The Lorekeeper's Tome

The Will-o-Wisp is the marsh's cruelest deceiver: a soft, drifting light that appears in the night-bound mire, looking for all the world like the welcoming lantern of a distant cottage or a fellow traveller's torch. It is neither. The light is a malevolent spirit, and it lures those who follow it deeper and deeper off the safe paths and into the sucking mire, the deep pools, the quicksand - feeding, the old tales say, on the fear and despair of those it leads to their drowning. It is evasive and hard to catch, flitting always just ahead, and the only defense against it is the hard discipline never to trust a light in the marsh after dark.