With the aid of her walking stick, Iris came to a gentle landing on the outskirts of a small village. The wooden hovels were nestled among the trees of the swamp, and at first glance the village appeared to be flooded. Vaguely dome-like roofs protruded out of the water, with only a small portion of archway entrances visible above the waterline. The wood was mossy and rotten, and most of the hovels had missing or broken planks. Though some patches of somewhat solid ground were scattered across the village, much of the terrain was submerged in at least a couple feet of water.
The frogmen that half escorted, half pursued her soon landed behind her. They had given chase by taking quick, long horizontal leaps through the swamp and kicking off trees in much the same way as Iris, but with much greater aptitude. It was only thanks to her blips that she managed to consistently remain ahead of them, otherwise she wouldn’t have had a chance at outpacing them.
The frogmen didn’t surround her as they had before, however, and instead they formed a line behind her as if to block off one at least direction of escape. She curiously peered at them over her shoulder for a moment, and then turned her attention back to the village. There were ripples in the water coming from the entrance to one of the hovels, which she watched travel some distance before a frogman rose up out of the water. Unlike the others, he wore a half-suit of leather armor, consisting of a chest piece, vambraces, and shoulder pauldrons. He was also noticeably more muscular, and held himself with a level of confidence that the others lacked. Were he not still a head shorter than Iris — and perhaps if he didn’t have green skin and the face of a frog — Iris might have found him imposing.
“Hi,” Iris waved lazily, “I’m just passing through, and I guess I pissed off your boys over here. Sorry about that, I was really just trying to help.”
The frogman’s throat swelled and stretched until he released a gurgling croak that didn’t sound very affectionate.
“Uh, like I said, very sorry for whatever I did. I’ll make myself scarce— oh! You didn’t happen to see a giant sky ship fly overhead recently, did you?”
The frogman twitched. His hand shot forward and a glowing lasso of slime-green magic shot out from his wrist towards Iris as fast as a blink. She only narrowly managed to blip away in time, and immediately another lasso from his opposite hand was shooting towards her. She blipped again, but this time the next lasso met her as she reappeared. It tightly wrapped around her wrist, retracting to remain taut as the frogman leapt towards her. She brought her walking stick up to block his lunge, but his tongue shot out, wrapped around the stick and ripped it from her grasp.
“Hey!” she shouted as she tore open a window to the void in her free hand.
The frogman landed inches from her, moving with blinding speed and impressive strength to wrap the glowing rope around her other wrist and bind her hands together. Iris aimed her palm at the creature and tried to summon her great sword from the void, but the tear had closed the instant the ropes were in place.
“Abby!” Iris said in a growing panic as she stared down the fierce-eyed frogman.
The tips of three tentacles rose out of the void, and the frogman’s eyes darted towards the bag the instant they appeared. In a smooth motion, he stepped around to Iris’s side and dropped more glowing rope in a circle around the rim of the bag, yanking it tight and squeezing it shut around the barely exposed tentacles. They squirmed and flailed, but were unable to extend any further from the void. Iris tried to blip, but her power pushed back against her as it had when she was placed in enchanted handcuffs by agents of Morose. Only a second later, the frogman had already tossed glowing rope over her head multiple times and wrapped her arms tight against her torso.
“Fuck you!” Iris spat as she struggled fruitlessly against the ropes, “Don’t make me kill you! I’ve killed frogs before!”
The frogman released a satisfied croak as he knelt down to pick up her walking stick, and then kind-of-pointed in a direction. It was to the north, a hard turn away from the direction Iris intended to travel. When she stubbornly refused to move, the frogman stepped behind her and shoved her forward.
Iris groaned as she was forced to stumble into water that quickly rose to her waist. Her boots were quickly flooded, and stuck to the soft mud below the water with every step.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“When I get out of these ropes, I’m feeding you to my tentacle monster.”
Negative tones came from the bag, which Iris interpreted to mean Abby didn’t want to eat the frogman.
“Well don’t tell him that!” she complained.
The frogman escorted Iris through the swamp for nearly an hour. She kept an eye out for opportunities to escape, but he held the end of the rope that bound her in his hand at all times and the only ability she had that still worked was Awareness of Matter, which offered no help in her current dilemma. The only solid idea she had was attempting to kick or headbutt the frog hard enough to injure him and potentially buy her enough time to escape, but she suspected the magic ropes might remained tied even if their caster was momentarily stunned. With no viable options, Iris had no choice but to wade through the swamp at her captor’s discretion and hope an opportunity presented itself.
“I have a wyvern in this bag, you know,” Iris said at one point, “he’s huge, and frogs are his favorite snack.”
The frogman seemed to laugh, and then shoved her forward again.
“Hey!” she complained after almost falling into the water.
After another bout of silence, Iris tried a different approach, “look, I really don’t know what I did. I thought I was helping by killing that thing, and if I wasn’t, then I already said I’m sorry. Really, I’m just trying to get back to my boat and get out of this swamp.”
The frogman didn’t respond.
“Can’t I just pay a fine or something?”
The frogman shoved her again.
“Prick,” she mumbled under her breath.
Finally, they came upon another village. This one was built mostly on solid ground, but the huts were still built atop thick stilts with several feet between the floors and the ground. There were five of them, and each had matching thatched roofs and a small covered porch. The huts were arranged in a half-circle around a small clearing of the driest ground Iris had seen since awaking in the swamp.
The frogman stopped well outside the boundaries of the village, leaving him and Iris still partially submerged. His throat swelled for a long moment, and then released a booming croak that scattered birds from the trees. Iris had only heard high level champions and titans project their voice that loudly, and suddenly her situation seemed much more dire than it had a moment ago.
The doors to the huts opened simultaneously, and out of each stepped a woman in green or brown sleeveless robes that ended above the knees. One of them was an orc, two of them were green-skinned swamp elves, and the other two had pinkish-red skin and goat-like horns. They descended the steps of their respective huts in unison, but all but the orc — who descended from the central hut — stopped at the bottom step. The orc woman continued in a casual stroll until she stood in the center of the clearing, where she stopped and spoke in an incomprehensible, ancient sounding language.
The frogman responded in his own language, which the woman seemed to understand. They exchanged tense but seemingly civil words, and after a short back and forth the frogman croaked and the ropes binding Iris dissipated. She instantly blipped away, appearing on the edge of the solid ground about half way between the frogman and the orc woman, then turned around to face the frogman.
“I want my stick back, too!”
The orc woman shot her a curious glance, and then spoke to the frogman again. He grumbled in a gurgling kind of way, but tossed the stick to Iris. The woman spoke curtly with what was clearly a dismissal, and the frogman panned a wary glare across each of the women before turning and leaping off into the trees.
“Thanks,” Iris said, turning to face the women.
The orc woman stepped closer and inspected her curiously, “you speak the language of the invaders.”
Iris wasn’t sure what that meant, “so do you, apparently.”
The woman turned her nose up at Iris and looked down at her with apprehension, “I’ve had the displeasure of mingling with humans before.”
“Yeah, well, whatever they did, I had nothing to do it with it. I’m just a traveler passing through.”
The woman laughed grimly, “that’s what they said, too, before they burned our villages and banned our magics.”
“I— I didn’t know about that,” Iris wasn’t sure what else to say.
“You’re a witch?” the woman asked abruptly.
“A wizard, actually.”
One of the pink-skinned women behind the orc feigned a retch as if she might puke, and the orc woman turned a critical glare on her that lingered for a few seconds before she slowly twisted back towards Iris.
“Yet you carry a witch’s broom, and wear a witch’s hat.”
“This?” Iris held up her walking stick, “this is just an enchanted stick,” she looked up at the brim of her hat, “and this is definitely a wizard hat.”
“Looks like a witch’s hat to me,” the pink-skinned woman from before called out.
The orc woman sighed, “whatever you call yourself, the frogs think you’re one of us — and witches always help their own. I suppose it’s up to you whether you want that help or not.”
Hope filled Iris’s eyes, “I’m trying to get back to my boat — it’s a sky ship, actually — if you could help me do that, I would give anything in return.”
A few of the women laughed, and one of the elves spoke, “maybe she’s not a witch, after all.”
“Never offer a witch anything she wants,” the orc seemed slightly bemused by Iris’s ignorance, “I am Dala, matron of this coven.”
“Iris Orion, adventurer.”
Dala stepped aside and gestured towards the center of the clearing with an arm, “the witches of Evermore Swamp welcome you, Iris Orion.”