The truck idles at the checkpoint, its engine rumbling against the biting wind that slices across the frozen wasteland. Before them stands a pit fiend, bundled in heavy furs and wool scarves wrapped so thickly around his crimson face that only his sulfurous yellow eyes remain visible. He looks profoundly bored.
“You are headed for Tantlin?” His voice comes muffled through the layers. “Nearly the only place one can go in all of Stygia. Are you here for the Swap Meet?”
Reklaw calls out, “Yes,” his breath fogging in the frigid air. Beside him, Kiki’s face twists in surprise, her dark eyes going wide.
“Buying or selling?” the guard asks, stamping his hooved feet against the ice.
“What?” Kiki hisses under her breath, turning sharply toward Reklaw.
“Trust me,” Reklaw mumbles back, barely moving his lips.
“Buying,” he states more loudly. “We have nothing to sell.”
The guard leans forward, his eyes narrowing as he peers over his heavy scarf into the back of the truck. His gaze fixes on the shivering form of Lula, the deva’s feathers ruffled and dull in the hellish cold.
“You could sell your slave,” the guard notes, a calculating edge entering his voice. “You could get loads of gold or even soul tokens for a captive deva. Lots here would pay for the privilege of breaking one…”
“He’s a prisoner,” Kiki snaps, her voice sharp as breaking ice, shutting down the conversation with finality.
“Too bad,” the guard says in what might be commiseration, though it’s impossible to tell through the muffling scarves.
Kiki’s hands move across the truck’s control panel, gears grinding and mechanisms whirring as she begins to deploy the vehicle’s transformation sequence. Metal plates shift and reconfigure, the wheels retracting as pontoons extend from the undercarriage.
“It’ll be quicker,” the artificer explains, her fingers dancing across switches and levers, “and we won’t have to mess with devils if we go overland.”
The guard shakes his bright red head sadly, ice crystals falling from his horns. “You should know that there is some sort of creature… an aboleth?… that’s been sighted in the Styx.”
“We’ll be fine. What are the odds?” Reklaw responds with more confidence than he feels.
“What kind of place lets an aboleth run loose?” Kiki snaps belligerently, her patience with this frozen hellscape clearly wearing thin.
“Are you criticizing the leadership of the great frozen land of Stygia?” the guard snarls in response, his posture shifting, becoming predatory.
Kiki stares at the guard, her eyes round as coins, wondering if the pit fiend will resort to violence. The moment stretches taut as a bowstring.
“No, you’re right,” the guard says finally, his shoulders dropping. “The ruler of Stygia exists frozen in a block of ice. Hard to govern from a glacier.”
The truck rolls forward and hits the River Styx with a tremendous splash. Black water, thick as oil and cold as oblivion, parts before the vessel’s prow. Kiki navigates downstream for several hours, the transformed truck cutting through the dark current while chunks of ice knock against the hull with hollow thuds.
Vali spots it first from his lookout position on the roof, where the wind tears at his cloak. A strange shape breaches the water ahead, massive and sinuous.
“It’s not an aboleth,” he shouts down, his voice nearly lost in the wind. “It’s a kraken!”
Kiki’s hands fly across the controls, coaxing every ounce of speed from the engines. The truck surges forward, but the creature moves with horrifying grace through its native element. The sky above darkens suddenly, clouds boiling into existence from nowhere. Lightning screams down from the conjured storm, bolt after bolt slamming into the truck with explosive force. Metal screams and buckles. Smoke pours from ruptured panels.
An enormously heavy tentacle, thick as an ancient tree and covered in suckers the size of dinner plates, crashes down across the back of the truck. The entire vessel shudders, groaning under the impact. The smell of ozone and burning metal fills the air.
A voice blasts into their minds—cold, alien, hungry: “I wonder how you will taste?”
The truck lists to one side, taking on water. Sparks shower from damaged systems. It cannot sustain much more damage.
The rail gun swivels and fires, the shot connecting with the kraken’s massive body. The creature bellows, a sound that vibrates through water and air and bone, and redoubles its attack. Another tentacle rises from the black depths.
“Maybe we can offer it something in our place!” Vali shouts desperately over the chaos.
He leans over the railing, bellowing at the creature through cupped hands: “How would you like a juicy chicken to eat? We can fry it for you, if you wish!”
The beady, alarmed eye of the hyper-intelligent rooster—Five’s former companion animal—focuses on Vali with unmistakable horror and betrayal.
“No!” Kiki shouts, and her hands move in the familiar patterns of spellcasting. Magic shimmers in the air, and suddenly forty pounds of perfectly fried chicken and several gallons of rich brown gravy materialize in the water before the kraken. The scent of herbs and spices somehow cuts through even the acrid smell of the Styx.
The food disappears into the kraken’s maw. The creature pauses, its massive eye considering them for one eternal moment. Then it simply disappears beneath the black waters, leaving only ripples spreading across the surface.
As they limp toward the shore, the group notices crowds gathered on the docks of what must be Tantlin. The city rises before them, all ice and iron and dark stone. Several bone devils, their skeletal forms wrapped in official-looking sashes, rush forward with weapons drawn.
“You’re under arrest for drawing the kraken to this part of the river!” one shouts, his voice rattling from his fleshless jaw.
An ice devil intervenes before they can board, moving with predatory smoothness. Gold coins pass from his clawed hand across the palms of the guards, the transaction so smooth it seems choreographed. The bone devils step back, suddenly finding other things to occupy their attention.
The ice devil turns to them, his crystalline features catching the dim light. “I am the proprietor of the Shackled Soul tavern,” he says, his voice like wind across a frozen lake. “I have the venue and you have the tale. We will be able to make some gold together. You will tell the story of your battle with the kraken—properly embellished, of course.”
Vali, the ambitious bard, nods with unmistakable hunger for the performance already burning in his eyes.
