Dell’s eyes snapped open and he struggled to move, but there was a hand over his mouth. There was a face in front of his, which he recognized as Burdock after a frightened moment. The goblin’s eyes were wide as he put a finger over his mouth to signal to Dell to keep quiet. Dell nodded his agreement, and Burdock slowly pulled his hand away.

It was the middle of the night yet, and Dell realized he was the last one to wake. Fletcher and Annie were both awake, staring at the barred door with weapons in their hands. Dell rose carefully with a questioning look on his face. Burdock again motioned for him to keep quiet.

There was a splashing noise outside. Dell’s and Burdock’s pointed ears twitched as they turned toward the sound. The water splashed again, then again. It sounded like something was wading ashore from the swamp outside. Burdock carefully tip-toed over to the other two and pointed in the direction of what he could hear. Both he and Dell had keener hearing than the humans, and they could discern the approaching footsteps of something outside.

Burdock held one palm flat, then walked two fingers across it. It’s walking upright. Fletcher mouthed something, and Burdock held up one finger. Just one of them.

The steps came to a halt outside the cabin wall, close enough for the humans had heard them. Fletcher moved toward the door with a large knife in his belt and a wood-splitting ax in one hand. Sharp Annie took a step closer, likely preparing to join him in ambushing the unknown person.

Suddenly, Burdock’s face twisted in disgust. He grabbed Fletcher’s leg to get his attention, then shook his head. Don’t do it. Fletcher gave him a questioning look, and the goblin tapped his long, green nose with his index finger.

Dell was trying to decode that gesture when the smell assaulted his nostrils; mud, decaying plant matter, old fish, and rancid meat. The humans smelled it an instant later and struggled not to gag. Dellromoz had no idea what was going on, but from the looks the river pirates were giving each other, neither did they. Could that be what a hodag smells like? That seemed the most likely culprit, that or some other large, swamp-dwelling beast. But Burdock thought it was walking on two legs, and that’s what it sounded like to me...

The thing outside shrieked, or roared, or maybe howled. Whichever it happened to be, it was the worst thing Dellromoz had ever heard in his life, by a long shot. It began with a sort of honking bark, like a donkey, then rose in pitch and got louder, adding a touch of vibrato until it sounded like the anguished scream of a man being tortured. From there it got louder still, rising in pitch again until it resembled nothing so much as the ringing a person hears after a serious blow to the head. The experience had more in common with being attacked than listening to the nighttime calls of animals.

All their eyes were the size of cart wheels. Dell locked eyes with Burdock and mouthed a question. Hodag? The goblin slowly shook his head.

No one slept. For the rest of the night, all four of them sat or stood in the center of the shanty with their backs to each other; waiting, watching, and listening. The creature hadn’t stayed long, after it made that awful sound it eventually walked twice around the structure, then went back into the water about where it had come ashore. Still, they kept up their vigil.

When the sun was well into the sky, they had opened the door and come out. Any hopes that it had been an animal they were all unfamiliar with were dashed immediately; it had left behind muddy bootprints where it walked. Nobody asked what it was. There was no way to know for sure, and all the possibilities were bad.

Burdock perched on the barge to keep watch, and the others loaded it up with whatever wasn’t being left behind. Fletcher pointed out that extra weight made the barge harder to move, so they were perfectly happy to travel light. Annie found a sculling oar to help keep things moving, and they shoved off.

“Waste of a good hideout,” Fletcher remarked.

“Something could kill it.” Burdock pointed out. “There’s plenty of armed folk about, the hodag, and those damn eels.”

“You’re a dear, Burdock, but I never heard of lake eels hunting the undead,” Sharp Annie said, “elsewise we’d have stories about eel paladins.”

Fletcher snorted. Dell and Burdock both laughed out loud. Annie smiled as she pushed the sculling oar back and forth.

“Eels in shinin’ white armor, floppin’ up and down on the steps of Phaethon’s temple!” Burdock cackled as he fell to his knees.

Fletcher never saw the attack coming. It had been lying in wait for them, that much was obvious, looking back. There was almost no warning; they had just passed between a close-set pair of tree trunks jutting out of the water, when Burdock stuck his nose in the air and started sniffing. He didn’t even have time to get the words out before it jumped from the canopy into the barge.

It was wearing a fisherman’s boots and jacket, and was covered in mud and seaweed, like it had been lying on the bottom of the swamp for years. The little gnome screamed as it hissed and kicked him over the side into the water.

“Draug!” Annie shouted, the dread heavy in her voice. Fletcher felt a bolt whistle past his ear, and the thing shrieked as it turned toward them. Its head at first appeared to be a featureless mass of seaweed, but Fletcher saw it had a skull underneath when it opened its jaw and stomped towards him, a crossbow bolt sticking out of its shoulder. He tried to strike the thing with the boat pole, but it was too long and awkward. The creature grabbed it and they struggled.

Burdock gave a battle cry and stabbed it in the back with his dagger. Infuriated, it shoved Fletcher away, then turned and backhanded the goblin. The long-eared river pirate rolled across the floor of the wooden craft, but didn’t give up. He grabbed a nearby boat hook and attacked again.

Seeing the opportunity for what it was, Fletcher dropped the pole and seized an oar that was stored next to the hull. The draug had its back to him as it made more awful noises and tried to grab Burdock, who was doing his best to keep it at bay with his improvised weapon. His regular weapon was still stuck in the creature’s back.

Putting everything he had into it, Fletcher swung the oar sideways. His technique was perfect as he followed through, and the abomination was knocked over the gunwale and into the swamp.

Annie had reloaded by this point and was watching where the monster went under. She gasped and turned to the other side of the barge. “Dellromoz!” she cried, but it was too late. The gnome gave a yelp and then vanished under the surface. A “V” shaped wake revealed the draug’s passage with its prize as it darted for a pile of snags a short distance away.

Fletcher picked up the pole, stepped to the side of the barge and began pushing. “Don’t just stand there,” he growled, “row!”

Burdock set his jaw and grabbed an oar.

“Poor little lamb,” Sharp Annie whispered. She picked up the sculling oar and put her back into it.

The hand that was clamped over Dellromoz’s nose and mouth suddenly let go, and he gasped and spluttered. He was still in the water, but his head was in a pocket of air. He groped around in the shadows, trying to figure out where he was and what was happening.

After a moment, he concluded that he was inside an overturned dugout canoe, jammed up under some waterlogged tree trunks. As his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out that the canoe was empty except for a pair of varnished wooden paddles. Where is that thing? Could I get away? It swam really fast...

A large shadow swam underneath him, before turning up and into the canoe. Dell backed away in fear as it surfaced, but there was nowhere for him to go. He watched wide-eyed as it reached up to the top of its head, grabbed the seaweed, and pulled it off.

“Finally!” Erasmus said, his blue eyes glowing in the dim light, “I was starting to think I’d never get a chance to grab you!”

Dell shouted joyfully and grabbed the adventurer in a hug, then pulled back. “Gods, you smell awful!”

“I had to make it convincing, it’s best if they don’t come looking for us later. Not that I smelled great in the first place, I’ve been crawling through the mud in the canal and now this swamp for days.”

“How did you find me?!”

Erasmus reached into a pocket and pulled out a wet red stocking. “I found the marker, just like we agreed, but when I climbed out of the water and started looking for you, you were already surrounded by those river pirates. I’ve been following this whole time, waiting for the right opportunity.

“I almost got you at that... tavern? Chandler’s? Smuggling operation? That Hollis fellow’s place! I stole this canoe and these clothes and was getting ready to jump that goblin, when his friends came back out. I had to sink the canoe and carry it with me on the bottom as I trailed your barge.”

A thought occurred to Dell. “Wait, so were you responsible for that horrible noise last night? “ Erasmus nodded. “That was terrifying, nobody got any sleep after that! What was it?!”

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“I was mimicking some things that I encountered years ago, on the journey back from the other side. They have a name in the Grave Speech, but it doesn’t really translate well into Ostari, there’s too much missing context. It’s something like ‘the ones who are lost in despair’. That aside, it’s like when I copied that guard’s voice, only louder.”

“Louder and nightmare-inducing!”

“That was the idea. Not only will they not come looking for you, but they’re going to tell everyone they meet to avoid this area! With any luck, we should be able to make it out of the swamplands without encountering any other people at all.”

“How’s it coming?” Dellromoz asked, peeking an eye out of the little tent he’d improvised from scavenged blankets. Erasmus had battered a wall down and robbed the thieves’ hideout, doing his best to make it look like the place had been destroyed by the vengeful dead, which was close enough to the truth.

They’d paddled in the opposite direction from the canal for the rest of the day, before making camp and building a fire as it began to get dark, despite the damp wood smoking terribly. They hung up most of their clothes on sticks to dry, though they still smelled like swamp water. Dell attempted to put together some dinner for himself before mosquitoes and biting flies began to swarm, made worse by his clothes still being hung up to dry, and he’d been forced to hide in his makeshift shelter. Erasmus took over for him, since the insects weren’t interested in him in the slightest.

“Well, it looks right to me, but you’ll have to be the judge. I didn’t burn it at least,” he said, studying the pot with the luminescent blue glow in his eye sockets. “I’ll hand you the seasonings as well, I couldn’t possibly get that right without being able to taste it.”

He lifted the edge of the tent and slid the cookpot under it, along with a small bag containing salt, black pepper, and some dried herbs.

“This looks a little thin to me, but the leaves are old, so there’s not much for it,” Erasmus explained as he added a steaming cup of tea.

Dell gave it a cautious sip. “It’s fine,” he said, “I’ve been lucky to have any at all these past weeks.” He tried the soup, then added salt, sage, and rosemary. “So you don’t eat at all then? I feel bad not sharing.”

“I do eat, after a fashion, but I don’t need to often. I suppose I could show you, it’s been long enough since last time,” the mistwalker offered. Dell peeked out of the tent as Erasmus walked over to where his coat was hanging and rummaged through its pockets, producing a few vertebrae. He removed a glove, took one of the bones in his skeletal hand, and squeezed it. Dellromoz watched as the bone disintegrated into a fine white dust in Erasmus’s hand. He shook off what remained in his hand, then did the same to another one.

“If I break a bone, this will usually repair it. I’ll save the others for now. I pulled these out of a pike I caught yesterday to make that smell you were complaining about. They’ll retain the vitality I need from them for a few weeks before they begin to degrade.”

“No garlic? Not even any salt?” asked Dell.

“There’s no sensation of taste, so garlic wouldn’t do anything for them,” Erasmus answered.

“Count me out, then. I wouldn’t want to live without eating.”

“Well, if you think about it,” the Popinjay shrugged, “I don’t.”

Dellromoz snorted and spat out his soup. “Don’t do that while I’m eating, now it’s in my beard!” he laughed, and his friend laughed with him.

While Dell was eating, Erasmus stood up, took a few steps back from the fire, and began to work through some sword drills. The gnome watched curiously.

“Were you a soldier?” he asked when he’d emptied his bowl.

“No, I was never in the military. Things were fairly peaceful when I was a young man, and there was only the one levy after I was too old to be eligible, that campaign down south, against the Pustinjali. My son-in-law went for that one, before he and my daughter were married.” Erasmus answered as he worked through parries and ripostes. Dell thought there was something strange about his answer, before he realized it was the cadence it was given with. Despite the vigorous exercise, Erasmus didn’t get out of breath or need to stop speaking to perform a maneuver.

“So who were you when you were alive? Where did you learn that?” Dell gestured as Erasmus stepped into a thrust against an invisible opponent.

“Elsie and I had an inn. I don’t think I ever even picked up a sword before I died,” the adventurer chuckled. “I had a quiet, peaceful life with my wife and daughter. The most violence I ever did was chasing a fox out of our chicken coop with a pitchfork. I did a terrible job of it too, we got a dog to watch the hens not long afterward. He wasn’t much better at it, honestly, but he ran faster than I did.” He paused for a moment as he remembered chasing after the chicken-thief with Dreadful, throwing rocks at the white tip of the fox’s tail in the dim light of the moon. He shook his head in amusement.

“The sword then?” asked Dell.

“Oh, right! It was after I came back, I poked around graveyards and old battlefields looking for a ghost who would teach me,” he said nonchalantly.

“A ghost?! How did that work?”

Gilderwald fell over and rolled on his back, absolutely howling with laughter. Erasmus pushed his battered straw hat out of his face and back on top of his head, then picked himself up off the ground, muttering obscenities. He reached down and picked up the stick he’d been using as a practice blade.

“Can we try it again? I’ve almost got the footwork!” he remarked testily.

“They must have been peaceful times indeed, for a man of your skills to grow old!” the spectral cavalry officer sputtered, trying to contain his mirth.

“Great,” Erasmus answered, “no problems.” Dell tilted his head sideways and gave him an inquisitive look, but the Popinjay refused to dignify the implied question with an answer, instead focusing on the placement of his feet as he transitioned from a parry with his rapier into a counterattack with the heavy-bladed knife in his off-hand.

“So you haven’t actually practiced with a sword for very long then,” Dell realized. “How long ago did you start?”

“A little over four years now.”

“Trevallion’s certainly been practicing longer than that! Are you really talented or something?”

“No, I just don’t sleep or get tired, and I don’t spend a lot of time at social functions to avoid being found out as a skeleton in a costume. My stint on the bottom of the canal is the longest I’ve gone without practicing since I started. A lot of people took up the sword before I did, chronologically, but I have more hours of actual practice than anyone who isn’t a professional duelist or instructor.”

“There are professional duelists?”

“Sure! Nobility doesn’t always come with land and a pile of gold; there’s plenty of low-ranking members of the peerage who have too many older siblings to inherit the estate, or their family holds title without land, or their parents were bad at business or gambling, you get the idea,” Erasmus said, waving the tip of his rapier in small circles as he explained. “If the family isn’t providing them with a stipend, or if it’s not enough to keep the bills paid, they need to find a suitable trade. Swordsmanship is one of those things a noble is supposed to know, especially given the military obligations that come with noble title. So, if you’ve been taking the lessons since you were young, and you’re confident in your skill, you can make a living by taking umbrage with the right people and then being paid off, either by the target of your ire, or some benefactor.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It’s certainly safer than the military. I’d take blackmailing rich fops over fighting pyromancers any day.”

Erasmus sheathed his blades, glanced around, then did a series of back handsprings across the campsite. After he landed the last one, he looked down. “Damn,” he muttered, “missed.” He tapped the flat rock that had been his target with his boot, and walked back to his starting point.

Dell rubbed his chin thoughtfully as Erasmus tried again. “Speaking of pyromancers,” the gnome began, having made up his mind, “what do you make of this?” He reached out his his hand, extended his index finger, and put it in the flame. He pulled it out after a moment and held it up for the adventurer to see.

“That’s a new one,” the Popinjay remarked. “It doesn’t hurt?’ Dellromoz shook his head. “Hmmm,” Erasmus tapped his gloved finger against his cheek. “Have you always been able to do that, or is it new?”

“It’s recent,” Dell admitted. “It began the night of the fire, the one in Drumlummon.”

“That’s a convenient development given what was happening,” remarked the mistwalker. “Did it really begin then, or is that just when you noticed it?”

“I didn’t notice this particular aspect until after, the night of the fire it was,” Dell searched for a better word, but didn’t find one, ”...different.”

“How so?”

“It’s not just that I wasn’t getting burned, it’s that I was the one burning things. I... I... I started the fire!” Once he said that, it was as if the floodgates opened, and the rest came spilling out. “I didn’t mean to do it! I don’t even know how I did it! They had caught me, and they beat me until I told them were to find Puglith, and then they threw me into the basement. I could barely move, and I just kept thinking about how this was it; when they got back they were going to finish beating me to death, and I was too small and too weak to do anything about it! I was terrified, but there was something else, too. It kept getting bigger, and bigger, until it eclipsed the fear, and I was just furious!

“I had helped them! I had helped them so many times! I helped them, and they just turned on me, because one of them was such an asshole that somebody finally did him in, and there were so many people he’d hurt that they had no idea where to even start looking for a culprit! I didn’t refuse to help them, even when I knew it was hopeless! I’ve seen cuts of meat in a butcher’s shop with fewer knife wounds than that bastard had, but I did my best anyway, and they couldn’t even consider for a moment that they should have reined him in years ago, or this was bound to happen! Perish the thought!” Dellromoz was standing up and pacing back and forth now, stomping his feet and shouting. Erasmus didn’t say a word, watching as the gnome vented.

“How dare they?! After every time I stitched one of them up, with nary an unkind word to say, they beat me because I couldn’t save someone they brought to my door when he was practically a corpse already! Well, fuck them!” Dell was so angry he didn’t notice when the tip of his moustache began to smoke, but Erasmus did. Still, the swordsman kept his mouth shut.

“FUCK YOU FULCHER GOSWIN! FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR WHOLE ORGANIZATION! YOU’D HAVE DONE THE WORLD A FAVOR IF YOU BURNED UP IN THAT FIRE, DO YOU HEAR ME?!” Dell coughed, and a gout of flame blasted out of his mouth, scorching the grass in front of him. Erasmus stood up and watched intently as Dell held up his hands. The tips of his long fingers began to blacken and smoke like candlewicks. The change ran up his arms as Dell watched with eyes wide in horror. A groan turned to a roar as the change swept over his head, changing his eyes to fiercely burning embers and his skin and hair to ash. His shouts were more than simply sound, they were accompanied by a blast of furnace-like heat. Even with his mouth closed, it radiated off him as if he were a bonfire instead of a gnome.

The change finished and Dellromoz was left standing in a circle of ashes as what was left of his clothes and the tent burned up. He turned around and watched as the last corner was consumed by flames.

“Dammit!” he shouted, and the heat released by his outburst obliterated the tent corner even faster.

“You know, Dellromoz,” Erasmus remarked, his arms crossed, “I’m starting to think we might be unusual people.”