Aric turned, muscles tensing, instincts flaring to life. His gaze locked on a bubbling patch of swamp some thirty yards away, where the water hissed and boiled as if something monstrous beneath churned, desperate to be unleashed.
The swamp pulsed around him, putrid, alive in the worst way. Each breath he took reeked of rot and blood. Bioluminescent flickers of light danced beneath the surface of the water and mud like the firing synapses of a massive brain. Trees loomed like gallows, their branches clawing toward the water, scraping the surface like the rotted fingers of a dead man. The swamp itself was surrounded by darkness, as if it were within a massive cavern, whose ceiling was so high it couldn't be seen past the shade it cast.
Something was coming.
The surface of the mire erupted. A pale, trembling hand shot skyward, clawing desperately for purchase before sinking again beneath the bog muck.
Instinct overtook him. Aric rushed forward, crossing the unsteady ground in seconds and grasping the hand, bracing his foot in the muck. His muscles strained, breath ragged. Not long ago, Aric's blessed body could tear down castle gates with a single pull. Now, this single man was a struggle.
Finally, with a sucking groan, he dragged the man free.
The stranger collapsed to the ground, coughing and gasping, slime trailing down his beard and armor. His raiment's were tattered, but the markings were clear: he was from one of the heretic warrior clans Aric had fought to annihilate. A curved mace clung to his back.
"Thank you," the man choked out, coughing up bog water. "I've been drowning in that pit for... hours, maybe days..." He paused, letting the reality of his freedom settle. "Gods..." he sighed, half-relieved, half-horrified.
Aric didn't answer. He was scanning the landscape now, really looking, for this man's presence had confirmed his worst suspicion.
Dozens of hands, like the one he'd just rescued, reached upward from the swamp. Desperate, nearly silent, save for the muffled bubbling cries rising from beneath the bog. All around them, the few broken humans who had managed to free themselves staggered aimlessly, dazed and hollow-eyed.
The faces of forlorn souls, ghosts long left without bodies, phased into view, momentary flashes of twisted agony before fading back into the muck. The souls of those consumed by this hell now served to illuminate the bog, flickering in ghastly blue light.
The man looked to Aric, desperation edging his voice. "Where... are we?"
Aric's voice came low and steady. "This is The Maw. The deepest of the thirteen pits of the underworld." He spat, futilely attempting to rid his mouth of the taste of rot and sulfur. "A cursed place where the Tribunal banishes those they brand as heretics... Where the souls of the damned are shackled to the mire in endless torment, and their bodies are devoured without mercy."
"Devoured?" The man blinked. "By what?"
"You don't want to find out." Aric said curtly, before turning on a heel and walking away.
The path through the bog was unclear, but ahead, a warm light shimmered faintly in the distance. Aric began walking toward it, each step cautious, each patch of earth suspect.
Behind him, the rescued man called out, "Hey! Er- wait up!"
Aric kept walking.
The man hurried to catch up, following him for a time before stopping to help another struggling soul. He bent down, grasping a hand and wrenching it partially free with a grunt. His efforts revealed a woman, pulled from the mud, still holding onto her baby, whose cries now echoed through the murk.
"Thank you," she whispered to the man, clinging to him like a coat tossed over a chair.
Aric halted, turning back. He recognized her voice. A soft voice that had come from one of the many faces he'd seen in Vorathis, the last bastion of the heretics. Aric remembered seeing her, frozen in fear as he opened the basement door to a half razed hovel.
"P-please, spare us..." was all she could mutter at the time, but even now, Aric could remember her voice. There he had seen her and her child, and there he had left them.
Though, evidently, someone else had found them after he left.
He took a step forward, mouth opening to speak, perhaps to apologize for leaving her without protection, or maybe to offer aid, when suddenly, the water behind them exploded.
SSSSHHHRRRAAAHHHH!
From the swamp surged a monstrous serpent, ancient and colossal. Its body coiled with primordial muscles, its scales fused with shards of petrified bone. Along its back, broken vertebrae jutted out like spears, as if skeleton had rebelled against it's own hide. The creature loomed, massive oblong eyes glowing a faint pale blue, that pulsed like a dying star.
"The Serpent who Devours the Divine..." Aric whispered, half in awe of the beast of scripture before him, and half in horror.
"Níðhöggr."
The serpent's jaw opened, wider than any snake Aric had ever seen, and from its black, ichor-dripping mouth, a five-forked tongue lashed. In the blink on an eye, it devoured the man, the woman, and her child, whole.
Aric froze, the serpent's soulless gaze locking onto him, the air thickening with its ravenous intent. All around him, those who'd pulled themselves from the mire began to scream and flee. The beast roared, its many tongues blasting. Bodies snapped in its grasp, swallowed whole.
Aric trembled. No divine blessings shielded him now. Every breath was a battle, every rattle in his knees a reminder. The monster's starved presence was a crushing weight on both mind, and muscle.
Its gaze snapped back to him, and just as fast, the serpent surged.
Aric stood frozen, the serpent's tendril tongues closing in, writhing hungrily toward his face. As the heat of its maw surrounded him, something deeper than even a divine blessing surged within him. Something that had kept him alive long before he'd uttered his first prayer to the Tribunal.
Raw Instinct.
And he leapt.
A messy, imprecise dive straight into the muck beside him, It wasn't pretty but he'd narrowly dodged the beast's maw as it snapped shut. Landing hard, knees shaking, Aric stared down at his trembling hands, stunned by his body's thoughtless action.
They took everything from me, he thought. My honor, my power, my life... His hands stilled, clenching into fists of iron resolve as he pushed himself up off the ground.
"But I am still Aric Duskborne." He said aloud, turned to face the rearing serpent as if it were the Tribunal themselves. "And not even the gods can take that from me!"
The serpent screeched, its tendril tongues whipping through the air as it dove again.
And again, Aric moved, but this time, there was no hesitation.
Somersaulting over its strike, he land in a messy slide, nearly falling before steadying himself and bursting into a sprint! His legs pumping, leaping over roots and slick pools of bog slime. Hands reached up towards him from the mud, shrieking voices pleading. Aric's eyes burned, tears stinging.
"If I stop, if I help them, we'll all die!" He half heartedly rationalized.
"H-Help!" a meek voice called.
A flash.
A child's face.
The boy.
The one from the city.
Aric slipped, plunging into the muck, as several ghostly souls of the damned rose from the mud and clawed at him. They begged him for mercy. All the while, the boy cried, hand outstretched to the former crusader, the same way he had only moments before Aric's own life was ended.
"RAAHHHHH!" Aric roared, his voice a raw, soul-rending howl that tore at his own throat. "Damn it!" He shouted, glaring up towards the black void that now replaced the sky and heavens above "DAMN IT!!!"
The serpent surged toward the child. The boy turned, frozen, mouth open in silent terror.
Aric burst from the swamp.
Diving into the serpent's path, he snatched the child, and kept moving. Ducking behind a wall of mangroves, he gripped the child by the shoulders and looked into his eyes.
"Run. You hear me?" he shouted to the child. The boy blinked, mouth still agap.
"Listen to me!" Aric said with a sudden firm shake, snapping the child out of his state of shock. "Get as many of the others as you can. Then run!" Aric finished, pointing towards a light at the edge of the swamp, their only true hope for escape.
The serpent howled in frustration. Echoes of its blind fury pulsed from its glowing sockets.
Aric turned, spotting an ornate sword buried in the bog beside a mangrove tree. A skeletal hand still clung to the blade's hilt, the grim fossil of a man's last attempt to free himself from the mud.
Aric saw it.
And ran straight into the fray.