Chapter CCCXX: And the Swamp’s a Pain ~Redaz

Redaz sighed as he trudged through the moors. He'd left the others to their own devices and was really regretting it.

"If my robe soaks up water to the knees I'm leaving," Redaz said angrily as he pulled his shoe out of the mud he was surrounded by, looked for a root, or other solid object too put it on, and sighed again at the now customary squish that came from his foot.

Redaz began muttering under his breath something to the extent of, "Stupid mud. (squish) Stupid moss. (squish) Stupid swamp. (squish) Stupid trees. (squish) Stupid mud (squish) ..."

Suddenly he heard the sound of hurried squishing noises, the occasional gut wrenching sucking followed by a small pop and the even more occasional rustle of dead plant life. Redaz looked up as a figure moved a mossy curtain out of his way and stepped around a dead tree. Jeremy stopped as he saw Redaz and panted a bit.

"What are you doing? That's the way we came from."

Jeremy looked up at him, "That guy, Jaded, he told me to come tell the others, there's some weird magic up ahead,"

"He probably said magik,"

"How'd you know? And what's the difference?"

"They all call it magik, I really just refer to anything similar as magic, less complicated. And the difference is that they spell it with a ‘k’."

"That's it? a ‘k’?"

"No it means something when it's spelled with a ‘k’, but I don't have time for grammar. I'll go after Jaded, you keep up the good work, the others will probably want to know about this."

"Actually, I was kinda planning on going back after I found someone and letting them tell the others."

"Nonsense," Redaz said over his shoulder as he began the squishy trudge ahead, "Jaded told you to tell the others, so tell them you shall. I on the other hand was not given any such instructions, so I have no obligation to do anything."

Jeremy sighed as the wizard very carefully walked away, then sighed and turned back toward the place where they had entered the moors, hoping to find someone more cooperative next.

* * *

As Redaz trudged through the boggy scenery he began to wonder why the group had decided to go to the middle of a swamp, and what an evil force was doing sitting around in one ticking off wild animals. It was while he was in the middle of these ponderings of the world's great designs that a large creature crashed through some knobbly and probably dead trees right in front of him.

The beast was a large scaled creature, with a pronounced chin under a maw full of teeth ranging from four inches to eight inches in length, all mostly triangular and exceptionally sharp looking. The creature reared up, and let out a hollow sounding roar. As it reared, Redaz managed to get a better look at the rest of its form. It had two hind legs as thick as small tree trunks, which each ended in large hooves. Its front legs, on the other hand, ended in prehensile looking digits, each about as big around as Redaz's forearm and each ending in a small hoof-like nail.

The creature fell back onto all fours, its digits splaying out in the muddy and mossy ground, and looked at Redaz with beady, angry looking yellow eyes. Redaz met this intimidating gaze with a look one usually reserves for shy looking children that have finally managed to grasp one's attention. After a moment of measuring up its potential prey, the creature roared again and swiped at Redaz with its left forelimb.

Redaz deftly sprang to the side, so that he was outside of the swipe. The creature gave a small growl of aggravation and lunged at the wizard. Redaz leaped upward and landed on the beasts shoulder blades, then ran down its back, and jumped off to land behind it. The beast looked around, confused for a moment, then flared its nostrils and sniffed the air. It whirled around and growled at Redaz.

He sighed and looked up at the monstrosity, "You're not gonna leave me alone are you?"

The creature let out a primal howl as it swung down both of its forelimbs. Redaz leaped back, and then bent down a scooped up a handful of mud and moss. Letting it dribble out from between his fingers, he looked scrutinisingly at the ooze.

The beast charged forward, mouth agape; Redaz jumped upward and back, hurling what was left of the mud into one of the creature's eyes. It stopped short and began furiously shaking its head to dislodge the muck. While it was busy, Redaz lunged at it; he extended one hand and grabbed it by the throat. As he clutched the beast, a black aura began to surround his hand, being fed by black energies that slithered toward it from all around, like serpentine shadows.

Suddenly the snakes of energy stopped and the black glow grew. Then spidery lines began to trace their way along the beast's neck, down its shoulders and over its chin. As they grew longer and wider, the creature began to kick, squirm and writhe in Redaz's grasp. As it did, Redaz clamped his other hand around its neck. More of the lines began to appear, and creep their way around its neck. Once a tendril of the blackness had completely encircled its neck, and grown about an inch thick, it stopped moving, its eyes rolled back and it collapsed.

As Redaz released his hold, the two black hand prints he left sloughed off like the mud they fell into, slowly all the other blackened parts of the monster's body followed suit, melting away and mixing with the mud the corpse lay in.

"I hate doing that, especially to animals." Redaz brushed his hands off, then seeming unsatisfied, found a normal looking patch of skin on the animal and wiped them off on it. "They never realize they can't escape, and corrupted flesh is so messy."