Stryker's Arc

Chapter 3 of 16

Stryker woke to voices shouting near the water. She'd slept coiled beneath the tour booth's awning, waiting for Guidry to show. Now something had the whole village moving toward the docks at dawn. She followed the crowd to where the boundary marker stood — an old twisted tree that marked where safe water ended and deep marsh began. The tree's roots had split overnight. Water pooled black around the base, and in that water, something green and massive lay half-submerged. Emerald eyes blinked once from just beneath the surface, then sank deeper. The villagers backed away, but Stryker moved closer. Past the broken tree, she spotted a wrecked boat tangled in vines, dragged up from somewhere it shouldn't be. The hull showed claw marks identical to the ones on Guidry's boat. This thing — whatever it was — had come from the deep marsh. It had crossed the boundary her grandmother's stories said couldn't be crossed. Stryker circled the wreckage twice, ignoring the warnings from the crowd. She found scales caught in the splintered wood — large, prismatic, catching light like gemstones. Not from a snake. From something older. The stories had been right about the deep marsh holding secrets. They'd been right about the danger. And if they'd been right about those things, then maybe her grandmother had been right about everything else too. Stryker pocketed three of the scales and made her decision. She wouldn't wait for Guidry anymore. Whatever had broken through the boundary had left a trail back to where it came from, and she was going to follow it.