Two more days pass, and the company continues to wander and search.
The swamp does not change, and yet it never looks the same twice.
Flat water stretches wide one hour, then narrows into corridors of root and peat the next. Sunlight filters down in pale shafts, then disappears behind thick, hanging moss. The wind is thin and inconsistent, carrying the constant hum of insects and the soft, hollow creak of leather straps shifting against armor.
No druids.
No witches.
No swamp tribes.
At least none that show themselves.
Boots sink slightly with each step when they disembark to search shallows. The sound is wet but muted. Metal buckles click softly. Muskets rest across shoulders. Powder horns swing against hips.
The men are tired.
Not broken.
Not yet.
But fatigue sits behind their eyes. Movements grow economical. No wasted gestures. No unnecessary speech.
For two days they sweep narrow banks, push through reed clusters, examine crude trails. They find remnants of camps long abandoned — charred wood reduced to gray powder, footprints pressed deep into peat then hardened. They find woven fetishes hanging from low branches, stripped of charms.
Nothing living confronts them.
Then the group regroups.
Seven tribemen kneel in a tight cluster under watch, wrists bound behind them. Two witches kneel beside them, robes torn but intact, eyes steady despite restraint.
They had engaged small numbers over the past two days — skirmishes brief and sharp. The company wins each encounter through discipline and coordinated volleys. No drawn-out battle. No grand charge. Just sudden contact and decisive suppression.
Seven captured tribemen.
Two witches.
Several wands confiscated.
The wands lie bundled in canvas near Aldo's feet.
The prisoners are tightly bound.
At Aldo's order, their thighs are bound as well. Two additional ropes connect the bindings on their legs to those around their arms, reducing any chance of coordinated movement.
"They cannot run if their hips cannot pivot." Aldo explains calmly to one of the younger recorders who watches the tying process with furrowed brow.
The rope fibers bite into damp cloth.
"They look uncomfortable ?" the recorder murmurs.
Aldo glances once at the kneeling witches.
"Comfort is not the objective."
The nine prisoners sit in forced stillness beneath a leaning tree, watched by rotating guards. The air this afternoon feels different—heavier, though not humid. A brief wind passes through the canopy before fading away, leaving the swamp strangely quiet. Insects buzz in scattered patches but suddenly fall silent. Nearby, armor creaks as soldiers shift and adjust their straps. Hano pauses mid-step and listens carefully. Something feels wrong, though he cannot immediately name it. The swamp's sounds seem incomplete: no frogs, no distant birds, only the faint rasp of breathing and the quiet movement of equipment. He crouches beside a patch of disturbed peat. Broken branches lie scattered there, not crushed by animal weight but cleanly severed, as if cut deliberately.
"Tracks." he mutters.
Lei joins him, eyes narrowing.
The tracks are shallow but numerous. Some human-shaped. Some not.
"Too many," Lei says quietly. "And too organized."
A faint scent drifts through the air.
Smoke.
Not fresh.
Lingering.
Onaga stiffens.
"They are corralling us," he says under his breath.
Aldo hears him.
He scans the tree line slowly.
"Form defensive spread," he commands, voice steady but low.
The company adjusts into a loose perimeter around the prisoners.
Muskets loosen from shoulders. Powder horns are untied. Men shift their footing as tension quietly spreads through the line.
There is a pause.
A breath.
Then—
The forest explodes. Arrows burst from the foliage in sharp succession, whistling past helmets and striking shields. One thuds into a tree trunk inches from a recorder's face. A hidden trap snaps underfoot; a crude net jerks upward, hauling two soldiers partly into the air before nearby men slash the rope and pull them down. A small explosion—alchemical rather than gunpowder—erupts near the left flank, spraying mud and smoke.
From the foliage surge beasts.
Not natural creatures, but warped shapes, gaunt and low, moving unevenly as if stitched from swamp carcasses and raw muscle.
The company answers with trained reflex.
"Volley front left!" Aldo commands.
Muskets fire in staggered rhythm, smoke rolling across the clearing.
Two beasts collapse mid-charge.
More arrows streak from high branches.
"Above canopy!" someone shouts.
Twenty men angle upward and fire.
Bodies drop from trees, hitting peat with dull thuds.
The prisoners flinch at the noise but cannot move far.
Then the ground itself shifts.
The peat ahead begins to rise.
Slowly at first.
Like something breathing beneath it.
Roots twist upward. Mud bulges.
And then it stands.
A gigantic humanoid shape forms before their eyes — peat and roots woven together, rib-like structures of drowned bones jutting through its chest. Water streams down its torso as if it has just pulled itself from the bottom of the swamp.
Its head is featureless except for hollow cavities where eyes might be.
It towers above men.
Silence falls for half a heartbeat.
Then more shapes rise behind it.
Smaller.
But similar.
"By the Saints…" a recorder whispers.
Aldo does not whisper.
"Slow retreat!" he commands. "Split into three detachments! Keep formation!"
The company obeys.
Three controlled movements backward, forming triangular spacing while maintaining line of sight.
The Mireborn Colossals do not act immediately.
They stand.
Watching.
Or sensing.
Then one more shape erupts — not at the perimeter.
In the middle of the company.
The ground beneath three slave-soldiers fractures and bursts upward. Peat and bone explode outward as a colossal torso forms within their ranks.
It swings an arm made of braided roots and skeletal fragments.
The impact throws two men sideways.
One collapses, armor dented, breath forced out.
"Focus fire center!" Lei shouts instinctively.
He does not wait for Aldo.
He fires into the creature's torso.
Others follow.
Volley after volley slams into the mire-born mass. Peat bursts away in chunks. Bones crack and dislodge.
The colossal staggers.
Hano rushes forward, hatchet flashing, hacking at exposed root clusters near its knee.
"Down! Bring it down!" he yells.
The creature sways. Then collapses with a wet, heavy crash.
Mud splashes outward. Breathing is harsh.
Aldo steps forward cautiously as others maintain aim. He kneels near the fallen mass. From its fractured interior he extracts a cluster of tangled biomass — fibrous roots wrapped around bone fragments, something dark and pulsing faintly within.
The recorders gather close, eyes wide.
"Name it." Aldo says.
One recorder swallows.
"Mireborn Colossal." he states, voice trembling slightly as he writes.
The biomass in Aldo's gloved hand shifts. Slides. Drips through his fingers like thick slurry. And before their eyes, peat begins pulling inward again. The colossal reforms.
"Volley!" Aldo shouts.
Gunfire roars. The creature collapses again. And again the mass begins to draw together.
"It's reforming!" someone cries.
Hano snatches a fallen branch from a nearby trap-fire, its tip still faintly burning. Without hesitation, he lunges forward and drives the smoldering end deep into the creature's exposed core. The peat catches slowly at first. Only smoke rises in thin coils, drifting across the damp air. Then flame spreads along the fibrous roots that form the creature's body. The Mireborn Colossal convulses violently, its massive frame jerking as fire races through its structure. Heat intensifies around them. The smell is sharp and choking, a bitter mix of burning peat and rot. Flames climb higher. The colossal begins to shrink as it burns, its structure failing, roots curling inward as the fire devours them.
Then it collapses.
Ash remains.
Silence.
The other Mireborn Colossals at the swamp's perimeter halt their advance. They do not charge. Instead, they retreat slowly, sinking back into the peat as though reconsidering the fight.
But the battle is not over.
From beyond the tree line, new figures emerge. Humanoid shapes move through the mist. Armor rusted yet intact. Helmets fused with peat. Weapons gripped in stiff, unmoving hands.
Undead soldiers.
Preserved by the bog.
They rush.
"Volley front!"
Muskets fire again.
Several undead stagger from impact.
But they do not collapse.
They continue forward.
"Fire again!"
Another volley.
Peat and fragments scatter from torsos.
Still they come.
Panic flickers through the younger ranks.
"Why are they not falling?!" a slave-soldier gasps.
"Retreat two paces!" Aldo commands.
They give ground while firing. Onaga and several others move swiftly to the injured. Two soldiers bleed from blunt trauma. One struggles to breathe. Onaga binds, lifts, directs.
"Move them back. Keep pressure. Don't stop."
The undead clash with the forward line. Metal meets metal.
Hatchets swing. Short spears thrust into torsos. The sound is grinding, heavy. No cries from the enemy. Only the scrape of armor and the dull thud of impact.
Lei drives his musket butt into an undead's helmet, then draws hatchet and hacks at its knee joint until the limb separates and the body collapses. It still reaches upward, fingers grasping.
Hano thrusts spear through another's chest cavity. It slows but continues to strain forward until he and another soldier force it flat and hack repeatedly until movement ceases.
The smell grows unbearable.
Rot.
Wet decay mixed with peat. Some soldiers gag. One vomits behind shield, wiping mouth with shaking hand.
Aldo sees it.
"Rotation! Those overwhelmed move back!"
"We can still fight!" one insists, pale but defiant.
Aldo shakes his head sharply.
"Negative. Withdraw."
He steps closer.
"You may not be facing merely Death Air." he says firmly. "It could be curse. Move out."
That word shifts their resolve.
Curse. They obey.
Reluctantly.
Lei gasps between strikes.
"You enforce Minimal Casualties Principle well," he pants toward Aldo.
Aldo does not smile.
"Report number…" he demands.
A recorder replies quickly.
"One hundred total. Seventeen out of battle. Ten deployed to tend. Eight protecting medics. Seventy-five engaged."
"Maintain staggered volleys. Target joints. Disable function."
The coordination becomes methodical.
Volley. Step back. Spear thrust. Hatchet strike. Undead bodies accumulate in broken heaps. Not destroyed. Disabled. It is exhausting. Sweat drips into eyes. Arms tremble from repeated impact. Finally, the last of the charging undead slows. Falls. Ceases coordinated movement. The field grows still except for labored breathing. No living witch or druid appears among them. Aldo surveys the fallen Mireborn Enlisted. He kneels beside one and studies its composition. Peat encases bone. Strips of decayed material woven between ribs.
"Necromancy…" he says quietly.
"From the Witch Enclave?" Onaga asks.
"Likely."
He recalls the feeling when he touched the Mireborn Colossal's core — the strange sustenance within.
"These are animated from burial sites," one recorder suggests. "Their weakness may be destruction of original grave."
Hano overhears.
"So what we did only makes them malfunction?"
The recorder nods slowly.
"Possibly. Not true destruction."
Around them, other recorders sketch furiously.
They document armor pattern, root integration, movement behavior.
"Mireborn Enlisted." one writes.
The air feels thick again. Heavy. Grinding attrition has replaced shock. No victory cry rises.
Only tallying. Only calculation.
Aldo stands.
"Consolidate forces. Prepare to move. This was not their final attempt."
The wounded are lifted carefully.
The prisoners remain bound and silent, watching.
The swamp waits.
Then—
A sound. Faint at first. Not wind. Not insects. A distant tremor in peat.
Lei stiffens. His musket rises slowly.
"Commander…" he says, voice low but sharp.
From beyond the tree line, shadows shift again. Multiple directions. Closer this time.
Aldo's jaw tightens.
"Position !" he orders quietly.
The recorders pause mid-writing. The wounded are pulled tighter into protective formation. The air grows colder. Another ambush comes. Lei's eyes narrow toward the movement, every muscle coiled.
And the swamp inhales once more.