I walked along the road for about thirty minutes before I decided I had gone far enough.
With a heavy sigh I stepped into the disgusting muddy waters of the swamp itself, and began to half trudge, half swim toward the area I knew the whelps where commonly found.
The body I resided in grew tired and sluggish within the first few minutes of my "swim" and I realized I should probably have given my slave a bit of rest before coming here.
We had traveled for most of a day to even reach Duskwood, and to be honest I hadn't been paying attention to the passing of time with the state of constant gloom the place was in.
A closer inspection of the body revealed I had overtaxed it by quite a large margin. Several of the muscles were torn, and soon enough I might even start hallucinating.
I traveled through the murk for around another hour before I decided it was time to solve the problem.
I cut my hand messily along the haft of my blade, before swimming to the shore of one of the small islands that sat a couple feet apart within the swamp.
As I made my way over I noticed several shapes that I had assumed to be driftwood following me.
I managed to reach the shore of the island before the crocolisks did, clambering up from the mud of the land with as much dignity as I could manage.
Not as much as I would have liked.
There were three that I could see, and a couple of well placed death bolts quickly turned that number into one as the wounded animals fled, not realizing that they would soon die anyway.
I waited for the last to reach the shore, breaching the surface fully with a massive splash as a large set of jaws made to clasp around me and pull me into a watery grave.
I stepped aside, letting the creature fly past me and unsheathing my sword with a flourish. With enhanced strength I drove the blade downward into the beasts skull, pushing it through and into the earth below it.
It struggled against the blade pinning it to the ground, dying as it did. I quickly drew the blood from the creature onto my body, tracing symbols I had memorized from Anastriel's tome.
They were used traditionally as a means to cast spells Anastriel had personally crafted, of which I knew none. But I found they could also be used to force the kind of healing Nyssa has managed in the past.
A small application of mana got the process started, and I watched as the beast shuddered, the blood pooling around its head now flowing to me.
I sat cross legged, focusing on channeling my mana in a way I new it wasn't supposed to go.
I closed my eyes, feeling as the creatures life force restored the wound i had given myself, and brought the body back into a manageable state, if not the mind.
When I opened them again the dried husk of a Crocolisk lay drained of blood just in front of me. I pushed the creature back in the water with a quick kick, figuring whatever other things may lay in the water would handle disposal well enough.
I leaned against the trunk of a tree, observing the land around me. I hated swamps. When I was in control of this place I would probably either never visit, or simply blow it up.
Just because I was willing to be here for the opportunity presented, didn't mean I was enjoying my time in a mud covered land filled with bugs.
It sort of fit the stereotypes most of the Elves had for the lesser races. Before Rick was in my head I had always assumed humans were mud-people, mostly staying in places like this.
I had come here with plans to take a look at the Sunken temple, but to be honest I was planning to leave now as soon as I had my prize.
Then a flutter of movement caught my eye. A flash of green scales above.
I looked up to the sight of a green drake flying overhead, headed to in the same direction I was going. I grinned at the reassurance. I was in the right place.
With a near skip in my step I jumped up, before making a swimmers dive into the waters in front of me.
It was only another hour of swimming through the waters of the swamp, and avoiding crocodiles and suspicious moving patches of moss I knew to be bog beasts, a kind of plant monster, that I found a group of the very beasts I was looking for.
Within the trees, sticking together in something like a pack, was a group of draconic whelps, surrounding the form of a very large and very dead crocolisk, relishing in their meal.
Whelps at that age looked something like lizards that had heads around three sizes too large for their bodies, and wings equally too small.
At a distance they where cute, before the rows of shark-like teeth and general viciousness of them became apparent.
A dragon whelp found in the wild was usually around three months old, four feet long from tail tip to snout, and weighed around a hundred and eighty pounds.
They where dangerous predators in their own right, and each of them was scarily intelligent. Some were smart enough at this age even to speak.
I dropped the moment I saw them, submerging myself out of view, before I surfaced behind a cluster of trees, and began to prepare the skulls in my pack.
Dragons, even whelps, where creatures of magic, and creatures of will. A dragon whelp had enough magic in it to match adept mages, and they had a natural affinity far beyond them.
Most spells I could cast on them would be at least partially resisted, and the one I had in mind could very easily be overpowered. It was a simple charm, something even children could use.
Sleep. It was usually magically enforced for around ten seconds before it drew away and it was up to the victims disposition to awaken.
I planned on not only extending the affect to several beings at once, but to make it last for several days.
Add in the fact the nature of my intended targets and the amount of preparation I had put into such a simple casting began to make more sense.
I gathered the skulls around me in a circle not unlike the one I had used to capture the souls in the first place.
They glowed red as I drew upon the souls from my place behind the tree line, and I watched the dragons heads whip upward as they sensed considerable amounts of magic gather together seemingly from nothing.
A couple of them managed to let out a strangled lizard-like call, before I unleashed the full power of several thousand souls into a simple sleep spell.
The entire clutch immediately fell unconscious, falling to the earth in a state of death like sleep.
The skulls crumbled away as I stepped past the magical circle, and in an instant I dove after the whelps, crossing the waters between us with near supernatural speed.
A quick scan of the group told me there was three females, and four males based of the pattern and brightness of their scales.
They all seemed sickly and relatively weak now that I was close, unlikely to be a batch that would survive long on their own.
I dumped out the contents of my pack onto the ground, mostly survival supplies and camping gear, before I sent a fireball into the pile, ridding myself of any evidence.
I grabbed one of the males.
I stuffed the whelp inside the pack, making certain to enclose it around itself in as small a ball I could manage without hurting it.
Eventually I managed to get its whole body inside, before I gently lifted the bag over my head, and began my journey back home.
Along the way I nearly giggled as I thought on the possibilities.