A cracking sounded loudly behind her, sinister and cold as though the world itself had broken open. She turned to look without stopping. A swarm of ice-blue eyes peeled open in the shadow, and the darkness frayed like thread into a multitude of irregular legs. Where the needle-like shadows met stalkers, they died, toppling in pieces. The countless legs of the benaffrygt pulled it across the slanted ceiling as Lyrua ran out to the street. Last out of the warehouse, Lander slammed the door behind them.
“How do we kill that thing?” Lyskilde begged as she ran.
Lyrua lifted Athen and kept close behind her, but her arms and legs were sore and tired and she feared she would not be able to keep the pace for long. Ove flapped through the air above her.
“If that is a ben-affrygt it will be harder to kill than a puddle of water and twice as fluid,” Ove said, landing in the street ahead of Lyskilde. “But if you dry their skin with Light they will crack like parched soil.”
“Light?” Lyskilde spun around, a smirk across her face lit by the lamp-light. With a snap of her fingers, pins of Light appeared like tears in the night above them, purging the street of shade. Without concealment, Lyrua watched the benaffrygt twisting effortlessly through the steel wall like the shadow of a weed sprouting, and shredding like chips of wood. Its black form absorbed all light that touched it, giving the appearance of pure shadow. An absence of a creature. It was over twelve feet long, and skittered towards them like a centipede on its irregular legs that resembled prehensile hairs or quills.
Lyskilde took a sturdy pose with her back straight and one arm outstretched, and drew from it like a bow. Light shimmered into a radiant arrow and she released it in a brilliant flare that embedded into the creature’s curling body. It cried out a horrible shattering of ice.
Lyrua rubbed the chill from her arm as she ran to put Lyskilde between her and the creature. Lander and Ove positioned themselves before her, and Lyskilde loosed another shining arrow.
The benaffrygt curled its body out of the way, stepping stiffly on the side with the wound where its skin was beginning to turn grey. It retreated, vanishing into the shade between buildings as if it were never there, except for the arrow of Light protruding from its side that hovered as if in nothing. Lyrua called Light into the alley behind it, and it groaned like a boulder of ice under pressure.
It spread its jaws, revealing a row of teeth that flickered like candle flame. The depths of its maw sparkled with star-bright dots innumerable. She could have been staring at the night sky; a river of vibrant points and bright clouds of colour. The air plummeted towards it, tugging her hair and clothes. Drops of sweat fell off her skin. The longer its mouth held open, the stronger the pull grew, and Lander had to grab her and Athen with one arm as she tilted forward. He pressed his hat on with the other.
Lyskilde’s lights, and even the light of the street lamps, drifted through the air, spiralling into the cosmic void and drowning the street in shadow. It snapped its jaws shut, and again all Lyrua could see of it were its eyes and some of its hair-like legs near the arrow. Lyskilde aimed again, striking true and penetrating the horror’s eye. The eyes clamped shut, so only the arrows revealed its movement as it poured like a brook over the corner of the building to escape the alley along the wall.
Lyrua gestured to cast more Light. The benaffrygt twisted its head back to look at them, crackling in protest. Another arrow pierced its side. Lyrua backed away, keeping Athen under her cloak, and raised her arms in imitation of Lyskilde. Mimicking the flow of the Ward’s mana with her own, she used the drawing motion to aid her imagination and form the arrow in her hand.
The moment she saw the benaffrygt’s flickering teeth against its starry interior she released her arrow into its side. It roared like an enormous crash of ice, but her arrow faded and winked away, unlike Lyskilde’s persistent spell. The monster’s grip loosened on the wall, delivering it to the street. The stoney texture taken by its skin slowed it to a shamble.
Lander stomped forward, brandishing his sword in challenge. The creature met his boastful stride with a barrage of legs, but dried and weak they broke their tips against his chest. The Iron tower of a man pivoted his body and with a smooth swirling arm motion he twisted the creature’s legs together and crushed them in the crook of his arm. They crumbled like parched straw, burning into flakes of ash in the light.
The surface of the benaffrygt broke away in patches, releasing the blackness beneath. Fresh legs bubbled and burst free, and the petrified layer fell away like shed skin, releasing it from Lyskilde’s arrows as it did. It paid for its regeneration with a diminished form.
The benaffrygt tested its legs against the street, carving discs of steel the size of barrel lids and tossing them aimlessly. Lander battered one out of the air with a whip of his fist before retreating to a safer distance. The discs crashed through the street, creating a deafening racket that Lyrua felt in her bones. She sidestepped as one tumbled by, swinging her son to safety by his underarms.
Keeping Athen pressed closely behind her, Lyrua took a deep breath and reached towards Lyskilde’s illumination to feed them with her mana and gorge the street with light. She had to shield her face from the radiance, and Lander voiced his frustration.
“Fine!” He roared, bemoaning his aggravated vision. “Then like a creature of the deepest trench of the abyss, I’ll kill you without vision!”
“Do not speak to us of places no light can reach,” a voice like rupturing boulders of ice said with a tone that betrayed indignance.
Lyrua squinted from under her forearm to see Lander’s reflective back shining brightly under his billowing cloak.
“So you speak.” Lander said, separating ashen spines from it with a blind stroke. “Then recite your final words.”
“When the Fourth blooms Asmodeland will devour everything you know,” the voice sounded with the confidence of ice clashing against ice.
Even blinded Lander confidently hacked the legs away as they tangled around his body. The benaffrygt beat sluggishly at him, damaging its own drying limbs against his steel. She could not see her Spellward, but could feel her casting. Another arrow found its home in the dark terror. Lyrua’s arm shook from the effort of bolstering the spell. She took deep breaths. She should be better at casting than this, but her breathing was all wrong.
Severed limbs burned as they fell until Lander’s feet kicked up clouds of ash. He dragged it by the legs knotted around his body, pulling them taught before carving through them with a downward stroke.
“Shame he isn’t here,” he said teasingly. He stabbed the benaffrygt in the head, and as he drew his blade from it, it ruptured violently.
The wound hissed as ash and air spiralled into the sparkling pool of stars within. It crumbled from the tips of its legs, absorbing itself until only a dried husk remained. Hollow and withered, the benaffrygt crumpled into its own mass until nothing remained, and the air fell still.
Lyrua’s arms trembled from the chill of the monster’s dying breath. “Is it slain?” she held Athen tightly without letting him out from under her cloak. “What even was it?”
“A ben-affrygt, as the boy said. I bet he got that from Daetan’s Army. It was a very small one, as they go,” Ove shivered. “Spawn of Asmo-deland that hunt strong sources of Dark to try and free him. I read a lot about them, but the books said nothing about the noise they make…”
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“What Dark could have lured a thing like that?” Lander asked, glaring at Ove under the shade of his hat.
“Don’t give me that look, you rusted wreckage. It wasn’t me. It takes a lot more than casting spells to call a ben-affrygt.” She pointed a long wing high and swirled it around. The hovering Light spells sputtered out as the night strangled them.
“Finally,” Lander groaned. His head turning to look down the road, he pushed his hat up with a finger, “Guards.”
Lyrua pulled her hood up and turned away so she had to watch over her shoulder. The guards approached, marching quickly as if to deny their accompanying Spellward the right to lead them. They stopped a few paces from Lander, and one of them stepped forward with a hand on his hilt.
“What is this? Unsavoury folk creeping about the Night?” the guard said. He wore no mark of rank, and his face was unshaven in violation of Army uniform. The Spellward’s lantern illuminated a signet ring on the man’s finger that Lyrua could not quite make out.
“I have already interrogated these folk,” Lyskilde said assertively. “Just a Lady out of her bed on urgent news.”
“And the racket?” the guard said, brushing past Lander and stopping above the carved up road, where the edge of the Spellward’s lantern-light faded. He pointed at the holes in the street, his head cocked towards Lyskilde, “What under Arthur’s arse is this?”
“There was a benaffrygt,” Lyskilde said honestly. Lyrua hoped she, or someone, had a plan for these guards. She disliked the thought, but it did occur to her that killing them might be simplest.
“A huge one, but easily felled,” Lander boasted. He was trying to follow Lyskilde’s lead, but pride was evident in his voice. Or arrogance. “It did quite a number on the buildings here. A good thing we were out to take care of it.”
“A what?” The guard turned his back on Lyskilde to face Lander.
The short-haired Ward stepped up behind him, and with a brief hand gesture to the other Spellward, stuck her hook through the back of the guard’s head. “Don’t worry about it.” He responded with a gurgle, and she flung his corpse out of her way.
The other Ward flicked her sword out of its sheath and split the face of the guard on her left. With the same motion her sword descended into the neck of the guard who had stood behind her. They both crumpled limply while the last fumbled for his blade. The Ward ran him through, and was two steps towards Lyskilde before his head cracked against the street.
“Apologies for the violence, but it is simpler this way,” Lyskilde told Lyrua. It was true enough, but it still made her sick to think about.
“A benafryggt, Lyskilde?” the second Ward said, scratching her chin. By her crests she was attuned to Dark and Lightning. “Good one. Was that necessary though?”
“I was serious.” She bent down to examine the bearded man’s hand, her blond hair sticking to the sweat on her cheek. “A mercenary ring?” It came off with a twist and she turned it over in her palm. “They are extremely poorly organised if they’ve left these on. I don't recognize the company though. This may have been last minute.”
“A lot of last minute devices it seems,” the other Spellward said.
Lyskilde nodded, holding the ring out for the other woman to take. “Hard to betray a plan if it barely exists I suppose. Take the ring to Gottfred at the Queen’s Arch, and report the benaffrygt. He will have answers I don’t have time to give you, and don’t be seen along the way.”
The Ward ran off the way Lyrua and the others had come, only hesitating to gawk where the wall was shredded into chips of steel. Lyrua watched her go until Ove pestered her to carry on. She walked, squeezing Athen’s hand, but her legs protested every step. The stress of the night was as heavy as a day of meetings with all the worst nobles from dawn to dusk, except with sore ankles and living nightmares. She was absolutely drained. Her hands clammed up against her son’s, and she did not have the energy to care, where normally she would be quick to wipe them clean.
“You’d make a good Captain,” Lander said, nodding approvingly at Lyskilde.
The tall woman shrugged. “So I’ve been told, but I can’t even earn the Lieutenant’s Gear without two crests, and that Gravity one keeps eluding me.” She spoke dryly, as though it were a tired subject for her.
“What holds you back?” Ove asked from somewhere unseen.
“Gravity,” she replied. The furtive ravenfolk remained silent as though the answer were sufficient, and Lyskilde continued. “Some days I feel like I can barely flip a steak with it.”
“That’s why I prefer Dark,” came Ove’s chirping from the shadows, “it’s easy, if you aren’t afraid of it.”
Lyskilde snorted a shy laugh.
As they neared the Residential Arch, the Wall towered oppressively just to the south. A tower drew near on the north side of the street, short by Manataklos standards, crooked like a mis-hammered nail, it squatted atop an unfortunately lopsided rhombus of a structure hugged by desultory steel walls. Another warehouse. Two private guards were slumped against the gate, dark blood glistening on their throats in the low light. Four guards lay scattered in the street nearby with their heads dipped in their own blood.
“The stalkers are dead,” peeped Ove, “and I didn’t find any more. There are many unmarked crates in that store house. Empty.”
“Are you suggesting someone smuggled them in by the crateful?” Lyrua squinted in the direction she thought Ove’s voice had been. “When did you have time to search the warehouse?”
“That or the Dew.”
“The Spellward with that group made it out, looks like,” Lyskilde said. “I hope they kill a few more stalkers for us. I feel vulnerable without much mana left.” She sighed, “Not that killing stalkers needs anything fancy.”
“You have Dew of the Moonflower Tree,” Lyrua said uneasily.
“I do,” Lyskilde thumbed her pouch open a little and ogled the contents, “but they’re a bit…” she trailed off.
“Expensive?” Lyrua offered, hoping for a quick end to the conversation. Why had she felt compelled to bring it up?
“Ah, my Queen, no. I would not fret over the cost at a time like this…” The tall woman scratched at the back of her neck. “It has more to do with the side effects. Stories from old wars where the Dew was used freely and soldiers became addicted. Or worse, their mana stopped recovering naturally. I don’t know if those tales are true, but they give me pause.”
“I see.” Lyrua had heard those tales as well. The Dew tasted so sweet it could drive a man mad with cravings for more of it. She even knew of a few of the nobles who would drink little else. But nobles were petty enough to favour a drink merely for its cost, so she could not know if addiction had anything to do with it. She had not had that problem with it. Not really. “No one will drink one unless we absolutely must.” She swallowed the excess spit in her mouth.
Lyskilde bowed, “Thank you, my Queen.”
Lyrua marched ahead with Athen in tow towards the darkness that swallowed everything on the wide street before them. The night’s gluttony was thwarted only by the gentle lamp light.
She was aggravated by their pace as another patrol crossed their path. She was not sure if it was frustration or boredom that motivated her, but she ordered her companions against the wall and confidently countered the Spellward’s detection net so they would not have to take another roundabout way. She regretted it immediately as her lungs starved for air and her knees wobbled out from under her. Athen marched forward heroically to do her breathing exercises with her and get her back to her feet.
She was embarrassed again; she knew she was supposed to control her breath during the spell not after, but also proud of herself for defeating that net.
They were so close to the Residential Arch that Lyrua was sure she would see it around the next corner. As they rounded it, stepping out into the street and finally finding the welcoming Arch spreading before them like open arms, an unnatural silence suffocated their surroundings. The clattering of the city was muffled and dull, like a bell wrapped in cloth. The light cast by the lamps was smaller, as if oppressed.
Ove fluttered down from the roofs. “A spell is cast over the wall to keep sound in,” she said. “A threat prepares to meet us.”
Silently in the distance, before the Residential Arch, another group appeared. Instead of turning, they stopped to discuss something with the men who guarded the gate. As Lyrua watched them, she realised something was different about this group.
“Lander,” she said.
The Iron nodded, “What manner of beast is that?”
“It looks like Toldremand.” A smile crossed her lips. “Don’t let your guards down.”
“Ah,” Lander’s voice reverberated with excitement, “has he gotten bigger?
“Goddess preserve us,” Lyskilde said. “Those are not Spellwards he is speaking to.” Her arm shook as she uncorked a vial of the silvery Dew of the Moonflower Tree and drank it in one gulp. She passed the remaining two to Lyrua and Ove.