A week passed since Lunette spoke of the need to leave Arvel’s house, and yet, nothing had changed about their daily routine. She had traded in her blanket shawl for one of his loose winter shirts; she no longer needed the warmth, but she preferred something she could hide her skinny figure under fully. She was able to walk on her own, and had done away with her bandages. Though she was getting stronger by the day, the increments were too small for her to acknowledge. She helped Fidget feed the chickens every day, but the walk to the coop and back left her winded and required her to sit and rest for a couple of hours after.

At Lunette’s insistence, the others felt more at ease leaving her at home for much of the day while they went to Elediah’s Trail to do their work. Arvel’s militia was taking on a fine shape, while Fidget had taken a firm lead over the women and their trap-building efforts. As for Rain, she was focusing her efforts on learning the skills that the other women had been honing for much of their lives, tightly binding bundles of thatch for the roofs of their new homes.

Frederik took a seat on a sealed rainwater barrel, some distance from the others who were still training. He was frequently mocked for taking breaks to catch his breath or rest, so he’d taken to resting out of their line of sight. But once he was through mopping the sweat from his brow, he opened the leather bag that hung from his hip to retrieve a small thread-bound journal and a piece of wrapped charcoal, to begin scribbling notes about what he had learned.

“Leading foot toward opponent, present a narrow target,” he muttered as he wrote in shorthand, “back foot perpendicular for greater strength. Knees bent, weight on balls of feet...”

Frederik groaned and reached down to rub one of his burning, twitching thighs, careful not to smear charcoal on his trouser leg.

“Don’t lean forward when attacking,” he continued, as he returned to his scribbling, squinting at the darkening page. His brow furrowed as the daylight dimmed further, and muttered to himself, “Who upset Fidget this time?”

He slammed his journal shut between both palms and looked skyward, to search for any sign of inbound rain. But to his surprise, he saw the dark clouds drifting west from over the mountaintops, rather than traveling eastward to cast a rain shadow over them. He narrowed his eyes, gazing into the unusual striations of the dark clouds, before he began to notice movement up high.

“D-Demons,” he muttered softly, before he sprung from the barrel. Forgetting all of the burning pain in his legs, he turned to run back toward the training militia, shouting at the top of his lungs, “DEMONS, INCOMING!”

Arvel froze when he heard Frederik shouting in the distance, and lowered his shovel. Only about half of the men had spears to train with, and the rest were still using farming implements like Arvel. He looked at the men, and saw the dread sinking into their eyes.

“This is what we been trainin’ for,” Arvel said, “Go ‘n get your armor on! Tell everybody what ain’t a fighter to get inside!”

The men immediately scattered, but they ran with purpose, and that direction overrode their brewing panic. They knew where to go and get their ‘armor’, their straw rain shawls, and they knew to spread the word. They had jobs to do and places to do them. And none of them had time to look up.

Frederik ran toward Arvel and stopped a few feet away, his hands on his knees, panting heavily, and said, “They’re up... in the clouds... th-they’re going to... dive down...”

“Damn, they’re high,” Arvel said, “Good work spottin’ em.”

Frederik stared at Arvel a moment, before lifting his shoulders and saying with a grin, “I believe that’s... the first time you’ve praised me.”

“Don’t get all emotional about it!” Arvel said awkwardly, “I ain’t some slave driver, I compliment plenty of folk! Go ‘n... go ‘n make sure Rain’s takin’ cover!”

Frederik grinned broadly at Arvel before turning to jog toward the houses, and Arvel turned to run toward the eastern side of the village.

The men were gathering there, each of them with bushy straw raincoats draped around their shoulders, and high woven collars to protect themselves from the sharp and jagged bits tucked within. The women, meanwhile, were dragging the tanning racks out into the middle of the gravel road, and affixing thatch-covered panels to them, tied with cord. As barricades went, they seemed quite flimsy, but they were better than nothing.

“Why are we putting up walls on the east?” one of the men asked, “They’re going to attack from above!”

“Let ‘em think we’re just a bunch of stupid human prey,” Arvel said as he marched up the middle of their forces, “They could attack from any direction, yeah, but what’s important is that we know where they’re attacking... and they’re gonna attack any big group of humans they can spot. Which is why it’s so important they see us, front ‘n center.”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The men looked skyward, gasps and cries of surprise rising up from the crowd. The dark clouds had stopped moving, and hung perfectly still above them, before slowly beginning to rotate, as though swirling around the eye of a tornado. The women and elderly ran for cover inside of their thatch-roof houses, and the men hunkered down low, lifting their weapons and tools up defensively.

“Remember!” Arvel shouted, as he remained standing among the kneeling militia, “Don’t panic. Block downward, never up, or you’ll catch a body-shot to the face instead. Their claws are nasty but they can’t do much from the ground, so pin ‘em down as fast as you can.”

The clouds parted, and demons began to pour from the ‘eye of the storm’, flying straight down toward the militiamen.

“Weapons up!” Arvel shouted, lifting his square-nosed shovel up in front of himself.

The rest of the men shouted a resounding ‘aye!’ as they brought their spears and tools to bear.

They seemed to move faster and faster the further they fell, until the lanky, winged demons came crashing down over the top of them. The air was filled with a cacophony of flapping, screeching, screams, and clanking metal. Arvel could barely see through the din of chaos that fell over them, but he kept his shovel up and thrust skyward, stabbing back at the demons that had decided to single him out in the crowd.

Through the melee, Arvel saw one of the demons grab hold of one of the younger men by the shoulders and take flight, but they only made it a few yards before the demon screeched and flailed. It let go of him, and he dangled by one shoulder as the demon’s other claw was tangled in the brambles and sharpened sticks hidden in the rain shawl. When the young man was finally knocked free, he hit the ground in a heap, covered in the blood that gushed from the demon’s mangled claw. He shook off what he could, and scrambled back to his feet, getting his weapon up again as he limped back toward the safety of the rest of the militia.

‘It’s working,’ Arvel thought to himself with a grin, before he shouted to the men, “Keep it up! It’s working!”

In the shade of a small hut, a dozen women were gathered, huddled together. Some of them quietly sobbed, while others tried to calm and hush them, not just to provide comfort, but also to make sure they couldn’t easily be found by demons.

Rain hugged her knees to her chest as she sat against the wall, and watched Fidget going through a toolbox nearby.

“What are you looking for?” Rain asked quietly.

“Weapons!” replied Fidget. She then lifted up a strange looking tool with a big, proud grin on her face. It resembled an enormous sewing needle, two-feet long and made of iron, with a hole near the tip. Rain had seen the men working on thatch roofs stabbing it back and forth through the rooftop, using it to weave cord through the thick surface.

“You’re going to fight?” asked Rain.

Fidget looked at Rain, surprised, and asked, “You’re not?”

“I can’t,” Rain replied, looking down at the dirt floor beneath her, “We’ve been working on these traps and defenses because we can’t fight. Not like the militia can.”

“You can fight,” Fidget said, as she knelt down in front of Rain. She picked up a pair of large sewing shears from the toolkit, and grabbed Rain’s skirt, beginning to cut the material halfway down. Rain reached to stop her, but Fidget swatted her hand away before pointing the shears at her threateningly, and said, “You can fight! What if you get grabbed by a demon right now? Just let it carry you off? Shrug and say ‘oh well, I did my best’? You didn’t, though! You didn’t do your best until your fingers bleed from clawing and you broke your feet from kicking.”

Rain stared at Fidget, eyes wide, and said nothing as the goblin cut her skirt to knee-length. Fidget pulled back the scrap of material and cut off a strip to tie her own fluffy hair back, before handing the rest off to another woman nearby. Fidget then took a small awl from the toolbox and jammed it into the screw in the middle of the sewing shears, twisting it until the hinge popped loose. She then picked up the two halves of the shears and offered one to Rain, and the other to another woman nearby.

“No worrying about breaking a nail when you’re going to die!” Rain said, “Mess up pretty dresses. Break nice things. Fix it when you survive.”

Rain looked down at the makeshift knife on her hand, before giving Fidget a little smile.

Suddenly, there was a pounding sound on the roof, followed by screeches and flapping sounds. The women screamed in terror as it sounded like the small house might come right down on them, and the walls shook while pieces of straw rained down on their heads.

Fidget leapt to her feet, and held up her thatching needle like a sword, the facing curtain-draped doorway, just waiting for any of the demons to figure out a way in. Suddenly, the curtain was thrown aside, and a body slid across the ground, between the huddling women.

“Frederik!” Rain shouted as she crawled toward him.

Frederik’s flouncy shirt was ripped, stained with blood both red and purple. There were three rows or deep cuts on his shoulder, and he still clung tightly to the shaft of his spear, even though the head had been broken off.

“What were you doing out there?!” Rain asked, grabbing the cut remnants of her skirt to push down over Frederik’s shoulder.”

“I-I’m sorry, my lady,” Frederik said through his grimace, “I tried to hold them off... Alas, I am no knight...”

Suddenly, light filled the hovel. A chunk of the roof was ripped off of its frame, scraps of cord snapping and pieces of thatch raining down on their heads. From above, three bloodied, half-mangled demons gazed down through the newly torn hole.

“Stay back!” Fidget yelled, as she held her thatching needle up high, pointing it toward them. Though she was less than half their size, her voice took on a serious growl without an ounce of irony, as she warned them, “Stay back, or else!”