7. Pact of Three

Ranha returned alone in the wee hours of the morning, bleeding mist from multiple gashes. Her arm was missing below the elbow. Dark tendrils waved like lost fingertips protruding from the ragged sliced-off stump. She didn’t seem able to regenerate a solid arm. She stumbled into one of Elrach’s webbed traps and dangled there like a large smoky fly.

Sensing the vibration of prey from the treetops, Elrach alerted the remaining twenty-some Mistforged survivors to Ranha’s return. They gathered around the spider web Ranha was trapped within, examining her pitiful shape with quiet dread. The silence bothered Silane. She stepped closer and poked Ranha’s less injured shoulder.

“Hey Ranha, are you awake? What happened?” Silane asked.

Ranha twitched, mouth forming voiceless shapes.

“Isn’t it obvious? They lost, as I predicted.” Elrach sounded miffed as he cut the webs suspending Ranha. With one final snip, Ranha fell like a rock. The hard ground jolted Ranha out of her daze.

“They’re gone. They’re all gone,” Ranha whimpered, smoky tears streaming down her cheeks. When the tears ran out, she explained.

The attack party found out the hard way that the townspeople were not as defenseless as anticipated. Door frames and thresholds had been coated with glow-in-the-dark paint to deter the entry of weaker specters; candles and lamplight, harmless though irritating to solidform Mistforged, became deadly when the fire within caught onto torches and bonfires. Common, untrained townsfolk had used the Order of Illumination’s special pipe weapons—guns, Ranha called them—to shoot great bursts of noise and light intense enough to burn anyone without full sun-resistance. Most of the attack force had been imprisoned in the Order’s mist-binding jars while disoriented from these blinding flares and firework-based weapons. Others had been hunted by light-specters with melee weapons that went right through solid-matter defenses to strike directly at the mist-self beneath. Ranha herself had barely escaped from a light-specter attack, minus an arm, and only then because another Mistforged had thrown himself in the way of the killing blow.

“We didn’t stand a chance,” Ranha said at last, burying her head in her hands.

News of the failed attack spread quickly among the group of survivors. Many lost their will to fight.

Some Mistforged knelt upon the cold dead ground and clasped hands in prayer. Ranha joined them. Soon, the air filled with voices entreating the Stargazer Supreme to rescue them from their plight.

Demix laughed hollowly. “Fools. Do they want to be eaten? Don’t tempt fate.”

Silane looked up to where the shifting clouds parted to reveal the countless stars of the night sky. Did the Stargazer Supreme watch over these same stars in the shadow realm? Perhaps they were beyond even the Stargazer’s almighty dominion now.

Elrach stalked between the kneeling and broken with disdain. “What are you doing, comrades? Get up. The Stargazer Supreme has no pity for the weak.”

No one rose.

“Then let her come for us.” A Mistforged shaped like an elderly human said, voice cold and lost. “Better eaten by our own kind then left to burn and dissipate by mortal hands. They destroy, but they do not devour; what is lost remains lost forever. It is a fate far worse than mere consumption.”

Voices rose around them in agreement. Elrach lashed out with one claw and chopped a tree in half.

“Keep talking like that, and I’ll eat you myself!” he hissed. The most vocal protestors shrank back, but their gazes held caution rather than fear. One against one, Elrach had a decent chance against any solid; twenty against one, his threat rang empty. In the wary silence that ensued, Elrach climbed atop his severed tree stump. “This is not the end. We who still exist yet retain the strength to fight on. The frontal attack failed; that was only to be expected given our current power levels. What we need is a different approach. More careful tactics. Stealth, not brute force.”

Demix nodded. “Infiltrate human society—”

“And tear it apart from within,” Silane finished, hands clenching into fists.

“It won’t work,” a rat-looking Mistforged said. “Those Order paladins are a menace! Anyone who goes near them dies. You’ve got better chances of surviving by laying low and eating whatever comes our way than purposefully seeking out your death.”

Elrach’s claws stabbed at his tree stump in frustration. “Even if everyone else wants to go cower in the shadows, hiding like prey, I will fight. And I will win. I will show the humans that Mistforged cannot be exterminated like common vermin. Mistforged survive, Mistforged devour, and Mistforged grow to supremacy! What power we do not have now, we will gain in time, for our growth is without limit. We know no master but hunger; we bow to no authority save that which is earned!”

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The inspiring words flowed through Silane, lending her strength and courage. Let the others doubt; her heart was pure, her convictions true. She was willing to risk everything to repay the humans for slaughtering her kin. Even while the rest of the survivors feared facing human wrath, she supported Elrach’s vision. She would carry out this mission where others dared not venture.

“Nice speech. Good luck with all that,” Ranha said softly, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’ve fought enough tonight. I just want to survive.”

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As dawn crept ever nearer, setting the horizon ablaze with the earliest hint of cruel daylight, Silane sat with her friends in the shade of an angelica tree, ironing out the last few details of their retaliation against humanity. Together, they had devised a plan to appease their slain kin and deter future attacks forevermore.

“During the invasion, did you get a close look at those light-specters? They weren’t so different from our own specters, lightshow aside,” Demix said.

Elrach thought about it. “They were far more powerful than ordinary specters. Stronger than solids. Perhaps even at the level of reanimators. To exist in broad daylight without trouble and without corporeality—if we consumed one, we would attain sun-resistance in no time at all.”

“Sun-resistance,” Silane echoed reverently. “With such power at our command, we’d be as strong as sentinels.”

She paused, remembering the one-eyed paladin crippling Sentinel Khond.

“Stronger,” Elrach said, voice filled with dark promise.

Stronger than a sentinel. It seemed so very fantastical. As though in agreement, muffled giggles trailed in from the side. Ranha emerged from behind the tree trunk, shoulders trembling with laughter. Her crazed grin didn’t reach her eyes.

“Eat a light-specter? That’s your plan? You’re all mad,” Ranha said, voice cracking into a sob. “You can’t catch one. You’ll die. Don’t… don’t die.”

Elrach threw a rock at her. “Haven’t you ‘fought enough already’ after that failed attack? Go rest and lick your wounds.”

Ranha left.

Blue crept across the horizon, ending their time together. They hurried off to possess mortal bodies before the first sunbeams scorched the world. Silane ended up in a pigeon. She didn’t know how the others had fared, but, at this point, it didn’t matter. The immediate objective was to acquire a suitable human host. Only then could their plan begin in earnest.

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At dusk the next day, three friends in brand-new human bodies gathered again under the angelica tree. Demix had possessed a teenage boy. Elrach looked like an angry toddler. Silane had found a sufficiently pathetic host, a small girl bullied by healthier and stronger peers, and lured her to darkness with the promise of slaughtering her bullies. Silane hadn’t actually killed the bullies yet—there were more urgent matters at hand—but they would meet their demise in due time, alongside the rest of humanity.

“We did it,” Silane said, grinning. The effect was rather diminished by the fact that two of her front teeth were missing, while a third was loose enough that it stuck the wrong way.

Demix noticed. “What’s with those teeth? You found a defective human.”

Silane moved to bare her teeth, thought better of it, and settled for a closed-lip scowl.

“Aww, what’s the matter? Going to cry?” He grinned, showing off his own body’s complete set of teeth.

Elrach coughed. “Focus, friends. Silane, use this body’s flaws to your advantage. The humans will perceive you as less of a threat due to your small size and weak appearance.”

“Fair point. Crying might even help your case,” Demix said.

“Shut up!” Silane kicked Demix in the kneecap. He shouted and toppled over, clutching his knee.

“Stop, stop it.” Elrach darted between them—or tried to, anyway, but there was something seriously wrong with the way he was walking. He ended up flat on his face, got up, and fell over again. He cursed.

Silane looked over, and a startled little, “Pfff—” escaped her. She wiped the smirk off her face before Elrach saw it, but the amusement lingered. In short, Elrach’s method of walking on two legs could best be described as a human walking like a spider.

“Argh! This worthless body. Why do humans have so few legs?” Elrach got his arms underneath him and pushed up onto all fours. His joints bent in ways that human joints were most certainly not supposed to bend. Popping and cracking noises ensued.

Impatient with Elrach’s difficulties, Silane helped him up and tried to demonstrate the correct way of moving in a human body. It didn’t work particularly well.

As the night slipped away and dawn once more crept near, Elrach sighed and pushed Silane away.

“This isn’t going to work. You two might blend in well enough to pass, but I need to learn how to be a convincing human before approaching the Order. We cannot risk their scrutiny this early in the plan.” Elrach frowned, unfamiliar human eyes sharp and focused. “We must part ways. Do not let my failings hinder your mission. For now, our plan rests on your shoulders.”

“I understand,” Silane said. “No matter what happens, I’ll not rest until the shame of our defeat is appeased in oceans of mortal blood.”

This satisfied Elrach. He placed a stubby toddler hand on the thorn-studded angelica tree beside them.

“Upon this day in one year’s time, let us reunite here to recount our progress.”

Elrach pressed his hand down, puncturing borrowed flesh on the thorn-studded bark. Blood welled from his torn palm, hissing and smoking as it ate into the wood. When Elrach stepped back, a new Mark was laid upon the tree trunk, deep crimson and jagged like a spiderweb. Demix placed another Mark beside it, blood steaming away to leave behind a sickly green stain that branched outward like rot. Silane completed the set with her own Mark, poison-blue and coiling between the thorns like a mass of worms. All three fresh Marks smoked in their respective colors for a moment before fading from mortal sight, warping the tree bark around them into the roughness of healed scars. The trace energies that lingered upon the tree were faint enough to be overlooked even by Mistforged senses.