The first firesheep crashed into the beasts’ ranks like a meteor, and the impact barely slowed it down. Flitting around the chaos monsters like a fiery white pinball, it set off explosions of pale flame every time it struck, sending the beasts reeling. Even from so far away, Lucas could hear their screeches, and he liked to think he had enough experience with beasts now to recognise that the tone of their cries belied confusion and pain.

  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Either way, it was clear the firesheep was doing serious damage, and the beasts had yet to muster an answer.

  It wasn’t long before the sheep’s brethren joined it, a dozen more lunar fireballs soaring across the landscape like rockets and striking with the force of wrecking balls. Behind them came the lunar plant network. At this point, it was an unstoppable white tsunami, spreading inexorably over and through the town. It looked to have sped up once more, eating up half a dozen metres every second, when at first it had barely crawled through one in the same amount of time.

  The plant network’s effects on the enemy were more subtle than the firesheep, but no less potent. While the firesheep struck with great force, sending the beasts flying and dealing great physical damage—Lucas couldn’t help noticing the similarities in the injuries to the ones he’d seen Valerie inflict on them—the lunar plant construct seemed to subdue them.

  Beasts were agents of chaos, beings of mana warped by demonic influence. Everything about them was impossible, mad. Most magical attacks were ineffective on them, because magic was, at its core, inherently chaotic, at least in part.

  The moonlight wasn’t enough to undo them. It didn’t tear them apart or show them the error of their chaotic ways with the scouring light of order. Its influence was difficult to even see at first, especially from the distance Lucas and Valerie watched from.

  Realisation came to Lucas when a sinuous, snake-like beast that had been evading the firesheep and launching its own counterattack took a glancing hit from moonlight-induced fire and went sprawling. At this point, the beasts were surrounded by the lunar plant network, and where one hit the ground, moonlight rose to meet it. It scrambled back to its feet, readying itself to skitter away from whatever attack came next, but it was helpless to defend itself as another firesheep hit it like a cannonball.

  Lucas blinked. “It should’ve been fast enough to dodge that, right?”

  “Your plants are slowing the beasts,” Valerie said, finishing his thought for him.

  Indeed, the more time they spent inside the lunar plant network’s domain, the more sluggish the beasts behaved. Before long, they started to look almost drunk… reminiscent of the time when their party had faced those three beasts in the open field.

  “The light of day weakens beasts, somehow,” Lucas murmured.

  “It would be more accurate to say the dark of night empowers them, but yes, essentially,” Valerie whispered back. “Nighttime is inherently more chaotic, darkness obscuring the truth of things. When you can’t be sure of what’s real or not…”

  She trailed off, her point made. Lucas nodded.

  Before long, the beasts barely posed a threat to the firesheep at all, and some of the firesheep started to break off from their herd, rocketing into the town. They didn’t care for roads or pathways, blasting straight through buildings and lighting them up with their ghostly lunar fire. The plant network flooded along with them, until soon it seemed the entire town was lit up within by moonlight.

  Lucas swallowed. With the beasts mostly subdued, the firesheep picking off the last of them, the night had turned eerily quiet. Even their lunar fires burned softly, barely giving off a peep of sound.

  It felt wrong to ask for the screams of the townsfolk back, but he’d take it, if it just gave him an indication that any of them were still alive.

  “Do…” Lucas had to stop and swallow again, the lump in his throat choking his words. “Do you think the demon killed them all?”

  “I doubt it,” Valerie said.

  That wasn’t a no.

  The firesheep were gallivanting around the town now, circling the demon where it was perched above the keep, a rippling mirage. That was a relief, at least. Lucas had worried they would go charging straight at the monster and break like the tide against a cliff. The demon’s direct attention was no longer on him, but he could still feel the phantom weight of it.

  Everyone here working together in perfect harmony surely wouldn’t be able to face that thing. He couldn’t comprehend how Valerie and her comrades killed them. His respect for her and her order was rising with every moment.

  The moonlight seemed to make it more tangible, refracting through its body like light through fog. It was rippling on its perch, an undulating intangible mass, surely watching proceedings below. Lucas found himself wondering what it was thinking. Was it looking down on this novel situation and wondering what the fuck was going on? Was it planning to escape? Or was it just considering how best to punish these insolent creatures that had dared to interrupt its fun? Did demons even think at all?

  Whatever the answer, Lucas would never know. Eventually, the demon did move, rising up like an inflating balloon, and evidently that was what the firesheep had been waiting for. Half a dozen blazing white comets launched out of the pale fires that had now engulfed most of Taunton’s buildings, rocketing straight for the demon.

  Jamie stirred to life in Lucas’ chest, crowing with triumph at the sight of someone, anyone, taking the fight to the enemy. Lucas concurred.

  There was no sound as the firesheep smashed into the demon’s sides almost simultaneously. It hadn’t moved an inch from its spot, and Lucas had to wonder if that was arrogance or ignorance. Either way, it hadn’t felt the need to dodge, expecting that it had nothing to fear from these enemies, and that cost it. From this distance, he couldn’t see if the firesheep did any true damage, but the demon’s form shuddered like a sound wave as it was pushed backwards, and a great screech tore across the farmland.

  Lucas slapped his hands to his ears, groaning, flinching backwards. The sound couldn’t have lasted for more than a few seconds, and the lunar mana Jamie was helping pump through his channels staved off the worst of its effects, but just for a moment it was like being assaulted by the combined effects of an entire army of beastly screams.

  He winced as he pulled his hands away from his ears, feeling the wetness there. He felt dizzy, and reached out to place a hand on Valerie’s shoulder, lest he fall over. She was still as a statue. Lucas looked at her, and winced. Her eyes were practically black.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  “You may need to purify me,” she replied, voice strained.

  Lucas nodded slowly. He tightened his grip on her shoulder, drawing on his lunar mana and letting wispy tendrils poke out from his fingertips. “How do I do that?”

  “Your plant network is dealing with the emotional aspect, so don’t worry about that for now,” Valerie gritted out. “Concern yourself with the demonic corruption. If you link your mana to mine, I imagine it won’t be difficult to identify.”

  Lucas chanced a glance at the ongoing battle. His heart dropped when he saw the demon was no longer looming above the keep, and the feeling of dread didn’t let up until he’d found it; it was on the move now, flowing across the town, chasing the firesheep around as they harassed it.

  A moment later, Lucas realised he could hear shouts. Voices. Barked orders. Screams, pleas, exclamations.

  People.

  He breathed a huge sigh of relief that made him feel like a balloon deflating. There were survivors. Hopefully, the firesheep would hold the demon’s attention long enough to let the people get away.

  Valerie had heard it too. “Once you’re done stabilising me, we’re going to run.”

  “What? No! We need to—”

  “We need to prioritise your safety,” Valerie said. She turned her sunken, dark gaze on him. “This endeavour has already been more successful than you can imagine. I resigned myself to the fact that everyone in that town was going to die the moment I realised a demon was approaching, because I knew that I had to get you away from here no matter what else happened. The idea that anyone else could survive did not cross my mind. I have to thank you for that.”

  Lucas closed his eyes, focusing on his mana as it wheedled its way beneath Valerie’s armour, seeking out her mana system. “And here I am wishing I could do more.”

  “Understandable,” Valerie said. “Anyone who’s ever faced a demon has experienced that feeling of powerlessness. Of hopelessness. Any survivors of a demon attack at all must be taken as a victory, but we cannot endanger ourselves—endanger you—for their sake.” She paused a moment as his mana finally met hers. “You’re going to need to be careful with this.”

  A moment later, Valerie’s mana system unfurled in Lucas’ mind, and it took him a moment to understand the shape of the problem. For the most part, her system was no different to his, at least in form—hers, obviously, was that of a fully developed adult, reaching every extremity. The starkest difference was that where his natural mana registered to him as a shining gold that was almost gaseous in its consistency, it was so light and malleable, hers was thick and white like milk. It moved sluggishly through her channels, and Lucas had no doubt that made workings of magic exceptionally hard for her all on its own.

  If not for that consistency, he might have described the colour as moonlight, and it was with that observation that he realised what was wrong. Her mana system covered her whole body, a complicated array of channels filling every nook and cranny of her form, and parts of it were darkening. Not in the way that the chaotic influence of a demon or beast’s might try to corrupt one’s soul; it was a more gradual thing.

  The effect seemed to begin in random places, multiple at once, but it had an insidious agenda, coordinated. Whatever was causing this, it clearly had specific designs for her. Beginning at random points in her system, it was like an infection was leaking into her mana from nowhere, steadily darkening it, corrupting it. Every moment, more points of infection appeared.

  “Talk me through this,” Lucas said, trying his best to keep his voice even. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded. “What the hell is going on here, Valerie?”

  “You heard them call me demon-touched,” Valerie stated.

  Lucas nodded as he sent his lunar mana towards the closest point of infection.

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  “It’s well known that I suffer from an infliction imparted on me by a demon, but that this happened during my time on the front lines is a common misconception.” She paused, stiffening as Lucas’ mana reached the nearest infection. In the end, it turned out Lucas barely needed to do anything; the mere touch of lunar mana purged the encroaching dark mana, whatever it was. The problem was, there were dozens of them, and more were popping up at every moment. Valerie continued in a tightly controlled voice, “The truth is, it happened when I was very young. I won’t belabour you with the details right now, so I’ll simply say I foolishly found myself alone in an area I knew to be dangerous, and I encountered a demon. I told you before that they’re sadists, yes?”

  Lucas nodded. Valerie’s sluggish mana was difficult to move his through. He couldn’t speed it up any faster than it was already moving, so he was essentially forced to chase down the corruption at its same speed. Luckily, purging the source stopped its spread, letting him overtake and purge it entirely. Still, it left him wondering if he’d be able to get rid of them at all, and wished he’d been able to observe how the pendant performed this task, while it was still whole.

  “I was a strong-willed child, and I can only assume the demon found my resistance entertaining. Somehow, it mutilated my very soul, and what you see before you occurs whenever my equilibrium is even slightly imbalanced.”

  “And even the most controlled person can’t be perfect forever,” Lucas muttered.

  “Indeed. Perfect tranquillity at all times is simply impossible, no matter how much one trains.” Her voice turned small. “And I was a child. Far from trained. I was naive enough to believe it had let me go, and I ran.”

  She fell silent, forcing Lucas to pick things up for her. “And bad things happened,” he said softly.

  Valerie just nodded. He could feel, through his connection to her, as her entire mana system shuddered under the force of memories she’d probably rather leave buried.

  “I understand,” he said quickly, opening his eyes and glancing at the town. The fires were still raging, the firesheep playing their game of cat and mouse with the demon.

  “Yes. Agreed.” She took a deep breath, and her mana system stabilised somewhat. More points of infection had popped up, though, to Lucas’ dismay. “Some time later, I ended up with the Order of Five, where Lady Claire took an interest in my affliction. It wasn’t something she’d seen before, and so she studied it extensively. Eventually, she settled on the solution of pumping lunar mana into my channels.”

  Lucas blinked as he digested that. “So, it’s not that your mana is naturally white, and you’re getting infected by… I don’t know. Demon mana?”

  “Demon mana seems an accurate descriptor,” Valerie said through clenched teeth.

  “It’s the opposite, isn’t it? Your mana is naturally demonic now, and the lunar mana… Well, it stops bad things from happening.”

  “Correct.”

  Lucas drew in a deep breath, glancing between Valerie and the demon. “Is being close to that thing making it worse for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we leave?”

  Valerie looked at him for what felt like the first time since his mana had touched hers. “We should,” she said. “But not yet.”

  Lucas nodded. His mana had barely covered a fraction of Valerie’s system, starting at her shoulder, and he’d been at this for minutes already. He moved around behind her, placing his other hand on the small of her back, and he splayed the fingers of both hands, giving himself multiple points of contact. From each finger he teased out a hair-thin strand of lunar mana and directed it into Valerie’s system. It wouldn’t ultimately increase the amount of mana he was giving her in absolute terms, but he didn’t necessarily need to overwhelm her entire system anyway; with multiple points of entry and selective injection, he could seek out the individual infection points without having to sluggishly pump his mana through her entire system.

  The night settled into an eerie quiet once more. It felt like there should be far more noise; the lunar plant network was utterly silent, the beasts had been vanquished, and the shouts of the townsfolk had long since faded away. Anxiety gnawed at the bottom of his stomach as he wondered what that last fact meant.

  A moment later, he got his answer.

  Dark shapes appeared in the near-white fire, moving towards the town gates. At first, Lucas tensed, expecting more beasts to come barrelling out of the flames, chasing down the interlopers who’d dared to intrude on the demon’s twisted games.

  Instead, tall, thin silhouettes began to coalesce into recognisable forms. Even from a great distance, he could tell they moved with too much purpose and poise to be beasts; the chaotic creatures lurched all over the place, and a pack of them would never move in roughly the same way, like he was seeing here.

  Survivors, he thought, feeling as if the weight of the world had lifted from his shoulders, and now he didn’t know how to balance himself. Relief felt like sunlight shining on his face after a day spent in the freezing cold. Deep breaths centred him, but each one came out shakier than the last as the survivors got more substantial, the frontrunners bursting through the barrier of the flames, and he found himself looking for identifying features.

  Wick was at the front of the pack, his shields held out ahead of him. As soon as he passed the flames and found safety before him, he split from the group, running sideways to let them pass him, presumably to cover their retreat. That was just the kind of man he was, Lucas thought, and not even the trauma of spending fuck-knows how long under the tender ministrations of a demon could change that.

  He picked out Aly next, a dozen or so more people after Wick. Her fur-pelt hood made her look like a woman with the head of a wolf. Under each arm she’d tucked the farmer’s two children, their names escaping him at the moment. He hoped the farmer had made it out too, but he didn’t see the man.

  A few dozen more people came running out of the fire before their numbers started to thin, and Lucas was horrified to realise he recognised so few of them. Worse, they were almost all warriors. Very few civilians emerged from the town, and those that did were generally being carried in much the same way Aly was carrying the two children.

  And when it was clear no more were coming, Valerie shrugged off his grip, spun on her heel, and practically dragged him along with her as she started off at a run. “We leave. Now,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Now, Lucas,” she repeated, and the steel in her voice brooked no argument. He shut his eyes for a brief moment, caught between two minds, but her pull threatened to knock him off balance, and if he fell he had no doubt he’d soon find himself thrown over her shoulders and carried for the next few miles.

  He turned, allowing himself to be dragged along behind her as she started to run. Lucas stumbled, his legs getting caught beneath him. Only Valerie’s iron grip kept him on his feet, practically dragging him along. It's took him a moment to find his rhythm, and then he was moving along with her, relying on her guidance to keep him from crashing into anything as his attention couldn't help straying behind them every few steps, searching through the darkness for the forms of the fleeing townsfolk, silhouetted by the raging fire and lunar plants in the distance.

  Beyond them the town was in chaos. Pale white fires raged. The magical sheep were still dancing around just about avoiding the demon, though it didn't appear to be trying very hard. Lucas couldn't say what gave him that impression. It was something about the way the Demon was moving. When it first arrived, he'd seen it cross hundred metres in the blink of an eye. Now it seemed almost lethargic. It's translucent form tumbled to and fro, almost lazily pursuing the sheep.

  After a moment Lucas realised what was so wrong with the picture. It was like watching a cat or some other predatory beast toying with its prey. The firesheep had provided some novelty, entertainment. They had distracted it for long enough for the townsfolk slip away, but how long would that last?

  As if in answer to Lucas's question, the rippling form of the demon reared up like a wave, rising higher above the town like a monstrous tower. The sheep kept dancing around it, but it was no longer pursuing them. Then, like a wave breaking, it crashed down on the town.

  Even from this great distance, he saw the shockwave produced by the impact. Firesheep went flying, battered away by the demon’s attack. But not all of them.

  The demon rose up once more, and this time it had a sheep in its translucent grip. The poor thing was thrashing wildly, utterly overcome by terror. Not even the moonlight mana could calm it when it was so close to the demon’s corrupting influence, inside the monster itself, like it was drowning in air. As Lucas watched in horror, the sheep began to thrash more and more, until its body was contorting in impossible shapes. Its fiery wool started darkening, steadily turning grey.

  It was just like Valerie's mana, he realised. He had cut off his connection to her magic energy, but he was sure if he reconnected, the white-to-grey change it was undergoing would look something like what he was seeing now. His stomach turned. He racked his brains for anything he could do, but nothing came to him. Nothing that wouldn't involve going back at least. And there was no way Valerie would allow that.

  Further and further, she dragged him away. They were picking up speed now, and it was difficult for Lucas to stay upright while constantly peeking back at the battle over his shoulder. The flaming town was becoming more of a distance speck. If he remembered the landscape right, soon it would be hidden entirely behind one of the hills that mark the horizon beyond Taunton.

  But still, he couldn't bring himself to look away. He felt he owed it to these creatures, even if they were acting on some kind of instinct and didn't know truly what they were doing for him and the people of Taunton.

  The poor creature in the demon’s grasp was barely recognisable as a sheep anymore. Its legs were steadily elongating. Its head was stretching out like taffy, like some unseen force was pulling on it. Its jaws were wide open as if it was screaming. The scene brought to mind one of those Medieval torture devices, those horrifying things that stretched people’s limbs out. Lucas couldn’t imagine the pain and terror it was surely experiencing.

  Eventually, its fiery wool darkened to a near black, and that seemed to mark the end of the demon’s interest in the poor firesheep. Like some psychotic sadistic child who had been torturing an animal and lost interest, it simply dropped the creature, letting it fall into its own white flames. It was destroyed instantly.

  Throughout all this, the other sheep had been frantically circling the demon, desperate to help their friend, to no avail. The demon was utterly uninterested in anything they did to it. Their attacks were ineffective. The lunar mana was only preventing it residual influence. When it brought its full attention on them, the power they wielded was not enough to stand up to it.

  The plant network was a different story. It was still slowly creeping across the town, inducting new plants into its ranks. When the Demon finally decided to descend properly from the town, the plants and the lunar mana were there. They seemed to grow brighter. A translucent wall of white sprung up in the demon's path, not quite halting it, but noticeably slowing it.

  There was a moment of stillness as the demon came to a full stop of its own accord. Lucas liked to imagine that the demon was truly baffled, never before having been denied like this. He hoped the network he created would exceed his wildest expectations.

  It was not to be. He had no idea what the demon did, what kind of infernal technique it deployed then. All he knew was, one moment the town was standing, if overcome with a white blaze. The next, there was an immense shockwave that seemed to tear through the fabric of reality. The world itself twisted.

  Both the firesheep and the plants were blown back, their pale fire suppressed as if by a great gust of wind, and the town itself was utterly obliterated in an instant. Debris and detritus went flying, flaming chunks soaring through the air. In the span of a second, the town was gone.

  The sheep, bless their bravery, were undaunted. A dozen distant comets went charging back in immediately, striking at their hated enemy, stoking their fire once more. It was about vengeance for them now. Lucas wasn't sure whether he imagined the furious bleats carried on the wind, but he liked the idea of the sheep roaring their defiance against the demonic foe.

  It turned into a running battle as the demon attempted to pursue the people who dared to try and escape it. The sheep harried and harassed it, charging at the monster over and over again. They never lingered long, having learned from their defeated comrade’s mistake. Still one or two of them got caught, and the demon didn't waste any energy warping them into beasts this time. It just crushed them like bugs.

  This couldn't last. The sheep would all surely fall eventually.

  But, Lucas realised, it might still be enough anyway. With their sacrifice, the demon couldn't pursue the survivors of Taunton as it was capable of. For whatever reason, it couldn't cross the distance in an instant like it had before. The survivors of Taunton had a chance.

  With every moment, the gap between them and the demon grew. Before long, it was so far away that Lucas could barely even make it out. Without the white fire of the sheep and the plants network, he wouldn't have been able to see it at all. By the time he and Valerie crested the hills and lost sight of the ongoing battle, it was barely more than a smudge on the horizon.

  With nothing else to see, he was forced to turn ahead and finally focus his full attention on running. It took him a while to get up to pace, to get his breathing in order, to get his gait in a proper rhythm. He'd been relying on Valerie, but now he put his all into escape, and soon he was running alongside her, and their pace quickened. Privately, he thanked her for not rushing him as much as she surely wanted to.

  A mixture of emotions battled with him as he ran. Pride, for the creatures that had stood up to a being of chaos and evil, despite the fear he'd been able to see them. At the same time, there was guilt. They were only animals, but leaving them behind to throwthemselves hopelessly at the demon, felt wrong.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. Not as he was.

  As Lucas ran, he dearly wished he'd get to see those sheep again. If only to thank them.

  Those feelings, guilt and dread and pride and hope, followed him all through the night as they made their escape.