Mat stood watch with Vin in front of the wooden gate. It was the middle of the night, but it suddenly grew even darker. With the coming of darkness, Mat felt a cold, itching sensation from his neck.

He had fled from the border region with Northshield where he was born and where bandits now ran rampant. It used to be a difficult place to live ever since he was a boy; with all the border skirmishes and whatnot. He thought things would pick up once both Dukes stepped back, but the situation grew even worse. The withdrawal of ducal armies created an area where bandits thrived, while the common man lived and died in misery.

Mat and his friends were fed up being hungry and beaten. They founded one of those bandit groups, looking for bread. However, their career was short-lived. After successfully hitting two caravans, the guards of the third one decimated them and only Mat survived.

With no idea what else he could do, Mat decided to go to Silver City and become a bodyguard or a thug. He already knew how to handle a knife, and a sword was just a big knife. This made him certain he could easily make enough money to live well.

He’d taken a ferry across the Yellow River, near where a great bridge once stood. The destroyed landscape sent shivers down his spine. The huge wasteland looked like someone angered Father of the Forge, and the god rained down his fiery retribution.

The soft fertile soil was turned into sharp jagged ceramics. Without armored footwear, straying from the beaten path meant ruining the soles of your shoes and turning your feet into a bloody mess.

After seeing the builders and armed men working on the new giant bridge and paving the road through the desolate region, Mat began doubting his idea of moving to the provincial capital.

Luckily, along the way he came across Oakwood Freeland, his new home. A former bodyguard from Silver City ran the show there, and he completely disillusioned Mat about going to the city to guard someone.

Sir Rand told Mat that slums were full of people like him. Former bandits starved, wasted away and died, often without a grave, thrown into a roadside ditch. The man offered Mat an alternative. An honest job of chopping wood and guarding the village at night. The place was safe, you were paid for your work and even when you grew sick there’d be food for you.

Mat was living a good life here. He even began courting a widow he’d met. However, it wasn’t meant to be.

A week ago Killin noticed traces of bandit scouts just outside their little woodcutting settlement. As soon as Rand caught wind of it, the night watch tripled and everyone was on edge.

Villagers temporarily abandoned houses closer to the palisade, and men now patrolled the walls, quietly grumbling about how tired they were.

As Mat’s life flashed before his eyes, he moved his hand to his throat and found it was pierced by an arrow. Despite the torchlight, the only thing before his eyes was darkness, but there was no mistaking the metallic scent of the warm liquid on his fingers.

I guess I didn’t deserve to live in peace, he thought as his consciousness faded.

“Atta—” Vin shouted right next to Mat, but his cry was cut short.

Good man. He got to warn them, Mat thought, wanting to smile, but his lips remained frozen. They’re real nice folk.

***

“Atta—”

The sudden cry cut short snapped Frida out of her meditation.

“We’re under attack,” the guards echoed the shout, alerting everyone.

Frida awakened her senses for a moment and heard soft curses, followed by a loud shout.

“Kill them all,” somebody yelled outside the palisade, but Frida wasn’t interested in the details. She let her senses go dormant after confirming there were a whole lot of people outside.

Her Master told her she shouldn’t waste Soul Force outside of battle, or on things you can’t influence.

“Everyone,” Rand’s shout echoed in the night. “Run towards the food storage. Be quick!”

Is he planning to use that thing Master left us? Frida wondered. It makes sense, I heard dozens of people outside.

Frida’s first instinct was to go out and fight. When she and Rand sparred she won two out of five matches now, and that was without awakening her senses.

In a real combat situation, she’d probably kill the man before he managed to wound her.

And yet, while she was confident of her newfound ability, she was certain she’d die against more than fifty bandits she believed she’d heard. And those were just the ones cursing.

So, Frida did the only sensible thing and obeyed Rand’s order.

A moment after Rand’s shout, the night was filled with cries and wails of desperation, as well as excited roars from outside.

“Men,” Rand’s voice echoed above the din. “Help the children and the sick.”

Should I also help? Frida wondered for a moment, then turned around and headed towards Emily’s house. The woman had a baby and she was pregnant again, while her husband was on patrol tonight. If anyone needed help, it was bound to be her.

A couple of moments later, she heard the terrified wails of a one-year-old suddenly woken up in the middle of the night.

“There, there little Jod,” a feminine voice begged. “Please stop crying.”

“Emily, over here,” Frida shouted and after circling around a house saw the woman with a bloated belly and a screaming toddler in her arms.

Emily was slick with sweat and breathing heavily after taking a dozen steps. Frida didn’t even wait for the woman to say anything and picked her up in a princess carry, taking her towards the warehouse.

“Thank you Lady Frida,” Emily said, using that empty title these people bestowed upon her and Rand.

“Don’t mention it, and stop calling me lady,” Frida grumbled. “You’re as much a lady as I am, if not more.”

She didn’t dare run while holding a pregnant woman who in turn had a small child in her arms. Taking it slow and steady Frida made it to the forbidden warehouse with plenty of time to spare.

“Where are old Pa and Granny?” Tommy, a young boy, asked.

“Don’t worry dear, Sean and Kit went to bring them over.” Tommy’s mother tried to reassure the boy. However, her voice quivered and she kept looking left and right like a panicked animal.

Her hands shook from the bestial howls and men shouting about killing and fucking.

Those animals are already here, Frida thought as she awakened her senses for a moment. She clearly heard the creaking of the gate being opened.

Luckily, the fence had bought them enough time. Then, Frida saw Sean and Kit approach carrying the elderly couple on their backs.

“Let go of me, you little bastard,” Old Pa said. “Why are you carrying me instead of protecting my daughter? She’ll become a widow if you die.”

Old Pa kept cursing the man everyone knew was his favorite son-in-law, and Sean took it with an awkward smile.

Looking at that face Frida was certain he was thinking something along the lines of ‘Would it hurt to say something nice at least once in your life?’

For a moment she smiled, sensing the familiarity of the scene. Then she recalled the relationship she shared with her mother-in-law and her mouth twitched.

She didn’t deserve such an end, Frida thought, toning down her senses until they no longer consumed Soul Force.

“Everyone into the storage,” Rand said, snapping Frida from her grim thoughts and horrible memories.

“But—” Sean said, wanting to protest.

Rand didn’t want to argue about it. The place was usually taboo, but it was also their last resort; and an attack by so many bandits was definitely something that required a last resort method.

“Get in, now,” Rand shouted, and people rushed into the warehouse.

After making three or four steps everyone stopped and dumbly stood in place. If not for newcomers pushing them further into the warehouse, those who entered would just stand in place until they collapsed from fatigue and then died.

Frida and Rand were among the last to enter, along with Sean, Kit and the elderly couple.

“They drove themselves up in a pen,” a bandit, cloaked in shadows, shouted as he turned around the corner and saw the well-lit warehouse.

“Kill the men, take the women,” somebody else shouted. Half a dozen bandits turned around the corner, followed by more of their fellows as they rushed towards the Oakwood Freelanders.

“Earthmother protect us,” Frida heard Rand say, as the man ripped the scroll Wolf gave him months ago.

A moment after the tearing, an incoherent chorus filled the air, seemingly gushing from the Spell Formation nodes, rising up in twisting spirals which surrounded the warehouse. Frida felt her skin crawl as countless resentful voices babbled, cried, cursed and argued, building up into a cacophony. However, in that ocean of death throes, a familiar high-pitch voice was louder and drowned all the others as it uttered a single word.

“Die,” Frida shuddered as she heard Wolf’s word, then the chorus devolved into an incoherent scream of thousands.

The scroll in Rand’s hands dissolved into mist, and somewhere from a roof above them those screams collided, exploding into a shriek which spread through the area like a tsunami.

The sound wave slammed into the running bandits. Like a real tidal wave of death, it reaped their lives. Men lurched and their eyes glazed over as soon as the invisible surge hit them. It dragged ghostly visages out of their bodies. Souls squirmed, struggling against the unstoppable current, powerless before their inevitable fate.

Frida had never seen anything as terrifying. Disembodied souls, faintly glowing in the night, reached out, trying to grasp their bodies as their faces twisted in pain and despair. But the force, which had ripped them out of their still warm shells, mercilessly dragged them away and snuffed out their lives.

The soulless bodies, previously in a dead run, tripped and staggered, falling to the ground. They rolled or skidded on the packed earth, kicking up clouds of dust. When they finally ground to a halt, their faces were locked into terrified grimaces, their hair as white as snow.

The few people still watching the scene couldn’t believe their eyes. In a moment the impossible danger was resolved, and the savage screams and brutal shouts which filled the darkness were snuffed out; replaced by eerie silence.

“Aaah,” someone screamed in the distance.

The owner of the voice was lucky enough to be outside the range of the Spell Formation.

“They’re dead,” another voice shouted.

“Run away,” the first voice screeched in panic, and then there were no new shouts.

“Should we go after them?” Frida asked, eager to slaughter the bandits.

“No, we need them to spread the news of what happened here,” Rand said with a hard face. “That way we’ll be safer in the future.”

Meanwhile, Old Pa was laughing and clutching his chest.

“Hahahahahaha! Lord is mighty,” he shouted. He couldn’t believe they’d survived this with such a small number of casualties.

With one final cackle, the old man lifelessly toppled to the ground, still grinning.

“Mortimer,” Granny shouted and went down to her knees.

She shook her husband, but the man was gone, the night’s excitement was too much for his old heart.