Aalune had begun disappearing before anyone thought to ask for heroes.
That was what Kaylor noticed first.
Not the empty houses.
Not the shuttered windows.
Not even the villagers who watched the road with the particular attention of people who had learned that anything approaching their home might be dangerous.
It was the absence of ordinary life.
Villages had sounds.
Children argued.
Doors slammed.
Someone shouted at a dog.
Someone else hammered something that did not need hammering quite so early in the day. Wheels complained against ruts. Chickens declared private wars against one another. Somewhere, inevitably, a man convinced he understood livestock better than livestock actually did made an avoidable mistake.
Aalune had some of those sounds.
Not enough.
The five heroes entered beneath a silence made of missing people.
Isamu had rejoined them before they reached the village.
He had come from the temple of his order while the others traveled from the Great Lake, meeting them on the road as though the separation had been little more than an inconvenient detour. There were no speeches. No dramatic reunion.
Fendor saw him approaching and said, “You missed a dragon turtle.”
Isamu looked at him.
“I heard.”
“Hexen destroyed another village.”
Hexen glanced over.
“It was already occupied by undead.”
“Parts of it were structurally sound.”
Kaylor nodded toward Isamu.
“Nethnarel cheated at dice.”
“I did not.”
Fendor looked at her.
“You moved them with your mind.”
“Allegedly.”
Isamu considered all of this.
“I should leave more often.”
Then the road bent.
Aalune appeared.
The humor faded.
The village lay in a shallow valley bordered by thin woodland and low, broken ridges. It was not fortified. There had probably never been a reason for walls. Houses stood close together around several larger communal buildings. Fields extended beyond them, though portions had gone untended. A few livestock remained penned near the outskirts.
Tieflings watched from doorways.
Nethnarel slowed.
The horns were the first thing anyone else would have noticed.
She noticed the faces.
Some had red or rust-colored skin. Others showed darker hues, muted purples, ash gray or colors close enough to human that only their horns and eyes betrayed the old blood running through them. Their features varied as widely as those of any people who had spent generations building families, dividing them, joining them again and forgetting which ancestor had come from where.
For one irrational moment, Nethnarel searched for recognition.
Not someone she knew.
Something older than knowing.
The Path beneath Gildan had done that to her.
Statues of companions.
Names carved into impossible machinery.
A voice recognizing people from lives they only partly remembered.
After that, every old place carried the possibility of being older than it appeared.
Aalune gave her nothing.
No remembered street.
No face from a dream.
No instinctive certainty that she had stood here before.
One of the villagers looked directly at her.
He saw another tiefling.
That was all.
Nethnarel was surprised by the relief.
Then Kaylor stopped.
Fendor noticed immediately.
“What?”
Kaylor did not answer.
His senses reached through the village.
Once, the power inside him had been simple enough to name.
Holy.
Sacred.
A paladin’s certainty that evil could be felt because good and evil occupied different places in the structure of the world.
Craven had done considerable damage to certainty.
The oath had broken.
Kaylor had not.
What remained of his old divine perception had changed with him, but it had never disappeared.
He felt something now.
Not directly beneath them.
Not standing behind a particular door.
A presence.
Faint.
Spread through Aalune like ink beginning to enter clear water.
Kaylor’s hand settled near Peacemaker.
“Something’s here.”
Nethnarel looked around.
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
Fendor frowned.
“That is less useful than your usual answers.”
“It’s not strong.”
Hexen studied the village.
“Yet?”
Kaylor looked toward the houses.
“That’s what it feels like.”
Creeping.
Not an army already occupying the streets.
Something advancing.
Something that had not reached the center yet.
Something taking its time.
The village elder waited for them near one of the larger buildings.
He was a tiefling too, older than most of the people watching from the doorways. His horns curved differently from Nethnarel’s, thicker near the base before sweeping backward along his head. Fatigue had settled permanently around his eyes.
He had probably been told the Heroes of Oxland were coming.
That did not stop relief from showing when he saw them.
“Mighty adventurers.”
Fendor glanced at Kaylor.
“Still strange.”
Kaylor ignored him.
The elder approached.
“Thank you for coming.”
“What’s taking your people?” Kaylor asked.
The elder hesitated.
“We don’t know.”
That was not the answer Kaylor wanted.
It was, however, the truth.
The elder explained.
People had begun disappearing several weeks ago.
One here.
Another several nights later.
Then more.
At first Aalune had found explanations.
Travel.
An accident.
Someone leaving without telling neighbors who considered themselves entitled to know.
Then the screams began.
Only at night.
A cry from the edge of the village.
Sometimes one scream.
Sometimes several.
People would gather the courage to investigate after the sound stopped.
Someone would be missing.
No body.
No clear trail.
No explanation.
Fear did what monsters had not yet needed to do.
Families left.
Those with relatives elsewhere packed carts and departed. Others simply abandoned homes and took whatever they could carry.
That explained the silence.
“How many?” Hexen asked.
“Missing?”
“Yes.”
The elder looked toward the houses.
“Enough.”
Hexen did not press him.
Fendor understood the answer.
Enough that counting them aloud would make them too real.
Kaylor looked toward the surrounding woods.
“Which direction?”
“That’s the problem.”
The elder shook his head.
“All of them.”
Fendor frowned.
“They come from everywhere?”
“We think so.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Some have.”
The elder described the creatures reported by survivors.
Humanoid.
Large.
Dark.
Their bodies distorted enough that descriptions disagreed about whether they were naked, armored, scarred or simply covered in something that resembled skin from a distance.
They wore little more than crude cloth around the waist.
That detail had survived every account.
Fendor found that unfortunate.
“Anything useful about them?”
“They’re strong.”
Kaylor nodded.
“Good.”
The elder stared.
Fendor intervened.
“He means useful.”
“I meant good.”
“I know.”
The elder looked between them.
Hexen asked, “How close do they come?”
“Closer every night.”
That silenced the heroes.
“They used to stay beyond the fields,” the elder continued. “People would hear movement in the woods. See something at the tree line. Then they came into the outer farms.”
His eyes moved toward the nearest houses.
“Now we see them between buildings.”
Nethnarel’s expression changed.
“And nobody knows where they go during the day?”
“No.”
“Tracks?”
“Some. Then nothing.”
“Burrows?”
“Not that we’ve found.”
“Old tunnels?”
“Every village has old cellars. None that lead anywhere.”
Kaylor still felt the evil.
The elder noticed where he was looking.
“You feel it?”
“Yes.”
The word came too quickly to soften.
The elder swallowed.
That answer frightened him more than uncertainty would have.
Nethnarel studied the tieflings nearby.
Their fear had become familiar enough that they carried it while working.
A woman filled a bucket from a well without looking away from the road.
Two men repaired a shutter that did not need repairing because it gave them something to do near their families.
Several children had been brought indoors as soon as the heroes arrived.
Not because the heroes frightened them.
Because evening would eventually come.
Nethnarel looked back at the elder.
“Are these my people?”
The question surprised everyone except her.
The elder frowned.
Nethnarel clarified.
“Not tieflings. I can see that.”
She glanced around.
“My people. Before.”
The heroes understood.
There were parts of their history measured in lives instead of years.
Hexen and Grazim had discovered traces of their original home.
Leonidas had returned as a nightmare from another timeline.
The world had remembered them in places they had forgotten.
The elder had no answer.
Neither did Aalune.
Nethnarel searched her own memory.
Nothing answered.
No old familiarity.
No buried name surfacing unexpectedly.
If her ancestors had ever stood here, generations had erased the connection so thoroughly that neither she nor the village retained it.
Fendor watched her.
“Anything?”
“No.”
“Good?”
Nethnarel considered.
“Yes.”
The elder looked confused.
Kaylor did not explain.
He returned to the problem.
“What happens if we wait?”
The elder looked toward the western sky.
“They come closer.”
“No.”
Kaylor pointed toward the surrounding village.
“What happens tonight?”
The elder understood.
“We listen.”
“For what?”
The scream came before he answered.
It cut through Aalune from the northwest.
Human—or tiefling—terror carried remarkably well over quiet streets.
The sound began high.
Broke.
Ended suddenly.
Every villager nearby froze.
The elder’s face went pale.
Kaylor was already moving.
“Northwest.”
Isamu ran.
Kaylor stared as the monk passed him.
Fendor started after both.
“Oh, good. There are two of them now.”
Nethnarel rose.
Fire moved across her clothing.
The familiar transformation spread from cloth to magic, red-orange flame turning the air behind her into wings.
Hexen called to the wolves.
The village exploded into motion.
Not toward the scream.
Away from it.
Tieflings came running around the corner ahead.
One woman had lost a shoe.
A man carried a child under one arm.
Another villager looked backward so often that he nearly struck a wall.
Then the heroes saw what pursued them.
Five figures entered the street.
The elder’s descriptions had not exaggerated their size.
If anything, fear had made the villagers poor witnesses to the details.
The creatures were humanoid only because they possessed the expected arrangement of limbs. Their bodies looked heavy and brutally assembled, shoulders wider than they needed to be, arms hanging long beside thick torsos. Dark flesh caught what little light reached the street. Crude wraps or loincloths covered them.
Their faces were worse.
Not bestial.
Not demonic.
Wrong in ways that made categories less useful.
They moved without the hesitation of creatures entering a defended village.
These things had done this before.
The fleeing tieflings passed Isamu.
He did not stop.
Neither did Kaylor.
Nethnarel flew above them all.
She saw the five attackers converging.
Saw the civilians escaping.
Saw Isamu and Kaylor about to make what they considered the sensible decision of reaching the enemy before anyone else did.
And saw an opportunity.
“Wait.”
Neither man waited.
Nethnarel sighed.
Then she climbed higher.
Power gathered behind her eyes.
The spell was new.
Not newly learned in the sense that lesser magic became familiar through repetition.
This was the sort of power that appeared only when a sorcerer reached far enough into the architecture of magic to discover that reality had surprisingly fragile supports.
Nethnarel had spent much of her life exploring the boundary between control and catastrophe.
Now she reached for something beyond both.
The creatures saw her.
One looked up.
Nethnarel smiled.
Her magic struck their minds.
There was no flame.
No lightning.
No visible projectile crossing the street.
The scream happened inside them.
Five creatures stopped.
All at once.
Their bodies locked in place.
The psychic force tore through thought, memory, instinct and whatever faculties passed for intelligence inside their warped skulls.
Their screams joined the one that had summoned the heroes.
One creature dropped to one knee.
Another clawed at its head.
A third stumbled into the wall of a house and remained there, unable to remember what movement meant.
The other two simply froze.
Nethnarel felt wild power surge behind the spell.
Some of the force had scattered badly when she first released it.
She caught the weakness.
Changed it.
Bent the poor strands back into the whole.
The Psychic Scream deepened.
The five creatures convulsed.
Fendor arrived in time to see every enemy in the street standing helpless.
He looked up at Nethnarel.
“What did you do?”
She hovered in fire.
“New spell.”
“Does it always do that?”
“If I’m lucky.”
Isamu reached the first stunned creature.
The whip moved.
He had changed since the Temple of the Swarm.
That was easy to forget until battle began.
His old economy remained—the same precise movement, the same refusal to waste effort—but the tools around that discipline had multiplied. The whip cracked through the air with greater force than before, and the first strike opened the creature badly enough that Isamu immediately knew the second would not be necessary.
He struck anyway.
The thing collapsed.
The insects around his hands remained quiet.
For once.
“One,” Isamu said.
Kaylor arrived beside another creature.
Fendor heard him.
“No.”
Isamu looked over.
“What?”
“You are not starting the finishing count again.”
“I killed the first one.”
“That is different from finishing.”
“It finished.”
Kaylor raised Peacemaker.
“Can both of you stop?”
The stunned creature in front of him could not.
Kaylor almost seemed disappointed.
Fendor had brought the new bow.
The weapon from the Pack Glitch’s lair remained colder than the surrounding air, the enchantment settled along its limbs like invisible frost.
He drew.
The first arrow hit.
The creature remained upright.
The second struck almost exactly beside it.
That one finished the job.
The dark humanoid collapsed backward.
Fendor immediately shifted aim.
Third arrow.
Another target.
The missile drove deep.
The creature nearly went down.
Fendor lowered the bow fractionally.
“I like this.”
Nethnarel looked down.
“You’ve said that about four bows.”
“Those were also good bows.”
The surviving creatures remained trapped inside the aftermath of her spell.
Their eyes moved.
Some understood they were dying.
Their bodies still refused to obey.
Kaylor watched one struggle against the psychic paralysis.
“You hit all of them?”
“Yes.”
“How many can you do?”
Nethnarel smiled.
“Enough.”
That answer pleased Kaylor.
It worried Fendor.
The battle should have ended there.
Five attackers.
Five heroes who had survived gods, dragons, demon temples and the architecture of their own forgotten past.
It almost did.
Then something else entered the street.
Kaylor smelled it before he saw it.
The odor arrived like an assault.
Rot.
Wet earth.
Spoiled meat.
A sweetness beneath all three that somehow made the combination worse.
Kaylor turned.
Dust moved between two buildings.
Not ordinary dust.
A low storm drifted toward him without wind.
Something occupied its center.
He saw a suggestion of bone.
Then flesh.
Then several overlapping human shapes dissolving into one another.
Fendor stopped drawing.
“What is that?”
Hexen had just reached the street.
He looked.
The cloud resembled a sandstorm that had learned to carry corpses.
Pale forms rolled within the murk. A skull surfaced and vanished. An arm stretched from the dust, became viscous, then disappeared back inside.
The entire mass moved with intent.
Toward Kaylor.
Nethnarel stared.
“That’s disgusting.”
Fendor nodded.
“Very scholarly.”
Kaylor had been watching for another attack.
The thing entered his reach.
He struck.
Peacemaker passed through the outer cloud and met resistance inside.
For an instant Kaylor felt the blade cutting through several different substances at once—grit, magical vapor, something gelid and something that might once have possessed ribs.
The cloud recoiled.
Not far.
Enough to prove it could be hurt.
Fendor looked at the black greatsword.
“Good.”
Kaylor turned his head.
“You’ve started doing that.”
“What?”
“Calling everything good.”
“I learned from you.”
The cloud surged over him.
The smell became unbearable.
Kaylor’s stomach turned despite his resistance to things that would have incapacitated ordinary people.
The rotting forms inside the storm pressed closer.
He saw a face.
Its skin sagged.
The mouth opened.
Nothing came out except more foul vapor.
Kaylor shoved forward.
“Hexen.”
“I see it.”
“No. Smell it.”
“I was trying not to.”
Hexen lifted the Staff of the Woodlands.
The ground changed.
Briar and thorn burst through the packed earth around the remaining creatures.
The plants did not grow naturally.
They arrived violently.
A dense field of spikes filled the street, trapping several of the stunned humanoids among them and cutting off the clearest route around Kaylor.
One creature finally broke free of Nethnarel’s psychic hold.
It moved.
That was a mistake.
Thorns tore into its legs.
It stumbled.
More spikes caught it.
The thing tried to force its way out and paid for every step.
Fendor drew.
“Now that feels unfair.”
Hexen watched the creature struggle.
“We’re being attacked by things that steal villagers in the night.”
“I didn’t say stop.”
Nethnarel remained above them.
She had another idea.
Fendor noticed the way she looked at the street.
“No.”
She glanced toward him.
“You don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Fire.”
“Yes.”
“The village is made of wood.”
“The enemies aren’t.”
“That does not solve the first problem.”
Nethnarel shaped the spell carefully.
Flame erupted among the trapped creatures.
Heat crossed the street.
The nearest wall caught light for an instant before Hexen forced the growing fire away from it.
The enemy at the center of the blast did not survive.
Another collapsed in the thorns.
Fendor winced.
“Controlled.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“Thank you.”
“I was talking to Hexen.”
The last of the dark humanoids tried to move.
Isamu reached it.
His whip snapped.
The creature twisted.
A second strike followed.
It fell.
The street became suddenly quieter.
Only the corpse-storm remained.
It attacked Kaylor again.
The dragonborn braced.
The foul cloud rolled around him.
Its stench was physical enough to feel like pressure against the skin. Something inside struck at his armor.
Peacemaker answered.
Kaylor carved through the mass.
The creature’s shape destabilized.
Dust spiraled outward.
Several half-formed bodies inside collapsed into one another.
Fendor fired into the center.
The arrow vanished.
Something cracked.
Hexen shifted the thorns away from Kaylor and tightened them around the edges of the moving cloud.
Nethnarel attacked from above.
Isamu came around the opposite side.
The thing had surprised them.
That advantage lasted only moments.
It tried to drift backward.
Kaylor did not permit it.
Peacemaker cut through the central mass a final time.
The storm fell apart.
Not exploded.
Collapsed.
Dust struck the street.
Viscous material followed.
Several pieces of bone hit the ground separately.
Then the smell became worse.
Everyone backed away.
Fendor covered his nose.
“That was unnecessary.”
Kaylor looked at the remains.
“It’s dead.”
Hexen stared.
“That does not improve it.”
Nethnarel landed farther away than usual.
“I vote we burn it.”
Fendor looked at her.
“You were already voting that.”
“Then I remain consistent.”
For several seconds nobody moved.
The surviving villagers who had fled the attack were gone from sight.
Doors remained shut.
A window opened slightly.
Then closed when Kaylor looked toward it.
The heroes studied the dead creatures.
Five dark humanoids.
One impossible storm of decay.
No symbols.
No obvious armor.
No explanation for where they had come from.
Fendor crouched near one of the bodies.
“Do these look familiar to anyone?”
No.
Hexen examined the ground.
The attackers had entered the village from the northwest.
Tracks existed.
Large feet.
Disturbed soil.
Then the battlefield had ruined most of what remained.
Nethnarel looked toward the woodland.
“Follow them?”
Kaylor listened.
Nothing.
Aalune had become quiet again.
Too quiet.
Fendor stood.
“We could go back to the elder.”
Kaylor looked toward the bodies.
“And tell him what?”
“That we killed the things he was worried about.”
Isamu shook his head.
“Some.”
Fendor looked at him.
“Why did you say it that way?”
Isamu turned.
The second scream came from the south.
Far enough away that for one heartbeat it sounded unreal.
Then it came again.
Shorter.
Closer to desperation.
A door opened somewhere behind the heroes.
A tiefling woman shouted a name.
Kaylor was already running.
Isamu passed him almost immediately.
Fendor stared after both.
“There are still two of them.”
Nethnarel’s wings ignited.
Hexen called the wolves.
The first battlefield remained behind them, bodies scattered among thorns and scorched earth.
They had been in Aalune less than an hour.
The elder had told them the creatures came from every direction.
Now they understood.
The first scream had not been the attack.
It had been the beginning of the night.