3. Evening Feast

The townsfolk were greatly alarmed.

“What in the world…”

“That girl bit me,” a child sobbed, huddled in her father’s arms.

“Fetch the city guard!”

“Never mind the city guard—they’re possessed by demons! Send for the Order!”

The Order soon arrived on-scene in the form of three people in silver-embroidered robes. The arcane glyphs on their clothing marked them as experts in all things supernatural. The townsfolk cleared out of the way quickly, since no one wanted to be caught between exorcists and demons.

“I am Brother Kherium,” the lead exorcist said by way of introduction. “The Order has been tracking these particular individuals for some time. As I suspected, they suffer from a textbook case of demon possession. The affliction is not incurable if treated in a timely manner. Brother Edelian, Sister Naphtha, restrain our patients while I prepare the banishment rites.”

The other two exorcists, Brother Edelian and Sister Naphtha, pushed through the small crowd of townsfolk. Sister Naphtha was shorter and walked with a slight limp in her step.

The demons glanced at each other. At some unseen signal, they lunged at Sister Naphtha, tackling her to the ground.

“No!” Brother Edelian dropped his rope and extended both palms with contorted fingers. He began to chant syllables in an ancient language.

Sister Naphtha sputtered and choked, legs flailing as she was strangled with her own rope.

Brother Kherium leapt forth with a silver pistol in hand.

“Back to the darkness from whence you came!” Brother Kherium fired the pistol.

Light flashed with a thunderous clap. When the smoke from the blank shot cleared and the spots in everyone’s eyes faded, absolutely nothing had changed. The demons were still present. Brother Edelian was still chanting. Sister Naphtha was still trapped.

Well, not quite.

One thing had changed. Sister Naphtha’s struggles had ceased. A swollen, purpled face was just visible behind the demons’ crouching forms. Glazed and lifeless eyes stared into the distance. Her mouth hung slack, and her limbs were limp. Brother Edelian went pale at the sight.

“These are no ordinary demons,” he muttered.

Fear surged through the observers: if a professional exorcist of the Order of Illumination could be defeated in less than a minute, what chance did ordinary townsfolk stand against these demons?

The demons lost interest in Sister Naphtha’s corpse. The girl-shaped one crept toward the crowd. People shuffled aside and retreated, unwilling to become the next victim. A gap opened up in the crowd, and the two demons crept out of the alley, emerging onto the main street.

Dozens of passer-bys stopped in their tracks to gawk. Laborers paused their work, dropping buckets of water or loads of firewood in their distraction. Mothers hustled their children away. Murmurs of demon possession pervaded the air. A few voices whispered, “Light protect us.”

Fear paralyzed some townsfolk, but it gave others strength. A threat had entered their hometown, threatened their children, and murdered their neighbor. This could not be allowed to continue. If Order exorcists could not remove the demons, then ordinary townsfolk had to take matters into their own hands. Wielding brooms, pitchforks, kitchen knives on sticks—any implement that afforded a bit of range—the townsfolk retaliated.

Stolen novel; please report.

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Demix and Silane fled from the human nest, moving with all the speed that the possessed bodies were capable of mustering. Given their injuries, this was not a considerable amount of speed. The human mob easily kept pace.

Not far outside town, they passed a familiar clump of bushes. Elrach sprang out to assist. He, too, proved no match for the armed mob. He lost half of a leg before Silane dragged him away. They fled together, occasionally losing bits of skin or limbs. As the possessed bodies took on more physical damage from the humans’ weapons, sunlight began to penetrate deeper into flesh, seeping below torn skin toward the nervous system where a Mistforged resided when possessing another creature. Black smoke trailed from these deep wounds, adding true pain—sunlight-induced damage to one’s very being—to the sting of nerve-pain from damage to the possessed body.

They plunged into the forest, desperately fleeing toward the arched trees that designated the mortal realm’s Worlds Gate. Before, traveling from the Worlds Gate to the human nest had seemed a pleasant stroll. Now, bleeding both vital fluids and mist from wounds physical and incorporeal, the journey became a grueling marathon of impossible distance. Step by tedious step, they made their way closer to safety.

The Worlds Gate appeared in the distance, and they rushed toward it. In haste, Demix, who had been targeted most severely by the humans due to his larger size, tripped and fell flat. The humans surrounded him in the next moment, stabbing with pitchforks and stakes. Wet sounds of tearing flesh filled the air. Demix shouted in pain and rage. Elrach and Silane, who were just a few paces ahead, stumbled to a halt. They exchanged a glance. Elrach growled, jerking his head toward the Worlds Gate.

“We can’t leave him,” Silane gritted out, diving back into the fray. She wriggled through the press of humans, throwing herself atop Demix’s possessed body. Sharp blades punctured her back. She grabbed Demix around the torso and dug her knees into the ground, but her mortal shell faltered. Demix was heavy. His body moved two inches before Silane collapsed from exhaustion and pain.

A whirlwind of slashing claws and biting teeth came to the rescue. Elrach tore into the backs of distracted humans, shredding tendons and ripping into unguarded vital areas. Shouts of pain rose from multiple throats as humans dropped left and right. Uninjured mob members abandoned their attacks to tend to their damaged compatriots. Amid the chaos, Elrach buried his teeth in Demix’s arm and pulled. Demix scrabbled against the ground with one working arm and one leg. Silane braced her knees against the ground and pushed. Working together, they managed to roll Demix in a crawling direction. Thus, with Demix crawling, Elrach limping, and Silane flopping like a beached fish, they resumed forward progress.

The human mob collected their wounded while the three demons crawled away, moving at less than walking speed due to the dozens of stab wounds inflicted upon possessed bodies. In the humans’ judgment, this pitiful display greatly diminished the threat. The demons were going nowhere quickly, making pursuit a far less urgent matter than attending to wounded colleagues.

The Worlds Gate neared. Those two arched trees were plain and insignificant to mortal eyes, yet the Worlds Gate pulsed with immense power to Mistforged senses. Beyond that portal, there would be no burning sunlight to keep them restrained in borrowed mortal bodies. As the friends approached the Worlds Gate, the very shadows seemed to lengthen in anticipation of the refuge that awaited once they returned home. The sky darkened between the gaps of the treetops. Horrid cerulean brilliance faded to a more amenable navy, then settled into familiar black.

Nightfall.

A pale moon peeked over the horizon, turning the treeline into a labyrinth of shadows.

In the light, Mistforged were small: diminished by the cruel sun, cowed by its rays, bound into weak and borrowed mortal forms. In the dark, Mistforged grew powerful: free to run and fly, free to change from solid to mist at will, creatures that knew only hunger and the will to survive. In the light, they were forced to flee; in the dark, they became the hunters.

Mere steps away from the threshold of the Worlds Gate, they abandoned their possessed bodies. Broken flesh splattered to the ground, pushed beyond its limits by the desperate race to escape. A giant spider, a boy, and a girl materialized above those tattered carcasses of a dog, a man, and a girl.

The spider’s pincers clicked.

The boy uttered a soft laugh.

The girl smiled with rather more teeth than a human ought to possess, each one rather longer and sharper than any human tooth ought to be. It was a humorless, vindictive smile, of the sort that haunts one to one’s dying breath.

They feasted well that night.