Meager Power

Though I was no expert in them, the marsh that opened up before us had to be different than the ones I was more familiar with from earth. An image here or there half-remembered showed in my head and did not match what I saw. I certainly didn't remember trees like the ones I saw before me, or really, trees at all. Offhand, I thought mangroves were the ones with trees, but these really didn't match that either. Supposedly, we'd be heading through the western portion of this marsh that made up a huge portion of land - hundreds of miles - between the two rivers that fed into the confluence down south. We'd be crossing the southern river soon, a slow-moving, wide monster named the "Un-Akh," and then later the "Un-Bhor." I'd joked that the confluence turned them into the "Un-Akh-Bhor" and was met with flat stares telling me that it was indeed the case. We're fans of critical thought in this house, even if it was for little pointless word puzzles that a toddler could solve. Certainly explained the name of the city down that way.

It was little "fun" things like that that kept my attention as we trudged through the marsh. It sucked an awful lot. The mountainous descent had been decently perilous and decently bad with the footing, but this was minimally perilous and maximally terrible with footing. All too often, my eyes went to Kelessta with increasing jealousy, noting how easily she made her way through the poor terrain. The rest of us trudged while she flowed gracefully. I was torn fully between being irritated and enamored, and which one was dominant differed based directly on how recently someone had taken a tumble into the muck.

"The Muck" was the term I used, but that really didn't fully cover it. It was absolutely filled to the brim with algae and silt, and there were bugs abso-fucking-lutely everywhere. I'd hoped to escape mosquitoes by coming to an entirely different world, the useless, ruinous, dumb, ecologically-useless, asshole invertebrates, but the growing bumps on my arms and legs were just increasing my temper. It was the perfect breeding ground for the awful, parasitic, abysmal, hope-devouring pests. Insects of all kinds roamed, some more familiar than others. Little things similar to dragonflies flitted about, and there was a ton of other animal life that took to devouring the various insects in the area.

In addition to all of this, it was made even worse by the temperature increasing. Though we were heading north, summer was coming to this portion of the world (I'll switch that to hemisphere once I can prove this place is indeed a sphere), and it was made so much worse by the lack of sun-blocking trees. Yeah, the strange ones were around, here and there, but they were nowhere numerous enough to do any sort of work to give us shade with our travel. They were definitely nice, but too sparse to really enjoy. No, this place was one unpleasant location that I was assured was still the better option. Apparently, it was a week and a half through the marsh, or over a month swinging around to the west. I had to fight with myself over that - was this misery worth getting to a real, actual bed faster? We'd gone a full three or four hours of travel into the shitty, awful muck, before I realized that my internal debate was moot. I wasn't the one making the decisions here, and the decision clearly had been made.

All of this said, I still failed to really parse the weirdest parts of the marsh. That would be the... things. The leggy things. I wasn't sure what to call them, because apparently we were so far out into the untamed wilderness that my companions didn't have names for them either. They stood in the marshy waters, nearly two meters off the surface. on odd legs-like-stilts. Seven of them. Three on each side, one on the back. On the front, it had a weird upward snout-like thing that sat below one enormous glassy eye. Still not done with the fuckery, two more eyes protruded from its body, one on either of its sides. The body was this bulbous potato-like shape that appeared to be covered in a thick, brown, leathery skin that was entirely hairless. It was, hand to goddess, the ugliest fucking animal I had ever seen in my life.

I wanted to pet one.

They ate fish, using their legs with spear tips on the bottom to simply spear fish the fish. The legs were multi-jointed, letting any one of them reach up and deposit a wriggling victim up to its snout and tear it apart. I hated the fact that I actually had the thought that I hadn't seen one shit yet, so I had no idea if it was able to consume the bones properly. They had to, I guess.

Plenty of birds about, too, with larger, heron-like creatures wading in and out of the different wet patches. Even more oddly, I saw that they occasionally just used the fuckin' muckstriders (great name, thanks Allison) as mobile seats. To support such abundant animal life, there had to be a ton of fish around, but whenever I peered into the waters nearby, there weren't any. I wondered if they were just really sensitive to our footsteps or something, and something about the striders let them not create ripples? I'm not a zoologist either, not sure why I'm speculating on stuff that I can't possibly know the eventual answer to. I've really been hitting that line lately, what was I, if not this or that?

What makes a woman? If a man is a raw chicken, is a woman a raw turkey or something? Take that, impossible beauty standards. I'll pull up with a plucked quail and go "Behold, a monkey" and no one will get the joke and I will be sad for my man Diogenes.

Digressions aside, there really wasn't much to do here except for digression. It was too balmy for pleasant conversation, walking was too much effort to try to participate in anything else, and there wasn't even any real danger yet. Apparently some marsh drakes made their homes deeper in, but here on the edge, it was just peaceful, boring muck. I really hoped it wasn't gators. I did not need to see a death roll in person, no thank you. Eventually, though, our first day of travel in the marsh came to an end, and we crowded around one of the big trees that dotted the area. They were tall, with leaves way too high up to provide much cover, but their presence meant the ground around them would be solid enough to stay for the night. Not enough room for a full campground, but enough to sleep in.

Seven of us were beat, the long day of slopping through the muck had worn us to the bone more than any other terrain likely could have. Very little chatter occurred between us as we all gathered our things together, placing bedrolls and bedding uncomfortably close. We lined up in order of watches, so that the person could simply sit up and tap the other person when they were ready. Tonight would be the first night where us earthlings would be allowed a full watch on our own, meaning that half the party could actually just get a full night's sleep. Cycling by two every night would be a godsend - godssend - godesssend - fuck, adjusting my vocabulary was annoying. This one stays godsend.

Unfortunately, my watch tonight was second watch, so it was one of the two really shitty ones. Though we had a tiny little space to sleep in, Basrith did have a solution to the biter issue. Though it wasn't usable during travel, he could set up a barrier that was minimally draining that would keep the fuckers out. It only could specify one species, so we all chose the mosquito bastards. Honestly, I wasn't sure I would have been able to sleep otherwise. How do people live in places like this? It was miserable. I could wax for hours on how terrible the place was, without repeating myself.

Thankfully, the night passed without issue. Rachel woke me for my watch, it was boring, and I tapped Thenishale to wake him before zonking out completely. If nothing else, being exhausted makes it easy to fall asleep. Back on our feet (mostly) the next day, the marsh continued to become all-encompassing. Visuals of the mountains in the far distance did very little to convince me that this wasn't all that the world was or had been. I took to wearing a bit of cloth over my mouth to prevent bugs from entering my mouth while I breathed, and much like the first day, the second ended with nothing of note.

A lot of stories gloss over large parts of travel, I noticed. The heroes start moving, find points of interest, and arrive at the next location in the next episode. It cuts out the mind-numbing boredom of just walking constantly. If I hadn't already been an introspective person, I imagine I would have had some soul-searching to do, but my soul was found. No, I had to entertain myself by doing stupid shit like counting muckstriders and betting with myself on how long a heron would land before taking off again.

The third day was slightly different, if somehow, in a worse way. Late morning, our progress stopped completely as we stared in front of us. The Un-Akh loomed in our path, oozing forward the all the swiftness of a moderately lazy river. It wouldn't be difficult to cross, if we just swam. The problem was that none of us wanted to swim, and Basrith only had enough magic in him to barrier three of us across, not including himself. I didn't hold that against him (much), as it was his magic, so he should be able to benefit. Two uses would be for Evelyn and Daniel, obviously. That meant the last one had to be chosen between myself, Rachel, Arla, and Thenishale. Our sekiss friend could fucking swim the same way she had been the whole time, and would be the one assisting the three of us unfortunate enough to have to brave the waters ourselves. So, as in all things in which we must be equal, we did the sensible thing. We used rock-paper-scissors. Or rock-paper-knife, more accurate to this place. Or more more accurately, Tricall. Weird-ass name. Rock beats knife, knife beats paper, paper beats rock. Some things continued to be universal.

So, we took our chances. Elimination style. Round one: me with rock, Arla with knife. I take it.

Round two: Rachel with knife, Thenishale with rock. He takes it.

Finals: me with paper, Thenishale with knife. He takes it.

So, the three of us watched the smug bastard sail over to the other side with nary a drop of water on him. We three unfortunate ladies got to wade through the water next to Kelessta, who assisted us when the river became too deep to stand in. We'd all crossed in short order, maybe just ten minutes of travel through a weak current, but it was still basically torture. On the other side, we were assisted up by our companions and allowed a small bit of privacy to switch to less soaked clothing. Thankfully, Arla's q-sack was waterproof, so we'd stored some in there, but we decided to just take the day after that. There was a good patch of solid ground ahead, enough to get a small fire going, so we set up there, used some of the firewood we'd gathered before we hit the marsh, and settled in to get dry and prepare for the days ahead. The trek to the Un-Bhor would be more treacherous, so we needed to be hale in case we got into any scraps.

Definitely not interested in fighting a marsh drake with a cold melting my nose, no thank you. Even with it this warm out, none of us were willing to risk it. Having the time away from bugs only helped, too, and personally, ending the night with having last watch was delightful. All too soon, though, we were forced to leave the banks of the Un-Akh and head deeper, armed for boar. Only one thing stood certain in my head, though; as soon as fucking possible, I was going to find away to travel a lot faster than this.