BT - Book 1 - Chapter 55 (Patreon)

Micah whirled under the rubbery brown tentacle that whipped over his head, narrowly avoiding the serrated spikes of bone embedded in its tip.  In a previous life, Will had found out the hard way that those spikes were actually teeth.  Each of the palm sized flippers of the bog horror could dig into and rip fist sized gobs of flesh from a target before bringing them back to the barrel sized gaping void filled with gastric juices that served as the monster’s body.

Micah crouched, preparing to lunge at the bog horror’s main body as another slapped into the brackish and soupy water next to him.  He kicked off the bottom of the bog, only for his boot to slip, spilling him face first into the knee deep water.  

Mentally, he made a note to use healing magic on himself just as his face plunged into the opaque water.  A tentacle slammed into the surface above him, the water slowing its descent enough that Micah was able to push off the bottom of the swamp with his spear, pushing himself to the side and avoiding the worst of the blow.

The teeth of the tentacle only grazed him, ripping a shallow but long strip of skin off of his back, causing Micah’s body to erupt in agony as his hit points began to drop.  He knew from experience that the teeth carried a dangerous anticoagulant.  Soon, his blood would draw the swarms of swamp eels that lived in the bogs murky depths.

He wasn’t entirely sure if the eels had some sort of symbiotic relationship with the bog horrors, or if they were simply a particularly dangerous brand of scavenger, but he’d prefer to avoid them if possible.  Each eel was almost the length of his forearm with a vicious hinged jaw the size of a grown man’s foot.  One or two wouldn’t be enough to kill Micah, but they were filled with diseases, almost impossible to see in the swamp’s murk, and utterly fearless.

Micah pulled his head above the water, gasping for breath.  The air was foul, humidity and the smell of rotting plant matter clogged his nose.

“Shit!” The word was torn from Micah’s mouth as another tentacle slashed in from the side.  

He activated the time enchantment in his spear, the haste buying him the half second he needed to interpose the weapon’s haft between the tentacle and himself.  The attack slammed into it with a thud, Micah taking advantage of his flash of foresight to angle his head away from the tentacle’s teeth as the heat curled around the spear seeking his tender flesh.

The blow lifted Micah out of the water, throwing him back a half dozen paces.  He splashed into the water, scraping his hip on a sharp bit of root.   

Surfacing, he coughed out some of the foul swamp water before planting the butt of his spear into the bog and pulling himself to his feet.  The horror scuttled toward him, moving slowly on the hundreds of tiny sucker feet that adhered it to the bottom of the lake. 

“This is what arrogance gets you Micah,” he muttered to himself as he prepared to cast a spell.  “Half of your back torn off and infected with gods know what.”

A sonic bolt exploded from his outstretched hand, generating a visible ripple in the air before it slammed into the lumpy and oblong form of the horror.  It rocked back, a high pitched and hissing squeal filling the dank marsh air as its tentacles went slack.

“It’s an ambush predator,” Micah sloshed forward, slamming his spear through the creature’s heavy lumpy exterior before activating the sonic enchantment.  “It looks like a stump and moves with about as much agility so what’s the first thing you do?  Run into spear range like a big idiot to try and ‘prove how much you’ve grown.”

It hissed once again at the spear buried in its woodlike armor, disoriented by the vibrations transferred into its body by the humming speartip.  Micah motion with his free hand, firing air knife after air knife into the base of its tentacles.

The first tier spell only bounced off the monster’s armor with a dull thud, but where it hit the rubbery limbs, it bit deep.  Each tentacle took two to three air knives to sever, but with the spear thrumming inside the horror, he managed to avoid its dizzy and off balance strikes long enough to amputate all four at close range.

With a grunt, Micah pulled the spear back out of the creature.  Trudging over to the rotting boardwalk that the herb gatherers from Basil’s Cove had constructed in the swamp.  The stag stared at him impassively as Micah pulled himself up onto the blackened wood.

“All yours buddy,” Micah bit out as he began casting augmented healing.  “It’s basically a defenseless lump right now.  Free experience.”

The deer sniffed at Micah, its nose wrinkling at his smell.  A single hoof sank into the murk of the swamp.  It turned back to him, snorting with displeasure.

“No,” Micha replied, clenching and unclenching his fists to fight the tingling and crawling feeling of his flesh knitting together on his back.  “You can’t just sit on the boardwalk looking pretty and staying dry.  If you want to earn experience, you have to fight, and fighting means climbing down into the mud and getting messy.”

It chuffed out an unhappy breath before splashing its entire body into the mire.  The bog horror crawled away, its tiny suckers slowing the creature’s pace to a lethargic walk.  

The stag easily caught up to it before planting its antlers on the top of the monster and pushing.  For a second, nothing happened.  Then the deer strained further and with an audible pop followed by a stream of bubbles as its suckers came undone, it tipped over.

The horror splashed down on its side, the gaping mouth on its top submerging into the water of the swamp.  The deer cocked its head at the creature as it shook, more bubbles coming out of its maw as the gastric juices interacted with the swamp water.

“Roll it to its left,” Micah called out, readying himself to cast refresh in the hopes that the low level spell would help him defeat any infections that might have taken root when his exposed flesh was exposed to the bog.  “A quarter turn and you’ll have both of its air intakes under water.  Then all you have to do is wait for it to drown.”

The stag, glanced at him pointedly.  Micah could almost feel the dissatisfaction pouring off of the creature.  Nevertheless, it listened, planting antlers into the creature’s side and rolling it so that both of the indentations it used to pull in oxygen were under water.

The deer grunted at Micah, bobbing its head to motion toward the partially submerged monster.

“You got it,” Micah nodded as he began casting plant weave.  “Now get back to the boardwalk before the swamp eels show up.  I’m pretty sure a quarter of my blood is in the bog by now so it’s only a matter of time.”

The roots around the bog horror rose up, pinning it to the ground with its air intakes underwater as the stag waded back toward Micah, snorting and grunting to itself in dissatisfaction.

Micah perked up as he noticed distortions in the murky surface of the swamp traveling toward the unhappy deer.  Swearing to himself, he accelerated his casting of root spears, drawing on the plentify plant life of the bog to create an impassable bramble around the oncoming monsters.

The wooden spikes didn’t strike all of them, but they injured and killed enough to fill the water with the scent of blood once more.  The eels diverted from the retreating stag, circling in on each other in a ball of combat and feeding.

Micah sighed, rolling over onto his hands and knees before standing up on the rickety boardwalk and surveyed their handiwork as the deer climbed up onto the unstable logs next to him.  The bog horror lay drowning, twitching and struggling against the plant weave as it tried to roll over the handspan it would need to save itself.

It stopped moving and Micah felt the tickling warmth that he’d come to associate with experience.  There was a lot.  Even splitting his gains with his animal friend, it was far more than he’d earned in any of his battles with the nightwasps.

The deer grunted, a noise that didn’t offer much room for dissent as its hooves thudded dully against the boardwalk.  It was walking back the way they’d come in, and it didn’t bother to look over its shoulder to see if MIcah was following.

“Wait up,” Micah called after it, jogging for a couple of seconds to catch up with it.  “There are still five or six more bog horrors around here.  Easy experience now that we’ve figured out how to fight them safely.”

The buck didn’t respond, it hooves beating out the same rhythm without pause or interruption.

“Come on,” Micah chuckled. “That wasn’t so bad.  Bog horrors hunt by pretending to be stumps before exploding into a flurry of tentacles if something gets too close.  Most magic and every arrow I’ve seen can’t get through their armor.  Unless you have earth magic and can drop a boulder on them, you’re going to have to wade in close to them, and getting close to a bog horror is a nightmare.  The water slows you down, and those tentacles are fast and deadly.  Most people just run away, but if you disarm them, they’re incredibly good experience.”

Micah quickly checked his status before grinning.

“Scratch that,” he chuckled.  “They’re incredibly good experience AND attunement.  I just got a point of night attunement.  Probably for engaging something vastly above my level in hand to hand combat and coming out on top.”

The stag looked back at Micah before chuffing out a full breath of air and jerking its head back.  Micah could swear that it was slamming hits hooves down on the boardwalk for emphasis.

“I know you’re younger now,” Micah shook his head, “but you can stop acting like a child throwing a tantrum any time now.  You aren’t going to evolve without getting your antlers dirty.”

It just snorted.

“Wait,” Micah broke out laughing.  “Is that seriously it?  You’re this upset because your fur got covered in mud?’

The stag stopped, looking at Micah before raising one of its filth encrusted hooves.  It slammed its leg on the ground, trying to knock the filth encrusting it off. Its nostrils flared as nothing happened.

“Sorry,” Micah rolled his eyes.  “You’re soaked in both mud and my blood.  You know, after the horrifying swamp monster ripped my back open?  You had to have seen it.  It got me right before it threw me across half the bog.”

The deer sniffed at him, but kept walking.

“Fine,” he responded.  “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how fur clumps when it dries while caked in mud.  I wouldn’t want to ruin your chances with all the does around our camp.  I’ll find us a river for you to wash your fur out in.  It’ll be a little bit of a detour, but it shouldn’t slow us down too much on our way back to the cave.” 

It glanced at him, eyes softening slightly.  It slowed its pace, letting Micah catch up and walk side by side with it.  He grinned.

“I mean,” he continued, a grin on his face.  “It’s not like I don’t need a bath.  That was one of the more vile fights I’ve been in.  Maybe next time we should find something a little less gross to fight.”

The stag sniffed him, flinching slightly as it got a good whiff of Micah.  Its nostrils flared as it bobbed its head in agreement.

“Plus,” he grimaced as he looked down at his filth covered clothes.  “We should try and smell all nice and fresh for when Trevor comes back.  I’m sure he’ll want to talk our ears off about Claire as soon as he gets back, and we’d hardly want to spoil the mood by looking like we just climbed out of an outhouse now, wouldn’t we?”