Queen in the Mud: Book 2, Chapter 5

I hefted a wooden crate onto one of the wagons, setting it down with a wooden clatter against the other cargo we’d already loaded.

Letting out a yawn at the morning sunlight filtering through the treetops, I stretched my arms and back, pleased at the notable lack of painful pops and cracks that I’d grown used to over the winter months. It had been a week since the last of my wounds had healed and I was grateful that I no longer needed to spend hours upon hours every day soaking myself in the regenerating water of Enzirus like some kind of salamander tea bag.

I definitely did not want to get so terribly injured again in the future, though something told me that I likely wouldn’t be able to avoid that particular eventuality. Some nasty monster would inevitably cross paths with me and smack me around again. That was just the kind of world that this was.

Standing up in the back of the wagon, I drew a deep breath of early spring air and looked out at the bustle of villagers as we prepared for our departure to the human realms. Most of the snow had receded by now, though a patchy layer of white slush still lingered every here and there with green grass slowly overtaking what had once been an endless expanse of white.

Below, at the side of the wagon and clutching a handmade slate and accompanying chalk pencil, Gwen cleared her throat to get my attention.

“Hey, Gwen!” I smiled down at her, folding my arms. “Looks like we’re running a little late,” I quickly added, noting how we had originally intended to leave at daybreak. “How’s everything going, otherwise?”

“Queen.” She gave a little bow of her head, returning a bright smile of her own to me. “Travel rations, tools and travelling equipment have all been loaded. Weaver even crafted a dozen tents and sleeping bags for your travels and they have all been loaded as well. We’re just loading the last of the trade goods before the caravan is ready for departure.”

“Weaver… that’s the elf girl from the Muerre isles, right?”

Gwen answered my question with a sharp nod. I wasn’t as familiar with the violet-skinned girl compared to the other villagers as she generally preferred to keep to herself, but she had always been polite in our interactions. When my fishing net made of woven vines finally broke, she had volunteered to craft a new one. Rather than using vines, she wove together tree fibers into a tough and sturdy rope.

That girl, Weaver, really lived up to her name; she had put together one exceptionally sturdy net.

I nodded approvingly and looked down at Gwen. “Give her my thanks, would you?”

“Of course,” Gwen answered primly, sounding very much like her mentor, Briham.

Gwen’s studies had come a long way in these last few months, and by now our community had grown to rely on her as a source of stability, direction and organization. The studious youth had clearly taken a page from Briham’s book in the form of ceaseless industriousness, though she wasn’t nearly as stiff and fussy as the old administrator. Although I planned to keep in touch with my transmitter tail ability, I felt relieved to know that the village would be left in such capable hands in my absence.

I hopped down from the back of the wagon and walked along the length of the caravan as Gwen dutifully followed at my side. The Gurbas were already hitched to the wagons, chewing at the frosted grass underfoot and ready to begin the long march to the human realms. Gwen gave the massive mounds of fur a wide berth as she followed me. Not out of fear of them, of course, but rather to avoid being licked and slobbered on by the amiable beasts of burden.

Gurbas were a strange and charming kind of creature, and try as I might, I couldn’t think of an earth-equivalent animal as comparison for its appearance. They just looked like a massive pile of long, coarse brown fur with beady black eyes and saint-bernard levels of drool dripping from their enormous mouths. The most striking thing about them, however, was just how friendly they were. They had a temperament like a golden retriever and if it weren’t for their lumbering size, I could easily see them bounding after a thrown ball and returning it dripping in copious amounts of drool.

Raising a hand, I affectionately stroked one of the beasts on the side, receiving a pleased moo of approval as I passed by.

Two of the three wagons in our caravan had been dedicated to carrying trade goods and all around, villagers were busy shuffling cargo into place. The first of these two trade wagons was already at capacity and the second was well on its way.

While there had been a significant number of issues and concerns regarding my idea to send a trade expedition down to the human realm, the biggest hurdle had also been the simplest one: money. Well, simple in concept, anyway. Between all of the half iron, iron, silver and gold coins that I carried with me, we had a combined wealth of 255 silver and 43 irons. Just over two platinum coins. Thaddius and Briham, acting as my advisors, had informed me that while that amount would be considered a small fortune for an individual, it was a near poverty level of funds compared to the needs of a village.

That meant that if we were going to field a trade expedition, we would need to find some way of generating money in order to gain a favorable return on our time and effort. We were just a small village in the middle of nowhere, though; what could we possibly have that the human realms, in all of their wealth and industry, want?

The answer came to me one night as I curled up to sleep in my home and under my blankets. It had been a particularly cold night, and I’d been wishing that I had a second blanket when I very nearly sat bolt upright in realization.

Back on Earth, from a historical standpoint, high quality animal pelts had made for a highly lucrative market and very rich merchants. No one would want to buy moosephant pelts, since those guys stank of dried up old poop, but we did have choko-chokos.

Those little orange-furred terror-mouths had some of the softest, warmest fur I had ever touched. We used it to line our clothes, make blankets, and I even had a nice comfy orange rug in my house now. Part of the reason I had been able to resist hibernating through winter was because of how warm the orange fur lining my clothes had kept me.

Even better, there was effectively zero risk of us hunting the choko-chokos to extinction. No matter how many we killed, there were always more. When I explained my idea to Thaddius and Briham, they had both responded with interest and even a small degree of enthusiasm, confirming that these furs would fetch a high price in the human kingdoms.

Thaddius even said that, to his knowledge, there were no other furs comparable to the silky softness of choko-choko fur in the human markets. It was easy to forget that the rugged-looking bearded warrior had once been the son and heir to a noble house, but if anyone would be knowledgeable about the luxuries available on the market, it would be him.

As soon as the weather began to turn and we could again venture further from home without risking a snowstorm and hypothermia, we started hunting. At first it was just Mudpuppy, Thaddius, Luna and I, as we were the only ones with any real combat experience, but eventually we began bringing along villagers as well. We crafted bows and arrows and brought along any villagers who showed promise in practicing with them.

While the furs alone were worth it, hunting choko-chokos had given several of our people levels in archery, tracking, and skinning skills. Not only would that help with having more productive hunts, but those skills would benefit our ability to defend the village if we were ever attacked.

Over the last couple weeks, we set up a complete production line centered around the hundreds of choko-chokos we brought down. The furs were skinned, stretched and dried before being stored for sale. Since the furry little balls of teeth and aggression were mostly bone with very little meat on them, the majority of the carcasses went straight to Sib, who had since built an entire alchemy lab of the bones we had supplied her. The slug girl wasn’t one for clear displays of emotion, but she certainly seemed appreciative, and had been buzzing about her new lab, grinding herbs here, boiling organs there, filtering, bubbling and toiling over salves, potions and poultices.

We even had a way of using the scraps of meat and weird, alien organs that came from the choko-choko bodies we processed. No one had dared to eat the choko-choko meat, as it smelled absolutely foul, but we quickly learned that when we dumped it into the lake of Enzirus, fish would swarm and fight over the nasty bits of flesh, making it excellent bait for our nets.

Additionally, the stone raptor babies that Mudpuppy had brought home absolutely loved the choko-choko meat and the vicious little beasts would tear into the viscera with insatiable gluttony whenever we dumped a bucketful of the foul stuff into their pen. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that we could ever truly domesticate those raptors - they had a bit too much of a violent streak about them - but Mudpuppy assured me that she was making progress. At the very least, she seemed attached to them, and they didn’t seem to be too dangerous, so I let it be.

Besides, when Mudpuppy had brought those baby raptors home, holding them in her arms and asking me if she could keep them with her wide, hopeful eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to say no to her. Even if she had been completely covered in blood at the time.

And so, everything fell into place. We put together our supplies, dried food for the journey and prepared the wagons for use.

I felt excited. We were going on an adventure, how could I not feel excited! Our trip down south would bring us to new cities and new lands, new cultures and new people! Maybe we would even see all kinds of weird new animals that you couldn’t find around here.

Stopping in my step, I looked out at the grandiose sight of Enzirus before me, its gargantuan mountains of floating stone disgorging endless waterfalls and veiling the islands in a haze of rising mist. Silver angels danced through the air and vines swayed with the wind.

Enzirus, my home. It would be a long time before I would return, and this was the last time I would see it.

Gwen turned to say something to me and gaped as I suddenly blasted into the air with a mana vault. Once I had climbed well over the majority of the floating islands, I brought my momentum to a near halt with levitating tail. I stared down at our home island and its multitude of buildings nestled between the trees.

Light gray smoke trailed from the stone chimney of the town hall that we had finished constructing during the winter. Other than the recently completed smithy, it was the warmest building in the village as we kept a fire going inside all through the day and night. Briham and Gwen had insisted that we needed a town hall, since it was important for something or other to do with the city. Something to do with the system recognizing the city as… uh, a city. Or something. It was important, that was all that mattered!

Anyway, I had been skeptical at first, but once we finished constructing it, the town hall really grew on me. Everyone went there to take their meals and plenty of people spent most of the day there, particularly during the colder days of winter.

Then there was the new smithy, manned by a brawny man by the name of Balder and his son, Dustin. Dustin was the little kid with the red hair like an explosion and patches of red scales marking him and his family as lizard-type beastkin. He was the striking image of his father, minus the huge muscles.

Sib’s alchemy lab stood out from the rest of the buildings, being the only one with that distinctive off-white color of bone. Its appearance was a utilitarian half-cylinder, something like a military building with a flat front and back with curving walls that met at the top, large and constructed entirely from bone. Almost half of the structure was dedicated to storage, with shelves and barrels made of bone set up to stockpile alchemical materials.

Surprisingly, Sib had actually asked to come with us on the expedition. I would have thought that she would want to stay and work in her alchemy lab, but apparently there were materials that she needed from the human realms to stock her laboratory, like specific kinds of glassware and whatnot. Well, at any rate, I was glad to have her along and was looking forward to talking more with the mysterious and slightly creepy ‘bone slug,’ as others had started calling her.

I spared another minute to gaze down at our village, carving the image of my home into my mind. Then I let myself drop and descended back down to the caravan.

Gwen stood, attentive, as I slowly floated down. The villagers were no longer bustling about loading and moving cargo and many turned up their eyes to watch as I floated down from the sky. Thaddius leaned against the side of one wagon and raised a hand to me in greeting. I spotted Luna seated on a boulder nearby and Mudpuppy next to her.

“All done loading?” I asked.

Gwen nodded. “The cargo has been loaded and everyone is accounted for.” She bowed her head to me and smiled, adopting a formal sounding tone when she spoke again. “Our first expedition to the human realms is prepared for departure.”

I rested a hand on her shoulder and flashed her a big grin. “You’re in charge until I get back. I know you’ll do a great job.”

She bowed her head again and a touch of pink lit up her cheeks. “Thank you, Queen. I’ll do my best.” Although her voice was level and professional, the tip of her tail doing happy little wiggles behind her betrayed her elation at the praise.

Luna raised her eyes when I approached. “Queen,” she acknowledged me in that cool and collected voice of hers. The storm mage had since shrugged off the timidity that had marked her youth, but she instead opted for an air of quiet brooding that followed her like a cloud. The end result was that very few people would actually try and speak with her, and I think she preferred it that way. Luna wasn’t antisocial per se, just not well inclined to conversation - and that was fine! She just needed her space.

“Hey, Luna! Thanks in advance for keeping the city safe in my absence.”

She didn’t respond, just nodded to me. And that was the extent of our interaction. I gave her a sheepish smile before turning to Mudpuppy.

Like always, Mudpuppy carried her spear at her side, the butt of it planted in the dirt at her feet. When I met her gaze, she tightened her free hand into a fist and her frown stretched further across her face. For all she tried to imitate the stoic cut of a soldier, her face had a way of betraying her emotions quite clearly. She was concerned.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she beat me to it. “Queen. Just… promise me you’ll come home safe.”

“Don’t worry!” I put on as comforting a smile as I could manage and pressed my hands against my hips. “I’m tougher than I look. Before you know it, I’ll be back home with plenty of new stories and trade goods and stuff!”

She nodded at that and gave a weak smile, but the concerned look didn’t fall from her face. I pulled her into a hug. “Keep everyone safe, okay?”

“I will.” Mudpuppy nodded again, looking somewhat mollified.

I said my goodbyes to several of the villagers who had gathered to see us off. In total, twelve people would be making the trip, including myself. Of that number, four were people who hadn’t wanted to join our village and instead wanted to return to the human realms. I didn’t hold it against them; many still had family or unfinished business down south, and to be honest, I was actually surprised that the number of people who wanted to leave was so low.

Finally, I stepped up next to Thaddius at the front of the caravan. “All right, let’s get these wheels turning!”

~ Mudpuppy ~

I watched the wagons disappear between the trees as the Queen left in search of foreign lands. The butt of my spear ground against the dirt and my face hurt from frowning so much. I’d been planning on sulking for at least a couple more minutes, but apparently that was too much to ask for as two small hands reached up and slapped me in the stomach wetly.

Biting back my irritation at this disruption, I looked down to find Gila’s red face staring up at me with her big eyes, her arms still slapped up against my chest.

“Mama!” She squeaked, her youthful face a mask of worry and anxiety.

I held back a sigh as I stared down at her. “What?”

Her mouth gaped open and she nervously jabbed a finger in the direction of the lake, eyes full of unspilled tears.

“Use your words. What’s wrong?” I stared down at the fidgety girl still glomped up against me. The kids hadn’t grown much over the winter, having slept through the huge majority of it. Both my kids were still only level two, even though I’d been stuffing them full of fish for overeating experience every chance I got.

“D-Dusky!” She gawked at me and jabbed another finger towards the lake. “She went to the bad place!”

“The bad place?” I wearily repeated after her.

“The… The deep hole! In the lake!” Gila’s lips were quivering now, and a couple fat crocodile tears dripped out of her eyes. “Grandmama Queen said not to go, but Dusky went anyway!”

I froze when she said that and quietly cursed under my breath. That was the one part of Enzirus that we hadn’t explored: the deep hole in the center of the lake that descended unknown fathoms into abyssal darkness. We had no idea what was down there, and in spite of all of our warnings and the potential danger, one of my daughters decided to go play there.

Gila was streaming tears now, still pressed up against my belly. “I don’t.. -sniff- I don’t want Dusky to die!!” She burst into loud sobbing at that, causing several villagers to cast curious looks in our direction.

I cursed again under my breath and angrily growled, “Haaah! Stop crying!”

That, of course, only made Gila cry more. She detached from my tummy with a wet squelch and plopped onto her butt, bawling her eyes out.

I slapped a palm against my forehead, feeling like a big jerk for yelling at a crying child. The Queen had made it look so easy bringing us up, but it took until now before I recognized all the patience she’d had with us. Patience wasn’t one of my strong suits.

Waving my hands placatingly, I softened my voice as much as I could. “It’s okay! Everything’s okay! Look, uh-- Here, wait here.”

I dove into the lake and returned a moment later with one of those squishy, blob-like brown scumsuckers, quickly shoving it into Gila’s hands. “Here, play with this! It’s chewy and delicious! Auntie Gwen will watch over you until I get back!”

Gila, still streaming tears, slowly stuffed the brown blob into her mouth and chewed. “Dank yu,” she garbled around squishy mouthfuls of fish, big tears still dripping from her eyes.

With Gila pacified - in a rather literal sense, given the blob of a fish in her mouth - I immediately dove back into the lake and swam for the center. Maybe I should have just immediately rushed towards Dusky rather than try and calm down Gila, but she couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to swim into the scary, pitch black hole in the ground that everyone warned her to stay away from.

I hesitated for a moment at the realization that I myself was exactly that kind of stupid, and began swimming even faster.

It took me several minutes, even swimming as fast as I could, before I finally caught sight of the brown-skinned girl floating over the chasm. I let out a relieved sigh when she turned to regard me. In her hands was a ball of woven plant fibers with blue light peeking out from the cracks. We’d taken to crafting these for use as lanterns, filling them with glowing blue mushrooms and hanging them up on poles to keep the village lit at night.

“We told you not to come here. It’s dangerous!” I glared down at Dusky, who avoided my eyes. “You weren’t going to go in there, were you?”

Dusky shook her head vehemently. “No, no!” She thrust the woven ball towards me, blue light shining out from the gaps between the stiff plant fibers. “I was gonna drop this ball in and see how far it went. I really wasn’t going to go in!”

I sighed again. To be honest, I was just glad she was safe. All the time I’d been swimming to find her, every manner of horrible thought crossed my mind. In light of threats to one’s family, fears had a tendency to multiply and the relief at knowing that she was safe made it hard to stay mad. Even so, I put on a token tone of admonishment as I scolded her. “Tonight you’ll be cleaning the dishes of the entire village. And they had better be spotless.”

Dusky let out a despairing cry at that and hung her head.

After holding a withering stare on Dusky for a moment longer, I glanced down towards the murky darkness of the chasm below us. We floated above a seemingly endless expanse of darkness. Surface light painted the downward-sloping walls of lakebed sediment in shifting patterns only up to a certain depth before giving way to shadows.

“Now,” I said, glancing at the glowing ball in Dusky’s hands, “drop that thing down into the hole.” When she looked at me, her face brightening, I held up a hand. “You still did a bad thing. You should have asked me first, but I like your idea. I wanna know what’s down there too.”

Dusky, evidently glad that she still got to conduct her experiment regardless of the consequences, gave a spirited nod of understanding and eagerly released the ball of glowing fibers. I reached over and pulled her a little closer with my free hand, spear still held at my side. Best to be prepared if we need to cut a quick retreat, I figured.

The ball of blue light descended into the pit at a surprising speed. Dusky must have stuffed a few rocks into the thing to keep it from floating. Even so, it took over ten minutes before the blue orb sank to the depths where sunlight failed to reach.

It was barely visible by that point, even with me straining my eyes to keep sight of the fading ball of glowing fibers, nearly all of its light swallowed up by the deep dark - and it was still sinking. I kept expecting to see the blue light reflected in the serpentine eyes of some leviathan of the deep, dreading the idea that this might be a den for some sort of truly fearsome beast.

But no such eyes turned to regard us, and before long, the ball of light fell to a depth where I could no longer make it out from the darkness. As it turned out, answers for this mysterious shaft of abyssal darkness wouldn’t be so easily forthcoming. My curiosity remained unsated.

There was something down there, I could feel it. It was undiscovered, something no one had seen before. What was down there, I wondered, hidden under a blanket of shadows?

It was unnatural. I recognized that now, looking at this massive, perfectly circular hole at the very center of Enzirus. At some point far below, the walls of this chasm became perfectly vertical, not at all like the sloping lakebed leading into it. How had it not been filled up over time as the current carried soil and stones into its depths? What could have possibly created something like this?

Some part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and swim after the ball of light, just to see how far down this cavern went. The call of the void. An unanswered, unsatisfied longing for adventure, for exploration and discovery urged me forward against better reason and judgement.

There was plenty of justification in searching this place. Although it wasn’t dangerous at the moment, that didn’t mean it couldn’t become such later on. Even if it turned out that there was nothing down there, it would still be a worthwhile endeavor to be certain of it. Besides, there could be something valuable down there. The Queen had found something interesting in one of the islands far above. Maybe there would be something else far below.

Truthfully, those reasons were little more than excuses to go exploring, but that didn’t make my argument any less valid. This unknown and mysterious feature in the lake below our home village did need to be explored. Just… not yet, and not without proper preparation.

After taking another moment to consider it, I finally shook my head and turned to the surface, wordlessly pulling Dusky along with me and ignoring her squeaks of protest.

It wouldn’t do to depart into a potentially dangerous place unprepared. Maybe I could be impulsive and impatient at times, but I wasn’t stupid. Well, I wasn’t that stupid. I would take some time to gather more glowing mushrooms, practice fighting underwater and give it a good think. And then, when I was as prepared as I could be, I would make the descent.

The Queen had her adventure and now I had mine. Soon, I would return and discover what waited for me in the dark depths of the abyssal chasm.