. Finally, her gaze flickered back to him. She gave him a tight-lipped smile—grimace, really—then turned firmly out towards the ocean.
So. Arin had seen him. She was just avoiding him.
Could she really still be upset with him, after all of these years? Sure, he’d quit. She’d stayed. But had she really expected him to keep going with the research that had gotten his mentor killed? Like nothing had ever happened? Honestly, she was the strange one for continuing on. Fear was the logical response, here. Whatever special something she had that kept her going, Tesh didn’t have it. Not fair of her to blame him for being ordinary.
Tesh went to the other side of the ship and avoided Arin right back. He took a few pictures of the crew and research team setting up, even though he knew the shots they really wanted wouldn’t come until they got closer to the island. At a call from the captain, the ship’s engines churned. Tesh lurched, but found his balance soon enough. It had been a while, but apparently some instincts didn’t fade.
Mist sprayed over the edge as the ship picked up speed. Tesh rummaged in his bag to for the camera’s water-resistant cover. The distraction could only last him so long, though. Once he’d fitted everything in place, his subject was waiting.
Tesh pushed down his misgivings at the sight of the fog-shrouded island growing ever closer. His boss had promised him that the trip would only last a couple of hours—if she hadn’t, his fear of the island would’ve probably overridden his fear of getting fired, and he wouldn’t have been here at all.
So he’d be uncomfortable for a couple of hours. He’d live. By the time evening rolled around, he’d be back on the shore, safe and sound.
Tesh skirted around the edge of the ship, searching for a place with a good angle of the approaching island where he wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Though there wasn’t much to see at this point. When the wind was going strong, it always seemed to carry with it a thick stream of mist, so even the best equipment on the market still spat out pictures that looked like they’d come from an early-2000s camera phone. Arin and her equipment had probably picked up some imminent clearing of the mists—something to make the trip worthwhile. That would be the best time for Tesh to do his work, too.
Still, a few approaching shots never hurt. Even through the mist, he could pick out some shapes. He followed a few through the lens, not sure what he was looking for, until—
Was that a seagull? He froze. Tracked it, compensating as best he could for the movement of the ship.
Not a seagull at all. It was one of them—one of the monsters. He gasped, and quickly took a few shots.
“Are you getting this?”
Tesh jumped at the sudden closeness of another voice. A familiar voice. He broke away from the viewfinder only to see Arin standing next to him, binoculars pressed against her face.
When Tesh didn’t respond right away, she added, “There, above those trees. Just past the inlet.”
“I’m…yeah. I’m getting it.” If she wanted to pretend she hadn’t been ignoring him, Tesh was more than willing to play along and chat. Like nothing had ever happened—sure. He raised the camera again.
Between the distance and the haze, Tesh couldn’t see much. What he did see, though, was enough. A humanoid shape, wings spread in flight: an impossible combination. It wasn’t the wildest thing the paltry footage had revealed from the island—no fire spitting out their mouth, or lightning bursting around them, or waves twisting up in impossible shapes—but that was better, somehow. He could appreciate the strangeness of it without feeling terrified, too. He held down the button and listened to the shutter click.
And how was he supposed to be petty, in the face of something like that? “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Tesh said.
“It really is,” Arin agreed.
They stood side by side in silence for a moment, leaning out over the water, lenses tracking the impossibility flying over the island. There was no sound from them but the shutter of Tesh’s camera.
“I can’t figure out how they’re staying up,” Arin said, finally. As if they were still college students, tossing theories back and forth about the strange new things that had suddenly appeared just across the bay. “They don’t look very aerodynamic, do they?”
“Not at all.”
“Controlling the air, maybe?”
“Controlling the air,” Tesh repeated. He shook his head. “Sometimes I still feel crazy, talking about this stuff like it’s totally normal.”
“You’re telling me. When I started school, I definitely did not think I would be using my degree to seek out holes in a magical wind barrier. I was thinking more, you know. Hurricanes.”
“Hurricanes? Pedestrian,” Tesh sneered with mock disdain.
Arin snort-laughed.
It had been a long, long while since Tesh had heard that sound. He lowered his camera. “I…I missed this. You know.”
Arin’s fingers tightened around the binoculars. “Did you?” she asked, carefully.
“Of course.” Those had been magical times. All of them, students and professors alike, equally swept away by the wonder of it all. How could they not? When it had been—look, an island suddenly appeared out of nowhere! Look, is that a magical barrier? Is that a desert sitting next to a plain sitting next to a volcano? Are those monsters? What else might there be, over there?
“Is that why you’re here?” The flying figure in the distance dipped below the tree line, and Arin lowered her binoculars. “To come back?”
“Oh, god no,” Tesh rushed to say, as if she had some way of keeping him here if he didn’t get it out fast enough. “I’m just covering for someone. They practically had to drag me out here.”
“Right.” She didn’t say anything more, but she didn’t have to. Her flat tone and slumped shoulders said it all.
Tesh turned back to the water. He couldn’t stand to see Arin looking so disappointed in him, and he didn’t want her to see his own bitterness. He couldn’t quite keep himself from mumbling, “Don’t know what you expect from me.” He thought the wind had picked up enough to cover his words.
Apparently not. After a pause, Arin said, “They were our friends.”
“I know that,” Tesh muttered.
“So why did you leave?” Arin raised her voice enough to be heard over the wind, but she didn’t yell. Tesh wished she would’ve. “You ignored my texts, my calls. Why—?”
“Because!” Tesh shouted. “Because they were our friends! Dr. Talley. Sirak. Gerving. They really cared about us. And then our magical, wonderful island ate them alive. Why did I leave? Why did you stay?”
“I want to find out what happened to them.”
Tesh didn’t. The various theories that had floated around in the aftermath were gruesome enough for him. Did Arin really need to confirm if they’d been burned alive, or dashed against the rocks, or drowned, or simply eaten? “Maybe you can. Good for you. But I can’t. There wasn’t anything I could do. There isn’t anything I can do.”
“When did I ever say you had to do anything?”
Tesh gripped the railing. “You didn’t need to.”
Arin’s jaw clenched, but rather than say anything she just turned back to the ocean. As far as diversions went, it wasn’t particularly convincing; the mists had settled in tight, and Tesh could barely see the shadows of the crew shuffling around behind Arin. Beyond the railing, there was nothing but white.
“So why are you here? Why come at all?” Arin asked, finally.
“I’m covering for someone at work.”
“And that’s all it took to get you inside? After all of that? Not—?”
“It’s not like it’s—” Tesh’s argument fell off as he fully processed what Arin had said. But…she’d had to shout over the wind at this point. Maybe he’d heard her wrong. He had to have heard her wrong. “Wait, inside? Inside, like--?”
The annoyance dripped away from Arin’s face. She searched his expression. “You didn’t know?”
“We’re going inside the barrier?” No. No, no. His boss hadn’t mentioned anything like this when she’d called and asked him to cover. She’d promised it would be easy. Nothing. Four hours, maybe five. And most of these sorts of trips were just…fly-bys. When there was a hole in the barrier, they’d take ships out as close as they could and snap pictures while the air was clear. They didn’t go in the barrier, for god’s sake. The last ones that had gone in were…
Well.
“Fuck,” Tesh muttered. He spun back in the direction they’d come, but the mists weren’t that much clearer that way. The mainland was nothing but a smudge on the horizon.
Arin grasped one of the hands Tesh had wrapped around the railing. When had it started trembling? “It’ll be fine,” Arin said. Like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Oh, will it? Professor Talley probably thought so, too.” Tesh didn’t like the note of panic in his voice. Other members of the research team were beginning to turn and stare.
“It will be fine,” Arin repeated, with more intensity this time. She had to lean in and yell just to be heard over the gusts. “We’re better prepared this time. We know that communications will likely be cut off. We only plan to be inside for a limited time. We have more modest goals—we don’t plan to land. Just to look.”
Tesh shook his head. No. No. He didn’t want to end up like them.
The ship lurched in a sudden gust of wind, as if in agreement. Tesh braced himself. And then—
The wind was gone.
Tesh’s ears rang at the sudden silence. He forced open one eye and saw that the mists, too, had disappeared, as if they’d never been there at all; all that remained as evidence were the beads of water glistening on his and Arin’s skin like dew. The ship sped through calm waters and a clear, sunny day, as if this was nothing more than a spring break day trip.
They were through the barrier.
And there was the island, closer and clearer than Tesh had ever seen it. Was it Tesh’s imagination, or could he feel something new in the air, something bright and sharp in his throat with every breath? Something that made his skin feel smooth and clean, as if he’d just scrubbed at it? He’d been worrying himself to exhaustion ever since he’d gotten the call for this job, but now it was like he’d taken a gulp of pure oxygen.
Tesh wasn’t the only one, by the looks of it. The ship had been bustling with activity, but as soon as the wind had gone quiet, all of that just…stopped. People stood still on the deck, gazing up at the sky or down at the sea as if in a daze.
“Wow,” Arin breathed. “This is…this is something.”
“It’s something,” Tesh found himself replying, despite himself. As if in a dream, he raised the camera. Through the droplets beaded on the waterproof casing, he saw—trees. A shoreline. Movement everywhere he looked, figures too blurred to identify.
He reached to adjust the focus, and only then realized that Arin still had his hand pinned beneath hers. When he tried to pull away, Arin’s fingers tightened to a vice grip.
Tesh flinched. “Arin, what—?”
But she wasn’t looking at him. She seemed, rather, to be staring right past him—or perhaps through him—her wide brown eyes shining with flecks of gold in the sunlight. “Do you feel that?” she breathed.
Tesh turned to follow the direction of her stare down to the surface of the ocean, expecting there to be some monstrosity breaching the surface beside them, but there was nothing. “Feel what?”
She ignored him. “We need to leave,” she whispered.
“What?”
“We need to leave!” Arin shouted.
Heads swerved in their direction. The captain hurried towards them, calling out, “What’s going on?”
Arin flung Tesh’s hand aside and strode forward to meet the captain. “We need to leave,” she repeated. “Now. Now. Back through the hole. Something’s coming, and we need to leave.”
“You’re sure?” The captain pushed his hat back and stared up at the crystal-clear sky. He probably assumed she was talking about a storm.
“Very sure,” she said. “Turn this around. Now.”
The captain met eyes with someone standing in the crowd, who nodded. The man shrugged. “If you say so.”
Tesh should’ve been thrilled. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? But…Arin hadn’t been terrified before. What had changed her mind? What could leave Arin panicked like that? He peered over the side of the ship, but still: nothing at all. Nothing but the waves.
Wait. Was that wave going the wrong way?
That was all Tesh had time to think before something slammed into the ship.
Before, when they’d been approaching the barrier, Tesh had been keeping a firm grip on the edge; now, with the water nearly still as a lake, not at all. Both his palms and the boat were still slick with mist. He’d been leaning over the water to search for whatever had so disturbed Arin. And that whatever-it-was had hit them with the force of a hurricane; the deck went from level to tilted at forty-five before Tesh even had time to think.
The boat hurled him out into open air. Someone—Arin?—shouted his name.
And then he was under, and he couldn’t hear anything at all beyond the roil of the ocean and his own pounding heart.
Anywhere else, Tesh would have been tense, but not terrified. He was a good swimmer, and the ship wasn’t far. He’d have breached the surface, waved at Arin, and someone would’ve thrown him a life ring. Simple as that.
Here, though. Here there were monsters.
The currents themselves seemed to fight against him. They whipped Tesh around in unpredictable patterns, until such simple concepts as up and down lost all meaning. He doubted he was heading towards the surface, though. The light only grew dimmer, the pressure around his chest tighter.
Tesh kicked. The surface might as well have been another world by this point, but he wanted to at least stop spinning. Finally, he caught some glimpse of his surroundings.
In the dark, something glowed.
Something that saw him.
The currents smashed him into some—rocks? Coral? He was so turned around, it could’ve even been the boat—and suddenly Tesh didn’t have time to look around any longer. He tried to protect himself as best as he could, but the solid whatever-it-was pounded against his arms, his legs, his back—
His head. Dull pain throbbed, and his limbs went slack.
And the dark swallowed him whole.