The marsh breathed differently than the basin. There, stone had spoken in steady pulses, a rhythm beneath the ground he could set his hammer to. Here, the earth sagged like bellows split at the seams. Each step sank to the ankle in sucking mud, every pool stank of rot, and the air gnawed at the lungs with damp heat.

Stronric took it as he did any forge. Measure. Endure. Adjust. If he wasted strength on curses, the mire would win. He planted each step like a smith setting tongs, solid and without hurry, and the mud released him grudgingly.

The Mountain Canary padded ahead. Its talons sliced through the muck, each step chosen with predatory care. Crest low, head tilting, it read the reeds the way Stronric read stone walls. Twice it clicked its beak, soft, warning of motion that Stronric could not yet see. Twice he slowed, hammering out his patience against the rhythm of his breath.

The swamp had teeth. He could feel them even before he saw them. Scrape marks along the trunks where claws had tested bark. Bones half-buried in silt, stripped clean, gnawed by jaws too wide for common beasts. The monitors here hunted in packs, but something larger owned this ground. A heavier predator, one that the lizards gave way to. He bent low to the bones, turned a cracked femur in his hand, and set it back without a word. The Canary made a low grinding sound in its throat. He agreed. The beast that left these behind was no mere scavenger.

He pushed on, slower but with purpose. His mind turned the swamp into a forge in need of order. Mud was slag, the reeds a wall of smoke, the insects were sparks that burned but did not matter. If he kept the rhythm, lift, step, set, breathe, then the marsh would tire before he did.

At first, Stronric thought he had found them, his kin and party. A staff-end pressed into the muck. The square heel of a boot. The faint frost of Kara's passing still melted on a reed, but when he followed, the signs tangled. Too many tracks in too many directions know which one was right. The mud drank them in and spat them back crooked, as if the swamp itself wanted to confuse him.

He crouched low, brushing aside reeds and he narrowed his eyes. Some impressions were deep and dragging, Dane's weight, maybe. He has found other tracks lighter, half-smeared, like Serene's smaller steps. But water had washed through, smearing edges until one set bled into another. He could not tell which path was the truth and which was only swamp trickery.

The Mountain Canary paced beside him, crest flaring as it sniffed at the ground. It gave a short bark, then turned its head east, talons sinking into a line of churned mud. Another set of tracks, fresher, vanishing into the reeds.

Stronric grunted. "Two ways, then."

The bird clicked sharply, as if in agreement.

He weighed the choices before him for a long moment. He could not afford to gamble wrong. The swamp swallowed mistakes whole.

"Right," he said at last, voice low. "We'll split it. Ye take the east, bird. I'll check west. Whichever finds them first, we call."

The Canary cocked its head, eyes burning amber in the dim. It gave a grinding cry deep in its throat, then bounded into the reeds, vanishing with predatory silence.Stronric adjusted the strap on his axe and turned to the other trail. The mud sucked at his boots, reeds dragging, as he followed the churned path into the mire.

For a time, he saw only shadows. Then, faintly, he found a scuff where a shield might have struck in a harder piece of mud. This led him to a broken reed, bent under weight and a half-print swallowed by water all heading in the same direction. It was not enough to be certain nor to settle his gut, but it was enough for the small flame of hope to alight.

He pressed on anyway.

The swamp pressed back, thick with the stink of rot and buzzing flies, but Stronric kept his rhythm steady: lift, step, set, breathe. He could outlast a marsh the same way he could outlast a forge, by patience, by weight, by refusing to falter.

Then the sound split the air.

A shriek sharp, metallic, furious. The Canary's cry.

Stronric froze, beard dripping sweat, heart hammering in his chest. The call came from behind him.

"Damn it," he muttered.

He had gone wide and by the distance from the call, miles too far, but the Canary had found them.

He turned at once, legs driving hard, mud exploding under his boots. The reeds whipped against him, tearing at his arms, yet still he ran. The Canary's cry rose again, desperate, and he bared his teeth.

"Hold, ye fools," he growled under his breath. "I'm comin'."

Stronric ran with the patience of a smith finishing a long heat. The marsh pulled and argued, but he answered with rhythm. Lift, step, set, breathe. He kept his weight low and forward. He chose the darker patches where roots matted the mud and avoided the glossy water that hid the soft pockets. When he had to cross a pool he tested it first with the haft of his axe, feeling for bottom, then placed his foot like setting a nail, quick and sure.

The Canary's cry came again, thinner with distance. He tasted iron in the air, not from blood, but from strain. The reeds carried that taste the way bellows carry heat. He adjusted his path a fraction right and kept moving.

A hiss cut the path ahead and the reeds bowed. Two monitors slid out, mud-slick and hungry, tails carving white scars across the brown water. They came at once, not clever, only quick.

He did not slow for them. He let the first lunge, then stepped in, inside the angle of its bite. The crystal axe sat heavy in his hand. He did not need the great edge. He snapped the haft across the hinge of the jaw and felt the joint give. The lizard's mouth shut on its own tongue. The second drove for his thigh. He lifted his knee and took it on the greave, then drove the bottom of the axe's butt down into the socket above its eye. The bone cracked and the lizard's body went slack. He dragged both aside with one sweep of his boot and did not look back.

The ground rose a little and turned stringy with roots. That pleased him, roots meant grip and a path that held. He moved faster. The reeds pressed close, then opened to a low stand of scrub trees with bark like old rope. Something had rubbed there, high on the trunk, leaving a smear that smelled of wet stone and musk. The large creature had passed this way. Its bulk had polished the bark smooth where the shoulder was widest.

Stronric set his palm to the mark and felt the measure of the beast heavy and confident. No wasted no turns heading in a straight direction towards the call of the Canary. He closed his eyes for one breath and built the thing in his head as he would a tool. Short snout for a broad bite, ridged spine, long tail for balance and sweep. He imagined its forelimbs set wide with thick joints, but even thick joints can break. He opened his eyes and increased his pace.

The trail of his friends returned in brief flashes and then went to water. A thread of Kara's frost clung to the undersides of reeds, a thin brightness that the swamp had not quite learned to swallow. A scuffed heel mark, almost gone. A knuckle's smear of blood at a reed split level with a tall man's shoulder, likely Dane's. He caught each sign with his eyes and folded it into his map of the place.

The Canary called again. It was not a warning this time. It was the hard bark it used when prey turned on it. The reed bed to his left shuddered as if a hand had drawn a wide comb through it.

Stronric cut left. The ground collapsed into a black run of water. A fallen trunk offered a narrow span. He stepped onto it and felt the rot shift under his boot. He set his other foot farther ahead. The trunk groaned. The marsh took it as an invitation and began to sink. He did not retreat. He crouched and moved in three quick steps, light and forward. The last step broke through, and he took the fall with his weight already on the far bank. The water took his shin and tried to hold it, bur he wrenched free with a sound like tearing cloth and kept going.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

He reached a stretch of open mud pocked with bubble scars and thin skins of scum. The sun, such as it was, came through the canopy as a pale coin and flashed off a shallow sheet. A dragonfly the size of a man's hand whirred past his face and was gone. The heat had a taste. It was that of a hot summer day filled with the smell of heated stones and greenery, no it was the smell of cooked rot. He breathed through a grimace, making a face but kept the bellows of his chest even despite the foulness in the air.

The monitors came again, three this time. He felt them before he saw them, not as sound, but as an absence of sound. The lesson of Echo sat in him now like a tool at a belt. The insects were loud everywhere except one narrow lane ahead. He shifted to cross that lane with his hammer raised. The first lizard broke through exactly where the silence had been and met the flat of the axe head. The blow did not need power, it needed placement. The beast went down and did not rise.

The other two circled with more sense. He did not indulge them. He stepped forward and cut their circle in half. One darted, he pivoted, and the edge took it behind the eye. The last feinted and turned to run. He let it. Some fights were not worth the coin of breath.

The reeds ahead separated without sound. The Mountain Canary burst out of them, mud on its shins, throat working. It did not slow, did not greet him, did not scold. It struck his boot with its shoulder as it passed, a quick, deliberate touch, then sprinted along the path he was already taking. It paused once to check that he followed. He did, and it vanished again into the stems.

"Good beast," he grunted, though the words came between breaths. "Show me the way'."

It did. The Canary rushed away into the swamp and Stronric followed close behind it. The bird weaved easily through the mud and reeds, its long thin legs slicing easily in and out of the mud. Stronric tried to hold a straight path behind the bird but he was forcing around various pools of mud and thick reeds. He was running without much thought or planning simply following and hurried to find his kin before it was too late.

Stronric crossed a patch where the ground trembled under his weight. He stood on a peat bed, wounded and waiting to swallow. He dropped to his hands and knees and spread his weight wide, crawling with care across the treacherous skin. The peat sighed around his palms, warm and wet. He reached the far side and rose with mud to the elbow. The Canary chirped quickly as if unimpressed by his slowing of pace. He wiped his hands clean on a reed clump and kept going.

Something large moved ahead. Not the quick slash of a monitor, more like a slow heave, as if a boulder had decided to breathe. He smelled it before he saw it. It smelled of old blood, stagnant water and scale. The giant beast was close.

His breath found a deeper rhythm. He rolled his shoulders, loosening the tightness that the run had packed into them. The crystal axe stirred in his hand, eager as a trained hound when the hunt came into sight. He let the head lengthen a finger's width, iron-hard crystal sliding into a broader cleaver's face. The axe made no show of the change, it simply shifted, as a tool shifts when asked by a hand that knows it well.

He slowed. Running to reach your people and running at a beast are not the same run. If he arrived wild, he would give the dragon what it wanted. He let his breath fall back into the pattern of work. Lift, step, set, breathe. He let the hammer sit heavy for a few paces so his arm would remember the weight. He listened. The insects were loud, then quiet, then loud again. A clear circle of quiet opened and closed like a mouth ahead.

He reached a low shoulder of ground that overlooked a broader run of water. The reed tops below swayed in a long arc, a path torn by weight. He heard men's voices, strained and short. He heard steel strike scale and ring dull. He heard a shield take a blow and a man grunt through his teeth. He heard a woman's voice give a small fierce sound that held pain behind it and would not show it. Rugiel. She made the sound when her body paid but she kept the ledger steady.

He moved down the shoulder and into the last screen of reeds. He crouched and looked through without parting them. The mighty lizard held in the center of a shallow pool. It was a grey-brown color with thick muted scales covering its mighty frame. It was larger than he imagined but held the same massive head with a long face filled with serrated teeth. Its tongue flicked out, tasting the air as it moved silently through the pool of water, the liquid flowing slick over the plated scales of its shoulders. The water couldn't have been too deep, so Stronric figured this creature, large as it was, was built low to the ground, with thick shorter legs built for quick bursts of ferocity and speed. Its great tail nearly doubled the creature's length propelling its solid body easily through the water.

Stronric looked past the creature and could see Dane standing to the Lizard's right, shield high, boots buried to the ankle. Lirian kept to the left, favoring his leg, mouth set hard. Giles fought forward, then back, as if he were trying to lead the fight and the marsh refused to follow. Kara's hands shook when she cast, frost forming and sliding away uselessly on the wet scales. Serene stood behind Rugiel, staff high and eyes bright with fear and something rougher than fear. Rugiel herself planted like a pillar, hammer up, watching the beast's weight and the angle of its hips, ready to make the hit that would matter. Rugiel was exhausted, but her stance still held but hardly.

The dragon lunged. Dane met it and sank another inch. Lirian stepped in and struck, then nearly fell when the tail whipped water at his knees. Rugiel shifted for the counter that would save them a heartbeat later. It would not be enough for long. The rhythm of the fight already belonged to the beast.

Stronric exhaled and let the last of the run leave his muscles. He rolled the axe in his hands and let it stretch into the form he used when splitting heavy timber. Not the long handle of a woodsman's show, but the compact weight of work, a head meant to bite and not glance. He stepped forward through the reeds and felt the mud take him to the ankle. He shifted a fraction to the right where the ground held. He raised his chin and set his jaw.

The Canary broke the cover to his left and flashed past his knee. It shot back into the fray, not at the beast's eye this time, but at the soft flesh inside the foreleg where scale thinned. It hit, raked, and vanished. The dragon swiveled its head to follow the pain and gave him his first step.

Stronric took it.

He did not shout. He did not announce himself. He moved the way a hammer moves when it has a clean line and a true strike to make. The axe came up. His boots found the path of roots under the water. The breath in his chest became steady and hot.

He broke the last of the reeds with his shoulder and entered the pool.

Rugiel

The Komodo dragon did not lunge blindly. It paced the waterline with deliberate weight, its scales grinding like wet stone on stone. Every step made the reeds bow and sway. Its bulk dwarfed the monitors they had fought before, its flanks rippling with cords of muscle thick as timbers. Each motion said it had killed often, and always without hurry.

Dane braced at the fore, shield lifted. He looked small against the beast, though Rugiel knew better than to measure a man only by size. His boots sank into the muck with a slow hiss as he grounded himself, waiting.

"Keep tight!" Giles barked, sword flashing as he waved the others in. "Don't give it an opening!"

The dragon answered him with a guttural roar. It lowered its head and came on, water splitting around its chest.

Rugiel stepped forward, hammer raised. The air around her was thick with rot and iron, but beneath it lay the faint clean trace of stone she had tasted after the quake. It steadied her, a thread of iron in the mire.

The beast struck first at Dane. Its head smashed into his shield with a thunderous crack. He staggered, boots dragged back half a pace, but he did not break. He dug in, raised the rim of his shield high, and shoved with a grunt that tore at his ribs. The dragon recoiled, more surprised than hurt.

Kara flicked her hands. Ice leapt from her fingers and wrapped the beast's foreleg in a sudden crust. Steam hissed as the creature's bulk shattered it in the next instant. Still, it faltered long enough for Lirian to charge. His sword slid between two scales at the shoulder, biting deep. Blood gushed dark and hot over his hands, and the rouge's teeth clenched as he ripped it free.

The dragon bellowed, tail sweeping. It slammed into Lirian's side and sent him sprawling into the reeds. His breath left him in a hoarse cry, but he forced himself up again, limping, blade still ready.

"Lirian!" Serene cried, taking a step forward before Rugiel's hand caught her shoulder.

"Hold your ground," Rugiel ordered. "He stands. We do not scatter."

The girl nodded, eyes wide, staff trembling in her grip.

The Komodo dragon's gaze fixed on the smallest of them. Its tongue flicked, tasting Serene's fear, and its body coiled low, ready to spring."No," Rugiel breathed, and charged.

Her hammer swung in a wide arc, striking the beast's jaw as it lunged. The impact rang through her arms like striking an anvil, jarring teeth and shoulders, but the blow turned its head aside. Its bite closed on air instead of Serene.

Giles took the chance, blade stabbing at its exposed neck. Steel clanged off scales and glanced aside, leaving only a shallow cut. The dragon roared and snapped at him, teeth grazing his arm. He stumbled back, clutching his sleeve.

Dane pressed forward again, shield bashing against its snout, forcing its eyes toward him. "Come on, beast!" he roared. "Look at me!"

The dragon obliged. It slammed against him, driving him knee-deep into the mud. His shield arm shook under the strain. Kara sent another blast of frost into its flank, but her breath came ragged, her hands unsteady. The cold cracked and fell away in shards.

They were slowing. Rugiel felt it in her bones, the rhythm faltering. Lirian's limp grew heavier, Giles's strikes grew wilder, Serene's staff drooped between blows. Dane's shield arm trembled so badly she thought it might give. Kara's face was pale, her lips drawn tight.

"Press it!" Rugiel cried, forcing her hammer down on the beast's knee joint. Bone cracked beneath the weight, but the creature only bellowed louder and thrashed. Its tail whipped again, smashing through reeds, sending water and mud spraying in a wide arc.

Serene slipped, falling backward into the muck. The dragon's head snapped toward her again, jaws opening wide enough to swallow her whole.Rugiel lunged, but she knew she would be too slow.

A sound cut through the mire. It was unlike anything they had heard here. It wasn't a roar of some rotten beast, or a hiss of the monitors, it was a shriek sharp, metallic, furious. The reeds burst apart, and a great feathered bird hurtled forward. Its talons raked across the dragon's snout, scoring shallow lines that bled brightly. The beast recoiled, momentarily blinded by the sudden attack, however the bird did not linger. The bird landed between Serene and the lizard, crest flared high, issuing another piercing cry.

Serene gasped, mud clinging to her face, staring at the creature with wide eyes.

The Canary snapped its beak at her again with a command, a warning before it darted aside, vanishing into cover.

The dragon roared, enraged, and swung its massive head after the smaller predator. Its tail lashed, water exploding outward.

That was when the earth shook a second time. It wasn't a soft tremor of distant ground, but a weighty deliberate quake of boots striking mud with purpose.

Through the reeds came a figure broad as iron, beard matted with dust, crystal axe glinting with strange light. His eyes burned with a smith's heat, steady and unyielding. The Mountain Canary reappeared at his flank, crest lowered, pacing him like a hound beside its master.

Stronric.

The Komodo dragon's roar faltered as even beasts felt the weight of iron will.

Rugiel felt her heart lift in her chest for the first time in days. She straightened, sweat and mud heavy on her face, and whispered beneath her breath, "By Morgal's forge… you found us."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.