The bottomless bag sat mostly undisturbed in the swamp throughout the night, only bothered by the occasional curious animal who sniffed or nudged it. On one occasion, an animal which looked like a scaly lizard-squirrel took a particular interest in the bag and tried to drag it off, but a quick wallop from Abby’s tentacle scared it off. Inside the bag, a small campfire burned atop a nonexistent floor within the infinite blackness, and beside it lay Iris and Littletooth. Abby’s enormous eye and ever-writhing tentacles loomed nearby, diligently watching over the pair as they slept.
Though an unnerving, never ending emptiness and a total lack of sensation were typically characteristic of the void, on this night Iris found it to be a comforting embrace. The distinction between the void pocket within the bottomless bag and the true void beyond allowed for at least some sense of up-and-down, the presence of light and sound, and even the propagation of warmth from the fire. It felt safe, like her own little fortress beyond reality where only those she trusted and allowed could ever enter.
Abby knew differently, however. She could sense the nightmare clinging to Iris’s soul like a vile tick. By entering the void, Iris had brought it with her. That was why the monster stood guard throughout her rest, ready to vanquish any apparition of the reprehensible creature that haunted her human. Mercifully, however, the nightmare made no appearance, and Iris only occasionally stirred softly through the night.
After she awoke, Iris lingered in the void for a while. She and Littletooth ate breakfast — meat scraps for Littletooth, and light salad for Iris which she prepared from Autumn’s ingredients — and she even tried to offer food to Abby, having learned the night prior that she had a mouth. After experimentally poking at the offerings with a tentacle, Abby vehemently refused, though she did watch curiously as Iris ate.
After breakfast, Iris wrote a journal entry addressed to her mother. After explaining her current situation and frustrating lack of a definite plan, Iris described the nightmare’s appearance the night prior, detailing the hope that filled her when she thought Mary had arrived, and the dreadful agony that replaced it as the nightmare revealed itself. In the entry, Iris assured her mother that she didn’t believe anything the nightmare had said, and still believed her mother’s other appearances to be genuine. As always, she signed off by saying she wished Mary were there with her, and that she hoped to see her again soon.
When Iris finally poked her head out of the bottomless bag, she found the swamp to be surprisingly pleasant in the early morning. The air was humid but cool, and felt much less stagnant than it had the day before. The constant buzzing and humming of insects was largely replaced by the chirping of birds, and the fresh rays of sunlight cutting through the canopy illuminated particles in the air like drifting sparkles of glitter.
After emerging from the bag, Iris wasted little time in getting on the move — though she did pause to don one of her wizard hats, feeling it necessary to fully savor the whimsy of the environment. Littletooth stayed behind in the void, unwilling to rouse from his comfortable slumber, so she started off the day at a breakneck pace. Pushing her limits was a surefire way to gain experience from even the must mundane of tasks, and judging by the experience she gained each day from her job tending to the sails aboard the Gaping Maw, she expected to earn a decent amount from her navigation of the swamp.
Only a few hours into the day’s journey, she came upon something unexpected. After pushing off a trunk with her enchanted walking stick and launching herself forward into a blip, she reappeared only a few dozen feet from an ongoing battle. It was flabbergasting, at first, to see four foot tall frogmen in loincloths and sashes wielding makeshift spears against a creature almost beyond description. At first glance, she almost thought it was the balrog, but she quickly realized it was something else entirely.
The beast was only slightly taller than her, and had no symmetry to speak of. Gnarled and twisted horns of various lengths extended from all parts of its head in all directions, while two rows of crooked and often overlapping teeth lined a slanted mouth that somehow seemed wider than its already quite thick and square skull. Its body was mostly covered in long, matted fur, but more horns extended out from a bony plate on its chest that served as natural armor. Its legs were inverted, with the knees pointed backwards, and ended in wide flat feet that appeared to have webbed toes. One arm was longer and wielded a jagged knife, while the shorter arm was bulky and wielded a crude wooden club.
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The frogmen seemed to be in a harrowing fight for their lives as they were slapped around and pummeled by the beast. Iris hadn’t been noticed yet, and she considered taking advantage of that fact to simply blip away. She didn’t have time to waste, and joining in on fights she could avoid seemed like a bad idea. On the other hand, these frogmen were the first sign of any kind of civilization she had seen so far, even if it seemed like it might be generous to call them civilized — and she did kind of feel bad at the thought of leaving them to potentially die when she could easily help. Finally, there was the consideration of the experience she stood to gain from the encounter.
Iris casually flicked her hand out to the side, extending the great sword from a void tear in her palm in a now practiced motion. One of the frog men, probably the leader based on the slightly ornate wooden helmet he wore, shouted orders to his soldiers in an incomprehensible language that sounded like a mixture of belching and gurgling. The frog soldiers responded by falling back from the beast and forming a half-perimeter around it with spears extended.
She took that as her opportunity to join the fight, and blipped into the air beside the beast. The assembled frog men echoed shocked gasps that sounded more like inverted burps. A swing of her sword sliced through fur and flesh above the bulkier arm, which went limp and dropped the club. The creature spun around in a fury, but Iris was already gone.
Iris reappeared again, this time in a crouch behind the creature, and twisted on her feet into a wide swing that sliced both of the beast’s calves. It spun around once more, this time much more clumsily, and drove its knife into the mud where she had just been. With her final blip, Iris appeared above the hunching creature and drove a downward stab into the its back, effortlessly sinking the blade through its chest until the tip impacted the inside of the bony plate on its chest. Iris rode the creature’s back as it released a death groan and collapsed to the ground in a muddy splash that splattered the stunned frogmen surrounding it.
“I wish balrogs were that easy to kill,” she mumbled as she yanked her sword free from the felled best, and then turned to face the baffled frogmen, “Iris Orion, nice to meet you.”
The frogmen’s spears had fallen slightly in their stupor, but now rose to attention to face her. The frog captain — as she decided to call him — stepped up in front of his soldiers and kind-of pointed a finger at her. His webbed hands made it impossible for him to truly point, but the intention seemed clear as he launched into a long, incomprehensible diatribe aimed in her direction. Though she couldn’t understand a word of the strange frog language, the frog was obviously telling her off with a quite intense passion.
She looked down at the beast beneath her feet with concern, “did you guys not want me to kill that?”
The frogman somehow grew even more infuriated at her interruption, and began aggressively pointed at the ground in front of him. She guessed he was commanding her to get down, so she shrugged and obliged. When she reappeared from her blip only a few feet in front of the frog captain, he recoiled back with a shriek as another round of burp-like gasps came from the soldiers.
“Look, I don’t know what I did wrong, but I’m just trying to get back to my friends—”
The frog captain shouted orders while pointing at Iris, and the soldiers moved in to surround her.
She sighed, “I’m kind of in a hurry— OW!”
One of the frog men had slightly poked her with his spear, drawing a trickle of blood from her shoulder. He gaped and stumbled back under the intensity of the angry glare she shot at him.
The frog captain was still shouting, but now pointed away from the group. Iris guessed he wanted her to walk in that direction, and was about to just blip away and be done with it all. A quick glance towards the sky, however, revealed that he was pointing in the same direction she wanted to travel anyway.
Despite all the captain’s yelling, the frogmen were actually kind of adorable and didn’t actually look all that dangerous, and in a strange way it was comforting to at least be around creatures who could speak even if she couldn’t understand them.
“Alright,” she shrugged, “try to keep up.”
She blipped out of the circle of soldiers and darted in the direction the frog captain was pointing, though she made a point not to leave their line of sight. They weren’t particularly threatening, and so long as she could keep her her pace in the meantime, she was curious where this encounter might lead.