Gripping my club tightly, I charged towards the serpent, determined. The owl-goat's desperate cries fueled my resolve as I closed in on the monstrous snake. Its massive body, an uncomfortable display of brute strength and predatory might, coiled around the poor creature in a deathly embrace.

As I neared, the serpent’s head reared back, its jaw unhinged, revealing a cavernous maw lined with razor-sharp fangs. But I was committed, no turning back now.

“Yahhhh!”

With a guttural yell, I swung my club with all my might, aiming right for the serpent's face as it prepared to strike its helpless prey. The impact was jarring, like crashing my weapon against a brick wall. To my horror, it seemed to have little effect. The serpent merely recoiled slightly, its cold, unblinking eyes fixing on me with a chilling indifference.

Undeterred but increasingly desperate, I hammered away at the serpent’s coiled body, each blow met with the same unyielding resistance.

“Let! Go!” I roared, but I found it was like trying to dent an actual tank.

Frustration and fear welled up inside me as the creature's hide proved impervious to my assaults. All the while the little creature in its clutches shrieked, only adding fuel to my desire to try to rescue it. But this monster wasn’t giving none and I didn’t have much else in the way of Galdur or weapons that could do anything for me.

“Screw this,” I hissed.

Backing up, I took a deep breath and charged once more, this time with a running leap. I aimed for a powerful overhead strike, putting every ounce of strength and hope into the swing. But as I soared through the air, the serpent reacted with terrifying speed.

Its head snapped forward, striking out at me with lethal precision. I didn’t have the time or ability to react. The beast's gaping mouth collided with my club mid-swing, shattering the wood into splinters. Its enormous fangs sank into my torso, piercing through flesh and bone as easily as a hot knife through butter.

“Uggghghh!”

Pain exploded through my body, a white-hot agony that eclipsed all thought. I screamed, a raw, primal sound torn from the depths of my being. Something hot and staggering immediately began coursing through my veins—I’d never felt anything like it, but knew immediately what it was: venom.

“Fu…nuh,” I moaned, my mouth not wanting to cooperate with—shit! Shit, shit, shit! My panic spiked at an all-time high because I knew now the venom was doing this! It was a paralyzing agent—one that spread with what I was realizing was terrifying speed.

The serpent slammed me to the ground with a wet splash. I tried to even so much as struggle against the serpent, my movements becoming sluggish and uncoordinated. My head bobbed beneath the surface where it landed. The shallow water, which had seemed so inconsequential moments ago, now threatened to become my watery grave. I couldn't use Waterwalking or Mist Veil; my lips and limbs refused to obey, the venom robbing me of control. That meant Elemental Shield was out as well, since I needed to touch the attavita to cast it. So what the hell was I supposed to do?

The snake's powerful body pinned me to the swamp floor, its weight crushing, unyielding. I gasped for air, my lungs burning, my vision tunneling as darkness crept in from the edges.

In my fading consciousness, I realized the true horror of my situation. Here I was, the supposed heir to some grand legacy, reduced to a helpless victim in the jaws of a swamp serpent. Panic, regret, and a fierce, burning anger mingled in my mind as I fought for each shallow breath.

The owl-goat creatures looked on in silent horror, their eyes wide with fear and helplessness. I wanted to tell them I was sorry, that I tried, but words failed me. My body was no longer my own, paralyzed by the serpent's venom, slowly being crushed in its unrelenting grip.

As the darkness closed in, my thoughts turned to the Trial, to Valdrimoria, to the Pyre Knight and her taunting words. Was this how it ended? Not with a triumphant victory, but with a silent, ignoble death in the murky waters of a swamp?

The weight of my failure pressed down on me, heavier than the serpent's coils. In these final moments, my thoughts were a jumbled mess of fear, regret, and a desperate, fading hope that somehow, someway, I might still pull through.

But as the serpent tightened its grip, as my vision dimmed and my breaths grew shallower, that hope flickered and waned, like a candle in a storm.

This was it, the end of Leo Trask's grand adventure, swallowed whole by the cruel, unfeeling jaws of fate.

Suddenly, I could breathe again, but only for a fleeting moment. The serpent had begun swallowing me whole, starting with my head. Its maw began gobbling me and I was helpless to stop it as I moved in, being choked into the body of the serpent. As I was drawn into the dark, suffocating passage of its body, I knew. This was it.

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I was sucked further in, and that was when a strange calm settled over me. Panic gave way to an odd clarity, like when you're faced with a task so monumental, you can't help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all. I recalled a time back at Rollins, when I’d been in a strangely similar tight space. We'd designed this custom bread production machine for an industrial bakery, and it was a pretty big contract—one of the biggest we’d gotten that year, in fact. Because of that, Mr. Rollins was scared to lose their business. That meant that one day when the machine broke down, he was scrambling to make sure the customer wasn’t upset. Which meant that I was the lucky guy who had to crawl inside and fix it. Four hours, wedged in a space no bigger than a coffin, with gears and belts all around me. Never thought I'd look back on that as the good ol' days.

Now, here I was, sliding into the belly of a literal beast. But then, as I entered the organic passageway of the snake's body, my mind, rather than surrendering to despair, latched onto a flicker of hope.

I saw what the beast was called.

GILDRUBITARI

The words appeared against the shine of the inner flesh, like pulsating veins until they too became more understandable.

TRAP BITER

But that wasn’t the part that sent my mind at a furious pace, despite my extreme deficit.

See, the thing was: Marshlore was active. Sure, it was a passive bit o’ Galdur—that much wouldn’t help me. I mean, I couldn’t knowledge my way out of a snake—could I? No…at least, not right now. But it got my brain—the only part of me still working—to spinning.

So far, I knew of three types of Galdur: according to Otho those were Speech, Corporeal and Mind. Waterwalking was Speech, it needed to have a spoken incantation; Mist Veil was Corporeal and needed movements to activate. Both Marshlore and Elemental Shield were Mind—but, somehow, I had been assuming I needed to have my hand on the little compass to use Elemental Shield—it seemed like that at the outset, but if that was the case, wouldn’t I need to do that with Marshlore as well? Hell, I had to reason that it didn’t need that at all—elsewise why was I able to use Marshlore without poppin’ my digits onto the attavita every six seconds?

So, in my moment of near-death, I thought that maybe, just maybe, Elemental Shield would work the same way.

Alright, Leo, I thought to myself, time to see if you've got more than dumb luck on your side.

It would take ten seconds to summon. Ten seconds of paralyzed, unmoving agony. Ten seconds I might not have, but would need to accomplish anyway.

So..I closed my eyes, the darkness around me becoming complete.

I envisioned the Elemental Shield, drawing on every memory of its formation, every sensation it had brought. The walls of the serpent constricted, its muscles undulating in waves around me. I could feel its damp, suffocating breath, the stench of death and decay. It was like being trapped in a grotesque womb, a place of birth turned into a tomb.

I focused harder, channeling every ounce of willpower I had left. I thought about that damn bread machine, how I'd navigated its insides, how I'd emerged victorious from that mechanical belly. If I could do that, I could do this.

Then, I felt a little tug.

Yes! Fucking yes! I thought internally, eyes closed, unable to breathe, unable to do anything except use my fading mind to fixate on the sense of Galdur strapped to my chest. Work, damn you. Work! I could feel the tingle, feel the resonance like a magnetic reaction in the base of my skull. They harmonized with one another, one feeding the other and then out into the world.

This is going to work!

Suddenly, before I’d even realized it, the Elemental Shield sparked to life. It was a slow build at first, tendrils of mist and water coalescing around me, drawn forth by the Galdur at my skull's base and yanked from the sensation near my chest where the attavita was. The feeling was bizarre, like my life force being pulled and stretched into something tangible. Then it was there. Two foot by two foot at best. But I needed more. I concentrated, pulling more Galdur from the attavita, through the filter in my head, willing it to become larger. With a stutter, I thought it was working.

Then…the shield expanded, pressing against the serpent's flesh from within. It was a surreal standoff, my will against its physical might.

The serpent's body constricted around me with terrifying force, each muscle contraction like the tightening of a deathly vice. I fought against the suffocating grip, my mind fixated on the Elemental Shield. Desperation lent strength to my thoughts, pushing against the serpent's unyielding flesh. It was a battle of will against raw, monstrous power.

I poured my Galdur into the shield, feeling it build up like a storm within the serpent's gut. My breaths were shallow, ragged, each one a struggle against the crushing pressure. The serpent's interior was a prison, wet and stifling, the stench of death filling my nostrils.

Bigger. I thought. Bigger.

With a final, desperate push, the Elemental Shield exploded outward, expanding even more and tearing through the serpent's insides with a sickening violence. The force of it ripped through scales and muscle, a maelstrom of magical energy unleashed in a confined space. I felt the serpent's body convulse around me, its agony mingling with my own.

In an eruption of gore and viscera, I was propelled out of the serpent's ruptured body. The swamp water embraced me, a cold, wet slap as I crashed into it. I lay there, gasping, choking on air and blood, the taste of bile and venom on my tongue.

My body was wracked with pain, every nerve alight with the fire of the venom coursing through me. My breaths were ragged. But I was out.

Lying there, battered and soaked in the remnants of my foe, my heart was thudding like a drum in my ears. The venom's grip was still there, its paralyzing embrace keeping me locked stiff. I couldn't move, couldn't even twitch a finger. All I could do was lie there, staring at the sky that I couldn't see through the canopy above.

And then, through the haze of pain and the creeping shadows of unconsciousness, I noticed a dark silhouette against the gloomy sky. Vern, the heron, sat perched above. Something felt different, though. The bird seemed like a silent, eerie sentinel. Its head was tilted, those sharp eyes fixated on me with an unsettling, almost human-like curiosity.

There was something unnerving about that gaze, like it held secrets or judgments unknown to me. Was it waiting to see if I'd muster the strength to stand, or was it just a quiet observer, witnessing the final, faltering breaths of a man out of his depth? The thought sent a chill through me, colder than the swamp water seeping into me.

In that moment, Vern wasn't just a bird; it was a symbol, a harbinger maybe, of the fine line between life and death in the Boglands. It watched, impassive and mysterious, as if it understood the gravity of what had just transpired, and maybe even what was to come.

The darkness crept in, swallowing at my consciousness. I couldn't help but think of all the turns my life had taken—how a foster kid from Kentucky ended up fighting giant snakes in a swamp from another world. It was a story, alright, one I'd never get to tell if I didn't…didn’t…

My vision dimmed, my heartbeats growing fainter and more distant. In that encroaching void, I found a strange comfort. It was like being back in that bread machine, only this time, I wasn't sure if there was an exit waiting for me. The swamp, with its endless mysteries and dangers, seemed to close in around me, ready to claim another lost soul.

And then, there was nothing but black.