The drums kept growing louder. Brief bursts of laughter penetrated the heavy door. Behind it rose two barricades of debris covered in thorny vines, arranged in a cone. Each was manned by men and women with knuckles white around spears and crossbows.

  “Twenty minutes!” Edmund shouted. “That’s how long we have to hold them back.”

  Elenya, Wretch, and the hunter-captain stood at the end of the tight corridor created by the heaps of spikes and furniture. The soldiers would prod with spears from the sides, while the brunt of the force would be funneled toward the waiting hunters.

  Melissa led a group of ten, all armed with sabers and shields. They were to protect Astrid at the back of the choke. The healer sat on a box, her face filled with calm. But Wretch saw the tremor in her fingers, the slight knit in her brow.

  “I sometimes forget Astrid has another power,” Wretch said.

  The door shook, yelps and howls sounding on the other side. In response, a wave of mumbling whispers and nervous shuffling spread through the survivors.

  “Sorry about earlier,” Elenya said, performing a few test swings with her cleaver. “I got caught up in it.”

  Wretch tilted his head. “It’s fine.”

  “You are looking for a purpose, right?” he continued, cracking his neck. “For us, it’s right here. Forget everything else. Just kill until Edmund makes you board that train.”

  “Maybe I have been overthinking it all,” the red-haired giant said with a sigh, some tension loosening in her shoulders.

  Astrid, having overheard the conversation, shook her head while the healer’s personal guards gave them fearful looks.

  The door rattled again. The drums were close enough now that Wretch could feel every beat in his chest.

  “They know we are here.”

  Edmund trailed his eyes over the defenders, pale faces and shivering grips. “If panic erupts, it will all fall.”

  Wretch looked at the soldiers with his black eyes. “What do they have to be afraid of? The four of us are taking on an army.”

  “Maybe you should rile them up, Wretchy,” Astrid said with a nervous half smile. “You practiced on the way from the church.”

  Elenya gave a dry laugh. “I’ll join the dogs if you do. Captain, tell them we’re strong. Besides, I’m a Fireling now. They won’t stand a chance.”

  Edmund removed his hat and closed his eyes. Even here he was dressed as a proper hunter in their typical black coat over a piece of armor, the tie of his suit peeking up by his sternum.

  “I’ll just tell them who we are. Hunters blessed by flame. Hungering for the blood of beasts. You two look scary enough to do the rest.”

  He climbed to the top of the left battlement and gave a loud whistle, drawing the attention of the hall as he removed his hat.

  “I grew up in Nov Yanosk,” he shouted over the masses. “When I was eighteen, I killed my first beast. The same one that took the life of my father.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “I can’t remember his face, but I can still hear his words. He told me that once the land was ours.”

  “That the creatures of the night were once mere children’s tales.”

  A bang shook the gate, bending part of the metal.

  Elenya gave a cruel smile while Wretch stretched his claws. He knew this monologue, the Hunter’s Call. He had sworn it the day he first joined the Richters.

  “Now it is our land no longer,” Edmund continued. “It is theirs, the creatures of the night. Every champion slain, every homestead crushed.”

  He cupped an ear toward the howls, the captain's theatrical prowess shining through his stern exterior.

  “Do you hear?”

  With a crack, pieces of wood splintered from the door.

  “They pound on our gates,” Elenya answered matter-of-factly in a voice low enough that only those close could hear.

  “To reap our lives,” Wretch continued in a growl, eyes locked on the gate.

  “To extinguish our flame,” Astrid whispered from behind.

  Edmund gestured toward the Blessed group in the choke, and his voice grew into a shout.

  “But my hunters still stand.”

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  “Elenya, Butcher of Hordes, Astrid the Tender, and Wretch, Collector of Wounds,” he continued.

  The massive door shook once more and splinters sprayed across the floor. A hairy arm, dressed in a torn uniform, plunged through the hole.

  “I am Edmund the Selfless, and a beast took my father. My hunters and I will avenge him today, but we cannot do that alone.”

  He drew his sword.

  “For fifteen minutes, I need you to not just forget your fears. I need you to kill and maim whatever comes through that door.”

  With a slam, the gate buckled inward.

  Edmund drew one deep breath.

  “Let them choke on Nov Yanosk steel, the last true city of man.”

  It was silent only for a moment.

  Then Melissa, the soldier left by the major, let out a high-pitched cry, raising her crossbow. The hall broke into a chorus of human cries, brimming with angst and horror but nonetheless matching the howls from beyond the door.

  Wretch took a deep breath and exhaled through his sharp teeth. This was good. Hunters against beasts. Grow or die, a situation that soothed something dark within him. If they lived, he would be stronger, one step closer to ascending higher. One step closer to finding the professor and tearing him apart.

  Edmund slid down from the barricade to stand with them.

  “Best I could think of. Together now, like we always do.”

  The red-haired giant stood with crossed arms and blew air through her nose.

  “We can do better than that, Cap.”

  Wretch nodded. “We have grown.”

  With a final crack and a hail of splinters, the gate burst open.

  First came a cacophony of laughs and howls. Then a flood of the dark-haired creatures poured into the hall. Some shambled forward on disfigured legs, others swung crude weapons. All were screaming with bloodlust.

  “Aim,” Astrid said from behind.

  “Fire.”

  Repeating snaps rang out from behind, and a rain of crossbow bolts passed over the three hunters, nailing the first wave to the wooden gate.

  The hounds rushed over their fallen comrades, jumping with joy. They followed the natural corridor to the waiting hunters.

  Wretch doubled over, his back roiling and twitching. In a bloody mess, two arms burst outward, growing in size and stretching as if an ashen giant tried to rip free of his flesh. The palms slammed into the ground with a thud, lifting him from the floor. Edmund raised his shield, and Elenya took a wide stance.

  The flood crashed against them.

  A moment before impact, Edmund’s shield exploded with force. The onslaught slowed for a breath of time.

  A shadow grew over the hounds. Wretch was in the air, plummeting downward with two grotesque fists. With a crack that shook the room, three hounds turned to paste. A gasp echoed from civilians and soldiers.

  Before his next strike, a wave of laughing jaws and mutated claws lunged.

  In a whirl of motion, Elenya stepped past him on the right, cleaving a handful of hounds whether armored or not.

  Edmund came up on his left, pushing with his shield and methodically dismembering the opposition with fast stabs.

  They stepped back as Wretch swept with a massive claw, shredding a handful of hounds and sending just as many into the spiked barricades, finished by civilians and soldiers with spears.

  They moved around each other. Elenya graceful and precise, Edmund rigid and unwavering, and Wretch crushing and crude.

  His flame did not last more than a few minutes, and he let his arms retract once it had diminished to a fourth of its glow.

  “I am out.”

  Elenya cleaved another disfigured snarling hound and turned to put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes lit up, and the medallion around her chest glowed.

  “I am still full,” she said with a crude smile on her lips.

  Scorching heat filled his system, returning him to half of his maximum flame.

  They had created only a few seconds of respite as the next wave waded over their kin, being whittled down by the spears in the process. A blur dashed through the horde, moving at breakneck speed over the dead hounds and toward them.

  Wretch’s eyes went wide.

  Without time to speak, Edmund pushed Elenya to the side. A blade that would have severed her neck instead cut deep into her back, and she gasped in surprise. Wretch stepped forward and slashed with the Blinking Blade, but the blur was already gone.

  “Get her to Astrid. I will keep them off us!” Wretch shouted, drowning down the urge to look behind him.

  He heard hurried steps as Edmund dragged her back.

  The blur stopped, sending a gust of wind in the other direction. It was a hound, but its arms were longer, and two curved blades of white bone grew from its forearms, extending from its elbows like two scythes. The other hounds took a wide berth around it, opting to climb over the barricades where readied spears met them.

  Wretch flashed a taunting smile.

  “Nice arms. Would look better on me though.”

  The hound laughed, and a name appeared in his mind. He projected his own name onto the creature, imagining ripping out its intestines.

  Bwiri, spawn of Vishnii and Wretch, Collector of Wounds.

  The hound sprang into action, its movement so quick and fluid that Wretch could only follow its general direction as it zigzagged toward him.

  He raised his blade to parry where he expected the strike to come from. A bone blade chimed against metal, and he stepped back from the impact.

  Suddenly, his leg did not bear weight, and he caught himself from falling. A laceration had severed the muscle down to the bone. He gritted his teeth as flame sealed the razor-thin cut.

  The blur, now a few meters away, stopped in a gust of wind, the hound licking a bone blade now dripping with his blood.

  An Ember or a Fireling. One power is the speed, the other is the blades. But how do I catch it?

  With a sudden jolt, the hound zigzagged forward at inhuman speed. Wretch dodged and parried a flurry of strikes, but for each cut he evaded, another sliced through his skin.

  In less than twenty seconds, he was covered in cuts from head to toe. The wounds were not deep. Each lacked power, but they added up quickly.

  The hound stopped in a blur, laughing hysterically.

  His moves are fast and strange, Wretch thought while gritting his teeth.

  “Come on. Finish it,” he said.

  Wretch heard Edmund shout something behind him, but he had no focus to spare. The hound blurred into movement again. Wretch strained his eyes and mind to the fullest.

  Then he saw it. The pulses of fire in its eyes.

  It’s not one Blessing, it’s two. One to charge to the sides and another forward.

  I still have to impede its movement.

  With a regurgitation, he spat out acid in a cone to the right, the corrosive sludge assaulting the floor. The hound zipped to the side but didn't slow, launching forward, but its cone of attack had just been cut in half. Wretch readied his muscles with everything he had.

  The Blinking Blade chimed as he blocked one of the bone-like protrusions.

  A second scythe plunged deep into his stomach.

  The hound tried to move back, but something stopped it.

  Its beady eyes looked down.

  Wretch’s own clawed hand held the wrist of the hound in an iron grip. The hound yanked at its arm without success, then turned to stare at him with a look he guessed was surprise.

  Wretch had a wide smile as blood spurted out between his teeth.

  “Got you.”