Chapter 41: Crossing the marshes

They made their way around to the back of the Inn with Cat unusually not in front but instead slinking along behind him. A short path led down to the marshland that most people used to begin their journey crossing it, and Kira stopped for a moment at the top to come to terms with what he was now going to attempt.

The marsh went on for as far as his eyes could see and disappeared far into the distance, betraying how it would take several days to cross. Far from being a normal wetland, it contained many raised islands bare from trees and crisscrossed with their own ditches that allowed water to flow through them. What made this stretch of land, if you could dare call it that, dangerous was that it was connected to the sea, and so the water in it would rise and fall during the day, meaning that you had to keep your wits about you to not get wet or wake up underwater after choosing someplace too low to sleep on.

In addition, it was populated with many different large beasts whose cries could be heard at the marsh's side, but they could not be seen themselves. This added a mystery to the place that should have kept anyone from wanting to cross, but Kira absolutely had to.

It looked as though trying to avoid the muddy bits as much as possible and stay on the raised islands was the best idea to avoid being stranded by the rising water. Other people had also come to this conclusion, and the Inn had been built where a good number of these islands lined up so that you could island hop across them to reach the other side whilst hopefully avoiding as much mud as possible. The first problem then became getting to the nearest island, a good two hundred strides away, that sat beyond the watery mud, gently slapping at the land at Kira's feet in small waves. Looking around himself, he saw a possible route across over to his left where the water seemed a bit less deep, and several stones had been placed for a person to walk over hence avoiding muddying themselves.

With Cat in tow, he stepped onto the closest stone. It sunk a little but did not disappear beneath him, and he gained confidence, happy about his choice to get some taller boots because had he still been wearing his normal shoes, he would already have had muddy feet with the sludge reaching up to his ankles. Pulling his feet out of the mud with a slurping noise, he stepped onto the next stone and then the next until they briefly disappeared, and he tried walking across the occasional tufts of grass that looked solid enough to bear his weight. He didn't bother looking back for how Cat was getting on, assuming that the lighter boy would be fine, but he had to when he was about to stand on the next stone along, and the boy called to him, "Stop! You don't want to do that."

Turning around and listening to him because Kira guessed that his opinion still held a tiny bit of value as he was a manipulator, Kira saw a very sorry sight indeed. Unlike him, Cat had not been blessed with new shoes, and his smaller height meant that mud now covered him up to his waist as he must have taken a wrong turn into some of the deeper parts of the marsh. "What is it now?" demanded Kira.

"Look at that stone again," he replied, "This time with your aura." before breaking free of the last bit of mud and hurrying over to stand at Kira's side.

Doing as he had been asked, Kira looked at the stone and saw that it had a minute aura of its own. Only living things had aura, and so this betrayed its identity. Taking a small pebble from nearby and throwing it at the stone, he was forced to jump back when, upon contact, the rock seemed to fall in on itself, and teeth shot up from either side of it, through the water, to close around the pebble that had landed squarely in the creature's mouth.

That wasn't good, he thought, as he looked around for a different route, but no obvious one presented itself. Eventually, he found himself following Cat across what seemed to be a path just as uninviting as the rest of them but somehow kept him from getting too wet as his feet didn't sink into it nearly as much as he had expected.

"You have experience in this sort of environment?" asked Kira, conscious of how much easier this was getting now that he was following the yokai.

"Yup, and I'm tired of following you right through the muddy bits." said Cat, "You realize that the best looking routes aren't always the best, right? Also, keep your proper eyes open for monsters hidden in the water."

And Kira did, seeing now why Cat had seemed to change course randomly to avoid otherwise invisible fish and long, lizard type animals that were only visible by their aura. This was probably why very few people that weren't manipulators dared to try and cross and why the materials and luxuries found on the island that this marsh guarded were so valued as they were tough to reach. Kira supposed that as Cat was a yokai, he had probably come from some equally horrible place and was content to defer to his authority for the time being.

After an hour of gingerly jumping from cleft to cleft and getting frustrated at the mud clinging to him, before giving up on trying to avoid it entirely, they arrived at the first island. Instead of climbing to its top and walking over it, Cat led him through one of the channels crossing it, seeking to avoid making themselves too obvious on the horizon to any monsters that may be watching from a distance. The ravine was V-shaped, and the water dominated the bottom, but Cat was adamant that they could not touch it, let alone walk through it, telling him that they didn't know how deep it was or what may be attracted to them by any splashes they made. This meant that they had to climb sideways, as though on a cliff, along the side of the ravine to make any progress at all.

Climbing was not one of Kira's specialities, and here it was an absolute pain because, in every hand or foot hold that he found, many small creatures and dirty little plants were living, which meant that he had to stop every few steps to wipe his hands down. With Cat getting further ahead of him, and at encouragement from Ghost, he stopped caring about this and pressed onwards with cold hands covered in water and dirt.

His mood was deteriorating as the journey continued, and he was sure that something was biting at his feet from within his boots as he periodically felt twitches of pain coming from them. What really irritated him was that Cat was not very encouraging like Ghost was; damn, wondered Kira, how was Cat managing to be even less useful than Ghost in this circumstance?

Wanting to take a break, Kira followed Cat to an outcrop of rock he had found for him and sat down to remove his boots and deal with his feet. As he had suspected, several small creatures, probably picked up when his feet had gone under the water earlier, were busy biting away at him, and he killed them with jabs of his aura before throwing the corpses away, but not into the water as that could be dangerous. Cat left for a short while to scout ahead and returned to tell him that they were about halfway through the first island, and Kira asked him how many were left to cross, but he was unsure, saying that there were at least eight more.

Eight moaned Kira internally before being reminded of his mission and resolving to push onwards so that they had cleared the first bit of land by lunchtime. After that, they were able to cross another two, in a similar manner, before stopping for Kira's dinner, and he demanded that they continue onwards even as it began to get darker around them. His companion did not necessarily think that this was a good idea but knew that he couldn't change Kira's mind without an argument and so went along with him.

As it turned out, he should have risked the argument because, under the low light conditions, Kira slipped on the side of a ravine. Not wanting to fall into the water below, he threw himself against the bank and ended up sliding down it, just managing to bring himself to a halt as his feet brushed against the dark surface, sending ripples across it. Quickly pulling himself back up, he looked around himself, with his aura concentrated in front of his eyes to try and see if anything would surface, enticed to do so by the thought of him being some prey. Cat had noticed what had happened too and was waiting a bit further along so that he would be ready to help in the case of an attack.

Their worries were soon confirmed. When, across the water, a new ripple appeared, not one that had been produced by Kira but instead one that looked like it could be coming from the front of a boat where it parted the ocean. Drifting to the surface, a giant, scaled snout appeared in the wake's centre with two narrow eyes set far back into it. It looked exactly like how dragons had been described in the legends that Kira had heard about them when he was younger, and he wondered if they had been based on this creature, but he deemed it unlikely due to the distinct lack of wings. With it coming closer, he saw that it must have been three times as long as he was tall and that a large proportion of its body just seemed to be a huge mouth preparing to take a piece out of him.

When the monster was a couple of paces away, it stopped and eyed him, seemingly too wary to attack, but this was a simple ruse. Without giving any warning, it burst from the water, faster than he would have thought possible for such a big animal, and opened up its mouth whilst flying towards him. This revealed rows of deadly sharp teeth that stretched back so far he was certain that, if he had placed his whole arm in its mouth, he could not reach back to where they began. Had he not been a manipulator, that would have been the end of him but, because of the increased speed that his training had blessed him with, he was able to react quickly to the threat.

Lifting one of his legs, he kicked at the front of the creature's snout, where its nose appeared to be and braced himself against the dirt behind him to stop it midflight. For a terrifying moment, it seemed that its huge momentum would still carry it close enough to bite him, but he managed to stop it just before it reached his torso, and it landed back into the water, splashing the brown sludge all over him.

Deciding that he was probably too much effort for what he was worth, the monster disappeared and swam away below the surface of the channel that soon became still once more, completely free from ripples and reflecting light from the newly risen moon, as though the dragon had never been there.

Having had enough for one day, Kira caved into accepting Cat's suggestion that they should find some place to sleep for the night and so, moving higher into the cliff face, they did, or rather Cat did, and he followed along. The space that he had found seemed too good to be true because it was too high for them to have to worry about the water rising with the tide, and it had a relatively smooth rocky surface for sleeping on. When the morning came, it seemed that it had indeed been too good to be true because another creature had already claimed it as its home. This animal's corpse now lay in the trough below - it had encountered Cat overnight - being gnawed on by the same monster that had attacked Kira. With Cat watching over him, Kira hadn't noticed this overnight scuffle at all.

Eating breakfast alone did not take him long, and he was spurred onwards by Cat's watchful eyes because he felt slightly uneasy about being the only one with any food. He did think about offering some to the boy, even if Cat didn't need it, but then decided against that idea as only Ghost deserved such kindness and it couldn't eat at all.

The rest of the journey across the islands took the same pattern of slowly climbing sideways through deep gullies before trying to identify the least muddy way to the next one along. This was not always easy, and one time, taken off guard by the rising tide, Kira ended up stuck on a small island, just a few feet across, midway between two of the larger ones. With the sea threatening to take this last perch from him anyway, he was then forced to swim a few dozen strides to reach the next bit of land, praying that his bag would not let too much water inside to ruin any food that he had left with him. Fortunately, when he reached more firm footing, his food was dry, but he certainly wasn't, and he became extremely cold until he managed to dry himself off all under Cat's direction.

The process of crossing the marshes was a miserable one and took three more days in total before, with no warning whatsoever, the next island along was actually the bank at the other side which they clambered up and onto before realizing that they had made it.