by E. Molloy
It was a whisper that caught his attention first. The voice was a nasally hiss, each word seeming to stick to the next as if the speaker had a mouth full of slime. "It has so much shinies."
"No," said an identical voice, "it is monster. See its claws, we did." A gurgling sound echoed after the voice.
"See its head, we did. Human head. Disguises."
"Trickery"
"Trickery"
In moments, the woods were full of tons of tiny little voices hissing "trickery". The horse had picked up its pace, both of its riders looking around anxiously. Lillian held tight to her bow and Daveth to his reigns. When they showed themselves, he hoped they could just dart in the opposite direction. Anything with a voice that small couldn't possibly outrun a horse, could it?
"Take the humans! Get the shinies!" one of the voices shouted over the others, suddenly.
The voices were still all around them, chanting 'trickery' and 'shinies' and some other things he couldn't understand. His eyes darted about as he gripped tighter to the reigns, the princess now holding her bow ready to fire, but with nothing to fire at.
Her voice came from behind him, pleading over the unbearable sound of sticky whispers that surrounded them. "We need to run. Now."
"Run where?" he asked, still unsure where the sounds were even coming from.
A sharp prick in his neck jolted him into action, a determination that lasted only a few moments. Daveth leapt off the horse at the pain, managing to at least land gracefully on his feet. He drew his sword, but after taking two steps forward into the darkness, the man’s eyes rolled into his head and he fell flat on his face. The princess didn’t even have time to get off of the horse as a small purple-feathered dart struck her in the leg. She fired an arrow off into the woods before losing consciousness and falling from the mount. The beast reared angrily with a loud scream and attempted to run. Another dart flew from the darkness, pinning it right in the butt, and the horse crumbled in a heap.
Lillian awoke abruptly with a gasp, her eyes going wide as they tried to regain focus. She scanned her surroundings, but found nothing but green and brown blurs all around. Were they in the forest, still? Had someone saved them? Oh, if they could have been so lucky.
The smell of seared meat and stagnant water filled her lungs, and she coughed. Her head was killing her, and as she tried to move her arms to put pressure on her temples, she realized that they were bound behind her back. She tried to kick her feet, and those were bound, too. As the potential enormity of the situation kicked in, she wriggled violently in her bindings, blinking her eyes as much as she could to clear the blur from them.
This worked, but she almost wished that it hadn't. Everything came into view upside-down. Dirt floors, slimy leaf and moss walls, a fire set inside of a collection of rocks in the middle of the makeshift room, and seven little figures all chattering back and forth to each other. Her heart stopped a moment as she realized that she didn't see Daveth anywhere in the room. She tried to talk, but only succeeded in biting farther into the rotting apple in her mouth. Apple? What...
"It wakesss," one of the little creatures hissed as it hobbled toward her. The small creature's skin looked like a dark mossy boulder, a polished greenish grey, coated in a clear slime. Its hands and feet were webbed with little suction cups at the tips of each finger and toe. On the top of its head sat two perfectly round beady yellow eyes, and just to the outside of each eye were tufts of small purple feathers. All of that was pretty gross, but it was nothing compared to its mouth.
The creature approached her with what she could only assume was supposed to be a smile, but her breath caught in horror at the expression that greeted her. One row of tiny razor-sharp fangs that spread across the entire length of their frog-like mouth that opened in a slit across the entire bottom of its face and back to where its long jaw ended. It opened its mouth farther to speak, and she could see a second set of jaws deep inside its throat with its own set of tiny little teeth.
"Ssoft skins," the creature admired, running a slime-coated suction cup along her cheek. The finger stuck on her jaw, and the creature had to yank its hand off of her to remove it with a small 'pop'. She cringed, a shiver going up her spine as the monster made a sort of gurgling sound that might have been laughter, as if it wasn't horrifying enough without the disgusting sound effects. It moved away from her, back to the others who were all working hard to devour a piece of meat that was bigger than all of them combined. As each opened their mouth, the second set of jaws pushed forward and reached out to grab the meat, as if they had a large carnivorous worm built into their throat. The inner mouth tore the meat from the raw corpse, pulling it past the outer pair which shredded it before they swallowed their bites whole. She gagged, in part from the scene and in part from the rotting apple in her mouth.
She had to look away; she couldn't watch those things eat. Her eyes darted around frantically, searching for Daveth or an escape or any sign of hope in this place. Tears leaked from her eyes, partly from terror and partly from the horrible smell that was starting to make every inch of her innards feel like liquid. Her heart raced and breathing quickened, which only made the tears worse.
Instead of finding something of comfort, her vision landed on a large pile of bones and metal, stacked almost to the ceiling of the small building. It looked like they'd been stockpiling armor and jewelry and pretty much anything that glinted in the sunlight. On the very top of the pile was Daveth's shield, his armor just under that.
He was dead. Her heart sank. She wasn't particularly fond of him or anything, but that meant that she really was alone with these...things.
Chapter 10
Daveth awoke to a strange popping noise around his head, though the sound didn't register at first. He was so exhausted that he didn't want to open his eyes.
"Just five more minutes," he mumbled groggily, trying to roll over. Ugh, he couldn't even do that. He must have been so tired that his body just refused to move around.
"No, it goes now, hurry," the quiet voice hissed frantically, followed by a familiar gurgling sound.
"What goes where?" he mumbled, forcing his eyes open. He was still half asleep, and a drop of drool leaked from the side of his mouth. He was greeted by a slimy green face with circular yellow eyes.
"It goes now or we eats it," said the creature as it desperately tried to untie the vines that wrapped his feet and hands together. Daveth gasped, his body jerking away from the thing as much as the give in the ropes would allow.
"Whoa! What do you want? Let me go!"
"We are trying," the thing whined, fingers popping against the vines as it tried to tear them apart. "It stays still," it said, holding up one suction-cupped finger at Daveth's face before moving to bite at the vines. Daveth was going to try and wriggle free again, until he saw the creature open its mouth. He must have stopped breathing when he saw its monstrous maw, as it was the only moment where his lungs weren't filled with the humid stench of the swamp and some sharp metallic fragrance. The vines snapped free, and the creature scurried away on four webbed feet as fast as it could, turning once it got to the far wall to face Daveth timidly. It held its finger up to its mouth again to shush him, pointing out a doorway as its other hand fumbled with the leathery flap of what resembled clothing at its waist.
"It goes that way, it must go now," it whispered hurriedly.
Daveth examined himself as he stood, noting that all of his body parts seemed to be intact, albeit undressed. In fact, he wore nothing but a pair of long cotton slacks that were stained all over with slime and tiny little perfectly circular spots of red.
"It goes! It goes now or we eats it!" it hissed again anxiously.
"If you want me to do something, threatening me isn't the way," he said, looking about the room. In the center of the room sat a large clay bowl that Daveth could have probably fit two of himself inside of, filled to the brim with a strange neon yellow goop. On the side of the cauldron was some sort of tap, leading into a long t
ray that was filled with some kind of metallic liquid that seemed to have poured from the spout. Leaning on the edge of the bowl was Daveth's sword, what he could only assume was to be the next thing melted down in the terrible pool of liquid.
The creature rushed toward him anxiously, and Daveth instinctively took a defensive stance. It stopped immediately as aggression was shown, raising its hands high in the air in what appeared to be an attempted surrender. "We helped it," the creature begged quietly, little beads of neon yellow liquid coming to its eyes. "We helped it escape. Please, it needs to go now. It needs to go before we...before the others come. It needs to..."
The creature wasn't making much sense, but Daveth thought that he understood. Whatever was going on, this thing clearly was saving him from it. Was this a swamp rat? It certainly fit the description, though as far as he knew the rats didn’t talk. He’d never seen one in person, and the drawings certainly hadn’t done them justice.
There was no sign of the princess anywhere, though, and he wasn't about to leave without her. He didn't even think about his armor as determination creased his features. "Where's the girl?" he demanded, keeping his fists held tight as though he would punch the creature if it didn't answer. He wanted it to be scared.
The creature kept its hands in the air. "Grgl?" it gurgled in response, clearly not knowing what he meant.
Daveth put his fist over his chest to imitate breasts (sadly the first thought that came to mind when describing a female to a race of creatures that clearly wasn't familiar with them). "Girl, with long hair. The princess. Where is she?"
"Soft one!" it said excitedly, then clapped its webbed hands over its mouth. Lowering its voice, it spoke again with a shake of its oversized frog-like head. "Gone," it replied bluntly.
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?!" Daveth yelled, with little regard to what might overhear him.
The creature cowered, backing away slightly. "Escaped! Trickery, the pretty one, it escaped. Please, it follows her."
Growing frustrated with trying to understand the creature, Daveth was at least pleased to know the Princess had escaped.
"And my armor?"
The creature stared at him dumbly, and Daveth tried to be clearer. He touched his chest, this time with open palms, then ran his hands over his arms. He hadn't realized until his warm hands touched his skin how chilly he was without his clothing. "Armor. The...the shiny..."
"Shinies! Stolen."
"I need them back."
It shook its bobbly head furiously. "No, it needs escape. Shinies guarded."
He lowered his brow suspiciously. "How do I know I can trust you?" he demanded again, his tone stern but at least quieter than it had been before. He knew he had little choice but to trust the thing, but it still felt the right thing to ask.
"It doesn't knows," the creature said, hurrying to the doorway on two feet. He didn't really know if that was supposed to be an answer or not, but he figured it probably didn't really matter. The creature peaked about outside a moment, then turned back to him and waved him over with its hand. "Escape," it said, and then hurried out the doorway.
This was his chance, and he knew it. While he hated to leave his fate in the webbed hands of a swamp rat, Daveth needed to get out of this place. Especially if Lillian had escaped, she would be out in those woods on her own, now, and he had to find her. With a sigh, Daveth followed after the thing, grabbing up his sword from the side of the pot as he passed it on his way out. He looked around the room just before hitting the small doorway to see if there was anything else in there that he could use, but found nothing. The only things he noticed in the room were lots and lots and lots of mirrors, all leaning up against each other on a wall.
He crawled out the doorway, which was far too small for a human to walk through, and out into the woods. Instead of woods, though, he found himself surrounded by swampy land. There were a few patches of ground that were clearly not covered in water, but it was hard to tell with the rest. Moss and fallen leaves floated atop the swamps, giving the illusion that there was solid land all around. He had no idea how they were going to find their way back to the path, now, or how far they’d even been taken from it. Still, questioning the how of everything at this moment wasn't going to do anything but delay his escape.
His eyes scanned in the darkness for the small figure that had freed him. It seemed darker here, too, or perhaps more time had passed than he realized. When his eyes finally focused enough, he spotted the small creature waving frantically from behind a large tree nearby. Daveth resisted his urge to run, knowing that the grounds here couldn’t be trusted. It took him longer than he would have liked to catch up to the thing, which led him far away from the tiny mossy hut he'd been stuck in.
The creature ran surprisingly fast for its size, bolting like an animal on all four limbs. It climbed the sides of rocks with its suction cup feet and leapt from rock to tree trunk to ground to tree again, keeping far ahead of Daveth. A few times, it appeared to dive into the ground, submerging itself in the swampy waters before reappearing farther down.
Daveth stopped in his tracks, suddenly, looking back at the hut that he’d gotten quite far from now. “Wait,” he yelled in frustration, unable to see the creature anymore. He stuck his sword in the ground, as if that would make it clear that he intended to go no further. The beast’s head popped out of the water just inches from Daveth’s feet. It noticed how close it was to him and abruptly leapt from the swamp and up onto the trunk of a nearby tree, climbing to a limb as its beady yellow eyes stared down at him from the perch.
"Why does it stop?"
"Where is she?"
The creature didn't reply, and Daveth's gaze grew angry. "Where is the princess?" he demanded.
The thing pointed back timidly, in the direction they'd come from.
"You told me she escaped!" he said, lifting his sword from the soggy mud and turning around to start running.
"No!" the thing yelled, jumping down from its perch and into the water. It leapt from the water a few feet in front of him and landed on the ground where Daveth’s next steps would have led him. It stood as tall as it could with its arms spread wide above its head, which still only placed the top of its head somewhere near his waist.
"You lied to me!" he yelled, and the creature lowered its arms, hugging itself and shaking a little.
"We had to. Please, it needs escape," it whined.
"What do you mean, you had to?!" he said, pushing past the thing and starting his run back toward the building. He wasn’t completely confident in his footing, but in most places he could still see where his feet had impacted the soggy ground.
"They eats it!" it yelled after him, and Daveth stopped. Perhaps he'd been listening to the thing talk for too long, but he suddenly thought he understood what had been trying to tell him all along. He turned and looked at the creature with rage, but said nothing for a few moments. The thing lowered itself to sit on the ground, looking at the grass and popping its suction cup fingers against each other.
"Th...They ate her?" he said, choking on the words. The creature nodded slowly.
"We couldn't save them both," it said sadly, then crawled on the ground toward him on all four legs, like a pathetic and disgusting puppy begging forgiveness. "Please," it begged, finally looking up to him again. "Please, it needs escape."
Daveth couldn't look at the thing anymore, and his eyes went back to where they'd come from. Everything in him wanted to go back and slaughter the swamp rats, to make them suffer for whatever they'd put her through. He imagined those horrifying mouths tearing at her skin, the princess screaming and Daveth sleeping through the whole thing and then running off into the night without her. The rage inside of him built as he thought about it. He deserved to get eaten, not her. His hands balled into fists, then slowly released as he sighed with a shake of his head. The thought that maybe this thing was lying, that maybe she was alive, was the only thing he had to hold on to. He started a run toward the small gathering of h
uts with no plan of action other than to find out for himself.
"Wait!" the thing hissed behind him, but he didn't stop. He could hear it following, but Daveth stayed in the lead this time.
Lillian wriggled and tried to scream through the apple-gag as little hands with suction cups all gripped at her skin. No longer hanging from the low ceiling, she was still gagged and bound. The things had devoured the corpse that was in the room before dragging her to the bloody patch of dirt. They were now tearing at what little clothing she still had, pinching different parts of her body as they chattered excitedly.
"Its face would make the best ones."
"No! Its legs!"
"Eats the meats, wears the feets."
The group let out a gurgling cry of laughter as the woman squirmed against their prodding. One of them must have gotten tired of her wriggling, as shortly after a sharp prick in her shoulder she began to feel her body numbing again. The harder she struggled, the faster it spread, and it was only a minute before she couldn't move anything but her eyes anymore. Tears welled up in them, but those would do her no good. Grabby little hands continued their pinching and shuffling of her clothing. A suctioned finger reached up to her cheek and touched her tears before the creature stuck out a long black tongue and licked the salty liquid from its finger. It let out a gurgling purr at the taste, and the feathers on its head quivered a little as its body shook with excitement.
The sound of a wolf howling somewhere out in the distance took what last drop of hope she had away. She wasn't the only one affected by it, though, as all of the little rats stopped their shuffling and chattering, frozen in place as they stared out the doorway. When silence was all that greeted them, they began their ritual again, only to be interrupted by the same howling sound, much closer this time. Each retracted from the woman immediately, skittering to a far corner of the room where they grabbed up small hollow straws and handfuls of purple-quilled darts. They seemed to all but forget she even existed as they all rushed out the tiny doorway, and within moments she was alone.
