Cindi was in his arms. But she was different now. It didn't matter; she was still his child.

Anderson had known it was foolish to enter the woods to look for her. Foolish and stupid, but the adventurer's guild was taking too long to come down from Hightmount. And he had to find his child. He had to, if that thing had her.

And he had found her. Or, rather, she'd found him. She'd come to his voice, hoarse and broken from calling her name. He'd recognized his child, even warped as she was in so many wrong ways, immediately. Any fear he felt from her horns and hooves was washed away by her confused cry of 'papa'.

He'd taken her into his arms and promised her aid. They almost reached the forest's edge this way before another of the stolen children, somehow older and even more out of their mind and natural form than Cindi, had found him and his daughter.

She had beckoned him forward. And he'd obeyed. He felt the faun in his mind as it spoke, its song-like voice trying to warp his senses, but he held fast to his need to protect Cindi. This overpowering protective instinct kept him from fully falling under the faun's sway, if only barely.

When he struck the changed and aged creature, she was surprised. He didn't give her time to not be surprised after that when he fell on her. She tore him and shredded him deep with her claws, so deep he wasn't sure he'd be able to get Cindi out of the woods.

He wouldn't forget the horrid feeling of smashing her head in with a rock. He wouldn't forget how Cindi had screamed as he had. But he'd done it to protect her. He hoped she could forgive him, because he wasn't sure he'd ever forgive himself.

***

We never found Anderson. Neither did any of the other villagers who swept Forbas at the custodian's behest to locate the man. The hours passed and the storm descended on the settlement as the three moons rose and were quickly obscured by angry darkness.

The winds shrieked in a violent fury full of indignation. The lesser wind elementals held very little sapience and only spoke the most guttural form of Aetaric that was more emotion-conveyed than proper language, but I understood them all the same. A compact had been broken, something most spiritual beings understood, and they were enacting retribution on another's behalf. Another who could only be the wild spirit who Forbas had angered.

Adler, his body enshrined in ceremonial robes, lifted a carved shepherd's staff into the air. He stood behind the yellow flames of the shrine house's hearth. Every man, woman, and child of Forbas filled the holy building or spilled out into its guardian. Adler's voice carried to us all regardless of distance.

He spoke in an ancient proto-imperial, one which my father had taught me years ago. He mostly called names, sent pleas, and gave apologies to the ancestors for even doing so. He traced lineages verbally, starting from the youngest living members of Forbas, reminding the enshrined dead of their blood bonds.

Angry thunder rolled overhead, like a great voice echoing from the faraway forest hills. It sounded like a warning. The custodian raised his voice over the thunder and it was still carried to my ear's as if he was right next to me.

The yellow, fuel less fire of the shrine house's hearth roared up to touch its steepled roof. The shadows of the living villager's flickered, and vague forms—some more ill-defined than others—joined their number from them.

"We are not alone," Garron said to me.

"We are not," Arthic added. "Whatever happens. We need to protect the villagers like we discussed."

"Right," Rosaria said, determined.

Adler held the horned idol in his free hand and lifted his staff forward, signaling the villagers, and the crowd began to lumber out of the shrine house at his behest.

Mile stayed glued to my leg, while the rest of my party dispersed to the various corners of the large procession of villagers.

Four-hundred bodies left the shrine house and its grounds and climbed through Forbas. Four-hundred living bodies, which were soon joined by flickering human faces that far outnumbered them. Faces which grew more defined with every lightning flash and chant from Adler, who now led the village up the plateau.

I felt a body that was less than a body brush past me. The ghost's face disappeared from my view when I glanced to it, but there were dozens more just as not-real as it was in the corners of my eyes throughout the crowd. Normal faces, old faces, even young faces. The dead had heeded the call of their blood.

Our destination loomed on the horizon, decrepit, broken, and barely standing. An old watchtower of Yordian make, more ancient than any other building in the village. It was the oldest structure in Forbas, the one that most represented the ancient past of the village. It was just barely away from the forest's edge.

We passed through Forbas's homes and shops. People that were not people anymore opened doors they had not opened since they still breathed and joined our procession. The well-remembered guardian spirits were the most solid of all the dead, appearing almost alive in comparison to those who had awoken in the shrine house.

As our numbers grew, we climbed towards the tower. And eventually we reached it.

Forbas's citizens, living and dead, encircled the ancient structure. Adler entered the roof-less ring of stones, and the most ancient dead followed him, now formed enough to remain almost as real as the household spirits even in direct sight. The ancient shades shone blue and gold; flicks of mist followed them as they walked, but no sound came from their footfalls. A few of their faces were now discernable, but many were only vague humanoid outlines.

Adler stopped before a great unlit pyre, which had been built in the center of the yordian tower's ruins. The sky echoed a warning that was much greater than it even had been before. Adler, however, raised his voice to meet the thunder once again.

Lightning flashed from the heavens, but instead of striking the custodian as he pointed his crook downwards, it hit the pyre he pointed at and ignited it. A number of the best-defined of the ancient shades disappeared in the violent flash as Adler directed the sky fire. Yellow flames erupted, burning brighter and consuming the wood of the pyre quicker than should've been possible.

Adler lifted the horned idol. He began to chant the names of all of the living and dead once more. But his eyes were soon drawn to a commotion at the back of the crowd. It was dark, but I saw Arthic's tall form turn to face the source and disappear towards it.

The custodian did not break his chant, and I watched Arthic guide someone through the crowd. Someone who was holding something else.

The man Arthic was guiding fell to his knees in front of the pyre, as a child-like form squirmed violently in his arms.

***

Their hooves echoed over the stone and dirt of the roads at Forbas' edge. Beautiful, and alien, their flowered horns shifted as if made up of dream-stuff as they proceeded into the heart of the village.

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They entered the now empty shrine house. The stones themselves ached under their changed forms, but no spiritual protection lashed out at them. Though changed, they were the blood of the blood that sanctified the stones; the aura of misplaced worship given will that suffused the shrine house would not, could not, harm them by its very nature.

The fur of the fauns leaked onto the flooring, dashing water off of their bark-armored bodies onto the tile as they spread out into the structure.

The faun that had been Garret struck the first of the ash-filled urns onto the ground, shattering and desecrating it.

Disembodied moans of realized tragedy and pain escaped from the shadows as the fauns did the will of their patron. There was no more final act of defilement that could wound the dead more than for their own descendants to forsake them.

Further shattering filled the air. The yellow fire in the central hearth flickered and was blown out by a gust from without the cast-open doors.

And, in a magnitude of time shorter than it had taken to sanctify it, the shrine house became just another set of stacked stones.

***

I pushed towards the front of the crowd as Adler stared at the man who had collapsed to his knees before him and the burning pyre.

The custodian was mid-chant, and I saw that he was forced to make a terrible choice.

"Who are these people, papa?!?" the small girl in the fallen man's arms screamed, and her eyes darted in a pained confusion that seemed to only grow stronger as she stared upon at least a number of faces that I realized she should've recognized.

The girl forced herself from her father's arms and her tiny hooves backed away from the man.

"Cindi," the man heaved through what, judging by the deep gashes all across his body, must have been great pain. "You know them... let them help you." He looked up to Adler, whose chant had slowed. "Please help her. Please."

Adler stared at the idol in his hands. And then looked back to the frightened, altered girl who glanced like a scared animal between the dead and living present.

The old custodian frowned and lowered his shepherd's crook and ended his chant. "Cindi? Child, what has happened to you?"

The little girl stepped back towards her kneeling father, who I had now reached. I extended my druidic aura and staggered a step as the life force of all the ancestral ghosts hit my expanded awareness. It wasn't a normal sort of life force; it was broken and half-written, filled in with something else where it lacked substance, as if forged from memories and not lives.

I shook the feeling of confusion off and cast [mending] on Cindi's father. I felt his wounds begin to close by my mana's will and he shuddered in shock. To my surprise, the man lifted himself to his feet even before I could fully heal him and he moved to embraced his child, who pushed back away from even him again.

"Cindi. You're safe," he said. "These people will help you."

"Papa," Cindi shrieked and grabbed her antlered head. "I don't remember. I don't remember."

"Baby? Cindi?!" Michaella rushed into the front of the crowd.

Cindi looked up and her hands uncradled her sobbing face. "Mama?"

Michaella wrapped her daughter up into her arms, completely disregarding the girl's altered shape. She was already sobbing as well. "I'm here, baby. I'm here."

The screaming started after that. Just as the pyre flared violently. Hands and nondescript faces reached out of the yellow flames as they suddenly began to die down. The flame-born, ghostly hands desperately reached out towards Adler and the idol he held as if trying to grasp the statue before they no longer could.

Adler turned in shock and horror as the ghosts all around us screamed in agony and began to collapse into nothingness, as their legs became naught but smoke.

Arthic turned, war maul already brandished, towards the back of the crowd where the screaming emanated. Lightning flashed again, and I thought I saw sigils flare from where Garron should've been.

I rushed towards the screaming of the villagers, leaving Arthic behind. I partially reached over my bond with Mile and used his superior night vision to guide both of our running as I pushed through the now much smaller crowd of Forbas's citizens.

I ran to where I heard pain. It was all I could do. And I saw its source, but I felt it in my druidic aura first.

Life energy, a mortal, but changed and infused with something that was more reminiscent to the signature of a wild animal or perhaps flora. Purple flowers shifted on her huge antlers as she whirled; her talons tearing open the neck of a fleeing woman.

It was hard to pick individual people's life energy out in such a crowd, but I zeroed in on the injured woman's as she fell into the mud and poured enough mana into her wound through my aura to close her artery up.

Mytharis was already in my hand as I charged the hooved-monster in front of me.

The faun back-stepped gracefully and struck at me next with its claws. I dodged easily enough, but she was fast enough to be a threat.

As I dodged her blow, I heard her speak in a primal language that I recognized. My eyes grew wide as vines erupted from her arms themselves and shot towards me.

I lifted my own hand and made the sign for a [lesser ward]. The sharpened vines she had summoned from her own flesh crashed against my wildly fluttering, blue-tinged shield of mana.

The vines retreated into her arm when they found no purchase one me. I'd already dropped my ward and my hand was in my component's pouch.

I found within my pouch and filled a number of tree-limb cuttings with a druidic spell of my own. I dodged under another slash of the faun's claws and then threw the [growth] and [direct flora] infused cuttings against her back. Words of power spilled from my own mouth as the cuttings expanded and wrapped around the faun.

The horned and hooved woman fell to the ground, bound by what were now wrapping tree limbs, but she was already muttering her own druidic counter-incantation.

My own incantation came quicker than hers, however, and I pushed mana through my druidic aura and into the grass where she'd fallen. The grass heeded my call and wrapped around her mouth, silencing her before she could order the roots I'd bound her with to unravel. The faun kicked and screamed but remained unable to move or stand.

I stared at the creature's face, Mytharis still in my grasp, and a dark realization settled upon me fully and kept me from ending her.

Rosaria burst through the dispersing crowd, and her eyes shifted between me and the faun.

"Don't!" I cried. "It's one of the children! The numina changed them!"

Rosaria stared at the faun and then to me. Lightning flashed and I saw that her own blade was already covered in blood. Her eyes showed horror through the brightened rain.

A scream of high-pitched, conflicting pain and beauty filled my ears. I turned my eyes to see another faun crumple before Arthic. The squire-captain stood between a number of villagers and three more fauns which had now all been struck down. I had no idea how the creatures had gotten through the crowd and into the ruins of the watchtower.

"I didn't—" Rosaria's voice drew my attention back to her soaked visage.

"I know," I said, meeting her heart-broken eyes. "I know. It's not your fault, but we have to figure out how to..."

"How to what?" she faltered.

"I don't know, but—"

Lightning crashed again and a load groaning filled the air from the forests edge. It was a shifting sound, and so echoing that it demanded attention.

At the forest's edge, a tall, lanky creature moved out between trees that shifted themselves over for it. Even in the darkness, I could see it clearly... I felt that it willed us all to see it.

The numina had a twisted, elongated snout, somewhere between a wolf’s fierce muzzle and the crooked bridge of a human nose, making it an unsettling blend of predator and man. Its maw was lined with jagged bear-like teeth, too large and too many for its mouth, each one glinting in the storm’s light. Feathers crowned its powerful shoulders, sleek and black, giving way to fur-covered arms that hung long and sinewy, ending in hands tipped with talons. Like the fauns, its legs ended in hooves, each one striking the earth with a dull, resonant thud. Its crowning feature, however, was a pair of massive horns—thick, spiraling like a stag’s but with the weight and solidity of a ram’s, ancient and gnarled, stretching skyward as if to claim the forest itself.

The Horned Man raised one taloned finger toward the crumbling watchtower and its dying pyre, his voice unfurling in a guttural, ancient tongue, each word heavy and primal, more felt than heard.

"Restore the old bond, upheld by my will alone. Walk the paths that were mine. Your echoed dead—lost, withered, fading—will shield you no longer. One in ten of your young shall come to me, a tithe for your silence and the oaths you have forsaken."

As the spirit spoke, the sky was lit consistently with unfurling arcs of unending brightness that almost turned night into day.

"Pery," Rosaria said from beside me, her voice regaining some of its strength. "That won't happen."

"I know. We need to get Arthic and Garron, before that thing can do anything else or get away," I said.

"They'll catch up," she argued, her voice still slightly shaky.