As her people had been fighting off the crabs, Aethe’s senses had been feeding her information related to how the crabs approached, fought, and retreated. It was, she explained, exactly the kind of thing an Escort Scout was supposed to do. The idea was that she’d learn things by seeing, and feed them to a team that could use those insights.

The commander hadn’t wanted any part of it.

Marco did. He listened as she explained that the crabs were lazy. He paid attention while she told him that they weren’t at all smart, to the point of perhaps not being conventionally conscious. That they were almost impossible to kill in the numbers they approached with, but that the elves were almost perfectly suited to dealing with the problem, if they weren’t psychologically aligned in a way that made them ignore the only person with the answers.

But now two people have the answers. Marco thought. And soon it will be three.

If the commander wouldn’t listen to Aethe, Marco was pretty sure he’d have a better chance of getting the message through. They were peers, after all. There was probably ten or twenty levels of power difference between them, but they were both commanders and that apparently counted for something. The older elvish man still resisted, but when Marco made it clear his team’s help was dependent on the man listening, the commander caved.

“I can’t believe he listened.” Aethe shook her head. “He would have never listened to me. Not in a lifetime.”

“I’m sorry about that. But at least they are now. You think they can cut the channel in time?”

“Absolutely. Just watch them work.”

The elves were moving forward as a group to the treeline, the most injured of them being at least healed up enough to walk now. When they got close, the commander paused, set, and fired a beam through the trees. It ripped a hole straight through, reducing every tree it hit to dust until it was finally absorbed by the endless trees beyond. They kept working, cutting a beam-wide path all the way back to the beach, then turning around to make a return trip, carving the channel wider in the process.

“How many shots are they going to do?” Elisa gawked at the destruction that had already been wrought. “And why aren’t the trees growing back?”

“They only grow back during a wave, and only once the crabs have passed them,” Aethe explained. “The space will stay open until then. As for how many shots they’ll do, I think we’ve just about come to the end of them. See there? They’re running. They wouldn’t do that if they hadn’t seen something.”

The commander came to them, out of breath and trailed by the other elves.

“They come,” he said.

“Got it. You have magic power left?” Marco asked.

“By the time they make it here, yes.”

“Then tell us what to do. Because I honestly didn’t think that part through.”

The commander turned to face the trees, then gave a heavy look at his people.

“Ideally, Marco, you won’t be able to do anything. But if things don’t go to plan, I’d appreciate you saving as many of these people as you can.”

Marco nodded.

“I have your back.”

The crabs came then. It was hard to miss them. As Aethe had said, they were lazy things. She had noticed they always came through the path of least resistance when the majority of the first wave came through the same path the elves had used to get to the island’s center. Now, with a new open path carved for them, they were pouring through it like water through a pipe, scraping against each other and clacking their claws as they approached.

“Not yet,” the commander said to nobody in particular. “Wait until the time. It’s soon. It’s… now.”

The first of his beams blasted out as the crabs neared the opening of the trees, creating a havoc so complete Marco couldn’t have imagined it. Sideways and packed side to side, the beam took out a column of the crabs three shells wide, clearing the space back far enough that the elves had time to recharge another shot, then another.

For a while, it felt as if Marco and the team really would be idle the entire fight, until it turned out that the sheer mindlessness of the crabs meant not quite all of them noticed the channel or used it.

“Over there!” Aethe spotted some kind of disturbance in the forest the team couldn’t see, but after three or four reps of her being absolutely right about things like this, everyone had learned not to question her judgment. They rushed over to the spot and engaged the single crab that had cut its way through the forest before it could get completely free of the trees, forcing it to fight sideways and taking one of its claws out of the equation.

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Riv was finally getting the hang of his club in combat, which made things a lot easier. When the crab overextended trying to get out, he managed to bash it hard enough to make it think twice, disabling claws or cracking shells while Marco and Aethe worked on hitting the vulnerable eyes and Elisa waited for her moment to shock it into submission.

The current crab fell soon enough to a concentrated barrage of several different forms of damage. Marco was riding high on the success until Aethe’s eyes widened and darted between two separate spots on the treeline.

“Two?”

“Yes. One close to the beam group. One back there.” She pointed to a specific spot at the far end of the clearing from where they were. “The group will be between the two. We’ll have to split up.”

“That’s not ideal,” Marco whispered.

“It’s your choice,” Aethe said, and Marco chillingly knew she meant it. If they left the flank of her former group open to attack, she’d obey the order that let her people die. “But make it quickly.”

“Riv, go with Aethe. Elisa, with me. I’m the only one of us who can just about solo one of the crabs. Keep it busy, Riv. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

No more words were needed. Everyone ran to their stations, getting there well before the crabs topped the trees on the edge of the space and burst through.

They fought and fought. It wasn’t an easy battle. Marco was tasked with not only keeping himself safe, but trying to do some amount of damage to a crab whose eyes he couldn’t easily reach while leaving openings for Elisa to take big enough that she could get in, do some hurting, and get out without getting hurt herself.

The crab wasn’t fast. He barely managed to keep himself alive at some points, slashed with the blade of claws he almost but not quite evaded. Eventually, the crab made a mistake, lowering its body for a charge enough that Marco was able to not only stab its eye but into the channel its optic nerve ran, sending the animal into fits. He ran away without his sword, letting time run its course as the life leaked out of the monster.

It was too late to ensure his friends were safe. He ran to join them, but the crab was on them, snipping away with its claws as Aethe dragged Riv away from the forest. There was blood flowing, and Marco couldn’t tell who was bleeding from where from that distance. Worse, Aethe had chosen to run in the wrong direction to keep everyone safe, which now meant Marco had more space to cover before the crab closed the distance and made his friends pay permanently.

He sprinted until his knees felt like they were going to explode, and didn’t even come close. A sweep of the blunt side of the outer claw sent both his friends tumbling. The crab towered over them, then reached its claw towards the sky to prepare for one last life-ending smash.

“No!” Marco screamed. “NO!”

A beam shot past his shoulder, as thick as three crab shells and as bright as the sun. The claw never hit because it simply couldn’t. The elves had cleared the channel, turned their attention on what was left of the battle, and cleared the field once and for all.

—

“We would have been defeated without you. Sooner or later. It was, as they say, a bad match.” The commander was talking at a volume level clearly meant to cover a wide area, making sure his crew knew who was responsible for the victory in his eyes. “You evened the odds. Your tactic won.”

It wasn’t his tactic at all, Marco reflected. He was about as likely to come up with that idea as Elisa was to voluntarily run a lap for the exercise value, and everyone on his team knew it. He threw a sideways glance at Aethe, who gave a subtle nod in reply.

“Glad to help. All of us were,” Marco hedged. “As for Aethe, she was vital. I was thinking that when you take her back, you might…”

The commander threw a quick hand motion at his people, who scattered towards the crabs as if it were their only mission in life. Marco held his words until they got out of earshot, more out of a desire to preserve the peace than any respect for the man who was withholding credit from his new friend.

Then the commander shocked them all.

“I, of course, know who was responsible for this. But there are some things, Marco, that you don’t know. Aethe might have figured them out.”

“The era,” Aethe said. “That?”

“Yes.”

Elisa didn’t seem to know what they were talking about any better than Marco did. It was a rare situation, but both of them were lost.

“My apologies. What Aethe and I, and perhaps your friend there, know is that this dungeon should not have been anywhere near your territory. The hidden sea entrance moves, but only slowly. We discussed it before, if you recall.”

“I do. Although I never understood how slowly,” Marco said.

“Aethe?” The commander looked at the archer, questioningly. “I assume you did the math.”

“It would have taken something like forty or fifty years, Marco. At the shortest.”

“What? But…” Elisa’s eyes shot back to the platform. “The stasis. It was meant to last until someone came to help.”

“Someone did.” The commander gave a small cough. “Just not as soon as we would have liked. I, of course, have to take my team back. There’s no way around that. Many of them had children, and might have grandchildren now. Small consolation for missing their lives up to this point, but some consolation nonetheless.”

“And Aethe doesn’t deserve that?”

“It’s not like that, Marcos,” Aethe spoke up. “I don’t have a family.”

“I’m so sorry, Aethe.” Elisa put her hand on her shoulder. “How did you lose them?”

“It’s not like that either. I’m an orphan of sorts. A ward of the government. It’s part of why I’m here. That kind of care creates a debt.”

“One you’ve now repaid. I’d say forty years is long enough.” The commander smiled. “Aethe, I should have listened to you earlier. I know this was your plan, and it was your plan that saved us. It still took someone else saying it for me to listen. If you go home, it will be more of the same. And it will never stop.”

“Your people are really that inflexible?” Riv rolled his eyes. “She’s great. Really great. This is the only way things can go?”

“It’s who we are. I’m changed. Believe that.” The commander nodded at Aethe, who nodded sharply back in a startled sort of way. “But it took a long time. She can’t fight that fight with everyone her whole life. So I have a favor to ask.”

“Take Aethe with us?” Marco said. “Easy answer. Absolutely. But it’s good for us only if it’s good for her. Aethe?”

“It will be difficult. I don’t fit with other elves. That doesn’t mean I fit with humans. I’m likely still odd. By human standards, I mean.”

“Oh, that’s just fine,” Elisa said. “That’s sort of our thing.”