章 19: Chapter Nineteen - Into Hag Valley

I surveyed the pool ahead of me with patient eyes.

Brownleaf was back in the forest, just watching, not helping or giving advice. Presumably he knew some things, but I hadn't asked him for information, other than confirming this was the proper way.

No Hag tracks, which was not surprising, as they routinely used magic to wipe their trails clean. However, there was a clear lack of tracks approaching this pool.

Ahead of me was a small waterfall, about thirty feet up and twice that wide, spilling over scattered dark rocks as it fell down into the pool below, forming a nice depression before flowing out and further down the foothills, to join the other streams coming out from the mountain doing likewise.

It was a really good illusion.

I noticed that the sound of the waters falling didn't really match the sight of them. Furthermore, the ripples and wave action didn't play across the pool like they should, and definitely didn't have the effect on the stones they should.

More importantly, creatures weren't approaching this pool to drink, despite the ease of access.

I just dropped my hand in the water, and the wave ripples never touched my skin, vanishing the instant they hit my Null, and my Vajra couldn't feel them at all.

So, there was something in the water, hidden under the illusion up there, probably preying on anything dumb enough to get close. Meaning it was watching me right now… there.

And I was in the air, my Sword out, jumping and arcing down as the creature looked up in shock from below the surface, stunned that it had been noticed, and I came down.

The pool of the water exploded with motion and frenzied splashing. Bits of green matter were flying in all directions, fluid tentacles visible among the spray, and then, very suddenly, it was quiet, the waves of the disturbance magically wiped away.

Brownleaf was coming forwards to see what had happened, when a figure made its way out of the pool, dragging a much larger creature behind it that seemed to be made of river weeds and green flesh, its equine head bearing a Sword buried into it, and its chest ripped apart to reveal the strange, plant-like flesh beneath, oozing a dark emerald ichor of some time.

"Water horse," he grunted, coming closer to examine the large mass of plant-like Fey.

"Guarding the way in. The water here is actually pretty slow and stagnant, and that whole waterfall there is an illusion. You can swim right through it." The centaur looked at the waterfall with wary interest, watching as I reclaimed my Sword. "I think this is where we part, unless you want to hunt Hag thralls with me."

"This fight is yours. If you can kill the Hags, much can be forgiven after such a feat, especially if they are the ones responsible for the madness you are blamed for." Which is probably how the typical uncaring person would take the whole tale, conveniently sidestepping any responsible moral judgments.

Whatever. Didn't change what I wanted to do.

"Right." Without further ado, I walked down the pebbled side of the river, my feet registering a trail that my eyes couldn't see. The centaur watched as I stepped right into the sprawling wall of the mountain before him as if it weren't there, and I vanished from his sight.

Truly a trope. Behind the waterfall that wasn't even there. I looked back and could see him there, so I poked my head back through the barrier and said, "I can see you through there, so anything standing guard might, too. You might want to move."

He blinked, nodded slowly at me, and turned quickly away, prancing as lightly as a deer and much more quietly, out of view in seconds.

There might or might not be a Hageye on watch here, but if they weren't right there using it, it wasn't all that useful.

In front of me was a slow-moving flow of water with a vaguely bad smell to it, deeper than it appeared and dark in color, smelling as if something unclean had been dumped into it. Streams and rivers were actually pretty good natural purifiers at this size, so whatever was corrupting the water was probably something happening long-term.

The Coven had been here a while, and probably couldn't stand pristine surroundings.

Ahead of me was a fairly narrow cut through the mountain, worn down by constant years of flowing water, and probably was a waterfall at some point. I paced silently along the narrow trail to one side, noting the imprint of some very big footsteps, some booted, some hoofed, and some bestial.

I wasn't all that surprised when the bog zombies rose up out of the water just offshore, and surged through the shallow waters towards me.

There were a dozen of them, which was pretty impressive, all things considered. They'd been preserved and pickled, and were all brawny males of several races, most of them human, and all of them with big wide fish-tooth jaws gaping open and pale, swollen arms and bodies, looking to overwhelm, devour, and drown the little girl with the glowing Sword, probably in that order.

The first one lost its head, I moved into the second and cut it down, stepping to Cleave to the third, ducking a frantic blow with advantage of less height, hewing through it to its spine and stopping that nonsense, a nonstop dance of blows flashing as I raced through their splashing bodies, and they came apart and died behind me. Copious amounts of overkill did the job for me as they dropped behind me. If they continued moving, I glided back through the shallow waters and removed their heads.

Yes, I was going to need Final Rest as soon as possible. It had been five days since I acquired the Sword in my hand, and gave Tremble a home. Its spirit could only be infused slowly into the Weapon, a process that would take months. Hopefully I could make it a better home before too long, as there was a whole lot of stuff Tremble was ready to grow into.

If I didn't dispose of the bodies, they'd just make them into powerful undead to annoy me. They were big on that kind of stuff.

From the tracks, I knew they had ogres and minotaurs serving them. That was fine. Add undead, and probably evil plant creatures and charmed minions, and basically anything could happen.

I expected to have a lively, fun time. Leaving the rotting corpses to be disposed of by the Fey who would no doubt come to investigate them, or Brownleaf, who would know to burn them, I proceeded on.

----

Well, what a nice place for Hags. It was like they'd made it a paradise for themselves, or something.

You don't expect to find a swamp up in the mountains, but that was exactly what was going on here.

They'd widened the river out, diluting its flow, and somehow arranged the right kinds of reeds, trees, algae, and rotting muck to turn what was a pristine mountain valley in a dark and gloomy place of rot, slime, and puffing mushrooms.

Alchemy, chemistry, spellcraft, and Knowledge: Nature said that a whole lot of things had been killed to make this place like it was, a combination of sacrificial dark magic and body-rot corruption.

I wondered what feeding them and all their servitors to the land was going to do to this place. I looked at the gloomy walls, fading into the mists above, and listened to the calls of the blood ravens likely in service to the Hags here.

I was in no hurry. First circumnavigate the place, get an idea of its size. If they sent creatures out to test me, all the better, I wouldn't have to fight them later. Unless it was Summoned demons or the like. Then they were just light exercise.

Ghosting away over the stones, moss, and slime ringing this swamp, I began my search. I left no tracks nor scent, and while I wasn't concealed from above, I wasn't easy to follow from the ground, either. I could have waited until nightfall, but I wanted to make some progress.

Let's see what found me, and how they'd die.

------

Stirges. Bowling pin-sized pseudo-bugs halfway between beetles and mosquitoes, somehow staying aloft. They were bloodsuckers, able to identify the smallest gap in armor to suck in their proboscis and start sucking away.

My blood hadn't completed forming all the stuff I was percolating in myself, and it would be some time before it was all done, so I couldn't let them suck and burn. On the other hand, they weren't attacking as a swarm, which just meant they were an exercise in hand-eye coordination and MAB.

And Cleaves. Can't forget the Cleaves.

Tremble hummed happily as the droning bloodsuckers came diving in. I knew they weren't reading any heat signature from me, so they had to be impelled by another influence.

Tight circles, precise arcs drawing contacts from one bug to the next, spinning to keep 360 awareness, not just to look cool (although I was sure it did look pretty cool). The thirst of stirges came in their scores, and died that way, too, falling apart all around me. Some of their opportunistic sorts converged on their own kin to start sucking away greedily, but I was an equal opportunity bug-killer, and mashed the knife-edge of my feet down on them as I hopped back and forth, while a blur of steel cut two and three of them apart on every arc, never stopping moving.

Of course, some got on me. Then they found I had DR 4/- and they couldn't get through my skin, just before my nails shredded them to pieces. Trying to get on my back didn't work, as my hair was covering it and sliced them open with paper cuts when they tried to get through it. Their legs and needle-noses fell off, and so did they.

It took a minute or two for the whole thirst to die, scattered around me in quivering bits. I slowed to a halt, breathing steadily, and waited for the next thing to appear.

A whole thirst would not descend on just me, they'd separate and go looking for prey in smaller teams. So, they'd been goaded and directed.

They were a favorite prey of bats and birds of prey, so I apologized to them, even as I bent down and picked one up.

They were also fat little things that tasted great fried in oil. Alas, alas. One day I'd have cooking supplies.

Without much hesitation I began to munch, peeling them out of their carapaces as I was waiting for whatever was going to come investigate the smell of dead stirge.

My hair quivered, and I looked thataway.

One thing I used my hair for was a sonic sensor. When I had my Vajra strong enough, this would be as effective as bat's sonar. More importantly, it could detect such ultrasonic chirping, and orient on it like radar.

There was a bat coming in. No, two, three. Powerful sonic cries, how big?

They came shooting out of the turgid mist that was blanketing everything, obviously thinking to surprise me with a power glide.

Instead, I stamped my foot down.

They were as tall as men, with wings over fifteen feet long. There was still no way they were strong enough and had enough lift to actually fly, meaning there was some magic at work.

I could have used this on the stirges, but had chosen not to for exactly this reason. The bats came in… and abruptly their power glides started falling rather quickly as physics got a lot harder around them and admonished them that they didn't have the proper surface area to weight ratio, nor the strength to maintain a wingspan like that.

And so they headed for the ground rather quickly, frantically beating their wings to forestall a landing that they couldn't stop coming.

They hit rather hard and awkwardly, out of control, and even went tumbling and sprawling, calling out with rather massive cries echoed with teeth-numbing force on the rocks.

My Null dealt with it, as I came down on the first one and planted Tremble in its heart.

They seemed to be partially sentient, by their reaction to me, getting over on all fours, curling up their wings, and looking startled and alarmed at my presence.

They were vicious, with needle-toothed jaws dripping ugh stuff, angled nostrils, tall ears… you know, meat-eating bats. They looked mean and vicious, and I really didn't care.

I accelerate really fast, moving over the broken ground like a stream of wind. The second one couldn't get out of the way as I buried Tremble in its chest, and kicked off and up, coming down on the third one as it tried to scramble back, and didn't make it in time. One wing, two, and then off with its head before it could scream in my face.

I chopped their skulls into little bits, so as to make it a mite harder to turn them into undead. Sticking a couple of stirges on Tremble for munchies, I proceeded on my mapping mission.

After all, I was not in a hurry. Killing all of their servants and minions was also something I wanted to do, as long as the Hags themselves didn't get away, and, after all, every day I got stronger.

If I was smart, I would have waited around a month for some of that Curse Karma to work its magic on me and make me strong enough to do this with minimal risk.

That was going to take far too long, as I had more Karma to reap, and my mind wasn't built to sit around and contemplate my navel looking for inner enlightenment. I was going to find something worth the killing to fight, or I was going to craft something. Since I had no resources to do the latter, I was going to do the former.

But it didn't mean I needed to be in a rush. I had time.