Chapter 11: The Mucklands
The four of them walk along the solid sodden path leading through the Mucklands. A few arm-lengths on either side of the path, the thick grass fades into a swampy, marshy bubbling bog. Unseen, crouching in the shade of the trees, thunderfrogs make their mammoth presence known through a series of bass-laden croaks.
“Do you think,” Madra asks, “this place might be dangerous?”
“Oh, most definitely,” Varello answers, “it ranks right up there with the Deathstretch on the Kleighton Gadabout’s list of ‘Places People Would Rather Die Than Risk Visiting’. I think it came in at number three. The Deathstretch was number two.”
“Oh? What was number one?”
“The Deus Palatium.”
“Lovely.”
“You can always turn back, you know,” Zanther says.
“Turn back?” Madra says, “After those bastards occupied my kingdom? No, I’ll have my revenge.”
“Speaking of revenge,” Varello says, “aren’t we a little under-armed for whatever it is we’re planning? Shouldn’t we go in there with powderblasts a-blazing and some giant, gleaming longknives?”
“Oh yes,” Novanostrum says, “that’s why we’re stopping in the Darrinian Capitol. They’ve got the best weapons on the continent.”
Zanther holds up his own longknife, borrowed from a Claustrian soldier, looking it over. “So the four of us are just going to march right into the Deus Palatium and do what, exactly? Ask the Pontiflex Minor politely if we can have a look around so we can try to find a secret painting which may not even exist?”
“Something along those lines,” Novanostrum says, “but probably with more killing. They do have thousands upon thousands of soldiers.”
“I must advise you,” Varello says, “I just don’t see this plan as having a very high probability of success.”
Novanostrum smiles. “What are you worried about? We’re not trying to fight the whole of their army, we just want to assassinate the leader of their church because he keeps sending soldiers and daemons and homicidal bards after us. If we can find the Original Painting, so much the better. Anyway, we did just manage to kill a Maximagus of the First Circle and fight our way past the Wizards’ Council. This is just one old guy and a bunch of soldiers. Should be a breeze.”
As they make their way down the thickly-vegetated path, their eyes and lungs are assaulted by thick, black smoke. They can hear screaming.
“Seems like someone’s house is on fire,” Zanther says.
“Who’d wanna live out here,” Madra asks.
“You guys just sit tight while I go save the day,” Novanostrum says before walking off the path towards the burning structure.
Madra makes a sour face. “Should we follow him?”
“Nah,” Zanther says, “he’s a big boy. He can handle himself.”
As Novanostrum approaches the house, a large wooden maze of verandas and porches built on stilts anchored in the swamp, he looks over his shoulder for the others, but they don’t seem to be coming.
“Need to have a little talk with those guys about sarcasm,” he says to himself, walking down a plankway connected to a short set of stairs.
With the screaming continuing unabated and smoke and flames billowing from the windows, he blasts open the front door with a gust of wind and enters the fray. Inside, the flames illuminate a trail of blood leading into a bedroom. He follows it to find a woman bound to a bed, beat and bloodied and hysterical.
“Get out!” she screams, “They’re still here!”
“Who?” he manages to spit out before being tackled by a sinewy stack of red muscle. The daemon has his foot on Novanostrum’s throat, eyeing his prey carefully.
“But I need...proof...” he says, thinking it over, “a head should do, I’d think.”
Novanostrum lifts his staff a tiny bit, managing to shoot a plume of flame out the window which explodes vibrantly in a shower of green and yellow sparks. The daemon is startled by this, and snatches up the wizard’s staff as other daemons burst into the room.
“Hey, Scanthyll, this is my shot to get out. Not gonna let a hoofhead like you ruin it for me. The human is mine to kill,” one of them says to the daemon standing on Novanostrum.
“Back off, both of you, his head is MINE!” shouts another one.
As the three daemons duke it out, Novanostrum tries to crawl to the bed where the woman is bound.
Madra, Zanther, and Varello see Novanostrum’s fireworks display.
“Cocky bugger, isn’t he?” Zanther muses.
“I still hear screaming--I don’t think he was doing that to show off,” Madra says before darting off toward the house.
“I’m not convinced there’s a problem,” Zanther says to Varello, “think I might just hang out here for a while.”
Varello shoots him a look of contempt and follows Madra. With a sigh, Zanther follows along, too.
Zanther walks into the burning bedroom to find his three companions surrounded by four daemons, one of them waving Novanostrum’s staff like a club. Varello’s lute lies on the floor, smashed into splinters. Upon noticing the knifesman, the daemons shift their angry stances from each other and toward him.
“Four of us, four of them. We each get one, we all stay,” Scanthyll says.
The next tick is a blur of wind and steel and cursed axes and hooves and fire, but it ends with Zanther, Novanostrum, Varello and Madra bruised, bloody, and still surrounded. Out of desperation, almost unconsciously, Varello starts whistling a slow, sad melody.
Novanostrum, Zanther, and Madra drop their respective jaws as the daemons drop like sacks of hammers, asleep. Still whistling softly, Varello motions at the girl and the door. The woman has stopped screaming, and Novanostrum unties her and slings her over his shoulder as they make their way out of the room. After snatching up Novanostrum’s staff and handing it back to the wizard, Zanther motions for Varello to follow, but the bard shakes his head.
“If he stops, they’ll wake up,” Madra whispers.
They file out of the house, making it halfway down the plankway before the burning stack of boards finally creaks, cracks, and crumbles. The whole smoldering mess is extinguished as it sinks into the bubbling water.
The four of them linger to watch for a few moments, then quickly start putting distance between themselves and that accursed place, but they don’t get very far.
A giant crab skitters out of the muck, clicking its enormous pincers together, frothing bubbles out of its mouth.
“Oh, High Hell, no,” Novanostrum says, with the girl still slung over his shoulder. The wizard raises his staff and summons a huge lightning bolt which strikes the crab, instantly boiling it and blasting it to pieces.
Zanther rushes over and scoops up one of the claws, sticking an arm inside and pulling out a large handful of tender meat which he devours eagerly.
The others stare at him.
“What are you lookin’ at,” Zanther asks, “I’m hungry.”