Holding onto the lamenting chicken, you pushed on through the unwelcoming swamp. From time to time, you lowered one of your hands to cut the toothed-bristling undergrowth with Tetreus’ blade: it was not as sharp as Carinda’s axe—neither was it as comfortable to swing—but it was up to mark to mince the thorns and cleave the toothed fens. Either because it was -this- obvious, or because you were under Carinda’s tutorship for seven years and you could judge it as a smith, but the difference was plainly evident. The grand and mingled trees, their truck like bleeding copper carcass and branches alike whetted bones and ribboned spines, scattered and dispersed the further you came, with only a couple of the nevergreens soon left isolated.

You reached a deep stagnant lake, a great expanse with no trees to roof the decaying waters. Everything here, like the rest of the Russet Swamp, was stained and coloured in red, but it was of a brighter—even golden—hues. The winterish sun, exposed and up high, elicited the undisturbed sleeve of the swamp to look like a late bloody battlefield blooming with sunflowers. The whiff of miasma and the rotting lake-bed—they couldn’t ruin the sight.
“KUKAW!KUKAW!”

Your feet wallowed through the morass until you found stable footing on an island-like patch of floating vegetation. The grassy foliage was submerged in the water, but just below the surface of it. The edges of those “islands” sloped and blunt, they were easy to climb onto even with both of your hands occupied. There were dozens of such islets spread across the lake; not big, they were just large enough to spread your arms. Crows, ravens, rooks and other birds with ebony-grey feathers, shared them with lizards and other reptiles (none of them as big as your arm).

Clouds of outgrown insects, too, rumbled between the ruby plants and above the swamp. There was no rest from them; not in here at least. You glanced at the sun; you had time not to worry about it turning dark …
“KUKAW!KUKAW!KUKAW!”

You sighed, your head buzzing from the hen-cry. You watched the waters below, but the creamy algae spread all over the lake—glittering to-blind—made it a hard task. If there were any big reptiles here, they did not sit out in the open.

In time, you spotted Veronica far in the distance, on top of an island like yours. Her form was easily seen, but it was not the biggest on there. She was too far away to see in clear, but she stood on a creature bigger than her, like another hill below her feet.

She was bending straight, and in her hands, she held a pickaxe! The pick was jabbed-gored, and the beast laid slew. Was it the beast you were hunting for? It was certainly big …