The front of the Inn didn’t stand a chance. In a single swift movement, all four of them merged their power together to rip the wall right off its foundation and toss the plastered wood and shattered glass onto the road. The inn’s door was now slammed two feet into an oak tree as tables and chairs lay discarded like pages from a burned book. A few noxious acids and vapours seep from the wreckage. Kiff looked at it with a glance of affirmation. There had been traps in the wall.

  So much for having a place to sleep.

  Oldsgood was waiting for them. The old man stood behind the bar with a wicked grin on his face. Sunlight glinted through the cracks where the wall once stood as the inn’s roof sagged. They weren’t taking any chances. No patrons were inside besides the party and their enemy. What few peasants remained dashed towards the door with confused glances towards the imperial soldiers. He looked scared but his hand already held a crossbow trained towards their position.

  “I have to hand it to you, Barka, you found my stash faster than expected,” the innkeeper muttered.

  Relief waved across Jan’s face. They had jumped to conclusions pretty fast concerning Oldsgood’s innocence, so at least that had been cleared.

  “Oldsgood, as a duly represented Sheriff of Kag, I am placing you under….”

  Oldsgood fired, the bolt screeching through the air to be deflected by Aloat with a single swing of her sword. She looked pleased at this as she used magic to force him upwards. Oldsgood felt his feet rise from the ground as he flailed in desperation, trying to do anything to reach a handful of potions behind the bar’s thick countertop. Aloat slammed him into the bottles behind, causing him to be cut on the shards of broken glass. It was time to change their approach.

  “The changelings? How’d you do it, how’d you control them?” She asked in pure fury.

  Oldsgood snarled. His bloodied lips almost curdling into laughter. The Sheriff showed no mercy. She began to toy with his body like a puppet on strings, whacking him into table after table in succession. In a quick flick of power, she tossed the non-magic innkeeper into the ceiling, causing it to indent and then slammed him into the floor, for him to let out a wheezing cough.

  Jan and Laura cast glances at each other in fright as she continued to hiss towards Oldsgood’s direction. Kiff shrugged as he kept an eye out for anyone else.

  “What kind of a man allies himself with the disease?”

  “Makes good men kill others for profit?”

  Finally, Oldsgood almost seemed like he would answer. His face had contorted to a mixture of pain, but he held strong. An undying fervour made up his entire composure. Loyatly coarsed through the man's veins.

  "You don't understab abything pbesant! I'll pry youb sworb off your bretty bittle bead borpse " He spat with a mouth full of blood before continuing to swear.

  Aloat didn't take this lightly. She slammed him into a piano, dissonant keys chorting out a squelching harmony as Oldsgood continued to take a beating. At last, when the man looked nearly on the brink of death, she walked forward and placed a knife to his throat. Blood matted the carpet as he wheezed. The tip of her blade began to trace a scar on his neck as she turned to face her companions.

  “This is brutal, Commander! I think my memory circuits are scared!” Sill stuttered.

  Jan averted his eyes from Oldsgood’s suffering.

  “Kiff, open that trapdoor; it probably leads directly to the stash.”

  "Wait, Commander, don't open that!" Sill cried.

  Kiff complied with Aloat, leaning forward to raise the door with his hand. For a moment, the room stood tense. However, the second the lid opened for a smidget Aloat changed her orders.

  “Close it, close it!!!!” She shrieked.

  It was too late. The compartment opened like a pop gun with a loaded spring, forcing the trapdoor to swing ajar as a cool wash of power seeped over the entire room. Inside a wrought-iron case was a watcher, and Kiff just opened the door. The darkness had already seeped in.

  In an instant, Jan felt his magical power drain.

  He fumbled for his sword, feeling almost completely unprotected in the foreign world the watcher had just sequestered. He reached out to the source to find his connection severed. Its radius couldn’t have been much larger than the entire house, but its existence alone showed this was no tiny operation. Watchers were extremely expensive. Kiff slammed his entire weight against the lid to no avail as they began to emerge.

  Ratlings

  There must have been twelve or so of the three-foot creatures. Rats armed with sharpened sticks and rusty knives rushed from the Inn’s basement. They chirped in an unintelligible swirl of sloppy noise but one thing disturbed their thick furry coats and talon-like hands. Puss. It was almost a fleshing, sticky, oozing growth that stretched from their eyeballs to their ears. The entire backs of their heads was pulpous red exposed flesh, and bile gushed like an open wound. Jan recognized what it was in an instant but the sight terrified him. The parasite. All of these creatures were infected and so addled with disease that it had rotted through their core and began to mulch on their open skin.

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  Oldshood got up and swung while they were distracted. Aloat instantly reacted and punched him downwards towards the floor.

  Laura sliced a ratling's head, a well-practiced swing, shaving it’s head clean off but they just kept coming. In an instant, Aloat sprang into action, foot still on top of Oldsgood’s body as she parried a strike from a ratling's wooden dagger and plunged her sword into the heart of another. The remaining nine creatures went for Jan. They seemed to work in unison, circling him with their long snout’s, beedy eyes and sharpened buckteeth. Jan took a swing with his sword, but he was woefully unprepared, almost stumbling as he cursed his knowledge in hand-to-hand combat. He grabbed a bottle instead and tossed it at the ratling leader to see it shrug the attack and screech forward. Rat-spit flew into his eyes as the creatures charged. Their fangs glowered in the inn’s ruins, and he climbed a table to escape. The parasite on their heads almost reverberated with every move, like a collective hive barking out orders. Jan had heard of this before through reading Damnu’s far-fetched accounts but for the disease to reach this phase, it must have been years of incubation or habitation and even then they weren’t supposed to issue commands, let alone organize a battle.

  “Behind you Commander, behind you!” Sill roared.

  Jan turned to have a Ratling jump on him. He wrestled with it’s teeth before slamming the creature into the floor and stomping on it’s head. Another threw a spear at his cloak and managed to pin him to the wall. Jan retaliated, using a towel from Oldsgoods collection to shield himself from their sharpened cleavers.

  Aloat took the time to whack another ratling with a chair and kick a crawling Oldsgood in the chest. The man let out another grunt before he gave up. Kiff was still trying to close the trapdoor. He looked around frantically for a switch behind the bar or anything that could seal the watcher back into it’s wrought iron tomb. Aloat cast a glance towards him and the two nodded.

  “It’s range is weak, we can use magic outside!” She cried.

  Jan was on top of the bar now, throwing bottle after bottle at the incoming ratlings. Sixteen-year-old Dworkish Brandy, Wei wine, imported beer and imperial scotch slammed into ratling spines and collarbones with a sickening crunch. Still they kept coming. It was almost endless with Oldsgood’s basement almost acting as a sort of portal for the putrid vermin.

  The four cast non-sequential looks at each other before running towards the exit. Kiff was the first one there, and he drew his bow. Firing arrow after arrow into the ratling horde.

  Six fell in an instant. Another two were pinned behind tables while they lobbed glasses and cutlery at their unsuspecting foes. The ratlings fought like animals. Feroscious and devout yet devoid of a single hint of strategy.

  Then Laura screamed.

  It wasn’t a scream of pain or anguish it was screech of terror.

  A dalious stood in the door.

  The nine-foot-tall lizard monstrosity slammed a tree trunk into the bar. The wood shattered on impact with debris soaring through the air to patter like shrapnel into the ground. It was wearing ragged clothes and snarled behind a forked tongue and sharp fangs. It was fairly young, no more than three of four but what was even more terrifying was the growth. The same putrid stitching blood-riddled mass clung to the creature's head like fungi on rotten trees. It squirted out ooze at the same time as the ratlings, seemingly in command.

  Aloat pivoted, with a swift stomp she crunched Oldsgood’s hand with her boot and ran towards the creature.

  It swung first.

  Floorboards shifted.

  The tree trunk planted itself into the ground, and the creature pulled back as it made a slow attempt to dislodge the weapon. Aloat slashed it’s legs, drawing green blood and sprinting around ratlings as she tried to make an exit.

  "Airstrike 888, 44456,8327, I repeat Orbital strike on my position, this is TACTI coordinate 1724, requesting immediate extraction!" Sill muttered quickly.

  “Run Commander!! Run!” Sill cried.

  The dalious was too strong. In one swift motion, it punched the air near Aloat’s head. Had her reflexes been but a second shorter, the Sheriff’s face would have been painted on wallboard, but she dodged to cut its arm with her dagger. She fumbled for her belt, throwing potions of corrosive acid in its eyes, only for the creature to stumble back and scream in agony. It rubbed its face for a moment with meaty three-fingered hands only to hiss back at Aloat and pick her up by the scruff of her cloak before throwing her three feet in the air.

  Three more ratlings focused on Jan. He was able to half-hazardly chop off the arm of one, but its companions screeched while they tried to lunge at his chest with butter-knives and assorted imperial daggers.

  Kiff now focused his efforts on the hulking lizard. He shot an arrow and it pierced into the creature's forehead, but the beast almost laughed through it’s iron-skull.

  "Tell the Jannic to shoot the parasite!! shoot the parasite!" Sill screamed.

  “The mass! Target the mass!” Laura shouted, reverberating the rocks conclusions.

  In an instant, Kiff adapted, firing arrow after arrow into the fleshy squelch sprouting from the daliouses' ears. At first, it worked with the creature bellowing in pain, but then it got worse. The ratlings rallied, surrounding their monstrous commander as Oldsgood howled with laughter.

  Kiff abandoned his bow, his quiver now empty, as he slashed his sword wildly. A ratling swung, but their wooden sword was blocked by the deputy's armour.

  He took down one ratling, then another, then a third and a fourth. At last he leaped forward and started stabbing the dalious itself. Grabbing hold of the creature's neck, the lizard shook vigorously before tossing him to the side. Kiff rolled and dodged another one of its ground-breaking swings and tried to cut one of its fingers.

  He missed. His sword slammed into the wrought-iron cell beneath them, and the dalious took advantage of the moment. In one single movement, it picked up Kiff and threw him sixty feet.

  Kiff was dead on impact.

  The world froze. Jan could feel his heart skip a beat when Kiff’s mangled corpse rested on the ground. His chainmail was bloodied, red hair the same colour as the wet floor. Rage coursed through his veins as he let out a terrible scream. That was until sadness consumed him. Whatever commanded that creature should count their prayers at night, savour every sliver, every moment that their sordid heart beated red. He would make sure they looked at the stars one last time. Jan grabbed a ratling, pinning it to the ground and stabbing it repeatedly in frustration, even as the corpse turned sour.

  He heard Aloat calling their friend's name. Her own voice was weak yet fueled by desperation. Jan cast a glance at Laura, she had been knocked out but was still alive. For some reason’s the ratlings ignored her in this state. Kiff’s pale face slowly faded with warmth, hope draining from his once bright eyes.

  He ran.

  Jan sprinted upstairs with Aloat. The two of them made their way down the nearest hallway. There had to be something, anything that they could do. They slammed a wardrobe down to stop the dalious before turning the corner. Panic set into his every move. Their breaths laced with anguish and thoughts dancing fervently towards terror.

  “The window! Jump out the window Commander!!” Sill screeched.

  “Hide!” Aloat hissed.

  Jan climbed into a closet.

  Silence followed.

  He heard the floorboards snap as it approached. The closet door had a slit, a tiny opening where he could peer into the outside world. The creature had grabbed Aloat by the cloak and lifted her into the air like a common toy. Then, to his horror and the sheer terror of the famous Sheriff, the creature spoke. It wasn’t something it could do, Dalious can’t speak. They could never speak. Neither could ratlings coordinate attacks. It was an unnatural voice. A sound that had never been meant to be replicated in the waking world.

  “Wheressss the boy, where is the boy Janss, the offworlder?” It snarled.

  The young scribe leaned back, covering his mouth to hide his breath as the creature continued to question Aloat. A coat fell onto his shoulders, and he grimaced as he tripped over the closet's contents.

  "Run, Commander, run! This isn't a jannic, it's the enemy! Run!" Sill cried.

  He stayed still.

  “Dawnshire, we left Jan in Dawnshire,” Aloat responded.

  “Liessss,” the dalious slithered.

  “I swear on my life we left Jan in Dawnshire” She continued.

  Then it punched through the closet door.