Morwen reddened at the observation. It was true. She was thinking about Caroc again. He hadn’t left her mind since he’d walked off into the camp to seek his revenge. Why did it haunt her? She never cared enough about others before to give their deaths a second thought, and in many cases she’d even been the cause.
The ranger’s tragic story of lost love had touched her. “Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped.
“Good, and how are you feeling?” Goron replied undeterred.
Morwen had crushed calendula and marshmallow root into a paste and smeared it on her and Goron’s many injuries. She could feel the familiar itchiness as they started to heal. It was the damage inside her Goron was referring to. Even though Morwen had been taking a knife to herself since she’d become a warlock, what had transpired in the butcher’s tent had terrified her. She wanted to tell Goron of her panic, and how frightening it was knowing you were about to be skinned alive, and how she could not stop thinking about Caroc’s death. But the idea appalled her. She couldn’t tolerate that weakness within herself and could never divulge it to others. Instead, she muttered she was fine and turned over on her bed of stone to show Goron her back.
Goron took first watch. The night was dark, the moon a slither above the tree line, the stars smudges of dirty light. The only sound was the occasional whine of a mosquito and the faint lapping of the lake at its banks.
Bored with the darkness, his mind turned inwards to the memories of the carnal delights he’d experienced with the forest goddess. He caught himself grinning despite his earlier resolution. Disgusted, he promised himself no matter what exquisite goddess emerged from the lake, he wouldn’t be tempted.
He felt responsible for what happened to Morwen, and he couldn’t leave her again. Besides, she’d changed. He could see Caroc’s death, and what had happened in the toadoks’ camp had affected her deeply. Morwen’s vulnerability touched him, and he saw her in a new light.
A piercing scream jerked Goron from his thoughts. He jumped to his feet and drew his axe as he looked toward the camp where Morwen was sleeping.
The night exploded in flame. Panicking, Szat was hurling fireballs haphazardly. Sparks rained down like fiery snow. Blubbery tentacles as thick as tree trunks whirled in the air. One was coiled around Morwen. Only her head was visible, mouth stretched in a blood-curdling scream.
A tentacle thumped Goron on the back and sent him crashing to the ground. He staggered to his feet, clasping his head. Momentarily disoriented, he heard Morwen’s screams echo all around him.
The tentacles retreated back to the lake. Goron stumbled over the rocky ground after them. Szat lit the way, flinging fireballs with pinpoint accuracy and no effect.
“Murdus protect us,” Goron gasped looking down from the outcrop of rock to the lake. Even in the weak moonlight the charybdis was visible, a huge mass obscuring the feeble reflection of light on the lake. Goron felt like screaming and fleeing in the opposite direction.
The charybdis’s single moon-sized eye was fixated on its prey as it reeled it in. Morwen had been hauled into the shallows of the lake, and her screams had stopped. Goron had vowed he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He dashed over the pebbled shore and latched onto a tentacle as it sank into the water.
The inky blackness closed around him as he was dragged down. He started to shimmy up the tentacle in search of Morwen.
He found the knot in the limb and felt Morwen’s pitiful struggles to escape. One hand still grasping the charybdis’s flesh, he used the blade of his axe to chop above the knot. The meat was rubbery and tough and did not cut easily. His body was desperate for air; his lungs burnt, and his head felt as if it were being squeezed in a vice. He struggled to continue with the grisly task, refusing to let go and abandon Morwen to her watery fate.
His axe had hacked six inches into the tentacle and still the charybdis held on, diving deeper into the dark. The blackness seeped into his head, drowning thought and memory.
Goron took in a watery breath. Where was he, in a dream? He let go of the tree he was climbing and floated up to the canopy of green stars. The scene changed. He was a giant splashing across the sea and mountains to pluck a sick star from the heavens. He stretched his hand out and caught one.
When he opened his fist it was full of rotting, green meat, its pungent odour massaging the back of his throat. He vomited. A torrent of water, coloured green by his stomach acid, sprayed into the air and floated away with the breeze.
He was in a vast cavern illuminated by the soft glow of the fluorescent green mushrooms which grew among the rocks and walls. In the cavern’s centre was a pool surrounded by a ring of stony ledges upon which he’d taken refuge. Goron adjusted his axe and eased himself upright. Only a hundred feet away was the charybdis. It had dragged its enormous bulk onto the rocks. Its attention was diverted by something lying upon the sandy floor.
Goron crept closer.
It was Morwen, and her black onyx staff was still clutched in her hand. The monster prodded at her with a tentacle.
“Leave her be!” Goron roared. He covered the rocky ground between them in a few leaps and unsheathed his axe.
The charybdis turned laboriously in his direction. Its moon-sized eye glared down at him.
Goron had only one chance. He raised the axe and hurled it at the white orb. The blade sank into the soft whiteness as if it were powdered snow
