Brutus’ barking shattered the silence.

All three noses had been sniffing the air in different directions when he’d stopped and alerted Theresa, pointing his heads toward the water.

His barking persisted.

“What is it boy?” Theresa said. “What do you smell?” She sniffed the air and frowned. “I can’t smell anything except ‘bog’.”

“I’ll check it out,” Grimloch said, wading in the direction Brutus was looking. Moving closer, he suddenly stopped and growled. “Death.”

“Let’s see what Najyah finds,” Khalik said. Glancing skyward, he said something in Tekish and the eagle banked, soaring above where Brutus was pointing. A heartbeat later she stopped and began screeching. Grimloch ploughed through the muck, heading in her direction.

Everyone stopped, watching as he reached down and drew something from the water: a greenish-grey body—about the size of Kybas—bloated and rotting. Grimloch held it above his head as he made his way back through the fetid water.

“Some kind of goblin,” he growled, shaking the decomposing body. “Or what’s left of one.”

“What the hell happened to its legs?” Thundar asked. “Did some giant beast bite the poor bastard in half?”

The group scanned the bog for signs of threat. Meanwhile, Alex had Claygon raise his hands, ready to charge the fire-gems if they were needed.

“It looks like a beast-goblin,” Isolde said, floating down for a closer look at the corpse. “Sir Swift had said there were some in the area. Ugly creatures.”

Alex had never seen a beast-goblin before, but knew about them from magic-lore. It resembled Kybas somewhat, but had a long, bulbous snout filled with razor-sharp teeth, and tiny horns poking from a bald head. Its half-closed eyes were like a reptile’s.

“What’s a beast-goblin?” Grimloch asked.

“It’s like…you know what a monkey is?” Alex asked.

“…small, tasty things that fall off ships coming from southern waters. They have tails.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Yeah let’s uh…let’s just go with that. Well beast-goblins are to goblins what monkeys are to humans, basically. They look kinda similar, but beast-goblins are a hell of a lot dumber. They’re also territorial as hell and have a mean streak as wide as our campus.”

Alex squinted at the creature, noting wounds on its body. He used The Mark to see if he could identify their cause. Unfortunately, between the rot and the large amount of damage to the corpse, he couldn’t tell much. Only that slashes running along the skin on its torso, looked similar to those he’d seen on the dead boy they’d found the day before.

Meikara confirmed his suspicions when Grimloch laid the corpse in front of her. “These are claw and tooth marks…it appears to have been partially eaten but…there’s something…” She reached into one of the wounds.

Squelch.

Khalik grimaced.

When the healer’s glove emerged from the little monster’s chest cavity, she was holding small, dark objects.

“Is…is that garlic?” Alex asked, looking at the blackened bulbs.

“And dill, it looks like,” Meikara said. “Other herbs too.”

There was a pause.

“Wait…someone stuffed the body like a hen?” Thundar asked.

“How gruesome,” Isolde said.

“More like ‘how smart’,” Grimloch growled, drawing a shocked look from Meikara. “Underwater beastfolk and selachar do similar things: we take meat, fill it with good stuff and let it float in seawater to pickle it. Makes it soft and tasty. Don’t know how it’d work with freshwater, though.”

Meikara seemed to be trying to digest that information.

Hogarth was hovering beside Isolde as everyone looked at the beast-goblin’s remains. “First time meeting Grimloch I’m guessing?” He said to the healer with a big smile on his face.

“He brings up a good point, though: it’d take intelligence to do this,” Alex said. “If something in this bog is stuffing beast-goblins full of herbs, that means whatever is doing it isn’t just some mindless beast: it’s got dexterity and enough advanced culture to cook and care about flavour. Oh, and it’s not above eating things that look humanoid, too.”

“Let it try and eat me,” Grimloch snorted. “I’ll eat it right back.”

“We shall have to find it first…” Khalik said. “My suggestion is that we get to where that dungeon was. I’d wager that if something is hiding in the area, that it will likely have made its home there.”

“No doubt,” Theresa said. “Let’s go.”

Grimloch put the body back in the water and they moved on.

Slsh.

Slsh.

Slsh.

Under the late morning sky, the group pushed on, fighting the muck and clouds of mosquitoes that rose from the bog. After the first few bites from the little bastards crawling under his force armour and clothing to get to his skin, Alex summoned a swarm of elemental beetles to attack the mass of blood suckers all around them.

The beetles soon turned the tables.

“Thanks, man,” Thundar said, slapping a couple of mosquitoes from his fur. “How much further until the entrance?”

“We should be coming to it soon,” Alex consulted the rough map Baelin had given them. He’d added some details. “There should be a way in on the other side of that hill over there.”

“That hill?” Thundar inclined his head toward a dark mound rising from the middle of the bog.

“Yep.”

“Then let’s get over there, check it out and get it done.”

“Cautiously,” Khalik said, eyeing their surroundings and glancing up at Najyah. “If whatever was pickling that beast-goblin uses this bog, it wouldn’t be surprising if its lair is also near.”

“I think you’re right,” Grimloch sniffed the air as Brutus started barking again. “The smell of death is strong here too.”

The sharkman found more pickled goblin corpses floating in the bog the closer they came to the cleared dungeon. The team was quietly scanning everything around them and using their oak branches to test the ground.

With each step, the murky water rose around Claygon and Alex realised they’d both soon be submerged by it, so he let Claygon deposit him onto Thundar’s land-bridge then continue pushing the water. His towering form slowly disappeared beneath the surface as he churned through the muck on the bottom of the bog.

If anything was hiding down there, he’d be there to blast it.

Alex looked up at Najyah and his Aervespertillo scouting high in the sky.

Neither had given any warnings so-

“Thaaaat’s far enough, interlopers.”

Everyone froze as a voice like scratching nails called out. Alex felt mana rise from all around and the team fell into battle stances. Isolde, Hogarth and Svenia backed each other, ready for whatever came.

“It’s an illusion!” Thundar shouted. “Something’s throwing their voice at us: they’re disguising where they’re hiding!”

“Very good, very good!” the voice crowed. The bog seemed to bubble with its every word. “You know your way around magics. Good, good. You do not fear and run scrambling for torches and pitch-forks at illusion. Tell me, what brings you to my home?”

Still tensed for a fight, they frowned, puzzled at the voice. Alex and Theresa’s companions turned toward them, looking to see if their Thameish team mates had any idea what was out in the bog. The huntress looked at her partner from across the moss-covered water and shrugged.

He cleared his throat.

“That depends?” Alex said. “We’re here to look around and—if we find anyone who can talk to us—parley with them.”

“Parley? What is this?” the voice asked. “I do not know this word in your tongue.”

“What tongue do you speak?”

“I asked my question first and so you will answer first!” the voice snapped. “Tell me what is parley?”

“Uh, a discussion of terms,” Alex said. “Basically, we’d like peace with those already in this region, so we’d like to discuss that.”

“Aaaah! Talking, good. Bargains follow words. Traaaaade.”

Something about the way the voice said ‘trade’ chilled his blood.

‘Claygon, find where that voice is coming from,’ he thought, before glancing up to his summoned monster. No information from it at all. Where and what this creature was—its voice sounded like a very old woman’s, but with an inhuman quality to it. Its illusion was actually concealing its voice from his summoned monster’s sharp hearing. What was this thing?

“We might be up for talking a bit of trade,” Alex said, glancing at his companions.

Everyone was scanning the bog, searching for the owner of the voice.

“Good, good,” it said. “The Lean Times are hard. It is good to trade, and all who wish to survive knows this.”

“Lean Times?” Alex asked, his gaze sharpening. “You mean when The Ravener comes…or do you mean something else?”

“When the black orbs tunnel beneath every hill, swamp, dale and glen,” she said. “When blood fills the forest and when their spawn stalks the night and day. It makes food scarce.”

Alex swallowed. This could be interesting: the only sources on The Ravener he’d come across were from the kingdom and the church of Uldar. This…whatever it was, seemed to have a different perspective.

That could mean more, as well as, new information.

Alex used The Mark, then: trying to learn the creature’s inflection, diction and speech pattern. If he copied some of it—and adopted a bit into his speech—he might seem more familiar to the creature and maybe set it at ease. The Mark brought up memories and pointed out specific ways the voice used the Common tongue.

He put some of them into his speech pattern. “Food is scarce for us too,” Alex said carefully. “No wonder you call it The Lean Times.”

“Yes, yes, human!” the creature cried, its voice sounding a touch warmer than before. “They are lean. The prey flees the black orbs. One gets so, so, soooo hungry.”

His companions looked at each other and a look of distaste was on Meikara’s face. There was something about the way the voice said ‘hungry’ that made Alex wonder exactly what kind of food its owner was after.

“Do beast-goblins not suit you?” Alex said. “They don’t look very tasty.”

“They are not!” she cried. “They are tough and filled with bitter tastes. It takes much to make them good to eat. Too much. I want proper flesh!”

Alex subtly reached for his slumber potion, trying not to spook the creature by making any sudden movements.

“What about the spawn from the dark orbs? Can’t you eat them?”

There was a cackle that came from all directions, echoing on itself. “The spawn’s flesh is worse than the green ones! Only to be eaten when there is nothing else. The taste is dreadful! Dreadful! Like a hundred human cesspits!”

Alex noted her mentally: The Ravener’s spawn tasted bad to at least one inhuman resident of Thameland. That information might prove irrelevant later, but for now, he would keep it in mind because the more he could understand about The Ravener, the better. It was like what Salinger had said about considering multiple factors of nature when trying to grow plants in areas they didn’t normally grow in: one had to pay attention to the other natural factors.

The question here was; did The Ravener have a role in the natural world or was it something more like an invasive species that only targeted subjects of Uldar?

“Do these spawn hunt you?” Alex asked. “How do you keep safe from them?”

The creature snorted. “They do not hunt us. They attack if we venture too close to their territories, but they leave us alone otherwise, just as we leave them alone. …but we have fought them before.”

“You have?” Alex asked, his interest growing with every word.

“Yes, yes! Territory needs to be protected and parts of the spawn have value as material. We can use them for weapons.”

Alex heard a note enter her voice that he’d heard countless times among the merchants of Alric and Generasi.

“Is that what you could use, hmmmm? Let us trade! Let us trade!” the voice said. “I have weapons and other things made from parts of the spawn! They are strong and can help you protect yourselves from them! Or, I have the shiny round things you folk use for barter and buying: taken from the many empty houses in the wild! I have more, too!”

“Weapons and things made from the spawn?” he asked, his curiosity piqued. “We’d be interested in those.”

“Good, good! Whether you are bandits or adventurers, I knew that is what you would want.”

“And what do you want?”

“Fleeeeesh,” the voice cooed. “Young flesh. Young goats or lambs would suit me, or calves would be even better…or even a nice, fat piglet. But those things would not be enough for weapons, only for the shiny disks. If it is weapons you want…then bring me a child.”

Alex froze.

“Ooooh it has been so long since I have had a nice child of humankind!” the creature lamented. “Tender and fat, oh where have they all gone? The only ones left in the villages and towns are the hard, crusty grown-ups. Not good. We want delicate flesh!”

Alex’s mind whirled with what to do.

‘Lie,’ he thought. “Lie, get out of here, send up a flare and then bring back a full force of wizards to wipe this cannibal off the map.’

“Fine,” Alex said, glancing meaningfully at his companions. He kept his words as sincere as possible. “We’ll get you whatever you want.”

Silence.

“You mean to trick me,” the voice was suddenly cold.

“Not so, you mean to trade and we have no children, goats or lambs here. We would need to get them, wouldn't we?”

Silence.

“Hmmm, true…but many times in past trades those same words were used. And then they never came back, or they came back but with warriors in metal clothes carrying sharp blades. Well, no matter. Could be you are telling the truth. There is one way to be sure.”

Splaash!

Something sinewy whipped from the water.

“I will need guarantees!” the voice shrieked.

A blur—something like a thin snake—struck out and wrapped around Khalik’s waist, dragging him under water before he could even gasp.

A breath later, Alex was pulled under.

The sky disappeared and he was sucked beneath the foul waters.