Screams pierced through the night—forcing Jack awake in an instant as adrenaline rushed through his veins.

A new moon meant only the light of the stars fell on the glade, and even that paltry illumination was occluded by the canopy above them.

All around him was frenzied movement in the dark, barely perceptible to his eyes; the motion was felt and heard more than it was seen.

They were under attack, that much was clear. He needed to determine the nature of the threat, from that everything else would follow. He focused on what he could hear around him, on what the sounds meant.

There was shouting, but only one screamer; one figure crying out in pain. None of the voices were aggressive, all sounded fearful, confused. It wasn't an attack by other humans, those voices would be in the mix, there would be sounds of struggles.

"To me! Shelter by the cart, all to me!" from the darkness Jam shouted above the din.

Jack reached out blindly and felt Stroph's shoulder flinch and then settle at his touch.

They rose together, and without a pause ran for the dark outline of the cart at the other end of the clearing. They kept close to each other, staying in contact was the surest way of tracking someone in the darkness.

Jam had rallied everyone to him. Most were standing, arrayed outwards with weapons in hand, spears that had been pulled from one of the wagons. One figure was brought in supported by two others, their breathing erratic and harsh with pain. Another had been dragged and was on the ground, unconscious. Jack could see dark splotches on their form, and only close attention revealed their chest continuing to rise. The majority of the amblers were being settled by their handlers, forced to calm despite the panic in the air.

Suddenly, one of the amblers that hadn’t made it to the circle brayed in agony. The sound cut off just as quickly as it had begun. Another cried out and was again cut-off. Whatever was around was still here, and still acting against them.

Most of the group had taken their weapons and were holding them out against the darkness. Even in this tense moment against an unknown foe they were following their training, taking a tight formation, keeping everyone close and protecting the vulnerable in their midst. Jam barked out commands to the spear bearers and they adjusted their half-circle at his word. They used a technique that allowed some of them to bury the haft of the spear into the ground and have it remain angled outward; slowly but surely they were building out a row of pointed spears, narrowing the gaps in their defence.

Jack didn’t know his own place in this rhythm. They were facing a danger coming for their lives and he had nothing to contribute, and could only get in the way of their established practice. Jam’s distaste for his effort to join their labour was being validated. A moment of hopeless, helpless fear clawed at his mind.

‘No. I’m more capable than that. Find a place. Find a role. The worst thing I can do is be a burden on them.’ He stamped down on the impulse to curl up and let events continue without him. He joined the wounded and others in the centre of their paltry wall of spears. Here he wouldn’t be in the way of the defenders.

“What is it?” a whisper in the darkness, panicked. “Did anyone see?”

“Lekub was on watch, his yelling woke me. Something was on him, but his shield card was active. I rushed over to help and something attacked me, struck my leg. I could barely see anything in the dark,” a woman’s voice, tight with pain, answered from the figure that had been carried in. “Is he okay? I-”

“He’s here,” one of the figures crouched by the downed man said, “he’s unconscious, bleeding... but it’s just a little, he’ll pull through.”

“Thanks the spirits,” the woman’s voice was thick with relief, “I’ll never tease him for leaving that shield on ever again. It must have saved him.”

Jack listened in on their discussion. There was something odd about the details of what had happened. He was familiar with the threats that roamed the wilds, but only at an academic level. Understanding the risks of various regions and the entities that wandered them was a key part of his trade, but his personal experience was nonexistent—until now.

“What did you see?” Jack asked.

The others looked at him in confusion.

“She gave us her answer lad, it was too dark,” one ventured.

“Her words were ‘I could barely see anything’,” Jack retorted, before continuing to press for an answer. “What did you see? This might matter.”

For a moment she was silent but then in a wavering voice she answered, “teeth,” and then continuing stronger, “I thought I saw black fangs as long as my hand, scraping against his shield, attached to shadow.”

All fell silent at the description. But Jack was already moving on to the unconscious man.

“Let me take a look,” Jack said, moving closer. “I have some medical training.” He didn’t disclose that nearly all of it was for the treatment of fall related injuries.

There was too little blood for shock, and a gentle pass around his head failed to reveal evidence of any blow. This wasn’t conclusive, but the fact that he’d been screaming earlier also didn’t fit if he’d suffered a head injury serious enough to see him unconscious.

There was a technique he knew for assessing the awareness of a patient; knuckles against the man’s chest he ground against it for a few seconds—no response.

‘Out cold. But no head wound. Poison?’

He looked more closely at the wounds on arms, gashes torn across his limbs. ‘Defensive wounds’, Jack surmised.

The darkness slowed his efforts greatly, as he struggled to make out any details but then he spotted something strange. On one of his arms there was a much more minor scratch, easily passed over in favour of the more serious injuries. But at the edge of that scrape was a darker spot of black that looked out of place.

Jack felt around the area, trying to find anything, but then-

‘What?’

The black spot felt like it extended into his arm, it was the exposed piece of something embedded into flesh.

With absolute care he worked his fingers against the foreign object, levering it slowly out until there was enough exposed to pull it the rest of the way free.

It was a short spine, no larger than a fingernail. From the give in its structure he knew it was hollow.

Without a word he went to the other woman who’d been injured. She’d been silent for the last minute and he suspected he knew why.

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

She was still conscious, but barely. Her words were slurred and increasingly incoherent.

By now those around him had followed his movements and realized something was amiss, so when he tore open the cloth over her wounded leg there were no interruptions.

Now that he knew what to look for the same black mark was easily spotted and extracted; it was another spine akin to the first.

Jack stood back, passing the spine to one of the gathering figures around him. He needed to think.

If it had come purely for prey, it should be leaving soon, taking one of its kills with it. But no... it had singled out the only awake human.

It had targeted the man on watch—Lekub. Striking from an ambush so he hadn’t seen it until it was already attacking him. His shield card must have saved him from being killed immediately, and so he’d had the chance to wake the camp.

It was a beast of some kind, something that came in the night to ambush sleeping victims. For a moment his thoughts dwelt on the outcome if it had been successful, silently killing every one of them, raising no alarm until the morning light rose to a clearing filled with corpses.

He forced himself to focus, pushing back the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. Responding without reason would doom them. The chaos around him grew distant and his mind bent to the question of what they were facing.

It hadn't left when its initial, silent approach failed. It killed the exposed amblers... their method to move the wagons. It was behaving cautiously, calculating—striking in darkness, targeting their lookout, removing their mobility.

So it was smart and it still thought it could achieve its goal, even with them aware and fighting back. It was just... changing tactics.

He knew then what it was, not specifically, but the pattern. Before the most recent Fall, in the era of the card-shaped, when breeding and modifying animals to serve human purposes had been the dominant technology, war-shaped had been made. Beasts that followed programmed behaviours, unnatural instincts crafted to produce the greatest harm, instill the greatest fear in their creators' enemies.

What faced them was a remnant of that time. It wasn’t something truly living, an organism shaped by the rhythms of nature with self-preservation, affection for its young—no, it was a tool made for death and horror.

If it managed to tear through the rest of them, he imagined it would leave the two it had anesthetized alive—to wake hours from now amidst a sea of blood.

But so far they were building out an admirable barrier. If it was as oriented towards stealth as he thought it must be there would be trade-offs. It would be worse at leveraging strength, tearing through them in a fury. If they could only hold the line, daybreak may bring salvation.

Jack looked back at the defenders, the brave few who stood between them and utter ruin. Several of them were slumped.

Jam had noticed too, calling them back. Stroph and another man stumbled back; the third, slighter, figure needed to be carried into the centre.

Jack hurried over to the trio and curbed Jam’s objections by explaining what he’d found in the already fallen pair. The other man, still large but smaller than Stroph, had already slipped away. A quick search found the black spines embedded in exposed skin, their job done.

Three of them had been struck without any notice. It was attacking them despite their defences.

“Stroph. Stroph listen to me,” Jack spoke slowly, holding the swaying man upright. “Did you feel something pierce you here? A sting? Did something brush against you?”

He could see the struggle to concentrate on his words on Stroph’s face.

“STROPH!” Jack shouted now, the desperation of their moment coming up against the potency of the poison dragging him to unconsciousness.

Jack raised a hand to slap him—anything to bring him up enough to answer—only for Jam to grab his arm.

“That’s a bad idea lad, he’s not one you should startle with a blow.”

“We all die if he can’t answer now,” Jack rebutted.

Jam fell silent.

Jack stared at the man, his face was shrouded, but he could only hope the intensity would carry through.

“You won’t slap him. It’s too dangerous,” Jam spoke with finality, and Jack felt his hope sink. They needed to know the delivery mechanism, anything else would be a slow death of attrition.

Without warning Jam reared back and swung his hand into Stroph’s cheek.

“CATASTROPHE YOU WILL HEED ME,” Jam bellowed.

Stroph was nearly bowled over by the blow, but from him Jack heard a soft voice, “why’d ya hit me Da?”

Jack immediately went close to him.

“I’m sorry about that Stroph, there was a big uhh hornet on your face,” Jack improvised desperately, “you got stung earlier as well I think. Do you remember when you felt a sting on your calves?”

“I didn’t get stung I think,” Stroph answered, and Jack felt his heart fall.

‘We don’t know when or how it gets the spines to its victims. It’s found a working strategy, and it will keep at it until we’re all helpless, and then it will kill all of us.’

“Got bit by a snake Da, no hornet.”

‘What,’ he thought; then out loud “What do you mean a snake?”

“Felt somethin’ movin’ in the grass when I was standing guard, felt slithery. Then I thought it bit me, I looked but there was nothin’, figured I was imagining things. Guess it wasn’t nothin’ huh?” Stroph slurred his way through an explanation.

Those were the last words to come from him, as the spines at last caught up to his greater size and he slipped out of their reach.

“It’s not a projectile. It’s reaching out a limb, an appendage, under the cover of darkness and the grass and striking out so carefully it’s dismissed as nothing,” Jack puzzled through the hints Stroph had given him.

Jam had put the pieces together as well and ordered a lantern lit. Their night vision would suffer; that was the price of it. A few of them had been using small spring-lights to work by, and the full illumination of a lantern had been a low priority or outright detriment until necessity now forced their hand.

If it had been a projectile, another strategy would have been needed. They would have improvised cover or pulled back to shelter in the wagons—but that would have limited their movement, wasting time and effort fruitlessly. That was why Jack had pushed for an answer as strongly as he had, they couldn’t afford the cost in manpower any pointless intervention took—not at the rate they were already losing people at the barrier.

But something was bothering him about Jam’s chosen solution—the lantern. It made sense to light it. Darkness was the domain of the predator, light was theirs. Trying to see was a natural recourse for them—it meant security and awareness, bringing their own domain out when they felt most vulnerable.

But everything that the creature in the shadows had done so far had been so purposeful, so targeted. When its first attack had failed, it adjusted its approach and pursued a strategy they were unprepared for. How would it respond to its stealth being removed?

The memory of the pained cries of the amblers—cut off in moments despite their hardy nature—came to the forefront of his mind.

But the lantern had been lit, and was being raised high in Jam’s hand to partially illuminate the clearing.

Their attacker was revealed for the first time.

It was as much of the shadows as it dwelt within them. Defined more by absence than presence—deciphering detail out of the blackness of its form was impossible in the dim lighting. It was low to the ground, carried by four thick limbs, only reaching his knee in height; but as if to answer his thoughts it left its crouch—leg joints twisting unnaturally to bring it to a new regular stance, it now stood a meter off the ground at its shoulder.

At first glance, it was at least the height of a man in length. But the tail stretched out at least that length again; swimming in the air with a predatory smoothness; as if inspired by the attention its tapered tip flexed and puffed out into a fuzzy bulbous end. Jack realized the source of the knock-out spines. A snake indeed, curling through the grass to brush against exposed skin while the creature crouched right in front of them.

It yawned leisurely, and there were the black fangs, lighter than the skin and powerful enough to kill a burden-ambler in a single bite.

‘It’s a programmed response. It’s meant to make you feel afraid when you expose it to light,’ he tried to reason with himself.

Without a sound, it turned and strode with a predator's grace—pure and fearless—past the edge of the lantern’s glow and in a single step, was lost in the darkness.