I nodded. Out of all of us, Diaval did seem the most capable. “So, Soren and I will head toward the shoreline, Seppo and Rose can do the middle, and Diaval can check the back.” I tried to make my voice command-like, similar to the surety that both Diaval and Soren had in their voices when they told everyone what to do, but it lacked something and I tensed in frustration. I kept feeling like I was lacking so many things that I should have known or been able to do, and yet here I was, floundering along like a half-drowned rat trying to swim against the current. The excess energy made my fingers curl into a fist and had me looking angrily for something to punch.

Soren put a hand on my shoulder, and I forced myself to relax. “It’s okay,” he said softly, so the others couldn’t hear as we began our search. “No one expects you to be perfect.”

No one except for myself, at least. But I tried to break away from the poisonous useless thoughts as we walked down the shore of corpses. I kept my eyes glued to the sand, worried every time it rippled of what was lurking under it. Once or twice I swore I caught sight of a flicking forked tongue or a disappearing tail, but the Nidhogg didn’t bother us as long as we didn’t touch those condemned on the shore.

I wasn’t sure what acts one had to do to get put on the shore of corpses—nothing good considering this was Lydian’s current resting place—but even the knowledge that these men and women might be murderers or rapists or something worse didn’t sit well with me as I watched vultures peck out their eyes, only for them to grow painfully back in, or for odd, scaled crustaceans to gnaw at their exposed feet and rip away chunk by chunk which again respawned in painful rejuvenation. Their screams alone had me gripping tightly to Soren’s hand. The screams of dying, tortured men who knew that they would never get the relief they sought wasn’t as terrifying as the men and women and other creatures who’d been on the shore long enough and had a dead, blank stare to their faces like their spirits had been completely severed from their bodies.

My stomach twisted as the tide receded and a horrible, rotting smell permeated the air. There’d been bodies lying under the water bloated and completely unrecognizable as to who they could’ve been or what they might’ve been when they were alive.