Adrea awoke to a sound that wasn't the rooster. It was also much darker than what she would have expected. Moderate rain was hitting something near her window making a pitter-patter sound. She was still a bit groggy, and wasn't sure what exactly had woken her up. Her mind immediately jumped to "demons", but there weren't any unusual sounds. She sighed. This was the fourth day in a row that this had happened. This was the first time that had been under so much stress, as far as she could remember. Although she kept telling herself that her father was right, and that the whole thing was probably overblown, that did not really help with her nerves. Waking up during the night also made the mornings even more difficult than usual.

She tucked herself under her sheets, and tried to think of other things. Unfortunately, there really was not much to think about so she settled on looking at how the clouds moved. Full moon was only two days ago, so the night sky was still rather bright, and the unexpected darkness was primarily due to rain. Even at night, she could make out the outlines of the clouds, with moonlight shining through intermittent gaps. It was not particularly interesting, but the ever-changing shapes would eventually lull her back to sleep.

As expected, getting up the next morning was an unpleasant experience.

"Good morning Adrea. You seem to be pretty poorly rested lately. Is everything all right?"

Somehow, the fact that her mother had picked up on it was a surprise to Adrea.

"Mom, I'm fine!"

She paused for a bit, realizing that she was over-reacting.

"Actually, probably not. I keep waking up for no reason at night. Then, I get worried that we're being attacked by demons. And then I can't sleep."

Her mother seemed to mull it over, but before she could say anything, Adrea continued.

"I know that Dad said that I shouldn't worry about it, but I just can't convince myself, apparently."

Great, now I'm angry at myself.

"Urgh... I don't want to think about it. Let's just get on with breakfast."

"Adrea, wait a minute. Maybe it would be better if you didn't sleep alone for the coming day or two."

"Mom. I'm fifteen! Not five!"

That was too much. She stormed out of the kitchen. Thankfully, the rain had cleared and so she went outside to check the fields, neglecting breakfast. She had to vent on something. Birds and weeds would do for now.

She avoided her family (except Naviya - she hadn't done anything wrong) for the rest of the morning before going to school. The main lesson today was geography, one of her preferred subjects. The highlight of this particular session was a lecture on the grand river network. All the provinces in Danalau were actually part of the same drainage basin, which made rivers a particularly effective method of transportation, especially when moving downstream. The grand river network had been a formalization of age-old practices, which included standardization of barges and the construction of appropriate infrastructure. The project had been started over 50 years ago, and covered almost all major cities. Interestingly, twelve years ago, a brilliant Vaahmeist, Breckmer Verhaaf, had come up with a plan to extend the network beyond its current size by using special dams that would allow ships to pass through them, widening narrow rivers while maintaining navigability.

At the end of the day, Adrea had mostly calmed down. She was a bit apprehensive at going home, but she managed to convince herself that her parents would not be angry at her. That, and she was famished.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The first thing she did after coming back home was finding her mother.

"Mom, I'm sorry. That was childish of me."

"I had a bit of time to cool off, and you're probably right." As always. "How should we do this?"

The felt really embarrassed to accept, but she knew that something had to be done.

"You can be quite handful at time, you know that?"

"I was thinking that you could use the spare bed in Naviya's room where you were sleeping until two years ago."

"I don't know... I mean it's Naviya, how's that going to help me?"

"I'm sure you'll feel better with her around. If that doesn't work, we can always try to bring that bed into our room, but that is something that we can't do today."

"Fine, I'll go ask Naviya if she is fine with that. But... umh.. before that, are there some leftovers from this morning?"

Adrea expected that Naviya would be indifferent, but the younger girl was actually be somewhat happy when she learned about the new arrangement.

After she finished her breakfast, the rest of the day went peacefully. This involved harvesting part of their crops and another training session with her father before sundown. Then, after that, she had to make her bed in Naviya's room.

The feeling of embarrassment, as Naviya helped her get things ready, was difficult to deal with, but Adrea managed to repress it by talking with her sister about unrelated topics such as her progress at school. They probably stayed awake for a bit longer than reasonable, but eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

She woke up in the middle of night.

Again? No. Something's different

She could hear an unusual noise in the background. It was quite low in volume, probably coming from the outside. Her house was somewhat isolated from the rest of the village, but it was definitely coming from there. Then, something washed over her, as though she had been doused in cold water. Her senses immediately shot awake. She jumped out from under her sheets, looked over her sister's bed...

With a loud crack, the wall next to her exploded into a thousand pieces, and she was flung into the opposite direction. Pain shot through her left arm half a moment later as she crashed into another wall. Disoriented from the impact, her vision was filled blurry white and purple alternating stripes. Then, as her eyes re-focused, her blood ran cold.

In front of her, no more than a couple of inches from her face, was row of spikes - pearl-white teeth as long as her arms, that seemed to almost glow. Every survival instinct screamed to her that she had to flee. She tried to get up, but fell on her side as her left arm failed her. The creature looked at her. Its three black eyes, two of them on the right side of its maw, were dotted with glowing purple blots that were moving about erratically, seemingly in an expression of glee. She tried to get away from it, her eyes scanning the destroyed room for an escape, when suddenly, numbness spread through her right leg. Turning around, she was once again greeted by the row of teeth, but this time, boldly displayed on the lower jaw was a spasming leg. Hers.

She cried out in panic, pain, terror, fear, desperation, resignation, with no coherent thought in her mind. Her vision once again blurred, as tears began to flow. She was going to die... She could make out the rapidly growing puddle of her own blood reflecting the moonlight, she could not hear anything except the loud thumping of her ears, and she barely felt anything else.

And then, through her tears, she saw her sister, sitting up in bed, confused. Somehow, the sight brought Adrea back to reality.

"NAVIYA, RUN!!!"

Sensation returned to her, and she cried out in agony, her broken arm and missing leg asserting their presence. At the same moment, the teeth of the monstrosity began to move independently, clacking against each like pieces of wood, yet resonating somehow. The grim display lasted but a second before the demon lunged at her, its maw open with three serrated appendages at it center moving in random directions around her. One of the teeth pierced her belly, and then... began to stir. At that moment, all her other senses failed her. There was only pain that felt like an eternity of pure torment.

She began losing consciousness, but then, the pain suddenly disappeared, and she found herself staring at her lower body being repeatedly perforated by the now blood-red spikes. Pieces of flesh and bone were flying in all directions. The gruesome display of her body being brutally mangled as she was forced to watch made her want to retch.

Just let me die already...

She turned her head away from the carnage. To her horror, Naviya was still there, with an expression of utter disbelief. She wanted to cry out, tell her to get away, but no sound came out of her mouth.

No...

And then, after seconds that had felt like a lifetime, she finally fainted.