Last steps

For several miles Tumbor trudged through the swampy water of Willow Morass, and for the last few he was becoming increasingly plagued by a writhing pain down his left leg. 

At first he attributed it to cramp and old age, his depression and self guilt masking any acknowledgement as to the real route of the problem. Only when forced into using a broken tree branch as a walking aid, and a severe fever threatening to consume him, did he seek a temporary refuge in which to pull himself from the water.

The makeshift bandage he’d applied to the goblin arrow wound had been lost, the wound open to the swamp water. The skin had turned black, several inches all around a large infected yellowy green blister where the hole had been.

“You old fool,” he said to himself. “Gone and lost an heirloom, and a leg, all in the same day. That has to be a record even for me.”

As he jumped back into the swamp, cursing in dwarven about how he should have returned to The Mercer Inn, his infected leg buckled from under him. Tumbor fell forward, smacking his head violently upon the base of a nearby tree.

His eyes closed instantly upon impact, his body already weak from the infection, leaving his body to bob lifeless upon the surface of the Willow Morass swamp.

Copyright: authorchrisbrown