The respectable streets of St. Millom felt like a fading dream as Lutz made his way to the Kholm Quarter. The air grew thicker, the buildings more cramped, the sounds more guttural. He slipped into the anonymity of his safe-house room, the space a welcome antidote to the opulent lie of Vesper Lane. With practiced efficiency, he shed James Morgan like a snake shedding its skin. The good charcoal grey suit was folded and placed on the narrow cot. In its place, he donned the uniform of the task ahead: the tough canvas trousers, the waterproofed boots laced tight to the knee, and the thick, waxed cotton coat that felt heavy and reassuring on his shoulders.
Beneath the coat, he had donned his harness. It was a second skin of worn leather, a symphony of pragmatism that combined a belt, bandolier, pouches, sheaths, and holsters into one integrated system. The weight of Henrik's revolver settled below his armpit, a solid, familiar pressure. The throwing knives in their bandolier sheaths lay flat against his chest. The parrying dagger found its home on the left of his hip and Creed did to on the opposing side. He felt the Sawed-off shotgun hug his lower back. His ammo and Night's melody sat comfortably in the belt's pouches. He buttoned the coat closed, concealing the arsenal within, the faint clinking of metal and leather now a secret music only he could hear.
He looked at the suitcase. Now, it contained only some wrapped food and an empty lead case waiting for its prize. He locked the safe-house door behind him and stepped back out into the quarter, a different man moving with a different purpose.
He found a carriage office on a bustling, grimy thoroughfare. The clerk, a man with ink-stained fingers and a perpetual squint, barely looked up as Lutz approached.
"Need to get to the Rotwood Fens," Lutz said, his voice flat, devoid of James Morgan's affected cadence.
The clerk's head rose slowly. "Fens, eh? Not a popular destination. But a carriage that passes near there leaves in twenty minutes. Five Shields."
Lutz paid the coins, their clink a transaction of pure utility. He waited on a worn wooden bench, watching the life of the city's underbelly flow past. Twenty minutes later, a weathered carriage, more a covered wagon than a comfortable coach, pulled by two tired-looking horses, rattled to a stop.
He climbed inside. The interior smelled of old sweat, damp wood, and tobacco. The other passengers were three burly and rough-looking men with hands like weathered stone and faces carved by wind and labor. Hunters or woodcutters, most likely. They looked up as he entered, their eyes initially holding a mocking glint at his youthful, refined features. But their gazes quickly dropped, taking in the practical, sturdy cut of his waxed coat, the heavy boots, and the way he moved with a balanced economy of motion. Then, as he sat, there was a faint, but unmistakable, clatter from beneath the coat—the sound of hardened leather and metal shifting against itself.
The mockery in their eyes died, replaced by a neutral, professional assessment. They didn't know what he was carrying, but they knew the sound of a man who was armed and likely knew how to use it. They nodded once, a silent, grudging acknowledgement, and returned to their own silent thoughts. The journey proceeded without a single word exchanged, the only sounds the rumble of the wheels, the clop of the horses, and the wind whistling through gaps in the carriage walls.
Lutz spent the time watching the city dissolve. The dense urban fabric gave way to smaller towns, then to scattered farms, and finally to untamed woodland. The air coming through the window changed from coal smoke to the clean, damp scent of pine and wet earth. It was serene, almost deceptively so. He kept his mind focused, running through the description of the Human-Faced Cage Grass, visualizing the terrain he was about to enter.
After one hour and forty-six minutes by his pocket watch, the carriage slowed near a small, grim-looking village huddled at the edge of the forest. A rough-hewn wooden sign, bleached grey by the elements, was nailed to a post. It read: ROTWOOD FENS - THIRTY MINUTES AHEAD.
"This is my stop," Lutz said, his voice cutting through the silence. He nodded to the other men, who returned the gesture with the same taciturn respect. He thanked the driver, stepped down, and the carriage rattled away, leaving him alone on the earthy road.
The silence was immediate and profound. It was not a peaceful silence, but a heavy, watchful one, broken only by the sigh of the wind in the tall pines. He hefted his suitcase and began to walk.
For the first twenty minutes, the road was firm, bordered by dense, dark forest. But gradually, the character of the land began to shift. The air grew heavier, damper. The fir trees began to be interspersed with gnarled, sickly-looking pillars of green wood he didn't recognize, their bark peeling away in soggy strips. The road itself turned soft, then muddy, his boots sinking with a wet, sucking sound with each step. The clean scent of pine was utterly vanquished by a new, potent miasma: the stench of stagnant water, rotting vegetation, and a cloying, sweet decay that stuck in the back of his throat.
The buzzing started as a distant hum and quickly grew into a pervasive, aggressive drone. Clouds of midges and mosquitoes materialized, swirling in the humid air. This was it. The threshold.
He stopped, setting the suitcase down in a relatively dry patch of moss. From an inner pocket of his coat, he retrieved a small and short wooden jar with a tight-fitting lid. Inside was a thick, greasy unguent, his last preparation—a rudimentary but effective insect repellent compounded with crushed herbs, it smelled powerfully of eucalyptus, mint, and something vaguely chemical.
He smeared the cool, waxy substance on his neck, behind his ears, and on the backs of his hands, the sharp scent a welcome assault against the swamp's foul breath. Tucking the container away, he took a final, steadying breath. Then, he opened his coat, unbuttoning it to allow for greater freedom of movement. The harness was now exposed to the dim, filtered light, the well-oiled leather and polished metal glinting dully. He was ready.
With one last look back down the empty road, he turned and stepped off the path, leaving the world of men behind. The ground immediately became treacherous, a unstable mattress of sphagnum moss, tangled roots, and hidden pools of black water. Each step was a calculation, testing the firmness of the ground before committing his weight. The buzzing insects, repelled by the unguent, kept a few feet away, forming a living, shimmering barrier around him.
The canopy closed overhead, plunging the swamp into a deep, green twilight. Strange, pallid fungi glowed with a faint, sickly light on decaying logs. The trees were twisted into agonized shapes, their branches hung with curtains of grey moss that felt like dead flesh when he brushed against them. The only sounds were the squelch of his boots, the drone of insects, and the occasional, distant plop of something—he didn't want to know what—entering the water.
It was a place that rejected sane life, a slow, wet graveyard. And somewhere in its suffocating embrace was a plant that wore a human face. Lutz moved forward, his senses stretched to their limit, every shadow scrutinized, every sound analyzed. The harvest was on.
The Fens were a lesson in pervasive, patient malevolence. Every step was a negotiation with the terrain, the mud sucking greedily at his boots as if trying to claim him for the swamp. The air, thick with the sweet-rotten stench of decay, was a physical presence, coating his tongue and the back of his throat. He moved with a predator's gaze and a prey's caution, his eyes constantly scanning the tangled, gloomy landscape.
He was giving a wide berth to a particularly gnarled, black-barked tree when it happened. One of its lower branches, which he had taken for a dead, leafless limb, suddenly uncoiled with whip-like speed, aiming to snare his ankle. It was pure reaction that saved him. A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, a shift in the pattern of shadows, and he was already moving, throwing his weight sideways. The branch, tipped with what looked like thorns of solidified tar, whistled past his boot, slapping wetly against the mud.
Lutz didn't freeze. He flowed backward, putting several feet between himself and the tree, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Creed was already in his left hand, its stiletto blade a sliver of cold steel, augmenting his movements further.
"Well, that's a welcoming committee, holy, that would've definitely gotten a normal person." he muttered, his voice a dry rasp in the oppressive silence. "Note to self: in the murder swamp, assume everything is trying to murder you. Especially the furniture."
He gave the treacherous tree a wide berth, his senses now dialed to a fever pitch. Every hanging vine, every knotted root, was a potential ambush. A short while later, his gaze was drawn to a massive, papery nest clinging to the bough of a half-drowned cypress in the middle distance. It was the size of a small barrel, and from it emerged a few insects the length of his thumb, their bodies a lurid, warning yellow and black. They buzzed with a deeper, more resonant pitch than the ubiquitous mosquitoes.
Fantastic. Giant, probably venomous wasps. Because why wouldn't the death-trap swamp have death-trap wasps?
Intimidated, he unholstered Henrik's revolver with his right hand. The weight of the polished silver and cold brass was a profound comfort. He now held steel in both hands. He moved forward in a low, wary crouch, his boots finding purchase on the less-soggy patches of ground.
As he walked, he focused, trying to push his "Thief's nose" outwards. It was an ability meant to sense the value and location of items worth stealing—precious metals, gems, coins. He wasn't sure if it would work on a plant. Was the Cage Grass "valuable"? To him, it was priceless. To the world? It was a predatory weed.
He felt nothing. No golden glow, no pull of hidden treasure. Just the damp, dead feeling of the swamp. Of course, he thought cynically.
His internal grumbling was cut short by a sudden, violent eruption of mud from a puddle to his right. A creature launched itself at him. It was a frog, but bloated to the size of a small dog, its mottled green and brown skin glistening with slime. Its mouth was a wide, gaping maw lined with needle-like teeth, and it moved with shocking speed.
There was no time for thought, only instinct. His right arm came up, the revolver a natural extension of his will. He didn't aim down the sights; he pointed from the hip, his agility and coordination taking over.
BANG! BANG!
The two reports were deafening in the swamp's hush, scattering birds and silencing the insects for a split second. The first shot took the frog in its bulbous throat, the second punched into its side. The creature landed in a heap, its momentum gone. It twitched spasmodically on the ground, its legs kicking at the air as a foul mixture of dark blood and a brown, viscous substance he didn't want to identify seeped from the wounds.
"Hop along now, bitch, damn." Lutz muttered, his voice cracking due to the adrenaline coursing through him. He kept the revolver trained on the twitching amphibian until it lay still. "This place is freaky as hell."
He reloaded the two spent chambers with practiced efficiency, his eyes never leaving his surroundings. The gunshots would have announced his presence to everything that wanted to eat him in the area. He needed to move.
He pushed deeper, the revolver a comforting weight in his hand. He focused on his Thief's Nose again, still nothing. He was relying on old-fashioned observation.
And then he saw it.
About twenty meters ahead, in the middle of a wider, particularly stagnant-looking puddle, was a small, protruding island of relatively dry, packed earth. On it grew a patch of grass that was an unnaturally vibrant, deep green, a stark contrast to the muted, sickly hues of the surrounding swamp. And in the center of this patch was a plant.
A spherical body about the size of his fist, composed of layered, open leaves, like a bizarre artichoke. And inside, a lump of pale, pulsating greenish-gray mush. As he watched, mesmerized and horrified, the flesh twitched and morphed. It bulged to form the shape of a fat grub, then smoothed out into the shimmering, enticing form of a dragonfly. The illusion was uncanny.
His eyes caught movement at the water's edge of the little island. A small, skink-like lizard, its scales drab brown, was cautiously approaching, its tongue flicking out. It seemed captivated by the morphing mass, which was now mimicking a struggling caterpillar. The lizard darted forward, its tongue shooting out to snag the "prey."
In that instant, the illusion shattered. The fleshy mass didn't just retract; it yanked. A thin, almost invisible tendril snapped back into the plant, pulling the hapless lizard with it. The lizard scrabbled frantically, its tiny claws finding no purchase on the slick leaves. And then, with a speed that was shocking, the open leaves of the spherical plant slammed shut.
SNAP.
The sound was soft, wet, and final.
Lutz stood frozen, his revolver half-lowered. He watched as the closed "cage" trembled and convulsed. It contracted rhythmically, a series of slow, deliberate pulses. A faint, muffled crunching sound. The plant was digesting its meal.
A slow, wide smile spread across Lutz's face, a stark contrast to the revulsion coiling in his gut. He was horrified by the efficient, casual cruelty of nature.
"Found you," he whispered, the words tasting of triumph and a strange, shared understanding. He had his target.