The masses of demons were like some great serpent on the horizon, their number imposing as they stood facing the Pikes. Willem watched as magic crackled in the air, arcing around the stone with a wild ferocity, smoke pluming off the heated earth. The king and Kha worked quickly, the magic soon enough forming a rift in the air that was too familiar in shape and purpose.

Nostalgia grasped him suddenly with sharp claws, his vision swimming with abrupt tears. He could not help but reflect on all that had happened in the past. He had been an orphan, a beggar in the streets, posing as a leper to hide the Maes on his face. That had been his life for ten years, struggling to scrounge together enough coin each day to fill his stomach with crumbs. Then he had fled from Mea Vatal, with Captain Is’shil and crew in the hopes of carving out a new life with them, or at least wherever they were going. I just wanted to live, he thought despondently. Yet, where had it all gone wrong?

They had gone to Malifor in the hopes of trading with the natives, only to find the land barren and haunted by consuming shadows. There the Vysians had all perished, eaten away until they were nothing more than bones. He too, had thought that he would die on those parched plains, surrounded by nothing but dust and burning sun. Yet desperation had sent magic coursing out of him, giving him a way out. The rift that he had opened led him to the Gates, where he had met those two doomed soldiers. He had joined them in their attempts to return to the Heartlands, to warn the legions of the dangers to the south.

The king’s roaring in the distance was like a warhorn, resounding off the walls of the mountains until even the stone itself seemed to tremble. It shook him out of his thoughts and he blinked quickly, gazing around like a startled deer. Crackling magic formed an arch underneath the green sky, framed by runic stones hauled out of the mountains. This was no waygate, for there was no matching gate at the other end. It was instead a waypath—a one-way rift that would shatter after use. Inherently unstable, crude yet effective, it would have to be enough for the circumstances. Those runes were a pain to read, his efforts too often futile in spite of what he knew. He could barely make out the carvings for blood, flickering too quickly across the gate.

Willem, for his part, stood at the tail of the crowd, casting out a final gaze at this strange valley that he had been in for less than two weeks, yet in which so much had changed. Norus stood behind him, an unreadable expression on the man’s face. Seeing Willem looking back, he merely gave a short nod before striding forward, his spine stiff and straight as a rod. Willem could help but be impressed by the soldier, who faced as these changes with an unflinching hardness.

How? Willem wanted to ask the man just how he could remain so calm, how he could be so collected in the face of such madness. Yet before anything could escape his mouth, the waypath before them began to warp and twist. The magic at the edges was starting to fray, the runes in the stones glowing dangerously bright. The air itself began to smell of char and flame, an acrid stench that clung to the skin like burning hair.

“GO!” the king howled, and the demons obeyed with an almost mindless fanaticism. With feet, hooves, and wings, they charged into that smoking rift, their forms swiftly engulfed by the depthless white. Magic crackled around them, leaving behind not even a shadow as they were stolen out of the surrounding space.

Willem could see the king and Kha both struggling to maintain the waypath. He had wanted to help, to loan them his magic, but they had rejected his aid when he had offered it. Such a delicate task, Kha had spoken, is not for clumsy pups...I am the eyes...the king is the arm...he is more than enough muscle… Yet if those words were truth, why was the waypath about to collapse now?

“Come on,” Norus growled beside him suddenly, the soldier striding forward with confidence and determination. “No time to be standing around.” The waypath was more and more unstable, warping the very space that it occupied. With each blink it seemed to draw closer, to swallow more and more of the sky like some gaping maw. Norus greeted it calmly, walking into the smoke and swiftly being devoured.

Damnit, no time for thinking. Willem could only shake his head tersely, a ragged howl escaping his throat as he too ran into the smoke, feeling it pull him into its senseless embrace. His vision was stolen away as he plunged once more into that limbo, the pluming smoke quickly wrapping around the rest of him and dragging him in farther. The crackling of the magic in his ears became muffled, growing quieter and quieter until finally there was nothing.

Once more, he felt himself being consumed by the magic, being torn apart. HIs flesh was eaten away piece by piece, fiber by fiber, until there was nothing left of his body. And being thrust into that familiar limbo, he could see nothing but depthless darkness before him, could hear nothing but an eternity of emptiness sprawled before him.

Yet despite his senses being denied to him, he could still feel. He could feel the thoughts of others around him, of the other demons that had entered the waypath. Like so many white threads, he could feel them spinning around him. Vibrant thoughts, memories, they were all displayed before him. Even this one, that danced in front of him so enticingly, he could reach out and grasp—

—The wind was cold against his scales, the night air a chill despite his movements. Yet the moonlight casting down upon him was a gentle warmth; the pulsing of his heart was a gentle warmth. Every stroke of his wings was like fanning a flame, the billowing wind carrying him higher and higher with effortless flight. For he loved to fly—it was his true home, to gaze down upon the world. If he could, he would love to do no more than circle about in the sky, gliding between the updrafts lazily.

Yet this was not the time for such sloth. This was a hunt, and the prey were below.

He could see them bolting across the grasslands, their lithe forms hard to make out in the moonlight. Yet his eyes could spot them, darting in and out of the grass as they fled. His brothers were chasing them, plowing through the earth with their brutish forms, tiring them out. He knew how to hunt those dog-like beasts; they tired after anything longer than a sprint.

There. One of them had nearly stumbled. It would collapse soon enough; it was not the one that had attracted his interest. He was watching the one in front, the leader of the ragged pack. Its black head bobbed between the grasses—that was his target. And as he watched, his vision fixated utterly on that furred throat, his wings folded by his side and he plunged.

Faster. The wind raced against his head. His eyes were closed to slits, a thin film shutting to protect his eyes. The air slammed against his ears, his muscles straining from the effort of staying true to his course. Faster. He dared to breathe, flaps in his nostrils closing to keep the frigid air out of his lungs. His heart was pumping out a drum beat, fierce as the tide in his head. Faster still, he barreled out of the night sky.

His wings flew out at the last moment, muscles straining as they suddenly caught the brunt of the wind. His plunge slowed abruptly, wings stretched to the brink of tearing. Yet his claws were outstretched, digging in tight as he felt resistance. He snapped them shut beneath him, beating his wings furiously as he felt the weight below. The struggling motions ceased as he snapped his jaws around its throat, its hot blood gushing into his throat. The dog-beast died quickly, its twitchings slowly ending until it was nothing more than a steaming corpse in the grasses. The rest of the pack had scattered, panicked with their leader felled. He cared not; his brothers would chase them down easily enough. As he tore off a strip of flesh, feeling its warmth fill his stomach, he chose instead to revel in this kill.

The night was not nearly so cold—

—Willem opened his eyes with a gasp, feeling the earth hit him abruptly. No, that sentiment surely was not apt, for the earth did not move, yet he could think of no better way to describe the sensation. He had been torn out of the memory unceremoniously, the space around him rippling like the surface of a rippling pond. There had been the sensation of being torn apart, the sensation of being pieced back together. There had been the pain of his body forming once more, and the pain of his senses returning. And then, where there had been nothing only moments before, there suddenly was.

Stone greeted unexpecting claws, dirt striking surprised faces as the demons fell out of the air. Space distorted, crackling with magic as that smoke-like rift opened once more. With their bodies returned once more, the demons felt that repulsive rejection from inside the waypath pushing them out. And so their army fell out of the sky, hitting the mud with short growls of shock and confusion.

They languished briefly, many tossing about in the dirt for a moment out of bewilderment. The air was thick and cloying with the scent of blood, unmistakable to their noses, and many of the demons flinched. The mud clung to fur and scales as they struggled to stand, proving an even greater nuisance as they fought to orient themselves.

Willem scraped at his face, flicking clods of dirt from his eyes and mouth as he slowly stood. He knew not where they had ended up, knew not where they had intended to go. Blood, the carvings on the waypath had said, and he suddenly understood.

The king knew not where the humans were, nor where the demons ought to go. He had told the waypath to find blood—human blood—for where there was the greatest number of humans, there would be a city. A crude method for securing directions, but it ought to have worked.

Yet, gazing around blearily, this was certainly no city. There was nothing here but upturned earth and corpses. A raging river was churning red with blood, armor and bodies visible where they became stuck on the rocks. They had prompted the water to flood the banks, soaking the mud nearby into a slog, trapping many men up to their knees in the muck.

And there were men aplenty here, even if most were dead. The waypath had served its purpose in seeking out human blood—it was only that most of the blood was spilled over the soil. Soldiers were struggling to walk through the mud, many discarding their heavy armor in the hopes of fleeing. Too many were wounded, bearing gashes from blades or even trailing bent spearheads behind them.

Yet all of them were turned to face the other bank of the river, and as Willem soon found why. Blackening the sky was a shadow, a single, massive shadow towering above mere men. It blotted out the clouds and the sun, casting an ominous haze over the earth below. Shaped like a skeletal man, its limbs were too long and its waits to thin where it billowed off of the ground. Yet the longer he stared at the thing, the more and more distorted his vision became. It was utterly depthless, its very being empty as the void.

Almost like an afterthought, Willem could make out the faintest of figures atop the shadow. It shimmered in the light, faint and indistinct at the distance.