Chapter One: Declan
"Fecking hell, Tavis!" Declan yelled, feeling the freezing water surround him.
He looked down and saw he was indeed waist-high in murky water. It was bad enough on his waist, but the frigid cold lanced between in legs. He looked up and saw the others wading to the shore. He felt the wave behind him before it crashed over him and he was soaked from top to bottom. He heard a laugh behind him and Kellyn sloshed passed.
He growled, feeling the water drip off his hair and into his eyes.
Kellyn laughed again. "You are a sorry sight," she said.
"Gee, I wonder why?" he muttered.
He pushed through the water, the lake not ending in a gentle slope to dry ground, but a bloody ledge. By the time he reached the ledge, the others had all clambered out. He pushed off the floor of the lake, propelling himself up with his hands, and landed neatly on the edge of the dry ground.
"Show off," Eoin muttered as he pushed him.
Reacting quickly, Declan grabbed Eoin's wrist. They teetered on the edge for a moment, exchanging wicked grins, before they both toppled back into the lake. Declan broke the surface, whooping; the water was not quite as cold as before, but it still set goose bumps along his skin.
"For feck's sake!" Eoin spluttered as his head popped out of the water. "Danu, that's cold!"
"Serves you right." Declan smirked as he pulled himself from the water again, then turned to help his cousin out.
"You're lucky you didn't snap my bow," Eoin said, shaking water droplets from his long, light blond hair.
"If you two are quite done," Sloan said evenly, always the leader, the voice of reason – though sometimes the voice of boredom too.
"Yes, yes," Declan said, looking around to get his bearings. "Tavis, could you not have found a more decent trod, man? Rather than one that opened into a bloody freezing lake?"
The water drying against his skin sent a shiver through him. Though, the tinge of iron in the air did not help either.
"Not one that wouldn't mean an extra day's trek," their navigator responded sullenly.
"All right, don't pout so," Declan told him, smiling. He tried to pull magic from the air but, for something as drastic as drying all of him, the iron interfered with his ability to draw enough. "Ugh, we need to get dry. Suggestions?"
"We could find a home or inn?" Tiernan offered.
"And do what? Wait for our stuff to dry out?" Kellyn asked.
"Humans have those machines now," Eoin said. "To dry clothes."
Declan thought about it; casting enough of a glamour over themselves while they set their clothes to dry would take very little magic. "It's as good a solution as any. Where do we find these machines?"
"They have places stocked with them that they use whenever they like," Eoin said.
"How the feck do you know so much about human drying machines?" Kellyn asked.
Eoin just winked and Declan snorted, not wanting to know how many human women he had been visiting lately. Declan was all for sleeping with beautiful human women, but seeing them more than once? He could not understand Eoin's patience.
"Right, well, find us a drying machine then."
Eoin smiled. "If we're where I think we are, we won't have to look long."
Sure enough, ten minutes later, they were sloshing through the door of a hideously brightly lit establishment filled with square, white machines. The metallic note in the air was palpable, but did not feel like iron.
There was one person in there, in the middle of the row of machines. She was throwing clothes into two machines, though how she determined which ones went in which machine, he certainly did not know. Her head bobbed, the short red curls dancing. He vaguely detected music.
"Come on then," Eoin said, leading them down the emporium to the back.
They pulled glamour around them, enough that no one would notice them or that they were about to be naked, and started undressing. It was a long and arduous process, pulling off weapons and armour, then finally boots and clothes. They joked and laughed as they passed their clothes to Eoin to put in the machine, totally unabashed at their shared nakedness.
"How do you know this works?" Kellyn asked, peering into the machine. "It won't ruin our clothes?"
"No. I've used one before."
"I don't think we need details." Declan smiled. "What you get up to-" His gaze had shifted to the girl further up the room and the look on her face before she blushed and turned away made him freeze.
She had been staring at them, mouth agape, as though she saw them exactly the way they were.
