A Triumph of Souls: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 3

Patiently, wielding the sword with skill and care, he began to excavate a clear space for himself within the enveloping mist. As soon as it was large enough and his arms and legs were free, he cut his way over to Simna and liberated the swordsman. Hunkapa Aub and Ahlitah were next.

“Everyone all right?” he inquired. Looking at him, it was impossible to tell if the water pouring off his face and arms was perspiration or amputated mist. Assured that they had suffered nothing more than fatigue in their own efforts to free themselves, he turned and started work on chopping a path forward. Instead of wielding a machete against a wall of intervening jungle, or a shovel against a rampart of packed earth, he hacked away with something that was not of the Earth at that which was little more than nothing.

As he toiled, tendrils of fog strained to clutch at him afresh, reaching out with quivering slivers of damp gray for his arms and legs. He slashed away mercilessly, ignoring them as they fell among the flowers and grass, trampling the condensed moisture beneath his sandals. No more maybe-almost words teased his ears, but the moaning continued without pause. The fog did not bleed beneath his blade—it simply asserted its mastery of melancholy as it continued to do its utmost to detain him.

A man used to dealing daily with cattle and children was not about to have his progress denied by a recalcitrant mist. A tunnel appeared behind Ehomba and his friends as he pressed forward, a cylindrical tube in the fog into which the occasional grateful, sodden insect or arthropod found its way.