Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 by Terah Edun

skin was stronger than steel, with ridged bumps along the spine that ended in a tail that had an armored ball at its end. It had swung the tail like a mace and crushed the chest of one woman with the indifference of a child that flung away a toy it no longer wanted.
    That was the first time the mercenaries had encountered a creature of the swamp head on. Except the swamp leopard. Well, the leopard hadn’t attacked any of them. It had attacked their pack animal, lunging at the elephant’s shin in a calculated move. But this creature? This creature had eaten a human—a mercenary. The group had gathered their courage like a cloak about them. They may have been slowly starving for protein with glassy eyes and aching feet, but they still had segments of their pride. Their pride and their battle fervor. Here was an opponent worthy of the third division’s ire. They feared no monster, even one as big as this. And most of all? They were tired of being challenged and losing to unseen foes—human, creature, and kith alike. First, the Kades had ambushed them with not an enemy combatant to be seen. And now creatures—creatures she was half-sure were kith , but knew for a fact that they were at least beasts, if not magical ones—had been picking off mercenaries for days on end, like ghosts that haunted them under the cover of darkness. Now they had one fully in their sights. Now was their chance to avenge their fallen foes. So they did.
    Their assault on the monster had been horrific. Not for it. For them. Their weapons were ineffective and bounced off its skin like dulled training swords on a wooden training dummy. Sara had briefly wondered if a mage attack would affect it. But she wasn’t going to waste her energy on the beast. The idea of hunting it had been discussed and quickly discarded, after all everything else they had encountered here had been either poisonous to the touch or noxious end to inducing vomiting upon consumption. This creature would probably be no different. As for the man he had consumed? He was already dead, after all. Apparently, neither were any of the other mages of the division, because none had bothered to engage it, not even the other battle mages.
    In the end, the creature had casually bitten a man in half and slipped back into the deep waters like a specter that vanished in the side of the muddy strip of land they had been trudging forward on day in and day out. For a few minutes, Sara’s skin had tingled as she kept a wary eye on the still waters. She had known that even though they couldn’t see the creature, it was still there. Lurking. Waiting. But apparently it was full enough with its meal of one and a half humans that it decided to leave their presence shortly after. When she saw a v-shaped trail of water leading away from them, she and a good number of her comrades heaved an audible sigh of relief.
    And they trudged on. That had been the first day. It had been twelve days since then, and the horrors they had seen had only grown worse.
    That was half of the reason why no one had tried to save the war elephant. They had learned that these creatures were often more than they seemed and, quite often, seemingly invincible.
    “The other reason no one else even bothers anymore? We’re damned tired,” Sara muttered to herself resentfully. “Tired of the attacks, and tired of defending ourselves without sleep. After all, how do you sleep when the very swamp itself is trying to kill you?”
    Sara wasn’t joking about that last part. There was something about this land that made it treacherous for them all. The one time a land mage traveling with their division had remarked on the subject, he had said with a sniff, “The very land has been called upon to devour us.”
    “By who?” Sara had asked.
    He had looked over at her with a disbelieving look. “By the Kades, of course.”
    Sara had shrugged, uncomfortable at arguing with him. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe the Kade mages