Adventuresome

Chapter 20

The marshlands were by far the worst place Perrin had ever been to, and she had been to some questionable places in her adventures.

The marshes smelled disgusting, and the smell kept changing so it was impossible to get used to it. As soon as she became accustomed to one nasty smell, it changed to a different one. The ground was squishy. Every step made them sink a full inch and their footsteps filled with water. Murky, brown water. Shallow pools dotted the landscape, not to be mistaken for the deep pools that masqueraded as shallow ones.

The only thing that managed to grow out here were reeds. There were no trees for cover. Then again, there was no land firm enough to support any kind of tree.

Perrin sat on the airship, looking out at the expanse of the marshland. A hazy fog hung over the watery landscape. With the fog, it was impossible to tell where exactly they were in the marshland, let alone what was the best way to go. One short stint off the airship to explore the nearby area and Perrin had already had enough of slogging through the damp reeds.

Lilliana was sitting not too far away, wrapped up in her own thoughts and staring at her staff while she did so. Perrin thought it was a weird thing to do when Dominick housed his spirit form there but decided against giving herself a headache trying to figure out how Dominick saw and felt the world from inside the crystal.

The four rowers were clumped together, tending the one who had been injured. Almost impossibly, and thanks to Dominick, no one else had been hurt. The man had twisted his foot pretty bad as he moved to get out of the way of the falling mast as it crashed through the deck. He survived the falling of the mast, but Perrin was more worried about how he would survive the marsh if he could barely walk. The others were giving him a splint or something, Perrin just hoped it worked.

The rowers may have been part of that bastard Captain Rill's original plan to bring them out and sabotage the ship over the marsh, but Rill had left them to die on the airship instead of bringing them along.

They had few kind thoughts towards him now.

Besides, No one is going to be left behind here in this miserable marsh.

Not that any of them knew where they were supposed to go, or even quite where they were. If Dominick knew anything, and Perrin had a rather nasty suspicion that he did, he was silent on the matter. At least, he said nothing out loud and Lilliana had voiced nothing about the matter so Perrin assumed Dominick was keeping his silence in their creepy mage to spirit communication as well.

Dawn had turned to full morning. They assessed the supplies and found quite more than Perrin expected. She would have assumed that Captain Rill would leave nothing useful on the ship.

"He wanted it to look realistic." One of the rowers said, Perrin thought her name was Fiona.

"Because a shipwreck without the captain or any crewmembers would look realistic." Perrin said under her breath.

"It dosn't matter why it's here," Lilliana interrupted before an argument could begin, "We should be grateful that we have anything at all. We should get our things together and go so we can get a good start while it's still light out."

"And go where?" Fiona asked.

Lilliana thought for a moment before she seemed to come to a decision. "Well, it would be of no use to return to the city now. To the south we would only be going farther from our destination and just to end up hitting the coast. If we go West we'll run into the other provinces." She took a deep breath. "So we should go North."