The next scream came from directly ahead.
Kaylor did not wait to decide whether that was better or worse than hearing one from across the village.
He ran.
The five heroes had fallen into a rough patrol formation after destroying the second portal, moving through Aalune with the deliberate caution of people who had finally accepted that the night would not end simply because they had won the last battle. The streets were quieter now. Too many villagers had learned to stay behind shuttered windows, and the few who still moved outside hurried from one doorway to another with their heads lowered and weapons held badly.
The scream cut through all of that.
A woman.
Tiefling, judging from the voice, though terror made ancestry difficult to distinguish.
One instant she was crying out somewhere beyond the next row of houses.
The next, Kaylor was gone.
Fendor watched the dragonborn accelerate down the street.
“Of course.”
Isamu passed him.
Fendor frowned.
“Of course.”
Nethnarel rose above the road, fiery wings spreading behind her. Hexen came after the others at a more sustainable pace, the Cloak of the Moon shifting around his shoulders while the wolves followed in a loose pack.
The scream came again.
Shorter.
Then the street disappeared.
Darkness did not descend from the sky. It appeared in the road itself, a vast concentration of blackness that swallowed buildings, fences, doorways and everyone unfortunate enough to stand within it. Lantern light vanished at the boundary. Starlight ceased. The glow from Nethnarel’s wings reached the edge and stopped as cleanly as though she had flown beside a wall.
Kaylor entered it without slowing.
For several heartbeats the scream continued somewhere inside.
Then it stopped.
Nethnarel hovered above the black mass.
“That’s not normal darkness.”
Fendor arrived beneath her.
“That observation is why we keep you.”
Something struck steel inside the void.
Kaylor.
Another impact followed.
Then a sound Fendor did not recognize.
Not quite a growl.
Not quite a hiss.
Kaylor’s voice came from somewhere beyond the darkness.
“I found them.”
“How many?”
Steel rang again.
Kaylor did not answer.
Fendor looked at Isamu.
The monk was already entering.
“No.”
Isamu vanished.
Fendor stared at the place where he had been.
“Why do I continue saying that?”
Hexen reached them.
“Because someday someone may listen.”
The whip cracked from inside the blackness.
Once.
Again.
Something inside made a wet sound.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“Today is apparently not that day.”
He stepped into the dark.
Sight vanished.
Not dimmed.
Not obscured.
Gone.
Fendor had fought underground. He had fought blindfolded once, although he preferred not to remember the circumstances. He had shot through smoke and magical fog, killed invisible things by predicting where they would move, and once placed an arrow through a target after seeing only the shadow it cast beneath a door.
This was different.
There was no information.
The world stopped at the ends of his fingers.
He could not see Kaylor.
Could not see Isamu.
Could not see the sword in his own hand.
The first thing that reached him was sound.
Breathing.
Not his.
Something rushed through the darkness from his right.
Fendor turned.
Too late.
A hard impact glanced from his shield. Something narrower followed it, whipping around the rim and striking through a gap near his arm.
Pain burned across his side.
Then the poison arrived.
He recognized that before he understood the creature.
Heat raced outward from the wound with unnatural speed. Muscles tightened. His heart gave one violent beat, and for an instant his sword arm became strangely distant, as though someone else had borrowed it.
Fendor planted his feet.
“No.”
The venom pushed deeper.
He forced breath into his lungs.
The world remained black.
Something moved near him.
Fendor swung.
The blade cut empty air.
Another strike came.
He caught that one on the shield.
The poison tried again to take his balance.
He refused it.
Centuries of elven endurance, several lifetimes of wounds and the simple fact that he had no intention of being killed in a village street by something he could not even see combined into an argument his body finally accepted.
The weakness receded.
Not entirely.
Enough.
“Poison,” Fendor called.
Kaylor answered from somewhere ahead.
“Good.”
Fendor stared into complete darkness.
“You have ruined that word.”
Something struck Kaylor hard enough that Fendor heard armor complain.
Then another blow.
Neither penetrated.
Kaylor laughed.
That was not reassuring.
The enemies inside the darkness had chosen the wrong person to discover first.
Kaylor could not see them.
Apparently that was mutual inconvenience at best.
He fought toward sound.
Peacemaker—or perhaps the frost axe; Fendor could not distinguish weapons by the noise they made striking monsters—moved somewhere ahead with brutal certainty. An attacker hissed. Kaylor answered with another blow. Whatever had struck him hit again and found only enchanted armor.
“Still here,” Kaylor said.
“That is becoming obvious.”
Isamu’s whip cracked again.
Fendor heard the leather cut the air, vanish into the dark and connect with something that had believed blindness would make the monk harmless.
It connected again.
Isamu said nothing.
He did not need to.
Nethnarel remained outside.
That was the intelligent choice.
She had been preparing Scorching Ray when she reached the battlefield. From above she could sense movement throughout the magical blackness, and before the darkness completely swallowed the street she had glimpsed at least two hostile shapes among her companions.
Now she could distinguish none of them.
Fire gathered between her fingers.
She stopped.
Somewhere below, Kaylor hit something.
Something else attacked Fendor.
Isamu’s whip snapped.
Hexen entered from another angle.
Nethnarel lowered her hand.
“No.”
Fendor heard her from inside.
“That sounds promising.”
“I can’t see you.”
“That is less promising.”
“I could shoot anyway.”
“Do not.”
Kaylor shouted, “Do it.”
“No,” Fendor and Hexen said together.
Nethnarel smiled despite herself.
She climbed.
The darkness rose higher than she expected, a vast blind cylinder occupying the space between several buildings. She continued upward until its upper boundary fell beneath her.
From there she could see Aalune again.
Roofs.
Lanterns.
The dark shape of the village around the impossible void.
But not what happened inside it.
She held the spell.
For once, patience was the more dangerous choice.
Below her, another creature found Hexen.
He heard the tail before it struck.
A sharp displacement of air came through the dark. Hexen twisted. The first attack missed. Something else scraped across the Cloak of the Moon and glanced away.
Then a barbed point found him.
The sting entered beneath his ribs.
Hexen recoiled.
The venom came immediately.
A different poison from the lake disease, though not entirely different in feeling. His body recognized invasion now with an intimacy he would have preferred not to possess. Something hot and aggressive entered his blood and began searching for weakness.
Hexen reached inward.
The poison met a druid who had spent too many years turning his body into animals with digestive systems nature had never intended humans to experience.
It failed.
For the moment.
The creature pulled back.
Hexen could not see it.
But something else remained with him.
Light.
The spell.
He had maintained the Sunbeam through the patrol more from caution than intention, its radiance held in readiness while they searched Aalune for the next threat. Inside the magical darkness, ordinary sight had disappeared completely.
The Sunbeam did not.
Its light did not destroy the blackness. The spell was too deep, too complete for that.
But around Hexen, a faint white radiance persisted.
Not enough for the others.
Enough for him.
The darkness changed.
Shapes appeared.
Not fully.
Edges.
A claw.
A hunched body turning toward him.
A tail ending in something sharp enough to make the poison in his side suddenly more understandable.
Another shape behind that.
Then another.
Hexen breathed slowly.
“Oh.”
Fendor heard him.
“What?”
“They can see.”
“Wonderful.”
“No. They don’t need to.”
That was worse.
The creatures moved through the magical darkness without hesitation because sight had never mattered to them in the first place. Whether they sensed heat, sound, vibration or something less natural, the blindness imposed upon the heroes belonged only to the heroes.
Hexen raised one hand.
The Sunbeam answered.
He found three shapes lined almost perfectly through the darkness.
The ray erupted.
For an instant, the blackness contained a white wound.
Radiance tore through the first creature and struck the second. The third twisted too slowly.
The blast should have blinded them.
It did not matter.
Things that hunted without eyes did not care whether light had taken their sight.
But they cared very much about being burned.
Their screams gave everyone else targets.
Fendor moved toward one.
He could hear it thrashing after Hexen’s light struck.
Three steps.
A scrape.
Something breathed close enough that he smelled sour flesh.
He swung.
The Vorpal Longsword connected.
Fendor reversed the cut.
Hit again.
The creature tried to move.
The third strike found it before it could escape.
Something heavy collapsed at his feet.
For several seconds Fendor remained motionless, listening.
The darkness around that part of the street changed.
Not disappeared.
Thinned.
One portion of the black field contracted sharply, revealing a wall, half a fence and the shape of Isamu standing much closer than Fendor had expected.
Another section remained completely opaque beyond them.
Fendor crouched.
His fingers found warm blood on the road.
Isamu looked down.
“What are you doing?”
“Confirming.”
“You cut it three times.”
“I couldn’t see it.”
“Now you touched it.”
“Yes.”
“Better?”
Fendor wiped his hand on the dead creature.
“Marginally.”
Kaylor emerged from the weakening edge of the darkness at almost the same moment.
He had found something inside.
It had regretted being found.
The creature followed him into view only long enough for Fendor to understand fragments of what they had been fighting. Clawed limbs. A body designed for sudden movement. A long flexible appendage ending in a stinger or barb.
Kaylor struck.
The thing dropped.
“That one was bothering me.”
Fendor looked toward the remaining darkness.
“You have a remarkable tolerance for being bothered.”
Something moved inside.
Hexen shouted.
Kaylor went back in.
Nethnarel finally had a target.
One of the creatures burst beyond the boundary of the darkness, perhaps trying to escape Hexen’s light or reposition around Kaylor. It emerged into open night and immediately discovered that the darkness had been protecting it from something far worse than swords.
Nethnarel saw it.
Her held spell vanished.
A different choice took its place.
“Stay there.”
The creature looked up.
It had no reason to understand the warning.
Nethnarel pointed.
The air between them became a line of terrible certainty.
Disintegration magic struck the creature squarely.
For an instant it remained whole.
Then structure stopped mattering.
Flesh, whatever passed for bone, the barbed tail and the entire violent shape broke apart into drifting particulate ash that scattered over the street.
Fendor watched from below.
“That seemed excessive.”
Nethnarel descended slightly.
“It is gone.”
“That was not disagreement.”
A fresh cry came from inside the remaining darkness.
Hexen.
The poison had found him again.
Another creature had reached the druid through the dim radius of his own light. Claws struck first. He turned one away, but the second attack drove him backward. The tail followed.
This time the barb landed cleanly.
Venom entered.
Hexen felt his body attempt the same rejection that had worked moments earlier.
It failed.
The poison spread through him.
His arms became heavier.
His reactions slowed.
The Sunbeam remained, but holding the spell suddenly demanded concentration that had previously been effortless.
The creature attacked again.
Hexen brought a weapon across and met it at close range. The blade struck harder than Fendor would later have expected from him.
Then again.
The attacker recoiled.
Kaylor appeared from the darkness and finished what Hexen had started.
For one heartbeat the two stood inside the faint radiance together.
Kaylor looked at him.
“You look bad.”
“Poisoned.”
“Can you fight?”
Hexen attacked something moving behind Kaylor.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Hexen glared.
“You have ruined that word too.”
Kaylor grinned.
The battle contracted.
That was how the heroes knew they were winning.
Not because the darkness had vanished.
Not because the creatures stopped being dangerous.
Because chaos began acquiring boundaries.
At the beginning they had entered a place where their enemies controlled every advantage. The heroes could not see one another. The creatures could. Poison came from attacks they could barely identify. Every spell Nethnarel possessed threatened friends as easily as foes, and the street itself had ceased to exist beyond the blackness.
Now they understood enough.
Hexen’s light gave them an anchor.
Kaylor fought from it.
Isamu moved along the edge of sound, striking through the dark and retreating before anything could answer cleanly.
Fendor stopped trying to see.
That helped most of all.
An archer learned early that eyes were only part of the shot.
Wind mattered.
Weight.
The expectation of movement.
Sound.
He heard claws on stone.
Drew the Icy Burst bow.
Waited.
Released into blackness.
Something snarled.
He fired again.
The arrow found a second target—or perhaps the same one. The darkness refused to clarify.
Isamu’s whip cracked nearby.
A creature screamed.
Fendor adjusted.
Third arrow.
The scream stopped.
“Still hate this,” he said.
Isamu passed somewhere beside him.
“You’re hitting them.”
“I would like to know what I’m hitting.”
“Why?”
Fendor considered.
“I have no answer that improves the situation.”
Another enemy rushed Hexen.
The druid’s poisoned body reacted half a step too late.
Kaylor intercepted it.
A heavy blow drove the thing sideways. Isamu’s whip caught it. Fendor’s arrow struck from somewhere beyond the darkness.
The creature fell.
The remaining blackness shuddered.
Then it collapsed.
Night returned.
Actual night.
The difference was astonishing.
Stars appeared overhead.
Lanterns glowed again along the street.
Nethnarel’s fire painted the rooftops orange.
For several seconds every hero simply looked around, rediscovering where everyone had been.
Kaylor stood near the center of the road, armor marked by strikes that had failed to penetrate.
Isamu was twenty feet away with the whip still raised.
Fendor stood beside two bodies and appeared faintly annoyed by both.
Hexen leaned against the corner of a damaged building, visibly pale beneath the poison.
Nethnarel hovered above all of them.
More creatures remained than Fendor appreciated.
Not many.
Enough.
The sudden return of sight hurt them more than it helped.
They had built their assault around blindness.
Now five Heroes of Oxland could see them.
Kaylor moved first.
He crossed the short distance and struck one down before it adjusted.
Isamu went after another.
The whip tangled one limb, redirected the creature’s charge and exposed it to Fendor.
The arrow landed.
Hexen forced his poisoned body forward and attacked again.
Nethnarel descended on the last visible target.
She did not use another great spell.
She did not need one.
Fire and steel ended what the darkness had begun.
Then nothing moved.
The street became quiet.
Again.
Fendor stood motionless for several breaths, still listening for claws that were no longer there.
Kaylor looked toward the bodies.
“How many?”
“No.”
“I was asking how many there were.”
“No.”
Kaylor smiled.
Fendor lowered the bow.
“Counting has become associated with bad outcomes.”
Isamu looked around the street.
“There were enough.”
Kaylor nodded.
“Good answer.”
Fendor pointed at him.
“Stop.”
Hexen pushed away from the building.
His balance wavered.
Nethnarel landed beside him.
“Still poisoned?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
Hexen considered.
There were answers measured in pain.
Others in weakness.
This was the second kind.
The venom had not put him down, but it had made every movement cost more than it should.
“Annoying.”
Fendor joined them.
“That is Hexen for serious.”
“I know.”
They spent only what they needed.
A little healing.
Enough magic to keep the wounded moving.
Enough attention to Isamu and Fendor that injuries accumulated across three fights did not become the thing that killed them in the fourth.
No one reached for their deepest reserves.
Chapter 85’s lesson had survived into the next battle.
The night wanted them exhausted.
They had finally become stubborn about refusing.
Only then did Fendor notice the villagers.
Those who had survived the first moments of the attack had not returned to their homes.
They were running.
Not through Aalune.
Away from it.
Tieflings crossed the outer streets toward the woodland in frightened groups, some carrying children, some dragging relatives, some with nothing at all. Whatever faith remained after the heroes closed two portals had been damaged by watching another piece of the village disappear beneath magical darkness while unknown things hunted inside it.
Fendor watched them go.
“They’re leaving.”
Kaylor did not tell them to stop.
Neither did Nethnarel.
Aalune had asked these people to remain inside while monsters entered through impossible gates, descended from the sky and now turned entire streets blind.
At some point flight stopped being cowardice and became arithmetic.
Hexen looked toward the woods.
“They might be safer there.”
Fendor glanced at the dark trees.
“Tonight?”
Hexen considered.
“No.”
“Excellent.”
“But perhaps less unsafe.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It may be enough.”
The building nearest the darkness deserved investigation.
That conclusion no longer required discussion.
Every strange structure in Aalune had earned suspicion.
The first portal had hidden inside a house.
The second inside a hut.
Now a magical darkness had appeared around another attack near yet another cluster of buildings.
They entered carefully.
Kaylor first.
Isamu above when possible.
Fendor covering the door.
Nethnarel searching for magic.
Hexen listening for anything alive that should not have been there.
Nothing.
No portal.
No ritual chamber.
No hidden shaft descending beneath Aalune.
No obvious source for the creatures.
The rooms contained the remains of an ordinary life interrupted by terror. A table. Crockery. A chair knocked over near the door. Bedding. A few possessions abandoned by whoever had lived there.
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“Anything?”
She shook her head.
“Not like the gates.”
Kaylor searched the rear wall.
“No cellar?”
“Not one that matters.”
Isamu looked toward the window.
The darkness outside was ordinary now.
Hexen touched the sting wound near his ribs.
They had won another battle.
They had learned almost nothing.
That felt worse than losing ground.
Aalune had endured creatures entering from magical portals.
Flying undead.
Now hunters that brought darkness with them and poisoned whatever they touched.
There was no single enemy type.
No single method.
No single direction.
The village was not merely under attack.
It was being subjected to something.
Tested.
Pressed.
Fed upon piece by piece by a night that kept changing its shape whenever the heroes found an answer.
Fendor stepped outside.
The others followed.
For several seconds nothing happened.
He almost laughed.
The silence had fooled them three times already.
It would have been insulting if it worked again.
Then the screaming began in the center of Aalune.
Not one person.
Several.
A chorus of sudden terror rose above the rooftops.
Kaylor turned.
Fendor closed his eyes.
“Of course.”
Kaylor was already running.
This time, no one told him to stop.