Chapter 1

The countryside was a smoking ruin as far as anyone could travel, but of course that wasn’t more than a few days in any given direction in those times. It was a desert by any name, with more dust than sand, but very little in the way of life to be found.

Yet even in the most inhospitable of places, you may find the least likely of things.

“Ela!” A woman’s concerned yell echoed around the barren fields and rocky outcroppings that surrounded the small shack. “Where are you, child!?”

“I’m here, Momma!” A small girl rose from the rocks, grinning as she played with the small carved doll that she carried everywhere she went.

Her mother glared up at the small child’s dirty face and dirt-covered blonde hair. “Ela! How many times have I told you not to play where I can’t see you!?”

“I’m sorry, Momma…” The child shrugged as she nimbly hopped up and over the rock she was standing behind, then slid to the ground and ran to her mother. “I just wanted to play in the rocks…”

The mother picked her little girl up and swung her around, causing the child to giggle gleefully as her feet were swept out behind her. “Ah, Ela, child…you know how much I worry… The monsters could be by this way again… What would I do if I lost you, child? What would I do?”

The girl hugged her mother tightly around the neck, holding as if to a lifeline. “I’m sorry, Momma… Don’t let the monsters get me!”

The older woman smiled sadly. “I’ll never let that happen, child…but you have to help me too… You have to do what I say, so that I can protect you. Okay?”

She nodded. “Okay, Momma.”

The mother put the girl down and took her tiny hand, turning back to the old shack that was a short distance off. She glanced down to the little girl by her side and pursed her lips in an amused, yet annoyed, look as her voice snapped with a crisp sternness, “Come on, Elanthielle Bosca Timone, let’s go home.”

The two walked along, the little girl occasionally skipping as the mother held her back from running.

*****

Life is a funny thing, one of the most pervasive of creations in all the realities. It extends from the lowest forms to some of the highest, always growing, never reaching that point of balance that the rest of the universe strives to achieve.

And always, always changing just when one least expects.

So it was night, two days after that mundane incident, when young Elan was woken by a crash from below. She got up slowly, creeping to the doorway, where she could see some light shining from the large room that made up the majority of the small home. Through the ramshackle old door she could hear voices.

The first was a man’s voice, thick with relief but laden with a background fatigue that Elan didn’t recognize. She had no experience to know the sound, a deep bass voice filled with a weary fatigue that hinted at more than it told.

“Marra…I’m so glad that you’re well,” the voice said. “Is she…?”

“Ela’s fine, Damasc.” Elan recognized that voice as her mother’s. “She’s asleep.”

“Thank the Creator of All,” the male voice said, some of the fatigue replaced with genuine relief.

Elan crept closer, trying to get a peek. She’d hadn’t seen a man since she was five. She could barely remember that they existed, even though her mother often spoke of days when there had been a man living here, in this very house. Someone called Father, her pappa. She tilted her head as she peered into the room, her eyes wide as she listened to the voices.

“I had thought you dead, Damasc…Dama…” her mother said in a voice that Elan recognized from when, over three moons back, she had hidden out in the fields and pretended to be gone.

She’d thought it would be a good joke, something funny to do. That was the first time she had ever seen her mother cry, so Ela had immediately shown herself and tried to comfort her mother. When her mother had seen her, she had cried even harder, falling to her knees and crumpling into a ball.

Elan had almost run away then for real, thinking that her mother cried because she had come back. Her mother had seen the look on her face though, and the tears that spilled from her eyes, and had stopped her before she could bolt. Elan would never forget the feeling when her mother held her so tightly, crying and saying her name over and over again.

She didn’t like to hear her mother cry. It made a black pit form in the center of her stomach, made her afraid because her mother was the rock of her life. She hated to think of that rock crumbling. So, with this pit forming in her stomach, Elan rushed out and yelled at the unfamiliar figure.

“Get away from Momma!”

The man started, actually jumping slightly as the twelve-year-old child yelled and glared up at him from less than half his height. He looked down at her quizzically. “Ela?”

Elan ran between the stranger and her mother, standing protectively in front of the coarse skirt her mother was wearing and glaring up at him. “You made Momma cry! Get away!”

The man started to laugh, tears actually running down his cheeks as his body shook with the deep rumblings. For the first time, Elan got a good look at the man.

He was tall. Really tall, as far as Elan could tell. Taller than her mother, who was the tallest person in the world. His face was dirty, which caused his tears to leave long tracks of bare skin against the soot and black dirt that was caked over him. Elan couldn’t really tell what color his hair was, only that it was really, really long and dirtier than her mother ever let her get her own hair.

“Oh, Ela…” The man grinned, reaching down and picking her up against her protests. He held her out at arm’s length as the little girl beat her fists down on his arms. “I see that you’ve been protecting your momma… I’m proud of you, Ela.”

She kept hitting his arms until she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. “Ela…child…this is your father. I wasn’t crying because I was sad, dear… I was crying because I was so happy to see him ali…again.”

Elan stopped hitting the man’s arms long enough to peer at him quizzically. “Pappa?”

The man grinned at her, his teeth glaring white against the dirt on his face. “Yes, Ela…I’m your pappa.”

She reached out, tentatively toward his face, but couldn’t reach far enough to touch him. So he drew her closer and she pushed some of that long, dirty hair out of her way and looked at him. His eyes were blue, she realized, and he had a long scar along the left side of his cheek. But what her eyes were really drawn to was a blue color that peered out from under the dirt on the right side of his face.

She hesitantly brushed some of the dried dirt away, revealing a blue picture on his face. “What’s that?”

Damasc smiled at the innocent question and for a moment just let it echo through his mind. He remembered when she used to ask questions about everything. Why is the sky blue, Pappa? What makes things grow, Momma? What makes the monsters act so mean?

He lost his smile, and a sadness came over him. But then looked at her closely and smiled again. “That’s a mark of a warrior, Ela.”

“What’s a warrior?”

“Someone who fights the demons, Ela,” he replied, again sadly but very patiently as he set her gently down.

Elan scrunched up her face. “But…what’s a demon?”

“That’s what we call the monsters, Ela.”

“Oh,” she said, her face becoming bright. Her mind quickly added up the information and came to a conclusion. “You fight the monsters!”

He nodded, and Elan beamed up at him, mind still working behind her crystal blue eyes.

“You keep them away from my sleeping… You keep them away from Momma.”

Her mother hugged her from behind. “That’s right, Ela… He does.”

Elan digested this for a moment.

Monsters existed. She knew that, but she never knew that anyone fought monsters. She looked up at the man, her pappa, and frowned hard. Her features crinkled up as she thought, and there was a long silence as the two adults watched and waited for her to speak again.

Suddenly her face cleared up and she beamed up at the two grownups. “I wanna be a warrior too!”

Her parents smiled, a little reluctantly, their faces troubled. Her father pulled her in tight, hugging her close as her mother turned away.

“Maybe when you grow up, Ela…” she heard her father say. “Maybe when you grow up.”

The little girl gripped her father tightly around his wide neck, holding him much as she held her mother, and scrunched up her eyes as she repeated a promise over and over to herself.

I will be a warrior… I will be a warrior… I will be a warrior…

****

The next morning, Elan got up slowly. She was tired from the night before. She’d been awake well past her sleep time, and the light from the rising sun hurt her eyes. Still, she stumbled up and out, moving slowly out of her small room as she rubbed her eyes.

She stopped for a moment at the curtain that hid her mother’s room from the rest of their home and peeked around the flimsy fabric for a long moment.

Inside she saw her pappa holding her momma as they both slept, and she slowly tilted her head as she took in the scene. Pappa. She rolled the word around in her mind and slowly tasted it as she silently wrapped her tongue around the concept.

She had a pappa.

Her momma talked about how a little girl was supposed to grow up with a momma and a pappa, but Elan had never thought about it much before. She had a momma and that was enough, so she had always thought. But now she had a pappa too.

While she was thinking, she saw the man, her pappa, turn his head and smile as he opened his eyes and looked right at her. She jumped back instantly, letting the curtain fall back as she stared in surprise and shock at being found out.

She reddened as his deep chuckling laughter came drifting out from the curtains, and quickly scampered back to her own bed.

*****

The next months were the brightest that Elan could remember.

Her pappa helped her momma work the fields, bringing in the food and water. In the twilight hours he would go down to the river, sometimes pulling Elan along with him, and fish.

She treasured those times, alone with her new pappa. Her old pappa.

“Come, Ela…” he would say to her as he gathered up his fishing gear. “Let’s go to the river and get some breakfast.”

So she went with him, helping him land the fish and grinning as they would both tried to catch the flopping, slippery fish. His laugh was booming to her ears, but it sounded nice too. When they had gathered the fish, he would sit down and just grin at her for a long time without speaking.

One time she asked him what he was smiling at.

“You,” was all he said.

She scowled at him, pouting slightly. “Why?”

“Because I’m so very happy to be home with you and your momma, Ela,” he said.

“Where were you, Pappa?”

When she asked that question, he would always grow silent. It was a long time before she could get him to talk, and when she did, she never felt that he told her the real story.

“I’ve been away, Ela,” he tried the first time.

“I know that,” she said matter-of-factly, putting her hands on her hips.

He laughed softly. “I’ve been someplace very special, Ela… I was part of something that meant something very important.”

“Fighting the monsters?” she asked.

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, Ela…fighting the monsters.”

“Is that what that was for?” she asked, pointing to a long piece of metal that was at his side. He never went anywhere without it; she knew that he even slept with it nearby.

He touched his sword lightly, nodding. “Yes, Ela…this was for fighting monsters.”

“And this place you went…they showed you how to fight monsters?”

He grew saddened, but nodded. “Yes, Ela.”

Elan nodded, grinning. “Then I’m going there too.”

“You can’t, Ela,” he said solemnly.

“Why not?”

“Because…” Damasc sighed heavily as he pulled his daughter close. “They don’t exist anymore.”

“Why?”

Elan pulled back as her pappa loosened his grip on her and saw the tracks of tears running down his cheeks. “Pappa?”

“They’re all gone now, Ela…” he said. “They’re all gone.”

*****

After that day, Elan stopped asking her father about where he had been and who he had been with. The pain she had felt rolling off him that day had hurt her so badly that she even shied away from the subject in her mind, preferring to focus her energy elsewhere.

She had always been a hyper child, running around their small home and property, even after helping all day in the field or at the river. So it was inevitable that Elan would occasionally arrive in places where perhaps she shouldn’t be and see things that maybe she wasn’t supposed to.

Not so soon, not so young, at least.

It was about a month after the conversation with her father that Elan happened on her father during one of his solitary times.

Elanthielle clambered up the rock, moving as quietly as only someone of her size could. Her carved doll was clenched in her teeth as she climbed, held gently but firmly as she topped the huge boulder that sat in the center of their field. This was her place, it always had been, and she loved being alone in the immense sea of dirt that surrounded them.

At the top of the boulder she set about to play as she always had, but for some reason she stopped and looked down at the far side. She didn’t know what caused her to look over the side—she just had this funny tickling along the back of her neck—so she crawled softly over to the side and peered down.

Her father was there, right below where she played, right below her place. He was sitting here, back resting against the hard and unyielding surface of the huge rock, his head tilted back and his legs folded under him.

Elan frowned. She’d never seen her mother do this, and her curiosity was instantly piqued. She crawled slowly over to the edge of the rock and stared down, wondering if he were asleep. But no, she soon realized, his eyes were open, though they didn’t seem to be staring at anything.

Elan stood up as tall as she could, shielding her eyes to blot out the light of the noon-day sun, and stared off in the same direction as her father was.

No, there was nothing out there. It was extremely strange, and she tilted her head slightly, a puzzled scrunching of her face causing her nose to wrinkle slightly. Maybe Pappa had better eyes than she did?

She hopped up, hoping to get a little higher, as if that might give her a better vantage from which to see what it was that seemed to so enthrall the big man that was her father.

Still nothing.

She frowned, sitting down herself for a moment, and pondered the situation. After a time she glanced back down and he was still there and still staring off into the distance. She pouted, then looked from side to side and made a decision. Quickly she scrambled down the side of the boulder and landed squarely on the packed dirt. She made her way around until she found him and approached slowly, hesitantly.

“Pappa?”

He didn’t respond.

“Pappa?” She began to feel a tension in her as she walked closer. “Pappa? Are you alright?”

She got closer, her hand hesitantly reaching out until it was almost touching his unmoving face, only inches from his frozen eyes.

His hand snapped out in a lightning move that tore a startled scream from her throat as she jumped and tried to run. His hand snapped around her wrist, holding her firmly as his eyes locked onto her. For a moment his face was hard, wary, but upon seeing her, he instantly softened. “I’m sorry, Ela… Did I scare you?”

Upon hearing his soft voice, she stopped trying to run and looked back, half frightened and half ashamed. “I’m sorry, Pappa…I just wanted to know what you were doing…”

He nodded. “It’s alright, Ela… It’s alright…”

Damasc pulled his daughter close and held her for a moment before speaking. “I was on a Dream Quest, Ela…”

“A what?”

He sighed. Trying to explain the Quest or the Dreaming to one so young was difficult. More so because his own teachers had been barely able to do so to him. He looked up at the hot sun above him and climbed to his feet while holding his daughter. With her in his arms, he walked toward the cold spring that was the land’s sole redeeming virtue.

As he and Elan drank some of the icy cold water that sprang from the depths of the ground, he tried to explain.

“You see…” he started haltingly. “You know when you go to sleep…the pictures you see in your head?”

She nodded. “Mamma calls them dreams.”

He smiled. “Your mother is absolutely right. Dreams are gateways to other worlds, Ela…other places in this world sometimes… They have a power that we seldom understand. A power that we almost never hold in our hands.”

Elan didn’t really understand, but she did feel that it was a solemn sort of thing, so she reacted appropriately, nodding very seriously.

Damasc smiled at her serious face, even as he noted the confusion in her eyes. “When we learn to understand and control our dreams…we learn to understand and control our lives.”

“Is that what you were doing?” she asked, her face full of innocent curiosity. “Controlling your dreams?”

He sighed again. “I was trying, Ela…”

“By sitting out in the sun with no water?” Ela asked. Even she knew that wasn’t a good thing to do.

He nodded.

“Why?”

“When the body is tired…at the edge of endurance…” Damasc tried to explain, “its connection to the physical world is weakened.”

She looked confused, but nodded for him to continue.

“The physical world…the world around us that we can touch and taste and smell…” he explained, “is only part of the world we live in.”

“What part?”

Damasc laughed. “The solid part.”

“Oh,” Elan said, as if that explained everything.

“Some things you will only know later, Ela…” Damasc said. “Maybe you should play with your doll for now… Childhood is a time for those things.”

“No!” she said quickly, actually startling her father. “No…please. I want to know.”

“Alright…” He sighed, not really understanding why it was so interesting to her, but willing to humor the little girl. “When you are weak…tired, but not sleepy…when you are hungry and thirsty…that is when your connection to the solid world is weakest…” he said slowly. “That is when you can reach into the world of spirit and dreams.”

“Why?” her voice was innocently questioning.

“I don’t know.” He smiled, saying three words that hurt any parent to admit to their child. “I just know that it is so.”

“Oh…” She frowned. “So you hurt yourself?”

“No…I…push myself, to make myself stronger,” he tried to explain.

“Oh,” she said, brightening immediately. “Like when I carry buckets for Momma… It was really hard at first, but it got easier after a while.”

“Exactly.” He sighed in relief, glad to just have any common comparison.

“Can you show me?”

That took him by surprise, eliciting a blink and a grunt of shock as his jaw dropped. “Ela?”

“I want to learn this…Dreaming,” she said. “I want to be stronger too.”

“Ela…you’re…you’re too young.” He tried putting her off, knowing that it was a lie. The younger the person, the faster they could learn. That was what youth was for.

“I am not!” she pouted instantly. “I’m old enough to help Mamma in the field…”

“Yes…but…”

“I’m old enough to help you fish…” she continued.

“Yes…but…”

“I’m even old enough to make the nightly meal,” she finished with a tone of finality.

He sighed and gave in, thinking that it was a childish whim and she would soon forget. “Alright, Ela…I’ll show you what I know…but do not expect much. I have only entered a true Dream Quest once, and that was a long time ago.”

She didn’t seem to be deterred by the warning and merely grinned in victory. “Thank you, Pappa!”

Damasc Timone sighed and smiled. “You’re welcome, my little dreamer.”

*****

Childhood speeds past in ways that few things in this universe can match, more so for a family that knows the pain of separation, and this rule was not lifted for Elan and her family as a seemingly endless march of scorching hot days and fearfully chilly nights came to pass. Elan grew up, as children were wont to do, gaining in size and stature with practically every passing day, as far as her proud, but confused, father could tell.

Damasc didn’t know what to do with her, in fact. She was like nothing he knew, nothing he understood. He worried about her, in fact. He thought that she should do as a child would. Adulthood would come all too soon in the world they lived in, and the innocence of youth should never be wasted.

Elan, though, had ideas of her own in that regard.

Elanthielle dedicated her spare moments to learning what her father was willing to teach her, spending much of the next three years chasing his impossible dream, though the Dreaming continued to escape both father and daughter. And in those years, she grew up. Her height almost matched her mother’s then, her eyes coming closer and closer to those of her father in those inevitable times when they would quarrel.

Like her father, she spent many of the hottest days of the year seeking her dream while pushing her body’s limits of endurance with every passing moment.

“You try too hard, little dreamer,” he chastised her often, frowning at the red tone of her skin where the sun had baked it through even the dirt covering she always seemed to wear.

Elan smiled as she looked up to where her father was approaching her. “I am determined, Father.”

Damasc smiled, a little sadly though. He missed the old Pappa title as much as he missed the tiny little child who had fiercely defended her mother on that first night so long ago. She now stood even with his shoulders and showed every sign of continuing to grow out of control. “When I was in the city, before what happened…my master told me that dreams are like the mist… Don’t try to capture them, they’ll just slip through your fingers. You have to allow the dream, like the mist, to surround you. Only then can you control the dream, and use the mist.”

She sighed, frustrated. “It isn’t easy to wait for something you want so badly you can taste it, Father.”

“I know that, Ela,” he told her sadly, wondering how it was that he had infected her daughter with his own madness. “I know that.”

“What do you want that badly, Father?”

Damasc looked at his fifteen-year-old daughter, wondering at her determination for the thousandth time. “Justice. Revenge. I want the blood of my friends to stop screaming in my dreams, Elanthielle.”

She shivered. He never talked like this to her, not in the entire time he had been back. The words scared her, coming from him, but she had to know…to know what they meant, why he would say them. She had to know what things, both beautiful and terrible, had happened to make her father the man he was.

“Tell me, Father,” she said, reaching out and grabbing hold of his tunic, turning him back to face her.

He looked away for a moment, then looked back. For whatever reason, she wasn’t backing down from her goals as he thought she would. He expected to come home to a child and instead found a young woman waiting to be born. That hurt too, as much as the missing title of Pappa.

“Years ago…” he started slowly, taking a seat by the boulder, “I left you and your mother and went off to war.”

“Against the monsters.”

He nodded. “Yes. Against the monsters. They rule our world now.”

“I’ve never seen a monster,” Elanthielle said, brow furrowed in concentration and puzzlement. “Why?”

“We, your mother and I, chose to build our farm here because the monsters don’t like the desert,” he explained. “They have no place here to hide from the sun…and even those who can walk in it have no love of the sun’s light.”

She looked around the barren land that was her home with new eyes. “Momma never told me.”

“You didn’t need to worry about it, Ela,” he said. “Besides that…few people are willing to endure the hardship of the barren lands…even when they have all the basics of survival, as we have here. They don’t come here, and so the demons who hunt them do not come here either.”

“So…home is safe,” Ela said wonderingly.

“No,” Damasc said sternly, fiercely. “No, Ela…you are old enough to know…there is no place that is safe. Not now, not for a long time. The demons rule our world, Ela.”

“We have to take it back.”

So simple a pronouncement, so difficult a reality.

He smiled. “Many have tried. Most have died. The demons come here through their portals…they cast their magics…and even our most powerful fighters and mages and priests fall before them.”

Elan was silent for a while, thinking about that. “What happened?”

The quiet between them stretched into minutes before Damasc spoke again.

“We were attacked. Ambushed in broad daylight,” he said. “They came up through the ground…inside the stone walls of our building… Outside they had human soldiers waiting to catch any of us who tried to escape.”

“Human…!?” Elan asked in shock.

Damasc nodded. “Humans. This is a painful lesson, Ela…one that would be best to learn now, from me rather than later from a traitor. Humans are not angels. We choose our path through life and we are free to choose any path. Neither good nor evil lays sole claim to our souls, little dreamer.”

She looked around the area, avoiding contact with her father’s eyes for a long moment. “I don’t know any other humans…”

“I know. And I’m sorry for that…” he sighed. “I wanted you and your mother to be safe while I fought…”

“It’s alright, Father,” she said, getting up with a troubled expression. “I understand. I…need to think about this.”

He watched her walk away before sitting back against the boulder and sighing as he stared up at the drifting clouds. Could she understand? Was there any hope of even that meager salve to his conscience?

Damasc didn’t know, and the question of it was preying on his mind every day and night now. The talk of demons and the failings of his past burned in him then, an old fire and one that he had thought quenched in the blood of all those he had called friend. He got up slowly then and walked back to the house, then into his and his wife’s room.

Beside the bedroll, wrapped in tattered cloth, was something he hadn’t looked on in three years. Damasc steeled his determination then and drew out the dull metal of his sword.

If his little dreamer was going to follow her father’s path, then she should be shown well and truly how to walk it. Perhaps, just perhaps, he might deter her from it if she saw the cold, stark reality of the road she sought.

Living was the best a person could hope for in these days.

*****

Elanthielle was by the riverside, gathering water for the crops, when she heard a noise behind her. She turned around and saw her father standing there, dressed the way he had been the first time she saw him. His clothes were thick and stiff, his sword strapped at his side, and his face painted blue.

“Father?”

He was silent for a long moment and just stared at her as she stood up and looked at him. Finally he pulled an object from behind his back and tossed it to her. “Catch.”

She did, barely plucking the item from the air as it flew past her. She looked at it in wonder for a moment. “Father?”

He didn’t speak as she pulled the long, slim blade from the leather sheath and looked at it as the dull metal reflected the rising sun.

“That belonged to a friend of mine,” Damasc told her. “He was a small man…but brave, and loyal… He died well. I brought it with me for your mother, but you’re old enough now, Ela… If you intend to follow my path, my daughter…you must understand and accept this one thing.”

“What?” she asked, breathless as she looked on the blade. It was so much longer than the knives she and her mother carried, and it was even larger than the heavy and curved blade her father habitually kept in his belt.

“The rule of iron,” Damasc said solemnly. “The demons are weak against it… Cold iron can cut a demon who is otherwise invulnerable… And if you can cut it, you can kill it. And that, my little dreamer, is the goal. You must be ready to kill for our freedom and not stop until every last demon is driven from this world.”

Elan was silent for a long time. “I understand.”

Damasc shook his head, his eyes hard. “No. You don’t. But one day, if you continue on the path you seek, you will…and on that day, you may pledge your life for whatever cause you choose. Until then, all I ask is that you hold your tongue when you speak of death and killing. You are a foolish child who knows nothing of such things.”

Elan swallowed hard, but nodded. Her father had never spoken to her like that, and suddenly the blade in her hand felt a great deal heavier.

“Good,” he said, after a time. “Now, lift your sword and do as I do.”

*****

Sword drills, running, chores, and the Dream Quest absorbed Elanthielle’s time from that day forward. As she trained, she grew. Within another few months she towered over her mother and was able to look her father in the eyes with only the slightest tilt of her head.

Together the two trained, working along the bank of the river each morning after catching the day’s fish. Damasc drilled his daughter in the forms he knew, teaching her to strike and to parry and to think as she moved.

For her part, the young girl moved fast, and learned faster. She mastered her father’s style in months and was quickly able to match his moves with almost every session.

His strength and his power, however, were not hers to grasp.

No matter how much she desired them to be.

One night in early spring, just after she had turned sixteen, while Elanthielle was training, life again changed.

She was standing on the top of “her” boulder, her blade flashing through the air as she swept through the motions her father had shown her, when it happened.

There was a burst of smoke and a flash of light that ripped through the air, the concussion sweeping through the air and blowing her off her feet. She hit the rock with her head, her vision going red and blurring as her body rolled down into the crevice that she used to play in.

She groaned as her hand reached up, flopping against the rock as she tried to climb upward. She slowly made her way to the lip of the rock and looked down at the flickering light that was coming from her home.

“Momma? Pappa?” she gasped out, her blurred vision making out the movement of forms against the flickering light of fires that she couldn’t make out with any clarity.

Chapter 2

Damasc groaned as he picked himself off the ground, scrambling and stumbling along the floor as he dove for his sword. He knew the feeling of the explosive spell that had rocked the old building, rattling the walls with the force of it.

They’d found him; he didn’t know how. After more than four years, he had begun to relax, believing that they had given up.

He should have known better.

They never gave up.

He hit the ground rolling, the pommel of his heavy blade fitting like an old friend in his right hand as he clasped it firmly. His left joined it as he came to his feet, eyes darting right and left in an almost crazed search for the cause of the attack.

He saw the first of them, lower circle demons, as they crashed through what was left of the south wall of his home. He screamed, a war cry that was never far from his mind, and charged them with his blade held high. Three died in an instant, the heavy blade carving them from right to left as he made a single mighty swing of the imposing weapon.

They were still en route to the hard-packed ground when he heard a scream from one side and turned to see his Marra being hauled out of the building through a new hole that had been ripped in the wall by the very claws that were now dragging his wife away.

He bellowed his war cry again and charged the wall, bursting through it shoulder-first as the already damaged wood shattered around him. He hit the ground hard, but his muscled legs absorbed the shock, and stared around with wild eyes.

“Marra!” he screamed, his sword sweeping from left to right and ending the existence of another demon.

“Damasc!”

He spun, running toward the source of the scream, and ran straight into an entire squad of the same lower level minions between him and his wife.

Blood boiling, enraged, and seeing nothing but demon blood, Damasc charged the squad. His blade led the way and ended the lives of eight of the creatures before he was dragged down by the survivors. His head hit the ground hard, one of the demons slamming it into the ground with gusto as others ripped his sword from his hands. He felt their leathery hands pulling him along the ground and he struggled, but more just piled on until he couldn’t move any farther.

Damasc grunted in pain and lost breath as a booted foot cracked his ribs.

“Rebellious dog.”

He looked up, blinking hard as he tried to clear his vision. As the picture came into focus, he snarled and surged up. “Venadrin! You sick bastard!”

He got less than two feet before he was clubbed down again by the lower circle demons holding him back.

Venadrin smirked and stepped forward, pulling the beaten man up by one large hand wrapped around Damasc’s throat. “You knew the price of rebellion. You know the consequence.”

“No!” Damasc screamed, struggling hard against the restraining hands.

“Do it,” Venadrin said, turning to look at a lumbering beast that stood behind him.

The scrawny, leathery beast nodded and lifted the limp form of Marra from the dirt at its feet and dragged her over to the remains of the hovel that had been their home. It threw her bodily up against the wall and quickly drove a spike through her arm, pinning her there. It continued to do the same to each of her limbs as the woman screamed in pain and Damasc roared in rage behind it.

Tears blinded him as he turned his attention from his dying wife, back to his tormentor. “How could you, you bastard!?”

Venadrin idly traced a scar that ran along his left cheek. “I enforce the masters’ will. After all, who better to track down a human…than another human?”

“Traitorous, scum-loving piece of filth!” Damasc screamed at the man, spittle flying from his mouth.

Venadrin wiped his face clean, then turned away. “String him up.”

Damasc screamed in fury as the demons dragged him away from the human tracker.

They quickly ran him up a makeshift gallows, stringing him up slowly so that the pressure of the rope slowly cut off his air supply. For a moment he twisted around loosely as the rope turned, and his eyes fell on a pair of blue eyes that were staring back at him from the top of the stone mound just a short distance away.

He fought down the urge to scream through the pain and the strangling rope, fought back the desire to tell his daughter to run. Instead he just stared intently at her and shook his head wildly from side to side as he saw her move to climb down the rock. The rope burned his throat with every move, but he kept shaking his head until he saw her hunker back down against the rock.

He barely had time to nod his approval before he was spun around and tied into place so he could watch his wife bleed to death.

*****

Elanthielle rose silently from the rock just after the last of the demons had vanished. She was quaking from terror tinged with anger, having spent hours upon hours watching the horror unfold. She never looked away, she rarely even blinked, absolutely unable to do either despite the terrible scene that lay on the desert plains beneath her boulder. Through it all she’d blinked away the burning tears and refused to look anywhere but at her parents.

Her dying parents.

The dawn was breaking behind her, to the east, as she rose from her prone position. The demons had all left a short while ago, as soon as the light of day began to make itself known on the horizon. She dropped from the boulder, landing nimbly on the packed earth of her barren home.

Her steps were halting as she stumbled forward, her suppressed grief mounting with every step as she closed in on where her parents were.

“Momma…” she whispered, her voice a hoarse mockery of its usual pure sound.

Her mother was white, an ugly pallid color that burned itself into the young girl’s mind, a color that she’d never seen in flesh before. Under her unmoving body was a huge rusty-brown stain that covered the ground. Elanthielle hesitantly reached up, gently nudging her mother’s shoulder.

“Momma?” She finally swallowed, falling back a few steps as what she knew finally became what she felt. “Oh, Creator…”

She fell back in halting steps until she bumped into something behind her and turned involuntarily. She instantly let out a shriek as she spun into the swinging body of her father. The shock robbed the young girl of her strength, and she fell to the ground, landing heavily as she stared up at the lax flesh that used to be the vibrant man she knew as her father.

“Pappa.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she whispered out the old name, the first name, the true name that she always kept inside for her father. “Oh, Pappa…”

*****

The hot sun was high in the sky before Elanthielle finished her grim work. She’d cut her father down and spent a good part of the morning dragging him into the house and trying to clean him up as best she could. Her mother was harder. Completely aside from the fact that the spikes were solidly entrenched in the wooden wall, the task was made all the more gruesome by the fact that Elan had to remove each of them in turn.

By the time she was done, Elan was coated in the thickening blood that hadn’t drained from her mother’s body, but both of her parents were resting more or less peacefully inside the ramshackle old building.

The girl then spent the rest of the morning cleaning up both bodies, methodically washing them down with water drawn from the small spring. Then she dressed them in the clothes they liked best.

Her father she placed in his armor, tucking his hefty sword in his left hand as she laid him back in his bed.

Her mother she dressed in an old dress that she’d only see her mother wear three times. It was soft and silky and made of some material that she had never known before. When she was done, Elan sat back at the foot of her parents’ bed and just sat there as the heat from the sun overhead began to seep into the house.

She didn’t move until nightfall, the heat of the day already fleeing the home with remarkable speed as the desert gave up its claim on the sun’s wealth. She got up quietly, moving with the grace she’d learned as a method to compensate for the power she lacked. Silently she backed out of her parents’ room and stopped in the open public room of the home. She strapped her small hunting knife to her hip, picked up her slim-bladed sword, and flipped the blade and scabbard over her head and shoulder, letting the weight of it settle against her back.

Elanthielle took a deep breath, her face setting as she moved, and picked up a small lantern that had served her and her momma for sixteen years. She looked at the flickering flame for a moment, then let out the breath in a long exhalation and smashed the lantern against the far wall.

The flames were already flickering behind her as Elan stepped out into the night air.

She paused, looking back at the building that had been her home for sixteen years, and spoke softly.

“I’m sorry, Pappa. I should have been stronger… I should have understood.” Tears welled up in her eyes as they reflected the dancing fires. “I understand now… I know what you meant, Pappa. I’ve chosen my cause… I’ve chosen…” She started to turn away, then paused again and looked back one last time. “Goodbye, Momma… Goodbye, Pappa… I love you both.”

Then she turned and her face darkened, as much by the swell of emotions welling in her as by the fact that the shadows of night enveloped her. She began walking to the north as quickly as she could, moving with long, even strides of purpose as she followed the clearly marked trail left by the murderers who had taken her life.

*****

As the sun set far off in the west, the man called Venadrin looked around his camp with a critical eye. Not that he let it show on his face at all. After all, it didn’t do for a mere human to go around critiquing his superiors. Not even when said human was technically ranked higher than those self same “betters.”

Even so, he had to fight to keep from curling up his lips in disgust. Demons, all of them as a race as far as he could tell, were mentally incapable of anything resembling discipline. Even the lower circle bastards who should have known better were far too arrogant to comprehend the need for piddling things like “security” and “readiness.”

Of course, even an old a hand at watching his back as Venadrin couldn’t really fault them for that, he supposed. They had, after all, been kicking the ass of every living being who dared oppose them for the better part of two millennia. At least.

Truth be told, Venadrin suspected it was a lot longer than that. So it was understandable that they be a little…confident.

Which only made the situation worse, from the human’s point of view. It actually galled him that these lowborn bastards had actually succeeded in keeping down every attempt by human armies to fight back. Even a human like Venadrin, someone who had long ago thrown his lot in with the demons, found it…aggravating to be exposed to such contempt.

He sighed, mentally purging his mind of the unproductive thoughts as he prepared to speak to his demonic “advisor.” That complete, he walked over to the towering hulk of a creature that was calmly eyeing the blood red setting of the sun.

“Skorra…”

“Yes, human?”

Venadrin bit down his anger at the contempt he heard in the demon’s rumbling tones. “We should be moving again soon.”

“What rush?” Skorra, the huge, leathery demon, didn’t even deign to look at the collaborator as he casually asked the question.

“We’ve done our job. It’s time to get back to the city,” Venadrin pressed. “Damasc had allies…friends. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be caught in the open like this…”

“He was alone.”

“He was not.”

“Female don’t count.”

Boy, you can tell that he’s never been married. Venadrin mentally curled his lips, but outwardly was careful to remain neutral. “Perhaps you’re right. But why risk it?”

Skorra shrugged, then nodded reluctantly. “Very well. Gather them.”

Venadrin nodded, still being careful to monitor his emotions as he turned away. Stupid bastard. Almost makes me wonder why I switched sides. Almost.

Aloud he raised his voice, catching the attention of his “lieutenants.” “Get everyone up and ready to move! You have five minutes!”

*****

Elanthielle had been walking for hours, moving as fast as she could and still maintain a steady pace. Her best guess was that she had been moving for three hours when she found the campsite. It was a pretty bad mess, even for a barren land like her home. The local terrain had been ripped up in a dozen places and soiled in a hundred more. She grimaced as she moved past the waste and refuse that marked the demons’ camp and continued to follow their trail.

Not far now, she thought to herself, her face tightening in determined anger. They left just before dawn yesterday… Demons don’t like to travel by sunlight…not even those of them who are capable of it.

As she moved, she mentally recited her father’s lessons by rote, doing the mental katas that he taught her even as she kept her eyes on the trail ahead of her. She’d hunted and fished with her father, and though game was scarce in the Barrens, they’d never once gone hungry. Not before or after Damasc had returned to his family.

As she moved, Elan promised herself that her hunger would not go unslaked this time, even though it wasn’t a physical hunger that gnawed at her ribs.

The dawn was lighting the sky when she found what she was looking for, the first signs she’d found of an occupied camp. The young girl drew her slim blade and moved forward slowly, her eyes narrowing as she made out a silhouette against the lightening sky.

*****

“Daylight shift,” the Gorana demon muttered in its croaking language. “Who does that softskin think he is?”

The demon stood, disgustedly, out in the open, purportedly to watch for anyone trying to sneak up on the burrow his “comrades” were currently nestled snugly in. He and three other Goranas had been stationed roughly at the compass points as the sun rose on the horizon.

He hated the blue.

It was an odd thought, he supposed, but it was true. The Gorana demon actually despised the color blue. Especially sky blue. The thought of all that color hanging over him just drove him absolutely mad.

And here he was, stuck on daylight shift, with nothing except that scourge-be-damned blue over his head. It was enough to make one claustrophobic. Give him the expanse of stars and black any day, or at least a comfortable cave.

He never had a chance to consider how idiotic that particular thought really was, as his train of thought was abruptly cut off by a shadow rising from a rock to the west. He looked up, frowned oddly, and almost had a chance to speak.

Then the shadow slashed down at him, and the Gorana demon didn’t see any more blue.

*****

Elanthielle panted heavily for a long moment, her sword dug into the ground where her slice had finally stopped. The demon thing had stood for a moment, causing her to panic and try to pry her blade loose from the dirt, but it had jammed itself solidly and she could do nothing but stare in stark terror as the demon stared back at her.

It stared. She stared.

Then the thing just slumped to the ground, like all its bones had magically vanished, leaving Elan to stare at the body for some time before her breathing returned to normal. Her chest heaved, but the rate began to slow as she got herself back under control.

She felt something slide down her face and her left hand came up reflexively to brush it away. When her hand squished against her cheek, spreading whatever it was, she pulled it back quickly and stared at it.

In the slowly rising light, Elan could see the black ichor that passed for blood in the thing she had killed. Instantly the realization swept over her, causing her own blood to rush from her face.

She had killed a demon. She was covered in its blood.

An incredible urge to scream welled within her, and she fell back away from the body as she stared at the thing in shock. Her panting redoubled, and her chest heaved as she scrambled back, leaving her sword where it was stuck in the ground. She came back to a halt, her back pressed against the boulder she had leapt from, and opened her mouth to scream as her hands began to scrape at her face in an attempt to get the blood off.

No sound came out.

Slowly she came back to her senses. One agonizing step at a time, first regaining some control as she grabbed at her ragged tunic and wiped her face clean, and then another step as she looked at the inhuman body and recognized one of the creatures that had strung her father up.

She got back to her feet, her face setting itself as rationality returned, and she glared down at the thing on the ground and knew.

She knew that they could die now.

She knew that she could kill them.

She knew.

Elan grabbed the pommel of her blade and wrenched it from the ground with a powerful pull, a victorious feeling swelling up in her belly as she looked around for another target.

By the time the sun had risen to midmorning, Elan had located the next one. The ugly beast looked just like her first victim…her first target, she told herself firmly, refusing to honor these things with any human designation. It was hunkered down low in a crevice, hiding its eyes from the sun as it grumbled to itself in some strange language.

Elan didn’t care what it was thinking; she didn’t much care if it thought at all.

She just wanted it dead.

So she stalked closer, moving as quietly as the great cats her father had told her about. Her sword was a dull line against the sky above her as she lifted it over her head and leapt down into the crevice.

Four of them, Elan thought, wiping her face clean again. Killing is dirty work, she added softly in the back of her mind, dispassionately deciding that her tunic and pants were ruined. They would be hard to replace out here.

She didn’t consider where her earlier rage had gone, but it wasn’t in her mind as she moved through the rock cropping, blood dripping from her face and hands, as she sought her next goal.

Now I must find what they were guarding.

She climbed out of the fourth such crevice she had been in so far that day and looked around. The sun was high in the sky now, just past its highest point and starting the long fall to darkness. That left her a few hours to do her work before the demons regained their advantage, she decided as she hefted her light blade and scoured the barren terrain with her eyes.

Somewhere there had to be a cave, she supposed. Father had told her that the demons had no love of the sun’s light, so they would be under cover if they could. She didn’t know much about the land around her, but the rocks seemed about right for an underground formation. The clean cuts looked like a place near home, one she had explored all her life.

Another few minutes of search, focusing in the center of where the four guards had been standing, found the entrance. Elan looked up at the sun one last time, then turned and strode into the dark of the cave.

She wasn’t going to let them get away with what they had done.

Never.

No matter the cost.

It only took her a few steps to know that she had been right—the cave was very much like the ones near where she had grown up. Her mother had shown one of them to her at a very young age, telling her that if something happened, she should run there and wait.

Well, something had happened.

But there was no one coming to get her this time.

Elan blinked away a sudden rush of tears, forcing them back as her stomach knotted up with the pain that reached up and constricted her throat as well. She gritted her teeth at that, forcing it all down, deep down inside, and locking it away. She didn’t have time for that, not now.

Maybe not ever.

So she kept moving down, along the smooth, carved steps that led deeper into the cave, watching the meager light reflect off the eerily perfect surface as she kept her eyes open for her prey. They were here; they had to be.

She couldn’t come this far for nothing.

They had to be here.

And then, they were.

The first shadow in the semi-grey of the cave was her only clue that she’d come upon her prey. It was a spot against the wall that didn’t reflect the tiny amount of light that infiltrated this deep. Elan held her breath, freezing in place as she looked intently at the shadow until her eyes adjusted to the low light and she began to make out details.

It was ugly.

Ugly as the things she’d killed above, ugly as the stories she’d heard from her father. It was just as ugly as she’d ever imagined the demons might be. Scales, like those on the water snakes that lived in the river, reflected the light in tiny points now that she could see again. Its eyes were dark pits against the reflected light, much like its shadow was cut from the light that bounced off the smooth, squared-off walls of the cave.

Elan froze, sinking to a crouch as she began to look around.

Her eyes had adjusted quickly to the low light, and she could tell that the cave was immense. It was bigger then she’d ever seen, a huge block cut from the earth that dwarfed everything she had ever known.

And it was infested with the demons that had destroyed her life.

They hung from the walls, the ceiling, and were scattered across the floor. They were a multitude of nightmarish shapes, large and small, leathery and dripping with something she didn’t want to consider. In the darkness she couldn’t make out the details as well as she might have wished, but something deep inside her was glad of it.

Elanthielle froze then, staring as some meager form of intellect rose up against the cold rage that drove her.

There were so many.

She swallowed, feeling fear for the first time since she’d watched her parents die.

Not fear of death, though. Fear of failure.

Her hate and her mind warred then, each demanding a different action. Her hate wanted them dead. All of them, and right now. Her mind kept insisting that this wasn’t the time. She had to live to get them all; she couldn’t die here. Not now, not yet.

Elan froze then, caught between two powerful desires, and found that she couldn’t move.

For long seconds turning to minutes, she crouched there in the darkness, staring at the monsters of her childhood, the objects of her hatred, and through it all she couldn’t move a muscle. Frozen in the moment of indecision, Ela didn’t hear the scuffle of claws on the smooth surface of the floor behind her until it was too late.

“Kor!” the demon croaked in its own language, the word more an expression of startled surprise than anything else. “Qen Kar Crakt?”

The moment of indecision died then as instinct rushed in to seize control from the mind and the heart. Where they had failed her, Elan’s primal core caused her to spin as she rose, kicking off the ground as her blade lashed out and neatly, if not cleanly, separated the demon’s head from its body.

The ichor and blood sprayed the room, inundating the air with a sickening, rotten odor and covering Elan with the sticky scent of death. She ignored it, letting the body and head slap to the ground in separate places as she pushed past them and ran for the exit.

She skidded to a stop when three more demons appeared from the darkness between her and her goal, warned by either the last words of their brethren or by his last breath. She didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter. Elan looked desperately to either side, then screamed as she saw others waking as well.

She lifted her blade then, and charged.

Her scream echoed through the cave, her instincts giving in to the demands of her heart as it became obvious that escaping undetected was no longer possible, and even escaping alive would require more than mere action now.

The three demons met her charge, the first falling to the swipe of her blade as her scream shocked and surprised the other two. The dying demon’s body captured her sword, though, and drug it down as it fell, leaving Elan open as the other two tackled her.

The sword jerked loose as she was propelled back, but they were in too close and she couldn’t get the power to hurt them with the blade as they fell. She grunted in pain and shock, air rushing from her lungs, as they hit the ground and rolled, but hung on to her weapon with a tenacity borne of desperation.

The scrabble of claws against the cold, smooth surface filled the air, along with her panting breaths and the hissing screams of the inhuman monsters with whom she fought. Their claws cut into her skin as Elan whipped her sword around, slamming the pommel into one demon’s temple and driving it away from her.

It fell to the side, leaving only the one left, but that one grabbed for her arm and held the blade back, slamming her hand repeatedly into the ground until the blade clattered free. It hissed at her then, yelling something in its guttural tongue and spraying her face with saliva as she screamed back and continued to struggle.

Her free hand found the hilt of her small knife then, the one she used when she hunted or caught fish in the river. It slid from her belt with a familiar ease despite the terror of the situation, and then slid right into the demon with only a little more difficulty than through a fish.

The demon froze then, its weight above her as she stared up into the soulless black pits of its eyes, and became dead weight against her small form. Elan screamed again, pushing with all her strength, and shoved it off to the side, where it hit the ground with a boneless thud.

She slowly climbed back to her knees, eyes looking around intently as she saw the crowd of demons that surrounded her then. They were of all shapes and sizes, as far as she could see. Monstrous, some of them, in size and appearance. Black ichor glistened in the meager light as some hissed at her, white flesh on others appearing almost luminescent in the low light as their perfectly human features were twisted in a parody of a smile, their eyes gleaming black against the grey of the cavern.

Elan’s hand found the pommel of her sword then, and she pulled it to her as she rose to her feet. Its scraping against the surface filled the silence then, and she drew it up until it was set before her in preparation for the defense, as her father had taught her.

“Well, well, well.” A cold voice, sinister in the darkness. “What have we here?”

Elan turned to the voice then, blood running from her face as she recognized the face of the man who had killed her father.

He must have seen the change, somehow in the darkness, and he smiled at her, lips thin against the gauntness of his face. “Pretty girl. What brings you to my little camp?”

Elan’s anger knew no coherence then, her lips pulled back until her teeth glistened against the wet black of her face. Only those shining white teeth and the glittering ice of her eyes really cut her apart from the monsters around her as she screamed incoherently and charged the man.

He met her blade with a flick of his wrist, a long curved sword appearing in his hand as if by magic and stopping her blow in its place with an ease that might have shocked her, had Elan had any faculties left to be shocked. She snarled again, yanking her blade back, and screamed as she pivoted and swung it hard at his side.

This time he stepped back in a single fluid motion, letting the point of her blade whistle past. He stepped in as her blow brought her arm well past. She felt him, then, pushed right up against her, his body touching hers as his clean, white face sneered down at her from the shadows above her.

“You don’t have the muscles to match me with those pitiful moves,” he hissed, sneering as he struck out at her arm with one hand.

Elan yelped in startled pain, and her sword clattered to the ground as her arm suddenly went numb and refused to obey her commands.

“You fight like an old friend of mine,” the man sneered again. “I wonder now…did we miss someone last night?”

She screamed, still incoherent, and swung for the man’s face with all the power she could muster. The blow cracked through the room, rocking him back in fury and surprise as he grabbed for his jaw in obvious pain. Then he snarled, and the last thing she remembered clearly was the pommel of his sword coming right at her.

The world swung around her as he connected with her face, throwing her back, and somewhere from far away she heard his voice again.

“Take her.”

Then, with growls and hisses, the shadows themselves fell upon her and she knew nothing but the pain.

Chapter 3

The pain was still there when she returned to her senses, or as close to her senses as one might suppose after the savage beating she had endured. The darkness was still all around her then, but the air was fresh and didn’t have the muggy humidity that had existed in the cavern.

Her eyes fluttered slightly, and a mocking voice filtered deep into her mind as a stabbing pain issued through her chest.

“Well, well, the sleeping beauty, as they say, awakes.”

That voice.

She couldn’t remember why, but she knew that she despised that voice.

Elan groaned in pain as she forced her eyes open.

She was outside. The stars were starting to show in the barely lit sky above her, and she was unable to move. She tried to roll to her feet, but a sudden tearing pain from her shoulder almost caused her to black out again as she let out a scream of pain.

“Tsk, tsk,” the voice said again, an edge of black humor tinting it. “Should have warned you about that… You aren’t going anywhere, pretty girl.”

Elanthielle opened her eyes then and saw the dark eyes looking down at her, and her mind caught up to the situation in a rush of rage and adrenaline. She growled and screamed, both in anger and pain, and tried to surge up at him. He just laughed as her back arched off the ground, but her limbs wouldn’t obey her commands.

She twisted around, the pain still riding the edge of her mind, and stared in open horror at her left hand.

A naked blade had been driven through her wrist and deep into the ground. There was a pool of blackened blood around her hand, soaked into the dirt under her.

Her gasp of horror ignited a round of sinister laughter from around her, and she twisted again to see that the man wasn’t alone. There were the demons, all of them, she supposed, all laughing at her predicament.

“Don’t worry,” the man, the human, told her then. “We were very careful…didn’t cut anything vital, so you won’t be bleeding to death. Well…unless you struggle too much.”

That comment just brought another round of laughter from the demons, which redoubled when Elan fell deathly still.

The human smirked at her sudden immobility, his eyes dropping down across her body in a motion that made her follow them with her own. Another hiss of air into her lungs announced her shock and was followed by a muffled groan as a knife-like pain stabbed through her chest.

“Noticing the lack of clothes I suppose?” He smiled that oily leer that he had during their brief fight, and Elan felt dirtier suddenly than she had when covered with demon blood. “Well, your clothes were ruined, I’m afraid…and we just don’t have anything in your size.”

She snarled then, against the pain, and surged up again with teeth bared.

“You should count yourself lucky, child. You’re not my type, and I don’t work with any of the demons that favor human…flesh,” he said, drawing out the last word as though savoring it. “Normally I’d bring you back and give you to the master, but it’s a long trip and you’re not worth the effort. There are hundreds more just like you where we’re going, so I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here.”

He just chuckled softly and looked up at the night sky. “It’s going to be a bit cool tonight, I’d warrant…but I wouldn’t worry. You’ll warm right up when the sun comes up.”

He got up from his crouch then, lightly fingering his jaw as he looked down at the mottled black and blue of the bruises that covered the her body. “What’s your name, pretty girl?”

She just growled again, fists clenched as blood began to run freely down the blade of the knives in her wrists.

“Very well.” He leered again, mocking her with a half bow. “Have it your own way. I seem to recall my old friend Damasc talking about a little girl, now that I think of it. Hadn’t really thought about it until now… I should have remembered you last night.” He rubbed his chin idly then. “Now, what was it he said her name was? His little Ela, I think. Is that you, Ela?”

Her eyes blazed with blue fire, teeth bared as her lips were pulled back in a rigor of hate and pain.

“Yes…yes, I can see the resemblance,” he told her mockingly. “Damasc had too much courage and not enough skill as well. You appear to have taken your looks from your mother, though… I would congratulate you on the luck, but it’s not really going to matter much.” He turned away from the snarling, twisting, and bleeding girl and looked around at the demons. “This is what killed seven of your brethren?”

They growled a little, glaring openly at him now, but were unwilling to do or say anything openly, as the only one who’d truly outranked the human was now dead at the hands of the child before them.

“Pathetic.” He shook his head, then turned back to where Elan was pinned to the ground. “Well, now, pretty girl…I’m afraid that my ‘friends’ and I have a long distance to travel, and we really should get going.” He kneeled down, mock whispering, “They really don’t like the sun, you know. Allergies, I suppose. I do wish I had more time with you… We could have had such fun, pretty girl. Say hello to the sun for me, will you? I don’t get to see it nearly as often as I’d like anymore.”

Then he sneered at her again and rose to his feet, turning his back on her as she fell back from her struggles, the pain finally beating her down.

“Alright.” He glared at the assembled demons. “Let’s get moving.”

The group started to move out then, and the man half turned back once more to leer openly at Elan’s body.

“By the way—” He smiled at her, his eyes glinting in the dark. “—when you see old Damasc in the pits, tell him I said, ‘Three for three’. He’ll understand.”

Then he turned his back on her one last time and walked away, vanishing into the darkness along with his demon cohort, leaving Elanthielle staked out on the blood-soaked ground to wait for death, from whatever source it came.

*****

There is an expression, which humans and other species have long used, that goes something like: “I’ll believe it when the sands of the desert grow cold” or, another common expression, “when hell itself freezes over.”

Neither phrase is particularly accurate in their intent, as descriptive as they may be.

The Nine Planes of Hell, for example, actually contain many areas where the temperature would be quite conducive to freezing over. That was, of course, if there were any water there to freeze.

Of course, for artificially constructed dimensional pockets, the Nine Planes are disturbingly inhospitable, which goes quite some distance to establishing the mindset of those who created them.

The other expression is equally false.

The nights in a desert are actually quite cold, the ground giving up its heat more readily than would water. Shortly after sunset, in even the hottest of deserts, the temperature can drop so drastically so as to have frost form long before the following sunrise if the air should happen to have enough water to freeze. The wasteland in which Elan grew up didn’t have enough water, so no frost formed around her, except in the ground where her blood had soaked into the dirt, and there it was extremely short lived.

That didn’t make the temperature any more comfortable, however. As the ground gave up its greedily acquired heat to the rapidly cooling night air, she felt goose bumps rise on her naked flesh. Elan focused hard on the dagger in her left wrist, trying to find a way to dislodge it despite the pain, but soon the agony that speared her with every inched motion was too much and she fell back again.

Her anger was gone now, the block that powerful emotion had raised against the agony gone with it, and Elanthielle found that she could no longer move without crying out. It was all she could do to lie still, whimpering softly at the pain that seemed to come from all sides. Her bones were broken, her flesh was battered and cut, and she had failed.

She fell back, looking up at the night sky, and a soft whisper came to her lips.

“Sorry, Momma… I’m sorry, Pappa. I…I didn’t keep my vow.”

Shortly after that, the shivering began as the rapidly dropping temperature and the loss of blood conspired to rob her of the heat she held.

How long she lay there, the cold working its way deeper and deeper into her body, Elan didn’t know, but eventually she drifted off and greeted the overwhelming darkness with all the joy of a starving man greeting freshly prepared food.

Sleep, if it could be called that, was fitful and filled with dreams and nightmares. She was chased by demons as they paraded the dead bodies of her parents before them, unable to turn on them because of the gut-clenching fear that rode through her, barely able to run as the land itself bucked under her feet and caused her to constantly stumble and fall.

Dawn found her unmoving against the ground, clotted and drying blood covering her wrists and ankles, eyes half open as they stared up at the lightening sky. She didn’t know when she had awoken, or if she had, but the rising sun brought her briefly from the mists that fogged her mind, and back to the harsh reality.

In an hour, the sun had returned the warmth she had lost. Its rays were like a gift from the gods themselves. Shortly after that, however, the gift began to take more than it gave. She sweated under the bathing heat, her naked flesh glistening from the perspiration as the rays began to beat down on her, robbing her of more moisture as the rising sun cooked the wasteland for another day.

By midday, every inch of her exposed skin, her entire front, was red and burnt and the sweating had stopped as her body began to find that it had no more water to give for something as trivial as cooling. Fever dreams set in shortly after, and awake or asleep, Elan could no longer escape her own personal demons.

*****

She ran.

Elanthielle couldn’t see where she was going, nor could she see what was chasing her, but she ran. The feeling of some unnamed evil breathing down the back of her neck wouldn’t go away, raising the hairs of that soft skin and sending shivers along her spine. She looked over her shoulder but saw nothing but sand and dirt behind her, but she knew…somehow knew…that if she stopped running, the terror would catch up with her.

So she kept running, even though the ground was uneven and moved underfoot, making her stumble and fall. She skidded along the coarse dirt, ignoring the fact that she felt no pain from the impact, and climbed back to her feet in a desperate struggle as the terror built up behind her again.

It was closer.

She could feel it.

Elan couldn’t shake it; she couldn’t stop running either. The mere thought of it catching her was enough to send her heart racing and tie her stomach in knots.

Then she hit something in her path and went down again, her hair haloing out around her head as she struck the solid ground, and her eyes snapped open with the shock of it as her back arched in an attempt to get up.

She screamed then, not from the fear, but from the searing pain that lanced along her body from the burns she had covering her exposed flesh and from the blades that still dug deep into her wrists and ankles.

Her cry went out, echoing over the barren land, but there was no one to hear it and she just fell back to the ground and sobbed from the pain she could feel frying her skin. There was little relief in it, but the sobs were the only action she could take that didn’t add to her pain, so she just lay there as the sun continued its descent to the horizon.

Her skin was on fire as reality reasserted itself, her fear dying down to a dull throb in the back of her mind, but the pain and loss coming back to the forefront.

Finally, though, all of it dulled out.

She didn’t know why, just that perhaps her body had experienced more pain than it could take. Maybe the dulling was some sort of safety release, protecting her sanity. Or, perhaps, it was the loss of her sanity that dulled the fires.

Elan didn’t know, nor did she care at that point.

The world wavered around her then, and she closed her eyes again, shielding them against the hot, baking sun.

When she opened them again, the searing flames of the sun were gone and she was standing alone on a windswept dune, a cool breeze wafting around her as she paused in surprise.

“Am I…dead?” she asked softly, the sound of her voice surprising her as she blinked and swallowed.

She knew that she couldn’t be standing there, that somehow she wasn’t really there. She was lying on the sun-baked dirt, with long daggers driven through her limbs to pin her securely into place. She wasn’t standing on a peaceful dune, watching the lights in the sky as they wavered and shifted colors in a brilliant display of beauty.

Still, she didn’t think she was dead either.

She wasn’t sure what being dead was, but she didn’t think that this was what it felt like.

“I’m asleep,” she said a moment later, then knew it to be true almost as quickly as the words slipped from her mouth.

At least it didn’t hurt anymore.

Her lips and throat still felt sun-baked though, and her mind…

She couldn’t focus suddenly, the world shifting around her as the dune vanished and she stumbled, coming to her knees.

She opened her eyes to the most wonderful sight she had ever seen: a calm, cool lake of clear water right at her knees. She fell forward then, splashing into the water, and dipped her face down into its surface, drawing as much of it up into her mouth and throat as she could. Her blonde hair landed in it around her face, slowly sinking into its surface, but she ignored it as she kept drinking.

She drank and drank, pulling more of the cool, clear liquid into herself than she ever had in the past, but it never seemed to be enough. After each cooling draught, her lips chapped at her more than before, her throat rasping worse and worse.

Finally she gave up, falling back to sit in the water that seemed so inviting, but remained so torturously out of sight. There she just sobbed again, unable or unwilling to move as she stared down at the water below her.

“Well,” a new voice spoke dryly, startling her.

Elan jumped, coming to her feet almost instantly, and spun around. “W…who are you?”

The figure was shrouded somehow, like she was looking through tears or something. Elan wiped at her eyes, trying to get them to focus, but nothing worked.

“Me?” The figure shrugged. “I’m just a traveler like yourself. Though I must say, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone waste their time in the Dreaming trying to drink the water.”

Elan slumped, not feeling threatened, so her brief surge of adrenaline quickly died out. “I’m just so thirsty.”

“That won’t quench your thirst, child,” the voice said softly. “It’s not really there.”

She looked down, passing her foot through the water with a satisfying swish. “It feels real.”

The figure chuckled. “Everything here feels real, child. That’s part of the power of the Dreaming.”

The second time he said the word, it sank in, and she looked up with wide eyes. “D…Dreaming? This…this is..?”

“What?” The figure seemed puzzled, and he stepped closer. “Don’t you even know where you are? What…?”

He paused then, taking a step back in surprise as blood began to run down her arms, dripping into the water below, and her face turned a blackened, burned color.

“Oh…oh my,” he whispered. “Maker, child…what happened to you?”

“M…monsters,” she whispered softly. “They killed me, I think.”

Then she thought of her body, staked out on the ground to die, and a sudden tightening in her gut snapped out and yanked her off her feet and back to that dying frame.

Cold air hissed down her throat when she opened her eyes, staring up into the black of the night sky, and then she began to cry again.

*****

The night chill was on her by the time she stopped the wracking sobs that had overtaken her body, but it was offset by the burning heat that seemed to be pouring from her scorched flesh. There was no comfortable middle, Elan soon discovered. The heat where she had been burned by the sun’s rays was scorching, and the cold from the ground on her back was chilling.

In the middle it felt like a knife edge separating heat from cold, cutting right through the center of her body.

Her throat was tightly constricted as she lay there, unable to do much more than just stare at the sky that hung above her. Sometimes she saw it, sometimes she didn’t, and most of the time she didn’t know the difference anymore.

There comes a time where pain and discomfort begin to fade away, the mind compartmentalizing it in an attempt to save what little might be left of one’s sanity. For Elan, that point was reached just before dawn on the second morning, the cold ground under her back now only numbing her shoulders and buttocks as she stopped trying to fight the pain.

The heat of the sun brought no relief this time, not even a momentary return to warmth as the scorching heat of her burns continued to pour off her skin like an open flame. So this time the sun brought only light and pain, but both of those were far in the background for her now, so she mostly just ignored it.

So it was that by the high heat of midday, Elan was so far gone in the recesses of her own mind that she didn’t notice the shadow that fell across her face. Nor did she feel the hands that pulled her wrists, blades and all, from the hard-packed ground, then followed it with her ankles before gently pulling her off the ground completely and carrying her back into the ancient caverns next to where she had been staked out.

Water in her mouth and on her lips was what woke her from the depths, bringing her sputtering back as she accidently breathed some of the precious liquid into her lungs.

“Careful, child.” A familiar, yet new, voice spoke from the shadows above her.

Shadows? Is it night? Elan tried to think clearly, but found that she couldn’t. The water pouring down on her face distracted her as she tried to greedily gulp it down.

“Small sips,” the voice said again, and she felt something cradle her head. “Yer in a bad way, child. I’d dare to say that someone doesn’t much like you.”

The innocuous delivery of the words caused her to choke on the water, eyes opening fully for the first time since she’d been moved. Elan blinked away the encrusted tears and filth that clung to her eyelids and saw a rough-hewn face looking down at her, an expression of concern lit behind the dark eyes and filthy beard.

“W…who…?”

“My name’s Kaern, child. Now be silent and drink,” the face ordered her. “And after that, rest. Ye’ll not be getting back to yer feet any time too soon, I’ll warrant.”

Normally Elanthielle might have argued, tried to get up, or at least tried to talk to the man she didn’t know, but at that moment she had no strength to do anything but meekly follow his orders and drink. When she had drunk her fill, then she lay back and rested, her consciousness fleeing the moment she closed her eyes.

*****

The man named Kaern looked down at the first other being he had seen in many years, wondering at the fact that she was still alive. The sun’s burns had just begun to fester, her skin was bubbling from the cell-destroying radiation that had been poured into it, and he knew that untreated it might scar her for life.

He sighed, climbing to his feet, and shook his head.

There was a reason why he hadn’t seen any other beings for years. He had little interest in doing so, after all. However, she had met him in the Dreaming, walking a Quest under her own power. That alone made her interesting, despite the fact that she was only walking her Death Quest.

He left the Ancient Redoubt, leaving the young girl lying on the cold, glassy smooth floor. She would be alright there while he fetched what was needed. The chill would bring down her fever, with some luck. Hopefully he would be back before her blood loss once more dropped her core body temperature to dangerous levels.

The sun was still high in the sky, which made things easier for Kaern as he tracked back along the path he had taken to find the errant child at a dead run. He’d passed a patch of cacti near a subsurface spring only a couple miles back, and it would only take him a short run to reach.

When he got there, he nodded with satisfaction, noting that they were indeed the type he needed. A few swipes with his long knife cut the plants down, and he spent a few minutes yanking their spines and chewing idly on the sharp and tough needles while surveying the site with his eyes.

He left the cut pieces of vegetation in place when he found the second thing he wanted and walked over to a slight indentation in the sand, being careful not to get too close. Digging out the surface sand was a matter of another few minutes’ work until he made it down to the sifting, damp dirt that lay below.

The spring was about where he expected, a dangerous, slow-moving bubble of water that could trap a man if he were unwary. The cacti were feeding off of it, lying out at the very edge of the spring’s reach. In closer there was the start of thicker vegetation, but nothing substantial, so Kaern knew that this water source was a recent one, or perhaps an intermittent spring that took time to build sufficient pressure deep down under the ground and only came to the surface on occasion.

Either case made little difference, though. He dug deep enough to get open water and refilled his water bladders while he eyed the surrounding area carefully for signs of danger or game. The cacti had been missing needles down low, along their base, so he knew that there were some of the scrawny desert rabbits nearby, but they weren’t particularly impressive eating.

Still, they were better than nothing, and the dried strips of meat and berries he carried would only do him for a few days at best.

I’ll lay some snares before I go back, he decided, noting a few likely places to do so as well as some local materials he could use. I’ll have to come back tonight to check them, though, or the scavengers will get the meat.

When the bladders were full, he carried them over to the cacti and dropped them down beside the harvest he had cut, then gathered up some of the twisted hide from his gear and dug around the sands until he found a rock of a respectable size to make a deadfall trap.

After he’d finished that, he set up three others and returned to gather up the rest of his gear, water, and the cacti he’d cut.

The sun was well on its way down to the horizon when he set out back toward the Ancient Redoubt where he had left the injured child. As he walked, Kaern briefly wondered what her story was. She was very young to have created the kind of hatred he saw in the injuries inflicted on her. Normally demons and bandits were less calculating in their inflicting of torture.

There were exceptions, of course, but those of that sort of twisted mentality tended to prefer staying closer to their primary sources of prey and amusements. It would be rare for them to come out this far from what currently passed for civilization, and if they had, then why didn’t they stay close to enjoy the child’s suffering?

Kaern shelved those thoughts as the Redoubt came back into sight, his ground-eating stride bringing him back to it in less than half an hour of walking.

****

This time Elan awoke to a cool, soothing feeling on her face, and her eyes flickered open to see the same scraggly-bearded man leaning over her. She tried to shift and move away, but he easily held her in place as he brought something to her face and let it slide down her cheek.

“Don’t move,” he ordered her gruffly. “Ye need this.”

She stopped trying to move then, unable to do anything effective anyway, and let him finish sliding the thing over her face, forehead, lips, and neck. Wherever it passed, the heat from her burns was soaked up for a time and she felt almost human again.

She watched, eyes tired and weak, as he cut another section from a plant and began to apply the same treatment to the rest of her body, then turned away in embarrassment as she noticed her nudity.

Instead she turned her eyes to the pile of material that he had stacked beside her, noting the plant stuff especially.

Water cactus… she thought weakly, eyeing the sliced pieces of plant as he went on with her treatment. She’d know the plant anywhere; her mother had shown it to her when she was very young and told her to look for it if she were ever lost. The juice of the plant would keep a person alive, the fleshy part would feed them, though the needles were dangerous because they contained a poison that could numb the mind and make a person stupid in the desert.

“Who are you?” she rasped out then, looking back at the man as he dispensed with the chunk of cactus he had and cut a new piece.

“I told ye that,” he said, his knife making quick, confident, cuts. “My name’s Kaern.”

She nodded. She could remember that, vaguely. “Thank you, Kaern.”

He shrugged. “Dinna thank me yet. Ye’ve lost a lot of blood, and between the fever and the shakes, ye might yet do another Death Quest.”

She swallowed painfully, shaking slightly. “Death Quest?”

He snorted, rolling his eyes. “Unbelievable.”

“What?”

“Ye do a Death Quest into the Dreaming, even to the point of contacting another soul, and ye have no idea what ye’ve done,” he said as he continued treating her burns. “Youth, child, is wasted on the young.”

Her muddled mind really wasn’t able to decipher even half of what he was talking about, but she did understand one word.

“The Dreaming?”

“Aye, child. The Dreaming,” he replied, squeezing the last gel-like substance from the cactus piece he was holding before tossing it aside. “Ye do know that much, I hope?”

She nodded painfully. “S…some. I…my Father was showing me about it.”

“Well I’d say that he did a fair job,” Kaern told her evenly. “It’s rare for someone, even in a Death Quest, to enter the Overmind, child.”

More words that she couldn’t fathom.

Elan just shook her head. “I…don’t understand.”

Kaern snorted, shaking his head in turn. “Few do. Perhaps I will explain it, but later. Rest now, I’m done with you for the moment.”

Elan nodded, then shivered. “C…cold.”

“Aye.” He nodded. “I know. Ye’ve lost a lot of blood, and only the fever kept ye from freezin’ to death last night, I’ll warrant. Will be touch-and-go for a while.”

She shivered while he busied himself with unrolling a pack on the ground beside her, then moaned in pain as he jostled her ankles as he moved her over to it. When that was done, he wrapped it around her, careful not to make it too tight on her burned flesh.

“There. That’s the best I can do for now,” he told her. “Rest. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

Her eyes followed him as he gathered up a few more things then made his way to the tunnel that would take him out of the old cavern. When he was gone, she stared into the shadows for a while, then finally closed her eyes and felt the waking world slip away again.

*****

Kaern returned a couple hours later, two scrawny rabbits in his pack and another refilled canteen hanging by his side. He checked on his infirm patient briefly, but when he saw her chest rise and fall with a regular motion, he sat down cross-legged some distance from her and dropped a few bits of debris he’d managed to scavenge from the vegetation.

The wood, such as it was, was wet and would smoke up a smaller cave, but he could tell at a glance that there was room to spare in the Ancient Redoubt, so he went about setting up a small fire.

Once the wood was in place and a small spit braced above it, he took out the small blade he carried for skinning and went to work on the rabbits. Skinning them and prepping them for the spit took only a few moments, after which he drew a small device from his pouch and pointed it at the firewood.

A brief lance of flame lit the Redoubt, then a steady flickering fire was burning cheerfully as he mounted the rabbits and stood up to look around.

He hadn’t been in this Redoubt before, and it looked sizeable. They were all different—those who had built them didn’t much care for uniformity—but there were always certain commonalities in each that could be exploited.

If there is any power here, the lights should be controlled from a master room off this main cavern. He moved along the side of the cavern wall, running his hands along the glassy smooth surface, admiring the mottled pattern embedded in the material.

Finding the door wasn’t hard, but opening it was another matter.

Locked. Lovely.

Kaern sighed, looking around the place, and wondered if that was good or not. Locked doors were a real pain, especially when you didn’t have a half dozen guys to help batter it down with, but it also meant that no one had raided the interior yet.

Well, no one demonic at least.

He glanced over to where the young girl was sleeping, his face thoughtful.

Well, there’s nothing to be done for the moment. He sighed, moving back to the fire and turning the rabbit.

*****

It was the smell that woke Elan the next time she opened her eyes, a scent of food that somehow managed to both revolt and entice her. She could feel that she needed food, but at the same time the last thing she wanted to do was eat anything.

She opened her eyes slowly, looking around at the flickering shadows that danced around her, then focused on the source of a scraping sound just off from the fire. The man who had cared for her earlier was sitting there, grinding something in a bowl with repetitive motions that seemed to suggest that his mind was somewhere else.

She shifted then, groaning slightly as the tough leather hide rubbed against her burns, and he snapped his head over to look at her intensely.

“Yer awake,” he said, rather pointlessly, but Elan didn’t think that pointing that out would be wise or polite so she just nodded. He got up slowly, and walked over to her. “How’re the burns, lass?”

“They burn.” She smiled weakly.

He snorted, shaking his head, and lifted the bowl up with one hand. “Here, lass. It’ll help.”

She looked into the bowl and started as she saw the half-ground cactus needles in it. She tried to move away, but winced instantly. “Those are poison…”

“Naw, lass.” Kaern half smiled. “They’re just not something you should chew on too much out in the desert. They’ll kill the pain for a short while and are safe, ‘long as you dinna take too much and you have plenty o’ water nearby.”

She eyed the bowl distrustfully, but noted that Kaern was chewing idly on one of the spines himself. After a moment she consented reluctantly to taking some of the powder with a drink of water and grimaced at the bitter taste.

“Think you can eat some food, child?” he asked after she had drunk her fill.

She shook her head slowly, closing her eyes again.

“Alright, then.” He nodded, putting the water bladder away. “But ye’ll have to eat tomorrow at the latest, even if I have to force it down yer throat.”

She didn’t even seem to notice his comment, and when her breathing became regular a moment later, Kaern sighed.

“I’m losing my touch,” he said out loud. “I can’t even threaten a girl child and make her believe me.”

With that thought in the air, he pulled another of the cacti needles from a pouch and slid it between his teeth as he took another look around the old Redoubt in the flickering firelight.

No security doors, so it wasn’t anything important. He eyed the stairwells, the glass-smooth marble, and molded fittings with a critical eye. Obviously public area. Probably a transport center.

He toured the huge room, noting a mural on the far wall, mostly hidden by dust, age, and shadow. It was a peaceful setting, showing a huge crystalline tower reaching into the sky until it touched the clouds.

Typical gaudiness, he thought disdainfully, but I didn’t know there were any transport centers this far from the coast. Must ‘ave been at the center of the blast… He shook his head in grudging admiration then. Fools they may ‘ave been, but they did know how to build to last. I could almost wonder why the demons won. Almost.

Chapter 4

Her stomach growled when she woke up the following morning, the light from the sun making it just far enough down to cast a greyish cast over the immense cavern. She shifted slightly, masking a groan as the rough hide scraped across her skin, but managed to force herself up to a sitting position so she could look around.

The first thing she looked at were her own wrists, the angry red slashes in each looking even worse than she remembered, and she shuddered at the memory of the pain.

She should be dead, she knew that. There was no way that she could have survived what she did. Her mother had taught her a lot growing up, and her father taught her even more. Injuries were a fact of life on a farm, and she had learned about heatstroke and dehydration from the moment she could crawl.

The insides of her wrists were puffy with the burn, a burn worse than any she’d ever had, and Elan had to wonder how badly the rest of her looked. A brief glance under the hides told her that it wasn’t a pretty sight, and it looked about as bad as it felt. She didn’t know what her face was like, but that was probably for the best.

“Drink.”

She started then, jumping and twisting, then falling and wincing. The sound had come from behind her, and when she opened her eyes again she could see Kaern standing in the dim backlighting of the filtered sunlight.

“W…what?”

“Drink,” he told her again, then tossed a leather wrap to her lap. “And eat. Ye need to replace the blood you lost, else yer not gonna make it, lass.”

Drink. Elan shivered, but nodded. She knew that. She took the water skin that was lying beside her and took several long swallows from it before sealing it and putting it back down. Only then did she unwrap the leather roll, pick out one of the jerky strips, and begin gnawing at it.

She knew that she needed food, but despite the rather vocal opinions of her stomach, she didn’t feel much like eating until she began to wash the food around her mouth. It wasn’t the best tasting thing she’d ever had, to be sure, but it had been pounded with berries and nuts, she thought, and the meat was enough to make her mouth water, so she chewed quickly and swallowed.

And then her hunger really hit.

*****

Kaern watched in approval as she polished off about three days of rationed strips in a few minutes, not worrying too much about the food itself. He’d scored another three rabbits in the deadfalls the night before and would have them roasting before too long. For the moment, though, she needed the nutrients in the jerky more than he did.

“Keep drinking,” he told her as he dropped his gear near the burnt out fire. “Ye need the liquid.”

Elan nodded again and took another long drink. Only when she was done did she realize that she was also in a need to dispense with some liquid. She squirmed a bit, grimacing, and looked around.

“What?” Kaern asked, eyeing her.

“I…well…need…”

He held up a hand. “Say no more, lass. I should have remembered, been there meself. Come, I’ll help you up.”

She hesitated then, but suddenly felt foolish for doing so. It wasn’t like she had anything he hadn’t seen already, nor did she look or feel particularly human at the moment, so she nodded and took his hand as he lightly lifted the hides from her and helped her up.

When he led her deeper into the cave rather than outside, she objected softly. “I can’t here… It’ll smell and…”

“Relax, lass,” he told her, “and touch that square right there if ye will.”

“This?” She pointed to something on the wall.

“Aye.”

She reached out and touched it, and jumped in surprise when it glowed suddenly and a section of the wall slid up in a flash so fast she could barely follow it.

“Magic…” she uttered in shock and fear.

Kaern snorted. “Nay, lass. No magic here, just some wonderful toys made by some very foolish folk. Come with me now.”

He led her in, then to another vanishing section of the wall, and finally to an odd-looking chair with a hole in it. It looked almost like the place Momma and Pappa had built outside their farm, but far neater.

“Sit here. Do what ye must,” he told her. “I’ll be outside.”

He helped her sit down, then stepped outside and let the door close. As soon as it did, a light lit up around her, and she started again, staring around herself in worry and fear. Slowly she reached out and touched the wall, running her finger through the dust to reveal what was underneath. It was white, very white, and everything felt cold to the touch but smooth in a way even her blades didn’t match. It was very strange.

*****

Kaern eyed the stock in the control room with interest, noting that it was indeed a transport center. The place looked fairly intact, actually, which was unusual for those old remnants of fallen civilization. He immediately crossed to the emergency kit that was mounted on the wall and yanked it down to check it.

“Bah,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Nothing but toys.”

The kit was full, but it was one of the more advanced models and contained a great many tools, none of which were of much use to Kaern. He closed it up and set it on the desk. He’d take it anyway.

The girl could probably put them to some use, once she knew enough not to be a threat to herself and others. In the meantime, he’d carry it. The kits were small and lightweight anyway, and probably contained some drugs that were of use, at least. The rest of the room was equally intact, though covered in depths of dust that were certainly indicative of the years since it had been used. How much of the dust was the remains of people killed in the blasts that turned the land above to a wasteland, he didn’t care to know.

He was eyeing a structural map when the door to the lavatory opened and the girl came stumbling out.

“Ye done?” he asked softly, not looking back.

“Y…yes,” she said, leaning heavily against the wall.

“Alright, lass,” he said, straightening up. “Come then, we’ll put ye back down for a while. After ye get some more to drink.”

She groaned softly, which brought a slight smirk to his face, but nodded wearily as he caught her arm and helped her walk back out into the main area. As they passed the door, Kaern made sure that it wasn’t gene-locked anymore before he let it close.

*****

Periods of sleep and waking passed in a blur for Elan, mostly feeling like some fog-filled dream that only became clearer on a very slowly progressive incline. She wasn’t certain how long she was in the stupor induced by her injuries, not to mention the ground cactus spines her rescuer fed her, but felt that it was probably a couple days at least.

She didn’t know if it was night or day anymore, but suddenly realized that she was bathed in light from above and didn’t understand how.

She shifted then, the dry rasp of the hide against her skin a far-off irritation rather than a searing pain, and sat up painfully as the muscles in her wrists stretched as she propped her weight against them.

“How are ye feelin?”

She looked over to see the man, Kaern, sitting cross-legged near a smoldering fire. The smoke was floating up into the huge expanse of space above their heads, and Elan could see it shifting and drifting above them.

“Better,” she replied, mildly surprised to find that it was the truth.

“Aye.” He nodded. “Ye are that. I think ye’ll survive this bout with whatever foolishness or bad luck ye encountered. Better then ye deserve probably.”

Elan clenched her fists then, knuckles whitening and the flesh of her wrists screaming at her as memories flashed back through her mind.

Her father shaking his head. The blood, oh God, the blood on her hands. A vicious thrill when the first demon died at her blade.

The pain.

The pain, both physical and emotional, of waking up nude and helpless as the man who killed her family, her life, openly mocked and leered at her.

Her eyes snapped open, icy blue flashing in their depths. “Shut up!”

“I touch a nerve, child?” Kaern seemed unperturbed. He just rolled his shoulders and looked over at her with an intense gaze from his dark eyes. “I suppose that means that it was foolishness more than bad luck that got ye in that position.”

The pronouncement, delivered with a flat, uncaring tone only made her blanche more as she struggled to get free of the hides she was wrapped in.

“Now, lass, don’t go a doin’ that,” he told her, rising to his feet in a single fluid motion. “Yer not ready to be up and about just yet, not if ye have a choice.”

She glared at him as he walked over to her and gently, but firmly, pushed her back down.

“Now, why don’t ye tell me what it was that brought you to this end ye’ve found?”

Elan turned her head, eyes boring into the far wall, her mouth a thin, hard line.

“Fine,” Kaern sighed. “Be that way then.”

He returned to his feet and walked a short distance away from her, grabbing a small wrapped pouch, and tossed it into her lap. Elan jolted in surprise, and stared down at the leather wrap that was there.

“Food, lass,” he told her. “Eat. Drink.” Then he chuckled softly. “Doctor’s orders.”

She frowned at him, puzzled, but he didn’t say anything else as he returned to his cross-legged position near the smoldering fire and idly turned the spit that floated over the weak flames. She pursed her lips then, but unwrapped the jerky he’d tossed her and began to chew hungrily on it.

After a while, Elan dropped the food and took some water, then looked around the immense cave again. Only it wasn’t a cave, she didn’t think. There was something unnatural about it, bathed in light the way it was now, something very wrong.

She cleared her throat softly, noting Kaern’s eyes as they rose to gaze at her.

“Aye, lass?” he asked softly, barely moving a muscle.

“The…the light…” She spoke softly, looking up for the source of light that had to be somewhere above her but she couldn’t find.

“It’s not magic, lass,” he told her, his words ringing with déjà vu for her. “I know magic better than I know this. This is just a clever toy, like an oil lamp, only bigger.”

“Oh,” she whispered, unable to find the lights.

The light that surrounded her seemed to come from everywhere at once, yet from nowhere at all. There were no shadows, no way to tell the time of day, even when she passed her hand close over the ground and peered under it.

In fact, a few seconds investigating under the hides covering her told her that there was light there too. Like it was being projected from the very air itself. Oil lamps cast shadows, the sun cast shadows, this…this had to be magic, no matter what Kaern told her.

He must have read something on her face because he smiled knowingly and shook his head. “Ye are a simple one, lass.”

Elanthielle stiffened at that, indignation flaring within her, but he quelled her response with a raised hand.

“And I mean ye no insult by that,” he said soothingly. “Sophonts are no smarter than ignoramuses. They merely hide their stupidity behind other people’s knowledge.”

Elan stared at him blankly, barely understanding two thirds of what he’d said.

He chuckled again. “What I mean, lass, is that yer simple because ye know no better. Not because yer stupid.”

“Oh.”

“’Course,” he went on, “ye might be stupid too. I dinna know ye well enough to tell that just yet.”

She scowled openly at him, eyes flashing, but he just laughed it off.

“To answer yer question, lass,” he smiled as he went on, “the lights are made by a machine that excites the tiny bits o’ matter in the room to give off light… Everything except the matter that’s alive, that is.”

Elan’s blank stare told him about as much as he needed to know about her current education and he sighed. “What do ye know, lass? Did ye at least learn yer numbers?”

“Of course!” Elanthielle fumed. Of course she knew her numbers. Her mother had taught her those when she was four.

“Good. Good. How about arithmetic?”

Another blank stare was his reward, and Kaern sighed again.

“Do ye know how to add and subtract? Two plus two equals four?”

She blinked, then nodded slowly. “I know that…I can take numbers away too, and I know the shortcut to adding…”

“Shortcut?” It was his turn to blink.

“Five by five,” she said, “twenty-five.”

He smiled. “That’s called multiplying. Alright, lass, you have some of the basics, at least. How about yer elements?”

Elan nodded. Of course she knew her elements. “Earth, air, fire, and…”

“Nay, lass. Nay…” He held up his hand. “Those are mystical elements, and while they’re important to know too, they aren’t what I mean.” When she just looked confused, he gave up. “Alright…we’ll use those. It’ll be easier for ye to understand anyway.”

She stared at him, waiting, as he took a moment to piece his thoughts together.

Finally he nodded. “Alright. Ye know how earth is all around ye, right?”

She nodded slowly.

“And ye know how fire gives off light?”

“Yes…”

“Well, what this machine does is it turns earth and air to fire in very small amounts,” he told her. “Just enough to make light, but not enough to burn.”

Elan thought about it, still puzzled, but nodded slowly. It made sense in a strange way—she supposed that she could understand it—but it still seemed fantastic. Why not just use oil lamps?

“That’s why the walls and floors here are smooth,” he went on. “They are slowly burned away by the machine. All the dust and dirt goes first, turned into light for us to see. If we leave the machine on long enough, it will burn away everything until there is nothing left.”

Her eyes widened in fear then, darting around her in search of the enemy he’d just describe, the all-consuming blaze.

Kaern, though, just chuckled at her. “Ye can relax, lass. It would take many thousands of years for the machine to burn away these walls. They’re made of a very heavy form of earth, and the machine won’t burn living cells either, in case yer worried.

“Besides,” he said a moment later, casting a hand along the dirt and dust on the floor, “there are many years of dust here for it to burn first. Much light to be had for no cost to us, so do not worry about it.”

She nodded slowly, trying to relax, but the image of an out-of-control fire wouldn’t retreat from her mind and she found herself looking for it from the corners of her eyes. His explanation done, Kaern fell silent though and, despite herself, she found herself slipping off again.

***

Kaern watched the girl fall asleep again and realized that he’d again forgotten to ask her name. He snorted softly and rose to his feet again as he pulled the cooked rabbits from the fire. It didn’t matter, he supposed. Lass and child would serve well enough for the moment.

He left her sleeping then, knowing that she’d be out for a while longer with the painkillers he’d ground into the jerky affecting her system. So he continued what he had been doing for three days and began to explore the old Redoubt.

What he’d told her about the lighting systems was incredibly simplified, of course, but he knew that light was only a secondary effect of the machine. Its primary purpose was to generate power, and the light it released from the stray molecules all around them was only part of what it generated. Other energies, far more dangerous than white light, were also released, but those were caught and tamed by the machine and stored for future use.

The place was what he’d thought it to be, he had quickly learned, one of the old public transportation centers. It was also in uncannily good shape, even for something built by World Builders, by the Engineers.

Probably had something to do with its location, he decided. The war weapons used in this area had been lethal to life but left most of the structures intact. Since they poisoned the land for years, even centuries in some cases, by the time anyone could come back there, the old places had been long forgotten.

That thought made him wonder, though…

What else was out here, in the wasteland’s expanse?

*****

It’s been more than a few years since I’ve seen one of these in operating order, Kaern thought as he examined the Gate that was standing against one of the far walls, alongside ten other similar devices.

He found that, with the power system operating again, the control systems seemed to be working and the system checks all worked out. It was an impressive testament to the World Builders and their civilization, and would have been even more impressive if Kaern didn’t know how they’d all died.

Even so. He smiled, a wry and bitter smile. They did know how to make their toys.

He shut down the control systems with a wave of his hand, glad that the gene lock had been deactivated when the girl had accessed the main control room. No one had managed to completely lock down this place. He figured they probably died too quickly. The gene lock on the master control room must have been an automated response, and the World Builders had too many non-human allies to gene lock all of their equipment.

At least not the public stuff, at any rate.

Of course, without intact Gates on the other side of the transit, it was suicide to attempt to use any of them. Which made all the impressive toys standing against the wall in front of him little more than historical curiosities.

There were system diagnostics to identify Gates and note whether they were operating or not, of course, and Kaern thought that the system was encoded to prevent transmission to faulty destinations, but he wasn’t planning on testing the theory. There were few things in the natural world that could actually kill his kind, and that was the way he liked it.

Scattering his component atoms across the far wall of another Redoubt in potentially less ideal shape than this one would most likely end his existence well enough, and Kaern wasn’t so bored with life that he was ready to try that particular last step.

Besides, the child wouldn’t be ready to leave for some days yet, at best. And the shock of being flung a few hundred miles in an instantaneous blast of energy wasn’t likely to improve her emotional and mental state.

Kaern smiled thinly, shaking his head as he turned away from the ancient Gates and walked back to the main foyer of the center. What a human girl child was doing this far out in the wastes was almost mind boggling. The fact that she’d managed to piss off an obvious psychotic and sadist, and get herself staked out in the desert sun to die, was just disturbing on so many other levels.

There was a story there, he decided, but she wasn’t likely to give it to him.

Which was a pity.

In three thousand years, he’d acquired an affinity for stories. They held a great many truths that real life often overlooked in the pain of the moment.

For the moment, though, he had something else he had to start looking for. Not as impressive as the Gates, perhaps, but more important.

Oh yes, he smirked, considerably more important.

*****

Elanthielle groaned and rolled over, tugging the hides tighter around her, then hissed in unanticipated pain as the rough hide scraped across the blisters and opened the skin underneath to the air. She grimaced, clenching her eyes and teeth against the pain, and gingerly pushed the hides off her as she reluctantly sat up and examined the source of her pain.

The burn blisters had whitened, puffing out incredibly, and looked disgustingly disturbing as some of them pealed back and oozed fluid from underneath. Elan swallowed, pushing back the pain, and reached for the water again.

She was feeling better, she knew, but the pain by times seemed almost worse now. Like the momentary fragments of lancing pain somehow outweighed the omnipresent agony she had suffered only days earlier.

“That’s gotta hurt,” Kaern said, startling her again with his silent approach. “Here, I found ye something that might help.”

He tossed a bundle to her, then grabbed a water bladder and took a sip.

“W…what is this?” she asked, looking at the bundle oddly.

“It’s clothes.” He rolled his eyes. “A shirt and pants. I’d suggest you wear them… They’ll be softer than those hides against yer skin, I’ll warrant.”

He was right about that, she noted immediately as she picked them up. The shirt was large, and one piece, something she’d not seen before, and she puzzled a bit on how to put it on. Kaern chuckled and flickered his fingers at her. “Over yer head, lass, just pull it on. Nothin’ to tie up on that.”

She found the larger hole in the bottom and ducked her head into it and, with a few seconds of painful struggling, managed to get her head through the smaller hole at the top. She looked down at herself and noted the armholes, then proceeded to twist and contort her limbs into place.

Kaern watched, amused, and didn’t speak until she was done. “It’s easier if you do it one arm at a time, lass.”

“Oh.” She blinked, but nodded. “Okay.”

The pants came next, and they were easier to work out. They fitted just like her old ones had, but were much softer against her skin, and the waist seemed to form itself to her perfectly in order to hold them up.

“No ties…” she said, looking down.

“Naw.” Kaern smiled. “Is what they used t’ call memory materials, lass. One size fits all, and all that rubbish.”

More words from her rescuer that she didn’t really understand, at least not in context to what he was saying, but Elan was getting used to that. She nodded slightly this time, looking at him. “Thank you.”

He just rolled his shoulders in that peculiar way of his and shook his head. “I just found them in the gift shop.”

“Gift…shop?” She blinked.

He smiled. “Long story, lass… Say, while you’re awake and I remember, what’s your name? I kin keep callin’ ye lass and child, and probably will, but it’s only polite to know yer name.”

Elanthielle looked surprised for a moment, then looked down at her lap. “I’m Elanth…”

“Elanth, huh?” Kaern didn’t notice how her voice trailed off, or if he did, he didn’t mention it. “That will do. It is nice to meet you then, Elanth. I’m Kaern.”

She nodded. “I remember… Thank you.”

She didn’t need to say that her thanks had nothing to do with the clothes this time. He knew that she meant, so he just nodded. “Think nothing of it, lass. I was not doing anything that cannot be done later, and you are a very interesting curiosity for me to explore.”

She stiffened slightly at his words but, again, he didn’t notice or, at least, didn’t comment.

“It is not every day that a child walks the Overmind.” He smiled in genuine amusement. “Even if she doesn’t know where she is or how she got there.”

Elan grimaced as he chuckled at her expense, but restrained herself from getting angry. At least, not too angry. Instead she tried to focus, to think, as she’d been taught. He seemed to know about her dreams, and maybe the Dreaming as well. And some of the words he used…

“Overmind?” she asked softly, curiously.

“Aye. That.” He nodded. “I suppose yer a mite curious now.”

She nodded, perhaps a little eagerly.

“Well, ye know of the Dreamin’. Correct?”

“Yes…” she whispered. “The realm of dreams, where we can touch what isn’t always real.”

“Aye, that’s close enough, I suppose,” he told her. “What ye need to understand is that the Dreaming is only one part…one level of a much bigger realm.”

“The Overmind…” she whispered.

“Well, yes and no,” he replied. “The Dreamin’, that’s like yer personal chunk of the Overmind. It’s part of who you are and is really yer own mind and soul. Now, the Overmind, that’s a fairy of a different tale.”

Elan blinked, shaking her head slightly as she tried to comprehend his speech. She thought she’d probably understood the important bits, but he had a habit of speaking with odd phrases that she didn’t know. She focused on the subject at hand, ignoring the bits she thought were just his “color,” and spoke softly. “The Dreaming is part of the Overmind…?”

“That’s right, lass. Yer Dreaming is yer part, in fact. My Dreaming is my part,” he replied. “It’s like…our home in that realm. The place where ye are safe.”

Home. Safe.

Elanthielle flinched as if struck, eyes closing as she began to count and try to block out the images that suddenly assaulted her.

Her father swinging, twisting in the breeze. Her mother’s weight as her body fell against Elan’s shoulder. The blood that covered her hands, covered her…

“Lass…?”

Elan shook herself and looked up through tear-blurred eyes to see Kaern looking at her with concern.

“Are ye okay, lass?” he asked.

She nodded vigorously, too vigorously probably, but he let it go and settled back to wait for her to collect herself. A few moments later she nodded. “Please…go on…tell me.”

Kaern eyed her for a moment, then nodded. “The Overmind is the realm that is created when yer Dreaming connects to the Dreaming of everyone else.”

“E…everyone?” she asked softly.

“Aye, lass.” He nodded seriously. “Everyone.”

She swallowed, trying to comprehend.

“Everyone,” he said again, “everywhere. More people then ye can imagine, more than ye want to imagine.”

“I didn’t know,” she said dully, thinking about what it meant.

“Few do,” he told her. “Most people never get past the little dreams that we all have, and of those that do, the majority stay safely in the Dreamin’. The Overmind is a dangerous place, child. Yer will against the wills of everyone else that exists there, whether they even know ye exist or not. An’ not just humans, before you start thinking that.”

She looked up at him, startled, wondering if the man could read her mind. She had just begun to form that very thought, and he’d cut it off before she even could finish it.

“Demons are there as well, and those that are aware of it are bad news,” he told her, and then shrugged. “’Course, everyone who is aware of the dreaming would be bad news there. Ye don’t want to mess with anyone who is aware of the Overmind, child…not even yourself.” He chuckled at the look on her face. “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’ll explain it to ye another time. For now, it’s enough to know that ye should not return there until ye have mastered the Dreaming.”

Elan, though, was still caught up on an earlier point.

“D…demons?” She shivered.

She’d never really feared the demons before, she realized. She had always been utterly confident in the ability of her father to protect and defend her and her mother. When that belief had been shattered, her rage had protected her from true fear, but the rage wasn’t enough anymore.

Elanthielle shuddered again, feeling something she’d never known before, and only realized now because the word had been spoken out loud.

Demons.

They scared her now.

An uncontrollable thrill of terror ran through her, and Elan felt her muscles begin to shudder just before a darkness overtook her.

“Lass?” Kaern said sharply, rising to his feet as Elan began to shiver and shudder. “Lass!?”

When her eyes rolled back into her head, he rushed over to her and barely caught her before her head hit the hard ground.

“Ah, damn it, lass. What has happened to ye?” he asked tiredly.

*****

She was something of a mystery, that much he had to admit. Kaern watched as the young one slept, more or less peacefully, at last. After she’d had, as near as he could tell, a panic attack, he’d managed to get her woken up and calmed down. Not an easy task, but it was done for the moment. They’d fenced around the cause of her attack for a short while without him getting any nearer to the precise details of what caused it.

The broad strokes he could guess for himself.

She’d obviously suffered a massive beating, enough that he thought that she had probably been attacked by multiple assailants. It was a small miracle that her kidneys hadn’t been damaged by the blows, but her attackers had focused much of their assault on the upper body more than anything that low.

Which means that she stood up to them, at least to start. He frowned, taking a breath. Otherwise the blows would have been more evenly distributed.

He thought that she was perhaps a good-looking child, though that was just a guess based on her eyes more than anything else. He knew that she had decent features only because her burns hadn’t yet blistered when he’d found her, and now she looked quite unrecognizable from her old self, he was certain. Truthfully, she barely looked human, though that would pass in a few days, perhaps a couple weeks.

She wasn’t too likely to scar either, he decided. She was young, and strong, otherwise she wouldn’t have survived, and her body would have the strength of that youth. Along with the application of the gel from the cacti, her skin would probably recover completely.

In the long term, she’d be fine physically.

However, Kaern had seen too many good people lost after the battle had been won to think that her fight was over. She was terrified of something now, most probably her assailants, which, judging by her last word before blacking out, were demons. Certainly the tracks outside and around the immediate area made it quite clear that there had been demons here, and a lot of them.

What didn’t make any sense was the way he’d found her.

Demons would have killed her, or worse. Probably consumed her flesh, perhaps done worse to her mind and soul.

The tracks he’d found, those few made in the packed dirt that surrounded the Redoubt, made it clear that the area had been rife with demons bred in the lower pits of the hells. Ones twisted from recent conquests, not from the higher planes. Ninth Circle most of them, if their tracks were any indication, a few perhaps from the Eighth and Seventh Circles.

Mostly still humanoid, their bodies still enduring the pain of the Long Change as they were corrupted from whatever they had been.

Which meant that they were all vicious, barely controllable, and tended toward sadistic violence whenever possible. However, they were also stupid, relatively weak, and had very little creativity.

And what had been done to Elanth had taken quite a lot of creativity.

That and remarkably accurate tool use for a demon, any demon.

In the end, there was something there that simply did not mesh, and the only person who could tell him the whole story was currently terrified of demons.

That, too, was all fine and acceptable of course. Demons were to be feared, Kaern knew that lesson quite well. Fear and respect were important things, and they were linked. Kaern also knew that humans were to be feared. He’d learned that lesson just as dearly, and found the modern arrogance and derision that existed among demon species to be insufferably stupid.

There was a reason why the Chaos Wars had lasted for millennia. Even today there were dangerous human splinter groups waging unlimited warfare against the demons that controlled this world, and others. Armed with nothing more than primitive magics, weapons, and occasional bits and pieces of technology they didn’t understand.

In any case, the girl he had here obviously had run afoul of a group of demons. What they had been doing out in the wastes, he had no idea. Demons didn’t much like the wastes anymore than a human would, though for different reasons.

Which, in fact, brought up the question of what this child was doing out here. She knew something about desert survival, obviously from her comments on the cacti spines he’d ground up for her, so she’d been trained for this environment.

The question was why, though.

The answer might be security, he supposed. Demons avoided the wastes like the plague, mostly because the weaker castes were vulnerable to sunlight and there was little cover to be had out here. The more powerful types could exist here with impunity, of course, but there was nothing to attract them out here. Not when the coast beckoned with its victims and powerful conjunctions of magical energy.

Even so, there were few humans who would voluntarily endure the hardships of the wastes for the rather nebulous exchange of security. Wastes or coast, security was a relative matter, and the world was dangerous wherever you went.

It would take a pragmatic and determined individual to decide that one danger was less of a threat then another, even more so for them to take along a child.

Unless, of course, they were being hunted.

Kaern’s eyes fell on the sleeping girl again, letting his thoughts mull that idea around. It would explain both the presence of the girl and the demons. A hunted human, perhaps a member of one of those splinter groups, could very well locate his family in the wastes. For him, the danger of demons wouldn’t be a dull background threat; it would be a blade waiting to fall across his neck at all times.

Fear could make a person do strange things, much like any other powerful emotion. It could make a strong man weak or a weak man a pillar of ferocity. Controlled, like all other emotions endemic to the sentient condition, it was a survival trait.

Uncontrolled, it was a death sentence.

And Kaern didn’t believe that the child was in any sort of control of her fear at the moment.

Chapter 5

Venadrin felt mixed emotions as he saw the great city rise up in the shimmer of the morning sun. It almost appeared from nowhere, as if by some great magic, and it certainly was enough to awe a lesser person.

He’d see it all, though, and was educated enough to be proof to the foolish superstitions of the peasantry.

One of the great preachers—stupid old men who believed that their god, whichever one they worshipped this week, would save him—had once said something he would never forget: that doubt and questions were the luxury of the rich.

It was at once the most profound and stupid thing he had ever heard. Profound because it was true, and stupid for exactly the same reason. The collaborator hadn’t always been what he was. There had been a time, however brief, when he had counted Damasc and those like him as his closest brothers. It was the poor fools who listened to the preachers that finally did in the last of his noble idiocy.

If doubt and questions were the luxury of the rich, then Venadrin knew without a doubt that religion and faith were the opiates of the poor.

The war could have been won. It should have been won.

Humans were smarter, they were better warriors, and it was their world. If only one in ten had fought, even now, it would be over. To find one like Damasc, however, or one like himself, Venadrin knew that you’d be lucky if you searched through only a hundred.

He hated the demons, they were filth, but Venadrin hated humans more because they were sheep.

“Come,” he said, glancing at his charges. “The sun will be high enough soon to inhibit you. Best we get within the walls.”

The demons put a little more spring in their step at those words.

*****

The presence in the throne room was pervasive, ominous, and held a weight to it that threatened to drive all the air from Venadrin’s lungs.

This was the reason he had left the resistance, the reason he hunted his own.

The one demon he had met that he truly feared.

Oh, Venadrin knew many that were dangerous. Demons that could kill him as easily as one might snuff out a small flame, but he also knew that those things were vulnerable themselves. They, too, could be killed in turn, difficult though the task might be, but this presence…the Master, was another matter entirely.

“So, human.” The presence seemed to come forward, leaning its force into Venadrin from the great throne across the room. “Tell me of your success.”

Venadrin didn’t have to add the implied threat that was there. He knew what would happen if he were to report anything less than success. He swallowed, his mouth and throat dry from nerves even though he knew he had the required news to report.

“We tracked down Damasc, Lord,” he stammered out. “He had fled into the wastes, where he had hidden his wife and daughter.”

“And do they yet live?”

“No, Master.”

The presence looked him over, then focused on his group. “I see you lost many.”

Venadrin closed his eyes, wincing, but nodded. “Demasc was a formidable warrior.”

Please don’t ask more, he mentally begged. Venadrin didn’t know how the Master would react to the fact that a mere girl child had slaughtered seven demons, and frankly, he didn’t want to find out.

He almost sighed in relief when the presence seemed satisfied, falling back and waving negligently.

“Be gone. Your presence is sickening, human.”

Venadrin bowed even as he retreated, his every expression as obsequious as he could make it. He didn’t know if the Master even recognized them as such, but he knew better than to chance anything less than his best bowing and scraping.

Escaping the Master’s throne room was always an accomplishment, and he considered it one worth celebrating.

Venadrin sent his troops, if they could be called such, on their way. He didn’t know what they did for amusement on their own time and didn’t care to find out. His own amusements were all that concerned him, and he expected a few days of indulgence before he was again tasked with something by the Master.

****

For the first time since she’d been plucked from the brink of death, Elan didn’t feel pain when she woke. She didn’t know if it was from the powder that Kaern kept making her take or if she were really healing, but she felt almost human again.

And it only took six days.

She laughed softly, bitterly, as she sat up. A week then, since she’d tracked down the murderers who had attacked and killed her family. Eight days since she’d watched her parents die.

Elan closed her eyes. It was too much; she couldn’t deal with it. The pain struck her again then, knotting her stomach and constricting her throat as she folded up and fell back down again.

“Hurts, don’t it, lass?”

She turned her head, looking up at the profile of Kaern as he stepped past her and dropped some more scraggly branches down near where he built his fires.

“W…what?” she asked, swallowing her pain and wiping her eyes.

“Whatever you lost,” he said simply, not looking in her direction.

She just stared at him then, not certain what to say.

“Don’t feel like it now, but yer not gonna die from the hurt,” he told her while fiddling with something in his pack. “T’ain’t never gonna go away, o’ course…but ye’ll get used to it.”

She stared at him, listening to what he was saying, and couldn’t believe what she’d heard. What the hell did he know about what she was feeling? What she would “get used to?”

“Few more days and ye may even forget the hurt for a couple hours,” he told her, still not looking back. “A couple weeks and ye might even laugh again.”

Her jaw was hanging open then as she stared at him, in wonder at the sheer idiocy of what he was saying. Her pain wasn’t for him to observe, it wasn’t for him to comment on. It was hers.

He glanced back her then, noting the glare without surprise. “I’m just saying that it’s—”

“Shut up,” she told him, gritting her teeth against a desire to say and do more.

“Lass, there’s no need to—”

“SHUT UP!” she screamed then, coming up to her feet. “Just shut up! You don’t know me! You don’t have the RIGHT to say that!”

“Know what?” He turned, voice calm but unswerving. “That ye suffered a loss? I know that, child, it’s written on yer face as plain as the abuse ye took was written on yer body. I may not know exactly what ye lost, but I know that look.”

She was shivering then, from anger rather than fear, as she faced him in the gaudy shirt and blue pants he’d given her. Her fists were balled up, knuckles white, and he knew that she was riding right on the border of control.

The young, he thought. So easy to push.

“And all I’m sayin’,” he went on, “is that ye’ll be alright.”

The motion started with her hips, and he saw it coming a mile away. Her minimal control snapped and she pivoted on one leg, kicking off the ground with more strength then he’d have guessed she had. The swelling from the burns made it hard to tell what sort of muscle tone the girl carried, after all.

Even so, he was waiting for her when she arrived and caught her punch on the outside of his arm without any change in his expression. There was no strength to the blow, and he was surprised it landed at all; her legs were quivering with the effort to keep her upright.

She screamed then, only after the first blow had landed, and a small corner of his mind was impressed. Most would have yelled as they charged, warning their target. She’d kept quiet until her actions gave her away, and only then let out the rage.

He stepped into her next blow, easily taking it on his upper arm. It was powerful enough to bruise him, which surprised and told him that she was no featherweight, but nowhere near the strength she’d need to be any sort of threat to him.

Her swings became wild then, what little control she had gone, and he let them rain down on him without retaliating. Her screams were raw in her throat, and she was wracked with sobs as she kept hitting him, so he just stepped into her and robbed her strikes of all their power.

As she hammered against him, far more at risk to harming herself than him, he caught her wrists and held them in place as she kept on sobbing.

“They’re dead,” she said, wracking sobs shaking her body. “They’re dead.”

“I know, lass,” he told her. “I know.”

“They’re dead,” she whispered, falling to her knees.

He caught her, keeping her from hurting herself as she fell.

“Tell me, lass,” he said softly. “Tell me what happened.”

She shook and she sobbed, but she didn’t refuse, so he let her go on until she gained enough control to start.

“I…it was just eight days ago,” she whispered, head down, voice tight and barely audible. “They came eight days ago.”

“The demons,” he said.

She stiffened at the very word, eyes flickering around in search of her nightmares, but she didn’t suffer another attack and managed to nod.

“Tell me,” Kaern said firmly.

Elanthielle swallowed, then began to speak.

She spoke quietly, she spoke softly, and sometimes he had to strain to hear her, but she kept speaking and Kaern kept listening.

*****

Youth, thought Kaern as he, once more, watched the girl rest.

Resilient and stupid, it was a peculiar combination. No experienced person would have fallen for the blatant manipulation of her emotions the way this girl had, but on the other hand, an experienced person would know better than to let their emotions bottle up like that. It wasn’t always necessary to talk, of course, but there had to be an outlet, a way to process the events that occurred. Without that, one would shortly go mad.

It was too early to think that she’d be in the latter category. Some people, perhaps even most, could process their own traumas enough to continue living as they must. Likely she would be one of those, he decided. She had the sense of someone with an inner strength.

The problem was that people with inner strength often survived their first traumas a little too well, leading to a sense of invulnerability that was illusory. They threw themselves into the flames again and again, until their strength, their foundation, was cracked and splintered and waiting for the final push over into the abyss.

After hearing her story, Kaern thought that she was such a person. She’d thrown herself into the furnace in her rage, but she had the intent to do so long before she understood what it truly meant. She had only fulfilled her earlier intent when she met these demons and their human lackey in doomed conflict.

Which left him with a more complicated question than what he had previously. When he first met her, this Elanth was little more than a child in distress. One did not walk past such a person, not if one valued their honor. Her escapade into the Overmind was curious, even promising for one so young, but it meant little in the overall scope of things.

Things were different now.

She wasn’t the child he’d thought, not entirely. Certainly she wasn’t yet an adult, but she was no longer a child either. She had suffered too much for that. Her passage into adulthood had perhaps begun too fast, too strongly, but it was begun and he had a feeling that she’d already marked her path.

Which, unfortunately, was going to get her killed if she had the nerve to follow it.

Waging a one-woman war against demons was just the sort of pointless cause that youth would embrace, a noble cause to tantalize the imagination and no wisdom to see the inherent impossibility in it. From what she had told him, her father had done much the same thing, only to return home when he realized just how futile it was.

It was his misfortune that he didn’t understand that, once you walked a path like that, there was no escaping it. It would follow you to the end of time to extract its price.

In any case, she would be hale and strong in a few more days, strong enough for him to leave her to her own devices.

It wasn’t his fight; it had never been his war. Unlike many others of his kind, Kaern had not joined the battle when the invasion commenced. He had little love for humanity and none for the demons, so he had no vested interest in either side. Both were too arrogant, too self-centered, too fundamentally destructive for his liking.

Of course, since the wars began, he’d learned to use the term “destructive” with a little more care.

Humans, at least, tended to try to avoid collateral damage, if only because they might want to once again use the area they were fighting on. Demons had few such compunctions, and their wars had razed so much of the land.

Kaern shook his head, pushing the thoughts aside.

The past was the past for good reason, and little to nothing could be done to affect it once it had come to pass. The future was unknown and unknowable, also for good reason, so all one had was the present.

And his present was unfortunately tied up with a sixteen-year-old human child who had an unfortunate hatred coupled with a brand new phobia for the same things.

They used to say that life was what happened when you weren’t paying attention.

Kaern really had to learn to pay better attention.

*****

Elan was moving around a lot easier than she had been in the past few days. The blisters from her burns were mostly gone, though the badly peeling skin still marred her features. She’d woken up about an hour earlier to find the place empty and Kaern gone. A quick step to the outside told her that it was night and he was probably checking the deadfalls he’d set, so he should be back soon enough.

In the meantime, she had to admit that she was feeling stronger than she had since being beaten by the demons.

She closed her eyes as the thoughts and memories returned, but only for a moment. The emotions were beginning to die out now, and she wasn’t losing control whenever she thought of the events of the past two weeks.

There were still moments, of course, terrors just before waking, or an odd moment when her loss would strike her again with full force and she would lose control. Those times were rarer now, and growing less frequent, however. For the last two days she’d been trying to find the Dreaming again, but the state of mind required was just as nebulous and out of reach as it had been all her life.

It was frustrating as she tried to find something that seemed to wisp just slightly out of her reach, just coming close enough sometimes so that she could almost feel it before it would vanish again. It was all the worse because she had the knowledge that it was there, an absolute knowledge backed by the proof of experience, and yet it remained elusive.

That’s where she was, in mind at least, when Kaern returned from his trip to the spring. She missed his entrance as she sat cross-legged on the floor, her body screaming her frustration with its stiff form.

“That’ll never get ye anywhere, lass,” Kaern said, dropping his latest catch along with some more scattered branches from the scraggly bushes that were growing near the spring.

Elan jolted, hissing in surprise and snapping around to look at him. “What?”

“That—” He nodded in her direction. “—will never get ye anywhere. A Dream Quest is not a chore, lass. It’s a journey without end. Yer already on it, so relax and let the scenery come as it will.”

“I did it once!” she snapped in frustration. “Why can’t I find it again?”

“Ye did it ‘cause ye needed it,” he corrected. “It will be there when ye need it, but I doubt ye’ll find it before then. Now come here and help me with the rabbits, lass. We have to talk.”

Elan slowly came to her feet then and walked just a little gingerly over to where Kaern was skillfully twisting his skinning knife through the hide of the scrawny animal. She picked up another of the small knives and a rabbit and went to work herself.

“About what?” she said quietly.

“About you,” he said, hands working as he spoke. “You yerself told me that ye have no place to go now, so tell me what you plan.”

He watched her face tighten, the muscles around her mouth pulling just enough to gather the skin tight enough to notice.

“Venadrin,” she said.

One word was all it took, just a name really, with no meaning to anyone else but her. Kaern understood the meaning in it, though, and grimly shook his head.

“Ye’ll never survive it, child.”

“I don’t care,” she said firmly.

“I think ye do,” he replied as he worked. “If ye didn’t care, ye wouldn’t have found me. There’s more t’ life then revenge, ye know.”

“Not for me. Not anymore.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped, his blade clattering to the ground as he glared at her.

Elan jerked a bit, almost dropping her own, shocked by the sudden sharpness to his normally calm voice.

“Ye’re young, mostly hale, and have a future,” he growled, picking up his knife. “Would yer father or yer mother ask ye to kill yerself for them when they’re already gone on?”

She paled dreadfully at that, though the color change was hard to see against the remaining evidence of her burns. Kaern ignored it and kept pressing home his point.

“And even if ye must wage this private war of yours, are you really so stupid as to do it untrained and unprepared?”

She glared at him, her color returning in a flush. He was now challenging her training, the training that her father had given her, and that would not stand. “I’m trained!”

“Yer a child,” he returned. “If ye were trained, ye would never have been in such a stupid position as I found ye. Attacking…what? Twenty? Thirty demons on yer own? That was worse than foolish, lass. That was suicidal.”

She scowled at him then, but didn’t have much to say in reply and instead turned sullenly back to her work.

Lord Maker, preserve me from yer children, Kaern thought, rolling his eyes. “When caught like that, against demons especially, ye have to work the edges of the group. Take them one at a time, when the rest aren’t lookin’. Bide yer time, even if it should take days, weeks, or longer. Better to be patient, lass, and get them all, than to be stupid and get dead.”

He watched her reaction closely, trying to determine if she was listening. Maker knew, he knew less about young girls then he did about just about anything else, and what he was learning wasn’t exactly promising. She was looking down at the rabbit in her hands now, apparently intent on her knife work.

At least she seems competent in that, he thought, eyeing the quick blade motions. So she can be taught at least.

Not a total loss then, assuming she was listening to him.

“I know,” she whispered, surprising him.

“What?” he asked, blinking.

“I was wrong. I know that.”

So, she was listening. He nodded, eyeing her. “Aye, lass, ye were. But ye survived it, if only by the skin o’ yer teeth… So then, the question becomes…what next?”

“They’re too far away now. I’ll never catch them,” she said, finally admitting something that had been gnawing at her for days.

“Aye, there’s that.” Kaern nodded in agreement. “Likely they’re back to the coast by now, and reported in about what they’ve accomplished out here.”

“Reported?” She looked up.

“Ye didn’t think that they acted on their own, did ye?”

The look in her eyes was answer enough, Kaern could tell. She hadn’t spared enough thought beyond the immediate crisis, and there was no knowledge of politick in her features. He shook his head, smiling softly. “Ah, lass, ye really know nothing of the world, do ye?”

When she didn’t reply, he went on.

“Yer pal ‘Venadrin’ is just a lackey. He’s nothing in the scope of things, child, though I’ll warrant he’s something to you.”

Her lips curled up, and Kaern almost expected her to growl.

“Now, above him, somewhere, is one of the minor lords that rule the coast. There’s the man who ordered him and his demons out here to hunt down yer family,” Kaern told her, then shrugged. “’Course, I use the term ‘man’ loosely. He’s probably a demon of the Sixth Circle, maybe the Fifth, if yer dad pissed on the wrong lawn.

“This demon rules at least one of the city states, along with every soul and demon within,” Kaern went on. “He owns the lives of his subjects, including yer pal Venadrin. Officially, no one does anything in a demon realm without the lord’s permission.”

Kaern rolled his shoulders, dropping his knife as he picked up a spit for his rabbit. “O’ course, under the shadows there is always a lot more going on than the lord is willing to admit.”

“How do I find him?” Elan asked softly, but firmly.

“Ye don’t,” Kaern replied evenly.

Elan glared at him then, her ire instantly piqued as she opened her mouth to object.

Kaern just cut her off with a chopping motion of his hand. “I’ll not aid ye to commit suicide.” He looked away then, frowning into the smoldering remnants of the fire. “When ye’re fully hale, I’ll show ye to a town I know. Some people there will give ye a place if ye want it.”

“Fine.” Elan said flatly, not caring in the slightest for a “place,” but knowing that she needed Kaern’s help just to find anything. She could wander the wastes for the rest of her life and find literally nothing at all.

Kaern eyed her for a moment, then grimaced. “Don’t be getting any foolish ideas, child. I’ve got my doubts that you could survive on yer own in a town. Not that ye’ve shown much talent for surviving in the wild.”

His sarcastic comment lifted her hackles, but Kaern ignored the glare she sent his way with a calm assurance of superiority.

“Get some sleep now then,” he told her off-handedly. “Tonight is the last night ye’ll have to rest for a while, I’ll warrant. Tomorrow we’ll start out, so be ready to walk.”

Elan glared, but nodded reluctantly.

Kaern watched her until she grudgingly made her way back to the sleeping area he’d set up for her and curled up again. He wondered briefly if he were perhaps speeding things up a bit, but her injuries were healing well and she’d shown that she was able to walk. The bastard who had tortured her had done his job well enough, Kaern knew. The blades through her wrists and ankles could easily have cut tendons or arteries, but had instead been placed with a surgical precision.

That one knew his anatomy, Kaern thought grimly. Venadrin. I believe that I’ll remember that name. I don’t have much love fer humans meself, but I’ve got less taste for a traitor.

He finally rose to his feet, looking around the perfectly lit room, and walked toward the back. There would be other things still here of use, if not to him, then to the girl.

*****

Life in a demon-controlled city wasn’t so different than in any human-controlled encampment Venadrin had known. Busier, it was so much busier, but really that was the most noticeable difference moment to moment.

Venadrin made his way through the streets, ignoring the hucksters and shills pushing whatever fraudulent sky medicine that was now popular. He noticed some shilling artifacts, likely fake or broken, from the old human empires. Some of those were worth a short attention, just to see if they were authentic.

Even a busted piece of ancient technology was worth investigating, particularly if it were being sold by a demon. Once the wars started, the old human empires started gene locking their technology, setting it so the demons couldn’t use it against humans. It was a stupid waste. In his experience, demons were rarely tool users.

Today he ignored them, settling on his path with intent. His short, expected vacation had been cut a little short with an unwelcome summons back to the Master’s palace.

The guards grunted and snuffed at him as he passed, but he ignored them. Demons liked to scare humans whenever they crossed paths. They enjoyed the scent of it or something, he supposed. Maybe it was just the mental satisfaction of showing their power over the lowest caste of the city, but Venadrin had a feeling that there was more to it.

He ignored the demons lining the room on either side of him, striding right through them into the throne room for the second time in as many days. Two times too many, to his mind, but the choice wasn’t his to make.

He only stopped when he again felt the presence, eyes casting down to the floor to avoid looking directly at the throne and what was sitting on it.

“Are you aware of why you are called here, human?” The voice reverberated, rattling his teeth and bones to the core.

Venadrin shook his head. “No, Master.”

“Of course you don’t.”

Venadrin felt cold sweat trickle down his spine as he wracked his brain, trying to think of what he’d done. Unfortunately, he was well aware that it was quite likely he hadn’t done anything. He could easily just be the latest example being made of by the lord of the city.

“I’m sorry, Master,” he forced out, eyes still down.

Rasping laughter passed along through the room from all sides save one. Only the presence ahead of him seemed disinterested in the humor most of them found in the situation. Venadrin felt the presence focus on him. It was like a deep pressure squeezing every part of him at once.

Blood began to trickle down his nose, he could taste it on his lips, and Venadrin knew that he wouldn’t survive much more interest from the lord of the city.

Finally the pressure eased, the presence pulled back, and Venadrin involuntarily relaxed.

“I have a new task for you, human,” the lord said. “With the final destruction of the resistance here in the city, it is time to finish the campaign. There is another free human settlement within my lands. It will be mine within the moon, or I will know the reason why.”

Venadrin closed his eyes, a dozen thoughts running through his mind, but only one in the front.

Another assignment. Thank the Maker.

He forced himself to nod curtly, dropping to one knee. “What would you have of me, Master?”

“Go ahead of my forces, human. Identify the defenders of the settlement, find their locations, and prepare that information for me when I arrive.”

Venadrin couldn’t help it. He looked up sharply in surprise.

He instantly regretted it, his eyes falling on the one who sat on the throne. He instantly slammed his eyes shut, trying to block out the sight, but it was too late. Like daggers through his mind’s eye, Venadrin could feel the image of the city’s lord tearing at his psyche, just looking on the demon felt like he’d received a mortal blow.

He refused to collapse, not in the sight of so many who would use any weakness against him, but he swayed for a moment before regaining control.

“You are going personally?” he blurted, as much to buy himself a moment as anything else.

“Yes, in this last campaign it is fitting that I command the final battle.”

Venadrin bowed his head again. “It will be as you command, Master.”

“Yes,” the demon said, “it will.”

Chapter 6

In the morning, Kaern let Elan sleep late, knowing that it would be best to start out well after the sun had started its dive to the horizon. The heat would be bleeding off by then, and he’d been keeping an eye on the phases of the moon to be sure they’d have light to travel by night. If his memory served, as it usually did, they’d have enough time to reach an oasis formed by a strong spring to the south.

It would be more than enough time, but he wasn’t certain how well she’d hold up under prolonged travel just yet. The burns were mostly healing now, though her skin was still puffy with the blisters and scarred by the ugly peeling skin. The injuries to her ankles, though, would probably break open before the first few hours were out.

For a moment Kaern reconsidered, but staying in place was no good either. The local food source was running out, the desert rabbits weren’t plentiful enough to support them much longer, and his own stock was meant for one. No, they had to move out before things became too tight to allow them proper travel provisions.

Besides, the medical unit he’d located in the control room had sealed antiseptics that were better than any of the local alternatives, so she’d be spared the agonies of flesh rot. She’d just have to tough out the pain, he supposed. It would be a good test of character if nothing else.

The rest of the old transport station had yielded little of value, unfortunately, save some clothes that would make for decent trading stock and a few trinkets that would go over well in the town square on market day. Public weigh stations didn’t generally stock any of the more interesting devices of the World Builders, more’s the pity. Though their more advanced technology was all gene locked, there were many useful trinkets that he would have liked to have found.

If nothing else, they were worth a great deal in trade.

Kaern shrugged the disappointment off and watched the sleeping girl as he waited for the sun to rise and fall.

Finally it was time. Elan had awakened some time earlier and there was nothing more to be gained by waiting around the old Redoubt, so it was time to move on.

“Are ye ready, lass?”

Elan nodded, shrugging the pack over her shoulders. She couldn’t make heads or tails out of the material the pack was made of. Its brilliantly vibrant colors were shocking in their sheer gaudy display, but it was sturdy and light and more than she’d taken when she left home.

She was dressed in the soft shirt and pants that Kaern had found for her, the shirt sporting a beautiful full color image of an eagle in flight that had fascinated her for hours once she’d recovered enough to appreciate it. The clothing was soft to the touch, incredibly so, and tough, but Elan wished she had her leather tunic and pants back. No matter how she moved in these new clothes, they felt too insubstantial to provide any sort of protection from the elements.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I’m ready.”

“Then we’ll go,” Kaern said from where he was standing near the door to what he had told her was the “control room.” He reached a hand in and flicked off the lights, startling her, though he’d told her that he was going to do so.

The lights just went out like a flash, and it seemed otherworldly to her of a sudden. Elan hadn’t been awake when he’d turned them on and hadn’t seen the sudden transition then. She jumped a little in surprise, but managed to keep from saying anything as the darkness descended on them. A few seconds was all it took to adjust, and then Kaern was at her side and guiding her out and away from the cavern.

They emerged out into the fading light of the desert day. Kaern paused, judging the direction once again to be sure, and nodded off in the distance. “That way. Come on, lass. We’ve got some distance to make before we stop. We don’t want to be caught out in the open wastes once the cold starts to set in.”

Elan nodded in reply and shivered slightly, remembering the feverish shifts from searing heat to ice-forming cold that had happened to her just days earlier. She didn’t want to be out in that ever again, at least not in such a state. The thought sent a shudder of dread through her system, though she suppressed it and followed Kaern as he set off.

A few hours later, Kaern was watching Elan’s steps with some trepidation and wondering if perhaps he should have waited a few more days despite the food problem.

She was limping already, of course. He’d expected that, but the growing red stain on her bandages wasn’t in the plan. He’d hoped that she wouldn’t reopen the wounds so quickly but knew that it was possible. However, she really was losing more blood there than he’d counted on.

He checked the sun, tried to gauge their progress, and was somewhat impressed. Despite the pain she had to be enduring, they’d managed to make their way farther then he’d expected. If she could hold up just a little longer, they’d be to the oasis and he’d be able to check out her ankles more closely.

“You alright?” he asked gruffly, coming up beside her.

She gritted her teeth, he could tell, but just nodded in response.

“We’re close,” he told her. “Not much farther. Are ye drinking?”

“Yeah,” she told him, patting the water bladder at her side.

He eyed it, noting that it was noticeably collapsed, and nodded. “Good. Keep drinking. When we camp I’ll check your ankles and see if we’ve got anything to help.”

She just nodded, her eyes grimly focused on the horizon as she put one foot in front of the other.

Tough girl, he thought appreciatively, recognizing the determination that was evident in her eyes.

He’d been there before, himself, that state of mind that took you away from the worst of your suffering as you doggedly refused to allow anything to move between you and your goal. Kaern was willing to bet that very little existed to her just then, other than the destination he’d promised her and the shadowing hint of pain dogging her every step.

He’d known that she was tough, just by the fact that she’d survived long enough for him to find her. He’d known that she was something special because she’d been able to call for help through the Dreaming. Now, though, he had to admit that he was finding a little bit of respect for the girl because he knew that she was hurting but she wouldn’t let it stop her.

Having the determination to survive was different than finding the dogged drive to just keep moving when stopping would feel so damned good.

She’s a tough little bit, mentally as well as physically, he grudgingly admitted to himself as he paced her, walking a few steps behind as they worked their way up the dune ridge. Maybe she won’t get herself killed too soon after all…if she’s got some brains to learn with, at least.

The oasis was about another hour’s painful trudging along, but they reached it ahead of when he’d expected, so Kaern was fairly happy with their progress. Elan crumpled onto a stone boulder that had been washed out by the action of the spring, taking the weight off her feet, and she practically whimpered in relief when she did.

He let her rest, using the light of the full moon to gather some wood and set a fire near the boulder. A few minutes were all it took to get a merry fire crackling, and he turned his attention to her.

“Alright, lass. Let’s be seeing yer feet,” he said firmly.

She winced but nodded and started to peel off the bandages he’d wrapped there. Even Kaern winced as they pulled free at last, pulling crusted blood and torn skin with them. He used some water from his own skin to clean them off and eyed the wounds critically.

“Not as bad as they might be,” he sighed after a moment, “but worse than I’d like, to be sure.”

“I’m fine,” she said grimly.

“No, ye’re not,” he corrected her. “We should have stayed back there another couple days. My mistake, lass. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be okay,” she said tiredly. “I just need some sleep.”

“Aye.” He nodded. “Get some rest. I’ll clean up yer feet and put some fresh, clean bandages on them for ye in the meantime.”

She eyed him oddly, but conceded to his help as he half carried her to the sleeping pads he’d laid out. In a few moments she was covered in furs, all but her feet, and her eyes were drooping as if on command, despite his attentions to her wounds.

Kaern cleaned the wounds again, getting the sand and grit out of them, then broke open the medical unit. He wasn’t certain how most of the stuff in it was used, but thankfully the Antecedents didn’t gene lock medical equipment as a general rule.

They also had a tendency to make it as idiot-proof as possible.

Bless them, he thought as he drew out a small cylinder about an inch and a half in diameter and four inches long. The script engraved on the side of it was clearly marked and still as clean as the day it had been inscribed.

This End Toward Injury.

Kaern snorted, chuckling softly, as he pointed the cylinder in the direction indicated and pressed the big etched symbol he knew meant “on.” The device hummed in his hands, sending a shiver up his spine as it bathed Elan’s heel with a white light.

Kaern supposed that he probably should have done this earlier, but he preferred not to rely too strongly on what little of the Antecedents remained. Among other things, much of their technology wouldn’t operate for him at all, and for another, more important, thing, he didn’t trust any of it as far as he could build it himself.

In a crisis, however, Kaern was a realist and a fatalist. He’d use anything he needed to in order to survive. After several passes, however, there were no visible changes in the injury, so he found himself examining the etched plate that lined the inside of the medical unit for hints.

The device he’d chosen was called some complicated name that used words Kaern hadn’t bothered to learn when the language was actually spoken, so that didn’t help him, but the directions listed under it explained matters in clear terms, so he sighed and went back to the job of treating the girl’s wounds.

The device wasn’t a miracle worker, obviously. The unit he’d found was an emergency kit, designed to stabilize a patient, not to cure them. One of the hospital units, or even the portable military ones, would have probably been able to completely seal the wound, on the outside at least.

This would only feed more energy into the patient’s cellular structure to encourage her to heal herself.

He sighed and kept passing the device over her injuries, knowing that any little bit of help could be of vital importance. It would be a long night, but he could handle that.

*****

Elan awoke with the sun for the first time in many days, blinking slightly as the light burned at her eyes, the chill of the desert night still clinging to the ground where she lay. The fire had burned out hours earlier, from the look of it, and there was a fine frost layer all around her. It took her some time to realize that the humidity must come from the oasis and the water it put out into the environment every day.

The thought of water roused her, first with the desire for a drink, then with the sudden pressure on her bladder from the water Kaern had forced her to drink the night before. She rose softly, looking around until she spotted where Kaern was slumbering against the boulder she’d sat on when they’d stopped the night before.

He looked worn out, she thought as she climbed to her feet, then froze in surprise when they didn’t pain her as they had the night before. Elan crouched down and looked at her ankles, a soft gasp of surprise coming from her when she saw the pink scars where just the night before there had been ugly red wounds.

How…? That’s not possible… She blinked away the crust of sleep in her eyes, staring for a long moment at the injuries that should have been much worse than she was seeing. It was minutes later when she finally jerked out of the shocked trance and shook her head to clear it.

She’d wonder about it later, she decided. For the moment she had the “call of nature” to attend.

When she returned to the immediate vicinity of their camp, Elan went about preparing for the morning in the way that she always had. She fetched water from the pool that had become the centerpiece for the oasis in which they were camped, filling her skins after checking it for any pollutants. She contemplated starting a fire, but she didn’t have a flint and she didn’t see Kaern’s anywhere, besides which, she didn’t really have anything to cook.

So she gnawed on jerky, shifting into the shade as the sun’s heat became uncomfortable, and spent her time eyeing the odd gleaming silver box that Kaern had brought from the place of the Ancients.

It was beautiful, a fine engraved symbol on the face of it in the shape of a circle with an intricate design within. Elan had never seen anything like it. The design was finer than anything her mother had done with her crafts, and she wondered what it meant as she traced the design with her fingers.

She eyed the case closely then, running her hands around the seam that split it in two, but she didn’t find any latches. Her father had a box; it wasn’t as nice as this, of course, but it had been bigger. That box had had big buckles on it where you would open or close it. This one was smooth except for a fine line around its center.

She peered closer, looking closer at the engraving, wondering how it had been made so perfectly.

“It’s Ancient script.”

She jumped, swiveling around to stare at Kaern as he watched her from where he was still lying.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, pushing the box away. “I wasn’t gonna hurt it!”

He just chuckled, shaking his head. “You couldn’t if ye tried. It’s tougher than that, lass.”

“W…what is it?”

He shrugged, smiling slightly as his face took on a serious, almost sad look. “It’s…an artifact.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s something that’s very old and belongs to something lost,” he told her. “The script that you were tracing, it’s writing.”

Writing. Elan knew what writing was. She used glyphs to record her numbers and to mark hunting traps. This wasn’t writing, this was art. It was beautiful.

“No it isn’t,” she replied, realizing as she said it that she sounded petulant. “I know glyphs. This isn’t them.”

He laughed tiredly, nodding his head. “Ye’re right, child, it’s not glyphs. It’s script, and very old. It says ‘crisis medical unit,’ and tells ye how to use it.”

“U…nit?”

He just shrugged. “Just means ‘one thing’…like that, it’s one box.”

“Oh.” She blinked, looking down at the silver case.

“Dinna worry about it,” Kaern said after a moment, shifting around so the sun wasn’t in his face. “It’s not important right now. Try to get some more rest, lass. We’ll have to move out again when the sun crosses the midpoint and starts to fall.”

She instinctively glanced up, noting that the sun was still very low in its climb, and nodded. “Okay.”

Kaern closed his eyes then and was shortly breathing very regularly as he claimed some more sleep for himself.

Elan looked at the box again for a while, tracing the etched symbols, the script, with her fingers. Then she moved back over to the sleeping area and crawled back into the furs. The walk the day before had been more than she’d expected, and while her feet didn’t hurt as bad now, her legs were still very sore from it.

She knew that they would be worse before they stopped this night.

*****

“Okay, we’ll camp here.”

Kaern held up his hand, noting the tired breath of relief that came from the girl. She’d stuck out the march better than he had expected, though he supposed he should have known better after the night before.

Her wounds had stayed closed this time, though he’d made her keep them tightly wrapped in order to prevent her ankles from moving much. It made walking harder on her, especially in the soft sand they’d had to traverse, but it was safer.

Again, she’d gritted her teeth and refused to complain, so he’d pushed her hard in order to reach a good place to camp before the night became too cold. And, again, he was impressed despite himself. They’d made good time and had arrived at the rock cliffs that formed the barrier to the south that surrounded the wastes.

“We’ll stay in the shade of the rocks this day,” he told her, dropping the pile of kindling and wood he’d carried with him the entire day. “When the light is still good, we’ll have to climb the cliffs here, lass. I know a way that isn’t bad, so don’t worry too much about it.”

“I’m not worried,” she told him firmly.

He snorted, shaking his head. “Then ye’re braver then I am. I said not to worry too much, but only a fool isn’t a little concerned about traveling in parts such as this.”

She didn’t say anything to that, so he went about setting up the fire that would keep them warm for the remaining couple hours before dawn. He’d known that there wouldn’t be any wood to burn where he was hoping to stop this time, so he’d brought enough for a couple hours’ heat from the oasis. It wouldn’t be as much as he’d like, but in truth they were starting to reach an area where it wasn’t safe to have open fires.

“Get some sleep, lass,” he told Elan as he crouched down and aimed his helio at the bundled wood. A brief flash of light lit up his face, making his hard features and scraggly beard stand out, and then the wood was caught and burning cheerfully.

“What was that?”

“What’s that, lass?” He glanced back.

“In your hand…” She was staring. “You…it’s not a flint, is it?”

He turned over the small device in his hand and smiled. “Naw, lass, it’s not a flint.”

“What is it?” she asked again.

“A helio,” he told her. “It’s a fire starter, better than flint.”

She blinked at him. “Helio?”

“Aye, lass. And don’t ask me what it means, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Something to do with the sun, I think. It’s been too long since I thought about it.”

“Oh.”

“There are many things in creation beyond what you’ve been taught, lass,” he said, not unkindly. “Many times many. Men have, in the past, accomplished true miracles…or as close as any mortals have ever come. This is just a toy. The wonders of the old world, those were things to beggar the imagination and stagger the hubris of even the more arrogant of fools.”

Kaern sighed, thinking of things long lost, then refocused on the present. The girl was bad for him, he decided. She made him think of things he’d long put aside. Things he really didn’t care to think of any longer.

“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “How can things like that exist? My…my…”

She closed her eyes, swallowing hard as she fought down a wave of grief.

“I was never taught about such things,” Elan said finally as her eyes opened again with only a slight wet sheen across them.

“It’s been a long time since any knew enough about these things to teach them,” Kaern said curtly.

“You know.” Her voice was almost accusing.

“Aye, and I’m no teacher,” he grunted before sighing and bowing his head a moment.

Finally he looked up, past her, and changed the subject.

“Get some rest,” he told her again, eyeing the sky critically. “We’ve been lucky, had good weather. But once we cross the cliff, I wouldn’t be too surprised if we get rained on every second day. Ye’ll need yer strength.”

She stared at him, wide eyed, when he said that it might rain every second day, but nodded dumbly and curled up near the fire. Kaern watched her rest for a while, then turned his eyes to the skyline above them as the rising sun began to illuminate it. He watched the ridge carefully, looking for silhouettes, but didn’t find what he was looking for.

Finally, he settled down himself, crossing his legs under him and letting his breath flow in and out in an old and familiar rhythm as he told his body to rest while his mind remained alert and waiting.

*****

The morning light came, as it was wont to do, but it wasn’t nearly enough to wake Elan as she slept in the shade of the huge cliff face. A short distance away from her, Kaern rested in his motionless way, legs crossed and back ramrod straight as he let his body rest while his mind stayed alertly on watch.

After a couple hours of meditation, you lose contact with your body in a strange sort of way, and Kaern had reached that level several hours earlier. He could still sense his physical self, far in the background on his sensibilities, but it was distant and uncommunicative at the moment.

His mind was active though, sweeping through the eerie quiet induced when one lost contact with the physical senses. He could feel Elan’s heartbeat, a low and easy rhythm down and to the right of him, while the life pulse of an eagle swept overhead, riding on the first thermals of the day. Other than those two, life was sparse in the desert, though sparse didn’t mean absent, of course.

Insects flitted around, still active in the shade of the cliff face as they scrounged for what food they could find before the sun became too hot and forced them to cover. Rodents and small predators played their games of nature around the small campfire, mostly unafraid of human smell and certainly not threatened by the two motionless figures who inhabited it.

All of this passed Kaern’s observation but didn’t overly concern him. Life was life, such as it was, and it would have been disturbing if it hadn’t been present.

The sudden flare of another intelligence, however, spun him around and made Kaern shrink his sense back into the confines of his body.

Where is it? he asked himself, casting out with slim threads of thought.

Out there somewhere he was being watched. He could feel the eyes on him, feel the signal tremble against the back of his neck as someone focused most intently on him.

They’re close…no.. wait. Not close. Kaern would have smiled slightly if he still had active and actual control over his muscles. Using a viewer. Lenses? Maybe. Maybe magic. Where are you?

The sensation passed then, and Kaern knew that whoever it was had stopped watching him directly. Human probably, he decided, considering the identity of the observer. There were many species that were unconsciously telepathic, but they were rare in the world, and humans weren’t among them. Not yet, and not truly, at any rate. Humans, however, had a knack of knowing when someone was looking at them…even when it wasn’t with eyes.

Any active telepath would never have been sloppy enough to send him that signal, that image of himself that alerted every warning in Kaern’s mind to danger. Against most people, that image would have done nothing more then send a shiver up their spine. But someone had sent it, unintended though it probably was, and Kaern had received it.

Time to move.

He reached his mind back out to his body and felt the connections jump back into place, like phantom limbs regrowing in an instant. His eyes snapped open as he fluidly rose to his feet.

“Child,” he said out loud.

Elan stirred, but didn’t wake.

“Child,” he said again, firmer. “Wake now.”

She opened her eyes this time, looking at him in confusion as he stood over her.

He ignored her mumbled question, his eyes rising to the cliff face. “It is time to move. We are being watched.”

That woke her up, her body tensing as she remembered the dangers that existed in the world. She threw the covers off her, making Kaern turn slightly away as she readjusted the clothing he had found for her and climbed to her feet.

We’ll have to find more clothes for her soon, he decided, Even synthilk requires washing from time to time.

“What is it?” she asked breathlessly as she gathered her things.

“I don’t know yet,” he told her honestly. “Bandits, most likely. Humans, I’d guess.”

“Humans?” she asked, face scrunching slightly as she focused on the word, confused. “Not demons?”

“Aye, humans. But make no mistake, there are damned few reasons to be watching a peaceful camp this far from town…and almost none of ‘em are good reasons, if you catch my meaning, lass. Demons are not the only evil in the world, as you know too well,” he said, speaking lowly as his eyes flickered along the ridge line above them.

Elan’s eyes showed a hint of fear, of which Kaern approved wholeheartedly, and she nodded.

Good instincts, lass. He nodded in return, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Of course, she had been betrayed by one of her own kind just a short time earlier, and that would tend to cut into any blind trust one would be willing to extend. Kaern just pushed the thought aside and began to pack up his own few things, rolling the furs into a tight bundle and then carefully securing his sword to his side.

He noticed her eyes on his blade as he secured it for quick use, clearing the strap and seating it more accessibly on his hip. He could see a look in her eye that he knew well.

Kaern eyed her for a moment when they’d packed up their camp, such as it was.

“We’ll find you a blade as we can, lass,” he said briskly. “Follow close to me. If we move fast, like as not we’ll be able to outpace them.”

Elanthielle nodded determinately, shouldering her pack and meeting his eyes.

“Alright,” she said.

“Good. Let’s go.”

*****

“They’re moving.”

“What?” a gruff-looking figure demanded, striding toward the voice. “It’s still early. No one who knows these cliffs moves before the sun dries them.”

“Well maybe they don’t know the cliffs,” the first speaker suggested dryly.

The gruff man knelt by the edge of the precipice and drew a tube from his pocket. He jerked it fully open, the metal telescoping out to about four times its original size, and placed the smaller end to his eye.

A moment later he let out a muffled curse.

“Damned fools,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah.” The first speaker grinned. “They’re going to split their heads before we can do it for them.”

The gruff man snorted, still watching the figures in the distance.

*****

Kaern felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and resisted the urge to look around for the source.

They’re back, he thought grimly, grimacing as he came to a realization. Amateurs.

No knowledgeable professional would stare at their target this long. It was stupid. Every experienced outrider knew that. It was better to err on the side of caution than to alert a potential foe who was observant enough to notice.

“We have to climb,” was all he said out loud though, not wanting the girl to alert the watchers to the fact that they’d been found out. “Take care, it’s early and it’ll be slippery.”

Elan nodded, not speaking as she picked her way through the rocks that were strewn across the base of the cliff side.

“Stay close and move as quickly as you can, but not so quickly as to make a mistake,” he told her without looking back. “I’ll pick out the easiest path I can find.”

“I’ll keep up,” she said softly.

“I’m sure ye will, lass.”

*****

“Damn them!” the gruff man cursed, scrambling across the rocks as he and the group he traveled with picked their way across the landscape toward the point they’d deduced the two drifters were making for.

By luck or design, they had chosen one of the farthest points from his group’s position to climb the cliff face, and he’d have to push hard if he wanted to intercept the pair. Obviously they were new to the area, because everyone who traveled the wastes frequently knew the cliffs and would never normally climb in that area because it was one of the more common places for brigands to stake out.

The irony of that situation was lost on him as he herded his men along the well-traveled path, ignoring the griping and cursing that came from them as he did.

“Ah, shut yer mouths!”

Well, mostly ignored them.

“We’ll be on them before they reach the top, and there’s only two of them so quit yer whining and move!”

Most of the band of eight shut up then, though the real whiners never did, of course.

Them, he ignored. Nothing would shut them up anyway, and the rest would probably start to get real worried if something did.

*****

“Ah!” Elan yelped involuntarily as her feet slipped on the slick stone, her hand just snapping out to catch a grip before she began to slide.

Kaern looked back at her. “Are ye alright, lass?”

She nodded shakily, firming up her grip.

“Good. Not much farther, but when we get to the top we’ll have to keep moving,” he advised her.

She swallowed, her heart pounding in her chest, but nodded. “I’m okay.”

“Come on then,” he told her, turning back to the path.

She gritted her teeth as he turned back to the path but doggedly began to follow him up what apparently passed for a “path.”

The top of the cliff face came sooner than Elan had expected, or could have hoped, but the treacherous path had taken a toll on her as they climbed. Her limbs were scraped, her fingers bloodied and bruised, and she felt like she’d just run full out for longer then she’d ever tried before.

Climbing wasn’t her strength, she thought.

Kaern didn’t let up when he pulled her up over the lip of the cliff. He only let her gasp a couple breaths, then hauled her up by the pack on her back and shoved her off in a new direction.

“Come on, lass,” he said in his odd accent. “It’s time to be moving again.”

She stumbled along ahead of him, moving faster than she could have hoped for, but she suspected that he was taking it easy on her just the same. His looks around and occasional bursts of frustration with their pace indicated that he wanted to move a lot faster.

He led them toward a path that cut through some light trees, more scrub than forest, but Elan couldn’t help but gape at them. Elan had seen trees before, but never so thick as these. Only a handful grew near her home, and even the oasis had only a few dozen. There looked to be hundreds here, blocking the view of a person trying to look more than a few feet through the interwoven mass.

Kaern was looking over his shoulder now, though, as they moved, and his motions were tense, like he was jumping at shadows.

“W…what’s wrong?” she asked, gasping as she tried to catch her breath.

“Nothing ye can help with, lass,” was all he’d tell her. “Now move along like a good girl. We’ve got ground to cover ‘fore the night falls.”

Then he’d normally give her a shove in a new direction, as if he couldn’t make up his mind where they were going.

All in all, it was frustrating as hell for her, and she was coming close up on letting him know it.

She was, in fact, about to yell back at him the last time until he suddenly shoved her and yelled out, “Get down!”

Chapter 7

“Get down!” Kaern yelled, slamming a flat hand into the Elan’s back, right between her shoulder blades where the pack was riding high.

She stumbled forward, losing her balance this time, and Kaern twisted as the fletched arrow plucked at his furred cloak as it whistled past.

The thud of the arrow slapping into a tree just past them was followed by the eerie vibration of its shaft in the air and the sudden silence of the wildlife around them.

Elan half yelped and half grunted in pain and lost air from where she had hit the ground, her anger flashing as she pushed off and rolled over. The slap of the arrow distracted her attention briefly, her eyes flitting over to the quivering weapon that lay embedded in a tree some dozen feet away.

She frowned, her brow furrowing as she tried to figure out how the arrow got there, but it was the sudden movement of Kaern that attracted her attention next.

Kaern’s hand dropped to his hip, his thumb popping a snap on the leather scabbard he wore as his hand closed around the hilt of the sword he’d never drawn before. When it slid from the sheath, Elan’s eyes widened in shock and surprise.

It was beautiful, gleaming brightly in the sunlight as it slid clear of the tattered old leather, so unlike her old sword. Her father had given her a fine weapon, he’d said, strong and light and able to kill demons. She’d learned since then that he had told her the truth. Her sword had served her well. It was her failing that had cost her the defeat at the hands of the demons and their human lackey, no fault of the sword.

But her sword had been an ugly thing compared to this slice of light that Kaern lifted into the air. The light gleamed off its every surface, it seemed, reflecting daggers of brilliance in all directions as Kaern drew the blade up near his head in a stiff stance that held the weapon as an extension of his self, making him a full four feet taller as the blade rose from his shoulder level straight up to the sky.

It was only then that she followed his gaze and started with the first true hints of fear.

Eight men were rushing from the woods behind them, blades in their own hands, and their faces were masks of murderous intent.

Elan rolled on her pack, grasping at the straps in near panic as Kaern strode forward with the blade still in place at shoulder level. She fumbled until one strap came loose, then kicked and yanked until she slid her arm free of the other.

She needed a weapon!

Her sword was gone now, taken by the traitor as a trophy, and she’d had no chance to get another since. She cast about, scrambling along the ground for a club or a rock. Anything would do, because anything would be better than her hands.

A scream, not of anger or fear, but of pure energy cut the air then, and she spun around on her haunches just in time to see Kaern meet the fastest of the charging men. Kaern yelled suddenly, a burst of sound that seemed to strike like a fist and freeze her heart in her chest.

It had the same effect on his opponent, she thought, because the other man hesitated for one brief instant before he and Kaern met, and it was his last hesitation ever. Kaern ducked low as he twisted his torso and snapped his arm out with the long elegant blade in a short, fast arc. It sliced through the leather armor of the charging man as if he wore nothing at all and bit deep into soft flesh.

The stroke continued through as Kaern kept moving, drawing his blade through the man’s guts with a single long slice that opened his bowels to the light of day and dropped him in an agonized heap.

The next cry that split the air wasn’t energy; it was anger. Hatred. Fury with Kaern for killing one of their own became the brigands’ battle cry, and they converged on him in their anger.

Steel clashed against steel and iron then as Kaern twisted and placed his feet with care on the rough ground, deflecting blows meant to end his life with deceptive flicks of his own weapon.

Elan jolted back into action then, hands grasping along the ground as she scrambled for a weapon. Her small, lithe hands closed on a thick piece of wood in short order, and she rose up with it in her hand, yanking hard on it until the thick root came clear of the ground. The earth didn’t want to relinquish its hold on the sturdy wood, though, so she jammed her foot down into the crook of it and pulled hard.

Forgive me, God of the Wood. I need this now, she thought as she groaned with the stress until the wood snapped under the strain and she staggered back, barely keeping her balance.

She turned to see Kaern sweep his blade around in a circle, dipping the point low behind his shoulder as he brought his hands over and around his head to deflect an attack against his back. He let the blade keep its momentum and swept it back around until it flicked out in the motion of a whip that brought its point on a wicked arc that opened up the throat of another bandit in passing.

He was hard pressed now, though, his sword sweeping in that never-ending circle as he deflected one blow, blocked another, and struck out only to be blocked by a third. Two men had fallen to his blade in only a few seconds of the fight, but the others were now pressing closer together, attacking in unison, and making life very hard on Kaern.

Elanthielle gripped her weapon, poor though it was, and padded lightly forward.

She wasn’t Kaern; she didn’t yell as she struck. She hit them like she’d hit the demon sentries in that eternity past, striking fast and silent. There were no shadows here to hide in, such as she’d used then, but their distraction with Kaern were good enough for her purposes.

Her father had talked to her endlessly about honor and how one met a warrior face to face. He said that you only hunted animals because people deserved better.

The demons she’d killed, they were animals to her view. They had killed her family from ambush, giving no quarter and offering no mercy. They didn’t deserve to be given the niceties of honor her father had taught her, so Elan had hunted them like the animals she took for food when she was hungry.

These were no different.

The heavy crack of bone and wood meeting seemed to overshadow the clang of steel on steel for a moment, sounding completely out of place in the frenzied fracas that had developed around the man who was supposed to be easy pickings. The man who had the misfortune of providing the bone that made the sound went down without further distraction, his body falling into the ground with a solid thud.

Elan didn’t even yell then as she drew back the wooden club she wielded, dropping back on her heel as she spun around to give a more dangerous speed to the weapon, and snapped it back at the next closest man.

He met her with steel, his sword biting into her club and digging deep, but her club had the momentum and the weight behind it, and lodging his weapon into the wood cost him his blade as it was jarred from his hand.

He swore a vile oath, charging at his attacker with his bare hands, and surprised Elan as he struck her high and sent them both tumbling over. She lost her club then, the extra weight of the sword yanking it from her hand as much as the tumble did, and instead struck out at her attacker with her fists and elbows in a snarling desperation.

Her blows were too light, though, and had little enough effect as he held her down. He snarled, yanking a double-edged dagger from his hip sheath.

Elan gasped in surprise and pain as the sudden pain bloomed through her chest and threatened to take the light of consciousness from her, perhaps permanently.

*****

Steel clashed on steel as Kaern let another sword slide away from his hands, run along the length of his blade, and fall away to the wayside as he spun through the battle. He was bleeding from a half dozen minor wounds, but even a major one wouldn’t kill him easily so he wasn’t worried about the small stuff. His curved blade caught the heavy hacking blows of its adversaries on its side, preserving the edge for the coup as Kaern let it flicker out, seeking the blood of the enemy.

Three men lay dead or dying on the ground now, their blood soaking into the packed clay of the path as Kaern focused on number four.

The scream of pain behind him was a distraction he could ill afford then, his head twisting around just enough to see Elan on the ground with the hulking figure over her, flashing dagger against her chest.

He tried to move to her but was soon blocked and prevented by the remaining brigands. Even while he was the better swordsman of the group, he wasn’t good enough to both fight them and help her. Elan would have to make do on her own for a while longer, he determined. Otherwise there was the chance that he wouldn’t be around to help her ever again.

If he cut loose, he knew he could take them all quickly, but her life would as likely fall with them, so Kaern steeled himself for a dangerous and dirty close-in fight that really didn’t play to his advantages at all. He was by no means weak with a blade, or most any other weapon wielded by man or demon-kind, but it certainly wasn’t his strongest point either.

Kaern growled, snapping his blade up in an angled defense that caught a hacking down-sweep of his foe’s heavier blade. Steel screamed against steel as the heavier blade forced itself on Kaern’s elegant one, forcing the point down. As the point dropped, the angle of Kaern’s blade became greater, and the heavy blade slid away from him.

As it fell off the tip of his sword, Kaern used the sudden release of pressure to snap his weapon forward and cleaved it through his opponent’s throat, biting into cartilage and bone until it slid clear through into open air again.

The spray of blood spattered back on Kaern as he lunged past, putting all his weight into the blow, then the strike was ended and the stunned man stood there for a second.

Only a second though, as Kaern snapped a reverse kick into the dead man that knocked him into two of his fellows, toppling his unattached head in the process. The two distracted men screamed in shock and fear as the headless corpse of their former companion landed in their laps, impaling itself on one of their swords, and brought them to the ground.

Kaern ignored them and turned to look at a grim-faced man who stood between him and where Elan was still buried under the hulking figure that had tackled her. He flicked his sword down, spattering the ground with blood as the centrifugal force carried the fluid off the shiny blade, leaving only a hint of red sheen to color its steel gleam.

*****

The pain screamed through Elan’s chest, or maybe she was screaming. She couldn’t be sure. Whichever it was, the pain was like a dagger stabbed into her chest, which was appropriate, she thought in a wildly bizarre moment of clarity.

She screamed again, though not in pain. Her anger focused her yell and the force of it startled the man on top of her as she jerked her knee up hard between his legs.

His eyes widened in shock, staring down into hers, and Elan stared back in equal shock for a second as she wondered at the effect of what she’d done. Her blow hadn’t been that powerful, had it?

She didn’t guess at it for long, however, as she screamed again and slammed her small fist into the side of the man’s face. There was a crack of bone then and a flash of pain spiked through her wrist and arm, but she ignored it as the man toppled over.

Her free hand went to her chest, grabbing at the dagger that was tearing through her. As she rolled over onto her side, the dagger came away and she looked at it, and herself, in shock.

There was no blood on her clothes, and the dagger was clean and unbloodied as well.

What? Elan shook her head, fighting the shrieking pain in his chest as she forced herself up.

It didn’t matter how, it didn’t matter what. She was alive and mobile, and Kaern was still outnumbered. She got to her feet quickly, staggering as another blossom of pain erupted in her chest, and quickly headed to where the sword and stick were lying on the ground.

On the way past, she snapped a kick to the face of the groaning man on the ground, putting him out and silencing him.

Separating the sword from the stick wasn’t easy, as she quickly found out, but she managed it without only a little groaning and grimacing from the blazing pain that erupted within her. She gritted her teeth hard as she rose up, this time with the heavy sword in her hand, and began to stumble toward the fight.

Kaern was fighting one on one now, with a large man who seemed to be matching his moves with the sword. She wasn’t certain, though it seemed that the man was on the defense, letting Kaern dictate the path of battle.

Her father had told her that a defensive battle was a lost battle, but if that was how an enemy wished to fight, the better for it. Kaern didn’t seem to mind it either as he cut into the wild parries of his opponent, looking for that single opening that would end it all.

But it wasn’t those two that caught Elan’s eye.

It was the two brigands who were circling around behind Kaern as he fought against his single man.

*****

He’s not bad, Kaern thought, trying to break through the defensive screen of his opponent.

So far the man had been able to match his every attack with an effective defense, but at the cost of not attacking himself. Eventually, Kaern knew that he would wear the man down unless something changed.

Like those two idiots getting back to their feet and circling around behind me, Kaern thought grimly as he redoubled his attempts to break through the defense of his opponent.

Steel clashed against steel, sending shrieks echoing through the wooded area, making the battle sound several times its size, like a pair of squads were warring it out rather than just two men.

Kaern’s strikes grew harder, faster, and more daring as he tried to pierce the defensive screen while also trying to keep an eye behind his back now that his opponents were trying to fence him in more carefully, planning their attacks rather than coming in fat, dumb, and slow.

The bandits had to keep moving, as Kaern refused to stand still.

He knew that they were behind him now, but he couldn’t turn away from the leader of their intrepid little band to deal with them. If he did, then he would be bleeding on the ground a moment later.

They knew it, and he knew it.

There was a bloodthirsty eagerness in their motions now. This man had cost them four of their friends already in this fight and they wanted revenge. They could taste the revenge even, and it tasted good to the two hard men who were circling eagerly with their swords, waiting for the moment to strike.

Then the moment came, only it wasn’t their moment.

*****

Elan struck silently again, as was her wont. Her appropriated sword was heavier than she was used to, but against an unsuspecting target it hardly mattered. The pain from her injuries flared and screamed at her as she swung, but she bit her lip, distracting from it, and forced it away.

The sharp edge of the blade she wielded cut deep into the side of the closest man, and he yelled loud enough for them both in that moment of shock. His own sword clattered to the ground as he reached down to the source of pain and wrapped his hands around Elan’s blade.

She grimaced and jerked it away, cutting up his hands and flesh even more as the bloodied weapon jerked free. She had blood spattered over her hands and feet and over almost every square inch of her exposed skin, making her a frightful sight as she turned to glare at the second man with teeth bared.

He hissed in shock and surprise, faltering as she laid an evil glare at him. Her face was splattered with blood, her hands covered in it from the arterial spray of his friend, but her teeth gleamed perfect white against the gruesome background of her face and lips, and that bizarre white shirt with the striking eagle on it looked perfectly clean and brilliantly white.

The man fell back from the incongruent mix of colors and gore, his guard dropping for a moment.

Elan saw the moment, as her father had taught her, and lunged to take advantage of it.

Now she screamed, letting the pain of her chest fuel the cry as she lifted the heavy sword high and hacked it downward.

The brigand saw it coming but started involuntarily when she screamed just the same and was barely able to get his sword up to block the blow.

Metal clashed on metal, screaming defiance as the two combatants were frozen in that moment in time. Then the moment ended, and Elan’s heavy blade and wild hacking swing forced the defender down as the tip of her sword bit into his shoulder.

He yelled out in pain, his arm falling dead as the blade cut through muscle and tendon and continued down until it embedded itself in bone. He fell back, wrenching the sword from her hands, and fell to the ground with it sticking up out of him like a flag someone had planted there.

Elan stared down at the bloodied form on the ground ahead of her, then at the one behind her. Both men were groaning in pain now, their life’s blood pooling around their wounds as she swayed in place. The first man she had struck was shivering as if he were cold, and she remembered how that felt.

How cold.

How…

The world spun around Elan then, a chill climbing her side, and she struggled to stay on her feet.

*****

Kaern saw the look in his opponent’s eyes, heard the screams from behind him, and knew what they had to mean.

He didn’t know how she’d done it, but the look on his foe’s face and the sudden desperate attacks Kaern was forced to fend off filled in the story well enough. Kaern snarled, his lips pulling up into an ugly smile, and parried a sudden wild strike, then slid his blade smoothly into the man’s guts.

It was quick and brutal, compared to the start of the fight, but Kaern knew that was how battle went.

The first to make an error would die, and would do so quickly and without mercy.

Kaern stood close to the man, looking into the shock in his eyes as he slumped forward, sliding up on the blade. Blood was flowing freely, out over the pommel of Kaern’s sword, and onto his hands, but he ignored it as he reached up with his free hand and clamped his fingers around the head of the dying man.

“Via Venita, Mensara Victus,” Kaern snarled, digging his fingers into the dying man’s skull.

Gleaming light erupted around his fingertips, letting them slide through flesh and bone, and deep into the man’s mind. The gleam lasted a few seconds, then the light went out in the man’s eyes and Kaern shoved him back off his blade and let him fall to the ground on his back.

“Bandits,” Kaern growled, shaking his head as he flicked the blood off his blade, letting it spatter on the ground. He turned around, “Are you alright, la—?”

Elan was still standing, and she looked alright, though covered in blood that may or may not have been her own. Alright until he saw her eyes, and that shut Kaern up. He rushed forward to her then, seeing the pain and disorientation in her eyes as she wobbled and wavered on her feet.

“K…Kaern?” She blinked, looking at him.

“Aye, lass, I’m here… Are you okay?” He looked her over for injury, but couldn’t find any.

“I…cold,” she said.

Cold? Kaern blinked. It was warm out and there was no reason…

Then he saw it.

From under her shirt, a steady trickle—no, a stream—of blood was running down and coating her skin where the material of the white shirt road up slightly.

Kaern lunged forward then as Elan toppled backward and caught her as she fell.

“Damn it, lass…” He shook his head. “You do get yerself in the injured way a mite too often fer my tastes.”

*****

She woke up in pain.

Again.

That was, perhaps, a bad sign for her future, Elanthielle supposed as she turned over and grimaced slightly. There was a crackling sound, the smell of embers on the air, and the warmth of a fire touching her face as she opened her eyes. It had gotten dark since she had blacked out. The night sky was clear, and the stars twinkled far too merrily above.

“Awake at last, then?”

She turned her head to where Kaern was sitting, cross-legged, by the fire and nodded painfully.

“That was a bad one,” he told her frankly, holding up a shirt she recognized as her own.

The material was unblemished to her eyes, but Kaern was clucking like an old mother hen as he poked his finger at something only he could see.

“That dagger even managed to put a little bit of a hole in here,” he said, holding it out between her and the fire. “Here…look.”

She looked, but shook her head. “What hole?”

He rolled his eyes, half smirking, and held it closer. “Watch for it, lass…it’s tiny.”

She stared, watching the point he gestured to, then at once saw a twinkle of light against the background of the shirt. Her eyes widened in surprise. That was it? That was all?

Kaern chuckled. “Small little thing, isn’t it? It’s large enough for this shirt, though, let me tell you. This is machine-bonded carbon weave. Soft as silk, true enough, but the very next thing to indestructible. Too bad the same can’t be said for you… The knife, shirt and all, put a fair size hole in you, after all.”

Elan looked down, lifting the furs that Kaern carried with them, and saw the ugly red puncture in her breast. It was ragged and glared angrily up at her, the throbbing of pain beating with her heart. She swallowed, noting that her side and belly were covered in dried blood, running all the way down her thigh. She looked up, eyes wide, as Kaern shook his head and tossed her a cloth soaked in water.

“Here,” he said, “you’d better wipe down. We’ll be to fresh water soon, so there’s no need to worry about saving it anymore. Water falls from the sky here.”

He smiled sardonically as he said that and Elan felt a surge of irate indignation. She knew what rain was! True, it didn’t happen often where she grew up, but it wasn’t that rare. A slice of pain from her breast silenced the words before they came, though, and she meekly began to wipe down the blood.

The stain the crusty red material left on the cloth caused her to glance back at the shirt in surprise as she noted again that it was unblemished by either physical damage or the stain of her life’s blood.

“Noticed that, did you?” Kaern smirked again in that irritating way of his. “It’s called a micro-fiber weave, lass. Nothing sticks to this material. Makes it especially tough and long-lasting.” He threw her the shirt then. “Wear it, keep it, enjoy it. It’s many times better than most folk own nowadays. Places in the cities would trade you years of rations for it, even precious materials if you happened to like that sort of thing.”

Years of rations.

She stared at the material as if seeing it for the first time. Food for years, all bundled into her hands. It didn’t seem possible; it was like a dream.

A dream.

No, it was a nightmare.

She shuddered, wondering if the shirt were worth enough to someone out there to get her mother and father back. Elan closed her eyes, shaking slightly as she bundled the shirt up in her grip and held it closely.

Probably not.

Across the site, on the other side of the fire, Kaern watched as tears cut a path of skin against the dirt on the young girl’s face and guessed at what she was thinking. Loss wasn’t easy, he knew that too well. He’d lost many times in his very long life, and it never felt any easier, first or last. Only time would attenuate that pain, he knew, and even then deep losses had a way of sneaking past the armor of time and knifing you where you were least able to stand it.

He tossed another stick on the fire and sighed as he watched her finish cleaning the blood from her skin. He’d gather up the bandits’ gear from their bodies in the morning, he decided, what little they had worth taking. They were only a half day’s travel from the outskirts of the city now, and they could arrive at their destination by midday, even with the extra weight.

“Get some rest, lass,” he said aloud then, nodding across the fire. “We’ll get where we’re going tomorrow.”

Elan nodded, not knowing what to say to that, and just finished what she was doing before she slid the shirt back on and lay down.

Where they were going.

Where were they going?

She didn’t know, but suddenly the future seemed a dark and dangerous thing. She hadn’t had time to think about it since that night when everything…changed…but now she couldn’t help but face it.

What was she going to do now?

There were no answers in the night, however, and Elan shivered as a chill wind blew over her and huddled in closer to the furs Kaern had given her.

*****

Morning came quickly, and by the time Kaern cleared the camp, Elan still hadn’t woken. He checked her then and found that she was drenched in sweat and was burning up.

“Damn,” he cursed softly, under his breath.

He’d intended to take the bandits’ weapons and kit—it wouldn’t have been too far to haul it— but that was out of the question now. He chucked the extra weight, tossing it by the side of the path, and used a couple of the larger tree limbs from the line of the forest as the basis for a stretcher. It took the better part of an hour to finish properly, but when he was done, he slung her into it and piled on as much of the gear as he figured he could handle.

Kaern wasn’t a man who wasted much if he could help it.

He broke camp and started toward the settlement he’d been aiming them for before midmorning broke, dragging the girl behind him.

Chapter 8

Simone Carnsworth shoved her way through the hard-packed earth, pushing the heavy blade ahead of her as she tried to turn the heavy dirt over. Breaking new land was about the hardest job they had and normally it wouldn’t have been her doing it, but it had to be done and she was the only one available.

The heavy chunk of metal she was pushing had been hammered out from a large sword, heat-welded together with spare chunks of armor and whatever other metal had been available. The plow was clumsy, heavy, and barely worked. Even so, it was better than anything else on hand, and it did the job.

Mostly.

She was about halfway through her eighth line across the small field when a crack sounded behind her, startling her as she twisted in the plow’s harness and looked around. She got caught in the leather straps, nearly falling over as her foot hooked on them.

“Ow!” she yelped, catching herself on the handle of the plow and keeping from a nasty enough spill. Working the land was growing harder with every passing season, it seemed. The rains were either too sparse and dried the land to the qualities of stone, or too common and left her bogged in the mud.

It wasn’t work for a lazy soul, of that there was no doubt.

Simone straightened up the plow, setting the furrow straight again as she prepared to continue with her day’s work, but a motion in the distance caught her eye. She stopped her work and carefully undid the straps, letting the plow fall heavily to the ground.

She was a big girl, near six feet and heavier than most men, so when Simone pulled the heavy blade from where it was strapped to her thigh, she was confident that anyone who saw her wasn’t likely to take her lightly. She stepped around the plow, eyes on the figures as they approached, and waited with the naked blade hanging loosely in her right hand. She wasn’t really expecting trouble—the small homestead was behind the outermost walls of the city and well enough protected—but she wasn’t expecting anyone, so there were chances she had no intent of taking.

“Do you plan to use that,” the taller of the two figures asked, laughter bubbling in this voice as he looked to the blade she was holding, “or can I come closer?”

Simone twisted up her lips, recognizing voice before the man. “You’ve not been in these parts for a while now, Kaern. What brings you back?”

Kaern shrugged, nodding to the slip of the girl he was helping. “This one found me in the Dreaming. Decided not to leave her there.”

Simone glanced at the girl for the first time, her face registering her surprise. Kaern wasn’t the sort to take an interest in someone, not even a pretty little thing like this. If she’d been prancing around the Dreaming, however, Simone suppose that might just explain it.

The large woman glanced down at her plow and decided that was about as much as she was going to get done this day. She slid the naked blade back into the sheath and nodded back over her shoulder. “Well, come on then. You both look like you’ve been through the wrong side of a war. Not that you ever look anything different, Kaern. I’ll fix you something better to eat than you been getting on the trail, and you can tell me the whole story.”

*****

Elan hissed as her wound was cleaned in brusque fashion, not roughly but with quick, sure motions.

“Nasty business, brigands,” Simone clucked as she worked. “And you’re a lucky one. A good blade would have ended you… Hell, a quarter-decent hammer would have done you in pretty quick too. Need to watch yourself better, lassie.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” Kaern asked from where he was sipping a cup of water in the corner, a smirk on his face.

“I thought you said that this…shirt was almost indestructible?” Elan asked, confused.

Simone laughed. “Sure enough it is, against the kind of cold-fired crap you see most people with these days. Good blades are rare, but they’ll cut this like butter. Don’t put any trust in that old fart’s tales of the old days. If he knew half of what he thinks he knew, he’d be a rich man.”

“Hey!” Kaern objected, almost laughing. “I know a lot more than half of what I think I know… Wait, that didn’t come out right.”

Simone just snorted, chuckling as she finished up cleaning and treating Elan’s wound. She examined the shirt for a moment and then tossed it back to the slip of a girl.

“It’s close enough to what he said, so wear it,” she advised, “but don’t get too comfortable with the idea of it protecting you. Would have been easier to sew up a clean cut than what that did to you, lass. You’d have a nasty scar there, if not for the old kit you brought along.”

Elan’s eyes fell on the silvery device Kaern had shown her to use, thinking about what it had done for the scars on her wrists and ankles.

“Thank you,” she whispered, pulling the shirt back over her head.

“You’ll live, no need to thank me.” Simone cleaned her hands and looked over to where the gruff-looking Kaern was sitting. “I can’t imagine she alone brought you back this way.”

Kaern shook his head. “No, I’d likely have been back here within the moon anyway.”

“Is that so? And why would that be?”

“War,” Kaern said simply.

Simone grimaced, but nodded. “I’ll call in the others.”

*****

Venadrin looked over the defenses of the community ahead of him, not particularly happy with what he was seeing.

It went without saying that they would have reasonable defenses, of course. It was the last free human settlement within the Master’s territory. For them to have held out this long would have required some sort of substantial defense.

What he was looking at, however, was a trifecta.

Impressive natural defenses, the cliffs would make it a nightmare to maneuver significant forces into the battlefield. There were too many choke points, and the line of sight was practically forever for their purposes. The natural plateau would be a hard nut to crack, there was no question of that.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only thing working in the defenders’ favor; there were skilled sentries. He’d been able to spot three, but only with the help of the enhanced senses and other creepy abilities of his more otherworldly contingent, and he was quite certain that there were more than that out there. They’d all have to be located and neutralized before a significant force could be marched on the community. Otherwise the battle would be a bloodbath, and most of the blood would likely be demonic.

They’d still win, of course—the community simply wasn’t large enough to hold off the Master for long—but the less blood risked on his side, the more likely Venadrin could expect to walk away with his own body fluid where it was supposed to be.

The final part of the problems he was going to have to deal with was that the community had clearly put a lot of work into the defenses beyond the natural strengths. There were hidden towers he could make out, what looked like small forts that probably held equipment and weapon caches, and from where he was standing it was clear that the top of the plateau was a fortified nightmare.

There’s only one thing to it, then, he sighed, handing off some of his equipment to his second.

“Where are you going?” the squat, particularly ugly, beast grumbled at him.

“Up there,” Venadrin said, nodding to the plateau. “Put together a bag with odds and ends, the sort of things a scavenger would bring to sell. I need to see it from the inside.”

*****

Patrol was a mind-numbing tedium, but a necessary one.

Every day was much the same, and that routine was a killer on a sentry’s alertness. Keeping yourself alert was the art and substance of a good sentry, because trouble wasn’t going to announce itself, as a general rule.

Being surprised was anathema to a guard, yet it seemed to happen all too often.

“Excuse me.”

Seren nearly jumped out of his skin, spinning to glare at the man who had walked up so close announcing himself. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“I’m just a scavenger, boss,” the man said with his head down. “Looking to trade.”

Seren looked the cloaked figure over, then nodded to the sack slung over his shoulder. “Open it up.”

“Right, boss.”

The sack thunked to the ground, unrolling to reveal a myriad of trinkets and mostly useless junk. Seren’s eyes fell on a few ingots mixed in with the rest.

“Is that iron?” he asked softly.

“Pure, as close as you can get, at least.” The scavenger nodded eagerly.

Pure iron was a rarity. As a useful material for making weapons against the demons, it was largely secured within the fortress of the lords, held under guard against those who would turn the metal against them. It was a hotly traded commodity, and even a few ingots would be worth letting the scavenger in. Hell, if he tried anything, they’d just “fine” him the iron before kicking his arse out.

“Where did you get that?”

The filthy and disheveled man looked around, then down, and around again before answering.

“Dug it up myself, boss. I know a place.”

Forget fining him if he has a mine, Seren supposed.

Iron wasn’t impossible to find, but there was never enough for weapons. Mostly they had old scrap, including steel and other metals. Steel worked almost as well, but it was harder to work than iron, so most smiths preferred to start with the base. Quality weapons would always be in demand, and the best quality against demons started with cold-forged iron.

Seren glanced it over and guessed that there might be enough there to make a dagger or two, which would be enough to buy the scavenger supplies for a couple weeks at least. With the rest of the things in the sack, he supposed the man had a decent haul.

“Alright,” Seren said, “you can go in.”

“Thank you, boss.”

The sentry watched the man scurry around, repacking his sack and hefting it over his shoulder. As the man headed up the pass, Seren refocused his attention down the road and didn’t notice the backward glance he received from the scavenger, nor the calculating look that marked the man’s eye.

Venadrin returned his attention forward as he shambled slowly forward, up the pass, keeping his head down even as his eyes looked around to take in as much as he possibly could.

*****

Elan limped over to the door of the small farmhouse, stepping out onto the porch and coming to a stop near where Kaern was sitting with one foot propped up on a large stone as he leaned back against the wall.

“Feeling better?” he asked, not opening his eyes or looking up.

“A little.” She nodded.

He didn’t say anything more as she sat down cross-legged beside him.

“Tell me about the Dreaming,” she said finally, after a long moment’s silence had passed.

Kaern didn’t say anything for a long moment. “You know most of what I know, lass. All that I have on you is experience. Give it a few years, with your talent, you’ll have me beat.”

She shook her head. “But I don’t understand it!”

He laughed, a dry, barely amused sound.

“Lass, no one understands the Dreaming. Not me, not you, not anyone,” he told her. “It’s the very antithesis of understanding. The ground can change in an instant, the law of gravity is more of a suggestion, and anything you imagine can haunt you at a moment’s notice. The Dreaming is magic at its purest, right down to the incomprehensible chaos of the universe.”

Elan barely understood his words and didn’t comprehend his meaning at all, so she resisted the urge to ask for more explanations as she tried to decipher them.

Kaern seemed to understand that, however, and sighed softly.

“Magic is the core of the Dreaming, just as it is the core of the universe, lass. And magic? It can’t be taught; it can only be experienced. We’re not meant to understand it. It’s part of us, but it’s more than us too,” he told her. “Don’t worry too much about it. You’ll understand when the time comes.”

“What if I don’t?” she asked plaintively.

“Then you’ll be dead,” he told her with a calm certainty that more than slightly unnerved her.

Kaern didn’t elaborate, because he honestly didn’t think she would be able to understand his confidence. He knew, however, deep down, that she wasn’t meant to farm or cook or do any other normal thing. This girl was on a different track, and she’d experience it for herself soon enough.

Magic called its own to task.

“It’s said…” he spoke again, eyes a little distant as he remembered his own lesson, so very long ago. “It is said that magic can create anything, except perhaps life, but life…life creates magic.”

“How?”

Kaern glanced at the girl, the semi-eager look on her face enough to bring a snort from his throat, save for the fact that it was the first thing she’d shown real interest in since he’d found her.

Not surprising, all things considered, but still…

“You know your magical elements, right, lass?”

Elan nodded. “Earth, air, water, and fire.”

“Right, but those are mere symbols. They mean more than what they say,” he told her. “Earth stands for the physicality of the universe, everything you can touch. Even the air you breathe is actually ascribed to the earth element, though most practicing mages don’t really understand that. Water, too, is of the earth element.”

“And fire?”

“Fire is a tricky one, even the flames of the real world. When you see something burn, you’re actually seeing an interaction of earth, fire, and air,” Kaern explained. “Earth provides the fuel, air powers the reaction, and fire is the energy released. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, however.”

Elan settled back, nodding seriously. Kaern did his best not to laugh in her face. The serious expression looked entirely out of place on the young teen’s visage.

“Alright, so earth is the physicality of the universe,” he said. “Fire is the counter to earth, the energy of the universe. The light of the sun, the heat of a flame, many other things that you would not yet understand. Energy is invisible, it cannot be seen, but we can see and feel its effects on the world. A fire heats you up, the sun lights the way, and so on. Understand?”

She nodded. He again did his best not to laugh at her. She didn’t understand, but that was okay.

“That brings us to the water element,” Kaern said. “Life. Humans, demons, plants, and animals…everything that lives is part of the water element. We are apart from the rest of the universe. We exist as a unique form and are here for a reason.”

“What reason?” Elan was leaning in again.

“To create air,” he answered. “The air element is magic. It cannot exist without life, but it must exist, and so we exist.”

Elan blinked, confused. “We only exist so magic can exist?”

“Precisely.”

“That can’t be. There has to be more to it than that.”

Kaern shook his head. “Not so far as I’ve learned, and I’ve been around a long time, child. There is no rhyme, nor reason, to life beyond what we create simply by existing.”

“That doesn’t make sense anyway,” she said, a little petulantly. “How can we create magic? Magic is everywhere, that’s what Pappa told me.”

“He was right. It exists in every part of the universe. It is the universe,” he told her. “Magic is created simply by observation. We see the universe as it could be, not as it is, and we make it so.”

“The world doesn’t look like I think it should be,” Elan scowled, eyes falling to the ground.

“Then observe a better version of it, be more determined than the enemy,” he told her. “It is your will against the wills of everyone else. Be more than your enemy. More implacable, more imaginative, more everything…”

“It can’t be that simple.”

Kaern laughed. “Simple? Child, do you have any idea what I’m saying? Simple. It’s completely impossible, child. It can’t be done.”

Elan scowled, eyes glaring into the dirt. “No. Not alone. We need a shared vision.”

Kaern smiled softly. “Now you have it, lass.”

“That’s why the demons are winning, isn’t it?” she asked. “They’re working toward a shared vision.”

Kaern nodded. “And humanity is split, weakening the Veil. The demons found a hole and pushed through it, widening it as they drove wedges into humanity.”

“Then we have to bring them back together,” Elan said softly, seriously.

“Easier said than done, but I wish you luck,” Kaern said as he got up, eyes focusing on some approaching men who were walking toward the house from the direction of the city. “For now, I have work of my own to do.”

Elan watched the dour-faced men as they walked past her into the house, following Kaern. She started to go in as well, but Simone was there, blocking her way.

“Not now,” the larger woman said, shaking her head. “This is for them.”

Elan scowled again, starting to feel like this had become her natural expression, and slumped against a tree root that had been upended and carved into a seat.

“Fine,” she mumbled, wishing she’d come up with something wittier.

*****

Kaern looked around the room as everyone settled in, seeing old and familiar faces for the first time in years. It was a mixed feeling, something he experienced often in his long life. Both the recognition of old times and the age that told him in no uncertain terms that those times were soon to be gone forever.

“You look good, Kaern.”

“So do you, Mikael.”

The grey-haired man laughed in his face. “Still can’t lie worth spit. Why are you back?”

Kaern smiled. “The girl needs to be with her own kind. That brought me here now, but I would have come soon anyway. I’d been hearing rumors—little, nasty whispers for the last couple years—but when I found her…they were confirmed. War is coming.”

“War never left,” a bald man said. “Tell us of something new.”

“The girl’s father was part of the resistance in the capital,” Kaern said. “After it was stamped out, he fled to the wastes. It took them a few years, but they tracked him down. They’ve tracked them all down. There’s no one left fighting the lord. I warned you all that this day was coming. You should have stood together. Now you’re going to hang separately.”

“Going against the lord in his own city wasn’t a war, it was suicide!” the bald man snapped. “You knew that. You know that.”

Kaern shook his head. “I’ve said my piece, given you more warning than you deserve. He’s going to come for you now. You’re all that’s left within his territory. He needs to secure this community before he can look outward. Do as you will with the information.”

Kaern got up, causing the men to rise quickly as well.

“You’re leaving?”

“Mikael, there’s nothing here for me.”

“What about then girl?” Mikael demanded. “Are you just leaving her here, with a war coming?”

“The whole world is at war, you said so yourself,” Kaern said coolly. “Besides, she wants to kill demons. What better place for her to be? I’m not your attack dog. Don’t treat me like one.”

“You’re a cold bastard, Kaern,” Makael said, his voice brittle.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Mikael snorted, shaking his head. “So why did you show up then? Why come back?”

Kaern paused, looking out the door to where he could see the silhouette of the girl sitting there. Finally he turned back around. “I just came to warn you of what’s coming. I owed you that much.”

Mikael shook his head. “We’ve known this day was coming for a long time, and you knew that. We’ve been getting ready for it for a long time.”

“You should be running.”

“You run long enough,” Mikael said, “and you never stop. This is where we stop running.”

Kaern closed his eyes. “Then this is where you die.”

“If that is what must come, then so be it. We’re ready,” Mikael said calmly.

That was probably what Kaern had always hated the most about the man—he was far too calm. There was no point in being calm when death was knocking. That was when a little fight was called for. Why go quiet into the darkness?

He would always vote for survival.

Of course, he had the advantage of knowing a little more about death and what lay beyond it than most.

“Whatever,” Kaern said finally. “Do as you will. It’s not my problem anymore.”

He turned his back and walked out, not looking over his shoulder as the men glanced at one another in silence.

“That man was never reliable,” Mikael grumbled.

“That,” Simone said from the doorway, “is untrue. Kaern could always be relied on to be Kaern. You just never understood what that meant. You never bothered to learn the identity of the man behind the myth.”

Mikael shifted, surprised by Simone’s entry into the conversation.

“I apologize, Simone,” he said. “I spoke out of turn.”

“No,” she sighed. “No, you didn’t. You spoke the truth as you see it, and that is never cause for an apology. Kaern has never been one of us, Mikael, and that is where you always misunderstood him. He does what he does for reasons of his own.”

“Reasons,” Mikael spat, clearly irritated and agitated. “The man has no reasons. He chooses to fight when it’s mad to do so, to run when there’s no reason to do so… He makes no sense.”

“You never commanded him in battle, Mikael,” she said softly. “And that man shows his heart only then.” She looked the old men over for a moment. “Now, it’s late. Consider what he told you. We’ll speak of it later.”

They understood the dismissal and rose from their places with no further word, filing out and leaving the home quiet.

Chapter 9

Elan looked up as Kaern stepped out of the house, his expression confusing her. He looked angry, sorrowful, a bunch of things she didn’t recognize.

He just walked past her, stepping down off the wooden planks and into the dirt, then kept on walking.

Elan got to her feet, chasing after him. “Kaern? Where are you going?”

“I’m done here, child,” he said, not looking back. “Time to move on.”

“Wait a moment, I’ll get my things.”

He stopped then, looking back at her. “You don’t want to come with me.”

“Why not?” she asked, challengingly.

“You want to kill demons, don’t you?” he asked, eyes locking on her.

“You know I do.”

“Well, you’ll find enough of them here in short order,” Kaern told her. “There’ll be a war here soon, plenty of killing to do. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it, lass?”

Elan stared at him, uncomprehending at first.

“What do you mean…war?” she asked, as if tasting the word.

Kaern looked off into the distance, away from her. He didn’t need to see her right now, didn’t need to think about other faces she reminded him of.

“The local lord will be coming,” he said, smiling a little shrewdly. “The one your friend Venadrin serves, unless I’m mistaken. He’ll be bringing his armies, and he’ll take this township…or lay it to waste.”

“You’re not going to fight?” she asked. “Aren’t they your friends?”

“Once,” Kaern said, nodding, “a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand you.” She shook her head. “You don’t act like you should. My father told me—”

“Your father was a fool who got himself killed in front of his child daughter because he didn’t know the difference between courage and stupidity,” Kaern growled, turning on her. His glare pinned her in place. “I couldn’t care less what your father told you or what you think it would mean about me.”

She fell back a step, sucking in a shocked breath of air, confusion and hurt practically radiating from her.

“You’re a girl child with a grudge, and if you come with me, you’ll drag me into your little vendetta until we’re both dead…” He took a breath. “Assuming you don’t kill me yourself first.”

Elan looked at him, shocked. “I would not—”

Kaern cut her off with a swipe of his hand. “Never say never, child…or did you really think that I was human?”

Elan fell back from him, her eyes widening. Kaern sneered at her as he watched her hand drop to the hilt of the sword she’d stolen from the bandits.

“You’re not even close to good enough to take me with that, child.”

She didn’t draw the blade, however, just stood there. “You’re lying.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I am not.”

“Demons are…are…different. Ugly…” she finished lamely.

He laughed at her. “I’m flattered. Do you like how I look? Am I handsome?” He mock preened for a moment, then leveled a stare at her that could have frozen water. “Clear your preconceptions, child. Only Eighth and Ninth Circle demons are hideous. As you progress through the more powerful types, there are many that can masquerade as human.”

She considered that for a moment, her breath coming in fast and shallow puffs.

“What kind are you?”

“That’s for me to know, child,” he told her. “Even with what is coming, you’re better here than with me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Pray you never do,” Kaern said, turning away.

A hand fell on his shoulder, startling them both.

“Go easy on the girl, Kaern. She’s young,” Simone said, holding him in place with a single big hand.

“She’s foolish,” he growled, “but that’s not why I’m hard on her.”

“I know, but your way isn’t always the right way,” Simone told him. “And the hard way sometimes is just abuse without purpose.”

Kaern snorted. “You always did like cutting through the crap, Simone.”

“And you always liked laying it on,” she countered with a bit of a grin. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s really going on.”

He paused, thinking about that for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Something is coming.”

“War.”

The two looked over to where Elan was still standing, her hand still on the pommel of the sword she carried.

“You said war was coming.”

“War is always coming.” He shrugged. “That’s the nature of life. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Living things are born to kill. It isn’t in our nature; it is our nature. From the lowliest microbe to the most complex masterpieces of the universe, we’re all murderers to the core. Anyone who says otherwise is just a pathological liar as well.”

“Cheery as always, Kaern,” Simone remarked dryly, “but you’re dodging the question.”

“I told you,” he said, eyes fixating on Elan. “I don’t know what’s coming, but I can read the signs. I’m not blind.”

Simone looked annoyed. “How about you assume we are then?”

“In the last few centuries, do you know how many humans I’ve met who could access the Dreaming?” he demanded, eyes still locked on Elan.

The two women shook their heads.

“I can count them on one hand,” he said by way of answering his own question, “and still have fingers left over for several rude gestures.”

Simone glared at him, clearly not following his train of thought, such as it was.

Kaern sighed, slumping slightly. “Think about it, Simone. Humans’ last outpost in this entire territory is facing annihilation, and I just happen to find a Dreamer right before it goes down? It stinks of prophecy, destiny. I hate that filth.”

Simone turned her focus back on the girl, eyes narrowing. “You cannot be serious.”

Kaern just shrugged. He wasn’t going to get into it with her or anyone else. He’d been involved in such matters before and they rarely turned out well for anyone directly in the line of fire, no matter what side you thought you were taking.

He’d decided a long time ago to put as much distance between himself and prophecy as he could, the real kind, at least. Most times it was nothing but hype, but he’d been around the planet enough times to know when he was looking at the real deal. The odds of running into a Dreamer, especially a child dreamer, were astronomical on their own. To find her right before a pivotal event? No, that was outside his comfort zone.

Simone, however, was far from convinced.

She shook her head, repeating herself, “You cannot be serious. This child? What destiny could she possibly have?”

“I don’t know, and when I find out, I want it to be from a long goddamn distance off,” he said simply.

“What are you talking about?” Elan broke into the conversation, her hand still on the hilt of the sword at her side.

Kaern looked at her for a long moment.

He’d known from the moment he saw her in the Dreaming that she wasn’t going to be some random encounter. That didn’t mean he liked the fact that he was sitting at the center of the play. He’d been there too often in the past and wasn’t looking for more of the same.

“I told you, lass, living things make magic…” he said, “but in turn, magic can make or break us too.”

He knew that meant little to either of them, so Kaern sighed before going on.

“Destiny events tend to be…messy,” he said, “and I can see one coming to a crux here from a long way off. I won’t try and stop it, I’m not that stupid, but I dinna see any reason to be here when it happens.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Elan complained. “I barely know how to fight. How can I matter at all?”

Kaern snorted. “Lass, if warriors made destiny, we’d all long be dead. Could be you’re just here to die and piss someone off so they become great, but I doubt that. Whatever it is, however, it’s not my concern. This is human business.”

He turned and started walking again. This time neither of the two moved to stop him.

“Hey, Simone,” Kaern called over his shoulder, pausing briefly.

“Yes?” the big woman asked, eyes still narrow.

“Teach her,” he said. “I brought her to you for a reason.”

Then Kaern walk down over a hill and out of sight.

*****

“I think we have a deal.”

Venadrin smiled blandly, accepting the trinkets he’d bargained for as he handed over the iron ingots. Trading iron to humans was one way to prove you weren’t working for the demons, a fast way to gain trust. The way humans figured, no demon would trade weapons that could kill them with their enemies.

There were only two problems with that.

The first was that Venadrin couldn’t care less if a few demons were killed by his actions. They weren’t his people. He owed no allegiance to the likes of them, even if he were the sort to be loyal in the first place.

The second problem was that the lord didn’t give a damn either.

Eighth and Ninth Circle demons were a plague on the universe, only useful as shock troops and for what they might eventually become. A few extra dead now was so beyond meaningless that Venadrin doubted the thought had even passed through the lord’s mind.

Or what passes for whatever goes on inside that…thing.

He closed up the bag, still smiling blandly at the merchant as he noted the positions of the local guards on reflex. It probably wouldn’t matter, honestly. By the time the demon horde made it this far, the whole place would be in chaos, but good habits were good habits.

Out of the corner of his eye, he kept watch on his true target, the constable’s office. That would be the source of resistance once the fighting got this far into the community, once the first line had been annihilated. Likely it would fold quickly, but you never could tell with peacekeepers.

Unlike warriors, they weren’t the sort to go out looking for trouble, but when it came knocking they often took their oaths to extreme degrees.

Eight constables visible, Venadrin noted, then slowly looked around, and most likely half the people here have been authorized to support them in an emergency.

That meant, conservatively, they were going to be facing a moderate core of trained peacekeepers and at least three hundred part-timers. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that their forces were going to be tired and weary by the time they got this far.

Difficult, but workable.

The defensive edge would make them a force to be reckoned with, but the lord had enough fodder to roll over it even so. Venadrin doubted that the real elite would even need to blood their weapons this time around, but he’d been mistaken before.

He unconsciously traced a long scar on his face, a final gift from Damasc before the man had retreated back to the wastes. Hunting him down had been a personal vendetta, and a pleasure, on his part. Killing the big fool, well, that was the most satisfying thing he’d done in recent memory.

Unfortunate I couldn’t have spent a little more time with his daughter, but dallying with bored demons in your vicinity is just asking for more trouble than she was worth.

*****

Kaern paused on his way out of the sanctuary space, looking back at the sparse greenery that was out of place in the world now.

Humans’ final keep, in this part of the world at least, was a singularly unimpressive holdout, but he had seen worse. They’d chosen a location that was defensible, for what it would be worth to them when the local lord finally decided to move on them. The approaches were few and narrow. The city itself had its back to the waters of the great Atalan Sea, approachable only from a single avenue.

That would ultimately prove their end, Kaern guessed. Only one way in meant that there was only one way out as well, and when that way had already been overrun by demonic hordes…well, running wasn’t an option.

Best hope they’ve a plan to stand and die, Kaern thought darkly as he turned away and began trudging once more toward the wastes. Better that than to live under the talons of a Fal lord.

He tried not to think too hard on the young human he’d just left in the path of that inevitable oncoming wave. Destiny, prophecy, these were words he had long since learned to respect in whatever language they were spoken.

Respect and fear.

Kaern well knew that many considered destiny to be the ultimate fate of all things, that there was no free will, just predetermination.

He knew better.

Destiny wasn’t predetermination, otherwise Kaern would view the whole situation through rather apathetic eyes and like as not ignore the entire thing. He knew from deep experience that while many things in creation were, in fact, predetermined…destiny was not one of them, though it was a counterintuitive thing to understand.

Destiny was the ultimate expression of free will, a point in the history of a universe when choice could truly make a difference.

Most decisions made by men were inconsequential. Turn right, turn left…either way, your decision would quickly merge back with the mainstream of the unfolding river of time. Most choices barely diverged at all from the trunk line universe. Some diverged enough to briefly become full-fledged alternate worlds in their own right, but even those would inevitably and quickly—by universal scales, at least—fold right back into the breath of time.

A destiny event, however…that was something else entirely.

That was a point where the universe could be struck just so, sending a portion off at such an angle that it all but permanently diverged from the trunk line. It was the point of creation for an entirely other world, a different universe that would become a trunk line in its own right.

A glorious thing, to be sure, but birth pains were legendary among mortals. The pain of a newly birthing universe could be no less, and for those who were at its epicenter…rarely survivable with one’s mind fully intact.

No, Kaern had no wish to be anywhere near a destiny convergence in the making, and it wasn’t his business anyway. This was a human affair.

Not my concern at all.

He forced the image of a burnt and bloodied little girl, staked out in the desert, from his mind as he consciously made his feet take one step at a time away from the human city.

*****

Elan found herself feeling very alone as she sat out in the open air, back to the farm home. Daylight was making its appearance known in the slowly lightening sky, and she’d already been up for an hour. She wasn’t used to sleeping late, nor was anyone else in the house. For now, she was just grateful for the shelter and care, but soon Elan knew that she’d have to find a way to contribute.

Simone had been quietly comforting, as if dealing with Kaern and his attitude were an old skill she’d brought out of the past with ease. Elan was doubly grateful for that, actually, as the man’s explosion the night before had left her utterly lost within her own mind.

The fact that he hadn’t been human, that just didn’t make any sense.

Demons were monsters. They killed and destroyed. Demons didn’t save an injured girl, patch her up, and get her to help. Elan didn’t know how to deal with the disconnect she was facing. The internal break was just too much for her. She’d been trying to work it out since the night before, but all she could manage was to decide that Kaern couldn’t be a demon.

Maybe he wasn’t human, maybe he was even technically linked to demons somehow, but he couldn’t be one.

“Feeling better?”

Elan twisted, then started to rise as Simone stepped out of the house. “Yes, thank you. I can help…”

“Sit,” the big woman said, pushing her gently but firmly back down. “You’ll have things to do soon enough. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Someone?” Elan blinked. “Who?”

“He should be…ah, there he comes,” Simone said, eyes focusing off in the distance.

Elan turned, eyes falling on a shadowed figure walking out of the east, his back to the lightening sky. As he got closer, she made out the trim and well-muscled form of a young man who couldn’t be much older than she was.

She instantly felt warmer and for a moment worried if she was becoming ill again, but her attention was held quickly by the newcomer as he stepped into the large yard of the farm.

“Caleb,” Simone said, “meet Elan. She’ll be joining you for your lessons, but she’s been injured so none of your usual nonsense.”

“Yes’m,” the boy said with a half crooked grin, eyes falling to Elan for a moment before he nodded. “Nice to see you.”

“And…you too,” she stammered out, swallowing.

“You alright?” he asked, concerned.

“She was raised alone,” Simone said. “Elan will have some troubles until she gets caught up.”

Caleb nodded amiably. “Well, I’m sure we can get her caught up fast. What is it today, Simone? Planting schedule?”

“No, swordplay,” the big woman answered.

The boy perked up instantly. “Really? That’s usually not until fifth day.”

“Times are changing, son. We’ll be working it more often, for both of you. You brought yours?” Simone asked.

“’Course.”

“Good. Elan has one of her own as well. We’ll do forms today.”

Simone saw them outside and around to the back of the house, where a small workout arena was waiting.

“I want you to start, Elan,” Simone said as she gestured to the middle of the ground.

Elan nodded, a little nervously and a fair bit self-consciously. She wasn’t used to being watched, and so many new faces were making her feel weird. She was trying to avoid looking at Caleb, not really knowing why, but the blond boy made her feel like she was constantly doing something foolish.

Not knowing what else to do, she took the blade she had…acquired from the bandits and walked to the center of the ground, dropping into the first stance her father had taught her.

Simone frowned, cocking her head to one side, but said nothing as she gestured for Elan to continue.

Elan struck out with the blade, exactly as she’d been taught, then withdrew to the first block position before transitioning to the second strike. Her heart stopped hammering in her throat as she fell into the old way of doing things, happy to be going through motions that made sense to her.

So she moved through all the motions she had been taught, then began the cycle a second time before Simone spoke up and stopped her.

“That’s enough,” the woman said with an odd frown on her face. “I’ve seen what I need to. Who taught you, Elan?”

“My father,” Elan answered, eyes dropping to the ground for a moment.

Simone nodded, as if having expected as much. “Tell me,” she asked, “was your father a large man?”

Elan looked up, her smile almost eclipsing the sadness reflected in her eyes. “He was the biggest in the world.”

Simone chuckled. “I think you may be surprised by the variety you’ll find in the world, even today, child…but for now I’m afraid we’ll have to start your training from the beginnings again.”

“What? Why?” Elan took a step back, affronted. “I know the moves! I did them right, I know I did!”

“You did indeed,” Simone told her. “You did them perfectly, with skill and precision. If you had another two or three times your body weight behind you, those would have been the strikes of a journeyman blademaster at the very least.”

Elan was puzzled by the statement, missing the look of shock and slight chagrin from Caleb at that pronouncement.

“Then…why?”

“Because your father’s blade style ill suits you, child. You don’t have his size or his muscle,” Simone told her. “For you we need speed, precision, and a more flowing motion. Come, let me see your blade.”

Elan hesitated, but stepped forward with halting steps until she was in front of Simone. Reluctantly she extended the weapon, pommel first as she’d been taught. Simone accepted it, turning it away from Elan and hefting it so she could get a good feel for it.

“Acceptable,” she said finally, handing the weapon back. “You may start with this blade, but until you master the new forms, I believe that for match ups with Caleb, we’ll focus on stave practice.”

Elan looked puzzled while Caleb groaned audibly.

“I hate stave practice, Simone,” he moaned.

“All the more reason to practice, then,” she responded with a grin that indicated far too much pleasure in the moment.

Elan had a suspicion that she was not going to enjoy this training near so much as she had the time she spent training with her father. She grimaced slightly and looked with some trepidation to where Simone was retrieving a pair of staves for the two of them.

Yeah. This isn’t going to be fun.

Chapter 10

If anything, Elan realized in short order that she had been massively underestimating just how very unpleasant the experience turned out to be.

Her knuckles were bloodied, arms and legs were sporting bruises upon bruises, and she really wanted to be doing anything other than the small chores she’d been assigned by Simone after they’d finished. Still, she’d been fed and her injuries treated, so she would not have felt right begging off even if she’d been given the option.

The work was light, however. Simone had insisted on that as a nod to both her treated injuries and the bruising she’d picked up at the hands of Caleb.

He’d been properly apologetic about it, she reflected on that. He reminded her of her father when he’d done something he knew her mother was not going to like. Elan didn’t know what that meant. It was beginning to dawn on her that everything she knew about human interaction came entirely from her parents and…bizarre as it seemed to her, that wasn’t normal.

Most people had dozens, even hundreds—a number that honestly boggled Elan’s mind to the point where she secretly doubted it was a real thing—of people who they took their example from.

That seemed so…abnormal.

She didn’t really know what to think about it. It felt so very alien.

For the moment, however, she had simply decided not to think about it at all. She elected instead to just focus on the immediate instead: learning what they could, and would, teach her…doing what chores she was asked to, and practicing those things that her father had taught her as though he were still there.

Perhaps his sword style was not for her—Elan didn’t know if she really believed that yet—but she would practice it religiously anyway. It was his legacy for her. She wouldn’t let it be lost. The skills her mother had taught her as well, they would not be neglected. She had learned all she knew of surviving, of living, from her mother in the time before her father came.

Elan hadn’t realized at the time just how important those skills were. They were just the things she had to do, chores.

She knew better now.

The one thing she was most intent on continuing, however, was her steps into the Dreaming.

Having achieved that lofty goal once, even under such painful circumstances, Elan couldn’t help but feel like a starving woman presented with a feast she hadn’t been fully aware of, just out of her reach. Now that she’d had a taste, she couldn’t go back to fasting.

So, after finishing her assigned chores and enduring a surprisingly uncomfortable meal in which she stared more at the table than she ate, uncertain as to how to act around entirely new people, Elan retired early to rest, recuperate, and hopefully to dream.

*****

She woke, screaming.

She couldn’t hear her own voice, and it took several long seconds before Elan realized that no sound was coming out, though her mouth was open and she was sitting up. Her screams still rang in her ears, but with no reactions from anyone else in the small home, Elan had to assume that they were from her dreams.

She couldn’t remember what she’d dreamed. The details were gone. The fear, that was still with her.

Elan didn’t understand it; she’d never felt that sort of fear before in her life. Not even when she saw her…what was left of her parents, not even when the demons staked her out and left her to die.

She hadn’t had time for fear then.

Now, she had nothing but time, it seemed. She didn’t know what to do now. Should she remain here? Learn? Leave and hunt down Venadrin?

A shiver ran through her as she sat there, cold sweat drying on her body.

The terror had snuck up on her in her sleep, and Elan didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t fight that, she had no idea how. It wasn’t human; it wasn’t demon. It was something deep inside herself, and her father had never told her how to fight…herself.

Elan, shivering, lay back down and curled up under the thin blanket.

Sleep wasn’t going to come easily, she knew, if it came at all.

Eventually, she drifted off again into a fitful sleep, rolling on the mat that separated her from the ground.

*****

Venadrin knelt at the foot of the pulpit that lead to the black throne, head practically touching the floor as he waited for the lord to take notice of his existence. It was something the man hated with every fiber of his being, kneeling there, both hoping and dreading that this…thing…would notice that he even existed.

If he had his way, he would kill them all.

Demons, humans, practically every living thing he had ever been in the presence of. None of them were worth the air they wasted with each useless breath.

However, that was beyond his power and he knew it.

So he knelt there, forcing patience to win over disgust, and waited.

Finally, he felt the presence of the Fal lord turn onto him with a weight that was almost palpable.

“So, human, what report do you have for me.”

It was phrased as a question, yet had none of the intonations of one, making it clear that an order had been given.

“My Lord,” Venadrin said quickly in response, “I have left detailed reports of the settlement’s defenses with your generals. It will be a costly fight. They have prepared as well as might be expected, but victory is assured.”

The lord observed him for a time, then spoke again. “Of course it will be costly, human,” the lord chuckled. “Were it not, I would already have eliminated them. I will look over your detailed reports and let you know if I have use of you again.”

“Of course, my Lord.” Venadrin bowed deeply again before backing away as he recognized the dismissal for what it was.

Venadrin paused at the exit to the room as a small demon rushed past him and called to the lord, excited beyond reason in Venadrin’s opinion. No being should be in either a rush, or excitement, to be entering the presence of any Fal lord…to say nothing of the beast at his back now.

“Lord! Lord!” the small demon called in a patois of Ninth Circle Demonique and the local human tongue. The horribly garbled language was barely understandable to anyone who knew either, and almost worse if you knew both. Venadrin cringed at the sound.

The lord turned, irritated, not noticing that Venadrin had paused to listen as well, just out of curiosity as to what might have excited the fool demon so.

“What is it?” the lord asked, his tone curt and edging on threatening.

The small one didn’t seem to notice. “Lord! The Wanderer has been spotted within your territory!”

“What?” The demonic Fal lord, master of all he surveyed, rose to his feet as he bellowed in rage.

The small demon cringed back, apparently just then realizing the position it was in.

“Tell me that again,” the Master ordered darkly.

“Th…the Wanderer, Lord. He has been seen.”

“Where? You will tell me where that…” The lord paused and started to look around.

Venadrin took that as his cue to vanish from the room, hoping he hadn’t been spotted.

Who, or what, is this…Wanderer?

*****

The capitol of the Master’s territory was filthy. The stench never failed to sicken Venadrin, no matter how much he was exposed to it. Lower circle demons were like a plague, the lowest three practically like rotting flesh made mobile by some unholy means. They left trails of corrupted flesh and expelled waste wherever they walked, and those were their better qualities.

He made his way through the uneven streets, dodging the more disgusting bits of detritus as best he could, working his way out to the outer ring of huts that circled the stone fortress and inner city that housed the demons.

The shanties were where the humans lived.

Venadrin stopped in front of a marginally larger hut than the rest, then stepped up to the door and kicked it in.

The “patrons” of the pub stopped their chatter and stared for a moment, silence greeting his entry. He glared around the room, daring any of them to say a word to him, and no one took him up on it.

Venadrin was well aware that he was far from the most popular man in the city, and he was plenty satisfied with that. He didn’t give a damn what any of them thought. The revolt against the Master had been stupid and would have gotten them all killed eventually. He didn’t care much for their lives, but he’d be damned if he let the likes of Damasc cause him to lose his life.

He walked across the room and hauled one of the drunks off the slab of wood that was serving as the bar, tossing him down.

“Give me a drink,” he said, looking at the man behind the slab with a dead-eyed gaze.

He’d chosen this place because he knew the “proprietor” and knew that both the man and his “fine establishment” had been in the city for longer than Venadrin had been alive.

The man wordlessly poured him a thick berry concoction that looked more like sludge than a proper drink, but Venadrin didn’t care. He took a deep slug of the sweet, sickly-tasting beverage and waved for it to be refilled as he put it back on the slab.

“You’re not the most popular man around these parts,” the server told him, refilling the rough cup.

“Ask me if I care,” Venadrin countered.

The man stared for a moment, then turned to leave. Venadrin lunged across the slab, grabbing his arm and hauling him back around.

“How long have you been here?” he demanded of the server.

“Too long.”

“A day is too long. How long?”

The server hesitated, then sighed. “Most of my life. I stopped counting a long time ago.”

Venadrin nodded thoughtfully. “Demons come in here by times, don’t they?”

“You know they do.”

“The name, Wanderer,” Venadrin said. “Heard of it?”

The server’s eyes darted from one side to another, which was answer enough for Venadrin, but he waited for the man to assure himself that they weren’t being listened in on. In fact, he took a look around as well.

Anything that so infuriated the Master, well it was something both important…and dangerous.

“That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time,” the old server said after a moment. “A name that isn’t to be spoken openly around here.”

“There’s no one around us sober enough to hear you, let alone understand you,” Venadrin said firmly. “Tell me.”

The server sighed, then looked around again before speaking.

“It was during the wars,” he said finally.

“Everything was during the war,” Venadrin snorted.

“No, not the war. The wars. That name has been around a long time,” the server corrected him, “through the last several conflicts, at least, but some say that he was around during the first war.”

“Demon then,” Venadrin said, unsurprised. Few humans could piss off a Fal lord to the degree that he’d heard.

“That is what most think.” The server shrugged. “But whoever this Wanderer is, he’s killed more demons than anyone I’ve ever heard…if he’s just one man. Some think the title is passed down, or maybe just stolen. Now, why are you bringing up old ghost stories, Venadrin?”

“No reason.” Venadrin slammed down the drink and pushed back from the slab, getting to his feet. “No reason at all.”

“Then you shouldn’t be bringing things like that up, collaborator.”

Venadrin shot a glare over his shoulder to the speaker, a large man who was balling his fists up in obvious threat. Venadrin just snorted and turned his back on the man.

“Go ahead, if you’ve got the stones,” he said without looking back again. “We both know what’ll happen if you do.”

Long moments passed before he nodded curtly and sneered at no one…and everyone.

“I thought so.”

Venadrin walked out of the bar, silence following him.

*****

Venadrin thought about what he’d heard, trying to piece the real story from the rumor.

For the Master to be so incensed by the name, it was clear that this Wanderer wasn’t some legend. He was a real being and someone who could be identified, otherwise the filthy little scavenger demon wouldn’t have been able to bring that warning.

So probably not some line of humans sharing a name, but just another demonic piece of filth playing their never-ending games of chaos. One thing he’d learned quickly was that demons cared for demons just as much as they cared for humans, which was to say…not at all. They killed one another with a fiendish glee that even someone like himself couldn’t match on his worst day.

Despite that, they’d driven humans to the point of death.

Venadrin didn’t know how many human lives remained on the Earth, but he knew that however many it was…it was almost the end.

Once the last war had been lost, or won, depending on one’s point of view, the demon lords who had divvied up the world amongst themselves would begin corrupting the lives that remained. Animals, plants…humans…would all begin the Change.

In a few generations, there would be another Ninth Circle of the Hells, and more rotting, changing, filthy demons to fill the ranks and be used as fodder in the next war.

Venadrin idly scratched at his right arm, turning it over to show the purple and brown scab that had been growing there.

It might not even take generations, he supposed.

Humanity was dead already. The humans just hadn’t figured it out yet.

But they will, he thought darkly. They will.

Chapter 11

Morning came early, all the more so because of how fitful a night she’d spent, but the moment Elan heard motion around her, she was awake and moving too. There would be things to do, there always were, and perhaps there would be more training as well.

Training was the only thing she…desired now.

There wasn’t anything else left but that, until she was ready. Ready to follow her father’s example, now that his warnings no longer mattered. The vengeance of the demons on her was already complete. They’d taken everything she’d known, and now…the world around her.

Elan felt like she was still in the Dreaming, like none of it was real.

The people Kaern had taken her to, they were nice but they weren’t real.

The demons, they were real.

With only nightmares left, Elan was ready to die.

Kaern’s words stayed with her, however, and she was willing to put off the inevitable until she had the capability, and the opportunity, to make the demons pay.

“Awake, child?”

Simone was looking in on her, causing Elan to snap out of her reverie.

“Yes,” Elan nodded stiffly. “I’m ready.”

“Ready?” Simone asked. “Ready for what?”

“To work,” Elan said, stating the obvious.

Simone nodded. “There is work to be done, but we’ll eat first. Work, and training, comes later. Get ready to meet the day, Elan.”

Elan nodded and pulled on the shirt she’d gotten in the old Redoubt, the smooth, soft material soothing as it draped over her. She hadn’t washed it…well, ever, but despite having bled on it, the shirt was still the cleanest thing she had. Elan didn’t know how that was possible, but she wasn’t above taking advantage of it either.

The morning meal was simple, but left her feeling ready to meet the day as Simone had suggested, and Elan went out with the others to get the morning’s work finished. Everyone participated, bringing water to the gardens and plucking the strangling weeds that would kill the edible plants. She was surprised at how little time it took to get the work put away, as they were finished up before the sun had risen more than a quarter mark.

With the day’s heat just starting to build, Simone called a stop to the work.

“We’ll finish the rest in the evening,” she said, “after training. Caleb, why don’t you show Elan around in the meantime.”

Caleb nodded. “Sure, I can do that.”

Elan nodded as well, though with considerably less certainty.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to explore a little, or that she didn’t like the boy exactly, but Caleb…left her feeling odd. Elan had never known anyone her own age. Of course, she’d never really known anyone at all besides her parents, so it was all beyond her at the moment. Caleb, though, stood out.

She just didn’t know how, or why.

So she forced that discomfort aside and brushed the dirt off her skin along with what little dust had gathered on her shirt. A couple swipes of her hands and a shake of the fabric left the colorful material as clean again as the day she’d first put it on.

“Alright,” she made herself say aloud.

“Come on, then,” Caleb said. “We’ll do a quick tour and then go to the water when the sun gets up so we can cool off.”

“There’s a river?” she asked, curious. She hadn’t been paying much attention to…well anything really, when Kaern had led her to Simone’s land.

“Sure, but I mean the water,” Caleb said, gesturing.

Elan looked in the direction he was pointing and frowned. “What water?”

“What wa…?” he sputtered, half turning. “The blue? You know? Water? The sea?”

She narrowed her eyes, looking harder. There was a thick blue line of something out there, but for that to be water, Elan couldn’t even imagine just how much of the precious liquid there would have to be.

“So much…?” she murmured.

Simone laughed softly. “Yes, Kaern said you came from deep inland. That’s all water, and much more besides, but none of it will quench a thirst.”

Elan frowned, looking at her sharply. “Poisoned?”

“Not as such,” Simone said with a hint of a sad smile. “Experience with that?”

Elan shook her head. “No, but my father’s stories…”

“Of course.” Simone nodded before going on. “Well, no, it’s not poisoned. The water is saltwater, enough to make you sick if you drank it, but it would not kill you unless you were very determined. The rivers and streams are fresh. Caleb can show you which ones are safe.”

She nodded. “Thank you both.”

Simone just waved them off, and Elan and Caleb started walking in the general direction of the great blue band in the distance. They were silent for a while, until his curiosity got the best of him and he half turned to her.

“Did you really come from inland?”

Elan glanced at him, surprised to see that there was a look she didn’t really recognize on his face, along with hints of looks she did know. Fear, wonder, curiosity. She nodded curtly in response. “My mother raised me there, away from the demons, until my father came.”

“No one goes inland,” Caleb said softly. “Even the bandits and demons don’t go out into the desert. I didn’t think anyone could live out there.”

Elan considered those words for a moment. “My father says…” She paused, wincing as she corrected herself. “My father said that humans were an adaptable people. We can cut out a life anywhere we choose, if we just put our minds to it.”

Caleb laughed softly. “Simone says that too. Even she’s never gone far inland, though.”

Elan nodded, her mind mostly elsewhere.

“It’s dry,” she said finally. “Mother said that it was harsh, but I don’t know a lot about that. I just know that it was home.”

“Well, come on,” Caleb told her. “I’ll show you the sights, then we can go swimming when the heat is on us.”

Elan nodded and followed him willingly and even with a little building eagerness. Everything was so…new.

*****

She’d underestimated just how new it was, Elan found in short order.

The people, the sheer number of people, staggered her. There were dozens. No, hundreds! They were crowded in on each other in a way that made her shiver at the thought, which caused her to hang back when Caleb went haggling for some food from someone he saw. She just waited on the periphery for him to get back and was surprised…pleasantly, but still surprised, when he offered her some of the snack he’d procured.

“Thank you,” Elan said, accepting the fried meat and bread.

“No problem,” Caleb said with a grin, popping a piece of his into his mouth as they started to walk away from the market. “You okay? You look a little…I dunno, pale?”

“I have never…I didn’t know that so many people existed,” Elan confessed quietly. “I don’t know how to…”

She stumbled over her words, uncertain what to say as they continued on. She didn’t even know how to say that she didn’t know what to say, if that made any sense. It didn’t make much to her, frankly, so she just fell silent again.

“Really?” Caleb asked, puzzled. “Wasn’t that many there today. You should see it on a holiday celebration!”

Elan shivered. It got more crowded than that? She didn’t think she could really handle that.

“I don’t think I want to,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I…if that’s okay, I mean.”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Again, Elan found herself completely unable to respond. She was realizing with every passing word they exchanged just how completely ignorant and unprepared she was for the life she had now fallen into. She just wanted to go back home, with Momma and Pappa.

Caleb had moved on ahead of her, and she was thankful for that, as she felt tears well up in her eyes despite every attempt to quell them. Elan shifted slightly behind him as they walked, staying out of his line of sight as much as she could.

“Where are we going?”

She was actually quite proud that she’d kept the tremor out of her voice just then. It felt like a major accomplishment, no matter how silly it sounded.

Caleb barely glanced behind him. “I’m going to show you the sights, remember? The temple is just up ahead. You’ve got to see that!”

Temple?

Elan didn’t know even what a temple was, but if he was excited, she supposed that she should be too. It was all very new, and if she were unprepared, then she needed to work on becoming prepared, after all.

“Okay,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

It felt forced, sounded worse to her, but Caleb didn’t seem to notice.

She followed where he led, shying away from the people as much as she could while trying not to be too obvious about it. Elan realized that she felt out of place among other humans, and that was a disturbing realization. She hadn’t really been able to delve into it before they arrived at their destination, however, and she was pulled inside the place he called a temple.

The temple was a familiar place.

Not from the outside, not at all. The flat stone or whatever it was jutted out oddly to her eye, and people had mounted platforms and rails all around it, making it look even stranger. Inside, though, the impossibly smooth walls and floor brought her back to when Kaern had located her so quickly that she had to rub her wrists to quell the phantom pains.

It was a Redoubt, as he called it.

There was…something, many things, she rather thought, different though.

“The lights are off,” she said, surprised.

“No they’re not.” Caleb frowned at her in the shadow of the oil lamps that flickered in the interior. “See?”

“Not those, the lights,” Elan insisted. “The ones that glow evenly by burning everything.”

Caleb looked at her oddly. “That sounds…unpleasant.”

She shook her head, frustrated. “I’m not explaining it right. Just…there should be better lights. Trust me, I’ve seen them.”

“If you say so,” he said, shrugging.

They made their way in by the flickering lights of the lamps, and Elan took in as much of it as she could. She’d spent some time in the other place, of course, but most of it had been while unconscious or delirious, so her memories of it were perhaps not as great as they could have been.

She still remembered enough to take the lead, though, surprising Caleb. She made her way to the wide platform and looked over it, comparing the area to her memory.

“There’s dust,” she said, thinking about what Kaern had told her. This Redoubt was in use, the lights should have been working, right?

“There’s always dust, everywhere,” Caleb snorted. “That’s the world.”

Elan shook her head, annoyed with her lack of understanding, and she found herself wishing that Kaern were there to explain. The man…

Demon? Is…is that even possible? Elan didn’t know. She’d been trying not think about it, if she were to be honest with herself, and even now forced the question from her mind. Whatever he had been, he had saved her and he had educated her during the time they had spent together. She would try to focus on that.

“The lights should have burned the dust away,” she tried to explain, but clearly failed if she were to judge by the look on Caleb’s face. So she just shook her head. “Never mind. I was just surprised.”

Caleb just shrugged and seemed to accept that as he showed her the interior of the “temple” and went on about what different places in it were used for. Elan couldn’t see what he was describing, however; she could only hear Kaern’s voice and words as they walked through.

She spotted the door to where she’d gone when she needed to…go…

It was open here, no lights flickering beyond the door, so she assumed that nothing inside was working.

It’s been emptied completely out, Elan realized as she saw the dust-filled shelves where things had been in the other.

She paused at an open hole in the wall where there had been an invisible wall and looked at the spot where the shirt she was even then wearing had been hanging.

Writing on the walls, faded and covered in dust, told her that this was a transport hub…just as the other had been, but none of the little points of light were lit up here at all. Elan wondered if the power sources had burned out… They do that, right? I think? Elan didn’t know, but she supposed that seemed right…or maybe someone had come in and taken it?

Was it just turned off?

So many questions, her head was whirring with them such that Elan didn’t even notice that Caleb had completed his little “tour” and led her back outside until she was hit by the heat and blinking in the bright sunlight.

“That was the…temple?” Elan asked, just to be sure.

“Yeah, impressive isn’t it?” Caleb answered with a grin.

Elan nodded numbly.

Her father had told her stories of the “temple” in the great city, the place where demons ruled. He’d described it as a place of power, but now that she’d walked this one and had memories of the other, Elan recognized some of the descriptions in her father’s stories.

If the temple were a Redoubt of the Ancients, as Kaern said, and not the place of magic and mystery her father described to her…Elan was genuinely lost, yet again.

Being lost was beginning to feel like being home, Elan supposed rather sourly. The feeling, unpleasant though it was, had that same familiarity to it.

“Come on, Elan,” Caleb encouraged from ahead of her when her steps slowed. “The beach is this way.”

Elan followed dutifully, trying to focus on everything at once and generally doing an incredibly poor job of it to the point where she finally had to put the temple out of her mind and just follow Caleb to the so-called beach.

She just hoped it wasn’t another thing to destroy her worldview. She really felt like she could only recover from such events so many times in such a short period.

Later, Elanthielle found that she couldn’t stop staring at the water.

It was endless, just undulating ceaselessly as far as her eyes could see. She’d never even imagined anything like it. She stepped onto the edge, the cool wash of it running over her feet and tugging slightly at her as it pulled back into the blue.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Elan ignored Caleb’s question. Honestly, she barely registered it. The great water entranced her. Her father had told her about the sea, about the endless water, but she had never managed to put it into a proper place in her mind. Something about it defied description until you’d seen it for yourself.

She was in up to her knees when Caleb caught her by the shoulder and held her back.

“Hey now, come on, can you even swim?” he asked. “Because I promise, even if you can, it’s different out there.”

Elan glanced back at him, startled after being brought from her thoughts.

“I…I understand,” she said after a moment. “I won’t go any farther.”

“I didn’t say that.” He smiled easily. “I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. It looked like you were a little zoned out there.”

Elan dipped her hands into the cool water, lifting it up to her face.

“You can’t drink it,” Caleb warned her.

She ignored him, lifting it to her lips and tasting just a bit of it before spitting out the saltwater back to the sea with a cringe on her face.

“I warned you.”

Elan nodded. “I know. Had to try.”

Caleb just nodded. “You’re not the first. Everyone seems to when they first get here from outside. You’re just from farther than anyone else I’ve heard of.”

Elan took a breath and sank down into the water, letting the undulations of the sea wash over her as she leaned back and felt the cold seep into her body. It was as though her life had just begun again somehow, in that moment, in a way she couldn’t describe.

All she knew for certain was that everything had changed.

*****

Kaern stopped along the ridge of the great wall, farther south from where he and Elan had crossed it to get to the city. Movement in the distance had caused his paranoia to awaken, and he dropped to a crouch and shifted back so as to avoid presenting a silhouette for any observers to spot.

He’d lived a long time, and while he had no particular worry of dying anytime soon, it was his rather sad experience that there were times when death might be more pleasant. So even he took precautions when he felt them warranted.

The movement was far off, so far in fact that he was initially surprised he’d noticed it.

Until he realized why he’d noticed it.

That is a lot of demons.

They were moving by day, which was highly unusual. That told him volumes in and of itself. Only the lord could force that many demons out into the sunlight. The white light of the sun affected their type badly, especially those who were still early in the change. Ninth and Eighth Circle demons would be burned by the time they arrived anywhere. Some hybrids wouldn’t even have made it as far as this group had.

Not that the lord would care. Kaern was well familiar with how much lower circle demons valued their less “evolved” brethren. Those that survived were strong enough to be of some value; those that didn’t were better disposed of than weighing the rest down.

He edged to the cliff and just waited, eyes sharp, even in the lowering light, and began counting.

It’s not a raid, Kaern decided shortly, sighing deeply. Too many by far, and too disciplined. This is a siege force, and if the lord himself isn’t leading this…one of his top commanders is. Damn.

They were moving on the city.

It was the only remaining target of value to bring out a force like he was seeing; there just was nothing else in any direction that he could think of. He’d hoped that they would have more time.

That she would have more time.

******

Venadrin marched.

The few humans, most of them little more than slaves, were vastly outnumbered by the demons around them as they moved, and the smell was enough to turn even his experienced stomach.

At least the commander has them marching in rank. Mostly.

Most of the force were Eighth and Ninth, of course, and thus nothing but fodder. Not that they seemed capable of understanding that. Those imbeciles thought they were the kings of the world, masters of the universe, and whatever else had managed to sink into their limited brains.

The Change destroyed intellect first, the body next, but the body recovered quicker. Intellect, well that didn’t come back. In a hundred generations or so, Venadrin understood from listening quietly to the lower circle demons talk, they would slowly re-establish some form of intellect, but from what he had seen, even then it was limited.

Stupidity and demons went hand in hand. They could be cunning, even clever in the way animals could be clever, but even the Master…even he was not what Venadrin would describe as smart. It galled all the more, then, that the beasts he walked with had won.

There was probably a lesson in that, for posterity, he supposed, but Venadrin couldn’t have cared less. In the moment was where he lived, and his moment had been destroyed by idiots long before he had been born. If they couldn’t be damned to care for his future, why should he care for the future of anyone else?

A grunt and a gesture from a demon ahead of him broke him from his thoughts and caused Venadrin to break ranks to move up to where the commander was riding.

“Orders, Commander?” he asked as obsequiously as possible.

Some demons, like the Master on occasion, were amused by a little fire in their human slaves. Some, like the commander, most assuredly were not.

“How far now to the city?” the Fifth Circle demon growled at him.

“If we march all day, we’ll arrive as the sun sets,” Venadrin answered.

The commander nodded thoughtfully.

“Then march we will,” the demon said finally, and with finality.

*****

Caleb and Elan returned to the farm an hour after the sun crossed overhead, the heat of the walk back drying any remaining water from their bodies long before they arrived. Simone welcomed them in, nodding to the counter, where food was waiting for them in covered dishes.

While they ate, Elan thought more about the temple and the lack of lighting and lights. She remembered the Redoubt signal board, as Kaern had called it, with lights lit up in green and red and a few points that looked like they should have lights but were dark. He had told her it referred to other Redoubts across the continent, and she wondered which of those lights represented the temple here in the city?

“Simone?” She spoke tentatively, still uncertain as to her place on the farm but driven to ask her questions all the same.

“What is it, child?” Simone responded, not looking over in her direction.

The response was casual, not really encouraging but not discouraging either. Elan took a breath to steel herself, still uncomfortable with…well, everyone really.

“Did you ever speak with Kaern about the…temple?” she asked.

Simone looked up then, eyes flitting to Caleb before settling back on Elan.

“Took you on the grand tour, did he?” she asked with a hint of a smile. “No, I don’t believe I ever did. Why?”

Elan’s eyes unfocused as her gaze drifted away from the woman, just staring off into the ether as she spoke. “Out in the desert, near where he found me,” Elan said, “there was what he called a Redoubt. It was almost identical to your temple.”

Simone was now focused on her much more closely. “Really now? Almost?”

“The lights there worked,” Elan said, “and the locks, and…everything Kaern showed me.”

Simone breathed out, her face shocked. “Intact? It was intact?”

Elan nodded, refocusing on Simone. “What are they? I…I don’t think they are really temples, at least that’s not what Mo…my mother described temples as.”

Simone shook her head. “No, they were not temples, originally, at least. I have seen three, none of them intact, but then I never ventured inland to the wastes. There are different types of the Redoubts, as you call them. The one here in the city and the one you describe in the wastes I assume was a transport hub built at the height of human power.” She glanced at the shirt that Elan was wearing, nodding knowingly of a sudden. “I suppose I should have guessed that you had access to one of the old repositories to be wearing that, but there are enough artifacts left that I didn’t think too much on it. Is that all?”

Elan frowned. “Actually I wanted to ask about the map?”

“What map?” Simone asked, puzzled.

“The one on the wall of the temple, the one that should be lit up,” Elan explained. “I saw the one in the…in the wastes, and it had lights on it. The one here is faded, but the places for the lights can still be seen if you look.”

Simone got up abruptly, crossing the kitchen and vanishing into her room. Elan and Caleb exchanged confused looks, but it wasn’t long before the older woman returned with a box in her arms. She dropped it on the table, pulled the cover off, and dug through it.

After a few moments she pulled out what she was looking for and carefully unfolded it to cover the table.

“Did it look like this?” she asked.

Elan hesitantly made her way over, leaning in to carefully examine the map. Lightly she reached out and traced the coastline before nodding.

“Yes, I recognize these lines,” she said finally.

“Very interesting,” Simone breathed. “I may have to make a visit to the temple later. Will you come with me, Elan?”

Elan nodded. “Of course.”

“Thank you,” Simone said, glancing outside as she folded the map back up and put it into the box. “In the meantime, I believe it is time to train. Sword drills today, Caleb. Elan, you and I will work on stave work and new drills for your blade.”

*****

Simone eyed Elan’s form as she went through the motions with her blade.

“Good. Remember,” she said, “stay away from the power strikes. You do not have the muscles, the weight, or the steel for them.”

Elan nodded, sweat beading along her forehead and face as she swung the blade and returned to her starting position. Her muscles felt sore in ways her father’s exercises had never quite pulled from her. She didn’t understand it. Nothing Simone was making her do was even half as strenuous as her father’s exercises.

She said as much to Simone.

The older woman just laughed. “Different motions, different muscles. You were training for a power style that gives you strength to lift and to strike, but not to move swiftly and with control. Control, especially, takes strength in specific muscles.”

She walked around her, tapping the underside of her arm.

“A blade, even a small one like yours, is heavy and only gets heavier the longer a fight continues,” Simone told her. “But you must control it, and maintain that control, or you will lose your battles.”

Elan nodded resolutely and returned to her starting stance before beginning again.

Simone continued to walk around her. “Life, battles, and swordplay have things in common with one another. All three are harder than they appear from the outside, all three require many kinds of strength, and…eventually, all three will kill you.”

So Elan worked the new style Simone insisted she learn, then picked up the stave and worked with that as well. When Simone told her to take a break and went over to help Caleb, however, Elan picked up her blade again and carefully practiced the forms and strikes her father had taught her.

Perhaps it was not the right style for her, but it was her style, handed to her by her father. No matter how well-meaning, or how nice, or even how right, she would not let anything of her parents be forgotten.

*****

Later, as the day was cooling but while there was still light enough in the sky not to require torches, Simone took Elan back to the city’s “temple” and had the girl show her the map.

Sure enough, it was there on the wall, faded and covered in dust, dirt, and grime, but it was clear enough once she’d wiped away the debris of the years that had gathered on it. Simone carefully cleaned the wall and then compared it with the map she had acquired many years earlier, noting the coastlines were identical, though she knew that the map wasn’t completely accurate in that regard.

“The coast has changed,” she said, nodding to herself.

“What?” Elan asked from beside her.

Simone looked over at her. “The coastline has changed over the years. I always suspected that it had, but some of my old compatriots believed that my map was simply bad. This confirms it, I was right.”

“Okay.” Elan was confused, but that wasn’t all that odd as of late.

Simone just smiled at her. “Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense to you. It makes little sense to many people far older and supposedly far wiser.”

Elan just nodded dutifully. “Why are the lights off?”

“Lights?” Simone asked, curious.

“The one in the desert, it had lights,” Elan said as she looked around. “K…Kaern showed me.”

Simone frowned, looking around herself by the flickering oil lamps. “I’m not sure. Does it look the same?”

Elan nodded as she walked deeper and pointed. “There was a sign there, on that wall. It said Embarkation.”

Simone walked in the direction the girl had shown, having to hop down a drop to make her way across to the wall. She looked at it closely in the shadowy, flickering light before finally reaching up and wiping away the dust to reveal the traces of large white lettering, the letter R. A glance to either side confirmed Elan’s word.

“Embarkation,” she mumbled, pronouncing the word as though tasting it. “I wonder what it means….”

Elan shrugged. “I don’t know. Kaern said it was some sort of transportation, but I can’t see how it could be.”

“If that old bastard said it, it was probably true,” Simone laughed, climbing back out. “I wonder why he told you all this. In all the years I’ve known him, he never said a word to me…”

Elan shrugged. She didn’t really know the answer, and any speculation she might make would feel too personal.

“There’s a door over here,” she said, walking in another direction. “It was…locked? Sealed? Kaern said it was gene locked. I don’t know what that means.”

Simone shook her head. “No idea. Where?”

“Here,” Elan said, frowning as she stared at a bare wall. “I know it was here.”

“Well,” Simone sighed, “I suppose that the layout isn’t identical.”

“No, something’s wrong here,” Elan grumbled, glaring at the wall. “It’s not the same.”

Simone looked at the wall, but it didn’t look any different to her. It was a long stretch of dirty stone, covered in oil, soot, dust, and the leavings of generations before them. There was nothing about it that stood out to her at all.

“What do you mean?”

Elan gestured behind her with a casual flick of her wrist, not looking over her shoulder as she did. “Just look at the other walls.”

Simone did that, peering through the murk and flickering lights, but still saw nothing but the walls and the shrines of the temple.

“Don’t you see the pictures?” Elan asked as her confusion became evident.

“You mean the shrines? Those were made by the city,” Simone said.

“No, they weren’t,” Elan insisted. “The other place had them too. Cleaner, easier to see, but they were there on all the walls. So why isn’t there any here?”

Simone looked again, now with narrowed eyes as she examined the shrines, and realized that they did indeed dot every other wall at even intervals, but not the one she was standing in front of. She turned her eyes back to the wall in question, now glaring at it, as it had become evident that it was hiding some secret from her. What, she could not say, but the child was right.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” she said finally, stepping back and staring at the wall pensively.

Elan pouted at it, a look Simone privately found somewhat adorable as she noted it out of the corner of her eye, looking for all the world like the wall had done something she found personally offensive. Finally the girl stepped forward and ran her fingers over it, leaving tracks in the dust and soot as she turned her hands black.

“It’s rough,” she said after a moment.

“Stone often is,” Simone replied dryly.

Elan shook her head. “Not in here.”

She walked across to another wall, near a shrine, and repeated her actions. Simone could see the tracks she made actually gleam in the flickering light, reflected more than she had expected.

“See? Smooth,” Elan said. “Burned smooth by fire. That’s what Kaern said. Earth converted to fire. Cold fire, for light. It turns the stone smooth.” She turned back to the offending wall. “But not that wall. Why wasn’t that wall burned smooth?”

Simone really had no idea what the girl was talking about. Earth turned to cold fire? It made no sense, but she was more than willing to give her a little leeway given what she had revealed earlier and the clear oddities that were being pointed out. She walked over to test the other wall herself, finding it smooth as the finest glass she had ever seen in her life.

How odd, she thought, wondering just what it all meant.

Smooth walls, rough walls, none of it made much sense to her…but it seemed to mean something to the girl, and the girl had spent time with Kaern.

Simone remembered what she knew about the enigmatic man…sort of…she knew as Kaern. She’d spent years with him, on and off, and knew annoyingly little about him personally. She knew he wasn’t human, of course. He didn’t go out of his way to advertise the fact but nor did he bother trying to hide it. Many of the most dangerous demons were nearly indistinguishable from humans, but so were some of the least of the demons, as well as many of the hybrid abominations they used to sow discord within human communities.

Whatever Kaern was, he wasn’t one of those, however, and he lacked the few signs of a younger demon just starting the Long Change, as it was known. He never showed any signs of the mental stress or physical shakes the newly changed did, the way the Change broke men and turned them to beasts.

He was older than anyone else knew, anyone else alive, at least. Even she didn’t know his real age, and it was a question Kaern avoided with skill and humor when it was broached.

He knew more than he let on, however, and if he’d let any of it slip to the girl, Simone would give her a chance.

But not tonight.

“Come then, Elan,” she said finally. “It will be dark soon. It’s time to return home. We can examine this later.”

Reluctantly, Elan pulled back from the offending wall and followed Simone out of the temple. Before she walked out the large, gaping maw of the place, she cast one last, annoyed look back into the flickering interior, then sighed and followed Simone.

The sun was low in the sky when they arrived back at the home, and Simone sent Elan into the house, telling her to clean up before the last meal of the day. The soot, dirt, and grime of the temple walls had never killed anyone, but there was little reason to test them.

Caleb was still out back, running through his sword drills, dark-dust-matted and sweat-slicked hair pushed back out of his eyes as he pushed through his exhaustion. She eyed him carefully, noting that his stance had slipped only slightly from earlier, and found herself approving. He was nearly old enough to take his own place in the world, to survive in the harsh environment that would be his inheritance.

Elan as well, she reflected, sighing. The girl had been trained well by her parents. Simone could see the touch of both mother and father in her, in her every action. She was surprised that Kaern brought the girl to her, really. He knew she looked after orphans, but normally they were younger when people dropped them off with her.

Elan was almost…hell, she was ready to take her own place. She’d proven that when she hunted down the demons that had slain her parents, whether she’d won that battle or not. Any slip of a girl who could do what Kaern had described, and survive it, could handle the more mundane challenges the world might send her way.

In some ways, though, Simone was almost saddened by missing the chance to have a real impact on the girl’s development. She was her parents’ daughter, though, and that was more than most of the children Simone cared for would ever have.

“Caleb,” she called, “it’s almost time to eat. Clean up. I do not want to smell you at the table, clear?”

The boy looked at her and flashed a grin against his sweat-stained face. “Clear, Simone!”

He wrapped his blade quickly and ran into the house, leaving Simone to turn and look out to where the sun was dropping down toward the sea.

It was blood red, casting a dim light that was only growing dimmer as the orb sank into the sea. Once, Simone remembered, as a little girl she had thought that the setting sun was beautiful.

Now it just signified the loss of what little defense the light offered, and the arrival of the monsters that stalked the night.

*****

The city was shadowed by the deepening red of the sun as it set into the sea behind it, oil lamps and wood fires flickering into existence as Venadrin watched from where the general had called a halt to the march.

“On the green flash, we march on the city,” the general proclaimed, casting a gesture toward the sinking of the sun.

Venadrin eyed the dimming orb, deciding that he had some time yet before the final march would begin, and he turned away to check with his own squads.

“Were the sentries I designated silenced as ordered?” he asked the closest demon, a curled and broken thing that practically walked on all fours rather than upright like an actual person.

The thing nodded quickly, its head moving unnaturally enough to make Venadrin ill.

“Yesss,” it hissed at him. “All sssentries were sssilenced.”

“Good. Carry a command,” he ordered. “The siege begins when the green flash of the sun signals nightfall. On that signal, eliminate the remaining sentries along the inner perimeter. The closer we can get before we’re noticed, the shorter this siege will be.”

“Asss you command.”

The misshapen thing, a Ninth Circle demon well into the Change…more damaged by the demonic magics coursing through its body than anything, scampered off to deliver the command as ordered. Venadrin hated dealing with those things because he knew that he was seeing the future of the human race in that crippled form.

When the war was ended with certainty, humans would be the next species to undergo the Change. Generations would be crippled by the chaotic, demonic magic that induced that deep transition. Eventually, of course, humans would progress, becoming lower and lower circle demons and assuming the power that came with that advancement, but he would not live to see it.

Not in any form he truly wished to endure, at least.

The Abyss with all them, Venadrin swore silently. He had no love for humans or demons, so be damned to them both. The only thing that mattered to him was himself, but he couldn’t see a path out for even a single person. In the end, a crippled life was better than an early death.

Whatever evil beast that had created the black-hearted world that he now stood on was certainly no better than the worst demon, or Venadrin himself. He had no illusions, Venadrin did not. He knew he was as evil as they came, and he was fine with that. Despite what the pitiful wretches of humanity clung to, Venadrin knew that if there was a Creator, one only had to look around at the world He had created to know that He was just as evil as Venadrin or the worst of the demons.

Nothing else explained the hell that had come upon them all.

A roar went up among the demons as the green flash was spotted. Venadrin had missed it, but he was aware that human senses only caught the flash rarely. For the demons it was a different story. As the demons surged forward, Venadrin took his place at the head of his column of weak demons and the many humans who had joined him on the winning side.

The final battle called.

*****

“Did you hear that?”

The sentry on the outer wall paused as he called out to his companion, looking back the way they’d come.

“Hear what?”

The dull question annoyed him, but then he’d come to expect no less from his patrol partner. Contrary to what the city council put forth to the masses, the men and women who patrolled the walls were far from the best and brightest.

“I thought I heard a scratching sound,” he said, waving his partner to a stop as he walked over to the edge of the wall. “Maybe something was blown against the wall. Just give me a moment to…”

His breath caught in his throat as a pair of glowing eyes looked up at him from the shadowed side of the wall, shock keeping him from calling out in alarm as the eyes suddenly surged toward him and a spindly, deceptively fast body came up the wall and lunged into him. He was thrown back as claws slashed at his face and throat, stopping all but a gurgling noise from escaping.

As the dark night grew darker and colder, the sentry caught sight of several more nightmare figures piling on and dragging his partner to the stone and wood walkway beside him.

Then the darkness took him.

*****

A slow, long wail rose from the distance, catching Simone’s attention as they finished the late meal of the day.

“What is that sound?” Elan asked, looking up herself.

Simone frowned. “Wall alarm.” Elan and Caleb tensed, but she waved them down. “Don’t worry. It’s likely just a trader who didn’t make it in before nightfall.” She got to her feet, walking over to the open door, and glanced out. Absently, Simone looked over her shoulder. “Prepare yourself for sleep.”

“But…” Caleb objected.

“Now.”

Even not knowing the woman well, Elan knew that tone. It was the one her mother used when her father was stepping over the line and she would brook no more foolishness. It was the same tone that caused her father, the biggest man in the world, to back down every single time. Elan didn’t bother objecting, she just started clearing the table as Simone stepped outside.

Caleb continued to look rebellious, but Elan had no intentions of walking dead on into that trap. She’d learned from her mistakes, and even then she’d rather face the squad of demons again than Simone just then.

“Peace, Caleb,” Elan said softly.

“But she can’t—”

“Peace.”

Elan didn’t know it, but her own tone was a remarkable reflection of both her mother’s and Simone’s just then, and the second dose seemed enough to get through the thick teenager’s head. Caleb drew back a bit, then threw another glance in Simone’s direction, then he gave up and started gathering the remaining utensils and cookware from the table.

Glowering at the floor and muttering under his breath, Caleb followed her into the cooking area of the home as she started clearing the ware and preparing to clean.

*****

Simone stepped out into the night air, feeling the heat rising up from the earth rather than it beating down from the sky. She walked to the edge of her property and looked toward the outer wall of the city.

While what she told the teens was possible, it was highly unlikely that a trader…or even a sizeable group of traders would have been enough to frighten the guards into signaling the alarm. Possibly a new wall guard had gotten jumpy but…

She shook her head and turned back to the house, striding inside.

“Caleb! Elan! Get your weapons, come with me,” Simone ordered tersely. If it were something, she had to look into it, but in that case, leaving the pair alone seemed like a bad idea.

Caleb jumped to that order, of course. Simone rolled her eyes at his eagerness, but her attention was more focused on Elan, whom she knew a good deal less. The girl was more cautious, which didn’t surprise Simone in the least. She’d seen a real fight and knew she was lucky to have survived.

“What is happening?” Elan asked as she retrieved the sword her father had given her, gripping it tightly by the wrapped blade as her piercing blue eyes stared into Simone’s own brown ones.

“I don’t know,” Simone told her honestly, “but take the staves as well.”

Elan looked annoyed, but nodded and fetched the long stave she’d been training with, as well as Caleb’s, from the corner. She tossed him his, and then the pair of them looked to Simone as she nodded her head to the door.

“Stay behind me,” she ordered. “If there’s anything actually going on, you’re to do exactly as I tell you. Understood?”

“Yes, Simone,” Caleb said by rote, sounding a little too bored for her liking.

She turned on him. “Caleb, if you ignore me and you get someone else hurt because you’re being a foolish child, I will see to it that you personally beat that sword into a plow and join the field workers every morning for a year. Am I clear?”

He gulped and nodded fearfully enough that she was satisfied that he believed her. Only then did she turn to Elan and glare at the girl.

“I expect the same of you. If I tell you to do something, you will do it.”

Elan just nodded curtly, but Simone easily read the quiet determination in the girl’s eyes and sighed. Elan would do exactly what she was told, right up until she determined it was stupid, then she would do her own thing.

Sadly, at this point, Simone figured that was the best she would get from her. She hadn’t had the girl around long enough to achieve any level of real trust, so it was this or leave her here at the house. Unfortunately, she was certain doing that would qualify as “stupid” to the girl.

So be it.

“Alright, let’s go.”

*****

“Shamans, to the front. I want the walls brought down,” the general ordered as he and his entourage watched over the battle as it began to be properly joined.

The human reaction time was better than he had calculated but, galling as it was, was almost perfectly within the predicted times the traitor had provided.

The fact that a human knew humans better than him was, perhaps, no great surprise nor any reason for shame, but the general still chafed at the fact.

It would matter little to the outcome of the battle, however, so for the moment the Fifth Circle demon shelved the annoying thought and refocused on the present. His orders had brought up the shaman team from where they had been waiting, well out of range of any of the enemy weapons, and the seven Sixth Circle demons set about their business.

Preparing the circle was an involved process, but with the humans well and truly distracted, there was little that could get in their way for the immediate future. Once it was complete, the battle was essentially over.

Of course, in effect, the battle was essentially over already.

Humans used to be tough warriors and they held off the inevitable for a long time, but the dregs that were left had not even a sliver of the greatness their forebears had drawn upon. If that greatness hadn’t been enough to save them, the current survivors were mere filth to be exterminated.

*****

It became distinctly clear as they approached the outer walls that something was indeed happening, as much as Simone wanted to deny it. Panicked yelling was almost overshadowing the more disciplined barking of orders. Of the two, it was the latter that worried her most. She was intimately familiar with the fugue state a good warrior could get into when faced with something that would…should…break lesser men, and she heard it then in those orders.

Whatever was happening, it was not good.

With the two youths at her back, Simone drew her blade and headed for the closest stairwell that lead up to the top of the wall, already wondering where most of the guards were. The walls were incredibly light from what she could see, even discounting the obvious situation they were facing. She needed to lay eyes on it for herself, however, before she could make any decisions.

“Stay close!” she ordered over her shoulder as she ran up the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time.

The two youths were too busy running to respond, but they were close enough so she kept her own focus on what was ahead of them. The top of the wall was a study in chaos, but the confusion didn’t seem violent at first glance. Others, like her, had rushed in to find out what was happening, and no one seemed to have any answers.

“Keep your weapons sheathed,” she ordered over her shoulder, eyes focused front as she looked through the confusion, trying to determine what was going on.

A rumble shook the wall, causing her to reach out to hold onto the parapet wall to steady herself.

Okay, whatever the hell that was, this isn’t a false alarm.

She stopped, turning around. “Caleb, Elan, you need to go.”

“What? Why? We can help!” Caleb objected instantly, and predictably, but she cut him off with a chop of her hand.

“Be silent, young pup,” she snapped. “This is no game. If it comes to fighting up here, you’ll either kill or be killed by our own people. You’ve no experience in groups like this, and that’s a death sentence. Go back, grab all the people you can who can’t fight, and get them to the temple. You can defend that if some of them get past us.”

“Some of who?” Elan asked, her voice steady but strung high with tension just below the surface.

“That, I don’t know,” Simone confessed. “Demons, like as not, but don’t worry about that. We’ve held this wall before, we can hold it again. Now go!”

Caleb still wanted to fight, Simone saw, but Elan pulled him away and the pair struggled and pushed their way down the steps to the ground against the flow of people rushing up. Simone watched them go for a moment, then put them as far from her mind as she could. She pulled her blade from her belt and jumped up onto the parapet so she could run above the confused crowds toward the source of the screaming.

*****

The crowds were milling around as Elan and Caleb pushed through them, trying to get any of them to listen as they moved, but no one was interested in the thoughts of a pair of panicked children and they found themselves ignored from every quarter.

“What do we do?” Caleb asked as he was brushed off yet again. “Simone said to get these people to the temple!”

Elan didn’t know. She could feel her breath coming in shorter gasps as the crowd seemed to press closer in on her with every passing moment as she spun around with wild eyes.

“Elan!”

Her heart was in her head, thudding against her ears with a tangible pressure as she spun around and tried to put some distance between her and the press of humanity.

“Elan!” Caleb reached out and grabbed her back, both physically and mentally, spinning her around so he could face her. “Are you okay?”

She took two deep breaths and nodded. “Sorry. I…I’m not used to so many people.”

Caleb looked her in the eyes for a moment, wanting to saying something to make it better, but nothing like that came out.

“Deal with it,” he said instead. “We have too many problems now to add one more.”

Elan nodded. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, just help me figure out what we’re going to do. No one is listening to us!”

Elan considered for a moment, then said, “We can gather the children. They’re going to be scared. Everyone is running around screaming. We can get them to the temple.”

Caleb considered, looking around. It was obvious that she was right. Children were visible everywhere as they looked to see what was going on, attracted by all the commotion. Some were out in the open, in very real threat of being trampled, likely having ignored orders to stay at home, much as he would have.

“Alright, we’ll do that. Come on!”

*****

Lightning blew apart the wall where it was thickest, sending defenders flying to the ground fifty feet below amid strewn rubble and shrapnel from the blast. The shamans barely bothered to examine their success before they began chanting and again summoning the eldritch energy that was theirs to control.

The demon general grunted in approval, the positive sound lost to the screaming of souls and clashing of steel and iron.

The eldritch powers wielded by his forces would more than counter the defensive advantages the humans had built for themselves, but it was clear that the defenders had been preparing for this day, despite the confused way in which they had responded to the attack. Iron and steel weapons were plentiful among the humans, and they were neither unfamiliar with their use nor unwilling to take the chances needed to make best use of them.

It was a courageous last stand, though futile.

“Send more of the Ninth Circle fodder to the front,” the general ordered. “Let them brunt the enemy’s blades.”

Horns called out his orders, and demons scrambled forward in sloppy formations to rush into the battle with no regard for life on either side.

More disciplined groups waited in the rear, waiting for the general’s final order to break the human resistance for the final time.

*****

Simone leapt from parapet to parapet as she sprinted along the walls, coming to a stop only when she saw the destruction of the front wall. Fighting erupted around it as demonic forces pushed through the hole and into the first defensive line.

My soul, it’s a full assault. I had hoped that I’d not live to see this day, she thought as she hopped down to the walkway and elbowed a stunned guard who was in her path.

“Wake up, fool!” she snarled. “The enemy is at our gates! Your shock and disbelief serves only them. Move!”

She didn’t wait to see if he’d snapped out of it, but shoved him along ahead of her anyway. There were scaly, misshapen things crawling up the rubble where whatever had destroyed the wall had left its mark, which meant that the wall’s defenders had a job to do.

“Draw your blade,” she snarled, cuffing the guard behind the head, “or die a coward and a failure. Either way, it is time to do our work.”

With these words, she pushed past him and put her body into the breach just as the first of the scrambling creatures tried to push through. Her blade sang as it sliced through the demonic flesh, sending a spatter of ichor across the shattered stone as she lashed out with her boot and sent the dead body falling back into its fellows.

“Hold the line!” she roared above the cacophony. “We alone stand between these beasts and our families! Fall here and you will only be the first to die!”

With that, she no longer had time to speak, as the press of demons once more filled the breach and the killing began in earnest.

*****

The orange glow of fires where none should be burning lit up the distant night, and Kaern cursed his prescience and the damnable voice in his head that had caused him to turn back. The forces the local lord had marshaled were impressive, but mostly consisted of nigh-crippled Eighth and Ninth Circle demons.

Those weak wretches were only a threat by their numbers, the ailments of the Change all but rendering them harmless by most standards. In numbers, though, even ants could prove lethal, and by any standard, those demon wretches were more than mere ants. He could see where they would overwhelm the shattered defenses, given time and continued to confusion on the humans’ part.

They could be held back for a time, however, and it was the far more dangerous groups that caught his eye as he crept closer to the demonic lines.

A coven of shamans, three squads of Soul Eaters chafing at the bit, and several brigades worth of demons more disciplined than I have seen in recent times, Kaern noted with trepidation, knowing that he was looking at a force that was more than a match for the human defenses.

It wasn’t enough to ensure victory, but frankly that was almost a moot point. For the humans here, even in victory it would be their end. A follow-up attack would face little, if any, opposition from the tired and broken forces within the walls unless something was done in short order.

In the many years of fighting Kaern had endured, rarely had he voluntarily faced odds quite so stacked against him…but, of course, rarely had he volunteered at all. War was something to be faced, not to be embraced. Only fools ran in where the Angels had long since refused to march.

Time to be a fool.

His blade whispered as it cleared the leather harness riding on his hip, metal gleaming against the moonlight as he surged from his cover and charged into the middle of the shaman coven as the glow of their growing eldritch power crested.

A scream of surprise more than pain announced his presence as he cut down the closest from the back, sending the twisted man to the ground with blood so dark red as to be black splattering the ground and coating his blade as Kaern kept his motion smooth and constant. He twisted and swirled his blade around as another turned in his direction and calmly bisected the magic user as lightning crackles began to flow along the blade.

A bolt of eldritch energy crackled through the night air, caught on the lightning-covered blade and absorbed instantly as Kaern cut down the source in the next moment.

Three of the coven lay dead or dying in moments, the rest scattering in all directions as Kaern stood in the middle of their circle, alone with his sword crackling in the night. He spun to face the demon horde as he twisted his blade and drove it point first into the ground, loosing the lightning he had stored. Crackling tendrils danced out from the epicenter he stood at, reaching out for the fleeing shamans and burning them down in their paces.

There was a silent moment, more illusionary than real, he suspected, as the general in charge of the forces glowered at him across the battlefield and Kaern glared right back.

Kaern could see forces starting in his direction, only to be held back by a gesture from the general as the big demon stepped forward himself.

“You are no human. I can see the demon magic flow from you,” the general called. “Why side with them? Why betray your kind, human lover?”

The laughter seemed to come from nowhere, building from nothing until it was the only thing anyone could hear, and there was no question of its source. Kaern laughed derisively, scornfully, at the question posed to him.

“I have no love of humans,” he said finally. “They are arrogant and destructive beasts, and those are among their better qualities. No, I side with them for other reasons.”

“What then? What price buys your betrayal?”

“Betrayal?” Kaern asked, stepping forward as the eldritch glow of the shamans’ circle coalesced further and descended around him. “You have the unmitigated gall to ask me the price of my betrayal?”

There was no one here to worry about harming if he cut loose…so Kaern cut loose.

The power surged, striking out and slaughtering a group that had thought to be flanking him, leaving nothing but smoking remains filling the air with their stench.

“I walked the gardens of Eden, abomination! I knew the face of the Creator, when creation was young,” Kaern snarled as the power built again. “Your kind cost me that. I am no traitor. The treason was committed by your kind a long time ago. I would not join you then, and I will not now, but I still pay for your treason…”

His words struck the general as though the blows were physical in nature, and the hulking demon fell back a step with each word while Kaern strode forward.

“Kill him! Kill him!” the general screamed, shock and near terror on his face.

Kaern continued to speak as the demon forces charged him, barely seeming to notice the distractions as he cut them down with a crackling blade.

“You call me traitor.” His voice was calm, but somehow carried anyway. “But what I truly am is betrayed. Forsaken. Do you know that name, demon? The name we call ourselves?”

Finally his words were lost in the tide of foes that descended on his position, blocking Kaern from the general’s sight as he settled in for a grim battle.

*****

Simone roared as she swung her blade down, cleaving through the head and shoulder of the closest of the shambling monstrosities scaling the section of wall she was defending.

Where are they all coming from?

In the back of her mind she couldn’t help but wonder how a force this powerful had gotten as close as they had. Lookouts and forward scouts should have seen and reported them at least a day’s march away, particularly given the general loss of power and skill that most of the demon sort suffered under the burning rays of the sun above.

To time their strike with the setting of the sun, as they clearly had, the force had to have marched in plain daylight across miles of open badlands, or they had to have been sitting just outside the perimeter for a whole day, waiting for the sun to descend into the waters on the horizon. Either of those options should not have been possible.

Of course, as she continued to hack away with as much force and as little finesse as she could manage, that was a question for another time.

An explosion of light to her left caused Simone to flinch away, opening her flank to a sudden charge that bowled her over and to the ground. Her sword clattered to the stone as she barely got her hand up to hold off the snapping jaws of the diseased beast that was growling and snarling at her while it tried to get its teeth around her throat.

Arm straining such that the muscles were popping under her skin, Simone held it back as she pulled her dagger and drove it up with as much force as she could manage. The thing above her flinched and tensed but otherwise continued its attack as she continued thrusting with strike after strike into its belly and chest.

Simone had heard from Kaern and others that things such as she was struggling to fight off had once been a people, as humans were. That she was perhaps looking into the future of humanity as she locked eyes with the dead black orbs in the sunken visage of the enemy both sickened and horrified her.

Death would be better.

With each stab of her dagger, the beast weakened as its black-red blood gushed out over Simone until she could finally buck and twist to throw the thing off her. She scrambled on hands and knees, lunging for her sword as the fighting continued to rage around and above her. With the blade pommel in hand, Simone rolled back to her feet and risked a glance to the source of the light that had distracted her.

In the dark she could see little in the distance, but lightning was crackling down and amid the flashes she spotted a mass of roiling life surrounding something she couldn’t see. It was away from the city, however, and that meant it wasn’t of any interest to her just then.

She turned her grim attention back to the fight just as a concussive blow shook the wall, and an unnatural silence descended as everyone paused to see what had happened.

“The gates!” the call went up. “They’ve breached the gates!”

Simone blanched, looking back over her shoulder briefly in time to see the demon forces flood into the city past the final defensive line.

The children! she thought desperately, but that was the only thing she could spare as the press of invaders descended on her again and the desperate battle raged on.

*****

“Come on, move in to the back,” Elan urged as another group of children were herded into the depths of the temple.

They’d been gathering up as many as they could, trying to get the youngest off the streets in the confusion of people running one way and the other. Some adults had joined them, helping keep people together, but mostly it had just been her and Caleb running nonstop and doing whatever they could manage.

They had a few dozen children and a handful of adults gathered when the screams and sounds of fighting that had been raging in the distance suddenly seemed to come from much closer.

She froze, eyes searching down the long, narrow street for movement. Elan stepped cautiously out, one hand resting on the hilt of her blade as she leaned into the stave held in her other hand. Motion in the shadows caused her to tense, then her eyes widened before she turned and screamed, “Caleb!”

Elan retreated to the entry to the temple, waving for her companion as she ran.

“What is it?” the young man asked as he ran over from where he’d been, deeper in the temple.

“Trouble,” Elan said, pointing back. “I think whatever is happening is in the city now.”

Caleb paled and looked over her shoulder to where the mob of people was moving. Occasional glimpses of steel glinting in the mass and the increase of the screams he could hear told him all he needed to know. He drew his sword.

“We have to get the doors closed,” he decided, pulling Elan back into the entrance to the temple.

“What about everyone still out there?” she asked.

“We’ll hold them as long as we can,” Caleb said, “but when it’s time, there’ll be nothing more we can do.”

She nodded grimly, her knuckles white as they gripped the stave and pommel of her blade, unable to see any other option. The two of them muscled the massive wooden doors shut, swinging them most of the way, then standing just inside and watching the fighting as it drew closer and closer with an inexorable motion.

Light reflected off blades in the midst of the crowd, but they could see that most of the front wave of people were running, being pushed by the wave behind them, unarmed and in a state of panic.

Elan didn’t know what to do as she watched. Part of her wanted to fight, of course, but she’d learned the hard way that the consequences of jumping without a plan were not to be trifled with. She absently rubbed the scars on her wrists as she waited and watched, wondering if Kaern had merely delayed her inevitable end.

Dying in the cold and heat of the desert would have been over already, if nothing else, she supposed.

Caleb, beside her, looked excited. He was barely containing himself from charging out to the fight. Only furtive glances over his shoulder kept him in check as he remembered just what they were standing guard over.

The lead elements of the wave of humanity reached them only minutes after Elan had first spotted the crowd in the distance, leading her and Caleb to wave them in as they approached.

“Here! Come here! The temple is the most fortified building in town!” Caleb yelled out as the first people stumbled and straggled in past him, barely keeping to their feet as the crowd behind them pushed.

The wave of humanity almost slammed the doors shut as the two youths strained to keep them open just enough to let people pass but not so much that they couldn’t close them when the time came. Both Caleb and Elan leaned into the doors, gritting their teeth and planting their feet as best they could against the pounding waves of people that were hammering against them.

“I don’t think I can hold it much longer,” Elan confessed, her voice barely heard over the commotion. Her feet were slipping more than gripping the stone beneath her, and each hammer blow on the door was pushing her back more than she could recover.

Caleb was holding up better, though even he was clearly feeling the strain as he fought back against the forces arrayed against them. “Just a little…longer! Get as many people in as…we can!”

Elan nodded but didn’t reply. She just put her shoulder to the wood and watched the people rush by in a panic, wishing a few of them would help rather than just blindly run, but she had no energy left to spare to either curse or implore the panicky fools.

It came to a head when a heavy slam on the door flung Elan back to the ground and she had to roll clear to avoid being trampled by the mass of people, but from the floor she recognized something that sent a chill through her. The shambling, scaled, and near-rotting form of one of the demons that had tortured her.

To be sure, she couldn’t honestly say that it was one of the ones, but it certainly looked the part.

Elan rose to her feet, stave in hand and a blood-curdling scream drawing up from deep inside her. The stave slashed out, weaving through the running people to connect solidly with the head of the demon as it paused to locate the source of the scream. While most knew that iron was a key weakness for the majority of demon species, fewer were fully aware that wood was nearly as effective in many situations.

The hardwood stave met demonic bone and tissue, and it was not the staff that gave way.

The spindly demon fell to its knees, dark blood ichor spraying across the temple floor as Elan rushed in and caught it in the teeth of her boot to send it sprawling to the ground. She strode over it, eyes now looking through the crowd for more, and paused only to stomp on its head with as much force as she could muster.

Caleb, who had been looking back and trying to locate her, paled as he watched the extremely short-lived and one-sided battle. He was rather glad, in that moment, that Simone had never permitted them to spar with no holds barred. He thought that he would have been the one sporting most of the bruises then, if he were lucky.

“Demons in the crowd!” Elan called. “Close the doors!”

Caleb let go of the door and backed away, letting the press of the fighting beyond do the work for him as he felt sick in his guts.

“There are people out there,” he said as he fell back.

“There are people in here,” Elan told him, “and probably more demons too. We’ve done what we can.”

He nodded painfully, eyes on the door as it boomed from a hit on the other side, dust filtering down from above as the wood strained under the pressure.

“Will it hold?” he asked, his expression sickly.

“I don’t know,” Elan confessed. “Those doors were not built with the temple, but a long time after, I suspect.”

“How do you know that?”

“Later,” Elan said. “For now, get your blade. We have to see if we have any demons in here with us.”

Caleb nodded fearfully. “And if we do?”

Elan just cocked her head and glanced down to the motionless body on the floor.

No words needed to be said.

*****

Simone panted as she stood over the wreckage of the wall, bodies of friend and foe alike strewn around her as her sweat-slicked red hair hung limply in the dead air that seemed to have settled around them. The fighting where she was had died out, there being little reason to charge up the wall when someone had blown the doors wide open.

Well, that and there seemed to be one hell of a ruckus going on right at the outer perimeter where the shamans had been when she first arrived on scene. She didn’t know what happened to them, but frankly she didn’t much care so long as they were no longer turning their dark magics against the city.

Wearily gripping her blade, Simone began to slowly descend through the rubble to get to the ground level, where she could start tracking down those that had entered the city or, more likely, find as many of the children as she could, along with what few of their parents were still alive, and prepare to flee.

The city is lost, she realized somberly.

Simone had always half expected that it would one day come to this. Humanity seemed doomed to always be on the run from the demons, but that didn’t make it any easier now that the day had really arrived.

She was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, one that might be a little more than minor, though she wasn’t sure as it stood. The living here would shortly envy the dead if this battle wasn’t turned in short order, but even if it were, there just was no way they could secure and hold the walls against another assault. They’d just lost too damned many.

She paused a dozen feet or so from the ground, falling into a crouch as a group emerged from the shadows, running in from the outside of the walls. She waited for them to get beneath her, getting a quick count of their number, and then jumped.

The first warning the demons had of the…well, the demon in their midst was when Simone’s blade cleaved one of the rear guard through the skull and a full six inches into his torso before coming to a stop. She planted a foot in his back and pushed with a roar, sending the body toppling to the ground as the sword slid free with a sucking noise.

The rest of the group were slow in responding, and that was to their final misfortune, as Simone charged in amongst them, blade slashing from one to another with lightning motions that left the entire group twitching on the ground as the black blood drained into the flagstones beneath them.

Simone panted, shaking her head as she glanced around and got her bearings. Whatever had distracted the bulk of the forces still outside the walls had bought them time, but she had to gather the city’s remaining defenders and organize them before everything was lost. She grunted, wincing as pain lanced through her legs and back, her body complaining bitterly about her exertions, but had no time to listen to it as she pressed on.

*****

A deep hammering roar echoed through the temple, followed by a fearful whimpering as Elan and Caleb moved among the cowering people, eyes and ears open as they looked for any unwelcome tagalongs that might have snuck in. So far they’d not found any, and Caleb believed that they had gotten lucky there, as he couldn’t imagine a demon not being noticed in the press of people.

Elan was less convinced, but still somewhat hopeful. The lack of hysterical screaming would seem to support Caleb’s belief, but she had no intentions of leaving any of those…things at her back if she could help it.

The deep, reverberating thuds on the door kept her looking over her shoulder as she searched. She just didn’t know if they would hold for long. She didn’t know what they would do if the doors failed, other than fight and likely die, but Elan could only hope that Simone and the town’s other defenders would stop the attack before that happened.

Never again, she decided, however. I will not trap myself like this ever again. Better to fight and die in the open air than cower here like animals in a snare.

“Everyone to the back!” Caleb called out. “If the door fails, we’ll need the room!”

Everyone shuffled willingly to the back, eager to get away from the groaning wood and falling dust of the big doors. Elan, Caleb, and a few of the armed people that had been pressed to the front of the wave that had retreated into the temple were left at the front of the space then, in the flickering shadows of the oil torches as they stood there with weapons in hand, waiting.

The door boomed and shuddered, shaking the air and making them all jump.

“It won’t hold,” one of the men said, shaking his head. “No chance.”

“Then we fight,” Caleb responded, his sword gripped in two hands as he stood and watched.

Boom.

The door shook, rock dust breaking loose from the hinges and drifting down across the lit torches.

Elan hefted her stave in hand, bracing for the inevitable, just as the door was struck again and the hinges were sheared clear from the stone, sending the huge wooden slabs inward, where they fell with a reverberating sound that shook them all to their cores.

A wave of figures followed the falling doors, surprisingly fighting the whole way and so intermixed that it was difficult by times to determine whether friend or foe. Elan was shocked to see that there were still humans standing and fighting in that mass of demons, but the chaos of the moment swept her up before she could do more than reflect briefly on it. In a moment, she and Caleb and the rest were buried in the fighting and there was no more time for such thoughts.

She’d never experienced such a press of people around her, but this time Elan had no time for the discomfort she often felt in crowds. She immediately pushed into the mass, staff in hand, and met the more obvious of the enemies with a flurry of blows backed by all the strength she could muster.

She found quickly, however, that in such a crowd her stave was far from an ideal weapon and was limited to short strikes and bodily weapons. Knees and elbows were more often used to bring down a foe, then she would dance back and let someone else with a shorter weapon rain down the final death.

Chaos reigned, however, and Elan had no idea if her efforts were gaining them much of anything as the temple filled with more and more fighters.

*****

Blood dripped steadily onto the ground from his hand as Kaern leaned heavily on his sword, nothing but death around him for a hundred feet or more.

Ninth Circle scum, he thought derisively as he straightened up.

Those who were still early in the Change were useful to those who desired shock troops, as they were generally available in overwhelming numbers, had a deep thirst or hunger for blood or flesh as a general rule, and were possessed of a vicious temperament due to the constant pain the Change inflicted on them.

They were also like wheat to the thresher, however, against a skilled warrior. It would inevitably come down to whether or not the demons ran out of numbers before the warrior grew exhausted and made a mistake.

This time, the enemy simply hadn’t brought enough bodies to the sword fight.

He looked around, unsurprised that the demonic general had taken the chance to leave the area. Higher level demons were acutely aware of their mortality when in the presence of those who could end it, but even with that, Kaern was aware that the general hadn’t fled entirely.

The sound of fighting and the glow of fires could still be heard and seen from the shadowed walls of the city. Kaern hefted his blade from the blood-soaked mud and rested it idly on his shoulder as he walked out of the circle of the dead, picking his way to the road that led into the now-destroyed gates of the city.

The bodies and destruction strewn about the gates were as he expected from such an attack. Mercy was not a trait held by the majority of demonic species. They were too cowardly to entertain the idea of extending it to potential enemies.

Mercy was a gift of the strong, compassion a fire that was the antithesis of the icy cold of fear. The majority of demons lived in fear, were ruled by it. They had no comprehension of anything else, and thus were incapable of the emotions humans habitually bestowed upon one another and everything around them. Not that humans were entirely immune to such things, of course—Kaern had met more than a few who were as worthlessly subsumed by their own baser fears as any demon might be—but he had known many more who were not.

From such fear, destruction was inevitable, and now he walked through the proof of it with his blade dripping ichor while he himself bled from more than a dozen wounds.

It was all a familiar scene for him, one he had seen more times than he could remember…or wanted to, for that matter. It was just another place destroyed by the disease that was spreading slowly across the universe, swallowing everything good and clean in its passing.

*****

Elan spun, whipping her stave about with vicious force until it slammed into the head of her target, sending the demon spinning to the ground with force to crack bones twice. At some point in the fight she’d found a corner that left more of an opening in the flow of fighters around her, giving her room to move finally and room to really make use of her weapon. She stepped into the next attack, snapping a kick into the head of the fallen demon to follow through and make sure it was down, blocking a strike from another source with the stave as she did.

The fight had forced her back, deeper into the temple as people screamed, fought, and died around her.

The demons would pay for the ground they were taking, of that she and Caleb would make certain, even if others cowered, but Elan had no doubt that they would take possession of what they paid for just the same.

She grunted as a blow to her stomach lifted her off her feet and threw her back, skidding to a stop as she struggled to get her stave up again to defend herself as the demon just rushed in and blew through the weak protection she had managed.

The stave clattered to the ground as Elan was again thrown back, slamming into the wall behind her as the breath exploded from her lungs and she painfully gasped, trying to fill them again. Through bleary eyes, she saw the demon charging again and just managed to twist out of the way as the blow missed her head and shattered the stone behind her.

Pelted by shards of stone, bleeding from her face and neck, Elan struck out with a kick that impacted on the demon’s thigh and staggered it slightly but only momentarily before it recovered. She went for the blade on her hip, ducking under another blow that cracked stone as she loosed the blade she had taken from the bandit from its sheath and brought it up in a slash from low to high that opened the demon’s flesh up like rotted meat.

She kicked the body aside as it fell in her direction and forced herself to her feet, putting a hand behind her to brace on the wall as she finally managed to suck in a breath of air.

The air filled her lungs as her hand fell farther than she expected and, rather than hitting stone, landed on a smooth, cold surface that almost instantly seemed to suck all warmth from her hand before growing warmer and becoming almost burning hot.

Light erupted around them from all angles, that same perfect light she remembered from the Redoubt Kaern had taken her to. Light that annihilated all shadow and seemed to come from every direction at once.

Cries of shock and surprise were lost in the hissing screams of the demon forces as they involuntarily flinched back from the light, trying to cover themselves, but were faced with it from every angle imaginable.

Elan didn’t have time to think about it, as she saw a chance and charged the closest demons to her, sword held high.

“Now! Take them while they’re distracted!” she screamed as loudly as she could.

Shaken from their surprise, the remaining human forces descended on their opponents with a vengeance, and in seconds only humans remained living within the perfectly lit Redoubt.

As the sounds of violence ended, the people who had survived looked up and around from wherever they were, confusion and wonder pervading their senses.

“W…what happened?” Caleb asked as he stood over three demon bodies, blood dripping from his blade as he held it still at the ready.

Elan turned to him, uncertain what to say, but started as she noticed something.

“Caleb, step back!” she ordered.

He did so, bringing his sword in closer for a swing if he needed as he looked for the threat. When none immediately showed itself, his attention was drawn to a slight motion in the corner of his eyes and he spotted smoke whisping off the bodies he had been standing over.

“What?” He blinked, confused.

“Move away from the bodies,” Elan said. “Something is happening.”

In another situation, the adults present might have objected to obeying the orders of a teenage girl, but any such thoughts fled when faced by the icy blue eyes glaring out at them from a face covered in blood and gore. The smoking bodies on the floor certainly didn’t hurt her authority on the subject, either, Elan supposed as she pulled her soft shirt up over her nose and mouth and knelt near the closest body.

“Something is burning them,” she said. “Is this normal for demons?”

Her father hadn’t mentioned it if it were.

Caleb shrugged. “I dunno. Never seen any this close. Simone would probably know.”

Elan rose to her feet. “Simone isn’t here.”

She turned around, looking to the busted stone wall behind her. “There’s something behind the stone…”

Caleb gingerly made his way over to her, along with several of the adults, to look for himself. The wall behind the wall was black and smooth and reflected the image of Elan and himself back as they looked upon it.

“What is it?”

Elan shrugged, reaching in, only for Caleb to grab her arm and stop her.

“What if it’s dangerous?” he asked.

“More dangerous than the demons?” she asked, incredulous, pulling her hand free. “This was built by our ancestors. If it kills me…well, better by their hand than by a demon’s claws.”

Again, she reached in and, this time intentionally, Elan touched the smooth surface of the wall. She hissed in surprise as it lit up at her touch and characters appeared on the wall. She could read the characters, but the words made no sense to her at all as she struggled with them.

“What does…‘override’ mean?” she asked, sounding the word out slowly, and nearly jumped out of her skin when the image changed again.

The black changed to white, and more characters appeared, but she could make very little sense out of any of it. Certainly Elan knew some of the words, and most of the characters…not all, but most…but the combinations of them made no sense to her at all.

“Does anyone understand this?” she asked, casting a desperate look over her shoulder.

Caleb was no help. He looked more adrift than she was, and even the adults behind her had looks of total bewilderment on their faces.

Reluctantly, Elan withdrew her hand and watched as it turned back to black.

Whatever it was, this wasn’t the time.

“We need to find out what is going on out in the city,” she said, turning away from the wall. “This will have to wait.”

*****

Simone screamed as she wrenched her blade from the side of a particularly large and annoyingly tough demon, wincing as she felt a sharp pain lance through her chest. She hoped she had only bruised a rib when she’d been thrown by the beast, rather than breaking one, but in either case she had more to worry about for the moment.

Her worst fears were made real when she located the largest grouping of demons at the town center, right around the temple itself, and as she got closer, she could see the doors had been destroyed. That left the interior open to assault, and from the sounds she could hear, there was a particularly large one in progress.

It was suicide to go down there, even if she were at her best. Hell, at her best and in her prime, which she hated to admit had been a few years in the past, it would still be suicide. She had been the one to send the kids in there, though, and that was something she couldn’t allow to eat at her. The city had fallen, or would inevitably. She would see her charges safely through the violence, or she would fall with it.

Simone was striding forward when a hand gripped her shoulder and yanked her back. She reacted instinctively, her curved sword arcing around in a lethal swing intended to take the head of whoever had laid a hand on her.

The dark figure simply stepped into her swing, however, and shouldered her sword arm lightly to throw her off.

“Peace, Simone,” a familiar voice said.

She found herself looking at Kaern’s visage as he stepped out of the shadows, glancing between her and the crowd of demons.

“What has you readying yourself for a death charge?” he asked simply.

She jerked her head toward the temple. “The children are there.”

Kaern cast his gaze in that direction, his expression darkening. “Well…that’s not good. Okay, together then and…”

He was cut off abruptly as a flash of light blinded both of them and set a scream rising among the demons. His expression flashed between confusion and recognition as he realized what he was looking at.

“You built this city around one of the old security depots?” he asked, shocked.

“Around what? That’s the temple.”

Kaern choked. “Temple? You worship there?”

He had to fight to keep from laughing at her. Frankly, the idea of worshippers in one of those old depots was absurdly amusing to him. The amusement left him when he considered it, though, as he rather expected that…toward the end…a great many of those within had done a great deal of praying, for all the good it did.

The Creator didn’t answer prayers. Not even to say no.

“What is that light?” Simone asked.

“Strong molecular sun-emulation system,” he told her, amused by her deepening confusion. “Powerful ultraviolet light. Very nasty for demons. Not nice for humans either, but they’ll burn slower at least. You say you sent the girl there?”

Simone nodded. “Yes, why?”

“She’s gene-encoded for these facilities.” He shrugged. “Somewhere, back in her bloodline, she’s descended from one of the leaders of your ancestors. It’s not that uncommon, Simone. Many humans are… Little Elan just seems to have a higher ranked ancestor than I believed.”

“I don’t understand,” Simone said, completely lost.

“You don’t need to,” he told her. “Let’s just get down there and pull the kids out before they do something stupid and get themselves killed.”

*****

“The light! It burns!”

The general hissed, aggravated as he kicked away the weak and injured filth that was clutching blindly at him as he walked past.

This task grows more wearisome by the passing second, he thought darkly. As though it were not enough that he had one of the Forsaken appear at the sight of his battle, now it appeared one of the humans’ ancient defenses had been activated as well? How troublesome.

It was a weak defense, only truly effective against the filth of the weaker circles or half breeds and possession spiritus. It meant, however, that the final cleanup would have to be completed by the more powerful and, thus, less controllable of his forces.

He would see it done if he had to kill his own forces until they obeyed his orders, but what should have been a relatively neat, if bloody, task was now something else entirely.

He arrived to the front, eyes falling on the human turncoat for a moment before focusing on one of his commanders.

“Is it as it appears?” the general asked darkly.

His demonic field commander nodded, glancing at the light pouring out of the opening. “A Truelight system, still active. Remarkable in its own way, if irritating, my general.”

He sighed.

It was true. Those humans had known how to build their toys at the height of their culture…for all the good it had done them.

“We will have to dispatch what forces we have that will be less affected,” he ordered, glancing over the forces available before settling on the human and his fellow collaborators. “You, human. You will lead this force.”

The human, whose name the general had never bothered to learn, looked rather put out by the order but didn’t waver. He knew what would happen to him if he did.

“Take the Sixth Circle group with you,” he ordered. “Bring the humans within to heel…or else.”

Venadrin nodded firmly, smiling nastily. “As you order, General.”

*****

Caleb hefted his blade as he led the way to the busted door, coming up short and backpedaling quickly as the entry was filled with hulking figures who didn’t look all that friendly.

“Elan?” he said as he started backing up. “I think the situation in town may be worse than we thought.”

“Why, I…?” Elan asked, coming out from around the wall and halting abruptly as she focused on one figure in particular.

Caleb half turned, concerned by her sudden silence, and was surprised to see a look of such vile hatred on her face that he immediately blanched white and took a step away from her. A glance in the direction she was looking was enough to tell him who had called up that rage-induced emotion, as one of the smaller figures in the oncoming group had apparently recognized her as well and was grinning widely.

“Well, well, well, the little slip of a girl lived,” the man, or man-looking thing, said with an inordinate amount of pleasure. “I did regret not spending more time with you on our last meeting, but demons are so hard to control. I’ll make it up to you this time.” He gestured at her, glancing at the demons around him. “Her I want alive. The rest? Meal time.”

Caleb’s eyes widened as the larger demons rushed past the man, charging in as most of the people within fell back in terror. He gripped his sword in both hands, trying desperately to remember everything Simone had taught him and coming up totally blank in the moment as he stared at a mass of demons unlike the chaotic frenzy from earlier. He froze in place as the demons charged in on him, until a scream of rage beside him shook him from the fugue.

Elan charged past him, her blade already sweeping in an arc to meet the charge, and Caleb was moving before his mind could catch up with his body.

Elan’s blade swept down, chopping violently through a thick, black, carapaced limb. The ichor splattered the floor as Caleb was forced to duck under the now free-flying appendage. He went low, going with the moment, and chopped the legs out from under the demon Elan had wounded, noting that she had already moved on.

“Elan! What are you doing!?” Caleb screamed, taking a moment to finish the demon as it writhed on the ground before he pulled his blade free and charged after the girl. “Don’t let them surround you!”

She wasn’t listening to him, however, and he found himself following her into the fray against his better judgment. It became quickly obvious that she only had eyes for the man who was holding back, just beyond the wall of demons they were fighting through, and Caleb wondered just what the story there was.

He didn’t wonder much, though, because he was too busy fighting for his life as the demons descended upon him and Elan with a fury. Smoke was rising off the glistening black armor they seemed to wear, unless that was what passed for their skin, and Caleb really had no idea why.

He didn’t think about it, however, and just focused on tearing into them while trying to get to Elan before she got herself killed.

He was briefly aware of others wading into the fight, though not so enthusiastically as Elan or his own (reluctant) charge. The sound of iron and steel against bone and chitin filled the area with deeply chilling sounds, punctuated by the screams of the dying from both sides.

Caleb caught up to Elan when she was pinned in place by three of the hulking demons, barely able to hold them off as she put everything she had into the fight. Sweat was coating her face, neck, and chest as she hacked away at them, and a tremor could be seen in her muscles.

“Pull back!” Caleb ordered, stepping into the fight on her right to take a blow intended for her, his sword shivering under the force of the strike. “Damn it, Elan, pull back!”

“I want him dead!” she screamed, glaring through the cracks at the amused-looking figure standing in the doorway.

“Then live to take his life later!” Caleb snarled, ducking under a blow and arcing his blade up and from left to right to cleave through the now open defenses of his opponent. “Fall back to somewhere we can defend!”

Elan screamed in frustration, but started to pull back as he covered her retreat. Caleb followed suit, and the two of them fought their way back to the narrower section of the temple area. Bodies of foes and allies alike were strewn across the floor between them and the door by then, the remaining demons closing menacingly as the pair sized up the situation as best they could.

“I don’t see a way out of here,” Caleb admitted after he’d gotten a bit of breath back. “I hate to admit it, but I just don’t.”

Elan shot him a glare that promised pain and death. “If you’re so sure we’re going to die, then you should have let me finish what I started!”

“I wasn’t thinking that at the time,” he snarled back. “I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell you thought you were thinking!”

“I was avenging my parents!”

Caleb took a step back at the sheer loathing in her voice, only the fact that her eyes flicked away from him as she said it keeping him from wanting to turn and flee for his life and sanity. He looked through the demons that were slowly, cautiously approaching, to the smirking man behind them.

“Him?” he asked.

“Venadrin,” Elan hissed. “A traitor who betrayed my father and murdered my parents on the orders of demons.”

Well, that explained her hatred, Caleb supposed.

“And now I may have just lost my final chance to end that bastard, thanks to you!”

Caleb bristled. “Not much of a chance! You were about to get killed out there!”

“Better a slim chance than none at all!”

Any counter Caleb might have managed had to wait because the demons had finally decided that caution was overrated and closed to attack. He brought his blade up, defending against the overhead claw strikes. Black ichor splattered his blade and face as the sword bit into the limb that swung at him, but the force was enough to drive him back.

Beside him, Elan was faring little better. The force of the blows she was blocking were shaking her whole body and throwing her back with vicious force. The pair stood shoulder to shoulder, covering each other and inflicting more damage on the demons than they were taking, but there were more of them and each demon was clearly better able to absorb injury than either Caleb or Elan could hope to.

People had ducked away from them, hiding in the alcoves, most of them children younger than either Elan or Caleb. Of the rest, some of the adults were fighting to keep the demons away from them; most were just fighting or hiding in general. For the moment, it was working. The demons were focused on the two who’d opened the fighting so viciously, but Caleb knew that when he and Elan fell, the rest would follow shortly.

He could hear screaming and crying behind him as he fought. The rest of the children were deeper in the temple, back as far as they could go, but it would not be deep enough. With each attack, he and Elan were being forced back a full stride at a time.

It only took seconds, though it felt like an eternity to him, for them to be fighting in the midst of crying and cowering children with the last wall just feet from their backs.

The line of blood, ichor, and bodies strewn across the floor of the temple went back all the way to the opening, but there was nowhere left to retreat to.

Elan yelped, and out of the corner of his eye Caleb saw her stumble. One of the youngest kids had gotten under her feet just as she’d defended a heavy blow, and she went down to one knee as the demon pressed the advantage with a powerful backhand that lifted her from the ground and slammed her into the wall with enough force to make him cringe.

Elan slumped to the ground, dazed or unconscious, and then Caleb was the only one standing as the demons turned their focus on him.

Tired, sweating, and all but played out, Caleb shifted his grip on his blade and got it up to a solid defensive position.

“Well?” he asked through bloody teeth. “Come on then, let’s end this.”

*****

Elan shook her head, a ringing following every move she made and stars popping in her vision as she tried to get back to her feet. She could hear yelling and the sound of fighting around her, but her vision was black with only a hint of light out in the distance, as if at the end of a long, terrifying tunnel.

She stumbled around, realizing that she’d dropped her sword somehow but couldn’t remember when or where. Her hand found a solid purchase, smooth and cold, and she braced herself as she slowly pushed herself to stand straight up. Something buzzed under her palm and Elan snatched her hand back from the surface instinctively, swinging around.

Everything went black again and she felt herself pitching over, causing her to throw her hands out desperately to stop her fall. Again, the smooth, cold surface pressed against her palm and something buzzed against her flesh. She didn’t have the strength to pull back, however, and so she held her hand in place and took deep breaths.

Coming here was a mistake, Elan thought, or perhaps mumbled. She couldn’t tell, and didn’t care.

Strange words came to her, whispering in her ear then with near perfect clarity.

Transport initiated. Execute?

“What?” Elan muttered, blinking as the tunnel of darkness faded a little and she could see the wall she was leaning against. “Transport?”

“Transport Confirmed. Executing.”

“What? Wait, I—”

She was cut off by a flash of white light that overwhelmed her. She fell to her knees, the world threatening again to go black around her as Elan pitched over and threw up her last meal all over the floor.

*****

Kaern put a hand on Simone’s shoulder, shaking his head as he looked over the forces arrayed around the entrance to the “temple.”

“We’ll not fight our way through that,” he said. “He has too many there, and I see a few who’d give me pause in a straight fight. We’ll have to try another option.”

“Such as?” Simone asked, frustrated, still hating the fact that she’d sent the kids right into what had turned into the biggest trap in the whole damn city.

“Your temple,” Kaern said with a chuckle, “is a former military installation. Those were never built with only one way in. Come on, I think I can find the bolt hole.”

“The what?” she asked, nonetheless following him as he led her around.

“A back door,” he answered, leading her around the mound that hid the structure of the temple from the rest of the city. “Planners never built anything with only one way in and out in those days, Simone. There’s always a back door…usually a couple side ones too…”

She shook her head, barely following half of what he said as he continued to mumble while they tracked around behind the temple and then began to move farther away from it.

“What are we doing?” she hissed when they had actually started to approach the city walls. “The children…”

“Are dead or they’re alive. Neither state is going to be changed by us getting ourselves killed through our own stupidity,” Kaern said firmly as he came to a stop near one of the older parts of the city. “Here.”

“Here?” Simone looked at the building they’d stopped in front of. “It’s a tavern.”

“Figures,” Kaern snorted. “Come on.”

She snorted, more frustrated as he led her into the abandoned tavern, looking around until he found a way downstairs to the basement. “Where are you going?”

“Your people built this city around what shelter you could find,” Kaern answered. “The most impressive of which you called a temple…” He had to pause to suppress a laugh, still tickled by that fact. “But it wasn’t the only one that was here when your people chose to build.”

In the storage space below the tavern, Kaern looked around quickly to get his bearings and then walked straight to one of the far walls. He paused and felt around for a moment before suddenly yanking a concealed piece off the wall and gesturing to it.

“If you please, Simone?” He pointed.

She stared at the glowing section of wall apprehensively. “If you please, what?”

“Just put your hand on it,” Kaern sighed.

Hesitantly, Simone did as he asked, surprised by the cold sensation and then the buzz that followed. She started to jerk back, but Kaern reached out and held her hand in place.

“Just a second longer,” he said firmly.

The panel glowed, then grew warmer, and finally faded again. For a moment she thought nothing had happened, but then a grating sound surprised her and she caught a hint of motion in the corner of her eye. Simone turned in time to see a smooth section of the wall sink into the ground, revealing a well-lit tunnel beyond.

“Come on,” Kaern said. “Now we hurry.”

They ran now, rushing through the long tunnel back toward, Simone hoped, the temple.

Simone barely had time to notice how smooth the walls were, but covered in glowing dust…that she found disturbing. Kaern just passed it off when she asked him about it, however.

“The light systems have been activated after at least a century,” he said. “The dust had time to accumulate. Now it’s being burned off. It’s harmless to humans, or would be if the Truelight defenses hadn’t been active.”

“How worried should I be?”

“You’re going to have one wicked sunburn tomorrow,” he answered. “So will everyone else…the demons more than the humans.”

They raced through the glowing dust, sending waves of it flowing behind them as they ran, a luminescent wake that chased after them. At the end of the hall, Kaern barely paused as he came to the dead end, calmly ripping another panel clear off the wall and pointing to it. Simone palmed the cold space without asking questions, enduring the buzz and the heating until it was over and the wall dropped out of the way.

The two of them emerged into the temple, the sound of clashing fighting attracting their attention to where Caleb was facing off against a group of demons and Elan was staggering to her feet. Simone was so relieved to find them alive she smiled, but beside her Kaern cursed.

“This is bad. They’re fighting on an active—” He started, only to be cut off as a flash of brilliant white light blinded them for an instant, and when they looked again, Elan was gone, along with Caleb, several demons, and a large group of children who’d been huddled nearby.

“Transport platform. Kiantze!” Kaern ended his statement with a word Simone didn’t know, but had no doubt was an epithet.

She didn’t know what had just happened, but there was no way it was good.

“Shit.”

*****

The blinding white light nearly set Caleb on his ass as he backpedaled as quickly as he could to get away from the demons that had been close enough to strike at him. Instead of putting his back to a wall, however, he stumbled back over something on the ground and did sprawl to his ass with a thump and a clang as his blade struck off the floor. He kept a tight grip, not wanting to lose his only defense as he blinked furiously to clear the spots in his eyes.

The world had changed color somehow.

The marbled black and grey stone of the temple walls was gone, and as his vision cleared, Caleb didn’t see the glistening black of the demons either. Instead, everything was white, gleaming white, the likes of which he’d never seen. Caleb heard the sound of someone retching and twisted, spotting Elan a dozen feet away. She was heaving as she emptied her stomach onto the gleaming white floor, but otherwise seemed fine. Others were with them—children that they’d been protecting in the last moment—but only Elan seemed to be in any physical distress…though Caleb rather expected that the physical was the least of the children’s worries at the moment, judging from their sobs. For the moment, however, he focused on her.

“Elan!” he called, scrambling to his feet.

She looked up at him, a miserable expression on her face just barely masking the confusion he felt as well. He started in her direction, for the moment ignoring the kids around them as he kept an eye out for the missing demons.

He was halfway there when an unexpected voice filled the air.

“Transport Complete. Eight Unauthorized Entities Dispersed Per Protocol.”

Caleb swung around. “Who said that?”

“Unauthorized User Command.”

“What?”

He spun around, trying to find the source of the speaker, but kept moving toward Elan until he was standing beside her.

“Are you okay?” he asked, not looking down as he kept searching for any threats.

She moaned, not answering at first, and shook her head. “I feel like someone is pounding my head from the inside, and I think I’m seeing things.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, risking a look down at her. She didn’t look good, but then, in his admittedly limited experience, few people who just finished throwing up ever did.

“Everything looks white,” she said painfully.

“Yeah, that’s not you, unless I’m seeing things too,” Caleb said.

She planted a foot under her and winced as she climbed to her feet. “Where’s my sword?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t see it.”

She swore, swaying as she stood up. Caleb reached out to steady her, letting her lean into him for a moment as they both took stock.

“Where are we?” Elan asked. “This isn’t the temple.”

“I don’t know, I—” Caleb started, only to be cut off by the voice from earlier.

“Transport Pad Nine, Atlan Sea Facility.”

“Who said that?” Elan asked, wincing as she twisted to look around and immediately regretted it.

“Atlan Sea Facility EI, Designate: Merlin.”

“Is that your name?” Caleb asked, turning with Elan as both tried to find the speaker.

“Unauthorized User Command.”

“What in the demonic filth does that mean?” Caleb demanded.

“Unauthorized User Command.”

Elan looked at Caleb, who was still supporting her. “What does unauthorized user mean?”

She knew what command meant, she thought.

“I have no—”

Caleb was again cut off by the strange voice.

“Facility Has Been Locked Down With Emergency Protocols. Commands Cannot Be Accepted From Unknown Persons.”

Okay, that made a little more sense. Not much more, but a little.

“Wait.” Caleb sounded indignant. “Why am I unknown but you’re answering Elan?”

“Unauthorized User Command.”

“Oh, screw you,” Caleb told the voice with feeling.

Elan, who was still blinking furiously and wincing with every motion of her head, looked more curious than the outrage of her friend.

“Do you know me?” she asked, confused.

“No.”

That was a straight and far shorter response than she’d been expecting. “Then why are you answering me?”

“Emergency Protocols Allow For Flexibility In Identification For Chain Of Command Purposes.”

Elan groaned, not understanding half of that, and pled softly, “Simpler please?”

The voice seemed to grow softer. “You are the great-granddaughter of the last executive officer of this facility. In the absence of survivors, protocols allow me to respond to you.”

She was about to ask more questions, but a quiet sobbing caught her attention and Elan looked around to see many of the children they’d been guarding were clearly terrified.

“We have to see to them,” she said, pushing herself off Caleb and walking a little unsteadily across the flat floor to where the kids were grouped. She counted them off quickly, noting that they had twenty-three of the city’s children with them. Elan dropped gratefully to one knee. “It’s alright. We’ll make sure everything is fine. Don’t worry.”

“She’s right,” Caleb said, backing her up. “Come on, we need to find a safe place for the kids…and then figure out how to get back to Simone and the others.”

“You’re going to leave us!?” one of the braver kids spoke up, setting off a chain of wails through the rest.

“No, I mean…” Caleb waved his free hand as he rested his blade on his shoulder. “I…but…”

Elan groaned.

And I thought I was bad with people. She sighed as she got back up to her feet. “Watch them. I want to look around.”

Caleb hesitated, both because he really wanted nothing to do with the pack of kids who were even then sniffling and crying and because he genuinely wasn’t certain she was going to get very far without collapsing. “Elan, you’re not looking…uh…” Her glare shut him up and he just waved his free hand. “Alright. Be careful, though, would you?”

“As I can,” she answered as she searched around and made her way to an opening across the room from them.

As she walked, Elan looked cautiously around, still intent on locating the source of the voice that had spoken to them. She was less than willing to deal with a disembodied voice if she had any choice in the matter. It smacked too much of demonic magic.

The white walls of the facility gleamed with a purity of color that she’d rarely seen, and only in the clouds in the sky. No speck of dirt marred them, no smudge, no imperfection of any kind. It was unnatural, as much so as the demons but seemingly in the precisely opposite way. She really didn’t know what to make of it as she reached the end of the corridor and found that it branched both left and right, and there was a large door ahead of her.

The door opened as she approached it, causing Elan to hesitate as she looked both directions and then inside the small room the door had guarded.

“What is this?” she mumbled, confused.

The room seemed to serve no purpose she could fathom. It was just a small, empty room, as unnaturally white as the rest of the place. Elan sighed and stepped back a moment before looking to the right and taking a step in that direction.

A hiss and a bang made her jump as a chunk of wall slammed down in front of her, blocking that direction. Elan stumbled back, then turned to her left. She was less shocked when the same thing happened, blocking that hall as well.

Irritated and more than a little frightened, though she refused to admit as much even to herself, Elan turned to head back to where she’d left Caleb and the children, only to again jump back as that direction, too, was blocked to her.

She turned slowly around and looked intently at the small room for a long moment.

Elan seriously considered just sitting down and stubbornly waiting out whoever was doing this to her, but the others didn’t have the time.

“Fine,” she spat, stepping forward into the small room. “Are you happy? Here I—”

The door hissed shut behind her, leaving her locked in the room as a blinding white light enveloped her.

*****

“What do we do?” Simone asked helplessly as they watched the demons finish rounding up the rest of the people who had been sheltering within the temple.

Kaern shrugged. “Well, I know I’m not cleared to initiate a transport, and I doubt you are… That would be a bit of coincidence, but even if you are…I have no clue where she went, or even if there was a functioning receiver on the other end. They could be dead, Simone.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she hissed, “but that wasn’t what I meant. What about them?”

Kaern glanced to the people who were being rounded up and sighed. “If we save them, we’ll draw attention to ourselves, Simone. We’ll have to run. There will be no chance of tracking the kids.”

“You yourself just said that was unlikely anyway,” she said. “And there are children out there.”

Kaern gritted his teeth, hating the situation on more levels than he cared to consider at the moment, but knew his companion well enough. Simone had a soft spot for children, which was why she had looked after and trained so many orphans after…well, after. There was no way she would just ignore this, even if it were tactically or strategically the smarter thing to do.

Besides that, he recognized the demonic breeds standing there in the light. No one, especially no child, deserved what they would do with their prisoners.

“Alright,” he said. “On my lead, take out the black ones first. No mercy, no quarter, Simone. Those things are walking nightmares. They die first, or we die screaming.”

She nodded firmly, shifting her grip on her blade. “How tough is their skin?”

“Like armor,” he told her grimly, “and their blood is toxic to humans, so keep your mouth shut and try not to get it on your skin, especially in your eyes.”

Simone grimaced but loosened up on the blade’s grip so she could get better power with her swings. “Not making this easy, are you?”

“I’m not the one setting the players,” he said simply. “I’m just calling the play. On me, Simone, just like old times.”

“Old times,” she said in agreement as she followed him out, covering his left side flank as Kaern broke right.

There were no shadows for them to drop out of, so the pair relied on speed as they closed on their targets with blades lifted high. Neither yelled or did more than grunt softly as they brought their blades down in power strikes that bit deep into the armored, black demons.

Simone’s blade bit deep, cutting a third of the way through the demon’s torso, eliciting a roar of pain from the shocked demon as she bore down on the blade, and she swept it out, cutting even more as she did. The black-green ichor of blood pulled from the wound spattered the floor as her blade arced down and around. She spun in place, sweeping the blade in a full circle, and then brought it down again in another power strike that sent her foe rolling to the ground, less its head.

Beside her, Kaern had gone straight for a cleaving stroke that left the head itself attached to his foe’s body, just in two very separate pieces. He kicked the body down when it began to topple in his direction and moved on to the next, blue sparks of lightning beginning to dance along his sword as he did so.

The commotion didn’t go unnoticed as they fought. Several demons guarding the prisoners had their attentions redirected. It was a moment that proved fatal, as they were swarmed by previously beaten down humans who now had nothing left to lose.

Simone was sweating in short order. The strength needed to penetrate the armor-like hide or carapace or whatever the hell it was the demons had was not insignificant, and it was wearing her down quickly to keep up the pressure needed. As she pushed through the strain and pain, Simone watched as Kaern cut his way nearly effortlessly through the hulking demons and, not for the first time, wondered about her sometime-ally and often-time friend.

He didn’t speak much of his past, but she knew he wasn’t human and she knew his past was painful to him. He hated demons with a fire that she’d rarely seen in humans, and even then only in those who had personally witnessed and experienced the sorts of atrocity that demons could inflict on their loved ones. Kaern’s hatred seemed deeper even than that, though it was tempered by the man’s tired pessimism.

Simone pushed those thoughts away as she charged another demon, thrusting her blade straight and true with a scream of effort as she felt the blade resist for a moment before suddenly sinking deep through its chest and coming to an abrupt halt against the armor of its back. Simone glared into the black eyes that stared back, shocked at her, and slowly pushed her blade out with as much strength as she could to hold the demon at a distance as blood gushed out along her steel and coated her hands.

“Yeeeahhh!” she screamed as she wrenched the blade clear and let the demon fall to its knees.

The fighting around her was still going on, but it was clear that the tide—inside the temple, at least—had shifted. The demons were all caught in losing fights or trying to run, something she noticed that Kaern had no interest in allowing.

He’d charged ahead of her, and she now ran to try and catch up as he cut down lesser demons with casual strokes, focused on something she couldn’t discern for herself.

What is he doing?

Kaern beheaded a final demon as he reached the goal his charge and kicked a human to the ground with a vicious blow. The man skidded along the stone, seemingly stunned more by the fact that the blow had casually destroyed his defenses before sending him to the ground.

“I know you.” Kaern dipped the tip of his blade down, lightning dancing along it and jumping out to occasionally make his target twitch and wince. “I saw you in her dream.”

“Kaern! What…?” Simone demanded, running up to him. She trusted him, but she couldn’t imagine why he was focused on a human while there were still demons fleeing them.

“He’s a collaborator, Simone. He works for the lord,” Kaern said. “I saw him in Elan’s dreaming…this one killed her parents.”

Simone’s gaze snapped to pin the man, eyes narrowing as she hefted her blade and started forward. Kaern’s arm across her chest stopped her and he shook his head.

“Why not?” she asked, furious.

Kaern didn’t reply. Instead he focused back on the man on the ground and leaned closer, taking a moment to sniff the air. He tilted his head and looked closer at the cowering traitor, a hint of a cold smile just barely touching his lips as he seemed to realize something. Finally, Kaern straightened back up.

“You live today, only so she can kill you herself later, if she chooses,” he hissed. “Remember that, and remember this. I’ve seen who you serve, and I know the consequences better than you can imagine. Killing you would be a kindness, and I am not that merciful. Pray she is. Now run, little human, run and run until you outrun your treachery…if you can.”

Kaern withdrew his blade and stepped back, letting the man scramble back and twist to his feet so he could stumble out the door of the temple.

Simone stopped him, angry, when he turned back to those inside.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why let him go?”

“Because he isn’t for me to kill,” Kaern said simply.

“You said yourself that Elan could be dead,” she hissed. “There’s no reason to leave a traitor alive for a dead girl to avenge herself on.”

Kaern snorted. “If that girl is dead, then I would be deeply surprised. I still smell the stink of prophecy in all this. Come, Simone, we have business to finish before the forces outside can regroup.”

Frustrated, but no knowing what else she could do, Simone followed him as he stepped deeper into the temple to finish off the stragglers of the demons left within.

*****

Elan fell out of the room, on her knees and heaving as her now empty stomach tried once more to empty itself. Nothing but a trace of bile and spit came out, however, and in a few moments she managed to push herself to her feet again.

That was when she realized that she wasn’t standing in the hallway she had entered from.

Instead she was in an immense room, with a ceiling so high she couldn’t be certain it was a ceiling and not part of the sky. There were shelves lining every wall and filling up the space in between, all of them stocked full of…something. She stumbled slightly as she moved forward, reaching the closest in a few seconds.

She pulled one of the objects down and realized it was a book.

Elan had seen books before, though rarely. Her mother had a few she used to teach her to read, but they had been small and tattered. What Elan was holding was heavier and larger than all her mother’s books combined. She hesitantly opened it and perused the first few of the pages but finally closed it in frustration.

She knew some of the words, but not most, and the meaning behind them was lost to her. Elan returned the book to where she’d taken it, eyes scanning the room and growing wider by the moment as she began to realize just how many books she was looking at. She didn’t know for certain if she knew the numbers it would take to describe them, just that it was more than she’d ever conceived of before.

Her mother would have called this a treasure.

Elan felt a wave of grief pass over her, thinking of how she would like to have shared this with her mother, but she choked it down. She had to find a way back to the others. As much as she would like to explore this further, it was clear that she didn’t have the knowledge she needed to understand any of it.

She reluctantly turned away from the books, heading back to the only way she knew that might get her back to where she’d come from. The door of the small room remained stubbornly closed, however, and nothing she could do would change that fact.

Frustrated, Elan struck the door with her fist, wincing as the pain drove through her arm and then spiked through her skull as well. She whimpered, gently leaning on the door and resting her head against the cool metal for a time.

A whisper of movement behind her caused her to move, ignoring the lancing pain the motion caused her, and spin around. Elan’s eyes widened as she now saw an empty room, the books all gone somehow. She pressed her back against the door, wishing for the comfort of her sword as an existential sort of fear descended on her, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor and just close her eyes and pray it all went away.

She didn’t know if she could take much more. The world was not supposed to change on the whims of some unknown force. That wasn’t how things went. It wasn’t.

In the center of the now mostly empty room, though, something caught her eye. It was a pedestal, with a single book resting on it.

Elan took a step away from the wall, almost against her will. Then another, and another, and soon she’d crossed the distance to the book and was looking down at the gleaming black lettering that rested against the white cover.

Ein Taki’amin Kine.

Hesitantly, she reached out and her fingers lightly brushed the cover.

“It means,” a voice spoke behind her, “To Walk the Path of the Knight.”

Elan spun, this time a shard of pain stabbing through her skull so deeply that she felt the world go black as she toppled to the ground, unconscious.

*****

She groaned, not wanting to open her eyes and feel that stabbing pain of the light driving into her brain. But remembering Caleb and the others, Elan forced them open.

It was bright. She blinked back against the light, but the expected pain didn’t arrive.

“You have a concussion.”

Elan started, twisting in place to get her feet and hands under her so she could move to either attack or run, depending on what she saw.

She froze instead, wanting desperately to run, but couldn’t keep from staring.

An apparition was standing there, a few inches off the ground, looking at her. She could actually see through the figure and spent a few moments staring at the wall behind him rather than at the figure himself.

The figure waited patiently for her to refocus her eyes on him, and when she finally did, he let off a very human-sounding sigh.

“Are we quite finished? Yes, excellent,” he said, clasping his arms behind his back. Elan found herself staring at his hands through his torso. “As I was saying, you have a concussion.”

Elan shook herself, refocusing on his face. “I have a what?”

The figure was an older-looking man, with gray hair and flint-colored eyes. Aside from the disconcerting transparency, Elan was surprised by how normal he appeared. Well, the transparency and the clothing. She’d not seen anything quite so neat and clean before. Even her soft shirt taken from the Redoubt didn’t have a look to quite match it.

“A concussion,” he said again. “You were struck in the head, hard enough to injure your brain. I’ve had the worst effects treated, but you need to rest for—”

“I can’t,” Elan said, dropping down off the table she now realized she had been lying on, planting her feet firmly on the floor. “I need to get back to Caleb and the children…”

“They are fine,” the apparition assured her. “Once the facility has been brought fully back to operation, I will set aside areas for them…”

“Then I need to get back to where I came from,” she insisted. “Others—”

“I have accessed the facility you transported from,” the man said coldly. “It has been compromised.”

“What does that mean? It doesn’t work anymore?” she asked, concerned.

“No, it means that dimensional intruders currently infest the facility and the area around it, and while the Truelight systems are operative, they are wholly incapable of dealing with the situation.”

“Dimensional what?”

The apparition sighed, looking like her mother when she’d done something particularly foolish.

“Demons. You call them demons,” he said wearily.

Elan nodded. “Of course. That’s why I have to go back. There are people there!”

The figure shook his ghostly head and looked up, as though casting a plea to the heavens. “Almost a thousand years, and this is the best I get to work with?” He sighed deeply, eyeing her with annoyance. “Well, at least you’re proactive. That’s something, I suppose. I would prefer intelligence, but courage and duty will do. Follow me.”

Elan didn’t know what to do, so she did as he asked.

*****

“Quickly, this way,” Simone said, rushing people into the tunnel she and Kaern had snuck into the temple from.

They would smuggle them out of the city, grabbing everyone they could along the way. They would lose many, but many times that would be saved by fleeing the city. With the lord’s forces solidifying their control over the area, it was impossible now to remain.

The tunnel Kaern had known of led almost to the city walls. From there Simone knew more than enough about the defenses to get people out on the seaward side. They would have to flee along the coast with as many as they could manage to save.

It would not be enough.

There was little else she could do, however. Simone had been through there before and, the universe and fates willing, would likely go through it again. There was no standing up to the forces of one of the lords. They were forces of nature…unnatural disasters, things to be weathered rather than to be fought.

In her youth, Simone had made the mistake many fell to and believed it was possible to win.

Youthful naiveté only lasted so long, and eventually even hope died.

Now, she would settle for survival. All dynasties fell, even those of the demons. If she, or those who followed after her, lived long enough to see that, then Simone would consider her life of value. For that to have a prayer of happening, however, she needed to keep as many of her fellows alive as possible.

“Gather weapons from the guard houses on the way out,” she ordered, clapping hands on the shoulder of a lightly injured guardsman. “We need to get as far from here as we can. We’ll have to walk through the day, not rest until the sun sets.”

“The heat will be hard on most of us,” the man said grimly.

Simone nodded. “I know…and we don’t have enough water to go around either, so we’ll have to go south. There is a river within range where we can get water.”

“I’ll make sure everyone picks up water skins as well, then. Even empty, they’ll be worth as much as a sword,” the man said.

“Good man, go,” she told him, gesturing as she looked over the survivors who were moving like a shell-shocked, shambling mob. It hurt her physically to see them like that, but better this than the alternative that many of her, and their fellows, were now enduring.

The living may well envy the dead, she thought as she looked back on the city.

“I’m going back.”

The words made her near jump out of her skin as she spun to glower at Kaern and hissed, “Don’t do that.”

He didn’t bother acknowledging her. “Get as many out as you can. I will…provide distraction.”

Simone caught his arm as he tried to move away. “Wait…”

Kaern looked back at her. “What is it?”

“Why?” she asked.

She didn’t really have to say more than that. He understood both what and why she was asking.

He hesitated for a brief moment, as though uncertain himself, mostly because he was.

“The world was never meant to be like this, you know,” he said, his comment catching her by surprise. “You humans were intended to stand or fall on your own. The demons, they were not part of the grand plan.”

She looked at him quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Join the club. None of us do. Why any of this has happened…” He sighed, shaking his head. “Maybe the Creator abandoned us as a bad idea… I don’t know if I can accept that, but very little else makes sense. Pain, suffering, these are elements of free will…but annihilation or the Change? Those are abominations to what we were promised. So, no, Simone, I do not understand it either.” He sighed. “As to why I’m doing this? I told you, the stink of prophecy is on this place, this time…and that girl.”

“You also told me that you wanted nothing to do with prophecy,” she reminded him.

“Maybe I’m just tired of watching the world die,” he said, though not with enough feeling to convince her he was speaking the truth. “Of watching the universe rot from the inside. Go, Simone, look after your people.”

Simone nodded as he moved away from her, wondering how much had to do with what he had just said and how much had to do with a certain child the gruff man professed to not care about. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” his voice came back over his shoulder as he walked away. “Thank the memories that girl brought back to me. I used to be a hero, once.”

“I think you still are,” she called after him. I suppose that answers that.

She almost missed his last comment before Kaern vanished into the shadows.

“I may be,” his voice drifted from the dark. “I learned a long time ago…heroes only arrive when everything is lost and the darkness has swallowed hope. It’s looking very dark and hopeless out tonight. I think, though—” She barely made his last words. “—that I am not the hero of this night… Something tells me that player has yet to make their grand entrance. Good luck, Simone. I’ll see you again, in this life…or what comes after.”

*****

“What happened!?” the general roared, furious beyond reason as he looked down at the pitiful excuse for flesh and blood that was kneeling before him.

“W…we were ambushed,” the human, Venadrin, stammered out. “They came from nowhere, a pair of them…”

“A pair!? Two measly humans slaughtered my demons?” The general drew back to unleash a blow that would, like as not, kill the ignorant human.

“No! Forgive me, General! They couldn’t have been human!” Venadrin shouted out, his hands up to defend himself, for what little good they would do him.

The general paused, large eyes narrowing as he leaned down. Steam puffed from his nostrils as he breathed out on the man. “Why do you say that?”

“His blade,” Venadrin said desperately. “His blade sparked with unnatural lightning.”

The general straightened up and took a step back, turning away from the worthless human.

“The Forsaken,” he said grimly. “It must be the one they call Wanderer.”

Venadrin’s eyes widened, unnoticed, as he heard the name uttered.

“Why are one of those…filth interfering with this operation?” the general grumbled, still having difficulty understanding it.

The Forsaken had long been boils on the arse of the expanding circles, but he had believed that those of this world had either finally given up or moved on. They normally did not stay once it was clear a plane had been lost to the circles.

Why was this…Wanderer still here? Still fighting?

“Get out of my sight,” the general ordered, not looking at the human. “Gather your squad, what’s left of them. Comb the city for survivors and hold–outs. I want them all here in the center square by dawn.”

“Yes, General.”

The human scrambled away, leaving the old demon standing amongst the dead and dying, unable to take the comfort and joy in the screams he normally would have. The specter of the Forsaken clouded his mind, refusing to leave him in peace.

*****

Venadrin scrambled away from the general, grateful for the reprieve, and ran back to the squadron he had nominal command over. All that was left now were the weakest and least controlled of them, the ones who wouldn’t have survived the white light of the temple.

He rubbed his skin where it burned, like he’d been in the sun too long, and wondered what that light had been. He’d never run into its like before, but it had to be something of the Ancestors, he supposed. One of the defense systems, one of few that had survived this long.

For all the good their toys did them, he sneered to himself.

If they’d been so powerful as the stories about them implied, the demons would never have beaten them. Stories were just stories, humans wanting to avoid the reality and pretend that once they had been powerful.

Magic was powerful. Demons were powerful.

Humanity and its toys had never been anything but weakness masquerading as power, making those who relied on them weaker by association.

Venadrin remembered the scorn in the Wanderer’s voice as he’d talked about mercy and his fist whitened around his blade’s grip in response.

Screw him and his smug demon shit attitude, Venadrin thought as he started to angrily gather his squad. If I see him, or that girl again, I’ll kill them myself.

*****

“Where are we?” Elan asked, looking around.

The area was the first she’d seen since arriving that wasn’t gleaming white, instead being a darker blue-gray color predominantly.

“This is the facility armory,” the specter told her. “If you are intent on suicide, I suppose I will help you sell your life for a value that approximates a reasonable exchange.”

Elan had no idea what the ghost was talking about.

The look on her face must have passed that along to the spectral man, though she had no idea how since he wasn’t looking at her. Regardless, he seemed amused as he spoke next.

“Weapons, girl. I’m bringing you to weapons.”

“You have swords here?” she asked intently.

He laughed. “No, child, there are no swords here. I said weapons, not toys. Your ancestors were far more powerful than mere sword wielders.”

Elan’s expression soured. “If they were so powerful, why are the demons here and they aren’t?”

The specter paused, seemingly to slump in place for a long moment.

“That,” he said finally, “is a deeply involved story. Come, I’ll give you the short version in what little time we have.”

Elan followed willingly, her ears pricking up to hear that story.

“First, it was no war as one might think. The intruders did not come as an army to face your ancestors in battle,” the specter said. “They struck from within and without, with one seemingly unrelated crisis after another. Bioweapons the likes of which have never been seen before, or since, which you may thank the fates for. Beasts that used humans as food, or worse, and disease that struck down people by the billions. In the midst of all that, they snuck in something…else,” the ghostly figure said as they walked. “It was believed to be biological initially…”

Elan’s expression looked lost at sea, causing the man to sigh.

“A disease,” he said. “A sickness that…weakened people, eating at them from the inside…but did not kill. Before the collapse, over ninety percent of humanity were being cared for by the remaining ten. Then it all came apart, and that was when the true horror began. The sick, once they were deprived of treatment, began to go insane. They turned on those who’d cared for them, and it all ended in screaming. Many of those you call demons are the perverse children of those poor, twisted souls, enduring what the demons call the Change.”

The man paused, looking at Elan intently. “Only then did the armies arrive. They defeated us before they even set foot on the battlefields…but don’t mistake that for thinking they took this world easily. With less than four percent of our people, we still fought, and it still took them centuries to control this world. The demons, as you call them, bled for every inch of the ground they now control…but they’d defeated us before we understood we were under assault.”

Elan didn’t even comprehend the numbers he was talking about, but she knew that they were far larger than anything she’d considered before.

“So they can’t be beaten now,” she said numbly. “They won against us when we were powerful, if weakened. I don’t know much, but I know that we’re not even that now.”

“Perhaps.” The man shrugged slightly. “However, in my experience with humans…you do not surrender to the darkness so easily as that. Hope is an eternal spring.”

Elan’s eyes narrowed as she looked sharply in his direction. “You’re not human?”

The man turned to look at her, an acrid look on his face as he seemed to visually reconsider her intelligence in real time.

“Really?” he asked dryly, gesturing at himself. “The ‘see through’ did not give that away?”

Elan blushed. “Well, I thought maybe you were a ghost?”

The man rolled his eyes. “I introduced myself before, but I suppose I can’t blame you for forgetting.” He bowed slightly. “I am Merlin. I am the EI of the Avalon Facility.”

Elan shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry…EI?”

“Elemental Intelligence,” Merlin responded. “It is difficult to describe in layman’s terms… To properly understand what I am, we would have to sufficiently advance your education to cover the subatomic guidelines that govern the universe. I am very much afraid we do not have the time for that now.”

Elan grimaced, but nodded.

There was too much to do. She just then realized that they’d come to a stop, so she looked around at the mostly bare walls that had row after row of empty racks that were clearly intended to hold something.

“Is there supposed to be something here?” she asked.

“You would be hard pressed to locate an intact armory anywhere on this world now, I am afraid,” Merlin told her. “Most were raided in the aftermath of the invasion, if they had not been issued during the initial fighting. There are exceptions, but those are not available to us at the moment and you would be more of a threat to yourself with real weapons than to the demons, I fear.”

“What are we doing here then?” she asked, frustrated.

He waved and an outline appeared on the wall, a section visibly unsealing and popping out.

“First, while that shirt you wear is undoubtedly better than most armor available to your fellows in these times,” Merlin told her, eying the silky shirt she’d belted down under her leather vest, “it is not rated for combat. Try these, if you please.”

Elan looked into the compartment that was open, skeptically eying the contents, of which there seemed to be very little.

She looked between it and Merlin a few times, then finally spoke one word.

“Really?”

“Just put it on,” he told her testily, exasperated.

Elan sighed, grabbing the folds of dark fabric inside, only to freeze as a sharp tingle of power jolted through her hand and up her arm. Unable to move briefly, Elan stared as the material flowed up her arm and coated her skin in a dark grey film with slightly iridescent hexagonal patterns. She tried to jump back but barely managed to shuffle a little, and the material just followed with her as she tried to pull it off with her other hand.

That proved ineffective, as it simply jumped to that hand and began coating that arm as well.

She started screaming, still trying to yank it off to no avail.

“Oh for…” Merlin scoffed. “Would you relax? It’s merely fitting itself to you.”

Elan didn’t listen to him as the material reached her torso and began to cover her leather vest, dissolving the material away almost instantly. Her eyes widened and she redoubled her efforts to try and scrape it off. “It’s eating my clothing!”

“Just the organic matter,” Merlin replied. “If you wanted to keep it, you should have removed it first.”

“You didn’t say anything about any of that!?”

The specter just shrugged. “I can hardly think of everything, now, can I?”

By this point the material had covered her torso, and while Elan started to get the idea that it wasn’t hurting her but wouldn’t be coming off, she was still trying to pull it away from her throat as it began climbing up to her face.

“Stop this crazy thing!” she screamed as it flowed over her face, and the world went black.

Merlin watched her for a moment, then rolled his eyes to the ceiling and reached out to touch her now covered forehead.

The light returned to Elan as she could suddenly see again, though her vision was now filled with words and numbers, lines and colors she didn’t understand. She blinked, taking a few breaths to be certain that she could do so properly, and finally started to relax enough to glare at Merlin rather than scream in panic.

“That was not funny!” She glowered.

“Am I laughing?” Merlin asked, his tone flat. “The armor you now wear once cost more than a rich man’s home. Billions would have envied you the chance to simply put it on, so please cease the hysterics and let us get on with this. You’ll also need what’s left in the compartment.”

Not willing to trust him again, Elan peered in while carefully keeping her distance.

“What is it?” she asked, looking at the single remaining object.

“Your weapon.”

It didn’t look like any weapon she’d ever seen. It was perhaps like the hilt of a blade, but oddly curved. She supposed that it might fit her grip well, but at most it would be a rather short club, in her estimation.

“I’ll find my sword when I get back,” she said, stepping away from it.

“I’ll not send you back anywhere if you’re not equipped to have a chance of surviving the experience,” Merlin snapped. “Pick up the damned sidearm, you stubborn child!”

Elan glared at the spectral man, who just glared right back.

“I can do this all century,” he said after a few seconds, “but I believe you have somewhere you want to be. Choose.”

She glared for a few seconds more before breaking her gaze away reluctantly and, though she would never admit it, with a rather childlike pout, picked up the odd handle and let it slide into her grip. As she’d guessed, it fit like it was formed to her hand. She was just a little surprised; it had seemed a bit large resting there, but in her hand felt perfect. She just wished it were a decent blade.

Elan yelped and almost dropped the weapon as it changed in her hand, a long, thin blade…assembling itself in a rapid motion. She swallowed, testing the feel and balance of it. It weighed almost nothing at all. She had to strain to feel it at all.

“I…you said there were no swords here,” she said, shooting an accusing look at Merlin.

“There are not. That is a sidearm,” he told her. “It has as much in common with a sword as you do with an insect. Now, you are equipped as best I can manage in the limited time we have. Are you determined to return?”

“People are dying…or worse,” she said grimly.

“Very well, then we will return to the Gate,” Merlin said. “With me, again.”

Elan fell into step behind the specter, still testing the balance of the weapon in her hand. “This isn’t iron or steel.”

“No, it is not.”

“Demons are weak to iron. Will this work on them?” she asked.

“The ones you call demons have multiple weaknesses,” Merlin responded. “Some more so than others. Many are only marginally affected by iron, if at all. Silver works on many, in some cases fire or ultraviolet light. They are not a single species, and thus have many different characteristics.”

“I didn’t understand half of that,” Elan grumbled. “I just need to know if the sword will work.”

“The sidearm,” Merlin stressed, “is composed of carbon, a material just as lethal to the majority of demons as iron. Yes, it will work. Iron grounds out their access to subatomic energy fields, which negates the energetic defenses they employ. Carbon, however, directly disrupts their cellular structure. Only when delivered by a weapon, however, which makes no logical sense whatsoever…but like most things with the demons, logic seems optional. ‘Why’ is something no one ever worked out, I’m afraid.”

“As long as it works,” Elan said, still annoyed with the other being.

Merlin rolled his eyes, an affectation he was beginning to realize he may as well get used to using. Sending a child out to combat, no matter whether it was the child’s choice or not, was not strictly against his code, but that was only because no one had ever believed it necessary to be. The very idea was so abhorrent as to be ridiculous, a parody of reality in the years before the invasion. In those centuries of fighting, however, Merlin had seen…and done…far worse.

“What are all these numbers and lines in my eyes?” Elan complained as they walked. “They’re distracting.”

She yelped when Merlin gestured at her and all the distractions vanished.

“Those were merely an augmentation of your reality. I have disabled them for the moment,” he told her. “We will bring them back as you get used to the operation of the systems. For now, you are correct, they would merely be a distraction.”

“You can do…things to me while I’m wearing this?” Elan asked, worried.

“The armor has a full communication suite, so yes, I can connect and make changes,” Merlin answered simply. “Once you are fully trained in its use, you will be able to set lock-out codes to secure it, but for now…I believe the phrase is, live with it.”

She shot him another glare. “You’re a jerk, you know that, right?”

“And you, my dear, are a brat,” Merlin said with a peaceful equanimity that just annoyed her even more. “Here we are. This will take you back to the transport Gate. I am not able to project there. However, I will be able to speak with you and advise you. Good luck.”

Elan looked at the small room she remembered from earlier with a degree of trepidation as she reached up to touch her face.

“Isn’t there a way we can walk there?” she asked, hesitant to step into the room. “I don’t think I want to go through that…not with this on my face.”

“Why…?” Merlin blinked, then his expression cleared. “It was not the transport that caused you to vomit. That was caused by your concussion. I have treated the immediate symptoms, so you may transport with no ill effect. Besides, the armor would simply convert any expelled material to fuel, so you need not worry about the effects of vomiting while wearing it. It would not be pleasant, of course, but that is merely part of the process, sadly.”

She still looked at the room, clearly hesitant.

“Child, if you’re that afraid of a transport, you are clearly not prepared for the task you have set yourself.”

Elan glowered at Merlin again, then defiantly stomped into the room.

The door closed, a flash of light was seen, and Merlin again rolled his eyes to the heavens.

“Ascension help me, I’ve become a babysitter.”

*****

Elan stumbled out of the room, her stomach doing flip flops but without the urge to fall to the ground and heave up her internal organs. She doubted she would ever enjoy what that “transport” was, but at least she was able to operate after using it this time.

A glance around was enough to tell her that she was back where she’d started, though thankfully the corridors were no longer blocked off. Elan set her sights and quickly made her way back to where she hoped Caleb and the children were still waiting.

She was rewarded for her hopes with the sound of voices chattering ahead of her, and Elan broke into a run over the last short distance to the room she’d left them in. When she broke into the room, all eyes turned to her, and instantly everyone started screaming and crying as they fell back to the wall away from her, while Caleb stepped forward with his sword held up and at the ready.

“Stay back!” he warned her.

“Caleb?” She blinked, stepping back a pace and bringing her new blade forward to the ready position. “What’s wrong?”

He paused, staring blankly at her for a long moment before speaking. “Elan? What are you wearing?”

She sighed, suddenly understanding the problem. “Don’t ask. Listen, take the children into the facility. You’ll be led somewhere safe.”

He blinked. “What do you mean, I’ll be led? What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Elan said, walking into the room. “I have to go back.”

“If you’re going back, then so am I!” he declared hotly.

“Caleb, we don’t have time for this,” Elan said. “Someone has to watch the children.”

“And it has to be me?” He looked at her like she was insane. “What do I know of children?”

“More than I do! You grew up with some, didn’t you?” Elan really didn’t want to do the whole arguing thing, but Caleb was being so stubborn. “Don’t waste time fighting, people are dying!”

“There’s an army of demons back there,” Caleb snapped, gesturing wildly despite not having any idea where they were or where “there” was. “One person isn’t going to save anyone from that.”

“And two will?” Elan countered. “I have to try!”

“Why?” Caleb demanded. “Why is it so damn important for you to try, but you want to stop me from doing the same?”

Elan just glared at him, an effect that lost something in the fact that her face and eyes were entirely covered by the mottled grey armor.

“You don’t understand,” she gritted out finally.

“No, I don’t,” he admitted freely, “but I’m not letting you go back there alone.”

Elan growled in frustration and was about to continue the argument when she heard Merlin’s voice echo through the room.

“I am already looking after one petulant child,” the specter’s voice said, exasperated. “A few more will not kill me. Bring them to the transport chamber and I will have them moved to a safe area with food and water.”

“Who was that?” Caleb demanded, looking around.

“That was Merlin. He…” Elan considered her words. “…is in charge of this place. I think we can trust him.”

Not that they had much choice, Elan thought grimly. It was clear to her that the EI, whatever that was, could pretty much do as it pleased, and that left the lot of them at his mercy.

“Merlin, can Caleb get armor?” she asked wearily.

“No, I am afraid we do not have time to gene code a set for him,” the voice answered. “Not if you want to have any effect on the current situation, at least.”

Elan frowned. “How did you get this ready for me?”

“That suit was your great-grandmother’s,” Merlin responded. “The key markers are in your blood. Altering the suit to match you personally will take time, but it can be done while you wear it.”

“Okay, fine,” Elan said, making the choice. “Come on, everyone, we’ll get you somewhere safe until we come back.” The children didn’t like the sounds of that, not that Elan really blamed them, but she wasn’t concerned with their feelings at that point either. When they cried, some of the younger ones mostly, she just shook her head and gestured. “This way.”

“Elan,” Caleb hissed, eyes wide. “They’re just kids. Give them a moment.”

“And we’re not? Everyone else seems to think otherwise,” Elan snapped, getting more frustrated by the moment. “We don’t have a moment. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

She really didn’t understand what the issue was. When she was young, if her momma told her to run and hide, or go somewhere safe, that’s damn well what she did. If she’d refused, or started noisily crying, Elan knew that the world had better damn well have ended…otherwise her momma would have made her wish it had.

Between her urging and Caleb’s cajoling, the two got the kids into the hallway and then to the transport room. She didn’t envy them that experience, but she wasn’t going to tell them that either. Instead they herded the children all inside and let the door shut on them. When the light flashed, Elan turned away and started back to the Gate room.

Caleb hurried to catch up to her. “What’s the plan?”

“We have to see what’s going on there first,” she said, hefting the newly acquired blade in her hand. “There were a lot of demons there when we left.”

“The facility you departed from is currently empty,” Merlin said calmly. “I have been monitoring it since you reactivated the systems.”

“What happened?” Caleb asked, frowning. “It was full when we left.”

“Unauthorized User Command.”

“Screw. You,” he said pointedly.

“Just answer the question, Merlin,” Elan sighed, tired by it all.

Come to think of it, she really just wanted to go to sleep. She blinked, shaking her head.

Later. Sleep when I’m dead.

“The demons killed or captured everyone remaining after your transport,” Merlin replied, “but as they were moving the prisoners out…this happened.”

A wall flickered to life, showing the interior of the temple they’d left. Elan hissed as she saw the demons pushing injured people ahead of them. Then both she and Caleb gasped as two familiar figures appeared and struck down a pair of demons in tandem.

“Simone!”

“Kaern!”

They watched as the duo tore through the demons, laying waste to anything in their path with furious vengeance. It all came to an end as Kaern slammed a human to the ground and held him at sword point.

“That’s Venadrin,” Elan hissed, rage boiling up. “What is he saying?”

Sound came to life, and the pair listened as Kaern stopped Simone from killing the man who’d done so much to Elan and then let him go with those confusing words. After that, the pair had gathered up the survivors and led them out the bolt hole.

Elan didn’t know what to think of it. She had so many conflicting feelings about the scene she’d just watched that none of them made any sense to her.

“Are…are you okay?” Caleb asked her.

“I’ll be fine,” Elan said sullenly.

She didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious with Kaern. Venadrin still lived when he could have easily cut the vile beast down…but he’d been right about one thing. Venadrin was not his kill.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said suddenly. “We have things to do. Merlin?”

“Very well. Transport…initiated.”

There was a flash of blinding white light, and when it cleared…the room was empty.

*****

How did it come to this?

She didn’t mean the destruction of the city; that was an ending that she could have written herself, in all honesty. No, what Simone was perplexed by was the fact that somehow she’d wound up as the person the survivors of that mess now looked to.

She had spent a good portion of her life fighting—sometimes she’d even been the one in command—but one thing she had long avoided was any hint of responsibility over the denizens of the city or any other non-fighting group of people. Fighters were people she could understand. For all that she, herself, farmed…Simone did not understand farmers. She’d been known to sell and trade a thing or two in her day, but she would never assume to understand the thinking of a trader or a shop owner. The only other group of people she had ever understood in her life were children, which, given the propensity of your average warrior to bouts of childishness, made sense to her.

Now she found herself leading a column of traumatized, stricken survivors along the coast to the south of the city…the remains of the city…and all she could think about were the last two children she’d been entrusted with.

Simone hadn’t really known Elan well, or at all really. The girl had promise, Simone could see that, but she was in the early stages of trauma. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen it in a child, and the fates willing, Simone hoped it wouldn’t be the last…because she was realist enough to know that the only way she would not see it again is if she were dead…or all the children were.

Caleb, though, had been with her for years. She’d brought him up from the age of eight or maybe nine. He wasn’t the first orphan she’d taken in, but he’d been with her longer than most. She hoped Kaern was right, that Elan was alive and somehow Caleb was with her, but now she found herself doing what she had always done in her life.

Moving on.

“Simone.” One of the former guardsmen crossed over to her. “People are getting tired.”

“Already?” Simone asked scornfully. “The sun will be up soon. We don’t stop until we reach the river, and even then only long enough to drink and fill the skins.”

He nodded nervously. “I…Simone, I don’t know if they’ll make it.”

“We have an army of demons at our backs,” she said, glaring. “They walk until they drop. If no one is willing to pick them up, then they stay where they drop. Pass that along. We don’t stop until the river.”

He nodded, a little fearfully, and rushed off to relay the message.

Simone turned away, hiding her expression. This was not the time for them to get a hint of softness from her. They had to keep moving, or they would die. If she had to beat them to keep them on their feet, that was what she would do. If they hated her for it, so be it. At least they would be alive to hate.

She glanced at the position of the stars above them, then at the gleam showing on the horizon. The sun would be up soon, and they were hours from the river. Once the heat of the sun began to beat down, it would get worse. Much worse. With all that water on one side of them, none of it fit to drink, and the badlands on the other, Simone was sure of thing…

The desert will claim some of them before the demons get a chance.

*****

Elan and Caleb stepped off the Gate platform as the after-flash of their arrival faded and examined their surroundings.

Blood trails marred the temple floors. Spatter decorated the walls, both human and obviously non-human in nature, but there was no sign of any occupants in the area.

“What do we do?” Caleb asked, uncertain as he looked around.

Elan didn’t know herself, really. She only knew she had a goal, but how to achieve it? That was beyond her ken, and she knew it. Still, she refused to admit that, either out loud or even to herself as much as possible.

“We need to find out what’s going on outside,” she said.

“If the demons are out there, you can be sure they’re watching those doors,” Caleb said, nodding in the direction of the large broken wood doors that had once secured the temple.

Elan sighed, knowing he was right. She glanced in the direction of the bolt hole everyone had evacuated through under the direction of Kaern and Simone.

“We go that way,” she said, pointing.

“Do you know where it comes out?” Caleb asked, heading in that direction.

“No,” she admitted, “but it can’t be too far, and we can double back if we need to, once we’re in the open.”

The passage was sealed, but Elan found she could easily see it as they approached. When she was within a few feet of the door, it opened without her even having to do anything.

“That’s creepy,” Caleb said.

“I know,” she agreed. “I think it’s this armor.”

Caleb shot her a sideways glance, but didn’t say anything. Elan did catch an odd expression in his glance, though.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing…it’s just…are you sure that’s armor?” he asked hesitantly, looking at her only with quick glances before he would look away again.

Elan sighed, looking down at herself. The mottled grey material clung to her form in ways that she found more than a little odd, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. It certainly didn’t chafe like her previous leather and cloth clothes did on occasion, the shirt she’d gotten in the old Redoubt aside.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but after my shirt stopped a dagger once, I’m ready to give it a chance.”

They were moving down the tunnel, the lighting dimmer and more red-colored than the bright white lights of the temple.

“Your shirt stopped a dagger?” Caleb asked. “How? When?”

“Just before I met you,” she admitted. “I was still recovering when Simone took me in.”

“Recovering? I thought you said it stopped it?”

“It did, mostly. It’s hard to explain,” Elan said, masking the fact that she had no idea how it had worked herself. “It just did, okay? I’ll show you later, maybe, but we have things to do now.”

“Right.” Caleb nodded. “Right…”

He snuck another glance at her out of the corner of her eye, drawing her attention again.

“Please stop that,” she said. “It’s…distracting.”

“What?”

“You keep looking at me,” Elan snapped.

Caleb flushed a little and a set of numbers appeared over him, slowly increasing as she watched, causing Elan to stumble as she focused on them.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, reaching out to catch her, but she waved him off.

“Yeah, it’s just this…weird armor.” She shook her head. “It does strange things sometimes. I don’t understand it.”

He looked like he wanted to ask some questions about that, but they reached the end of the tunnel and stepped out into a stone room and looked around.

“I think this is under one of the buildings near the wall,” Caleb said. “Some of them have cellars like this for people to hide in if things get bad.”

“No one hid here. Didn’t this qualify as bad?” Elan asked.

“Maybe they were caught outside, I don’t know. There’s the stairs.” He pointed and started in that direction.

Elan got ahead of him by the stairs, holding him back. “Let me. If the armor works, I’ll be more protected.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” he objected.

She shrugged. “Then try and kill whatever got me.”

She started up the stairs, leaving Caleb to shift his grip on the pommel of his blade and pass it back and forth between his hands before he followed her up.

“Crazy girls.”

As they neared the top of the stairs, a rumble shook them, causing dust and dirt to fall around them as they clutched to the rail on the stairs to keep from being thrown to the ground.

The pair looked at one another, argument forgotten, raced the rest of the way up, and rushed out into the building above.

*****

Kaern sat idly on the parapet of one of the guard towers as the explosion tore through the section of the city the demons had been moving through. Rigging an appropriate level of destruction with what little the people here had available had required a little creative thought. He had fought through enough wars in his very long life, however, that improvising things that went boom really was almost a hobby by this point.

The fires were flickering and casting their light around, such that he could tell that they were burning merrily away even though he could not see them. Kaern was unsurprised. While the locals hadn’t bothered to mix real explosives in a long time, they still knew the value of oils, sulfur, and other various chemicals.

In general, they weren’t effective as weapons, if only because they were very nearly as dangerous to the people using them as the demons, but since Kaern had a mostly deserted city to play in, he felt like indulging himself.

Once the secondary explosions had died out, he jumped up to his feet and then dropped off the tower to the wall below, landing in a casual roll that brought him back to his feet. He set out in a brusque yet intentionally casual walk toward another part of time, not hiding his presence in the slightest.

What use was a distraction if it wasn’t…distracting?

*****

“Whoa!” Caleb put a hand up as a wave of heat washed over him, surprised that Elan wasn’t even flinching. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, but it looks like it wasn’t nice for the demons,” Elan said, her tone sounding satisfied as she stood in the door and watched the enemy burn.

Caleb hid behind her to avoid the heat, but tapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t you feel the heat? Oh, and could you not sound like that? It’s creepy.”

“Heat?” she asked, confused, turning to glance at him. “And what do you mean, I’m creepy?”

“Not you, your voice. I know they’re demons, but you sounded like you were smiling and really, really happy,” he told her. “And that’s a little creepy. And yeah, heat. How can you not notice that?”

Elan shrugged, turning back. “Don’t know. I guess the armor works.”

“Well, that’s great for you, I guess,” Caleb said, “but I’m not going out this way. There’s a back way out of the tavern, though.”

She nodded absently, eyes still on the burning demons as she backed into the tavern building and swung the door shut to block off the heat. It would probably burn shortly, but by then they’d be gone anyway.

The whole place, and every demon with it, could burn once they were gone, as far as she was concerned. Elan would happily light a few fires herself.

Caleb led her around the bar to the back rooms, through the barrels and bottles, to a door that led out to a quiet back alley. She slipped out first and then waved him along. It was clear as they moved through the shadows cast by the buildings against the fires that the city was, if not deserted, certainly not populated by people any longer.

“Do you think they all got out?” Caleb asked as they paused near one of the guard towers and looked on as the fires continued to rage while inhuman shapes and shadows ran through the streets.

Elan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t really care a lot either, she realized. She hoped that people had gotten out and would do what she could to help those she could, but the city itself meant little to her. She’d grown up with her whole world being one small cottage and a chunk of land in the middle of a desert. Humans mattered to her, but it was all rather unreal somehow.

The demons, though, they were real. They had to die.

Her grip tightened on the sword—sidearm—in her hand, and only the armor she wore hid the whitening of her knuckles.

“There’s a squad moving around the fire,” she said. “Come on, we’ll flank them.”

“Where?” Caleb asked.

She pointed. “There.”

He looked in that direction, squinting against the shadows. “Are you sure? I don’t see anything.”

“It’s plain as day….” Elan trailed off. “It is plain as day. Isn’t it still night out?”

She looked up and around, confused.

“Of course it’s still night. Oh, I see them now. Wow, how did you spot that?”

Elan hesitated. “I…don’t know.” She shook herself. “Worry about it later. Come on.”

*****

Kaern whistled as he walked, casual as he remembered walking the paths of the old communities and the paradise from even earlier. He was not walking a path in Eden now, but if he tried hard enough, he could always go back there for fleeting moments in time. He rarely did—it was too painful to remember—but right now he needed the pain. It fueled his actions.

He stepped off the edge of the wall, dropping forty feet to the ground, and landed in the middle of a group of demons that had been sent out to scour the city for any stragglers who might still be hiding out. Not everyone had evacuated. Some people always stayed, in his experience. Too old to run, too sick to walk, too stupid and stubborn to think they needed to.

The demons were pulling an old man out of a house and laughing as they did. It was a singularly disturbing sound. These were Ninth Circle demons just in the Change. They’d probably been human, once.

Now, they were just meat.

When he hit the ground, all eyes turned to him. Most of them were more curious than wary, giving Kaern more than enough time to straighten from where he’d landed in a crouch. The dirt under his feet kicked up as he moved, snapping out his blade to bisect the closest demon with an almost casual flare.

He slammed his shoulder into the one holding the old man, then stomped its skull while it was on the ground and used that motion to kick off in the other direction. With two of their fellows down, the rest started to heft their crude weapons finally, but it was too late for them. Kaern slipped under the guard of his next target and brought his blade up in a sweep from left to right that sent the demons wheeling away from him as he simply spun on to the next target.

In seconds they were all on the ground, dead or dying, and Kaern was standing over the stricken old man.

“T…thank you, I…how…?” the man stammered out.

“Ninth Circle demons are filth,” Kaern said coldly, not looking at the man. “Wheat for the thresher. Their only power is numbers, and here they didn’t have them. Can you walk?”

“Not well,” the old man admitted. “I didn’t want to slow the others down.”

Kaern nodded. “Go back inside, find cover, and wait for the sun. I can’t promise you good odds even then, but they’ll be better than what you have now.”

“Thank you,” he said, getting back to his feet and hobbling inside.

Kaern didn’t respond to the old man. He had other things on his mind as he set out again to harass and generally make as much a nuisance of himself as he could. Many people had told him over his life that he was very good at making a nuisance of himself, and Kaern had always believed one should go with what they’re good at.

****

Elan hit the demons like a runaway boulder, shocking Caleb as he struggled to catch up.

Her first blow entirely bisected the demons that caught it, but what was more shocking to him, who followed her into the fight, was that he didn’t think she was aware of it or actually intended it. The blade cut through like there was nothing stopping it and then continued to sweep up to kill another demon before taking a slice out of the building behind them.

Best stay behind her, Caleb decided as a hint of cold sweat chilled him. At least until she’s mastered that thing.

With that thought clearly in mind, Caleb shifted to catch one of the demons trying to attack Elan from behind. His sword was one he had worked with so long he was intimately familiar with its weight and draw, so he gauged the swing as he stepped into the demon that was fixated on Elan and brought his blade down from right to left.

The well-honed edge split open rotting flesh and sent black ichor spattering across the ground as the thick almost-blood sprayed from a severed artery. Caleb sidestepped the spray as best he could and pivoted to sweep his sword around in a vicious arc that caught another down low and sent it toppling to the ground with a ruined leg.

Elan, shocked by her own attack, had paused to stare at the weapon in her hand and would have been swarmed had Caleb not stepped in to distract the demons from her. Even with his distraction, however, she was still struck before she recovered from the surprise and sent back into the stone wall of a nearby building.

The stone cracked audibly and dust drifted down around her, shaken from the impact, but Elan found herself barely shaken by the strike, but rather took it as an eye-opening moment that brought her out of her shock.

Right, deal with the surprise later, she thought as she lunged off the wall and swept her blade across the neck of a demon that had thought her open to a follow-up blow. The demon’s head rested in place for a moment as its misshapen face looked surprised just before it fell forward and toppled off the body and fell to the ground at its own feet.

She shouldered another away, sending it flying twenty feet back and sprawling to the ground, and found herself beginning to get a feel for what had happened.

I’m stronger, faster too, Elan thought as she fought, starting to grin under the armor. “I think the armor is magical, Caleb!”

“I noticed!” he growled as he ran through another demon with his blade. “Don’t swing that sword in my direction either, please.”

Elan sent a nervous and slightly guilty look as she shot a glance back at the damage she’d done to the building. “Ah, yeah. Good idea.”

Caleb muttered something about liking his head where it was, then something else about both of them that she didn’t understand at all.

Elan ignored him and surveyed the ground around them. In seconds they’d eliminated the entire group of demons between them, and it had been easy. She rather thought that she and Caleb could have managed to do as much without the assistance of the armor and sword…sidearm…she carried, but with it, the fight had been so easy.

“If you’re quite finished playing around,” Merlin’s voice sounded clearly in her ear, making Elan jump, “the area you’re in is infested with demons, and very few humans. I don’t believe you’ll be saving many by staying still. Oh, and just to make the point, the armor is not, in any way, magical.”

“What? Where? How?” Elan spun, looking in all directions.

“What’s wrong, Elan?” Caleb asked, hesitantly staying just out of the sweep of her blade.

“Didn’t you hear that?” she demanded.

“Hear what?”

“Merlin!” she hissed. “He’s here somewhere.”

Caleb twisted around, eyes wide. “Where? How?”

“I don’t know!”

“Oh for…” the voice of the specter groaned. “I am not there. I am speaking to you through your armor. If you survive this, child, you will be spending a rather inordinate amount of time in your studies. Ignorance is forgivable, but only when you seek to correct it as possible.”

Elan scowled. “He says he’s speaking to me through the armor. He’s also a jerk.”

Caleb stared at her for a moment, but really what could he possible say to respond to that? Instead he just shook his head and surveyed the area around them.

“Okay, magic armor and voices no one else can hear aside,” he said dryly, “what next?”

Elan was about to respond, but Merlin’s voice again distracted her.

“I am activating some of your display systems. Try not to panic, please.”

“Shut up, jerk!”

“I just asked what’s next?” Caleb protested.

“Not you!” Elan grumbled. “This stupid ghost or whatever he…oh…wow.”

“What?”

Elan didn’t answer as she looked around, realizing that she was seeing through the walls of the stone buildings around her. Demons were moving above, below, and around them and showed up a glowing red to her vision. There were humans, many of them huddled in the buildings, and they were lit up in blue. She glanced over at Caleb and was surprised to find that he was glowing green.

“You’re green,” she said, surprised.

“I’m what?” he asked, half confused and…no, pretty much all confused.

“Green. You look green. Why do you look green? The other humans are blue,” she said, confused.

Again, Merlin spoke through her armor. “Green is the code for an ally. Blue is a civilian. Red is the enemy.”

“That’s amazing… What does civilian mean?” Elan asked.

There was an odd noise that almost sounded like sobbing, but when Merlin spoke again, Elan was sure she’d misheard, as his voice was steady as always.

“Civilians are people who are not fighters,” he said in a very slow voice that sounded like he was speaking to a very young child.

Elan growled and made a gesture her father had once made when he was very angry, one that got him scolded by her mother for doing it where she could see. She didn’t know what it meant, but it felt right in the moment.

That done, she turned to Caleb. “The jerk has shown me where everyone is in the city. People are mostly hiding, and the demons seem to be searching for them. There’s something wrong, though.”

“What?” Caleb asked, electing to skip over the question of how she could know any of that for the moment.

“There don’t seem to be enough people,” she admitted. “Just a few, here and there. I don’t know where the rest are.”

“What about the demons?” he asked.

“What about them?”

“Well, how many of them are there?”

Elan paused, turning slowly to look around. Finally, she made a confused noise. “A lot, but…”

“But?” Caleb prompted her.

“All the ones I can see are the weaker ones that the light burned,” she said. “They’re moving around the city as far as I can see, like they’re searching it.”

“There should be a group of them, the leaders.” Caleb frowned. “Maybe with prisoners?”

Elan shook her head. “I don’t see anything like that.”

“Can you see the whole city?”

“No,” Elan said firmly. “No, I can’t.”

“Then we need to look around the city, find the places you can’t see,” Caleb decided. “Maybe we can find if there are any prisoners?”

Elan nodded slowly. “That sounds right. Okay, should we go up on the walls then?”

Caleb shifted his gaze to the walls, considering. “Do you see any up there?”

“Not a lot. Everyone seems to be focused in the city,” she admitted.

“Then let’s go up,” he suggested. “You’ll be able to see farther from up there, right?”

She looked at him. “You’re asking me? I don’t know how this thing works…”

“Yes, you’ll be able to see farther,” Merlin grumbled in her ear.

Elan jerked her thumb toward her right ear. “The jerk says yes, so let’s go.”

The pair turned toward the wall and broke into a jog toward the closest stairwell leading up to the guard walk.

*****

Kaern let the demon’s body drop to the ground at his feet as he looked up and down the street he was standing in, something bothering him beyond the obvious. There were not enough demons around for what he had been expecting, and all of them were Ninth Circle trash. Not even a challenge, spread out as they were.

It was beginning to feel rather like cheating, the pitiful things were so easy to kill. If not for the fact that they were monsters in their own right, he might actually be feeling guilty about it.

Okay, probably not, but that was because he knew the sorts of monsters they really were.

He’d lost track of the general and his more powerful legion, which made no sense. A demon that powerful shouldn’t have been able to slip from his senses so easily, not within a city this small.

He must be more to the center, Kaern decided as he began to penetrate deeper into the city, deciding to up the risk a little.

The demons he’d encountered to this point would be of limited threat to him, even if they managed to swarm him. Being pinned down in a narrow city street would make that risk a little higher, but he was getting nowhere as it was. Picking them off a few at a time was satisfying, perhaps, but pointless. Ninth Circle trash was literally endless in their reserves, and he was well aware that the commanders of the demonic legions considered thinning those herds to be a positive thing.

Losing scores of them just meant that the few who survived were likely to be made of sterner stuff than the dregs they normally were.

The real threat here were the lower circles assigned to this world, rarely less than Sixth Circle, thankfully, but they were infinitely more deadly than even a mob of the lowest trash of the demonic legions.

Which made him worry, as the general should have set at least a few larger threat beasts loose on the city as part of the general scouring for survivors.

Where the hells are they?

*****

Merlin observed the crude human city, both through the eyes of the armor he had issued to the girl and the surviving scanners that remained within the now reactivated secure base that people had built around. The city itself was a chaotic mass of locally sourced materials, mostly stone and crude cement, with an almost organic structure that was generally seen in places that grew with little to no oversight.

No civil planners had a hand in the design of the place he was scanning, that much was certain. The Ancestors would have been horrified by many of the design “features” put into place, assuming they stopped laughing long enough to consider the ramifications. People did as they must and to the limits of their capacity, however, so Merlin refrained from amusement on their behalf.

It would be in poor taste now anyway.

The infestation of the dimensional intruders was near complete on every level, but the Elemental Intelligence found himself agreeing with the thoughts of the two children who now searched through it. The demons within the scanning range of Elanthielle’s armor and the security facility were all twisted, shambling wrecks of their former beings, barely mobile by many standards, and only a threat to the very weak or when in large groups.

That didn’t fit with the initial scans he’d received when the old security facility had come abruptly back online. There had been several high-risk entities within the range of the facility and many medium-risk signatures who’d actually penetrated it.

Where did they go? the elemental entity wondered, examining the records of the facility’s scanners with intent.

Unfortunately, after centuries of disuse, little of the facility was fully operational. He could track them for a short period after the children had transported to Avalon, but lost them quickly all the same.

I need more range, but there’s nothing left to give it. He cursed the loss of the old satellite network that had once provided near-instant access to intelligence from anywhere on the world.

He felt like he’d lost his limbs, was half blind, and had clearly suffered from dementia for good measure.

Perhaps he had.

Either way, he knew he could only act on what he knew, so Merlin set about making the appropriate plans. The girl had brought people back to him. He refused to give up the opportunity without a fight. He had thought it was all lost before, and that darkness would not swallow him again without a fight.

*****

“I’m not seeing more than scattered groups,” Elan said as she looked across the burning city.

The light from the rising sun was eclipsed by the smoke and shadows cast by the fires as thatched roofs and wooden buildings burned. Most of the city was stone, so it remained intact, but the damage would be undeniable come daylight.

Elan scanned the city section by section, but all she found were scattered survivors and demon squads hunting them. No signs of either the real population or the main force of the demon army, which left her and Caleb in a quandary.

“Where’d they go?” Caleb asked, frustrated as he planted his hands on the parapet in front of him and glared out across the city that he had once called home.

“I don’t know, but they’re not here.” Elan shook her head. “I…”

Her pause caused Caleb to look at her curiously. “What is it? Do you see something?”

“Yeah…no…I don’t know,” she said, leaning forward. “A red figure just killed a bunch of other reds.”

“The demons are turning on each other?” Caleb snorted. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Elan nodded, but her voice remained curious. “Why, though?”

“Does it matter?”

The girl shrugged, honestly not knowing if it did.

“That,” Merlin’s voice spoke in her ears, “is not a lower level demon. It reads as entirely human, aside from a dimensional variance that only shows up on the security facilities’ scanners. Your armor would not read it as a demon without my direct link to them. Only higher level demons are that well-disguised.”

“Well, that is interesting,” Elan said softly.

“What? What is?” Caleb asked beside her.

She glanced at him, annoyed. “We really need to get you something so you can hear the jerk.”

“You make it sound so appealing…” he deadpanned.

“He said that the demon I’m watching isn’t a low level like the rest, which means he might have more information on what’s going on,” Elan said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, wait!” Caleb caught her shoulder, causing her to half turn back to him. “The invisible voice in your head told you that this one is dangerous, and your instinct is to go down and ask him where his friends went? Are you out of your mind?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged and asked, “Would I know if I were?”

Then she slipped his grasp, hopped down off the parapet, and dropped to the next level so she could scramble down the stairwell to the ground. Caleb swallowed the urge to curse at her and followed as best he could, losing ground and gaining frustrations with each step.

*****

Kaern stood his ground as the small group of demons charged him.

They were pitiful things, clearly wracked by the Change and likely unable to think rationally through the pain and primal urges that marked that period of a species’ metamorphosis into the Ninth Circle. By the time they reached the Seventh, some level of intelligence would return, but that would be centuries away at best.

Of all things he’d seen come from the revolution against the heavens, this was the worst.

It was blasphemy beyond heresy to see sophonts turned to mindless raging beasts.

He sidestepped the first to reach him, flicking his sword casually out to cleave its chest in. The body kept running for another dozen feet, dead but entirely unaware of its disconnection from the mortal coil. Kaern ignored it.

He lashed out with a boot that utterly crushed the next one’s knee joint, toppling it to the ground in howling agony. The beasts could operate without their hearts, or even their brains, for a limited time, but the mechanics of how their bodies worked were no different than humans. Cripple their joints, and they would fall.

He stabbed his sword into the next, at the chest level and through the heart, and shoved with all his strength until it stumbled back and impaled the one behind him on his blade as well. Their joint struggles sent the pair to the ground, cursing and scrambling at one another until the first died. Kaern left them to it while he focused on the final beast.

It was an anticlimactic finish as the demon howled and leapt at him. He simply sidestepped and crushed its throat with a ridge hand.

It was dead but still a threat until it fully realized it, so Kaern threw a knee into its face and sent it to the ground with crushed nose, cheek, and jawbone.

Only then did he take a moment to survey the area and, once satisfied, jerk his blade out of the two demons on the ground, making sure to twist it to ensure that they would be dead in short order.

He turned around slowly, feeling something was off but unable place it.

I’ve heard that sound before. He frowned, trying to place the odd sub-audible whine that he could feel in his teeth more than hear.

Kaern was still trying to place it when a far more familiar sound caused him to twist and bring his blade up to parry a whistling strike that had been aimed to take his left arm off at the shoulder.

His blade crackled with lightning, but it was the cold black of the other that surprised him.

“I haven’t seen one of those weapons in five centuries, at least,” he said casually, looking down at the armored foe with real surprise in his eyes. “Full augmentation armor as well? Did a hole open in one of the Ley trinaries?”

“Kaern?” The slim and short figure fell back, carbon sidearm blade dropping slightly. “What are you doing here?”

He dropped his blade tip entirely from surprise as he recognized the voice. “Elan? Where in all of holy creation did you find those? I guessed that you had a high-ranked ancestor, but this is a bit much, even for a convergence of the fates.”

“What are you talking about? And answer my question, damn it,” the girl snapped at him. “What are you doing here?”

He sighed, looking around. “I was trying to buy Simone time to escape with as many survivors as I could, but I do fear that I failed. There’s plenty of the filth around the city, but none of the upper ranks, I’m afraid.”

Though he couldn’t see her expression, the quizzical body language was easy enough to read as she stared at him for a moment before saying anything.

“You came back,” she said finally.

“Aye,” he answered.

Elan stared for a moment, but it was quickly clear that he wasn’t about to offer anything more.

Elan gave up, for the moment. “We noticed the demons in the city. Where did Simone go?”

“South. What happened when you activated the transport?” he asked in turn.

“How did you know about that?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“I arrived a hair too late to stop you, but I watched as you engaged a blind transport. Not smart, girl,” he told her dryly. “And now it is you who needs to answer my question.”

“Tell him nothing. He is a demon,” Merlin’s voice ordered her in no uncertain terms.

Elan hesitated. “I know that, but this is Kaern!”

“We have no confirmation of his allegiances,” Merlin said.

“Huh? What does allegiances mean?” Elan asked, confused.

“We don’t know what side he is on.”

“He saved me,” she protested, “and he helped Simone…. I…I don’t care if he’s a demon.”

Kaern smiled softly, amused by the girl’s petulant tone, as much as he appreciated the sentiment. “I thank you for that, Elan. Judging from the one-sided conversation I’ve been privy to, I can only assume you’ve made contact with one of the ancient command computers…”

“Computer? Why I never!” Merlin muttered, indignant. “I am no more a computer than you are a monkey, little girl, no matter what this jumped-up intruder believes.”

Elan frowned, confused, her head cocking to one side.

“What’s a monkey?”

Kaern chuckled. “They’re another breed of animal, distantly related to humans through an ancestor even more ancient than your civilization. Don’t worry about them. They’re not native to this area. You’d fine some if you went far enough south, I suppose…and only one of the Elemental Intelligence systems would be so prideful as to compare you to a monkey, if what I’m guessing is correct…so, given our location…”

He pondered for a moment before his eyes widened.

“Oh my. Avalon survived?” he whispered. “That is a shock.”

Merlin’s voice was silenced for a moment before he came back. “Who is this person?”

“He’s Kaern. He saved me,” Elan said firmly. “That’s enough.”

Caleb arrived, running and panting as he skidded to a stop with his blade ready, despite clearly being out of breath from chasing her. Kaern looked over at him, partly sympathetic and partly impressed. “She left you in the dust, I suppose?”

Caleb glared at him briefly before deciding that he wasn’t going to have to fight immediately and let his blade drop to the dirt while he leaned over and sucked in several deep breaths.

“Buck up, lad, you’ll never keep up with someone in augmentation armor,” Kaern said cheerfully. “But it says a lot of you that you’d try.”

“What…what’s going on?” Caleb asked between breaths.

“I believe we were just settling whose side everyone is on and that there’s not much point in trying to distract the invasion anymore,” Kaern said, his tone darkening, “if there ever was. The main cohort has broken camp and moved on. Either back to the demons’ main territory or they’ve gone after Simone. I fear the latter.”

“Simone?” Caleb straightened. “We have to go after them.”

“And we will,” Kaern promised, looking to the lightening sky, “but you two have given us another option I’d not believed we had. New plan, children. Come, we have lives to save.”

*****

The sun had risen over the horizon and the heat was already starting to climb rapidly as Simone rode hard on the straggled group of refugees she had been saddled with. A few had already fallen, health problems and old age toppling them. Others had tried to carry them, but she’d vetoed that in a hurry. Few, if any, of the group were remotely in good enough shape to accomplish that feat, and they’d only drop themselves if they tried.

Instead they’d had to take up valuable time to construct rough litters to drag them. She had a few extras made while they had the chance; the odds were good that they’d need them, but it was all she could do now to keep some of the lazier bastards from faking an injury.

She cast worried looks over her shoulder, back to the city that loomed a little in the distance. She knew Kaern would do what he could to hold the demons’ attention but doubted it would be enough. The attack was a sign that the lord had decided to finally finish what he’d begun so long ago, and his patience with upstart humans was at an end.

She did not know how many humans were left alive across the world but suspected that the numbers were terrible and frightful in how low they must be.

We may well be the final gasp of our kind, she thought sadly as she trudged along, heading south and hoping for any sign that death would pass them by this time.

Perhaps it was time for humanity to vanish into history. She and her kind had been hanging on for a long time after it really should have all ended. There had to come a time when they finally slipped and fell into the Abyss, after all.

Perhaps today is that day.

*****

“The prisoners won’t be able to keep up this pace for long, General,” a Fourth Circle demon hissed to the general as the big beast of a demon looked on ahead.

“If they fall, they’re food,” the general growled. “We will not permit this group to escape.”

“Understood.” The Fourth grinned nastily. “That is what many were waiting to hear.”

The general half turned. “Make certain that no one helps them fall. Alive and strong they’re worth more than food, if only by a little. I would have gifts to present to our lord as proof of the victory.”

“I’ll be sure, General. Enough will fall on their own, I expect, to ease temptation.”

The general nodded silently, dismissing the Fourth Circle demon with a casual gesture.

The world now belonged to the Circle Lords. This was the last significant holdout of humans left. Barely a few thousand of them here, and likely no more than ten or twenty thousand across the planet now…almost all right here on this continent.

They were a species about the slide into the abyss of extinction, and it was a long time in coming.

The general laughed softly as he moved through the night, ignoring the moans of pain and despair from around him…humans and lower circle demons alike.

Originally this world was projected to have fallen within a year of the invasion. The victory had been assured, they’d been promised. The enemy numbers had fallen to insignificant levels, their capability to wage war reduced to next to nothing. They were already beaten.

Those already-beaten foes had managed to wage a war that dragged on for centuries, until attrition finally brought them low. Demons were replaceable, even ones of his stature, the general was well aware. With near infinite reserves, it was possible to simply continue pouring bodies into the fray without end. Eventually, even the humans here fell.

For them to be reduced to what he had taken in that pitiful city almost felt wrong.

Better if they had died on their feet, fighting back, he supposed, musing idly more than anything else.

It made little difference to him if he killed warriors or animals. Either way his blade would be fed, but he had faced too many humans who were real warriors to take much joy in the cleanup he was now assigned to complete.

Soon. This world will be cleansed, and a new front will be opened. We’ve wasted too much time here, the general sneered in anticipation.

Out there, past the stars, past the fabric of the universe, other peoples waited for the Change. All creation would fall before them, in time.

*****

Elan kicked the door in, sending wooden splinters flying into the room like shrapnel to impale the demons within before they even realized a threat was in the area. It wasn’t enough to kill them, but the wood did more damage than one would think, if they had been human, and she took advantage of it as she rushed into the room with her sidearm blade held low and to the side.

“What the cir—” the first demon barely managed to get out, only half turning in her direction before she struck.

Her matte blade sliced through the creature’s side, sending it howling as it fell, and she moved on. With the enhanced speed and strength she now had, the demons were no match for the skill her father had imparted, and Elan realized just how much she’d been missing in the style before due to her own weakness.

In moments, the demons were dead around her, and she turned to a closed door across the room.

“You can come out now,” she said clearly. “They’re dead.”

There was a long silence and no movement, which frustrated her, despite understanding it.

“Come out,” she ordered. “I have no time for this. If you don’t, then you can just stay here for when the next demons come. I won’t be returning.”

The door creaked open slowly, and a pair of eyes looked at her and widened before vanishing back into the dark and pulling the door shut behind them. Elan sighed, growing more frustrated. Again, she couldn’t blame them—in armor she hardly looked human, for all that her form was clearly visible—but she did not have time for this.

She strode across the room and pulled the door open, revealing the three figures she knew to have been hiding within.

“We have no time,” she said. “The demons control the city, and we will not be taking it back from them. If you want to live, go to the temple.”

The older of the three, a woman well into her late age, sheltered two young children behind her. “The streets—”

“—between here and the temple are being cleared,” Elan promised. “You have to go now. Staying here is certain death. At least if you get to the temple there is safety.”

“There’s no safety in the city if the demons control it,” the woman hissed, fearful.

Elan smiled, though the woman could not see it. “Exactly. Now come.”

*****

Caleb grunted as he dispatched the last of the demons, sending it to the ground a foot shorter than it had been when he started.

“Good stroke,” the man named Kaern said approvingly. “You would gain a little more power if you pivoted from the hip as you swing, however.”

“Simone taught me,” Caleb said, a hint of pride in his voice. “She’s never mentioned that.”

“I taught Simone,” Kaern said with a smile. “And she uses a different style for her own fighting. Try it next time. You will see what I mean.”

He looked up and down the street, spotting some survivors heading hesitantly in their direction and, ultimately, toward the temple.

“Hurry along,” he ordered them. “Time matters. Simone and the others will need help soon, so we need everyone here safe. Get to the temple.”

“That’s the eighth group to show up in the past few minutes,” Caleb said, surprised. “I didn’t think Elan was this good…”

Kaern snorted. “She’s not. She’s wearing augmenting armor. Anyone could slaughter this filth with that sort of gear. Your ancestors made some truly amazing, and terrifying, weapons.”

Caleb considered that for a moment. “But…then, how…?”

“How did you lose?” Kaern asked somberly.

Caleb just nodded.

“Turning humans against one another was never difficult,” Kaern answered, heavily. “You hate each other almost as much as you came to hate demons. Hate and unfounded fear are the allies of the Circles, and they’re very good allies indeed. The First Circle has been using the darker emotions of hate, fear, and jealousy for longer than the world we stand upon has existed. They’re exceedingly good at it, and few worlds have stood strong against them when their full attention was focused. Humans tore themselves apart and didn’t even realize they were doing it.”

“That…that’s wrong,” Caleb said. “It has to be. How could we…?”

“Never underestimate two things about all people, not merely humans,” Kaern said. “The ability to fool themselves and the ability to fall into a cycle of hate at the drop of a hat. I don’t know why it is that way, but it seems like it’s something to do with free will and a limited perspective.”

Caleb stared at him, a hint of real horror in his eyes, as Kaern then shrugged.

“Or maybe we’re all just incurably stupid. Either way, those are the cards we’ve been dealt, kid. The trick isn’t getting better cards in this life,” he said. “It’s all in how you play the ones in your hand. So remember that lesson. Don’t fall into the trap of hate and fear…because maybe the person you think you hate is just the distraction someone else is using to maneuver a knife into your back.”

Caleb was silent as he considered those words, but Kaern nudged him shortly, nodding off in another direction.

“Back to work,” he said. “There’s another group to clear.”

*****

With the sun rising and the demons being forced more and more to the shadows and interiors of the city, the small group managed to get people from their hiding places and out to the temple. Those who were in bad shape, which was most of them, were sent directly. Anyone hale enough to help was directed to go shake others out of their hiding places and send them on.

By midmorning the city was as clear as they could make it. No more non-demonic images showed up in Elan’s sight, and Kaern called a halt to the operation as they regrouped at the temple.

“That went better than expected,” he said, looking over the dozens, or perhaps hundreds, whom they’d managed to gather. “Elan, tell your friend that there are people coming through.”

Elan nodded, but before she could say anything, Merlin’s voice was in her ear.

“I heard him,” the specter said, sounding begrudging. “Transport will begin shortly. Move people onto the platform in groups. I will be quarantining them when they arrive.”

“What?” Elan asked. “What’s quarantine mean?”

Kaern nodded approvingly. “He’s going to keep them separate from whoever else is there, in case the demons…or I…have been infected with something. It’s the correct thing to do, Elan.”

Elan nodded slowly, filing yet another new word away for future reference.

She did not like feeling stupid, yet that was where she repeatedly found herself lately.

They got people onto the platform through a combination of reassurances, threats, and implied bribes that none of them had any clue whether they could actually make good on. The trio didn’t care, though, not as long as people were gotten clear of the city as quickly as possible. There was still too much to do and not remotely enough time left for them to do it.

Despite the fright engendered by the flash of light and vanishing people, the transports were handled reasonably quickly and with surprisingly little objections. Kaern said that fear made people panicky and uncontrollable, but terror…real, deep-down existential terror made them either brave or resigned. Either of those emotions played into the trio’s needs at the moment, thankfully.

When the last group was ready to go, Kaern put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder.

“You’ve been a great help, boy,” he said, “but it is time for you to go.”

Caleb turned red. “No chance. I’m with you.”

Kaern shook his head. “Elan and I will be moving fast. You won’t be able to keep up, and we will not be able to slow for you.”

“I don’t care. I’m with you,” Caleb insisted. “If I can’t keep up, I’ll catch up.”

The older man hissed, annoyed. “Boy, you’ll never get anywhere in time to help. At best, you’ll come in after it’s all over; at worst, you’ll be alone in the badlands for as long as you can survive.”

Elan hesitated, but finally spoke. “He’s right, Caleb. I…I can move really fast now. Maybe we can get another set of armor for you later…”

“I. Am. With. You,” Caleb out stubbornly. “I’m not leaving, and unless you’re planning on attacking me here and now, you cannot make me.”

Elan and Kaern exchanged glances before Kaern sighed, resigned to the decision.

“Fine. We cannot slow for you,” he stressed. “We lost too much time saving people here…but, if you’re determined, that’s your right.”

Elan nearly looked rebellious, seemingly considering attacking Caleb for his own good. She could do it, she was sure. The armor she wore was amazing, unlike anything she’d ever experienced in her life, but as she considered it, she realized that it wasn’t her call to make.

“Fine,” she said, a hint of petulance sneaking into her voice against her will before she shifted her attention. “Merlin, that’s the last of them.”

“Confirmed. Transport initiated.”

A flash of white light wiped out their vision for a few moments, leaving them all alone in the Ancient Redoubt-turned-temple.

“Time to go,” Kaern said, turning and walking out through the shattered doors.

Elan and Caleb followed him, the lights within flicking off as the power was cut off from Avalon at Merlin’s behest.

*****

The sight of the river was both relief and concern for Simone.

They needed the water, badly, so there was no option but to halt the group there. It was a vulnerable position to be in, however, and that was assuming the water was entirely safe.

Concerns mattered little, though, compared to the very real danger of people dying of thirst before they even had a chance to evade the pursuit she was certain was after them. With water, they could push on. Even if there were sickness in the water, that was just something they would have to deal with once the immediate threat was past.

So she didn’t stop the majority of her charges from rushing forward to the river, some throwing themselves into the water as they sought to drink. Those were fools, but it wasn’t her place to curb their idiocy at the moment.

She held back the guardsmen, however, keeping discipline as best she could as she addressed them.

“We need to post a perimeter watch,” she ordered. “I will have runners bring water skins to volunteers.”

A couple dozen or so volunteered, albeit wearily. She nodded to them, and they backed out of the group and moved to fill in the requested perimeter.

“The rest of you will drink in groups while the remaining stand watch,” she ordered. “Rest as best you can, but stay alert. We are not out of danger yet.”

With their marching orders given, the weary guardsmen broke apart and their leaders got them organized as quickly as they could so that they could each drink in turn without overly compromising the rest. Simone left them to it, looking around the area with tired eyes.

It was a river delta, with surprisingly lush vegetation for the area. A veritable paradise compared even to the city, but utterly incapable of fortification.

They were sitting ducks just waiting for the hunters to pick them off.

*****

The general looked on ahead, pleased with the situation as it was playing out.

Certainly he would have preferred to wrap everything up neatly at the humans’ city, but in war the unexpected was almost the norm. No one had predicted one of the Forsaken, let alone the thrice-bedamned Wanderer involving himself.

The losses were insignificant, however, when compared against the gains.

The human city was now theirs, though what use it would be the general didn’t know or care. Likely it would be razed or left to rot. It depended on how well he finished his job from this point on.

The captives they had were nearly dead from exhaustion, but that didn’t matter either. If they were weak enough for this to kill them, then they weren’t strong enough to be of any value other than food anyway.

All that mattered was that the remaining humans be shattered beyond any ability to mount resistance into the future.

“Lord General.” A Sixth Circle demon approached, saluting roughly.

“What is it?” the general asked, mind shifting from his train of thoughts to the present.

“Advance scouts have returned with report of the humans,” the demon hissed. “They have reached a river and stopped for water.”

The general nodded. “Good. How far ahead?”

“An hour, at our current rate.”

He didn’t need to think hard on it. “Increase the pace. We’ll end this, once and for all, for the Circles.”

“For the Circles.”

*****

“How far ahead do you think they are?” Elan asked as they ran.

Kaern considered it for a moment. “Not as far as you might think. Simone was moving with wounded and elderly. That will slow her a lot.”

“Could the demons have caught them already?” she worried.

He laughed, legs pumping easily. “Marching demons is like herding cats, and they’re keeping prisoners too. No, they’ll not be moving much faster. We should have time.”

He spared a look to the unspeaking third party of their little group, both surprised and impressed that Caleb had hung with them so far. It wouldn’t last. There was no way an un-augmented human could keep up the pace he and Elan were setting. But while the boy had no breath to speak, he was still doggedly keeping with them.

It was impressive, very impressive. More for the boy’s guts and determination than his physical prowess, as it was clear that the only thing keeping him moving was sheer blood and guts and a stubborn refusal to stop. Kaern had seen such in the past, but only rarely, and usually wasted. He didn’t know what he would do when this was over, but if the boy lived, he might consider hanging around.

Potential for greatness was always worth cultivating.

They were running a little ways up from the beach, on the harder and more predictable ground, while he kept an eye for trace of the two groups they were pursing. As long as they didn’t see any trace, and there was no signs of the groups between them and the water, Kaern could be certain that they had a distance yet to run.

He was distracted slightly as he noticed Caleb beginning to flag behind, but didn’t want to say anything until he also noted that Elan was started to slow.

“Don’t. We can’t slow down,” he told her. “He’ll have to catch up.”

Caleb nodded, still unable to speak much, and waved them on. “I’ll…catch…up.”

“Let’s go,” Kaern said. “Pick up the pace.”

He and Elan increased their speed, leaving Caleb behind in short order.

“I can’t believe I’m moving this fast,” Elan admitted. “I’m not even worn down.”

“You’re high on pure oxygen and the hormones the suit is tricking your body into releasing,” Kaern answered. “Otherwise, even with the augmentation, you’d be feeling it by now. When you crash, and you will, I doubt you’ll be able to move much for a couple days. We’ll worry about that if we live, however.”

Elan shot him a worried look. “Is this dangerous?”

Kaern snorted. “This what? The armor you wear, or what we’re about to do? Because I assumed you knew the answer to the second one.”

She flushed under her armor, though he couldn’t see it. “I meant the armor.”

“You’re untrained, barely fit, and have no idea what you’re doing. The fact that Merlin gave you that armor is proof of how desperate the situation is,” Kaern told her. “You could kill yourself just by misjudging how strong you are right now, so yes, it’s very dangerous. The demons we’re about to fight, however, are far more so. My advice? Don’t worry about it.”

Elan nodded as they continued to run.

“The real danger of the armor is depending on it,” Kaern said after a moment. “Your people were great warriors, but they depended on their tools too much. When the infrastructure needed to build and maintain them fell, they were caught depending on tools that would eventually break without hope of replacement. That was when the war was really over, when the soldiers were reduced to fighting with sticks and stones, and had no skills with either.

“You have a powerful tool there, Elan,” he went on, “but someday it will fail you. When it does, will you be ready to fight with your own hands and skill? Or will you fail, like your tools, and like your ancestors?”

She shot him a glare that, again, he couldn’t see.

“I won’t fail,” she said heatedly.

“Good. For now, run faster.”

*****

The demon forces fell upon the outer sentries, swarming around the boulders they’d used as their primary cover and charging up the hill to where the sentries were positioned.

“Run,” one of the guardsmen ordered. “I’ll hold them as long as I can. Warn the others!”

Some obeyed, some didn’t, but that was all he had time to say as he gathered his blade and stood forward as the demons closed.

They were charging the high ground, and those who remained to hold them back used that to their best advantage as the stood their defense. The initial wave fell in a quick, brutal engagement that left fifteen demons smoking on the ground and three guardsmen bleeding out beside them, but the second wave was already charging and it was far, far larger.

The guardsman knew they couldn’t do more than delay them, but every second now might buy a life.

He met the charge with one of his own.

*****

“The lead elements have engaged the human sentries, Lord General.”

The demon general nodded. “Push the rest through. I want to close on the main group as quickly as we can.”

“It will be done.”

Most of his force were sent on ahead, pushing hard to close the distance before the human refugees could get themselves in order to again flee. He did not want to chase those vermin all across the continent and back, and to avoid that, the battle here had to be finished and quickly.

“Leave the guards for our captives,” he ordered. “Everyone else to the front.”

“Yes, my Lord General.”

*****

Simone drew her blade at the first call of alarm, already turning back to the direction they’d come. A few men were running in, looking bedraggled and worn, such that she didn’t need to hear their report to know what was going on.

“Get everyone together! We have to move out!” she ordered, slapping men on the back as she ran toward the returning sentries, not slowing until she got to them. “What happened?”

“Demons. Swarmed our position,” the sentry gasped. “A few stayed to hold them, but it won’t be long now.”

Simone closed her eyes for a moment, but nodded.

“I understand,” she said.

And she did. Men had given their lives for time. She couldn’t waste that sacrifice.

Simone turned around, shouting orders. “If you can’t move in two minutes, we are leaving you here!”

That set everyone moving faster and grumbling loudly, but she couldn’t care less about their grumbles. If they lived, they could bitch to her later.

In two minutes, amid many complaints, Simone started moving the group upriver. They’d have to stay close to water as long as they could, and she knew their only chance was to evade the demon forces in the badlands, where they could use the sun as a real weapon against them.

People were running through the shallow waters, stumbling in the mud, and generally making the whole situation worse, by far, than it needed to be. They were moving, however, and that was all Simone could ask for, given the situation. With an eye over her shoulder, looking for any sign of the enemy, Simone joined them as the large mass of people moved slowly out.

*****

Kaern held out a hand, slowing their pace.

Elan didn’t ask why. She could easily see the mass of red and blue ahead of them. It was taking some getting used to, the abilities the armor granted her, but it was also a rush the likes of which she had never experienced in her life.

“That’s their prisoners and some guards,” Kaern said, slowing to a stop and dropping to a crouch as he looked on for a moment and then past the grouping. “The main group won’t be much farther.”

“We should go,” she said, eagerly twitching as she forced herself to remain still.

Kaern looked at her for a moment, knowing that the girl was running on a hormone high that she didn’t really have any idea how to control, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Hopefully it wouldn’t get her, or anyone else, killed.

“I’ll go on,” he said. “I see mostly lower-level demons here. You take them, then catch up.”

“But…” Elan objected.

“No!” he snapped, keeping his voice low. “Those people need to be saved as well. Do what I tell you. I’ll deal with the main group.”

“How? You’re only one…person?” she said, sounding hesitant.

“Leave that to me,” he said, getting back to his feet. “You handle them, then hurry and catch up. Trust me, there will be plenty left for you when you arrive.”

Elan didn’t reply as he ran on, leaving her there to glare for a moment at his back. With that out of her system, however, she, too, got to her feet and started to swiftly move through the growing underbrush that had been steadily getting thicker.

He wants to ditch me here? I’ll show him, she thought fiercely as she sprinted now. I’ll catch up before he can even blink!

The demons had posted a watch, she could tell as she approached, but it was arranged to cover the direction they’d been travelling and not where they’d come from. Elan slipped in close so she could get a good look at the scene with her own eyes, rather than relying entirely on the red and blue blotches that the armor put up in her face.

She was shortly glad that she did when she instantly spotted several humans who appeared blue to her armor holding weapons, shoving and kicking at the prisoners. Elan’s grip tightened around the blade in her hand and she saw red.

“I strongly advise that you calm down.” Merlin’s voice shocked her. “Your heart rate is entering concerning levels, and you’re beginning to interfere with the armor’s ability to regulate hormone generation and delivery.”

“Later,” she hissed as she picked her target and sprinted from the underbrush.

“This is not how operations are conducted!”

Merlin’s admonition was entirely ignored, barely even registered for that matter, as she pushed her speed to the highest she’d ever tried in the armor. She simply wasn’t interested in anything he might have to say, nor what anyone might have to say at that point.

She cut through three demons without even looking at them for more than an instant apiece before cutting them down on her way to her first real target.

The armed man barely had time to turn from where he’d just kicked an old woman to the ground. The whole world had become a blur of motion and color as she delivered a backhanded hammer blow that lifted his body off the ground and sent him sprawling to the ground some distance away with his neck twisted at an odd angle.

Elan didn’t stop moving, even as more demons rushed in on her.

She wasn’t even really seeing them after the first few moments. In her mind, she was back in the badlands, on that night just hours after her parents had been murdered. She felt them scrambling at her skin, the blades piercing her arms as she struggled…as she fought. Elan felt like she was being pulled down, drowning in a swarm of the vile creatures…

Then, instead of being chained in place, unable to move, she surged out and up and threw the bodies off her.

Men and demons screamed as they were thrown across the camp by the force of the blows dealt to them by the dark creature that had viciously appeared in their midst. Some threw down their weapons in terror and ran, but that didn’t save them as the whirlwind of death descended on them and set them flying through the air on their final voyage.

Arrows and bolts snapped off, impacting with no effect, and the few swords met a similar fate as their demonic counterparts’ claws and teeth. In seconds the camp was a slaughterhouse, men and demon alike having met their end in a seemingly single violent instant.

One of the last few surviving human guards recognized that the captives hadn’t been targeted and grabbed up a girl from their number. He held her in front of him as the black demon charged down on his position.

“I’ll kill her!” Venadrin screamed. “I will kill her!”

Elan stopped, in a seemingly impossible motion, and for the first time he saw that it seemed to be a female figure. He held a dagger shaking at the throat of his captive.

“I’ll kill her if you come any closer…”

Elan would never know for sure why she stopped, if it was the threat to the prisoner that stopped her or the sudden recognition of the man she was facing. In later years, she would hope it was the former, but just then she could only really focus on the latter.

“You,” she hissed, her voice almost inhuman as it was twisted by rage and adrenaline.

“I’m going to back out of here,” Venadrin said. “If you follow me, this bitch is dead.”

Elan lunged forward, hand closing on the blade in his grip and tearing it from his hand with a single yank. The shock caused Venadrin to fall forward into his captive, knocking her to the ground and out of the way. Elan stepped over the former prisoner and picked the man she’d seen in her nightmares up by the throat.

She didn’t quite have the height to lift him off his feet, but instead dragged him across the camp and slammed him into a tree trunk with enough force to shake the plant and drop leaves all around them.

While she held him there, glaring at the face she’d come to hate, a demon struck her from behind with a club. It snapped off, barely fazing her as she looked over her shoulder and snapped out a reverse kick that crushed bone as it lifted the demon from the ground and sent it hurtling across the camp.

She slowly turned her eyes back on the hated figure, who was clawing at her arm and trying to breathe through her grip.

“For what you did to me,” she hissed, “I could never kill you enough times.”

He gasped, eyes bulging. “Who…are…you?”

Elan let him drop, and he did, to his knees as he gasped and gagged.

“You don’t deserve to know,” she said as she lifted her blade.

Merlin’s voice surprised her. “Hold your blow… I want to see something.”

“Back off, Merlin,” she growled. “He’s a dead man.”

“Indeed he is. Look to his shoulder,” Merlin said.

She shifted her gaze from the hated face to where the shoulder was now lit up. “What is that?”

Venadrin, hearing only one part of the conversation and little enough of that, looked up weakly. “What is what?”

Elan ignored him, listening to Merlin speak. Finally, she reached down and pulled the man to his feet, again slamming him back into the tree. She thought she heard bones fracture but didn’t care.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Of course it damn well hurts, you crazy bitch!” he snarled. “You slammed me into the tree!”

“Not that.” She shook her head, jabbing him in the chest with her finger. “That.”

“Ow! Yes, it hurts! Don’t do that!”

Elan cocked her head to one side. “You’re not even human anymore, and you don’t even realize it.”

“What are you talking about?” Venadrin asked, a cold fear rushing through him.

“You’re already one of them,” she said. “The Change is turning you, slowly. It’ll be crippling soon, they tell me. A pain that never goes away, just eats at your brain until you’re incapable of doing anything but eating and killing…just a mindless, soulless husk of the man you used to be…not that that man was worth much to begin with.”

Elan stepped back, eyeing him for a long moment as Venadrin’s face turned white with horror and realization, his hand reaching for the bubbling rash hidden under his tunic.

“This would a punishment,” she said. “Eternal pain, condemned to become a demon…”

She half turned away, then stopped and almost casually swept her blade up and across Venadrin’s neck. The thump of the head striking the ground was the last thing Elan registered of the man who’d killed her parents. She didn’t even bother to turn around to see his body slump to the ground, but simply walked away.

“Be grateful,” she said to the air as she walked away, “that my revenge isn’t worth the lives you’d take as one of them. You certainly took enough as one of us.”

It took everything she had to keep her steps steady and not collapse where she stood, but her control eroded with every step as Elan saw her parents appear in front of her. Wavering, unmoving, they didn’t look at her but through her before fading away.

Elan’s control was shattered and she screamed, fists clenched and arms shaking as she dropped to her knees and then slumped in place, unmoving.

*****

Kaern had turned east, heading inland a short distance from the prisoner camp. The trail he was following split there, but the heavier grouping had moved inland while a lighter contingent continued along the coast, so he opted to follow the larger group. He pushed his speed a little more now, trusting in his own abilities more than he did in that of a girl he only knew slightly, augmentation armor or not.

He hoped she’d be okay at the camp, but it was by far the least dangerous option available to them at the time. He knew that somewhere up ahead, a demonic lord general was waiting along with his personal guard.

Those wouldn’t be Ninth Circle. Seventh at a minimum, quite possibly lower depending on the general in question. It wasn’t unknown for a particularly intelligent lord general to be guarded by much more powerful, though stupider, demons of the lowest circles.

Even with a blade in his hand, there were things Kaern would prefer not to face, and the personal guard of a lord general was definitely among those. Facing that sort of foe with a slip of a girl at your side who’d not been truly proven…well, that was another level of foolishness.

The terrain was getting rougher as they moved inland, climbing into lowland hills, but the lusher foliage was fading quickly and falling into scrubland that hugged the riverbanks and didn’t reach far beyond. He had to work now to stay hidden as best as he could while maintaining speed. He could hear the distinctive garbling of upper circle demons ahead of him and knew that he was on the right track.

Simone must have gotten to the river if the general believes that she’s taken her group inland. Unfortunately, if he’s right, then he’s likely got her walking into an ambush.

The only positive was that he was fairly certain that whatever trap had been set had not yet been tripped.

The lack of screaming made that much clear, if nothing else.

*****

Simone trudged through a shallow pool, shooting looks over her shoulder for any sign of their pursuers, but so far they’d been lucky. It seemed they were outpacing the demons, which was more than she’d hoped for.

If they could get far enough into the badlands, it would be possible to hide among the rocks and caves that made up much of the landscape. Move by night, evade the demons while they were searching, and rest by day when the sun was too hot even for humans.

She didn’t know for sure if she really believed they could do that, but it was a hope if nothing else.

Faint hope, but hope.

They were moving slower than she’d like, but Simone knew she couldn’t push them much harder. Too many people in the group were simply incapable of the speed she wanted them to maintain.

The terrain was rising up around them now and making her nervous. She hadn’t realized how much it would change and how quickly. It had been a long time since she’d traveled this far out, and she had never needed to go inland when she had.

It was too late now to reconsider, however, so she kept the people moving.

They were coming around a bend in the river when she realized they’d walked into a trap. It was nothing obvious, not at first, but Simone had long since learned not to ignore that itch on the back of her neck. Bad things came when she did, though this time, she supposed, bad things were coming anyway.

She grabbed the closest guardsman, pulling him in to her. “We’re being watched. Spread the word, get ready for a fight.”

She just didn’t know yet whether it was best to push through or try to retreat. Which direction was the trap arrayed in?

The guard gave her a frightened look, but nodded and quickly moved off to spread the word. Simone set her hand on the blade hilt resting at her hip. She didn’t expect they would be able to get so close as to make drawing the blade immediately a requirement, but it felt comforting all the same.

The feeling continued to get stronger as they moved, until she was almost jumping at the slightest noise. Before the group was all around the bend, Simone lifted a hand and called a halt. She nodded to the guards, and those with bows and crossbows notched their weapons as they scanned the rising terrain around them.

Simone cursed her foolishness. Coming up the river had put them into a trap, but without water, where would they be?

“Fall back,” she ordered softly. “Keep watch downriver for a flanking force, but fall back all the same.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The guardsmen nodded as they started to push people the other direction.

Worried murmurs were starting to build, but Simone ignored them. They all had cause for worry, but feeding that concern would do none of them any good.

“There!” one of the guardsmen shouted, pointing.

Simone looked up and to the north, where a large formation of the demons had shown themselves. They looked like the sun was doing them no favors but, unfortunately, not like it was crippling them. She supposed that the enemy must have fielded its stronger forces for this task. And perhaps she should be flattered by that.

She was just angry.

“Archers,” she ordered, “fire as they enter your range.”

*****

The trap would have been set in another few moments, but the leader of the humans had sniffed it out.

Frustrating, but not a particularly large problem. It just meant that cleaning this up would take that much longer. He had already been out in the sun this long, he could endure the discomfort a little while longer.

“Signal the rear guard to close the trap,” he ordered.

That would keep them from running, but he’d lose more of the rear guard than he intended, as they would be forced to take the brunt of the humans’ ire before the rest of his forces could get into position, but that was what they were for, he supposed.

“Everyone else, close from the front and sides.”

*****

Kaern paused at the crest of a hill one over from where the demon general’s forces were positioned. He checked their positions as quickly as he could, then looked down to the river as the human column paused and then began to reverse.

Smart girl, Simone.

He didn’t know if she’d seen the demons yet, but she obviously knew something was up. It wouldn’t get her out of the trap, but it would keep it from closing on her with the most force. If he could just distract one of the pincers, that might be enough for them to get clear.

Maybe.

Probably not.

What the fuck, let’s go for it.

He got to his feet and began to run down the hill, keeping low but really giving up most attempts at stealth in exchange for speed.

Demons were doing the same, obviously focused on the human column below them, and that meant that they weren’t looking for him. Hell, if they spotted him, Kaern expected that he might pass for one of the demons’ own numbers at first. He could work with those odds.

He angled his run to intersect with the demons just as they reached the upper banks of the river and surged right into the lead element from their blindside. He went low as he hit the first demon, shoulder under and up to send the thing flipping through the air before Kaern brought his blade into play.

It was noisy, messy, and spectacular as he cut through the lead element before they could even think to defend themselves.

Enough so that most of the eyes of the soon-to-be battlefield turned to look at the unexpected slaughter with surprise.

Kaern stood steady, planting his blade in the ground ahead of him as he looked up the hill to where the lord general was staring down at him.

“I called you out, Lord General,” he yelled mockingly, “but it seems you didn’t hear me. We have business, you and I!”

*****

Caleb was wheezing as he slowed from a ragged jog and examined the scene in front of him. There were bodies everywhere, demons and humans. The humans mostly looked intact—they had their limbs, at least—but the demons had been diced.

“Whoa,” he mumbled, walking through the scene until he noticed that not everyone was dead.

Most, actually, seemed pretty alive. A group of shackled and bound people were all pressing as far to one side of the field as they could get within the limits of their bondage. Caleb looked them over skeptically for a moment before speaking.

“What the hell are you all doing?” he asked between deep breaths.

“Getting away from the monster,” a tired-looking little girl said, her eyes flicking across the field.

Caleb twisted his sword off his belt and looked in the direction she had, focusing on a figure he’d barely noted before because it wasn’t moving. Now that he was looking close, he realized he recognized her.

“Elan!” he yelled, rushing forward. “Elan! Are you alright?” He slid to a stop, skidding along on his knees as he let his blade drop, and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Elan!”

She took a deep breath and shuddered, letting him know she was alive at least. He looked around, trying to figure out what the hell happened. She didn’t seem to have any extra holes in her, but he knew nothing about how the armor she wore worked, just that it was beyond his comprehension.

He shook her gently. “Come on, speak to me. Are you okay?”

“They’re dead. Gone,” she whispered. “I…just realized it.”

“What? Who?” He looked around again. There were a lot of people he didn’t recognize, but maybe someone she’d known?

“Doesn’t matter,” she said softly. “Nothing matters. They’re gone.”

“Come on, Elan!” he hissed urgently. “This isn’t you.”

She lifted her head finally, and maybe looked at him. He couldn’t tell through the armor she wore, which masked her effectively. He hoped she was looking at him, at least.

“I killed him,” she said. “Didn’t change anything. I knew it wouldn’t, but I hoped it would.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Caleb said. “Killed who?”

She gestured over her shoulder, but didn’t turn. Caleb rose up on his knees to look over her head and spotted the body. Without a head, it was difficult to identify, but he was pretty sure he recognized the armor. The head was faced mostly away from him when he spotted it, but it was enough for him to figure it out.

“He had it coming,” Caleb said seriously. “He chose demons over us. He murdered.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sorry I killed him, Caleb. I just wanted it to mean more than it did. It should have meant something… I…it just felt like nothing. He murdered my parents, he left me to die in the desert…in the end, he was just one worthless excuse for a… He wasn’t even worth hating, Caleb. What do I do now?”

“You fight,” Caleb hissed. “We fight. There are still people to save. Simone. Kaern.”

He got up, walking away from her to grab an axe that had been tossed to the ground.

“This isn’t about hate, Elan,” he said as he walked to the chained people. “It’s about hope.”

A few swings of the axe busted the chains, and Caleb looked down at the people.

“You owe her,” he told them. “She’s offered you hope when she has none herself. Get up. Grab a weapon. We have work to do.”

“There are children here!” a woman objected.

“What am I?” Caleb asked angrily, then pointed to where Elan was kneeling, “What is she? I’ve had a blade in my hand since I was six. She just saved all of you! The demons don’t care if you’re a child or not…or do you think the fate that they were dragging you to was somehow preferable?”

The shivers he saw pass through them was enough to answer that question.

“If you’re too young to pick up a weapon, hide,” Caleb advised. “Everyone else…fight now, or die later. I don’t care which.” He turned around, walking over to Elan with slow, measured steps. “I wish you could rest, but there is no time.”

Elan didn’t move for a long moment before slowly nodding and pushing herself to her feet.

“Okay,” she said dully. “One more. I can do one more.”

Caleb nodded. “Where’s Kaern?”

“He went on ahead, asked me to save them,” she said with a nod to the former captives, who were slowly getting over their fear of her.

“You did that well,” Caleb told her with a grin, “but now we’d better catch up to him.”

Elan wrapped her fist tightly around the blade she had used to kill so many and nodded, a little more firmly. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

*****

Simone paused in her direction of the withdrawal, looking up the banks to where she saw a fight erupt with furious action. It took several moments before she realized she was looking at Kaern as dozens of demons charged his position, somehow managing to hold his own against them.

The distinctive tendrils of lightning that flowed from his blade as he fought were visible even in bright daylight, occasionally reaching out to strike down a foe from beyond the reach of his sword. She swallowed, understanding that he had just stepped into the middle of the trap that she had foolishly walked her people into.

Thank you, friend.

Then she returned to directing the withdrawal.

“Watch for the rear guard!” she ordered. “They will have a force to close the door on us!”

Those words were practically prophetic, though she needed no seer to drag them up from her mind. As they continued to push back, they ran into a significant force trying to stop them, but it wasn’t large enough.

“Loose arrows!” Simone ordered.

Fletched wooden shafts with iron tips whistled through the air and fell upon their targets, piercing demonic flesh and bone. Those that struck true to the heart killed most of the demons they hit, but many merely wounded and a chorus of angry screams rose up. The demons snapped off the arrows and charged the human ranks, only to be met by steel and iron as the two sides clashed.

*****

Kaern hacked and hacked with his blade as he slashed his way through the pitiful demons that made up the front ranks of the lord general’s force. The fodder was just there to absorb damage, so that was exactly what he was dealing them as he worked his way slowly up the hill.

The lord general had focused entirely on him, which was the intent, but it was clear that was going to be costly for him personally in the very near future as Kaern watched elements of the personal guard forming up above him.

This is going to hurt.

He slew the last demon within reach of his blade with a diagonal slash that sent the misshapen body of the creature tumbling down to befoul the river below them, then set his gaze up the hill and began walking.

Pain was an old friend. Kaern was determined to introduce that old friend around as much as he possibly could.

*****

“Why is this bastard plaguing me!?”

The lord general was very near to throwing a fit of rage as he watched the Forsaken he believed to be the one known as the Wanderer fighting his way toward the top of the hill. The Forsaken had retired from the war ages ago. They had acknowledged the loss of this world when even the humans, beaten though they were, had refused to do so.

It made no Circle bedamned sense!

Now, of all times, with the last independent humans in the entire continent about to be brought to heel, and now this one chose to show up.

The lord general strode to the ridge of the hill, glowering down as the swordsman again began to march in his direction.

“Why?” he demanded, his voice reverberating with the power that was in his nature. “After all these years, why do you plague me now?”

The arrogant bastard just grinned up at him, cutting down three more demons with casual motions. He never even bothered to look at them or break his stride as he continued to close.

“Prepare yourselves,” the lord general ordered his personal guard. “We will have to end this one here and now.”

The guttural noises of acknowledgement from the guard were of some comfort, as the general really didn’t know whether he could successfully take on a Forsaken. He rather doubted it, if he were honest with himself, though that was difficult to admit. His guard, however, were strong. Stronger than he was in personal combat by far, even if they were sometimes unfortunately lacking in…other areas.

A variety of weapons made their appearance. Upper circle demons rarely used such things, often lacking the intelligence or temperament to learn to properly wield a weapon of any real quality, but as the Change was completed, that sometimes changed.

His own blade might be enough to level the odds, the lord general supposed as he laid his hand on the hilt of the weapon he had been gifted from the lord of the territory for one of his victories in years past.

The rustred and black blade was enveloped in a light-absorbing mist as his hand closed around the hilt, its deep magics sensing the coming fight and eagerly straining at the leash to be set loose.

“Hold until he’s close to the top,” the lord general ordered, “and then kill him!”

*****

Kaern read the play as he disposed of the last of the fodder, seeing how the general’s guard was setting themselves. They would strike at him while they still had the terrain advantage, but would wait for him to wear himself out as much as possible.

It was a good plan.

A tad simple, perhaps, but effective to be certain.

Of course, he wouldn’t be worn down by a little piddling climb like this. The fighting had really just woken him up as well, though he had to admit that running from the city to this fight had certainly tapped some of his reserves. He was far from running on empty, however, so the question was really just about how strong the guards were.

Even he didn’t know that, and it was a rather important bit of information.

He marched slowly up the hill, eyes on the waiting demons as he tried to judge their intent. It was a strange standoff for a few moments, with him slowly approaching and them glaring at him, waiting for the right moment. Kaern saw it in one of their eyes a moment before the decision was made, however, and the standoff ended in an instant.

The demons were all Fourth to Sixth Circle, by his estimating, an even dozen, which meant that this particular general was considered valuable as a war leader indeed. When they attacked, Kaern lunged up the hill in a full sprint and dove under the demons as they leapt for where he had been.

Idiots.

Power did not connote intelligence.

He hit the top of the hill in a roll that brought him back to his feet and headed right for the lord general himself, who was already swearing up a storm as he drew his own sword.

“Tough to find good help, isn’t it?” Kaern asked with a grin as he charged in with his sword, drawing back for the strike.

“You have no idea,” the lord general grunted as he brought his own blade up to intercept Kaern’s strike.

Lightning and black eldritch energy bled from their weapons as they engaged, a shockwave flattening the grasses around them.

“A death blade?” Kaern asked with some surprise. “Someone’s been a kiss-ass.”

The necromantic blade screeched against his own weapon as Kaern used his leverage to push it aside before pivoting for another strike. The general jumped back, narrowly evading the blow, then countered with a powerful overhead chop that undoubtedly would have split him asunder had Kaern stuck around to take it.

He didn’t.

Twisting aside, Kaern brought his weapon up and spun it into a slash aimed at the general’s side. Again, the two blades intercepted and a concussion wave erupted from them, blue lightning dancing amid the necromantic energy being bled off the general’s weapon.

“I earned my blade,” the general grunted, muscles bulging as he held off the shockingly strong pressure from his opponent.

Kaern had to split his attention, as the demons he’d evaded would shortly have corrected their overshoot and, hill or not, be right back up and coming for him. He’d tested the general’s skill, and it was a little better than he’d expected.

Hopefully not enough to make the difference.

He stepped up his assault, hacking in one slash after another with enough force to break a human’s bones. The general began to backpedal, blocking the blows one after the other, sweat pouring down his misshapen features as the blows came harder and faster. Slowly, the lightning began to eclipse the black eldritch energy, growing in power with each strike, tendrils occasionally lancing out to strike the general and burn him time after time.

Metal met metal once more, and the black blade flew from the general’s hands just as Kaern sent a solid kick into his torso that flung the demon onto his back. In the next instant, Kaern lunged forward to end the fight, only for his blade to be stopped by blue steel less than a foot from the general’s head.

He tilted his head, looking at the general’s savior. A female demon, clearly lower circle than the general, as she looked more human and wasn’t straining particularly hard against his blade.

“Nice wings,” Kaern said, winking. “Succubus?”

“You wish.”

Kaern looked her up and down. “I rather do, actually.”

She hissed as he winked at her, then kicked out to force Kaern to dance back and away from her.

Metal scraped on metal as he dodged back, cursing his luck.

Wings. I should have had at least another thirty seconds before they recovered, he grumbled as he dodged left, countering her assault with a pivot to slash out with his blade at her thighs.

She jumped over the blade, then hovered for a moment as her wings beat steadily before she swept her blade up and overhand, dropping to deliver more force. Kaern took the blow on his sword, angling it off and deflecting the attack to the ground at his side before he delivered jab to her nose that rocked her head back with a rather satisfying crunch.

Her blood was dark red tinged with blue as it flowed freely from the shattered nose, and she stumbled back from him just as Kaern was forced to throw himself to one side to avoid a bull’s charge from behind.

And there’s the rest of them. Shit.

He turned, sword in one hand and the other held out to ward off attacks as he evaluated the situation.

My evaluation is: I’m fucked.

He’d gambled on a direct move—take out the general and hopefully put much of the remaining demons into a state of disarray. Demons didn’t tend to be controllable at the best of times, so if it had worked, he might even have been able to survive. Since it hadn’t, he was in real trouble.

Kaern ducked a slash from behind, kicking out to catch his attacker in the guts. The demon folded up, but before he could press that advantage, a roar and a charge from his flank caught him. He managed to bring his blade around in time, but despite stabbing it deep into the charging beast, Kaern was still picked up and carried by the charge as he slammed his elbow down into the demon’s neck time and again while twisting his blade ceaselessly.

The charge faltered fifty feet away from where it started, the demon finally falling dead as he pulled his blade out of the sucking wound and rolled clear before he could get pinned under its bulk.

One down.

That just left eleven more, and all of them were charging him even as he got to his feet.

Kaern grimaced. Ahhh…this is going to hurt.

He ducked the first blow, slashed the demon’s leg with his blade, then twisted clear of the second. The third caught him, glancing off a rib in a shallow furrow, but he managed to evade the next couple.

By that time, Kaern was surrounded, and luckily there just wasn’t enough room for all of them to take swings at him at the same time. The demons closed the range enough to make it harder for him to swing his blade, however, so he choked up on the grip with his right hand and half bladed the weapon with his left.

“Come on, then.” He grinned as the lightning danced around him. “Let’s see if any of you can stand up to a traitor.”

*****

“We’re through!”

Simone twisted to see the guardsmen at what was now their front lines cheer as the hole broke in the demon line. They pushed through the hole, widening it with their bodies and blades, and behind them the refugees followed.

“That’s it!” she called. “Through the gap! Guardsmen, cover the retreat or we’ll lose everyone here and now!”

The fighting was redirected as much as possible to opening up the gap wide enough to force the refugees through as Simone cast a look over her shoulder.

She could no longer see the fighters up on the hill, though occasional blasts of magical energy and blue lightning told her that Kaern was still in the fight. There was nothing she could do for him, however, and as much as it galled her, Simone was going to have to leave him to his fate.

Anything else would be wasting the time he’d bought them.

She wrenched herself back around to focus on the objective that had to be completed, lifted her blade, and charged into the line herself.

Blades and claws, arrows and vile demonic magic and weapons—all those and more met as Simone and the guardsmen slowly pushed open the line and held the hole as the refugees broke through and began to rush back downriver.

“Hold the line!” she ordered as she swung her blade. “Do not falter!”

She saw men go down in her peripheral vision, covered an instant later by demons and other defenders rushing to fill the hole, and Simone despaired at how many they must lose just to buy a little more time.

They would escape, of that she was confident, but while it was a victory, she knew that they could ill afford, or survive, many more such victories.

A roar from above them sank her confidence, however, as she looked up from the fight to see demonic reinforcements pour over the banks and begin to flood down toward them.

A victory so costly as to nearly break them was bad, but a defeat would end them here and now. In that moment…Simone saw defeat coming for them, and with it despair rode alongside.

*****

Oh no, Elan thought as she skidded to a stop and looked over the riverbed that lay down the slope from her. Too late. Too damn late.

She hadn’t realized just how many of the demons there were, but they were swarming down over the banks toward the people below in numbers that would overwhelm anyone, she could imagine. She glanced up and over and saw a fierce fight tearing across a nearby hilltop, Kaern at the center of it. He didn’t seem to be doing all that well, if the blood and bruising were any sign, but he was doing better than the people below her would be in a short moment.

She tensed, gripping her blade tightly as she prepared to jump down and do what she could.

“There are too many,” Merlin’s voice rang in her ears. “You are not fast enough to make a difference.”

“I can see that,” she hissed, “but I have try.”

“Use the weapons I gave you,” he ordered. “That sidearm is far more than a blade.”

“What?” Elan hesitated, lifting her hand to examine the black blade she was holding. “Really?”

“Just think the word blaster.”

When she did as he bade, Elan almost jumped out of her second skin as the blade in her hand dismantled itself and then rebuilt into a much shorter, and incredibly useless-looking, club.

“This is a joke, right? We don’t have time for that,” she growled.

The tone of exasperation in Merlin’s voice was palpable. “Point it down at the demons.”

She growled, but did it. Elan was mildly surprised to see the colors of the demons change in her vision as she swept the “blaster” around.

Stupid name.

“When the red demon signal changes to green, simply squeeze the blaster,” Merlin ordered. “I’ve adjusted the firing weight a little high, so squeeze firmly.”

Elan frowned but did as she was bade. She picked out a demon from the crowd and gestured until the harsh red was replaced with a flickering green that steadied as she focused on it. Then, with a firm squeeze of the weapon, Elan jumped in place as it let out a barking chirp that she couldn’t really describe and bucked lightly in her hand.

A white pulse of power seemed to connect her to the demon for a second, most of that time just being the afterimage, and the demon screamed and fell forward in a tunnel.

“What is that!?” she yelped, shocked to the core.

“Standard issue responsive sidearm,” Merlin told her. “It would take too long to describe right now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me it could do that?” she hissed.

“Right.” Merlin’s voice was incredibly dry. “Because I hadn’t already put enough weapon power into the hands of an untrained child. I felt it better for you to use something you were at least marginally familiar with until you needed more. You’re still far from ready, but needs must, I suppose. Now, I suggest you do something.”

Elan buried her questions and started marching down the hill instead of running, sweeping her blaster ahead of her. When a demon flickered from red to green, she would squeeze the weapon firmly.

Flashes of white light strobed the battlefield, attracting every eye in the area as the slim figure made her march of death.

******

Merlin monitored the scene through the sensors built into the subatomic fabric of the armor he had issued to Elanthielle, examining every face, every expression, and every factor of the battle he could.

The looks of awe and fear struck him, both from the demons and the humans, as they looked up at the armored form of Elanthielle as she slowly marched while spitting magnetically contained micro-pellets of negatively charged metallic hydrogen.

Of course, none of the observers had any idea she was doing that.

At the height of civilization, her actions would not have raised much of a response. She was a combatant, doing what combatants do.

Merlin realized nearly instantly, however, that did not hold true in the here and the now.

The list of emotions he was seeing appeared in front of his vision as a list.

Fear, terror, hate, shock, awe…hope.

“If we are to do this,” he said softly as he observed, “then perhaps it is time to play all the cards…”

He tilted his head slightly, an affectation that meant nothing to the EI but was the result of old habits.

“If I set this in motion…there is no going back,” Merlin mused. “Best make sure it isn’t wasted, then.”

He reached out to the armor he had issued to Elan and keyed in a single command.

*****

Elan barely noticed it when her head covering—it couldn’t really be called a helmet—retracted. The fabric of the armor left enough over her eyes to continue providing her with the information she had begun to grow used to, but now the hot air blew against her skin and her blonde hair flowed out behind her as she strode through the battle and continued to strike down demons like a character from an epic myth.

Those watching, however, noticed it instantly.

Her obviously human appearance, now that the foreboding black and grey covering was gone, combined with her target selection, changed everything in an instant.

Simone looked up, recognizing the girl she had only just begun to know, and felt both relief that the girl lived and the despair she had felt begin to fade. Elan was alive, and that meant that there was a good chance Caleb had survived as well, but more than that…she could feel the sense of defeat lifting.

“Open that hole!” she ordered as loudly as she could, shaking people from their shocked state. “Get our people clear!”

The flagging morale reversed almost instantly, though, really, the odds and chances hadn’t shifted much at all on the surface. One person, with a single infantry weapon…no matter how great, really couldn’t significantly affect the material status of a battle like this…

But battles were not won or lost on merely their material status.

As the humans surged forward again, fighting with both renewed hope and the knowledge that there was nothing left for them to lose, the demons were suddenly caught between a vicious enemy and a mythic goddess from stories told to frighten the young and the gullible.

Terror and despair were the emotions they felt, and it showed in their reactions.

The hole opened as the human lines surged, and people began fleeing through it.

*****

“Get to the leader of the humans,” Merlin told Elan, his voice holding a tinge of urgency the likes of which felt out of place for him.

“What? Why?”

“Just do it. If you want anyone there to live, do what I say,” he ordered tensely.

Elan didn’t really have any objections to the plan. She’d intended to fight her way to Simone anyway, and from a glance it seemed like Simone was the leader Merlin wanted her to reach.

“Fine. You will tell me what this is about, eventually, I hope?” Elan asked sarcastically.

“I won’t have to. You’ll see it for yourself,” he told her, his tone a disturbing mix of cold and amused.

She shivered.

“Suddenly I’m not certain I want to know,” she mumbled.

“Too late for that, I’m afraid. No going back now.”

That just confirmed that she didn’t want to know what he was talking about. Still, she had her goal, and Elan set out to achieve it. She only had to redirect slightly, as she had been aiming for a slightly less direct route originally, but Simone was on the move.

“Run,” Merlin advised her. “Time is short.”

Elan broke into a sprint, charging right into the biggest mass of demons on the bank, and plowed through them like a machine. In close, she used the blaster faster and without waiting for the green flicker to confirm her target. There weren’t any humans in the way, and she couldn’t have missed if she wanted to anyway.

Between the blaster and her elbows, knees, and other bodily weapons, Elan sent the filth of the demon forces scattering as she used the lean of the land to her advantage and fought her way through the ranks until she burst out over a ridge that dropped away to the riverbed below.

Elan landed in a crouch, three demons slamming into the ground around her somewhat less gracefully.

She got to her feet and sprinted to where she spotted the red hair she knew to be Simone’s. Some men got between them, warily and with swords drawn, but Simone waved them off.

“Let her through,” Simone ordered over the din of fighting. “Keep our people moving.”

Elan came to a stop. “You need to get everyone back down to the shore.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Simone said. “There are obstacles, you might have noticed.”

“You don’t know half of it,” Elan growled. “Most of the demons are arrayed upriver. Far more than we can ever fight. You have to get to the shore.”

“Then what? If there are that many, they’ll just run us down,” Simone said. “We can’t outrun them.”

“Convince her,” Merlin said tersely in her ears.

“You won’t have to, Simone.” Elan grabbed her by the shoulder. “Listen to me. Unless you want everyone to die, get them to the shore. As fast as you can.”

Simone looked into the crystal blue eyes, swallowed a shiver of cold fear, and nodded. “Alright. Fine. Nothing else I can do anyway. I just hope we have enough to fight through.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Elan said grimly, repeating what Merlin was telling her. “Just remember, when you get to the shore, look for an outcropping of rocks to the north. Get to them. You’ll know them when you see them. Get to them.”

“Go back to the north? That’s right back into their territory!”

“Just do it, Simone!” Elan snapped. “Just…just do it.”

Simone stared at her for a second but, frankly, they had nothing left to lose.

“Fine.”

Elan turned away, looking to the lines that were holding for now as men and women rushed by, carrying children and elderly and the injured. Behind them, flashes of energy could still be seen from the hilltop where she had spotted Kaern battling earlier.

“I’ll do what I can to buy you time,” Elan promised, “but get to those rocks. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Wait!” Simone grabbed her arm. “What about Caleb? Is he okay?”

Elan smiled. “He’s around.”

*****

“There’s a lot of them,” a man with a bow in his hands said softly as he crouched beside Caleb, looking over the riverbed from their observation point.

“Yeah, and every living one of them is going to try and kill our people,” Caleb said grimly before adding, somewhat belatedly, “and us.”

He laughed, a little dark, he supposed, but it was what it was.

“I guess we do it to them first,” Caleb said. “Get everyone into place.”

The man nodded and crawled back, leaving Caleb to look over the swarm of demons alone.

Caleb didn’t like being alone. It left him with too much time to think about what he was doing, and what he maybe should be doing. He should be training with Simone. Those days now felt like a distant memory though, playing games with his sword training, like it wasn’t serious.

Well, it was serious now.

Caleb withdrew from his position and crawled back to where the others were waiting.

He didn’t like being alone, but Caleb looked around at the determined faced who were waiting for him and he knew…

He wasn’t alone.

“We’ve been afraid of the dark for a long time… I believe,” he said, feeling younger even than he was as older eyes looked to him for orders, “that it’s time we remind the demons why they should fear the light.”

They did not cheer—it was too important to remain quiet—but the gleam in their eyes told him that they knew what he was saying and understood.

*****

Kaern slammed back into a tree, hard enough to likely have crippled a human, but he was able to move enough to dodge the follow up that was aimed to take his head off. He was cut and bleeding from a dozen places, at least three serious, even for him. In exchange, three of the lord general’s guard lay dead or injured to the point of being unable to continue and unlikely to recover.

The remaining nine, however, were quite intent on making him pay for that.

“You truly must be one of the Forsaken,” the female he’d crossed blades with gritted out, bleeding from several spots herself. “No one else could take on the twelve of us and last this long.”

Kaern laughed scornfully. “Nine now, but don’t flatter yourself. I’ve not done anything yet that a skilled human couldn’t have managed. You lot have gone soft. Haven’t met a real fighter in five centuries, I would bet, if ever.”

She hissed at him. “Arrogance.”

“Fact,” he spoke, glad of the break in the fighting and willing to stretch it out. “You weaklings have been testing yourself against the refugees of a lost cause, as if they’re a tenth what their ancestors were. But, weak as they are, their ancestors’ potential is still there, waiting to bloom. Why do you think you’ve been sent to wipe out a single small city? The lord master is afraid of what they might become if he left them be.”

“Lies!” she snarled.

Kaern laughed, no sarcasm in his tone at all. “And the devil of it all is that he’s right to fear them.”

She screamed incoherently and charged him, the temporary truce ended.

Kaern stepped to the side as she passed, twisting under the slash of her blade, and flicked his own sword out in a deceptively casual motion. She continued on past him, stumbling to a stop as blood erupted from her side where he had stabbed in deeply, and fell to her knees.

He looked over the rest, and spoke calmly. “Eight.”

*****

Elan struggled as she threw herself into the swarm again, trying to distract and slow them enough that they would not be able to join the attack on the refugees’ line.

So far it seemed that she was succeeding, gathering a rather large degree of attention, none of it particularly positive. Her sidearm whined and discharged time and time again, but despite their fear, nothing would deter the demons from swarming her. She was fighting flashes of that night in the desert, trying not to relive her nightmares, as much as the demons themselves, but there was nothing to do now but fight or die.

Perhaps both, in the end.

An annoying buzz attracted her attention, causing her to look around amid the fight. “What is that?”

“That is your sidearm warning you that it will shortly be forced into regeneration mode,” Merlin advised her. “I suggest you return it to blade form. Just think blade, or sword.”

Frustrated, Elan flicked her hand down as she did as she was told and the weapon changed, the black blade assembling itself as she strode once more into the fray.

“What the hell is regeneration mode?” she growled as she swung the blade, foregoing any of the style she had learned from her father or Simone. In the mass of targets she had, hacking was the only real style she could manage.

“Generating negatively charged hydrogen pellets requires energy,” Merlin explained calmly, not mentioning that he was securing her face and head covering again now that the psychological intimidation opportunity had passed. “Your sidearm can only fire so many before it must recharge from the thorium core. Why do you suppose a blade mode was included at all? There are few things more useless than an uncharged blaster, but a blade is always of value.”

Elan growled in frustration as she fought. “You do know that I didn’t understand at least half the words you just spouted, right?”

“Then why do you keep asking?” Merlin grumbled back, irritated.

“Honestly?” she asked with a grin as she jabbed a fist into the misshapen face of a demon ahead of her. “Annoying you is beginning to entertain me.”

Merlin was silent for a few moments, before replying, “Well, so long as you find it entertaining. Just a warning, if you intend to live, you may want to withdraw now. The clock is counting down.”

“Counting down to what?” Elan asked, now annoyed again.

“You would not believe me if I told you,” Merlin responded, before correcting himself, “or, perhaps I should say, you would not understand me if I told you.”

Elan growled, hacking off a demon’s arm as she wrenched her way free of the last of them and began to run up the bank to the hills on the north side of the river.

Smug bastard, she thought, casting an eye to the east, where Kaern was fighting. “I need to warn Kaern.”

“He is a demon. Leave him,” Merlin ordered.

“I owe him,” she said, shaking her head. “So that is not going to happen.”

Merlin swore silently, but said nothing to deter the girl as she turned and ran inland rather than to the sea as he had told her.

*****

With most of the refugees pushing back along the riverbed heading for the sea, Simone and her guardsmen rushed ahead to meet any resistance to the withdrawal. She barely knew why she was in such a rush, but something about Elan’s attitude had convinced her.

Alright, the strange weapon and armor the girl wore certainly added to her credibility, and as much as Simone didn’t want to admit it, even she hadn’t been unmoved by the scene of the girl striding down the bank of the river while calling down the power of the Gods themselves against the demons.

It was the first time she’d started to truly credit Kaern’s belief that the girl’s arrival had been prophetic.

Perhaps she had been sent to them, and if that were the case…well, best to pay attention, then, right?

It wasn’t like she had many other options anyway.

They were through the heaviest resistance and now trying to get ahead of the refugee column again in case they were needed, but when the column ground to a halt, people slamming into those in front of them as they started scrambling to back up, Simone knew that they’d just run into another problem.

She almost ground to a halt herself when she saw it, the line of demons blocking off their path entirely. She knew that there was no way they’d be able to fight through that, not with the weakened forces they had.

Behind them lay death, and now death waited ahead.

Simone gritted her teeth as the men and women around her looked to her for guidance, any guidance would do.

“We’ve no choice,” she said. “The only way out is through them. If it takes our lives, we have to get as many as we can through.”

They set their expressions, nodding in agreement as they continued on ahead to close out the front of the column. Simone set herself at the vanguard of their formation, sword held aloft.

They were walking to their death, but bravery came easy, she found, when all other options were stripped away. She would not surrender and running was not an option, so they would die or she would.

The two lines, demon and human, closed on one another and were only moments from meeting when a whistling sound filled the air and shadows flitted across the sun. Simone and the others from both sides looked up, shocked as waves of arrows rained down from the sky and fell upon the demons.

They were not demon killers, for they had no iron tip, but the arrows tore through flesh and sinew, embedding into bone with solid impacts. The demon line was torn to shreds by the strike from the sky, and everyone twisted and looked for the source.

Atop the hill to the north, a blade held high glinted in the sunlight before it dropped and a second wave of arrows was lofted as the demon line broke into chaos.

Simone recognized the blond boy holding the sword and grinned with relief. Before the arrows could strike down, she struck her own sword against her armlet to gather attention from those around her.

“We strike on the heels of those arrows!” Simone yelled, bringing her blade up. “Charge!”

With a roar, the guardsmen, and many of the refugees, surged forward at her command.

*****

“Hit them on the flanks!” Caleb ordered. “Help them punch through!”

His “army” consisted of weakened prisoners of the demons, elderly, and the extremely young. It didn’t seem to matter in that moment, not as they were charging down the bank. An experienced man would have cringed at the lack of discipline, but no one would have questioned their enthusiasm as Caleb led them against the monsters that had haunted their nightmares their entire lives.

Caleb and the front line hit the demons from their flank like a wave crashing onto the shore, though this wave had steel and iron, and the shore was being hammered from the other side just as hard.

“Open the hole!” he ordered above the fray. “Clear a path!”

In flashes as the battle continued, Caleb could see Simone’s red hair through a mask of demons, humans, swords, and claws. He angled his attack and threw himself into the fight, sword rising and falling with a vicious, hacking rhythm as he cut a path.

They were lucky with both surprise and tactical position on the enemies, but also in that they were facing the lowest of the low. Caleb had seen hints of how the upper levels fought, was well aware that he was nowhere near that level, and had no wish to be responsible for a worthless slaughter of his own people.

They did not go through untouched, however. He saw people fall, blood flowing to muddy the already wet dirt at their feet. Human blood mixed with demon ichor, leaving them stomping through an unholy mix as they killed and fought with iron, steel, and even sticks and stones.

If they were to die here and now, they would die in the blood of their enemies and comrades.

Caleb didn’t know if that was a good thing, or merely a necessary evil, but it was enough for him.

Bleeding from claw gouges and worse, Caleb broke through the demon line over the bodies of those he’d slain. He barely refrained from striking at a guardsman who was so covered in blood and ichor that he barely looked human, and saw a similar moment of hesitation on the other man’s face before they both turned and threw themselves once more into the fray.

“Hold the path open!” Caleb ordered, then looked over his shoulder to the weary guardsmen. “Get the people through! We’ll not be able to hold them forever!”

“He’s right!” a familiar voice called over the cacophony. “Move them through!”

Caleb looked to his left to see Simone fighting up beside him and grinned. “Good to see you. Lovely day, isn’t it, Simone?”

She looked at him, wry amusement on her blood-spattered face. “You’re a long way from an old hand at this, whelp. Save the act for if we get out of here.”

“When we get out of here, Simone,” he yelled over the fighting. “Get it right.”

She shook her head slightly, smiling as she blocked a blow and then countered with a pivoting slice that relieved the demon of his arm. “If you say so.”

They had the hole open, and people were flooding through like a giant wave, running through the shallow waters of the river’s edge. The price was seen on the bank as far back as the fighting had begun: bodies littered where they had fallen and blood-soaked mud that was up past their ankles as they fought.

The price would be—in fact already was—dear, but not paying it was unthinkable, so Simone, Caleb, and the rest held the line as the refugees escaped.

“They’re almost through,” Simone said, sometime later, maybe hours…maybe minutes…maybe just seconds. Honestly, her sense of time had vanished into the ether. “We need to break off ourselves.”

That was going to be easier said than done. The demons were fighting ferociously and clearly had no intent on giving up their prey, no matter how many of them fell in the process.

“Where’s Elan? We can’t leave her!” Caleb objected.

“She went to warn Kaern,” Simone yelled back. “Told me to get everyone to the sea and find some rocks if I didn’t want to die out here.”

Caleb shot her a look through a mesh of claws and iron. “She said that?”

Simone nodded, grunting as a claw scored along her ribs and opened a bloody furrow in her flesh. “She was pretty certain of it, actually.”

“Shit,” Caleb swore. “Okay, we need to break off!”

“You just said…”

“If Elan says we need to be at some rocks, then we need to be at those rocks! Run!” he ordered over the cacophony of combat, then threw himself all the heavier into the line, knocking back a dozen or more as his weight sent some falling back into others. “Run!” Caleb cast a look around, snarling, “Run for your lives!”

*****

Kaern spat blood as he knelt on the patch of ground he’d fallen to after being thrown across the hilltop.

“Six.” He coughed a laugh out, grinning through blood-covered teeth as he looked up.

The demons, all of whom looked nearly as bad as he did, surrounded him warily as he slowly got to his feet and leaned heavily on his sword.

A slow and steady percussion caused them all to pause and glance to where the lord general was clapping, an expression of amusement on his face.

“You are as good as your reputation, Wanderer,” he said clearly. “It’s a pity you and your kind turned on us.”

“Never turned on you,” Kaern correct with a shake of his head. “Refused to turn on Him.”

The lord general snorted. “You think your Creator cares what you do? If He ever did, He doesn’t anymore…or He’s dead, eons past. What good creator would allow what you’ve seen happen, to universe after universe? Only a sadist would allow the Change to even exist, you know that as well as I.”

Kaern snarled, unable to answer that charge with anything that convinced even him. His own faith was long since shot; only his stubborn pride kept him true to the oaths he’d sworn once, so very long ago. Perhaps it was possible that the Creator was dead—maybe the one true God had a limit after all—but Kaern’s honor did not.

It was the only thing he had left to call his own, and no one would take that from him.

He lifted the sword from the dirt and held it out, unwavering. “I swore to protect, to council, and to comfort His children on my eternal soul. My soul may have been ripped away by your ungodly betrayal, but my honor never was. I decide my path. Not you, not Him, and sure as Hell’s Nine Unholy Circles not the Abomination! ME.”

“So be it.” The lord general lifted his own blade, turning to the remaining six members of his guard. “End this, and him. We have work to finish.”

Kaern stepped back, intercepting the first strike on his blade, and lashed out with a kick that doubled over the demon attacking from behind him. The third strike slipped through, however, and tagged his shoulder with a blow that tore the leather armor he wore, drawing a bloody furrow in his shoulder.

He threw up another block, then his head was rocked to one side from a blow and he stumbled.

The demons were on him in an instant then, pummeling and clawing and biting as he struck out as best he could. The pressure of the fight forced Kaern down to one knee, his sword arm pinned down while his free one sheltered his face.

Then, in a flurry of motion, the weight was lifted off him and he found himself blinking at the sun in his eyes as he looked around.

Two of his attackers had been sent flying across the hilltop, impacting a tree and rock respectively, while the rest had backed off warily and were clearly reevaluating the situation. Kaern twisted his neck until it cracked as he got back on his feet and glared over at his “savior.”

“You’re supposed to be helping Simone,” he grumbled.

“She’s not the one who needs help,” Elan told him dryly as she stood between him and the majority of his attackers.

“I had it under control.”

Elan looked back at him, and while he was unable to see her face under the armor fabric she wore, her entire body practically screamed, Who do you think you’re kidding?

He sighed, rolling his eyes, “This isn’t your fight, child.”

“If not this, then what?” she asked simply.

With no response to that, Kaern steadied his grip on his blade and the two got ready to move.

*****

The lord general, who had taken a step closer, studied Elan’s form with wide eyes.

He had not seen armor of that type in centuries. As he understood things, there should be no human alive who could wear it any longer. If he were to judge, in fact, he would swear that this one was very young. The Forsaken’s use of the word “child” would seem to support that, though it was, of course, difficult to be certain.

“That one.” He gestured. “Take her alive. And kill the Forsaken already!”

The human and Forsaken stiffened, forgetting their banter as his demons charged in again. The pair met them, blades to claws, as the lord general watched. The Forsaken was weakened, and while the arrival of the girl child had reinforced his will somewhat, the signs of his faltering were still clear.

She…had the power of her forebears, he had to admit, but none of their skill.

She used her weapon like a barbarian would wield his.

Crude, certainly effective enough, but wasteful. Even with the armor she wore, those actions would wear her down in short order. He calmly watched as another of his guard was hacked down, noting everything in the actions of his enemies before he decided it was time to intervene himself.

His blade, a gift from the lord master himself, was the equal of any weapon known and certainly more than a match for even the weapons of the former human warriors of this world. The necromantic aura of the blade would cut the girl down, through any armor the humans had ever made.

He wanted her alive, however, so he determined to merely…cripple her.

*****

Elan grunted as her blade caught a blow aimed for her head, and for the first time, she felt her bones rattle despite wearing the armor Merlin had gifted her. The strength of the attack rattled her from her arms through her body and down to her feet, where she was pushed back a foot, even as she dug in against the strike.

“Careful!” Kaern snapped, shouldering her attacker heavily while fighting off another two. “These are not the same filth you were mowing through down below. Don’t try and match them strength for strength. They’ll pick you apart, lass!”

Elan stepped back, feeling the stinging blow still ringing though half her bones, and just nodded.

“Kaern, we have to get out of here!” she yelled. “We don’t have time for this!”

“I don’t think our playmates here are going to be happy if we try and leave the party early,” Kaern shot back, grinning weakly.

Elan took a swipe at one of the demons, who easily jumped out of range before slashing back at her. She had to throw herself aside to dodge the attack, landing in an awkward roll and scrambling back to her feet.

“You don’t understand. We have to leave,” she stressed. “Mer—”

Her words were cut off when the lord general suddenly appeared in front of her and smashed Elan with the flat of his blade. The blow was hard enough to lift her clear off the ground as the whole world seemed to shake and vibrate, sending Elan hammering through a foot-thick tree trunk with splintering force.

She felt her armor stiffen up such that she couldn’t move, but even being unable to fold herself around a tree, it still felt like she’d just fallen a thousand feet and slammed into bedrock.

“Lass!” Kaern roared, tearing through the defenses of the demon he was fighting and vaulting over shattered trees to get to her side. “Lass! Are ye okay?”

His brogue was filtering back as he reached her, sliding to a knee at her side.

Elan was convulsing on the ground, sucking for air that just wouldn’t come. He realized that she’d at least had her lungs emptied by the blow, perhaps even managed to crack ribs despite the advanced armor.

A glance up told him that their opponents were picking their way toward them through the debris she’d left in her path. He considered the options, but frankly only found one…not that it was a good one.

“Time to go, right ye are, lass,” he ground out as he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. He hoped that she didn’t have any internal injuries that he was aggravating, but the alternative was worse so, as she’d said herself, it was time to run.

The lord general looked on in rage as the Forsaken took one more glance at him and his guard as they struggled toward him…and then turned and fled.

“After him!”

*****

Simone and Caleb stared as they reached the shoreline or, rather, where the shoreline had been.

“What happened to the water?” Caleb asked, expression stricken.

“I…don’t know.” Simone swallowed.

They were looking at a low tide, the likes of which neither had ever seen. Sand flats were visible practically as far as they could see, aside from patches and pools of water that remained behind.

People were murmuring, fear building, and Simone knew that she had to get a control of things before that fear turned to something worse.

“Alright, we’ll worry about it later!” she yelled. “North! Look for the rocks we were told to find. Quickly, now! Quickly!”

Getting that many people moving was a monumental task, but they’d been doing it so much by this point that they had things well in hand.

Having demons literally chasing them didn’t hurt in that, Simone supposed.

They ran north, pushing the column as hard as they could, Simone and the guardsmen at the front searching for the rock outcropping that Elan had said they couldn’t miss. Simone didn’t know about that, because she would have expected to have seen it the first time they passed, and she didn’t recall that.

And yet, it didn’t take long before one of the scouts let out a yell.

“There! See it?”

Simone pushed through some people and stared, not understanding how she hadn’t seen it the first time. When they first passed by, perhaps the top few feet had been sticking out of the water. Perhaps.

She knew the water would be gone. What the Hell’s Circles is going on here?

Simone hesitated, looking around as she tried to understand what was happening.

Caleb didn’t. He nodded ahead. “If Elan said make for the rocks, we make for the rocks. Come on!”

He strode on ahead, causing Simone to break out of her hesitation. To those who were looking at her, she nodded firmly. “He’s right. It’s death to stand still. We make for the rocks.”

*****

At the rock formation, Caleb stopped and examined the scene before anyone else could catch up to him.

He quickly spotted the smooth, flat surfaces that spoke to him of the temple and the place that they had been taken by the light, even through the moss and dirt that marred its surface. He nodded, understanding why they’d been sent there, though he was far more worried by the lack of water than he’d put forward.

Magic was something he had seen in his life.

Demons could throw fire and pain. They could freeze a man’s blood or cast down the walls of the city. Those were things he feared but understood in a vague sort of way. He had seen human magic users do similar feats, though there were few of those left, as they were the first people the demons had killed whenever they captured prisoners.

Making the ocean vanish, however, that was not magic the likes of which he had ever even imagined.

I hope you know what you’re doing, Elan, he thought as he looked around, trying to find a way inside what he was almost certain had to be another place like the temple.

Simone and the others arrived behind him as he looked, but Caleb didn’t even look their direction.

“It’s like the temple,” he said. “We need to find the entrance.”

“Everyone, start looking,” Simone ordered instantly, casting a worried gaze behind them for any sign of pursuit.

Though she saw nothing, unnatural sounds could still be heard from deeper inland. The threat was far from gone.

*****

Kaern raced through the underbrush, ducking and dodging to either side as he tried to stay ahead of his pursuers. With Elan balanced on his shoulder, he was certainly not maneuvering as fast as he might under normal conditions, but the demons behind them were far from their own ideal environment as well.

The Change had a way of making even the strongest dislike the light of the pure sun, and light itself could be painful to them. They were, in almost every way, the very opposite of what they preyed upon. Nightmares made flesh, but there were things that made nightmares consider carefully before crossing.

“Come on, lass,” he urged as he ran. “Talk to me. Are ye alright?”

Elan groaned, and he felt her move against his shoulder and back where she was flopped like a sack of potatoes.

“I’ve been better,” she moaned.

Kaern felt her stiffen up and then let out a cry of…anger? Something. He didn’t slow down.

“What is it, lass?”

“I lost my sword!” she swore. “Again!”

He tried to keep from laughing at her, he really did, but it just didn’t last long.

“That’s the last thing you need to worry about now, lass. We’ve a lord general and half his guard on our trail, plus the rest of their legion to worry about, just for good measure.”

“But it was a magical weapon,” she complained bitterly.

Kaern snorted. “The blade the lord general smacked yer arse with, that was magical. Your blade was no more magic than the air you breathe…less, actually. I expect yer pal Merlin will be able to dig up another for you. They made those things by the tens of thousands a day back at the peak of your ancestors’ time.”

That shocked her to silence, the idea that such things had once existed in such numbers… She still could not fathom how humans had lost.

“Are ye alright?” he asked, still running.

Elan nodded weakly. “I think so.”

“Then can ye run?” Kaern asked quite seriously. “I can keep this up, but we’d be faster together.”

“I can,” she promised. “Set me down.”

He did so, only slowing enough that she wouldn’t be flung to the ground. Elan landed running, but clutched at her ribs as she did.

“The bones broken?” he asked, pacing her as she tested her movement.

“No,” Elan said. “The armor says that they’re just bruised, according to Merlin anyway.”

“Good. Run faster.”

She nodded and they did.

With a horde of lower level demons, and more than a few more dangerous ones on their trail, Elan and Kaern burst out of the scrub running flat out toward the sea…and both almost faltered as they realized that the sea was not there.

“What in the Nine Hells did you do, lass?” Kaern whispered, shocked.

“It wasn’t me!” Elan wailed. “I don’t know what’s going on!”

He shook it off and kept running. The pair launched themselves down a dune in a foot-first slide that brought them to the beach, then scrambled back to their feet and bolted in the direction Elan was being told to go via her armor.

Kaern didn’t take too long to figure out what was going on. What he was seeing was beyond any magic some slip like Elan could manage, even if she were talented…which he had no idea if she were.

“Merlin, you crazy old bastard,” he swore. “You’ve flipped yer logic crystals on this one, fer sure.”

Elan winced, shaking her head. “He’s not amused. What’s going on?”

“That loony old fart.” Kaern shook his head. “No time, lass, we need to move faster. Lord, it’s already sucked out the shallow waters.”

They heard a roar behind them and both risked a glance in time to see what had to be the entire demon horde burst over the dunes like a crashing wave.

Ahead of them, they could see the rock formation Elan had spoken of, as well as the entire refugee column.

“Run ahead, lass,” Kaern said, slowing down. “You’ll need to get them inside.”

“Ahead? What about you?” Elan skidded to a stop, realizing that he had dropped back.

“I’ll buy you the time you need,” he promised.

“No! You come with me!”

“Lass, look beyond the rocks,” he ordered her. “See the horizon?”

Elan looked, and then frowned as her armor automatically seemed to bring it all closer in a small section of her eyesight. It was really disorienting, but she only noticed that for a moment before she realized she was looking at something…very odd indeed.

“What is it?” she asked.

It looked like a mountain, but it was…moving.

“That’s the ocean coming back, lass. Don’t slack off now,” Kaern ordered, slapping her back and sending her stumbling forward. “Go! Save lives. Just remember one thing from me to you, if ye will… Don’t trust those tools of yer ancestors too much. They’re powerful, but they’re no replacement for the power you carry inside.”

She looked at him, both confused and stricken, but he just winked and turned away as he leveled his blade out to the side. Lightning was licking off it and dancing between the sword and the ground.

“Well?” He looked back. “What are ye waiting for? Run!”

Kaern started running then too, but toward the demon horde as the lightning continued to build. Elan watched him for a few seconds before forcing herself to turn and sprint the other direction.

*****

“Elan!” Caleb greeted her. “It’s a temple, I know, but how do we get in?”

Elan was moving stiffly as she arrived, her head uncovered by her armor and her expression frozen.

“It’s a security bunker,” she said. “This one is locked. I’ll open it.”

Caleb stepped aside as she strode past, her hand coming up and the armor crawling off it as she held it out and touched a section of the stone. A grinding and rumbling sound startled most of them, everyone now being on edge by a distant, low roar that they could hear but not identify.

A section of the stone wall shifted and ground open a crack, then froze in place. Elan swore and rushed over to it, sticking her arm in and then leaning into it. Slowly, as she braced between the slab and the wall, it inched open until something gave and it suddenly retracted entirely.

“Everyone inside!” she ordered, cold blue eyes looking through the gathered people to something well behind them. “Now!”

“You all heard her!” Simone yelled, pushing people ahead of her. “Move!”

There were hundreds of people, possibly more. Elan couldn’t count high enough to know, and she didn’t really understand the numbers Merlin was telling her. Honestly, she didn’t care either. As they rushed past her, she was staring back toward the beach, where lightning was crackling against the clear blue sky.

******

Kaern met the front rank of the demon horde with contempt and lightning.

Of the two, the lightning was the more effective.

Dozens fried instantly under the onslaught, the weaker ones that made up the disposable front of the demonic forces. The rest scattered instinctively as the horde ground to a stop. A few of those, like the general’s guard, who were strong enough not to worry about his attack, came to the front. Kaern held his weapon aloft and looked past the demons to where their general was standing and looking over the scene with contempt in his expression.

“Well, Lord General?” he taunted. “I thought you wanted me dead… Why hang back now?”

The general and his guard pushed forward to the front of his lines, glowering at Kaern.

“One being, even such as you, cannot hope to stand here,” he said. “You are lost. Surrender, accept the Change, there is no need to be Forsaken any longer.”

Kaern laughed at him.

“You did get one part of that right,” he said, still laughing.

The lord general’s eyes narrowed as the large, misshapen demon glared. “What are you speaking of?”

“I don’t hope to stand here,” Kaern said, closing his eyes. “Listen to the world you’ve raped. She is angry.”

The lord general hesitated, the wording nagging at him. He did, in fact, listen, and his eyes widened as he realized that the low, distant roar had grown without him noticing it.

“What is…?” He looked up, at and then past the Forsaken standing in front of him and at what appeared to be a white fog on the horizon.

It was not fog, however, and it was not on the horizon. It was far, far closer indeed.

“Nine Hells…” the lord general whispered in shock before turning and pushing violently through the demons behind him. “Get out of my way! Move! Move!”

Kaern didn’t budge. He just smiled and watched the futile attempt at retreat until he was struck from behind by a force unlike anything he’d ever experienced in the many eons he had lived and everything went black.

*****

“Get in! Get in! Get in!” Simone screamed over the roar that was now deafening.

People were screaming and running past her as she screamed, along with Caleb and the guardsmen who had managed to remain calm enough to help. As they did, Simone looked over the rushing crowd to where Elan was staring out and to the south. Simone knew that Kaern was back there, but there was nothing more that could be done.

She was grateful he’d slowed them that last few minutes or the demons would be here fighting to get in with everyone else.

The ground rumbled and the roar suddenly quieted for a brief instant.

Then there was a bang so loud it shook the air, and Simone looked back to see water explode around and over the rocks they were sheltered behind. The spray crashed down over Elan as she watched, soaking her hair to her head and back, but the girl didn’t move.

“Elan!” Simone screamed. “Get in here!”

The water rushed around and circled back, rapidly swirling around them as Simone retreated into the temple with the last of the people. She yelled again for Elan but didn’t even hear herself over the roar that had surrounded them. Elan was lost in the spray and Simone felt her heart sink. That girl was the only one who could close the damn temple doors.

Breath and life came back a moment later when a black figure walked out of the spray, knee deep in swirling water, and strode up to, and past, her. Simone retreated deeper inside as Elan pressed a spot on the wall and the big doors slowly groaned shut as water rushed in through the ever-shrinking crack.

In the darkness, after the door had shut, Simone heard Elan move, and bright lights suddenly lit up all around them.

“He’s gone,” the girl said numbly. “The wave took him.”

Simone nodded somberly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I know. I know.”

She could see the child was trying not to cry, as though that would somehow be wrong. Simone reached out and pulled her close.

“I know,” she said again, “but he saved us, just as you did.”

Elan stiffened, but didn’t fight her off. She did not cry either or, if she did, the tears were well hidden in the salt spray she had walked through.

“Come on,” Elan said. “We can’t stay here.”

Simone winced. “Where can we go? We must be underwater again…”

“We can go to a new home,” Elan said. “A new home.”

The words felt…odd to her, like they didn’t belong in her mouth, but everything felt odd just then. Elan tried to shake off the feeling of numbness, tried to feel more, but it just wouldn’t go. She gave up, shaking her head and pointing into the darkness.

“Come,” she told Simone and the others who were in earshot. “This way. I’ll show you.”

Simone looked at her wearily, only now starting to slow down and realize just how much things had changed. The girl she’d taken in looked different to her, and not just from the unearthly black garb she wore. She looked…older, maybe. Tired, certainly, but there was something in her eyes that Simone didn’t recognize.

She followed as Elan led her, and the others, deeper into the dark at first. Then, in the distance ahead of them as they walked down, a light lit up at the end of a very dark tunnel.

“That way,” Elan said softly as she nodded toward the light. “Home is that way.”

*****

The island was warm. Sunlight poured down on them as the refugees warily exited the open doors of a different temple than the one they had entered.

Simone, Elan, and Caleb walked in the sunlight that filtered through a large, leafy canopy overhead, a breeze just keeping the warmth from reaching uncomfortable levels. Simone had travelled across vast expanses of the world, particularly in her younger days, fighting and bleeding in most of them…but she had never seen a place like this.

It made her wonder just how much larger the world was than she had realized, and as she looked around, she found many new things every passing moment to catch her attention. There was water aplenty, streams just flowing down to the sea filled with crystal clear liquid. It would have to be tested, she knew, but it looked far better than the murky supplies they’d struggled to purify in the city.

The area was also green, green in a way that even the plants and trees around the river had not come close to matching. Lush, vibrant green, punctuated by reds and yellows and blues in the trees and bushes. There was a spring emptying into a small stream nearby, and beyond it they could see the stream run down to a sparkling blue ocean.

“Where is this place?” Simone asked in awe.

Elan shrugged and just numbly repeated what Merlin had told her. “A long way from where we were…but not far enough to be free of the demons. It’s a place no one bothered to name, so we should be hidden from them for a while…just for a while.”

“No name?” Simone smiled sadly. “That’s not right. Something this beautiful should have a name.”

Elan considered that for a moment. “The sea here was known as Atlantikos once… How about…Atlantis?”

Simone considered that as calls of joy erupted behind her. She turned to see children running out of the temple, children she didn’t think had been with their group. Then she remembered the dozens who’d vanished with Elan and Caleb, glanced toward the girl, and nodded slowly.

“I think Atlantis sounds…perfect.”

*****

Halfway around the world, off the coast of a land that would one day come to be called Africa, a body floated in the rough seas as it was being pulled farther and farther away from land by the rip current and out to sea.

Lightning crackled occasionally, though the body did not move, warning off any predators or scavengers that were feeding wildly on the many others around it.

END

Dedication :

Over the years I’ve been writing, I’ve made a lot of friends through my work. Some of the earliest ones were also incredibly influential in this novel, and all my work as it progressed. A fair few of them are no longer with us today, and the world is poorer for their passing.

Tim Knight was one of my first readers, and an avid writer himself, who provided me with feedback when it was needed and just praise and criticism in general. Steve Pantovic was an inspiration for my earlier work, his ideas fueled my own and without his work it’s possible mine would not exist today… certainly it would not exist in its current form. You can find both their works at the wandererverse if you’re interested, I recently reread some of my old favorites myself and was constantly surprised both by how far our community has come over the years… but also by how much I enjoy the stories we’ve come from.

More recently, my small section of the fanfic community lost another of our own in Asbjorn Grandt, who has helped me format my novels, archive my fanfiction, and generally was just ready to help whenever and wherever and however he could.

I hope you enjoyed The Knighthood and, if you did, say a quick word of silent thanks to the people, without whom, it would not… no, it could not, have existed.

I am forever in their debt.

Evan Currie