Katja had just begun to drift off, when she was woken, all of a sudden, by a loud crashing in the undergrowth of the swamp. She sat up, grasping for her short sword and dagger. Glancing over, she saw Thrycia was up too, hurriedly stringing her bow.

Katja peered into the gloom of the swamp. Whatever it was, it was getting closer. Katja could hear branches snapping, water splashing as it ran headlong at them. She turned and tossed some more wood onto the fire, building it up, to try and throw more light onto the trees.

Thrycia, meanwhile, nocked a long arrow to her bow string and waited, keen elf eyes peering into the mists. Nadia continued to snore, oblivious to everything around them.

Suddenly, from between two bushes, a mud-splattered white figure burst out, running straight at them. Thrycia spun, raising her bow, but didn't fire. Katja was about to swing her sword, but stopped, as the figure reached the camp and collapsed onto the ground, panting desperately for breath.

In the dim firelight, Katja could make out the figure of a young girl, probably not more than fourteen, fifteen years at most. She was dressed in the tattered remnants of what had probably been a very finely made white dress, now torn and mud spattered.

Katja could see the girl's lean, hungry figure through the tatters, her flat chest rising and falling quickly as she gasped for air. She probably hadn't eaten anything in days. Her skin was pale and covered with sweat and grime and mud from her desperate flight through the swamp.

An iron collar was locked around the girl's slender neck. A short chain was attached to the ring on the collar. The final link had been filed through at some point. The girl was barefoot, and Katja could see red marks around her wrists and ankles. She'd been cruelly bound with rope not too long ago.

The girl stared up at Katja and Thrycia, her blue eyes wide with fear. She grunted something unintelligible and gestured into the swamp. As Katja sat, puzzled, she grunted the odd message a couple more times. With a lurch of horror, Katja saw the girl's tongue had been cut out, sometime ago.

"Thrycia, see if you can wake Nadia!" Katja said, as she tried to calm down the frightened girl. Nadia knew a couple healing spells. Maybe she could help this strange girl. The young woman continued to desperately gesture back to the swamp. She looked fearfully back the way she came.

"Oh goddess…" Katja swore under her breath as she realized the meaning of the girl's gestures. She had only a second to hurriedly shout a warning to Thrycia before they were under attack.

A hail of sling stones fell on the camp site.  Katja crouched over the squirming girl, shielding her. Katja wished for her chainmail. She'd had given Nadia her armor to store in her sorcerous pack. The last thing she'd wanted to do was swelter in that heavy metal coat trudging through the swamp. Now, she needed the armor and didn't have it.

Glancing up, in between volleys, Katja saw shadowed figures crouched amongst the trees, popping up from the undergrowth to hurl their missiles at the hill before disappearing back into cover. One lingered too long and Thrycia managed to get off an arrow. Katja heard a woman yell in pain. Thrycia had to duck down hurriedly behind the cover of her pack as a rain of projectiles descended on her.

Suddenly, one of the attackers stood up, at least a foot or two taller than the rest. Katja could hear him begin chanting in some guttural language. "Oh great…" Katja muttered to herself. Some crazed priest or shaman hurling spells at them while his acolytes stoned them. Just what they needed.

Suddenly, Katja heard a second person begin chanting. She turned. The priests spell, whatever he was casting, had awoken Nadia and she was hurriedly preparing a counter spell. She spat out a cantrip, hurling up a globe of light through the trees. It illuminated the swamp revealing the cultists.

They wore dirty linen kilts and were bare-chested, men and women. Each wore a painted wood mask worked to look like fierce monsters or leering skulls on their faces. At the front, half a dozen or so went about loading and hurling slings at the four women at the top of the hill. Behind them, dozens more cultists stood waiting, holding a motley assortment of weapons, farming implements, rusty knives and short swords, crude wooden cudgels.    

Standing at the fore of his followers was a tall, thin, almost skeletal man. His limbs seemed almost unnaturally long and thin, like a scarecrow. The priest wore a dirty linen kilt and had tattered robes draped over his shoulders. A large mask carved into the face of a leering skull covered his face. He threw up his arms and serpents made of smoke shot forward, hissing the twisting their way up the hill.

Nadia's chant came to a climax and she gestured forward. From the murky waters of the swamp, strangler's hands, with long, thin fingers, made of mud and muck, rose and grabbed the priest by the throat, choking the life out of him. Katja didn't see what happened next, but the priest managed to escape Nadia's spell and disappeared back into the swamp.

"Weak fool." Nadia hissed in satisfaction. "I'll show him not to challenge a true sorceress." She turned her attention to the fled priest's followers. In the shadows of the swamp, strange beasts rose from the water. Gaping maws appeared, swallowing up slingers. Long hands and tentacles reached up and dragged men and women down into the murky waters.

The flight of their leader and the sorcerous onslaught didn't seem to faze the cultists in the slightest. A hail of missiles fell on the apprentice witch, forcing her to turn her powers to protecting herself, summoning a shimmering shield around her. Those cultists not killed outright by her spells rose out of the water, coughing and gasping for breath, as the spells faded. Meanwhile, shouting war cries in an odd language, the rest of the cultists surged forward, waving their crude weapons, splashing knee deep through the marsh.

Katja held her weapons tensely, waiting for the attackers to get close enough. The girl huddled at Katja's feet, terrified. Thrycia loosed arrows in quick succession, downing a number of cultists. Nadia lowered her shield long enough to cast a quick spell or two, sowing panic and terror amongst the cultists.

Despite that they surged up the hill in a frenzy. In their hurry, many of them tripped and fell back down the steep hill. They were trampled underfoot by their comrades in their desperate attempt to close.  The first to close was a young woman wearing a skull mask holding a pair of sickles. As she reached the camp, she stumbled. Katja stepped forward and kicked her hard across the face, sending her rolling back down the hill, tripping several more cultists.

Almost immediately, she was replaced by a large man whose unkempt beard spilled out from under the leering wolf mask he was wearing. He rushed forward, bellowing like an ox, swinging a cudgel. Katja raised her sword into a hanging guard and blocked the swing, knocking it to the side and throwing the man off balance. As he stumbled, she neatly cut open his belly with her knife.

The man fell with a gurgling cry of pain as blood and bowels spilled onto the ground. The cultist behind him nimbly leapt over the dying man, shrieking like a banshee. Katja swung her sword and hit the girl's mask, which shattered as the girl dropped, knocked out cold.

For all their fanaticism, none of the cultists were warriors. They had no idea how to fight. Katja had no trouble dodging or blocking the attacker's clumsy attacks, which more often than not ending up getting in each other's way. In minutes, she'd sent several more cultists stumbling down the hill, wounded.    

Behind Katja, Thrycia had tossed aside her bow and was fighting with a pair of long knives, holding half a dozen attackers. Moving almost at a blur, the elf neatly hamstringed a female cultist with one knife, stabbing a man in the gut with the other as the first cultist fell with a shriek of pain.

The hail of stones stopped as the cultists reached the top of the hill, the slingers unable to shoot without hitting their own allies. Without having to worry about that, Nadia dropped her shield and began chanting a spell. The campfire flared up, taking the form of a laughing demon. It hurled fire into the cultists' ranks, spreading panic and terror.

A female cultist rushing at Katja squealed in fear as a pair of long, sinuous snakes shot from the swamp and quickly wrapped around her legs, tripping her. Katja slammed the pommel of her blade onto the girl's head, knocking her out before turning to block a blind swing from a fat cultist wearing the fierce scowl of a wild boar.

Almost at once, the cultists' nerves broke, their frenzy turning to fear as they fled down the hill, leaving behind a dozen dead or wounded comrades. Katja panted exhausted as they ran, tripping and stumbling back into the swamp. Thrycia picked up her bow and shot down a couple cultist sin the back as they fled.

Katja had a few seconds to celebrate her victory before a second volley of stones slammed into the hillside. Hurriedly, she took cover behind the crest of the hill. Once again, most of the missiles fell on Nadia, who was forced to raise her shield again. Katja winced as a stone bounced off her shoulder, bruising it.

All of a sudden, the priest reappeared. His mask had fallen off, revealing a bald head that more resembled a skull then most of the mask he'd been wearing. Red eyes burned in his eye sockets and his throat was a living red where Nadia's spell had attempted to strangle him.

He raised his head and began speaking, his voice weak, barely more than a whisper. It was loud enough, though. Katja tensed, expecting some spell to slam into them. To her surprise, nothing happened. All of a sudden, Nadia's shield disappeared, dispelled by the priest. Before she could raise it again. A volley of sling stones hit her. One round river stone cracked against Nadia's skull, knocking her out cold.

A feral cry of triumph poured from the throats of two dozen cultists and they rushed forward again. Meanwhile, the priest quickly chanted another spell. Rings of shadows appeared around Katja. They shrank quickly, pinning her arms to her sides and tripping the young woman. She dropped her weapons and fell to the ground, struggling against the magic. Nearby, Thrycia and girl groaned as they fell to similar spells.

Katja struggled to her knees, just as a female cultist mounted the hill. In her hands, she held a wooden cudgel. The club his the side of Katja's head, knocking her out cold…

***

Katja's head was pounding like an imperial war drum as she came to. A wave of nausea ran through her and she had to resist the urge to vomit. She managed to keep it down, but barely. A good thing to, because she'd been gagged with a strip of torn, dirty, cloth; probably from her clothes, which she wasn't wearing anymore. Her bare skin was battered and bruised from the stoning and the battle. There wasn't a single bit of her that didn't ache to the bone.  

As Katja recovered, she realized her disorientation was because she was hanging upside down. She hung from her bound wrists and ankles from a long pole, like a deer killed during a hunt. A pair of cultists carried the pole on their shoulders. Katja swayed back and forth uncomfortable as they trudged through the swamp.

Katja twisted her head, looking around. The rest of the cultists were trudging along beside her and her bearers, some supporting comrades that had been wounded. Behind her in line, Nadia and Thrycia had been secured the same ignominious was for transport as Katja. They'd been stripped naked and gagged as well.

The priest strode forward, haughtily, at the head of the column. In one hand, he held a chain. Attached at the other end of it was the strange girl they'd been chasing. She stumbled forward, exhausted, head bowed low with despair. Her hands had been roughly bound behind her back with cord.

Katja groaned into her gag. They'd stumbled onto something bad; there was no doubt about that. Now, how where they going to get out it? As the procession made its way deeper into the swamp, she began testing her bonds for any give in them…


What happens next?
They're rescued by a new group who drive off the cultists...
They manage to escape from the cultists...
They don't escape and are taken back to the cultists' temple...