“I am not saying that I do not wish to bring word back, ghil. I simply do not wish to die in vain. Charging the ranks of the nashiin with no plan beyond ‘survive’ is folly,” Nadhem said resolutely. He and Sahira had gotten into it again almost immediately upon waking.

  The sun shone through holes in the roof of the shelter, though it was indirect sunlight, as it was still early in the morning. Julia had shared her water and rations with the group, despite the elves having their own. They seemed to have bags made of some animal’s organ that kept the water out well, but they were small.

  Julia didn’t know how long they’d be without food or a way to cook it—lighting a fire was still too dangerous—so she had offered her own supplies. She had prepped for a dungeon delve, after all. Her bracelet was filled with both dried and preserved rations as well as fresh meals and water.

  “Your concerns are valid, ghil, but what else would you have us do? Flee? Languish here in uncertainty? You speak of folly as though our options are not already limited to one,” Sahira said, sounding more tired than angry now. A shame, since she’d only woken up a few minutes ago.

  Julia leaned over to Taln?r, who was standing next to her with his arms crossed—watching his siblings work things out. “What does ‘ghil’ mean? They’re both calling each other that,” she asked in a whisper.

  Taln?r glanced over at her out of the corner of his eyes before replying, “Ghil is a shortened form of ‘ghathil,’ branch-of-the-same-tree. Ghathil is a more formal way to address one’s branches, while ghil is a less formal, more intimate way of address.

  “This is good, as it likely means they’ve become comfortable enough with your presence to drop formalities…or maybe they’re just too involved in their own business to worry about it.”

  Julia nodded slightly, considering. So “ghathil” was loosely translated as “sibling?” She noted the word must be gender-neutral, as they were both using it to address the other—not analogous to “brother” or “sister,” then.

  “Your language is interesting,” she whispered. “How did you learn to speak my language so well? Do you meet many humans from outside the marsh?”

  Taln?r looked at her in bewilderment for a moment before answering, “I do not know your language, Julia. I’ve never spoken it.” He must’ve seen the visible confusion on her face, as he clarified further. “I am speaking my native tongue right now, as are you.

  “The World is translating it so that we might understand each other. The World seeks the advancement of intelligent races, so it provides translation to facilitate cooperation and interaction,” he explained.

  “It does? That’s news to me. Why can’t I understand some of the words you speak, then? Your metaphors, sure. Translating the specific words, like ‘tree’ and ‘branch,’ doesn’t really convey the meaning of the metaphor—so my confusion there is understandable. However, you all frequently use words that just don’t exist in my lexicon. How is that?” Julia asked in confusion.

  “Ah, I see,” Taln?r said with some amusement. “Indeed, my community is rather proud of our culture and history. Thus, we frequently prevent the World from translating our words. Well, that’s one reason—our pride in our culture.

  “Another reason is more practical, which is that direct translations don’t always get the meaning across most effectively. Sometimes, to truly understand a concept from another culture, you have to learn it as the people of that culture do,” he finished.

  Julia was stunned—she didn’t realize any of this was even possible! “How exactly do you prevent the World—I think we humans call that the System—from translating your words?”

  He thought for a second before snapping his fingers. “Aha, you’ve probably already modified your Status page, yes? Changed the order of things, squeezed more details out of a description, or things like that?” At her nod, he continued. “Halting a translation is very similar. You simply will it to stay in your native language.

  “It takes a while to happen without extra thought, but it will. At first, you have to think hard to tell the World what you want to remain untranslated as you say it—having multiple lines of thought going at once is difficult. Repetition makes it second-nature, though. Most of us can do it without much thought,” he said proudly. Julia thought it was a slightly strange thing to be proud of, but whatever.

  She was about to respond when Sahira cleared her throat loudly. Julia looked over to see both Sahira and Nadhem staring at her and Taln?r. Nadhem then spoke. “Perhaps one of you has a suggestion, since you’re clearly unconcerned about our current predicament?”

  Julia’s cheeks began coloring, but she responded firmly. “You’re trying to make a decision while having functionally no information. I can go scout—see what the blockade looks like, maybe even spots where it’s weak. Having more information might bring new options to light,” she suggested.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Sahira crossed her arms and thought for a second. She looked up at Julia and nodded, “A wise suggestion and astute observation. We argue about a situation we have not fully assessed. Let us gather information before committing our lives.”

  Taln?r looked to Julia, “You have a way to move unseen? Surely you don’t think just your water walking will be enough to avoid their notice. They’re not even particularly attuned to sound, so the lack of splashing likely wouldn’t even make a difference. They sense life, and you, my demi-spirit friend, radiate it like a torch.”

  That cleared a few things up for Julia, like why her invisibility hadn’t worked well against the undead. “I have a way to become less corporeal. It doesn’t make me vanish or anything, but it…how do I explain it…it sort of ‘spreads me out’ over an area, so the concentration of my ‘life,’ or whatever they sense, will be lower,” she explained.

  Taln?r thought for a moment before nodding. “That could do it. I don’t know the specifics, but life flourishes in this swamp. If you can ‘spread out’ enough to appear as a cloud of bugs or something to their sight, I imagine the nashiin will leave you be. Just be careful—being harder to detect doesn’t mean you’ll be invisible to them,” he cautioned.

  She nodded—sound advice. Sahira nodded to her as well. Nadhem, who had been observing quietly, suddenly uncrossed his arms and hefted his bows onto his back. “Perhaps you trust her enough to risk your lives on whatever information she can scrounge up, but I will look for myself. Scouting is my job,” he said as he arrived at the wall of dirt and rapped his knuckles on it, as though indicating for Julia to open the way.

  “Nadhem is a capable scout, and whatever information we can acquire will improve our chances of survival. I suggest the two of you go opposite directions to cover as much ground as possible.

  “We should also have a way to signal that something is amiss. Let us declare that if the both of you are not back when the sun reaches its highest point, something has gone awry,” Sahira said. All three of the others nodded in agreement, and Julia opened a small doorway in the shelter.

  Nadhem left silently with his shoe-boats equipped, gliding off into the distance. Julia was about to step out onto the water, but she instead gathered Trixy up in her arms and headed back inside. She handed the fluff of Trixy over to Taln?r, who took her with surprise and a little reverence. “Please, look after Trixy for me,” she requested.

  He nodded and she bent down a little to be eye-level with Trixy while giving her chin scratches. “Sorry, Trixy. This is a stealth mission where invisibility won’t help us. I’ll come back soon, and I’ll need your help when we break through the blockade, so stay here and save your strength for when we need it,” she said with a smile.

  Trixy squeaked sadly—it caused Julia almost physical pain! She kissed Trixy on the head and headed out into the swamp. Having seen Nadhem head vaguely left, she resolved to head to the right. However, before anything else, she used her Spatial Coordinates spell to lock the shelter’s position in her mind.

  She’d spent many years playing around in the woods around Rockyknoll, but she had no real woodsman experience and thus, no confidence she could find the shelter again. That done, she made herself as light as possible and dispersed into a vague fog of Julia-stuff.

  She used Wind Magic to propel herself away. It wasn’t as fast as running on the ground, but it was quick. She was still unclear what kind of intelligence the undead possessed. She knew some had more than others, but that was all. She couldn’t assume that any of them would be dumb enough to see a cloud of fast-moving life energy and not realize it was a threat.

  She drifted through branches, a faint wisp of fog passing through the dead canopy. She noticed first the barges still ferrying the undead to and fro. Now that she was focused, she could see many. They didn’t seem particularly sturdy or quick—not more than planks (sometimes whole logs) strapped together and moved along by a skeleton with a long pole.

  Of course, undead wouldn’t be worried about drowning, so this wasn’t exactly a weak point. Taking a barge down could potentially work as a slowing tactic, though. This brought her to what she really wanted to know, and where the greatest risk for her was likely to come.

  She drifted slowly down from the trees and into the water of the swamp, carefully making her way across the biome divide and, finally—after over a week of avoiding it—into the marsh. Her Truesight active, she began to notice shapes on the floor of the marsh. There were undead down there, lying in the muck—many of them.

  Julia spent a while just drifting around the marsh water, observing. She was beginning to suspect that the undead barges were nothing more than bait. They never had any but the dregs manning them—standard skeletons that were poorly equipped. Yet, beneath the surface ranged the whole of the undead army.

  Dreg skeletons, gh?ls, and even revenants lurked beneath—stationary and silent as statues—or corpses. Were it not for the fell mana suffusing them, she likely wouldn’t have even known they were there. They seemed to be lying in wait—for orders or for victims, she wasn’t sure.

  The undead lining the floor allowed Julia to get a decent read on the depth of the marsh, which was considerable. The waterline in the swamp thus far was variable, but it generally didn’t go above her waist. However, as it approached the marsh, the ground steadily descended—the decline steepening immediately after the treeline. By the point of the marsh where the undead waited, the water was two stretches deep.

  Julia retreated back to the treeline and lightly floated up into the branches of a tree farther back into the swamp, contemplating what she’d seen. Should she try to go farther into the marsh to see how deep the undead had penetrated, or should she follow the circumference of the undead blockade to see if there were breakages or less-guarded areas?

  Before she could decide, a cloud of smoke rose from the tops of trees a few journeys east of her position. There was no explosion or concussive blast, and there was no way a fire would start naturally after such a fresh rain. This couldn’t be good.

  She decided to forgo some of her caution in favor of speed, condensing back into her normal shape and leaping from branch to branch. No matter how dumb the undead were, any that could see that smoke would likely be heading for it. As such, they’d likely not be paying much attention to her (she hoped). Regardless, she aimed to get there first.