Stone Sacrifice ✔️Chronicles of Grey BOOK ONE [COMPLETED]

Chapter Seven

Mud Waters.

Those two words can be put together as one to make mudwaters and that would be the swamps that spread twenty arms up in the north, used as a smugglers port, an illegal fighting ring, a home for deadly creatures to hide and grow and gain strength until they come out into the world and attempt to surprise us by swallowing us whole.

But Mud Waters was a town. No. It was a community of people that had made the mudwaters their town, using the beasts as food, the smugglers for trade, and the fighting for prophet. Most that lived in Mud Waters were thieves and witches and people on the run.

Or at least, that's what it once had been.

But this self-sufficient community had managed to grow. They had children and raised them there, they taught their people to fight and defend themselves instead of to steal or fight away the Knights that hunt for them. Most who spoke of this place said the name with disgust, but any who had been there for any length of time learned to love it.

Oh, it was still filled with deadly creature, thieves and smugglers, and runaways, but it was a home too.

But it has been years since I stepped into the swamp and even longer since I lived there, hidden on a scrap of land as Jovian trained me from noon to night until I was too exhausted to even scratch my bug bites.

In the summer, it was similar to a desert as there was no drinkable water, little shade, and the heat that came from the waters below made you hotter then the air made you. More often then not, people died of starvation and dehydration as they attempted to cross, as the water was too sickly to be drinkable.

In the winter, even late as it was, it was just fine as there was only a bit of warmth from the water. So long as you had water to drink, you were fine.

And so long as you knew your way through the swamp.

We stood on a raft and pushed it through with poles while also keeping sure the pole ahead of the raft was not too low to sink down. The swamp was riddled with drop offs and that was where the darkest of creatures hid, so those were to be avoided at all cost.
However, it was also a maze. Looking around the foggy waters, it looked like there were several places to land only to find that it had been a mass of reeds or ancient, rotting roots from before the Eastwood spread into the mudwaters several hundred years ago. These were the best way to go, however, and when Aitch went to turn us toward a clearer part, I corrected him.

"Go east."

He paused, pole in the water. "But we're going north."

I shrugged, either way would get us where we were going, it would simply be more complicated his way. Aitch hesitated and looked to Arion.

Arion shrugged and motioned, so Aitch turned East as I had said. Not an hour later, we were going North again and there was the first hint of people, sparing on the shore. They paused when they saw us and called out. "Where you headed?"

"North boarder." Arion called back.

"It's high tide for another hour, best rest up at the shore."

Arion called out his thanks and we passed, but then he turned to me. "High tide?"

"Meaning heat." I explained, glad to know something he didn't. "Not the water. Just a slang mud term. Every few days a piece of the waters will turn hot enough to boil."

"We still alright to pass now?"

I nodded. "We can pass, but he's right, we should land at shore for the hour."

He pursed his lips, debating, though I wasn't sure why. When I questioned him, he only gave me a look that said the reasoning was ovbious, which it was not,