Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li: The Morcyth Saga Book Three by Brian S. Pratt

glances to Miko and
shrugs, before turning to follow the path.
    After moving several hundred feet deeper
into the swamp, the air begins to smell foul. The stench of decay
and gaseous fumes permeates the air. “What is that foul odor?” Miko
says, holding his nose.
    “Some areas, like swamps, give off odors due
to stagnant water and other rotting decay,” replies James. “Though
I’m no expert on these sorts of things, just something I’d read
once.”
    The further they go into the swamp, the
thicker the swarms of mosquitoes become. Miko is becoming quite
slap happy as he continuously kills bugs that land on him. For
every one he kills, it seems another dozen or more take its place.
The fact that he’s bare from the waist up makes it even worse.
“This is unbearable,” he says after killing his hundredth mosquito.
His back has dozens of raised bumps from where they’ve gotten to
him.
    “I know,” agrees James as he kills another
one. “Let’s stop for a second.”
    He tries to remember the shows he’d seen on
the Discovery Channel about bugs and attempts to come up with a
spell to help keep them at bay. He formulates his thoughts before
releasing the magic and then suddenly, a cool mist settles about
their exposed skin. It takes only a second before the smell hits,
the most god-awful smell James has ever come across.
    Miko begins gagging and tries to move his
head to get away from the smell, but it’s all over them. “What did
you do?” he gasps, trying to breathe without smelling which is nigh
on impossible.
    “Tried to keep the bugs off us,” replies
James, eyes beginning to water from the stench.
    Miko quickly realizes that whatever the foul
smelling mist may be doing to his senses, it is in fact keeping the
bugs away.. No more of those pesky mosquitoes are landing on him,
or even coming close for that matter.
    “It worked,” James exclaims in satisfaction.
“I’d rather have stink than bites, wouldn’t you?” he asks.
    “If it just wasn’t so bad,” Miko begins, but
then nods his head in agreement. “Next time, try to put some
perfume in it, okay?” The rain had by this time all but slacked off
and doesn’t seem to be washing the pungent stuff off of them.
    “Okay,” agrees James as they once again
start following the trail deeper into the swamp. Further along,
they come across the skeletal remains of one of the rhino-lizards
they’d run into earlier. It’s half sunk in the water, lying next to
the trail. The top half of the animal, the part not in the water
still has rotting, decaying flesh attached to the bones. The
section within the water looks to have been picked clean.
    Miko eyes the carcass as they pass and
observes small fish swimming in and around the bones. Not paying
attention to where he’s putting his feet, he accidentally steps off
the trail and into the water.
    Suddenly a flurry of activity surrounds his
boot as the water begins to churn. Pulling his boot out of the
water quickly, he finds three of the small fish are attached to his
boot. Appalled, he rubs his boot along the ground, and quickly
scrapes them off before running to catch up with James. This time
he’s paying much closer attention to where he places his feet.
    From up ahead, they hear the sound someone
coming down the trail toward them. James begins to leave the path
and enter the water in order to hide in a copse of trees when Miko
grabs him by the arm and shakes his head vehemently. Pointing to
the small fish swimming there in the water, he warns him quietly
“They’ll eat you alive!”
    Nodding his head, James turns around and
quickly leads them back down the trail to a group of trees they
passed just moments earlier. Moving carefully off the trail and
making sure not to step into the water, they hide amidst the trees
as they wait for whoever is approaching.
    A group of four warriors appear out of the
swamp as they come their way down the trail. Each is carrying a
lethal looking spear as well as wearing