"Wait, he's waking up."

Archie felt the disorienting haze of waking up in a new place, but the grogginess didn't last long. The moment he sat up, he felt alive as if rejuvenated from the world's greatest nap. He looked out the window. Dark purple clouds stood out against the deep blue sky of dusk. It was still the same day, and the festival raged on. Someone had taken him back to Barley's home. A hand grabbed the scar on his leg, sending a surge of essence through it.

"He's fine now," someone said. Archie turned to see a Purple Jacket sitting next to him. Nori, Blanche, and Barley watched with concern.

"Where's Sutton?" Archie asked. "And Hawthorn?"

"The small one's with the Bhantla," the Purple Jacket answered. "He wanted to observe. The Khalyan is outside. We gave him his quarterstaff back. He's celebrating with it."

Archie looked at Nori, remembering her collapse during the cleansing ceremony. "Are you okay?"

"I feel good." She smiled. "You're the one that had the tough time of it."

"My leg…" Archie pushed his essence into his leg and hardened it with sugarskin. For the first time ever, the glossy sheen covered his scar. Beyond that, the sugarskin felt more solid than normal. Tougher. More even. "I feel…stronger."

"Your scar carried a…sort of poison," the Purple Jacket explained. "It was like a cancer, always trying to spread. Your essence naturally fought it. Kept it at bay. Now that we have cleansed the scar, you should feel more in control of your essence. More powerful."

Archie conjured sugarskin over his scar, let it fade away, then conjured it again, laughing at his success.

"Your essence was keeping this infection from spreading…but it wasn't trying to eliminate it," the Purple Jacket continued. "Most people…their essence does the cleansing on its own."

Archie frowned at the implication, and he had a feeling that this might not be his last wound. "Is there a way to speed up the process?"

"Meditation. It can help cleanse a wound like this as well as help to stave off the wendigo."

Nori laughed through her nose. Archie shot her a look. "What?" she said as she contained a laugh. "You? Meditate? You're almost as wound up as Sutton."

"I…I meditate! I did the chanting in front of the Monastery. And I've been doing my omnihandle—tell her, Barley!" Archie looked to Barley for confirmation.

"He tries," Barley said. Nori laughed.

The Purple Jacket did not smile. "It can be useful for other things, too. Your emotions. Your essence control. You must feel your essence through your whole body. From the individual hairs on your body to the tips of your toes. If you can control its flow, you can direct it. You can use it to cleanse the infection."

Archie repeated the knowledge back in his head—he had the feeling he would need it one day. "Is the exorcism still happening?"

"It's been two hours since the Bhantla started. She is now a conduit, channeling our essence into the Glutton."

"She's taking our essence?" Blanche asked. "Couldn't that…hurt us?"

The Purple Jacket tilted his head to the side—not quite a shake of the head. "Not really. She only takes a lot from her assistant Chefs. Two of us are resigned to rest. They gave too much. As for everyone else, the Bhantla only takes a little. That's what the wine was for. It fuses to some of your essence, and that gets used. We've been putting it in the animal feed. All those goats and yaks the villagers brought? We use them, too."

"What about the wild animals?" Archie asked.

"They are too few in number to matter."

"What about the elk? There were a lot of them."

"Elk?"

"Yeah. I thought I saw a herd of elk a few times."

"Elk?" Barley asked, his smile having vanished.

The Purple Jacket's face went as white as the Bhantla's. His jaw hung loose. "What do you mean, you thought you saw?"

Archie's brow scrunched up. "I dunno. It's like, I kept seeing them out of the corner of my eye, but they were always gone when I turned to look."

Barley jumped to his feet, causing Archie to flinch. "When?" Barley demanded. "Where?"

Archie looked back and forth between the Purple Jacket and Barley, confused by their apparent terror. "What's going on?"

The Purple Jacket ran to the window and studied the sky. "Tariaksuq. They attack at sundown. We don't have long. Stay here."

The Purple Jacket ran outside, using some magic to leap on top of Barley's home with a thud.

"Tariasic?" Blanche asked.

"Tariaksuq," Barley corrected as he rushed to pull his quarterstaff from his things. "Ancient creatures. During the day, they appear as elk, but you can't see them if you look directly at them. At night, they transform. They hunt. They steal children. The wendigo must have called them."

A chill went up Archie's arm and down his back.

The wendigo must have called them.

An elk bugle, screeching like metal dragged across stone, cut through the sound of the festival outside. Archie's heart seemed to stop beating for the duration of the horrific cry.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The Purple Jacket jumped back to the ground, poking his head inside. "They're already here," he said. "Can any of you fight?"

"Yes," Barley declared before Archie could even consider the question. Not that it took Archie long.

"Me too. And her." He nodded at Nori. Then he winced at Blanche. "Not her, though."

"I can fight!" Blanche protested.

But the Purple Jacket had no time for an argument. "Run to the top of the village," he commanded Blanche. "Tell them tariaksuq are here and to go to the east bridge. Go!"

Blanche flinched and ran out the door.

"Come on," the Purple Jacket commanded the others as he followed her.

Barley and his quarterstaff were only a step behind. But Archie needed more time. He needed to process what was happening. What was happening? What were tariaksuq? How much danger were they in?

He exchanged a worried look with Nori and then ran outside.

Hawthorn stopped practicing mid-swing. "What's going on?" he asked, his face mirroring their worried expressions.

"Tariaksuq," the Purple Jacket answered as he marched out of the compound.

Hawthorn hopped alongside him. "The night hunters?"

Another elk bugled, this one from the other side of the village and rising to a shrill, piercing wail.

Hawthorn's face dropped. In their time together in Khaldeer, no one had matched his enthusiasm for combat. But faced with a real fight, that joy vanished. He froze.

"I'll go to the east bridge," the Purple Jacket stated. "You all go to the west. Hold them there for as long as you can. Retreat if you have to."

Everything was happening too fast for Archie. His chest tightened against his heart.

"You want us to go alone?" Nori asked.

Another elk bugled and the sun dropped lower, lower, lower, lighting up the sky with streaks of purple and pink. They had minutes before it set.

"There weren't many to the west," the Purple Jacket explained. "Just a flanking attack. A dozen, maybe more."

"And the east?" Barley asked, his face warped with worry.

The Purple Jacket took a deep breath and shook his head. "Too many. Maybe a hundred."

"Hala Bhasantla," Hawthorn muttered as he dropped his head in prayer.

"Go," the Purple Jacket commanded. "And don't falter."

And then the Purple Jacket was gone, disappearing into the dancing and celebrating crowd that flooded the main street. "Everyone get inside!" his voice rang out. "Everyone get inside!"

Barley charged in the opposite direction, glancing back to make sure the others followed him. His easy-going demeanor was gone. His knuckles turned white around his quarterstaff. His jaw clenched. His eyes hardened with fear.

Seeing Barley's expression made something click in Archie. He thought of the licertes. Of how he had wished he knew how to fight then.

He knew now.

The Purple Jacket's yelling stirred the crowd into a frenzy, people pushing each other aside as they parroted the command, "Get inside!"

Barley had to push his way through the crowd. Archie, Nori, and Hawthorn followed him closely, allowing him to spearhead their path.

Another elk bugled from the west. A second call joined it, then a third and fourth and fifth from the east. The sun set lower, lower, lower.

"Tariaksuq!" someone yelled. The crowd found a new phrase to parrot. "Tariaksuq! Tariaksuq!"

The crowd grew solid, standing firm like statues. Barley slowed to a walk as he weaved through the swarm of people.

"Move! Move!" he urged. The panic in his voice caused the nearby crowd to stir, pushing Archie back.

Someone screamed down the hill. Frantic movement went through the crowd like a wave from the lower end of the street up to the top. The uniform confusion of the crowd turned into individual panic. People broke from their formations, screaming for their loved ones as they pushed in every direction.

Archie fell ten feet behind Barley, and just like that, there were twenty people separating them. The wave of movement went up, up, up the street as the sun went down, down, down to the horizon. The blues in the sky turned to deep purple, the pinks into blood orange. The sunset was moments away.

The elk bugled again and again, their cries blending together with the screams of the village and rising into the air like a ritualistic song to the darkening night sky.

The wave of people turned into a river, sweeping Archie away. Nori's arm found its way through the rushing villagers, reaching for Archie. He tried to grab it, but the crowd's current swept him away. He got crushed between their bodies, lifting him up so that only one of his feet could scrape against the ground in futile resistance. Up the street, he saw the Bhantla's Chefs form a wall to prevent the people from entering the upper courtyard and disturbing the exorcism.

Archie abandoned his restraint and shook off the panicking people around him. Instead of politely struggling against the crowd, he slammed his body against it, pushing his way upstream. He rationalized his brutality. Any injuries he caused would certainly be less severe than whatever the tariaksuq were would inflict if they made their way into the main village.

Archie remembered something his father had taught him at one of the rivers near Sain so many years ago.

Do not swim against the current. Swim across it.

He launched himself sideways into an alley, finally finding the freedom to run. He looped around the building and saw Barley and Hawthorn turning around the downhill curve.

Archie stopped to look back up at the crowd as they compressed up the street. Just as he stood on his tiptoes for a better look, Nori emerged from the end of the crowd and fell onto the open road.

"Are you okay?" Archie shouted.

"Fine," she panted. "Go!"

Archie turned back down the road and ran. As his head turned, he glimpsed a herd of elk moving through the fields. When he looked again, they were gone. He looked down at the road as he ran and used his peripherals to examine the field and count the elk. A dozen, two dozen, he couldn't be sure out of the corner of his eye. But he could be sure that there were too many.

He ran down, down, down the steep road and the sun dropped, dropped, dropped, highlighting the ridges of the mountain with a pale yellow. The elk called one more time, louder, shriller.

Then the sun finally dropped below the horizon, leaving them in the dim moonlight and torches of the village.

And then a new light shone. One by one, the antlers of the elk glowed silver like the moon. Archie no longer needed to look out of the corner of his eye to see the elk. Not that he would call them that any more.

They were the stuff of nightmares.

They ran upright on sharply bent animalistic legs, their cloven hooves striking the dirt to add a percussion to the song of panic that had taken over Jakha. Their pelvic bones and ribs stuck out at the ends of their emaciated midsections.

Their arms transformed to those of a human, but the palms of their hands extended twice as long, and their fingers ended in sharp points. The opening of their gaping jaws extended back behind their snouts, their lower jaws hanging and flapping as they ran. Sharp teeth protruded from swollen, bubbling gums that had grown over their lips.

A horn blared from up the village. As if they needed an alarm. The tariaksuq continued their bugling as they ran from the treeline, their cries rising to that of a shrill violin.

Fear gripped Archie. It coiled around his legs and tied them together, slowing him to a walk. For a month, he had trained and built himself up in his head. He thought himself strong. Confident.

But facing these demons, he recognized his inexperience. How could he be expected to hold them off? He reached into his pocket to feel his hardened blueberries. What could they do against such size? He conjured a noodle between his thumb and forefinger. He had struggled to lasso a yak. How could he hope to restrain one of these beasts?

He just needed a plan. He needed time.

But Barley didn't. He charged forward onto the bridge to meet the first tariaksuq, his quarterstaff raised high.

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