Page 23 of The Blight of Hollowmire

I should turn and run. I was a fool to come here—to think I could best this mire of memories and grief alike, to think I was strong enough to put my armor back on and face down the monsters that left me in shambles when I was younger and more able-bodied. Run, and doom all those in Valehar who cannot find a meal without begging. Run, and fail those who relied on you before—who believe in you now.

The surface of the bog bulges, swelling subtly like a tumor upon the water.

“No,” comes the feeble whisper from my cracked lips.

But of course, the water does not hear me—nor does the thing beneath it. The bulge grows, the water sliding off its surface in slow sheets as something beneath pushes upward with considerable force. I draw my sword without taking my eyes off the disturbance, steeling myself for another battle I feel ill-prepared to meet.

The thing that emerges defies nature—at least, the natural order of things in Valehar. It is roughly the size of a horse and the shape of a massive spider, but it’s unlike any earth-bound creature I’ve seen. Its legs—all eight of them—are composed of sticky, translucent membranes stretched over moss-covered bones. These malformed cartilaginous limbs move haltingly—pale tendons and darker knots that push past one another in a stuttering, jerking, staggering movement. Its body, or head, if that is indeed what it’s called, is a clear fleshy mass of green organs and viscera, crowned not with eyes but with a cluster of glassy orbs that catch the light and roll blue-white.

As it hauls itself onto the causeway, I see that the underside of its belly is lined with five small, circular mouths, each ringed with thousands of needle-sharp teeth that click softly against one another in anticipation of its next meal—likely me, hopefully not followed by Magnar.

The stench hits me a moment later, overpowering the stagnant water of the bog—a smell of rotting flesh and brine, undercut by something sharper, almost acidic, that makes my eyes water and sours in my gut.

“Back,” I order Magnar, but I don’t dare look away from the thing to see if he will obey. Gods, please give him the sense to flee if I am overcome.

The massive swamp spider tilts toward me, its five mouths snapping and foaming with black spittle. One of its mouths opens wider than the rest, revealing a thick, green-black tongue that seems to crawl toward my boot, leaving a trail of viscous, acrid fluid in its probing wake.

I strike before it can make contact.

My sword cuts through one of the glossy membranes along the creature’s belly, splattering the causeway and my greaves with stinking green-gray fluid. Where it lands, the vegetation blackens and sags, sinking back into the water beneath with a faint hiss. Gods, not poison. The creature recoils, its skeletal limbs thrashing violently, before it opens its horrid mouths and emits an earsplitting keening screech that seems to come from every mouth at once.

Injured and furious, it surges forward with a renewed sense of rage and breathtaking speed.

The impact sends me careening backwards, and my heel slips on the slick, melting surface of the causeway. I barely manage to keep my footing, but continue to hack and slash at the disturbingly clear flesh. Unfortunately, each time my blade finds purchase, it releases a new flood of the caustic fluid, which spatters and burns every place it meets my exposed skin.

One of the front limbs boasts a set of five pincers—disturbingly like a hand—that clamps onto my boot and begins to slowly draw my leg forward, clearly intent on pulling me into the mire.

Its pincers bite through the leather of my boot, through the wool socks Millie gifted me last winter, deep into my skin, and pain pierces through the cold numbness. I curse and bring the pommel of my sword down hard against the creature’s leg—or is it an arm? —but the blow is ineffective with my failing strength. More pincers latch on, fastening to my greaves, my thigh, the edge of my cloak. The gods-awful screeching intensifies—the high-pitched trills setting my teeth on edge.

The causeway begins to sink beneath us, and briefly I wonder if I will drown before I can be consumed by all these chattering mouths too-full of teeth.

Magnar seems to sense my desperation, and the brave beast lunges forward, rearing up to stamp at the creature’s upper mass. Several small tears form beneath Magnar’s powerful hooves, but a flood of gray-green fluid gushes outward, drenching his forelegs and my lower half. Magnar screams and jerks back, shaking violently, but the distraction is enough for me to wrench my leg free from the doomed drag toward the black bog water. Clamoring backward, I swing and miss at another of the swamp spider’s whip-like tongues, which fastens more firmly around my ankle and yanks me down with such force, I lose my breath.

Stars dancing in my vision, I suck in the stinking air as though my lungs cannot get enough of it. Above me, the writhing creature shifts and undulates, perhaps triumphant in its knowledge that my end is nigh, and cold despair sinks in. Embedded within its mass are fragments of things that do not belong in this natural, unnatural place—rusted bits of armor, a strip of fabric in Valehar’s colors, what might be a human hand caught in translucent flesh.

My strength all but sapped, every subsequent strike of my sword yields precious little, until another of the monster’s tongues wraps around my wrist with pressure enough to make me drop it. Its mouths descend, and strangely, relief comes like a sigh because finally, it is over.

But it isn’t.

When the swamp spider’s needle-teeth bite through what remains of my armor’s integrity, pain explodes through me in a dozen points at once.

I claw at the membranes above me—more from reflex than anything more noble—but they simply yield and reform beneath my fingers, slick and ungraspable. The stench of the monster’s mouths and fluids is overwhelming now, filling my nose and mouth until I gag.

Through the gelatinous mass above my face, I see something that looks disturbingly like a human skull suspended within, its empty eye sockets tilted toward me, as though in recognition.

My vision begins to narrow as cold water seeps up around my legs, my waist, my shoulders. Magnar’s frantic movements blur at the edge of my sight, his hooves striking at the creature’s sides, but this time he cannot find purchase on the slick surface.

Once more, I reach blindly for my sword and find only empty air.

So, this is how it ends, I think distantly. Not in glorious battle beneath a banner, not defending a king or a village, but half-digested on a rotting strip of woven reeds in the same cursed bog that should have claimed me years ago.

The world begins to go dark around the edges, and an otherworldly peace beckons me as pain blessedly begins to ebb and the cold sinks in deeper. The cold is not so bad anymore—I find I like it better than the burning.

There is a sharp, cracking sound—like a tree branch snapping, or a sap-filled log popping in a hot fire—and the pressure on my body lessens abruptly. The membrane above my face splits, and light floods in, and it is almost enough to call me back from the cold darkness seducing me. I draw in a ragged breath.

Without the numbness of the cold, pain erupts from every part of my body all at once, before mercifully, the world goes black.

When I come to, it is to the sensation of cold mud against my cheek and the distant, muffled sound of water lapping against moss-coddled reeds. My head throbs in slow, punishing waves—my body is more pain than flesh. For a brief moment, I cannot remember where I am, only that my body feels both weightless and impossibly heavy.