Chesterleaf '76
All is quiet in the swamp. Chesterleaf forest is all dark and silent on this night. All but the ripples on the water - the soft splashing sound caused by the motion of the swamp creature wading forwards to some uncertain end. The moon reflects light off its wet, mossen body - and off the cold, black swamp below. Whenever it makes its appearance, this place goes quiet; just like this. And it makes its way through -- aimless?
Perhaps. On shore its feet mush against the leaves and mud, and its fanfare comes as the chaotic cracking of twigs. When it walks, it is always like a stranger, or more still someone introduced once and then forgotten. To the outside world confused, but in its every motion familiar to these woods. A natural insult, it continues on through the darkness and onto a trail hidden deep in the trees. This is land which no man has ever walked. This lonely path is scorched at its edges, lined here-and-there by clumps of dislodged marsh, stacked like hay. The creature is getting closer to the source of a glow - dim, barely noticeable when it started, but now getting eerily bright. It seems to play in the air around the creature, like bodiless fireflies clouded in a luminous mass. Now the creature is approaching the source, a cavemouth at the foot of a long rocky hill.
From this cave the glow emanates, and here it is most concentrated. Aside from this cave, the world is dark. The creature enters, it is inclined to. It follows through lit rock walls, grey. Gradually, as the creature goes deeper, the cave walls and their stalactites and stalagmites become crystal - in pinks and violets and blues. Now the creature has entered a central room, and the walls are all crystal; it's bright in here, and covered in color. Across the room, a strange figure sits on a crystal throne which was grown out of the wall.
The odd little man with blued skin and bulbous head had peered motionless while the creature approached. For a moment, the creature gazed curiously on him, and they both were still. Then a pink light settled on the cavedweller's face, framing him softly against the crystal.
He started to speak.
"So you have come..."
His tone was flat and serious.
"You think your presence, unseemly as may be, could tarnish what is mine? I envision your end is coming. I will vanquish you in absentia!"
The blue man rose, an energy emanating from his head. It suddenly flared forth, knocking the creature back hard against a crystal cave wall. The creature rose, somewhat confused, and the man approached in a hurried march and blasted the creature back further.
