Chapter 4: Night

The sun hung low behind Owen as he marched along the darkened road. Five hours had nearly passed, and each time he glanced over his shoulder, the blood red sun sank ever closer to the horizon. They had passed out of the bamboo forest in which he’d first found himself, following the road to where it ran alongside a wide river, which passed through a series of valleys nestled between rolling green mountains.

These valleys had constituted the majority of their journey, until they rounded one mountain and found the river leading through a great, open field. There were few to no trees in this great plain of grass. But at the center of that field, with even more mountains forming a backdrop in the distance, there was a wall.

It was the walled city of Ysvale, one of the few places safe from demons, Azure had told him. And now, as they neared it, the city’s great wall rose up to imperious height over them, its gray stone blazing crimson in the sunset.

Owen’s whole body hurt, just as Azure had said it would. At first, it had been a simple discomfort and exhaustion. Now, every single muscle ached with agony. If he’d been on his own, he never would have made it this far. But with Azure setting the pace, he’d managed to just fight through the pain enough to keep up with her.

“We’re nearly there,” said Azure, picking up her stride once more. Owen merely grunted, having lost the ability to speak over an hour ago. It was taking everything he had just to keep going, and he did not have the luxury to talk. He was pouring sweat from head to toe, his clothes soaked through.

He knew for a fact that Azure was also correct in saying he’d be feeling this for a week. By now, his mana had refilled. But that lack of rest was doing a number on him.

Still, all the pain in the world was nothing compared to what lay waiting in the dark. He just focused on the city gate ahead. It hung open, like it was waiting to welcome him and Azure into its fond embrace.

They were maybe half a mile away. So close. Not much further.

It was then that Owen felt the last drop of sunlight leave his skin. Feeling suddenly clammy and cold, he dared cast a glance back at the western horizon. The sun had disappeared.

A terrible chorus of high-pitched shrieks came up as if out of the ground itself. The cries carried with them malice intermingled with bloodlust in a way that shook Owen’s very core. Amidst those terrible calls, he thought he could hear words, spoken in between the war cries as a strange, unintelligible, guttural language.

At this point, he dared not look back again, focusing only on the burnished walls in the rapidly dying twilight. Azure broke into a run, and despite all the sense of pain coursing through him, Owen ran to match. Each step was like dragging lead, each breath like gasping in shards of glass.

They were a hundred yards away when the gate began to close. It shuttered down with a loud and heavy clinking sound, the chains controlling it as ominous as the tones of a clock at midnight.

“Hold the gate!” Azure screamed as they sprinted forward. “Hold the gate!”

They were so close. Only fifty yards. But the gate had not slowed in its descent. If they would make it, it would be as close a call as Owen had ever had in his life. Including when he rammed a damn wyvern with his van.

Thirty yards. Twenty. The last crack of space was rapidly shrinking. They would have to slide under the gate if they wanted to make it in time.

Ten yards.

Bang.

The city gate slammed shut with a great crashing sound right as they reached it.

“No, no, no!” Azure said, slamming on the gate with her fists. “Let us in, you bastards!”

Owen came to a tottering stop against the hardwood. Strips of metal went all the way up the door, likely serving as a reinforcing frame. Not that he cared much. His whole body ached, he was exhausted, and they were locked out of the city.

He slumped into the dirt and turned to face out from the mouth of the gate. He was so tired. Meanwhile, Azure continued her appeals to the unfeeling hunk of wood and metal now separating them from safety.

Finally, she stepped away and spat on the portal. “Bunch of right bastards.”

Owen clenched his jaw. “So, what now?”

“Now,” said Azure, pulling her fingers through her hair. “Now, we hope for a miracle. Shit.”

“I’ve never been much of a believer in miracles,” said Owen, forcing himself to stand. No matter how tired he was, the words “give up,” were not in his vocabulary. Instead, he just compartmentalized the pain like everything else. He would deal with it later. For now…

“Are there any structures we can take shelter in? Any places to hide, or any choke points we could use to keep the demons at bay?”

Solemnly, Azure leaned against the corner of the gate’s port, letting her hands rest on the thickset stone. “They’re already here, Owen.”

Owen squinted and saw exactly what she meant. Maybe two hundred yards away from them, with eyes glowing crimson in the falling twilight, were three humanoid figures. From this far away and in the halflight, he couldn’t discern any details. And yet despite that, their very presence made Owen want to scratch and claw at the gate until his very nails were raw with blood and splinters.

He shook the impression away, setting his jaw. He was not going to give up.

“Is this all of them?” he asked, not taking his gaze from the center-most demon’s glowing eyes.

“No, more are coming. Those are Sentinels. They rarely interact directly with a battle, but they cast spells to buff the weaker demons.”

“If we kill them, will the other demons disperse?”

Azure barked a hoarse laugh, and her eyes darkened. “Neither of us possess the magic necessary to destroy a Sentinel.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Already, other demons had begun to gather around the Sentinels like a host around their generals. Or like linemen around a quarterback.

“Probably, then? Like I said, tonight is a Lightmoon. Without the Sentinels’ buffs, the moonlight will probably burn enough for them to retreat. But it rises from the East, so it has to crest over the city wall first.”

“What about that flashbang of yours?”

“Flash… bang?”

“The flash of light I saw you use on the wyvern. Will it hurt them?”

Azure nodded. “It’ll kill the smaller ones, even with their buffs. But I can only cast, at most, three before I tap out my mana. But it’ll just irritate the Sentinels, at best. Nothing we have can kill them.”

“Not even stabbing them in the heart?”

“No. Cutting off their heads could do the trick, but my dagger won’t be able to cut them clean through. By the time we saw through their neck, they’ll have killed us.”

“I see,” said Owen. There were at least forty or fifty pairs of glowing crimson eyes, though the lesser demons were all fainter than the three Sentinels. “What if we slathered your dagger up with Wyvern venom, and then stabbed the bastards with it?”

Azure’s eyes went wide, and for the first time since they’d found themselves stuck in this impossible situation, Owen saw the faintest hint of hope gleaming through them. “That could work,” she said, rummaging through her pouch. “That could work nicely.”

She pulled out the flask of venom and said, “It’s not like they’ll just let you walk up and stab them, though.”

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“That’s where you come in. Dagger, please,” said Owen. When she relinquished the blade, he unstoppered the venom and poured it over the metal. “Going to Riverbrook High School, you pick up two important things: how to take a hit, and how to use a shiv if you ever need it. The way I see it, this dagger is just a bigger shiv. And my ability to take a hit made me into a damn good Linebacker. Didn’t matter if a lineman got between me and the quarterback. When coach called for a blitz, I was on that asshole like a dog on raw meat.”

“I… don’t understand a word of what you just said,” said Azure.

“You’ve got three flashbangs loaded up. I might not look it, but I'm a pretty fast runner.”

“In your condition?”

“In any condition, dammit,” said Owen. “When you hear a gunshot go off a block away from you, it doesn't matter how tired you are: you book it. So, I’m going to close the distance on those assholes and stab them with a good dose of poison. Your job is to keep the smaller demons from getting me first. Hold this for a second.” He handed the dagger back to her, along with the half-empty flask of venom.

Then, he unslung the breast-plate from his back and tied its straps around his left forearm. It felt awkward as hell hanging there, but it was better than nothing. He could at least have a shield in all this madness. He took the dagger back and set his jaw, gazing out at the voluminous swarm of demons.

“You up for this?” he said, giving her a sideways glance.

She cracked her knuckles, and the faintest hint of light leaped from her cheek-scales. “May Isthu protect us.”

“May Isthu protect us,” Owen repeated under his breath.

He charged out onto the open field, blood rushing through his ears as he went. Pain was forgot, exhaustion forgot. He gripped the venom-laced dagger in hand and cried out, his voice raw on the early night sky. Azure joined with a battle cry of her own, and though he couldn’t see her, he knew she was right behind him.

Their charge seemed to be the trigger for the demons themselves, as they let loose an unholy cacophony of shrieks and cries that carried the promise to tear him limb from limb. But he would not allow his roar to be swallowed by their horde’s frenzy. He cried out all the greater, and for the briefest moment, he thought he felt power coursing through him.

He met the horde of demons halfway to the Sentinels. These lesser beings were about the size of dogs, but in the shape of pale, skeletal humans crawling on all fours. Their mouths were wide-open maws of jagged teeth and rotting flesh, and their eyes were bulbous, black orbs sunken into the top of their misshapen skulls.

The first one in the horde leapt for Owen’s throat, its teeth vibrating in its maw as it screamed. Owen caught it on his makeshift shield and slammed it to the side, roaring as he did so.

Only a split-second later, Azure’s flashbang went off, carving a field of light around Owen’s shadow. Nearly a dozen of the smaller demons were caught in its glow, shrieking as their pale skin burnt away to nothing.

The bright white light disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving an afterimage seared into Owen’s retinas. He squinted through half-blindness, charging deeper into the enemy lines.

Those demons remaining did not immediately leap at him. The ones that had been too close to the blast radius of the flashbang, though not burnt to cinders, hissed violently as they stumbled back, their eyes clenched shut.

She blinded them.

But of course, that made sense. If it blinded him, of course it would blind demons that couldn’t handle sunlight.

Owen punted one of the stunned demons to the side with a swift kick, its neck snapping from the force. A few of the demons from the rearward ranks scrambled forward to meet him, leaping in unison.

“Hold the flash,” Owen cried out, hoping that Azure would hear and understand him. If she only had two more left, then they needed to save them for as long as possible. He caught one of the demons on his shield. It bit down hard on the metal, shearing it away like paper. The other one, he caught with a kick, punting it backward.

Before the clingy demon could dig into his arm, Owen fell forward and dropped down onto the shield, crushing the monster with his weight. It fell limp at impact, and he rolled to the side just in time to avoid another leaping demon.

He pulled up to his knees and--

Something hit Owen hard just beneath the ribs, knocking the air right out of him and sending him tumbling head over heels in the dirt. He only barely managed to keep his grip on the dagger, coming to a stop several yards from where he’d started.

A Sentinel loomed from where it had struck him, its burning eyes illuminating the horned goat skull that composed its head. Its body was sinews of flesh strapped over a thickset, humanoid skeleton, with a large heart visibly beating from beneath its ribs.

That’s what he was aiming for. The heart.

The Sentinel moved like shadow itself, covering the distance between itself and Owen in an eyeblink. For the briefest moment, all Owen could see were its glowing, terrible eyes, wreathed with flame.

Azure’s second flashbang went off. Owen’s vision filled with white, and he heard the Sentinel roar with a great, guttural cry. Taking his chance, Owen reached out with a bear hug, embracing the dread monster’s skeletal, bloody frame. And then, remembering just where he'd seen the Sentinel’s heart, he stabbed it through the back with the dagger.

The blade slid between its ribs, and Owen felt it sink into soft flesh.

The Sentinel’s roar became a shrill screech as it cast Owen from itself, shoving him back into the dirt. Vision returning to him, he saw an outline of the monster’s form as it crumpled in on itself, smoke and flame erupting from its bones.

It exploded, sending bone shards flying in every direction. Several of those tagged Owen, stabbing into him like shrapnel. He screamed as he collapsed forward onto the dirt, tasting blood and bile both. He spat as he scrambled to his feet, ignoring his body’s protests. There were two more of those Sentinel assholes trying to kill him.

“Owen!” Azure screamed. In the half-light of his vision, he saw her silhouette sprinting toward him. But behind her… Two shadows.

He rose up to meet her, hitting her with a shoulder tackle that took her right off her feet. They fell to the dirt together, and something heavy moved the air right above him, cutting through his jacket as it trailed behind him. He didn’t need to guess what it was as he screamed, “Flashbang!”

Whatever state Azure was in after getting full-on tackled, she must have had the wherewithal to let loose her spell. The blinding white light flashed even as Owen jerked up to move on the two Sentinels.

Desperate for a way to see, he dropped his shield and reached out with his hand in front of him, remembering the symbol for his Mana Sense. He funneled his mana into his hand, using his memory of first casting magic as a guide, and drew the Sigil in front of him from memory. Unable to even see it glowing, he had to hope he was painting the correct picture. Then, he planted his palm into the symbol.

The mana in his hand immediately snapped away, drawing with the rest of his pool up through his body and to his eyes. This time, though, it hurt. Like, really hurt. Owen screamed as the world went black.

Then, the world came alive for him once more. It was like staring through tunnel vision, his eyes burning with pain, but he could see mana once more. The two clouds of jet black mana, bursting off the Sentinels right before him, surrounded by dozens more smaller black clouds from the lesser demons.

Instinct took over. Owen leaped at the closer of the two Sentinels, raised the dagger, and plunged it right into the monster’s heart. At the exact moment the blade found its mark, his vision went black.

He lost his grip on the dagger, falling to the dirt as the Sentinel shrieked. He heard it stumble away, its bones fissuring and popping, before it too exploded, its bone shards hitting Owen in the side.

Owen tried to move, but his body wouldn’t obey his commands. He was utterly spent. His eyes still burnt like he’d washed them with vinegar. Something told him he hadn’t quite drawn the Mana Sense sigil correctly. This must have been what Azure meant when she mentioned spells backfiring.

Beyond that, he was 100% sure he’d used all his mana again. And whatever a normal mana exhaustion felt like, doing it again before he’d recovered must have been that much worse.

He heard Azure crawl over to him, her breathing irregular. He hoped he hadn’t broken her ribs when he tackled her. “Owen,” she gasped. “Get up, Owen.” She shook him, trying to make him move.

Owen tried to tell her he couldn’t get up, but even his lips were stuck shut, his jaw taut and clenched. Slowly, the darkness receded from his vision, revealing only Azure’s draconic, ice-blue eyes, wide with terror.

Run, he tried to tell her. Get away.

A deep, horrendous voice spoke, “You two have caused me much suffering.” It was the Sentinel.

Run! Owen practically screamed at Azure. He tried to move, if only if he could signal for her to go!

His vision expanded even more as Azure turned in place, kneeling, with the dagger raised at the looming Sentinel. “You shall not touch him,” she snarled.

The demon lashed out with its hand, snatching Azure by the throat and lifting her off the ground. The dagger slid limply from her grasp, clunking hilt-first onto the dirt.

“You shall face a fate worse than death for your obstinance,” the Sentinel seethed, its voice coursing through Owen like a dread poison. It reached out with a finger and drew a long cut down Azure’s face.

She screamed in a way Owen had never heard a person scream before. It rattled his bones worse than any demon cry, it made every single inch of his body want to act, to move. It didn’t matter the cost, it didn’t matter the pain.

I have to save her.

And then, it was like a dam broke. Energy, and pain with it, came crashing through Owen like a coursing tide. Every single inch of his body was in an indescribable agony, blood blossoming from his very skin. And yet, he could move.

He grasped hold of the dagger in his hand and threw himself at the Sentinel. Its hand moved like lightning, catching him by the throat as its head snapped around to stare him down. “You should not be able to move.” Its arm was so long that Owen’s blade wouldn’t even graze its ribs if he swung it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Owen saw Azure’s hand move. He recognized the pattern, and despite the blood bubbling from between his lips, he grinned.

Azure cast her flashbang.

The light erupted in front of the Sentinel’s face like a bomb, and it shrieked. Its claw tightened around Owen’s throat, but Owen smashed the hilt of the blade down on its elbow, shattering it. Then, through the white, blinding light, Owen wrapped himself around the monster’s ribs, staggered it backward, and drove the dagger through its back and into its heart.