The marsh shuddered before it struck. A deep tremor rolled through the sodden ground and set the reed beds clattering like a rack of spears shaken by an unseen hand. Stagnant pools slit themselves with ripples, and the scum that filmed their surfaces drew quick circles, then stilled. For a breath, the air changed. The cloying sweetness that had haunted this place thinned, and Rugiel tasted only wet stone, iron, and the plain musk of honest rot. Light slid a little cleaner through the canopy, pale and true, and the weight on her shoulders eased as if a great door had swung open somewhere beneath the earth.

No one spoke. No one dared hope. The marsh pressed in again, heavy and warm, and the insects resumed their thin, maddening whine.

"Keep moving," Rugiel said. Her voice was even. She did not need to raise it. The others heard the decision in it and obeyed.

They went on through water that never chose a proper course, only puddled and slept. Mud grasped at their boots and let go with ugly, sucking sounds. The reeds were tall as men and twice as stubborn, and every blade wore beads of sour water that slid down collars and cuffs. Their rations were almost gone. The dried meat had taken the marsh into itself and tasted of damp leather. Dane had found roots that did not sting the tongue, but chewing them felt like working bark.

Rugiel kept to the fore where the ground was least treacherous, hammer in hand, gaze patient. She was tired in ways that only stone understood. Armor that usually felt like an oath felt like a millstone now. Still, she made no complaint. Strength given freely steadies others, and the group needed steadying.

They were frayed. Serene's staff dragged when she thought no one saw her. Her cheeks were streaked with mud, and there was a tremor in her hands that had nothing to do with fear. Dane's shield arm shook between steps, though he planted his feet with the same stubborn care he gave to every problem. Kara moved with her usual elegance, but the edge had gone strange on it, as if she were holding a cold mask to her face and it had begun to slip. Lirian's thigh wound had sealed in parts and opened in others, and the way he set his jaw told Rugiel the pain had teeth. Giles was raw with impatience. He snapped orders that sounded like arguments, and he filled the air with motion because standing still made the swamp louder in his head.

A frog croaked, then cut off. Ripples broke to Rugiel's right. At first, they looked like the aimless stir of water insects, then they spread in three even circles and vanished beneath a carpet of duckweed. Rugiel lifted one hand. The line halted. The group fanned, not cleanly, but enough.

The reeds ahead gave a slight nod, left then right, as if some invisible oar carved a channel through them. A hiss feathered the back of her throat and made her tongue itch. The first lizard slid into sight, low and long, its skin the color of wet bark. It opened its mouth and showed teeth the shape of fishhooks and the color of old bone.

"Lizards," Dane said, and that was all. He raised his shield and planted his boots in the mud.

They came without warning after that, as if the marsh had decided that all concealment was a game now finished. From the water on both sides, from a slick bank behind, from a rush bed that pretended to be empty, the monitors poured in. They were the size of hounds, their bodies powered by thick shoulders and long tails that snapped the water like whips. The stink of them was rank and coppery, as if they had been sleeping in their own hunger for days.

Rugiel stepped into them. Her hammer rose and fell with certainty. It was the craft of long practice, the line of sight that knew where weight must go if one wished a thing to break. She smashed the first skull cleanly, felt the shiver of bone through haft and glove, and pivoted to guard Serene. The second lizard hit her metal dress hem and skidded, stunned, and she brought the hammer down to crush its ribs before it could coil and strike again.

Giles hacked, angry and fast. He drove a blade through a gullet and yanked it free with a grunt, then nearly lost his footing as the mud clamped greedily at his boots. "Hold zem from my flanks." he barked, and then he was swallowed by the reed line and reappeared a pace away with a curse.

Kara's fingers sketched clean, precise shapes. Frost struck a lizard mid lunge. Ice spread outlining the creature from snout to shoulder. The creature thrashed and slowed, and Lirian stepped in, wordless, and split it in two at the spine. Lirian's breath came rough, but his blade kept its line. Dane's shield rang dull under a bite that would have taken a lesser man's arm. He shoved with his whole body, hip first, and the lizard slid back. He swung low and the creature's ribs rang with a crunch of broken ribs, and set his boots again.

Serene swung when she had to, but not with style. Her hand shook dangerously as she swung her staff. The staff met the jaw of the striking lizard, shoving it aside and the beast found only mud where her throat had been. Serene's eyes were wide, but when Rugiel glanced back to measure her, she saw a spark behind that fear, the kind that listens and learns in the space between heartbeats.

"Plant your feet," Rugiel said. "Strike through, not at. Let the weight finish the work."

Rugiel took her own advice as a lizard shot for her knee. She met it not at the point of impact but past it, hammer angled, the head of the weapon already thinking through the skull to the mud beneath. Bone shattered, and the beast went still at once, mercy of a clean blow.

The fight did not rage quickly and end, instead it ground on and that was worse. The marsh took each step and charged interest. Every strike cost breath, and the air did not return it quickly. Insects crawled into collars, and the wet pressed into every seam. The lizards did not care. They were tireless and simple and kept coming.

"Left," Dane called. "Two."

Lirian cut one and turned his shoulder into the other. Kara laced a fan of frost over its eyes and slowed it, while Giles thrust home. The swamp accepted another body and closed over it. The water shook, then it stilled. The hiss in Rugiel's throat faded to a taste that was almost metallic.

Then there was quiet. The sort where sound seems shy to return. Mud settled in little sighs around boots. A single insect tried a line and moved on.

Rugiel held still long enough for her breath to find its shape. She let the hammer's head sink until it kissed the ground. The tremor from earlier nudged her memory again. She tasted the air, and the sweetness that had soaked this place felt thinner than it had in days. She looked up into the canopy. It let a shaft of light through as if reconsidering its grudge.

"Everyone whole," she asked, not as a question but as a checking of accounts.

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Dane nodded once, clipped and honest. "Whole enough."

Serene managed a small gesture that was meant to be brave and looked like an apology. Kara wiped a line of frost from her sleeve where it had clung and made her hand stiff. Giles sheathed his blade with unnecessary force and looked toward the reeds as if he could glare the marsh into offering a road. Lirian tightened the bandage at his thigh and gave her a single, steady look that said "unfortunately, he was still in the world."

Rugiel's gaze moved back to the water and saw something watching them.

It was not a lizard. It held itself too high for that, and its patience was a different kind. The creature stood for an instant on a low, slick log, talons sunk for purchase, body long and balanced like a hunter set to spring. Its head bore a plume that lay flat along the skull, and its eyes were the bright yellow of old amber. Feathers covered it in earth colors, not soft but close to scale, and the plates along its legs were like leather studded with stone.

It looked at Rugiel as if measuring weight. Then it slid from the log without a splash and was gone among the stems.

She did not lift her hammer. She did not call after it. She only marked the direction and the grace of the thing and the way it made no sound where everything else in this swamp announced itself with complaint.

"We are not alone," she said. "There is a new hunter in this place. It watches rather than charges."

Giles snorted. "Let it watch as I gut ze next of its kind, oui?"

"It is not of their kind," Rugiel said, and left it at that. She did not see terror in the others at her words, only a small tightening. They had room for little else. Hunger and fatigue had taken the larger spaces in them.

The tremor hummed again in her memory. There had been a change in the air when the earth shook. She thought of stone, of balance taken back from rot, of a brace set properly under a failing beam. She thought of Stronric because there were not many things in this world that could convince the ground to settle itself. The thought steadied her, and she did not share it. Hope is a tool, used at the wrong moment, it slips.

"Drink," she said. "Short rest. Weapons checked. We move when breath returns."

They knelt where the ground held together enough to serve as a floor. Dane poured a little clean water over his head and wiped it with a cloth that had once been white. Lirian checked the lacing on his greaves, and the movement cost him more than he let on. Kara drew a circle with a fingertip in the wet soil and watched the tiny trickle of melt along her knuckle absorb into the mark. Giles paced until the marsh reminded him it preferred still prey and then stopped, scowling. Serene leaned her head back and closed her eyes for four careful counts, then opened them again before sleep could steal anything.

Rugiel rolled her shoulders. The gnats accepted this as permission to land, and she ignored them. She looked to the reeds where the creature's shadow had vanished and weighed what she had seen. The creature did not move like a scavenger. It moved like a thing with a mind for pathways and angles. It had watched her first, not the wounded. That interested her.

"Move," she said at last. "Hold to our formation. If the earth descends before us, we shall pass to the left."

They rose with the heavy grace of people who have learned to husband strength. The marsh accepted them again, their weight and their purpose. The reed beds thickened. The water darkened from green to brown, then to a color that did not belong in any stream Rugiel had known in her childhood. A dragonfly the size of a man's hand traced a careless figure over Dane's helm and zipped away.

The first hiss came sooner this time. It had wet hunger in it. The ripples were broader and closer together. A tail broke surface and laid a white scar across the water. Rugiel did not need to lift her hand to halt the line. They felt it as she did.

"Shields," Dane said, because habit had its own strength.

The monitors came thinner, smarter, as if the marsh had taught them caution by killing their eager brothers. One slid along the bank almost level with their knees. Giles lunged and pinned it with his blade, then had to plant his free hand hard to keep from going down with it. Two more rushed on the left where Lirian stood. Lirian set his feet and made the first one pay for its boldness, but the second took advantage of the opening and found leather with its teeth.

"Serene," Rugiel said. Rugiel had no need for more words, as the girl stepped, raised, and struck true. The lizard's jaw snapped off her staff and then closed on air. Lirian finished it with a short, mean stroke. Kara froze a patch of water to blunt a rush and bought them a breath.

The breath failed them. Weariness swarmed faster than the reptiles. Serene faltered on a root hidden under the muck and went back as if the marsh had reached up and pulled at her ankles. Her heel slid and her staff struck a reed and turned in her hand. A lizard leapt for the soft of her throat, jaws open, claws tucked to rake as it landed.

The reeds to Rugiel's right parted in a silent rush. The ground-born creature exploded from cover, not flying but running so fast the eye wanted to grant it wings. It crossed the space between Serene and the lizard in a blink. Its talons hit the monitor's shoulders and pinned it to the mud with terrible ease. The hooked beak crushed the base of the skull with a quick, precise bite. The lizard's body thrashed once before going slack.

The creature pivoted, crest flaring, and planted itself chest to chest with Serene. It made a sound that was half bark and half iron scrape, sharp and scolding. Mud flecked its plumage where water had kissed it. Its yellow eyes were bright and very aware. Serene froze, eyes wide, breath caught in her chest. The raptor snapped its beak once, as if to say remember this, then sprang away into the reeds and was gone without a splash or a telltale ripple. Only a sway in the stems that calmed at once, gave away the creatures retreat.

Silence fell in a small circle around them. Even the insects paused as if the marsh wished to hear what they would do next.

"What in all ze gods' names was zat?" Giles said. Awe pushed the anger out of his voice and left it empty.

"A hunter," Rugiel observed with quiet poise. "Yet not one of our company."

Serene swallowed and nodded, as if agreeing with a teacher. Her hands shook and then steadied around the staff. "It saved me."

"Indeed, it did," Rugiel observed, her tone measured yet firm. "And in so doing, it granted you the courtesy of a warning, though I fear you heeded it little."

Dane lifted his shield a little higher. His eyes never left the reeds. "Then I will take the warning as a favor. We should move before the marsh decides it wants thanks of its own."

They started to shift formation when the reed bed to their front opened with a new kind of sound. It was not the quiet slide of a clever predator. It was the weighty parting of stalks forced aside by bulk. The water rose in a long hump breaking to expose a back surfacing. Its skin was plated and wet as new iron. A head pushed through the green, thick wedges of muscle stacked along the giant lizard's jaw. Its eyes were set deep beneath heavy ridges. The thing breathed, and the exhale smelled of old blood and deep places. It was not a monitor grown large by luck. It was a new predator, one king of those lesser lizards. A Komodo dragon, massive as a bear, tail thick as a tree limb, paws like shovels tipped with knives.

Rugiel set her feet. The ground told her the truth. If this creature closed with them, it would break Dane's guard, crush Giles against the reeds, and take whomever it liked from the center. Kara's frost would sting it but not stop it. Lirian would meet it because that is what he does, and the wound in his thigh would split wide, and the swamp would have him.

She lifted her hammer and felt the old calm settle. There is a rhythm to great beasts. You do not meet them on their first rush. You take their angle. You use the place. You put their weight against them, and you do not miss.

"Hold," she said. "Let it show us how it thinks."

The Komodo dragon growled, a low rumble that vibrated along the mud and into bones. It advanced one slow step, testing their nerves, then another faster one when they did not break. Water curled around its ankles and ran down the grooves in its scales. Its tongue flicked and tasted them. It lowered its head.

The marsh remembered the quake. The air cleared a hair's breadth more, as if some distant hinge had turned again. Rugiel felt the change in her teeth. She thought of a forge door opening to bright heat.

"Now," she said quietly to no one in particular, and set herself to meet the charge.

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