“I figured,” he muttered. Isaac felt a little sorry for him. The guy’s whole life floated or sank on his ability to make people laugh. He tried, bless his heart.

“I’ll lead,” Trish said, no more amused than the others. “Sadina will take up the rear so we don’t lose anybody.”

She looked around, eyebrows raised, expecting a question or two. When no one responded, she turned around, ducked her head slightly, and slipped into the darkness of the cave.

“Catch ya on the other side!” she yelled over her shoulder, the hollow echo of her words swallowed by the rocks.

Isaac couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this cold. The tunnel that cut through the peninsula couldn’t have been more than a hundred meters long, but it was grueling in the darkness. No one had bothered to bring a torch, and flashlights were a thing that only existed in the old world. How Trish knew her way through the turns and drops and inclines was beyond him. But they stayed close together, each of them doing exactly what the person in front of them did. Truth be told, once his eyes adjusted, just enough light seeped in from both ends of the tunnel to keep him from face-slamming into a rock every ten seconds.

But the water made Isaac miserable. Every step of the way, at the very least his shoes were completely immersed, and often the freezing liquid came all the way to his shorts. The splish-splash of their ten pairs of legs slogging through the narrow stream made Isaac think of Captain Sparks dunking lengths of hot iron into the cooling buckets. What he wouldn’t give for some of the warmth from the Forge fires. Every centimeter of skin he owned shivered uncontrollably.

It wasn’t really that much fun learning that he was this big of a wimp when it came to adventuring. It’s just the cold and the wet, he thought. I can handle anything as long as it’s warm. He’d hiked and climbed almost every square meter of this huge island, but usually with the comfort of the sun lighting the way.

“There’s gotta be some dead bodies decomposing in here,” Carson the giant said. He was two or three people behind Isaac. “Something don’t smell right.”

Isaac took a big sniff but didn’t notice anything besides the usual strong scent of the sea, which pretty much anyone would agree smelled like rotting fish.

“Wasn’t me,” Dominic replied, to the surprise of no one.

Sadina spoke up from her position in the very back. “Over seventy years, I’m sure at least a few poor saps got lost in here. We’re probably stepping on bones and body parts as we speak.”

“Remind me never to go anywhere with east-siders again,” someone said. Isaac thought it was the girl with the long, braided hair, Jackie.