Dashing through the trees, Julia took note of the undead she could see with her Truesight. She was right: every undead in the area was converging on the pillar of smoke, though most didn’t seem to be in any great hurry.

  The skeletons and gh?ls ambled in that direction, going not much quicker than when they were milling around aimlessly. She thought this lent credence to the theory of neither being particularly intelligent beyond a few basic instincts.

  She hadn’t seen any revenants yet, so she was unsure of their pace. Hopefully, the lack of sightings wasn’t because they were already ahead of her. Her thoughts were interrupted by a huge, black hand suddenly appearing in front of her face.

  She was mid-leap, so there was no time to do anything but watch in horror as it gripped her helmet like she might palm an orange. Her momentum stopped so suddenly that her vision blurred, bright lights and colors blooming at the edges. Her reaction time was fast due to her Mana-Fueled Perception kicking in—a curse as much as a benefit in times like these.

  She felt everything in slow motion: her head smashing into the hand—which felt more like rock or metal than flesh—felt her body below her head continue forward with the momentum, and felt her neck strain, threatening to separate from her shoulders under the momentum, while her head remained stuck fast.

  She did the only thing she could think of: shifted her body into a more fluid form, sliding her now-mushy head out of the helmet so it could follow the rest of her body. Now free of the hand (and down a helmet), she resolidified her body and manipulated it so that she would at least not land on her head due to some kind of errant spinning.

  She impacted the water and skipped across it like a stone before slamming into a tree, sliding down to its roots with the waterline up to her neck. She stood on shaky legs—head still spinning—and looked toward her attacker.

  “You again,” she spat.

  “Me,” the dark knight said, his voice like rocks falling on metal. He crushed Julia’s helmet in his enormous hand like a fruit, crumpling and tossing it behind him.

  “You will die and become one of us. This will happen no matter what. But if you make it easy for me, I’ll return the favor. Cease your vain struggle, and I will make the transition painless.

  “You will accomplish wonders among our ranks,” he said as he approached, with sure steps that spoke to his confidence.

  He didn’t seem in a rush, so Julia took advantage of the time he was giving her. She shook her hands and arms out while shifting her weight back and forth between each foot. Nice and loose, she drew her sword and wreathed it in crackling red lightning. “Counter-offer: how about you leave, and I’ll let you live—or unlive,” she boasted, confidence in her voice she didn’t actually feel.

  The exchange was giving her enough time to prepare, which was her main goal. Something Braden had once said—something she’d thought was silly—came rushing back to her. She was still very young but already reading through adventurer stories like they were drugs.

  She’d come across a trope that she disliked where there were always words exchanged between the hero and villain in the midst of heated combat. When she’d asked Braden about it, his answer had surprised her.

  “Some advice, Jules: if the villain is going to monologue, let him,” he’d said.

  “Why would a villain monologue in the middle of combat?” she’d thought at the time. Now, she was inclined to agree. She wouldn’t frown at a gift from an enemy.

  One benefit of the crimson lightning was that it was obvious and attention-grabbing, so it was the perfect cover for what she was actually planning. The knight had likely already deduced that it was what she used to kill the undead, so he should already recognize it as a threat and pay close attention to it.

  “Yes, this is good. Hubris is often the quickest way to join our ranks,” he chuckled with a horrible scraping sound. Julia crouched, shifting to a combat stance and holding her sword at head-height with the tip pointed at the approaching knight.

  This was not her preferred combat stance, but it unquestionably said, “I’m going to strike you the instant you get close enough,” which was the message she was trying to convey.

  The knight kept walking, unconcerned, as he drew his enormous sword. This was the moment Julia had been waiting for. That sword was huge. Even a knight as large as this one needed both hands to draw and wield that sword. A task occupying both hands left him exposed. She now had an opening for something unexpected—something desperate.

  Julia shifted her grip on the sword as quickly as she could—grasping the blade just above the crossguard in her right hand. She winced as the blade bit into her palm, then shifted her weight back and javelined the sword forward with a big step. It launched out of her hand like an arrow from a bow, sparking with red lightning along the blade.

  The knight—to his credit—reacted instantly, abandoning his half-drawn sword to get his hands around front, but he was slightly too late. The sword spun enough that it was the crossguard that actually impacted the knight first, hitting him just left of center-chest. The lightning arced across his armor, leaving furrows and glowing divots. The knight staggered slightly but remained standing.

  Julia was already in motion, having not wasted time watching the results of her throw. She bolted toward the smoke column atop the water as fast as her legs could carry her. If her spell worked properly, she needed to get as far away as possible.

  BOOM!

  The detonation behind her was so strong that she could see a shockwave travel on the water’s surface around her, making her stumble and almost lose her footing. She didn’t know what a real fight between herself and that knight would look like, but she couldn’t find out right now while her friends were (potentially) in danger, so escape was her priority.

  Her sword came flying across the water to her open hand, and she grabbed it and sheathed it quickly before continuing her sprint. She had marked the sword’s coordinates and used Telekinesis to call it back. She was not giving it up.

  The spell she had used was something she’d thought of on the spot. While the consumption lightning was undoubtedly her best bet for defeating the nashiin, she couldn’t count on it dealing enough damage to the knight. She suspected she’d have to get a healthy dose of lightning into the slit in its visor to do anything fatal—or whatever the undead-equivalent of fatal was.

  As such, she had simply used it as a diversion. She’d gathered up water in a sphere about the volume of her fist before spreading it across the length of the blade. It was pure water extracted from the swamp, so it should be sufficiently insulating to not be tainted by the consumption lightning along the blade.

  She had also planted a small seed of intense heat around the pommel of the sword, using her Will Anchoring to build a function into the spell. When the sword impacted the knight and the lightning discharged, the water would wrap the seed of heat in a sphere, flashing it into vapor in an instant.

  This vaporized water would expand fast and with extreme force—hence the explosion she’d heard behind her, as well as her immediate flight from the scene. She wasn’t aiming to kill the knight or anything, but the force of the expansion should be enough to pick it up off its feet and throw it quite a ways away, which would both distance it from her and cover her retreat.

  She sprinted toward the smoke, a grin on her face and desperation just beneath it, praying Ravina never heard about this maneuver—despite it being a rather desperate situation that she felt justified the tactic.

  As she neared the source of the smoke, she heard what she was both afraid of and suspecting: combat—specifically combat that sounded like what she had heard yesterday when she first found the elves. She heard what was certainly impacts against Sahira’s armor, the unmistakable twang of Nadhem’s bow, and shouts that couldn’t be anything but Taln?r, frustrated that his healing was being blocked.

  She jumped into a tree near the combat zone to get a better vantage and was horrified by what she saw. Taln?r was missing an arm, his face pale, fear in his eyes as he tried his best to keep his brambles up.

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  Nadhem was limping, which was difficult to see when standing still shooting his bow, but Julia could see how he favored one leg. Sahira seemed mostly-unharmed, but being the bulwark that the relentless wave of undead smashed against, her time was limited as well.

  The source of the smoke seemed to be the trees their shelter was built around. They were aflame, with purple fire licking at the sky. Dark smoke rolled above, and Julia could swear she saw shapes of skull and bone in the smoke.

  The undead were more numerous than any cluster she’d seen yet. There were rows and rows of skeletons forming an enclosure to trap the elves. They had pikes pointed at them with archers and crossbowmen in a row behind.

  The gh?ls were climbing the brambles now, abandoning their mindless assaults against Sahira in favor of tactics—or perhaps, guided by their leader.

  An undead the likes of which she’d never seen hovered a few stretches off the water. It was similar to the revenants in appearance, in that it was all decayed skin stretched too tightly over prominent, jutting bones. Unlike the revenants, it wore a decayed-but-decorated robe of matte black with gold trim around the edges and seams. It had the same skull biting a rose insignia emblazoned on its chest in gold.

  This must be one of the leaders of this undead campaign. If the dark knight was a “Fell Captain,” according to the elves, this would be something like a “Felllord.” It floated above the field of combat, simply observing. Its eyes burned with purple flames that somehow looked hotter than the ones devouring the trees.

  It had its hood up, but she could see that its skull was crowned by a circlet, the purple gemstone glowing like an eye. Its left hand was behind its back while its right gripped a gnarled staff. It was made from a full human spine—tailbone to skull—biting down on a large purple gem—a focus, likely. A heinous abomination, this staff.

  She found herself overcome by a fury she didn’t understand. Seeing her friends in such dire straits evoked memories of just a little more than a week ago, when nearly everyone she’d known was suddenly taken from her. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

  She blasted down into the center of the undead with a burst of wind, landing on her feet with a splash. She straightened up and cast her hands straight out to the side, parallel with the water. It began to spin in a whirlpool around her, slowly changing from that murky brown to blood-red.

  As it darkened, flashes of crimson lightning arced inside, lighting it up from the inside like an underwater storm. The undead nearest her were blasted back by her landing and the ensuing whirlpool, but there were a great many that were unaffected, and now they were looking straight at her.

  “Thank the Mother you are well, Julia! Please, retreat from this place! We are too injured; we will only slow you down. Please, Julia N?ralin, please bring word to our people in the marsh. They must know the extent of the danger they are in! Leave us, and save our people!” Sahira pleaded.

  Julia caught an arrow right in the cheek before she could reply. It pierced straight through the flesh of her cheek and impacted her teeth, blasting a few apart before slamming into the teeth on the other side of her mouth and coming to a stop. That was just the first one, though.

  A barrage of arrows rained down on her. She hardened the mana around her core and took the arrows without dodging, focusing on her spell.

  One pierced into her right thing, impacting her femur before coming to a stop. Another bit into her shoulder, the arrowhead piercing all the way through her body before coming to a stop, the fletching sticking out the front of her shoulder, and the arrowhead poking out her back.

  The arrows might have already managed to pierce her chainmail underclothing due to its deteriorated condition, but the real problem was those crossbows. They punched through her chainmail like it wasn’t there. The only good news was that all the bolts and arrows deflected off her plates, which were protecting her most vulnerable bits—or, most of her most vulnerable bits.

  An arrow pierced through her eye and stopped when the head met the opposite end of her skull. Fortunately, her body wasn’t human anymore—or not fully, at least. As long as she protected her core, bodily harm was just temporary pain.

  The elves all gasped as they saw Julia riddled with arrows, thinking this was surely the end. She’d died before she could even get a single spell off.

  To their immense surprise, her body began to look…mushy. It wiggled and flowed. Arrows fell from her body like coins from a purse.

  “Hsssshhhh...ouch,” Julia hissed through gritted teeth, blood and bits of teeth spitting from her mouth. She scarcely realized the pain she was in—her mind consumed by a single thought.

  You will not take them.

  You Will Not Take Them.

  YOU WILL NOT TAKE THEM!

  Y???????O????U???? WILL?????? ?????N?????O?????T TAK????E????? ????T???????HEM?????!??????

  Y???????O????U???? ???W??????I????L?????L?????? ?????N?????O?????T???? ???????T??????A??????K????E????? ????T???????H???????E????M?????!??????

  So lost was she in preventing the death of her friends, she didn’t notice the blue boxes popping up and closing repeatedly in her periphery.

  A vision of a great, violet eye with multiple pupils flashed so quickly that, had anyone been close enough to see it, they might have wondered if it had even happened.

  The air around Julia began to distort, like a heat haze had risen around her. Strange shapes began appearing: tentacles made of flesh and shadow, claws of great beasts gnashed and morphed into teeth, and too-long fingers without nails groped at anything nearby.

  These shapes and shadows appeared and disappeared, morphed and changed so quickly that it was difficult to grasp a single shape from the many before it changed. Julia was unaware of any of this, nor was she aware of the blue and red lights spinning in her eyes, merging and morphing into a shining, violet light.

  She finished her spell—its concepts not wholly known or understood by her—working off instincts she didn’t yet comprehend. She turned back to the elves, grinning as blood and teeth fell from her mouth, her body riddled with sucking, bleeding holes where arrows had fallen out.

  “Hold your breath,” she said, voice like a thundercrack.

  The elves inhaled before they even realized what they were doing. “Dahm'Zahra,” Nadhem whispered.

  Water surged upward, wrapping around the elves and Julia in a great sphere as they rose into the air. The water of the swamp collected into the whirlpool that was quickly becoming a tornado.

  The tornado of blood-red water grew in size, lightning flashing within like an underwater storm., and everywhere it passed, it scoured the unlife out of the undead.

  Many of the dregs were destroyed instantly, the water quickly pouring into their orifices, seeking out and consuming their animi. The tougher ones, like the gh?ls and revenants, were swept up into the great catastrophe, where they were broken and battered by the torrential water or struck by an errant bolt of the crimson lightning.

  The felllord floated toward them, its face contorted in what looked like a mixture of surprise and anger. It raised its staff, and a great gout of purple flame blasted out the jewel like dragonfire. It vaporized the water wherever it touched, scouring away the blood tornado slowly, methodically.

  The sphere of water around the elves and Julia began shifting back to a clear, pure color, while the water directly in front of the sphere began darkening—as though it was sucking all the color from the sphere.

  The felllord’s eyes locked with Julia’s, and she gave him a wicked grin. “That’s right. All eyes on me—nothing else. Hit him, Trixy,” she said calmly.

  Just as she finished, a yellow streak of lightning blasted from below the water. The lightning didn’t hit the felllord itself—it struck the staff, knocking the gem loose and casting it into the swamp below.

  The gout of purple flames stopped instantly, and the streak of lightning zapped back into the swirling tornado of water. Trixy latched herself into place around Julia as the felllord bellowed in anger and floated down to retrieve its focus. Its demeanor indicated its strength—strong enough to only be annoyed at these turns of events.

  Julia released all her spells save for the one holding the sphere of water around them, and the dark blot of water in front of the sphere instantly decompressed. It blasted their sphere of water out of the tornado at what must have been close to the speed of sound.

  The water protected them from any kind of air resistance as she held it in place. Julia held on, her only thought: stay conscious long enough to maintain the sphere.

  They flew across the swamp almost parallel to the biome divide for several journeys before the sphere at least splashed back into the swamp water. The water cushioned their landing, though the impact still rocked them.

  “Not the worst landing I’ve had,” was her last thought before she collapsed along with the sphere of water.