I was awakened in the night by the sound of bells ringing across the city, an urgent clamor that was impossible to sleep through. The glowing formation from the book faded quickly from my mind as I blinked my sleepy eyes, wondering what the heck was going on. I heard the sound of people moving around in our house, speaking rapidly in low voices; it was my parents, who were already out of bed and moving about with a sense of purpose, their words tense as they hurried about gathering things up.
Mom went into another room and returned moments later with a dully glowing lantern, and I pushed myself up (with some difficulty) to see over the edge of my crib. Dad had donned what looked like red leather armor, and he was carrying a massive broadsword and shield. Mom was wearing a thinner sword at her right hip, and a dagger at her left. Both of them had uncharacteristically serious expressions, and they moved with purpose as if they knew exactly what they were doing.
I wondered if this was some kind of fire alarm drill. But… that made no sense. You didn't use swords against a damn fire! Something else was happening - something bad.
My heartbeat sped up as mother scooped me up and muttered something to me in a soothing voice; maybe asking me to be quiet, or trying to keep me calm. Seven or eight months had passed by then and I was starting to get a sense of the language, but I was still heavily reliant on context clues... none of which applied to this particular situation.
I had never heard that tone of voice from her - subdued but urgent. Pleading even… It was very disconcerting coming from a woman who was usually so outwardly confident and sure of herself.
We quickly left the house, the door wide open behind us – in fact, my father actually took the time to latch the door OPEN, using a hook on the wall I had never really noticed before. Other families up and down the street were rapidly fleeing their houses as well, and all of them similarly chose not to shut their doors (though most of them didn’t have a latch as ours did).
Most of the people in our street were grouped together in a crude formation with the armed adults on the outside, and the children in the middle. A distant howl sounded off in the night, and a neighbor of ours (a woman who lived up the street) waved at us and let out a commanding yell to hurry up, which was punctuated by a distant but horrifying scream.
My family quickly joined up with the rest, with Jaws joining the outward-facing group. He towered head and shoulders over everyone else, with his greatsword (which was as big as Mom) held in one hand, and his shield (which was way bigger than Mom) in the other. Seeing everyone side by side in a group like this made me realize that my mother was actually quite tall, which was weird for me as I had mainly seen her in comparison to dad, and had therefore formed the mistaken impression that she was very short...
A few people (mostly alone or in pairs) ran past our group as we waited for a few more families to join us, but it wasn't long before we were all moving together up the street. I absently noted that we were moving in the opposite direction as the smithy, and there were faint sounds of yelling coming from that direction. Not wanting to think about what that might mean, I focused my attention on the darkness surrounding us.
Not five minutes later the tense silence of our immediate area was broken by screaming directly ahead of us. One of the women barked a series of commands, and the formation shifted with the largest fighters (like dad) moving towards the commotion. I couldn’t see what happened next, but there were sounds of violence and pain such as I had never heard before in real life, mixed with yelps of pain that didn't sound like they came from a person. It was so much… more… than I remember from movies and TV. I held onto mom’s sleeve for dear life.
We carried forward after the sounds of combat stopped, stepping over the bodies of what looked like some kind of shaggy black wolf… and pools of dark blood around two dead villagers, their bodies savagely torn open. Mother quickly covered my eyes, but felt certain that the remains belonged to some of the people who had run past our group earlier.
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Suddenly the reason behind our tight formation became crystal clear; we were banding together to survive. I had suspected something of the sort, but I hadn't expected our attackers to be animals... or maybe they were monsters that just kind of looked like animals, because attacking a settlement like this did not seem like 'natural' behavior.
I could scarcely even comprehend what was going on, and I didn’t even have time to react as I heard a clattering sound to the right of us. Mom suddenly shifted me to her left arm, drawing her sword with her other hand as we heard a loud howl that was much too close. There was a group of a half dozen shadowy four-legged forms growling at us from a gap between houses, but they hadn't yet moved to attack.
Our group consisted of at least thirty armed adults protecting more than a dozen children, but we didn't even stop moving forward as the formation rapidly shifted, blocking my view of the threat. I didn't hear the sound of combat after that, so I could only guess that the beasts considered the risk greater than the reward (or they saw Jaws and mistook him for an alpha monster... an easy mistake to make in my opinion). The creatures slunk off down the street in search of easier prey, and we continued onwards at a steady pace.
Without warning, a massive stone structure loomed out of the darkness ahead of us, outlined by brilliant fires burning on its roof. It was only a little taller than the next biggest buildings around us, but it was so huge that I mistook it for a wall at first, unable to see the entire structure in the darkness despite the small fires illuminating the roof.
The sound of combat washed over us as we drew closer to the end of the street. We entered a large open courtyard that surrounded the gigantic building, and I could barely make out a pitched battle of around sixty villagers holding off a few dozen shadow wolves. It quickly became apparent that they were fighting to keep the entrance to the building clear, and the combat shifted continuously in a wave-like pattern as new monsters tried to close the gap and force their way inside.
At first, it looked like there was a constant stream of reinforcements joining the villagers to push the beasts to either side of the gateway, but as we got closer I could see that it was actually the same villagers constantly rotating through. Things were moving too quickly for me to catch exactly how they were pulling it off, but I had the impression that some of the defenders were leaving the formation of villagers near the stone building and moving out into the courtyard. From there, they engaged any loose wolves, putting pressure on them to join the rest of the monsters closer to the stone walls on either side of the gate.
That ended up helping compress the formation of the defenders again, allowing more to step back and rush out to apply pressure on the wolves again, maintaining a relatively clear path into the building. We ran into the middle of the gap between the defenders, and I saw wounded villagers getting dragged inside by people who were not wearing armor. They moved aside to let us pass, and soon we had entered through the protected gateway, which turned out to be a short stone tunnel leading into what looked like a second courtyard, except this one was fully enclosed and well-lit by torches placed into the walls.
My eyes adjusted to the brightness inside the building, and I saw that there were two lines of armored villagers ringed around the exit of the tunnel, probably acting as additional lines of defense. The enclosed space was enormous, and I could see pillars off in the distance that ran from the floor below to the ceiling above, but they looked puny compared to the size of the room. If anything, it reminded me of one of those gigantic shopping centers in my previous life, except somehow made of stone instead of metal and reinforced concrete. My engineering background allowed me to quickly assess that a structure like this should have been impossible, as it should have collapsed under its own weight - but I had other concerns at the moment.
We moved in with our group, following shouted directions given by a man in shining chain-mail armor. We ended up entering what looked like a storeroom, with packed shelves stacked high along the back wall. After our group entered we stood around for a few more seconds as more people joined us, and it was then that I noticed our group had gotten smaller... and was also missing an essential gigantic figure, which was all I cared about.
A command was given by someone, and the door was shut behind us. As I panicked, looking around for Jaws, the people closest to the door worked together to lift a massive iron-reinforced wooden beam and set it on a series of heavy iron hooks across the doorway, effectively locking the door shut from the inside.
A number of the older children were crying, and there was a chorus of wailing from all the infants around us. I felt a faint urge to start yelling and join the rest of the kids in their shameless cacophony, but instead I simply looked at mom and willed her to open the door so that we could find dad.