The march into the Southern Marshes continued, each passing day stretching into a weary blur of mud, mist, and the restless croaks of unseen creatures.
Two months slipped by, yet it felt far longer to those trudging through the swamp. The disciples' robes were no longer clean, most of them permanently stained by muck and blood, the hems torn where leeches and biting roots had clung to them.
Even the air seemed heavier the further they went, as if the swamp itself sought to grind them down with every step.
During this time, they encountered danger again and again. Beast tides became an all-too-frequent occurrence. Sometimes they surged forward in great waves, the swamp's predators crashing through mud and reeds in numbers too vast to count.
Other times the attacks came irregularly, beasts erupting from beneath the water's surface or descending from above in screeching flocks of bird beasts or swarms of blood thirsty insects.
