Cordelia ruminated through her choices, and wondered which manner of death she should favor among those few available. She had still the sword in hand, with which she might tickle or amuse the immaterial foe. Or she might beg for her life.

“Wait!” cried she, the sword sprang from her scabbard and shook in her trembling hand, “Am I not your kind, sent here for your very purpose!”

She had not hoped for mercy, though she had sued for it, only a moment's delay, or to confound the creature long enough for an escape. But the silver orb was not checked by some conscience for its fellow-creature. It came down upon her. And she remembered the shattering pains in the World Serpent’s plane when a star had devoured and corrupted her soul.

But there blossomed no pain as that time. It passed through her like a ghost. Her eyes were shut lest the brilliance blinded her. Yet she felt a touch, light as a tap upon her shoulder. So that she shuddered. But no pain. Fear shook her more than aught physical discomfort. And when she dared look, the orb hovered before at eye level.

It made a whistling sound. And a succession of these formed a high-pitched voice.

“You mask your presence well, girl,” said the orb.

Presently, the light dimmed, and there revealed at its center a raven white as snow. “To what Lord answer you?” the raven asked.

Cordelia’s lips quivered, scarce able to believe in the sharp turn of her fortune. “Jormungandr, Lord of Serpents, if you are any ally of her...” she stammered out.

“A-ha, you are indeed she! This quest bears fruit at the last!” it said, narrowing the black almond eyes. “I was wondering where you could be hiding, and to that extent, what plot Jormungandr plays. In truth, I wander hither while my brethren feast for the very chance of this encounter.”

“Who are you? Will you help me?” It was starting to seem too good to be true. “What seek you of me?”

“Soft, girl. This is hardly the place and time to hold discourse, alas. And yet we shall speak again ere the night is sped, no doubt. That is, if you survive this ordeal. Now, have you no favor to ask of I?”

Favor? She wished to live. To flee from here and secure a life in some place peacefully. But there was a more pressing need.

“Save them,” she pleaded, “Save the knight and his sister!”

“You ask of me to save she who endangers our kind,” the raven snickered, “Very well. Do you wish those siblings to see another dawn, go thither to them with haste, but waste not a second!”

Cordelia turned. But the pyre must have been mostly vanquished, for she could not see any more of its outline, nor anything else, as all was a pitch black save for the bird before her. Muffled also were the noises of fighting that she was disoriented, unsure of the direction to which the desolate building lay.

Her serpentine familiar stirred around her wrist. “Taste the air, mistress,” it said helpfully.

The raven scoffed, “Mastema! Serve thou now as this child’s fylgja? What low disgrace for such a great one to have fallen! We dwell now in an ill age, this!”

Even as the snake hissed resentfully at the affront, Cordelia awkwardly followed the strange instruction, too bewildered to argue or wonder at the seeming folly of the act. She parted her lips and thrust out her tongue, tasting the air. The coldness of the night which in her frantic flight she had forgot now stabbed at her softest and most sensitive organ. And as she tasted the immediately visible cold she tasted also the subtle sounds, such tiny vibrations in the air that seemed to connect and enlarge into actions and movements, forming vivid ghost images of actions her inferior senses were thus far blind too. And as her tongue flicked, dimensions of the world resolved into mind shapes, clearer than aught the eyes could see in the dark or daylight. And twice over these images came, perceiving depths the way a pair of eyes could do; for twin also was this organ, forked at its extreme like most of her crawly brethren. And when this inhuman, slithering forked tongue was drawn back under the arches of her mouth, she devoured also a vividly formed interpretation of reality. Brooding branches, moist soil, veins deep under, critters, buried saplings, trapped winds, bloated corpses, the heat of a dying fire. Even the lingering taste of a dusk long dead was visible to her. And she tasted blood and fear and mounting desperation and a nearby melancholy. Even the unaccountable shapes of the dark creatures had now become comprehensible, as though her tongue had been wrapping around these prowling things entire, caressing upon their outlines and natures and learning of their intimate functions. So that once she had tasted their every gnarled limb and smooth scale and terrible hunger and base instinct, she came to know them for what they are.

With these learned knowledge, Cordelia’s fear of the unknown at once vanished. She turned now to where the fighting was drawing to a bitter close. A new fey light glinted dangerously in her eyes.

“What must I do?” she asked the raven.

“I placed a mark on you just now,” it said, ascending into the air, borne as though by a sudden gust, “And so they shall become drawn to you even as you were drawn to me on the fey road. And now you must run. Harken I and run thither to join the slaughter! Cordelia von Jormungandr, run with your thoughts bent on your hopes and on your prey!”

So she ran.

The night had changed, altered to an unrecognizable state. It was like navigating an unlit room you have dwelt in your whole life. So that she knew by instinct when to leap over a treacherous root on the ground, or when to duck, or when to expect the surging heat of mortal combat.

She rounded the house, broke through the tree line, and was upon the dried pond. She marked instantly what had been known till then only by the tips of her tongue. The fully armored Derrick was being overcome by the fiends at the edge of the pond and Esme was limping with her back against the one intact wall.

But if she or the siblings had thought these fiends numbered many, manifolds of which were now entering the clearing. There had been a faint resemblance of order in their charge before, not anymore. Maddened howls and terrible sounds of crashing and fangs tearing upon flesh infested even their ranks far from earnest combat. These creatures had been driven by a new insanity, compelled by a thirst not even their ancient instinct could understand. And drawn they were to Cordelia, whose person was like their goal of existence, so that they fought and tore at their fellow-creatures to get to her.

But to all this, which she had wailed at the slightest glimpse before, she now regarded with scorn. For she knew them for what they really were. Base and thoughtless creatures only as clever as the humans they hunt, naught more. For tactics alone do not a worthy opponent make. Their greatest might was physical, yet not even this could frighten Cordelia. For even as she had tasted the nature of these lesser feys, she had learned some measure of the strange raven from before. Not much and still enough to perceive its immense lore as a thing to be trusted. If it had sent her hither with a plan, then she knew her survival could only be found in following its instruction and naught where else.

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So she stormed the dried pond, entering the slaughter.

Chaos prospered in the mass of these hellish things, but her tempting presence had roused it to a magnitude far more terrible. So that they trampled upon each other, turning away from Derrick even as his blackened blade and visage still steadily brought certain death to their brethren. From all corners of the clearing the creatures wheeled and charged at her, converging and checking each other’s advances. Yet she knew even confusion and madness among their ranks could not preserve her long. They piled upon her, fighting each other for her flesh, and sharp claws dug into her limbs. Though death seemed certain and struggle futile, and her arm could not even be lifted, Cordelia’s hand held onto the sword as she had held onto life with gritted teeth time and again in this world.

She saw Derrick had run from the combat. Full of charged purpose he broke into a sprint his failing body could scant afford, then he stopped at the center of the pond he had not been able to advance towards when surrounded by the fiends. And there upon the spot he stabbed the ground with a triumphant expression, as though it had been the belly of a dread wyrm. In truth ‘twas the very dug-up ground he had prepared before the fighting. There, a buried stake was struck. And the night exploded in holy light.

Everything dark and sinister in the dried pond was swept away by the glorious light, cleansed like vermins by a divine solvent.

During the blasting of that intense heat, Cordelia for a brief moment found her grip on the blessed sword slackened. At once the heat sharply bit into her flesh. But when by reflex she tightened on the hilt this pain quickly faded away. She dared not let go of the enchanted weapon again.

Only when the glow behind her eyelids had gone away did she dare cautiously crack open her eyes. There she found an empty, deserted place save those of herself and Derrick.

He was sprawling on the ground, half sitting, half lying, his armors dented and painted black. Panting, he looked at her in disbelief, his eyes saying “Your profoundly reckless act has saved us all!”

“No You did,” she said hoarsely with a dry throat, “and luck.”

“No luck. Our prayers were answered.”

‘Tis true, Cordelia thought morbidly, only not by your god.

Derrick crawled to his feet. Though his dented armor and body protested, groaning and grimacing, he forced his limbs and made toward the building. Fear darkened his eyes, something not even the charge of a demonic army had been able to stir in him.

Cordelia followed, almost too exhausted to think or dread what she might find.

The fire had mostly been scattered into sprawling burning brands. What was left of the building’s standing wing was now precariously close to crumbling, its walls broken through in many places by the hurling bodies that were no more there. There was only Esme who’d slumped against the smeared crimson wall. The beastly black blood had painted her even as her brother. Her face, sullen and unseen, cast unmoving downwards. And across the slight body there littered cuts and weals and marks of fangs and claw-torn gashes, so that Cordelia should think it a lie a living person could bear so many. And yet she breathed, ever so softly.

“Find my pack,” Derrick commanded.

And even as Cordelia scrambled for it on her aching and limping feet, he crouched beside his sister, whispering, “She lives,” as though to confirm to himself out loud.

Cordelia found the pack half buried in the rubble. The things in the dark had had no appetite for wholesome food and so had not touched it. When she returned with the pack, Derrick had laid Esme down. The girl’s breathing was so soft Cordelia wondered if it was only her imagination and Derrick’s that her breasts moved. Still she handed the knight his pack in hurried silence. And holding her breath she watched as he untied the pack and produced some salves and simple medicine.

She had doubts simple first-aid could truly save the girl’s life now.

But Derrick sat back, and tearing to rags the blanket taken from his bag, he told Cordelia to aid him in bandaging his sister’s wounds.

Her concern shifted to him then, and she found, from the joints in his armors, blood was oozing out at his every movement.

“Tend to yourself also,” she said, “Leave your sister to me.”

But he shook his head, “I will live. Death has not claimed her, but he waits.” And he added, as though finding himself unconvincing, “Her life is more important.”

To anyone else, to Cordelia had she not known what she knew, what he said would have appeared no more than the words of a loving brother. But knowing what she did, Cordelia marked instantly the gravity of his statement, one he with all his heart believed in, and for an even greater reason than brotherly affection, though that too played no small part. So he was aware of his sister’s nature. And she had begun to guess the siblings’ reason for hiding so deep in the forest.

In the end Derrick’s wounds gave him little choice but to leave the tending of Esme to Cordelia, so he sat back with a grimace and began to take off the armor.

She dared not say she had done a good bandage job. But whether by her clumsy work or the herbal salve or some healing ability innate in Esme, the blood eventually stopped trickling, and the unconscious girl entered into troubled sleep. Only then did she wash the deep gashes on her arms with what little water remained after treating Esme, and bound it tight with fragments torn from her skirt. It was the one she had awakened in this world with, now but a tattered affair barely held together.

When later she returned with the other packs which had been scattered during the fight, Derrick was already sitting by a new fire. He had treated his own wounds and for all but the purple bruise on his face and arms seemed hale. Thinking it strange indeed the constitution of the knights in this world, she produced for both of them such foodstuff stored in her pack.

And so with little appetite, she shared a meal with the knight, and listened half-heartedly as he told her how he had long known of this abandoned house, and had buried the stake in that pond for the very purpose of a last stand in the worst event. Over the years the stake had gathered tiny residues of holy energy in the earth, which was made possible only by an art the knight had learned during his esquire days from a powerful wizard in exchange for a service done.

Naught of this meant much to her save that the strange raven had known all this, and had aided them in carrying the plan all too smoothly. Should Derrick have triggered the trap too soon, there would have been too many of the fiends outside of the clearing for this trap to meaningfully end the battle. And if not for the mark the raven had placed on Cordelia, he would never have the chance to trigger it in the first place. All this, the knight could not guess, but he credited this fortune to the divine intervention of the chief god of his religion, which perhaps was close enough to the truth, if in the wrong direction.

Without so much faith in this Good God of him, Cordelia was plagued by troubling questions, and chiefly those of that raven’s nature.

It had not declared itself, and she knew little but that it was fey even as her, and had sought her out a-purpose. The promise of a discourse later that night echoed in her ears. And she anxiously awaited the event. Even when exhaustion stole into her and slowly she slipped into slumber, she waited. In her last memory before sleep, Derrick was still sitting his vigil, watching the night and his sister, worrying for the worst and praying for the best.

It was perhaps midnight when she woke. Derrick had dozed off while leaning on the wall near his sister. Esme was flushed with a healthier complexion.

This gladdened Cordelia with sleepy relief, and again she was welcoming the slumberous embrace. But just then, her wrist was rubbed hard. A distant voice echoed in her head. Again started awake, she glared at the snake at her wrist. Red crystal eyes stared back with utmost urgency.

“No time for sleep, mistress,” it hissed, “our lord desires your presence.”