"As watchful as a flying Harpy"

A popular saying about the state of mind expected of a patrolling Militiaman.

When Barmak’s thrown ax eviscerated the squid-like Demi-Human, its skin’s camouflaging properties ceased to hide it. Damien glanced at it but found with dismay that he didn’t recognize the Merman’s subspecies. That was bad news, in multiple ways, the Acolyte thought with a grimace. It meant that La Réunion was facing a large-scale invasion from a coalition of deep-sea tribes, and not the usual harassment from the local, well-known tribes. More importantly, they would have to fight off foes with unknown capabilities, which meant no plan for a counter-attack would be as foolproof as he liked. Already the Colonel was screaming to the NoMs to sound the alarm and send their neighbors to shelter in the Bastion. Damien hesitated. Strictly speaking, he should go with them, as an Acolyte, but…

“Acolytes, go evacuate the residential district! All combat Mages, contain them to the harbor. Now! I want True Sight on every Mage, immediately!” Raynaud continued ordering his Mages, unleashing a volley of Magma Knives on the first wave of Mermen as he spoke. The resulting explosions shredded a particularly big tentacle-limbed Merman and its bodyguards before they could react, their smoldering remnants stopping its would-be followers for a few seconds.

Before he began to run down the street toward his home, Damien saw his father sprinting toward Barmak and Sheher, exchanging a few words, then begin to herd his stunned colleagues toward the Bastion. The two Demi-Humans were advancing towards the rapidly forming front-line when he passed the street’s corner, Julia still in her Polaris-form hot on his heels. Behind her, the streets to the harbor’s plaza were being closed by Walls of Force, and the neighboring house’s outer walls shimmered with consolidating Wards. The contingency barricades would hold 15 minutes, the time needed in theory to empty the residential district of its non-combatant population.

“Go get Jean and Manon, I’ll take care of the neighbors!” He told her. The Conjurer-Diviner would be useful against foes capable of camouflage, and he could help rescue trapped peoples with his Dimension Doors if he was well enough for that… Damien winced. Probably as a prank, Pyrite had given his friend a fruit he hadn’t recognized. Thinking himself polite, the boy had eaten his cousin’s gift without question… And suffered intense intestinal distress the whole day. He seemed to be recuperating when they left for the exhibition but had decided to not accompany them, just in case.

He finally reached the Montel’s, his breath shortening, and entered the wide garden. Stepping on the eroded cobblestone path, muscle memory kicked in and his body felt like he was gliding to the entrance. Past childhood memories of being invited to delicious meals when his dad was busy and the smell of the home-cooked meals were so fresh in his memory... But he had to snap out of it. After the miracle half-elf baby Halla, the poor couple was far too busy for entertaining guests. Certainly, he should have been more helpful to repay them but he was wrapped up in his own bubble of triumphs and failures. Soon, when things slow down for him, he would repay their kindness and babysit so the couple would have a night for themselves. With the doctors giving the baby a clean bill of health, that should be an easy task and a debt well overdue. Damien intended to knock delicately on the door, hoping the parents would be able to take their baby asleep to the Bastion. Surprisingly, as his knuckles touched the door, it fell to the ground.

Horrified, the young man swore when he understood what had happened by glancing at the hinges. They had been torn off, and the door precariously balanced against the frame. He silently signaled to Manon that he needed her Shield on him while he initiated the incantation for an Ember Knife and unsheathed his sword. A desperate yell abruptly came from the stairs, prompting the boy to not wait for his friends. Damien pounced in just in time to see an eight-tentacled Merman plunge its beak in Daniel Montel’s torso from the ceiling where it had suspended itself. Damien, recognizing the wound as a fatal one, strangled a sob for the loss of the nice man that’d babysat him when his father went back late from work, and hatefully unleashed the spell he’d been nursing.

The lukewarm Ember broke on impact with the cephalopod’s skin. Dozen of shards devoured the flesh of the monster and its victim, growing hotter until the half-burnt carcasses of it and its prey fell to the ground, leaking an oily mix of red and blue blood from their wounds and dark ink from the Merman’s mouth onto the stairs to the baby’s room.

Glancing at his right, where the young father had looked when the Merman fell on him, the boy saw Kanna Montel’s butchered, half-eaten body in the living room. The Japanese-born NoM had put up more of a fight than her ambushed husband, Damien thought, making an effort to detach himself from the situation and let his tactical training take over the need to mourn the couple. A plain dagger that used to be mounted on the wall was laid near the ruin that had been her left hand, soaked with blue blood.

He shakily, hopefully, climbed the stairs saturated with the odors of burnt flesh and fresh blood. Just as he walked past the corpses, the sound he’d desperately hoped to hear rang out; a baby’s cries. He entered the room, that was the baby’s bedroom and the workplace of the deceased Kanna, who had been a seamstress. The window was still open. He took an unfinished cloth-work Kanna had been working on, a children-sized yukata, intent on tugging the infant in it and leave the house. As he was bending to cradle her out of her crib, he was stopped by a shiver in his arms.

“Timingila. That’s the only name you’ll hear. Timingila. It means your end in the depths.”

Damien turned, looking for the source of the whisper. At first, he found nothing. Then, the wooden stairs creaked. A low, deep, phlegm-ridden voice whispered.

“Timingila. I am Timingila. Timingila is all around you.”

The body of the Merman, still pockmarked with spots of charred flesh, was climbing the stairs. Its enormous eyes were inky, pupil-less orbs now, their whites were overtaken by a layer of a black, malodorous, lumpy liquid. Its beak was moving disconcertingly as if to make it seem like it was the one speaking. Damien wasn’t convinced. The whispers were terrifying to him, unreasonably so. Something that he didn’t understand was afoot.

“Timingila will devour your rot. Timingila is here for you.”

Faced with an unknown, incomprehensible foe, the boy made a snap decision. With a flourish of his sword, he unleashed Sun-fire mites on the ground between him and the reanimated Merman, who hissed and hesitated before the bright flames. Damien used the diversion, seized the little girl from her crib, and without looking back, jumped through the open window, activating his Feather Fall Ring as he passed it.

“Julia!” he screamed at his astounded bear-shaped friend. “I need you to contain a fire within ten seconds.”

He delicately put little Halla in Jean’s arms as soon as the little group joined him. Julia nodded, ready to smother the fire. When Damien unleashed a fist-sized Flaming Sun on the house’s entry, then more on each window. It was not one, but three shrill, squeeky voices that hissed at the Sun-fire.

To ensure that the fire wouldn’t spread, Julia used her elemental version of Grease, spreading a thin layer of ice instead of the slippery grease of the neutral spell on the ground around the house. The wooden walls were ignited now, as were all the possible exit points. For a full minute, the whispers continued, shadows moving in the burning house. Only when one of the load-bearing walls crumbled under its weight did they cease. Damien hadn’t stopped looking into the fire once, tears blurring his sight. He knew that the barricades would hold a few more minutes. Making sure that the abominations inside were not a threat anymore took priority over being in the Bastion when the Walls would crumble. Especially so since in all likelihood, it now usurped the couple's bodies. He explained what had happened inside to his comrades. His friends had long since finished evacuating the neighborhood when he jumped from the window.

“I could’ve been quicker,” he muttered, finally detaching his eyes from the burning house to look at the now orphaned Halla, who was fascinated by her home’s pyre. “I could’ve saved Daniel if I was quicker.”

Jean looked at him worriedly but did not comment. Julia delicately caught his shoulder in her maw and nudged him toward the Bastion’s direction.

“Right. Let’s go.” He cradled Halla against his chest, his right hand maintaining her head, and broke into a run towards the Bastion’s gates, hoping the baby wouldn't start crying and attract more infiltrators. The great hilltop fort awaited them, its warded walls cannibalized from the hull of the Saint-Denis colony ship, with two towers protruding over the wall, one the domain of Colonel Raynaud, the Beacon of Saint-Denis, which shared its name with its owner’s war moniker. The other tower was the administrative and civil center of La Réunion, the Council’s tower. As for the fortified flanks of the hill, they were the rock-and-metal skin hiding Saint-Denis's Mage Wave and Militia barracks, the Manufactorum and the Vaults under it.

They were the last ones through the Bastion Gate. One guard, recognizing them ticked their names on his list and stopped them.

“The Acolytes are to report to the Manufactorium.” He informed them.

Damien executed his orders, but not before warning the militiaman. “The Bastion might’ve been infiltrated. One of those invisible octopuses got the Montel family. I managed to save the baby. Pass the message to Militia command, please.”

The NoM paled, but took the information in stride, turning to a colleague to pass it on. Jean gave him a sympathetic nod, and they went on to enter the Manufactorium's testing grounds. He spied a glance from one of the militiamen at the baby but didn’t have to point out that she was technically more precious to the island than most Acolytes, considering her nature as a Half-Elf. She was already recognizable, with her long ears and elfin features, almost alien compared to a human baby. He guided them to the sergeant at the Manufactorium's gate, passing in front of the emergency tents sheltering the NoM population. Before they entered, Manon took Damien aside. “I don't think you'll find someone to take care of her,” she remarked, pointing at Halla with her chin. “I can probably conjure up some kind of harness to hold her. Sound like a good idea?”

Damien smiled for the first time since the beginning of the attack. “Well, I could certainly do with free hands! Thanks, Manon.”

The shy girl answered to his smile by a sad one of her own, then produced a number of lengths of creepers, safely tying the Half-Elf to Damien's chest.

Meanwhile, Jean began his work. “True Sight, Link Sight” Jean cast, using Lucille to patrol the Manufactorium’s corridor, looking for more infiltrators. After a few seconds, he paled. “The Mermen are getting in position,” he said via a Silent Message. “Six of them. Sending Messages via Lucille to point them out to Combat Acolytes. Looks like the whole Saint-Denis Mage Wave is on the harbor, we won't get help from them in time”

He waited a few seconds, allowing the Combat-specialised offensive Acolyte to prepare their Spells. “Fire now!” He ordered. Damien shot a Sun-fire Sphere with one arm, letting go of Halla's head for a moment, towards a squid that was waiting for the occasion to ambush Manon. In the complex, five more explosions sounded out.

“Timingila. That’s the only name you’ll hear. Timingila. It means your end in the depths.”

Forcing himself to ignore the chorus of eerily synchronized voices, Damien examined his victim. For a lesser Merman of that order, especially one that seemed made for stealth and assassination, not battle, a Tier 2 spell was gross overkill. However, he’d noticed that their strangely transformed form had demonstrated a strong dislike toward his Positive Element. Hopefully… Yes, the monster’s body was being consumed by his Sun-fire with a strong hissing sound.

Jean’s eyes bulged. “Damien, the other ones are rising!”

“Timingila. I am Timingila. Timingila is all around you.”

“Restrain the corpses!” Someone screamed. ”I can’t destroy them!”

Indeed, one of the corpses, that had all its limbs blasted off and entombed in transmuted Earth, was leaking the same black, lumpy liquid that had covered the one in the Montel’s house. The whispers came from it, and not the mouths of the Mermen, he noted. A Scorching Ray from one of the older acolytes hit the lump of greasy liquid, with no visible effect. Experimentally, Damien expended one more use of his Sun-fire Infestation. At each point of the radiant fire on it, a sizzling sound accompanied a violent flash, obliterating parts of the lump. Alas, the liquid was being replenished quicker than the cantrip could burn it. Damien considered using one more Sun-fire Sphere, but he was getting worryingly close to the limits of his mana reserves. That he’d managed an Ember knife and four Sun-fire Sphere in less than ten minutes was already a miracle for a Conjurer who had only barely managed to cast a Tier 2 spell in that School just a few weeks earlier.

“Timingila will devour your rot. Timingila is here.”

“Damien,” Jean Messaged, “I’ve information from the harbor. That black ooze is in all the Mermen that are attacking right now, and it looks immune to anything that isn’t at least a Tier 5 spell or a Positive Quasi-Element… They have it contained for now, but that’s going to last only about an hour… Colonel Raynaud, the Azad, and the Chieftain are doing all they can.”

“Right,” Damien acknowledged. “Does anyone know where Roland is?” He asked around.

One of the Transmuter-Fabricators of the Manufactorium turned. “He said something about activating the Mirror in the Vault for the Intendant. He said you’re free to plan anything useful if he gets a look at it before you pull the trigger.”

Damien smiled. Mind racing with speculative Circles and Mana linkages, his arms still lulling Halla, Damien moved in the depths of the Manufactorum, plotting and calculating ways to dramatically increase the scope of the exhibition he had originally planned. Julia, Manon and Jean stayed behind, planning with the Militia Lieutenant in charge of the Bastion's security to destroy the other Mermen infiltrators who had no doubt gotten into the rest of the fort now that the Manufactorium was safe.

“Timingila comes for the Ancient Blood. All will die, drown, rot, and be devoured."

The voices kept getting stronger. The young Conjurer-Enchanter unsheathed his sword, embracing his charge more tightly to compensate, staring speculatively at the Cores in its pommel and the runes along its blade. He was going to need it.