"Haa…" Julia sighed.

It had been four days since they'd left the city, and the caravan had trudged along without incident. There had been the occasional monster, but it was easily handled by the mercenaries, who seemed accustomed to dealing with such threats.

While it was interesting getting a glimpse of the monsters that roamed the plains—large bovine creatures, a predatory cat or two, and even a giant snail with a spiral shell that left a disgusting trail behind it—Julia was beginning to wonder if she'd have to ride all the way to the Three Cities.

Four days of travel, while going much slower than her party had, was still taking them nearly within spitting distance of the swamp they had left behind.

That said, there were some benefits to being in the wilderness for so long.

"Incoming! Thunderbird, likely male—big!" the mercenary at the head of the column announced.

The caravans ground to a sudden halt as the mercs arranged themselves evenly throughout. A few with large bows dispersed throughout the column, while the melee-focused armed themselves with heavy-looking crossbows from one of the wagons in the middle of the formation.

They completed their arrangements just as the grass below their feet began to sway, as though a sudden wind had picked up. Julia noticed her hair had started to rise, like a thunderstorm was approaching.

Crack!

A blast of thunder sounded overhead, heralding the arrival of one of the most beautiful creatures Julia had ever seen. Its base shape reminded her of the hawks she used to see in the forest around Rockyknoll, but that's where the similarities ended.

Its coloration was a gradient of pale blue at the head, transitioning to a deep, midnight blue at the tail feathers. It had a crown of feathers sticking straight up upon its brow, with electricity of that midnight blue arcing between them.

It had dramatic blue eyes that almost seemed to glow as it scanned the ground below. Its great wings, which must have spanned the length of several grown men, followed the colored gradient pattern, and lightning flared off the ends of the feathers as it beat the air to stay aloft.

Its tailfeathers were much longer than the hawks that she remembered, stretching for at least the length of its entire body. The wind stirred about them, as if the bird were riding a miniature cyclone.

"Spread out! Don't be near anyone else! A single strike of lightning could take whole groups out if they're too close together!" the head merc shouted. "Draw!"

The mercs drew bows and loaded bolts, but before the order to shoot came, a fog materialized in front of the bird. It was completely opaque, as though a thick cloud had suddenly manifested. The mercs likely couldn't see what happened within, but Julia was fully aware.

Two great reptilian eyes appeared through the fog, and the thunderbird went completely rigid. Its body tensed, as though suddenly stricken with rigor mortis. However, it didn't plummet from the sky, seemingly held aloft by that cyclone about its tailfeathers.

The bird stared at the pair of eyes for a few seconds, and Julia thought it would be sweating, were it capable.

Suddenly, a shiver ran through its entire body, as a chill might travel down a human's spine, and it turned quickly around before disappearing with a zap of electricity. The sky cleared of the fog, and an eerie silence blanketed the surroundings, all the nearby animals having quieted down, and the mercs seemingly flabbergasted.

The lead merc looked around in stunned silence before directing a pointed stare toward Julia.

"Wasn't me," she said nonchalantly, shrugging.

"Ahem, right. Well—let's get moving, people! It's decided to find a meal elsewhere, apparently," he said, feigning confidence.

"Did you have harsh words for it?" Julia asked telepathically.

"Unnecessary. Lesser creatures recognize their betters instinctively," Lumenfall snorted.

"A rather grand claim for a ferret, don't you think?" Julia replied with a smirk.

"It would be quite a claim for a ferret, yes. I have not seen any recently, though," Lumenfall snarked.

She had been enjoying the opportunity to stretch her bulk in full, her only restriction being that she remain camouflaged. Julia didn't relish the idea of explaining why there was a dragon-ferret riding on her shoulder, or flying above the wagon train, at all times.

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She tried to tell herself that this four-day journey was worth it if just for the opportunity to please Lumenfall, but it did little to stave off her restlessness. She found that when she was in the city, she didn't experience the tension she now felt. Even if her leads were sparse, at least she was still in pursuit of the Nashiin's leader. Out here—well, she was beginning to wonder what she was even doing.

It wasn't the lack of progress that had her insides in such a knot, but the idea that every stride traveled likely took her farther from her goal.

After a few more hours of travel, wherein Julia tried to distract herself from her mounting unease, the sun began its slow descent into the afternoon, and Julia began to detect something—a familiar scent—though not with her nose.

It was the Nashiin's stink.

Julia sat bolt-upright, her hands gripping her knees tightly. So abrupt was her posture change that the young man driving the carriage next to her flinched. He was perhaps slightly younger than Julia—one of the apprentices. Davon had been rotating them out—partly so they could gain experience driving the train, and partly so he could take occasional breaks.

Ithshar appeared behind them both, balancing on the thin wooden back of the bench with the balls of her feet—quite a feat of acrobatics.

"You feel it?" she whispered.

"Thin, weak, but present," Julia replied with a nod.

"We must investigate," Ithshar said, and Julia agreed.

"Stop!" Julia commanded.

The wagon train ground to an immediate halt, the beasts of burden not needing orders from their drivers, as Julia's command was echoed by the World.

The lead merc, along with a few others, and the leaders of the merchants came running up to Julia's wagon.

"What?! What is it?! What's going on?!" the merc leader asked, his eyes nervously scanning the surroundings.

Julia calmly dismounted the wagon. Ithshar joined her, and the rest of her party began to converge. Gasps of surprise sounded as her armor began to crawl across her skin in tendrils, stitching itself together atop her clothing. She ignored the gasps. Her mind was focused.

She'd not spent the past few days idly. She'd constantly been working on improving her searching abilities, as well as her general perception. There was…some progress, but it would require a great deal of practice—no shortcuts that she could see.

However, she had thought of a few different ways to search in a more focused, narrow way.

Julia closed her eyes and even cut off her senses of hearing and smell, focusing solely on the information she wanted. She snapped once, the sound a clear, metallic ring due to her gauntlets, and a wave of blue energy spread out, with her as the origin. It moved so fast that most would've missed it with an ill-timed blink.

The wave was a very simple spell she'd designed based on how bats see—or how they aid their sight, at least. Braden had mentioned that bats weren't actually completely blind, but that they used echolocation to see in the dark. Julia's method was similar, but it wasn't something native to her biology, so it'd taken a while to create.

The pulse was simply unattributed mana that Julia infused with a very simple intent: to return once it touched what she was looking for. She could be general in her desire, ordering it to return when it bumped into anything that wasn't air, for example. That would give her an almost exact recreation of a bat's echo location. However, that much feedback was still too much information for her to process at the moment.

Ordering it to return when it bumped into traces of the Nashiin's stink, though? That was simple. The trail of filth was easy to overlay on top of what her eyes saw, and she suddenly had a heading to follow.

Julia opened her eyes, seeing the mercenaries and merchants clustered uncomfortably close, their faces full of worry. She looked at her party and nodded before placing her hand on the lead mercenary's shoulder—she should really learn his name.

"Remain here and assume a defensive formation. We will attempt to destroy the enemy before they reach the convoy, but assume that some might break through.

"Enemy type is undead, so prepare accordingly: blunt weapons for bashing bones. If you have any casters that know crowd control spells, use them to funnel the undead into a killbox, if possible. If any know spells dealing kinetic damage—damaging wind spells, hurled rocks, anything like that—even better," she explained.

The mercenary furrowed his brows in confusion.

"Undead? Do we need to be concerned about a bunch of—" he started, but Julia grabbed both his shoulders abruptly, stunning him into silence.

"These are not the undead you are used to. They are the Nashiin. They are organized into military formations: infantry, archers, and shock troops. The skeletons line up with pikes in front and archers in back.

"Their shock troops are the Ghûls. They are fast, and possessed of a primal hunger for the living. Their claws rend flesh from bone, and their fangs can puncture mail.

"The Revenants are commanders that organize the undead beneath them, and they are skilled fighters on top of that. They wear armor—generally rusty and deteriorated, but armor nonetheless—and carry weapons that they are frighteningly capable with.

"Underestimate them and die. Understand?" Julia asked, shaking the man a little.

He gulped and nodded.

"Good. Avoid getting hit as much as possible. If anyone does, they need to come find me immediately, lest they begin to rot from the inside," she explained as she released the man, her sword manifesting in her hand, her shield strapped to her arm.

The lead mercenary and Davon barked orders to their respective companies behind as Julia and her party moved off the road.

"How many? Where?" Sahira asked, her shield held to her side, ready.

"Dunno. I've got a trail, but it's weak. Their taint has soaked into the dirt here—probably means it's been a while—but I can see it hovering above the ground like a malevolent fog, about a journey ahead," Julia explained.

"This time, let me do the healing," Talnîr joked, making the group smile.

As they advanced into the wilds of the plains, Julia's smile darkened, the happiness fading as it shifted to anticipation.

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