28. Bog #2
Sorcha heard whimpering. Her eyes snapped up to follow the sound. In the swirling mist above, a shadow twisted and flickered, tangled in the suffocating sludge. Strands of mist dangled from the surface of the stomach, pulsing with eerie light.
And in that instant, she knew. Noctis was there. Sorcha summoned heat to her hands, burning the ooze away long enough to push herself upright. Maelan and Kyron struggled to free their hands or limbs from the imprisonment.
She reached for her sword and snapped her whip, slicing through the thick, clinging slime to free Kyron, Maelan, and Noctis.
The walls of the stomach groaned around them, the sound low and guttural.
The chamber shuddered, the tremors forcing a thick, bubbling bile to rise.
Skeletal remains, Rotting flesh and mangled parts of creatures, half digested and unrecognizable surfaced from the churning filth.
The stench alone was a fate worse than death.
A violent retching sound rumbled from above, vibrating the stomach walls.
The bile surged, filling the chamber, swallowing them whole. They tumbled, twisted, and fought to stay above the sloshing wave until Sorcha slammed hard into something solid.
They were covered in bile, surrounded by remains, the sudden brightness of the space blinding for a moment.
Sorcha wiped the slime from her face with the back of her hand, trying to clear it away as she planted her feet.
Kyron stood as well, slipping on the ooze, while Maelan staggered over some of the remains, standing by Sorcha and Noctis, trying his hardest to shake the disgust off. The smell of the toad mixing with the scents in the cabin washing over them, twisting her with nausea.
They stood in a cabin that had seen better days, moss creeping up the walls, trees twisting through the windows. The air was damp, earthy and thick.
Inside, a large hearth flickered, casting long, shifting shadows. Beyond it, a kitchen sat cluttered with shelves packed to the brim with bottles, dried herbs, and flowers. A pot of stew, thick and bubbling, simmered over the flames, its scent a strange mix of spice and decay.
In the center of the house, a winding staircase curled upward, leading to a second level where more books and odd trinkets lay scattered across the floor.
Maelan took a slow step forward, his eyes scanning the room. “What just happened?” he muttered, still trying to process it.
Kyron shook his head, wiping more bile from his arms. “A nightmare-fueled fever dream is what I’d call that.”
Sorcha turned, her gaze settling on the hearth as Noctis moved beside her, ears twitching, her body low, a quiet growl rumbling from her throat.
A voice drifted down from the darkness at the top of the staircase. It was smooth but tinged heavy with an unsettling amusement.
“You know, it’s terribly rude to snoop around someone’s home.”
The metallic skrrrrt of fingernails dragging slowly along the iron handrail echoed through the room before she even came into view. A woman descended the steps, her boots clicking softly. Her smile was pleasant, eerily so, stretching just a bit too wide across her face.
“I see you’ve met my Púca,” she murmured, like she casting a spell. “Lovely little shapeshifters, aren’t they? You’ve wandered into a very dangerous place, little birds. It’s fortunate I found you first.”
Her face was breathtakingly beautiful for a heartbeat.
Then, the illusion warped, her features violently fractured.
For a sickening split second, her eyes turned into bottomless pits of solid black.
Her lips split back to her ears in a jagged, violent grin, revealing rows of yellowed, broken teeth worn down to the bone.
Her beauty was nothing but a cruel illusion, a cheap trick of the firelight.
Just as quickly as it came, it vanished.
The skin knit back together. Her hair flowed like liquid ink once more, and her deep brown eyes sparkled with false warmth.
Kyron and Maelan’s eyes widened with terror, their faces drawn tight. They must have seen it too. Sorcha now knew, this had to be the Bog Witch. She watched as the woman approached, her features shifting, flickering in and out of focus for a moment, like a reflection in disturbed water.
“Come, it’s cozy by the fire,” she cooed, gesturing to a hearth that smelled faintly of burning hair. “I’ve got food in the pot, and you look like you could use some warmth.”
Sorcha forced her legs to move, taking three measured steps forward. Her fingers tangled deep into Noctis’s freezing, misty fur. She aggressively rubbed behind the hellhound’s ears, what looked like a casual gesture, but really, it was a warning.
“Thank you, that’s very kind of you,” Sorcha said, “but we really must be going. Is there any way you could direct us out of the marsh?”
She glanced back. Kyron and Maelan hadn’t moved an inch. Their bodies were completely rigid, statues of pure panic.
The witch’s smile didn’t falter, though her eyes hardened as she locked onto the boys. “Oh, come now, don’t be shy. I’m deeply sorry for the rude welcome. Next time, I’ll remind my little friend not to eat the guests before they’re properly prepared.”
She waved them over with a slow, hypnotic crook of her finger. The underlying malice in her tone made it perfectly clear: playing along was their only prayer of survival.
Sorcha forced her face into a blank, neutral mask. But as she subtly tried to test her internal energy, horror struck her. Her magic was gone. A heavy, suffocating force pressed against her smothering her inner flame as if the very oxygen in the cabin was engineered to extinguish her power.
They were forced to sit at the small wooden table. Three bowls of thick, steaming soup were placed before them with an unsettling clatter. The scent was violently earthy, heavily laced with standard herbs, but beneath the rosemary and thyme hid a sour, copper tang that made Sorcha’s skin prickle.
She stirred her broth idly, watching the grease swirl. She caught Kyron’s eye, then Maelan’s. The witch stood over them like a vulture, her unblinking gaze lingering heavily on their faces every single time they lifted a spoon.
So, they began the deadliest performance of their lives.
Sorcha carefully tilted her bowl, pretending to blow on a hot spoonful while letting the broth drip silently into a deep crack in the rotting wood of the table.
Kyron feigned a clumsy reach for his iron cup, deliberately spilling a massive puddle into the thick wool of his heavy sleeve, which absorbed the liquid.
Maelan tilted his bowl just enough to let a steady stream slosh over the far edge, dripping soundlessly onto the dirt floor beneath his boots.
As they reached the bottom of their bowls, the witch finally drew a deep breath, looking thoroughly satisfied.
“I’ll be back in just a moment,” she said in a sing-song way.
She turned and climbed the stairs, her form melting into the heavy shadows of the upper loft.
The very instant her boots cleared the top floor, Kyron and Maelan exploded into motion.
Kyron darted to the herb shelves, his hands a blur as he swept glass bottles and dried roots directly into his coat pockets.
Maelan rifled through a chaotic stack of tattered books and yellowed parchments on a side table.
Sorcha threw her upper body over the table, hissing in a panicked whisper, “What are you doing?! Get back here!”
Maelan didn’t even look up, his fingers flying through the pages. “A sleeping drought. I found it.”
Kyron lunged across the room, thrusting a handful of blue-tinted nightshade petals and dried root into Maelan’s hands.
Maelan didn’t waste a second. He crushed the ingredients between his palms, grinding them into a fine, powdery dust before dumping it directly into the witch’s steaming tea mug. It dissolved instantly, leaving a faint, oily shimmer on the surface that quickly vanished.
The heavy, rhythmic creak of a floorboard directly above sent them scrambling back into their chairs, forcing their bodies back into postures of serene calm.
When the witch descended the stairs this time, she had abandoned the illusion entirely.
She hadn’t even bothered to pin her skin together.
Her blackened lips curled into a grotesque mockery of a smile, her broken, jagged teeth gleaming in the firelight.
Her pale skin was marred with greenish patches of weeping decay, and bald spots peppered her skull, her stringy black hair hanging in limp, greasy strands.
She looked at them and saw three perfectly paralyzed victims. Or so she thought.
The witch took her time as she sauntered over to her counter and plucked a long, jagged boning knife from a block.
The slow, rhythmic scrape of metal against a sharpening stone filled the suffocating silence of the cabin.
She took a long, lazy sip of her tea, letting out a satisfied sigh.
She smiled, savoring the absolute terror radiating off the three.
“You know,” she mused, tapping the flat of the blade against her rotted palm, her voice dripping with a mockingly sweet, motherly tone.
“That soup contained a rather special ingredient from my garden. A paralysis flower. Oh, it’s subtle and slow working.
Just enough that you can still blink... maybe twitch a finger if you try real hard. But...”
She leaned down, her foul, decaying breath washing hot against Kyron’s cheek. “... not nearly enough to run.”