When I stepped outside of the church, I no longer stood alone in Caelfall’s streets. The restless dead gathered in the bell tower’s shadow. Mistwalkers all, clad in the raiments of a dead kingdom, pallid faces framing hungry eyes.

Thunder rumbled above. A light rain began to fall.

“You were a fool to come back.” Vaughn, the Mistwalker commander I’d tailed on my first night in the village, faced me from the center of the street. Encased in a set of old, battered armor, he was near as tall as me, his wide shoulders made into metal hills by studded pauldrons. He held a heavy broadsword in his fist, the nicks of many campaigns marking its blade. He rode one of the brutish chimera the continental company had brought, which snickered at me, a purple tongue lolling.

Others surrounded him. A dozen or more, all of them forming a half ring around the front of the church, many lurking in the shadows of homes and shops. In the rain and mist, their armor seemed formed of pale shadows and their eyes gleamed with odlight.

There was no sign of Catrin. She’d betrayed me, then.

Perhaps this had always been her plan. Had she known what was inside of the church?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the task I’d been given. The doom in my hand. I tightened my grip on the axe.

I regarded them all, and saw a few take nervous steps back. The Wil-O’ Wisps lurking within my pointed cowl made the inside of the hood glow with eerie blue light, masking my face. More of that light spilled from the narrow gap down the front of my cloak, which I’d wrapped about myself. I couldn’t see the effect myself, but I imagined it was uncanny.

The Wil-O’ Wisps giggled playfully, the sound just on the edge of hearing, and more of the ghouls began to lose hold of their bravado.

“I’m here for Orson Falconer,” I said, my voice emerging from the elf light with a faint echo. “Step aside.”

“Sure.” Vaughn lifted his scarred blade. Unlike the others, he was unimpressed. “We’ll do that.”

Fine then.

I lifted my axe, and amber fire played along its edge. I ran the fingers of my right hand along the fae alloy, leaving tiny trails of golden light where I touched. “This is pure aura,” I said to the Mistwalkers. “It cuts you, and your spirits will lose their grip on those borrowed bones. Won’t take much more than a nick.”

Vaughn bared his yellow teeth in a snarl. “I’ve had enough of this. Take him.”

The Mistwalkers were veteran soldiers to a man. They didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter. I hadn’t expected my attempt at intimidation to work. Hadn’t wanted it to, really.

They’d earned this for the old troll, for the villagers, and for five centuries of murder.

I waited until the nearest ghouls were perhaps five paces away, then flashed into motion. I went forward in a rippling flurry of blood-red cloak and dancing faerie light, lashing out with the elfbronze axe.

The bell atop the chapel tolled. I couldn't say who was responsible. Maybe Brother Edgar, the one survivor of that nightmare I’d failed to stop. Maybe it was the wind, or the tortured spirits bound forever within that desecrated hall.

Maybe it was the ghost of Father Micah, Caelfall’s last preoster.

The gladius of the nearest ghoul shattered, along with the hand holding it. The mercenary stumbled back, maimed hand burning with a molten light. I stopped my forward motion, brought the axe up, then down to cleave into the undead soldier’s shoulder.

There was a bright flash, a smell like nothing so much as one might find in a sunlit glade, and the ghoul fell to one knee. His right shoulder was severed nearly down to one lung, and the edges of the wound burned with golden flame. He opened his mouth as though to scream, and more of that light spilled from it. No sound came other than the rumbling of a furnace.

He fell, a smoking husk, and the ghost tethered to the corpse came free in a ghastly wail before it too was consumed by aureflame.

I lifted the axe as the rest of the Mistwalkers froze in their tracks, lifting arms and shields to cover their eyes from the flare of light. I let out a breath, and it emerged as a dawn-lit plume.

I began to kill.

Distracted by the dramatic death of their comrade, two more Mistwalkers fell as my sanctified weapon lashed out. I wielded it more like a greatsword than a proper axe, cleaving and slicing, blessed bronze sheering through chainmail and severing paper-thin ghoul flesh. Each undead soldier who fell erupted in a briefly lived plume of dark golden flame, their undead spirits losing hold on ancient bones as auratic fire consumed them.

It was a painful, nasty way to go, an unmaking which tormented the spirit as much as the body. There would be no peaceful rest for these — the flame would hurl them into the Dark, where they would burn for centuries.

Outnumbered as I was, the mercenaries should have been able to easily overwhelm me. Instead, terrified of the doom I brought, they backed away and lost their coordination, allowing me to dance through them, swinging my burning axe as I went.

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I went through them like a killing wind, and within moments three more ghouls had fallen before they’d barely had the chance to muster a defense.

Then Vice-Captain Vaughn spurred his ghastly mount forward. Huge, grim, the chimera lunged at me, a heavy head alchemically engineered to snap bones surging forward, maw wide. Its carrion reek filled my senses.

It died on the first swing. Faen Orgis clove the beast’s skull, but its forward momentum didn’t halt. Hundreds of pounds of war chimera struck me hard in a shower of burning fur and gore, and I went down into the mud. Only my elf-forged armor saved my life.

Vaughn rolled from his saddle expertly, landing on his feet. He planted a boot on his dead mount’s shoulder and brought his sword up to take my head.

The ghoul’s scarred sword met the edge of my axe as I rose, battered but intact. I batted the swing aside, but the Edaean legionairre was wicked strong. My bones quivered from the shock of impact, my muscles groaned. The ghoul warrior let out a shout as he struck, then surged forward with a terrible fury before I could get my proper balance.

I barely caught another killing strike on my weapon, ducked the second, then fell back as his onslaught went unabated. We dueled beneath the bell tower, moving around the mound of the dead chimera. He didn’t stop, didn’t need to breathe or rest, didn’t need to care if his muscles tore and his bones fractured. He had the strength of the dead, and the hate of lifetimes dedicated to war.

He was an old ghoul. He’d probably fed on many potent bones across a hundred battlefields, and I’d have had difficulty finding anyone with that kind of implacable killing potence outside of the oldest elves. He was stronger than Irn Bale had been. Less graceful, true, but he had a veteran’s cleverness and a cruel edge to his swordplay.

Vaughn jabbed his sword at my eye, intending to puncture my skull. I flinched, bringing up the shadow-metal vambrace encasing my left forearm. The blade skidded off the elf metal, leaving a shallow groove to join a hundred others. I had an opening and tried it, but another Mistwalker swung at my legs with a poleaxe. I bared my teeth in effort, dancing back before the hooked blade could hamstring me. Vaughn had distance again and used it well, shouting as he chopped one-handed. His blade skidded off my hauberk.

“Your irk friends give you some new toys?” Vaughn hissed through teeth nearly too large for his mouth.

I had no interest just then in banter. I took my axe in both hands, bringing it back behind my head — not for a swing, but to block the sword of a ghoul who’d gotten behind me. I used her own momentum to carry the swing around, letting it go harmlessly into the trampled grass, then punched her in the jaw hard enough to shatter yellow marrow-crunching teeth. She went down, letting out an almost jackal-like yip.

I flicked the blood from my knuckles as I caught my breath. The Mistwalkers, still numbering more than half a dozen, paced around me like a pack of starving direwolves.

I was out of breath. They didn’t see it through the wisp-light filling my hood, but heard it. Vaughn barked out a laugh.

“Orson told us you were some kind of holy killer,” the ghoul said, still laughing. “I admit, you put on a good show, but we’ve killed your like before. You tire like any man. Still…” He clacked his yellow teeth together. “I bet that’s some ripe aura in those bones.”

“I want one of his ribs,” another ghoul said. He was drooling like a hound.

“We’ll all get our share,” Vaughn growled, the same hunger making his voice rough. “Company rules.”

Discipline broke, and several of the undead mercenaries lunged forward ahead of their leader. Ready, I swung my axe up, and a sunburst of auratic light blazed to life from the runic blade. The ghouls stumbled back, screeching and blind. I sprinted at Vaughn — he was the most dangerous enemy present. If I killed him, the others would fall like chaff.

Eyes scorched, the Mistwalker commander spat something in a language I didn’t recognize. It was grating, harsh, a blemish on the fabric of the world. His iron sword began to boil with a green-black smog, the same power writhing up one steel-clad arm. He swung, and the smog boiled across the ground in front of him, erupting in a curtain of poisonous fumes. I barely stopped before barreling straight into the curtain, the edges of my cloak carried forward by wind and momentum. The edges of the red cloak sizzled where they touched.

Art. I should have expected a fighter as experienced as the ghoul vice-captain to have one. It reminded me of the choking smoke of battlefields, of alchemical craft erupting in toxic clouds that scalded the lungs and blistered the skin. A manifestation of a soul steeped in gore and iron hate.

I threw an arm over my face to shield myself from the fumes and leapt away, silently cursing. It was too late. Some of the fumes had gotten into my hood. My mouth became suddenly, horribly dry, and my eyes started to itch, then burn. Two or three of the wisps withered and died, dimming the light inside my cloak.

“Stings, doesn’t it!?”

Vaughn came through the black fumes, a titan of iron with yellow teeth bared in a macabre grin. The fumes clung to his armor and shaved scalp, writhing around his huge frame in a protective cloud.

The wisps in the cloak with me whispered fearfully. I couldn’t understand them, but got the message well enough — I was in trouble.

Vaughn brought up his sword, and once again it boiled with hateful fumes. His grin widened until it seemed to split his face in half. His skin was pallid as the corpse he should have been centuries before.

Before he could bring that finishing blow down, he staggered to one side. A look of confusion crossed his twisted features, then pain. He reached up with his free left hand, and found the elf-forged dagger embedded into his neck just below the right ear.

His neck twisted to one side, his features contorted into something truly nightmarish, and he fell to one knee. A strange keening sound came from his lips as the Banemetal tormented the ghost trapped inside his body.

“Thanks for giving me a bunch of darkness to hide in, you marrow-licking bitch.”

Catrin emerged from the billowing well of fumes, apparently unaffected by their bite. I could barely see her through the red haze my vision had become from that same poisonous smog, but her expression was nearly as frightening as those of the ghoul’s — her skin was paler, her hair bleached of color. When she peeled back her lips, her canines had elongated into sharp fangs.

She knelt down, ripped the Banemetal dagger from Vaughn’s neck, then plunged it into the back of his bald skull. I heard the sickening crack as the little blade punctured his cranium. A tinny scream escaped the ghoul’s jaws as his spirit finally came free of the body, twisting as silver flames devoured it.

It took another moment for my own magic to counteract Vaughn’s. My mouth and eyes still burned. I could see well enough, though the edges of my vision hazed. I turned to the rest of the ghouls, who were still recovering from my own flash of light.

My glove voiced a leathery whisper as it tightened around the axe’s grip.

The Mistwalkers stared at me and the dhampir, blank-eyed and bestial.

They fled.