by water and cypress trees standing like sentinels around it, was the remnants of a tree like nothing she’d ever seen before. It must have been huge in its time with a trunk easily thirty feet in diameter, but now it was just a husk of its former glory. Several stout limbs grew out of it at odd angles, ending in splayed-out branches that almost resembled fingers. Five wide roots raised the stump off the ground by about six feet, creating a space underneath that might have made for an excellent camping spot.
Then an eye opened on the side of the trunk … then another and another.
“I don’t like this,” Ayela said.
One of the stout root limbs pulled free of the earth as the thing came alive. The bark split along one side, opening a giant maw four feet wide that ran vertically up the side of the tree. Another root came free, revealing a base of splayed-out roots that served as a foot.
“We should leave,” Hector said.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Isabel said.
With two legs free, the tree thrust up and toward them, pulling its other three legs from the ground. The creature stood, turning in the mist, stretching its limbs like it had been sleeping for a very long time. Isabel counted five eyes, seven arms, and three giant mouths. Then it roared. A kind of gibbering, gurgling cackle that shattered the calm of the swamp, filling the deathly still air with madness.
“Run!” Isabel yelled.
And run they did. The swamp creature shambled behind them, splashing through the water, closing the distance with alarming quickness. Isabel looked over her shoulder, trying to reconcile the thing chasing her with everything she understood about reality. It was as if nature herself had gone mad … and the insanity was gaining on Isabel.
With a thought, she sent Scales to entangle the creature’s legs. The giant snake obediently attacked, winding itself around several of the thing’s stout root limbs, hobbling it and slowing its pursuit.
The swamp thing stopped, grabbing the snake with several of its branch-like arms and jerking it away from its legs, then unceremoniously thrusting a section of the snake into one of its giant vertical maws, clamping down so hard that Scales was torn in half, both ends writhing about in pain and panic. Isabel felt the link to her pet sever as he died.
The creature stopped its chase and started eating the snake with all three mouths, stuffing huge sections of the dead reptile into each maw with almost frantic hunger, barely bothering to chew before taking another bite.
Isabel and her companions stopped, staring with macabre fascination as the thing devoured the giant snake in less than a minute. When it was finished, it looked around with its five eyes, each moving independently of the others, but sensing nothing in the immediate vicinity, it started digging into the muddy soil with its roots as, one by one, its eyes began to close.
Isabel motioned to move away quietly. They traveled in silence for over an hour before Hector stopped, shaking his head.
“I’m with Isabel,” Ayela said. “That was literally something out of a nightmare.”
“I kind of feel bad for Scales,” Horace said.
“Me too,” Isabel said, “but I think he saved us.”
“I had the same thought,” Hector said. “I wouldn’t even know where to start in a fight with something like that.”
“Can we just get farther away from it, please?” Ayela said.
Horace pointed at her and nodded.
The ground got firmer and higher as they traveled through the afternoon. There were still plenty of pools of standing water but they became much easier to avoid. Near nightfall, they found a shelf of exposed stone that was big enough for them to make camp. Isabel used her light-lance to ignite a damp log and give them some much-needed warmth and light for the night.
She was sitting her watch in the middle of the night when Ayela came awake with a start. She looked around wildly before taking a deep breath and calming herself.
“Nightmare?” Isabel asked quietly.
“Sort of,” Ayela whispered. “An old woman came to me, here at this exact spot, and told me the path we must follow. She showed me the soldiers coming through the night and said we would only survive if we did as she instructed.”
“That sounds pretty specific,” Isabel said, sitting up a little straighter.