Dead Weight

"The worst kind of helpless is when your family walks into danger and your own body won't let you follow."

The camp materialised from the haze of heat and exhaustion like a mirage becoming real.

Canvas tents. The blackened remnants of the campfire. Figures moving between structures with the purposeful energy of people dealing with crisis. It should have felt like coming home, or at least like returning to safety, but the weight of everything I was carrying — the secret, the shame, the fear — made the sight feel more like approaching a courtroom than a sanctuary.

Lois bounded ahead of us, her earlier distress seemingly forgotten in the joy of reunion. She made a beeline for Glenda, her tail wagging with renewed energy, her face pressing into the woman's chest as if seeking comfort and reassurance from the only source she trusted.

The sight made something twist in my chest. A dog's love was so simple. So uncomplicated. No secrets, no shame, no bargains struck with ancient entities in exchange for the use of your own limbs. Just affection, freely given and gratefully received.

I envied her.

Paul and Charity stood near the fire pit, their expressions grim, their conversation falling silent as we approached. Charity — the half-naked warrior woman who'd appeared from the darkness with blood on her hands and demands on her lips — looked as fierce and unyielding as she had the night before. Whatever had happened since I'd last seen her, it hadn't softened her edges.

Glenda looked up from her embrace with Lois, her eyes finding mine with a professional assessment that made me feel like a specimen under glass.

"The feeling has returned in my uninjured leg," I informed her, surprised by the gratitude that coloured my voice.

It was true — sometime during the torture of the lagoon, the numbness had receded. I could feel my uninjured leg again, could sense the sand beneath my foot and the muscles working to support my weight. Whatever Clivilius had threatened, whatever consequence it had promised for my defiance, it hadn't claimed that limb yet.

Glenda's face softened, some of the tension draining from her features. "Well, that's a relief," she said, rising to her feet. "And the other leg?"

The wounded one. The one that had been torn apart by shadow panther teeth, submerged in lagoon water, subjected to sensations that defied description. I tested it gingerly, shifting my weight to feel the damaged muscle respond.

Pain. Significant pain. But also... something else. A sense of knitting, of healing, of flesh slowly remembering what it was supposed to be.

"Seems to be quite the miracle," Karen chimed in, joining our conversation with a forced lightness that didn't reach her eyes.

I nodded, accepting the assessment even as I wondered what price that miracle had extracted. "I'll be sure to give it plenty of rest."

"We can make you some crutches," Chris offered, his eyes brightening with the prospect of a practical problem he could solve.

Karen scoffed, dismissing the suggestion with a wave. "Forget making crutches. Just have Luke bring us some real ones."

The instruction was directed at Paul, who nodded his acknowledgment without comment. The idea of manufactured crutches — real medical equipment from the real world — felt almost laughably normal after everything that had happened. As if a pair of aluminium supports could somehow bridge the gap between who I'd been and who this place was turning me into.

"That's a much better idea," Glenda agreed, but her attention had already shifted, her gaze drawn toward the tents with a intensity that made my nerves prickle.

I followed her line of sight, squinting against the glare of the morning sun, and felt my heart stutter in my chest.

Two figures were emerging from behind the canvas walls. Uncle Jamie and Beatrix, moving with the heavy, deliberate steps of people carrying something precious. Something terrible. Uncle Jamie held a bundle in his arms — a shape wrapped in stained sheets, cradled against his chest with a tenderness that spoke of love and loss in equal measure.

The stains on the fabric were rust-coloured. Dark in places, lighter in others.

Blood. Old blood, dried into the cotton, marking whatever lay within with the signature of violence.

What... or who... lay beneath that soiled shroud?

The question carved itself into my brain, each word a fresh cut. The bundle was too small to be human. Too small to be Joel. But it was the right size for—

"Duke," I gasped, the name escaping before I could stop it.

The pieces fell into place with a sickening click. Duke — Uncle Jamie's dog, the loyal companion who'd been by his side through everything.

The burning sensation behind my eyes was immediate and overwhelming. Tears of grief, of rage, of helpless fury at a world that seemed determined to strip away everything and everyone we cared about. I blinked against the sting, my vision blurring, my throat closing around emotions I couldn't name and didn't want to examine.

Paul stepped forward, his spine straightening with the weight of leadership. "Jamie," he began, and even from here I could hear the crack in his voice, the fracture where professional composure met personal grief. "I know things are painful right now, but we need to know when you last saw Joel."

Uncle Jamie halted, his footsteps ceasing as if he'd walked into an invisible wall. The silence that followed was suffocating, a vacuum that seemed to pull all the oxygen from the atmosphere and leave only dread in its place.

My gaze swept across the assembled group, searching for answers, for reassurance, for anything that might make this moment less terrible than it already was. But all I found were faces etched with the same fear, the same grief, the same dawning horror that was currently clawing at my own insides.

Joel was missing. And Duke was dead.

Uncle Jamie's voice emerged like gravel dragged across glass.

"It was just before the attack last night," he said, each word seeming to cost him something vital. "He was in bed in the tent when I took off after Duke."

The confession settled over the group like a funeral shroud. I could see it in Uncle Jamie's posture — the way his shoulders curved inward, the slight tremor in his arms as he clutched Duke's wrapped body against his chest. He blamed himself. Had left his son alone in a tent while he chased after his dog, and now Joel was gone and Duke was dead and the mathematics of that trade was written in the lines of agony carved across his face.

Paul pressed forward, his jaw set with the kind of determination that looked like it hurt to maintain. "And when you returned?"

The question was a blade, and Uncle Jamie had no armour against it.

Silence. A silence so complete it seemed to swallow sound itself, leaving nothing but the whisper of wind across sand. Uncle Jamie's face crumpled, rebuilt itself, crumpled again — a man fighting to hold together pieces that no longer fit.

He didn't need to answer. The silence said everything.

Glenda's arms folded across her chest, her fingers digging into her own biceps hard enough to leave marks. "Then it's settled," she said, her voice carrying an unsteadiness I hadn't heard from her before. "Joel is missing."

The words made it real. Official. Not a worry or a concern or a possibility, but a fact — cold and immutable and devastating. Joel, who had sung around the campfire just hours ago. Joel, whose raspy voice had carried that strange melody into the darkness. Joel, who had offered to help build a road despite whatever trauma still lurked behind his hollow eyes.

Gone.

Charity broke away from the fire pit, her movement sudden and decisive. The morning light caught the planes of her face, illuminating features that might have been carved from stone for all the softness they showed. Whatever emotions stirred beneath that surface — if any did at all — she kept them locked away behind walls I couldn't begin to scale.

"I am certain Joel has been taken by the Portal Pirate," she declared, her accent thickening around the words. "I will hunt him doon and bring Joel back."

"What the actual fuck?" I muttered, the words escaping before I could catch them.

Portal Pirate. The term landed in my brain and rattled around like a marble in an empty jar, making noise but finding nothing to connect with. Another piece of this world's impossible puzzle, another fragment of a picture I didn't have the context to assemble. Creatures that hunted in darkness weren't enough — now there were pirates too, snatching people through dimensional doorways for purposes I didn't want to imagine.

"I'm coming with you," Uncle Jamie blurted, his voice cracking with desperate resolve.

My heart seized in my chest.

No.

The protest screamed through my skull, bouncing off the inside of my cranium with enough force to give me a headache. Uncle Jamie couldn't leave. He was the only family I had in this place, the only connection to the life I'd lost, the only person who might understand what it felt like to be ripped away from everything you loved and dropped into a nightmare you hadn't asked for.

You can't leave me here.

But the words stayed trapped behind my teeth, held hostage by the knowledge that they were selfish, small, utterly inadequate to the situation. Joel was missing. Of course Uncle Jamie had to go after him. Of course nothing else mattered in the face of that imperative.

Charity nodded, her agreement as unyielding as granite. "Prepare yer things. We leave immediately."

Immediately. Not in an hour, not after they'd rested, not after Uncle Jamie had been given time to process the loss of his dog or the disappearance of Joel. Immediately, as if every second that passed was another step Joel took toward a fate too terrible to contemplate.

I watched terror grip my uncle's eyes, watched it twist his features into something raw and exposed. The anguish there was beyond anything I'd witnessed — a father's fear, primal and absolute, stripping away every defence he'd ever built and leaving only desperate need in its wake.

Charity closed the distance between them with purposeful strides, her hand reaching out to cradle Uncle Jamie's chin, tilting his face up to meet her gaze. The gesture was intimate in its forcefulness, demanding his attention, refusing to let him retreat into the fog of grief.

"If ye want ony chance of finding Joel alive, we maun leave immediately," she pressed, her words landing like hammer blows.

I couldn't watch anymore.

I turned my head, desperate for something else to focus on, and my eyes found a horror I hadn't noticed before. Near the campfire, lay a shape that made my stomach lurch toward my throat.

A creature. Black-furred, panther-like, its body sprawled in the dust with the boneless stillness of death. Its mouth gaped open, revealing teeth I recognised — serrated edges designed for gripping and tearing, the same teeth that had sunk into my calf and dragged me through the darkness like a ragdoll.

A shadow panther. Dead.

Dried blood crusted around its muzzle, dark and flaking, a testament to the violence it had inflicted before someone — Charity, probably — had ended its existence. The sight of it should have brought satisfaction, should have kindled some sense of justice or closure. Instead, all I felt was a fresh wave of nausea, a visceral rejection of everything this world represented.

"I need to say farewell to Duke first," Uncle Jamie pleaded, his voice quivering with the effort of holding itself together.

Charity's response was immediate and merciless. "Life is full of decisions and consequences. Ye need tae make a choice, Joel or Duke."

The cruelty of it stole my breath.

She was right — I knew she was right, in the cold calculus of survival and time-sensitive rescue operations. But the way she said it, the flat delivery that stripped all compassion from the truth, made me want to scream at her. Uncle Jamie had already lost so much. His dog lay dead in his arms, his son was missing, and this woman was forcing him to choose between grief and hope as if the two could be cleanly separated.

I gagged, the reflex rising unbidden, and clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle the sound. The bile burned at the back of my throat, a physical manifestation of the horror churning through my system.

Beatrix stepped forward, her presence cutting through the tension with a gentleness that seemed almost miraculous in this harsh landscape. She positioned herself in front of Uncle Jamie, her hands reaching out to ease Duke's wrapped body from his arms.

"Duke knows you love him, Jamie," she said softly, cradling the dog's remains against her chest with a tenderness that made my eyes burn. "He won't ever forget that."

The words were a kindness. A small mercy in a moment that had precious few to offer. I watched Uncle Jamie's face as he processed them, watched the war between urgency and grief play out across his features in real time.

He leaned in, pressing his lips to Duke's shrouded head in a kiss that lasted only a heartbeat but contained a lifetime of love.

"I'm so sorry, Duke," he whispered, his voice breaking on the dog's name.

The sound that escaped him — half sob, half moan — carved itself into my memory with the permanence of a scar. I would hear that sound in my dreams, I knew. Would carry it with me alongside all the other wounds this place had inflicted.

Uncle Jamie drew a shuddering breath, his chest expanding with the effort, and straightened his spine. When he spoke again, his voice had hardened, resolution crystallising around the raw edges of his grief.

"I'll grab my things."

I'm going too!

The thought screamed through my mind, desperate and defiant. I couldn't stay here. Couldn't watch Uncle Jamie walk into the unknown while I sat useless in a camp full of strangers, nursing a leg that might never fully heal. He was family. The only family I had in this dimension, and I would be damned if I let him face whatever horrors awaited without someone at his side.

But your injured leg, the voice of Clivilius slithered through my consciousness, cold and familiar. You would only be a burden if you go.

I flinched at the intrusion, my skin crawling with revulsion. The entity was still there. Still watching. Still manipulating, guiding, controlling from somewhere deep in the fabric of this world.

Fuck off, I snarled internally, but even my defiance felt weak against the truth of its words.

Uncle Jamie paused at the edge of camp, his footsteps faltering as if some invisible hand had caught his shoulder. He turned, casting a glance back over the group, his eyes finding mine for a brief, devastating moment.

"Take good care of Henri for me," he said, his voice carrying the weight of farewell.

Henri. The little anxious creature who'd found sanctuary in Joel's company. Another orphan now, another soul left behind by circumstances beyond anyone's control.

Paul stepped forward, scooping the plump little dog into his arms with a protectiveness that seemed at odds with his usual practical demeanour. "We'll keep him safe, Jamie. You have my word."

The promise hung in the air, a fragile thread connecting the man who was leaving to the people who would remain. Uncle Jamie nodded once — a sharp, decisive motion — and then turned away, disappearing into his tent with Charity close behind.

The silence that followed was absolute.

I stood there, supported by Chris's arm around my waist, and felt the world contract to a single, terrible point. Uncle Jamie was leaving. Going off to hunt a Portal Pirate through a dimension I didn't understand, chasing a son who might already be beyond saving. And I was staying behind, anchored by a leg that couldn't carry me and a bargain I hadn't fully understood.

I'm not a burden, I thought, the words fierce and futile.

But even as I formed the thought, I knew it was a lie.

In this moment, in this place, that's exactly what I was.