The Blunt Reaper

The machine began to whir.

His fingers tightened around the restraints as the tube against his arm trembled.

"Shouldn't we wait?" someone asked beyond the glass.

A brief silence followed.

"There's no need."

The whirring grew louder.

Then the pain began again.

===================================

Mara turned toward him. "Do I need to ask what this Red Tide is?"

"Again, you probably don't."

"This is the most frustrating trip I've ever been on."

Rook rested one arm across the coffin. "As long as you keep calling it a trip, we're pretty much guaranteed not to make it."

The old man laughed. The sound travelled across the water, disturbingly loud in the stillness surrounding them.

Mara lowered her voice further. "I thought you said the things beneath us were sensitive to sound."

"They're farther down near the shore," he replied. "Besides, I've been ferrying souls across these waters longer than most Bastions have existed. I know when I'm allowed to laugh."

"That sounds like something a man says immediately before being eaten," Rook muttered.

The old man laughed again, then looked between them. "Are you two not dating?"

"Hell no!" Rook and Mara replied at once.

Their voices struck the fog and disappeared into it.

Mara turned sharply toward Rook. "Wow, that was really fast."

"The same could be said about you."

"I was correcting him."

"So was I."

"You sounded offended."

"I was."

Mara scoffed and looked away. Rook did the same, while the old man continued laughing as he pushed the boat deeper into the mist.

Time became difficult to measure upon the water.

Nothing changed around them. The same gray fog drifted past the boat, and the same black surface rolled beneath it. Even the sound of the pole entering the water came at perfectly measured intervals. Mara occasionally glanced behind them, but every trace of the shore had vanished.

She took the crystalline sphere from inside her coat and studied it beneath the lantern light.

Darkness shifted within the smooth surface. It wandered aimlessly at first, then gathered along the side facing Rook. When Mara turned the sphere away from him, the shadows stretched after him before scattering again.

Rook noticed. "Put that away."

"I'm not looking into it."

"You're holding corrupted memories over memory-eating water."

"I have a firm grip."

"You also had a firm grip on the Abomination lure."

"And I didn't drop it."

"That was luck."

"That was skill."

"That was you nearly slipping while someone strangled you."

The old man glanced at the sphere. Whatever amusement had remained in his expression disappeared. "Best keep that covered."

Mara looked at him. "Do you know what it is?"

"I know there are things in these waters that feel memories the way blood-drinkers feel an open wound."

She immediately returned the sphere to the inside of her coat.

Rook nodded. "Good. At least you listen when the advice is sufficiently threatening."

"I listen when someone explains the danger."

"I explained the danger."

"You said to put it away."

"Which would have prevented the danger."

"That isn't an explanation."

Rook opened his mouth, reconsidered whatever he had intended to say, then looked back toward the water.

The boat continued forward.

Some time later, something struck the hull.

The impact was not strong enough to overturn them, but the boat lurched sideways. Mara caught the edge before she could be thrown against the coffin. Water slapped hard against the timber as the vessel tilted, then gradually levelled again.

The old man did not react. He merely pulled his pole from the water and adjusted their course.

Mara looked toward the side that had been struck.

Something floated upon the surface.

At first, she mistook it for driftwood. The fog parted as the boat passed, revealing a pale hand. An arm followed it, then a shoulder covered in rotted cloth. A man's corpse floated face down in the black water, his hair drifting around his head while his fingers moved gently with the current.

The old man guided the boat around the body without speaking.

Rook did not look at it.

Mara kept watching until the corpse disappeared behind them. "Was that one of the people you ferried?"

Neither man answered.

Another body emerged from the fog ahead.

This one floated upon its back. Its skin had swollen until the face barely resembled that of a person, but the eyes remained open beneath the water. The boat passed close enough for Mara to see the pale irises staring upward through the dark surface.

Then came a third.

A woman with one arm wrapped around herself. A man wearing the remains of rusted armor. Another body whose face had been worn smooth, leaving no eyes, mouth or nose behind.

The farther they travelled, the more appeared.

Soon, the old man could no longer guide the boat around them. The hull pushed gently between the corpses, turning some aside while others scraped along the wood. Fingers knocked against the planks. Waterlogged faces rolled toward the lantern, then vanished beneath the boat before rising again behind it.

There were dozens.

Then hundreds.

They covered the surface in every direction, packed so closely together that Mara could barely see the water between them. Some had plainly drowned. Their bodies were bloated, their clothing heavy with water and their skin stretched tight across swollen limbs. Others had been beneath the surface for so long that almost nothing remained except bone held together by strips of gray flesh.

Yet none of them sank.

The boat forced a slow path through the dead. Shoulders bumped against the hull. Fingernails scratched weakly along the wood. One corpse rolled onto its side as they passed, and its empty gaze followed Mara for several seconds before the water turned it away.

The old man pushed forward without changing pace.

Rook remained silent.

Mara could endure their refusal to explain only so long.

"What in God's name happened here?"

"These are the people who drank from the river," the ferryman said.

Mara stared across the endless field of floating bodies. "More like drowned in it."

A corpse struck the side near her. Its face briefly rose above the surface, mouth hanging open as dark water poured from between its lips.

She drew back. "They're dead?"

"No." Rook's gaze passed across the bodies. "Well, worse."

"What's worse than being dead?"

Rook finally looked at her.

"Me, you, the old man, and everyone else you've met here are dead." He turned toward the bodies surrounding the boat. "These are the Empty."

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