In Chapter 160, Dabwick meditated in the Blackwood Swamp, near Miacknian Mun’s home:
***
Dabwick crouches in the reeds. Mud sucks at their boots, gnats cloud around their ears, and the reeds whisper in the early evening breeze. The air tastes of rot and wet iron. Fireflies drift in slow arcs, their faint pulses like lamplight in miniature. Though they are so far outside the city limits, they can’t help but think of Cassomir.
The lanterns of the City seem almost frailer by comparison these days, their light stretched thin against shadows that creep farther each night. The City’s streets carry a heaviness that Dabwick cannot shake. It should feel familiar, being back. Yet nothing feels the same. Nothing has felt “the Same” since they arrived. Cassomir is home, but it no longer feels safe.
Perhaps it never was.
Memories of yesterday drag through them like a hook. Fight after fight, heartbreak after heartbreak. The fight in the warehouse was the worst of it: fungal husks lurching in from around every corner, their bodies crawling with alien threads. And in the heart of it, Dabwick saw him: Nikos Vera, Bucket Boy. A boy once so quick to grin, always dirty with street dust, forever hungry for bread crusts and scraps of kindness. Dabwick had watched him grow from a child of the alleys into something almost steady, almost ready to claim a place.
But here his body was becoming a shell for Xhamen-Dor. His mouth was split with spores, his eyes blank, his small hands clutching at the air. Dabwick’s breath had turned to ash. There was no cure, no reprieve. To leave him was cruelty. To save him meant ending him. Finally, their blade kissed his throat, swift, merciful, and terrible.
The swamp air thickens with the echo of that moment. Dabwick’s hands tighten on the staff across their knees, the woods’ living grain warm and steady.
They remember, too, the words of Summon Nature’s Ally rising like bile during the battle. Again and again, the spell pressed against their lips. Wolves could have torn the husks apart, eagles could have harried their ranks, bears could have held the line. The wilds stood ready. And each time Dabwick choked the words back, swallowing them down.
They could not risk it.
They could not live with the thought of wolves foaming with spores, eagles keening as fungus bloomed through their wings, bears staggering under the weight of infection. Summoned or not, real or not, the fear—that fear—stopped them.
And so Dabwick fought alone.
Every step heavier than the last. Every breath thick with spores. They survived, but it was not a triumph. It was survival only, stained with doubt.
Mist drifts low across the fens, curling around their ankles. The still water holds the reflection of the rising moon, distorted. Dabwick stares into it as though an answer might surface there.
Will they hesitate again? The thought of Miacknian Mun’s house gnaws at them. If the corruption is already inside, what choice will they make? To stand alone, as they did before? To bite back the words until their throat is sore? Or to summon, and risk that the corruption bleeds into the bond between druid and beast, fouling what should remain pure?
Brother Ashgrove taught Dabwick that a summoned creature is what he called a “manifestation.” He didn’t really define that term, but Dabwick had always thought it meant they were just a pattern, or a shadow. A thing that vanishes when struck down, untouched and untainted. Unreal.
Yet Dabwick’s time in the Dreamlands taught them that “unreal” doesn’t necessarily mean “untrue.” And today, the memory of Nikos whispers loudly in their mind: what if your Understanding is not the whole truth? What if the shadows carry more than anyone knows? If you cut a summoned creature, they bleed. Is their suffering any less “real” than what Dabwick suffered when they died at the Forsaken Caravanserai?
The swamp presses its silence on them. The insects buzz, the reeds bend, the water laps against the roots of alder trees.
The world offers no answer.
Dabwick’s shoulders sink. Their breath rasps out of them, and finally, they speak aloud. Their voice is rough, as if dredged from the bottom of the fen.
“Would you thank me, Nikos, if you could? Or curse me? I held back the wilds for you—held ‘em back and cut your throat myself. If the City falls because I keep the summons silent, will that mercy mean anything?”
The reeds whisper. The fireflies pulse. The swamp holds its silence.
And Dabwick waits, unanswered.
First Reference: Chapter 160
Other Notable References: —