The nameless boy stood at the front of a pack of travellers. Many had horses at their side, fastened with all kinds of bags and luggage. Some had small children accompanying them, some had weaponry, all were nervous.
All except the boy.
The small lantern that hung from his neck glowed with a soft blue light, not very strong. However, from what the boy remembered of his times in the pack behind him, this blue light glows unhindered by the mist surrounding. When he'd been in amongst the crowds on previous journeys, he could see the blue light emitting in front, but not the person holding it.
Monster bait is all it is. Creatures in Fog, especially on this pass, seem to only kill a strict number of people, as if following some ruleset. The rules differ from Fog to Fog, and here, at the Great Fog Barrier on the Daltarian Road, the rules were simple:
One kill a day.
In such a wide Fog, one that stretched for several miles, this was odd. You'd expect it to have much more complicated rules, or at least far more deadly ones. It's not like you need to follow the rules - but the Fog subsides after someone dies.
That's how this crossing got set up: a toll road with slaves as monster bait. Today was the boy's unlucky day. His turn to be bait was here. He'd already half-accepted this fate, but someone intervened in his resignation.
The boy fiddled with the knife at his hilt, gripping it over and over again, trying to remember the things that Drun had taught him. A few hours wasn't going to give the the boy much of anything, but even those simple lessons: plant your feet, never take your eye off of what you're aiming at, use your weight to stab harder... those simple lessons were indispensable now.
The Fog clung loosely to the boy's body. His clothes were dampened by the grey smoke at it pulsed around him. He could see nothing, barely able to keep himself on a straight path by the directions that were shouted out behind him. He could hear them, but only just, the Fog seemed to block sound well.
The chains he was bound in were heavy, and taking off his manacles was impossible. He had considered chopping off his arm and running, but even his legs were bound. Cutting the chains wouldn't work, either, as they were made of a strong steel that his knife could only barely scratch.
It was scary. Being forced to walk alone in the unknown, with everyone behind hoping for his death, was too much for a seven year old boy to handle. Tears welled up in his eyes as he nervously walked, legs light but weaker than normal, all the strength in him being drained with each step.
"Stand strong, boy."
The boy heard a deep voice behind him. Stepping through the fog, alongside the chains that dragged limply across the floor, came Drun. His imposing sillouhette marched up and put one hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Ahead, fool. Look forwards."
But the boy didn't look forwards. He stared at the man above him. The man who'd gone reminded him how to fight, and who was now walking beside him, giving him strength. Enough strength to hold in his shaking. He stared, grateful that the man was beside him now, that he didn't have to face what was coming alone.
Of all the wrongs that he'd been put through, by the people that picked him up on the side of the road, by the guards in this merchant troupe as they travelled here, by all those who chided him as 'bad goods' when up on the selling stalls, by the men and women behind him hiding and condemning him to death, this one right could wash them all away.
He wanted to say something, to tell the man what he had done. But he couldn't. He didn't know how.
A smell, faint but unmistakable, sailed through the dense air and slowly burned into the boy's senses. It took him several seconds to realize it was there, but now he couldn't mistake it. He pulled a hand up to his nose, blocking it.
"It smells?" Drun asked, looking to the boy with a serious expression.
The boy nodded, pointing at Drun. It was the same smell that lingered on the man, only much more ferocious, as if kicking and rearing. Drun let out a small chuckle, and his face relaxed.
"Yes, well... I'm not exactly the nicest smelling man right now, haven't bathed in a while."
The boy was shaking his head frantically. He waved his arms around, pointing indiscriminantly at the haze, the smell was all around them.
As if finally understanding, Drun became serious again. He lowered his stance a bit, and smacked the boy's hand away from his own face, freeing the boy's nose.
"Can you discern a direction? Where?"
The boy stood still for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. The chains stopped their dragging; a signal for the carriage, out of sight behind them, to also stand and wait.
He used his nose to try and locate the iron-like smell. He pointed, beyond the haze to his right. Drun held his tied sword in both hands, lowering himself further. They both felt something pass. On the ground just beyond their vision, something lurked and moved with a steady speed. He kept pointing to his right, but as he felt the thing move, the boy traced its path: around to their left, staying just out of sight. And then, nothing.
The thing must've been completely on their left. But, there was no movement. It stopped in its tracks, waiting, just past their vision, just past where sound could reach. Drun stood still, watching with his marble-covered sword out infront of him, one forearm resting beneath it to support its weight. He daren't move, waiting for what felt like an eternity for something to happen.
The chain moved slightly, the movements in the formation travelled up and through the mist until it reached the two, standing alone, and echoed with steel clanging against steel. The caravan of travellers must've thought the boy died. Moving up assuming the Fog was now safe.
As if waiting for the sound, something shot out of the mist from the left, slamming into the boy with the weight of a war horse.
The boy was hit by something combing all manner of texture: soft and spongy, but with specks of hard carapace that stabbed into his skin. He could make out different shades of flesh that bulbed outward in small peaks, channels of red ran between them like rivers through valleys. The boy's hand fell into one before him, it felt warm and soft, with lots of give to his palm's push. The flesh intertwined around the boy's fingers like interlocking with a boneless hand, trapping him against its body as it pulled him into the fog.
The chains had erupted into loud bangs and they pulled taught within a second of the boy's capture. Just as his arm was going to snap from the force, the chain link broke somewhere outside of his vision, shortly followed by the breaking of the chains on both of his legs. He was free, but not alive yet.
As he was being pulled by the fleshy creature, the boy finally pulled his head back to see it more clearly. Its body stretched out well into the fog, with no legs, propelled by a curling, snake-like movement of its long torso. The torso was covered in flesh of all colours and textures, and continued as far as the boy could see. There were no patterns to its body, a haphazard mess of skin and blood tied together by small, dark plates about the size of a hand.
Red grew on the corner of the boy's vision. A rotting, messy gum packed with unneat and yellowed teeth showed itself, pushing against the boy as it unfurled into a wide grin. The boy pushed his free arm against the teeth, stabbing between them with Drun's knife and drawing dark red blood from the gums.
The thing jolted violently in response, letting its grip of the boy go and flinging him into the Fog. The boy collided with the cobble remains of a house, only barely protecting his head from hitting against the old stones of its wall. His back was in agony, and it was a miracle it hadn't immediately snapped from colliding against the stones.
By the time the boy had began to crawl away, the abomination had cut a wide circle through the trees, maintaining its breakneck speed. It carreid its momentum in a fierce charge towards the broken house that the boy barely hid behind. The boy only caught a glimpse of the thing's scale as it broken through the foggy treeline towards him:
A face with no eyes, no nose or ears... just a mouth. And skin grafted across where any other features could be thought of. It headed a pathwork, cylindrical body of differently taught and loose packs of skin, both tied together under dark scabs, and burned together on some edges. The skins pulled tightly around a long underbelly of ribs that poked out to the sides, and pitched over spinal vertebrae. The boy saw the creature as a mess of enlarged, starving torsos, all barrelling towards him with the power of dozens of horses.
This was it. He'd done all he could. Maybe the boy could've run away into the fog, given that his chains were gone, but not with this thing so dead set on him.
As the creature bounded through that split second, and came within a short distance, the boy gave up. How could he defeat this? It was so large, so strong, stronger than any city guard or back-street thug that he'd managed to beat or flee from before. It was for the best to stop fighting, now, and rest.
The boy slammed the knife forwards, driving it deep into the thing's open mouth. He had been swallowed in that second, darkness now fully surrounded him, with his own shadow faintly casting from the open mouth onto the tongue that flailed about inside. Blood trickled from the back of the creature's mouth, and the boy clung to the impaled knife tightly.
The mouth erupted with a deafening roar from the throat below the boy, a dark-red, rotting, wet void ready to swallow him whole. He felt his hand slipping, now wet with damp and warm breath, blood, sweat, saliva, all making his palms slick. He was barely able to hold himself up with two hands.
'Don't give up. Live.'
The boy heard his own voice resonate in his head, pounding a mantra in his skull over and over again, fighting against the screams that surrounded him.
His hand slipped, and he began to fall.
As he felt his strength giving in, the boy used its last reserves to pull the knife free with his still-gripping hand. Falling further and deeper into the creature's throat, he raised his hand up.
And then he stabbed it.
Driving the knife through his hand, the boy let out a terrible scream of pain, his blood mixing with the creature's as he pinned himself to the thing's inner throat. His arm had lost strength, but he could still hang there. Unbeknownst to any, the boy's eyes, bloodshot, stared up towards the creature's open mouth with determination.
***
How much time had passed? A few hours? A day? A minute? A week? Welt couldn't tell, and laid stumped against a tree, almost paralyzed from the lack of sensation in his body. His eyes struggled to maintain their focus on a tree opposite him, and he tried to count the folds in its bark to keep his mind present.
He always lost himself at fold twelve, falling back into unconsciousness for some amount of time. Sometimes, his head would rock back with enough force to smack against the tree behind him, and that could bring his mind back for a time, but never long enough to do anything.
Welt kept dreaming, dreaming of unpleasant things, things that he didn't want to remember. He pulled himself up, trying to stand. He felt like there was something in the Fog, just out of sight. Was it far? Or was it just on the edges of the Fog? Which direction was it in?
Welt couldn't stand up, and slid back against the tree. He began counting again:
One. Two. Three. Four...
Something coiled around his shoulders gently.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
It pulled itself up onto his head, resting on his scalp gently.
Eleven. Twelve.
It sank into his skull.