The few days prior to the Culling Night were spent getting Mia back up to her fighting capability, the best we could. She wouldn’t be in peak condition, but by merit of the activities of the Culling Night, peak wasn’t where she would have to be. Just sufficiently good would be enough to deal with the horde of spike feeders that would attack the city.

For all of my years in the village, I had somehow missed the key defining features of the Culling Night. Something in the back of my memory trickled to the forefront, restoring brief sounds of the need to stay indoors, the guards moving out to the perimeter, injuries increasing that night but never seeming out of the regular scope of danger. For all that I had wanted to be a wolf, I had been content to be as sheep, never truly thinking through the danger of that night.

Alain had been given special dispensation to avoid the Culling Night, in deference to the task granted to him. His mission required his absence amongst the guard. It would be impossible for a member of the city guard to not be present for Culling Night, barring extenuating circumstances like injury. Every single guardsmen was required to fend off the horde of spike feeders that would descend upon the city.

There was no rhyme or reason to their assault, as far as anyone could tell. It was just a given that the spike feeders would amass on the city, the vast majority person-rank spike feeders, with a few village-rank ones dispersed intermittently amongst the horde, but that was relatively unimportant in the end. The beasts were fixated on breaking into the city, unable to notice the guards attacking them. It was as the night sounded, a veritable culling of the herd.

And yet, for all the amassed corpses, it still wasn’t enough to put a dent in their numbers. They returned by the next Culling Night in greater numbers, ready to swarm towards the city, trying to break through to the people inside. They cared not for their own safety, only for the lives of those enshrined within the sturdy city walls. Thus the city guard fought them off again and again, doing their best to strike with speed and minimal harm.

“Whats the big deal regarding the Culling Night?” I asked. We were sitting over our dinner, eating a distant thought due to my concern for the night. “If it’s that easy to kill the spike feeders, what’s there to panic about?”

“Legends say that in a time before our living memory, there was a culling night where the spike feeders made it into the city and ravaged the population. The city guard was able to mitigate the damage, but the impact left its scars. Now its taken much more seriously, lest we cause another disaster,” Vera said, appetite undeterred. She slammed a whole slice of bread into her mouth, chewing with her mouth open.

“It’s important, Perry, but it’s not like, missing training with Javier important,” Mia said. “No one’s probably going to die during the Culling Night, but if you miss training, Javier will certainly kill you. It’d be pretty easy for him to. Given your scrawny arms and noodle legs, which tend to happen when you skimp out on training.”

I had rolled my eyes back at her, still feeling afraid for the night but less so. Just enough to keep me on edge. Just enough to treat it with the respect it deserved. Later that night, we gathered in our classroom for a final briefing.

“We’ll be taking our post near the northwest gate,” Javier had said. “There will be others strewn against the wall, as the intent is to spread our forces wide enough to cover all means of entrance, but not too wide so that our forces are stretched too thin. You’ll need to kill them quickly and safely. Do not take any excessive risks. Do not get careless. Even if they’re letting you slaughter them, you’re still apt to get maimed if you get snared by an errant spike. Is that clear?”

We nodded, swallowing any questions we had, Vera saying a brief prayer under her breath. There was only an hour before the Culling Night truly started. An hour before the horde that was starting to amass outside the walls ran frantically for us, aiming to overwhelm us. An hour before the only thing we would know would be combat. And yet, something inside of me was looking forward to the opportunity to proving myself.

Everyone was wearing their leather cuirasses, already taking on their enhanced features onto their person. It was all about getting into the right state of mind to kill the beasts amassed down onto the vast plains. There were spike feeders of many kinds, some with giant arms, others with sloping bodies, some with fierce beaks, but one feature continued to unify them. Pale skin, dull eyes, endless spikes. The gauntlet of variable forms mattered not compared to the result we needed to achieve. The only option was success.

In my mind I had pictured the spike feeders as a veritable wall of flesh, threatening to swell over the city walls, stampeding over the city guard. I had built up the night larger than it was, and it was already excessive. What was present was countable. It was measurable. It wouldn’t overwhelm us. We would defeat it.

For the first time in my life, I was able to watch the breaking of the Culling Night, the heralding moments of the frenzied assault. Up in the sky the moon shone boldly, cracks forming at its center. They slowly jigsawed down the middle, expanding further and further until it fractured in half. Its sides swayed apart, shining broken but whole, a terrible emptiness welling within me at the sight overhead. Something in the world snapped, all the built-up tension releasing at once. Then the spike feeders began their rampage.

They broke from their huddled masses, facing us with nothing in their minds but the pursuit of something that was out of reach, the stronger ones trampling over some of the weaker ones in their wake. They carried fragments of other spike feeders with them as they continued to advance, flesh lanced into their own with the commingling of their black spires. I almost hoped that would be sufficient, that their own avarice would decimate their own numbers, but the spike feeders were far hardier than being taken down by some incidental damage.

Some of the other teams had already begun their assaults, colleagues running out ahead to intercept some of the beasts. Given their squads were larger, they could afford to trim down the attackers ahead of time, lessening the work for those behind them. We didn’t have that luxury.

“Go for the kill, be fast and be careful,” Javier cautioned, his tongue lashing out at one of the beasts that had finally approached his range. The swollen pink club bashed through the head, narrowly avoiding the concentration of spikes on the creature’s head, the skull collapsing from the impact. It fell down, already felled in a heartbeat, but where it stood two more followed, unerringly advancing.

Javier was a storm on the field, massacring most of the spike feeders before they could even reach our location. His adept range was empowered by his incredible striking power, ending spike feeder after spike feeder with a powerful blow.

He even fixated on those who got through our gaps, the ones that were able to ignore our attacks through a favorable form, like the one I tried to scratch that was covered in a hard shell. Even Electromuting the spike feeder hadn’t been enough time to find an opening in its carapace, but Javier didn’t need to worry about such things, using his brute force to beat the errant spike feeder into the ground.

My strategy was comparable to Mia’s, in that we both hoped to find a vulnerable spot and subdue in one blow. She weaved around the prairie in double time, speeding about faster than my eyes could track at times. Her beak pierced through the dull beady eyes, skewered ichor stained upon her face. It may have been disgusting but spike feeder after spike feeder died, felled by her masterful strike at their most vulnerable spot.

I had availed of my Swollen Fur to mitigate any potential harm from the black spires, running around to Electromute spike feeders that I was near just long enough to claw at them with my spurs. They collapsed shortly thereafter, my venom ending their miserable existence, screams bellowing from their needle-filled mouths.

They had been mostly silent in their frenzy, fixated so much on the city that they couldn’t even cry out, barring a few other shrieks of outrage throughout the plains. It seemed that immense pain that lingered was enough to break through the rage state, even if only for them to express their suffering.

Vera was not having the same kind of success we were. It wasn’t to say she was ineffective— she very well trampled and battered many a spike feeder, but her attacks were more prone to causing incidental self harm, and the larger surface area of her attacks meant that the force was dispersed wider, requiring multiple instances of blows to put down the monsters for good. She was managing to keep at a similar pace by bashing her targets further back and taking time to intercept a new face each time, but it was certainly more taxing than our own efforts. Which was never a good thing, as the more energy one lost, the more prone to error they were.

“How much longer do we have?” I grunted, taking down yet another spike feeder, avoiding the keratin coated wings that nearly collapsed upon my body. The mound of spike feeder corpses was growing around the perimeter of the city, piling higher and higher. There were gaps where the creatures continued to filter through, but to their sides were heaps of broken and battered bodies, fallen appendages littering the area.

“We have until the Culling Night ends,” Mia replied, pecking out the brain of a spike feeder that had fluttered past me. She had jumped off of my shoulders, wings rapidly beating to give her the extra air movement to skewer the beast.

I would have felt bad for Mia, to be exerting herself to this degree, but I didn’t have time to feel bad for her. Even my quip was almost atonal, without any context, just a matter-of-fact request for further understanding of our progress.

If one were to describe the attack as a training exercise, that wouldn’t properly capture the slaughter we were committing. Normally the spike feeders would have some sense of self preservation. These ones pushed forwards with no care for their own continued existence. They rushed forwards, only availing of advanced movement techniques if it was built into their form, unable to even sense their brethren in their advances. They existed just to move forward. They existed just to be cut down.

One couldn’t call that training material. The most being trained was our stamina and our ability to kill the mostly defenseless, a trait I couldn’t admit I would ever want to practice further.

This was simply destruction of an invasive species, the culling of the herd, as the name of the night implied.

We continued on until the moon fused together once more, cracks vanishing out of the sky. Only an intact satellite shone overhead. Any of the remaining amassed spike feeders that had started at the back of the horde now retreated, unwilling to confront so many people at once, dormant instincts returning.

At least from our side, we had persevered, largely on the shoulders of Javier’s efforts. He had covered so many gaps in our progress. He made sure our section was covered in corpses, even if some were behind our front line. Just as long as they weren’t inside the city, we had succeeded, and that was the truth of the matter. There was no breach by our given territory. I could only hope the same was true for the rest of the guard, let alone the city.

“What now?” I panted. I wanted somewhere to rest but that wasn’t a luxury that was available. We were in a sea of corpses, the unmarred grass like an island isolated from the biohazardous jetsam.

“We go inside and rest,” Javier said. “You’ve done a great job. Now you have to recover from it. I imagine this was a lot to experience, so go to your rooms and sleep until the next morning, where we’ll debrief about your efforts on the field. Even if this was mostly just an excuse to let loose, there was still room for improvement for all of you. We’ll bring that into the next training session.”

I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to argue with Javier. Whatever snide comments Mia might have carried at the start of the night were no longer present, and Vera whispered prayer after prayer, hands clasped together. I had come out the best in terms of cleanliness. My methodology was the cleanest, leaving me with minimal collateral damage. Mia and Vera weren’t as lucky, and that was reflected in their shocked nature.

I dragged the pair with me back into the city and then the barracks, fixated on the prospect of ending this night and moving on from the horrific experience we had lived through. I deposited them in the bathroom, as they definitely needed to clean up, and fell head-first into my bed, unable to remain conscious any longer.

In the morning, I woke to Vera’s hands rousing me from my sleep. “Rise and shine, Perry. It’s breakfast time.”

I didn’t know why we were still waking at our regular time, but I wasn’t going to fight against the prospect of food. I stretched, murmuring a quiet thanks to Vera and finished my morning preparations to join the rest at breakfast.

At the table already sat Mia and Alain, scowls fixed upon their faces, mouths already open to continue an ongoing argument. “You had it easier,” Alain snarled. “I was the one that saw the protesters had taken advantage of Culling Night to come out and protest once more.”

“So you’re saying that you had the advantage of being able to deny that you were affiliated with the city guard while we massacred the endless horde outside the city walls. That’s really hard, Alain. Boy, I wish my everyday life could be as hard as observing protesters.”

“I’m not just observing them, I’m trying to infiltrate their ranks. They were on edge with the prospect of spike feeders infiltrating the city.”

“Get out of here. In no world were the spike feeders going to break through with us guarding the walls.”

“You mean five years from now when the quantity of spike feeders is so vast we won’t be able to handle it? Their fear wasn’t unnatural and that made my job all the harder, while you just got to murder aimless monsters running towards the city with no sense of self-preservation.”

The two were prepared to continue sparring on end if not for the presence of Javier to break things up. “I don’t want to hear any more out of the two of you for the rest of breakfast. You both had a hard job to do. Neither was harder nor easier than the other, given you were both working for the city guard.”

The pair groaned and buried themselves in their meals, leaving me to stab idly at the food I had in front of me. “Did we do a good job last night?” I asked, unable to look in Javier’s direction. I didn’t want to see any judgment cast from his eyes.

“You all did quite well for having been with the guard for not too long, let alone the lack of formal training. Do you know how many years the other guards have been trained for? The exacts don’t matter, the answer is definitively more than you, and yet you were out there with them fighting off the horde.”

Mia seemed poised to take the moment to interrupt, but Javier’s glare and rapid hand movements silenced her chance at speech. “Alain, we’re glad to hear you’re ingratiating yourself with the protesters. While we’re gone, you’re going to report to Amalaris.”

“What do you mean ‘while we’re gone’?” Alain asked, cocking his head. His face was placid compared to the turmoil he had shown in his argument with Mia. Here he was a bastion of professionalism.

“This was partly why I had come to join you for breakfast. With the Culling Night concluded, the researchers are now freed up to be put to use on other matters. We’ll have to escort them for the first stage of our greater mission. We’re going to be delving through some ruins, barring Alain, who needs to continue doing his infiltration job.”

Alain’s face shifted through a wide range of emotions before settling into acceptance. “Understood, boss. Just be sure to keep me informed on the results of the excursion.”

“I wouldn’t think anything less. Even though we’ll intentionally be down a person from the start, I expect that we’ll avoid running into any of the same injuries we had before, is that understood?”

The rest of us nodded at him, barring Vera, who shoved her plate away from her face. “Sorry, I missed all that over the sound of the bread rolling over my teeth. Could you say that all again?”