The Wailing Mire
Location: Abyss / Layer 7—Kearackinin
I had that nightmare about the Phantom Plane again last night cutter. The Wailing Mire, I call it, though that name doesn’t do justice to the horrors. I saw it as if I were standing there, my claws sinking into the blood-soaked muck. The mists were metallic, sharp and choking, like the breath of something dying but refusing to actually die. Pools stretched out before me, not water but of black blood, their surfaces rippling with formless faces—countless faces—twisting and screaming in endless torment. The only thing alive about them were their cries, which crawling into my mind like earworms. I couldn’t shut them out. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t even look away.
They say the Mire was born from battle—a clash between demons and devils during the Blood War, when this swamp became their graveyard. The ichor that fills the pools is their blood, mingled with the souls of those khaasta who fell here. But it’s not just the dead that linger here, trapped by the seals on the plane. The Mire itself remembers. The ground undulates, as if the swamp is breathing. It feels like you are walking on something alive. Shapes beneath the surface—shapes that shouldn’t exist, writhing masses of limbs and teeth and eyes that watch you even when you close your own. They’re waiting for something—or someone—to make a mistake.
The Bloodspawn rise from these cursed waters, grotesque amalgamations of demonic flesh and swamp matter. They are mindless but relentless, their bodies constantly regenerating no matter how many times you strike them down. I saw one in my dream—a hulking thing with too many arms and a face that wasn’t a face at all, just a gaping maw within a maw within a maw, dripping with ichor. It moved without sound, but its presence screamed louder than any voice in the mire. They say pure water or can stop them, but in my dream, I had none. All I could do was run—and the swamp was molasses around my feet.
The cries of the pools grew louder as I stumbled deeper into the mire, a wrenching pull in my gut like my own stomach was trying to swallow me from the inside. The faces in the pools turned toward me as one, their mouths opening wider and wider until they weren’t faces anymore but endless voids of darkness. And then I saw it: sunken at the bottom of the largest pool was something ancient and terrible—a relic from that long-ago battle, still pulsing faintly with a sickly green light. It called to me, promising power if only I would reach for it. But even in my nightmare, I knew better than to trust it.
I woke gasping for air, my scales slick with sweat that smelled of iron. The cries of the Wailing Mire still echoed in my ears, faint but persistent, like they had followed me out of sleep and into waking life. Was it just a dream? Or was it something more? The say there are many relics from the Blood War scattered across the planes for the taking—but they also say no one who goes to Kearackinin ever comes back… I don’t know what’s worse: Being drawn to this place every night in my dreams, or knowing that someday I might have no choice but to actually go there myself…
Source: Jon Winter-Holt