The Magehound

Their traitorous behavior disgusted Matteo. He fell upon the cannibals, slashing and stabbing until the stirge song faded into silence and the bodies lay thick upon the ground.

Andris waded over to him through the grim carpet. "Big swarm. Even so, they had to be desperate to attack an armed band."

Matteo nodded. He stooped by one of the men, a young jordain he recognized but whose name he had never known. The man had been bitten two or three times. He was as pale as a man drained by vampires. A pike lay nearby, heavy with skewered stirges. Another stirge lay dead beside him, leaking ichor from a gaping hole in its head where the snout had been. This protruded from the man's chest. He had torn it away when he ripped the giant insect from him, but not quickly enough. Blood had bubbled from the top of the tube, but the flow was stilled now.

Andris stooped and gently closed the man's eyes. He rose and motioned for the others to follow. The ground grew soft beneath their feet, and soon bog gave way to shallow water. They waded through it, moving into the deep shadows of moss-draped trees.

Matteo bumped against someone and stopped suddenly, instinctively putting out his hand to steady whomever he'd jostled. He felt a deathly chill and snatched his hand back. Squinting in the faint light, he made out the glassy shadow of an elf. Behind the crystalline form was another elf, and as his eyes adjusted, he made out several more. Matteo would have thought them to be clever statues but for the incredible cold within.

"I'm beginning to see why Tzigone warned you away from the swamp," he told Andris, shaking his head in awe. "By all the gods that ever were! This laraken is no ordinary monster."

"Since when did monsters become ordinary?" Andris said with an attempt at lightness. But his eyes were pained as he took in the ghostly shadows. "Let's keep moving."

The swamp water grew steadily deeper, the shallows unexpected giving way to sudden dangerous drops and deep pools. As they skirted one such pool, Matteo thought he saw the crenellations of a vast sunken tower, but he couldn't fathom a valley deep enough to swallow such a thing.

As he studied the towerlike shape, the water stirred. Before he could draw breath to shout a warning, a figure rose suddenly from the water, and of the water.

Shaped more like a giant bear than a human, its form was dark and brackish, and small fierce fish schooled frantically within the watery body.

Matteo shouted an alert and pointed to the magical creature. "Water elemental!"

For a moment the fighters paused. Such creatures were fought with spells and weapons of magic, and they had none.

Andris pulled a small bottle from his bag and shouted a command. Matteo quickly lit a torch and waited until Andris and several others had tossed the contents of their bottles into the fetid water.

He dropped the torch, and the swamp gas exploded into a ring of bright flame, which quickly engulfed the water elemental. With a roar like that of an angry sea, the creature fought to beat through the flames. Its body began to dissolve with a searing hiss. Clouds of steam billowed upward. Finally the creature could take no more and disappeared back into the pool.

Matteo and Andris regarded each other somberly. "A powerful wizard could summon an elemental, but no such person could survive here for long. Yet there is much magic here," Matteo observed.

"The water elemental was a creature of the plane of water," Andris responded, seeing Matteo's reasoning. "The gate must be near."

"And likely the laraken as well. Without Tzigone to draw it away, we will have to destroy it here," Matteo reasoned. "Then Kiva can close the gate-if that is indeed her intention."

Andris gave him an odd look. "We should split the men into two ranks. If we spread out, we may be able to flank the laraken with an all-out attack. You take the second troop."

They scattered into the swamp, creeping through the shallows and slipping through openings in the vines. The water became less fetid as they went, until it was as pure and clear as a mountain stream. One of the men bent to dip up some water in his cupped hands. Matteo gave him a quick jab with the blunt end of his pick, then shook his head sternly.

It was a moment's distraction, no more. Matteo didn't see the enormous green-black hands that slid through the curtain of vines several paces before him. But his attention snapped back when a loud ripping sound shook the swamp and echoed through him like lightning and thunder combined.

And then the laraken appeared, darting through the opening in the thick jungle vegetation.

"Mother of Mystra!" whispered Matteo.