A hand grasps at my waist and I'm about to swing when I realize that it's Jed. The blade barely stops before it would have split his throat. He is hunched over, his face pinched with pain.

“This way,” he says. I look back over my shoulder, see the horde bearing down on us. It's too dark to see how many but I know it's enough to overwhelm us. “There's a river nearby,” he says. “We'll be safer there.”

I nod and he leads the way, limping. I try to hold him up, to help him, but my own feet lose purchase and I constantly slip.

The roar of the water pounds in my ears and eventually Jed slows, sliding his feet out as if he's probing for something.

“We have to move faster,” I tell him. “They're getting too close again.” He holds a hand up and I am quiet.

“Here,” he says, and I'm about to walk past him to see what he's pointing out and he pulls me back at the last moment, just as I feel my right foot slipping into nothingness.

He kneels and I follow suit. Both of us scoot forward and then I feel the emptiness with my own hands. There's a canyon, cut by the river. Just up the river I can see a massive waterfall, churning and throwing debris into the darkness. The roar of the water is deafening now, fed by the storm. Waves glint below, the river frothy, foamy, hungry.

I'm terrified looking down on it, my fingers digging into the mud. Jed swings one foot over the edge of the cliff near the falls.

I grab his hand. “What are you doing?” I ask. My voice cracks from the strain.

“It's too high to jump,” he tells me. “There might be rocks we can't see. We have to climb down.”

I'm already shaking my head. “The ground is too soft, we'll never make it.” He grabs my hand, pulls me over the side and wraps my fingers around something firm and slick with rain. “Roots,” he tells me. “We can use them like rope. Be careful of the rocks,” he adds, “the rain may have loosened them.”

I'm still unsure. I can't climb with the scythe and I'm unwilling to let it go. But then the Unconsecrated horde descends on us and Jed pulls me over the edge before the first one can get me and I drop the weapon into the darkness below as I clamber for purchase in the soft earth.

They begin to fall around us, bumping us, grabbing at us as they tumble down the side of the cliff.

“Hold on!” Jed yells. The stream of Unconsecrated bodies does not stop, their arms reaching for us as they slip past, forcing us to climb lower. We shuffle down until I find a little overhang that protects me from the falling bodies.