Tallah had to give the monster credit. That voice was as smooth as a lullaby and twice as hypnotic. When the creature spoke, its shape seemed almost alluring. But the Ikosmenia saw all too clearly the spikes of power accompanying the words, the tremble in the illum that signalled some subtle manipulation of power.

"Salvation from what you're going to do to us if we don't accept?" Tallah asked.

She'd trust eating whatever clung to the soles of her boot before heeding this creature's words. The night wasn't so kind as to bring them another reprieve after the dragon's descent.

Soldiers clustered behind Vilfor and Liosse, with crossbows trained upward. Tallah's misgivings were shared.

Some of the children whimpered in the crowd. Tallah heard the small voices and drew strength from that fright. Between Anna's irreverence and the fear from those she was protecting, she found herself eagerly anticipating the next moments.

"Your world was gifted to us," Mol'Ach sang out as it glided atop its web. "Your lives are of no importance. There needn't be more senseless slaying."

"That would've been nice a few bells ago," Tallah said. "Back before you killed defenceless people in their homes."

Anna and Bianca were up to something. She could feel power draining out of her back and straight into the ground, spreading out among the trees, the two ghosts weaving frantically.

Mol'Ach raised its hands, palms spread out, as if to embrace them. Tallah noted seven fingers on each hand. "Death was necessary for our crossing," it sang out. "More death is not. The deed is done. We have come. And you may bow before she who shows the way. I speak with the authority of the mother in my womb, and I offer you service in our glory."

'Quite the arrogant monster, isn't it?' Anna said. 'Keep it talking. I'm about to wipe the grin off its face if it thought this display would impress us.'

Tallah filed away some of the fresh information. So this was something of what came through the portal now. A bit tiny, compared to the figures she'd seen from atop the wall. But the creature did not lack for confidence.

She decided to kick it in the shin.

"I accept your surrender, if that's what you're offering," Tallah said.

Several soldiers laughed.

Mol'Ach did not smile. Instead, it straightened and sneered down at them, showing itself in full gruesome glory. It presented itself as a perfect, easy target, either in foolish overconfidence, or complete control.

"You are the one known as Tallah Amni, I take it?" it asked as it drifted over the high webs. "You are less than I'd imagined. So much is expected of one so… human."

'The cheek,' Anna sneered, offended on Tallah's behalf. 'I'm curious if it bleeds as richly as it speaks.'

Tallah shrugged as a fresh batch of fireflies popped into existence around her. "I'm flattered to be known all the way to where you've come from. Do the creatures I've slain remember me fondly?"

Red eyes glowed among the trees an webs. First a handful. Then an army lit up as the chimeric creature stared down, incredulity washing across its face. This was not going according to plan.

"Cat got your tongue, Mol'Ach?" Tallah spat the name like phlegm. "I see you're bringing more friends for us to slaughter."

Mol'Ach skittered across the web, going around the immobile group. Crossbows followed it. Tallah caught sight of Sil bouncing her mace up and down as the healer tracked the daemon. That one was eager to get to doing rather than talking.

"I do not need to kill you, human," Mol'Ach said after some time. "There is nothing more we need of you. Why do you provoke me? Why don't you kneel? You cannot win this fight."

"Then why don't you bugger off?" Tallah shot back. "If you need nothing from us, why are you here?"

That had struck a nerve. Mol'Ach stopped dead, two legs gripping a tree, the other scratching at the thick bark.

"My children are hungry. We have travelled long. If you kneel, we will be gentle."

"Go and eat one another," Tallah shot back. "I promise you will not stomach any of us."

Her illum store was full and refilling immediately after each lance she prepared. All of them were relegated to small points of power, disguised as her fireflies. The air sizzled around her, smelling of burnt dust.

Every sword that was available was drawn. All crossbows that had survived trained on Mol'Ach, the soldiers ready at a single word to loose.

It made Tallah proud to be standing there, with those men and women, to tell the creature to sod off. It barely made sense.

"I cannot kill you, Tallah Amni. I have sworn an oath. But everyone else… is food."

Tallah let out a low laugh. Now that was some excellent news.

A spike of power over to the side revealed Sil having requested some power from her goddess. Her mace's light was unmistakable.

"Why don't you come down here and let us show you how much we care for your threats?" Sil shouted, her voice as steady as stone.

Tallah stared at the healer, taken completely aback by the provocation.

"She yer friend?" Liosse asked at her sude. "Sounds like she'd be one of yers."

"Give 'er a few years, and she might be the next you," Vilfor answered. "I've seen 'er fight. That thing has no idea what it's in for."

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Well, the creature definitely hadn't expected the answer it got. Maybe it was the overload of fear already permeating the air, or the late stage of the night, or even just the inherent resilience of the people there, but what followed were jeers and flung insults. If that thing had anything human to it, its expression was one of puzzlement. Maybe it had expected them to unanimously fall to their knees in supplication, thankful for any reprieve from the fighting.

Monsters now gathered at the edges of light. Tallah spied the already well-known beastmen, trolls and other assorted nasty buggers. They lingered. Like her soldiers, these were waiting for the order to attack.

"Your world was gifted to us." The words swam around Tallah's mind. Those weren't the words of a normal daemon, and they hadn't been spoken without conviction. The creature believed it had come to rule. Why or how made very little difference in the moment, but she resorted not to forget the implication.

"Did Ryder orchestrate all this?" she asked on a gamble. "Is that—"

"Do not speak His name!" Mol'Ach screamed. "You do not know what you invoke."

Touchy.

Tallah grinned and let loose, stabbing skyward with her lances in a staggered attack. Fireflies zoomed up, followed by lances, intermingled so they wouldn't be easily distinguishable. Mol'Ach leapt off its tree just before impact, screeching furiously.

Everything happened lighting fast afterwards.

Someone screamed. More than one: the shrill, high-pitched cries of children, going up.

Tallah spun from tracking the monster. Something had come down from the trees, lightning fast, and grabbed children from the mass.

She retrained her fireflies on spiders dropping on long lines of silk, each grabbing one person to lift them into the canopy, faster than the eye could track. Blood-curdling screams drifted down.

Tallah loosed on all the monsters she could see, fast as she could. Some burst apart. A few escaped with their struggling prey.

One had two children gripped. Tallah couldn't hit it for fear of hurting the children.

She was already off the ground when the spider broke in two. The children fell, maybe ten metres off the ground, screaming. Civilians clustered together and caught the two girls.

Howling echoes filled the forest. Soldiers closed ranks.

Tallah had to drag herself from what she'd witnessed. Not the spider falling in two, but the weave that had cleaved it. It had been a barrier.

She swung her gaze to Sil. Blood flowed down the healer's face, bright red, oozing from like tears and snot from her eyes and nose. But Sil was grinning, teeth stained red, a look of manic anger in her eyes.

"Is that all?" the healer screamed into the dark above. "Steal our children and expect us to break?" She gestured with her incandescent mace. "Get down here, coward, and face me."

'Was that what you expected her to do?' Anna asked. 'She's burst nearly every vein in her sinuses doing it. I've repaired the damage.'

"Not what I expected but I'll take it," Tallah said as she turned to the fight already raging. The daemons barrelled into their formation, howling out of the dark.

'Do not engage. Draw back the soldiers,' Anna demanded. 'Let us.'

"Tighten ranks!" Tallah screamed without even questioning the wisdom of what she was doing. Anna had earned that trust.

Liosse gave her a wide-eyed stare, than took up the cry.

"Gather round the civilians. Move yer arses!"

Vilfor commanded his own side of the force, repeating the order, gesturing with his axe. He whirled in place and buried the weapon into a leaping kitty, cleaving it clean in two.

"Don't let 'em near!" the vanadal bellowed. If he missed his arm, Tallah couldn't see it on him.

Soldiers obeyed as the night filled with shapes. Daemons exploded from the webs, rising from the ground or falling from the trees. Many of them looked like spiders. Others were heavy set things that barely fit among the trees. Kittens leapt from the canopy, followed by the shrill caws of crows.

"I will not soil myself on your blood," Mol'Ach sang down from somewhere in the darkness. Tallah launched a hail of fireflies in the direction, though with little hope for success. "Know I have given you a chance and you have spat in my face. You will serve in the end. All serve the Prison in the end."

Tallah found herself rammed from behind, going down on her face into the mud. A grunt of pain followed, though not her own.

Vilfor stood above her, frantically shaking his arm. Tallah sprung back on her feet only to see the large warrior screaming in agony. Something sizzled on his shoulder, the armour melted clean through. He roared in anguish, dropping the axe.

Moments later, his arm stopped moving and drooped, then fell off at the shoulder. The limb dropped heavily to the ground, fingers still twitching, muscles spasming.

"Sil!" Tallah called as chaos errupted around them.

Before the daemons dug into them, other figures exploded out of the ground around the beleaguered mass of humans. Tallah felt an eye-watering tug on her power that very moment, staggering her concentration.

Blood dolls rose from the mud, claws bared, to fall upon the creatures. They flowed through through the webs and slit them apart as if they were little more than actual spider silk. Anna hadn't left the blood behind, Tallah realised, but had dragged a net of it all the way to here, keeping it hidden and widely dispersed. No wonder the ghost had needed Bianca's constant help.

Daemons screamed as feral clones of Tallah smashed against them.

Sil was at her side, shoving her way to Vilfor. The vanadal knelt next to his severed arm, staring at the limb as if he couldn't believe he'd lost it. He was now missing both arms on his right side. Blood streamed down his torso as the wound still bled purple, even his constitution failing to seal the wound.

Tallah hadn't seen the attack. If not for him, she would've maybe lost something instead. This Mol'Ach had an interesting way of keeping its oaths.

"You are needed. You are not needed whole."

She'd heard the words before, from one of the white-faced daemons. How they expected her to fight Catharina maimed was beyond imagination or reason, but who could predict these mad creatures?

Sil said the prayer and Vilfor's bleeding stopped. She fed him a bloodberry tonic while the battle raged around them. The webs were gone. The first wave of daemons were summarily scythed down by the surprise counterattack.

Liosse helped the vanadal to his feet and looked to Tallah for the next step.

"March!" she called. "Quick. Don't linger."

As if on cue, the night above lit up as if the sky had caught fire. The dragon roared above. Trees shattered. The ground shook. Echoes filled the night as the great lizard landed heavily somewhere out into the forest, toppling trees in its wake, roaring defiance.

"Bugger waited for us to draw them out," Liosse said, incredulous. "It's on our side then?"

"Stop gawking. Get moving," Tallah said as she almost ran ahead. "Sil, with me."

Dawn still lay some bells away. Anna's strength wasn't bottomless. Neither was Tallah's. They were acutely aware of time slipping away. Surviving the thrust of the trap was welcomed, but it would amount to nothing if they didn't make the pass.

"March!" she called out again as she began to run.

Vergil ran past her, howling mad, to form the point of their spear. Whatever got in his way ended beneath the tread of his boots, the violence on display nothing short of frightening.

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