Jess Lebow - The Darksteel Eye

Inside the oily swamp, hundreds of tiny green lights flickered. The resulting ghastly glow didn’t light up the night sky, but it did illuminate the outline of the trees and brush. Eerie shadows played over the surface of the thick liquid as the pinpricks of light moved around, covering the Dross in a squirming veil of motion. It was as if the ghosts of all who had lived and passed on were haunting this place, and it set the small hairs on the back of Glissa’s neck on edge.

“What makes those lights?” asked the elf.

Bruenna shrugged. “I don’t know. Until now, I’ve made it a point in my life to stay out of this place.”

“Good thinking,” said Slobad. “Slobad don’t like Dross, huh? Gives goblins creeps.”

A gentle wind blew out of the swamp, bringing with it the rancid smell of rotting flesh and a light rustling sound.

Glissa stopped just at the edge of the goopy liquid. “I think we should stop for the night. Who knows if we’ll find a dry place to camp once we enter.”

“Good,” said the goblin. “Longer we stay out, better, huh?”

Glissa bent down next to the goblin. “In the Tangle, there are bugs that give off a glow like that. We call them fire beetles.”

Slobad narrowed his eyes, looking deeper into the green-lit swamp. “Crazy elf think them lights are bugs?”

Glissa shrugged. “Could be.”

Slobad grabbed his chin then, after a moment of thought, shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “Slobad don’t want beetles, huh? Happier out here.”

Glissa laughed. “Okay then.” She unhitched her sword from her belt and sat down on the ground. “This is as good a place as any.”

Bosh sat down beside Glissa. Al-Hayat curled up not far away and began licking his wounds. Slobad found a soft spot in the wolf’s fur, rolling into a ball and falling asleep. Within a matter of seconds, the goblin’s soft snoring could be heard over the rustling swamp wind.

Bruenna placed her hand on Glissa’s shoulder. “We will set some wards to warn us of danger.” The wizard smiled. “Better to get a good night of rest knowing that we won’t be eaten while we sleep.”

“Good idea.” Glissa nodded. “Thank you, Bruenna.”

Bruenna and her wizards took off into the darkness.

Glissa turned to Bosh. “I haven’t heard much from you lately. How you holding up?”

Bosh looked down at the elf. “I have been better.” He held out his hand. Several long wounds criss-crossed his palm and knuckles. Scabs were forming on the older ones, but a few still seeped blood when he moved his fingers.

“Bosh,” she said, grabbing a hold of his hand. “Do they hurt?”

“Some,” replied the golem.

She touched one of the scabs, and Bosh winced. Glissa pulled in air through her gritted teeth, sympathizing with his newfound pain. “You’ve got to learn how to avoid getting hurt so much.”

“I am trying,” he admitted. “When the vedalken attacked, my first thought was to pick you all up and run through the razor grass.” He pulled his hand away to poke at a new fleshy patch along his chest and down where an elf would have a ribcage. “I remembered, so I stayed put. We had nowhere else to go, and we had to fight.” He gave his hand back to the elf. “What should I have done differently?”

“Well, to begin with,” she said, “you need to avoid their weapons as much as possible. Part of fighting is learning to defend yourself. You can’t just rely on your metal hide to keep you safe from harm. You have to move, make yourself less of a target.”

“What else?”

Glissa thought for a moment. She had to put herself in his place, think like a metal golem, then she could tell him how to think differently. “Okay,” she said, having thought of something else. “Smashing stuff.”

“I like smashing stuff,” said Bosh.

“I know, but that’s a problem.”

“But I like smashing stuff.”

Glissa laughed. “Yes, I know. You don’t have to stop altogether, but you need to make sure that what you smash isn’t going to hurt you.”

“Nothing hurt me before.”

“That’s the difference. Vedalken who are carrying weapons will hurt when you smash them.”

Bosh shook his head. “I do not like being fleshy.”

“No.” Glissa examined a fresh wound across the top of her hand. It was scabbing up. “Sometimes neither do I.” She looked back at Bosh’s hand. “But there is one good thing.”

“What?”

Glissa pointed to the scabs on the golem’s hand. “Now you heal.”

Bosh lifted his palm to his face. He examined the dried blood for a long time. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” explained the elf, “before when something got broken, Slobad had to find new parts or repair the old ones in order to fix you up.”

“Yes, I remember.” Bosh slumped. “But he cannot do that now.”

“No,” said the elf, “but now he doesn’t need to. You fix yourself.”

Bosh looked puzzled.

Glissa pointed to the scabs again. “That dried blood is your flesh repairing itself.”

Bosh looked at it again and fingered the oldest scar. “That was from several days ago,” he said. “This healing takes a long time.”

Glissa nodded. “Yes, it does. That’s why you’ve got to be more careful about what you hit and what you let hit you.”

Bosh shook his head. “I do not think I will ever get used to flesh.”

Glissa laid her head on Bosh’s lap. It felt as if she had just barely touched her ear to his hard metal leg when the magical wards sounded, and she was on her feet again.

The moons were still down, and the sky was pitch black. The same dull green glow issued from the swamp, but now, instead of there being hundreds of tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the swamp, they were collected together in a tight cluster-standing at the edge of the swamp.

A tingle ran down Glissa’s spine, and goose bumps formed all down her arms. “Nim.”

There before her stood the decaying husks of nearly a hundred undead creatures. Hunched over, their mouths agape, their knuckles dragging in the muck, the zombies shambled toward the shore. No two looked exactly alike. Each had been a unique human, or possibly elf, during his normal life. What they had now couldn’t be called “life.” They moved, were animated, but to Glissa these creatures suffered a fate worse than death.

On their backs, in the hunch where their bodies had nearly collapsed from leaning forward, each of them carried a glowing green orb. It was these devices that had lit the swamp, giving it the eerie glow Glissa had seen when they first arrived. Now, with so many collected in one place and with one purpose, the light had intensified-leaving the far end of the swamp in total darkness.

The zombies moved very slowly, a thick, green smoke pouring from open cavities on their shoulders. Their methodical march toward Glissa and her friends was unnerving. It felt like a force of nature. It was so big, so slow moving that you knew it was coming, but there was little you could do to try to stop it. When they entered the ring of magical wards that Bruenna had set, they triggered a loud noise like a huge gong being slammed by a mallet. The alarm went off three times then fell silent.

Glissa pulled her sword and was relieved to see that Bruenna and her wizards were awake and alert. The elf chuckled to herself. Apparently their wards were loud enough to wake the dead.

To her right, Al-Hayat was on his feet. Slobad had taken to his shoulders, his vedalken pike held under his arm like a lance. To her left, Bosh towered over her, rubbing his hands together, the same somber look on his metal face that he always had.

The human wizards were the first to strike. A cloud of wisping blue smoke poured out over the edge of the swamp. It mixed in the air with the nims’ poisonous green gas then settled on the advancing monsters, engulfing nearly a dozen of the tattered nim. Where the smoke touched them, whirling person-sized tornadoes emerged, enveloping their victims in cones of spinning wind. The miniature storms lifted the swamp muck into the air, obscuring the nim from view.