Another large gray blur jumped out of the water, giving them a better view of its gray-ish black scales which covered its body. The wyrm snatched and broke the neck of another bird close to the surface and disappeared below the water with a splash, the slithering mass of competing serpents joined it, frothing the water with their rapid movement as they fought over the prey..

  “What’s happening?” Christofer asked confused as he stomped after the wagon.

  “Rot Wyrms!”

  Another serpent swam across the surface. Along its body was a black dorsal plume of some sort that jutted from the water as it swam towards them. A soldier jabbed it with his spear.

  “I got one!” the soldier which impaled it happily exclaimed.

  The man held up the Rot Wyrm in the air with his spear as if he wanted to gaze upon his prize as it bled on his leg which dripped into the water. The captain almost bit his tongue in frustration. The Rot Wyrm had a circular mouth, reminiscent of a gigantic leech mouth, with large almost talon looking teeth that gnashed as the bleeding Rot Wyrm wriggled on the spear before dying.

  “Rookie! Throw-away-your-spear-with-the-Rot-Wyrm this instant!”

  “What?”

  “Throw. It. Away! The spear!” the captain spoke through gritted teeth, “Rot Wyrms are attracted to the blood!”

  Before the soldier could react, a wyrm splashed up through the murky water and clamped down its teeth into the soldier’s calf and pulled him out of his saddle, into the water. Christofer's eyes locked onto the spot the man had fallen into the water while the others started running. The water splashed with red foam from the numerous rot wyrms swarming the soldier’s body like piranhas.

  An attempt at rescue would be like trying to wrench a strip of bacon out the jaws of a beast. A veteran soldier approached on his horse and threw his spear. It passed through the bloody pudding remains of the man in the water. The wriggling of the body came to a sudden stop.

  “May the valkyries deem you worthy,” the veteran muttered before yelling, “Norseman. He’s dead, move it!”

  The veteran soldier grabbed the reins of the dead man’s horse and began to gallop away with the horse in tow. Christofer glanced at the one speaking, then down at the body. He kicked himself off into a sprint, using the surrounding ruins, be it remnant traces of walls, broken pillars as well as ruined archways as footholds to propel himself forward.

  There were traces of marks on the walls that used to be pictures. Even with a quick glance, he could see that they weren’t drawn by the same people who built the ruins. As he ran, his long hair kept falling in front of his eyes, obscuring his vision. The gecko slithered out of Christofer’s shoulder. It’s head was on a swivel, aiming to be his eyes while he ran.

  “Rot Wyrm, five o’clock. Duck.” the gecko’s whisper echoed in his ears.

  Trusting his instinct, he followed the instructions. The serpent flew over his head.

  “Rot Wyrms, six and seven o’clock.”

  Christofer came to a stop and extended his left hand behind him without looking back. The capillaries under his skin flashed briefly. A swirling, glowing red mist around a red circle instantly flashed into existence in front of his hand. A blood rune.

  “Exori flan? Flam? Fucking–” Christofer hurriedly said.

  The control of the blood rune disappeared as it sucked into a fine point and exploded, creating a massive amount of kinetic energy that knocked the two wyrms back, but energy of the recoil flowed back into his arm. With his left arm tensed in a locked position, the energy couldn’t be dissipated properly and simply gave way with a crack. However, with the adrenaline coursing in his veins, he had little time to truly register what had happened.

  “Rot wyrm, nine o’clock.”

  ‘I see it,’ Christofer replied in his mind.

  Jumping over the incoming wyrm, his shoulder shook and he felt another sharp pang in his shoulder before climbing up on a stone pillar that had fallen over on the ground. He walked to the end of it and crouched down. Peering into the distance. The Rot Wyrms splashed ahead of him in the water, trying again but failing to chomp down the birds that got close.

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  “Bird.” was the only word the gecko uttered.

  Christofer pushed his hair up with his right hand, glanced up, instantly had the same idea and lifted his right hand up into the air. The gecko climbed from his shoulder up to the hand and shot out its tongue. The void black tongue lanced out and its sticky tongue stuck to the bird in mid-air. The gecko sucked its tongue back into its mouth so quickly that only a few feathers danced in the air where the bird had been previously. Christofer carefully gripped the panicked bird’s legs with his right hand.

  “My bad, bird. It’s you or me. I choose me.”

  The bird furiously tried pecking his hand to no avail.

  ‘To the left, or the right,’ Christofer questioned in his mind,’To the left it is.’

  The bird was launched like a baseball into the water, resulting in a path being instantly cleared by the wyrms, attracted by the new puddle of blood where the bird had touched down in the water. Jumping down, Christofer continued his mad sprint towards the others through the rising water.

  Visibility was poor as he stumbled around a more than halfway submerged church, he glanced down into the water at the gothic building’s large cracked rose-window made of crimson stained glass that rose through the water. He turned around and slapped away the hair that had once again fallen down over his eyes. The wagon had once again gotten stuck in the muck. The soldiers were struggling to get it loose.

  Thunder clapped. It boomed out, leaving a concussed silence after it.

  Christofer’s legs sloshed through the murky water as he approached them, placed his right hand on the back of the wagon and leaned forwards. He pushed his right leg forward. The wagon got loose once more as Christofer pushed his left leg forward. Moments later, the wagon finally rolled out of the water and back onto land on the other side of the wetlands.

  “Norseman,” a soldier called out to him, “Hey, Norseman!”

  “What?”

  “Stop,” the soldier said as he used both his hands to grab Christofer’s left arm, “Here.”

  With a quick motion, the man quickly popped the dislocated shoulder back into its socket. The strange numbness that he hadn’t realized he felt shifted to a wave of warmth and pain as circulation was restored.

  His left arm twitched as his arm made some more micro adjustments back to what it had been prior to being injured and rapidly started healing as the hint of eerie green light flickered from his shoulder.

  “Norseman, hey, you alright?”

  “No,” Christofer clenched his left hand in front of his face before relaxing his arm.

  He followed the wagon out of the water, up the road to what appeared to be boulders that had been stacked one on top of another smack in the middle of a pass between two steep hills. On the side of the mountain was a dark opening. An entrance of a cave, about 4 meters high and 6 meters wide

  The surface of the opening was almost smooth, as if it had been carefully carved away by hand or bored by machinery of some sort. The men were distributing and lighting torches. Their lights shining into the maw of the cave did very little to illuminate what lay within that dank place.

  “What is the status of our troops? Report,” the captain looked at Ike.

  “With the dead and injured combined, we’ve lost a quarter of our men and many of the men are showing signs of hypothermia. Three of our horses are missing… We recovered one.”

  Christofer paced in slow, uneven strides alongside the road, mud pulling at his boots with every step. The sounds of shouting and splashing had faded behind him, replaced by wind and the faint groan of soaked wood settling. The wagon stood ahead, crooked where one wheel had sunk too deep before breaking free. One of the rear panels had been splintered from something's impact — teeth marks visible along the edge. Another plank hung loose, half-torn from its frame. A deep gouge ran along the side where one of the wyrms had raked past it. The canvas canopy was shredded near the top, dark with water, fluttering in ribbons.

  “A quarter, huh,” the captain sighed, ”We’ll have to recruit more soldiers… Do we have the coin for that? Keep in mind that we have to hire reliable scouts to recover those horses.”

  “Yes, we still have quite a large coffer, but a lot of that will go to buying new sets of armor and horses though. Additionally, Halvar is down a spear and his horse has a split hoof. I’m afraid trotting may be hard on it. He stated he is willing to walk while it recovers.” Ike replied.

  Christofer approached the wagon and reached for the handhold. The moment he gripped the edge, his arm gave a short tremble. Not pain exactly — not anymore — just aftershock. Adrenaline ebbing like tidewater. His shoulder ached, the kind that settled in after a joint had been realigned by force. He swung one leg up, then the other, and pulled himself back inside with a grunt.

  “Alright, then, that’s that. We’ll tend to the horses and the injured at Giant’s Hand. Even if we walk slowly, we’ll still buy ourselves days after navigating through the caves,”

  “Those chasing us are an army, with a Tross in tow. Which forces them to go the long way around. By that fact alone, we already gain a few days advantage on them. Even if they split off a search team, not many know how to navigate these caves, take a wrong fork in the cave and you’ll find yourself within troll territory,” The captain continued.

  “Follow my lead,” the captain said, “...and stay quiet.”