I was awakened in the night by the sound of bells ringing across the city, an urgent clamor designed to be impossible to sleep through. The glowing formation faded quickly from my mind as I blinked my sleepy eyes, wondering what the hell was going on. Beside me my parents were already out of bed and moving about with a sense of purpose, their words tense as I heard them banging about gathering things up.

They left the room and returned moments later with a dully glowing lantern, my father having donned leather armor and a massive broadsword and shield. Mother was wearing a thinner sword and a dagger at her belt, both of them looking frightened but sure of what to do. Was this some kind of fire alarm drill? Wait… that made no sense. You don’t use swords against a damn fire! Crap, this was serious.

My heartbeat sped up as mother scooped me up and muttered for me to stay silent, or at least I was pretty sure that was she said. Seven or eight months had passed now, and I was starting to get a firmer grip on the language. I had never heard this tone of voice from her, subdued but urgent. Pleading even… It was very disconcerting coming from a woman who is usually so confident and sure of herself.

We quickly left the house, the door wide open behind us – in fact, my father actually took the time to latch the door OPEN, using a hook on the wall I had never noticed before. Other families up and down the street were rapidly fleeing their houses, similarly choosing not to shut their doors (though most of them didn’t have a latch as ours did).

A distant howl sounded off in the night, and someone up the street let out a yell to hurry up, which was punctuated by a faded but horrifying scream. A few people started to run, and but most of the people around us gathered together into a crude formation with the armed adults on the outside and the children on the inside (including mother, who was carrying me). I didn’t see many old people, and there was nobody that couldn’t keep up with the group. Not wanting to think about what that might mean, I focused my attention on the darkness surrounding us.

Not five minutes later, the tense silence was broken by screaming directly ahead of us. One of the women barked a series of commands, and the formation shifted with the largest fighters (like dad) moving to the front. I couldn’t see what happened, but there were sounds of violence and pain such as I had never heard before in real life. It was so much… more… than I remember from movies and TV. I held onto mom’s sleeve for dear life.

After the sounds of fighting stopped, we carried forwards, stepping over the bodies of what looked like some kind of shaggy black wolf… and the pools of dark blood around a half dozen dead villagers, their bodies savagely torn open. Mother quickly covered my eyes, but felt certain I had just seen the remains of the people who tried to run ahead. Suddenly the tight grouping of our formation made more sense; they banded together to survive.

I could hardly even comprehend what was going on, and I didn’t even have time to react as I heard a clattering sound to the right of us and Mother suddenly shifted me to her left arm, drawing her sword with her other hand. There was a loud howl, and I saw a group of a half dozen shadowy four-legged forms growling at us from down the street. Our group consisted of at least forty armed adults protecting a dozen or so children, and I guess the beasts considered the risk greater than the reward as the slunk off down another street away from us. We moved onwards, a massive stone structure that I had never seen before looming ahead of us, outlined by brilliant fires burning on its roof.

The sounds of battle drew nearer and nearer as we entered a large courtyard before the large building, and I saw a pitched battle with around sixty villagers holding off a few dozen of the shadow wolfs. We ran by them and into the well protected gateway of the building, but dad and a handful of other adults (both men and women) peeled off of our group and went to join the defenders.

The interior of the building was darker than out in the courtyard, lacking the illumination granted by the bonfire on the roof, but torches lined the walls at uneven intervals, creating eerie pools of light amongst the black. We moved in with our group, following shouted directions by a man in shining chain-mail armor. We ended up entering what looked like a store-room, with shelves stacked high along the back wall. After our group entered, we stood around for a few more minutes as more people joined us before a command was given and the door was shut. The people closest to the door worked together to lift a massive wooden beam across a series of iron hooks set in both the door and the walls on either side, effectively locking the door shut from the inside.

A number of the older children started to cry, which seemed to set off a chorus of wailing from all the infants around us. I was shocked to see that most of the parents had been clamping their children’s mouths shut, preventing them from being able to make a sound during our escape! Only now that the bar was safely across the door were they set free. One child was knocked out cold, possibly dead, its father panicking as an older woman took over and started to check for a pulse. Mother just looked at me with a fiercely proud grin and said, in a voice that was maybe a bit too loud, something that roughly translated too:

“Well done Heller! I knew I wouldn’t have to muzzle my brave little boy.”