Fantasy: The Beginning of the End

Fantasy: The Beginning of the End - Z. Smith - Part One: The End - Chapter Eight

"Don't get me wrong," Darius was saying, "I like exercise as much as the next guy. Push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups... other-ups... But I didn't sign up—"

"We didn't sign up; we were ordered."

"Right! I didn't sign up for this mission just to complete a triathlon for King Friggin' Colu!"

"Don't call the king that, Darius," I grunted, though hardly caring what he called King Colu at the moment.

"Then get him out here to climb these damn rocks!" Darius howled ahead of me as he scaled up a gray boulder.

Despite my insistence that the king was not a self-righteous and arrogant prick, as Darius so delicately described our liege, I would be lying to say I did not feel similar ill-will toward our betters at the moment. The three of us had set out early that morning from our campsite, thankful that the rest of the night had been blissfully peaceful and that we had not been set upon by a horde of stinking Strawmen. We had traveled northwest a while, skirting the foothills of the towering Perils before finally finding a pass leading north through the mountain chain, just as Inquisitor Redmane had assured us we would.

What the good Inquisitor neglected to mention was the gap was little more than a rocky crag one had to perpetually scale up and down while trying not to bust one's skull open on a stray jagged edge. Darius, Leta, and I had spent the better part of the afternoon climbing up the perilous slabs and boulders, and we were finally making our descent on the opposite side of the mountains.

"All I wanted," Darius complained, "was to walk through some mountains, see some wildlife, and eat my muffin. But no! The walking has to be rock-climbing; the wildlife has to be murderous; and the damn Inquisitor had to eat my muffin!"

"Where did you get that muffin, exactly?" I asked, attempting not to stumble down some loose rocks.

"Mind your own business!"

Darius had become increasingly irritable as the day progressed, and even I began to feel the strain of our journey. It seemed we had hit one pitfall after another, and for once I wished something would go smoothly on our mission. I knew complaining would do little to change our predicament, but as we mounted a ledge overlooking the mire stretching before us, I found a pit of apprehension growing in my chest.

The Miserable Swamp lay before us like a sleeping hornets' nest; a patch sea of ages-old trees grew precariously upward from murky brown waters. A thousand bug sounds emanated from the fetid mass, starting from the slow hum of buzzing stingers to the mind-shattering din of cicadas. A row of frosty, gray mountains rose up on the far side of the mire, but my eyes immediately focused not on these distant peaks, but rather the black, unusual blemish growing in the center of the swamp. A solitary mountain stood impassively in the middle of the tangled bog; its trio of jet-black peaks glinted in the strangely warm afternoon sun. While an unusual sight to be sure, I found the unorthodox presence to be oddly ominous. There was something off about the forlorn mountain, and despite the heat rising from the quagmire below us, I felt a chill as I gazed at those black spires.

"That's Mount Dusk," Leta said, pointing to the lonely peaks I had been staring at. "We'd do best to avoid it and try to keep to the edges of the mire. The further in we go, the more dangerous the Miserable Swamp will become."

"Agreed," I assented, and Darius grunted his approval. We began our trek further down the gap, at last reaching a squishy mass of brownish grass mixed with bog water. The smell of swamp was incredible; I had never encountered such an unbelievable stench. I felt my eyes burn and water, and I began to feel sweat beading up on my lower back.