Blackmists are not all made equally, as we know. The one Gruin and I had lived through already was a particularly thin current, the only reason we still lived. The impossibly thick walls of the shelters made to weather this ancient curse are not always overkill. Maybe one time in a thousand, the Mists will come with strength enough to conjure monsters able to smash through brick and mortar, to rend wood, to butcher a dozen armed men by themselves, and in numbers to fight an army.

  This was not a one-in-one-thousand manifestation of the Mists. More like one in a hundred thousand.

  It looked like dark water was rushing towards us, moving as fast as the winds themselves. Even from a horizon away I could see we’d be engulfed within the hour.

  And that meant that everybody present had an easy time deciding what to do about it. There was no hesitation, all of us headed for the shelter. Our only hitch was when some of the townsfolk started taking issue with us.

  “These fuckers are the reason that Demon is coming for us!” one of them snarled, leading a pack of toughs who were all armed with an assortment of weapons, varying from lumber axes to pitchforks and hammers. I’d have bet on my group against fifty of them, and there were only forty. Right now. But those fortywere getting nods and murmurs of agreement from their townsfolk, and I didn’t want to fight a damned lynch mob.

  “We didn’t lure it here,” I told the people, “it was going to come down before long anyway. All this fanfare is meant to do is drive us apart, isolate us. Do you really want to do without nine skilled fighters, two of whom are Thaumaturges in training, for the upcoming Blackmists?”

  Another of the men lurched forwards, what I took to be a leader among them.

  “Maybe you’re not going to help anyway, maybe you’re all spies. Demons in human skin, here at the head of the attack to infiltrate our shelter and kill us from inside it while your kin attack from the outside.”

  “Then the Demon wouldn’t have made such a big show with its wretchlings as soon as we arrived, would it?” I asked him. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure what the wretchlings were even doing with it. From what Morlo had told me I’d have expected the Demon to just slaughter them out of hand. That it was able to use others as well as just kill them made it more dangerous, not less. A mad animal was far more easily dealt with than a hostile intelligence.

  I saw a similar fear sprouting on the faces staring me down then, and relaxed. If they were getting more scared as I spoke, it meant that they were, at least, listening to me. Sure enough, the men slowly broke up and diffused after that. I knew to keep an eye out all the same, the deadliest enemy is the one right behind you who’s gone unnoticed.

  This town’s shelter was one of the weaker ones that I’d seen, which was just another disaster added onto the endlessly growing pile. Its walls were maybe a foot thick and made of solid stone, other than that though it had little to boast about defensively.

  Contributing the most to our odds of survival was the fact that, unlike so many shelters, this one was actually big enough to house the town’s full population. Though it was crowded inside, terribly crowded, they made do with the demeanours of people who were well used to such conditions.

  I was used to them too, of course, having spent enough of my travels broke with Gruin that this was well within my comfort zone. Or tolerance zone, if nothing else. The Arvharest trainees were the most nervous of all, clearly not used to weathering Blackmists nearly this big or in a centre nearly so light in population. Cedwin was taking it all rather well, surprisingly enough. We’d untied him once news of the Blackmists became undeniable, figuring that they would do fine in boxing him in with us and that we couldn’t afford to do without his skill at arms when the darkthings finally made their presence known.

  Granted, I was concerned about the effects of his firearms in such tight conditions. I’d be fine thanks to my inhuman resilience, and the rest of our group had enough experience weathering such noise in the tunnels, but it’d surely come as a nasty shock for the people with us.

  George would probably be the bigger concern there, though, with his using a damned blunderbus. He and Cedwin were among four gunners in the defence, with most of the other young men sticking with improvised melee weapons. Suddenly my Thaumaturgy and magic-made blade felt like I was hauling around a damned cannon battery.

  Which didn’t do much for my courage. Not when the people settled down and the silence started stretching on like a hanged man’s neck. Outside, slowly, I heard the scrambling, the scraping, the sounds of life that wasn’t alive and death that wanted to spread itself around. The darkthings were here.

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  At first they seemed to be circling the shelter, maybe biding their time, maybe trying to figure out what its weak points were and how best to attack them. The attack itself came fast though, at most a half-hour into the night. It started with a rumbling, great thuds against the stone that left much of the wall around it shivering.

  “They’re trying to break in!” someone screamed, because if there’s one thing the obvious always needs it’s an idiot to point it out. No sooner had they done so than another impact resounded through the shelter, and this time I saw tiny cracks appear like spiderwebs in the stone surface.

  “It’s coming!” Gruin roared, “get ready for—” he coughed up about a fistful of blood mid-sentence, which didn’t do much to inspire confidence. I wasn’t left to linger on it for even a second before the wall burst inwards, chunks of rock pushed free and exposing us to the outside. Exposing us to the Blackmists.

  The first creature to erupt from them and force its way inside seemed eager to attack us, for all of two seconds. Then Cedwin blew a chunk out of its head and Vara and myself both took some of the ambient heat radiating off everyone to throw a pair of fireballs into its face. Darkthings don’t like fire, especially not the light it generates.

  One breach, that was all. The creatures kept rushing through it, but there was order among the defenders and most would have hung back to let our fellowship work as the front lines even without having been told. We knew our business and this was it. More fire shot out, all of it effective. With a thousand people compressed into one shelter the air was filling up with heat nice and fast. It was heating up more as we spat more fire into the breach, making it easier to produce more with each subsequent blast we put out. Still human, despite it, we were tiring, but tiring slow. I reckoned between Vara and myself we could’ve kept that maelstrom up for a good few hours.

  Then another breach was made.

  I barely had time to react before a darkthing was coming for me, this one a quadrupedal creature that seemed halfway between a lizard and human. I waved a hand, concentrated my will and slowed it with a blast of air, then skewered its throat with my sword as its run turned to a stumble. Darkthings don’t need blood or organs the way living creatures do, and this one survived the strike. It started writhing on the end of my blade, trying to reach past it and get at me, gurgling and twitching, shuddering and spasming. I booted it off and chopped again, this time taking the head completely free of its shoulders.

  That put it down for good.

  More were coming forth, and a third section of wall in the midst of being broken open as well. Gruin swung his hammer around as blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and spasms racked his arms, injury apparently doing nothing to impede him. Il’vanja was the polar opposite.

  She whipped around, dipping in and out of reach for the darkthings, her blade seeming to barely graze them yet flooding the air with spilled blood. I could barely follow her, watching from the corner of my eye as I was, and counted maybe a half-dozen dead at her hand before the next incident occurred.

  Now rather predictably, it was another breach. What was less predictable was that this time the thing creating the breaches burst in through its latest work. It had to be at least as big as the undead I’d struggled so much against during the attacks at Sheppleberry, the towering giants who’d smashed in the town’s gates.

  I wasn’t about to risk my own skin fighting something that big, not without first getting a good look at what it could do. The state it’d left our shelter in had already told me that it wasn’t a ‘one on one’ sort of opponent either, so I did my best to look innocuous and let somebody else try it first.

  Unfortunately, plate armour has its drawbacks. It tends to tell anyone with one eye and half a brain that you’re either in charge, or important. Apparently the darkthings were able to make that same observation, because they started swarming for me like I’d just put my foot through a bee hive.

  Fortunately, plate armour has its advantages. Especially when you’re wearing two sets with the weight of only one. Darkthings are nasty creatures and their teeth and talons will slice you right down to the bone, or even deeper, but they weren’t up to do more than mar the surface of my armour. Impressive enough, that. But I was too alive to be impressed right then. I kept my footing and kept my cool, too experienced with near death to let another notch on my belt of experiences get to me. I backed away, chopping and punching, throwing out jets of flame and keeping the darkthings from getting too comfortable while their leader started to join the rest.

  I like to think I brought Vara the perfect chance to blast it, and blast it she did. A gout of flames bigger than five of me standing on one another’s heads struck the largest darkthing, and for one brief moment there didn’t seem to be a single shadow anywhere in the whole shelter.

  When the flames cleared, the giant darkthing was, unfortunately, still there. Not smoking like a creature of living flesh would have, but steaming at least where the air was boiled free of its held water. It trailed mist and sizzled right towards me as if the girl’s Thaumaturgy hadn’t struck it at all. Cedwin took the next effort at getting its attention.

  In usual Cedwin fashion, he did so by shooting it. This time his weapon of choice was a heavy arquebus rather than one of his dainty rifles, the sort of thing you use to not only kill a man in plate but leave his family from being able to have an open-casket funeral. It didn’t do quite as much to the giant, but I watched with no small satisfaction as a meaty chunk left the darkthing’s shoulder and fell wetly at its feet.

  Once again, though, I was reminded of the darkthings’ resilience, it didn’t so much as slow down from the hit. Another blast of flames hit it from Vara’s Thaumaturgy and I compounded the attack, then saw it just stride right through and swing for me with a great, inky blade that seemed to materialise in its fist mid-strike.

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