Luke

We made good time the second day. We had even begun to descend the mountains by the time the sun had become midway shrouded by the distant horizon.

"Making good time," Gordez commented. Of course we were. We were travelling light. We weren't allowing ourselves to get distracted. We had our eyes trained ahead at all times. And all but one of us were military trained. And that wasn't even to say it had been a silent endeavor, the only noise among us the marching of our feet against the earth. It was like old times. What are old times? I had no idea what these 'old times' were, but that wasn't the point. It felt nice, as simple as that, as though we were able to forget for a few hours that the purpose of our journey was to help support a terrorist organization by conscripting a band of bayou bandits.

If I had possessed the opportunity to have a real childhood, I wanted to think that it would feel something like this, as we walked along the mountains, cracking stupid jokes, enjoying the sights, having legitimate conversation, and overall, just feeling like we belonged right there with each other.

It had been a great day for it too. The sky was covered in clouds, ensuring that the Springtime sun didn't bear down on us too too hard. Despite the precarious nature of the terrain, we had taken it slowly and done it smart.

Even the night passed smoothly without incident. We kept our respective watches, myself taking the third, and sure enough, the sun rose to all of us still alive the next day, and from there, it was down into the swamp.

That was when things became less than ideal. The sky was clear, the sun shining bright. By a normal person's standards, that may have been considered 'idealized perfection.' Not for us, not when we were situated thousands of feet above sea level, the altitude already doing enough to exhaust us as it was, somehow, the extra few hundred yards closer to the sun feeling as though, in that moment of time, were making all the difference.

While disassembling the camp, Zek had accidentally cut himself a rather sizeable gash along his arm, much to Ka'lira's obvious concern. He was alright, of course, at least until we had begun descending the mountain, and he'd had a run in with a plant that, upon contact with his wound, had escalated the pain tenfold, to the point he had been yelling at us to just, in his words, "Cut the damn thing off!"

He wouldn't stop scratching at his wound, tearing at it, to the point we feared he would rip right into his arm. Gordez and I had to restrain him while Ka'lira bandaged his arm, and we had to fight against his thrashing for nearly 5 minutes until the pain finally subsided, and he was able to calm down. He spent the rest of that day, sword in hand, chopping at any shrubbery that got in his way.

Mountain had transformed into forest. Forest had transformed into marsh, and marsh into swamp. At some indiscernible point along the way, the sun had decided it would no longer grace us with its company, and had disappeared beyond the multi-layered tree canopy that extended hundreds of feet into the sky above us.

Gordez wouldn't have me light the way ahead with my ability, insisting to me through whisper that we never knew who was watching. I'd called him out for being paranoid at first, but as we trekked deeper into fog, it started to feel to me as though every shadow hid a pair of eyes that were watching me. The others felt it too. We were sticking closer together, Zek and Ka'lira practically holding on to each other with their free arms sporting their respective weapons.

I'd unsheathed my blade on the pretense of using it as a machete, and though I would hack and slash at the recurring vine or branch, I mostly just clung onto the sword, the steel in my hand the only thing making me not feel entirely exposed at this moment in time.

The swamp was moving around us. We felt it. We heard it. It was easy enough to assume single swamp critters going about their days, hunting, being hunted, but it felt like more than that. It felt wrong. Unearthly. And it could be seen too, vines moving, branches falling, water rippling where it shouldn't have. Who knows? Maybe I was just going paranoid, but it wasn't just me. The others were seeing it to. At least, they were seeing something. Zek was jumping at shadows. Ka'lira was training her crossbow on random points in the middle of the swamp, and Gordez would not stop gathering us together like school children, pushing us forward, moving us along. Something was very wrong, and that would no longer be up to debate when we entered an empty clearing in the middle of the swamp, sludge water rising as high as our knees, trapped in what looked to be a cage of vines and trees, the very way we had entered having closed around us. All of us had our weapons drawn. We didn't know what we were fighting, but we knew one thing: we were in for a fight.

There was a splash behind us, and we turned. Where he stood, the water had ceased to exist, his feet perfectly dry, a wall of water refusing to shower his lower legs, the displaced water rising above and around him, transmutated into icicles pointed directly at us. He was wearing a green outfit of cat alligator scales lining his body, an assortment of utility belts and bandoliers accessorizing his apparel. From the way his head was pointed, I was prone to believe that his head itself was that of a swamp creature, angry eyes and a snarling nose directed directly towards me until the beast raised its head, revealing the face of a man within the maw of the dead alligator's head. "You shouldn't have come here."

Another splash, to our right this time, then another from behind us, then to our left, then behind us once again, and as we darted back and forth, our eyes trying to keep up with new arrivals, I was starting to realize that, somehow, I was missing the desert.