Chapter 6: Bog Trouble

If Bram Thistleside had been compiling a definitive list of Places One Should Absolutely Not Enter (Even If Promised Pie),
Brokegloom Bog would’ve nestled comfortably between dragon dens and the lavatory behind Old Man Pindle’s tavern on poetry night—though only just.

The bog sprawled along the eastern edge of Briarbrush like a dark stain on the countryside, a marshy tangle of half-drowned trees, oozing reeds, and fog that clung like cobwebs spun by anxious ghosts. The air itself felt thick and oversteeped, like old tea left too long in the pot. What passed for a path slithered through gnarled roots and soft ground that squelched ominously with each step, as if it resented being walked upon.

Some villagers claimed the bog rearranged itself when no one was looking. Others swore they’d seen lights dancing above the water—green, flickering things that whispered in rhyme. Bram didn’t believe half the stories. But his boots, already soaked to the ankles in suspiciously warm muck, had begun to emit a series of damp grumbles that could only be interpreted as protest.

“Are you sure we have to go in?” Croaksley’s voice drifted up from Bram’s satchel, muffled but edged with dread. The frog’s wide, glassy eyes blinked up at him from a cozy tangle of dry cloth, his expression somewhere between curious and appalled. “It’s damp, it’s dark, and it smells like expired alchemy mixed with children’s nightmares.”

Bram paused at the edge of a sunken log bridge. The moss on it quivered slightly, even though there was no wind. He adjusted the strap of his satchel and took another squelching step forward.

“I need answers,” he muttered, sweeping aside a vine that looked uncomfortably like it had just licked its lips. “I saw floating lights tracing spirals in the fog at the edge of the bog before dawn this morning.  Spiral runes were involved with the flaming rats, the melodramatic cheese, the philosophical cows, and so many of the recent problems.  And well, someone’s got to poke at this mystery with a stick.”

“Why,” Croaksley said with theatrical despair, “does it always have to be you doing the poking?”

“Because,” Bram replied, eyes narrowed as he tested the next patch of mud with the butt of his copper-handled net, “I’m the idiot who brought the stick.”

The vine behind him twitched again.

And somewhere deeper in Brokegloom, something blinked.

The path—if one could even insult the word by calling it that—threaded its way through a tangle of weeping trees whose limbs draped low like mourning widows at a funeral for common sense. The ground beneath Bram’s boots was a patchwork of mossy hummocks, each one puffing softly when stepped on, like moldy bellows exhaling forgotten secrets. The moss murmured in languages that made Bram’s spine itch, and once, a particularly bulbous clump let out a haughty “hrrmph” when trampled.

Bram swatted at sluggish, oversized fireflies that blinked irregularly in what might have been Morse code—if Morse code had been invented by drunk pixies with commitment issues. One spelled out “TURN BACK,” while another seemed stuck on “LOL.” None of them seemed to be on speaking terms.

The deeper they ventured, the stranger things became.

Bulging orbs—wet, lidless, and unblinking—peered out from between tree roots and the knotted, barky bulges of swollen trunks. They didn’t glow. They watched. Quiet, damp surveillance. Bram didn’t like it. Not one bit.

More eyes blinked open beneath the surface of black, glassy water puddling between roots. Each blink was accompanied by a delicate plop, like someone dropping pearls into a soup made of nightmares and pond scum.

A moss-covered stump on Bram’s left yawned. A slow, creaking motion, revealing a glistening tongue made of lichen and lonesome, long-forgotten suppers, before closing again with a low shlorp. From the branches above, something long, boneless, and eel-like slithered overhead. It moved with the sound of wet laundry being dragged across stone.

“I’m not saying turn back,” Croaksley said from Bram’s satchel, his voice the sort of diplomatic tone one might use when asking a lion if it’s really sure it wants to eat the nice gazelle. “I’m just offering that perhaps—just perhaps—we could hire someone with less sense of self-preservation and more expendability?”

Bram didn’t answer. He grunted, eyes focused ahead, as he ducked beneath a curtain of vines that smelled strongly of cinnamon and—less helpfully—poor decisions. They stuck to his hair like clingy regrets.

The air around them congealed. The fog, already thick, grew denser still—like breathing porridge through a wool sock. The usual sounds of the world—rustling leaves, chirping frogs, Croaksley’s complaints—faded into the hush of a place that held its breath far too long.

Then, without fanfare, they stumbled upon the pond.

It didn’t glimmer so much as... stare. The water’s surface was still, unnaturally still, and mirrored nothing Bram wanted to see. No trees. No sky. Only himself—but taller, smugger, and judging him with the weary disappointment of a man who’d expected better. His reflection adjusted its collar critically.

Bram scowled. “Alright,” he muttered. “Now you’re just being rude.”

From behind a twisted cypress, something shifted. Bark cracked faintly, and then a voice emerged from the shadows—dry, calm, and utterly unfazed.

“Only if you measure rudeness by height.”

Bram spun on his heel, copper-threaded net raised like a talisman against nightmares. His breath caught in his throat. Croaksley launched himself from the satchel and landed on Bram’s shoulder with an audible squelch, webbed toes digging in.

At the far edge of the clearing, something emerged—or perhaps unfolded—from the mist. It didn’t step so much as settle, like a drop of ink dispersing through water. The figure seemed cobbled together from fog, shadow, and half-finished thoughts. It shifted constantly, as though the world couldn’t decide what shape it was supposed to be. Its outline pulsed like a heartbeat drawn in charcoal and moss.

Not tall. Not short. Folded. Angled wrong.

Its surface writhed gently with patches of wet moss, clusters of tiny mushrooms, and trailing vines that twitched of their own accord. From beneath a heavy curtain of rootlike tendrils that hung like a hood stitched from the forest itself, two soft, luminous orbs blinked—lightless yet glowing, greenish and hollow.

Then, after a beat, a third light blinked into existence, slightly off-center and higher than the others.

Bram’s knuckles whitened around the haft of his net.

Croaksley whispered a short prayer for bravery.

The creature raised one thin, jointless limb, slow as a fern uncurling in reverse.

“Welcome,” it said, each syllable dragging like damp paper tearing under water, then stitching itself back together. “To the Between.”

“Er. Hello,” Bram said cautiously, still gripping his net like a particularly polite weapon.

The creature tilted its head—or possibly just rearranged its head-equivalent shadows. Beneath the veil of root and rot, the trio of glowing lights blinked slowly, almost thoughtfully.

“You wouldn’t happen to go by... Boggie?”

The thing’s voice rasped again, this time with an almost pleased crackle. “Some call me that, yes. Others know me as the Murkminder, the Maw Beneath the Fen, the Elder Roots, the Sleeper in Sedge. But I like Boggie. It’s friendly. Squishy. Approachable. Like a toad in a teacup.”

Croaksley, still clinging to Bram’s shoulder, blinked slowly. “You’re... not what I expected.”

Boggie chuckled—a sound like a wet boot being pulled from particularly judgmental mud. “I get that a lot. Now then, would you care for some tea? It’s imaginary, but exceptionally vivid.”

As he gestured, a moss-covered boulder beside him unfurled like a blooming toadstool, shaping itself into a squat, spongy stool. A second puffed up beside it, fatter and slightly damp. A third sprouted with a sad whimper and immediately deflated in protest, shriveling into itself with theatrical despair.

Bram hesitated, then slowly lowered his net. “We’re looking for the source of some very odd magical behavior,” he said. “Unnatural stuff. Creatures acting wrong. Villages going sideways.”

“Oh yes,” Boggie said, nodding with solemn enthusiasm. “The giggling pigs. The heroic cheese wheels. The philosophical cows. It’s all gotten so flavored lately. Too much salt, not enough mystery.”

“What do you know about all of this?  Things aren't getting better.  It's like someone is causing all this on purpose.  Is it Morvaene?” Bram asked, stepping carefully onto the stool. It made a damp sigh beneath him.

Boggie raised a limb that might once have been a branch and swirled it through the fog above. The mist coiled and danced, condensing into a floating spiral that pulsed slowly, like a sleeping breath. “He opens doors without knocking,” Boggie said softly. “Wakes the dreaming bones. Pries into roots that are best left curled. He desires control over things that do not want his supervision.”

Croaksley frowned. “Can he be stopped?”

Boggie tilted again, his hood of moss twitching slightly. “That is less a question of strength,” he said, “and more of story. Every tale must have its meddler. Its mistaken messiah. And every messiah needs a plumber.”

Bram blinked. “I think you mean hero.”

“No,” Boggie said quite seriously, “plumber. Things are leaking.  It's getting messy out there and is going to get worse.”

Then, without further clarification, he dipped one tendril into the dark water beside him. A faint ripple glowed outward as he fished up something half-unfurled and dripping—a scroll, soft and ancient and smelling faintly of vinegar and hope.

He handed it to Bram.

Bram unrolled it carefully. Drawn in muddy ink was a crude spiral, a frog, a net, and what was unmistakably himself tumbling into a suspicious-looking hole.

“This will make sense later,” Boggie intoned.

“Or never,” Croaksley muttered.

Boggie shrugged. “Either way, keep it dry. The scroll doesn’t like baths. Or eye contact.”

Bram briefly looked at it. Then he tucked it gently into his coat, glancing at Boggie’s three blinking lights.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Boggie nodded once. The third light winked again, just slightly out of sync with the others.

“Good luck, Bram Thistleside,” the creature murmured. “The path grows twisty from here.”

And then, like smoke in fog, Boggie began to dissolve.

Not vanish. Diffuse.

As if the Between had loaned him shape, and now wanted it back.

Bram and Croaksley stood ankle-deep in the mire, the last of Boggie’s words clinging to the air like fog that had something to say but lacked punctuation. The clearing behind them pulsed faintly, as if watching them go.

Croaksley broke the silence with a sniff. “Well. We’ve officially been warned by a sentient pile of compost who brews pretend tea and hands out prophecy like fruit at market.”

Bram slipped the scroll into his coat pocket, secured it with a buttoned flap, and tightened the strap on his satchel. “He made more sense than half the royal council back at Plynocco.”

“You believe him, then?”

Bram gave a single nod as he started walking, boots squelching in the mossy earth. “I do. Because it’s the first time all week someone’s told me about something weird before it exploded.”

The path ahead—if one could call it that—parted like a curtain drawn by unseen hands. The vines stopped whispering. The watching puddles looked politely away.

They moved in silence for a while, the bog shifting gently around them, less a place than a creature dreaming in low tones. Strange lights blinked quietly from beneath the surface of the water, vanishing whenever Bram glanced their way. Branches bowed without wind. Somewhere in the murk, something yawned—a sound too deep and too old to come from anything with lungs.

“You know,” Croaksley said, “for a swamp where the mushrooms judge you and the mud remembers your name, that actually wasn’t too terrible.”

Bram grunted. “Speak for yourself. I think something licked my boot.”

“Better your boot than your brain.  But, you're right.  That was weird.”

"It was weird!  And I can't read anything written on that scroll.  I'm glad it at least has a picture drawn on it."

They stepped across the final moss-covered log and out into the drier fringe where the bog released them, no ceremony, no farewell. Just the faint rustle of leaves that had never once rustled in the breeze.

As they passed the last gnarled willow, a puddle beside the trail blinked, then winked.

And somewhere deep in Brokegloom, Boggie chuckled.

The world, it seemed, was beginning to wake.

***

Far to the north, Princess Eleanor guided her stead down the winding track that uncoiled from Castle Marrowfen like a serpent made of mist and stone. Behind her, the tower loomed tall and thin against the graying sky, its spire stabbing upward like a splinter of night. The air around the castle had hung heavy—thick with the scent of damp parchment and something older, stranger. But now, with every hoofbeat that carried her away, the weight on her chest lessened.

The fog clung stubbornly to the path, curling around her boots and stirrups like ghostly fingers reluctant to let her go. Trees emerged from the mist in solemn procession—crooked, branchless trunks slick with lichen and shadow. Somewhere in the hush, a raven croaked once, then fell silent.

Eleanor’s brow furrowed beneath her riding hood. Her visit had brought clarity, but not the kind she’d hoped for. Morvaene, all smiling politeness and veiled threats, was planning something much larger than just the public mischief of singing farm animals to get his magical restrictions lifted. The memory of his voice clung to her mind like incense—soft, sweet, and strangely suffocating.

The narrow path gave way to broader trails, and long after, to a lonely lane paved in old stone and flanked by hedges that hadn’t been trimmed since the last full moon. The mist thinned, and in the growing distance, the familiar outline of Plynocco Keep rose atop its hill like a ship cresting a wave. Its towers pierced the fading sky, and its banners—royal blue and gold—fluttered in the dying light, catching the last amber glimmer of the sun as it dipped below the horizon.

Home.

And with it, the weight of duty.

She did not shrink from it. She had asked for this burden. Fought for it. But the shadow Morvaene cast now stretched wider than she had feared.

Eleanor’s hands tightened on the reins, her leather gloves creaking faintly in the quiet.

And she would not be caught off guard.

Not again.