Past the last village, where the gallows rotted and were never rebuilt, a crooked hut squats on stilts driven into black water, ] and the evil inside calls itself ... The Defiler! It wears vestments stitched from funeral shrouds and strips of flayed skin, Its smile holds too many teeth, arranged in rows that fold backward into a gullet built to swallow centuries whole. And Its cauldron... Ah, yes, its cauldron has never once gone cold. Fungal venom. Rendered marrow. Bile scraped from the bloated dead. Eyes crushed to paste beneath a pestle carved from bone. His congregation kneels in the shallows. Crooked children with clawed hooves. Twisted beasts that sprout antlers from broken jaws. Grinning wretches whose human faces have slipped loose and hang around their necks like wet masks. They once ... answered to names. Now they dance to the Defilers twisted symphony of agony ... Below, the mire heaves like a womb gone septic. Mud bulges. Roots seize. Egg sacs split open beneath the scum, and the Fenborn claw their way out already screaming And every one opens its eyes [menacing] already knowing how to hate. The mire does not bury what it takes. It empties them. It fills them. It sends them back out. And now The mire beckons once more...
