A week south of the mile marker, the road gave up without apology, sinking into the Great Murk Swamps. Reeds stood taller than Ray along the causeway, the water between them brown as tea and full of biters.
He slapped a mosquito the size of a coin off his neck, "After seven days of mud, leeches and damn cheese that tastes like a wet sock, somebody down here better be paying for this walk."
Yuzu hopped a puddle with her bandaged arm tucked against her ribs, "You told me the work was south, making this the work."
"I said that before anybody warned me that south was mostly soup with a few trees floating in it."
She flicked a leech off his sleeve with her rapier tip, "Button your collar, given that swamp leeches carry fever and my sunleaf is gone."
The hamlet of Sallow Ford squatted on stilts at the swamp’s edge, its notice board leaning like a drunk.
The headman met them on the ladder, a man in a fish-scale apron who kept wiping his hands on it.
Behind him an empty goat pen hung out over the water, its little gate chewed to splinters at the hinges. A boy sat on the pen rail with a frayed leash wound around his fist, watching the reeds without blinking.
"Lurkers took four goats and the fisherman’s dog this month, so the village pooled what it could," he said, tapping a smeared notice.
"What does the village’s best effort come to in coin, sir, considering my pack is down to crumbs and spite?"
"Forty silver... and a smoked eel," the headman mumbled, studying the planks between his feet.
Ray held up a finger with his most patient smile, "Sir, with the greatest respect, an eel is a snack, not a—"
"We accept the forty silver with the eel included," Yuzu said, stepping on his foot.
[ CONTRACT LOGGED ]
[Job: Lurker Nest]
[Client: Sallow Ford]
[Fee: 40 Silver]
[Threat Grade: F]
He rubbed his ribs through the binding, wincing, "I want it on the record that I’m being paid in fish, a new low even for me."
"It’s recorded right next to your whining about the cheese."
The headman pointed them toward a drowned grove a mile out, where the lurkers dragged everything they caught.
They waded out at dusk with mud sucking at every step, dead cypress trunks rising around them like broken pillars. The smell hit first, rotten meat and soaked fur, followed by a clicking in the reeds like someone counting coins.
[ HOSTILES ]
[Type: Marsh Lurker]
[Count: 9]
[Rank: F]
[Pack Behavior: Erratic]
"Nine frogs for forty silver comes to four silver and change a head," he murmured, thumbing the safety off, "which is the cheapest anybody has ever hired me."
’Erratic is never a word I want to see sitting next to a pack of teeth.’
Yuzu squinted past his shoulder, "Tell me what a lurker looks like before one bites me."
"Picture a frog that ate a wolf and regretted nothing," he muttered, drawing both pistols.
She planted her rapier in the mud, gold light rising behind him into a low dome of Veil.
The first one burst out of the water fast, all mouth, its eyes swaying on stalks like a crab’s. He shot it once between the stalks, then caught the second one as it broke left through the reeds.
"Two down, dumb but quick, which describes half the bosses I ever worked for," he said, tracking the ripples.
"You worked for frogs?"
"I worked for guys who’d lose a staring contest to one of these, though at this pace we’ll be home for dinner before—"
The remaining seven cut him off, rising out of the mud together in a wall of teeth and stalks.
"Oh, shit, they were only circling to get everybody in position," he breathed, shifting his feet in the muck.
’Seven from three angles with her behind me and my ribs locking me square means missing isn’t on the menu.’
His shoulders dropped as the job took over, his breathing slowing until the swamp sounded far away.
The closest one leapt at his face, so he stepped into it and rammed his forearm up under its jaw. His hunting knife slid in under the stalks before it could close its mouth, the body slumping off the blade.
Hard Sell sat cold under his right sleeve with zero charges left, so he wasted no thought on it.
The other six were already moving, mud spraying as they came in from three sides at once.
"Three on the left with two more in the water behind you!" Yuzu shouted, bracing the dome with both hands.
His answer came level enough to frighten her more than the frogs, "I see all six, so keep the dome up while I work."
He looked at the pack the way he used to look at men reaching for the wrong inside pocket. Something cold came off him, rolling out across the water until all six lurkers stopped dead in the mud.
[ RANK UP ]
[Contractor: Ray K]
[New Rank: E]
[Recognised Feat: The Kelford Channel]
[STR +5]
[AGI +5]
[VIT +5]
[PER +5]
[MANA: 90 → 150]
[New Skill: Killing Intent]
[Effect: Freezes Weaker Things Nearby]
[Blueprint Points: +15]
The jump landed a heartbeat later, heat pouring down his spine until the sucking mud let go of his legs.
Every insect in the grove went silent at once, the reeds standing as still as painted ones.
The lurkers shook where they stood, stalks trembling, not one of them able to lunge or even look away.
Behind him Yuzu’s teeth began to chatter, her grip shifting on the rapier until the hilt felt like ice.
He finished it in six shots spaced like a ticking clock, each one clean between the stalks.
The three on the left fell first, then the two in the water, then the one crawling backward.
[ HOSTILES NEUTRALIZED ]
[Count: 9]
[Rounds Remaining: 32]
[Mana: 150/150]
’If it only freezes weaker things, then one day I’m going to meet something it doesn’t freeze.’
The silence held afterward as if the whole swamp was holding its breath, while Ray holstered both pistols. Yuzu let the dome fade, rubbing her arms through her sleeves like someone climbing out of a cellar.
"What did you just do to them, when my teeth were chattering behind a perfectly good ward?" she hissed.
"I made a face... apparently a really good one," he said, the grin creeping back like it was never gone.
"That cold came off you like a draft through a cracked door, so warn me next time."
"Nobody planned that, Doc, least of all the guy whose face did it."
She pressed two fingers along the binding under his coat, "You promised to report every twinge, starting with the ribs."
"They hurt like hell, which I’m reporting right on schedule like a model patient," he said, wincing when she pressed harder.
"You looked at them like you were reading their names off a list."
"That’s just my working face, the one I keep in a drawer for special occasions."
’Apparently the look that made grown men sign over their bars works just as well on frogs.’
She squinted at him for a long moment before sighing, "Then never use it on me when we argue about dinner."
"Deal, though I’m keeping it ready for the next time you steal my skewers."
"I have never stolen one of your skewers," she said, folding her arms.
"You’d have stolen three in Kelford, Doc, with a whole tavern watching, if my hands were any slower."
The nest sat in the roots of the biggest cypress, a heap of reeds, goat bones and a dog collar. Ray crouched carefully beside it with his back kept square, the HUD crawling slowly over every strand of the heap.
[ SCAN ]
[Nest Age: Four Days]
[Pack Origin: Northern Mire]
[Behavior: Flight]
He rose so easily his own knees surprised him, the ache in his ribs a notch quieter than before.
"This nest went up four days ago, which makes these frogs tourists just like us."
"Lurkers never leave their water, not in any swamp book I ever read."
"These ones left anyway, running south hard enough to start eating goats in a village that never saw them before," he said, wiping his knife on a reed.
"What makes a pack of lurkers run?"
He looked north, where the mist sat on the swamp like a lid on a pot close to boiling.
"My guess is something bigger than a pack of lurkers, a sentence I really hate saying out loud."
They walked back by lantern light with the dog collar in his pocket, the swamp croaking again behind them.
The boy from the goat pen was still on his rail, the leash wound around his fist.
Ray crouched in front of him, holding out the collar, "I found this in the nest, kid, though I’m sorry it’s all I brought back."
The boy took it with both hands, turning the tag to the lantern, "His name was Mudge, mister, who bit everybody in Sallow Ford except me."
"That sounds like a dog with better judgment than most of the people I ever worked for."
Yuzu watched the boy carry it up the ladder, her voice low, "That was kind."
"It was a receipt, nothing more, since every job deserves one."
The headman paid in coins that smelled of fish, then handed over the eel like a holy relic.
"Forty silver plus one eel from a client who can’t stop smiling is exactly how a contract should close," Ray said, bowing low enough to make his ribs complain.
[ CONTRACT CLOSED ]
[Job: Lurker Nest]
[Bounty: +80 HC]
[Balance: 610 HC]
[ STATUS ]
[Name: Ray K]
[Rank: E]
[Title: Siphon Breaker]
[STR: 21]
[AGI: 23]
[VIT: 19]
[PER: 25]
[MANA: 150 / 150]
[Skills: Contract Style, Marksmanship, Mana Infusion, Killing Intent]
[Weapons: Payday, Last Call, Breaker Dagger, Hunting Dagger, Severance, Hard Sell]
[Gear: Drowned Key]
[Blueprints: Curveshot, Severance, Hard Sell]
[Blueprint Points: 25]
[HC: 610]
The mana sat in him like a full well now, deep and still where it used to slosh near empty.
’The System says E while the guild still stamps me F, so I’m officially two different contractors now.’
She wrinkled her nose at the parcel under his arm, "Ugh, that eel is not coming inside with us."
"This eel is a contract fee, which earns it the same respect as gold plus a little extra for the smell."
"Did the lurkers say anything before you killed them?" the headman asked, only half joking.
"They mostly said they were in a hurry to leave whatever lives up north," he replied, patting the eel.
The headman’s smile slipped, his eyes flicking toward the mist like a man remembering an unpaid debt.
"Old folk say something big sleeps in the northern mire, though nobody living has ever laid eyes on it."
"Then somebody just woke it up... so I’d keep your goats inside for a while."
’Nine lurkers ran from it and a whole village forgot about it, so naturally I’m the dumb bastard walking straight toward it.’