The morning brought with it a sharp change in their surroundings. The rolling highlands had gradually given way to flatter terrain, the soil growing increasingly tired beneath their horses' hooves. What began as occasional puddles had transformed into stretches of shallow water flanking the dirt path, which itself had narrowed considerably since dawn.

  Lynara observed the shift with growing curiosity. Their route had deviated from what she'd expected based on the maps she'd glimpsed during their planning sessions. Rather than turning northward toward the mountain passes that would lead them to Vellano, they continued eastward, skirting the edge of what appeared to be a marshland.

  "This isn't the road to Vellano," she remarked casually to Caldus, who rode beside her at the center of their company. The knights formed a protective vanguard ahead, while the squires followed behind, leading the pack horses.

  Caldus's expression remained impassive, his eyes scanning the misty waters that stretched on either side of the path. "Your powers of observation remain impressive, Lady Brahe."

  "As does your talent for evasion, Ser Knight," she countered smoothly. "I believed we were taking the northern pass."

  "Plans changed."

  Lynara studied his profile, noting the tension in his jaw, a common tell of his it seemed. "They do indeed. Yet typically, change is precipitated by something. A reason, perhaps?"

  The knight remained silent, guiding his mount around a section of path where water had begun to encroach. Lynara followed suit, the joints of her horse splashing through the shallow puddle.

  "I understand your reluctance to share tactical information with me," she continued after a moment. "But if we're entering dangerous territory, might it not benefit your diplomatic charge to be forewarned?"

  A small muscle twitched in Caldus's cheek. He glanced over his shoulder at the trailing squires before returning his attention to her. "The northern pass is currently... inaccessible."

  "Inaccessible," she repeated. "A curious word. Bandits? Landslide?" She paused, watching him carefully. "Or perhaps something less mundane?"

  Caldus's eyes narrowed slightly at her last suggestion, confirming her suspicion. "Reports indicate severe weather in the highlands. Storms."

  "In early autumn? How unusual."

  "Indeed," he replied curtly. "This alternative route will add three days to our journey, but it avoids the mountains entirely. We'll circle east around the Phaecian marsh, then turn when we reach higher ground."

  Lynara glanced at the murky waters spreading out around them. "This doesn't appear to be circling the marsh so much as traversing it."

  "We're following the trade road," Caldus responded, his tone suggesting his own uncertainty, but closing the conversation there and then. "It should be elevated above the wetlands."

  She nodded, accepting his reluctance to elaborate further. The knight clearly had no intention of revealing what intelligence had prompted this detour. A mess of storms and blizzards in autumn would certainly qualify as unusual enough to warrant caution, but his reluctance suggested something more concerning than merely bad weather.

  As they rode deeper into the marshlands, the vegetation grew more exotic and twisted. Gnarled trees rose from the murky waters, their branches draped with pale moss that hung like spectral fingers. The air thickened with humidity and the earthy scent of stagnant water, occasionally punctuated by something sharper, a hint of decay that lingered at the edges of perception.

  Something about the place prickled at Lynara's senses. Beneath the natural sounds of water and rustling leaves, she detected a dissonance, a subtle wrongness in the energy that permeated the swamp. She'd encountered similar sensations before, in places where the veil between worlds thinned, or where prolonged dark rituals had stained the natural order.

  As they progressed, she became increasingly certain they were being watched.

  She considered mentioning this to Caldus, but hesitated. Such an observation would be difficult to explain coming from a mere noblewoman. Better to remain silent and alert, ready to react if necessary.

  The path narrowed further as they advanced, forcing them to ride single file. Caldus took the lead behind his knights, with Lynara following and the squires bringing up the rear. Conversation ceased as they focused on navigating the treacherous footing.

  Midday came and went without a break for rest or food. Caldus clearly intended to cross as much of the marsh as possible before nightfall. The sun, visible only as a diffuse glow through the canopy and mist, had begun its westward descent when Lynara noticed the first significant change in their surroundings.

  The mist, which had been a constant presence since they entered the wetlands, began to thicken and take on a faint greenish tinge. At first, she thought it might be a trick of the light filtering through the leaves, but as it intensified, she recognized it for what it was, not natural fog, but something conjured.

  "Ser Caldus," she called softly, keeping her voice low enough that only he could hear. "The mist—"

  Before she could finish, the unnatural fog surged forward, engulfing their company in seconds. Visibility dropped to mere feet, the world beyond shrouded in swirling green. With the mist came a putrid stench: rotting vegetation and something more acrid, like venomous secretions.

  Caldus raised his hand, signaling a halt. "Form up!" he commanded, his voice cutting through the eerie silence that had descended.

  The knights responded immediately, wheeling their mounts to create a protective circle around Lynara and the squires. Swords rasped from scabbards, the metallic sound unnaturally muffled in the thick air.

  Something moved in the fog, darker shapes flitting between the trees, disturbing the water with soft splashes. Lynara strained her senses, detecting multiple presences converging on their position.

  A high-pitched whistling sound cut through the air, followed by a wet thud and a choked cry. One of the squires, a boy no older than Matteo, looked down in shock at the object protruding from his chest: a barbed dart nearly the length of a man's forearm. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only blood emerged, black in the strange light. He toppled from his saddle, splashing into the shallow water beside the path.

  "Shields!" Caldus roared.

  The knights barely had time to raise their defenses before more darts hissed through the fog. One struck a pack horse, which screamed and bolted, dragging another animal with it into the deeper water where both disappeared beneath the surface. Two more squires fell, one dead before he hit the ground, the other clutching a dart embedded in his thigh, his face contorted in agony.

  Lynara's mount reared as a dart whistled past her shoulder, missing her by inches. Rather than fighting to control the panicked animal, she used its motion, sliding from the saddle and landing in a crouch on the muddy path. Better to be a smaller target than to remain elevated and exposed.

  More whistling projectiles sliced through the air. The knights' armor deflected most, though one found a gap at a joint, dropping a knight to his knees with a grunt of pain. Their mounts, trained for battle but unaccustomed to this swampy terrain, whinnied and stamped nervously.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the barrage ceased. The silence that followed was broken only by the labored breathing of wounded men and the soft splashing of water around them.

  A new sound emerged from the mist, a language of clicks, hisses, and guttural croaks. It came from all around them, the speakers hidden but clearly communicating, coordinating.

  Caldus dismounted, drawing his blade with a fluid motion. "Back to back," he ordered, his voice low and steady despite the chaos. "Squires to the center, it looks like marsh masters"

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  The remaining knights formed a perimeter, facing outward into the mist. Lynara positioned herself near the center with the surviving squires. The position afforded her both protection and concealment for what she might need to do.

  A glob of viscous green liquid suddenly arced from the fog, splattering against a knight's shield. On contact, it hissed and bubbled, dark energies visibly roiling within the substance. Where it touched exposed metal or leather, it corroded instantly, but where it struck the ornate patterns on the knight's armor, it simply evaporated in a puff of foul-smelling smoke.

  Lynara's eyes narrowed. Death magic, neutralized by the armor's enchantments. Interesting.

  The reaction seemed to surprise whatever lurked in the mist as well. The clicking communication intensified, now with a note of alarm or confusion. Through the swirling green, Lynara caught glimpses of their attackers, tall, sinuous figures with scaled skin in mottled patterns of green and brown. Their elongated heads featured protruding snouts and yellow, slitted eyes that reflected what little light penetrated the fog.

  One figure, larger than the others and adorned with necklaces of bones and teeth, raised clawed hands in a complex gesture. The dark energy of the marsh began to coalesce around its form, gathering power for a more potent attack, following the threads of its power she could see they were connected to the lands around them, a spell held together by the putrescence of a rotting swamp and its innate energies.

  Recognizing the danger, Lynara crouched lower, using the chaos as cover. She dipped her fingers into the shallow water beside the path, establishing contact with the dark network that permeated the swamp. The marsh was saturated with necrotic energy, centuries of death and decay bound together by the ritual workings of these creatures. To a trained eye it resembled a vast web of sickly green filaments crisscrossing beneath the surface.

  With subtle movements of her fingers beneath the water, she sent a countering pulse through the network, disrupting the marsh master's spell before it could fully form. The creature staggered, its concentration broken, yellow eyes widening in shock as the gathered energy dissipated harmlessly.

  The clicking grew angrier, more urgent. The marsh master gestured sharply, and its followers surged forward, abandoning ranged attacks for direct assault.

  They emerged from the mist like nightmares, bipedal lizards standing as tall as men, their bodies sleek and powerful. They moved with uncanny speed, leaping from submerged positions to attack the knights from multiple angles. Crude weapons of bone and flint clashed against Federation steel.

  What the creatures lacked in arms, they made up for in numbers and familiarity with the terrain. For every one that fell to a knight's blade, another two would appear from the waters. They fought intelligently, coordinating their attacks to isolate individual defenders.

  One knight, separated from his companions by what looked like a primitive man catcher, was surrounded by four of the creatures. He fought valiantly, his sword a blur of deadly precision, but when the lizardmen dove beneath the water's surface, he could not follow. They seized his legs, dragging him off the path and into the deeper marsh. His screams ended with a wet gurgling sound.

  A squire, attempting to retrieve a fallen weapon, found himself seized by a scaled arm that shot from the water. The boy struggled, but his attacker was too strong, pulling him down into the murky depths. Bubbles rose to the surface, then nothing.

  Through her connection to the swamp's energies, Lynara sensed something more ominous developing. Beneath the water, at equidistant points surrounding their position, several marsh masters had formed a ritual circle. Their combined power was building toward a cataclysmic release, a wave of necrotic energy that would engulf everything within its radius, dissolving flesh from bone and corrupting even the knights' blessed armor through sheer overwhelming force.

  The situation had deteriorated beyond what conventional combat could salvage. If she did nothing, even Caldus and his most skilled knights would fall, and with them, her plans.

  Lynara reached into a hidden pocket, withdrawing some of the blood thistle she had secretly taken from Matteo's herb collection. Crushing it between her fingers, she let the essence mingle with a drop of her own blood, then traced a symbol on her wrist. The effect was immediate: her senses sharpened dramatically, the world around her coming into hyperfocused clarity.

  Through this enhanced perception, she could see the energies of the swamp as clearly as physical objects. The ritual circle beneath the water glowed with malevolent purpose, its power building toward critical mass. The marsh masters channeling it were connected to each other and to the swamp itself through filaments of green energy, a complex network that they controlled through generations of practice.

  But networks could be redirected.

  With surgical precision, Lynara began to alter the flow of energy, much as one might place strategic stones to divert a river's course. She made no grand gestures, nothing that would betray her actions to observers. Just the subtle movement of fingers against the surface of the water, gentle ripples carrying her influence outward.

  She found the weakest link in the ritual circle, a younger, more nervous, marsh master whose concentration wavered with each clash of steel nearby. This was her entry point. She sent a pulse of energy through the connection, not disrupting it entirely, but subtly altering its resonance.

  The effect cascaded through the network. What had been a harmonious convergence of power began to destabilize as each marsh master unconsciously adjusted to the change, creating further dissonance down the line. Like instruments falling out of tune with each other, the ritual's potency diminished with each passing moment.

  The marsh master leader sensed the disruption, its yellow eyes widening in alarm. It abandoned its attack on a knight to focus on stabilizing the ritual, but Lynara had already introduced too many variables. The more it attempted to correct, the more complex the distortions became, the lizards had expected the ritual to come to fruition, hopping out of range with their task of keeping the knights in place complete.

  With one final, delicate adjustment, she reversed the polarity of the network entirely. The accumulated necrotic energy, rather than erupting outward in a devastating wave, collapsed inward upon its creators.

  The effect was instantaneous. The water bubbled and hissed where the marsh masters had positioned themselves for the ritual. Their screams—inhuman sounds of pain and confusion—echoed across the swamp as each was struck by the very power they had intended to unleash.

  The surviving lizardmen froze, sensing the catastrophic failure of their ritual. Panicked clicking and hissing filled the air as they witnessed their leaders thrashing in agony, their scales blackening and peeling away where the corrupted energy touched them.

  The marsh master chieftain rose partially from the water, its elongated face contorted in rage and pain. It fixed its gaze on the knights, then at the foreigners among them, as if searching for the source of this reversal. For a brief moment, its yellow eyes locked with Lynara's.

  She met its gaze impassively, revealing nothing.

  The creature hissed once more, a command rather than a threat, and as one, the surviving marsh masters retreated into the deeper waters, dragging their wounded leaders with them. The unnatural mist began to dissipate in their wake, sunlight once again filtering through the canopy above.

  Caldus stood among his remaining knights, his sword dripping with dark ichorous blood, his expression a mixture of grim satisfaction and bewilderment at the abrupt retreat of a foe that had seemed on the verge of overwhelming them.

  "Reform ranks," he commanded, his voice steady despite the exertion of battle. "Tend to the wounded who can be saved. We move as soon as possible."

  As the knights and surviving squires hurried to comply, Caldus approached Lynara, who had risen from her crouched position by the water's edge.

  "Are you injured?" he asked, his eyes scanning her for wounds.

  "No," she replied simply. "Fortune favored me." She added, smacking some detritus off her dress, conveniently smearing the ritual pattern she'd formed and mixing the blood thistle with the rest of the marsh residue.

  Caldus nodded, though his gaze lingered on her with a hint of speculation. "You remained remarkably calm during the attack."

  "Panic serves no purpose in such situations," she offered with a slight shrug. "I've seen combat before, though admittedly nothing quite like... those creatures."

  "Marsh masters," Caldus supplied, cleaning his blade before sheathing it. "Denizens of these wetlands. They typically avoid the trade roads."

  "Yet they seemed quite prepared for us."

  The knight's expression darkened. "Yes. Almost as if they were waiting." He glanced back at the diminishing mist. "And that retreat... unusual. They had the advantage of numbers and terrain."

  "Perhaps they exhausted their resources in the initial assault," Lynara suggested innocently. "Or perhaps something affected their magic."

  "Perhaps," Caldus echoed, considering how the armor had disrupted the initial blast of necrosis. "Still, their behavior was... uncharacteristic."

  An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, broken only when a squire approached to report on the casualties and the status of their remaining horses.

  As Caldus turned to address the immediate needs of their company, Lynara gazed out over the now-peaceful marsh. Beneath the surface, she could sense the confusion spreading among the surviving marsh masters, their connection to the swamp temporarily disrupted, their confidence shaken by an inexplicable failure of powers they had wielded for generations.

  A small victory, and one that must remain unattributed.

  She glanced at Caldus as he efficiently reorganized their diminished party. The knight had lost men today, good men whose deaths would weigh on him. Yet they had survived an ambush that should, by all rights, have annihilated them completely.

  In time, he might wonder at their remarkable escape. But for now, survival and continuing their journey took precedence over unanswerable questions.

  Lynara brushed the remaining mud and evidence with nonchalance, considering her surroundings.

  The blood thistle's effects were already fading from her system, her heightened awareness returning to normal. She committed to memory the feeling of the marsh's dark network, knowledge that might prove useful in the future. Every ecosystem had its rhythms and rules; understanding them was merely a matter of observation.

  As the company prepared to continue their journey through the remaining stretch of wetlands, Lynara mounted a horse provided by one of the fallen squires. The animal sensed something in her, shying nervously until she stroked its neck and whispered words in a language no one present would recognize.

  Ahead lay Vellano, and beyond that, the holy see itself, each step bringing her closer to her ultimate goal. Today's encounter had been an unexpected complication, but it had given her more insight into the region's situation.

  And if certain knights noticed that their diplomatic charge seemed to bring an unusual measure of fortune to their company... well, that too could serve her purpose.