The Way Forward

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. He was too slow though, that grotesque and putrid creature, and I caught him in his dark green face with the back of my halberd, knocking him, sprawling and bleeding, back toward the stream. I finished that one off as he tried to roll away, but more were coming, rising out of the water like so many mutated nymphs, their inhuman faces agog with a bloodlust as strong as their stench.

I knew what they thought of us – what they’d been told by their master – and I knew what they’d do to me if they caught me. It wasn’t true, of course, what they’d been told, but there was no time to explain the truth, even if we had spoken the same language. They wouldn’t understand anyway. Attempting communication with these creatures was a fool’s errand, and I hadn’t survived this long by being a fool.

I took stock of my situation in one frantic glance, backing away from the waterway even as I turned my head. The faster I could escape, the more likely it would be that I would live to return and knock out another one later. There were too many of them to fight at once, and too few of us to defend ourselves forever. So this was what we did. Find one or two alone, take them out, then retreat back to camp before the others could catch us. Rivers weren’t the brightest creatures, and they didn’t know how to organize themselves properly.

Their master could have guided them, could have wiped us all out months ago if he’d taken the time to, but he seemed to be preoccupied, disinterested in us. The truth was, we didn’t really matter to him. He had thrown up this wall of bodies, separating us from his fortress with this writhing mass, but he didn’t seem to care what happened beyond that. It was like he was just trying to stall us. And I guess he had been.

Because now the Queen was gone, and no one knew where to. Taken from her bedchambers as she slept. How that could possibly have happened, we didn’t know, but we did know one thing. We were surrounded. Utterly and completely. Until we could escape from this trap, we were of no use to anyone, and we didn’t have time to concentrate on trivial details. All we could do was what we had already been doing. Sneak in, kill a couple of rivers here and there, regroup. Thank Vinishri Maronetti wasn’t actively targeting us. Even so, roving bands of rivers would come upon us at times, and when they spotted us, they’d attack, their sharpened teeth and fins slicing our bodies apart even as they crushed us in their massive grip.

Where had they come from? We all speculated, of course, but no one knew. The river had bred them, and they were of the river. That is all we knew, and more than we could have ever dreamed. Maronetti must have been responsible for them somehow. Whether he had made them himself or summoned them from some other realm, we didn’t know. Perhaps they had simply come into being, some arcane response to his evil presence, twisting the world around him into something obscene, some mockery of nature. It didn’t matter now though. All that mattered now was the fight to survive. To escape in any direction would be a welcome reprieve, but until that was possible, it was attack, feint, retreat, recover. Rinse and repeat.

The rivers closed in around me, and I ran, bringing my halberd in close and leaping between two of them before their hands could lock around me, crushing my powerful frame into nothing more than a congealed pile of warm blood and meat. Our only advantage was our speed and brains. It was enough. At least so far. Freed from the crowd, a light jog would be sufficient to sustain my lead, and they wouldn’t follow far. Out of sight, out of mind. That was the key, and it was vital. Stay hidden; stay safe. I ran back to camp and into the biggest surprise of my life.