When they came there were significantly more than thirty.

“Looks like you were right,” Mammy told Keary as they hurried out through the front doors of Town Hall.

“Ain’t I grand?” He quipped.

A line of Fomorians came out of the darkness and when they reached the shield of light, they hammered on it with their tridents. Each individual hit against the shield produced ripples that moved out from the point of impact and interacted with the others in a beautiful display.

“Will it hold?” Mammy breathed.

“I have no idea, but I doubt it.” Keary rumbled. “They only learned to cast it yesterday. Better get those petrol bombs up here.”

“What happens when it breaks?”

“I imagine they’ll come pouring through the breach and try to overrun the barricades,” Keary told her. “Get behind the second barricade, bring down the reserves and keep them there. We will make every inch of ground they take cost them… We have to protect the hospital.”

She looked him square in the eye. “Be safe, big man.”

“You too Mammy.”

There was no rhythm to the pounding on the shield, they simply attacked it with their weapons. Tess and Adam had moved to opposite sides of the enclave entrance and had their hands pressed against the light shield.

“Looks like they’re trying to reinforce it,” Vivien said when she noticed them through the window.

“Stop them!” Aidan ordered urgently.

“What? Why?” Viv asked.

“All the legends tell us that if you’re in contact with your spell when it’s broken the backlash can be huge. Crazy huge. Go! Stop them! Now!”

Vivien’s arms pumped hard as she ran. Carelessly she took three stairs at a time and nearly lost her footing twice before she burst out of the door and into the dimly lit no man’s land.

“Tess! Adam! Get back!” She screamed. For a moment she was frozen in indecision, unable to decide which way to run.

Adam was closer and she managed two strides before the incessant pounding on the shield broke through. To Vivien’s horror, both Adam and Tess were thrown back from the shield and lay still. The Fomorians cheered and surged forward to attempt to climb over the barricade, but Keary was waiting for them with a half dozen volunteers. The moment the shield faltered they lit the wicks on their Molotov cocktails and threw them. Once more the waterfront was filled with screams and the stench of burning flesh. The throwers continued until they ran out of bottles, then they turned tail and ran.

Vivien bent at Adam’s side and looped her arms under his. Keary saw her and angled himself to run in her direction but she got an arm free and waved him off.

“Get Tess!” She yelled and pointed, then picked Adam up again and dragged him back towards the Town Hall door.

She got through moments before Keary caught up with them. He’d picked Tess up and had her over one shoulder. Once they’d burst through the door with their unconscious cargo, two men who had been waiting locked and barricaded the door with chains, then heavy tables and chairs.

“Get them back to the hospital,” Keary ordered when they’d deposited the witches into waiting wheelchairs. “Then get back here with as many reinforcements as you can.”

Keary and Vivien darted out one of the side doors and saw that the volunteers with rifles had begun to methodically pick off the attackers as they became visible. Vivien could hear that there were snipers up on the roof as well.

“Will they make it to the barricade?” She asked.

“Probably,” Keary said. “There are a lot of them,” He glanced sideways at her. “I don’t know that we can beat them… we’re going to have to break them.”

“What does that even mean?”

“We have to make them run. We have to make them fear us more than they hate us.” He said.

Vivien stared at him in shock. “How?”

“With fire.”

The Fomorians eventually made it over the barricade, over the burning bodies of their comrades. They screamed and roared as they ran across the killing ground towards the second barricade. Many were shot by the snipers and dropped mid-stride, but still, they came. When they got close enough the second barrage of Molotov’s flew. Some of the throwers aimed at the attackers, who screamed and tried to put themselves out. Others seemed to be wildly wide of the mark until the bottles broke open in the shallow pools of petrol on the road.

“Fire,” Keary mumbled. “Where’s Mitch? Get Mitch!”

“What?” Viv asked, her face slightly green.

“He’s a Fire gift! Fomorians are water creatures and there’s a ton of fire out there, get him!”

Vivien ran through the side door, straight across the hall and out the other side where she found Mitch on the other barricade. He’d obviously had the same realisation and, with a sickened expression, he stood on a car bonnet with his arms out in front of him as he tried to control the flames. He had a sheen of sweat on his face and his arms trembled but whether that was effort or disgust, Vivien couldn’t tell.

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“I can’t hold it!” Mitch yelled to no one in particular. “I’m not strong enough.”

In the back of her mind, Vivien seemed to hear Aidan yell at her not to. To protect herself. To keep the secret. Her stomach seemed to agree with him because it roiled violently and threatened to reject her last meal as she climbed up onto the bonnet with him.

“We’re going to have to pull back again.” Mitch gasped.

“No,” she disagreed. “We won’t.” She put one hand on his shoulder with her fingertips against his neck, and the other on the wrist of the arm closest to her.

The flames in front of them flared and intensified. As the shocked humans watched, Fomorians screamed, but not for long. The bright yellow gave way to blue as the heat ramped up and soon the entire area was completely impassable.

The attack faltered at the first barricade and the Fomorians stopped climbing over. An argument seemed to break out and though they couldn’t make out words, it seemed the gravelly, deep-voiced Fomorians disagreed with a hysterical and shrill voice.

“You OK?” Vivien asked. She’d closed her eyes, unable to look.

“Yeah,” Mitch breathed in wonder. “I could go all day.”

The sun began to rise, rosey and yellow fingers of light stained the eastern sky and kissed the mountains to the west. There was no-one in the killing ground capable of screaming. Still, Mitch and Vivien stood on the rusted bonnet of a Holden Ute and maintained the intensity of the flames.

“They could try to come around, get over the other barricades,” Keary said to Mammy. “But something tells me they’re losing the taste for the battle.”

“If they hate us as much as you say…”

“Oh, I think they’ll come back, but Mitch has kept this shit up longer than I’d have thought possible.” He looked at the side of the Town Hall as though he might be able to see straight through it to what went on on the other side. “He’s going to be dead on his feet, but if he can convince them we can do this indefinitely, I think they’ll slink off to lick their wounds for a while no matter how much Justin yells at them.”

A cheer rang out when the light shield went back up. The defenders couldn’t see, but Tess and Adam had made it out of the hospital to the rune line and reignited it. The other witches, who it turned out had been stationed around the shield, had to be collected and brought back in.

With the reignition of the shield, Mitch and Vivien allowed the fires to return to their normal state. They sat heavily on the bonnet and leaned against each other. Not so much in physical exhaustion but in shock at what they’d done. Defenders climbed the second barricade and moved out to man the first one again while Fomorians yelled and shook their tridents at them.

Justin, so crazed he seemed to froth at the mouth, attempted to attack the shield with his bare hands only to be jeered at by both defenders and Fomorians.

“I’ll get you, you bitch!” He screeched. “You BITCH!”

The Fomorians began to collect the wounded and dead that they could reach. Though the bodies within the shield were so charred as to be unidentifiable, those outside hadn’t been exposed to the same level of heat.

“What are you doing?” Justin screamed. “Get back here!”

But his allies didn’t listen to him. Keary made his way forward and stared grimly at Justin through the shield. “I’d run if I were you.”

Justin glared at him, then his eyes changed focus. “Traitor,” he hissed.

Issac made his way across the

“When your bully boys are back in the water, I’m going to have the witches drop this shield” Keary continued. “And if I find you, I’m going to peg you out for the Skrayling.”

After another round of raving, Justin took off towards the mountain, up Macquarie St. He was long gone by the time the Fomorians had bundled up their depressing cargo and made it back into the water. At the second barricade, Aidan had come downstairs and he held Vivien’s hand while she trembled and cried silently. Mitch seemed in somewhat better shape, but he too was pale. Keary came back to them and put a big hand on Mitch’s shoulder.

“That was some of the most impressive shit I’ve ever seen.” He said, then looked down at Aidan. “You too. No wonder you’re in the chair.”

Mitch and Aidan looked at each other, and Aidan begged Mitch with his eyes not to say anything. Mitch looked haunted and worried, but he swallowed hard and gave Keary a weak smile. “I need to sleep for a week.”

The craft approached the docks slowly, under a full-bellied white sale. A boy from the Grand Chancellor was sitting with a pair of binoculars on top of the old Mures restaurant roof, keeping watch. When Aidan and Tess approached he called down a greeting.

"What do you see?" Aidan asked.

"It's huge and as far as I can tell it's going by magic!" The boy called down.

Aidan glanced at Tess for a moment before they both hurried down to the marina. “Let the others know!”

As the ship came closer and began to slow they could see Lud at the prow. He surveyed the city with an expression of pride. When he looked down and saw Aidan he waved and called out.

"Nothing's on fire!"

Aidan could only smile helplessly. "It was a near run thing."

The ship kissed the dock and bounced back a little, but Lud didn't wait. He jumped from the prow and caught his son in a rough bear hug. With all the breath nearly crushed from him, he was unable to answer any of Luds questions. Where were the others? What had happened? How had they held the city?

"Where's your sister?" Lud asked.

"Coming, she's coming."Hhe looked over his shoulder and sure enough he could see Vivien, Keary, Scott and Mitch on their horses. They galloped down Argyle Street with grim determination on their faces. Those expressions fell away once they rounded the park and could clearly see the great ship.

"We were coming to rescue you," Lud said with a rueful grin. "All of you. When you didn't come to the moot mound we thought something had happened."

"Viv wouldn't leave," Aidan said with a smile. "And then Keary and I wouldn't leave her, and then Mitch wouldn't leave Keary..." he shrugged helplessly. "Then we had to save everyone."

"Obviously," Lud grinned, bemused, as the others pulled their horses up and jumped down.

Mitch and Keary had people to greet, but Vivien hung back, unsure what to do. Lud wriggled his way through the crowd towards her.

"Hi..." she said shyly.

"You're the cause of all of this," Lud said proudly. "You saved the city."

Vivien shook her head, "No, no I really wasn't. I mean, I just.. Aidan did everything. Aidan and the others... I just had a hissy fit and threw a tantrum, that's all."

"I'm so proud of you," he said in a thick voice and pulled her in for a tight hug.

Somehow Aidan made his way to them and he was also included. Citizens had begun to make their way down to the waterfront to see what the commotion was. Keary was the first to break away and move to reassure them that everything was OK. This was no invading army, no strange new creatures from the mist. These were family.