Dawn reached Chaos and dropped down on her knees beside him. The arrow that had hit him stood out on his right flank and a large puddle of blood had already built beneath him. Anxiously she laid a hand on him and activated Nurture, concentrating fiercely.

She felt his little heart struggling to pump the blood that was left inside of him around. Dawn gripped the arrow and guided it out carefully, another application of Nurture sealing off his veins in the wake of the removal. Then she smoothed out the damage in his muscles and closed up the wound with another healing spell.

The wound was gone but Chaos still lay motionless. She had healed the damage, but had not been able to replace the blood he had already lost. Praying to all the gods that would be willing to listen to aid him, Dawn picked him up, bloody as he was, and carried him in her arms tenderly.

Echo watched her, still cowering in her hiding spot. She had been frightened badly by the unexpected development and was afraid to move. Until now, she had gotten to know humans as benevolent figures that spoiled her with cuddles and delicious treats and were fun to play with. Her whole world had been shaken up when one of them had hurt Chaos out of the blue with that evil stick from afar.

Bitterly, Dawn recalled Ankou’s concerns about the cubs learning that humans were their friends. As always, her friend had been right in being concerned, but she hadn’t really listened to him and Chaos had paid the price. Hanging her head, she sent a message to Ankou whose grief was a living presence in her mind.

[He’s still alive, but very weak. I don’t know if he will survive.]

She looked at the cub that lay limply in her arms, struggling to breathe, and only then her thoughts turned to the human soldiers who were responsible for his condition.

The group was busy with their own concerns and no one had taken notice of anything untoward happening. Some of them were teasing the lookout who had shot Chaos about seeing demons behind every rock just now. The devotee put an end to that at last, admonishing them to keep quiet and order and be mindful of the dangers. So, at least she hadn’t been spotted during her mad dash out into the open.

Cold rage rose up within her for an instant and she wished for them all to be hurt like Chaos was. Let those who callously hurt him die an agonizing death, she thought grimly. But a moment later, she got a hold of herself and was horrified by her own savage thoughts.

‘No, I didn’t mean that!’ she thought morosely.

Though she was disappointed in the devotee who didn’t care that someone had shot a lynx cub without rhyme or reason.

While she couldn’t expect everyone to feel the affinity for the cats that she herself did, she had expected better of a chosen of the gods.

Frowning she pondered the logistics of taking both cubs with her and beating a hasty retreat to the village. Should she try to pick Echo up now or was it better to stay still and wait until the group rode on? She looked down at Chaos, still unsure if the cub would survive. He had held on until now, and it was not as if there was anything she or even Samya could do for him. He would have fight this battle on his own. At least cats were said to be tough and tenacious. So, she would hope for the best.

She was still standing out in the open, protected from detection only by Shadow Play, when she heard the first clicking sounds.

Dawn closed her eyes and cursed herself and the whole situation. It was almost as if she had called up the demons with her dark thoughts.

The party of soldiers had heard the sounds too now, and while they still were looking around in search of their enemy, the unknown ranger burst into the camp, letting go of his stealth when he was safely inside, and called out a warning.

“There are big spiders up on the cliffs and more coming from the front. A lot of them.” The man was obviously disconcerted and frightened.

The devotee stood up calmly and said,

“Well, it seems the beasts spared us the trouble of going to look for them. Kind of them, really,” while he adeptly drew his sword. He walked a few paces to reach his horse and removed his shield from the saddle with practiced motions, then shouted:

“Everyone, prepare yourself! Archers, aim for the eyes!”

From the cliffs up to their left, the first huge long-legged bodies appeared. Some of the archers started to shoot, while others in the company seemed to freeze, apparently paralyzed with fear at the first sight of their monstrous enemies.

Their leader raised his shield to the sky and thundered:

“Warrior grant us courage to stand against the minions of the abyss!”

His shout seemed to wake up the soldiers who were frozen in fear and they shook themselves and belatedly started to shoot as well.

Some of their arrows reached the enemy, more failed. Only one arrow managed to hit its intended target and struck the eye of one of the demons, causing it to rear up and shriek in pain.

‘They are not Teren,’ Dawn thought somewhat dispassionately, standing a distance back from the action. While she could have picked up Echo and departed in the direction of the village with impunity now, her attention was captured by the battle in front of her.

Spiders were descending rapidly down the cliff-side, she counted three of them there. All grown-up. From the way down another sizable group of enemies approached, these were partly grown spiders and partly a bunch of adolescents, that to Dawn appeared way smaller than the last batch of spiderlings they had fought against. More of the queen’s brood? Did she really have an unlimited supply of eggs?

Once the first demon reached the ground next to the party, the soldiers armed with swords ran to fight it, first and foremost among them the devotee.

While the swords of his soldiers mostly just clunked against the well-armored legs of the grey demons, the great sword of the devotee cleaved a leg in two as if it was made of paper. Dawn could make out a subtle glow surrounding his blade. An enchantment maybe? Or one of his path skills?

He was dismantling his foe rapidly, one leg at a time. His followers didn’t fare nearly so well, though. One soldier was impaled by the razor-sharp leg of his opponent and another stumbled and fell down as he backed away, lying on the ground and watching a demon approach him with mute horror.

Others were hard pressed as they fought the foes coming up from the front. Nathan was in the forefront of that group and apparently used his heat or fire spell against the demons. Dawn could see smoke rising up from one of the adult spiders. But it took more than just a bit of heat to kill one of them. Why didn’t they use fire? That had been pretty effective in their last fight and Nathan knew it as well as she did.

She had barely finished the thought when the first fire arrow struck one of the demons in the front. Some of the archers had managed to light up their arrows and started up a barrage against the big group. Several demons went up in flames, the shrieking intensifying as they went berserk.

Meanwhile, the devotee had taken out two of the three demons that had descended from the cliffs and turned to aid the others against the bigger group, leaving four of his soldiers to battle against the last one.

As before, the spiderlings weren’t affected as much by the fire. Two of them managed to come up to the soldiers from the flank and used their fangs on them to good effect. One after another of the soldiers dropped, taken out by the paralyzing venom. More spiderlings poured in from the opening on that side. The devotee was busy fighting against the adult ones in the middle, cleaving their legs and keeping them from spreading the fire among his own soldiers.

Dawn was still watching in morbid fascination as she saw the monsters sidling up to Nathan, who was fighting against another knot of enemies in the middle of a group of soldiers. One spiderling pierced the thigh of a soldier with its leg in passing. The man gave a hoarse shout of pain and fell down. Nathan was concentrating on the foes in front of him, trying to keep them from overwhelming the group and hadn’t noticed that the flank had been breached.

Dawn was looking at the fighters around him, frantically trying to see someone coming to his aid. But everyone was busy fighting their own enemies. Thinking furiously for an instant, Dawn shook her head and thought: ‘I can’t just stand by and let him be killed!’

Still cradling Chaos in her arms and keeping her stealth up, she ran a few steps into the direction of the battle, then activated Call The Lightning.

The bright glare came down a bit behind the spiderling closest to Nathan, but several of the smaller demons dropped, killed by her spell and Nathan, surprised by the glare and the noise, looked around and finally noticed the danger.

The devotee had been surprised as well and lost his rhythm for a moment, glancing over his shoulder to see what was happening behind him.

When he saw the group of dead spiderlings he raised his eyebrows but turned back to his own fight instantly. Slowly but surely the group prevailed against the enemies now. Some more soldiers were struck down or paralyzed by the beasts, but the sword of the devotee, the arrows and Nathan’s sword and spells were whittling them down one by one.

To Dawn, who watched, the fight seemed to go on for a long time, but in reality the whole battle was over in minutes, not even half an hour between the start and the end.

Once the devotee had made sure that all enemies had been killed, he sheathed his sword and called out loudly:

“Well fought, men! We have sent these demons back to the abyss where they belong. Surely the gods rejoice.“

Then he continued: “Now it is time to care for our wounded and dead. Bring them over to our sister of healing. Angela will aid them.”

One by one the soldiers collected their fallen and wounded comrades, examined the paralyzed ones to ascertain if they were still alive and brought them over to the woman, who had stayed protected in the background. She started with the most severely wounded, who was bleeding heavily from a grisly wound in his thigh. As Dawn stood and watched, she saw the blood flow slowing down and the wound starting to close. But before the soldier was completely healed, the sister already turned to the next wounded. Once she had taken care of the three most severely wounded she took some minutes to rest.

One of the soldiers who was still waiting to be healed grumbled as he saw her sitting down. But she just looked at him and said: “There’s nothing to be done. I don’t have the mana left to take care of you just now. You will just have to wait for a few minutes until I have recovered.” Her face remained strangely expressionless as she talked.

A few minutes later she started up again, seeing to the wounded and examining the paralyzed soldiers. The rest of the group was busy with seeing to their dead. Three of the soldiers had lost their lives in the fight against the demons.

They were laid down on the ground and their weapons and possessions removed.

The devotee instructed his men to bury them in a cliff crag under a pile of stones for the time being and afterwards stood before the cairn, head lowered and spoke a prayer for their souls.

“They will rest here for a while and we will collect our brothers and take them with us to bury them at home, once we return from our mission,” he told his men afterwards. “Until we have removed the rest of these demons from the earth, we cannot afford to be burdened by their mortal remains. The living have to take precedence for now.”

He turned away and addressed Nathan. “What was that lightning that destroyed some of our enemies just now? Did you or Ricano gain a new spell?”

But Nathan and Ricano both shook their heads solemnly. Nathan replied,

“It wasn’t one of us, chosen one. Maybe the Warrior saw our plight and chose to come to our aid?”

The devotee frowned doubtfully and rubbed his chin: “The gods rarely grant their aid directly in a fight. It is not their way.”

Then he shrugged and dismissed his concerns. “But you may be right nevertheless. If there ever is a right time to bend the rules, it surely is during a fight against demons. And it was lucky for us, else we might have lost still more of our brothers.”

One of the men spoke up then and asked him.

“Do you think it right to continue, chosen one? We lost several of our men in a fight here out in the open. If we enter the demons’ lair, surely we will be at a major disadvantage against them? And who knows how many of the beasts are left?”

But the devotee shook his head in brusque denial.

“There is no reason to doubt our mission. Didn’t we prevail just now? The enemy has to be severely weakened after losing that many of their number, and apparently the warrior himself came to our aid during the battle. Should we repay his benevolence with cowardice? Courage, men! There is no retreat in the face of demons. Let us make all haste instead, to reach our designated campsite for the evening in good time.”