The fen by day was a sodden, insect-thrumming purgatory. By night, it transformed into a different world altogether—a realm of profound, swallowing blackness and alien sounds. The mist that hung perpetually in the daytime coalesced into a cold, clinging fog that diffused the weak starlight into a ghostly luminescence. Sounds were muffled, yet amplified; the plop of a frog sounded like a stone dropped in a well, and the rustle of reeds could be the breath of something immense.
They had made camp on the highest, driest ground they could find after hours of slogging—a hummock of solid earth crowned by the skeletal remains of three ancient, drowned oaks. Their roots formed a natural, gnarled palisade. Kestrel, with a practicality born of a life spent avoiding notice, had immediately begun weaving reeds and broken branches into the gaps, creating a low, camouflaged windbreak. Arrion had done the rest.
Before the light failed, he'd taken his bow and vanished into the grey twilight. He returned an hour later, dragging the carcass of a young fen-boar, its tusks still short but wicked. The hunt had been swift and silent; a single arrow from the monstrous bow. The beast would provide meat, and its hide, once scraped, could be used for repairs.
With the last of the light, he'd put his immense strength to work. Using Briar's harness rope and his belt axe, he felled several of the smaller, deader trees from the periphery of the hummock. He dragged them, stripped their branches, and with Kestrel's help, wedged them vertically between the larger roots, creating a crude but effective stockade about chest-high. It wouldn't stop an army, but it would funnel an approach and give them warning. He piled the lopped branches into a tangled, spiky barrier around the base—a chevaux de frise of fen-detritus.
Inside their tiny fortress, they risked a small, carefully shielded fire in a pit dug deep into the peat. The boar meat sizzled on greenwood spits, filling the damp air with a rich, life-affirming smell that fought back the miasmic odours of decay. Briar stood placidly in a corner of the enclosure, a dark monolith of warmth and quiet power.
Kestrel ate with the focused intensity of someone who'd known real hunger, her eyes constantly flicking to the fog beyond their wooden teeth. "The fire will draw things," she said quietly, not looking at him.
"The cold and wet would kill us slower, but just as sure," Arrion replied, turning his spit. "And most things fear fire. We need the heat. We need the cooked meat."
She gave a non-committal grunt, her skepticism palpable. She'd barely spoken since the river, her energy spent on navigation and survival. The easy banter of the thief was gone, replaced by the grim focus of a soldier on a forced march through hostile territory.
After eating, they took watches. Arrion took the first, leaning against the rough bark of the central oak, the living thorn a comforting pulse against his skin, his senses stretched out into the dripping dark. The fen's night chorus was deafening—croaks, buzzes, clicks, and strange, liquid gurgles. He filtered them out, listening for the discordant note: the snap of a branch under a boot, the metallic whisper of a drawn blade.
He heard only the fen.
When he woke Kestrel for her watch, she nodded silently, taking up position with her back to the fire, her needle-dagger now supplemented by a sharpened boar tusk she'd fashioned into a crude but serviceable stabbing weapon. Arrion wrapped himself in his waxed canvas tarp, the damp ground leaching heat even through it. Sleep, when it came, was the shallow, alert sleep of the hunted.
He was pulled from it not by a sound, but by a cessation.
The insect chorus died. Not faded, but was severed, as if a blanket had been thrown over the entire fen. One moment, a cacophony; the next, a silence so absolute it pressed against the eardrums.
Arrion's eyes snapped open. He was already moving, a hand going to Nightshade's hilt before he was fully upright. Across the dim glow of the banked fire, he saw Kestrel, rigid, her head cocked, her knuckles white on her weapons.
Then came the steps.
They were not the splash of something moving through water, nor the crackle of something pushing through reeds. These were thuds. Deep, heavy, wet squelches, as if something massive were pulling its feet from thick, sucking mud with each step. Thud... squelch... thud... squelch... The rhythm was slow, deliberate, unhurried. And it was circling their hummock.
Arrion rose to his full height, his head clearing the top of their stockade. He peered into the fog. The weak starlight showed nothing but shifting grey vapour. But he could feel the displacement of air, the vibration through the sodden earth. Whatever it was, it was big. Bigger than Briar.
Kestrel was at his side, her breath a white plume in the cold air. "Not men," she whispered, confirming his own thought. Her voice held no street-rat bravado now, only a flat, professional fear.
The circling stopped. The silence deepened. Arrion strained his ears, his Adept's senses pushing out. He heard it then—a low, wet, grinding sound, like stones being turned over in a gullet. It was directly opposite their crude gate, where the barrier was weakest.
"Be ready," he murmured to Kestrel. "If it charges, go left. I'll take the front."
He didn't draw Nightshade. Against an unknown beast of the fen, his bow might be more useful. He slung it off his back and nocked an iron-headed arrow, the string giving a soft creak of tension.
The grinding sound ceased. For three heartbeats, there was nothing.
Then, with a sudden, shocking violence, the barrier of tangled branches directly in front of them erupted. Not from an impact, but from within. A shape burst forth from the fog and the debris.
It was not a boar, nor a bear, nor any natural creature of the fen.
It stood on two thick, stumpy legs that ended in broad, webbed pads. Its body was a bulbous, slug-like mass of glistening, peat-coloured flesh, covered in warty protrusions and strands of clinging algae. It had no discernible head, only a rounded front from which a vertical, toothless maw gaped, dripping black fen-slime. From this maw emerged four long, whip-like tentacles, each tipped with a barbed, bony hook. They writhed in the air, tasting the scent of fire, horseflesh, and humans.
It was a Fen-Lurker. A creature of legend, said to be the fen's immune response to intruders, a living amalgamation of decay, stagnant water, and predatory instinct.
It let out a sound—a deep, bubbling glorp—and one tentacle, faster than a striking snake, lashed out towards Briar.
The warhorse reared, a scream of equine fury tearing the silence. The barb sliced across his shoulder, drawing a line of blood. Briar's training held; he didn't bolt, but pivoted, his iron-shod hooves lashing out in a deadly kick that connected with the creature's side with a sound like a wet sack of grain being hit with a maul. The Lurker shuddered but didn't retreat.
Arrion fired.
The iron-tipped arrow slammed into the centre of the bulbous mass with a solid thunk. It sank deep, but the creature seemed to barely notice. No blood flowed, only more of the black ooze.
Thud... squelch. It took a step forward, another tentacle lashing towards Arrion. He ducked, the barb whistling over his head. He drew and fired again, this time aiming for a tentacle root. The arrow sheared through rubbery flesh, and the tentacle went limp, flopping to the ground. The Lurker glooped in what might have been pain or annoyance.
Kestrel was a darting shadow. As a second tentacle aimed for Arrion's legs, she lunged, not at the tentacle, but under its arc. Her boar-tusk dagger, honed to a razor point, stabbed upwards into the soft tissue where the tentacle met the body. She twisted and ripped it free in a spray of foul ichor before rolling away.
The Lurker reeled, its movements becoming more agitated. It wasn't a cunning hunter; it was a slow, relentless digestor. But it was tough, and its tentacles were deadly.
Arrion dropped his bow. It was too close. He drew Nightshade. The water-grey blade slid from its star-dusted scabbard with a soft shing that seemed to cut through the fen's miasma. The smoky patterns in the metal seemed to swirl with a faint inner light.
He didn't wait for another strike. With a roar that echoed Briar's earlier challenge, he charged.
The Lurker's two remaining tentacles shot towards him in a pincer motion. Arrion didn't try to parry the whipping, flexible things. He dropped into a slide on the wet peat, sliding between them as they crossed over his head. He came up inside the creature's reach, right before its gaping maw.
He brought Nightshade down in a two-handed overhead chop, aiming not for the rubbery body, but for the base of the maw itself, where he hoped something like a spine might be.
The blade bit deep. It didn't just cut; it sheared. There was a resistance, then a sudden, wet parting. The black ooze that erupted was not just fluid; it held faint, dying phosphorescence, like corrupted moonlight. The Lurker let out a final, shuddering GLORP that became a weak gurgle. Its body sagged, the tentacles going limp. The massive form began to dissolve, melting back into the peat from whence it came with a hiss and a terrible, final stench of opened graves and primordial mud.
Arrion stood over the dissolving heap, Nightshade dripping black slime, his chest heaving. The insect chorus did not return. The silence was watchful, shocked.
Kestrel approached, wiping her dagger clean on a handful of reeds. She looked from the vanishing creature to Arrion's sword, her eyes wide in the firelight. "That… is not a normal sword," she stated.
"No," Arrion agreed, cleaning the blade meticulously before sheathing it. The thorn at his chest pulsed once, warmly, as if in approval.
He checked Briar. The cut on the horse's shoulder was shallow, but the edges were already an angry red. Fen-Lurker barbs were likely septic. Arrion used a splash of their precious drinking water and a pinch of salt from his pack to clean it, then applied a dab of Lyra's salve. Briar nuzzled his hand, a quiet trust in the giant's care.
They spent the rest of the night not sleeping, but listening, weapons in hand, backs to the fire. The fen had reminded them of its nature. They were not just hunted by men. They were trespassers in a ancient, hungry place that had its own ways of dealing with intruders. The hills might have eyes, but the fens had teeth, and they had just felt their bite. The easy part of the journey was unequivocally over.