Rune of Oldfyre

Chapter Ten

We continued south, where else would we go? The foggy moor had made way for misty swampland. The Chaos Marsh, people really like to get dramatic when they name places. Luckily the path rarely went into the wetland. Which was great. It did, however, run tangent to a creepy old dude's home. Which was less good.

He sat on his porch playing a banjo. Although it could have been a fiddle (I grew up in a loose cultural replica of feudal Europe, I'm not an expert on instruments invented centuries henceforth. Don't judge me). He had some sort of dog sitting at his side. The shack he, I assume, called home was made of wood and a poor knowledge of masonry. The roof was only prevented from a cave in by a tree branch growing within the dwelling.

"Who goes there?" He asked, you could hear the poor education and not-so-subtle racism in his voice.

"Three adventurers." Anya said.

"Adventurers? Hmm." He replied. The "hmm" was drawn out for long several seconds.

"Yes," I said, "We are making our way to Incursia."

"Incursia? Hmm." He said, again drawing out the"hmm" portion. He then motioned for us to approach closer. Upon closer inspection, he was similar in appearance to George Carlin. And the dog wasn't a dog, it was some sort of large reptile. It rested its head on the wooden deck. He noticed us look at it.

"This is Ally, my alligator," he said, "I'm Wallace Walman Wallberg."

"We were wondering if there's a faster way to Incursia from here." Anya said.

"Incursia? Hmm. I never been." He said.

"Well we better get going." I said, hoping we could avoid sleeping anywhere near this dude and his dinosaur.

"Nonsense," He said, damn, "Stay the night. I don't get many visitors."

We were afraid that, had we not obliged him, we would face further dire consequences. So there we sat , in a shack; and playing a board game.

You will never truly comprehend the meaning of 'surreal' until you end up playing fifteen games of dice with a strange man and his alligator, all in the middle of a massive swamp. I still don't fully understand how the day ended like that, but I assume it had something to do with him threatening us with his alligator.

The meal laid out in front of us was some sort of rodent. I decided swamp rat. It had a hint rancid and just a dash of pure unequivocal evil. All in all, not bad. Wallace tried entertaining us by doing some sort of dance he had choreographed. We clapped, hoping it would appease him enough to not kill us (at least Anya and me that is, allister beat us to it).

“Well I think it’s about time we get going.” I said after the food was gone.

“I wouldn’t allow it,” He complained, “The swamp is awfully dangerous at night, stay the night.”

“I really think we should get going.” I insisted.

A few hours later we found ourselves running through a swamp in the darkness. We decided to “stay the night”; but when we were sure Wallace was a sleep, we bolted out of there. He apparently wasn’t sleeping and now he trails our path with a torch screaming. I don’t mean he’s yelling at us to come back, no, he was just produced a constant guttural screaming. It was actually quite disconcerting