Zey quickly realised the folly of her last order when she looked around and realised this black tar had risen to the surface of the entire river around them. There was no escape in the water.

“Belay that, spread out but stay in the boat! Round the edges!” She shouted, feeling a strange tug on various bits of her gear as some of the locals began raising the boat out of the water with magic. Zey pulled her comms unit closer but had to hold on tight to stop it floating away.

“Jotunheim, this is Zey. We’ve run into difficulty, I…uh… I'm not sure how to explain it. We’re nearly at the shore now.”

She signed off and scanned the tree line when a line of natives appeared. Squinting, Zey’s features hardened when she saw what they were doing.

“Archers on the riverbank, take cover!” She yelled, crouching behind the gunwale to fumble with her gun. It was moving all on its own, probably because of its metal content, so she wrapped the strap around her arm a couple of times to stabilise it. Then Zey poked over the top and fired on full auto.

Her magazine was bigger than usual, holding 45 bullets, but it was still empty in just a few seconds. The muzzle flash made it difficult to see if she’d hit anything, but the barrage coming from the Humans seemed to have the right effect. The strangers fell back into the tree line, and for a moment there were no targets.

Zey looked around - the boat was in chaos. The natives were much larger and made very juicy targets for the arrows; she could see some of them had been gravely wounded. “Everyone alright?” She asked her crew over comms.

“How could they know we were here?”

Zey tried to contact the Jotunheim, but couldn’t make a connection.

“Jotunheim come in - we’re under attack by unknown assailants. Requesting indirect fire, do you copy?”

A horn sounded. Zey swore, put the communicator back and looked at her weapon. The magazine had another full magazine taped to its side, so she swapped them clumsily over.

A loud, rhythmic thumping came towards them, and two huge creatures emerged. Yelling out, Zey didn’t even hesitate into shooting her second magazine at the one on the left.

“What are these things?!” She shouted, not even sure anyone could hear her over the racket.