As the sun settled to rest behind the mountains of the valley that surrounded the abandoned village of Shalebeak, the party of four shared a supper of vegetable chicken broth in the common area of the dilapidated house. The cool night air caressed the land, and an uncomfortable chilly breeze was ushered away by the orange warmth of a slow crackling hearth.

Ben had discovered that Ainsle’s assessment of his demonstration earlier that day was not the bashful response of a proud teacher he thought it was. The old woman spent the rest of the afternoon pointing out the liberties and shortcuts he had taken with his interpretation. She corrected his form, and Ben resumed his training under her supervision until the waning light brought the Priestess, who suggested that they stop for the day. Ann achieved the latter by glaring at the Berserker, who was, in fact, not resting by prancing around in full-plate armor.

The party gathered on the floor around the door-table, except for Ainsle, who sat on a chair near the hearth.

"Hey Ainsle, just curious."

The Berserker turned her head to face Ben with a raised brow.

"Why are you wearing your armor?" Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, dressed more comfortably?"

The young man’s glance wandered over to Ann in her shorter-by-the-day dress and at Jor, who wore only her tunic and skirt. The Squad Leader had donned her light armor when she left to scout but had taken it off as soon as she returned to the dwelling. The Archer suddenly found her bowl deserving of intense scrutiny at Ben’s casual attention. Ainsle grinned.

"Well, look at you. If you wanted to see my arse, you could’ve just asked," she teased.

Ben pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a chuckle.

What did I expect?

Ben thought as he was caught off-guard by the whip-quick reply.

"You know what I mean…" He said as he schooled his face into an expression of concern.

"Aw, you’re no fun anymore!" Ainsle protested.

Unexpectedly, it was the recently withdrawn Squad Leader who spoke up:

"I asked her to."

The room, already quiet, seemed to go silent. She continued.

"For her safety and ours. If you lost control of your Avatar again, Ainsle needed to be ready to deal with it."

The Priestess seemed to bristle at the comment but remained silent.

"I got it," Ben said, suddenly embarrassed at his lack of awareness.

"You know, lover boy-" Ainsle’s words abruptly stopped.

At the same time, the Priestess suddenly looked up from her bowl and out into the open doorway. Jor stood and swiftly made her way to the room she and Ainsle had been sharing as the Berserker stood and retrieved her great mace from the wall next to the hearth.

"What’s going on?" Ben asked, concerned.

He looked out the doorway and tried to see what had startled the women, but he couldn’t make out more than silhouettes of rubble under the moonlight. He stood to try to get a closer look before feeling a gentle hand touch his back.

"Please stay behind me, my- Ben."

The expression of distress in Ann’s blue eyes worried the young man even further. Before he could protest, Ainsle walked past the two with heavy footsteps that strained the floorboards. He heard the sounds of leather creaking and the clink of steel coming from where Jor was, and he assumed she was in the process of arming herself.

The Priestess followed the Berserker out of the cabin, and Ben, almost vibrating with worry, was not far behind. In the distant field on the outskirts of the village, he saw an impossibly large, silent mass of slow-moving figures. He could barely make out their features in the dark, and from such a great distance, he had initially thought the writhing mass to be a swarm of insects.

The horde appeared to be migrating through the valley to a destination he could only guess at, as he was unconscious when he was brought to the village. He didn’t have a good sense of where what was, and he made a note to buy a map when they reached the port city.

"Benny-boy, won’t you kill the fire for us? Quietly," Ainsle said, in a tone devoid of her usual playfulness.

Okay, if she’s being polite, then this is pretty serious.

Ben nodded and moved with quick, light steps to comply with the instruction. At the doorway, he almost bumped into Jor, who was in full gear with her bow in hand. She leaned to the side to let him pass, and Ben scrambled to disperse the burning wood with a log before dousing the coals with water from Ann’s old water skin. Smoke. He learned that the fire wouldn’t go down without a fight as thick plumes of hissing smoke irritated his eyes. Satisfied that no light came from the abandoned house, Ben joined the women outside once more.

"…make it in time. Before things get out of hand."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The young man had arrived in the middle of a hushed conversation between Jor and Ainsle.

"Didn’t you say the Lordling would report the attack to the Council?" the Berserker hissed.

"Yes, but the scale of this migration is a new development. We have to get to Honeydew and meet with the Councilor before he sails out. Failing that, we’d need to send a message to the capital," Jor explained.

Ann stood quietly beside the pair; her hands clutched her pendant, and she did not participate in the exchange. Ainsle let out a frustrated breath.

"Shit." She shook her head. "I’m done, Jor. I told you already. Aetheria can burn for all I care."

The Squad Leader waited for Ainsle to calm down before she spoke.

"Do what you want. After. Until we make it to the port, you’re still a soldier of the Empire."

"Fuck that," was all the Berserker said, eyes scanning the migrating horde.

Ben tip-toed in a crouch behind Ann’s position and mirrored the two women’s hushed tone.

"Ann, what’s going on? What are those things down there?"

The Priestess seemed to be drawn out of thought as she turned to regard Ben. The sudden rotation of her upper body caused her thick blonde braids to swing and whip Ben’s face.

"Ow!" he exclaimed.

The two soldiers froze and turned their gazes toward him. They stared, open-mouthed, with expressions that screamed incredulity. In the dark of the night, Ben swore that he saw both women, in perfect synchronization, mouth the words: ‘SHUT - THE – FUCK – UP.’

"Sorry-" he tried, as the Priestess put a dainty hand over his mouth.

"Shh," she whispered. "Those creatures down there are drawn to the Convergence in Moonvale. They’re answering the call of the Dark ones from beyond the weave."

Ben’s eyes went wide. He tried to speak, but her hand held steady and barred any attempt. She continued.

"I’ll explain more later, but for now, let’s not bring any attention to ourselves, okay?"

He nodded, which seemed to satisfy the Priestess as she unmuted him.

"Can they hear us from all the way over there?" He asked quietly.

"I’m not sure, but if anything, I trust the soldiers to know when it’s dangerous to act and when not to. For this, I will follow their lead."

Ben nodded, and although he understood approximately nothing of what Ann had said, he decided that he’d do as they say. He wondered if he had been an inquisitive person before waking up with amnesia, as he couldn’t quite tell whether he was disturbed by his sheer lack of knowledge or not. He knew that he enjoyed the physical exertion that training with the staff had brought him, but beyond that, he’d have to figure out where his talents lay.

Now’s not the time for introspection, Ben.

He chided himself.

Jor stiffened and turned to indicate with a tilt of the head that they should relocate to the interior of the abandoned house. Ben tried to allow Ann to go first, but she stubbornly refused and waited until he got to safety first. The women followed him inside, and the two soldiers began clearing the door-table. Ainsle drew Ben’s attention with a series of clicks of her tongue and mimed that he help her move the heavy board to its original home. The door-table became a door once more, and Jor, almost completely silently, began placing big pieces of heavy rubble against it as a makeshift barricade.

The house was pitch black inside, with only the dim light of the moon spilling in through a narrow window to illuminate their silhouettes. After the door was secured, the party was ushered by Ainsle to stand in the center of the living area facing each other, and Jor put a finger on her lips to indicate that they should remain silent. The Squad Leader methodically met eyes with each of the people in the room and repeated the process, seemingly to no end. Ben began to feel dizzy as he tried to track the Archer’s head while she turned to face each party member like the hand of a clock before repeating the process.

He was curious about the monsters in the field, and he leaned to the side to peer out the shutterless window. Jor grabbed him by the jaw and forced him to look into her wide green eyes as she shook her head slowly and deliberately.

Don’t look outside.

He felt a deep fear at the thought of the implied warning.

Ben nodded, and the Squad Leader continued her ritual, meeting his gaze like clockwork. He found that the night was eerily quiet without the crackle of the hearth. He hadn’t noticed before, but there was no cricking of insects or calls of nocturnal fauna. The lack of sound reminded him of his time spent at the outpost camp, but that was deep within the blight woods. He shivered.

After several minutes spent staring at each other in near-total darkness, Ben heard the muted sound of an insect chirping in the distance. The two soldiers visibly relaxed, and Jor stopped to nod to herself.

"Okay. It’s gone," the Squad Leader said as she gestured for the others to relax.

"What’s gone? Jor, what’s going on?" Ben asked, exasperated.

"Did you feel the stillness in the air earlier?" It was Ann who replied.

Ben turned to face the woman, who was busy trying to relight the doused hearth.

"Yes. I felt it… So?"

"There is a particular kind of spirit, whose name you should never utter. Not even when the sun is high above or friends and kin surround you. For to call its name is to invite death." She paused to strike her flint. "It wades through the weave, searching for prey on both sides. It cannot see those who cannot see it, and it cannot hear those who cannot speak. If you dream in its presence, it will find you."

Ann’s tinder caught the spark, and a soft glow began to fill the room. Jor approached the small fire to warm her pale hands and spoke.

"It’s a lesser-known protocol we learned at the Academy. In the event of an encounter with a ‘redacted’ entity, the Strike Leader or Squad Leader is to perform the following procedure…" Her tone changed to a monotonous drawl as if she were quoting from what Ben thought was probably a military field manual. She continued. "Basically, don’t look, don’t talk, and don’t sleep until the threat has been confirmed to have passed."

Ainsle sat heavily on her chair by the hearth. She rubbed her eye and scratched at her bandage.

"Back before Willy and I joined the boys in black, we ran into one of those cunts with our old band." The scarred woman glanced toward Ben and shook her head, her eye devoid of humor. "Fucking gruesome stuff. Gruesome, I say. We lost four of the lads that night. Luckily, we picked up a little runaway Caster a week before. She told us to stare at the sky and, whatever we did, to stay awake."

"Did you see… anything?" Ben asked.

"I saw old Tommy’s liver, who didn’t take the twig of a girl seriously. But Willy was smart, you see? He kept going on and on about how valuable those College types were. So, I listened and nearly fell asleep on my feet. Almost two bloody hours!" the old woman complained. "The girl didn’t make it, though; she had trouble controlling her mana well or something, and the fucker left nothing of her behind."

Jor interjected: "As I think you’ve surmised, many powerful spirits, usually those of the more dangerous variety, tend to be drawn to large amounts of expended mana."

Ben nodded and shivered at the thought that such a creature existed in this world.

"Is everything out to kill us?" The young man asked rhetorically.

"Pretty much," remarked Ainsle.

The Priestess spoke up.

"We need to leave in the morning. Our welcome here has worn thin."

Jor, who had not addressed the Priestess more than was necessary, turned to face her.

"I would agree, regardless of Ainsle’s injury."

"But?" The Priestess raised a questioning brow.

"We may have a bigger problem."