The good mood could only last so long and ten minutes later we sailed into the bay of the St. James Township. Anastasia had come back up top. Inside the bay, there were three jetties to choose from. There were a few larger motorised vessels moored at them but plenty of room for us to dock wherever we pleased.
Each of us scanned the small harbour for activity and apart from the gulls, and the breeze blowing rubbish about, there was no sign of any living beings.
“Quixbix, do you know where the podium is?” I asked quietly.
The ghost town vibe implicitly encouraged quietness.
<Not precisely, but from the layout we can see, there appears to be more buildings on the left, the inland side of the bay, than on the hook of land on the right, so probably there> he advised.
The largest jetty that looked to be made from concrete was the first on the left-hand side of the bay. One of the sides was clear, so it made sense to make use of that one.
“Okay, let’s moor up at the big jetty that’s nearest. I can see it has a few bars and a hotel nearby, which usually indicates a central hub and would be a good place to start our search,” I ordered.
We slipped in smoothly and docked. We didn’t need to tie up our ship as tiny crystalline hooks emerged from the hull and gripped onto the side of the jetty holding it in place. The taffrail gate opened and the gangplank extended a few feet onto the concrete wharf, and we trooped off the ship and onto dry land.
As we expected trouble, we were fully armoured and geared. We’d been able to kit Anastasia in some poor leathers from what Shana had replaced with Bound gear and what we’d looted from Luca’s minions.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t had anything better on them than what we were previously using. Or perhaps I should say fortunately, as if they had been better geared, they would have been more difficult to handle, and that fight had been a smidge closer than I would have liked already.
After debarking from the ship, we wandered through a small car park and onto the main street that ran around the whole bay. The building directly across from the car park was a bar. From what we could see, there had been minimal damage. The lock was broken and several of the windows smashed from the outside.
We poked our heads in and took a look around.
The chairs and tables had been overturned, and there were bits of seaweed and oily residue on some of the surfaces. No people, no bodies either. Nothing. Not even pets gone wild, just the cawing of the gulls in the sky above.
“Well, this isn’t creepy at all,” Jackson muttered sarcastically.
“Any ideas, Quix?” I asked the imp as I rubbed some of the residue on my fingers.
<A few, none of them good. Something from the lake, obviously> he whispered.
“Hmmm, Anastasia, are you getting anything from the Marena’s threat sensors?” I said as my eyes scanned the wreckage of the bar.
“Neither you nor I are on the ship, sir,” she commented drily.
Of course, the spyglass was in my inventory and Anastasia had to be on the ship to interface with it directly, at least for now she did.
I glared at the cheeky minx anyway and she relented. “There was a cluster of creatures called Lesser Fomorians that we passed on our way into the bay. They were on the far edge of what we could detect almost the full mile away and at the bottom of the lake, maybe two-hundred and fifty metres down.”
Quixbix sighed in my head <I was afraid of that. Fomorians, even the lesser variety, are a bunch of aggressive sea dwellers capable of coming onto land for extended periods. They tend to leave this kind of residue, so I think it’s a very strong possibility they are responsible for the town’s apparent vacancy.>
“How many of them were there Ana?” I queried.
“Hard to say exactly, fifty-six within our detection range. But as I said they were right on the edge and there could have been more just beyond,” she said, dropping her sass.
<Balls> the imp swore. <They have to be from a super-splurge spawning crystal. Lesser Fomorians are second tier mobs, there is no way it could have disgorged that many in a week. Unless there are multiple crystals forming a cluster, which is just as bad.>
“Doesn’t matter,” I assured them. “We’re here, and now we know. We still need to find the podium.”
There was a series of nods, and we exited the bar hastily. The lake water remained calm, and the street was similarly placid.
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“Any ideas?” I asked the group.
“A few of the podiums we passed were by the post office in the smaller towns,” Shana suggested.
I looked about and saw a signpost for the post office a bit further up the street and we walked cautiously a few hundred metres up the road.
The post office was in a similar condition as the bar and several other buildings that we walked by. Windows smashed and doors forced. But there was no sign of the podium.
“This is a bust,” I muttered. “Do we just wander around until we find it?”
<No> Quixbix responded. <They are always out in the open and usually central to the settlement’s limits. Maybe by a town hall or something like that.>
“A town hall, hmmm okay, but where?” I mused.
“How about that building over there,” Jackson said pointing back the way we had come from. Over the top of the bars and a bit further on from the waterfront. “That looks like the biggest building we can see. Maybe it’s there.”
“Worth a look,” I agreed and led my team back in the other direction.
We left the main street and took a route behind the buildings we had previously surveyed to get our eyeballs on some fresh real estate as we backtracked. If the podium wasn’t here, we would have to come up with a more scientific search pattern or retrieve the bikes from the ship’s hold and cycle around the town until we found it.
As we neared the building it became obvious from the signage this wasn’t the town hall but the local community school.
We stopped in front of the doors. This building seemed to have avoided the light damage the others had suffered. Probably as it was shut for the summer, with no people inside. Therefore. nothing to draw in the spawned mobs.
However, there was also no tell-tale obelisk-shaped podium in sight.
“It’s not here either,” I called out to the group.
<Bloody hell> Quixbix swore again. < Please don’t let this be what I think it is. Over to your right about five metres> he announced firmly.
I jogged over to where he directed and saw what he was talking about. The podium had been here. There was a large square of the obsidian crystal on the ground in the middle of the car park, and we’d missed it as we had been scanning for something sticking up vertically.
The depressed square reacted to my approach and the obelisk started to rise from the centre. “Excellent, we’ve found it,” I said cheerfully.
<No, this is not excellent. We need to get back to the ship and quickly> Quixbix contradicted me.
“What? Why?” I sputtered.
<I don’t have time to explain…> Quixbix started, but he was interrupted by a gurgled caterwaul from somewhere deeper into the island away from the bay.
And then another from the direction of the post office behind us.
Followed by a third, answering the first two, coming from just beyond the school, but much closer than the other two.
Finally, a fourth, louder than any of the others came from within the bay itself.
<The Fomorians are still here> Quixbix informed us unnecessarily.
They were indeed, and they had us surrounded.