Sorore knelt, her brother seemingly petrified at the girl’s limp grip. She gently slid Aya’s fingers from his shirt and grasped them. Other children might feel embarrassed or a certain amount of self-reproach for the action. But not a fellow Bequeathed - the trials of the dreams that haunted their steps were a shadow on all their lives. Rather, Sorore felt a welling of resolve, to ensure that her new sister would learn to temper it as they had.

Frare at this point was kneeling next to her, watching Aya’s face as it twitched and shuddered. Eventually, her eyes closed and slurred words turned to steady breathing.

“Well that was…” said Frare, “we should probably go. Yes. Let’s go.”

Sorore looked at him with the sourest expression she could manage.

“Oh, now you want to go. Not when you were disturbing her the first time,” she said, gentling tucking Aya’s hand under the cloak, “scaredy-cat.”

“I am not,” her brother insisted, the volume rising to an inappropriate level.

“Fine, fine. I’ve got the blankets, now come on,” she said, leading her brother away and closing the door behind them. As they stepped out onto the clearing where the fire pit was, they noticed the two paladins speaking in hushed tones.

“What was all that about?” said Frare as he threw the blankets over his shoulders and sat in front of the fire.

“How’s lady Aya?” asked Lillian.

“Sleeping,” Sorore said, offering the pair a blanket, to their polite refusal.

“Concern won’t let you avoid the question,” said Frare. Sorore resisted the urge to smack him for the discourtesy.

“We were discussing the commander’s ‘warning’, cryptic as it may be,” Lillian said.

“He said to keep a ‘sharp eye’,” Niche huffed, “You know, I think it’s just superstition, him and his ‘bad winds’.”

“Either way, we’ll never be caught unawares,” assured Lillian.

Sorore settled on an over-turned log by the fireside and mirrored the paladins' movements. Characteristically, her brother broke the silence that followed.

“So, the things from the forest? That brings the cold. That’s what he’s worried about?”

The expression from the paladins told the twins everything.

“The… the-” Frare’s face screwed up as he tried to recall the proper name.

“Malfeazed,” Sorore supplied, quietly.

The shadows at the edge of their fire seemed a little darker, the night a little colder at the term.

“Malfeazed, malfeazed,” Frare said as he rolled the word around, and the faces around the pit grew tighter, “like ‘malfeasance’?”

“You remember the weirdest things,” Sorore sighed in exasperation.

“So where do they come from, then? And not just ‘monsters from the deep’.”

“What more do you need to know?” Sorore said.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Deep was the Deep. It was evil. Everything that came from it was evil. It wasn’t a difficult line of thought.

Niche made for his parchment of scripture, before being stopped by Lillian.

“You must be hungry. Why don’t we break for supper?”

Frare sat forward and locked eyes with her, not just in sharp inquiry, but in active defiance.

Lillian held his stare, while Niche divided up dried meat and hard cheese, with chunks of bread. It was far from the fine fair they’d been subjected to in the series of castles they’d inhabited, but Sorore didn’t mind. They’d had some truly terrible meals when they were aboard their father's ship. “I’d never ask the crew anything I wouldn't do myself,” she recalled him saying, before wrinkling his nose at the slop before him, “and that includes eating this.”

Sorore held the food in front of Frare’s nose, watching as he struggled to keep his eyes off the food. Finally, he relented, inhaling the provision with gusto. Lillian seemed content to leave it at that.

“You are so predictable,” she said as she passed her portion to her brother, who promptly wolfed it down.

That spirit of fairness had always been strong within their father, even when it came to his children. He didn’t believe in spoiling them, despite the dedicated effort of her grandparents and fervent advocacy of their mother. Just when she was about to speak the thoughts aloud, hoping to prompt Frare to reminiscence, she blanched.

Something that resembled an icy gale ripped through the clearing, yet disturbed not pine nor leaf. Both the twins and the paladins snapped to attention and craned their heads around to stare at the northern woods. No sign of movement could be seen, no shadows moving around the branches, and for a moment Sorore managed to pray that it was just a coincidence.

Then fingers of fog began to obscure the trunks, wrapping them in their cold grasp. It spilled over the lip of the hill to the north, flowing down like a tide rolling in. By this time, the men around them were beginning to turn and remark on the sudden drop in temperature. Lillian and Niche were on their feet, weapons drawn, hollering at the men to draw and stand to. Sorore clung to her brother’s shirt, feeling how clammy his skin had become.

The cold began to run fingers along her ribs, panic wrenching her throat into her chest. The feeling was only compounded when the fog billowed over the camp, the only relief the torches beginning to spit into life around them. The shouts of men grew more frantic and indistinct as shapes began to move to the north. Chittering, wailing, hissing - all emerged from the night, growing louder as the creatures approached.

Lillian vanished into the fog, appearing mere moments, practically dragging along a bewildered Aya. The men were running, drawing towards the centre of the camp, weapons drawn and armour on. Aya was looking around at the mists, fear and shock ripping through any grogginess that she might have had.

“What’s happening? Where are we?” she said as she looked around at the woods.

Sorore said nothing, the paladins herding them behind the lines of men beginning to form. The commander was waiting with a dire expression upon his face, helm on and his own sword loosened. Three horses were prepared for them, one which had the Heebenian knight Damafelce beside it.

At the current moment, she was arguing as to why she should say, only to be hushed by Naia as they were being approached.

“I don’t think it’s a large group, but this is just in case,” he said, handing the reigns to the paladins, “Hraajr, you’re in charge if I die.”

She glowered down at him but gestured to Aya.

“Come on miss, you’re with me,” she said, ignoring the objections of the paladins.

“Don’t be stupid,” Naia said, silencing the pair, “you need three horses, and Hraajr is the best rider we have.”

The paladins accepted help, with obvious reservations, probably deciding that it was not wise to argue now.

“Wait here. Hopefully, this won’t take much time. If things go bad, run south, hard as you can. Don’t bother returning for us - we’ll make our own way out.”

Sorore was hoisted onto the horse with an apology from Lillian as Naia turned away and headed toward the front lines. Finally, there was nothing but anticipation and the howls of the mist things. The shadows grew closer and closer until Sorore could make out the differences between them. Some were small, scuttling creatures, the size of a dog or pig. Others were towering hulks, lumbering behind their faster counterparts.

No matter how much she expected it, the first clash of steel, the cries and shouts of soldiers, the smell of blood - it always came as a surprise. She turned back to Lillian, seeing only a mask of focused iron, eyes flitting this way and that. They were already beginning to pad away as the line was slowly pushed back towards them, although the ebb and flow of battle were almost impossible to gauge as the fog thickened.

Eventually, the mist obscured the line and the fight, with the sounds stretching in all directions. Lillian gripped Sorore tighter as she glanced around, sword drawn in preparation. On top of the disorientating nature, Sorore could feel the malevolence in the fog. The very air wanted to confuse, to hurt, to kill them if it could.

The words ‘follow the hate’ echoed in her mind and she looked around and noticed that both her brother and Aya were no longer visible.

“Lillian-” she began, before being quieted by the paladin.

“I know,” she said, as she pulled the reigns closer. The horse at this point was itself becoming difficult to handle, nervously whinnying as it flitted back and forth. They sat awash in the muffled battle din until another sound broke through the mess.

The piercing scream of someone, young, and a girl.

Without hesitation, Lillian turned the horse and galloped. Within moments they had closed upon its source - Aya was lying on the ground, Damafelce trapped under a downed horse, while a vulgar twitching monstrosity approached with claws outstretched.

Lillian leaned into the gallop. Sorore herself began to scream. They were surely too far away - the blow would fall before Lillian could hope to strike it down. Time slowed, the thing lunged and…

Chaos erupted as another shadow lept from the mist, bowling over the creature and knocking it to the ground. It took a moment to recognize the shock of red hair, or Frare’s arm, pulsing with light, as it sunk into the creature’s back. The monster began to thrash and scream, a terrible ragged wail. Frare tightened his grip on something within and ripped away, stripes of flesh and gouts of blood following his arm as he brought it up. Throwing whatever viscera he held away, he turned back with a grin.

“I never left,” he said, offering his soaked hands to Aya.

As the thing melted into a puddle of flesh, Sorore managed to catch a glimpse of his eyes. The twins had always shared the same dull green, flecked with gold and hazel, but, for one moment, Sorore could’ve sworn they had been a luminous emerald.