Chapter 7: In Which Things Get Swampy

“Aaaaaaaah!” Eunkyung screamed, because she thought it was probably the right thing to do when hurtling to one’s certain death at a velocity exceeding ten thousand turtle-leagues per hour. “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Heeeeelp!!”

“Hibildy gibildy,” said a very dull-sounding voice in her ear suddenly. “Hobbledy gobbledy… uh, wobbledy pobbledy.”

Shrieking for real now, Eunkyung whipped around in the air as best she could. How could there be somebody right next to her? Did going splat only happen in pairs? Whoever it was, how could they sound so completely and overwhelmingly bored?

“Woof hoof,” the voice continued, and sighed, and Eunkyung felt her body slowing down in the air. The streaks of light were calming down too, rearranging themselves into somewhat more coherent shapes, and her ears were no longer stinging from the cold air whipping itself around her. What was happening?

“Atoona. Ahoona. Aloona poona… oh, whatever. Foona,” concluded the voice miserably, and with an almighty yank to her belly button, Eunkyung jerked to a complete halt in mid-air, floating a hand’s length above what appeared to be a swamp.

“Oooh,” she moaned, dizzy from the sudden interruption in her freefall. “Ohhh, my poor head.”

“Drat,” said the voice, and cursed under its breath. “It didn’t work.” Eunkyung groaned and squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to quell the nausea.

“Your Certain Death spells never work, Kyungsoo,” another voice, much deeper, said. “Never. But it’s alright. I’m sure you’ll get it next time.”

“I’ll never get it,” Kyungsoo said mournfully. “It’s hopeless. I’m dreadful, Chanyeol. Awful. The absolute worst.”

“Ohh,” Eunkyung groaned again and opened her eyes. Peering at her was a huge, rock-colored creature with bursts of wild moss hanging from its head, its great craggy face stretched into a grin. What in the turtles?

“Hullo there,” said the rock-thing cheerily. “I’m Chanyeol. Nice to meet you, Thing Forty-Two.”

Even in her dizzied confusion, Eunkyung screwed up her nose at him. The audacity of this… this thing! “I’m not Thing Forty-Two,” she said, frowning her most imperious frown. “I’m Hwang Eunkyung, Crown Princess of the queendom of Bijeon.”

Chanyeol shrugged his shoulders, which appeared to consist of two enormous boulders, which made terrible gnashing sounds as they ground together. “Never heard of her. Have you, Kyungsoo?”

Following his gaze, Eunkyung shrieked at the sight of the little red demon sitting on a nearby rock, head in his hands. She had never seen a real demon before in her life, but with the curled ram horns protruding from his head and the fiery markings criss-crossing his chest, this Kyungsoo could hardly be anything else. Although… aren’t demon horns usually a lot longer? And sharper? And… scarier? she wondered.

“Did you hear that?” Chanyeol asked the demon excitedly. “She screamed, Kyungsoo! See? You are kind of scary! Not all hope is lost.”

Kyungsoo sighed again, and a sad little puff of smoke escaped from his horns, curling toward the sky in the shape of a frown. “It was only a shriek,” he pointed out miserably, “and not a very loud one, at that.”

“Are you a demon?” Eunkyung asked, pulling herself up into a sitting position. While her eyes had been closed, she had been gradually lowered down to the soggy ground.

“I wish.” Kyungsoo rubbed his forehead with a nubby claw. “I’m only a demon-in-training. Have been for the last nineteen centuries. Oh Satan, I’m probably the oldest demon trainee ever to live.”

I don’t remember demons being quite such wet blankets in my history books, Eunkyung thought, frowning. Or quite so… small. Indeed, Kyungsoo probably only reached her hip in height, even including his horns, which protruded above his head.

“You see?” asked Kyungsoo, stamping his foot, and Eunkyung realized rather belatedly that she had spoken aloud. “She thinks I’m small.”

“Well,” Chanyeol said, spreading his great rock-hands apart with a grimace, “to be fair, everyone looks small to me. I’m a mountain troll, after all.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Eunkyung said, indeed feeling a little apologetic for hurting Kyungsoo’s feelings, “but where am I exactly? I thought I was going splat, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t.”

Kyungsoo made a face, his forked tongue slithering out to wet his lips. “You were supposed to be going splat, but of course stupid little me decided to try to hurry along the process with a Certain Death spell, and we can all see how well that worked out.”

“We don’t really know what this place is,” Chanyeol added before Eunkyung could protest her attempted murder by an apparently very incompetent demon-in-training. “We just call it the Swamp. Because… well.” He gestured at their surroundings, which were indeed grey, muddy, and swampy.

Eunkyung shook her head, taking in the Swamp. “But… but there’s so much water here,” she said. There were puddles all around her, puddles full of the life-giving water that her homeland so desperately needed. “I don’t understand. We flew across so many queendoms on my blimp, and we never saw this much water in one place. Which queendom are we in?”

“A cursed one,” Chanyeol said with a shrug. “Nobody here remembers exactly how they got here.”

Eunkyung scrambled to her feet, scrabbling for balance. She wasn’t used to standing in mud anymore after such a long drought. “You mean there are others here?”