Don't Go Down to the Water's Edge...

"Funny how
These things come about
When you're tied to the teeth and mouth,
The sound of fury,
A shot of pain,
There was no real reason,
No gain...
I didn't do a thing
I should have done something."
Seven Mary Three, Water's Edge

After the meeting with Tu, we hauled ass out of town, to the west.
The mantra was pretty much, "Which way, Nate?"
The answer was Pigeon. Guess someone just ran out of ideas that naming day.
It was a charming little hamlet with quaint scenery and... no. No it wasn't. It was a swamp, with one street light, three airboats and an airborne alligator. Maybe two, I couldn't tell on account of its velocity. Anyway, the alligator didn't show up until almost the very end and the airboats came in at the middle.
We pulled into the town, on its short little road. I think they'd seriously rolled up the sidewalks. To be fair, it was late at night. Or maybe by then it was early morning.
We kept following the Pritchert compass and somehow found a place that rented out airboats. Well, they did during normal business hours.
This didn't really qualify as "normal" or "business hours," so we "borrowed" one of the boats and kept the engine quiet. We decided a quiet approach, for wherever we were going and whomever we would meet there, was best. Gunnar and Jack rowed us along. With big branches. I've spent about three months with the Band now, and shit like that is still impressive.

Time did that thing where it blurs together when I'm bored. Plus the trees all started to look... well, like trees. Trees that all looked exactly like one another. Call me a florist. A flora-ist?
Whatever.
We were on the water a while, not much going on besides the sounds of the guys, the water, and the wildlife waking up. Even Vader was quiet, which was cool for a dog kinda out of his element.
I'm not really sure how long it was before Nevermore squawked, "Incoming." I didn't see anything, at first. Then, shapes, under the water. They moved fast. They carried... tridents. They looked kinda like mini-krakens, Harryhausen style, like in the first "Clash of the Titans." The good one.
The water things moved a little closer. I guess I'd been looking over Gunnar's shoulder or something at just the right time, because I knew what they were. Nommo. They had something to do with the Loa and the Drowned Road. They used to be worshipped. They weren't anymore, now they were all but forgotten. Which, y'know, totally explained what they were doing here in the swamp outside Pigeon. They started trying to surround the boat.
Jack hung off of the side of the boat and Gunnar took his axe back from Nate and dropped down into the water in front of the boat, ready to fight. My favorite war-machine.
Brendan headed off on his own, which I remember thinking was ridiculously stupid even before he got filleted. He almost died, by the way. Almost. Score one point for team "Laurel says no one's dying today (except maybe hopefully Caleb)."
I watched Jack try to hit a Nommo, and Camila try to shoot a Nommo, and Gunnar try to slash at a Nommo, and it did pretty much nothing. The blows all connected but did no damage. I holstered Sibyl and slung the sniper rifle around before I realized Nate was probably going to have more luck with it than I was. By the time I'd made up my mind how to contribute to the fight, those water-snake-mer-things had slashed up the boat.
It started sinking and I dove into the water, trying to clear the side. Ultimately I wasn't very helpful in this fight. The couple of hits I did get off at the Nommo accomplished next to nothing. I had much better luck with the alligator that landed in the boat right after Jack hopped out, and that's not saying a whole lot. Several seconds went by where I was pretty much useless, until I heard Brendan screaming as he flew through the air and hit the water. I couldn't see him well, but... the water turned very dark around him and he looked... wrong.
The color I see around him, it's usually a bright green when everything's alright. This time it was streaked with a deep burgundy, like old blood. I knew it was bad.
I knew that I needed to get over to him fast, or it was going to get worse. I also knew that a Nommo would help me accomplish that.
I could kinda make out Jack and Gunnar's shapes when I dove into the water, and the nearest Nommo had Jack's massive arms around it. That was going to make getting what I wanted a lot easier. I pulled my spatha free - I think this is the first time I'd used a sword since meeting the guys - and plunged beneath the surface. I stabbed as hard as I could into the Nommo's face.
I think it was too hard.
I also think I stole Jack's kill, which felt really good. I mean, I wasn't technically after the Nommo's death, just its eye. I think I'd read somewhere something about how, if you could stand it, having a Nommo eye in your mouth turns you into one of them. You swim faster, you look just like them (I'm not sure how that will come in handy, but you never know), and you can go deep underwater. That last part especially might come in handy in Guinnee.
The kill was a perk. Those things were... ophidian enough, and in the words of Henry Walton Jones, Jr., "I hate snakes. I really hate snakes."
As I twisted my arm and pulled my blade free, I saw some air escape from Gunnar's mouth. But, seeing as how my powers of pure awesome don't yet include sub-aquan hearing and I have no idea what he said.
If it was important, he'll tell me later.

Brendan was bleeding out into the water when I got to him, and the guy we'd come to find, Luc, was dying of cholera.
I don't know how he got cholera in the swamp. Diseases are popping up in a lot of places where they aren't supposed to.
Anyway, Brendan was the priority. There were a handful of reasons I was not OK with Brendan dying.
One, it would have been really shitty if the last thing I talked to him about was how I'd keep saving his life but didn't and never would love him.
Two, I was serious when I said I'd be saving his life for a long time to repay him for saving Gunnar. One hundred times wouldn't be enough, I'd told him. So I'll aim for one hundred and one.
Three, we as a band really need someone with his kind of smarts, and it's not like we could just go down to the Pigeon area Piggly Wiggly and find another Irish computer geek.
Four, and this is one of the more important reasons, I still count him as an ally and a friend. An awkward friend, but still. Today was not a good day for him to die. He was trying really hard, though. Now he can check "get cut almost in half by a Fomorian" off of his bucket list.
I learned today that I don't need to touch someone to heal them. I was still 30 yards away from him and I... I don't know how it worked. I was still swimming, and I refused to let him die. His wounds, which were numerous and fucking severe, began to knit closed. He went from being a bloody mess to being a bruised mess.

It was the best I could do. I feel like I should have been able to do more.