by Ramy Vance
17
They had been traveling for nearly three hours and noon was quickly approaching. The temperature of the swamp had changed drastically from that of the garden. The balmy, breezy weather was gone, replaced with a muggy, sticky heat. The Mundanes and José slowly made their way through the swamp, responding to the heat that clung to them like an extra layer of skin. They were dripping sweat and their legs rose and fell with the weight of exhaustion. Still, they were making good time. They would be close to the final ring soon.
As they made their way through the swamp, they had come across a handful of sentries, mostly orcs patrolling through the swamp. Thankfully, Sandy’s invisibility cloak and José’s buffing had rendered them all invisible. The cloak extended further than just the eyes. It also masked them from magical awareness as well. This was an added benefit that Suzuki was extremely grateful for because most of the sentries were also outfitted with mages, more orc mages than Suzuki had ever seen.
José raised his right hand and the Mundanes stopped. He leaned over to Sandy and whispered in her ear. Sandy raised her wand and with a flick of her wrist cast a sound dampening spell over herself. José’s passive buff caused the spell to extend to everyone in the immediate area. José snapped his fingers, looking over his shoulders to see if the orcs a couple of feet away could hear him.
The orcs took no notice.
José nodded his approval as he turned back to the Mundanes. “I just wanted to make sure that we could talk as well,” he said. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be wandering invisible and mute. What do you think we should do about them?” he asked, jerking his thumb toward the orcs.
Suzuki shrugged his shoulder. “I say we leave them. We don’t want a bunch of bodies piling up while we’re sneaking around. It’ll raise attention. Even if they can’t see us, I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to find us when they start getting suspicious.”
“Good point. Let’s keep pushing on.”
They continued on their path, working their way around the orc mages that stalked through the dark swamp, the orcs holding hefty torches that cast a pale-yellow light across their path. The patrol was made up of three orcs, two of them mages, their bodies covered in some sort of ashen warpaint, their faces painted up like skulls with two beady eyes glowing in the dimness.
Suzuki pointed at the orcs as they walked past them. “What’s with all of the mages out here?” he asked. “Aren’t orcs that can do magic supposed to be super rare?”
Sandy nodded as she came up closer to Suzuki. “They are rare,” Sandy explained. “Very rare. And those aren’t even orc clan mage markings. They’re something else. I’ve never seen anything like those before.”
Beth laughed a little derisively. “Since when did you become an expert on orcs?” she asked.
“Books—I’ve been reading a lot about the different magical systems of the different races. There’s a huge section on orcs because magic is so rare with them. It’s almost like an aberration. They usually give their mages specific markings from youth so that the rest of the orcs know to stay away from the mage since they can be…volatile while they’re growing up.”
Suzuki laughed to himself.
He didn’t want to say it out loud because he wasn’t sure how Sandy was going to take it, but he could see that Diana was rubbing off on her. The way that she talked about magic and history really reminded him of Diana. He made a mental note to ask her more questions about the orc tribes later. He was very curious to know how magic worked with the orcs.
The Mundanes and José made their way past the orc sentry as the orcs were rounding a bend of trees. One of the orc mages stopped walking and stared out where the Mundanes had been as if he could feel some trace of what had been there before.
Suzuki stopped to watch the orc try and figure out what was going on. Fortunately, the orc wasn’t able to sense anything definite. He turned back to his fellow orcs, and they lumbered off on whatever their mission was. Suzuki noticed the large microchips on the backs of their necks as they continued on in their search. He wondered if the microchips impacted the magical abilities of the orcs. If the Dark One was able to control the minds of those who were microchipped, what was keeping him from being able to control and influence other aspects as well?
Suzuki let his mind wander a little bit. It was a really good question and one that was worth investigating. There were tons of benefits of having an army of willing slaves. But once you started playing with the mind, what else was possible? Suzuki knew that his body had changed so much when he came to Middang3ard. Bonding with his familiar granted him magic and also helped his body perform superhuman feats. He remembered when he first merged with Fred, he had told the imp that he felt like Captain America. If that was possible, to what limits could the Dark One push the bodies and psyches of his slaves?
Beth looked at Suzuki and saw that he was deep in thought. She gently pushed him, breaking his concentration. “What’s up?” Beth asked. “You look like you’re about to have an aneurysm.”
Stew laughed from across the party formation. “That’s just the way his face looks, dude,” Stew chided. “You’ve just been away for a bit and forgot. He’s got resting nerd face.”
Suzuki ignored Stew. He knew that would get under Stew’s skin more than if he had said something back. As he spoke, he noticed Stew’s smile drop as Suzuki sidestepped Stew’s teasing. “I’m thinking about what the mind control could be doing to the orcs,” Suzuki said. “You know, breaking the mind down to control it…that’s some heavy shit. I guess I was just wondering what else it would be capable of doing.”
“Why?” Beth asked. “What does it matter?”
“What do you mean?”
“Fuck them. Who cares what it’s doing to them?”
Suzuki shrugged. “Maybe we should. Were the orcs running raiding parties and killing innocent people before the Dark One enslaved them? How long have they been slaves?”
“Suzy, these are pointless questions. They’re trying to kill us, so we have to kill them first. That’s just the way that it goes.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy. There might be another way. Maybe we could—”
“The Dark One’s forces are monsters, Suzy,” Beth said.
Suzuki thought of what Fred had told him earlier, about Fred’s family. “Yeah,” Suzuki said. “Maybe they aren’t monsters like we think they are.”
“Maybe not, but they’re still the monsters that are trying to kill us.”
Suzuki couldn’t think of anything more to say. He’d noticed that Beth seemed to have a much harder stance on what was going on in Middang3ard than he or the Mundanes did. It probably had to do with the fact that she was military. There seemed to be a level of finality that the military had which MERCs did not share. Suzuki had noticed it at the dinner the night before. Of course Beth had just been sprung from a prison where she and her friends had been tortured for weeks. It would be surprising if she had walked away from that without being somewhat changed. Suzuki couldn’t imagine how that experience would have changed him.
He tripped over a root and faceplanted. By the time that he was able to pull himself out of the mud, which seemed to be trying to suck him under like quicksand, he was coated in it. He looked like a creature that had just risen up from the swamp itself.
Stew helped Suzuki get to his feet while Suzuki tried to shake the mud off his arms. “Dude,” Stew started. “You look like a low budget Swamp Guy movie or something.”
“It’s called Swamp Thing,” Suzuki grumbled as he wiped mud off his face. “If you’re going to try to rip on me, you might as well get your facts straight.”
Stew smirked. “I just like to call attention to how unbelievably nerdy you are.”
“Stew, there’s a new comic book movie every two weeks. There is nothing nerdy about knowing who Dr. Holland is.”
“Dr. who?”
Suzuki let out an exasperated sigh. “Holland. Alec Holland. The Swamp
Thing, you know.”
“No, I don’t. I think I was too busy not being a huge ass nerd to have caught that reference. Case and point. Check and mate.”
“It’s just ‘checkmate’.”
Stew gave Suzuki the biggest smile. “Oh, I know, dude. I know.”
Up a bit ahead of the rest of the Mundanes, Sandy stopped walking. She looked over her shoulder and held her hand up to signal to the rest of the party to stop. They stood there in silence for a moment, while Sandy knelt down and stared at the mud. She walked back to the rest of the Mundanes. “There’s something down there,” Sandy said.
“What are you talking about?” Stew asked. “Like, under the mud?”
“In the mud, babe. And yeah. I didn’t get a good look at it but it was swimming. Like this was water or something.”
Suzuki nodded and pulled out his hand ax. “We should be good, though, right?” he asked. “We’re still invisible.”
“Yeah, we are. Whatever it was didn’t stop when I got close to it. It just swam past, but I figure it’s better to be aware, you know. Pointers from Chip and Diana: keep an eye on your surroundings.”
“So, you’re switching to a rogue now?”
“It never hurts to diversify,” Sandy said as she pressed her amulet to her chest, causing her skin to turn pale gray and flake off until she was covered in a cloak of ash.
“That is so unnerving to look at.”
Sandy’s masked face stared back at Suzuki. “Yeah, but you gotta admit that it’s pretty fucking badass.”
Stew was running his hand through Sandy’s miasma of ash like a kid fascinated with a new toy. Sandy waved Stew’s hand away. “Cut it out, babe.” She giggled. “That tickles. Come on, we should keep moving.”
As they walked farther into the swamp, Suzuki noticed that Beth was staring at his ax. He decided to show off and tossed his ax into the air. He missed it, and his ax plopped into the mud. “Fuck,” he muttered as Beth started cracking up.
“Were you trying to impress me?” she asked. “Because you failed miserably.”
“Whatever,” Suzuki said. He shrugged and kept walking.
“Wait, aren’t you going to get your ax.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
Suzuki absentmindedly held out his hand. His ax pulled itself from the mud and flew into his hand.
Beth stared at Suzuki’s ax, her mouth hanging open. “All right, that was impressive,” she admitted. “Where the fuck did you find that?”
Suzuki looked the weapon over. “The ax? Oh, probably our first mission or something. I actually can’t remember where I picked it up.”
“Are you serious? I thought you said that the loot you guys were getting wasn’t that cool.”
“It wasn’t for a while. There wasn’t anything special about the ax. I’ve just been working on my enchanting. I figured it would be cool to take something really simple and turn it into a badass little work of art. You know, make something that’s just mine.”
“Where did you learn how to enchant like that?” Beth asked.
“Just reading and practicing and shit. Sandy hooked me up with some books and I’ve just been tinkering away at it. It’s like a hobby.”
“Okay, that’s really impressive. I don’t know anyone in my platoon who can do anything like that. Honestly, I feel like we’re all just grunts. It seems like you guys have a lot more freedom to, you know, figure things out.”
Suzuki thought about what Beth had said. There did seem to be a lot of freedom being a MERC. No one told you what to do. You could learn what you wanted. The Vets seemed pretty interested in helping the newbs develop. Suzuki quietly thanked whoever was listening that he had failed to get into the military. Beth wasn’t making it sound like a great place to be. Even though it didn’t feel like it, Suzuki was thinking that the MERC was where it was at.
There was a sudden crash from behind, and Suzuki whipped around to see where the noise was coming from.
Stew was sitting in the mud, struggling to get back to his feet. Sandy was reaching over to help him back to his feet. “Not so easy to stay on your feet, is it?” Suzuki called back.
“Fuck off,” Stew muttered as he stood up, grinning broadly. His smile vanished as he suddenly fell back down into the mud. Then he disappeared beneath the surface of the swamp.
Sandy reached down into the mud, grasping for Stew’s body as she screamed, “Stew!” She stood up, empty-handed, covered in mud. “Where the fuck did he go?”
Something brushed against Suzuki’s leg. He looked down, but the mud was too thick. He couldn’t make anything out. Then he felt something else rub up against his leg. He jumped and yelped a little. Whatever had touched him had also shocked him. It was no more than a static electrical pop, but it still caught him off-guard.
A few feet away, Stew exploded out of the mud, flying through the air, screaming until he hit a tree, falling onto one of the branches. He scratched his head as he struggled to sit up in the tree.
Suzuki tried to run over to Stew, but the mud was impeding his movements. The rest of the group were also making their way to Stew. “Hey, dude,” Suzuki shouted, “What the fuck was that all about?”
Stew looked down from the tree, his eyes widening. He was a good twenty feet off the ground and Suzuki remembered Stew once mentioning something about being afraid of heights when they had been playing together. “I don’t know!” Stew shouted. “Something grabbed my leg and pulled me under. I thought we were invisible, Sandy!”
Sandy pulled up her HUD and looked through her status updates. “We are,” she replied. “All of us, still pretty invisible.”
“Well, something knows that we’re here. And I have sneaking suspicion that it wants to eat me.”
Suzuki felt a pressure around his ankles. Then there was a jolt of electricity, much stronger than last time. His legs went hot, and then his teeth clamped down as something in the mud pumped him full of electricity. Another shock ran through him and he went flying through the air, slamming against a tree and sinking into the mud. Once his strength returned to him, he scampered up the tree that he had been knocked into. Whatever had shocked him was in the mud, and Suzuki wanted to be as far away from that as possible. “Up in the trees, everyone,” Suzuki shouted.
Sandy waved her wand and levitated herself up into a tree where she sat perched like some swamp spirit. José took a giant leap and landed gracefully in the branches of a tree covered in Spanish moss. Beth took the longest to get to safety. She had done a double take when Suzuki had shouted orders. Maybe she wasn’t used to listening to anyone other than her commanding officer. Either way, she managed to get into the tree before whatever was slithering in the mud could zap her.
Now they were all in the trees, looking like some odd parody of a child’s nursery rhyme. They hardly looked to be the rag tag group of adventurers that they thought of themselves as. We must look so fucking stupid, Suzuki thought. At least we’re invisible.
Suzuki leaned over the side of his tree branch and stared down at the mud. He could see movement, something slithering back and forth. He couldn’t tell how many somethings there were, though. “Does anyone know what the fuck lives in swamps?” Suzuki called out.
Sandy shrugged as she stared down at the slithering things in the mud. “I don’t know, alligators?” she suggested. “I think maybe monkeys. Definitely leeches. I really hope those are leeches.”
“Why the fuck would you want them to be leeches?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re pretty cute—all those fangs and thirst for blood. I’d like to catch a few. Maybe try some ritualistic blood play…”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Sandy?”
“I think you mean, ‘How did you develop such a complex personality and interesting opinions?’ Thank you for the compliment.”
Beth was standing in her tree, sword drawn. She looked anxious. “Uh, so are we just going to stay up here all day?” she asked.
Stew was hanging upside
down on his tree branch. Apparently, what he had said about being afraid of heights had been something of an exaggeration. “Nah, I doubt it,” he called. “Unless this suddenly became an episode of Naruto.”
Sandy snapped her fingers and mimed a gun pointed at Stew. “And Stew with the references, coming for Suzuki’s nerd champion status.” She laughed. “You guys are tied. Now it’s sudden death.”
In her tree, Beth started laughing. Not the guarded, almost worried laughter that had been sneaking out here or there whenever she heard the Mundanes joking. This was the real deal, a straight up belly laugh that made Suzuki smile. It seemed like she was finally starting to warm, finally starting to remember what being a Mundane was like.
But that was enough joking around for now. Suzuki stood, balancing himself on his branch. He took aim at the slithering movement in the mud and threw his ax. It landed with a satisfying thud and whatever had been moving stopped. “Guess that was easy enough,” Suzuki said.
“I doubt there’s only one,” Sandy said.
“Are you volunteering to go check it out?”
Sandy shook her head. “Nope. I’m pretty sure our Fearless Leader should take care of it.”
Beth dangled her feet over the branch she was sitting on like a child on a swing set. “I thought MERCs didn’t have leaders?”
“We do when it’s convenient for someone to have to do the dirty work. Plus, Suzuki likes looking impressive and shit.”
Suzuki leapt out of the tree and landed with a splash of mud. “That’s not true,” he said. “I just like getting the job done without looking like a jackass like some Mundanes I know.”
As Suzuki spoke, he felt movement around his ankles. that same kind of slithering. There was more of it this time. It seemed to be dozens upon dozens of what felt like snakes rubbing up against him. “Sandy, is there anything that you can do about this mud? I can’t see anything,” Suzuki complained.
