"I'm not sure if that's a good idea," I replied to Rosaria.

In the distance, the horned man was not moving; he was merely watching the villagers.

"Pery, we have to stop that thing. We're wasting time. Arthic and Garron see it too and they'll see us."

"I am already here," Garron said and approached us.

I regarded him and glanced back to see Arthic jogging our way as well.

The squire-captain was hardly painting. The fauns had been novice-tier monsters as far as I could tell, though especially dangerous for their druidry. His lack of exertion put Arthic well into the competent tier as a fighter, at the very least.

"Did all of you hear it?" Arthic asked.

"Yes," Garron replied.

I looked back to where the horrified villagers now huddled around the burnt-out pyre. Adler was bent, murmuring something over Cindi as she clung to her mother.

"It's banished the ancestors of Forbas somehow," Arthic said. "Custodian Adler says his connection to them is now fleeting. They are still there, but they'll be unable to help him to break the village's connection with the numina until he finds out what has happened to them."

"But what is it waiting for?" I asked.

My question was answered as a massed series of further and lighter resonant, echoing hoofbeats danced through the violent rain.

Five fauns ascended the same old road that we'd taken from Forbas. They approached us first but made no move to attack. The lead creature, his eyes the same deep green as all of the others, stared past us to the villagers.

The faun’s voice was low and resonant, carrying grim authority as he spoke.

"Your shrine house has been unsanctified by our hands, and your blood has been shed to show the sincerity in what we demand. There is no need for more to be paid tonight. Give us the first of your young that are ours, the tribute owed to our master, and we shall depart and the blessings from him shall be multiplied unto you," he intoned, his gaze then settling on the bound faun that I'd restrained with bark and wood. "And return those of our circle to us—the living and the dead alike."

An angry and fearful rise came from the crowd. The lead fauns and those behind him, another male and three females, remained deathly still.

Adler approached slowly through the crowd, leaving Cindi behind in her parents' arms.

"We will give your master nothing," the elder said and frowned at the faun who had seemed to be expecting him. "Garret, do you truly not remember your own family and neighbors?"

The faun that had been Garret frowned. "If I ever did, I do not now. But I am in no pain, and nor will the children we take tonight be."

"You will not take anyone," Adler said solemnly. "Not if you still wish there to be a village for the spirit who has changed you to seek dominion over. Not a one of us will stand by and allow that; you will have to go through us all."

The faun frowned. "Channeler, the ways you have been wrongly taught are profane. The dead things you nurture and help cling to the ethereal were once tolerated in their existence when they were few in number, but now in their crowding of the grey they steal vitality from an old one. Their existence impedes the order that this world has clung to since the first dawn. Do you speak for all here when you deny us?"

Adler leaned on his shepherd's crook and met the faun's gaze readily and sadly. "There may be a day when Forbas abandons those revered dead who would only see them live well, but I will not see this night take that choice from them. I will not trade the worship of those who give to us for that of a spirit which takes as much as it blesses. You have been taken, and I am sorry we could not protect you, but you will not take others along with you while I still breathe."

The villagers began to assemble behind Adler as he stood before the fauns. All the while the Horned Man merely stood watching on the horizon.

"You failed to give me an answer," the faun said to the custodian and then addressed the crowd. "Does this man speak for all of you? Would you sooner see the land turn against you, your crops decimated year after year as the blessings given to you turn to curses, and for your children to starve from famine all the same?"

"I truly speak only for the departed who can not speak, Garret. But I know my family here. And I trust that they agree with me," Adler still responded.

"Garrot?" a man's voice said from the crowd, and its owner stepped forward towards the faun. "Garrot, what has happened to you, son?"

The faun's face twitched at the sound of his father's voice, but he didn't look at the man; instead, he kept his eyes locked back on the custodian.

When the faun spoke again, he spoke in a carrying, resonant voice. "I do not doubt the honesty of your channeler's sentiments, but I doubt their reality. Those who do not resist what will be and has always been will not be culled."

The faun lifted his hand and spoke the first syllable of a word of power. Rosaria and I were already moving.

Two of the four fauns behind Garret moved just as quickly as we did and swiped at us with their claws, cutting us off from intercepting their spokesman. Rosaria side-stepped, I ducked, and Mile fended a faun off from my side.

Arthic was the one to intercept Garrot's mystical strike towards Adler. His warmaul glowed with with an activated skill as he brought it down to crush the sharpened roots that sprung from the faun's forearm to the earth.

"They're the kids! They've been changed!" I yelled to my party.

Arthic met my gaze solemnly for a brief moment, and then squared off against Garrot. "I know! But we must act to save others!"

"No!" Garrot's father cried out. "That's my son!"

"He is not your son anymore," Garron said calmly, and a sigil began to form in front of his hands.

"They may yet be saved!" Adler warned us as he regained his footing from almost being struck before Arthic's intervention.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The squire-captain's face shifted at the custodian's words as he dodged a slash of claws.

"We will try," Arthic said and swiped his warmaul at Garrot's leg. "Disable them! We shall heal them later!"

"They case use druidry!" I shouted and deflected the claws of a female faun off of Mytharis. "They can likely heal themselves. The only chance we have is for them to be unconscious with their mouths gagged."

I caught sight of the eyes of the faun as I deflected her strike.

"Silly boy. Relax yourself," her words rang like soft velvet in my ears, and I staggered.

She raised her claws to strike at me, but I could see no threat in them. Her sharpened fingertips descended towards me as I waivered where I stood.

A flash of fur and teeth slammed into the lithe, bark chest plate of the attacking fawn and knocked her back away from me.

Mile's consciousness slammed into mine over our bond, offering his own aware panic into my mind in place of my own missing emotions.

As the dog bit deeply into the faun's face, his savage protective instinct snapped me out of the now thrashing faun's trance.

Rosaria rushed forward and stabbed the downed faun in her stomach as Mile continued to harass the creature. The faun wailed in pain and threw Mile off of her, but Rosaria kicked her hard across the face before she could stand or cast another spell. The creature's neck was thundered to the side; when her eyes reopened, another kick from Rosaria made her limbs fall limp.

I inwardly cursed the situation we found ourselves in. I reached into my component pouch and threw a number of tree root cuttings onto the fallen faun, using [growth] and [direct flora] to bind her body and mouth. I considered healing her sword wound, but I could sense through my [druidic aura] that it was not a life-threatening injury, likely a show of Rosaria's restraint, and decided to preserve my mana.

I then bound the other faun that Rosaria had similarly handled, while I'd been entranced, and turned to reassess the battlefield.

Garron's hand slammed into the ground, a sigil flared, and the earth itself reached up to grab the wrists and ankles of the foe he personally did battle with. The creature started to chant words of power, but I lifted my hand and released a blast of air mana into her mouth, silencing her. Garron's earth binds pulled the faun to the ground and another bit of rock looped up and covered her mouth and then restrained her head to the earth as well.

Arthic exchanged blows with the faun that had been Garret. The squire-captain expertly struck at the quick creature with his warmaul, barely giving the dodging being enough time to get in a counterattack between heavy strikes. I had no doubt that if Arthic hadn't been avoiding killing blows that it would've been over already.

"Give up," Garret intoned to Arthic. "Your strikes are slowing."

It wasn't true, but I realized there was more to the words than a mere taunt. Arthic's face grew confused for a moment, and his next swing was slowed.

"Arthic! He's using magic to make you believe his words!" I shouted.

The squire-captain's war maul veered off to the side of Garret in an arc made awkward by his suddenly slowed movements. The faun took advantage and whirled to lash out at Arthic's neck.

Rosaria rushed past me, her legs carrying her faster than I'd ever seen her move. She slashed violently at the back of the faun's knee, cutting deep into the tendons there and causing the creature to falter.

As Garret stumbled, Arthic pulled back just enough to avoid his neck being cut open.

Rosaria, meanwhile, spun around her enemy with a pirouette. Her sword slashed hard across Garret's stomach. The faun fell bleeding. She pulled her foot back to kick him in the head.

"Stop!" Garret ordered her with mana ringing in his order.

Rosaria froze.

My own boot met the other side of the faun's unsuspecting face, as Garron commanded the earth to seal the creature's arms and legs to the ground.

Rosaria caught herself and, then, met Garret's whirling eyes. Her boot connected against his chin moments after mine. It seemed more personal than even when she'd been protecting me earlier.

Lightning split the sky once more, flooding the world with searing brightness.

"Your choice is made," the Horned Man's voice echoed within us, a vast and consuming presence. "Your fields shall wither, your bounties—gifts freely given by my hand—will not return to modest gains but will crumble to dust. Your young, whom you would keep from me, denied the purposeful eternity I would grant, shall grow weak before your eyes, their bodies beyond your power to sustain as they perish by your deeds and hands." His voice surged through our minds, compelling us to look upon his towering form. "For deceit and ill-faith, this is the fate owed to you. My memory is ever-old to your meager lifetimes. My mercy is spent. My retribution shall not be so easily expended. And it will persist for as long as I am."

The trees, which had before shifted to allow the wild spirit passage, moved back towards the Horned Man and he vanished behind them.

***

Adler spent the next night in the shrine house, tending to it and doing his best to reconsecrate it.

The fauns were bound with ropes and gagged. They were anointed hourly by rituals of cleansing from the custodian. Only Cindi seemed to respond well to these rituals, however. The other fauns seemed unfazed by the rites. They neither asked for food nor water, but merely expressed that they wished to be returned to the forest when they were allowed guarded moments to speak.

The fauns Arthic had fought and quickly disabled were also among the number of those we'd subdued after realizing their true nature. Only one faun had been truly slain by Rosaria's blade. His corpse had been burned on a purifying fire, with prayers to the ancestors and Saints given to aid his passing into their arms. Only then had Adler returned the ashes, in an urn, to his weeping parents.

The people of Forbas did not return to their homes, save to tend to their family shrines. Unfortunately, even the household spirits of the village had been weakened into dreaming comas by the desecration wrought by the hands of the fauns.

We helped where we could, aiding the custodian in the cleaning of the temple in the small ways he would allow. And by guarding the fauns.

Arthic, Garron, Rosaria, and I had discussed our next move at length. We couldn't leave the fauns in the village; they were monsters. Nor did we have the heart, or permission of the villagers, to kill them.

We'd also considered entering the forest and trying to find the wild spirit. We were leaning towards this option; however, we had no idea where its place of power might lay.

We didn't that is, until Anderson and Cindi approached us.

The girl was much more docile than before. Her father had slept and was in as good of spirits as could be expected, as he guided his daughter by the hands towards our group. Adler walked beside the pair.

"Excuse me," Anderson said. "I think I may be able to help you."

"I can help too, papa," Cindi said.

The little girl's eyes no longer had the emerald glow of the other fauns' gazes. Her skin had also returned to a much more human pallor. Her horns and hooves, however, remained.

"No, Cindi," Anderson said. "You are never going near that thing again."

"Cindi believes she remembers where the wild spirit is," Adler revealed to us.

"And I can lead you there," Anderson offered.

Arthic and Rosaria began to stand then. "If that is true, then you must know we will do whatever we can to protect you, but when it comes to blows with the spirit, then you may not be safe."

"I'm aware," Anderson said with a gleam of simmering purpose in his eyes. "I have to do this. Adler says if you slay it, then the children might return to themselves, and Cindi might be cured."

The custodian made his agreement. "I can feel the wild spirit's power infused in them. Even their age seems a dream wrought from its alien will. If it is slain, then its influence may pass as easily as a dream as well."

"We will slay the numina as your contract requested," Garron promised Anderson. "If you will lead the way, we will follow."

"We promise," Rosaria said.

Adler appraised the girl in particular as she spoke.

"Can we leave now?" Anderson asked us.

We looked between ourselves.

"I believe we're all ready," Arthic said.

"I will pray and make an offering so the Saints may watch over you, for I fear it will be some time before I can offer much other protection," Adler told us.

"It's not far from where the monster was standing last night," Anderson told us.

"We will follow," Garron reaffirmed to the man.

"Watch over Michaella and my daughter?" Anderson asked Adler.

"As best as I am able while I still live," Adler promised the other man.

Cindi wrapped her father's legs in a hug. "Come back, papa. Please don't be too brave."

Anderson's eyes grew weak as he ran his hand through Cindi's brown hair. "I won't be gone long, Cindi. I promise."

As we left, Adler momentarily pulled Rosaria aside. I didn't hear what he said to her, but her eyes became nearly as wet as those of Cindi's father. But she didn't cry; she never cried.