Chapter 2

Three months had passed and the party was en route to its destination. The fel glen of the Druid-Lich.

Two of the wizard’s last remaining agents led the party through the swamp. Antioch and Dendiscorne were temporarily allied. Temporarily, because they were sworn enemies. In theory, that is. Antioch was a servant of the Good. Dendiscorne a pacted-one of the Null. These two metaphysical slaves were on a quest. Subcontractors of a sort. The errand boys of a petty wizard named Delphos. They were his most loyal servants. And as yet the two liked the strange party of dwarves. They were funny and made for good travelling companions.

On an orange Octember dusk they walked ahead of the thieves’ wagon train. Beneath fiery leaves which fell slow as snow, time seemed frozen in amber. The swampy air stifled the breath, and the will-o’-wisps sparked off in the bog. The dangers were as yet absent, or at least distant, and the walk was dull. They killed time with conversation. Mostly arguments.

Antioch kicked a stone he’d been kicking for a while.

“The thing has suffered long enough.”

Antioch kicked it off the path into the brackish waters. Best to stay to this path, he thought. There are things best avoided in the venomous marshland. Not least of which were the men.

The Pan-lands, as they were called, collected the outlet waters from the River Oronth, and this toxic swamp — the Fetid Pans, as they were known — was a safe haven for exiles and the hunted, who took these nigh jungles as their sanctuary. This, of course, led to all kinds of criminality. Banditry and the cartels being the primary hazards.

“This is one of those days you encounter and readily forget. No regrets or triumphs. Empty non-memory.”

Dendiscorne often spoke like this. He was prone to a certain melancholia which accompanies alcohol.

“I prefer days like these. Better boredom than misery,” spoke Antioch.

“I’ll take the worst over nothing. Better a hell than purgatory.”

“You speak of an ailment of the mind. Perhaps with one.”

“We’re all cracked somehow. A sage once told me that.”

“And yet you’d mistake a monkey for a wise man.”

Their talks went on like this. Whirlpools which drowned out any sense of truth. They walked on and on, seemingly eternal.

An hour passed and it began to grow dark. A gloom of cloud crossed the sun. And the day grew dim as to need torchlight. That was when the Mycoloths attacked.

Beneath the swamp there is a network of mycelium. It possesses something akin to sentience. Most of these kinds of superorganisms — these gestalt forests beneath the trees — spend their time meditating. But some have intentions on the world and plans of their own. Their agents are the Druids. They source their powers in these fungal hives and channel their alien actions upon the world. For the Druids see this fungal dirt as downtrodden. And as with many, they sympathize with the lowliest creatures. The animalcules of some greater alien soul. They had ill intent for our two itinerants.

These Mycoloth shamblers, mold-addled protoplasms reaching, amoeba about the fel glades, always grasping. With many stalks, they crawl as spiders, slither as snails. They descend quietly upon the two aforementioned mercenaries. Danger often surprises like a house spider.

The fungal blooms crept toward the two warriors. Their lichenous wings brushed across the mud and stone and whispered. Their gills made quiet breaths as they trudged down the nearby hillock.

They were mere yard-spans away when they lunged upon the two.

Their slime sharpened to fangs, and they exhaled puffs of spore-like gas.

Dendiscorne was the first to draw his blade. His was as a crescent moon, and it reflected the remnants of the sun. He swept backward, dividing one of the creatures in twain — and the halves kept moving, each grown a new mouth where the cut had been. And yet the foes multiplied from the treeline. They approached as a legion.

Antioch then took his cue and wielded his hammer. It shone a sterling silver when he beheld the tool which was not meant for nails. He sent it crashing down upon one of the beast-things. There was a splatter of alien viscera as the blunt steel connected with its heart.

But the things would and could not die. As there are things in this world which are intransigent that way. They reshaped into new forms, their biologies adapting swiftly to their damage — a struck limb knitting itself whole between one breath and the next, a crushed mass blooming fresh stalks before the echo of the blow had faded. The greater fungal mind might have felt these strikes as a tickle, but these individuals wished to avenge their pain. They regrouped and then encircled the armed men, eight, then nine, the ring tightening with each creature that staggered from the treeline to join it.

Antioch and Dendiscorne fell in back to back, the way men do who have walked the same roads long enough to know without asking where the other’s blind side lies.

Fire is the key. It is the bane of all that lurks and grows in shadow.

Each warrior prayed to their respective patron. Antioch prayed to the reference point of the Good, that lodestar which leads the hearts of men. Dendiscorne prayed to himself and so invested his confidence with his innate talents.

The hammer of the Paladin burned white-hot and dripped molten radiance. The sabre of Dendiscorne ignited black as vanta.

With their weapons held like torches, they drew this circle outward and outward, and where the fire touched, the fungal flesh did not knit itself back — it hissed and blackened and stayed dead, until the force of Mycoloths broke and fled to the mangrove trees. They didn’t run so much as locomote away, unhurried even in retreat, as creatures do when they have a thousand more bodies to spend. Gone were the interlopers and the day was seemingly won.

Antioch let the hammer’s heat bleed back to plain steel. His hands shook a little after, the way they always did — cooling metal, he told himself, and nothing more.

“We held it,” he said.

“We held here,” said Dendiscorne. He had not yet sheathed his blade. His eyes had already gone past the treeline, toward the dark where the wagon train waited.

That was until the Dracora arrived. The two warriors heard shouts back at the wagon train — and beneath the shouting, something vast exhaled, a sound too large for any throat the swamp ought to hold. The rest of the group had been attacked.