Somehow I know, I may never return to this hallway. I may never see these visions of beauty, or joy, ever again. If somehow, some day, I’m allowed to return, by some specific event, then it will be far in the future, and require a confluence. Yet somehow, it’s for my benefit. Whether that’s to prevent attachment, and loss, or something else entirely, I can’t even begin to fathom. The darkness will recede if I can find my way back here, on my own. This brief visit meant something. It conveyed a message of great import that I don’t understand. One I won’t remember when I wake. Oh. I’m dreaming. That’s too bad.

Hm? I smack my lips and contort my visage as I stretch out my facial muscles, trying to get my bearings. What was—. Oh, right, I was asleep, willingly. I think I might have been dreaming. Too bad I don’t have access to my Can’Z’aas memory logs, or that they didn’t seem to keep track of my dreams. Or, if they did, they got redacted by my subconscious or something, so they wouldn’t take up too much space. I dunno.

It’s funny, I know some time back, I’d been thinking about how I don’t know how to truly function in a society, and now that I’m tangentially adjacent to one, I’m mostly shut down, on autopilot. I’m practicing my magics, but not my social skills. I’m tracking, but not talking. I’m looking for clues, hints, running through a swamp, alone, far ahead of everyone else, yet I stick close enough to see the lantern. If that lantern signals “S. O. S.”, or swings wildly, or goes out completely, I have to rush back immediately.

The lack of sun, with Rayileklia’s endlessly darkened skies, leaves a perpetual haze, made worse by the mist rising from the swampy terrain. The only source of illumination as always is the frequent lightning that streaks across the sky, briefly illuminating the swampland with its electric glow before plunging it back into darkness.

With each flash of lightning, I try to use my eyes to scan the gloom, searching for any signs of movement. Try, because I haven’t fully recovered from my temporary blindness yet. Even without the mist, everything would be painted over in a gray hue. Huff. Sighing, I realize I’ve got to utilize my other senses, I mean, that was obvious, I just kind of forget sometimes when I’m suffering something. It’s hilarious how accustomed I can get to one problem or another. I recall a time when I was trying to decide whether it was better to continue adventuring with a sword sticking out of my guts, or to pull it out, because I couldn’t take a break.

One thing that’s apparent here is that, unlike the regions around the Sisters Hidden in the Mist, and their sanctuary there’s signs of wildlife. It’s almost startling to recall that they’d somehow caught or driven into hiding, basically all wildlife in a massive area. I let my ears tune in to the subtlest of sounds. There’s a distant croaking of frogs, a rustle of reeds, splashing of water were the frogs leap. Despite not truly being able to smell all that well, or perhaps at all, I can tell the swamp would be musty, a pungent mixture of decay and vegetation, tinged with the acidic tang of the constant drizzling rainfall. The scent is somehow somewhat embedded in the way the air lands on my tongue, how my silent sonar picks up a slight increase in density of the air surrounding my sensory range, as the swamp’s mists thicken.

There’s an occasional burble, often accompanied by a pop and a hiss, as swamp gasses filter up through murky, muddy water, filling air bubbles to the point of bursting. Focus Reggie. A plan, a direction, a course of action. In a pinch, the swamp gasses could be ignited, serving as a short distraction, or a warning flare. Though, my main methods of igniting it would provide a fairly sizable source of light themselves. Fireballs and lightning bolts would be my main methods, though I could perhaps dig out the waterborn candle. The candle would be much subtler, and would take a moment to submerge, and light. I don’t even remember if I included it on my list of assets. It’s such a minuscule magic item, with such limited use. Yet here, and now, it’s like a spare stick of dynamite, or a hand grenade, or at least a short delay flashbang grenade

Huh. It’s funny how that works. My mind reaches out, grasping at straws, and it finds them. It tugs on them til the logical end is located, and then it jams that straw somewhere unexpected. As often as not, nothing comes of it, but sometimes, just sometimes, the straw manages to mesh up with the butt of another straw, and a plan begins to form. It’s funny, I think the phrase is meant to be about dried hay, straw, not plastic drinking straws, but that’s the metaphor my mind paints a picture of. That in and of itself is doubly funny to me. I’ve never seen a plastic drinking straw. I shouldn’t even know they exist. Stupid buggy broken Fakeworld memories. Oh well. It’s an amusement, a distraction at least.

Thanks to Tiktik, Elder traded me some rose carnelians, and I’ve already got them mashed and mixed into a paste, for when I complete the telekinesis enchantment mastery. I’m relatively close, and I will pause for a break to apply it to myself when it does happen. I don’t think the telekinesis will be powerful enough to say, grip a rampaging hydra and hold it in place, but I’ve got a few ideas on how to use it, that might be a bit out of the ordinary. They’re not altogether unlike when I used telekinesis to squeeze and pressurize thermite til it exploded directionally through a small aperture. That was definitely not an intended use of the spell. It felt like something sheared through my skull and a quarter of my brain when that happened.

A plan, a direction. If I just keep repeating it to myself, it almost seems real, almost real enough to distract myself from—. From thoughts I can’t allow myself to contemplate at the moment. Losses too great to allow myself to feel at the moment. Only the tiniest shred of my sanity is holding on, the barest thread of my entirety. I need to keep that bit of me focused, distracted. It lets me carry on, despite it all. A plan, a direction.

Granny Altross has an estate on an isthmus that we’ll be passing through soon enough, and I’ll try to broker some sort of arrangement to allow the refugees some momentary respite on her estate grounds. Presuming—, presuming she’s still alive. Or at least the Altross estate still stands. Fearing for the safety of a person I’d never met, and never knew, is a decent enough distraction. I’m mostly only attached, because I’m almost positive she’s Taylynn’s ancestor, and because she helped Taylynn lead the type of life that Taylynn wanted to lead.

I need to plot out what dangers the Jaggedfen Bog actually poses to those within its borders. It’s several hundred miles on a side, dozens of thousands of square miles in area. How could one hydra, or even a few hydra, manage to menace and terrorize the region enough, such that no traveler dares head to the western half of the continent any longer? The obvious answer chills my bones. There are far, far more than a few hydra in the swamp. There could be dozens of lairs, maybe hundreds of lairs if they’re solitary creatures.

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I can’t go roaming thousands of square miles, hunting down every powerful beast! I don’t have that kind of time! Plus, what are these supposed spirits of the swamp? Is it just folk superstition, like assuming swamp-gas explosions are will-o-wisps? Wait. I told a tale of will-o-wisps once. There was another tale though. A swamp. A tale of the slime, and murk of the swamp’s surface. Agwai’s horror tale. Leaning down, I jab my fist into a pool of murk, covered with algae. Foolish of me, I know, but I’d just blast myself with a fireball if something tried to claim me. The algae doesn’t seem to try to creep up my arm or anything unusual, so I suppose we’re in the clear.

If it’s neither of those, could it be something else? I heave a sigh, because my genre senses start blaring warnings throughout my brain. As if in answer to my question, things begin entering my sensory range. I almost laugh as I shake my head. The first sense to pick them up is hearing. There’s a barely audible, nearly imperceptible swish from dozens of directions. I can’t rely on my sense of sight, since I effectively don’t have it at the moment. I eschew color, and depth perception, in favor of innately knowing the texture, and density of things within my danger wraps’ sensory range.

I inhale deeply and exhale slowly as I draw on time, seeking that empty space, that nothing between moments. In a moment between moments, I analyze what I’m sensing along my silent sonar, as the first few enter its range. First, there’s the faintest hints of disturbance on the water’s surface, an almost imperceptible displacement that causes the deeper standing water to lap at the mud. Second, within those disturbances are creatures, bodies. Slick, bumpy skin, eyes atop their heads, lips that wrap almost entirely around their heads, with bulbous gullets, or necks. I don’t even need to see them to know what they are. They’re bullies. Two swamps in my life, and both are inhabited by bipedal, hostile frogs, each roughly the size of a teenager. Equating them to teenagers, they’re twice as hostile as the worst, and twice as deadly as the deadliest. I really shouldn’t be equating them to any one or any thing though. I don’t need the anguish that would come from taking their lives if I started to think of them as more reasonable people .

Huffily I heave a sigh while rolling my eyes and shaking my head. With my erratic, jerking, jolting movements, I’ll have a hard time dodging projectiles, and they’re all carrying spears, poisoned spears at that, no doubt. I’m only about two thirds of the way done memorizing the telekinesis enchantment spell, but that would be the best, or perhaps second best defense against projectiles. I know that with it up, I can intercept thrown or launched weapons. I could also test out my theories on being able to blanket a square region in telekinesis like a shield. Or literally float a square of orichalcum around. If I do cast the telekinesis enchantment out of the staff though, then that will be all the offensive and defensive magical power that I can bring to bear from it.

The first ones are leaping forth from their submersion, and croaking a single word as they hurl their spears. I was going to give them a chance. I was going to try to talk things through, be my best self. But no, they open with not just hostility, but murderous intent. Fine. I can reciprocate. My archsorc staff is in my hands, and I launch a pair of fireballs at the first few bully frogfolk that break the surface of the swamp, hoping to also catch their projectiles in the blast, and throw them off mark. Thankfully, with magic, and a perfect sonar map of my surroundings, it’s easy to toss the fireballs with pinpoint accuracy to achieve my desired effect.

I follow up the fireballs with two lightning bolts that I line up for maximum effect. The devastation that I wreak is evident immediately, as I’ve eliminated every hostile creature in a thirty food radius. Of that I’m certain, thanks to my silent sonar, but I can’t be sure there weren’t more further outside that radius, now with the pained death-throes and croaking drowning out the otherwise too-quiet displacement of water. For my own safety, I conjure forth a wall of fire from the staff, in a massive circle around me, just at the very edge of my silent sonar’s radius. Hopefully they’re not foolish enough to try to lunge through the wall of flames, and hopefully they don’t see me within it. I’m sure all it would take to finish me is a well placed spearhead making it through the flames, even if the haft is burned to ash on the way through. I’m not sure if the toxin that they coated their spear heads with would be completely nullified by the fire. If not, it might take just one good scratch to end me. Whether it’s a paralytic toxin, a necrotizing toxin, or something else entirely.

Then again, Jaz helped me with my acid resistance, and Adom helped me with my poison resistance. Could I maybe stand a few ounces of poison to the bloodstream nowadays? To be fair, Adom’s aid in building my resistance was less voluntary help, and more hostile prank, so I don’t have quite as good a grasp on the actual values of lethality reduction I might have. I wonder, are the bully frogfolk the spirits of the swamp? Or is there still yet other possibly hostile life within the Jaggedfen Bog?

Also, I find myself irritated that a massive region of the continent is called the Jaggedfen Bog, when it contains marshlands, swamplands, and several bogs. I can’t recall all the differences offhand, but I know there are differences. Stupid lazy explorers or cartographers or whatever. If they’d named the individual environments, I might have a better idea where the hydra, or hydras, actually hole up. The massive, multi-headed serpent is unlikely to be too elusive, since it’s a master of the swamp that has been wreaking havoc on the region for years.

Grr, these are treacherous conditions for a miles-long caravan of refugees. Mangroves that leave mazes of tangled roots and vines, bully frogfolk that attack on sight, explosive swampgas bubbles, loose or sticky footing, the constant acid rain—. What the hell was I thinking? Then again, where else was there to go? March off to the Imperium, and beg to not have their souls stolen? Break into the Fae’s wilds, possibly destroying the very enchantment that might have otherwise protected them? Try to swim across the ocean to the south, to the untamed lands? Huff, I heave a weighty sigh as I shake my head. No, this was the only option that didn’t assuredly end badly.

My instincts tell me that we can make it through this. They also tell me to prepare for a barrage of attacks from the surviving bully frogfolk. In that case, shields up, and enchantment on. Staff is down to around one third power, maybe a quarter, so I don’t have many casts left from it today. Maybe I’m relying on it too much as a crutch. Maybe. Let’s do something a bit hazardous though. I set up the orichalcum sheet from my hyperdimensional haversack. I’ve always got to be careful putting it in and pulling it out, so that I don’t tear the opening. Thankfully the opening has some give, and stretches quite a bit. Setting up my sheet of metal, leaning it against my right bicep, and the right side of my head, I swap my double-barreled wrist crossbow to my left arm, while sliding my buckler further up my left arm.

Annoyingly, strapping my shield so far up my arm has some drawbacks. It locks my elbow in an extended position, but I’ll have to keep it extended to fire my crossbow anyway. My Valkyrie buckler will offer cover on my left side, while I have total cover on my right side, and can easily transition sideways to have the large sheet of metal against my back. Feeling about as prepared as I can be, as I’m dropping the wall of fire, I enchant myself with telekinesis from the staff simultaneously. As if they’d been waiting for the opportunity, a storm of spears comes sailing my direction.