The Gravemarsh at dusk: flat, waterlogged ground stretching in every direction, the air thick with the smell of rot and standing water. Twisted trees rise from the muck at wrong angles, draped with grey moss. The fort is visible maybe half a mile distant, torchlight already showing in the dying light.

The dead are already moving toward them. Not running — the marsh doesn't allow it — but wading, pulling themselves free of the sucking mud with the single-minded patience of things that don't tire. A dozen visible, and more shapes shifting in the fog further out. The nearest is perhaps thirty feet away.

She stumbles, catching herself with the Force, and then sees the sky; the last hues of sunset are captivating, but she's only distracted for a moment before more proximal concerns draw her attention. She gestures for the droid to climb on and drops her 'saber into her hand; she can already tell that she'll be more mobile over the mud than the creatures surrounding her, but the nearest concentration of living beings is half a mile off and that's if she doesn't detour to avoid the thickest clumps of the things. Hold tight, she signs, and sets off, the Force serving to stop her from sinking into the mud as she runs.

The dead turn toward her as she moves — or rather, toward the sound and vibration of her passage, heads tilting at wrong angles. They're slow but they're everywhere, rising from the water, and her path to the fort is not clean. Two clusters she'll have to go through or around, and around means deeper water.

At the fort wall, Merra has already spotted her — the lightsaber is unmistakable even at distance, a moving point of light in the darkening marsh. She's shouting down to the yard before she's finished processing what she's seeing.

Inside, the debate is short and loud. "Something's out there fighting them. Human. Alone. Has some kind of — Merra, what did you call it — " Kiril doesn't wait for the answer. Whatever she is, she's killing undead, not running from them, and she's heading for his gates. He makes the call: if she reaches the walls, they open. If she doesn't, the question is moot.

The torches on the wall multiply. They're watching.

Around would be smarter, even with the extra detour that the deeper water represents; she doesn't know what these things can do, and she's increasingly sure from the way the Force is wobbling and churning that something odd is happening here, even if she's not sure how to interpret the unfamiliar patterns. She's not in the mood to be judicious, though, she's in the mood to kill whatever threatens her. She goes through, lightsaber flashing.

The first cluster comes apart quickly — she's faster than they expect anything to be, and the lightsaber does what it does. But one gets a hand on her arm before she takes its head, and the touch lands wrong in the Force, a smear of something that isn't quite death and isn't quite life, profoundly unnatural. The second cluster is harder, mud sucking at her feet at the worst moment, and she takes a glancing impact to the shoulder before she's clear — nothing serious, but another layer of wrong sensation to manage.

She comes out the other side with maybe a hundred yards to the gate. The watching torches haven't moved.

The gate opens.

Kiril is in the yard when she comes through. The gate is heavy timber, moving on a counterweight — fast enough, but not instant. Two soldiers are hauling on the mechanism, watching over their shoulders.

She spins as she comes through the door, her momentum changing in a way that's clearly unnatural, ready to strike down any undead who make it through the door behind her. After half a beat she gestures impatiently at the gate mechanism and it flings itself out of the soldiers' hands, slamming the gate closed.

She turns to face Kiril, giving him a slightly quizzical inspection before gesturing for DZ to let go of her; the droid promptly does, and steps to the side, visible to him but still protected by Deskyl's striking range. Deskyl signs again, and she asks a question in a polite, deferential tone and a completely unfamiliar language.

The soldiers stare at their hands where the mechanism left them. One of them looks at Kiril. Kiril's expression has completed its revision and settled into something flat and unreadable.

He doesn't understand a word she's said. He looks at the droid — a reasonable guess for translator — and then back at her, and spreads his hands in the universal gesture for I don't know what you just said.

"Kiril," he says, touching his chest. Then he waits.

"Xaari Deskyl," the droid replies, gesturing to her companion.

Deskyl signs again, shifts her stance to hold her 'saber in a neutral guard, and closes her eyes. After a moment, the droid asks another question, just as polite and no more understandable.

"What do you want here?" He asks it plainly, not hostile, watching her closed eyes with the particular stillness of a man deciding whether to be alarmed. He adds, slowly: "Food? Shelter? How long?"

Deskyl signs as he speaks, just a beat behind, with her eyes still closed. The lightsaber in one hand doesn't seem to interfere, the tip bobbing in concert with the more complex gestures of her other hand.

"Want shelter. Want..." she gestures from him to herself, then touches the place on her face where a mouth would be.

"Talk," Kiril says. "You want to talk." He glances at Deskyl's signing hands, at the droid's gesturing, working it out. "She can't—" he stops, reconsiders, addresses the droid directly. "She doesn't speak."

"She doesn't speak," the droid nods. "How long, she doesn't speak." She taps her own chest, "can't speak. Want you talk."

He nods slowly, accepting this, and then looks around at his soldiers — still watching, still frozen in various postures of uncertainty — and makes a decision.

"Vass." The sergeant materializes from somewhere to his left. "Get them inside. Food, somewhere to sleep." He looks back at DZ. "Talk tomorrow. When there is—" he pauses, gestures vaguely at the dark, "—light."

Deskyl scowls, at this, and opens her eyes to have a brief signed exchange with the droid.

"Want you to talk," she reiterates, slightly more emphatically.

Kiril looks at her for a moment — the scowl, the emphasis — and then pulls up a crate from the side of the yard and sits down on it.

"Talk," he says, and waits.

"You talk," she replies, back to her original calm tone. "DZ-12-Q," she touches her chest indicatively, "get talk when you talk."

Something shifts slightly in Kiril's expression — understanding, and maybe a flicker of something that isn't quite relief. She's not demanding answers, she's offering to learn the language. That's a different kind of patience than he expected.

He talks. Nothing sensitive — he describes the fort, the marsh, the supply situation in plain practical terms, the kind of thing he'd tell any new arrival. He speaks at a measured pace, gesturing at things when he can: the walls, the gate, the building behind him. He keeps going until it seems like enough.

She's not going to get to fluency from one conversation, but she's a quick study, and she has a reasonable grasp of the very basics of the language by the time Deskyl starts visibly drooping, some forty minutes later. "Deskyl should sleep," she interjects when it happens. "Do you have - things, that are like talking but not talking, that I can see?"

"Books," Kiril says, and looks at Kolar, who has been standing in the shadows this entire time with the expression of someone developing a headache. "Get her books. Whatever we have."

He stands, and addresses DZ directly. "Sleep now. Talk more — tomorrow, next day. When you have words." He pauses. "You eat? Both of you?"

"Deskyl eats. I do an other thing."

He nods, unsurprised — the droid not eating tracks — and says something over his shoulder. Brytha appears from the direction of the kitchens with the particular expression of someone who was already awake and already annoyed about it, carrying bread and something hot in a bowl.

She looks Deskyl over with sharp, assessing eyes, sets the food down on the crate Kiril vacated, and says something short and practical that DZ probably catches about half of.

Deskyl eats efficiently and without comment, looking somewhat like she's in danger of falling asleep where she sits; the bowl is clean by the time she's done, regardless. She stands, then, and gives Kiril a questioning look and a nod toward the fort's sleeping quarters.

Kiril glances in the direction she nodded — the correct direction — and his expression does something brief and controlled before he gestures for them to follow him. He shows them a small room, a storage space hastily repurposed with a bedroll, and steps back.

He says one word, pointing at himself, and then the door.

Deskyl is not, actually, going to wait for pleasantries rather than depositing herself in the bed the instant she sees it.