The splashing of the swamp was distinctly different from the squishing of mud in the marsh, Tali thought distractedly. He focused on the sound, a slower cadence of a lower note than the fairly quick pace of stepping in the marsh. He figured it was because the sound relied on his whole body moving, which he was just realizing would move in a pattern, not steadily forward like it looked to him. This pattern was a longer sound than stepping in mud, and it happened less often, too. He spent a while thinking about this instead of what might lie in wait for him in the swamp.

Eventually though, he could only stay distracted for so long. He came up short when an alligator crossed his path and he almost ran into it. He stopped walking very suddenly and focused in on the eyes just above the water's surface. He thought back to the lessons he got from those that needed to go into the deeper waters in the marsh which these beasts occasionally wandered into.

The fishers and the potters would often tell hatchlings about lizardfolk that crawled on all fours and had large, elongated mouths for snapping up fish and even breaking logs in their way. They would always make sure to play up the menace of the creatures, but never failed to leave them with a lesson before the story was done. In all the stories where they weren't attacked, they had a menacing stare down with the beasts, standing still like a stalk of grass on a windless day before the alligator would turn and go another way. Anytime there was an attack, it was because they ran.

Tali held this in his mind as he felt the instinct to flee for his life, as this looked nothing like his kin. It was easily half again as big as Tali from the silhouette he could see in the water, and not being able to see its body was terrifying on its own as his imagination filled in large teeth in the front and sharp claws underneath. Fortunately, the beast simply swam by and payed him no mind. He breathed out in relief when it was well out of sight before continuing on, but he now kept an eye out instead of letting his mind wander like before.

Keeping his spear at the ready at all times, his journey into the swamp went on for easily another hour before he was stopped by a loud splashing nearby. He was keenly aware how exposed he was as he'd just passed into a clearing in the trees. The water was a little deeper as well, his feet a little more firmly in the mud. It was a perfect ambush spot that he'd decided he had to cross. From either side came what he was dreading most. In the afternoon sun, Tali was flanked by to pitch black raptors who approached him at an unhurried pace.

He pointed his spear to one, but did not face it directly for fear of the other that would be behind him if he did so. Instead he glanced back and forth, watching for which would attack first. He was under no illusion that he stood any chance. Against one maybe, but two, flanking him while he was mired in deep water? That didn't mean he would simply go without a fight however as he brought his tail around under the water, ready to strike at the other just in case.

Neither jumped at him, however. They didn't even seem to be stalking him as they simply walked toward him. When they for close they sniffed at him. When he turned to look at one full on, it met his gaze for a moment, then turned to look in the direction he was heading and off to the left, then back at him. When Tali looked in that direction, it turned and started walking that way. After a few seconds of bewilderment, he felt a nudge from behind him. When he looked back, the other was looking at him as well, then pointed its head after the other one.

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They want me to follow? he thought. This was ludicrous. These were horrible killing machines that had terrorized his village for longer than even his parents' clutch was alive and he'd never heard of anything like this before. Feeling he had no other option though, he reluctantly followed the Night Terror before him deeper into the swamp.

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To call the swamp quiet wouldn't be entirely accurate with three now splashing through the waters, but there was a distinct lack of the sounds of life as Tali was escorted by two monsters that, by all rights, should have eaten him by now. There were no birds chirping, no distant splashes of animals disturbed by their passage, not even the ever present din of insects that otherwise were inescapable.

He should've noticed before when he found that clearing that they'd gone silent, but he was too focused on his sight. Scanning the waters for alligators, he hadn't noticed they sounds of the swamp taper off until he was already following the thing in front of him. He idly wondered if they were the cause. They had to be, right? It wasn't worth thinking about now, though. Ahead of him was a stone structure, something luxurious by his village's standards. He was briefly curious how it didn't just sink into the mud out here until he realized that wasn't important at the moment. Was this where the monsters were leading him?

The structure looked old. Not that he had any reference for what an old stone structure would look like, but it was overgrown with moss and the stones were rounded at the edges, indicating it'd been here awhile at least. Suddenly, Tali was nudged in the back. Hard. Just barely keeping his balance, he glanced back at the monster behind him before taking the hint and continuing on his own to the ruins. As he closed in on the arch that once held a door, a voice called out from within, almost a hiss and with a beckoning tone.

"I've been waiting for you, hatchling. Do join me for a chat."

The voice made a shiver run down his spine to the tip of his tail. The words didn't do much better, enhancing his sense of trepidation.

I shouldn't have come here. Not alone, anyway. he thought, not for the first time as he passed through into a hallway to his right.

Immediately the humidity grew noticeably. Tali's breaths came much heavier, and he had to breath deeper to stay focused. The stone felt alien on his feet. While they used bricks of clay in the village occasionally, never were they so wasteful as to lay them as flooring. He'd never felt both cold and hardness beneath him in such a built structure, only in the swamp on the occasional bolder. Moss was everywhere, though not all encompassing. There was a clear walking path in the hallway, but it still clung to the corners, walls and ceiling with only the occasional probing tendril in the walkway. This gave the humid air a musty quality that only made the heaviness of stagnant humidity heavier.

Ultimately, he felt more and more oppressed the further in he went. Though it was but a scant few dozen steps before the hallway ended with an opening to the left, he felt completely cut off from the natural world he was so used to that was only a few steps away even in the largest huts in the village. When it did open up, he wasn't any more reassured. The open room was dim, to say the least. It looked a but more lived in than the rest of the structure, but only in that there was a crude chair and table to one side directly under one of several cracks in the stone roof that let light in.

His eyes only passed briefly over that oddity however, as they very quickly locked in on a pair of glowing yellow eyes on a raised area of the room that was distinctly dimmer than the rest. The eyes were looking directly at him expectantly.

"Welcome to my abode. We have much to discuss." came the voice, a toothy grin appearing below the eyes.