Chapter 9: The Mangrove of Red Death
Soma bent down, sweeping broken glass into his palm. Shards scattered across the storeroom floor, catching the light like fragments of ice.
From the kitchen came a warm, familiar voice.
Lunch is ready!
His chest loosened at the sound. He smiled—really smiled—and ran barefoot toward the doorway. There she was: Savitri, his grandmother, sari bright in the afternoon sun, the smell of cumin and earth clinging to her. He threw his arms around her waist, pressing his face to her shoulder. Her warmth sank into him, steady and real.
It was only a bad dream. All of that… nothing but a dream.
The floor buckled.
A deafening roar split the world, ripping through the house like a blade. The kitchen cracked apart, walls folding in like paper. Savitri's form shattered into dust between his arms. The smell of spices burned away, replaced by iron and rot.
Soma gasped as the world tore itself inside out—and jolted awake, sprawled on cold dirt while the valley still roared.
He pressed a hand to his face, forcing the ache down, forcing his grandmother's fading warmth out of his mind. Dwelling on her would break him.
He took a deep breath and looked toward the noise.
At the riverside, dust boiled upward, and through it he glimpsed a storm of movement. Draconic beasts, their scales rippling with violet sheen, slammed into a herd of Armored Bulls. Bronze plates split beneath claws. Hooves struck like thunder, cracking stone as beasts screamed in fury and fear.
For a heartbeat, Soma simply watched. At first, such a sight would have rooted him in horror. But now… he only flexed his hand. Pain answered sharp and raw, dragging a grimace across his face.
I can't use my right hand anymore. If I want to move, I'll have to throw left.
But carrying stones with his injured hand was impossible. If he kept relying only on his left, he'd run out too fast. He needed a way to carry more.
Overhead, countless yellow leaves fluttered. He noticed a few cat-sized black beetles chewing through them, but the leaves themselves never tore. Curious, he plucked one down. It bent in his grip like leather, flexible yet impossibly tough. He tried tearing it with all his strength—nothing. Not even a scratch.
An idea sparked. He gathered two rocks: one small, one heavy as a human head. He dropped the larger to the ground, laid the leaf across it, then hammered the edges with the smaller stone. Bit by bit he punched holes around the rim. With a sharp point of stone, he sliced another leaf into rope-thick strands and threaded them through the holes, sewing the edges together until the leaf folded into a crude cone.
He tied the leftover rope into a belt and slung the cone against his hip. When he slid a few stones inside, it hung like a makeshift holster, snug against his side. Not perfect—but it would hold.
Staggering upright, he filled the new pouch with stones and flew toward the noise.
The fight's end came quickly. One bull fell with its guts spilling in steaming ropes, another collapsed with a draconic beast skewered on its horn like a grotesque trophy. The predator writhed there, half-dead, claws scraping at the bone spike as though refusing to surrender.
Above, two-headed vultures circled, their hooked beaks snapping at one another—but none dared descend while predators still fed.
The smell hit him next. Iron. Rot. The heavy stench of death turned his stomach.
Soma forced himself down to the riverside. He reached out, hand brushing across two faint, flickering souls rising above the dead. They slid into him, cold as knives at first—then searing. His chest clenched; his veins surged with borrowed strength, muscles coiling with sudden heat. For a heartbeat it felt intoxicating, as if he could crush stone barehanded. Then the rush vanished, leaving not just hunger—a craving.
He refused to waste another second.
A stone left his left hand, and the world blurred northward.
The scenery warped into twisted color.
After flying dozens of kilometers, the lush forests of violet and green gave way to something stranger. The green earth soured into a sucking mire, black as tar. Rivers slowed to a crawl, their waters thick and red, like diluted blood.
And the trees… they twisted. Roots clawed above the ground like writhing serpents. Trunks gleamed with wet crimson bark that pulsed faintly, as though veins beat beneath the surface.
Soma slowed, unease crawling through his hollow chest. It felt like stepping into a wound—open flesh carved into the world itself.
The air pressed heavy and wet. Insects whined ceaselessly, swollen and grotesque, their bodies shining with rot. Each breath dragged the taste of mildew and iron across his tongue. Life sounded on all sides—croaks, clicks, shrieks—then stopped, as if cut off by a blade.
At first he thought a pale shape drifting in the water was a fallen tree. Then the smell hit him: harsh, cloying, putrid. The corpse of an alligator floated belly-up, its skin blue-gray and slick, its stomach ripped open to reveal a nest of crawling meat. Maggots—if that word even fit here—swarmed inside the cavity, boiling over one another like foam.
The stench thickened his throat. He forced himself past.
The mud heaved. What first seemed like the swamp breathing became great waves rolling through the mire. The waves did not move like one creature; they heaved like the slow breath of something vast slumbering beneath the mire. Black armored plates broke the surface in segments, vanishing again as if an endless body writhed below. Each shift churned the swamp like an ocean tide.
The thought of that hidden thing gnawed at Soma until he tore his eyes away.
The swamp offered no respite. Mangrove roots rose like the ribs of a colossal skeleton, their crowns dripping parasitic vines that glowed faintly in the gloom. Pools shimmered with oily colors, each bubbling as though something breathed below. Massive fungi clung to trunks; caps wide as rooftops shed spores like drifting ash.
He hurled stones as fast as he could, desperate to put distance between himself and the mire.
Through it all, the silence pressed—as if the swamp itself held its breath.
Then—he saw it, even from a kilometer away.
At the swamp's heart loomed a tree. If it could even be called that.
Closer now, the tree refused to fit inside the mind. From a distance it seemed tall; up close, its trunk was a mass that broke scale. The base spread like an island, roots clawing in every direction until they dissolved into the mire. The trunk vanished into clouds above; even craning his neck until it ached, Soma couldn't find the top.
Crimson bark wept a slow, constant ichor that trickled down its roots, bleeding into the swamp until the waters ran red. Branches spread outward for nearly a kilometer, thick as towers, casting shadows that blotched the dim light. The leaves were monstrous—broad as houses, their undersides alive with shifting shadow.
Near the roots, the mire writhed. Worms as long as boats surfaced in the ichor, mouths ringed with teeth. Fungal growths split their caps to release faint green spores. Batlike things hung in clusters from low limbs: wings studded with spines, eyes flashing red whenever they blinked.
The branches moved. Spiders—dozens—crawled along the limbs. Each was the size of an ox, their bodies glistening with hair and slime. They spun webbing in sheets between branches, sagging under the weight of trapped creatures: some still twitching, others drained to husks. The tree was not part of the jungle; it was its own ecosystem.
Soma clenched his fists. The sight was almost too vast, too grotesque to hold.
The swamp wasn't just alive.
It was watching.
Despite every grotesque sight, he still pressed northward.
He ignored the sights that clawed at his sanity.
Dragonflies the size of men shredded smaller beasts midair; their wings buzzed like saws. Compound eyes reflected every angle at once, cold and alien; serrated mandibles dripped meat.
Then the silence broke with a violent croak. Then another. Then dozens. The swamp erupted into a chorus of three-eyed frogs, voices overlapping until the noise rattled his skull. Frogs vaulted from branch to branch, tongues cracking like whips as they dragged screaming prey into waiting maws.
But Soma let it all blur.
One truth anchored him. Keep moving north.
Find someone. Anyone. An intelligent being.
Another thought gnawed at him: It feels like I've been here more than a week. I've traveled dozens of kilometers, but I haven't seen a single sign of intelligence. Not a trace.
What if no one intelligent lives here? What if I'm alone forever?
The idea clung like rot.
He stopped counting throws. He stopped tracking distance. The twin suns never shifted; their frozen light burned down no matter how far he went, indifferent and eternal.
Time smeared—days, weeks. He couldn't tell.
Before the mangroves finally thinned, he passed something out of place: half-buried by mud, a massive slab of stone lay scored with lines that might once have been symbols. Time and weather had blurred them, but the pattern felt deliberate—not nature, not animal.
A hundred feet farther on, a square boulder more than forty-seven feet long jutted from the mire like a ruined altar. Its surface was scarred and pitted, inscriptions eroded into near-unreadability. Whatever hands had carved those marks had long since vanished, yet the suggestion of design lodged in his mind like a question.
This was no ordinary stone. Its shape was too precise—unnaturally square. Nature did not make such things. Someone had. To Soma, it felt less like rock and more like a message, a shard of hope left behind. Millennia might have passed since it was carved, yet the fact of its existence whispered of intelligence. Maybe even survival. To know for certain, he would have to check it himself.
Who knew how many weeks—or months—passed before the endless mangroves thinned? The swamp's choking stench began to fade. Pools dried, roots cracked, and insects dwindled. Ahead, on the horizon, Soma saw it: the end of the crimson forest.
For a moment, the sun struck a droplet of blood on a mangrove leaf and made it glitter like a fallen star—beautiful, and filthy.
Beyond it—an endless yellow sea shimmered in the heat. For a heartbeat, it looked like freedom. Then he remembered: nothing here was merciful.