We bump into another rock. I get another mouthful of gross tasting water as I bob underneath the surface of the river for a moment. Coughing and sputtering, I flail over to the shore. Lil and I spend a quarter of an hour or more sifting through muck and mud, trying out various globs of moist soil. We assess which reacts the best when dried out by Lil’s flames. Eventually we find some, well, what might possibly actually be clay, after a few mishaps.

One of the blobs of mud that we try to fire-bake ends up igniting, letting out a woosh of flame, as a kind of air pocket or gas pocket in it expands and bursts. It makes me think there might be some sort of methane or similar gas in the swamp soil. I’m tempted to find a way to weaponize that. I’d make little carefully baked spheres of mud full of gas, toss them lightly around an area, and have Lil set them off, starting a chain reaction at a critical moment if we have to make a getaway, to cause a pretty big distraction. I don’t know enough about soils and gasses to do it safely however, so I’m not going to risk Lil or myself trying to collect flammable gas, in flame-baked mud.

Actually, thinking about it, digging down into the muck, and burning a dry hole in the ground sounds like a potentially extremely dangerous idea. But I’m far more terrified of the Octorochi Orochi snakey serpent thing. I honestly think I could probably survive an explosion set off by a small packet of swampgas with one of Lil’s puffs of flame, while I don’t think I’d survive another run-in with the serpent. Wait, what was that thought a few moments ago? A chain reaction at a critical moment? A critical reaction? A reaction itself becoming critical? Something like that. That sounds oddly familiar.

Wanting to be able to make a quick getaway to the river, should we get surprised while resting, Lil and I look for a tree whose trunk seems a bit concave or maybe hollow. It doesn’t take long until we find one that probably sucked up too much salty water, or sulfurous mineral deposits, and basically petrified itself in a dead state. Odd, everything about the swamp seemed homogenous right up until we started looking for a specific thing.

Lil and I excavate a meager corridor of earth under the tree, leaving a few tiny holes that peak out between the roots as we heat and harden the mud into a sort of a dugout. Huh, is a dugout called a dugout because it was dug out? I mean, it has to be, right? Anyway, after finishing crafting a cozy dry little hole, we shape our clay cover, and plaster the outside of it with mud and sloppy muck as we snap it into place blocking our small dwelling from the outside world. Completely blocked off save for the small ventilation holes that peek up through the roots of the tree we’ve dug under.

Finally, having a safe space to do so in, Lil and I pull out some food to satiate our rumbling stomachs. Looking over at Lil, I give a half sad smile, I’m glad we both made it out okay, but I’m still disturbed, thinking about Staff Ninja just being gone. I haven’t got any real coping mechanisms for anything that happens, I can only keep moving forward. I don’t have any sort of long term plan to shoot for, because I don’t know what’s available to be done in this world of ours. I just have to make things up as I go. Lil noms happily and seems to have been able to move on pretty quickly.

I rub my eyes as I yawn out, “It’s been a pretty long day, I’m feeling really sleepy buddy, hopefully we can get out of the swamp really quickly tomorrow Lil.”

“Sounds good Reggie. Yawn, me too.” Lil hops, bounds, and bounces over, giving me a sort of bonking nudge as they nestle into the crook of my arms, curling their tail around my waist.

Memory Logged, Dream:

The greys and browns of the stonework in the temple are somehow pristine. Though the temple has been seemingly lost and unvisited for countless ages. Most of the reliefs and stonework have been spared the ravages of time. We know however that the supposed celestial emperor and his reign of terror trace back to here, but to even enter, I’ve had to slay a number of powerful members of the celestial empire. Not being one to march headlong to my death, I still try to seek side entrances, but as expected, the celestial lieutenant’s insignias open only a massive front entrance.

It has been years of chasing leads to even get this far. This had better be the right place. Jarvis’s rumors were on the money about the lieutenants at least. Tavner knows his stuff about the Imperium, that’s for sure. Poor old sod’s been running that inn under its banner for far too long. That’s what spurred enough people to risk enough to contact the Vale for a job. The biggest ever requested. No other assassin would touch it. What have I got to lose though? Eights hasn’t responded in years. Gram and Gramps aren’t really my family. Huff. Nothing in my life but death.

Death is a bloody business, and it’s my business, I’m here to fulfill the true end of my contract. Jarvis and many of the good people of these lands wish to be freed from their ruler’s despotry. Just stay focused on the task, don’t get reminiscent. You might not be the best, but you’re the longest-lived of the Vale. At least, the longest-lived that hasn’t backed out into retirement.

Stalking what some might consider hallowed halls, it’s still eerily quiet for what is rumored to be the center of this dominion, a tyrant’s vaunted domain. This tyrant whose iron grip has suppressed and oppressed for the last two generations is rumored to be from the heavens, lauding themself as the Celestial Emperor, as of some sort of angelic figure, or deity. I don’t care where you’re from, grinding the commonfolk into the mud, killing them on a whim, ordering construction of some asinine spire to the heavens is something I’d fight against even without being paid. The nation I’m from is tiny in comparison to this supposed Celestial Empire. Vale Valley is little more than an independent town located twixt a series of mountain ranges.

Vale Valley’s main export happens to be murder. Our self sufficiency is predicated on most of our citizens being assassins and rarely needing anything save a safe space to lodge. It’s also why no one invades The Vale. A town hidden amidst mountains, filled with nothing but trained killers, and no useful resources is not a tempting target for even the most war-mongering nearby nations.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I see a working fountain, I swear I hear faint murmurs, or even screaming, coming from the mild steam wafting out of the fountain. To the north are statues whose beards appear to be a mass of stone serpents encrusted with jewels. For some reason, seeing many serpent faces fills me with a mote of dread. The statues smattering the innards of the temple appear to be placed randomly. The figures making up the statues are also incredibly lifelike, I’d swear the statues are just people covered in stone, or turned into marble. The path deeper into the temple requires crossing a chasm over an internal river, the water of which shares properties of the fountain, a steam that sounds like it’s murmuring or screaming far in the distance.

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Noticing that several of the statues’ figures are in positions of fear, and dotting the bridge across the river chasm, it feels quite like the figures were actually people who were instantly petrified. I don’t believe in magic, but perhaps some sort of paralyzing gas could do this. Maybe it causes, what’s the word? Calcification? Something like that, hardening, dermal something or other, I don’t know.

I focus on the air around me, and begin whistling inaudibly, at least to most creatures, eventually a moth floats in from outside the temple, attracted to the sound. I carefully catch the moth, and blow against its back, aiming it towards the bridge. Startled by my breath, the moth flaps its way partway across the bridge, before falling out of the air, heavily thunking into the bridge and shattering, having turned to stone. Seems I’ll have to find a way to avoid a grisly fate to be able to fulfill my contract.

A voice rouses me into a groggy state, “That sounds kinda scary Reggie.”

“Huh?” I jostle myself awake to Lil’s bemused voice.

Lil helpfully replies, “I think you were talking in your sleep again, having a dream. It sounded exciting, but like, like it was the same dream, from that one time.”

Still groggy, I ask for more clarification, “The same dream? Like what about?”

“Like you were someone who had to fight the ruler of an empire because they were a bad guy, like mega bad, mega mega mega bad. They were in some scary temple with statues that used to be people.” Lil is almost excited to tell me a tale I apparently just told them in my sleep.

I don’t remember any of what Lil is saying, but I think even my dreams end up logged in my brain’s databank of logs somewhere. I might be able to dig around and find it later. Oh, right, interact with the world around me, Lil is waiting on a response, “That sounds, well, kinda weird. So I was there trying to stop the ruler of the empire? How did I get there, why did I get there?”

“Well, you were a killer, you said in a really gruff voice ‘Death is a bloody business, but it’s my business’ or something like that, so you were like a killer, you said everyone where you came from was an assassin. It sounded like you were hired by the people in the empire that were being hurt.” Lil says the death line in a mockingly gruff voice, through text, somehow. The text boxes seem to be more and more voiced the more I interact with Lil, like I don’t even notice myself reading them in my mind’s eye anymore, I basically hear what Lil’s saying at me.

Bemused, I mumble, “Well, huh, I wonder if that dream will keep going.”

Lil exuberantly declares, “I hope so, I like waking up and hearing you tell me a story.”

Chuckling, I try to correct Lil, “Well, I mean, I’m not intentionally telling you a story.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, la la la la.” Lil intentionally ignores me, or pretends to anyway, and I can’t help but to laugh. They continue, “You’re telling it to me because you love me buddy, and you can’t convince me differently.” I keep chuckling, but I flick my head towards the lid on our little hideout as I raise an eyebrow. Lil nods to my unspoken question.

We carefully bust our way out of our dugout, popping the mud seal on our fired-clay hole cover. We steel ourselves for another day of riding the river. To make it a little easier on ourselves, I suggest to Lil that we get a large chunk of lumber or a fallen trunk, hollow it, coat it with mud and fire harden it, to make essentially a canoe. Lil agrees that would be better than trying to bob along downriver smacking into rocks repeatedly.

We set about trying to find, or fell a decent sized tree that isn’t too large, but that part proves a tad difficult, all the trees are massive, there are no large branches or anything, no fallen trunks, it feels like every tree is a sequoia. I think that’s the word, like ancient baobab or redwood or kapok or some other massive tree that’s been around since prehistoric times. I don’t want to fell any of them, even if I could do so. Oddly the branches are miniscule in comparison to the trunks, while a trunk might be a dozen feet from side to side, the branches that fall are walking-stick sized. The fallen branches are far too small to turn into a boat or even to lash together as a raft, and the trunks are so massive they’re unlikely to even fit in the river when it occasionally bends, dips, or thins.

Frustrated of searching, though we are making at least some progress southwards, I’m about to suggest to Lil we give up. Suddenly there’s a rustling, and a squishy swishing noise that stills my heart momentarily. Not hesitating, I run to Lil who is scouting a slight ways away. We’d figured spreading our range of vision out would be the best way to find a useful canoe body. I scoop Lil into my arms while mentioning what I heard.

I carry us both hopefully away from peril, making a mad dash for the river. Without a second thought, I take a big puff of air, hold my breath, and I throw myself bodily into the swift waters. I clutch Lil tightly so we don’t get separated. Lil seems about to complain, but doesn’t bother, and just clutches my arms with their tail, as we’re once again sent careening and bobbing downriver.

Hours go by, and I feel like my body needs nutrients that aren’t just random raw fish platters, like, I think my skin is looking slightly pekid, peaked? Pale, slightly ill and green around the gills. That may be from spending a day floating in a sulfurous or salty section of a river, or could be from the lack of any fruits or vegetables. It would amuse me to no end if that rustling was just some fruit vendor, like an actual nice person wandering around selling their wares, and I overreacted and threw us into a river.

Speaking about selling their wares, we actually have various forms of currency from fishing, things that look like paper money, or coins, so maybe there is an economy somewhere in this world, people that trade for these with goods. Whether or not anyone else exists out there though, I highly doubt the rustling was anyone non-hostile, as neither Lil nor I have any experience to back up being remotely hopeful yet.

Or maybe I’m being cynical? I guess let me think of all the things I know from this world, in this world, not from assumptions and knowledge whose origin I don’t understand. There was at least one fanged sphere on… Day… One… a sharp rap on my head as it plows into a river rock shakes me from that traumatic flashback fairly quickly. Anyway, one negative, for sure, the flying dinosaur things didn’t look friendly, but I won’t give them a score, the fish were pretty much neutral, and only hostile when I started eating them or bleeding in their pond. Still just one negative, maybe two. There was that scary cave area when ascending the cliff, and the lava biome itself seemed pretty hostile, so I’ll say maybe on another negative there.

Lil exists, so one major positive experience, honestly Lil’s so wonderful that they’re probably worth at least two or more positive experiences for hopefulness. Vampguppy is a weird situation, since they kind of didn’t and don’t exist, but just sort of sprang into existence based on something we did, so I guess I can’t really count that one too bad, but if I’m giving Lil two points, then Vampguppy probably can be counted as one with all the other maybes. At that point, it’s two negatives and two positives. The beaverfolk were fairly amicable, if not actually friendly, they sort of seemed to be willing to be friendly, and at least avoid hostilities, so three positives. The feathered bear was definitely hostile, so three negatives. The bullies were kind of negative, I mean, it almost seemed like it wasn’t even hostility, it was just kind of, fighting was what we were supposed to do. Staff Ninja, I sigh as I think about it, Staff Ninja was probably a positive experience about to happen. The Octorochi Orochi snake serpent hydra thing was definitely a negative, so four negatives, and four positives. I guess we could maybe be hopeful that any experience is about as likely to be positive as it is to be negative?

With that reverie leading me to a more hopeful conclusion, I rub sleep from my eyes, realizing we’d been drifting downriver for at least ten hours, and Lil is shivering in my arms. Not that Lil can actually get cold, with their infinite thermal resistance. I understand their sentiment though, since I’m not even certain how we’re managing to stay afloat so easily for so long. Still, I’m grateful for the ease, since we’re saving time and making headway away from whatever might have been after us.