Morlo didn’t wake up that day, but Gruin did. He was very much as angry as you might have expected, thundering around swearing and raving. George, the arsehole we’d been nothing short of robbed in exchange for our shelter, was quick in heading over to investigate the sound. Unfortunately for him, this came immediately after Gruin found out how much money we’d gotten shaken down for.

  George wasn’t even one step into the room before the Grynkori was up, stumbling over and grabbing him. I’ve seen Gruin hoist men clean off their feet. Right then, wounded and weighed down by thick plate, he didn’t quite have the strength for it.

  He just dragged the big villager down to stare him in the eye instead.

  “Where the fuck is my money, lank?”

  George, an idiot, met the Grynkori’s stare.

  “It’s my money.”

  Gruin did not kill him, because we were fast enough to forcibly extricate his would-be victim before any bones could be broken or displaced. He did manage to scare the shit out of George though.

  “What’s wrong with you people?” he spat as he stumbled back to his feet.

  “SOMEONE TOOK MY FUCKING MONEY!” Gruin roared, not, apparently, caring that he had found out about the existence of said money only ten minutes earlier. His voice rolled out through the town like someone had fired a cannon out of his throat.

  The townsman stood up straighter, apparently seeing a challenge in Gruin. “I’m not here to fight,” he spat, “there’s something happening beyond the walls.”

  “Why is that any of our business?” Dubin asked, frank as ever.

  “Because the people here are currently debating whether it’s your fault, and if we should kill you over it,” George replied, franker still.

  That rearranged my priorities, and I wasted no time in accompanying him outside. George shot a glance at the still-bound Cedwin, but apparently knew better than to say anything about him. God only knows what he thought about us at that point. Sometimes I crack up thinking back to it.

  I had enough time to imagine a great many fears as we headed for the walls, and pretty much all of them fell short of what actually awaited me there. The wretchlings staring at the town numbered maybe a hundred or two. Certainly more than I’d have wanted to fight but…well, shit, they’re so bloody tiny it’s hard to get intimidated by them. Certainly when you’ve already escaped from a hundred times their number or more.

  “What do you want?” I called out to them, figuring that if I didn’t snap myself into the conversation I’d have time for my yellow streak to rear its head. The wretchlings called back and said…something I didn’t hear.

  Turns out, their lungs are a lot smaller than ours, too. And their ears a lot bigger. I had to somewhat awkwardly shout back and let them know I hadn’t a clue what they were saying before they shuffled closer to repeat it.

  “Come out and we’ll let the town live,” said their leader. I thought about that for a second.

  “How?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “How will you let the town live? How will you be making that decision? What threat do you pose to the town.”

  I’d be surprised if there was a single soldier here outside of our group, but there were also at least a thousand people and all of them were humans. The average wretchling was literally under half the weight of these people.

  Apparently, their leader was starting to realise that fact now.

  “We’ll storm you,” he said hastily, “with ten—fifty times the numbers you see now.”

  I was more than a little cautious about them, having seen that they did have those numbers in the peaks. I was also cautious about any of them who’d want to talk to me. People who want to kill you for no reason don’t stop to chat if they think they don’t stand to gain from it.

  And they’d not stand to gain anything if they actually had the ability to swarm us.

  “I don’t believe you,” I told the wretchling. “Was that all you wanted to say?”

  They started shrieking at that, hissing curses and threats that I did my best to tune out. Despite their size, I’ll admit to being unnerved. There’s only so much you can do to mentally shrug off aggression from two hundred sources at once.

  Fortunately, my courage only needed to keep pretending it existed for a few seconds before the wretchlings turned and stalked off. I watched them, feeling vaguely weirded out all the while.

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  “What have you brought to my town?” George growled, fury sizzling up into his eyes with such intensity that my own were quickly looking for his blunderbus.

  “Nothing,” I snapped, “there were already wretchlings up there and I don’t think we’re the reason they left the mountains. They’re too active for that. Something else has been driving them here.”

  That something was, if I was right at all, the Demon. Truth was I was talking out of my arse to avoid getting hanged by a bunch of angry villagers. It seemed to be working though. George’s anger slowly evaporated as he tried to stare me down a moment longer, then stormed away when I didn’t start beating my own chest and meeting his challenge. I just didn’t have that sort of stupid pride in me anymore. Another piece of evidence to my theory that a bit of suffering goes a long way.

  Speaking of suffering, things were going as you might expect back at the barn. Vara was apparently the de facto leader in my absence, even with Gruin awake. That probably came from just the two of us being most closely associated with Morlo in everyone else’s mind.

  Trouble is, she didn’t have quite as much experience with almost dying as me.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, as soon as I entered. Probably she was trying to direct attention back to me, which was a good idea because everyone present had the look of a group that was fraying apart. I got everyone up to speed and tried to hide my own bafflement at what was going on.

  It would’ve been nice to have Morlo awake and able to contribute, but he remained thoroughly unconscious. Moving around, at least, mumbling things, but in no condition to be offering any kind of advice or information, because the Thaumaturge was pathologically unable to actually benefit me.

  Cedwin had to remain tied up, at least until the situation stabilised, but I trusted everyone else enough to let them wander. Or, rather, knew that trying to prevent them from doing so would be an unpopular enough command to shatter whatever fragile veneer of authority I’d managed to somehow project.

  Part of me wanted to start moving around too, but my body was just unwilling. I almost struggled removing my plate, though I’d drilled a lot on how to do so myself already, and spent a good few minutes lying back and just enjoying the relative weightlessness of its absence once I did. Most of you people reading this have probably worn plate at least once, I can’t imagine the common man is getting his grubby fingers on these records. Come to think of it, that also means that you’re exactly the sort of privileged wanker who heroes actually do serve, making my little tirade at the end of the last account’s epilogue a bit ill aimed.

  Whatever. This is already a compilation of me being an idiot, if your opinion of my intelligence has survived that then it should weather this just fine as well.

  Being more or less alone with Morlo was usually unnerving, but I found it relaxing there. The old man was a lot less of a terror when unconscious. What I’d not been expecting was for him to start talking, mumbling really, in his sleep. At first I listened just for something to do while I laid there and rested.

  Then I listened harder, because I started hearing things that interested me.

  “Didn’t…Mean…Didn’t…” Morlo was sweating, tossing and turning. It was a good sign as far as his recovery went—dying people didn’t have the spare energy to do that—but left me all the more enraptured. “Durun…Durundhai…”

  I recognise the city now of course, but the name slipped my mind at the time. I leaned in, tried to hear more. To make sense of whatever was happening. This was a rare peek behind the Thaumaturge’s impenetrable shield of manipulation, and I didn’t intend to waste it.

  “Heroes…Not ready, too many. Done before. Tried before. Durundhai…Not again. Fuck you…Demons…All…” It became less coherent as I listened, and whatever snippets I could parse, mostly individual words, didn’t jump out to me beyond that at all.

  But the act of listening woke me up a bit. I was nice and alert when Il’vanja entered, though I didn’t hear her footsteps even from a few paces away. Aelfs seem to glide. I’ve realised in my later years the reason their gaits are so disturbing, it’s pure mechanical efficiency. More optimized than clockwork, and all of them share it. I was on edge before she started speaking.

  “There’s been another development,” the aelf told me, “the Demon approaches.”

  Well that was about at the bottom on my list of desirable bits of news. Suddenly I felt a lot worse about staying in the town even briefly, but then we’d not had the option of leaving it in our condition. Not without getting run down anyway.

  I took the time to put my armour on, though was stupid enough to initially refuse when Il’vanja offered to help me don it.

  “Wouldn’t be right,” I told her, “a woman helping. Touching me like that, it…Wouldn’t be right.”

  “Your socially constructed gender segregation is more important to you than saving time in donning your protective wear?” she asked.

  It was the earnestness that gets you, with aelfs. They’ll ask the most ridiculous questions, the way they phrase things makes you sound like you’re insane, and do so without the slightest hint of sarcasm. Makes you feel like a fucking idiot. In this case, I was one, but not enough so to refuse when prodded so logically. We got the plate on in a scant few minutes and were hurrying through town shortly after.

  Outside the walls, there were wretchlings. More wretchlings than I’d seen last time, more than I’d feared I might see this time. My hopeful theory had been that the vast majority would be unable to follow us due to disunity and the narrow passes leading out of the Foggy Peaks. This was probably correct, but still left us staring down a good thousand or two at least.

  I barely saw them however. My eyes fell instantly on the Demon. It was just as terrifying as before, maybe moreso. Thrice as many limbs, a thousand eyes, the air hissed and smoked around it and I felt a terrible promise of violence whispered down every bone of my neck.

  Believe it or not, I was actually handling the sight better than almost everyone else. Even among our ‘fellowship’ people were flinching back, avoiding sight, taking cover. Acting as if the Demon’s gaze alone were cannon fire. Considering it had stared down Morlo in a battle of magic and come out the victor, that wasn’t so far from the truth.

  Gruin, of course, was among the few who showed less fear than me. Which is to say, precisely none like always. It was actually hard to stop him from throwing himself over the walls and engaging the wretchlings in melee.

  “World shall fall,” the Demon called out, making the air shiver as it did, “All shall burn.”

  It disappeared then, just broke up into smoke and nothingness. I was relieved for all of a second before looking behind it, to the horizons.

  I saw the thickest Blackmists of my life rolling over towards us.

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