Whispers from the Dark

10.2 The Wetlands

hey dear readers. This is not a very long chapter and without any action, but new horrors, drama and action will haunt their path. keep reading and you'll find out more! Please leave a vote if you like it or any comments are welcome. 

We'd been trotting around for a while and I must have lost consciousness at some point for when I opened my eyes, we were surrounded by only marshland. There were no green hills anymore. We were surrounded by small bushes and watery, slimly islands surrounded by smelly brown looking puddles. The moss we walked on was sloppy and wet. There was a continuously humming noise of buzzing insects. Sometimes you could hear an eagle cry, but mostly you heard the small sounds of creeping insects and fish at the edge of the puddles. It smelled a bit humid and rotten now and then. I tried to look over my shoulder, but a searing pain stopped me. I felt the wound on my back bleed again. "Good, you're awake," Ash said as he let the horse slow down until we stood still. I groaned a bit as an answer. I didn't really want to be awake. Everything seemed to hurt in my body. The wound on my arm looked like a third degree burn wound. The skin scorched from the heat stood a little aside, showing the deeper red skin underneath. "I was afraid I lost you at some point. You just didn't seem to wake up. But your wolf let me know that you were still alive. I think he would have made more noise if you were dying," Ash said as he looked down at Artemis with a smile. He stepped off his horse and helped me off him as well. When I tried to stand, my legs gave away underneath me and I slumped against Ash. "I think my energy source is empty for now," I grinned with gritted teeth as he pulled me off the ground and carried me towards a small rocky place with bushes. He chuckled a little and carefully placed me against a flat rock covered with moss. Artemis immediately curled himself around me and pushed his head under my hand. I scratched him behind his ears while I watched Ash set up a small camp.

The marshes were a place that everyone avoided. People used to travel through this place called the Wetlands, before the war with the Fiend. They would use the main route to get to the Temple of Veras. But since the war people anxiously avoided the Wetlands. They got a new name: The Marshes of the Fiend. People who have experienced the war with the Fiend, say that the Fiend remained here. On these waters sailed a small boat with a lonely captain. He was holding a spear in his skeleton hand and wearing a simple long black cloak with a big hood. You wouldn't be able to see his face, but his yellow eyes could search through your head. Finding your biggest fears and bringing them to life if you would refuse to step into the boat and descend the stairs into the darkness. You knew that if the boat of the Fiend would approach you, you wouldn't survive. I knew a little of the Fiend. I knew for example he could change shape and was very good at seducing his victims to follow him. He could for example change into a very handsome and charming men, you'd immediately trust. And then he would turn back in his horrific form and take your soul into the dark.

According to the journals of Barnabas, the Fiend and his followers live in a different plane of existence. Known as the Underworld. Only a person invited by the Fiend or seduced to walk down the stairs in the boat, could come to this awful place. Not much is known about the Underworld, for not many lived to retell the experience. So, Barnabas had not much knowledge of the Underworld. He did however write down what the bargain was he, other mages and the former high king Talron made with the Fiend. They had made a deal with the Fiend as they probably couldn't destroy him back then. He would live in the Underworld and in return was allowed to spend one day each year on the Mid Realm, which was the realm we were in right now. When or where the Fiend would appear and make his victim, was unknown to the mages and Talron. But Barnabas thinks he only for the last few years, appeared outside the Ancestral Region. Which means across the sea, many people had suffered by the hands of the leader from the Underworld. But ever since there is war between the mages and the humans in the Ancestral Region, whispers tell of a dark shadow creeping back into this world. And these whispers were confirmed for me when the demons started to appear in and around the cities. Unfortunately, the high king Edmund and therefore his folk, think that the Necromancers have summoned the demons and the Necromancers think that the high king Edmund summoned the demons. The only persons who knew better and fear that their darkest fears have come true, are the Thieves Guild and the mages, followers of the former Archmage Barnabas, who are scattered around the Ancestral Region. This world was going to fall into darkness if no one would try to stop the Fiend.