For years, he had lived in peace in Frostvale, allowing himself to forget the horrors of what he had lived through in the past. The thought of such creatures coming to the village never crossed his mind.
But now, faced with the reality of evil incarnate, his mind went blank.
It was Lady Valara who broke the spell of terror that had gripped them all.
"Women and men of Frostvale!" she roared, her voice carrying across the center with the authority of noble blood and battlefield experience. "Grab whatever weapons ye can and fight! We'll not go gentle into the darkness!"
Her words struck the villagers like a physical blow, snapping many of them out of their paralysis. She raised her hands, and the origin power flowed out like a torrent of fire. She aimed at the fiend, which was running towards her.
But even as the villagers began to respond to her rallying cry, grabbing fire pokers, kitchen knives, and broken chair legs, the situation grew far worse.
More shadows began to pour into the village. Each one took on the same hideous form as the first, until a small army of the fiends stood arrayed against the wedding guests.
The creatures moved with predatory motion, their multiple arms weaving hypnotic patterns in the air as they advanced. Their iron-gray skin seemed to absorb the light from the torches, making them appear as walking voids in the shape of monsters.
Gareth the Blacksmith, his massive forge hammer in his hands, stepped forward to stand beside Lady Valara. "Aye, m'lady," he rumbled, his voice steady despite the terror in his eyes.
"We'll give these hell-spawn a fight they'll remember."
But even as the bravest among them prepared to make their stand, the truth was written in their faces.
They were farmers, craftsmen, and merchants—people who had lived their entire lives in the safety of Frostvale's walls. They were not warriors, and the weapons they wielded were crude tools compared to the supernatural might of their foes.
The fiends began to advance in perfect synchronization, their multiple arms moving in a grotesque dance of death. The air itself seemed to grow thick with malevolence, and the very stones of the village began to weep with moisture as if the land itself were terrified.
-
Jaenor thought of his mother and father; they weren't present at the center. He looked around. Taeryn and Baren were moving along with Natina, and others.
He yelled, "I will get my parents."
Taeryn looked at him and waved his hand.
They couldn't think straight, and their only thought was to get away from these creatures.
But the fiends cared nothing for mortal tactics or defensive formations.
They moved like liquid death, flowing around the villagers' desperate attempts at organization. The first wave struck with the fury of a winter storm, their multiple arms lashing out in all directions.
Rena, still unsteady from the ale, stumbled backward as one of the creatures lunged past her, its claws raking across the stone floor where she had stood mere moments before. Her wedding dress caught on a broken chair, and she fell hard, her vision spinning as she watched the chaos unfold around her.
"Rena!" The voice cut through the screams—it was Taeryn, his black hair wild with panic. He grabbed her arm, hauling her to her feet with surprising strength.
"We must get away from here!"
Beside him stood Baren, whose usually jovial face was now pale with terror. In his arms, he carried his wife, Ryanna, who had been struck by falling debris when the fiends had attacked them. Blood trickled from a gash on her forehead, and her eyes were wide with shock.
"The tavern," Baren gasped, his voice barely audible above the din of battle. "We can bar the doors and make a stand there."
But even as they began to move, the true horror of their situation became clear.
Screams and pleas echoed into the night air; houses were burning and crashing under the attack.
The fiends were not simply killing—they were hunting, selecting their prey with deliberate malice. One of the creatures, its four additional arms weaving hypnotic patterns in the air, cornered Old Henrik against the far wall.
"Please," the elderly hunter wheezed, raising his walking stick in a futile gesture of defiance. "I have grandchildren—"
The fiend's elongated mouth opened impossibly wide, revealing rows of teeth like broken glass. Its primary arms seized Henrik by the shoulders while its secondary limbs wrapped around his torso. There was a wet, tearing sound, and the old man's pleas became a gurgling scream that cut off abruptly.
Ryanna found her father getting stabbed by the fiend near the well, and lifted his body to drink his blood.
Ryanna watched in horror as her father's body crumpled to the floor, his life's blood pooling beneath him. The scream that tore from her throat was primal, the sound of a heart breaking in real time. She struggled against Baren's grip, trying to reach her father's still form.
"He's gone, love," Baren whispered, tears streaming down his face. "He's gone."
Taeryn, seeing that Ryanna was too distraught to move quickly. He nodded towards Baren, and then he lifted his own mother, Natina, into his arms—she had been struck by one of the fiend's claws and was bleeding freely from a deep gash across her ribs.
"Follow me," he commanded, his voice cracking with the strain of leadership thrust upon him.
He led the small group through the chaos, stepping over the bodies of neighbors and friends. The tavern was only fifty paces from the center, but those fifty paces stretched like miles before them. Fiends stalked between the overturned tables, their iron-gray skin glistening with blood that was not their own.