Grimoire was in an uproar. Hollow Hour was already in full swing, and the Grimoire Guard was stretched thin, though not as thin as they had been, thanks to Lorelei’s timely arrival and efforts as a Healer.
They could have handled Hollow Hour. Yggdrasil watched over them, Deirdre ran HQ, Jacob Crowley led the Hunters. They were in good hands, and they’d had enough nights like this to stay calm and do their jobs.
But then came the tremors. Earthquakes, but no. There were no earthquakes in Grimoire. And they were steady, rhythmic, like…
Footsteps.
And thus came the uproar. As more and more eyes turned eastward and saw two giants, Darkness-born behemoths come to trample their city.
“Give them a volley,” Deirdre said, speaking through a channel to all those manning the Manors on the eastern border. She was one of the only cool heads right now, but of course she was. Deirdre Greyson wasn’t one to lose her composure, no matter how dire things became.
Neither was Jacob Crowley. He came to join her at the primary command center, watching the giants draw closer, and waiting to see what the Manors of Grimoire would make of them.
A volley rippled out, a cascade of booming shots, a moment later followed by a series of explosions across the bodies of the two giants. Faint, hesitant cheers went up from a few.
Those cheers didn’t last. Not when the smoke cleared, and the giants came on undeterred, rumbling their way towards Grimoire.
“Hagan and Mercedes,” Jacob Crowley said, referring to the co-Heads of the Guardian Guild. “Are they close enough?”
“Yes,” Deirdre said, speaking through several open channels. “They’re on their way with a dozen Guardians. But we’ll still need to figure out how to take those things down.”
Amidst the growing screams of terror and panic, Jacob Crowley strode out from mission control to speak to the Hunters and citizens, to do what he could to calm them down. As he left, a flicker of cobalt-blue electricity heralded the arrival of Callum Greyson, his blonde hair tousled and windswept, his blue eyes alert and focused. “We barely have enough Hunters for the Hollows,” he said. “If the Manors aren’t even shaking those things…”
“We’ll figure it out,” Deirdre said, an island of calm amidst a growing storm of panic and upheaval. “Help me sort through active Hunters, figure out who might have the most firepower, or the most effective methods for trapping them and buying us time.”
“Right.” Callum flipped through files on Hunters, going backwards alphabetically while Deirdre worked forwards.
Just then, a cry went up. More of a collective gasp, and then a collective held breath. Callum and Deirdre looked up, and saw…
A girl.
“Olivia,” Deirdre said in a hushed voice. She was the only one, thanks to her mastery of Divination Magic, who could make out the girl in white tumbling from the heavens straight towards the tallest giant.
“Olivia?” Callum asked, gaping. “Is she… is she taking that thing on by herself?”
Olivia fell straight towards the tallest giant, alabaster scythe in hand. Callum stared, not believing it. If the Manors’ cannons had so little effect, what could her scythe possibly…?
Olivia swung, a single slash through the giant’s neck, and kept on falling past it. For two whole seconds that felt like two whole hours, the entirety of Grimoire watched, waiting, trying not to hope too much when it all seemed to impossible…
But then… the giant roared. Not a battle cry, but a last, dying gasp.
And then was silent. And the head tumbled free of the body.
“She…” Callum started, unable to find his voice beyond that one word.
“She did it,” Deirdre murmured, staring in amazement.
Olivia vanished through a magical gate and erupted through another one beneath the other giant, flying up at it and slicing through its neck. Just like the first one, all it took was one slash.
And the giant was slain.
Olivia soared high, reached the end of her momentum, stalled in midair, and then stepped through a gate.
She was gone. Her work was finished.
In less than ten seconds, she’d slain two giants. Two monsters of size and power Grimoire had never seen, gone just like that.
A ragged, astonished cheer went up, and it took Callum a second to realize it was him who’d screamed, full of pride and exultant victory. Someone else joined in, and then another, and then the entire city was cheering, voices raised in a clamorous cry in honor of the one who’d saved them.
But, moments later, a third giant appeared, and started rumbling its way down the eastern slopes.
“Any ideas of Hunters to send?” Deirdre asked.
“Yeah,” Callum said, cracking his knuckles, cobalt-blue electricity sparking around him as he grinned. “Me.”
He dashed out, but he wasn’t alone. Racing right beside him, keeping up with Enhancement Magic, was a man all in black, with black hair and dark eyes, wielding a sword shaped like an ornate key.
Jacob Crowley.
“What, you don’t want me to show you up?” Callum asked, he and Jacob both zipping out of the city and across snowy plains towards the eastern slopes.
“You can’t handle it alone,” Jacob Crowley said in his endlessly calm, dark, smooth as silk voice. “But you’re reckless enough to try. And with me, we’ll be enough.”
Callum barked out a laugh. “So you can’t take it down alone, either.”
Jacob’s eyes narrowed, his gaze steely. “We shall see.”
They reached the giant, and Callum surged upward, Electricity Magic — his own form of Elemental Magic — warping him ahead faster than light in short bursts. To the giant’s knee, to perch for a moment, then warp up to its waist, then its elbow, then finally, the shoulder.
Callum didn’t have any kind of blade to cut off the giant’s head. But Olivia had shown him one thing.
When in doubt, go for the head.
So Callum let loose, electricity surging and blasting the giant full in the face. It roared, and swatted at him, and he zipped away, to the opposite shoulder, keeping up his offensive. The giant stumbled — no doubt Jacob’s work, attacking the beast’s legs — and then crumpled to its knees. Callum fired one last furious blast of electricity, and thought he saw, for a brief moment, a dark shadow flicker through, a dark blade slashing.
And then the giant roared its death cry, and Callum leapt free, getting out of the way as the giant dissolved to ash.
He stood, panting, in the snow, and Jacob joined him — annoyingly only looking mildly winded.
“Well,” Callum said, dusting off his hands and catching his breath. “We weren’t quite as fast as her.”
“But we did it,” Jacob said. “And there are other Hunters who can, as well. Come. Let’s organize proper teams for this. You need a rest, and I need to make sure my Hunters’ heads are back on straight after that disgraceful panic.”
Callum grinned. “You never let anyone off the hook for anything, do you?”
“And they’re better off because of it,” Jacob said, already striding back to the city.
Back in Grimoire, cries and cheers went up for Jacob and Callum, Crowley and Greyson. Jacob quickly shut down those cheers and got people focused on the task at hand, and back to work. “There are still Hollows to fight, in case you forgot,” he said. “Back to your patrol routes.” He started calling out names — Callum noticed he hadn’t even needed to consult the files — and organizing them into “Stalker Elimination Squads.”
“Oh,” Callum said, returning to Deirdre and dropping into a chair, gulping down an entire water bottle in seconds. “Right. Olivia was a Guardian at Renault, right? Fought Stalkers. Guess those giants are like them?” He let out a low whistle. “Kids like Olivia fight stuff like that every single night? Makes being a Hunter look like kids playing on a playground. So those are Stalkers…”
“Facsimiles of them — probably just as strong, or stronger yet — born of the Darkness,” Deirdre said. “Sal means to take Grimoire.”
“You think he’s out there watching us?” Callum asked, casting his gaze towards the high mountain peaks in the distance.
“He told us he’s coming,” Deirdre said. “Whether he’s already out there directing things in person or still on his way, the increased assault is doubtlessly his doing.”
Callum stood, standing with her by a window. “If he was out there, you’d be able to see him, right?”
Deirdre pushed up her glasses, her gaze steely, focused. “If he was anyone else, yes. But the Lord of Night… we have no idea just how powerful he is. Or what kind of power he really commands. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could hide himself from my sight.”
Callum considered that for a while, taking a seat again. He gulped down a sports drink next, recognizing that he wasn’t just in need of hydration, but of precious electrolytes. He’d been pushing things to the limit night after night, and had barely avoided overuse injuries that would have left him out of action for far too long. He’d found a reckless balance, like walking a tightrope. Experience and a keen understanding of his own body helped immensely, but he couldn’t let himself get careless now.
“Should we call back Caleb’s team?” he asked after a while. “Chelsea would love to try her hand against those Stalkers. She’d probably be great at it, too. Anastasia, Bronn, and Stride would be a huge boon against them too, right?”
“They would,” Deirdre said. “But I don’t want to call them back up unless it’s absolutely necessary. That dark well beneath Grimoire… I think it’s going to spawn dangers worse than anything we’ll see up here. It’s just waiting for the best moment to tear us all down. We need our very best down there. No matter how bad it gets up here… we have to hold.”
Callum watched as a team of six went up against a new giant. They fought far more cautiously than he and Jacob had, feeling out their massive foe. But teamwork was a Hunter hallmark. They coordinated themselves effectively, figured out the giant quickly, and had it felled in just over a minute.
“No injuries,” Deirdre said, breathing a sigh. “But it takes a lot more to drop one of those than it takes for even a hundred Hollows.”
“I’ve proposed a rotation,” Jacob Crowley said, striding back into the command tent and handing a sheet of paper to Deirdre. “I think it will suffice. If those giants come in greater numbers, we may be in danger. But they haven’t come close enough for Yggdrasil to trouble with them, so she may give us a stronger safety net than we realize.”
“May be in danger?” Deirdre asked, the corner of her mouth twitching towards a faint smile. “We’re always in danger lately. Until Sal is defeated, this is our world.” She looked over the paper, then nodded. “This looks as good as anything I could come up with. And you took far less time than I would.”
“I know my Hunters,” Jacob said, turning and striding from the tent.
“He never changes,” Callum said, watching him go. “Never slows down, either. Or gets hurt. And he’s older than us. By, like…” He paused, bobbing his head from side to side, trying to remember Jacob Crowley’s age.
“Thirteen years,” Deirdre said. “He’s not quite sixty.”
Callum whistled, impressed, but also a bit put-off. “How does he have more stamina than me? Nothing wears him out.”
“Your father isn’t all that different, you know,” Deirdre said with a smile.
“Yeah, Dad’s ridiculous,” Callum said, shaking his head. “Going on eighty and moving around like he’s thirty. I’m pretty sure the cane’s just for show.”
“He’s used a cane since before you were born, hasn’t he?” Deirdre asked.
“Yup. He doesn’t limp, never has. He just likes it. Sure does make him seem like a gentleman, though.”
“Your father is a gentleman,” Deirdre said, laughing softly. “Timeless and elegant. I’ve always admired him.”
Callum grinned. “Me, too.”
——
On the western borders of Grimoire, Oscar Greyson watched as a giant — the colloquialism of “Shadow-Stalker” had already taken root, less than an hour after the first two had appeared — reeled backwards, repelled by his Guardian Magic, channeled through his large blue tortoise Summon.
Oscar had always thought of his tortoise, Athos, as “gigantic.” He did stand two stories tall, after all, with tree-trunk-thick legs and a magnificent shell that could easily support two dozen passengers.
He would have to amend his definition of “gigantic” after today. And come up with a more accurate word for his Summon’s size.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Oscar said with a smile as he felt the faintest hints of grumpiness from Athos. “Your size is not diminished one bit. And as we both know from my grandchildren, size really isn’t a barometer of strength. As you are perfectly well displaying now, in fact.”
Pride replaced grumpiness, and Athos stood a little taller, raising his head and gazing defiantly at the giant that tried to fight past him. For all his great size, Oscar’s Summon was only the size of the Shadow-Stalker’s fist, and yet even so…
Guardian Magic was proving its worth.
The giant regained its balance, swung another punch, and came up against a powerful, invisible barrier. Its own tremendous strength was reflected back on it twofold, and this time, it did more than stagger the giant. A grotesque ripple ran up the monster’s arm, and Oscar winced slightly.
“Oh, that’s a harsh bit of feedback,” he murmured. “You won’t be using that arm again.”
The Shadow-Stalker howled and fell back with a crash into the forest, and Oscar winced again for the flattening of so many beautiful pine trees. Reforestation teams would have their work cut out for them when the endless nights of fighting were over.
With the giant on its back, a team of six Hunters saw their chance and pounced, unleashing all their marvelous offensive magics at the beast. It howled and writhed, convulsed and struggled, for a few moments. But, in the space of ten seconds, the monster was slain and dissolved into ash.
“I still don’t get how that girl took them out with just one slash,” said the leader of the team of six — Taylor, a twenty-seven year-old who specialized in Enhancement and Confrontation Magic, a prime close-quarters fighter — as they walked back to the perimeter base that they were currently operating out of. He hefted a magically Augmented sword, a beautiful two-hander nearly as long as he was tall, gleaming white with a golden fuller down the center of the blade. “Their skin’s way too tough. I can cut in with one slash, sure, but I can’t cut all the way through. Especially once I come up against bone.”
“Oh, please, I don’t need the gory details,” said the female Hunter beside him, a twenty-nine year-old specialist in long-ranged Confrontation Magic named Thalia. She fiddled with her Talismans, a pair of silver bracers engraved with crescent moon designs. “We took it down, and we can take more of them down. Let’s leave it at that, and count our lucky stars. We’re not trained for things so… big.”
“Just goes to show those Renault mages aren’t messing around,” Taylor said, taking a seat beside Oscar, resting his sword across his thighs. He looked up at Oscar and nodded, his eyes full of respect. “And thank you, Iron Wall, for making things easy for us. I hope I’ll still be improving when I’m your age.”
“Iron Wall,” Oscar murmured, smiling. “Do you know how I received that nickname?”
“I know that every time you tell the story it’s completely different,” Thalia said, smirking as she took her seat beside Taylor. “And that no one else seems to know first-hand.”
“Oh, the ones who know just let me tell it,” Oscar said, chuckling. He’d known Thalia’s parents since before Thalia was born, and had worked with Thalia a few times since she’d become a Hunter. “They’re fond of the way I tell stories.”
“I’d love to hear the truth, just once,” Thalia said, leaning forward expectantly.
“Who says you haven’t?” Oscar asked. “Just because I’ve told it many different ways doesn’t mean I’ve never told the true tale before.”
“So you admit you’ve made it up most of the time!” Thalia said, frowning.
“I admit that I like to amuse myself,” Oscar said, laughing. “And I do enjoy the company of you youngsters. It gives me hope to see the next generation carrying on so ably. I was never tried so heavily when I was your age.”
“Mister Crowley deserves all the credit,” Taylor said, his voice overflowing with pride. “He had never let a Hunter die under his watch until that Lunar Festival incident. And since then, we’ve been pressed even harder than against the Shadows and the Radiance, and we’ve avoided fatalities once more.”
“Yes, he is an excellent Head of the Hunter Guild,” Oscar said.
“Oh, sorry,” Taylor said, bowing his head. “I… your son was the previous Head. I shouldn’t —”
“Nonsense,” Oscar said with a smile. “He and Deirdre did their part, and did it well. And I take no offense. Callum wouldn’t, either. For my part, I think Jacob is exactly what the Hunters need in a crisis like this. Nothing breaks his spirit. And he has experience that my son and his wife don’t have the benefit of. Don’t forget, my son is more than a decade younger than Jacob. He still has a lot of life to live, and a lot to learn from it.”
“So age is the secret to everything,” Thalia said, hanging on Oscar’s every word.
“Oh, no,” Oscar said. At Thalia’s puzzled look, Oscar smiled, a twinkle in his eyes. “Age is only a part of it. Time only reaps its rewards if you spend it well. One who lives long, and lives well — now, there is the secret.”
“To make the most of the life you live,” Thalia said, smiling. “Right.” She looked up as a little bird, a tiny sparrow, flew down to her, alighting on her outstretched finger. It was Raia, her aquamarine-hued Summon. They conferred for a silent moment. “Seems like our break won’t last long.”
A tremor shook the earth — distant, but not so distant as to be on the farther side of the city. Taylor looked up, and then stood, hoisting his sword. “Let’s make sure to live through this. And to prevail.”
“There are things we can only learn by facing down the giants in the world,” Oscar said, turning towards the giant in question — giants, in fact, as there was not one, but two Shadow-Stalkers approaching Grimoire’s western border. The Manors guarding this side fired a volley, despite it not showing much of an effect. They had to keep trying, and hope that even small efforts helped to soften up the monstrous foes.
That volley was also a signal.
A signal for the Iron Wall of Grimoire to go to work.
——
Chelsea blasted a tendril of Darkness with her emerald fire, and watched it smolder, crackle, and dissolve into ash. She wrinkled her nose at the smell.
“They’re not dangerous,” Caleb said, scanning the chamber of the Darkness-filled Well. “And it looks like we cleared them all. So what’s the deal here?”
That was the question. Twice now, the foaming waters deep within the Well had spat up these long, grotesque tendrils of gooey Darkness that groped along the floor slowly — too slowly. They were easily destroyed, but that only made things seem more suspicious.
“The waters continue to foam,” Sieglinde said, peering down into the Well. “They must be preparing something truly terrible.”
“So these tentacle-things are just a warm-up,” Chelsea said, twirling her lighters. “We can handle them just fine. But we can’t make the waters down there calm down.” They’d all figured that out with her, when she’d sent a powerful blast of fire straight down the Well, only to watch it get sucked into the dark waters without effect.
“It begs the question,” Will said in his soft, passive voice, “of what we can do if it comes up like a flood.”
“Like it did after we slew Kaohlad,” Gwen said with a nod. She wove a cage of interweaving strands of silver thread all around the Well, preparing for the next attack. “If the waters come out as a flood like that, our only recourse may be to run.”
“Distasteful,” Stride said. He sat on the stairs, looking over one of his many swords. “There has to be a way to fight it.”
“It’s like the Darkness has two different forms,” Chelsea said. “There’s the stuff we can fight, which comes in tons of different varieties, from active monsters to passive gooey stuff like those tentacles. And then there’s the deeper Darkness, that takes you to the Shadowland. You can’t fight that from outside. But if you go in and conquer what it throws at you, you can dispel that Darkness.”
“Anyone feeling like taking a dip?” Galahad asked, peering cautiously at the edge of the Well. Artemis came up behind him and shoved him towards the Well, and it was all he could do with an uncharacteristically undignified whirling of arms and wobbling about to keep himself from crashing into Gwen’s thread-cage and plunging right in. “What are you doing, Artemis? You could have killed me!”
“You were the one who suggested it,” Artemis said with a shrug. “Don’t say it if you are unwilling to do it yourself.”
“Please, let us not fight amongst ourselves,” Hestia said, holding out her hands for calm. “I think part of the reason we cannot fully quell these dark waters is because none of us are Paladins, or even Sub-Paladins.”
“If we had a Relay, then that might change things,” Will said.
“A Relay?” Chelsea asked.
“Oh, right,” Caleb said, nodding. “Like what Delilah, Alice, and Addie used to stop the Darkness that Blaise let build up. Maybe if we threw one into this Well it would fix it.”
“If it was a viable option, don’t you think Earth’s Paladin would have already done it?” Anastasia asked. She stood leaning against the far wall, arms folded across her chest, her violet eyes locked on the Well, alert and focused. “He came down to the Well with Delilah and Alice, and ended up doing nothing. If a Relay could stop this, then they would have already tried that. The problem with this Well compared to what Blaise built up is that, as much as it beggars belief, this Well is connected to the heart of the world. Earth’s heart.”
“Oh, right,” Chelsea said. It had been a lot for her to accept, the first time she’d heard about hearts of worlds, but after all she’d seen, and all that was still new and unknown to her, she’d begun to accept the concept. And even if it was just a metaphorical way of looking at it, it made sense to her.
She knew her heart, and what lay within.
Darkness rests in every heart. No matter how much we choose the Light… Darkness is still there. Waiting. For any opportunity to take hold.
But that begged the question of how to fix things here. If Earth’s own heart was festering so violently with Darkness… how did they stop it? How did they bring Light back to their planet? The skies were veiled, a dark shadow coating the land even in the brightest hours of the day. There wasn’t a Dream Forge to rekindle, or a Revue-like being to make a promise to.
“Perhaps there’s nothing we can do,” Gwen said. “Nothing but buy time. If this is a symptom of the Endless Night, like the ashen veil in the sky, then it only stops when the Endless Night is prevented.”
“Right,” Caleb said, a keen, determined gleam in his eyes. “Just like when we left to come back here from the Library. We’re going to do everything we can for Grimoire. But in the end, it doesn’t come down to our fight here. It comes down to Delilah, Shana, Fae, and their teams. We just need to keep things under control long enough for them to turn the Key of the World and put an end to all this.”
“Oh,” Chelsea said, suddenly making a connection — and with it, gaining a little bit more hope. “It’s just like the Library of Solitude. When we went there the first time, and Shana had to relight the Dream Forge. The real fight was in there, the real hope for the Library was that. But Gwen, you and me, and Lorelei, and Delilah, we had to defend the Forge. We had the fight of our lives, but it was just like this. We could only buy time. Just hold the line, until Shana won.”
“So now the same problem presents itself on a larger scale,” Galahad mused, a hand to his chiseled jaw. “Interesting. We are the defenders, the ‘Grimoire Guard’ indeed, buying time for the valiant heroes to save the day.”
“Aren’t you disappointed?” Artemis asked, rolling her eyes. “You always think of yourself as the leading man.”
“Yes, well, there are still opportunities for heroism in the supporting cast,” Galahad said, drawing his pure-white sword and twirling it. “And there is something very… knightly, about fighting a battle we cannot win, a battle in which the only outcome even close to victory is buying time. Don’t you think?”
“Silver lining,” Artemis said with a chuckle.
“The question remains,” Stride said, sheathing one sword and drawing the next, looking it over. “How do we continue to buy time if the Well simply explodes and floods the Underground? If it does, I doubt it stops down here.”
“To flood the whole city…” Sieglinde murmured, her eyebrows drawn close together. “Yggdrasil’s roots cannot reach this deep. But if the Darkness spreads high enough, I believe she can, at the very least, slow its progress.”
“And I’ll throw whatever I can at it, flood or no flood,” Chelsea said. “We don’t just go down without a fight. And there’s no way we’re just gonna run away. We were assigned to this even though the fighting up top’s fiercer than ever. They could use us up there, but they put us down here. The very best Grimoire’s got. It’d be a real failure if we let the Darkness get up and out to the city streets.”
“You’re calling yourself the best Grimoire’s got?” Gwen asked, raising an eyebrow, though there was more teasing than seriousness in her expression.
“Hey, that’s what they called us, okay?” Chelsea said, pursing her lips. “If they think I belong with the best, I’m not gonna go and let their confidence down.”
“Darn straight,” Caleb said, twisting his torso as he stretched out his shoulders. “And it was my mom who called us that, and sent us down here. I’m not about to go letting her down.”
“So no matter what happens, it comes to fighting with all we have,” Stride said, moving on to the next sword. Chelsea wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing — some kind of check, of course, but what he was checking for wasn’t at all clear — but if it helped him fight his best, she wasn’t about to break that concentration by asking. Stride lips turned in a confident smirk. “That suits me just fine.”
“Then get ready,” Anastasia said, stepping forward from the wall in a ready stance. “Something’s coming.”
She’d heard it before anyone else. But as Chelsea listened, she could hear it, too — the telltale gurgling, roiling bubbling that heralded the next wave of something gross from the Well. Perhaps more gooey, inky tendrils to grope around helplessly, easy targets.
Perhaps something worse.
Chelsea readied her lighters, and everyone else brought weapons or Talismans to bear, or slipped into whatever stance they needed for preparedness.
A fountain of black spray made them all jump back. This was new. Gwen’s threads shone silver, and much of that first Darkness dissolved, but so did many of the threads forming the cage around the Well.
That was an opening. An opening the next blast of Darkness took advantage of. Great globs shot up and out, splattered on the floor around the Well, and then reformed into shapes more solid.
The shapes of monsters.
No more slow tendrils, no more feeling out and warming up.
Chelsea steeled herself, targeted the nearest Shadow-Hollow, and let loose.
Their fight had begun.