Adarin looked over the company in its strange divided mood, the transformed men stood in a huddle, separated by mistrustful glances from the untouched. The forest was filled with vitality. The untouched soldiers were uncertain, distant from their altered once-comrades. Despite all of that, they shuffled onto the ship in good military order.

  Adarin had kept reaching out to his officers at the encampment, but the details he was getting were as sparse as they were gruesome. Bats were dropping pieces of flesh. After the initial deluge, Francesco had used illusion magic to intimidate the settlers into listening to him. Forced them to stay out and stay calm.

  Adarin ground his teeth. That cannot hold. It’s a pressure cooker.

  Mages had begun burning the bat swarms out of the sky, but they had simply started flying higher and higher, and mocking laughter had begun emanating from all sides of the temple. It’s a disaster if the camp blows up before I get there.

  Finally the ship was pushed away from the shore and fell back into the central stream of the river. Adarin recalled the aerial reconnaissance and walked up to the one-eyed captain.

  “Unless I’m misremembering, another merchantman took up our position at the port?”

  “Yes,” she nodded curtly. “The unloading is still proceeding at pace.”

  Adarin looked over the crew, judging how much more it could take. Do I tell them what’s happening? Do I keep it as a surprise?

  Suddenly a volley of gunshots could be heard from the distant forest. Soldiers and sailors tensed. Turning around, Lieutenant Krislov appeared by Adarin’s side.

  “Sir, scouts say it is coming from the direction of the encampment.”

  Adarin barely suppressed a groan. “Captain, find a place where we can go to shore as quickly as possible.”

  The woman opened her mouth. “But there might be tree trunks under the water. We don’t know—

  “We don’t have the time to maneuver with another merchantman at the docs. We have to get there now. That’s an order.”

  He upped his volume and addressed the crew.

  “Soldiers of the Order. Soldiers of the Republic. The enemy is attacking the encampment. They are playing with us, dropping pieces of meat onto our tents. We will put a stop to this. Ready yourselves. We will be marching hard through the forest.”

  Too few calls of acknowledgement or enthusiasm came up. Adarin caught disconcerted looks. The new druids, the transformed, had taken to the bow of the ship, whereas the others kept near the rear castle. Cohesion is still down for shit. Fucking hell.

  He considered his options, then looked to Lieutenant Krislov. “Any ideas on how to deal with—” he gestured to the deck, “this?”

  The wooden Adonis, who had finally gotten himself a loincloth, shrugged, then played with his viny beard. “I am not sure. It’s just my body. I'm not any different. I don’t feel any different.”

  Adarin rolled his eyes in private. “Yes, but humans fear the strange and the new—especially if the familiar has been transformed into it. And that is what happened to you and your comrades.”

  Lieutenant Krislov studied his feet on the deck. “Yes, I—”

  Adarin tapped him on the arm. “It’s not your fault. In fact, this might be a huge advantage we’ve been granted. It’s just—” He shook his head. “We could have used a day to sort things out.”

  Krislov nodded, his wooden muscles rippling in a disconcertingly alien way. “Yes. We could.”

  A cry erupted from the bow watchstanders, and the captain took it up, giving orders in rapid-fire succession. She turned to him. “Sir, we’ve located a suitable place to land. We’ll be back on dry land in three minutes.”

  Adarin nodded and gestured at Krislov. “Lieutenant, get your men into order. Get them ready for the forced march.”

  Moments later the ship gently shook as its keel scraped the riverbed. The gangplank dropped nearly three meters from the riverside. Groans of annoyance and protest emerged from the musketeers while the scouts were already down in the water.

  Krislov’s voice rang out: “Stop complaining, soldiers. Into formation. Into the water. March. March.”

  With grumbling professionalism the unit rallied and made it through hip-deep water onto the beach. Adarin among them, greeted by the now-familiar acrid and alcoholic odor of the black muck and the blight. White tree trunks welcomed them, though Adarin did a double take and walked up to a middle-aged beech tree. The bark was regenerating, and in the crown he could make out sprouts of young leaves. A few more looks confirmed his suspicion. The forest is coming back to life. Is that the power of the locus?

  As the unit went through the final motions of readying itself for the march, he studied the reactions of the new druids. Disgust from some, but a troop stuck a few paces to the side, touching trees, and soon serene smiles spread alongside happy murmurs among the transformed.

  Adarin snapped out an order. “We shall investigate the forest later. For now—”

  Another volley of gunshots sounded in the forest. Closer now.

  “For now we need to take care of this.”

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  Following the zigzag pattern of roads, the unit hightailed it through the grid of the destroyed city towards the temple, whose walls were already distantly visible through the forest. The squelch, squelch, squelch of the rapid march rang out, an eerie report among the trees, and Adarin noted the shimmer of green and reemerging leaves above them in the canopy.

  They were grimly welcomed by many guard posts and two patrols, and only because the scout sergeant was doing an admirable job informing the outer guards that they were coming, no one was delaying them.

  “Current mood—I’m surprised no one is shooting at us,” Lieutenant Krislov murmured next to Adarin.

  Adarin hummed in dark agreement.

  Five minutes later they burst through the main gate of the temple and stepped into the panicked horde that had once been their main encampment. Goulash slices of red meat lay everywhere, their blood staining the olive fabric of the tents. Settlers and soldiers alike had collected under roofs and under the colonnades, hiding from the sky that was swarming with an endless flock of bats and birds.

  Sporadically, musketeers fired into the swarm, through the rich tang of ozone mixing with the coppery tang of the blood. Pillars of fire, lightning, and shrapnel that shot up wherever a mage was either losing their nerves or firing on orders, illuminated the late-afternoon encampment with an eerie strobing light.

  Just as Adarin stepped into the inner courtyard, the swarm reacted. What had been a disorganized mass became a gigantic whirlwind circle, and the eye of the storm was focused on—him.

  “He’s here, he’s here, he’s here.” Thousands of voices whispered.

  Adarin dodged back, barely avoiding the deluge of fleshy parts that smacked onto the ground in front of him, forming a shallow pile that looked like an accident in a butcher’s shop.

  “Follow, courageous warrior. Follow. Follow, follow, follow.”

  The voices rang out. Adarin ignored them, hissing in frustration.

  “Lieutenant, secure the gate. No one gets in or out.”

  The musketeers and mages swallowed but took up a blocking formation.

  Then Adarin reached out. ‘Francesco. Liora. Duchess Viola. Report.’

  Francesco was the first to respond. ‘You’re here… I think they are reacting to you. They have been murmuring about wanting to show us something the entire time.’

  Adarin pressed his eyes shut. Amazing, the swarm of creepily whispering birds wants to show me a special secret.

  Liora followed. ‘They have been saying that “the fate of these two was merciful.” What do they mean?’

  Adarin ground his teeth until his jaw clenched, took a deliberate, calming breath in the privacy of his mind-space, and loosened his body, preparing the grenades and the diamonoid dagger. Maybe I’ll finally get to use them on something. Someone.

  Duchess Viola responded last. ‘Sir, the settlers are in an uproar right now. They are shell-shocked. But as soon as they realize this flesh—Gavin and Liora assured me that it is human. First one, now two dead.’

  A terrible suspicion settled into Adarin’s stomach, yet he dismissed it with a cold surgical cut. Not the time to dread what might be coming.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ he hissed back, regretting his tone instantly.

  He considered his options, but they were no good ones. None of my skills… Maybe if I created a large bubble of explosive gas in the air and ignited it. But if it’s light enough to lift and I just produce it, it will dissipate.

  He looked into the staccato of evocation magic. It certainly reaped a harvest of birds and bats, charred little corpses raining down onto the encampment, but it was like spitting into a hurricane.

  Then the time for contemplation was over. The maelstrom above him descended into an infernal shriek, and it dove down. A single windhose came straight at him.

  Adarin went low to the ground and screamed, “Soldiers, cover!”

  In an instant the wingbeats and screeching flyers were on him. He could distantly make out the screams of men as a wave of fur and feathers erupted through the entrance tunnel.

  He slashed, bashed, and battered, and while each stroke and strike brought his manipulator back wet and sticky with blood and guts, while each root whip carved a channel into the swarm, the pitiful pile of dead birds he was standing on when it was all over was scant consolation.

  A third of the soldiers in the unit had been torn apart, flayed and blinded. Many others were still struggling with birds that were hacking and pecking, with bats crawling all over them, tearing into their flesh.

  Most of the transformed new druids had been fine. They had defended themselves with magic, had been made tougher by the blessing, and Lieutenant Krislov, who had been in the middle of the tunnel, had thrown up an abjuration barrier defending the rest.

  Then Adarin noticed the trail of flesh crumbs laid out in neat ten-centimeter intervals leading out of the temple.

  Cawing screeches erupted from the swarm as Adarin advanced, noticing now that it was circling over the plaza in front of the temple. He swallowed down his rage and turned back to the temple. I can't just charge outside. That's what they want.

  He went out checking the soldiers. None of them were dead yet, though many were quickly dying. Hands that had lost fingers until they were nothing but meaty sticks of muscles ran over profusely bleeding bling faces. He saw a man tearing a bird from his guts with a wet, gurgling scream.

  The less injured, especially the druids, were doing their best with potions, bandages and cantrips. But it was a pitiful effort in the face of the carnage.

  ‘Liora, we need healers here.’

  He waited, a shivering range barely contained by rapid pacing, under the colonnade, where the blood had not yet been removed from the eyes of the statues. Krislov and one of the transformed naval mage stood beside him, Alteration spells of living wood and overdriven vitality ready.

  “Come, come, come. We want to show you a secret. Secret, secret,” the swarm whispered. Adarin contemplated throwing his grenades. But they won't do anything.

  He came to a decision, and kicked himself for not having ordered it far earlier. ‘Devon. Gavin. Get some fucking cannons out here,’ he sent over the noospheric link. ‘Quicklime-airburst, and canister shot. Now.’

  The tense standoff continued as cannoneers approached in a chaotic tangle from the encampment. The and the encampments mood visibly began to shift. Suddenly the order had taken back the initiative. Or at least it looks like that. The cannons will make a lot of noise, and silence alongside inactivity here is the greatest killer of morale. Mules and men looked as if they were awaiting the hammer of judgment to come down on them, but nothing happened as the cannons lined up.

  Finally, Francesco, Devon, and Gavin appeared alongside Liora, who was already taking care of the wounded in the tunnel.

  As soon as Gavin stepped out of the temple, the swarm began to whisper with renewed vigor. “Sinner, Sinner, Sinner, Sinner.”

  And just as the cannoniers went through the last steps of loading and aiming, it dispersed, leaving behind another rain—no, another trail of flesh crumbs leading off into the city.

  Adarin turned to Gavin. “What have you done?”