Page 2 of Dweller of the Mists

“Please exit, Noelle Xander,” the AI reminded her.

“I am,” she hissed back at it, even though it was ridiculous to argue with a life pod’s AI. They didn’t even have the kindof advanced AI that the ships possessed. It wouldn’t register a conversation, so it couldn’t be reasoned with. It would merely record and report. And there went six years of work down the drain for “noncompliance” with regulations once the recording got back to Corp. “Fuck,” she whispered again. “I’m going now.”

Grabbing the small survival bag equipped within the life pod, Noelle immediately filled it with what remained of the food and water rations, adding to the enclosed supplies before closing it. Hitching the bag over her shoulder, she gave one last forlorn look around at the relative safety of the life pod before reaching up and pulling herself out of it and out into the swamp.

Chapter

Two

The swamp was hauntingly beautiful. That was Noelle’s first impression of it as she stood upon the life pod, her eyes wide as she got her first real look at her surroundings. Trees that rivaled sequoias in size rose from the swamp waters, their massive roots emerging above the water in thick, twisted systems teeming with life. The trunks of the trees were silvery in color with a faint sheen that she could sometimes see through the fog from those trees closest to her, but they were also in bloom with long strands of glowing flowers in hues of pink and purple. Their soft blossoms drifted in long, luminous wisps through the heavy fog with the breeze.

Noelle dragged her tongue along her bottom lip nervously as she tore her gaze away from one swaying flower-filled vine and focused on the dark water. The fog crawled over its surface in a scattered, broken manner but the water itself was just as impenetrable as the surrounding gloom. As beautiful as it all was, it made her acutely aware of just how isolated she was in a world that she knew nothing about and couldn’t even see well.

“Hello!” she called out. Noelle turned her head slowly as the entire surrounding swamp abruptly fell silent. “Kim? Kastle? Daniels? Is anyone there?”

Silence thickened for several long moments before being broken once more as the sounds of the swamp stirred to life. She was truly alone. Trying not to panic, Noelle’s gaze dropped to a massive root system of the tree her pod was precariously perched upon above swamp water. This definitely wasn’t a safe place to stay long-term when any number of things could make the pod slip straight into the water. She would have mentally thanked the AI for pushing her out the door if she weren’t still salty over the reason for it.

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she lowered herself down the side of the pod onto a massive twisted root. Her foot immediately slipped, but she was prepared for that and gripped the side of the pod harder as she regained her balance and braced her legs wide to evenly distribute her weight. Her footing gradually became more certain as she inched away the water’s edge where the pod rested and climbed higher along the root system to the massive trunk. Tipping her head back, she squinted up at the canopy higher overhead.

It was almost how she envisioned Earth must have been like millions of years ago. Before the glacial ice sheets had crawled over a large portion of the planet. The heat and humidity were about right to provide the feeling of a primeval swamp. She half-expected to see some creature of monstrous proportions suddenly rise from the water to take a bite out of something.

Noelle froze at the thought, her eyes shooting down to the water nervously and then back up to peer among the trees. Wasn’t the threat of predators one of the reasons that Darvel chose not to send them down into the swamp?

Her pulse quickened as her heart picked up a rapid pounding rhythm in her chest as her gaze searched the fog uselessly.

She shook her head. “Get ahold of yourself, Noelle. It’s not like you didn’t spend most of your life in the bayou. Everythingis just… bigger. But the same rules apply. Presumably,” she muttered as an afterthought.

Bracing her weight with one hand against the enormous trunk of the tree, she made her way along the roots, pausing only for a moment to work a dry segment free that was straight and sturdy enough to make a half-decent walking stick. It was only so armed that she felt confident enough to inch across the root systems from one tree to the next, using her walking stick as anchor and leverage for sustaining her balance. Her feet slipped more times than she could count, but the more she walked, the more she became accustomed to the awkward gait that was forced upon her as she crept forward.

She paused after a short distance and glanced back. The mist had swallowed her pod so thoroughly that not even her goggles were able to penetrate the gloom enough to even make out where it rested. There was nothing but a white wall rising from the water into the trees, speckled with soft lights and the movement of long hanging branches with the faint stir of the humid air.

Somewhere in the distance, a song rose with a note that she might have categorized as curious. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. The heavy shroud of fog made her feel isolated and yet she felt as if she were being studied by something. That she wasn’t truly alone. Noelle dismissed it with a shake of her head. She couldn’t go crazy yet. It was certainly the environment for it, however.

“Got to find a safe place to sleep before night falls,” she muttered out loud. She needed to hear the sound of a voice, even if it was only her own. “Keep moving.”

Using her walking stick for leverage, she hopped the short distance to another root system and continued to walk in the direction indicated by her beacon. She would have to go quite a bit of distance to get to the supply drop. It would be impossibleto reach before nightfall. If she didn’t miss her guess, it was several days north of her current position. She wasn’t shocked. They were never meant to arrive in the swamp. Although the supplies hadn’t landed precisely at their designated camp coordinates—and they had all collectively groaned about the days of traveling it would take for them to retrieve everything and bring it to camp—it was still considerably upland from the swamplands where she landed. She would just have to find places to shelter in the interim and pray that she met up with one of her team before then.

With a grim set of her mouth, she plunged ahead.

It was slow going—painfully so—but Noelle picked her way along the roots steadily as she fell back into the accustomed habits that came with traveling through the swamp. While nothing was so oversized back home, there was still a certain familiarity that settled gradually into her bones. She dragged the back of her forearm across her brow to mop her sweat and promptly startled when another signal suddenly sprang to life with a loud chime that made her stumble in surprise. Lowering her arm, she squinted at the signal.

“What in the world?” she whispered.

The signal was corroded, flickering in and out, but it was clearly being broadcasted at that frequency by something Darvel-made. Was it the abandoned camp? A shiver of apprehension ran up her back as all of her grandmother’s old ghost stories once more came rushing back to her. If her grandmother were there, she would be shaking her head and warning her not to fool with things better left alone.

“Whatever the swamp takes, just leave it, child,” her grandmother’s voice whispered from her memories. Back then, she had found an old doll half-buried in the mud at the water’s edge but hadn’t had the opportunity to rescue it before her grandmother drew her away with a shake of her whitened head.“The swamp has its own spirit and life, and it doesn’t take kindly to people fooling with what it has claimed from those who have been here before. It is the price that was paid. You don’t go stealing anyone’s coin from them. Least of all from the spirits who are dwelling here.”

Noelle had nodded in agreement, her tiny hand tightening around her grandmother’s thin fingers as they continued to forage. Those had been happier times, before the local government had gotten word of their community of unregistered non-gratas living and breeding illegally off-grid and carried out a full-scale raid, wiping out their little community. She had clung to her grandmother as they were ripped from their home and forced into a camp for children, the elderly, and the infirm, but she had never seen her older siblings or parents again.

She swiped away another drop of sweat and grimaced. The sweat was cold on her skin with the cooling temperature. Night would arrive soon and, as of yet, she hadn’t been presented with any options to keep clear of convenient predation. There wasn’t even a decent tree with low enough branches for her to grab onto so that she might scurry up into them. She grimaced at the signal. It was just a short distance to the northwest of her position. It wouldn’t take her far out of her way if she sought shelter there within the old camp.

“Sorry, Grandma,” she whispered as she realigned herself with the new signal. “I need a place safe to get decent sleep.”

Chapter

Three

Gwum Narvook Shoowilp Bia faltered and nearly fell from the low branches of the tree at the sight of a petite little creature crawling up from the ruined metal he had been studying from above. That… was unexpected. Though the metal piece was far larger than anything else he had seen fall from the sky, he had not imagined that it would have anyone within it! Was he mistaken? He had seen something large blaze through the sky from where he had been traveling nearby and had followed with excitement, but perhaps he was mistaken as to where it had landed. Surely this had to be merely some creature’s den.

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