The corrosive mire swallowed their footsteps, each step accompanied by nauseating sucking sounds.
Before Raine's eyes lay only blurred darkness, occasionally punctuated by warped flashes—embers of the mental onslaught.
He relied almost entirely on Karrion's sturdy arm to guide him, the dwarf's heavy breathing and the occasional curse his sole guideposts.
"Slow down, lad," Karrion rumbled, bristling with caution. "This blasted ground's slipperier than a goblin's backside greased with lard."
Thalia's breath was close beside him, just behind his shoulder.
He felt the icy whisper of her cloak brushing his arm, carrying the damp chill unique to the forest's heart.
Her silence was more unsettling than Karrion's grumbling.
The forest was deathly still.
No wind, no insect calls—only the sound of the three trudging onward, amplified and then devoured by the viscous air.
Suddenly, Karrion halted.
Raine lurched forward, nearly toppling, but the dwarf's strong arm caught him.
"What is it?" Raine croaked, each word throbbing in his skull.
Karrion did not reply at once.
Raine heard him bend low, breath rasping close to the ground.
Sounds of fingers brushing aside decaying leaf and slime drifted up.
"Damn…" Karrion growled low, anger and a hint of… unease in his tone.
"Something's following us."
Raine's heart clenched.
"What is it?"
"Don't know," Karrion stood, scenting the air like a wary boar. "Not ours. Fresh tracks—big, and… chaotic."
He paused, as though gathering his words.
"And look here."
Raine could not see, only imagine.
Karrion's voice continued, laced with revulsion and gravity.
"A few corrupted beasts lie dead here. It looks like… they were torn apart."
"This isn't normal predation. These things… were toyed with until death."
"The breaks in the bones aren't right—claw marks everywhere…and acid-etching, as if dipped in caustic."
"The methods are cruel. It's as if the killer… savored the act."
A chill crept up Raine's spine.
In this twisted food chain of the corrupted wood, could there be even crueller predators—ones that take pleasure in slaughter?
"Are they after us?" Thalia's voice, at last, cut through—cold but with a barely perceptible edge.
"Who else would be worth their trouble?" Karrion snorted. "The tracks looped around our camp last night, then tailed us along our path."
"They've got patience."
Raine clenched his fist so hard his nails bit into his palm.
Blind, weakened—and now hunted by an unknown terrifier.
Just the grandest of predicaments.
"We need to get out of this bog—fast," Karrion urged. "It's too open, visibility's horrible—it's a shooting gallery out here."
He seized Raine's arm again and quickened his pace.
Mud splashed, the stench of rot intensifying.
They stepped into a comparatively open expanse.
Gnarled dead trees stood solitary in the slate-gray mire, like tombstones.
A thick fog reduced visibility to mere paces.
An eerie silence pervaded.
Even the bubbling of the mud had vanished.
Raine's nerves were taut; he strained to catch even the faintest disturbance.
Suddenly!
Karrion bellowed, "Watch out!"
At once, Raine felt a rush of fetid wind sweep overhead!
Followed by a sharp whoosh, then the hiss of viscous liquid sizzling as it landed in the mire beside him!
"Damn thing! It came from above!" Karrion roared, shoving Raine aside.
Raine staggered back, slipping and half-kneeling in icy mud.
The fight erupted instantly!
The wind whipped by a war-hammer's arc, the dull clash of metal against resilient carapace, and Karrion's furious battle-cry.
And another sound—lighter, stranger.
Like silk threads snapping, or insect legs skimming the air.
Thalia was in motion.
He felt her stir the air—now to his left, now to his right—like a specter.
No dazzling arcana, only subdued ripples of power and, at times, a crisp crack like shattering glass—attacks bent or dispersed by unseen force.
"Szzzt—!"
A searing agony ripped through Raine's calf!
He groaned, lowered his face—though he could not see it—and reached down to feel.
His fingers encountered a blistering, sticky fluid; his skin stung as though burned by acid!
"Raine!" Thalia's voice took on a sharp edge for the first time.
He felt her at his side in an instant, a cool—but not cold—energy blanketing his wound, quelling the corrosive burn.
"Stay still!" she warned sharply.
"They spit venom! It eats flesh!" Karrion's voice boomed from nearby, hammer striking shell in thunderous arcs. "There's a brood of 'em—at least five… six!"
Raine clenched his teeth, enduring the agony in his leg and the all-encompassing darkness before him.
He heard them move—an eerie mix of heavy crawling and sudden leaps.
They melded with the shadows and mist, striking from impossible angles.
Karrion's hammer fell with mountain-splitting force—his brute strength and unyielding constitution an impenetrable bulwark in close quarters.
Each blow accompanied the sickening crack of bone or shell giving way.
"Eat this, you hideous spider-spawn!"
"And you—dream on if you think you can burrow up here!"
But the horde was large, and their tactics uncanny.
They did more than bite and spit—emitting a chaotic aura that scrambled perception, rendering Raine's fogged mind even more disoriented.
Thalia fought in an altogether different manner.
She was like inky lightning coursing through shadow.
Raine heard no chant—only sensed the shadows around her swirling and reshaping in strange patterns.
At times, shadow-tendrils coalesced in an instant to bind a beast's limb;
At others, a curtain of darkness snapped open, devouring the fetid spit;
And sometimes a subtler force struck at the corruption itself, causing it to momentarily falter and fade.
This power… was uncanny.
It was neither the pure blaze of star-magic nor the frigid void of necromancy Raine had imagined.
It felt like… balance.
A subtle force moving between light and shadow, life and decay.
And now that force sheltered him, fending off the silent threats from every direction.
The din of battle waned.
Karrion's breathing grew labored as the beasts' shrieks and movements subsided.
After a final dull thud, the mire fell silent once more.
Only the trio's ragged breaths and the soft hiss of dissolving matter remained.
"All… all of them?" Raine panted, pain still blazing from his calf wound.
"Aye… all gone," Karrion rasped, exhaustion thick in his tone. "Bloody things… far more tenacious than I figured."
He stepped to Raine's side, crouching to examine the wound.
"How are you, lad?"
"I'll live… Thalia tended it." Raine noted the corrosive burn had eased, though the sting remained fierce.
"That's a relief," Karrion exhaled. "That venom's a blight—one drop and it eats chunk of flesh."
He rose, surveying the aftermath.
"Bah! A bunch of muck-spawn and shadow-beasts! No clue what else this damned wood can conjure!"
The dwarf launched into loud complaint—his method of stress relief.
"Strong as an ox, they burrow, climb trees, spit venom… all-purpose warriors, they are!"
"And that shell—hard as dwarf-forged shield! My old axeheads are worn to nubs!"
Raine had no mind for Karrion's venting.
He strained to turn toward Thalia, seeking the hint of that momentary light he'd sensed.
During the fiercest flurry—when the venom struck him and Thalia had swooped in to shield him…
He'd glimpsed a flicker of unusual radiance.
So faint, so fleeting—like a dying wick flickering out.
Had it come from… the area of Thalia's breast?
A trick of the mind?
A hallucination brought on by psychic strain?
He could not be sure.
Yet at that instant, he'd sensed the air warm ever so slightly and the oppressive stench briefly vanish.
Now he "looked" to Thalia again.
Still a murky silhouette, but he sensed her condition was off.
Her breathing was more rapid, edged with restless turmoil.
She swayed for a heartbeat, then braced herself.
"Thalia?" Raine ventured.
"I'm fine," her voice dropped lower, hinting at exhaustion. "Just… drained a bit."
Karrion ceased his ranting and approached.
"Hey, witch, you all right? That was some flashy work back there—but you look worn out," the dwarf said, surprising with a note of concern.
"I'm well enough," Thalia replied evenly. "These creatures resist most forms of energy."
She offered no further explanation.
But Raine's doubts deepened.
That fleeting gleam…
And her unusually pale countenance now…
What was she hiding?
Karrion grumbled on about the "blasted fiends" and the state of his hammer.
Yet Raine's mind was elsewhere.
They were being hunted.
By a predator unknown, powerful, and merciless.
And his companion, the mysterious shadow-witch, bore some hidden, immense burden.
The path ahead lay shrouded in mist and rife with peril.
And from the darkness, many more eyes seemed to watch, wordlessly.