Fighting two men at once is something a lot of people give little thought to, considering it no more than some heroic triviality, but there’s a definite strategy to it. I believe the usual way of going about it is to immediately be stabbed and die. That wouldn’t serve me very well though, so I’d have to try and find a better method of exiting this fight.

  Step one, it seemed, was trying to get them both on the same side of me. I heard the second man approaching before he was on me, which is the only reason I survived this fight at all. Before he could join the melee I’d already lunged for the first, throwing everything into a sudden attack, smacking away his panicked retaliation then moving into a grapple, wrestling him for a second until we changed places and he was stumbling back into his friend.

  There, that was better. Now I could at least see where they both were, even if they still had twice the limbs, weapons and heads as me. It was a start, step one. Step two would be killing one of them—or getting killed myself. That would certainly simplify the conundrum.

  Instead I chose to go by the more tedious, uncomfortable and injuring route of actually fighting to survive. My instincts for self-preservation proved unsurprisingly mightier than my indolence and laziness, as usual. But that brought no sort of innate advantage in this fight.

  After all, both my opponents wanted to live, too.

  I knew that one of them was the tough who’d walked up trying to intimidate me in the blackmist shelter, and some primal part of my mind was rather satisfied to see that he didn’t look anywhere near so smug or confident now he was struggling against me with help. On the other hand, it was clear I was on the losing end here.

  Being better than either one of my opponents had kept me alive, but I was giving ground every second just to keep things that way and I knew, sooner or later, one of them would get lucky. So I got thinking. My sword’s range was the major advantage, forcing caution onto them as they closed to attack me at once. I backed away, dragging them along in my wake simply because if they didn’t close the distance constantly then I’d be able to commit with thrusting attacks that had no risk of leaving me open to a counter.

  So they were always working harder than I was, exerting themselves more. And neither of them, I could tell, had trained nearly as much as a swordsman. Nor had they spent weeks trekking across the countryside.

  They kept coming, snarling and spitting as steel flashed in the air, scraped off walls, whistled by my face. I kept backing away, coaxing them after me and harassing them with little nicks and snips from my own blade. If I ran out of space behind me, I’d die. And I couldn’t control that, so I didn’t think about it.

  Another pace back, more parrying, their attacks continued without relent. Another pace back, more parrying, I swore as one of them got in closer than I’d intended and almost nicked my arm. Another pace back, but now…now they were slowing, the big one especially. It seemed a great pressure had started easing from me and my blocks came easier, my counters more often.

  I took one last pace back, feeling the press of stone against my shoulders, before I saw an opening and lashed my sword out to scrape along one of the men’s chests. He stumbled away from me, eyes wide, horrified. Blood welled from the cut and soaked into his clothing, not a lot, not at all, but all the strength seemed to be leaking out of him with it.

  Now the men took a step back, and I pressed forwards after them stabbing away after. I saw the man I’d lacerated was still bleeding, the ichor spreading in a wide patch at his arm as his wound continued pumping more and more vitae out into the fabric. It had seemed such a tiny thing, at first, but every moment that passed spilled out yet more vital broth from his veins.

  The other was fighting, if anything, more vigorously than before, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall and knowing that things wouldn’t last much longer now that I’d made the first truly deep wound. His blows came fast and clumsily, easily turned aside as I used my better reach and stride to control the space between us. Finally, the first man I’d cut stumbled right as the other was open.

  I ended things with a swift thrust to the chest.

  Both of them were down as one, coughing, wheezing and bleeding. I stared as their bodies slowly turned to corpses, waited to feel something.

  Didn’t wait too long of course, my life was still in danger. I turned to look at the wall I’d backed into and realised, with rather a stupid flush of embarrassment, that there was another corridor veering off to the side from it. I could’ve kept retreating if I’d just noticed that.

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  Note to self, then, improve my peripheral vision so I don’t get stabbed to death. I turned and headed down the new path, keeping my sword ready more out of mad paranoia than anything, and noted as I went that the air was growing warmer still.

  I pondered that, idly. There wasn’t much else changing, the architecture of the place—aside from its bizarre scale—was about as I’d have expected. So what was that heat coming from? I half expected to stumble onto some great crucible buried under the elder’s house.

  What I found instead was so very much worse. In the last chamber, bound to a wall by iron chains as thick as my wrist, was a…

  It feels wrong to call it a creature. A being, let’s say that. It had anatomy, as far as I could tell, but that anatomy made no sense. It had substance, I thought, to be interacting with the world, but that substance seemed to change and shift by the moment.

  Whatever sat at the end of its head—not a face, surely, not that—was bristling with so many jagged teeth in so haphazard a configuration that it looked as if they were sprouting out of skin at random. Flesh was hard and pulled taut, eyes uncountable and unfocused, but something about this thing told me it knew I was there.

  It shrieked, the noise running through me like the sound of fingers scraping a chalkboard. I knew then what this was, instinctively.

  “Darkthing,” I croaked, backing away and trembling. I remained there for a second, staring, disbelieving. And then I ran.

  If you’ve been reading this account while shaking your fist and cursing me for my cowardly ways, then that’s absolutely fair enough. If you’re doing the same now, stop it. I had just seen a darkthing, out in the open, for the first time. In all likelihood, you have never done this. I can say that with statistical certainty, because dead people can’t read.

  To gaze on one of their kind is a horror beyond words, so I won’t bother with any more clumsy efforts at conveying it onto page. Just know that you’d have done the exact same thing I did. Everyone would. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’m not a brave man. But I did not fail in any way when I fled from that room.

  Running as I was, I didn’t even notice the two bodies I’d left as I leapt over them. Would I have, if I were less frantic? Probably not. I tore out of the underground section and through the house faster than I’d run anywhere, and erupted from the window to just keep on sprinting. It was only when I collapsed into an alley, and found Gruin staring down at me, that I finally let myself pause to breathe.

  Even then, I felt the trembles racking me. What I’d seen didn’t seem like it would ever go away.

  “What happened in there?” Gruin demanded, looking, despite himself, somewhat worried. I realised only then that I wasn’t grinning. Well that made sense. It wasn’t exactly fear I felt now, whatever this emotion was. Definitely not that. Fear was too mundane—too common—to describe what I felt at seeing that monster.

  Fighting for every word, I explained myself to the Grynkori. I saw him grow paler and tremble more strongly as I did.

  “What dark magic is this!?” he spat at last, “that bloody bastard. Elder you call him? Well he won’t be getting any fucking older than he is today,” without another moment’s hesitation Gruin started marching off.

  “Wait!” I snapped, following after him and jarred out of my stupor by the sheer familiarity of the Grynkori’s madness, “hang on, what are you planning on doing?”

  “I’m going to kill that elder,” Gruin replied. He said it as if it were some sort of tactical move, some solution. He said it as if he thought walking over and clubbing a village leader’s head in without elaboration would be readily tolerated by the rest of his people.

  “Do you think we’ll survive if you do that?”

  Gruin looked back at me, eyes narrowing.

  “You’re not scared, are you? Scared enough to leave a man to make use of dark things and do nothing about it?” Pure disgust was in his voice, and I knew I’d already made one mistake by revealing my apprehension.

  “I’m not scared, obviously,” I replied, calmly, “but there are smart and dumb ways to go about things like this. What is the dark thing there for, how was it captured, did Arig do this himself or is he working alongside—even for—another? If we kill him now there’s a thousand answers we won’t get, all of which are important.”

  God must have taken a personal interest in me and decided to help out, because Gruin actually looked like he was considering my words.

  “You…make a good point, human,” he growled. I could tell it was causing him no small amount of pain just to concede even that much, and his hammer was now trembling in the fist that gripped it. “So what do we do?”

  “How about we get out of this damned area first?” I suggested, “I don’t want to get caught by whatever other bastards Arig has working for him when they find their dead friends.”

  Gruin grunted in a most decidedly Gruin-ish way, and we made off quickly at that. Though we didn’t leave the village—if we did, there was every chance we’d simply be left walled outside for the blackmists—we put as much distance between ourselves and the house as we could.

  Now, had I been thinking more clearly I would definitely have done things a little differently. But I wasn’t exactly used to powerful conspirators trying to kill me yet—even if, and I say this with no great pride or bragging, I had entirely predicted that this would happen from the start.

  But predictions only take you so far, and this was far from a large village. We didn’t have nearly enough distance to build. Come two hours before nightfall, men started looking for us. Much more than two. They were armed well enough, covered in thick leathers—shitty, improvised armour—and carrying hatchets and spears. Not well. Well enough. Because there had to be a dozen of them at least.

  I looked at Gruin where we squatted behind one of the smaller buildings near the outskirts, one we hoped was abandoned. He looked back at me.

  Both of us grinned, and for very different reasons. The men came closer, weapons were drawn, and it was us who made the first move.

  To do otherwise would be to die.

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