Julia crouched low in the muck as it tried to glue her boots down. She was using magic to hold the water away from her body, but keeping the mud from her boots would take too much concentration, and she could not afford to be unfocused right now. She peeked around from the tree root she was hidden behind to examine the squadron before her—for it was a squadron. One in military formation.

  There were skeletons marching in line, organized and lacking any of the rot and discoloration the submerged skeletons possessed. They were heavily armed and disciplined—a stark contrast to the submerged skeletons.

  Some carried pikes that thrust straight into the air as they marched, while others bore swords at their hips or carried bows on their backs. This was not a gathering of mindless monsters; it was a patrolling army.

  Julia had traveled another few days through the swamp, always skirting the line to the marsh. She had noticed a few changes on the marsh side. Where there were previously only grass and reeds, there were now titanic trees dominating the horizon. These trees were not close together—sometimes several jogs apart—but they were so colossal that their branches and leaves connected to create an almost-complete canopy covering the marsh.

  The trees were also not like the ones in the swamp she was currently navigating. The swamp trees were large, but not too much larger than the oaks she was used to around Striton. They had large, gnarled roots that arched up from the waterline and converged into a snake-like trunk that seemed as if it couldn’t figure out which direction to grow.

  The trees that now dominated the marsh were huge, with perfectly straight trunks and roots similar to the oaks she knew, but they were so monumental that the roots were not wholly below-ground. Rather than the usual look that trees had of being buried in the ground, these seemed more as if they were resting on it—as though the trees were resting on their roots the way an octopus might its arms.

  The change in the marsh coincided with a marked increase in undead activity. At first it was just a few of the skeletons ambling around rather than staying submerged. They seemed no different other than being ambulatory, so Julia was able to easily avoid them. However, their numbers increased until—as of just a few hours ago—her Truesight couldn’t find even a single skeleton submerged in the swamp water. They were all walking around.

  Julia began feeling a gnawing in her gut that told her there was likely only one reason the undead would be more active here: she was approaching the source of their reanimation. This was just a feeling, so she made note of it while continuing on her way.

  Now, it couldn’t be denied. What else could form these mostly-mindless undead into military formations and make them orderly?

  This was distressing for many reasons; not only were organized and better-equipped skeletons a far greater threat, it also implied that there was intelligence behind their reanimation.

  She wasn’t sure which she preferred more: a random act of nature that brought malicious dead to this world, or an intelligence guiding it. Both were disastrous in their own ways, but she felt certain anything with intelligence would only do something like raising dead (or summoning them) out of malice.

  She was currently scouting the undead both for their strength and their purpose. She was still collecting details on the former, but the latter had become clear. These undead were blocking access to the marsh—or the swamp.

  They were guarding the border, but she couldn’t tell which biome they were trying to block access to. It didn’t really matter—she suspected the living wouldn’t be getting through in either direction.

  It wasn’t just the border that they were guarding. There were rudimentary wooden barges being steered around and into the marsh. She couldn’t see far enough to make a real estimation, but she was guessing they were encircling a wide area of the marsh.

  This was the real source of Julia’s uneasiness. Even just the section of the marsh she could see was enormous. What kind of numbers would be required to form an effective encirclement of such a gigantic area?

  She had read a couple books Braden had on military tactics, but she was far from an expert on the subject. She wasn’t sure of the finer details, but there must be an absolutely heinous number of undead in the marsh.

  She was aware of this from the beginning of her time here due to the number of submerged skeletons, but seeing active and organized undead in such large numbers was a different experience. Now they weren’t just a passive feature of this swamp.

  Julia would have to decide whether to backtrack, sneak through the undead-infested swamp and keep her current course, or break through the blockade and into the marsh. The latter was her last option, as she suspected that those barges weren’t the only undead present. They didn’t need to breathe, so why would they all be riding barges above the water?

  Backtracking was also not her first choice. She’d been traveling for a week by this point. There was no way she was going to travel an entire week backward. She could start heading away from the marsh—perhaps the swamp would end eventually, but the water source was still her best lead on encountering people. If the swamp ended in the foothills of mountains or something, where would she go?

  She decided that she’d already been tracing the biome border for a week, so a while more wouldn’t hurt. Sneaking through the undead shouldn’t be too much trouble—or not as much as breaking through the blockade, at least.

  She gave Trixy the signal for invisibility and began climbing the tree she was hiding behind. Any movement through the water—even walking over it—could give her away. Sloshing through the water or plopping over top of it would be easy to both see and hear…which she wasn’t sure undead without eyes or ears could do, now that she thought of it, but better safe than sorry.

  She lightened her body’s weight and began her usual routine of jumping through the trees. She hadn’t moved more than a few trees from her starting position before Spiritual Sense pinged something small and fast approaching her from the side. She was mid-air, so the best she could do on such short notice was twist her body.

  She hissed as an arrow grazed across her cheek. It gouged a small channel across her skin before flying off into the air behind her. Her sudden and unplanned acrobatics sent her careening into a branch, which she slammed into back-first before falling into the water below.

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  She splashed down on her feet and stayed crouched low with her sword drawn, ready for action—it didn’t take long. She heard the splash splash splash of approaching skeletons, their boots sounding like the synchronized beat of a drum. How had they seen her? She was completely silent and invisible!

  She didn’t have time to think. She wrapped a water shield over herself, leaving only a small gap over her mouth to breathe—just in time, as an arrow bounced off her breastplate. She glanced in the direction of the arrow to see a squad of skeletons approaching, pike-bearers in the lead with archers behind. The pikes were lowered toward her, and the formation was only a jog away.

  That distance was to both her disadvantage and advantage, as the pikes couldn’t reach her. The archers were not so disadvantaged. A practical hail of arrows beset Julia as she pulled the water behind her up over her head and froze it into a frigid awning. The arrows pierced into the ice shelter and stuck in place, a grim reminder that ranged fighters needed to be prioritized.

  Julia had been forced into conflict with a few more skeletons after her first encounter and had further developed her methods for combating them. She decided that while effective, her lightning was simply a poor match for her environment. All it would take is a single lapse in her Cage spell on either her or Trixy and disaster would strike—from her own spell, no less.

  The method she had found most effective was, unsurprisingly, using the environment to her advantage. There was water everywhere, so might as well use it.

  She pulled water up in front of her and froze it, making a bulwark against arrows shot head-on. She had no trouble seeing the skeletons through the ice thanks to Truesight, so she focused on forming her spell.

  She started by infusing the water all around her little igloo with her mana. Braden had mentioned the dangers of using mana too far from your own body, but not only was there little choice at the moment, but she didn’t see any casters around to interfere. She gathered the water up into an amorphous pool and began steeping it in her will and intent.

  The water was not saturated with the mana, but it was evenly distributed throughout, which should be sufficient for her purpose. As her will sank into the mana, and the water became suffused with it, it turned a bloody crimson color, darkening even the already-dark swampy murk.

  The lines of skeletons were less than a jog away now. Julia had no idea why the archers were also approaching with the pikes, but she waved it away. They must be trying to find an angle to shoot through her igloo—it didn’t change what she had to do. She pushed the water toward the line of skeletons with a heave, creating a blood-red wave that washed over the alabaster bones and dyed them red like their blood had returned.

  The wave passed harmlessly by them and continued into the swamp, but where the water entered the skeletons’ eye sockets and nose holes, the mana went to work—consuming. The skeletons quickly began to drop at the same time her igloo did.

  She had stopped maintaining the temperature of it as soon as she started casting her water spell, so it was quickly succumbing to the weight and damage from the arrows embedded in it, as well as the warmer swamp water licking at its base.

  She let the igloo fall around her to see that the skeletons had all fallen—every single one. Her spell worked! Good thing because it was not cheap. The wave had wiped out a quarter of her mana in a single go.

  Still, for taking out what must have been two dozen skeletons, it was pretty cheap. The only purple glows remaining were clearly from the skeletons submerged on the—wait.

  There weren’t any submerged skeletons around Julia when she landed. She had made sure of it specifically to avoid being ambushed while she combated the marching ones. She then realized that all the skeletons, archers included, advancing on her position en masse would be a perfect way to hide ambushers.

  As she had this thought, monsters burst from the water around her. They were gangly creatures, but they were not skeletons. They had thin, pale skin stretched across their frames—like their bones had outgrown their skin. The subtle purple glow in the skeletons’ eyes was a purple flame in these creatures’.

  They had long claws on the tips of their fingers—or maybe talons was a more appropriate descriptor. They were long and curved with what looked like serrations on the underside of the claws. Matching their claws were sharp, pointed teeth in snarling mouths dripping with drool.

  The biggest shock was that these creatures had long, pointed ears jutting out higher than the tops of their heads. Julia had never seen them before, but she imagined this must be what elven corpses would look like—were it not for the claws.

  Julia sprang back and quickly cast a shortened version of her previous spell. She made tiny droplets of water with the consumption intent and launched them at the monsters. Her mind was processing things so fast it almost seemed the world had slowed down, so she had ample time to see how ineffective the spell was.

  The water splashed harmless against the monsters’ faces and bodies—of course, they didn’t have holes in their faces to enter like the skeletons—before dripping off like blood dripping from a wound. It gave them an even darker, more frightening appearance. More frightening than their appearance was their speed. Even as she backstepped, they gained on her like she stood still.

  She had time to see but not react, so the best she could do was to angle herself away from the creatures and prepare another spell.

  “AAAAHHHH,” she screamed as a claw caught her visor mid-turn. She was preparing a more concentrated version of the spell, forming a single, larger droplet of water rather than several small ones when the claw struck. Julia was sent spinning—these things were fast and strong—and the interruption to her spell sent it launching toward the monster that struck her.

  Something peculiar happened when it struck—it went through the monster’s head and burrowed into its brain. Julia made a note to examine that later with one “room” of her brain, while the other parts of her mind reeled with pain. She felt warm blood dripping down her face, and she couldn’t see out of that eye anymore.

  Even more concerning was that her Mana Body wasn’t filling the wound in. Previously, wounds to her body would very quickly be filled in like when water is scooped out of a puddle—more fills it in, and the water level simply lowers a little. Now, her mana was not interacting with the wound at all.

  She used a burst of wind to blast herself up and into the branches of the tree she was under while focusing on using her Mana Healing, but it wasn’t working. nothing she did with her mana caused it to interact with the wound. It was like the wound was resisting any heal—no. It was like the wound was consuming all the mana she sent to it.

  Before she could think about it further, the situation changed. The monsters that were clawing at the tree she was in and had begun trying to climb the trunk—using their claws to grip and tear the bark—now backed off and stood a half-jog away, glaring at her hatefully. She heard a splashing and looked toward its source to see a juggernaut approaching.

  It was a giant—at least a stretch-and-a-half in height—clad from head to toe in black plate armor. There was a sword longer than Julia’s entire body strapped to its back, and it carried a tower shield in its left hand fit to block an entire doorway. Its head was covered by a helmet—a barbute, she thought—that had a “T” shaped visor that revealed nothing of what lay underneath.

  Its plate armor was plain but for a single insignia skillfully shaped into the metal over the right breast. The symbol was of a skull with a rose blossoming out of its mouth, its thorny-vines wrapping around the exterior of the skull.

  The giant splashed through the water completely uninhibited by its drag. To Julia, the water reached her belly button; for the giant, it barely came up to its knees. Its visor was locked onto Julia, and it was coming this way.