Guardian

The light winked out. The mana sheath Nathan had forced around his blade flickered, then died—steel plain and heavy in his hands. The swamp still glowed faintly—fungus slicks pulsing violet on the trees, motes drifting pale through the mist—but the loss of his own light felt like being dropped in cold water.

His grip slipped. “The mana—it’s not wrapping!” The words tore out of him, thin against the bubbling laughter rippling through the swamp.

A mercenary nearby slipped in the sucking mud, buckler half-raised. A slick arm of sludge coiled around his calf and yanked. He went down with a strangled cry—until Ronan was there, hauling him upright in one brutal jerk and shoving him back toward the rear line. “Hold formation!”

Alia darted forward, glass already in her hand. She hurled it down, the vial shattering in a hiss of smoke that ate through the clinging muck. “You’re clear,” she said evenly, catching the merc’s arm and guiding him toward safety before kneeling to bind his bleeding leg.

Tamsin darted into the gap, knives flashing. She split the thing’s head clean in two. The laughter fractured—one voice becoming two—even as the slime writhed, already pulling itself back together.

“They’re reshaping!” she spat.

“Nyx!” Sera barked.

Nyx’s stylus sketched furiously, sigils sparking one by one down the women’s blades. Bren’s shield and short sword lit faint blue, Sera’s longsword flared bright, even Tamsin’s twin knives caught a flicker. “Hold steady,” Nyx muttered, voice thin but fierce. “Reinforce, bind, cut.”

Across the line, Ronan’s voice cut low and sharp. “Loose!”

A mercenary’s crossbow answered first, bolt flaring as it slammed into a sludge-thing’s chest and burst in a spray of steam. Another man’s axe shimmered with frost as he hacked through a grin too wide for any face. Sparks burst from a sword edge as the third merc joined in, each blow heavier, hotter—brighter than the crew’s newly-augmented steel.

Sera risked a glance, breath catching. “Their augments—”

“Everything from the manor’s been enhanced,” Ronan said flatly, cutting another horror down with a burning sweep of his own blade.

“Behind!” Bren barked.

The water erupted. A corpse-thing lunged out, claws locking around one of the wounded mercs. Nathan caught the man’s wrist, boots skidding, and nearly lost him to the pull—until Nyx’s stylus carved a quick sigil across the air. The glyph flared. The swamp-hands shredded away in smoke. The merc stumbled upright just as Ronan’s augmented greatsword hacked down, leaving the air tasting of scorched iron.

“Fuck!” Nathan gasped. His sword was still just a dead bar of metal in his grip. No glow, no strength.

A streak of light cut past him—a crossbow bolt humming bright, its augment biting deep into a sludge-thing’s chest. The creature reeled back in pieces, and Nathan turned to glimpse one of the mercs bracing the crossbow for another shot, face pale but steady.

Ronan was already moving, greatsword sweeping, his bulk a wall between Nathan and the laughter that pressed closer from every side. “Eyes up!”

“Focus!” Nyx’s voice was sharp.

“Not exactly a switch I can flip!” Nathan snarled back, his knuckles whitening on the hilt.

Faces smeared with hollow eyes rose from the muck, limbs bending wrong. Mouths gaped wide, bristling with too many sharp teeth—but the laughter filling the swamp was bodiless, echoing from every side like too many throats forced into one voice.

“Children’s choir from hell!” Nathan blurted.

“Get it together, rookie!” Tamsin darted low, knives flashing.

“We’re covering you.” Bren planted herself solid, shield braced, short sword stabbing arcs through the mist.

Ronan hacked clean through a spawn—only for it to slump, shudder, and re-knit itself from the slurry.

Nyx’s stylus flared, a sigil snapping into place midair. “Sever!” The glyph burned like a brand across the sludge-thing’s chest, light searing through muck until the shape collapsed into steaming tar.

For a heartbeat the swamp stilled—steam curling in the gap, enough for everyone to register that it worked. Then the mire surged again.

Her shoulders shook, breath ragged, but her eyes stayed locked on the next target.

Nathan lifted his blade, both hands tight on the hilt—and the panic cracked.

C’mon, c'mon, work already. They’re holding the line for you.

The mana in his chest stirred, faint at first, like a shiver in his lungs. He grabbed at the feeling, urged it on. The churn grew, spinning faster, rushing down his arms. Cold fire threaded through his veins, pooling at his fingertips as if it had been waiting there all along.

The wrap didn’t catch. Mana snapped free of his grip, arcing along the sword in erratic lashes of current. The blade quivered, edges glowing raw and unstable, before the surge cracked forward into the creature.

The thing convulsed. Its shape buckled as if yanked backward, strands of warped light tearing free—fragments fizzing apart in the air. Most guttered into the mist. A few jittered close, brushing his chest before scattering like sparks drowning in water.

The spark remnants licked through him in their wake. His breath caught. Whispers clung inside his skull, too high, too eager to laugh through his throat. He slammed his jaw shut. Not mine. Not my laugh.

The husk shrank, teeth still chattering in a pitiful giggle before melting back into formless muck.

Sera’s blade froze mid-swing. “What in the—”

Bren swore. “It just… shriveled.”

Tamsin spat slime. “That was fantastic!”

Nathan’s voice cracked. “I—I don’t know what I did. Felt like I just knocked something out of it. Like—like knocking the stuffing out of a stuffed animal.”

Nyx’s eyes sharpened. “Stuffing? No. You forced its mana loose—you drained it. Did you absorb some of it?”

Nathan swallowed. “Yeah… it felt weird.”

Ronan didn’t pause his swing. “Whatever it is—do it again.”

“I’ll try,” Nathan managed.

The mercs surged forward with the women, steel and augments flashing. One’s sword cleaved deeper than iron had any right to, the edge burning white-hot as it split a sludge-thing in half. Another’s mace sang with heat, chain glowing red as it smashed through a dripping grin. The archer, crossbow steady, each bolt trailing streaks of light through the fog.

For a breath, the line held.

Nathan reached out to a few more motes drifting near him and absorbed them. He felt the churn again—that cold fire scraping through his veins, too much, too wild. His grip slipped. “This… isn’t in the handbook,” he rasped.

The shapes pressed closer, teeth snapping, claws reaching. Panic surged.

For one heartbeat, even the laughter held, like the swamp was waiting to see if he’d fail.

He clenched both hands on the hilt, lifted his blade, and shouted.

“Stand back!”

The current ripped free. Not neat, not clean. It tore out of him in a wave, slamming into the swarm. Light shattered across the muck as five, six, seven of the things convulsed at once. Their bodies collapsed inward, as if their own weight betrayed them—spines bending, limbs folding until shapes sagged like rotten cloth. Warped light ripped free, shredding from their cores in jagged strands that fizzled apart in the mist. Laughter shredding into static before the husks dissolved into muck slurry.

The survivors staggered, shapes wobbling, edges sloughing apart.

“Push!” Sera snapped.

Bren barreled forward, shield slamming a half-formed grin back into the mud. Tamsin’s knives flashed, pinning another through what passed for a throat. A merc’s mace rang out, chain glowing hot as it shattered a third.

The last straggler clawed upright—only for Nyx’s stylus to carve a sigil across the air. “Sever!” Light branded its chest, tearing the muck apart until nothing remained but steaming sludge.

The eerie laughter that had been permeating the swamp broke.

Silence followed, broken only by ragged breathing and the drip of black water.

Nathan staggered, chest heaving, sweat slicking his grip on the hilt. “I’m… drained.”

The others fell back into line, shoulders rising and falling, each breath harsh in the thinning mist. Steel tips drooped for a heartbeat before lifting again. Bren leaned hard on her shield, chest heaving. Tamsin spat black muck and wiped her brow with a trembling hand. Even the mercs, steadier by habit, bent at the knees, drawing ragged breaths through clenched teeth.

For one strained moment, no one pressed forward. Just the sound of their breathing, rough and uneven, filling the sudden silence.

A quick breather.

Ronan crossed to where Alia crouched with the injured. She glanced up as she tightened a bandage.
“I’ve done what I can for now,” she said evenly.

His reply was just as flat, but weighted. “You stood with them. That matters.”

Alia gave a small nod and rose, moving down the line to tend to the others, hands steady, efficient.

Then the swamp mist thinned. Dark water swirled, pulling—and the body of the merc who had been dragged under surfaced, face slack, eyes wide to nothing. Alia didn’t even need to check.

Bren swore under her breath. Sera’s jaw locked tight. No one spoke.

Nathan shuddered.

Ronan waded forward. He didn’t flinch. Just knelt, fingers finding the catch on the dead man’s bracer. A thin rectangular piece of metal slid free from the hidden slot, no larger than a matchbook. Ronan pocketed it without ceremony, leaving the body to sink.

Nathan’s breath snagged. He glanced down at his own bracer, suddenly aware of the faint seam running along the inside. A slot. How had he never noticed?

Nathan gaped. “What—what was that?”

Ronan didn’t look at him. “Guild tag. Proof of service. Families get this back.”

The other mercs closed ranks, silent. One grabbed the dead man’s sword, gripping it tight with his free hand. Each of the four men did a quick and silent head bow, before checking weapons again.

Nathan swallowed, bile thick in his throat. “…That’s it? No funeral? No—”

“Not here.” Ronan’s voice was stone. “Not in the mud. He fought. He’ll be honored.”

Sera added quietly, “That’s more than one can usually get in a dungeon. Typically if one falls in battle, there isn’t even time to grab the tag.”

The silence held, heavy and damp.

Nathan dragged a hand across his face, trying to steady his breath—then froze. Something pale glinted half-buried in the muck a few feet away, faintly luminous under the drifting motes. At first he thought it was another fragment of the creatures they’d just killed. Then he realized it was smooth, oval, and pulsing faintly.

An egg?

The shell split with a wet pop. Slime oozed out, strings snapping as something pale and rubbery pushed free. It flopped in the muck, skin slick, gurgling bubbles through a hole where a mouth should be.

Nathan gagged. “Oh, that is foul—”

Then it lifted sludge-like tendrils toward him, wobbling. Like it wanted a hug.

It giggled. Thin. Wrong.

Sera and Alia both recoiled, wincing.

Nathan yelped, stumbling back with his sword up. “What the fuck is this creepy thing?! A loot drop?”

Tamsin leaned in, expression flat. “…Adorable.”

“It is not adorable!” Nathan’s voice cracked with outrage, the kind reserved for when someone handed you a tarantula and called it a kitten. “It’s a—”

The husk lurched forward an inch, mucky tendrils still outstretched, and giggled again.

“—a nightmare doll made of swamp vomit!”

Bren planted a boot beside it, unimpressed, short sword hanging loose at her side. “I can just stomp it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Nyx rasped, coughing swamp water but fierce, eyes fever-bright. “Aberrant spawn that didn’t dissolve? That’s unprecedented. Jar it. Now.”

Nathan gawked at her, then at the husk still wobbling like it expected a cuddle. He scooped it up, gagging as it sagged in his palm—like a stress ball made of nightmares.

Nyx extended an open jar toward him. “Nathan—does it affect you?”

He hesitated, the grotesque little thing writhing in his gloves. “…No. Actually feels kind of warm?”

He plopped it in.

Nyx slammed the lid on and shoved the jar into her pouch, quick and practiced, like she half-expected it to bite through the glass. “We’ll study it later.”

“This dungeon has it out for me,” Nathan muttered.

A muffled giggle escaped from the pouch. It lingered in his ears longer than it should have. Even sealed, the thing felt less like loot, more like the swamp whispering it wasn’t done with them.

Then the water surged.

Nathan shouted, “Ohhh, what now?!”

“Hold—!” Sera barked, but the ground gave way before the word finished.

The swamp heaved like a lung, then collapsed into a churning whirlpool. Mud tore out from under their boots. Black water spiraled down, sucking everything with it.

Ronan bellowed something unintelligible as Nathan’s footing vanished.

He plunged under. Cold swallowed him whole, pressure crushing his chest. He thrashed, clawing at empty water, lungs burning.

Panic roared through him—then light blazed through his ribs, mana streaming down his arm and coiling tight around the sword’s hilt.

The blade snapped back into his grip with a thrum of heat that rippled through the water.

Nathan’s chest burned, lungs screaming.

Then his tailbone slammed against something solid. The impact knocked the air from him as Nyx crashed across his legs. More bodies thudded down in a ragged heap, everyone coughing and gagging.

The muck sluiced past, leaving them sprawled across mud-slick stone.

The swamp had spat them into a vast cavern, ooze-veined and glowing faintly sick.

Water sheeted down the walls, draining into a wide basin that reeked of rot.

Nathan hacked up a mouthful of swamp water, rolled to his side, and croaked, “Fuck… spas really have gone downhill.”

No one laughed.

Then the cavern heaved, a groan rising from stone and root as if the whole place were about to tear open.

Mist clung low across the basin, stirred by ripples that kept widening. Beneath the water’s skin, pale motes glimmered in tangled veins—threads converging, streaming inward.

At first Nathan thought the basin itself was swelling, the water doming. But it didn’t stop. It climbed higher—ten feet, twenty, thirty—until the roof of the cavern seemed ready to burst. A wall of black ooze heaved upward, filling half the cavern’s span and blotting out the glow of the walls.

Mouths studded its bulk. Dozens. Hundreds. Some wide as doors, teeth grinding in wet clacks. Others no larger than pinholes, whispering like leaking steam. Between them bulged sockets that blinked without pupils, half-formed eyes rolling in slime. Tendrils as thick as trees slapped onto stone, anchoring the mass as it dragged outward, roots groping for prey.

And then all of them opened.

A hundred mouths shrieked, laughed, sobbed—layered together in a sound that bent the air.

Nathan’s stomach lurched. That wasn’t a monster. That was the whole damn dungeon wearing a face. The bulk pulsed upward, bigger than any house he’d ever seen, bigger than the manor itself. Boss room. And the boss is fucking ginormous.

“Guardian!” Sera’s shout cut through, echoed raggedly by a merc behind her.

One of those tendrils scythed across the cavern, slamming a man down. His scream gargled out—and stayed down.

Alia hurled a vial that burst like lightning; for one heartbeat the air smelled of copper and herbs before the rot rolled back meaner.

Bren cursed, bracing behind her dented shield, then kicked a mouth’s teeth down its own throat with a crack.

Tamsin dove into a gap, blades flashing, and split a spawn from chin to crown. Black ichor sprayed; she spat blood and kept moving.

Nathan staggered forward—or the swamp shoved him. Either way the sword came alive in his hands, cutting a line of unbearable light that burned even when he blinked. He slashed. A tendril fell. He slashed again. Spawn popped like overripe fruit, then shriveled into infant husks, their pitiful giggles threading through his skull.

The Guardian drank. Motes streamed into its bulk like rivers down a throat, the cavern shuddering with each swallow.

Nathan saw it too clearly now. A vein of light pulsing through mud, root, and stone, feeding the Guardian. It wasn’t standing in the swamp. It was the swamp’s throat, gulping. Each swallow swelled it. Each swell squeezed the cavern tighter.

“Do you see it?” Nathan rasped. “The vein—under the root cage!”

Ronan carved a path without looking up. “Where?”

“There!” Nathan stabbed the air, breath hitching. A thick current of motes funneled through a gutter of muck into the Guardian’s mass. Last time he’d cracked one open with a rock. Not here. Not with this thing.

Ronan’s eyes flicked toward the glow. “I see the stream.”

“Not the stream—the vein it’s pouring from!” Nathan’s voice cracked. “I need to close it!”

A tendril hammered down. The line broke; another merc went still.

Sera’s shield split with a groan—she flung the halves like plates, drew the long blade off her back, and kept fighting.

Ronan’s jaw tightened. “Close it?”

“Yes,” Nathan said, sudden and certain.

Nyx’s voice cut through the din. “Yes! Do not widen. Constrict! Bind it like a wound—hold!”

A tendril the size of a tree slammed her sideways into a fungus-slick pillar. The crack echoed.

“Nyx!” The shout tore Nathan’s throat. He lunged—

Ronan barred an arm across his chest and yanked him back. A tendril smashed where his skull had been; the shockwave thumped his lungs. “Snap out of it,” Ronan barked. “Fight.”

Through the mist: Nyx crumpled against the pillar, chest moving shallow but steady. Down, not dead.

He was done watching.

“More.”

Motes stirred near him, restless.

Nathan raised his sword, breath breaking. “I said—MORE!”

They obeyed.

Stars ripped out of the air and speared his chest. Light raced his nerves. Bands wrapped torso, arms, thighs—armor poured and set in an instant.

The sword flared from flicker to pillar.

Spawn flinched. The Guardian’s nearest mouths snapped shut.

Nathan moved and the bands moved with him. He slashed—one tendril dropped, its motes collapsing inward. Laughter rose like broken bells in his skull; he forced it down, teeth bared.

Tamsin skidded close, catching the glow under his skin. She let out a rasped whistle. “Still nightmare fuel. I’ll take it.”

“Keep it on him,” Sera snapped, dragging herself upright. “Give him time.”

“Or cover,” Bren muttered, hacking a short sword through another spawn. “Too damn bright.”

Tamsin and Sera ripped a gap. Bren jammed steel like a crowbar and held it. “Make it quick!”

Nathan waded into the wash of light. Tendrils beat the air like pillars. Ronan took one on his shoulder, slid under the next, cut the third—nightmare-practice turned execution.

There—the vein.

The flow, bright and stubborn, humming beneath a root cluster. He drove his blade in—not to split, but to pin. Light met light. The current bucked, trying to surge up the steel into his chest.

“Hold,” Ronan said, close and rough.

Nathan didn’t pull this time. He wrapped. Bands threaded forearms, ribs, thighs, tightening—the way you twist a belt and jam a stick to stop the blood. Cold burn bit; his teeth clicked.

“Don’t spill,” he panted at the flow, soothing it like a skittish horse. “Stay tight.”

The current fought like a jaw clamped on his hands. Mine, it pressed. He answered with pressure, not force—narrowing the channel, folding light around light until the rush pinched to a thread.

The Guardian shuddered.

Hundreds of mouths shrieked at once—laughter, prayer, pleading—flattening to static. Its mass didn’t explode; it deflated, cinched in the middle. Tendrils sagged. One slapped weakly and lay twitching.

“Again!” Sera’s voice broke with sudden hope.

“Keep it shut!” Tamsin—already carving a tendril trying to re-knit. “No sips!”

Nathan tightened the tourniquet. Every turn salted his vision with sparks. Bands bit his ribs; the wrong laughter tried to use his mouth. He bit his lip until iron cut the taste.

“Have you got it?” Ronan said, still hacking at the Guardian in merciless arcs.

His arms shook, the bind fighting him like a living thing. He knew one more twist would either close the vein—or tear him apart. For half a heartbeat, he almost let go.

Nathan twisted the bind a final quarter-turn.

“SEAL.”

The word detonated through him. Light scalded marrow, split across nerves, cinched the bands until his joints cracked. White swallowed his sight. His chest felt split by the pressure, every heartbeat threatening to burst him from the inside. For a blink he heard his bones scream.

The Guardian convulsed. Its bulk cinched in thirds, knots tying in a living sack. Muck geysered outward; mouths ripped open and fused shut in the same breath. Tendrils whipped, cracked stone, then sagged.

It didn’t unravel at once but in layers—its mass unmaking itself, slabs sloughing away until nothing stood. Each mouth sealed in silence as it fell, teeth knitting back into sludge like it was ashamed to be seen.

Nathan staggered. Every breath was a knife, his hands shaking on the hilt. He wasn’t sure if he was holding the blade—or if it was holding him.

At last the sword dimmed, sagging heavy in his grip. Silence pooled thick, broken only by the wet drip from the cavern ceiling. Then stone and root heaved upward, thrusting a pillar through the mire. At its crown rested a chest of ancient wood, banded in tarnished iron, seams glowing faint gold.

He swayed, nerves raw. “Does that… did we win? No more sludge monsters?” His voice was sandpaper.

Ronan steadied him against a pillar.

For a long moment, no one answered. Only the hiss of settling muck, the basin stilled, the last few motes drifting thin and faint.

The cavern groaned.

Stone shuddered, roots creaked, and the air bent. Cracks of gold split through the mist, spiderwebbing until the whole cavern seemed to buckle around them. With a soundless rip, the seam widened—light pouring through like a wound in the world. A portal bloomed open, edges molten, the interior rippling with impossible color.

Nathan blinked blearily at the swirl of colors. His lips parted on a dazed laugh. “That’s… cool.”

Alia staggered to Nyx, already pulling vials from her satchel. “She’s breathing,” she said quickly, hands steady though her face was pale. “Cracked ribs, maybe worse—but alive.”

Tamsin sagged against the wall nearby, one hand pressed to a gash along her ribs. She managed a crooked grin anyway. “Still prettier than me.”

Sera nodded and pressed a bloody hand to her thigh, gaze fixed on the chest. “Collect it. We’ll sort later.” And then she headed to Alia to help carry Nyx.

No one reached for the chest at first. It sat on its pillar like bait in a trap, light pulsing in the mist. The silence stretched, broken only by the rasp of breath and the scrape of gear as the others readied to move.

Bren muttered something sharp under her breath, set her sword aside, and hauled the chest open.

Inside gleamed bundles of coin, a knife humming faint blue, a sphere of glass filled with fireflies that weren’t fireflies, and a band of metal that pulsed like a heartbeat. Bren shifted each quickly into cloth, practiced hands efficient, no motion wasted.

For a moment, something smaller caught the light—a coin-sized disc of glass in a bronze frame. The surface didn’t reflect her face, only a shifting blur, like water disturbed. Glyphs flickered once along the rim before she wrapped it away. Nathan’s vision swam; everything glowed and shifted until he had to look aside before it made him sick.

Ronan had already gone to the fallen. He didn’t linger—just crouched, slid a thin tag free from each man’s bracer slot, and pocketed them. The two dead were left to the muddy stone.

When he rose, his gaze found the two mercs still standing. He crossed to the bowman first, setting a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Oris.”

Then to the merc with the mace. Ronan’s palm landed firm on his shoulder. “Kerric.”

Neither spoke, but both straightened under the weight of it. A merc’s acknowledgement—alive, and still counted.

Darkness crept at the edges of Nathan’s vision. His knees buckled.

Ronan’s arm locked under his shoulders, hauling him up like he weighed nothing. “Got you,” the man rumbled. “You did good, kid.”

I’m not a kid, Nathan thought stubbornly, even as the black pressed harder.

Daylight spilled through the portal ahead—an exit waiting.

And he let go.