[41st Year of Foresai, Lower Fire Month, Day 4]

Three words rang over and over again in her head.

Six hundred years.

They hung in her mind, black drippings of a fact so disjoint with everything she knew. Evileye’s message was nearly incomprehensible, a half strung together rant about beings that had stepped off the pages of history that gradually slurred into warnings of imminent death to all. Death was a theme, Gagaran and Tia having been caught by hellfire that killed them both on the spot. Had it not been for the sudden appearance of the Dark Hero Momon, she would have been slain along with the rest of the lot. Renner would have suspected a trap, some half-hewn trick on the part of Eight Fingers to expose her identity as secret commander to the Blue Roses were it not for the sudden dawn between the crenelations she now peered through.

It's a dark, yet simple explanation. Why did we burst into the enemy's quarters only to find them empty and bare? For fel powers were at work.

The dark had been peeled back by felflame, the smothering black of a summer night violently torn away. It would seem devils had little care for the world, denying the decency of night with a pillar of flame. Unnatural was a woefully inadequate word. The blaze was profane, a symbol of blasphemy, and were it not for the fact that she had already struck the gods from her list of things that could be said to exist, she would hazard it a spite to them. Not only was it stunning, it was nonsensical, given over to all the properties of that which it was not. Flame did not stand still, it leapt; flame did not tower, it billowed; flame did not shine unlight, it sparkled. The most maddening element of the column was its perfect roundness - as if it had been staked to a spot and swept around a constant distance; another point to terrify her.

Sleuthing, seizing, sicking, splitting, slaying, scrapping, and stealing away; skulking for slaughter, scratching the seemly, and scarring the sensible; how ought one do something other than sink, slip beneath the surface and safeguard themselves in stupidity? There is no sanctuary in surrender, only the sepulcher. Nor in the opposite - sanguine struggle is simply sacrifice striped in sanctimoniousness. So goes skill, so goes surety, stripped in stride by sidelong scraping of the sulfurous and cruelly spake. Sundown shan’t have summoned such a sordid sundering, but lo, submission; lo, slavery. So looms the sword; all shall be subsumed in the gentle currents of soil, lost like the scent of petrichor o’ertopped by smothering billows of smoke. Six hundred years.

She shook, stuck in a sort of blind fear that rendered her immobile. Up until five minutes prior, the evening had mostly proceeded to plan. With the departure of their forces from the palace, she and her comrades had made for Ro-Lante’s civic warroom where they intended to pass the evening, shuffling around wooden figures overtop a map of the city. Eight Fingers apparent abandonment of their bases was a minor frustration, but not one she had been overly concerned with, instead taking the opportunity to sow whatever paranoia she could with false warnings of a traitor - a possibility she had evaluated and dismissed. When the next message from Evileye came, it was not one of contact with the enemy’s ace, nor the news of Climb’s death she had so hoped for, but rather something alien entirely. She had dashed out of the war room up onto the battlements, where she witnessed a truer kind of horror than she had known before. Without much thought, she had simply sunk down - rump first - onto the ground, watching the flame with little animation. Others had come, screamed, cried, but that all faded away for her. Looking around now, she saw that besides those knights brave or foolhardy enough to look at the spire along with her, all others had left. Where Zanac or Raeven had gone, she did not care about. She was lost to the sight, a decision she had no doubt was wrong, yet felt no impetus to correct.

Did the enemy bind themselves up in a contract? Some fiendish pact? Is that even possible? It’s something out of a storybook, a foe so comically wicked that they would sooner turn to the dark powers than admit defeat. That can’t have been it, right? Eight Fingers is not a cult, not a secret society dedicated to blighting the land and blotting out the sun. Divanack- Divanack is just a… an aesthetic, not an ideal. They are humans, and humans alone. Merchantmen who conspire to murder, not to destroy. I… but what if they did?

What would they have given up? Their very being? That inner light of a thing that dreams itself? What would nightmares like this want? Or, perhaps this is the reward, the bargain. “Give us passage, and we shall slay your enemies.” In this way. But Evileye mentioned this… foe… this Jaldabaoth was a greater force than those of two centuries ago. Her surety in that is a question for another time, but such power… such a black ability.

When the world was made from land to abattoir then, it took years for the heroes of the age to come together, and although slain by the enemies of the same, they were by every account greater than those who.exist today. Some remain, Rigrit - and perhaps those whose existence she helps keep secret - and by no means are those current warriors of today useless. Gazef, Lakyus, Azuth, this roguish Brain who has chosen apropos absurdity in assisting Climb, the more elusive and enigmatic Sebas who seems to bind Climb and Brain together, and - though I am loath to make such a judgment without meeting the man - the mightiest of them, Momon, along with his bondswoman sorceress Nabe.

Imaginings came to her now. Pictures of battle, swords swung, spells slung. Blurred images of heroes fighting monsters - to Renner, little more than the illustrations in Zanac’s dark bestiaries she had peeked at as a child. Lakyus was there, as was her team. So was the pitter-patter of her floating blades, as best as Renner could sooth them working. It was clear to her how little she knew, only being privy to the aftermath of violence, not it in conduct. Her heart seemed to slow, chest growing heavy.

Of those, I am not. Were a thing to drop from the sky now, perch on the battlements beside me, and step closer, I would be at its mercy - of which asking for from a demon is laughable. All I may do is see and behave as others. To peer and ipso facto speak “the netherrealms, inescapable gaols, and eternal, twisting doom.” Foolish. Foolish, foolish, foolish.

Very rarely did Renner come to such moments: times where she could say with certainty that she was experiencing things as was everyone else. Though she had long since severed her inner self from humanity, her body was her body and was thus immutable. Per the legends, demons cared ought of spirits, but naught of souls, and as Renner was in every way indistinguishable from her fleshy brethren, she could expect little but the same fate were she to meet one. Thus, twice within two months time, was Renner affected to a danger unto her person: not the clean slit of a sword, but the ugly scars of a bite. The image was visceral: in place of a blade through her chest, she now pictured it crushed in the jaw of a terror she knew not of.

Is that my death? Why not another victim? Another person for the eating. Another bellow. Another scream. Another dying. Another hunger. Forgotten in the gullet of some grand fiend, or perhaps a pack of the little ones. Six hundred years.

What of my flesh? Its flavor? Tender from sixteen years of gentle living? Stringy from the same? What palate will I appeal to? Perhaps it will be soured by my disposition. Perhaps bolstered. The special thrill of a princess torn in two. How does high blood pair? Six hundred years.

The steady thrum of obliteration. Not of I, but of man. These creatures of malediction penning the citizens, running them about until they die or their minds finally slag and cave in. I’m sure either is desirable. Is that not the legend from before? Even the time further back; those enemies of yore defeated by those interlopers to the Godhead.

That’s the worst of this, the utter disconnect with everything else that is, was, or will be. Why six hundred years? Why such a holy count profaned? Why the obfuscation by Slane? Was this by their knowledge? In the same way, were not the Demon Gods of two hundred prior not itself four hundred distant? Why now pluck out time and obfuscate it? Why need the world swell and disgorge itself, akin to the flesh around a tick bite, except on the very surface of reality?

It is a fact unto itself. Self justifying, self fulfilling. Why is Re-Estize now set upon by demons? Because six hundred years have passed in secret. Why is that hidden time significant? Because we are now set upon by demons. There is no root, yet the deepest nooks of my heart sing it to be so. I think I’ve gone and lost my mind.

Renner began to gently laugh, burrowing her head in her hands. Tears flowed soon after, an admission of weakness she knew not she had. They were childlike, the sorts of powerless, confused lamentations she gave as a little girl, before she had hid herself. She felt as small as she had then, the things she had failed to understand at the time pouring back in; her lot, those chance things assigned to her like sex, place, and now mortality. A thankfully long minute passed, her light sobbing stiffening the knights to either side, before she trailed off.

Then, in the losing of things, what would a sickly mind look upon that pillar and see?

Renner raised her head and sat there staring for a time at the flamewall. The taste of the moment began to change; it shifted from sorrow to a tepid hollowness, then the faintest traces of anger, and lastly, genuine offense.

Why, a personal attack. An insult. A mockery. Do not pitly things jeer?

Renner bit her lower lip, eyes darting away from the column.

The timing is too suspect; too pinpoint. Why strike now? At the very least, “their” action - if I can use such a humanizing pronoun - was conducted with the knowledge of my own. Why raid in the window between sundown and my assault? Why strip the Eight Fingers bases bare? They were searching for something. Evileye spoke as much, but the implication… Why strike now? Because whatever they desire would have fallen into our hands via the operation. The open way in which this object of desire was spoken to Momon places a burden on this line, but it aligns with their actions thus far.

Why strike now? Can they not simply take any object from us? I don’t see how we could safeguard it when they have so outmaneuvered us as is. Why strike now? The organization itself? If they - as legend has it - are so invested in the suffering of mankind, seizing upon and perhaps controlling an organization like Eight Fingers would be preferable, but that could simply have been done the day prior. Why strike now? The only explanation is that our action’s undoing by the breach made by theirs is critical to their objectives. To that, it must be some… manipulation. Some gambit. I refuse to accept this has nothing to do with me.

Renner hitched then held out her left hand. The nearest knight gently folded it into his own, then pulled her up. She turned to him, gave a weak nod and slipped out of his hold to wander to the edge of the battlements, leaning over and peering - not at the flame, but at the city before it.

Pray tell, Chardelon, are you to spend these next hours in womanly terror, or will you cut loose the moores of reality and dive headlong into destruction?

The question was wholly rhetorical. Renner cracked a wider smile than she had in the last decade.

I choose madness.

—

For some reason she couldn’t place, Gaye stirred. Light was playing across her eyelids. Without much thought, she flipped over onto her other side, grimacing. Day had come quickly, and she was much too tired to face it. She groped lazily at the spot beside her, hand finding nothing but more of the blanket and straw.

Where is he?

Her husband, Alrec, was missing. She spoke out his name.

“Mm.”

With a few more prods against nothing, she gave up and flopped back down. She was much too tired despite the apparent dawn. General, malformed worries began to pour back into her mind: fixing breakfast, washing the children, washing the tenement, fixing lunch, and so on. More specific fears too; mending a pile of scarves to sell, getting Alrec to put down the pipe and keep it down, tending to her swelling belly. Gaye made to nuzzle a little longer in the covers, summer days affording a little time spent languishing after sunrise. Then came a scream from the street and a rattling at her window.

She shot out of the mound, eyes wide. A mass was hanging on the shutters, but the image refused to resolve, her vision blurry from her sleep. She yelped, and blinking several times, stumbled back out of the blanket, scrambling to keep it on her bare self as she drew upward along the wall.

A thief?!

Burglaries were part and parcel of city living, a fact that had seen her possessions stolen twice over. Her eyes had still not cleared, and she wiped in frustration.

“Alrec!”

Her cry was not met by her husband, but with a wrong-sounding snicker and more screams from the street. Vision restored, she leveled her eyes again, only to not understand what she was seeing. A red form hunched on an inward-swung window shutter peered at her, beady yellow eyes sunk into a face with a nose far too flat. A monster. She cried again, this time higher and louder, and again came the snicker - altered in the same way. The squat beast turned upside on the shutter, taloned hands reaching out to carry it down the slats, folded fleshy wings and an iron tail rapping against it.

“Alrec!”

The monster dropped to the ground, clacking against the floor as it began to scramble towards her. Gaye yelped again, bolting from the sleeping room into the main space. Her flight through the kitcher was too wild; and she lost her balance and careened to the floor. Slamming into the hardwood headfirst, she split her chin, sliding forward a finger length more before finally stopping. Dazed, she drew her head upward slowly. The first thing she caught was Alrec’s pipe, its smoldering contents strewn about the floor in a lazy arc. This snapped her back, and she was suddenly aware of what had happened.

Gods, I’ve taken a fall. Oh my Gods, a fall!

“Alrec!”

Getting a hand under herself, she slipped it down to her belly. She had fallen straight onto her front, her still-growing child with her. More clicking came from behind, and she scrambled forward, bobbing her head higher. She caught a quick glimpse of three sets of legs, those of her husband and her two children. Alrec was huddled in a corner, Lia and Keyle pressed against the wall behind him.

Why isn’t he helping?!

“Al-”

She raised her eyes a little further, his name lodged in her mouth. To either side of her family were stranger things, things that explained their stillness and silence. Two more monsters: one of equal height to her husband; the other hunched over, yet nearly to the height of the ceiling.

Beastmen? Here?! But we're so far from the border!

The first had the head of a crow, black feathers layered down its form before they disappeared beneath its clothing. It stood tall like a man, holding a thick tome in its right hand - gnarled and black - its left offering a profane symbol. Donned in vestments akin to that of a priest, it had a great shelf hanging off its back that held two little monsters - these of the kin that had burst in through her window, though smaller. They were stacked end over end, perched on protrusions from the thing, the top creature penning something with its scroll, the bottom creature in the business of managing a miniature library. The monster squawked, the low beat of a corvid bearing its eyes at her.

The second was hulking, two horns curling from a bone white goat’s skull - as if its flesh had sloughed off. Torso like that of an ab-man, it - along with the rest of its body - was entirely bare. Two thick arms hung toward the ground, covered not in flesh, but layered scale. Its legs were furred, bending back at the knees to end in hooves. Sprouting from its back were two wings of the same form as the little monster, only greater, stretching from the ceiling from the floor. It bore in its left hand something she could not place, her eyes too blurred with tears.

“Darlings!”

“Momma!”

“Ma!”

“Gaye! Gaye get out of-”

The larger monster whirled and backhanded Alrec, throwing him off his feet and to the side. He slammed into the wall beside them, not bouncing off or barreling through, but embedding inside it. Streams of blood began to flow down, the skin of his breast having been cut open in a dozen places by the wooden hatching that supported the daub - in some places, embedding inside of him. She screamed. Her children screamed. The monster laughed. Gaye fought herself onto her feet.

I need to get to them!

“Darlings-”

The hulking thing twirled again. An alien clicking followed as the thing in its left hand flew forth and whipped around her children, sending them both to the ground, bound. It was a net, the weave patterned like a honeycomb. It was woven brass, some of its cells occupied by mechanisms she couldn’t place, and between which crackled bright sparks. It did not go limp on their forms as was natural, rather slithering round to encase them completely, with a dozen clicks as latches along its length connected and locked together. A thread emerged from the end, running back to the larger monster, where it looped around its finger. She took a step forward, then a second, yelling.

“Lia, Keyle!”

She took three more before she realized what she had done. The monster was too close, it turned to look at her.

I don’t- I don’t want to-

Her mind seized. It had taken her children, and would soon take her; they were crying for her, struggling to vocalize between bolts and bangs; it was a horrid, horned thing, something that would try to take her. Before she knew it, she had taken a step back. Her children screamed louder. It reached out, fingers uncurling from a palm wider than one of her handspans. She scrambled back more, blindly falling into the grasp of the lesser aberration.

Oh my Gods, it’s got me.

Close enough to the feathers, she was struck with the smell of the thing, the choking scent of tainted smoke.

That's the smell of sulfur. These aren't beasts, these are demons!

Beastmen were a matter Gaye could account for: creatures that - even if superior to the fair races in physical ability - could at least be framed within the bounds of the world itself. Beastmen warred each other and raided humanity; raiding was conducted for the purposes of slaving; slaves were either chattel or livestock. Grim realities as they were, they were at least realities. No such certainly existed with fiends. Its pitch-colored hand curled around her arm and began to pull her back.

“Darling!”

Her husband began to slip, the hatching that held him up buckling. He was sent to the floor, yet not flush with it, still cleaved to the wooden protrusions. Alrec’s face was ruined; she and her children cried out again. The larger demon turned its head, growing low and pointing at the wall. One of the little fiends on the crow demon’s crawled out onto its book arm, wrapping its talons around and opening a little pocketbook of its own. It, and the thing that held her spoke in tandem, a ring of arcane words iridescing in the air. It shifted into seven separate forms in rapid sequence, the last symbol snapping and scattering the circle. A tremendous current of air rushed forward, the wall in front of her blowing open, exposing the street beyond. Gaye tried to cower, but the demon held her firm, interposing her between it and the backblast of wooden shards. Several embedded in her front, and she winced in pain.

“Momma!”

Then, before she could catch up to the moment, she was pushed from behind. A frantic look round, and she saw the greater demon following after, dragging her children behind.

They’re capturing us. Why? Oh Gods, why?!

The pace of her breathing accelerated, tears mixing with sweat. She couldn’t imagine what was to come. Priests had warned her before of demons, but always in the abstract, the necessity of guarding her faith or striving for better worship; bards had spoken of the Demon Gods, singing laments or war chants, reciting the histories of those dark times two centuries prior. There were always threats: the Empire’s knocking in the east, turmoil in the royal court, the powder that changed hands on every street corner, but times did not yet seem that dark. Now, for no reason at all, monsters had slipped out of the black, slew her husband, murdered her unborn child, bound those living of hers, and stole her away as well.

Another shove, this one much mightier, and she was sent out onto the street, rattling in the fiend’s arms. The outdoors was bright, not in sunshine or moonlight, but in a sickly orange. Catching the sky between the buildings, she saw the lack thereof, the firmament instead given over to flame. Had it not been for the thin patch of night above, she would have thought it the netherrealms. A thud sounded as the other beast stepped out, the two turning to look at each other and going still.

“Momma!”

“Darlings, it’s going to be alright! It’s going to be-”

Her youngest had dissolved entirely into tears, wailing uncontrollably. One of her fingers appeared to be stuck in the mesh, twitching unceasingly as bolts of light struck it from all sides. Her elder wasn’t much better, his cries for help trailing away into barely vocalized howls. Gaye was terrified; then, she was pulled back, and her children were dragged forward.

No! No!

“Momma! Help!”

“I’m coming! I’m-”

She reared her body and twisted back, slamming her elbow right into the gut of her captor. The beaked thing grunted, but did not let go. Its grip around her arm tightened, every swing of her arm she could force lesser than before. The little demon on its arm swung off of it onto her, scrambling up her arm. She bucked, but it held on, quickly scrabbling up and on top of her shoulder. Its feet danced along her flesh, then, wrapped around her neck, the hazy feeling of her hairs standing on end. Twitching back, she saw it exchange books with the other little demon, swapping for a lighter-toned leather with a depiction of a man on it. The bird-like thing snapped its tome shut, handing it off before grabbing her from behind and forcing her head forward. The demon dancing along her neck seemed to pause, before running its talons gently along her spine. Seeming to find the right spot, it slipped them in, her wail turning into a scream.

It was pain unlike she had ever known. She could hear the muffled noise of something being cut, a snipping intermingling with her still audible heartbeat. She fumbled, the monster removing its claws to catch her. She was suddenly unable to tell where her feet were; she could trace the budding heat of blood spurting from her neck, down the length of her back, but then it seemed to disappear when reached her groin, dissolving into a indistinct mass of sensation akin to that of a limb that had been slept on. It yanked back again, and this time she was unable to brace against it, ripping her back a distance double what it had before. Her head snapped forward before bouncing back and again lolling downward. Dazed, she tried to shriek her children's names again, but lost them in the space between her mind and mouth. She was transfixed on her feet. They were limp, ratting off the ground impotently as she was dragged back. She tried to kick them, then, to move them. She couldn’t.

I’ve gone lame. Just like Uncle Eddric.

She forced her head up against her daze, finding her children were already ten paces distant. She tried to scream again, only a whimper escaping her lips. Her vitality continued to flow from her, streaks of it now starting to emerge out from under her. She heard more cries from either side as more people were dragged into the street by monsters: the Edrics, the Hellrens, the Fores, the Portrellens, Mister Alekson, Jelre and Yilre Heibachs, her best friend Sathilya, her cousin Benric, some of the girls from the local brothel, the Boudel children, all but the eldest Kilre, Miss Weise, Chardel Unruh, Zanue Ilwra, the new couple who had just moved in across the street whom she hadn’t introduced herself to properly yet, the smith from a street down, and many others she didn’t know. All were being split apart, the fiends grabbing, tugging, and doing everything they could to split parent from child, wife from husband, brother from sister, friend from friend. Some gave up, going limp as they were dragged away; others fought meaninglessly; some were struck; some were murdered; some were eaten. The things that did these deeds came in many, varied forms: lanky abominations thrice her height covered in spines, two-legged frogs adorned in faces with the bulk of a wagon on end, greater gray skinned kin of the winged red things, prancing motes of flame that weaved between all the debris of the street, green gyres of the same with ever shifting mouths betwixt the tendrils, pestilent things the size of a man with jaws encased in brass, metallic things akin to mares though stretched to twice its length, hounds whose nostrils shot smoke and mouths foamed slag, mockeries of a person with words written in floating bloody streaks in place of heads, and more that she could no longer care to mark.

She could not break away; she could not take flight; she could not engage in heroics, nor succumb to cowardice; she could not move her legs; she could not save her children, nor abandon them; she could not run, she could not walk, she could not be paralyzed in fear. There was nothing she could choose to do except pray.

Oh Gods, help me!