Six moved.
She kept her steps slow, deliberate, minimizing the splashing as she waded through the ankle-deep water. The fog pressed in from all sides—thick, grey, suffocating—but now she could see through it.
Sort of.
The Blood Scent painted the world in shades of violence.
Red glows pulsed all around her. Dozens of them. Some faint, some bright, some flickering out even as she watched. The swamp wasn't just a swamp.
It was a killing field.
Thirty feet to her left.
Six's head turned instinctively. Through the fog, she could see two red signatures—one small, one slightly larger. The small one was fleeing. The larger one was pursuing.
Then they collided.
The small glow flared brilliant crimson—fresh blood, lots of it—and began to fade.
Six swallowed and kept walking.
Don't stop. Don't look. Keep moving.
But she couldn't help it. The choker fed her information whether she wanted it or not, and her eyes kept tracking the carnage unfolding in the mist.
Fifty feet ahead, slightly right.
Something was hunting.
Six slowed, squinting through the fog. She could barely make out the shape—a compact mass, roughly the size of a medicine ball, hovering near the surface of the water. It looked like... a bundle. A knot. Tentacles wrapped tightly around a central body, coiled and compressed like a loaded spring.
Then she saw the beak.
It protruded from the center of the tentacle mass—curved, sharp, and long. Black as obsidian and gleaming wetly.
The creature was completely still.
Waiting.
A faint red glow passed nearby—some kind of swamp rodent, bleeding from a scratch on its hindquarters, paddling through the water without a care.
The tentacle ball launched.
Six flinched.
The thing moved impossibly fast—uncoiling and hurling itself through the air like a living cannonball. It crossed twenty feet in the blink of an eye, tentacles unfurling mid-flight, beak leading the charge.
SQUELCH.
The rodent didn't even have time to squeak.
Six watched the red glow flare and die as the tentacle ball wrapped around its prey, beak plunging in again and again with wet, rhythmic sounds.
Jesus Christ.
She gave that area a very wide berth.
Eighty feet to the right.
Another hunt. Another kill.
This time she saw the predator clearly.
It was a crawdad—or something that had once been a crawdad, before this nightmare world had gotten its hands on it. The thing was massive, easily four feet long, with a segmented tail and armored carapace the color of rust and dried blood.
But the claws.
God, the claws.
The right claw was standard—oversized, crushing, brutal. But the left claw had changed. It had elongated into something that barely resembled a pincer anymore. Instead, it was a single tapering spike—a biological spear, three feet of chitinous death that ended in a point sharp enough to punch through steel.
The crawdad had cornered something against a submerged log. Six couldn't see the prey clearly, just a desperate red glow flickering and pulsing.
FWOOOOSH!
A jet of high-pressure water erupted from somewhere near the crawdad's mouth, slamming into the prey and pinning it against the wood.
Then the left claw came down.
The red glow went out.
Six exhaled slowly.
That's what shot at me earlier. There's more than one.
She scanned the fog, and her stomach dropped.
Three more crawdad signatures. No, four. Five. All scattered throughout the swamp, all faintly glowing with the residual blood of recent meals.
And the tentacle balls—she could see at least a dozen of them now, bunched up and motionless, waiting for prey to wander too close.
The swamp wasn't a location.
It was an ecosystem. A brutal, endless cycle of predation where everything killed everything else, and the only rule was eat or be eaten.
And I'm walking right through the middle of it.
Six adjusted her course, weaving between the red signatures, giving each predator as much space as she could manage. The fog helped—none of them seemed to have noticed her yet. But every step felt like a gamble.
Then she checked behind her.
Her blood went cold.
It was still there.
Far back, at the very edge of her perception—maybe a hundred and fifty feet—a massive red glow pulsed in the fog. And it was moving.
Slowly. Steadily. Relentlessly.
Not running. Not charging.
Six's hand drifted to the choker at her throat, then tore her eyes away from the distant glow and faced forward.
"Move. Just keep moving."
She pushed deeper into the swamp, surrounded by monsters, and now hunted by a god knows what else.
And the fog swallowed her whole.
Six needed to know.
The not-knowing was worse than anything. Every time she glanced back and saw that massive red glow pulsing at the edge of her perception, her heart seized. Her mind conjured images of dark fur and freezing mist, of a wolf's body with a man's torso erupting from its chest.
Is it him? Is he toying with me?
She couldn't keep running blind.
Six spotted a suitable tree—a massive dead cypress, its trunk thick and gnarled, its branches reaching up through the fog like skeletal fingers. The bark was slick with moisture, but there were enough handholds.
She jumped, caught the lowest branch, and pulled herself up.
Climb. Don't think. Just climb.
Her wounded bicep screamed in protest. The choker pulsed faintly against her throat, sipping at her vitality, a gentle reminder of its price. She ignored both and kept ascending.
Twenty feet up. Thirty. Forty.
Finally, she found a thick branch that could support her weight and settled into a crouch, her back pressed against the trunk. From here, she was above the worst of the fog. She could see the grey-white blanket stretching out below her, broken only by the tips of other dead trees.
And she could see the glow.
It was brighter now. Closer.
Six steadied her breathing and waited.
Come on. Show yourself.
Minutes passed.
The glow intensified—shifting from a distant pulse to a steady burn. Whatever it was, it was big. The signature wasn't just large, it was deep. Layers of wounds, old and new, painting the creature in shades of crimson.
Sixty feet.
Fifty.
Forty.
Six's fingers tightened on the branch.
Please don't be him. Please don't be—
The shape broke through the mist.
Six's breath caught.
Then she sagged against the trunk, a shaky laugh escaping her lips.
"Oh thank god."
It wasn't Fenric.
It was an ogre.
The creature was massive—twelve feet tall at least, maybe more. It waded through the ankle-deep water like it was nothing, each thunderous step sending ripples across the swamp's surface. Its skin was the color of swamp mud, grey-green and mottled, stretched tight over slabs of muscle and fat.
The ogre's head was too small for its body—a lumpy, misshapen thing with tiny eyes, a broad flat nose, and a mouth full of yellowed tusks. Wiry black hair sprouted from its scalp in uneven patches. It wore nothing but a crude loincloth made from stitched animal hides, and it carried a club—a whole tree trunk, really, with the roots still attached, resting on one massive shoulder.
But the wounds.
Gods, the wounds.
The ogre was covered in them. Gashes across its arms and chest. Puncture marks on its legs—probably from the crawdads. A long, jagged tear across its back that looked like something had tried to take a bite out of it. Old scars layered over older scars, a roadmap of violence carved into grey-green flesh.
This thing had been walking through the swamp for a long time.
And it was still standing.
Six watched as the ogre trudged forward, tiny eyes scanning the fog. A tentacle ball launched itself from a nearby cluster of reeds—hurling toward the ogre's throat with beak extended.
The ogre didn't even look.
One massive hand came up and caught the creature mid-flight. There was a wet crunch as the ogre's fingers closed. The tentacle ball spasmed once, twice, then went limp.
The ogre grunted, stuffed the dead thing into its mouth, and kept walking.
Chew. Chew. Swallow.
Six blinked.
Okay then.
She watched the ogre's path, noting how it moved. The creature wasn't wandering aimlessly—it had a direction, a purpose. It was heading... northeast? Maybe? Hard to tell without the sun.
More importantly, the swamp parted for it.
Six could see the other red signatures—the crawdads, the tentacle balls, the other things lurking in the fog—and they were moving away. Giving the ogre a wide berth. Even the apex predators of this nightmare ecosystem knew better than to pick a fight with something that size.
An idea formed in Six's mind.
He's clearing a path.
She chewed her lip, considering.
Following an ogre through a monster-infested swamp was insane. The thing could turn on her at any moment. Could notice her, decide she looked tasty, and smash her into paste with that tree-trunk club.
But...
Everything else is avoiding him. If I stay behind him, stay quiet, stay out of sight...
She looked back the way she'd come.
Fenric was still out there. Still hunting. And she was exhausted, wounded, running low on options.
The ogre was a risk.
But it was a calculated risk.
Six made her decision.
She descended the tree silently, dropping the last ten feet and landing in the water with barely a splash. The ogre was already fifty feet ahead, its massive form fading into the fog.
Six followed.
She kept her distance—forty feet back, maybe fifty—and matched her steps to the ogre's thunderous footfalls. Every time it took a step, she took a step. Every time it paused, she froze.
The swamp creatures continued to flee from the ogre's path, and Six walked in the wake of cleared water.
Just keep moving, big guy. Don't look back.
The ogre didn't look back.
It just kept trudging forward, chewing on another tentacle ball it had snatched from the air, completely unaware of the small blood-splattered girl trailing in its shadow.