From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 7: The Lake

Our vessel was an act of faith, poor planning, and unintended consequences.

"We’re not building a raft, I can switch things. We’ll just... Switch our way across."

"Switch us?" Finn squeaked. "All five?"

"Maybe? I have no idea, I once switched a pebble with some sand. So, we’ll switch. Until we’re across."

The words sounded absurd as I said them aloud. I braced for the inevitable pushback. A plan built on a maybe and a single pebble sand swap deserved to be laughed out of the cavern.

They stared at me. Phinyx slowly nodded, as if this made perfect sense. "I can vibe with that. A journey of incremental steps. The vibe of progression."

The laughter never came... Was I the only sane man in this group?

The first step was getting Finn there. I concentrated on Finn and on a paddle. Darien’s team had left one of their reinforced wooden paddles stuck in the lake’s edge on the far side. It was the closest, most obvious object.

I concentrated and my mind started hissing again, until suddenly...

There was a soft pop of displaced air.

And Finn was here, he didn’t teleport.

Instead, I felt a sudden, profound chill on... My right foot? I looked down. My right boot was gone. In its place, wedged between my sock and the damp stone, was the reinforced paddle.

"Uh." said Kira.

"Your boot is over there." Yami stated calmly, pointing across the lake.

And it was. My worn, grimy boot was now standing upright in the distance where the paddle had been.

A beat of silence passed.

"The vibe." Phinyx announced solemnly. "Is one of... unexpected footwear based translocation."

"I was thinking of the paddle and Finn, but I didn’t touch Finn, I guess it needs... direct contact?" I theorized, wiggling my cold, paddle secured toes.

"So you can’t aim." Finn summarized, despair creeping back in.

"I can aim! The aim just... lands. Somewhere. Look, it’s progress. We got the paddle. That’s a resource."

After that, no one wanted to be teleported and risk dying or falling into the river, so...

The second step was now to get the boat itself. Darien’s abandoned reinforced raft was still beached on the far shore, near from where my boot stood sentry.

"Okay, new plan." I said, gripping the paddle. "I’m going to switch this rock I’m touching, with the boat."

"The whole piece?" Kira asked.

"I hope, if not, this will take longer."

I focused on the cold rock that I was touching with my hand, then on the dark, hardened raft.

Switch.

The usual static hurt my head. And then, the rock felt different.

The boat got here on a simple switch. Well, I also felt drained, not physically but, in a different way.

Phinyx reported. "The vibe became acquisitive."

We now owned a whole hardened boat.

We were also still stranded.

"Right." I said, gritting my teeth. "We need more than one paddle."

I switched one of Finn’s buttons for the remaining paddle, which bonked him on the head. And then we were ready to travel.

And beached directly at our feet, dripping with despair tainted water, was the complete boat.

We stared at it.

"You... switched the whole concept of ’boat’ back together." Kira said, awe in her voice.

"I think I just gave it a vibe of wholeness." Phinyx whispered.

"The note A is proud." Yami said.

Then we got into the boat and started our journey across the lake.

We piled into the craft, its hardened plates groaning under our weight. Using the scavenged paddles, we pushed away from the stone shore. The transition was immediate.

As we left the solid rock behind, the temperature didn’t drop, but the air felt heavier. A profound, silent chill seeped through our clothes, a cold that originated in the mind and spread outward, scooping a single emotion from our souls, hope.

The black water didn’t splash, it parted with viscous reluctance, clinging to the paddles like tar and dripping back with a thick, syrupy slowness that seemed to defy gravity.

Phinyx hunched in the center of the boat, his eyes squeezed shut. "Okay, okay, vibes of insular warmth... a bubble of ’not here’... think cozy thoughts, people, for the love of paste." he muttered, his voice tense.

A faint, shimmering distortion bloomed around him. It didn’t stop the chill, but it took the sharpest edge off, turning a soul deep freeze into a mere winter’s grasp. It felt less like warmth and more like forgetting we were cold.

We began to paddle. Each stroke was a battle. The water offered a constant, dense resistance. The despair wasn’t just a feeling, it was a pressure. It whispered in the silence between our breaths, not with words, but with a simple, heavy certainty.

’Stop. This is pointless. You are already dead.’

Yami began to hum, a single, clear note that she pitched directly into our skulls. It was the note A, a tuning fork struck against the fog, a lifeline of pure, meaningless frequency to focus on.

Halfway across, Finn gasped. "It’s... pulling." He wasn’t talking about the water. His face had gone slack, his paddling faltering. He was staring into the depthless black beside the boat. "So much silver... down there. It’s beautiful." His voice was dreamy, distant. The lake’s despair was offering him a twisted version of his heart’s desire.

"Finn!" Kira barked, snapping her fingers in front of his face. "That’s not the Citadel. That’s a lure." She placed a hand on the boat’s hull, her brow furrowed. "There’s... movement. Deep down. Something is circling."

Her words sent a jolt of terror through us, renewing our hysterical paddling.

The boat swayed, its improvised construction complaining. A low, wet groan echoed through the stone around us, as if the cavern itself disapproved of our passage. Something long and dense broke the surface near our port side, then submerged without a ripple.

We didn’t scream. We poured every ounce of fear into the paddles. Phinyx was chanting now. "Vibe of disinterest! We are boring! We are driftwood! Very bland, unappetizing driftwood!"

After an eternity that lasted perhaps a minute, our paddles struck solid ground. We scrambled out, falling onto the blessed, cold stone of the far shore, hauling the boat after us as if the black water itself might crawl out after it. I collapsed next to my lone, waiting boot, my lungs burning, my hands blistered, and my mind feeling thin.

I pulled the boot on. It was damp with alien muck that felt strangely warm.

From the tunnel ahead, Darien’s voice, cut through. "Was that a scenic tour? Finish up! Finn! Which way?"

Finn, still on his hands and knees, breathing heavily, raised a trembling finger. It wasn’t a confident point. It was the shaky extension of a dowsing rod. "That way" he pointed to the bigger tunnel on the wall.

His eyes were wide, not with relief, but with a new, more profound horror. "I also feel Silver inside the lake." His voice dropped to a whisper we all focused on.

"And it’s moving."