NOVEL NEXT Chapter Forty-Eight: Smoke and Mires
The hollowness of Autumn’s coin-pouch echoed the empty feeling inside her heart. How Liddie had swindled her into investing all her money into alcohol trading, she’d never know. Liddie’s own heavy investment into the scheme mollified her somewhat, knowing she wasn't the only one broke.
Autumn was still miffed.
“Like I said, we can make double our investment back when we get to Duskfields!”
The self-satisfied grin on her face undercut Liddie’s attempts at reassuring her. With her slim chest puffed up in pride, the charming pirate strutted down the walkway in front of Autumn, hands threaded behind her head and boots thudding on the wood.
Autumn wasn’t having any of it, no matter how handsome she was looking.
“You brought 130 crates of Mosswine, Liddie. Not 130 bottles, crates. Just how are we meant to sell all that?! Can our wagon even fit that? How heavy is that? 32 gold, all gone.” Autumn lamented.
Confident steps faltered, making Liddie miss a step and almost fall on her face. She sent an embarrassed look Autumn’s way when she recovered.
“Ok, I’ll admit that I got a little, tiny, miniscule bit carried away. But! But! I promise, promise you that I’ll get you your money back! 100% You can always count on a pirate to…yeahhhh, now that I say it out loud…Anyway, stop worrying. It’ll work out fine, you’ll see.”
While Liddie felt sincere to her, Autumn couldn’t help but worry; she’d sunk all her money into this. Well, except for the share of the Quillodiles sales allocated to their party, but that wasn’t her personal funds.
It was a good thing then that they’ll be out in the swamplands for the next four days; Future Autumn could worry about it.
After taking a calming breath, Autumn readdressed her liquor-buying-compatriot.
“What is your plan, then? I hope it’s not just to sell it to the taverns or something.”
Liddie blinked owlishly at Autumn. “How’d you know?”
Autumn massaged her brow in frustration. Perhaps this was something she should have asked before going along with Liddie’s whims. The puppy dog eyes being sent her way weren’t helping. How she was doing it with glowing orange eyes boggled the mind.
“Liddie. I doubt even the Adventurer’s Guild would go through that much in a year. You-We brought 130 crates worth of liquor. Crates!” The puppy-eyes came back. “A-ah, fuck it. We’ll…I’ll figure something out later. It’ll be fine, Autumn, it’ll be fine.” The witch muttered to herself.
Liddie grinned brightly. “Heh, I could drink that much in a year.”
Autumn’s eyelid twitched. “If you did, you’d die. Let me stress it one more time. Crates!!!”
Luckily for the spiraling conversation, and Autumn’s stress levels, they arrived at the set gathering point.
A series of docks stretched out into the water like a ribcage of weathered wood. Small swamp-boats lined the edges while their boatmen awaited with smoking pipes in hand. The few adventurers dotting the dock paid heed to the earliness of their arrival.
Seeing an excess of time on her hands, Autumn took to looking over the gathered villagers. Scattered amongst the building porches and steps were a collection of wizened elders idling away their time with games, crafts, or just watching over the younger children zipping about. Most, however, puffed away at pipes that spewed forth a riot of colors and shapes.
Autumn recognized one elder they had met yesterday, Akarr, if she recalled correctly. As she watched, the elder puffed out a vibrant cloud of smoke that formed into a slithering snake that weaved through the air.
“Interested in a pipe yourself?” Akarr asked, having spotted Autumn’s inquiring gaze.
Embarrassed at being caught staring, Autumn blushed and lowered her face beneath her hat. Liddie's focus was on the mind-altering substances, and she pulled Autumn along, despite her stuttered protests.
“Are we ever! Hi, my name’s Liddie Eastoft and this is the wonderful Witch Autumn.” Liddie beamed expectantly at the elder.
Akarr stared blankly at the pirate. “Good for you, girly. Did you want a smoke or not?”
Liddie scowled. The pirate had bandied her name about all day, but this was the first time she didn’t get the respect she expected. Autumn spotted a steely glint in the elder’s eye and, in an effort not to annoy one of the village’s leaders, spoke before Liddie could.
“U-um. What is it? In the pipe, I mean, or is it the pipe itself that does the colored smoke…stuff?”
The elder, Akarr, pulled her gaze off of Liddie and looked Autumn over. A brief light of interest and respect flickered behind her murky orange eyes.
“It’s Bog Gutweed. Just a mild painkiller to take the ache off of the old joints. Nothing addictive or anything like that, if you're worried.”
Liddie blinked, surprise breaking her from her mood.
“Huh? I thought it was a regulated substance? Sent to the army and hospitals? It fetches a decent amount on the black market…I mean…What?”
Akarr winked at Autumn before giving Liddie a stink eye for her comment.
“We elders have our ways. I’ve got a spare pipe here. Go on and give it a try. You look like you could use it more than me. Kekeke.”
The elder cackled like a Witch might.
Autumn eyed the packed pipe that Elder Akarr held out warily. Seeing Autumn’s hesitation, Liddie took the pipe herself and took a drag. From her mouth came a smoke pirate ship, complete with an accompaniment of sea monsters chasing it.
A look of calm relaxation smoothed Liddie’s face, and she offered the pipe over to Autumn.
Although Autumn was mildly reluctant to indulge in an unknown drug, her teenage rebellion piqued her curiosity. Grasping it lightly in her prosthetic fingers, Autumn drew in a lungful of tickling smoke before coughing it out into a cavalcade of galloping nightmares.
Autumn’s sputtering was met with the boisterous laughter of a pirate. She ignored that as a wave of calm washed over her body; it floated up to her eyes, and the world took on a new splash of brighter saturation. The greens were greener, the reds redder, blues bluer.
A haze of bountiful color enveloped her.
And as the smokey magical drug settled in her limbs, the aches and pains of her journeys soothed. The phantom fingers she didn’t even know she had eased away.
“Give us another pull.”
Liddie stretched a hand out for the pipe and Autumn let her have it. More sea monsters twirled and divided through the air. Autumn was half expecting a Kraken to appear, but it was absent. She saw a Sharktopus though, so there was that.
A childish squeal of glee took her attention away from the smoke monsters. Rushing about the walkways was a gaggle of Inferni children. As she idly watched, several of them bounced between the walkways by jumping atop lone poles in the swamps that farmers were using to anchor traps and trellis.
A young demoness jumped from pillar to pillar in unsteady leaps. When she landed she’d windmill her arms to steady herself, before letting out a bark of laughter and jumping again.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Autumn asked.
“Hmm?” Elder Akarr looked over at the children. “Sure, but that’s the point. Even if they fall, they have a family to fish them out.”
Elder Akarr pointed to the fishermen and women watching over the jumping children with faint fondness and recollection adorning their faces. To emphasize her point, the young demoness mistimed her jump and fell to the bog with a shriek, and an amused demoness soon fished her out.
“The question is: who’ll haul you out of the muck when you fall in?”
Autumn’s bone white fingers bit deeply into the wood of the boat’s prowl. Cold sweat dripped down her back beneath all her layers of protection. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see desperate souls grasping at her, yet when she turned, there was naught but tranquil muddy waters passing her by.
They’d been on the water for a few hours by now.
When the meeting had finally finished, the adventurers all piled into the awaiting boats and set off. Able-bodied boatmen ferried them out into the nearby river: Deadman’s Gullet. The river of silt and mud carved its way north through the mire till it broke around marsh islands in the Bay of Treachery.
At the flash of a familiar skull, Autumn swiveled back to the ferryman piloting their boat, only to see a bird-skull mask instead.
“First time on a boat?” Liddie asked.
Autumn took a deep breath before replying.
“N-no, just…unpleasant experiences with rivers. Oceans too, but I can’t remember why.”
Infinite madness lurked just beyond the outstretched fingers of comprehension before it vanished in a contemptuous wave.
“Well, if you’re going to puke, do it overboard.”
Liddie left Autumn to her nervous contemplations. The young Witch gazed out over the slow waters. Great swarms of incessantly buzzing insects danced a myriad of patterns over the low grasses. Pyre’s alchemical concoctions, an item she’d shilled to the other teams for a mostly reasonable price, kept the bloodsuckers at bay. Still, they followed in their wake like great hungry clouds.
The line of boats followed the natural flows of the river for the better part of the afternoon. Grand gatherings of willowing, grasping trees passed them by in between open expanses of peat and spires of rotten dead trees.
Giant frogs the size of boulders added to the hymn of swamp life, bellowing croaks to shake the heavens and earth. Occasionally, lashing tongues would strike out to pluck passing birds from flight and swallow them whole.
Autumn swallowed her surprise and focused her magical sight on the waters and riverbank. Thanks to her abilities, they had relegated her to the bow. Not that it had proven much use; other than the occasional aquatic life shadowing their wake, everything else seemed content in avoiding their travels.
Nothing Fae in nature had approached, at any rate.
Turning back, Autumn took in her party. Under her sight, she got a clear view of their emotional states; everyone displayed varying degrees of watchful caution. Nethlia sat like a statue, keeping sharp eyes on the monsters teaming the riverbanks. Liddie on the other hand was nearly slumbering under the gentle sway of the boat.
Autumn shook her head in exasperation.
What little she could see of Edwyn’s face was green. The Manus had already puked twice and looked to be on the course of another round of feeding the fishes. It made sense to her now why there were so many following the boats.
Wisely, Autumn turned her attention to the other two members. Pyre looked no less nervous than Autumn, but for different reasons; the closer they got to the end, the closer they got to violence. The rattle of glass vials upon one another accompanied the rhythms of the swamp. Nelva sat in opposition to her; calm, cool, and collected. She whispered words of encouragement to the nerve-struck alchemist.
Autumn turned her sight back to the waters, her eyes shaded by her large Witch hat.
Time’s passage went uncontested. And as the sun dimmed, they arrived at their destination.
A dead fort rose from the swamps on a spit of land. Stone had crumbled into ruins under the assault of time and the denizens of the mire. Its watchtower-like keep lay gutted, casting a skeletal gaze down upon the riverbank. Dilapidated walls bordered the waterline in a vain attempt at keeping the water out as vast holes perforated the aged stone.
It was into one of these broken breaches they entered the ruins.
Autumn’s boat bumped up against a ramshackle dock. Eager to feel solid ground beneath her feet, Autumn jumped clear of the boat first, scrambling away from the ghosts in her memory. After she’d helped tie the boats onto the dock, the others joined her with looks of either relief or amusement.
Nethlia looked over at the party.
“Alright team, we’ve made it halfway down the river. From what the scouts have told us, it’s about a two-day journey east across the mire from here. We’ll be heading out first thing in the morning, so let’s try to find a dry spot for the night.”
To save weight, they’d left their tents behind. Seeking refuge, they stumbled upon one of the few available hiding spots from the ever-pouring rain and used their raincoats as improvised coverings over what gaps there were.
With a yawn on her lips, Autumn slipped into a slumber, surrounded by friends and the wails of a night swamp.