The second scream came from the south.
Isamu was already gone.
Fendor saw the monk take three strides.
The fourth seemed to happen somewhere much farther down the road.
Then there was only the back of him disappearing between houses.
Kaylor ran after him.
“He cheats.”
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“With movement?”
“Yes.”
“That is not how cheating works.”
Kaylor was already too far away to hear the answer.
Nethnarel’s fiery wings spread.
She rose above the village.
Hexen whistled sharply, and the wolves bounded after the others.
Fendor drew the new bow.
Aalune had been quiet when they arrived.
It was not quiet anymore.
Doors slammed as villagers pulled children inside. People ran from the direction of the scream, some with weapons they clearly had no idea how to use, others carrying nothing except the instinct to put distance between themselves and whatever had found them.
The night had settled completely now.
Lanterns burned at intersections and outside houses, small islands of gold surrounded by darkness.
Ahead, Isamu reached the next street.
He stopped.
Only briefly.
Long enough to understand what he had found.
The creature waiting there looked as though someone had tried to build a man from meat and become impatient halfway through.
It stood considerably taller than Isamu.
Its body was broad and nearly skinless, heavy muscle exposed beneath a slick surface that caught the lantern light. Long arms ended in hooked hands or weapons—Isamu could not tell where one ended and the other began.
Two necks rose from its shoulders.
Two heads looked down at him.
Both were ugly.
Not identically.
That would have been easier.
One face appeared almost human except for the mouth.
The other possessed too much jaw and too little forehead.
They turned independently.
Then focused upon Isamu together.
The monk drew his whip.
“So that’s new.”
The nearest head opened its mouth.
Isamu struck before it could make a sound.
The whip snapped around one arm.
He stepped inside the creature’s reach, reversed direction and struck again.
The thing staggered.
Isamu followed with the kind of attack most opponents received only after they had already made several mistakes.
This creature had made one.
It had existed within reach.
By the time Kaylor arrived, dark fluid covered much of its chest.
The monster was still standing.
Kaylor slowed.
“How much did you hit it?”
“Enough.”
The creature turned one head toward the dragonborn.
The other remained fixed on Isamu.
Kaylor looked at both.
“I dislike that.”
Isamu moved backward.
“There are more.”
Kaylor saw them.
Shapes moved farther down the street.
One emerged beside a barn.
Another crossed between two houses.
A third stood nearly motionless near a fleeing group of villagers, watching them run.
Five.
Perhaps more beyond the lantern light.
The elder had said the creatures were coming closer every night.
Tonight they had reached the middle of Aalune.
Kaylor inhaled.
Cold built in his chest.
Frost gathered between his teeth.
Isamu saw what was coming and moved aside.
Kaylor breathed.
Winter erupted into the street.
The cone of cold swept across two of the advancing creatures. Frost crawled over exposed muscle. Ice formed along one monster’s shoulder and across the side of a house.
The effect looked impressive.
One of the creatures shook itself.
Most of the ice broke off.
Kaylor frowned.
Isamu looked at him.
“Enough?”
“Shut up.”
Fendor arrived.
He had heard the blast and expected bodies.
Instead he found Kaylor staring personally offended at two mildly inconvenienced monsters.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“He breathed on them.”
Kaylor pointed at Isamu.
“You ran ahead.”
“Yes.”
“That was irresponsible.”
Isamu stared at him.
Fendor raised the Icy Burst bow.
“Save it for after the monsters.”
Nethnarel landed behind them.
“No.”
Fendor glanced back.
“No?”
“I’m staying up.”
Her wings beat once, lifting her above the roofs.
“Much smarter.”
Hexen reached the street last.
He was not alone.
The wolves appeared around him in a rush of shadow and teeth, spreading instinctively toward the spaces between the heroes and the frightened villagers.
They had been with Hexen long enough to understand that battle usually meant two things.
Bite what Hexen wanted bitten.
Do not bite the people screaming unless specifically instructed otherwise.
Hexen pointed toward the two-headed creatures.
The wolves understood.
Fendor drew.
The new bow had become familiar quickly.
That pleased him.
It also worried him slightly.
Weapons were not supposed to become comfortable this fast.
Then again, they had found the thing in Leonidas’s lair.
Very little about that deserved to be called normal.
He fired.
The arrow hit one of the two-headed creatures in the chest.
Cold spread around the wound.
It kept coming.
Fendor fired again.
A second arrow struck the same target.
It slowed.
Not much.
“These things are difficult.”
Kaylor drew his old frost axe.
Fendor looked at it.
“Not Peacemaker?”
Kaylor rolled one shoulder.
“Wanted something cold.”
“You just established that cold was disappointing.”
Kaylor smiled.
“Then I’ll hit harder.”
The monsters charged.
The battle should have been simple.
That was the dangerous thought.
The five heroes had fought things far worse than a group of oversized two-headed horrors wandering through a village at night.
They had killed dragons.
They had destroyed the Temple of the Swarm.
They had crossed ancient machinery beneath Gildan that recognized them as masters.
Nethnarel could tear apart minds with a scream no one else could hear.
Isamu could cross half the village before most enemies understood he had moved.
Fendor carried weapons built around the assumption that a perfect stroke should sometimes end a life immediately.
Hexen had recently demonstrated that a village itself could become a weapon if he became sufficiently irritated.
Kaylor was Kaylor.
Five two-headed creatures ought to have been manageable.
Then Nethnarel looked south.
More shapes were moving.
Not attacking yet.
Coming.
A cluster beyond the first group.
Another farther away.
Something emerged from the side of a building.
She counted.
Stopped.
Counted again.
“Oh.”
Fendor heard her.
“What?”
“There are more.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
Kaylor laughed.
“That’s my line.”
“No one owns that line.”
Hexen saw the incoming wave.
He also saw the villagers.
People had not cleared the southern street.
Several were still running between the monsters and the heroes.
Some had frozen at the sight of fighting ahead and danger behind.
A tiefling man pulled an older woman by one hand.
Two children ran beside them.
Another villager had fallen.
The battlefield was mixed.
That complicated everything.
Nethnarel reached for a spell anyway.
Fendor looked up.
He saw her expression.
“No.”
“You don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That sentence has never helped me.”
Necrotic power gathered around her.
Not fire this time.
Not lightning.
Something colder than either.
A darkness that existed because life knew it was not welcome inside.
Hexen looked up.
“What spell?”
“Circle of Death.”
Fendor stopped drawing.
“How large?”
Nethnarel considered.
“Very.”
“How large is very?”
The answer appeared.
A vast invisible boundary formed in Nethnarel’s mind, centered on the distant cluster of attackers.
She adjusted it.
The radius was enormous.
Too enormous.
Fendor saw her looking at the villagers.
“Oh, good.”
“I can move it.”
“Move it farther.”
“I am.”
“Farther.”
Kaylor remained in the street ahead.
Nethnarel shifted the center.
“Kaylor is there.”
Fendor nodded.
“We’re keeping Kaylor.”
“I heard you.”
The wolves were there too.
Hexen noticed.
“They’re magical.”
Nethnarel looked down.
“That sounded like permission.”
“It was information.”
“Close enough.”
The villagers continued running.
Nethnarel waited.
One heartbeat.
Two.
The nearest family cleared the worst of the area.
The fallen villager crawled toward the side of the road.
Several other figures disappeared behind a building.
Nethnarel released the spell.
Death expanded.
There was no explosion.
No visible sphere.
For an instant, the night simply became wrong.
Grass curled.
Leaves blackened.
The air tasted metallic.
A pulse of necrotic power passed across the southern street.
The wolves caught inside it vanished back into magic.
Several monsters reeled.
One dropped to a knee.
Others remained standing.
Farther away, villagers screamed as the edge of the spell swept frighteningly close to their flight.
Fendor stared up at Nethnarel.
“That was a Circle of Death.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing died.”
One creature collapsed behind another.
Nethnarel pointed.
“That did.”
Fendor considered.
“Circle of Significant Discomfort.”
Kaylor shouted from farther down the street.
“Stop naming spells!”
Hexen had already begun calling the wolves again.
One by one, the summoned pack returned around him.
Nethnarel looked mildly apologetic.
“They’re fine.”
The nearest wolf growled at her.
“Mostly.”
The two-headed monsters reached them.
One attacked Fendor.
Its arms ended in hooked weapons, long enough to catch rather than merely cut.
Fendor brought his shield around.
The first hook rang against it.
The second slipped past.
Metal—or bone—caught beneath his guard and tore across armor.
Fendor twisted away before the creature could pull him closer.
The Icy Burst bow became inconvenient at that distance.
He let it fall against its strap.
The Vorpal Longsword came free.
The monster’s two heads looked at the blade.
“Correct,” Fendor said.
It attacked again.
Fendor stepped inside the hooks.
The sword moved.
One head followed the motion.
The other did not.
The enchanted edge crossed the first neck almost without resistance.
The head separated.
The creature remained standing.
Fendor stared.
The surviving head screamed.
“Oh.”
The monster swung wildly.
Fendor ducked.
The Vorpal Longsword reversed.
A second impossible cut flashed through the night.
The remaining head left the body.
For half a heartbeat the great torso stood without either.
Then it collapsed.
Both heads rolled in different directions.
Fendor looked down.
The Vorpal Sheath had answered.
Not once.
Enough.
Kaylor saw the corpse.
“Both?”
Fendor nudged one head with his boot.
“Apparently.”
Isamu arrived beside him.
“You finished it.”
Fendor stared.
“Do not.”
Isamu looked at the two heads.
“Definitely finished.”
Fendor bent.
He picked one up.
Then the other.
Kaylor began laughing before Fendor even turned.
The surviving monsters saw the elf standing amid the fighting with a severed head in each hand.
Fendor raised both.
“Flee.”
One of the nearby villagers saw him too.
The man fled immediately.
Fendor watched him go.
“I meant them.”
Kaylor laughed harder.
“Very convincing.”
Fendor dropped the heads.
“I hate all of you.”
The monsters did not flee.
They came harder.
One burst from a building to Hexen’s right.
Fendor barely saw it before the thing launched itself into the druid.
Hooks struck.
Hexen staggered.
The creature hit again with unnatural precision.
Pain ripped through him.
For a moment, Hexen’s perception narrowed.
The monster’s attacks carried something beyond physical force.
A violent psychic discharge followed the hooks, driving into his mind through the wounds.
His vision flashed white.
The wolf nearest him lunged.
The monster struck it aside.
Hexen’s anger arrived before the pain finished.
His body changed.
Green cloth and moon-dark cloak disappeared into an expanding shape.
His spine broadened.
Arms became enormous legs.
His body sank toward the ground beneath a growing shell.
Fendor glanced over while parrying another hook.
“What are you?”
Hexen’s transformed head emerged from beneath the shell.
Large.
Reptilian.
Turtle-like.
Very angry.
Kaylor looked.
“Dragon turtle.”
Hexen snapped his jaws.
Nethnarel shouted from above.
“Not a dragon turtle.”
“Sea turtle?”
The enormous druid charged.
Fendor stared.
“It is attacking. Classification can wait.”
Hexen hit the creature with enough weight to make taxonomy irrelevant.
The monster disappeared partly beneath him.
The impact cracked the road.
Hexen bit.
The two-headed thing stabbed both hooks into his transformed body.
He held the shape.
Barely.
One wolf seized its leg.
Another caught an arm.
The monster fought like something built to absorb punishment rather than avoid it.
Kaylor struck another with his frost axe.
Once.
Again.
The enchanted weapon carved through exposed muscle.
The creature took both blows and remained upright.
Kaylor stepped back.
“These are meat.”
Fendor parried.
“What?”
“Just meat.”
“That is usually how bodies work.”
“No. More than normal.”
Isamu understood.
They were not protected by clever armor.
They were not particularly difficult to strike.
They simply endured.
Massive bodies built to continue after injuries that would have killed ordinary things.
“Meat puppets,” Isamu said.
Kaylor nodded.
“That.”
Fendor sighed.
“We have scholars.”
A scream came from behind them.
Not a new victim.
One of the villagers fleeing the battle.
Another creature had emerged from a side street.
Then another from behind a building.
Fendor saw movement farther east.
“We are being surrounded.”
Nethnarel saw something worse.
They were not being surrounded.
They were being replenished.
Every time one fell, another seemed to appear somewhere nearby.
Not from the woods.
Not from the southern edge of town.
From Aalune itself.
She flew toward a roofline to get a better angle.
Below, Isamu engaged one of the newcomers.
The whip cracked.
The first hit tore across its torso.
The second wrapped an arm and pulled the creature off balance.
Isamu crossed behind it.
Another strike landed.
The thing remained standing.
“Meat puppet,” Kaylor shouted.
“I heard you.”
One of the monster’s hooks caught Isamu.
The hit was heavy.
The second was worse.
Both heads screamed.
Something discharged through the hooked weapons.
Not electricity.
Psychic force.
It entered Isamu through the wounds.
The monk stiffened.
Pain flashed through his mind without crossing the distance between flesh and thought.
The creature pulled him closer.
Both hooks remained embedded.
For the first time that night, Isamu stopped moving.
Fendor saw it.
“Isamu.”
“I’m fine.”
The monster jerked the hooks.
Isamu’s answer became less convincing.
Whatever the thing was doing, it was not merely holding him.
It was draining something.
Thought.
Will.
Some inward reserve the creature could reach only through the hooked wounds.
Fendor started toward him.
Another monster blocked the way.
Kaylor intercepted that one with the frost axe.
“Go.”
Fendor went.
The creature attached to Isamu turned one head toward the approaching elf.
The other continued watching Isamu.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“Release him.”
It did not.
He struck.
The blade cut deeply into one shoulder.
The creature staggered.
One hook came loose.
Isamu tore free of the second before the monster could reset.
Fendor attacked again.
The thing absorbed the blow.
Still alive.
Fendor stared.
“I cut deeper than that into dragons.”
Isamu rolled one shoulder.
“Hit it again.”
“Thank you.”
Nethnarel remained above the street.
She had a clean target farther away.
The wand came into her hand.
Her Wand of Magic Missiles had been useful for so long that she had stopped thinking of it as impressive.
Tonight she needed certainty.
She pushed almost everything remaining in the wand into the cast.
Seven charges.
One reserve left afterward.
Magic appeared around her in a constellation of bright darts.
The target never had a chance to dodge.
The missiles turned in the air.
Struck.
One after another.
Each impact drove the monster backward until the final bolt dropped it.
Nethnarel looked at the wand.
One charge.
“Worth it.”
Fendor called from below.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Another creature emerged from the building beside her.
Not the alley.
Not behind it.
The doorway.
It pushed through shattered wood as though the structure had barely contained it.
Nethnarel stopped.
That was the third one she had seen come from that building.
Maybe fourth.
The fight below continued.
Isamu’s whip tore into another target.
Kaylor hacked at the nearest meat puppet.
Hexen, still in massive turtle form, held one creature against the road while wolves worried at its legs.
Fendor abandoned the bow entirely and fought beside Isamu with shield and sword.
But Nethnarel stopped watching them.
She watched the building.
Another movement inside.
A shape crossed behind a broken doorway.
The village was not large enough to contain this many creatures.
Not without someone having seen them before sunset.
Not without cellars, tunnels or hidden barracks the villagers should have known existed.
Unless they had not been in Aalune at all.
Until the fight started.
Nethnarel descended slightly.
Magic brushed against her senses.
Not from the monster.
From the building.
She focused.
At first the residue disappeared beneath everything else happening in the village—Hexen’s transformation, her own spells, enchanted weapons, summoned wolves, the lingering necrotic wound left by Circle of Death.
She narrowed her awareness.
There.
Inside the structure.
A fixed source.
Spatial magic.
Large.
Sustained.
Nethnarel’s expression changed.
“Hexen.”
The giant turtle looked up.
“Kaylor.”
The dragonborn split one creature’s arm open with the frost axe.
“What?”
“The building.”
Fendor drove the shield into a monster’s chest.
“Which one?”
“Left.”
“That is useless from down here.”
Nethnarel pointed.
Another creature appeared through its broken doorway.
Fendor understood immediately.
“Oh.”
Isamu broke one hook away from his side.
“There.”
Kaylor looked.
The creature emerging from the structure joined the battle.
Behind it, something moved in the darkness.
Another one.
The truth of Aalune changed.
The elder had said they came from every direction.
He had been right because that was what the villagers saw.
Screams began in one quarter.
Then another.
Creatures appeared between homes.
By the time anyone responded, the trail disappeared.
The monsters were not crossing the woods every night.
They were entering the village from somewhere else.
Nethnarel flew toward the building.
Fendor saw her.
“Where are you going?”
“To look.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“That worked extremely well beneath the waterfall.”
She glanced down.
“I came back.”
“Sideways.”
Kaylor hit another creature.
“Nethnarel.”
She stopped above the roof.
“What?”
“Don’t go inside alone.”
Her eyebrows rose.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“Growth.”
Kaylor ignored him.
Nethnarel focused on the magic.
She did not need to enter.
Not yet.
The source was unmistakable now.
Something inside the building was keeping a passage open.
Not a door in wood.
Not a tunnel.
A gate.
A magical connection between Aalune and somewhere that was not Aalune.
Her stomach tightened.
“There’s a gate.”
Hexen returned to human form.
The Cloak of the Moon flowed across his shoulders as the great shell vanished.
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you close it?”
“I don’t know.”
Another two-headed creature broke through the doorway.
Then another shadow appeared behind it.
Fendor looked from the monster to the house.
“They keep coming.”
“Yes.”
Kaylor smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because at last the problem had a shape.
An enemy in the street could be killed.
A scream could be followed.
A village could be defended one frightened block at a time.
But a gate explained why none of that had mattered.
They had been fighting the symptoms.
Now they had found the wound.
Nethnarel landed in the street.
In her hand, the nearly exhausted Wand of Magic Missiles disappeared back into her gear.
Her eyes remained fixed on the building.
“I have something.”
Kaylor looked at her.
“What?”
“A gem.”
Fendor understood from her tone that this would not be a decorative answer.
Nethnarel continued.
“Anti-magic.”
Hexen’s expression changed.
“How much?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Enough?”
“Maybe.”
Another monster forced its way through the ruined entrance.
Kaylor raised the frost axe.
“Find out.”
The heroes turned toward the building.
Behind them, Aalune screamed again.
Ahead, something beyond the world kept sending monsters through an open door that had never belonged there.
And the night was nowhere near over.