The road was bumpy and agonizing on Boggy’s already unfamiliar body. Every single part of the strange human anatomy was in intense pain, a sensation the boglet knew very well. Each time he assumed a new form, the acclimatization process was difficult, to say the least. This wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time he’d turned into a tree; his leaves had been shriveled and dried for a month after he transformed.

But the bumpy road wasn’t the only thing that was bothering Boggy. He was sitting on the hard, splintery carriage with Karla’s inert body tucked between his knees. Edie was sitting inside of his breastplate (which was also technically part of his body, but he thought of it as more of a hard outer shell), and Darkness was lurking in the shade of his cape. They were in a deep, whispery discussion in the monsters’ tongue. They might have been worried about the human in front hearing something, but the howl of the wind easily masked their voices.

The soft, raspy voice of Darkness was firm, and the one that was currently annoying Boggy. “I am telling you Boggy, you have to change your face. The proportions are all wrong! The eyes are too high, the mouth is all crooked, and you need those weird eye cover things!”

“Isn’t this human the only one that you’ve ever seen? How can you be so sure that all humans look like that?” Boggy was a little bit defensive. He’d built the best replica of the human in the grove that he could, and he thought he’d done quite well. Sure, he wasn’t the best at mimicking detail, but he’d never needed to do something like that for a rock or a tree?

“Well, it is pretty obvious from the way that the human looked at you that there was something wrong, and I would bet a whole color that everyone else will look at us like that, too.” Boggy begrudgingly agreed on that point.

“Darkness is right, but I don’t think that you should adjust it while we’re in front of the human. They tend to get a little wary of changelings and the sort.” Edie paused. “Or at least they did. That might have changed. You should add eyelids as soon as possible, though."

“Well, I wasn’t planning on changing it now, anyways. Also, what are eyelids?”

Edie launched into an explanation Boggy found both intriguing and disgusting. Who would have thought that animals would have such shocking body parts?

The conversation was cut short, however, by an interjection from the human up front, who had apparently found the silence to be awkward. Edie translated for Boggy as he spoke. “So, uh, why are you carrying around a rock, anyways? Is it magical or something?”

Boggy looked down at the inert form of Karla. She certainly looked exactly like a rock; so much, in fact, that on the way to the road he had accidentally left her behind and carried around a completely different stone. Darkness had informed him of his mistake, and they’d spent a good hour trudging around the forest looking for a rock. According to Darkness, she was still alive, just in a state close to hibernation. It appeared she’d spent too much energy trying to get them out of the Grove, and this was her way of compensating for it.

A whisper drifted into his ear from the breastplate. “I’m about to speak, try to match my words.” Boggy silently groaned. He was awful at this. With quite a bit of effort, he moved his lips as the fish spoke for him, and whispered the translation afterwards.

“This is my… pet.” The words sounded from his body, although he didn’t know what they meant. Whatever he had just said had clearly startled the human. A quick translation was whispered at him, and Boggy stood rock solid. The merchant looked back at Boggy, and then down to Karla, and then back at Boggy.

“Sir, you do realize that’s a rock, right?” There was no response from the back, and the conversation died as quickly as it started, much to the boglet’s relief.

Boggy kept his lips sealed tight, although he questioned Edie with a whisper. “Why did you say that?”

“I panicked, alright?” Edie looked mildly mortified. “Anyways, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’s going to kick us off the carriage for being stranger than we already are.” Boggy took her word for it, and the carriage drifted into silence, the passengers listening to the howling of the wind and the rattling of the vehicle. Except for Darkness, who shifted with frustration underneath the cape, muttering to himself about the problems with Boggy’s disguise.

Boggy didn’t think of much, only ecstatic that he’d finally had a chance to rest after the long journey it took to get here. It was the most that he’d ever had to move in his life, and he was looking forward to relaxing the rest of the trip.

The wind suddenly shifted, blowing eastwards, causing the merchant to shiver from the sudden chill. Boggy shivered too. Not from the cold. There was something on the wind that set all the hair he had on his body on end, something that urged him to stand as still as possible. Something dangerous was coming.

He attempted to warn the others, but they already knew. Edie kicked Boggy in the chest, a not so subtle attempt to get him to move, and Darkness grew even more agitated. The boglet urged his body to move, but his instincts got in the way once more, fixing him to the carriage. That wasn’t enough to keep him down forever, though. He strained past them, working his way to his feet, and managed to stand up.

The merchant looked back at Boggy, and said something. Edie didn’t have the time to translate, but the tone that she responded in was clearly urgent. The carriage slowed down for some reason.

By that point it was too late. There was no escape from whatever bloodlust was on the wind, so Boggy did the next best thing; hunker down. He prostrated himself on the ground, putting his friends underneath his body and hoped that they wouldn’t get hurt.

The next moment, the carriage exploded. Something landed on the roof, chopping the vehicle in two. Splinters and pieces of wood sprayed everywhere, showering Boggy with slivers. Thankfully, though, he managed to avoid getting hurt anywhere important. Most of the projectiles had landed on his outer shell, protecting him and his friends.

He sagged with relief, and looked up to survey the situation. His relief disappeared as he realised it was very, very bad.

The carriage was now in two pieces, a dozen meters apart, with Boggy’s entourage on one side and the merchant and his horse on the other. In between them lay a gigantic beast, one that Boggy hadn’t seen in his time at the Grove. Its scales were differing shades of dark green, built to camouflage itself in the forest, and the eyes that were set on the front of its head were sharp and intelligent. It slithered around, restless in the sight of its old prey.

Edie whispered, “That’s a basilisk. We’re screwed.”

Boggy had to agree with that assessment.

###

When the basilisk had found his lost prey, he’d been ecstatic! It had been a blow to his ego when the human had escaped from him, and he’d scoured the entire forest for any sign of the warrior. It had taken a great amount of skill, and a little luck, to find him standing on the road, talking to another human.

But there was clearly something wrong with the human. At first the basilisk thought it was just in his mind. After all, if it was a disguise, then it was a fairly good one, and a very useless one. Who would want to disguise themselves as that idiot?

As time went on, however, more and more things appeared to be amiss. The aura that surrounded the human was not one that he’d seen before, and it had even managed to make him hesitate at first. Somehow the human also managed to lift up an entire wooden caravan, even though he had been struggling to lift a sword when he’d fought. How had the warrior gotten so powerful in such a small amount of time?

As the “human” got onto the carriage, however, the basilisk’s keen eye managed to spot something suspicious. There was an ounce of blackness that shouldn’t have been there, a fin that stuck out of the breastplate, a strangeness to the face that he hadn’t noticed before. The facts were seemingly separate, but it all clicked into his brain at once.

Somebody had stolen his prey!

A cold, quiet fury overtook his body, and he had the urge to go and kill everything in that general direction at once, but he silenced it. There was an art in patience, in waiting for the prey to weaken. If he attacked now, they might fight back, and he didn’t know how powerful they really were. He would kill the imposters when they were asleep. Plan of action made, he tailed the carriage for hours, biding his time.

But fate had other plans in mind. The wind changed, carrying his scent with it, and the basilisk knew at that moment that the jig was up. He lunged into the carriage, hoping he could take out the imposter before an encounter. One look at the carnage showed he had failed. The fake human was on his knees in front of him, a stupid expression on his face but ultimately unharmed. Another spike of anger pierced through the basilisk, but he restrained himself, simply flicking his tail in aggravation. He needed to deal with this… thing like it was a threat.

He bared his fangs in a facsimile of a smile, and began to talk. “Well, well, well. I’m not sure what you are, but you are fearlessssss to steal my prey from me.” He slithered as he walked, ready to attack or dodge at a moment’s notice.

To his surprise, it talked back. Or more accurately, the fish on it talked. In a melodious shout, it said, “Wait! We didn’t steal your prey, we swear!”

Unbelievable. They dared lie to him, right in front of his face. The basilisk spit out venomous words, and quite a bit of literal venom in response. “Oh, really? Then pleasssse explain where you got that disguissssse of yours.” He narrowed his eyes.

No time was wasted in response. This time, the fake human himself addressed him. “We did not kill him, it was the witches.” The voice wasn’t scared in the least. It was steady and casual, as though talking about the weather.

“Witchesssss!?” The basilisk flinched back in surprise. If there was a witch anywhere near this, he was going to slink away as fast as he could. There was an unspoken rule among the beasts of the forest; don’t interfere with anything that the witches were doing. “Are you from the Grove?”

The fake human hesitated, but nodded. The basilisk wavered in his commitment to catch these imposters. They could be more trouble than they were worth. “What are you doing ssssso far away from home?”

The human didn’t answer immediately. This sparked the basilisk’s interest once more. If they were doing business on behalf of the witches, then surely that would be the first thing they said. He lurked a little closer to the imposters, looming over them intimidatingly. “It couldn’t be that you ran away, issss it?” A little bit of saliva dripped onto some of the scrap wood that used to be the carriage, corroding through it with a sizzling sound.

This time, the fish answered. “No, of course we didn’t! We’re just on… a quest!”

“Oh, really? What kind of quest?” The basilisk watched the fish intensely, keen on catching it lying. If they had escaped the Grove somehow, then that meant they had forfeited the witches protection.

“Uh, it’s a quest to find… something, I can’t say anything more.” The fish flubbed, failing to falsify a mission. The basilisk’s eyes flashed, and he crept back a little bit, giving the imposters just a little bit of space to breathe.

“Ah, then I suppossse that I should let you go.” He let out a dramatic sigh, and in barely concealed rage drawled, “But you mussst understand, I am quite angry at the witch who killed my prey. And I would very much like revenge.” With a look straight at the human, he let out a dangerous chuckle. “I don’t think that the witchessss will mind much if I kill you, will they?”

The fake human flinched, and the basilisk widened its smile. It was time to eat. But before that, he was going to play a little bit.