The darkening sky warped and shimmered as the demon rose up, a living mirage that distorted the light of the stars themselves. It loomed over the walls, stretching itself ever higher like a rising wave. If not for the magical attacks constantly flying at it, it might have been totally invisible. The mere thought was terrifying; as disturbing as the demon’s ghostly visage was, not being able to see it—not knowing for sure where it was or what it was doing—would’ve been a thousand times worse.

Nothing Taunton’s defenders tried was having any effect. Below, Ser Deryk was occupied trying to keep the civilian townsfolk from hurting themselves in their frenzy—but even if he hadn’t been occupied, his thin rapier-like blade didn’t glow white like Valerie’s did, and the man seemed to rely on sheer speed, flitting back and forth across the courtyard, so Lucas suspected the man would’ve been just as ineffective against the demon as everyone else.

The world was filled with panicked screams and the surreal sounds of various magics. There were only a handful of Wands present in Taunton, but magic wasn’t exclusive to the Wand class.

Stars launched their own weaker spells. Arcane arrows and other projectiles flew at the demon in a seemingly constant stream. Those Swords with ranged abilities sliced at the demon’s translucent body. Even Shields had some offensive ability: Loren seemed to be able to launch ghostly projections of golden light in the shape of her armour.

None of it worked, but Lucas still found himself admiring their courage. They were shouting to each other, coordinating their efforts. For every failed attack, they switched to a new technique, never discouraged, never giving up. At the same time, they were covering each other, making sure anyone who was focused on attacking the demon was simultaneously protected from the poor souls who’d been driven to madness by the demon’s chaotic corruption.

He wanted desperately to delve into his own magic and help somehow, but Jamie was still too frenzied to reach, battering against the inside of Lucas’ soulheart. And, still reeling from his previous experience with trying to tap into a plant, he was loath to try his floramancy—even so, he seriously considered it anyway. Standing here and doing nothing didn’t sit right.

Valerie’s grip on his arm was still vice-like, strong as steel, threatening to snap his arm if he twisted the wrong way, and the blasted woman wasn’t responding to any attempts to get her attention. Even waving the moonlight pendant in her face had no effect. She was still muttering to herself, glistening eyes flitting between the scene below and the demon, her shining blade held out before her, unmoving.

Looming above them, the demon’s shimmering form seemed to ripple like a body of water disturbed by a falling rock. And then it fell, plunging down on the courtyard and all within it like a wave.

The moon shuddered and dimmed as the demon plunged down past him. It didn't even touch him directly, but the grayscale world trembled, hints of colour seeping in through cracks in the sky. Distant, muted sounds started to gain in volume and definition. Where before the cold had been numbing, it suddenly started biting at his skin and stabbing icy shards deep into his flesh, attacking him like it had a mind of its own and malicious intent.

Its effect on his mana was minor at first, like a shadow had ghosted its fingers across his soul. That didn’t last. There was a predatory purpose to the demon’s chaotic magic, and it didn’t appreciate being denied. He could feel its attention pass over his body until it arrived on the pendant, and soon deep black fingers started to stretch across the moon, steadily snuffing out its light.

Lucas lost all awareness of anything else around him, staring up in horror as the shadows around the moon seemed to contract. Cracks spread across its lunar surface like an egg shell, and one piece fell away, revealing a writhing mass of luminescent winged creatures trapped within.

Something reached into his mind and rummaged around with all the finesse of an ice pick slammed through his skull. Icy agony pulsed inside his brain. The moon suddenly seemed a thousand times as bright, and he screwed his eyes shut to the glare. Blurry images danced on the back of his eyelids.

The walk into town, seeing the despondent faces on the people in the graveyard. The signs of beast tracks on the leadup to the town. The confrontation with the beasts back in Elwyn’s farm.

Horror suffused him, and his eyes snapped back open. The demon seemed to feed on his feeling of fear and self-loathing, drawing on those recent memories.

The moon hung in the sky, shining bright as the sun, and the stone walls stood grey and imposing, but below them the demon’s form had flooded the courtyard, and it was roiling like a stormy sea, each wave manifesting its own disturbing translucent image.

The vast majority of scenes playing out meant nothing to him, horrifying as they were; they were little more than a scrapbook montage of misery and regret, each one surely meant to torment a different victim. He didn’t recognise the blond girl tearing apart a crowd of people with clawed fingers and sharpened teeth. The scene of a young man strangling a woman while laughing maniacally was of no obvious significance. And the red-headed woman laying into a group of people with similarly coloured hair with a giant warhammer could have been a horror movie, for all the emotional effect it had on him. There were dozens of similar scenes.

But he knew that one close to the centre, the fires raging and beasts frolicking through the flames. His heart threw itself against his ribcage as a spout of flame launched a beast into the air, sending it flying through the sky like a comet towards Taunton, where it immediately started attacking. A moment later, the image cut back to a view of Lucas’ face, watching the carnage the beast was wreaking with a savage grin on his face.

That wasn’t how it had happened. Not even close.

But it didn’t matter. The truth hit him with the force of a train, knocking his mental fortitude off balance. The moon wavered, dimming.

The image wasn’t necessarily meant for him. Surely he wasn’t the only one seeing this.

Laughter in a thousand discordant voices echoed like rolling thunder.

“Vvvvvvaaaaaaa…”

The chorus was cacophonous. The sheer volume of it vibrated his entire body, affecting him on more than just the physical level. His mana pathways shivered. Jamie’s rage kicked up to a new level; the eldritch creature he’d bonded to barely resembled a cat anymore, unfolding itself into a manic mess of animal parts that had no right to fit together. He could barely make sense of the creature’s form even through their bond.

Just fucking get out! He thought, bringing one hand to his chest as he’d seen Valerie do plenty of times. You’re the one that knows how, you dumb… whatever you are!

Lucas’ thoughts were growing scrambled, and the noise wasn’t helping. Desperate, he tried to focus on what was going on around him, hoping he’d see some clue as to how he could get through this disaster.

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Instead, he saw carnage.

He didn’t know what the demon had done, but in the intervening time where he’d been distracted by Jamie, it had spawned things down below. They were like beasts, but not; each one was humanoid, with two arms and two legs, but that was where the similarities to human beings ended. They moved like contortionists, lurching this way and that, but there was purpose to their motion, intent.

For some reason, Lucas found himself focusing on one in particular, a single scene among many. It looked like a woman in a dark cloak, but the hood had melted into the sides of her face. Thick, black veins trailed out from where the fabric had fused to her skin, running down to her jawline and below like lightning bolts. Her eyes were wild, frenzied, and they were focused like she saw only one man in the courtyard.

Elwyn. Frozen still with his children cowering behind him, all three of them just as intent on the monstrous creature as it was on them. They were wide-eyed, trembling, frozen to the spot as it stumbled towards them.

There were many like that, though just as many people were fighting back against their personal monsters. Either way, any semblance of a coordinated defence had broken down.

The demon’s laughter rumbled through the world, revelling in the misery it was causing as it rippled back up the outer wall of the keep. It had no face, no eyes, but somehow Lucas felt its attention was riveted on the scene beneath it.

Valerie evidently felt the same, and took it as her cue to act.

Except she didn’t attack.

Lucas didn’t even realise what she’d done until there was absolutely nothing he could do about it; in the blink of an eye, he was resting over her shoulder like a bag of potatoes, soaring through the air with the town blurring by below them, his stomach turning as much from being pressed to the metal plate on her shoulder as at the sudden momentum. Valerie’s cloak was spread out like a pair of wings, and even with his grayscale, colourless vision he could tell the magical fabric was rapidly darkening, to the point it was nearing the black of night. His heart threatened to race, but the moon shone upon him once more from the corner of his vision, cracked and dimmed but back to soothing his panic before it could even begin.

But that only worked for the fear that came with realising he was soaring high through the air on the back of a woman half a head shorter than him. Not even the moon could do anything about the horror that suffused him when he realised the intent behind this sudden flight.

She was running away. Escaping. Leaving all those people to die horribly.

“You pray it loses interest in you.”

Everything had happened so fast. In reality, it had probably been a handful of seconds since the demon had entered the town; she'd been planning this from the moment she saw it, hence why she'd taken him straight to the roof.

Lucas started thrashing, a keening cry breaking through the moon’s calming embrace, tearing out of his throat. “No! Back!”

Valerie ignored him. No matter how he tried to wriggle out of her grip, her arms remained steel. Her cloak was almost midnight now, and they descended rapidly, the ground rushing towards them at terrifying speed. But Valerie landed as easily as if she’d just hopped off a curb, barely bleeding a fraction of her momentum, transitioning into a sprint down the wide main street that led directly west of the town where the firesheep still burned. Their bleats of terror grew louder.

“Valerie!” Lucas tried to shout, but it felt like his body was muted, numbed. His heart should’ve been beating harder than this, his breaths coming more laboured, his stomach churning. He felt distant from himself, his very soul being pulled away from the physical reactions of his body, drawn upwards towards the false moon.

Again, she ignored him. Didn’t let him down. She moved with incredible speed, far faster than he could have managed even with mana-assisted strength, yet somehow barely making a sound.

Or maybe that was merely because Lucas couldn’t quite focus on anything other than the desperate screams in the distance, both human and beastly. He imagined he could pick out individual voices among them, faces flashing through his mind.

Wick, with that easy grin he hadn’t shown since the incident in Pentaburgh. Aly, with her perpetual frown. Elwyn with his welcoming eyes, and his two innocent children. Even the people he barely knew; Deryk the skycloak, Jeisyn the Bowmaster and all the others from his guild, Loren and Marsh who he’d barely met for a few minutes before the alarm had gone up.

None of them deserved to die. Especially not like this.

Jamie was still going mad in his chest, furious at the demon but trapped in a prison of his own making, and he seemed to get worse and worse as they got further away. It was starting to hurt, but Lucas didn’t know what he could do about it. His mana seemed not his own, tugged between the moon’s influence and whatever it was his bonded companion was doing.

Valerie reached the edge of the town and passed through the gate in no time at all. His stomach lurched as she leapt again, pure strength carrying them over and through the inferno the firesheep had stoked up, a wave of heat washing over them before they burst through. The firesheep were running around madly in the conflagration, utterly frenzied, mindless with terror even this far from the demon and without its attention. They wouldn’t escape its wrath, either.

It was all horrifying, but the moon was stealing his disgust before he could even process it. For the first time since he’d been graced by its calming light, he glared up at the moon with anger, and even that he could feel draining away; even cracked and deformed by the demon’s assault, it was picking him apart, pulling away the parts it felt he didn’t need.

Fuck you, Lucas thought, reaching up for the pendant.

Valerie came to an abrupt stop, and Lucas would’ve gone flying from her hold if she hadn’t snatched his arm, pulling him down next to her. The sudden halt in momentum jarred at his bones and sent his brain rattling in his skull. But as dizzy as he felt, Lucas wasted no time in tearing the pendant from his neck, snapping its chain, clenching hard in his fist; a part of him hoped it would shatter.

Sensation flooded back in, briefly overwhelming. The cold of the night, biting, fighting against the hot flames that roared away a dozen metres to his right. The screams in the distance, the terrified bleating of the firesheep, the awful laughter of the demon as it tormented the people of Taunton. Colour bled into his vision, turning the world to watercolour; the brilliant reds and oranges and white of the flames, the majestic twinkling sky, and even the reddish-pink of his mildly scorched fingers. They weren't more than a hundred metres beyond the town's western gate; close enough to hear the screams from the keep with startling clarity. There was no sign of anything chasing after them, beast or demon.

Lucas glared at the pendant with disgust, gripping it tightly in his hand. Logically, he knew it had saved him. He could still feel its effects, even, nipping at the edges of his feelings and taking the bite off them. But emotion that had been totally muted was flooding back in, and it was hard to get past the anger permeating him. He was ready to throw it at Valerie, to rage and demand she take him back. But when he saw her face, he froze.

Her demonic mien was worse than he’d ever seen it. Inhuman, almost. The gaunt cheeks, the sunken eyes, the pale complexion. Ghoulish.

But the sight brought him no fear, for there wasn’t a hint of that otherworldly fury in her expression. The vast majority of her face was blank, emotion wiped clean. Her lips were neutral, her brows straight. She wasn’t even breathing heavily.

The only emotion was in her eyes, and it was the furthest thing from rage.

Tears streamed down her face, carving wavy lines through the soot and dirt marring her cheeks. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, her icy blue pupils dilated without a hint of that moonlight that sometimes entered them. Shadows seemed to dance across her form, lit by the great flames to their side. Her cloak was dark as the sky behind her.

“If you have a plan to save those people that would not put you in jeopardy,” she said quietly, with the slightest tremor in her voice, “I would very much like to hear it.”