There was a demanding pinching at her nose.

  Something prickled on the skin of her face.

  Groggily, feeling very much like her bones were lead and her muscles treacle, Soleil tried to blink open her eyes.

  There was something gluing her eyelids closed, sticking her eyelashes together, only one of her eyes slid open at her command.

  The world swam, too bright compared to the darkness of unconsciousness, but dim and mysterious. Movement smeared in front of her gaze, she couldn't quite puzzle together what everything meant.

  Light coloured, flinching blobs.

  Larger clouds that fluttered back and forth.

  Stripes of darkness and light.

  Her eye slid closed.

  The pinching at her nose again.

  Once, twice, then finally her eye blinked open.

  The blurred clouds seemed closer. More in focus. A pitted surface. A little shine here and there to indicate smoothness.

  Everything leading to a strange apparatus. Two parts that moved together like dancers, one large, one small, clicking together, the noise as muffled as her eyesight was burred but something about it lodged on a crevice in her brain.

  Hmmmm.

  There was something about that.

  Something she should remember.

  Her eye drifted shut again.

  Then snapped open.

  Flicking her fingers, the runed blade passed from sheath to palm, and then it was spinning through the air, the crab speared on it and no longer trying to pull her nose off.

  She sat up, then felt worse, her bones reminding her that just because she wanted them to feel normal did not mean that they would agree to act like it.

  Drifting sideways, she rolled onto her belly and coughed. The noise was choked and sounded like a donkey's bray as she hacked and scoured at the thick mud coating her lungs. It felt worse now that she was a little bit awake, she could feel the gritty slime that lay in thick layers on her insides. If she was human she knew she would have drowned long ago, but the magic that infused her being had kept her alive long enough to choke and cough it out again.

  For a long while she lay there, hunched over, her shoulders arching at each hacking cough, until the dark, grey muck stopped falling from her lips. She felt bloodied and abraded. Hollowed out and scraped clean.

  "I think," she said in a low voice, one that was practically unrecognisable it was so scratchy and dull, "That this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me." She coughed again, but this time it was mostly out of reflex. She had nothing more to give.

  She struggled to her feet. The mud coated every part of her and while it hadn't dried, it had thickened and collected in a carapace-like layer over her wool travelling dress. The artful tucks and tidy lines had been completely drowned out by thick mud and a few seaweedy strips of plant that dangled and waved.

  She stretched out her arms, before stopping with a grimace. Pushing the fingers of her opposite hand into a rip near her elbow, she pulled out a broken piece of shell. Another shift in her position had her reaching down the back of her collar and pulling a second crab out by one stabby, little leg. She held it up for a moment and glared. It did not seem to be worried about being discovered, instead it started scrabbling and trying to pinch her. She threw it over to where she had sent its fellow.

  "One vote for travelling in full armour, I suppose," she said, her voice was slightly less gravelly. She coughed again, bending at the waist and covering her mouth with both hands as she hacked for a second into them. Looking up, towards the sky, she frowned. The fog was still thick and murky, it was probably the same day. By her guess, not even a handful of hours had passed, but it was twilight-dark under the clouds. At the cliff-side station and in the air carriage the light had been softly diffuse like seeing light play and drift through thin silk curtains. Here it was more like someone had stuck a sack over her head and whisked her off to parts unknown.

  She rubbed her nose. More globs of muck fell off and she sighed. "Revolting," she muttered, "I must look like a bog witch. People will hide their babies in fear of my hunger."

  She picked at yet another tear in her sleeve, before passing her hands up to her head. Her bonnet was long gone. She mourned for a moment, it had been so pretty with its little ribbon roses around the brim. Running her hands over her hair, she found a solitary hat pin that had survived the fall, pulling it out she looked sadly at it. The end had been decorated with a tiny wooden flower, now it was broken off with naught but a jagged splinter left. It could only be useful for hunting the tiniest of vampires now.

  Her skirt was in a similar horrendous state. It had been pleated into her waist, smoothly flowing out in a bell shape. Modest and practical, yet fashionable, with a little whimsical asymmetry detail with the layers of over skirts. Now there was a huge lurch in the fabric where it had been torn free, the fabric hung open like a mouth gasping for air, or a wound jagged and bleeding. The hem on that side flopped in the mud at her feet and she did not need to move a step to be certain that it would drag and trip her. Taking the pin, she did her best to pull up the skirt and inexpertly folded it down, stabbing the pin through the fabric to hold it. Now she could walk forwards without tripping, at least.

  The sheath belted onto her hips slapped against her skirt as she moved. The wet swatting noise was all reminded her that the sword was gone.

  She could have drowned out thunder with her groan, "Damn it all. That was a gift from Aunt Leonora." She clenched her fists, her gloves squeaking as she tried her best not to succumb to a childish temper tantrum. Everything had fallen apart. All her hopes, her plans. Her lower lip wobbled but she bit it and refused to fall apart.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She would hardly be the worst off.

  The conductor had fallen out a few moments before her. Without godly strength to keep his bones from shattering, it was near impossible that he had survived. She suddenly felt a moment of shame, he had done his best to keep them all alive, and she had barely thought of him. She had not even given him her name, nor asked for his.

  As for the others, well there was only a little more of a chance for their survival.

  When she had fallen, the air carriage was still attached to the chain holding it in the air. But assuming that it would have stayed up there for long seemed foolish. It had already started groaning and swaying like a drunk, it wouldn't have taken much to rip it fully off the chain. Maybe just the same gravity that had ripped her out of it would do the deed? Would the humans still inside survive if it fell? She thought of Titania who had been so friendly, Zlatica who had seemed so strong and knowledgeable. Even the shrieking and unfortunately dressed young woman hadn't deserved that.

  Tears started to gather, but she pinched her arm. "None of that, don't pre-empt grief. Until I know for certain, they may live. And grieving early will just wear a pattern into the road for the fates to follow."

  Clasping her hands together, she tried to pull herself out of the pit of sorrow she had tumbled into by similarly pulling herself out of the pit of mud she was actually placed in. When she fell the force must have pushed the muck and water away from the point where she landed. Now it was slowly creeping back and the mud was starting to rise around her boots.

  Picking up her feet as high as she could, she waded through the mud. Every step was an odyssey, she would place her her foot on what appeared to be solid ground, then it would sink up to the ankle, and in some extreme cases, would go even further.

  "I don't know if it is lucky or unlucky that I am already so cold and wet that I cannot feel it seeping in through my boots," she muttered as she pulled one leg out a particularly deep hole that nearly ate her up to the thigh.

  But eventually, even more covered in mud and more exhausted than she had known it was possible to be, she made it to what looked like a small craggy island sat outside of the crater she had left when she landed. Heaving herself up onto the stone, she sat and just breathed for a minute or two. In the short journey from the depth of her muddy puddle, her legs were absolutely clarted in muck. The hem of her skirt wasn't much better, "You could plant carrots in this!" She said, poking it with her knife.

  A clod of earth came loose and fell to the ground with a wet splat. She wrinkled her nose. "I specifically chose to come to Glayth so that I would NOT have to go on adventures and be covered in mud all the time," She groused, knowing that there was no one to hear her. Her aunt had offered to take her out to the Drained Sea and give her the opportunity to level like an adventurer, she had politely declined. The way Leonora's eyes had been dancing when she asked Soleil had known full well her aunt had not expected her to accept.

  Part of her had been very tempted to say yes just to be inconvenient.

  But then Maven had gotten himself in trouble and Glayth had seemed like a graceful way to sidestep the issue. Leonora had gone off to rescue Maven from whatever foolishness he had been caught by, and Soleil was off to school to learn things and level up the less muddy way. She scraped some mud off her boot with the side of her knife.

  So much for that plan.

  Sitting up in a splayed leg sprawl, she pulled back the right hand cuff of her coat and peered in. The orichalcum bracelet sat there as pretty and humble as ever. She quickly checked on the left wrist and found that its twin was much the same. It was just a simple band with a lock, you wouldn't know to look at it that this was an item of extreme power. Or rather, the absence of it.

  Orichalcum was an awkward alloy to work with, it didn't want to mix properly, you had to coax it every step of the way. And it wasn't cheap to mess up, given that it was gold and silver that you were mixing together like oil and water.

  So you had an awkward, expensive metal, that no one in their right mind would work with, that gods found useful for very specific things that they would prefer humans not know about.

  She had asked a lot of questions when her aunt had appeared with these bracelets, perishingly few of which were ever answered.

  But she had twisted them around her wrists, just as her aunt recommended. She had been much younger then and her control over her powers was whisper thin and vulnerable to any change in temper. She had been horribly aware of much harder she had made life for her aunt. Living with her had been like a fae curse. She had set fires, soured milk, the world itself had seemed to be against her. The bracelets holding her powers in and helping her to control them had been a relief.

  She tilted her wrist and let the dim light play on the runes carved into the metal. That had been, what, six years ago now? How time flies when things aren't bursting into flame around you every time you found a new hole in a sock, or ran your sleeve through some ink.

  And, of course, the keys were in her luggage. She groaned. “I never make things easy, do I?” So she was stuck at human levels of magic for the time being. Not that she was much more powerful than that with the bracelets off, anyway. She may be a goddess, but the power of a god grew with their story. The more who heard of them, the more fantastical things they did, the more they were prayed to, all of that would make a god more powerful.

  Soleil was twenty, nothing more than a blink of time for most of the divine.

  She had never been anywhere or done anything, which rather precluded anyone having heard of her.

  She had never been prayed to or given sacrifices. There were no temples built in her name.

  She was basically a baby.

  No. Worse, she thought with a derogatory smirk, I have definitely heard of literal godly babies who could smite me into next Tuesday.

  And that was why she had to hide. Her aunt had made it very clear. At this point in her life she would be worth more to most other gods as a snack than a friend. She needed to become more powerful so that she could shift that mathematics, make herself into a bigger threat, so that she would be a more tempting ally.

  But for now she had the strength of a precocious human mage.

  "Right human magic, what do I have that I can use?" She thought for a moment then grinned. Like she had told Titania she had wanted to study Magical Geography. And she had studied ahead.

  Standing, she held her left hand out in front of her. "Compass Rose, show me North." She whispered, layering as much magic into her voice as she could. It was hard, she had to battle with the bracelets just to let a mere whisp of power escape, but this was a simple enough spell.

  A glowing vine appeared around her arm, draped like it had grown there over decades, rather than appearing in a second. The rose of the vine slowly grew into being above her palm, shining softly in the dim light, a pinkish gold colour that matched the early dawn. The rose was pristine and perfect in the way only magical items could be, but only for a moment. Then the petals most of the way around its face started to disappear, leaving only a few in one corner.

  Keeping her hand before her, Soleil moved so that the petals faced the front. The ground looked a little drier in that direction. She could only hope that it would stay that way.

  The mainland and island stations were seventeen miles apart, she knew, but much of that was going around the side of the island. So it would take less than that to reach the island. As long as she didn't manage to thread the needle and go right through the passage between the island and mainland.

  "I'll probably notice if I start walking an extra twenty miles, right? I couldn't end up in the Drained Sea by accident," She reassured herself. It was mostly effective. So many things had already gone wrong, after all.

  Taking a breath she started to walk North, the compass rose in her hand leading her deeper and deeper into the fog.