Fear of the Dark

The mass panic that I'd come to expect didn't come. The people around me were survivors of the first challenge, each seen horrors beyond what all but the unluckiest people on old Earth would have had to go through in the span of only three days. So when the darkness went absolute, before I even really had the time to think of what to do next, Anna threw up more fire. The crone, lit briefly in my friend's mage-fire immediately dispelled the flames in flight, but even so the field was lit for a second, maybe two. Each time Anna lit her fire, the crone was somewhere else, but each time also, more of our fighters crushed some of our attackers and freed more captives.

I had to think. The crone was distracted by Anna. I was in the middle of the ring, quite safe. If I could just pick the right spell, I could maybe turn the tide. Anna cast another one of her fire spells- two coiled flame serpents intertwined. I looked around for the hag, and raised my staff to cast once more.

And she wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere. None of the shadow monsters were there anymore. No sign of them, but the corpses of the twisted things and the broken bodies of adventurers remained. There weren't many casualties. A middle aged man I might have seen drinking beers on a porch in a working class neighborhood of the city stared blankly into the fire, his head twisted all the way around. A woman in her twenties was folded unnaturally over the wall, facing to the sky with a broken back, her athletic form hanging limply on either side of the wall. Most of the corpses were accidents of kidnappings gone wrong.

Anna conjured a firestorm strong enough to get the soaked bonfire back going. I saw sweat beading on her forehead, and recognized the sight of a spellcaster close to burning hit-points. I ran up to the wall, and stopped time. I did it to get a headcount without wasting any time. My focus flashed, passing over their faces. I couldn't deal with learning who was missing. Not yet. There were one hundred and ninety-two of us left. Five were dead that I could see. Forty-two people were taken. I dropped out of frozen time, my body unfreezing with the rest of the world.

"We have forty-two taken!" I called from above, with all of my voice. I realized now I stood above them and they were looking up to me. I don't know what fear was the greatest- the fear of the darkness surrounding us, the monsters in it and the fate of our companions, or the fear of those hopeful, determined looks. I couldn't take it, and I collapsed to sitting on the wall. Then, when I realized that there was empty night behind me and nothing protecting my back, I dropped back down.

"Fucking shadow pieces of shit! Come and fight us! Cowards!" A man shouted. Oh, Marcus. I still didn't really know anything about him, but he seemed to fit the role of the leader of the fighters quite well already. The mages, however, were gathering around me. I was trembling. The thought of what lay beyond those walls, especially now that I knew some of what it was was paralyzing. And I saw that same fear in the eyes of my fellow spellcasters. Most of them. Ajit seemed to be shaken, but upon seeing our fearful faces he took a steadying breath and dusted the ash off his robes.

"We attracted the attention of the predatory creatures. The witch woman was their leader and the real problem. We could have taken them in firelight. They feared it. Our people are still alive, it is harder to take them than to just kill what they could," he said, his voice a still pool of calm. "I didn't think. The walls would have been big enough for humans and most animals, but that's not the world we're dealing with right now," I said. "Didn't have much of a fucking choice, did we? We left folks on watch and everything," Emma said.

The fighters and rangers were gathering by the fire, as Anna was rushing over, her feet unsteady. Marcus shouted: "I'll need volunteers! We're getting out there now. They could be dead any moment, will you allow it to happen?". Whatever, Artemis would deal with him.

"God, I couldn't think of anything. I'm sorry, Anna, if we'd focused the fire properly, she couldn't have countered it all, I just thought I had more time," I said. "No complaining, it's fixing time now," Anna said. "Fuck, where do we even start?" I said.

From the distance, by the fire, another loud voice rang out.

"Anyone have any good scouting or tracking abilities? Something that works in the dark?" our dunedain ranger leader was calling. It was reckless. We couldn't just randomly go out into the dark with no direction or protection, why wasn't Artemis-

Oh. Oh no.

I didn't bother asking, instead using the party ability to find her. She was out in the dark, and moving rapidly away from us.

Stolen story; please report.

"They got Artemis," I said. "They got Artemis," I shouted, so that the whole camp could hear. And that got everyone's attention. I was her friend, I had been around her in her moments of weakness, but for the rest of them she was the leader that had forged order out of the chaos of the first challenge. What was more, she'd done it with equity, camaraderie and unflinching fairness. She had raised to and above the occasion and none of us would be here if not for her. And she wasn't here anymore. All of a sudden, the bravado of the fighters seemed a lot less friendly; the discussion among my fellow spellcasters- a lot less casual. But then again, it resolved the disagreement between us in an instant.

You really can do anything, when you have no choice but to do it.

"I can find her, I can track her perfectly so long as she lives! I am calling an emergency Council meeting this instant!" I proclaimed with a force I knew I wasn't capable of. And they listened too. Marcus, Octavia and the ranger whose name I still hadn't got approached me after a beat of hesitation. Hannah and Zack came too, and I didn't intend to leave them out of it. They were my friends and I knew they would come with me on a quest of this importance.

"Dude, we don't have time to talk this through. If you can find them, we need to get there right now. Who the fuck knows what they'll do to them once they reach their lair," Marcus said. "Agreed, but we can't just run off randomly. And we can't take people who cannot handle themselves. And we need to make sure the people we leave behind are as safe as they can be," I said. "Level 15 and up only then, how many people like that do we have?" Octavia said. "Everyone level fifteen and up raise your hand!" Marcus roared above the fire. A decent number of hands went up, but no more than fifty. All of the spellcasters, Zack and Hannah were among them, however. "We need to leave someone in charge here. I can come back with an ability if necessary, but there needs to be someone here," I said. "Leave it to me. Better if it's someone in your party so you can communicate," Anna said. "Alright," I said and drew a deep breath, "We need volunteers level 15 and above. We will be departing in three minutes. If you are injured or too tired to run, you're out!"

I was fully aware that I was just about in that last camp, but it was Artemis. I could rest when I was dead.

"Oh shut your mouth, we're all going," Zack called. "You're goddamned right," a woman from the specialist group I didn't recognize joined in, and then everyone of the required levels came forward. Some people even complained that they weren't allowed to come because of their lower levels.

"We aren't risking it, period. Even this could just make it worse. If we're not back by dawn, keep going to the mountains," I said. "Alex, catch," Emma said, and threw a plastic bottle with glistening, viscous black fluid in it. "What is it?" I said. "It's drugs. It'll keep you up and moving for about eight hours. Then we'll have to carry you though," she said. I unscrewed the cap. I looked into the suspicious bottle. It stank of tar and bubbled slightly. I winced and downed the thick fluid. Immediately I was wide awake and jittery, but the fatigue and physical exhaustion was gone. "Strong stuff," I said. "Magic innit," she said, "Before anyone asks I ain't got enough for everyone." "Fooorm up! Right here! Leaving in one hundred seconds!" Marcus shouted.

The people who gathered were all veterans of the first challenge. Not just survivors, but people who'd gone out and intentionally farmed experience and gathered loot. Many were clad head to toe in magical items; I saw glistening swords, spears, shields and white wooden bows among them. My own wizards made up nearly a half of the group. It kind of made sense. Low level spellcasters died really easily in the subterranean Halls of the previous challenge.

"You all sure you're up for it? This is gonna suck as much as anything we did in that damned school," I said. "Shit speech, Alex," a man- I recognized him as Lawrence from forever ago- said. "Yeah, ain't you supposed to be inspiring and shit?" Emma said. "Fuck that. If any of you need inspiring you should stay the fuck here," I said. "Hell yeah! Let's fucking go by mutual consent and shit," Zack said. "Done with your little tete-a-tete? Can we go hunt those bastards down then?" the ranger leader said.

I nodded. "Follow me. Don't lose sight," I said, as I ran back up to the top of the wall and leaped down, arcane vitality coursing through my veins. I stopped pretty much immediately outside. I tapped the soles of my boots together and the ratskin boots provided some light, but in the soft moss and mud it was jittery and unreliable. It was just too fucking dark to follow anyone through anything. I needed a light.

"Hey, Chum," I said. The imp had been quietly besides me as he usually was when dealing with serious Guild business. "What's up, boss," he said. "Can you make some sort of a light for them to follow?" I said, "I just have actual burning fire." "Ha! I think I've got just the thing," Chum said.

There was a smell of sulfur that always followed his spellcasting, followed by a tingling heat on the back of my neck. Whatever magelight he'd cast on my back was glowing very clear deep red, casting a light about five feet around me, and surely visible from a great distance. Which was a blessing and a curse, of course. Well, if they came for me, I had plenty of surprises in my sleeve, so let them try. I cast the HUD spell this time to be sure, and found that it didn't register anything I couldn't see. That made sense, but at least it helped me make sure which of the shadowy shapes in the distance were actual enemies, and which were just the long, drooping branches of the willow-like trees of the forest.

The muscles in my legs still burned, but with Emma's elixir in my veins I could move them whether they wanted to cooperate or not. I ran in the direction that the innate sense of the party ability directed me towards Artemis, and a quarter- no, a fifth- of the Guild followed in my footsteps.

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