He ambushed Cutter when they were slogging through the mud and dragging their raft higher onto the shore. Riley shoved a foot and a half of dull steel in his partner’s side. The struggle that followed was brief, and by the time Riley had finished gutting Cutter like a fish, he barely had the energy to cry out in pain. All he could do was cough up blood and y in the mud while he tried to hold his entrails in. He didn’t even have the strength to stop Riley from rifling through his pockets for the map and whatever other s he might have had on him.

  “Two shares is good, but one share is better, don’t you think chum?” Riley asked, smiling that rotten smile as Cutter’s blood poured out into the mud, and his world faded to bck.

  That should have been it for poor old Cutter. A bad end for a bad man.

  Even though he was dead, Cutter’s spirit stood over his own corpse while he watched his partner mutite his body for a few more s. He couldn’t do anything to stop it as Riley broke several fio get his rings off and followed that up by bashing him in the face a couple times to pry loose his two gold teeth. Eve came to getting rid of Cutter’s body, Riley wasn’t gentle. He just shoved the hole in his guts full of stones before dragging him into three feet of water aing him sink into the murk of the fen’s deep mud where no one would ever see him again.

  Cutter might have dohe same thing of course; waste not, want not, and all that. He would have had the good seo wait until they’d gotten the gold out of the s and dowhough. Killing anyone before you had eyes on the goods was about the dumbest thing a thief like Riley could do, but that didn’t stop him from doing it anyway.

  Cutter’s memories didn’t stop even after his eyes were blinded forever and his lungs filled with water. Things just kept right on going after that. Cutter even smiled as he watched the look of horror bloom on that weasel Reilly’s face wheried to open the blood-soaked treasure map and found it hopelessly ruihat st memory would st forever, even after the names aails of everything else dissolved in the murky water. Even after the carp and the crawfish reduced him from a feast to a skeleton a little more every day, he would always remember that joyful moment of frustration.

  Riley still dug for the treasure that day, just as they’d po do. He got close too. Painfully close. He found the traces of something buried and he dug up the empty chest that Cutter had put down there as a decoy. The look of disappoi was grand, but not as good as the rage that followed. He kept going until he broke his shovel beating the chest in frustration. If he’d only dug two feet further, he’d have found the bags of old imperial s and grave goods they’d stolen them from those adventurers, but he didn’t.

  The murdering bastard had stopped just short of the finish line.

  He left that day empty handed, in search of a new shovel and a better pn. If he’d left with the gold then Riley would have dragged it off to some city where he could live like a king for a few years, and the echo of the partner he’d left deg in the bog would have faded entirely. Cutter would have drifted away to whatever eternal reward awaited cutthroats and fidence men. That isn’t what happehough. Riley left the s with nothing but bloody hands and a couple gold teeth for his trouble. He’d tried to steal everything but e away with almost nothing, and that thought kept Cutter’s wraith anchored where it was, basking in the misery of the murderer and anyone else who’d e after his treasure.

  Things grew more jumbled after that. Days and nights bleogether. Cutter bmed it on the mist, as he stood there at his lonely vigil, ging to the bitterness of his betrayal like the needle of a pass. If he wasn’t going to get to spend that shiny on a lifetime of wine and women, then no one else would her. After a few weeks he wasn’t really a person anymore, or even a memory of a person. He was too diffuse for that. He was a handful of memories mixed with a need for vengeahat slowly spread among the pools of the bog, drifting outward like a poison.

  That first day Cutter was stuck to the spot where he died, but as his blood drifted outward, and the bugs that fed on his flesh wandered further afield, his reach widened. By the time he could reach the treasure he’d so carefully buried so deep in the muck, he could barely remember how they’d mao swipe all that gold in the first pce. He khey’d stolen it from advehat had pilged it from an a crypt, and that he’d pnted a deadhead log so Riley could ram it and sink their skiff on the river, but he couldn’t remember quite how he’d gotten those casks this deep into the fen. A few days ter he couldn’t even remember that much. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t even a ghost anymore. He was a mist - a fog of greed that would never let aake the score he’d died for.

  The only thing that kept time for the spirit was Riley ing back over and ain. He spent months digging and searg on boggy isnd after flea bitten sand bar without success. Day in and day out he traipsed through the s, digging new holes where old holes had filled and faded away. It was enough mohat he would have a hard time spending it in a lifetime, so it was worth finding, even if it took half a lifetime. Anyone might have dohe same thing. Every day he looked for it, he fed the darkness growing in the Fen though, and every time he raged in frustration at another empty hole, the treasure sank a little lower into the earth - forever out of his reach. It was these outbursts that fed the shade of his partner. He couldn’t do anything but exist and hate. He couldn’t defend the treasure or summon minions to do it for him. All he could do was watd feed on the frustration of the man who searched.

  The murderer sulted soothsayers and arists. Sometimes he came back with little toys like dowsing rods and charms that did nothing. Occasionally he even brought the hedge wizards with him. The artists spent days leading the bastard in circles, but the ones with a real gift only found a growing malevolen those murky waters a almost immediately o return. They sehe light fading from this pce as surely as the egrets that had stopped ing here in the year since his betrayal. The dark waters and deep rushes were still full of life of course, but that life was ging. Ducks and es chose to nd in other wetnds along the river, but in their pce Shoebills and Bloodbeaks were being more on.

  The murderer didn’t notice. Instead of running from the festering darkness, he built a pce to stay atop the one pce was sure the treasure wasn’t: the empty chest. It was a terrible excuse for a shack - just sticks shed to sticks to make a pce to sleep. The floor was a foot above the highwater mark, and the roof was thatched well enough that it mostly kept the rain off, with a rge ft ro the ter just big enough to make a small cooking fire without burning the whole pce down. It was a sign that he’d exhausted his meager savings staying in town, not that the shade cared. All it cared about was that, instead of feeding on its murderer for a few hours at a time it could do it all day long. Things became more vivid after that.

  The murderer could only spend half his time hunting for treasure because he had to spend the other half hunting or fishing for food, but that only made things worse for him. The more he ate of the s, the more he became a part of the s. It could touch him now. It could slide its fingers deep into the man’s twisted little mind and fan the fmes of greed so that he would never give up. In time the s discovered that all sorts of orments became possible as well. It couldn’t just make him stay - it could make him suffer. Those torments that turhe trickle of life force he’d been siphoning off his betrayer into a flood.

  Dreams were the easiest way to hurt ahat was foolish enough to dwell in its depths. The shade could ihe murderer’s dreams most nights when his defenses were lowest and force him to remember what he’d done. Even if the s couldn’t remember the details anymore the murderer still did. Most of the time it could only remember that look of disappoi when the murderer realized the map had been smeared into illegibility by his partner’s life blood, but when he was in the head of his murderer, it could remember other things too. It could remember what it was like to have a name and hands. It could remember what it would feel like for his reanimated corpse to hold Riley’s head uhe brackish water until the bubbles stopped. It could teach the murderer things too. It could teach him what it felt like to be devoured by the denizens of the feiny bite at a time. These dreams were almost always rewarded with screams, as the murderer bolted up from his nightmares.

  The real nightmare was all around him though, and because that treasure he couldn’t leave. So, day after day he sank further into the mud and the madness, and the whole time he fed the ohing he wao stay buried.

  After dreams came diseases. It was a harder thing to do, that required the s to work through is and spoiled food because it had no hands of its own. All it had was a desire to make its murderer suffer, and the best tool for that turned out to be siess.

  The first fevers came on tiny wings. Maria. S shivers. Grey fever. For over a year the murderer had mao avoid all of them, but in the space of a month was ied with all three, back to back. After that the s let him recover from death's door just enough to avoid killing him before he followed with Giardia and Goblin Guts. Every day was hell after that, and every night was worse. Not just because he couldn’t mao keep anything down, but because he was too sick to fulfill the o hunt the s’s treasure, and it ate at him as badly as the disease did.

  Any sane person would have left by now, but there was no sanity in Cutter’s Fen though - only the dead and the damned.