The Twice-Enchanted Blade: Part 13

It was the second day since we entered the marsh. We were sitting around a sorry little excuse for a fire, which we had to resort to Annabel’s detested fire magic to create in the first place, on a tiny, damp island that was the closest thing to dry land in this forsaken swamp. Whether we made any meaningful progress towards our goal, we had no idea. At least, we weren’t going in circles, as I made sure to carve signs into any notable tree we came across, and we didn’t stumble into any of them yet.

By this point, we had become one with the mud. It permeated our clothes, our skin, our equipment. I was roasting a few plump frogs over the fire. Annabel, meanwhile, was making a bird-like effigy out of the mud. When she finished that part of the job, she started an incantation, and the object in her hand started moving, gaining the characteristics of an actual sparrow. It made a few cautious hops along the ground, then, at the sorceress’ command, flew directly upwards. Like the last dozen or so times she attempted this, the tiny familiar plunged back to the ground in mere seconds, crushed to pieces.

“Not again!” Annabel was clutching her fists in anger, “I hoped to catch at least a glimpse of what’s taking them down, but they never manage to clear the fog, and noticing threats before that is nigh impossible”.

“We’ll just have to find that tree the old-fashioned way then”, I responded phlegmatically while offering her a roast frog, “You better give up on this fool’s errand. Maybe if you could make a bunch of these familiars, some of them could break through, but even then you’d need to repeat the ritual every half hour to make sure we didn’t wander off course”.

“Multiple! That’s it!” New enthusiasm gleamed in her eyes, and she started mucking about in the mud again.

“Did you not hear the rest of the sentence?”, I said exasperatedly, “We may briefly go in the correct direction, but unless you repeat it -”

“I heard you, alright!”, she cut me off, trying to focus on her work. “I just want to know how far we are from that damned tree, if it exists at all – it could’ve rotted away centuries ago for all I know. Without a rough estimate of how much longer I’ll have to spend in this bog, I think I’ll go insane!”

Seeing as she was irritable, I left her alone, silently chomping on my frog. And when this attempt inevitably failed, I hoped she would finally give up.

Annabel distributed a dozen or so effigies around herself, then began to chant again. Once again, little mud figurines came to life and flew into the fog. And once again, their remains started dropping to the ground. One. Two. Four. Seven. Nine.

“Three of them made it through!”, she shouted, beaming with excitement, “It’s some birds that’s been knocking them down – damn ugly things. I think I can avoid them for a while now that I can see them”.

She spent another few seconds in silent concentration, then suddenly pointed her finger somewhere to her left. “That way! Now, that is one massive tree! Must be our target, can’t see any other candidates. Now let me just try to gauge the distance...”

Another familiar hit the ground. I mark the direction Annabel was pointing at with my sword. She closed her eyes, now fully focused on directing the birds. It was a good few minutes before she finally opened her eyes, breathing heavily.

“Well, we have a direction for now, but this seems awfully exhausting for you”, I said, “Are you sure you can do this again if we need to course correct?”

“I’d rather not have to command this many bird familiars at once ever again”, she admitted, “but there won’t be a need to. I know the approximate location of our goal, so a simple guiding light will suffice”. She was already conjuring a pale glowing orb, about the size of my fist.

“How are we going to tell it apart from all the will-o'-the-wisps?” I asked. Various luminescent phenomena, whether natural or supernatural, were a constant mild annoyance during our journey.

“Good point”, she changed the orb’s color to a warm pink, then smiled. “It’s much cuter this way anyway”.

We followed the guiding light as well as we could, though Annabel had to halt its advance every now and then as we went around particularly dangerous bits of terrain. For a good chunk of the night, we pressed on, then made a break at yet another small island.

The next day, the swamp finally fully showed its hand. Ever since we entered the marsh, the only thing that resembled an illusion was the will-o'-the-wisps, which couldn’t trick anyone who knew the place was uninhabited. I had concluded, to both my relief and slight disappointment, that it was the best the bog could do. It turned out I was wrong.

It was isolated pictures at first. King Philoctetes’ Bellum table. My room back in Hieropolis. The feast in Zh’el-Ezniq. Each scene felt a bit closer, a bit more real, a bit larger than the last. Every time, the nagging feeling that the swamp was merely a figment of my imagination, a dream conjured up in a moment of idleness that grew too intense, became harder to shrug off.

Then it happened. One moment, a giant newt was uncomfortably slithering across my foot, the next, I found myself back on the streets of my home city. It was the full package this time. Poorly maintained historical buildings were standing next to modern glass complexes. Machines were moving down the road, carrying their passengers to who-knows-where, making a characteristic roar – for this time, there was sound. And not only sound but smell, the stench of burning fuel that I had almost forgotten in these past few years. Other people were walking along the sidewalk, minding their own business.

Further down the road, I saw a small café, and in front of it, the familiar figure of my wife. She smiled and waved at me. I did the same. This whole adventuring business, I thought, might have been nothing but a particularly vivid daydream. I pondered whether to tell her about it, afraid it would make her worry for my mental well-being. Maybe when we get home. No need for extra stress when she returns to work from her break.

I started walking towards our usual meeting spot, but it was rough going, as if wading through molasses, each step taking more effort than the last. The slowness of my progress angered me. I last saw my wife this morning, my brain told me, but I felt as if it had been years, and I yearned to talk to her. As I was halfway there, someone grabbed me from behind, and I heard a familiar voice:

“I don’t know what you are seeing, but it isn’t real. Follow the light. This way”. I was being dragged to my right, towards a building. My attempts at resistance went surprisingly poorly, as I couldn’t keep balance for some reason, until my wife glanced at me with a sad, puzzled look, and I got drawn into a wall, passing through it with no resistance.

Then the world lost all coherence, and I was fumbling my way through a caleidoscope of shapes and colors. Yet at any given moment, there was a faint pink light somewhere around, and I was constantly nudged into fumbling my way towards it. I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually the nudging stopped, the light disappeared, and I sat on the ground, confused beyond all reason.

It took me a while to come back to my senses. When I did, I noticed I was in some sort of clearing. The mist was thinner here, and I could see a massive tree in its middle. Finally, I realized Annabel was kneeling next to me, shaking my shoulder, and looking remarkably worried.