Five: Of the Thing in the Murk

At dawn, Thomas wakes sick from wine, arms himself, and debates drowning risk versus armor before committing to his vow to face the river monster. He finds the girl has cut herself on his sword; he reins in his anger and sends her to the priest for bandaging. The priest outfits them for a holy procession, and two villagers join: a drunk, stout farmer Sanson with a billhook and a bearded youth with an old boar spear.

They stop at the seigneur’s keep, where the pale seneschal refuses to help despite the priest’s appeal. At the river, massive serpentine tracks and grisly leavings confirm the horror. The monster briefly surfaces to snatch a severed leg, sending the bearded man fleeing and leaving Thomas and Sanson to advance.

Thomas wades in, prodding with the boar spear and taunting the creature until he stumbles; the thing surges. In the rain, the girl helps locate Thomas’s lost sword, and the beast attacks, revealing a pallid, eel-frog body with whiskers, venomous spines, and a tail ending in a human hand. Sanson hacks at its head; Thomas slashes its snout. The creature retaliates, flinging the boar spear with its tail-hand and grievously wounding Sanson’s face, then mimics his scream and seizes him to swallow.

Thomas strikes with Sanson’s billhook, tearing into the monster as it gulps the farmer. Entangled and raked by spines, Thomas is nearly blinded by the tail-hand, but he saws at it, breaks free, and drives his sword deep into the creature’s neck and chest, opening a gushing wound. The dying beast bites Thomas and drags him under, then vomits him out along with Sanson’s corpse and other remains.

Exhausted, pierced at the groin by a spine, and half-drowned in heavy armor, Thomas crawls from the water as the thrashing ceases and hail begins. He collapses on the bank, the monster apparently slain, the farmer dead, the bearded villager fled, and the priest and girl left to face the aftermath.