Okay, so I tried to give this the eeriest atmosphere that I could. It may be a fail, but, hey, I tried. ;) Besides, the next chapter is meant to be even creepier. Listen to a spooky soundtrack (movie, game, whatever. We've all heard spooky music) and maybe it'll help. Helped me, leastways.

Here we go.


~11~ Into the Marshes

Merlin cautiously stepped from the ferry onto what he thought was solid ground. The spongy mosses bordering the river caved and he hastily skittered back onto the raft.

"Lily-liver," Arthur snorted, and hopped off low-sided, flat-bottomed boat. He immediately sank, water rising up past his knees. The knights held their tongues; Merlin couldn't help but grin, though he tried not to. Arthur glowered back at him, lips tight over his teeth. "Don't you say a word," he growled.

The king's companions managed to drag him onto land, and then went about as though nothing had happened. As they headed inland, and the ferryman disappeared into the mists, Bain brought out the dragon teeth to read.

"We continue west," he said in a while, after checking the teeth and trail of the vampyre employee, Daphne. He looked longingly east, where Vraal remained, but then remembered his duty and took the lead.

The silence was deepening with every trudging step, and the travellers found themselves hankering for conversation.

"Tell us about your adventure, there, Merlin," said Gwaine, tugging free of grasping reeds.

With a modest shrug, the warlock recalled his journey after they had 'abandoned' him in Camelot, from the tense nights worrying about Vraal attacking (he never mentioned that he actually did) to the horse thieves.

"I evaded them near the town," he explained. "From there, I rode as fast as I could to get here. It was fortunate that there was just the one road leading to Riverstone, else I'd have lost you. The fever had started to return around mid-morning the next day, but I managed to fight it until the end. A whole day of it..." He shuddered.

"The thieves did that to you?" asked Leon, pointing to the servant's black eye, bruised nose and split cheek.

"Yep, and they got my ribs, too."

Leon grimaced. "Ouch."

"And all that time, Vraal never attacked you?" Arthur enquired.

"...No. I don't think he liked the berries...The holly berries? Vampyres hate the smell," Merlin added as the king frowned. Then Arthur nodded in remembrance.

Night fell, and suddenly the world became very eerie. The spongy moss on the shores of the river had long since been accompanied by the whispering reeds that drowned themselves in swamp water pools. They hissed and chuckled to one another as the travellers found the hardest, driest patch of land they could and built a fire with the small wood supply they brought from Riverstone. It wasn't a very big fire, and the land wasn't very hard, but they did their best. They enjoyed what fresh food they managed to buy, for in the upcoming days, they were doomed to suffer through hard, dry, preserved food if they wished to avoid eating what little the marshes provided.

"Won't catch me eating a toad," Gwaine grumbled. "No sir."

They huddled nearest to the fire as they could, and then Bain reached into his unnecessarily large pack and pulled out some kind of string instrument.

"A lute," Elyan grunted. "He brought...a lute."

The bard ignored him and strummed a few chords, tuning it gradually.

"Deep in the marshes they tred,
With the wind in the reeds,
A stench of compost in the air,
And the companions devoid of steeds.

With the mists swirling evermore,
And no fish a-flipping,
The pools of water placid and dark,
And the moon a toenail clipping—"

"Stop! No more!" Gwaine wailed pleadingly.

"The moon is a toenail clipping?" Arthur threw his hands in the air. "That's quite enough, Bain!"

Ψ Ѫ Ψ

The same night that the companions were brooding around their first fire in the marshes, covering their ears against horrible poetry, Daphne the Dagger was caring for the graves nestled in the tunnel created by overhanging limbs and branches of surrounding trees. The water reached past her ankles, but she was unfazed as she pulled the reluctant creepers and soggy mosses from the twin pair of cold tomb stones. She read the forgotten script, painful as it was, and fell to her knees, feeling the lump rise in her throat. She traced her fingers along the carved names.

There was no such thing as a dry grave in Wraith Marsh. The acidic properties preserved the flesh but destroyed the bones, which is what Daphne needed.

"Daphne, is that you?"

The Dagger stood and turned, both hands grasping the weapons of her speciality before she even recognized the voice. "Naomi, you're here!"

The two sisters laughed and rushed to embrace each other, relishing the sound of each others' voices, unheard for over a year. As they pulled apart, Daphne took in her sister's slightly haggard appearance. The dark clothes of her profession were torn and muddied, but she still had that skull-headed staff she always carried around.

"Life has been hard on you," she commented, and got poked in the stomach for her troubles.

"You're one to talk!" Naomi countered, trying to brush a knot in Daphne's raven hair. She smiled. "It's been too long."

"But now, we have but a few days."

"You have it then."

Daphne reached into her jacket and pulled out the small red drop that was the ąnima gēmmą. The final ąnima gēmmą. "And it is full."

Naomi stared greedily at the small gem, and took it, cupping it in her pale hand like she would a baby bird. "You have done well, my sister. How did you manage?"

With a sniff, Daphne said, "A little help from a blood sucker. It was the most efficient way, but the most expensive. The remains of the coinage we got from that depressed nobleman is gone."

"No matter, no matter. We have more wealth than we can imagine, right here," the necromancer replied, holding up the soul gem and watching the swirling spirits trapped inside. "The Nameless One will be satisfied, I'm sure."

"And my Kale shall be with me once again, my Kale and my little Adam." Daphne knelt before the twin graves, not noticing the flicker of darkness in Naomi's eye at the mention of the deceased lover. "Not long now." She reached down into the deeper pools at the foot of the tomb stones, where her hand brushed against soft, clammy flesh. "Not long."

Ψ Ѫ Ψ

Merlin woke up with his palm in mud. He grimaced and wiped it on a patch of moss, then tucked himself closer in his blanket, cozy. Behind him, he could hear the others stirring, but he didn't want to talk to them, not yet. Instead, he mulled over what Vraal had said to him, now four days ago.

"When your petty little king kills Daphne, I will be free to do with you however I wish. I will know when Daphne is dead; be sure of that, warlock. I will know. Beware the Nameless One."

Shuddering, Merlin withdrew into himself ever further. The vampyre's threats were bad enough, but then the warning about some thing called the Nameless One...

He couldn't ask Bain about it, else he give away the true nature of his journey to unite with his companions. He didn't have the book of dark creatures anymore, for it was lost with the rest of his possessions.

He could have been lying, he reasoned with himself. Yeah, that's it. Vraal was just lying, trying to scare me.

Pushing himself to his hands and knees, Merlin stretched his tense back muscles before sitting back on his heels. Most of the others were already up. As he scanned the marshes, he suddenly became aware of how creepy they really were. The mists that had fallen the night prior refused to leave with the coming of dawn, and hung wispy around them, as though hiding the bog's secrets jealously. The black-watered pools were lifeless and impartial, shored by mossy ground. A few faded, leafless trees jabbed into the twilight sky like broken hands, and the reeds taunted each other, bowing gently in a breeze Merlin couldn't feel. The stench of decomposed earth and rancid water clogged his nostrils. It was no wonder the place had such numerous horrid names.

They had a cold breakfast and waited for Bain to gather his bearings. He took the lead, moving both on land and through the secretive pools, all of various depths. Sometimes they were just at their ankles. More often, they reached up past their shins. When it parted around their knees, thick and sludgy in some areas, thin and slimy in others, grumbles of discontent became audible.

There were signs of previous human habitation in the swamp. Occasionally, a post of some ancient fence stabbed into the air like a lonely sentinel, or the remains of a raised walkway started from nowhere and ended at the same place. The ruins of a building caught their curiosity, until they saw that half of the structure had already rotted away. It was a neglected, desolate place indeed.

A submerged root of some long gone tree grappled Merlin's foot, and he fell forward with a splash that was swallowed up by the insulating mists. He spat out rancid water, using one drenched hand to wipe his sopping face. He untangled his foot and stood, rivulets streaming off his shoulders. He was grateful for the water-proof clothes, for they kept him dry, but they did nothing for the chill.

"Watch your step, young masters," Bain called over his shoulder. "We must care not to stray but a foot out of line, else we loose ourselves in the depths of this cursed land."

To be lost here, in such a place as this, the warlock muttered inwardly, and shivered.

When the voices began, they were so low and inconsistent that they were nearly undetectable. As they rose in pitch and volume, they were deemed just whispers of the wind, only there was no wind. When higher singers joined the chanting, the six companions had no choice but to accept what they were hearing.

"What's this new devilry?" asked Leon in a hushed tone, afraid to attract the attention of the mysterious voices.

No one, not even Bain, had an answer.


They went as far as they could and managed to find an ancient log to rest upon. It was soggy, and the trunk was peculiarly serpentine, but they were grateful for the pause and nibbled on biscuits to tame their growling bellies.

Arthur sat on the curved log and pulled one foot onto his opposite knee, and went about tugging off the clinging debris, the slimy snippets of roots and flaccid plant remains, from his boot. At one point, as Merlin watched – glad he wasn't doing the chore for the king himself – Arthur pulled off what looked like a thick, black strip of some kind, but when it wriggled, the king tossed it away with a barely withheld gasp of disgust. Merlin had an equally difficult time suppressing a snicker, and Arthur glowered at him as though wishing he had thrown the cynical black creature at his servant.

Gwaine patrolled the area cautiously, not straying too far away from their resting place. The choruses of enigmatic voices had stopped some time ago, but it still left him, and the others, wary. Everyone jumped when Bain's raven plummeted from her circling in the air and landed with two hops on the log. She cawed and pecked at the soggy wood as if searching for insects. No one paid her attention, until she crowed three more times and jabbed her beak in a frenzy at her perch.

"What's with her?" asked Elyan, nodding his chin at the infuriated bird.

"Hungry?" Bain made to pass her a crumb from his biscuit, but the raven simply took it and threw it away before proceeding with her frantic pecking.

Arthur was making ready to unburden his other boot when, suddenly, a repulsed, horrified expression befell his features. Merlin blinked questionably.

"What's wrong?"

The king simply swallowed, looking near the warlock's knees. Merlin frowned just as he felt something brush his leg. He glanced down, and paled.

It was a muddy, unpleasant brown, tipped with black and speckled sparingly. It was roughly triangular in shape, and attached to the log like a fungus by one corner. Spines the size of dog teeth ran down the length of the outer edge. It was about as long as Merlin's arm and wider than his waist, and it was waving slowly, to and fro, touching the warlock's leg again and again.

Leon, sitting not too far down the log's length from Arthur, also looked upon the protrusion in distaste. "Is that...a fin?"

Merlin glanced at him, ashen-faced, and nodded slowly. "We're sitting on it," he croaked.

"Sitting on what, exactly?" asked the king, stiffening.

"Sitting on a—"

"Wyrm!"

All those still perched on the 'log' were thrown flying through the air and into the water at Bain's cry, while his raven took off in a flurry of feathers. Arthur drew his sword, Excalibur, before he even got to his feet from the pool of water, and faced the serpentine creature as it rose from the muddy sludge, its bulbous head reaching to a height of twelve feet. Eight ochre eyes of various sizes and lengths all opened simultaneously and glowered suspiciously down at the six astounded companions. Its nose and mouth, ending in a dull point, twitched, and its many fins, running down its whole length, wavered experimentally. Gills at its throat pulsed, releasing a nauseating stench of decay.

There they all stood, staring at the wyrm as it stared back, motionless as scarecrows. Then Bain's raven descended and landed on Merlin's shoulder, where she jabbed his ear. He grunted, flinching, and the wyrm's head snapped around to face him. The warlock quailed beneath the many-eyed gaze.

"Oh, sh—"

The wyrm's circular mouth flashed open, revealing the four layers of razor teeth within, releasing a horrible, hissing warble. It lunged.

Arthur yelled unintelligibly and body-checked Merlin, sending him staggering out of the way of the teeth, and slashed at the creature as it neared. Excalibur cut through slimy skin and the wyrm retreated, its neck pulling away with the grace and speed of a heron, but the grotesqueness of an eel. It hissed in frustration and pain, and the rest of its body curled around itself in defence.

"To me!" Arthur roared, and his knights hastily obeyed. Decades of discipline held true as they created a wall, which kept the wyrm from lunging again.

Bain stood by Merlin at one end of the wall of men, drawing a bow, and the warlock upholding a dagger, which would be of little use against the monster. It was better than fleeing and abandoning his companions.

The wyrm hissed again, a horrible, scratchy sound, and it wavered back and forth like a cobra readying itself to strike.

Perhaps it had been spending nearly half his life watching his back for danger that urged Merlin to turn his head slowly around and squint into the grey fog, so thick now that it made the water line impossible to see ten feet away. The second wyrm was noticeable, however, as it slithered up behind the companions as silently like a cat stalking its prey. It seemed even bigger than the first one.

"Erm, Arthur?"

"Yes, Merlin?" The words were terse between clenched teeth.

"In this case, two heads are not better than one."

"Gee, thanks for the advice, Merlin! I..." He trailed off once he realized what the servant meant. He turned once, then faced the first wyrm, which seemed to almost smirk as it assessed the situation. "Double line!" he bellowed, and those on either end of the wall of men came about and got back-to-back with the next people in line. Now Leon, Arthur, and Merlin faced the newcomer, while the other three continued to keep the first off.

"All right, now what?" Merlin resisted the urge to hurtle his magic at the monsters, even as the power snarled and pulled at its bonds within him. He could dismantle the wyrms in a heartbeat, but what would that result for him in the end?

"We...we..." Arthur was concentrating as the second wyrm jabbed at the knights, gurgling deep in its circular, toothy maw. It was big enough to bite a horse in two, and then swallow the pieces whole. He sliced at it with Excalibur, missed, but never faltered.

"We charge headlong into danger, swords swinging, lungs screaming and hoping for the best!" Gwaine cried cheerfully, and broke the line.

"Gwaine, no!"

The wyrm squealed gleefully and struck, only to shriek in agony and recoil, shaking its head side to side and scattering dark blood everywhere. Gwaine hooted with exhilaration and hacked at the creature's slimy body, and even managed to cut off a fin before being forced to retreat. Elyan pounced to the ruffian knight's side defensively, and Bain shot an arrow into one of the wyrm's eight eyes. The monster gargled and thrashed about, trying to dislodge the quarrel.

As all of this was happening, Leon and Arthur led the second wave at the new wyrm. It had seen what the silver sticks of metal had done to its mate, and so was much more wary. Therefore, it made for the weakest link of the attack: Merlin.

The warlock dodged to the side, out of the creature's strike, then whirled around, using his momentum to drive his dagger into the creature's swollen nose. With a squeal, the wyrm swung its head towards him and batted him away, stunning him. As he crashed into a pool, to surface blind and coughing, Arthur leaped forward and jabbed his blade into the creature's gills. It flinched and retracted, hissing angrily. Leon unwittingly did the same as Gwaine and amputated a fin from the wyrm's side, and it slithered back, manoeuvring its body to a more protective position.

After that, it all fell apart. As though communicating through telepathy, the two wyrms suddenly lurched towards each other, bowling the knights over and effectively dividing them.

Merlin dragged Arthur from the water, only for a wyrm's tail to sweep their feet from under them. Leon was lost from view in the explosions of water and roiling wyrm bodies. As Arthur tried calling for his knights, his voice was swallowed in the hellish din. Even Merlin had difficulty hearing him.

"Go, Merlin!"

The servant had to look to his king to see that he was actually speaking to him.

"Go! Hide in the fog!"

"No!"

"Do what I say!"

"No—!" Merlin's defiance was interrupted as the wyrm's tail once more flailed towards him. He caught a blow in the chest and was tossed several metres into the swamp. He landed with a splash, and as he tried to gasp for air, he inhaled water. He vaguely heard Arthur screaming his name through his coughing fit, in which he nearly vomited to rid his body of unwanted water, but could only stand for a moment before falling over again. He was trapped in mud.

As he fought to pull his feet free of the muck, he tried finding the site of the skirmish, but was alarmed to see that the fog completely concealed it. Only the sounds of splashing water, shrieking wyrms and bellowing men could be detected.

He grasped what felt like an ancient root or branch beneath the surface of the swamp, and with a sequence of wiggles and twists, he hauled himself from the greedy grasp of the mud. At the same time, the branch yanked loose in his hand. An idea blossomed at the back of his mind.

He stood, precarious on the soft ground, and upheld the branch like a torch. It was wet, yes, and soggy, yes, but what was that for a warlock?

"Iňflảmmő." His eyes blazed like twin coins and a spark ignited the tip of the branch. It sputtered, but as Merlin coaxed it gently, it caught the water-logged wood and flickered playfully.

He recalled, from many days ago, reading about wyrms in the book of dark creatures where he had learned facts on vampyres. It said that these monsters abhor heat, but light, paradoxically, catches their eye.

He heaved a deep breath, ensured that his stream of magic keeping the flame sustained would not be disturbed, and let the sounds of the battle lead him right back to its midst. He had lost the dagger, left it in one of the monster's noses, so when he reached the nearest slimy coil of the nearest slimy wyrm, he simply yelled, "OI!" at the top of his lungs and kicked it.

The wyrm nearly ignored him, but then one of its many eyes noticed the flickering mage fire. With a sound that could almost pass as a purr, the creature turned its massive head and stared at the flame, even disregarding the stab Elyan inflicted on its side.

"Yeah, that's right. Follow the fire." Merlin slowly backed away, holding the torch before him and waving it gently back and forth. The wyrm's ochre eyes followed the light's trail, and then its whole snaky body roiled about to tail it, to tail the servant. "Come on."

"Merlin?"

Damn! The warlock spun about and fled, retreating from where Arthur's voice rang out. The wyrm, along with its companion, followed, all sixteen eyes on the flickering flame that was rapidly vanishing into the fog.

"No, Merlin!"

Go, go! the servant ordered himself, holding the fire above his head and bolting into the mists. Once more, he heard Arthur yell his name in dismay, but, devoid of the chain mail that would inevitably slow the king down, Merlin swiftly outstripped him, leading the wyrms away from him and his companions, with no thoughts his own life. It didn't take long to lose them all, and even as the wyrms closed in on him, he was satisfied in the knowledge that they were safe.


Hm, a cliffie.

*Troll face* Problem?