Warm… Dark… Weightless…
This was fine.
The troubles of the world were muted and distant.
Here, he could finally find rest.
Logan’s dazed reverie was shattered by pain. His lungs were screaming for air, and that realization allowed his addled senses to take stock of the general throbbing ache that was his entire physical being. He took a moment to contemplate the merits of just giving up and drowning right there, but then he caught a flicker of movement. Something else was in the pool with him.
Panic seized his battered muscles. Moit! The water was full of parasitic slugs! Flailing with what strength he had left he breached the slimy skim of the water and gasped for air. There was no time. He had to get out! Kicking furiously, he half-swam for the shore, feet sliding along the slick mud of the bottom. Then came the moment he had feared more than any other fate that might have befallen him out here.
A sticky mass clung to his shoulder, and he felt a sharp pain on the back of his neck. He thought of Marla, orphaned and alone. No, not alone. Dagny would be with her. He hated to be the reason Dagny had to go through the loss of a parental figure again, but they would be able to guide Marla through the loss. All of this flashed through his mind in the flicker of a signal lantern as he felt something peel back the skin at his nape faster than he could react.
Then there was a bolt of yellow; like a blurred arrow of condensed sunlight. The thing moved with such force that it left a wake in the water beneath where it flew. The slug was wrenched away from his vulnerable flesh with a meaty-sounding thwack, and in a moment of clarity Logan realized he couldn’t afford to investigate. Charging out of the water and onto the land, he held his bleeding neck and took stock of the situation.
Bass howls of rage made the smaller stones on the ground jitter in place. The mangroves had managed to pierce the troll to the ground with their sharp roots, but the beast had no fear of injury and kept tearing its limbs free to claw at them. Its lumpy green hide was bristling with javelins, but the tiny weapons weren’t doing enough damage and it was all the mangroves could do to just hold the monster down.
The perimeter was contracting, consolidating resources as the assault on the Leshies continued unabated. Without the support of the mangroves, the enemy had an advantage in momentum. He cast about, searching for his pack and the fire starter, but the impact had likely sent them flying afield and the low light wasn’t helping him to spot where they had landed.
Another of the massive centipedes charged in. Whatever was controlling the primitive creatures must have gotten wise to the Leshy’s tactics, because this one never gave the troops a chance to strike at its underbelly. Instead, the countless legs of the armored tank drove it head-first through the line like a plow through loose soil. The chitinous giant bored right to the center of the fray, making for the troll.
“STOP IT!” Logan coughed, blood dribbling down his chin. “STOP THAT BUG!” Fighting his way to his feet, Logan grabbed for his daggers and prepared to jump on the thing himself when he heard the familiar twang of a bow. Near his knees, Saboteur stood astride his ramshackle ballista. The plant it was strapped to rocked back as the arrow loosed, skewering the arthropod through the head. The segmented serpent thrashed in dramatic death throes, spraying spurts of acidic bile in random arcs. Logan barely managed to dodge an aimless spray that left Igore’s bark sizzling. The troll’s frenzy only increased as the acid burned welts into its skin. Welts that didn’t heal.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Logan’s eyes lit up and he spun around in search of another centipede, or even the corpse of one. Spotting a crumpled heap of legs he dove for the fallen creature as the troll roughly snapped a large root off of Mosstache.
“The bile sack should be near the jaws,” he muttered to himself. He growled with frustration as he saw the head of this beast had been crushed beyond repair. He stood and looked for another, but every one he spotted had the same problem. Hacked the bits, run through, crushed…
“Gods damn it all I need ACID!!” His frustrations were drowned out by the cacophony of combat. He had a flare of hope when he saw what might have been the last of the centipedes hitting the shield wall, but before he could signal the troops the thing had been swarmed by furious flytrap warriors. Many of them were practically unarmed at this point, their primitive blades having broken or dulled beyond use, leaving tooth and… well, tooth, as their only weapons. It slowed the flytraps down, but not by much.
Logan gasped as inspiration struck. He screamed over the chaos as loudly as he could.
“JAVELINEERS TO THE FRONT!” he cried forcefully enough to hurt his throat. “FORWARD ONE AND TWO-” Logan prayed this wasn’t a huge mistake. “EAT THE TROLL!!”
There was a moment of apparent confusion, the less bulky Leaf Leshies realizing they were now the front line, while the hardy melee troops wondered if they had heard correctly. Then came a frenzy that made the Moit look positively subdued. Logan had heard Leaf Leshy ‘voices’, with each individual being able to make a single high-pitched note. It was usually reserved as a battle cry. The Flytrap variety, as it turned out, were so much worse.
The carnivorous plants made a kind of low, gurgling hiss. He doubted it would even be audible over the chaos were it not being echoed by nearly a hundred of the little savages. All semblance of discipline and order disappeared in an instant as the massive slab of meat that was the fen troll found itself dogpiled by a rabid horde. In a normal flytrap plant, a mild digestive acid would slowly dissolve bugs and other tiny prey. He could only hope that the Leshies retained that trait.
Relief flooded through him as the troll's enraged bellows turned to agonized whines. He watched as the nearest Leshy bit down on the beast's forearm, jerked back and forth like a hound, and pulled a palm-sized bit of lumpy flesh free. It began to regrow, but much more slowly than before. Slowly enough that the thing couldn’t keep up with the green piranhas that we’re eating it alive. Relief was supplanted by revulsion at that thought, and Logan returned his focus to the battle.
His knives slid smoothly back into their sheathes. They would be useless against the smaller foes, and require him to get far too close to the parasites infesting them. With no time to search for his spare string, Logan snatched up his bow off of the ground and charged for the front line. There was no grace here. No symphonies of battle, or artful economies of motion. Grasping his bow by one end, he leaped to the aid of the flagging Leaf Leshies. As the setting sun left them depleted and the hordes of nutria and other vermin washed in like a fetid tide, he swung the rowan bow with abandon. Every time the line would buckle, Logan jumped in to bat at the infestation and buy the Leshies room to breathe.
Gasping, covered in ichor and blood and muck, he shakily lifted his bow to swing at a lump of writhing fur that may once have been a rabbit, only to find his bow trapped in the jaws of a large caiman.
“Bugger…” The word barely touched the air as the realization of just how bad this was about to be registered in his mind. Then a jagged root smashed down onto the beast, and Logan felt a powerful claw grab him about the waist and lift him into the air. The lopsided trunk could only be Igore! The exhausted Halfling looked back over his shoulder to see the twitching troll no longer being held by the mangroves, allowing the trees to return to the front.
Putting his bow swings to shame, the mighty branches cleaved into the enemy forces, allowing the Leshies to reassert their footing and form up again. The slugs and their hosts were being pushed back as the troops mounted on the mangroves hurled down the last of the javelins. As Igore placed Logan on the crook of its twisted trunk for safety, he heard it again. That bowel-watering, awful guttural hissing. It was the most glorious thing he’d ever heard.
Like a verdant explosion, the flytrap Leshies surged back outward. They leaped over the Javelineers, looking as fresh and energetic as their leafy cousins in the noon sun, and hurled themselves into the dwindling enemies. It took a moment for the reality of the situation to hit him. The infested swarm was thinning, breaking, scattering! Logan thrust his broken bow into the air and gave a routing cry.
The troops responded in kind, with a cacophony of hisses, piping screams, and even deep crackling, wooden groans from the mangrove trees. They had won! Somehow they had managed a real victory.
“Clear the brush! Set up the barricades!” he ordered, then bellowed so loud he thought his throat might bleed.
“FOR THE MANGLEGROVE!!”