Willem slept fitfully, knowing that the enemy was close to them. Every flicker in the night seemed to be a dancing skal, every noise a dying man’s muffled screams. His own muscles were tired from being clenched in nervousness, his heart pained from strain. He could do little but toss and turn on the ground, the hard dirt uncomfortable for sleep and eerily cold.

We will camp for the night, Mors had commanded them, and the men had swiftly fought their fear against their exhaustion. For many, exhaustion won out, and most were too tired to even eat before collapsing against the ground. Few tents were pitched that night, many soldiers sleeping in their armor and drawing blankets tight around themselves.

Outside, Willem could hear the crunching in the dirt as a few of the demons paced about, keeping watch as they needed less sleep. He tossed and turned, chasing after sleep but never managing to catch it in his grasp. Instead, he could do little but let his thoughts wander, struggling to shut out the whisperings of Atal that lingered in the back of his mind.

Run, the god told him. Flee, before death closes in. Willem wanted to claw his own skull open and dig out the wild musings, but he could do little more than clench his jaw and force his thoughts elsewhere. He had to think of something else—Kat, Norus, something. He almost welcomed the scream in the night when it finally came.

Immediately, the camp broke out into an apparent hailstorm as arrows slammed into the dirt around him. Most missed any targets, splintering and shattering off rocks and armor before skidding across the dirt, but others found their way into bellies and throats of sleeping men. In the dark of the night, Willem could not see how many men were killed, but the rest hurriedly reached for shields and weapons under the sudden attack. Yet confusion was heavy in the air, and the air was swiftly filled with a tumult of screams and commands to rally.

Looking up, Willem could briefly make out flickers of movement against the faint clouds, black specks that danced dangerously over their heads. It was a moment before he realized it was a second volley, and then fear and panic sank their fangs into his flesh. Hurriedly reaching for the mahji in the pit of his stomach, he threw the looping coils of magic out into the air with hardly a thought for control. He could not help but wince in pain, realizing how little of the mahji remained for him.

“Away!” Willem shouted in panic, watching as the ribbons spun and frayed into a thousand strands that stirred the air into a gale. As the second volley fell, they were swiftly blown astray by the churning mass of air, scattering wildly to the sides and missing most of the legion.

At the same time, he heard a sudden roar take up from the demons, the monsters belching forth streams of fire into the air to illuminate the land around them. Under the light, Willem could briefly make out a charging mass—enemies, he presumed. The other demons seemed to agree, and swiftly charged to meet them head-on.

“Legions, form rank!” came a piercing shout that cut through the din of the battle, and Willem turned to find that the legionaries were standing in formation—even if it was smaller than he was used to. Their expressions could not be seen underneath their helmets, but their shields were straight and their files crisp, if nothing else.

Two hundred feet out, the field suddenly erupted in a cacophony of flame and brilliant light as the demons made contact with the enemy. Willem could barely make out what was happening in the madness, obscured by distance and firelight. He was so focused on them that he was caught entirely by surprise when the sky suddenly crackled with lightning. Willem swiftly turned his head just in time to watch as Kha let out a crackling blast of lightning—but not where the demons were fighting.

Instead, that white flash of surging power struck the group of archers lurking amongst scattered stones to the right, completely hidden in the dark of the night. Their third volley was ruined by the sudden attack, their arrows flying wild even as sulfurous flame crept up their bodies to illuminate inhuman forms. Willem saw their robes being discarded to reveal blackened, charred bodies covered in bulbous veins, their features twisted and their bodies warped.

“Your friends?” he growled out, and for once Atal was silent in the back of his mind.

“Advance, double time!” the command came, and the ground suddenly shook from the cadence of boots striking the dirt, soldiers shouting hoarsely to keep tempo. Willem paused for a moment, uncertain of what to do before seeing the demons struggling to hold the line. With his heart thumping out a madened rhythm in his chest, he took off in a sprint.

The closer that he came to the enemy, the more detail he could make out of them. He could see the nebulous black that pulsed in their veins, could see the flaking cracks that webbed across their skin. Their bodies were half charred by flame where they fought the demons, but their eyes were twisted with a madness. Willem watched as one of the demons, a large bear-like beast, suddenly let out a hideous roar before falling to the side, one of the cultists pulling out a malformed hand that had buried itself in the demon’s chest. The fingers were tipped with shadowed claws, his body growing more and more inhuman the more wounds that he took.

An anger filled him, feral and hysterical, and he surrendered himself to it. Willem let out a roar of his own as he arrived, taking a wild leap and letting his instinct take over. He landed on another cultist just in time to save another wounded demon, the man’s skin painfully cold to the touch. Willem felt the last of his mahji pulse out of his claw tips, swiftly burrowing into the man’s shoulders before igniting into flame. The cultist squirmed and thrashed, screaming as his insides were burnt to ash. Willem swiftly tore off the man’s arm throwing it to strike another cultist off balance. The resulting stumble was enough of an opening for a pup to greedily bound forwards, sinking needle-like teeth into the cultist’s throat.

Willem threw his head to the side feverishly, his heart pounding madly as the high of bloodlust took him. Spying a wounded man trying to flee, he hurriedly lunged as raked his claws along the man’s back, watching as a spray of black blood gushed out and the man collapsed. Not bothering to take the time to relish his kill, he looked once more for another target and found a fellow demon being overwhelmed by four of the cultists.

On and on the fevered rhythm repeated, like a wild dance. His body moved on its own, his mind descending into a haze as rote repetition and instinct took over. Every drop of blood that landed on his skin sent his own blood churning. Every gargling scream was enough for him to let out a bestial howl. This is strength, a part of him realized—the wild, feral part that reveled in this combat.

Suddenly, he felt a chilling cold scrape down the length of his arm. Whipping around, he saw one of the cultists take a bite out of his forearm, black mist pouring out that froze his limb. The man was missing both arms and Willem had previously mistaken him to be dead, leading him to this current predicament. His arm was bitterly frozen, and he instinctively reached for mahji to burn away the cold. Yet there was none left, and so instead he reached for another part of himself—the weak reason, the pathetic fear, and fed that to the flame instead.

Instantly, a white fire blazed up to the sky, a hundred times hotter than anything else he had ever conjured. That searing light immediately illuminated the battlefield, throwing the night away and sending the cultists hissing to the ground, their skin smoking. The man clinging to his arm abruptly let out a howl, his mouth bursting into flame that proceeded to swallow his skull.

At the sight of the soulfire, the last of the cultists seemed to have lost their nerve, and the twisted men hurriedly began to flee back to their tents and that spire in the distance. At the same time, Willem turned his head to see the legion standing tall amidst the stones, the rocks now littered with broken bodies of cultists and soldiers alike. Joy stood atop the rocks, his fur matted with alien blood and crackling mahji spilling from his fingers.

Seeing their figures depart, Willem felt a wild roar once more tear its way out of his throat, carrying the last of his adrenaline and feral abandon with it. He stood a bloody figure, his hide speckled with black and cracked wounds covering his body. Many of the demons had died, many other whimpering as the twitched on the ground. The few that remained joined in his call, adding their bestial voices to his as they heralded the enemy’s retreat.

As if it heard, the sky suddenly lit up yellow as the first cracks of dawn slipped through. They had lived through the night.