William’s warning shout, “Worst is ahead! Much worse!”, barely registered over the thunderous roar engulfing them, but his frantic pointing downstream communicated the message clearly. As the patched boat hurtled onward, the team followed his gaze through the churning spray. What they saw stole the breath from their lungs and replaced the lingering adrenaline with pure, cold dread.
The “true” Hammer Falls.
What they'd navigated so far? A mere overture. A warm-up act. What lay ahead was the main event, a liquid avalanche poured into a narrow, jagged wound in the earth. It wasn't a sequence of rapids. It was a solid, seemingly endless wall of white water, a chaotic battlefield of colliding currents, standing waves, and boat-shattering rocks packed together with terrifying density. Narrow, twisting channels snaked between massive boulders, promising passage but threatening to smash them against unseen teeth just below the surface. Bleached skeletons of ancient trees lay trapped like snares, creating treacherous eddies and unpredictable hydraulics. The air itself was thick with freezing spray, visibility reduced to mere yards, the roar an oppressive physical force vibrating through their bones. Hazard Assessment Update: Probability of catastrophic failure significantly increased. Recommend immediate cessation of forward motion... oh, wait.
Julia’s face went sheet white beneath the spray, her hands gripping the sides of the pitching boat. She’d faced down horrors, wielded powerful magic, but this raw, elemental fury felt different, unconquerable. Caspian, eyes wide with primal terror, clung instinctively to Julia's arm, his scholarly knowledge utterly useless against this show of might by nature. Even Jett, normally unreadable, muttered a low curse, his knuckles white on his paddle, his gaze sweeping the chaos with grim apprehension.
Roland, wrestling with the steering oars, his face a mask of strained determination, saw the fear threatening to paralyse his team. He knew this was the critical moment. Despair now meant death. Retreat was impossible. The current had them utterly in its grip. He had to rally the team...
Roland’s voice cut through the roar, raw and commanding, forcing their terrified gazes away from the churning chaos ahead. “Look at me! All of you!” His eyes burned with fierce intensity. “Yes, it looks like the jaws of hell! Yes, any sane man would quail! But we are not sane persons deciding on a picnic! We are soldiers, mages, agents of the Crown on a critical mission, and we cannot turn back! We knew the risks when we chose this path!” His voice rose, filled with grit and sheer will. “Now FOCUS! Forget the 'what ifs'! Execute your function! Jett, William – SPOT! Julia – SHIELD! Caspian – SUPPORT! I STEER! We do our jobs! We trust the ones beside us! We survived Sharwood, we slipped an army, we will not be broken by rocks and churning water! Show this cursed river the meaning of Averian resolve! NOW!”
His raw, defiant words hammered through their fear. It wasn't comforting, it wasn't gentle, it was a brutal demand for performance in the face of death, a stark reminder of duty. William felt the cold dread momentarily shoved aside by a surge of focused adrenaline. Acknowledge reality, demand execution. Effective crisis leadership. Caspian visibly straightened, his hand gripping Julia’s shoulder tighter, his expression hardening with grim purpose. Julia met Roland’s fierce gaze and gave a single sharp nod, her own resolve solidifying, mana already gathering at her fingertips. Jett grunted, his focus already locked back onto the immediate water ahead. They steeled themselves.
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But before they could even take a collective breath, William's voice, sharp with urgency, ripped through the din.
“LEFT! HARD LEFT! SHARP ROCKS!”
“LEFT!” William screamed, EMMA’s enhanced visual feed highlighting a jagged fang of rock half-hidden in a standing wave less than fifteen feet away. “HARD LEFT! ROCKS, PORT BOW AND MID! SECTION ONE, SECTION FOUR!” Impact imminent! Collision probability: 95%! MP: 103/136 (Sustained visual analysis).
Julia reacted instantly, no hesitation. Reinforce! The blue shield snapped into existence, covering the threatened port side just as Roland and Jett threw their combined weight into the oars and paddle, fighting to wrench the boat sideways against the powerful current.
SCREEE-THUMP!
They didn't clear it entirely. The reinforced port bow scraped violently against the rock face with a sound like tortured metal, sending shivers down William's spine. Simultaneously, a secondary impact thudded against the mid-section. But the shields held. The patched wood underneath groaned but didn’t shatter. Caspian, anticipating the scrape, had even managed to project his own faint shimmer onto a section near the stern, perhaps absorbing a minor impact they hadn't even seen. Coordination: Functional under stress. Redundancy: Partially effective.
“CLEAR!” William shouted, already scanning ahead, heart pounding.
“NEXT!” Roland bellowed back, fighting to straighten their course.
It became a frantic, desperate rhythm. William, perched precariously at the prow, eyes wide, EMMA feeding him visual data, trajectory lines, submerged object warnings, current velocity shifts, translating it into raw, urgent calls. “ROCK LOW STARBOARD! SECTION TWO!” ... “DROP AHEAD, CROSS-CURRENT FROM LEFT! REINFORCE KEEL, SECTION FIVE!” ... “LOG JAM, CENTER CHANNEL! HARD PORT, ROLAND! JULIA, FULL BOW REINFORCE, ONE AND TWO!” MP: 95/136.
Julia was a whirlwind of focused energy. Her hands danced, weaving mana, the blue shield flickering, shifting, solidifying split-seconds after William’s calls, intercepting impacts that felt like physical blows against the hull. Sweat beaded on her brow despite the icy spray, her breathing grew ragged, but her magic held, a vital, luminous barrier against destruction. Julia Mana Estimate (Visual Observation): Approaching 60% capacity. Strain indicators: High.
Roland and Jett worked in brutal synchronicity, muscles straining, faces set, battling the river's fury with paddle and oar, executing desperate manoeuvres based on William’s warnings. Caspian remained glued to Julia’s side, providing physical support against the lurching boat, occasionally adding his weak shield to buffer minor impacts.
They scraped past rocks that would have gutted them. They plunged down drops that threatened to swamp them. They fought currents that tried to spin them into whirlpools. The boat groaned, leaked around the straining patches despite the tar, shuddered with every near-miss. It was chaos, sheer survival, reacting moment to terrifying moment. System operating significantly outside design specifications, William thought, ducking as spray flew over the bow. Probability of hull failure increasing with each impact event. MP: 88/136.
Through a gap in the spray, William scanned further downstream with EMMA's enhanced sight. The chaos seemed... slightly less dense ahead. Maybe fifty yards more of this intense section? Forward Scan: Hazard density decreasing beyond immediate zone. Potential reduction in turbulence.
“Almost through this section!” he yelled, hope warring with exhaustion. “Fifty yards! Keep focus! Rock formation, centre right! Reinforce starboard bow, section two!”
Julia’s shield snapped into place. Roland grunted, angling the boat. They were working, battered but functional, a desperate machine against the river's rage. Just a little further...
