The pillars of creation

Jennsen had spent a lifetime in forests and had seen everything from huge bears to newborn fawns, birds to bugs, bats to newts. There were things that worried her, like snakes and bears with cubs, but she knew the animals well. For the most part, they feared people and usually wanted only to be left alone, so they generally didn't frighten her. But she didn't know what animals might be lurking in this dark and damp place, what poison things with fangs. She didn't know what conjured beasts might prowl the nether reaches of this sorceress's lair, beasts that feared nothing.

She saw spiders, fat, dark, and hairy, their legs slowly raking the dank air, descending smoothly on threads anchored somewhere above. They vanished into the ferns growing in sprawling mats across the ground. As warm and humid as it was, Jennsen kept her cloak closed around her and the hood covering her head to better protect herself from the likes of spiders.

The bite of a spider could be as deadly as any animal. Dead was dead, no matter the cause. The Keeper of the dead gave no special dispensation because the deadly poison came from something small and seemingly insignificant. The Keeper of the dead embraced with eternal darkness those come into his domain-for whatever reason. No grace was granted for how you came to be dead.

As at home as Jennsen felt in the out-of-doors, and as hauntingly beautiful as the swamp was, the place still kept her eyes wide and her pulse racing. Every vine or green wisp she touched seemed threatening, and more than once made her JUMP.

The whole place felt as though death skulked nearby.

And then, before her, the spine of rock, her only path down, ended in a still, flat, rank, moldering, mossy place crisscrossed with a tangle of roots. It looked like the trees feared the murky wet, and tried to keep their roots up out of it. To the sides, the ground was grown over with every sort of spreading vegetation.

She spotted the distinctive shape of a leg bone sticking up from the muddy expanse to the side. The bone was covered with fuzzy green mold, but the general shape remained recognizable. What sort of animal it could be from, she didn't know. At least, she hoped it was an animal bone.

She was surprised to come upon muddy spots that actually looked as if the mud were boiling. Gooey bubbles of dark brown mud bubbled as if at a slow boil, throwing globs of the thick mud and releasing steam. Nothing grew in the sunken areas of bubbling mud. In some places, the mud had hardened into collections of short cones from which rose yellowish vapor.

As Jennsen carefully picked a path among the tangle of roots, between steaming vents and boiling mud, wending her way deeper into the shadows at the bottom, she saw that the muddy stretches began to be replaced by standing water. At first, it was pools and puddles that boiled and hissed and released plumes of acrid vapor. As she left the hot springs behind, the water grew in size to ponds surrounded by tall reeds reaching up toward clouds of tiny bugs flitting together in balls.

Stagnant water finally took over in earnest, a forest floor that was dark and liquid. Dead trunks stood in the black water, sentinels watching over a land reeking of rot. The whoops and calls of animals carried across the water from places darker still. Duckweed grew in some areas near the edges, under leafy banks, welcoming the unwary with the look of green ground to tread more easily across. Jennsen noticed eyes poked up through the duckweed, watching her pass near by.

The mossy ground became spongy, until it, too, gradually lowered beneath the motionless water. At first, she could see the bottom, just inches below the glassy surface, but it went deeper until she could see only darkness below. Through that darkness, she saw shapes, darker yet, glide by.

Jennsen stepped from root to root, trying to keep her balance without having to put her hands to the often slimy trunks of trees for support. By staying on the protruding curves of roots, she didn't have to step down into water. She feared the water might hide a hole that could swallow her.

With each step, as the roots standing above the surface of the water grew farther and farther apart, the knot in the pit of her stomach drew tighter. She hesitated, fearing she was going too far, that she would reach a place where she couldn't turn around. She couldn't really question her judgment that this was the best way in, because there had been no opportunity to make a choice; this had been the only way. She leaned down, squinting into the gloom, peering ahead past trailers of moss and leafy vines. Through the mist and shadows and undergrowth, she thought that not far ahead the ground rose up again, offering a drier path.