An endless cacophony of chirping insects and frogs filled the swampland as the glimpses of sky grew dark and the last rays of sunlight trickled away. A yellow-orange glow bobbed through the trees and glinted off the waters, periodically flashing blinking out and reappearing across distances. A balrog occasionally roared in the distance, momentarily quieting the chorus of wildlife.
Iris finally slowed to stop when she came across a stretch of semi-solid ground. As her feet touched soil, she stumbled forward with slumped shoulders and leaned against a tree with one hand, and on her walking stick with the other. The muscles in her legs burned, and though she had avoided any single over-expenditure of mana, the sheer amount she had used and recharged throughout the day had caused a faint but swelling pressure in her skull.
While there had been no major fights during her journey so far, there had been several torso-sized bugs that required swatting and a particularly vicious gecko that spat acid when it hissed. While Littletooth had gleefully attacked the insects, he thankfully had the sense to hide from the gecko while Iris and Abby dispatched it. The only wound Iris sustained was a gnarly burn on her forearm — which she earned by not taking the gecko seriously at first — but the exhaustion that was now overwhelming her felt like an injury in itself.
With an almost guilty hope, Iris looked up at speckles of sky through tiny gaps in the leaves. It was silly to expect to see the Gaping Maw floating overhead, but she had to imagine it was possible. Otherwise, what future did she dare imagine? What hope was there that her friends would find her in a swamp that stretched for thousands of miles? How long would it take her to reach civilization, especially when her supplies ran dry and her time had to be spent on survival more than travel?
Littletooth apparently wasn’t satisfied having gorged himself on over-sized insects and a gecko almost twice his size, as he was currently trying to shove his head between two gnarled roots to reach a cowering frog in the crevice beneath them. Iris removed the bottomless bag from her waist and placed it on the ground near Littletooth.
“Keep an eye on him, I’m going to check the sky.”
Affirmative tones emanated from the bag.
A few blips and leaps brought Iris to the upper branches of the tallest tree nearby, where she could gaze out through gaps in the branches. The crowns of trees rolled like hills as far as the eye could see beneath a cloudless star-filled sky. The only structures to break the form were the towering giant trees, of which she could currently see four. One such tree was roughly in-line with the trajectory of her journey, and she withdrew her spyglass from a tear in her palm to get a better look. Even with the spyglass fully extended, she could make out little more than a silhouette in the darkness. It was hard to judge, but she guessed it would take two days of travel to reach it.
Besides pure curiosity, there were other reasons the giant trees interested her. There had been plenty of time to think during travel, and most of the half-baked plans she deemed even worth considering further involved those trees in one way or another. For starters, she imagined each tree must house a biome distinct from that of the ground-level swamp, which might mean opportunity to hunt for food that wasn’t a bug or something with scales, and just maybe there would be a source of fresh water to be found. It also made since to her that if anyone actually lived out here in the swamp, they would probably live in the upper reaches of those trees where the air was fresh and didn’t smell of noxious gasses. Finally, if she were to hunker down and erect some sort of signal to help would-be rescuers find her, that would be the best place to do it. After a final panning of her spyglass across the horizon in a fruitless search for the silhouette of the Gaping Maw, Iris sighed and returned the spyglass to the void.
When she returned to the ground, Littletooth was still struggling to reach the frog beneath the roots. Iris blipped the helpless creature into her hand — which prompted Littletooth to hurriedly glance around in confusion — and then tossed it towards him. He leapt and snapped it out of the air, chomping only twice before swallowing it whole. The act struck her as strangely callous, after-the-fact. It didn’t seem fair to the frog that it had a perfectly good shelter to shield it from its predator and yet she had simply yanked it out with powers far beyond its comprehension and thrown it to certain death.
Iris collapsed onto the ground and slumped her back against a tree, bringing up her knees to bury her face as she wrapped her arms around her head. Even with her eyes closed, the glow stone necklace washed her eyes in warm orange light. It was taking everything she had to keep it together, but she was losing ground. Occasionally, when she was feeling particularly disheartened and hopeless, it became frighteningly easy to believe she would go mad in this swamp.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
An unexpected laugh escaped her lungs, and she tossed her head back against the tree, “I’ll become a crazy bog witch.”
Confused tones emanated from the bag nearby.
“That’s my eighth plan, if all the others fall through. I’ll go mad and live in this swamp, and become a crazy bog witch.”
Disapproving tones came from the bag.
“Oh come on, it doesn’t sound so bad,” she insisted, “we can build a hut on stilts, and make soups from frogs and bugs. Littletooth will grow up to be a big, strong swamp wyvern, and before you know we’ll be ruling the whole place.”
“I think it sounds like a great idea,” someone said.
A wave of goosebumps crawled across Iris’s skin. A dark figure stood beyond the edge of the light. Her instincts told her to fight — to summon her sword and lunge forward with a deadly strike — but she recognized that voice.
“Mom?” she whispered.
A tentacle rose from the bottomless bag clutching the handle of a lantern, which Abby held out at length to illuminate the figure. It was Mary, her silver robe had been replaced with a black one and a hood was drawn over her head.
“Mom!” Iris shouted.
Warning tones came from the bag as Iris launched to her feet and sprinted forward, enveloping the woman in a bone-crushing hug.
Mary laughed and placed a gentle hand on her head, “it’s good to see you, Iris.”
Iris withdrew only half-way from the hug, “when is this for you? I mean, what year are you from?”
Her face was still partially obscured by the hood, but she looked older than Iris had last seen.
“That’s not important right now,” Mary said, “what matters, is what you are going to do next.”
“I-I don’t know,” Iris admitted, stepping back and lowering her head in shame, “I’ve been thinking of solutions all day, but they’re all missing details. I don’t know what to do.”
Mary lowered her head and spoke somberly, “you’re not going to make it out of this swamp, Iris.”
“What?” Iris almost whimpered.
“I have foreseen it. I’m sorry.”
“No, that can’t be right! What about your unfinished quest? I’m supposed to help you! You said so in the journal!”
Mary shook her head, still looking to the ground, “I was young and naive when I wrote that, Iris. I didn’t even know who you were yet. I’m sorry I misled you, but this is where your journey is.”
Iris’s face contorted into an amalgamation of disbelief, disgust, and dismay as her voice faded to a desperate whisper, “you’re wrong.”
“I’ve come to say goodbye, Iris. Please don’t make it difficult.”
The goosebumps returned, and Iris shook her head in a terrified stupor, “she wouldn’t say that.”
The light from her glow stones had faded away, she only now realized as she took a staggered step backwards and the glow of her necklace faintly returned.
“Y-you’re not—” Iris stumbled back a few more steps.
A wicked grin eased across the woman’s face, “did you really think she would come to visit you?”
“Shut up!”
“Why would she want to see you?” the woman laughed faintly, “She left for a reason, you know.”
The great sword erupted from Iris’s palm as she lunged forward with a furious scream and a wild swing. The woman stepped back and leaned away to dodge the swipe, causing Iris to over-extend. As the heavy great sword threw off her balance, her feet slipped in the mud and she fell forward. The woman laughed. Something wrapped around Iris’s feet and yanked her back, slamming her face into the muddy ground as she was dragged back away from the woman.
More tentacles than Iris had ever seen erupted from the bottomless bag as it stretched wider than ever before. A bulbous mass emerged from the void, appearing as a thin layer of bumpy purple flesh wrapped around a singular giant eye. It was the epicenter of a writhing mass of tentacles that whipped and whirled around it. The eye abruptly split horizontally across the middle, revealing rows of triangular teeth before an endless black void. The roar that exploded from within was deafening and cacophonous, like a chorus of a thousand otherworldly monstrosities screaming in the purest rage to ever exist.
The nightmare staggered backwards, its uncanny facsimile of Mary’s face crossed with abject terror. Tentacles collapsed all around it with murderous speed, slamming into the mud with wet thumps and splatters as the nightmare exploded into shadowy wisps. A disdainful groan came from Abby, unmistakably conveying her desire to remove the nightmare from reality. The mouth closed and the eye seamlessly reformed before Abby turned to Iris, where she still lay on her chest looking up in a tearful shock.
Comforting tones came from the aberration as a tentacle slowly reached out to gently wipe a tear from Iris’s cheek. A pair of tentacles parted the opening to the bottomless bag — which now lay limp and deflated on the ground — as Abby crawled back inside it. Once she had returned, the bag regained its usual plump shape.
Iris breathed heavily as she pushed herself up from the mud and onto her feet. A wary gaze panned across the darkness that surrounded her, and she yelped as something pushed against her leg. She looked down to see Littletooth whimpering and nuzzling his head against her, and she laughed a little despite herself.
After scooping Littletooth into her arms and cradling him closely, Iris stepped up to the bottomless bag, “c-can you open it for me?”
Any consideration of pitching a tent and sleeping in the swamp was now gone. The thought of spending her nights in the void had occurred to her earlier in the day, but there had been too many uncertainties to commit to it. Now, it was the only place she wanted to be. Abby obliged, and the tips of three tentacles reach out to hold open the mouth of the bag and reveal the void within. After wiping fresh tears on her shoulder, Iris hopped into the bag and disappeared into the void.