### 126

You hurry away along a track that winds through the settlement of huts and down to a beach covered with coarse black sand. Here a ramshackle jetty, constructed from wood and bone, protrudes from the lee of a sand dune and out into the sluggish grey sea. Fringing the beach is dense jungle from where there suddenly arises a cacophony of hellish cries. You glimpse shadows moving in the undergrowth, and when you stop momentarily to take a longer look, several arrows come shooting out of the trees. They arc towards you and explode when they hit the sand close by. Your Kai senses warn you that there are a great number of archers lurking in the jungle, far more than you can hope to defeat single-handedly. Anxious to escape while you are still able, you hurry down the beach to the jetty where you discover a sea-going canoe. Without daring to look back, you leap into this canoe, cast off its mooring rope, and paddle as fast as you can away from the shore.

Once you feel sure that you are beyond arrow range, you attempt to follow the coastline in the hope of finding a safer place to put ashore. But a mist sweeps in across the water and engulfs your tiny craft before you can change course. This mist thickens rapidly to become a dense sea fog, the like of which you have never experienced. Despite your advanced Kai skills, you are unable to see through it and quickly you lose all sense of time and direction.

After what seems like many hours, you eventually catch sight of a dark shape low in the water which, at first, appears to be a distant island. You paddle towards it but as you draw closer your senses suddenly scream a warning that you are heading into deadly danger. Instantly you reverse your stroke to change course, but it is already too late. Two slits open in the dark shape and a ghostly light washes over the fog-wreathed ocean. You feel the canoe lurch violently as it is hit by a powerful undercurrent and, in the next terrifying instant, you are sucked into the maw of a titanic sea creature and swallowed whole.

Tragically, your life and your quest for the Moonstone come to a watery end here.