Ove crouched on a window sill just above Lyrua and Athen at the entrance to the square. She did not know what to do, but she was restless waiting. There were ways that she could help, but was it the right time? Would she get in their way? Better to save her strength until Lyrua and Athen were in direct need of it.

Shrills were formidable, but they mere shadows of the Nightmare that birthed them. They should be nothing to this many Spellwards. None had fallen to the monster’s shriek; a firm measure of their resilience.

The second shrill lumbered forward swinging its five hands, clawing for Wards. They danced easily out of its reach and slammed it with spells, chasing bolts of Light to sneak them through the shadows. The creature crouched, slithering forward as it redoubled its efforts to take someone in its claws, violently smashing the streets. The Wards backed nimbly away, luring it away from the other.

Columns of guards spilled into the plaza from the east and west, a hundred strong. Before they could break file to spread out, Torfinn turned and waved his arm. A thin line of blue shot out, glimmering like spider’s silk. Alarmed, the guards twisted to duck aside, and it detonated into their backs, engulfing the guards in blue flame that seared their flesh from their bones and discarded the rest of the guards like rags. Embers consumed his sleeves as Torfinn clenched his fists, seizing the ash and smoke in the air and forced them into the lungs of the survivors.

The guards’ horrified expressions froze to their faces as they died, giving pause to a company of reinforcements entering the square behind them. Torfinn made a circle with his hands, calling a horizontal tunnel of blue flame around them. His words both brought power to his mana, and warned of the impending spell. “A flame azure their bones to gnash, within a whirling Wheel of Ash.” A roaring flare of blue torched the guards into a cloud of ash, and a fevered wave of air brushed over the square.

Across the plaza, someone smashed two metal rods together, the resounding clang formed a wave of Sound that crashed into the column of guards and shattered them like dried leaves.

Ove cocked her head. The Spellwards may be close to as dangerous as she and Lander. Shame for him, having to stand there bored. He thought the Archangels actually watched him when he fought.

Spellwards attuned to Dark were countering the shrills’ shadow pockets to let spells through, and a woman hurled stones from the fountain as big as her head with Earth. The shrill reeled as one struck it in the head, splintering its horrible teeth. Three of the Wards were dashing about, trying to burn the corpses of guards to ashes, and Ove was impressed Toldremand or Fourstaile knew shrills well enough to try it. But it was not enough.

The broken maw of the shrill dangled askew, dripping black mist like bile that glittered with a rose tint. The mist breathed a mockery of life into the fallen guards, their bodies twitching and bending cruelly, while corpses of stalkers simply stood up, took weapons if they could find them, and resumed their assault. Dismembered bits of guards pulled together, uncaring what other dead flesh they bonded with, creating horrors with too many limbs, or bodies melted together at the shoulder, lurching like crabs of human flesh.

The abominations fell as easily as the guards had, but they did not remain still for long, and any limb or piece of flesh separated from a greater body quickly found a new one. Every Ward attuned to Light became consumed with separating the things into as many small pieces as they could, while Wards attuned to Fire incinerated them.

The second shrill continued its grasping assault, forcing their backs against an army of crooked abominations. Past the fountain to the western side of the square they retreated from the shrill’s attacks, carving golems of severed flesh from their path. They glared into the Wards, the burden of their gaze pulling them from their feet.

The Spellwards formed circles around their fallen companions until they could stand, their white tunics were torn and stained. Pressure grew to regain control of the square as the battle shifted towards Lyrua and Athen.

Finally Fourstaile acted, climbing into the wide fountain, and stood alone in its basin. The woman was too stoical sometimes, and Ove was eager to see her slay one of them. Toldremand could have destroyed one by now… if he had not destroyed his memory of the spell that could do it.

The florafolk bulged, her stout legs and thick arms writhing as if filled with snakes. The writhing slithered up her body until it reached her neck, and her entire form shook and pulsed. One of the chrysanths in her hair shrivelled and disintegrated as she consumed its power and folded it into her form. Her limbs grew suddenly, an explosion of twisting vines thickening and elongating her arms and torso, while roots sprouted from her feet and wrapped around her legs. Roots and vines continued spilling out of her body until her stocky figure was larger than the shrills.

Commanding incredible grace despite her size, Fourstaile pivoted around the fountain and reached for the shrill with the broken jaw. It caught her hands, and shrieked in her face, clawing shreds of plant matter out of her body with its other three arms. It raked her head, destroying her hair and tearing her chrysanths.

Fourstaile pulled until one of the monster’s arms tore from its body, and bludgeoned it with its own arm until it collapsed, using most of its remaining limbs to support itself.

The second shrill groaned, a low rumbling sound that summoned the dead to it. Jumbles of distended flesh and collections of mismatched parts abandoned their relentless advance and turned to lumber instead towards it. The shrill lowered its body so the dead flesh could cover it.

Toldremand shouted a command to blast the crawling corpses with fire, but they had none, their mana was depleted. Nearly every Spellward seemed to be drained. Fourstaile had had the sense to prepare the Dew, but clearly they had not foreseen shrills. Not two.

Fourstaile planted a foot in the side of the shrill, pinning two of its arms to the ground, and tore the creature free of them. It gurgled its bile in pain, ripping flesh from her arms with its remaining claws.

She swung the creature around, pushing it to the fountain, causing a ripple in the ranks of the Wards as they stepped away. With one arm under its chin, she lifted it into the air and plunged it into the statue of Balaans. His arm penetrated its chest, spraying black blood, ridged carapace and hundreds of shards of thin, needle-like ribs that curled like screws. Blackrose mist erupted from its mouth as it wailed, spraying across the square. More of the dead woke in twitching fits as the mist drifted over them, and crawled towards the low drawl of the second shrill, now covered in a disturbing enamel of the mass dead. Ove was grateful the shrills’ power was only a memory of the Nightmare.

But the impaled shrill was not dead, and it tore at Fourstaile’s arm until its claws finally found enough purchase to tear it off. It could regrow, but the woman had lost eleven chrysanths battling the beast; if she were to lose the remaining three, she would die. She smartly retreated, deliberately stomping the dead leaving trails in the blood as they crawled across the square, to put distance between herself and the shrills. As the excess of her body wilted off, the again-small woman took shelter with the Queen.

Spellwards took turns hacking the top of the shrill’s head with axes, destroying the thick carapace that protected its skull and stepping away before it could reach them. They breached its skull and Toldremand pierced the monster’s head with his spear. The shrill’s death boiled its flesh to mist in a splashing gurgle that left its skeleton bare within a hollow chitinous shell.

The remaining shrill now towered well over double Lander’s height. It took its fallen ally’s chitin in its massive claws and began devouring it to add its mass to its own, but without spells there was little they could do. Anyone who stepped too close would be torn apart, and with multiple layers of armour now their weapons were useless. Bartholomaeus had spoken true when he said they underestimated him. Two shrills, and so many sacrifices for them.

Ove began gathering Dark mana and hopped down from the sill. Lyrua stood facing away from the battle, a blank look in her eyes, and Athen cradled in her arms, unconscious. Her eyes drifted down to look at Ove, but she made no attempt to speak.

“I need that Dew,” Ove said. Lyrua just stared, overwhelmed, trying to free her mind from what she saw. To keep the sound of a shrill crunching the bones of its brother across the plaza out of her head. Ove reached into the pocket in Lyrua’s trousers and retrieved the vial. “This ought to work,” she tried to sound reassuring. Lyrua nodded. “Give the Prince a peck for me.”

She hopped into the air, and landed on Lander’s shoulders to whisper at him. “Lander.”

“What?” He tried to shrug her off, his boredom turned to resentment.

“Bored? I think we will need you to slay that thing.”

“You’re damn right you will need me. But we can’t leave the Queen,” he groaned. “No Iron was ever Exalted by waiting.”

“They can protect the Queen,” she said, “we only need a few minutes. Be ready to slay the shrill, you may be the only one it can’t kill.”

She dove from his shoulders and glided across the square, startling some of the Spellwards on edge and drawing ill looks. She found Toldremand and landed next to him.

“What are you doing?” he growled. “Unless you have some extremely swell news, you need to remain with the Queen.”

She held up the vials of Dew of the Moonflower Tree, dangling them beneath his chin. “I have a plan, it will work. Lander can battle the shrill, but we need to block its Dark spells.”

“Where did you get those? And how do you intend to deprive it of its spells? It absorbs mana from the corpses as they join with it, it will never run out. Or do you intend to stall until daybreak?”

“Lyskilde had them. She said all the Night Quarter patrols had some. Shared with us.”

He scratched the hair on his exposed chest, damp with sweat. “Is that where Fourstaile found so many? What do you intend to do with them?”

“We need one Ward with Light, one Ward with Gravity.” She handed him the vials and he called a Ward over. Captain Gottfred Agard trotted over and gave the waist-high salute. The shrill finished devouring its ally, new chitinous protrusions growing through the layer of dead flesh, and crawled across the square to find the discarded bones to chew. Gottfred and Toldremand drank the dew with their eyes on the creature as it gnawed.

“Three things, take the Queen, leave the square, and find another way.” She shook her head. “That’s one thing. Gottfred will banish the Light from the plaza. Then, I cast my spell, and the shrill can’t wield Dark anymore, but it will still use Gravity. Light spells will not work either.” She looked at Gottfred, “So wait for us to the South when you are done. I will start casting now, so you better hurry.”

With that, she began casting her spell, something she had worked out years ago, but never actually had needed to cast. She was not skilled enough with Dark to survive casting it; nor did her body hold enough mana, so she would need to take advantage of all seven spell components to aid her. Toldremand gave his orders, and the Wards organised their retreat from the plaza quickly.

First was the Parity component. She was already using a portion of her attention to pull mana from the surrounding darkness to supplement her own. She continued drawing mana, hoarding it within her like a sack overful, with one of her arms in the air to attract the dark like a lightning rod.

The Time component was the principle that assigned mana left uncast would grow volatile, heightening its power and unpredictability. She assigned the mana by casting the shape of the spell, teasing the mana without allowing it to take form. Already it fought her for release, yearning to become the spell it was meant for. As long as she could hold it, the mana would continue to ripen and gain power. But if she was not careful, it would destroy her, and likely others as well.

The Spellwards were on their way out of the plaza now. The shrill turned to watch them leave, but did not stop crunching the arm to stop them. By her count, that was the last bone; they had only moments before the massacre would begin. She needed her own blood for the Blood component, and regretted that she could only draw it from her torso. She made a light cut across her waist and let the blood stain her hand.

She waved her bloodied hand through the air in tight, controlled patterns to satisfy the Rhythm component, guiding the mana to efficiency, then began to speak the Verbal component as the Spellwards guided the Queen and her son out of the plaza. Gottfred banished the Light with a snap of his fingers, plunging them back into blackness.

What she said did not truly matter. It only mattered that she spoke the words with conviction, and that they related to the spell she was attempting to cast in some way.

“In the absence of light, is only dark-ness...”

The next component was Sacrifice. As she spoke the words of the spell, she allowed the memory of it to be seared from her mind, taking the very piece of her soul that knew the spell and sacrificing it to fuel the spell as it was cast.

Filtering the ripened mana into her words, she held aloft an emerald, blessed by the church’s Spellrector, which cracked through the centre as the immense mana was Focused through it.

At last, she commanded the world to change, “... When even the darkness recedes, all that remains is a stark World of Grey!”

The shrill howled, seven massive limbs pounding the ground as it bounded towards them in the pitch black of the moonless night. The darkness cracked like dried skin, peeling away until the plaza was void of light and dark, so only a blurry shade of the world remained in the square.

Everything Ove could see was flat, making distance impossible to judge. Every noise released waves that rippled the World of Grey like reflections in a pond, lending it depth and definition as rebounding sound told the ears what things were.

The shrill thrashed in surprise, scrambling desperately to control its advance. Stripped of its power, it sprawled across the ground, shaking bits of its coating of flesh away with rage as it dragged itself back to its feet.

“This will only last a minute or so, about as long as it took me to cast it,” Ove said to Lander as he marched past her, eager to feed his hunger for combat.

“That will be enough,” he replied.