Another uneventful week had passed by as Dei and her group spent day after day on the road that seemed to have no end. The constant shrubbery had turned into thin saplings, before growing in size until the group was walking past thick trees that divided into a hundred different roots sticking out of the swamp water like a bundle of straw. The small encampments they passed by at this point paled in comparison to the size of Camp Miller, and they sent in Charity to do any bartering for food and goods they needed instead of risking the presence of the whole group at once.
Strangely enough, Dei started to notice more and more bodies rotting within the underwater biome on either side of her. One day, after spotting a rather large group of bodies strewn haphazardly next to the road way, she decided to raise one of the skeletons below the water, willing him to ‘RISE’ out of simple curiosity.
What came up out of the water was the decayed body of a soldier, clad in tarnished chainmail and thin leather scraps that flaked off the body every time it moved. It was evident the man had died some time ago, since Dei could hardly find a single inch of flesh on the body as the skeleton started to fall apart at the hinges due to a lack of ‘joint glue’ as Fei had taken to calling bone marrow.
Dei allowed the body to sink back into the mud even as the sound of cracking bones submerged underwater while Fei continued her work. She then animated a couple more bodies from the muck, revealing similar armor, helmets, and swords across several different styles that marked this area as somewhat of a battlefield.
Charity seemed to grimace at the sight of the rising bodies as the rest of the group took a small breather in the afternoon sun shining through the tree branches.
“I don't think I would want to fight a war in terrain like this.” She said while continuing to look out at the desiccated soldiers’ bodies.
Matthew walked over to sit next to her and offer a water skin, “Yeah, those early years in the golden monarchy were a bit of a mess around here to be honest. He took control a lot faster than any of the other shard-bearers, but then the revolts that came after? Felt like there was always some new challenger to the throne fighting a guerilla war against the king.”
“How'd he stop the fighting then?” John asked from his seat up the road.
“He never did. Instead he trained up one of the strongest groups of mages across all five shards and set them to work brutally putting down each new rebellion until there was no one brave enough to fight back. He rewarded his closest followers, entrapped anyone with even a flicker of magical talent, and cut down anyone who opposed him all with the same plan.” Matthew paused to look over at Charity, staring out at the rippling water as the unseen movements of cracking bones stirred the usually silent depths.
“Do you know why the other countries fear the Arcanists of the Golden Kingdom so much?”
Charity waited for a moment before answering, “Because we all heard the stories of the trees coming alive. They said the ground could open up at any moment and the water itself walked the land tearing apart anyone who dared set foot against the Monarch.”
The group settled into an easy silence for the rest of their break as the water to the side of them eventually settled. Despite the somber attitude of the humans next to them, the skeletons had errupted into an internal discussion about the idea of providing some real monsters of the swamp for people to fear. So when everyone got back up to start walking again, Dei decided to leave her tethers in place on this group of skeletons, just in case she wanted to start any swampside stories of her own in the near future.
—
A short man waded slowly through the murky water that drew up to his groin, accompanied by the soft sounds of small waves lapping against the nearby trees. Without looking back, he knew that seven men were following after him, slowly bending their way through the snaking tree roots that threatened to trip them up under the water's surface.
Light bloomed into the dark night ahead of them, a marker in the distance that shone like a beacon to any passing human. More importantly it was their target for the night as Nathan quickly ushered his group off the road as soon as they noticed the bright flame of a nearby campsite up the highway. The man shook his head in stunned silence that someone had the gall to set a fire right on the roadside by the look of things, practically asking for trouble. Anyone who had lived long enough in the swamp knew full well the arcanists that patrolled the depths couldn't find you as long as you didn't have a flame out after dark.
He was practically doing them a favor, Nathan thought to himself as his crew stepped closer to the open fire up above the dirt slope to the road proper. Daggers and axes were quietly unsheathed as they started to close the last fifty meters towards the side of the campsite. His crew had done this many, many times in the past, and had even stopped complaining about wet pants after they discovered that most travelers never set guards to watch the wetlands instead of the road to their front and back. So when Nathan finally got close enough to really get a good sight of the fireside, he hesitated.
There, outlined by the fire behind them stood a thin figure draped in a thick woolen robe despite the muggy fall air. Its face, or perhaps her face based on the build of the person, was covered in darkness as the light of the campfire concealed her in a flickering shadow. Another figure by the fire side stood up then, covered in thick armor similar to the girl, but standing more than a foot taller than her and wearing a strange helmet that made his head look like the dull white color of uncovered bone. As he turned to face them, twin embers of orange fire flashed in the night as he stared pointedly in the direction of Nathan and his gang.
No one moved. It wasn't like they had any hope of thinking they hadn't just been found caught in the act, but more so, no one had even the faintest idea of what to do in the face of those burning eyes. The female figure slowly raised a hand to her own head as well, and she drew up a mask over her face to reveal a purple grin and mismatched burning eyes of blue and purple. The orange burning man finally started moving, shoving Nathan out of his stupor and back into action as he called out to his men.
“Don't be fooled by their illusions boys, they're just two people. We can take em!”
The orange eyed man had already reached the edge of the roadside and instead of standing there to wait for their approach, he opened his arms and all but fell into the murky depths as he dived under the water.
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This time Nathan's men muttered among themselves about the weirdo's behavior as the female figure merely stood there waiting for their approach. It was only after the man had been under the water for a good thirty seconds that Nathan started to have a very bad feeling about this.
They made it another twenty meters towards the road before anything happened, when a sudden splash of water echoed out from the rear of their group. Nathan spun around as he caught sight of a large plume of water like something had just been submerged below the water.
Someone to the right of the frothing water started to yell out, “Dell, where'd you go?”, before the closest men to the water started to walk over with high kneed strides as fast as they could. By the time they got there, the water had stilled once again before a small current showed that something quite big was moving away from them under the surface of the water.
“It's a water Arcanist! We're all gonna die!”
“No you idiot! This isn't-” Nathan tried to reassure his group as several cracking sounds echoed out from the dark where the current had traveled away from them. It sounded like some sort of massive creature chewing on the remains of their friend, even as more swells in the water approached his group from the sides this time. To their credit, his men at least turned to face whatever was coming, although their eyes clearly betrayed fear as the swells came within ten meters of them on either side, then completely stopped.
Seconds passed by until the cracking sounds behind the group subsided and they were left with nothing but the tense lapping of waves against the nearby tree trunks. Everything stopped as the men clutched tight hands around their axe hafts while others waved their heads back and forth scanning the water.
Draco was the first to break, standing as he was near the back of the group, he suddenly turned to their rear and started taking plunging steps away from the rest of them. He barely took three steps, barely even opened his mouth to let them know he was gonna get out of there, before a massive body erupted out of the water and caught the man by the throat. Twin orange embers stared Draco down as the massive skeletal man brought up his sword and plunged it through the bandit's chest until it clearly pierced the back of his clothing. And with that, everything plunged into chaos.
Two more decayed corpses burst out of the water on either side of the group as one raised a short sword straight into the stomach of one of Nathan's men, while the other corpse merely leapt on top of the man he attacked, pulling him down into the murky depths. The fiery orange skeleton behind them had already disappeared below the waves again, as he pulled Draco's body into the water with him until they were both out of sight.
His remaining three men scattered without a care in the world as they ran in all directions away from whatever horrors were attacking them. Nathan's eyes nearly bulged out of his head as the fleeing man closest to the back of the group was suddenly cut off by a familiar face. Was that, Dell? His skin was a bit pale and his eyes were only half open but Nathan was at least happy to see he wasn't quite dead yet. At least until he noticed the gaping bloody wounds all over the man's body like he had been torn apart from the inside out.
Dell had clutched his friend by the shoulder, stopping his run as the two met eyes in the night, then slowly Dell brought the other bandit into a tight embrace like he hadn't seen him in a lifetime. The two stood there, oblivious to the thrashing water where a man had been dragged under the waves, nor the agonizing screams of the man clutching his stomach even as the skeleton next to him raised his sword for the killing blow. But Nathan was the only one still watching, stunned at the strange reaction from the nearly dead looking man, before the two of them fell backwards into the waves as Dell twisted his friend off his feet and forced him underwater.
Nathan joined the rest of his men in running then, trying his best to escape the only direction no one else had run as he bolted towards the roadway. Twin eyes of strange colored fire followed him with every step as he made his way closer and closer to the edge of the road until he was barely a couple of feet away.
Ten feet, eight feet, six feet, he was going to make it! But his leg finally caught on something, pulling his foot back as he ran and causing a flush of pain to erupt from his ankle. At first he thought he had just gotten tripped up by one of the tree roots in the area, but as he looked back he realized the closest trees to him were too far away to have roots extended all the way out to him. Looking back as he was, he realized that the screams of his impaled friend had cut out already, and he could no longer hear the frantic splashing of men trying to rush through several foot deep water. No, there was nothing but silence as he reached down his leg to try and free it from the roots.
As his hands grazed his calf area, desperately trying to keep his wheezing gasps for air in check, he felt something odd. There was something biting his leg, he realized. Wait no, it wasn't biting him, it was holding him? He let go of his hatchet from his other hand as he reached down with both arms to try and pry it off of him when he finally traced enough of the foreign object to realize it was a skeletal hand holding him in place.
Perhaps sensing that he had figured it out, twin flames of orange fire slowly rose out of the murk as the skeleton remained holding on to Nathan’s outstretched foot, pinning him in place. Nathan rebelled against the very sight of the creature before him, twisting in place with his waist to start throwing punches into the head of the skeleton as it just stood there. Its hand started getting tighter and tighter around Nathand calf until he felt the boney fingers ripping into his leg with every tired swing he took at the uncovered skull of the monster.
Bright flashes of orange shone from the skeletal head with each punch that Nathan landed on him, lighting up the night behind him as more figures came into view. Some of them were rotten corpses, devoid of flesh as they dragged the tattered remains of their half forgotten armor through the marsh. But others, he recognized. Dell's face flashed in the orange light, then Draco's, then more and more of his brothers in arms were all suddenly standing behind the glowing set of eyes that fixed on Nathan even as he continued his assault.
The skeleton holding on to him reached out with his free hand then, resisting the swating hand motions that Nathan tried to throw out to protect himself from this new danger, until he grasped Nathan's leather vest by the collar. Nathan screamed in protest as the skeleton pushed him backwards while raising his trapped leg until the man's mouth started to disappear under the water. He craned his neck at the last moment to take one last gasp for air before being forced fully under.
Orange burning eyes peered down at him through the murky surface, the only thing he could really see from beneath the thrashing waves. His free leg kicked up again and again into the skeletons chest, even as he wrestled with the arm pinning his own chest into the water, but nothing seemed to make the slightest difference.
His lungs started to run out on him as the burning in his chest redoubled and he suddenly stopped fighting. What was the point? He stared up into the orange eyes above him as his killer suddenly shifted his body weight out from under the water.
Nathan gasped with giant heaving breaths as his body was pulled out from under the water and promptly thrown up the side of the road where he collapsed into a roll across the hard ground. He didn't understand. Couldn't understand. Why wasn't he dead already? Why had they spared him?
Suddenly a black piece of rock fell by his head to practically embed itself in the dirt as he flinched away from the attack. Only when he opened his eyes did he realize something was written on the black rock, illuminated by the small campfire still burning to their side.
“Serve me.” it read.
Nathan raised his eyes up a slender arm towards the owner of the black slate board, until he eventually found the mismatched pair of burning eyes that he was expecting to be there. Nathan nodded even as he continued to make sputtering gasps for air as he looked up at his new master. After a few moments like this he finally got out his first words since returning to the land of the living.
“I'll serve! J-just let me live!”