Chapter 14: Inescapable

Vix was held captive by the carnage before her. Where the sunny little room had been a few seconds before, now only a graveyard of stone and wood remained. Caine’s body was sprawled limply upon the wreckage, blood falling down in a steady pattern to the floor.

Dead again. Vix let out a low, anguished moan at the sight of him.

Behind him, the Riverman rose to his full height. Vix saw him fully now. No longer a shadow, he was bathed in harsh and glinting daylight. His clothes were dark gray, the color of ash. Underneath them, his body was bizarrely formless, lumpy in some places and thin in others, looking like a liquid that had been forced into human form and then suddenly frozen, to remain in its tortured state forever.