There were six of them in total – Pale and Captain Allen, plus four of his men, all fire mages. Six of them, to retake an entire city. Pale ran the odds through her head as they all moved. However she looked at it, things didn't look good for them. Already, the other fighting around the city had tapered down to almost non-existence, save for a few bursts of activity coming from the tavern where Kayla and Evie had holed up, plus a few other strongholds.

And if that was the case, then things were about to get even more dire. If the civilians were no longer fighting, it was almost certainly because they'd been either killed outright or turned. And in either case, it meant that the undead horde was getting close to critical mass.

"Do you have a plan?" Allen asked, interrupting her thoughts.

"From the sound of things, there are still some strongholds set up around town," Pale explained. "I say we move between them, taking out as many ghouls as we possibly can in order to alleviate some of the pressure they're feeling. Then, when night falls… when night falls, we go for the leader himself, and take him down."

"You make it sound so simple," Allen gruffly replied.

"Believe me, I don't mean to," Pale answered. "I've run into the leader before. He's inhumanly strong and fast. It will be a difficult fight, but we have no other option than to fight him regardless. The alternative is lying down and dying in the snow, and leaving him alive to continue to prey on people."

Allen's eyes narrowed. "Very well, then. We will follow your lead."

Pale nodded in understanding, and then continued on. A small horde of ghouls barred their way, but the mages with her cut them down in the blink of an eye. Pale didn't even need to break stride as she moved, instead merely stepping over burning bodies and keeping on her way, her temporary allies right behind her.

The first stronghold they encountered was a blacksmith's shop. To Pale's surprise, piles of undead lined the streets outside, though none of them had been burned, and instead were marred by deep cuts and missing limbs. She stepped past them in amazement, then carefully approached the store.

"Friendlies coming in!" she announced. "Don't attack any of us, we're with you."

There was a pause, and then to her relief, someone answered.

"Come in, quickly!"

Pale motioned for the men with her to follow, then stepped inside the shop. There were more dead ghouls inside, along with a few people – it looked like two full families, plus a few stray civilians. Several of the men had armed themselves with swords and plate mail, and were standing guard at the front of the store. All of them were breathing heavily from exertion, sweat dripping from their bodies onto the ground below.

"Who are you?" one of the men asked. His gaze turned to Allen, and his eyes widened. "C-Captain! Such a relief to see you, and-"

"Save it," Allen replied, cutting him off. He looked around. "How did you manage to kill the ghouls without burning them?"

"It's silver," one of the other men said. "We realized it when one of us happened to grab a silver sword the lead blacksmith had been working on by chance. Regular steel doesn't do anything to them, but silver, or even silver-lined steel? It takes them down almost instantly."

"Good that you managed to figure that out on your own. Do you have any more of those swords?"

"A few spares," one of the men offered. "Blacksmith got a large request from a werewolf hunter not too long ago, thank the Gods. There are plenty to go around."

"We'll need some of them." Allen motioned for two of his men to move forward, and they collected the offered weapons, hooking them onto their belts. Allen nodded appreciatively at the men, and then turned to walk away, only for Pale to stop him.

"Wait," she said. "We should leave a fire mage with them."

Allen turned towards her, his gaze smoldering. "Are you out of your damn mind? We're short-handed as it is, and you want to-"

"We might need to fall back," Pale emphasized. "We have no idea how big the hordes are at this point. If it's too much for us, we'll need a spot we can retreat to and regroup at, at least temporarily. It's worth leaving one man behind in order to ensure this escape route doesn't get completely cut off." She motioned with her head to the men standing guard. "Look at them – they're all exhausted by now. They don't have much fight left in them. A mage would do a lot to help."

"Hm… I don't like the idea of leaving a man behind, but admittedly, you have a point," Allen said. "But we cannot be doing this at every checkpoint, not if we wish to take on the hordes."

"I know, but given that they have a stockpile of effective weapons, I think it's worth the risk. Choose the man who's staying."

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Allen looked to the nearest guard, then pointed at him. "You, with them. Hold here and don't let this position be overrun, whatever you do."

"Sir!" the guard replied, snapping a quick salute before falling in with the defenders.

Allen let out a slow exhale, then turned back to Pale. "You have your checkpoint. Let's move on to the next one. Hopefully, we didn't waste too much time, and they're still alive when we get there."

Pale's brow furrowed, but she said nothing in response, instead stepping out of the shop and moved on down the street. The sounds of combat reached her once more, and she broke into a dead sprint, pausing only when she rounded the corner and saw the size of the horde in front of her.

There were dozens of them, all clambering over themselves to try and break into the second floor of a three-story building. On the roof, several mages were trying to fend them off with magic, but they only had a single fire mage among their number, and Pale could tell just by looking at her that she was exhausted. Her spells were coming out as little more than weak embers at this point; each one was enough to temporarily fend off the baying horde, but it was doing no real damage to any of them. The only thing saving the people inside was that they had barricaded the doors and windows on the first floor, keeping the ghouls from breaking in.

Pale didn't wait to see more. She reached into her jacket for one of her few Molotov cocktails, lit it, and tossed it directly into the middle of the horde. The bottle exploded, sending a wave of fire washing over a good portion of the crowd. An inhumanly loud screech filled the air, causing her to wince as she stumbled and clamped her hands over her ears. Next to her, the guardsmen did the same.

And then, as soon as it had started, the noise stopped, replaced by the sound of groaning and shuffling feet as the horde turned away from the house and began moving towards them. Pale didn't hesitate; she hefted her shotgun and began to pour shell after shell downrange. The ghouls were far enough away that the spread of the pellets meant she could hit several of them with a single shot, which was fortunate for them, as the crowd had thinned dramatically by the time her weapon ran dry and she was forced to reload.

As she thumbed shells into her weapon, Allen and his men rushed past her, their newly-acquired swords at the ready. Pale watched the blades scream through the air, separating heads from necks and limbs from torso. She had to admit, they were effective, though the idea of her allies being that close to the undead worried her greatly.

It would only take one wrong move for one of them to be infected and eventually turned, which would be a dramatic loss of firepower. And that was something they simply couldn't afford with Vincent still running around.

With one final swing of Allen's blade, the fight was over. Ghouls lay strewn across the ground, either burning to ashes or cut into pieces. Pale surveyed the damage before rushing over to Allen, who she noticed wasn't even winded after his close-quarters bout with several ghouls.

"Status report," she said. "Nobody got bit or scratched?"

Allen shook her head. "We're all fine. My men are too good to lose a close-quarters fight like that."

Pale looked up at the sky, grimacing as she saw the sky begin to dim, the sun no doubt starting to set below the horizon even behind the clouds.

"Let's hope they can keep it up, then, because night will be here soon," she said.

Allen's only response was to scowl.

XXX

They continued to fight for a few hours, trying their best to clear out the hordes of ghouls that had set up around town. All told, they managed to secure three more large strongholds, as well as eliminate dozens upon dozens of ghouls. '

But the fighting had taken its toll on them all.

Pale grimaced as she pulled the last of her incendiary shotgun shells out of her backpack and used them to fill up her side saddle, belt, and bandoleer. Once these were gone, she'd be completely out of her most effective anti-undead ammunition.

The others weren't doing much better. None of them had been injured, thankfully, though they were all clearly very tired. Even Allen had started to show signs of fatigue, the swings of his sword and the occasional fire spell coming out weaker than they had at the start of the fighting. His men were in much the same state, but worse – one of them was now incapable of casting little more than a burst of embers from his hand, and another's silver sword had snapped, leaving him with just a scarce few spells before he was completely defenseless.

Allen walked over to her, staring up at the sky. The snowfall had let up just enough that they could see the full moon through the clouds. He stared at it, that ever-present scowl he wore deepening.

"He'll be here soon," he surmised.

Pale nodded. "He will be. I'd be surprised if he's not watching us now."

"Hm. Men, form up! Let's not get taken by surprise on this one."

The other four mages fell in alongside them, forming as much of a circle as they could, all of them standing back-to-back with each other.

It didn't last, as a chorus of screams from off in the distance suddenly echoed through the night.

"What in the three hells?" Allen growled.

Pale's eyes narrowed. "It's him," she said. "It has to be. That was coming from the blacksmith's shop. Come on, move!"

She took off running, and the others followed after her.

XXX

When they arrived back at the blacksmith's shop, it was to a complete bloodbath. Everyone inside was dead, having been torn to pieces. Pale stared in shock as she surveyed the damage, her grip on her shotgun turning white-knuckled.

"What is this…?" she wondered aloud.

"What do you mean?" Allen demanded. "You said it had to be him."

Pale shook her head. "I was wrong… this isn't his work – none of these people were drained the same way the first victim was. This is something else."

"What do you mean? If it wasn't him, then who-"

A sudden screech from the back of the shop took them by surprise. Pale fell to the ground just in time for a large black shape to soar over her head and make impact with one of the guardsmen who'd been following after him. There was a sickening noise of flesh tearing, followed by blood pouring onto the ground. Pale immediately jumped to her feet, shouldering her weapon as she stared at whatever had just attacked her.

The guardsman's body lay a short way away, missing its head. And standing over it was what she could only describe as some kind of grotesque mixture of a man and a bat. It was tall, standing roughly six-and-a-half feet, and was also clearly bipedal with a human-like head and face, but that was where the human resemblance mostly ended. Aside from that, it looked like the most nightmarish bat she had ever seen archived in her data banks.

The creature stared at them, the guardsman's head hanging between its jaws, an expression of primal fear forever frozen on the unfortunate man's face. As they stared back, the creature's red eyes blinked once, and it let the head drop onto the ground below.

Then, almost as fast as she could track it, the creature leaped for her, its blood-soaked jaws wide open and dripping for her flesh.