Eventually the water and grass mats tapered off until we were slogging through wet, marshy mud. The only vegetation there were these sticklike reeds growing out of irregular clumps that stuck up like little hills. You either had to wind around the clumps or step up onto them and then back down into the muck to keep going in a straight line. It was exhausting, and every now and then one of us would sink up to our nads in a watery mudhole we hadn’t seen coming.

The good news—for me, anyway—was that so many creatures and people and plants had died in the bogs over the centuries that the Death Spirit hung in the air like fog. With a little bit of Swallowing the Universe breathing, my Spirit sea was full to bursting in no time.

Out of curiosity, I checked my stats on my HUD.

Name: Grady Hake

Spirit: Death

Height: 5’7”

Weight: 142lbs

Age: 16 Van Diemann years (current location), 14.4 Universal years

Credits: 0.5

Spirit Reserve: 6,986

Pretty incredible, considering a month ago I’d had exactly nine Spirit and my sea could barely hold the eighteen hundred needed for my quota to the OSS.

In my pocket, Hungry Ghost was sucking down the Miasma, too, the turquoise strings of Death Spirit creeping across the marshy land toward it. Although, as I’d learned, only I could see his effect on the world around me because I was his accepted master. It was sort of a safety measure to keep the little skull stone from being stolen.

I let my HUD arm drop and caught up to everybody else.

We’d just crossed into a thigh-deep stretch of muddy water when the muck a few yards in front of us shifted and rippled. A sound like gargling bubbled up from underneath.

“Swamp gas?” Warcry guessed.

It definitely stank bad enough to be the fumes from decomposition, even with the downpour beating it back.

Rali frowned. “This doesn’t feel natural.”

That’s when the first mud-stained arm broke the surface.

Before we could run for it, a dozen rotting bodies jumped up out of the bog around us like a movie ambush of bandits dropping out of the trees…except up. Their skin was stained the same dark brown as the muck, even the one that had been a shark alien back when it was alive. Soupy mud dripped from their mouths as they gargled it out, groaning and grunting like the ferals from the Rust Flats.

For about half a second, no one moved.

Then the shark feral broke into a sprint toward us, a rooster tails of muddy water flying up on either side. With a mindless howl, the rest of the pack followed.

Instinctively, I threw out Dead Reckoning and sloshed through the bog to intercept the shark. As I ran, I pumped Miasma into both arms, covering them with my Death Metal shields.

There was a flare of red light behind me—Warcry catching on fire. Chains jingled, and I knew Kest was shooting the pointed weights on her chain gauntlet.

Somehow these ferals could move much faster than should’ve been possible through the muck. Seeing them running around while I was giving it everything I had just to move at a slow slog was like being in one of those nightmares where you try to run as fast as you can, but no matter what you do, you’re still moving in slow motion.

The shark and I collided, and I threw my weight into my left shield, slamming it into his gap-toothed maw. I couldn’t get full body power behind the blow because my feet were stuck in the mud, but the shot staggered him, and razor teeth plinked into the water. I hammered out the other shield in an elbow strike, blasting it at an angle across his temple. His skull crunched like an eggshell and rotten black goo splattered. The shark dropped into the muck, dead.

“They’re just like ferals!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Take out the heads!”

“Bog ferals?” Warcry let out a string of curses as a kick from his prosthetic demolished a decaying face. “This bleedin’ trash planet!”

Dead Reckoning pinged behind my back, letting me know a feral was about to blindside me. I went to spin around, but a hand down in the muck latched onto my right ankle.

“Crap!” I kicked, but the fingers dug into my skin through my jeans.

The rotten fist Dead Reckoning had warned me about crashed into my jaw. White sparks popped in my vision, and skinless knucklebones scraped off my cheek. I stumbled, trying to stay standing, but the hand in the muck tripped me up. I fell forward. Thick, rancid bog water filled my sinuses.

Dead Reckoning freaked out again. Clumsily, I shoved my right shield over my shoulder to protect my back just before another fist clobbered me.

A second underwater hand grabbed my shirt from below and pulled me down farther. You always think you can hold your breath a decent amount of time if you have to, but I’m here to tell you, the second you’re thrashing around, choking on muddy water, fending off rotting hands from every direction, your breath is just gone.

Lungs full of bog water, I dropped Dead Reckoning and both shields and shot out Dead Man’s Hand, following the decomposing arms back down to the feral hidden in the muck.

Stomps rained down on my back and shoulders from above, but I focused on finding the life point of the thing holding me down.

Living things’ life points usually flickered like the flame on a candle, but this feral’s life was an oozing brown slime. Dead Man’s Hand closed around the ooze like a fist.

But I couldn’t smother something that wasn’t burning. What was I supposed to do to stop this thing?

A stomp scraped down the side of my head, almost tearing my ear off. I didn’t have time to think the move through. I squeezed the bog feral’s oozing life point and yanked as hard as I could.

There was a split second of resistance, then a feeling like strings of gristly meat tearing as I ripped the life out of the feral.

The fingers clutching my shirt and ankle immediately went limp. The oozing life point rolled into my Spirit sea, a gross oiliness and a rush of power hitting me at the same time. Strength poured into my muscles, and my lungs stopped freaking out.

I squirmed out from under the stomping, then grabbed onto one rotten leg. Getting my knees underneath me, I shoved as hard as I could, throwing the feral backward in the water, then I climbed on top of it.

I chopped a reinforced elbow down on the feral’s head. With the water in the way, I shouldn’t have had enough power behind the hit to smash the skull, but there was so much extra strength from that absorbed life point that my arm plowed right through the feral’s decaying head. Brains and bog water geysered in every direction.

A third feral, which must’ve joined the party when I went under, clawed at my back and neck. Fleshless finger bones cut into my skin.

Before it could tear into me again, I re-formed one Death Metal shield and twisted around, slamming it into the feral’s gut. As it doubled over, I smashed the edge of the shield into the back of its head. It dropped limp into a dead man’s float, rotting goo seeping out of the gash in its skull.

I staggered to my feet, still coughing and choking, but managing to suck down some oxygen in there, too.

Rali was a few yards away, helping Warcry, who was still throwing burning fists, but wasn’t moving his legs at all.

I sent out a huge blast of Dead Reckoning like a radar. A dozen oozing brown feral life points appeared in my brain. Three ferals had ganged up on Warcry from below, trapping his legs like they had mine, and a bunch more were crowded around him trying to attack while Rali held them off.

There was also a flash of sparkling purple nearby, but the second I noticed it, it disappeared.

Warcry let out a snarl and threw a burning punch at a feral. Rali darted around him, whirling his walking stick and launching palm strikes, Warm Heart Spirit shoving the decomposing creatures back without him ever laying a hand on them. Rali was a lot faster than he should’ve been, like the water and muck didn’t affect him, but it was only a matter of time before those grasping hands below managed to get a hold of him, too.

With Dead Man’s Hand, I reached down into the muck and seized one oozing brown life point. At that range, it took a lot of concentration.

“Hake, look out!” Kest yelled.

Chains jingled, and something whiffed past my cheek. Putrid black gore splattered against the back of my neck. A dead bog feral plopped into the water behind me.

I looked around for Kest, but she must’ve had the hairpin invisibility array on.

“I’m going to take out the ferals underneath,” I told her. “Can you watch my back for a minute?”

“You got it.” The water in front of me stirred as she passed.

“Thanks.”

I grabbed onto the life point of a feral grasping at Warcry’s ankles and tore it out. The oiliness left a bad taste in my mouth, but I ignored that and used the rush of strength to split Dead Man’s Hand in two and catch the other life points below Warcry, ripping both out at once.

As soon as their hold on him let go, Warcry jumped into action, hurling burning kicks at the rotting monsters attacking him aboveground. Feral heads exploded in showers of decomposing brains and skull. Rali backed out of the spray, spitting like he’d gotten some in his mouth.

Inside, my Spirit sea crashed and surged like crazy. Those life points were way more potent than any of the Miasma I’d absorbed from graveyards or ossuaries or Hungry Ghost. This was like a burning semi full of TNT and fireworks running ninety toward a brick wall. I felt like I could blow up the whole universe.

And puke. That oozing, rotten sheen from the life points coated my Spirit sea, making me sick to my stomach.

I shoved that feeling to the back of my brain for dealing with later when we weren’t being attacked.

More hands surged up from below, but with Dead Man’s Hand overcharged like that, I was able to tear out the life points out two and three at a time before they grabbed us. Kest’s invisible chain gauntlet picked off the ferals coming at me, and Warcry took care of the ones surrounding him and Rali, turning their heads into explosions of corpse juice and teeth.

For some reason, Rali wasn’t fighting anymore. He stood back, watching me with an unreadable expression on his face.

A feral with a pair of ragged arm bones sticking out of its shoulder lunged at him from behind. Rali twisted his shoulders, letting the thing trip past him. I snatched its life point and ripped it out. The feral dropped dead into the water.

Warcry and Kest dropped the last two aboveground ferals. No more jumped up from below, but I checked with a superpowered blast of Dead Reckoning just to make sure.

“That’s it,” I said. My lungs were heaving from exertion and adrenalin, even though I’d basically been standing still for most of that fight. If it hadn’t been raining, I probably would’ve been soaked with sweat.

Warcry jerked his chin at me. “You take out those ferals underneath?”

I nodded.

“Savage,” he said approvingly.

Rali was still staring at me all weird, but when he took a breath to say something, Kest interrupted.

“We need to get to dry land,” she said, turning visible again as she picked a couple hairpins out of her messy buns and stuck them in the storage ring. The rest of the pins she left in for speed of triggering the invisibility array. “Somewhere more defensible. Ferals are attracted to Spirit, so there’ll be more of them coming.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Rali exhaled and put his walking stick across his shoulders. “First things first.”