Marius pivots his gaze round him, the glade of broken bodies like unharvested rice, sinking in clumps, bobbing in the ripples of marsh-muck at the surface of the fetid water.   More fetid now than before, more rich with lifeblood that won't go to waste; did the raiders think, when they arose, that their breakfast would be churned into life-blood and cell growth only to be spilled as a feast for the needlefish and microbes of this swamp?<br/><br/>He looks at a still heaving form to his left... from more than one of the barraging, tactically oblivious mob, he'd only snipped off a limb with the oversized blade... knowing that the wound would be mortal, knowing how shock feels and how bodies react, he'd been, naturally, surprised to see some of them keep fighting-- not just stand, but actually continue to fight.<br/><br/>Now, his skin glistening with sweat that has barely had time to rise to the surface, Marius's shoulders heave for breath, and his first instinct is to look to Amara.  To see her, to see a lock of her dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, and the wild, hollow fear in her eyes-- somehow, it must be connected to this place... all the more reason to move...<br/><br/>One of the raiders... Marius sees him squirming in the muck; his legs are gnarled and dead trunks he drags through the lichenous, murky water-- his spine severed from one nearly-avoided strike of the dead man's blade Marius carries.  The grizzled, haggard face is bloodless now, spitting foam and bile as he wheezes and scrapes along the surface of the bog like some missing evolutionary link.<br/><br/>Marius watches... someone fed this man as a child.  Put hope in him.  And this is their reward.<br/><br/>He hears Thorius speak, and sizes her up for injuries.  There's something oddly fetching about the spatter of blood on her cheek... not her blood, he can see... not smeared, as many would have done with the back of their hand.  There's truth in her words, and it sets him into motion immediately.  Marius draws up on the scraggly-headed man, whose hair and beard must have been blond once.  His boots splash closer, unhurried, but wasting no time.  The man's breathing becomes more labored, vocal, and cries of pleading gutter with bloody foam at his lips.<br/><br/>Marius toes him over like one rolling a log aside, splashing the wounded raider onto his back.  Cautious for concealed attack, Marius seems otherwise unconcerned for the man.  "If you know anything, speak it."  He takes the flat of the still-dripping blade and, with a delicacy that belies the weapon's size, he flips the man's arm out in a pose like mock grandiosity, exposing the armpit, the pale, blood-smeared fingers, the flank.