I plunged into the murky depths with a gasp and a splash.

Of all the ways to learn a lesson, this was the least convenient version. I’d had no manual, no training, how was I supposed to know I could only cast one of those spells at a time? This was not my favorite day, that was for sure. It was a bit embarrassing.

I started to push back to the surface, but that’s when I felt a weight land on top of me. Hard.

No! I thought. No, no, no, no!

The vine zombie had landed on me, knocking what little air I had out of my lungs. I could feel its boots on my back, like it was trying to force me to the bottom of the swamp. I rolled away from the weight underwater, and that’s when I felt more movement. I couldn’t see well here—the water wasn’t the crystal clear variety of a lake or stream, but murky, and what little light might’ve been helpful was muted by the twilight. But I knew what the displacement around me was: vines.

Breathless, I shot backward as well as I could, hoping I wasn’t moving into a trap as a dark, blurry shape darted by me. Another vine.

It’s trying to grab me! I was panicking, now—which would not bode well for my survival. I kept pumping my arms and legs, hoping that I’d be able to break the surface long enough to get a swallow of air, but that’s when another vine hit the surface of the water like a stinger missile. While it didn’t grab me, it did hit me right in the stomach. I wasn’t expecting it, so when it made contact I took an involuntary breath. The water, a greedy beast, invaded my nose and mouth.

Pain filled my chest as what was likely only a small amount of water hit my lungs like an icy fire. I was able to scramble up and break the surface long enough to cough and snatch a tiny amount of air before the heavy boot of my assailant struck again, landing on my shoulder and pushing me back down. It was like a really fucked up game of Whack-A-Mole—and I was the mole.

Not like this, a frantic thought flickered as panic continued clawing at my throat while I flailed against the water’s suffocating embrace.

Breathe, a voice in my head urged, but the remaining liquid in my lungs halted the attempt. Another voice reprimanded me for the thought. You can’t breathe! You’re underwater, dummy!

The shock of being plunged back into the cold was petrifying. Move, you gotta move, my mind commanded, but my limbs became frenetic, uncoordinated in their movements. I was sinking, the darkness of the swamp pulling me down as if the hands of the dead reached for me, yearning to drag my soul into their watery grave. My eyes burned as I battled the silt and decay, desperate to orient myself.

My chest screamed for air, a fire igniting with every beat of my pounding heart.

Up, you must go up. Kicking, pushing, thrashing—I called upon every shred of instinct to survive, to find the surface again. The murky water around me was a dance of shadows, a twisted mockery of my own desperation. The dim light above, a cruel mirage of hope, taunted me.

Reach for it, break through. Air, the promise of life, was just beyond this liquid barrier. Keep fighting. I needed to reach it, to break through the surface holding me between the suffocating death below and the life-giving air above.

I saw a dark serpent in the water, diving toward me. Another vine. Even dwelling within the panic and oxygen deprivation I was able to force a thought through my own neurons. Grab it.

I turned my body as it aimed for—best as I could tell—my torso, and as it missed, I latched onto it, twisting my arm around it and pinning the vine to my chest with the crook of my elbow. I need air! I need fucking air!

This movement turned out to be a mistake, though—one my drowning brain hadn’t considered: the vine began to wrap around me and push me farther into the depths of the swamp’s water. I was being plunged deeper, now entangled with this creature’s tendril. I need to go up. I NEED TO GO UP!

So, I did the only thing that made sense. With my free hand, I grasped the chair-leg spear and—while still holding tight to the vine—plunged the tip into the section I could reach the easiest.

The muffled roar above seemed to shake the very water around me. I held on with all my strength as the vine began thrashing, its movement violent and sporadic in the swampy water. In my fight for survival, the vine’s attempt to unwrap itself from my grip was met with fierce resistance; I wasn’t letting go of this sumbitch, though—my life quite literally depended on it.

Every muscle in my body was screaming, aching for oxygen, yet I held on, clinging to the vine. The creature tried to escape, its movements growing more frantic, but I was relentless, stabbing into the vine's flesh, an act driven by the primal instinct to survive. I could feel the vine relenting, its movements becoming less about attacking and more about fleeing, pulling me upward.

And then, the sudden rush of air as my head broke the surface, the sweet, life-giving oxygen flooding into my lungs in ragged gasps. I coughed, I hacked, I breathed. My vision, though obscured by the sputtering and the heavy fog that had descended, confirmed the success of my spell.

I’d done it! I’d summoned a fog!

It seemed particularly silly to be celebrating my own efforts when it was largely useless to me at the mome—wait…

Wait, wait, fuckin’ WAIT!

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

As I caught my breath, I’d realized something. Even in the thick, obscuring cloud of Mist Veil I could see outlines. Shapes. Almost as if they were superimposed—highlights of the creature and the tendrils. They almost…well, glowed. Doing its best Spider-man villain impression, the corpse-costume of the creature was dangling from the bridge, feet inches above the water. Two vines were fishing through the brack, probably attempting to locate me, while four other sinewy appendages held the body aloft. Was this part of the spell? It appeared that whatever was inside the radius of my Veil was made apparent to me. Did that mean that they couldn’t see me, but I could see them? From the way it searched, looking nearly blind, I thought that might be the case. Though I truly wasn’t sure if it even used the eyes, since the body seemed to be controlled by whatever was inside the cavity beneath its flesh.

Holy shit! This fog isn’t useless! It’s a damn godsend!

But this wouldn’t last forever. I needed to either bolt or fight, and quietly wading in the water struggling not to cough would achieve neither of those outcomes. Could I make it to the other side? I knew I could maybe attempt to summon Waterwalking again, but…that hadn’t gone so good last time. Added to this was the fact that my chest hurt from what was definitely rib fractures—nor could I ignore the draining sensation at the base of my skull from where the spell was pulling its power. If it was anything like before, I wouldn’t have long before I’d need to take another nap—and like I said: I was currently dog paddling in the deep end.

Shit. All my options are trash. What to do?

Desperately, I looked around, hoping maybe there’d be…I dunno, something that might give me a chance to escape. But my best odds right then were using the obfuscation of the Mist Veil and…I guess swimming away quietly?

I mean, I figure that’s the case considering it didn’t seem like the creature is too keen on getting wet. Its body isn’t even touching…

Oh…hell. Why was it hovering there? It had just stomped on me when it had me in its clutches, rather than…you know, actually getting me in its clutches. It would have been simple to spring down and wrap me up in its deer-hauling strength and I wouldn’t have had a chance. I hadn’t even seen it coming. So, why was it just using its vines to try and nab me unless it couldn’t use the body? Was this thing like the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz—A.K.A would melt when exposed to water? Man, I’d loved that movie as a kid—and I actually watched it again last year when I was recovering from my bout with what I’m pretty sure was malaria. So yeah. Was it like that? And would I be brave enough to make the attempt?

Let’s find out.

There, in the swamp, time hung as heavy as the air, thick with waiting. I was nearly motionless, my own breath a rationed luxury. A voice bubbled into my mind—not like the ones I’d been hearing since arriving, but a memory. Of all people’s voices it was Selena—who might’ve been ‘mom’ eventually, if I’d gotten more time with her in my life. I couldn’t remember the precise scenario, but I remembered her calm, smiling face. “Patience,” she’d said, “is a bitter medicine, but haste is poison.”

That was never more understandable to me than right here, in this anticipatory void, this half-light under the dim sky in the marsh. Waiting. Waiting…

There!

I saw my moment—a partial second of frustration from the creature—a lapse. It couldn’t see in the fog and was getting irritated not being able to find me. So I took a deep breath and went for it.

I whispered my spell. Waterwalking.

The syllables fell from my tongue, stirring the sleepy waters beneath me. I watched Mist Veil begin to disperse at this—I’d chosen to do it this way rather than dismiss it on its own both because of time and…well, just to see if I could.

The magic took, and I rose, a fragile victor on a rippling stage.

With the fog's retreat, my moment's grace ticked away. The creature, with its puppeteer's vines, directed its dead servant's eyes to me. Fear was a living thing inside me, snarling to either run or stand like stone. I shivered, the water below a mirror to my fright, ready to drag me under.

On the knife-edge between dread and doing, the creature’s limbs performed their macabre dance, and because I couldn’t control the panic that always seemed to flare when it was least convenient—I gave into it, letting a full blown attack take me.

I’d always kept it at bay—on a careful leash. That was primarily because when it came to a fight-or-flight response, my lizard brain’s choice was always fight.

I found my scream. It ripped from deep within, a primal cry that broke the swamp’s silence. It was the sound of raw humanity, the anthem of the trapped and cornered.

Adrenaline lent me wings, and I drove my spear into the nearest vine. It snapped with a sound that was both a promise and a threat. Time was a thief, and I stole a precious instant, launching myself forward on my stomach like I’d done earlier with the crocogator. I aimed for the gap between the meat puppet’s feet and the surface of the swamp, darting under the beast along the cloak of the water.

The creature, ensnared by its own weaving, was slow to follow. I exploited the opening, my chest heaving with effort and the taste of swamp. I regained my footing, then scaled the creature's back, driven by the pure need to survive.

The swamp reeked of rot and my own sharp fear as I slashed another vine as hard as I could and pulled the creature down. The two remaining vines were having difficulty supporting the weight of us both and I felt them give. With a screech, the suspension was released, and we both tumbled to the water. Except only one of us went below the surface.

It was an odd sensation, colliding with the buoyancy of water and not deeper, while the demon beneath me took a plunge. But this was what I was hoping for. I held the body there, struggling to remove itself from the depths, holding its body below the barrier of oxygen. It couldn’t do anything to bring me with it. I felt a vine come up and try to drag me below, but with the spell active, as exhausting as it was, it couldn’t manage even a small dip.

When that didn’t work, it tried to pierce me with the tip of the vine, ramming it into me repeatedly. It hurt, but it didn’t break skin. Still, my panic led me to removing my spear and stabbing down. Over and over I pounded the body in my grasp with punctures. Muffled, garbled screams escaped from the water as the creature roiled. Whatever was happening due to the water was really messing it up something fierce. But I held on.

Finally, with one last jerk, the creature stopped moving. So I released it, watching as it slowly drifted away into the depths of the brack. I breathed slowly, my heart bashing against my broken ribs. The pain swam into my senses then, and I cried out in pain, rolling onto my back even as the Waterwalking spell continued to support me. I had to have cut a tragic scene if someone were to see it. Lying in the center of the water, wailing in agony like a newborn baby. It was more out of relief than out of pain—I was so thankful to be alive right now. I hadn’t realized how much adrenaline had been coursing through me until I started calming down.

But…but, I’d done it. I’d…killed the fucking thing. I heaved, lying there, trying to process this. I didn’t know what it was, or why it had wanted to kill me, but I’d conquered it. Exhaustion washed over me as I felt the spell starting to lose its grip. That got me up quick.

I dragged myself across the water, toward the side of the expanse I’d been aiming for initially when crossing the bridge and slumped onto the bank before muttering, “Marsh, release my stride.”

I waited there for just a handful of minutes before deciding I couldn’t let myself pass out in open terrain without a backup plan. So, even though I was dog tired, I stood up and went to retrieve my club and anything else that might’ve been dislodged from my person when I’d been attacked.

After gathering up my belongings, I paused. The deer carcass was still there, only just slightly…eaten. My stomach grumbled.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “I mean, I’m not going to eat it raw…”

I didn’t have any means of making a fire with me, and I was too weak and injured to gather the resources at the moment to make one “from scratch.” So, instead, I chopped a few chunks off the deer’s body with the spear—which took longer than I intended—and stuffed the steaks into the pockets of the lab coat.

“This will have to do,” I said aloud.

I was just turning to continue on my way when I heard another voice. Much like the one I’d heard when I’d made the weapons—it was voiceless and filled my head more than my ears.

The Boglands takes note of your willingness to vanquish your foes.

To which domain would you like to dedicate your kill?

The Bog?

Yourself?

Or to none at all?

“Uh…” I said. “...what?”