“But we won’t see it if it comes at us.” Lianshi had stood up. “We should get in the light, stand in the center, back-to-back.”
“She’s right,” said Leonis. “We’ll not see an attack coming out here in the dark.”
Then the small creature leaned into the light, slowly, deliberately, revealing its hideous visage, a face out of a nightmare. A great, bald head with liver spots mottled across its scalp, a hole for a nose, a wide, lipless mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, great batwing ears, and eyes that were little more than beady black gems, eyes that glittered with malice and amusement, that studied the three of them before it pulled back into the darkness.
Scorio felt his stomach tighten with fear and his mouth go dry. “To the lights,” he said. “Move together. Hurry.”
And he led the way, running across the eight or so yards that separated them from the slender columns, expecting at any time to be attacked, for that horrific creature to leap out, claws swiping—
He staggered to a stop as he entered the clustered columns, each so bright and pale that they seemed to set him on fire where he passed through them. He heard Leonis cry out in pain, but then the large man was there, stumbling into him, half-turning to look back into the darkness, blood vivid and crimson across his shredded thigh.
“Lianshi!” cried out Scorio, and she emerged from the darkness, eyes wide, hair a disordered halo about her pale face, crashing into them, turning, pressing her back to them, facing out into the darkness.
“Turn,” said Scorio, wanting instead to check in with Leonis, to see how bad his wound was, to bind it.
But there was no time.
Leonis did as he was bid, breathing harshly. Together they stood thus, forming a triangle, shoulder to shoulder, staring out through the blazing white columns at the pitch darkness beyond.
“It got me,” said Leonis, still breathing heavily as if he couldn’t catch his breath. “Talons.”
Scorio stared into the darkness, eyes narrowed, trying to pick up on a sense of movement. Anything. Even a fraction of a warning.
“How do we kill it?” asked Lianshi, and to Scorio’s surprise, her voice had steadied, grown hard.
Leonis shifted his weight off his bad leg. “Grab it. Smash it against the floor. It’s small. Looks light.”
Lianshi’s laugh was completely without humor. “Grab it and smash it. Got it.”
A flicker, a bounding leap, and the creature burst out of the darkness to fall upon Scorio, fast as a nightmare, wicked fingers terminating in black nails flexing and seeking his face, lips writhing back to reveal fangs, mouth yawning open, impossibly wide.
Scorio cried out in alarm and grabbed hold of its wiry body, its waist so thin he could almost close his hands around it. But for all its small stature it was wickedly strong, and flailed at him, slashing open his arms and a line of fire across his cheek. It was like trying to hold a wild cat by the waist, the thing hissing and spitting, and snapping its jaws.
Leonis roared in fury and lunged over Scorio’s shoulder to slam his knuckles into the creature’s face. Scorio wasn’t holding it firmly enough for the blow to do much damage, but then Leonis took hold of the creature with both hands and with another cry drove it into the ground, falling upon it, smashing it down with all his considerable strength.
Lianshi screamed and she fell into Scorio, nearly knocking him over. He twisted about and saw another of the imps latched onto her, one hand gripping her shoulder, feet planted on her chest, desperately trying to get its fangs into her neck.
Scorio let out a wordless cry and plunged in, grabbed it by the scrawny neck, and tore it away from her. The monster screeched and scratched at his wrists, shredding his flesh. Scorio’s instinct was to just hold it away from his face, but some remote part of his mind recalled Leonis’s advice and he hurled it at the ground as one might a thick clay jar, seeking to shatter it.
The little beast hit the ground on its side but was flexible enough, sufficiently sinewy, to bounce right back to its feet unharmed. Scorio kicked it across the jaw, punting as hard as he could, and knocked it back and out of the light. He followed right after, still shouting, his fury finding release in his barks of fear and anger, to stomp on its wiry frame, crushing it beneath his heel as hard as he could.
“Leonis!” Lianshi’s cry was horrified, and Scorio looked back to see a third imp on the large man’s back, its own spine arched so that its knobby vertebrae were in sharp relief, its face buried in his companion’s neck. Lianshi had grasped it around the waist and was hauling at it, but it clung on with tenacious strength.
One final stomp, the feeling of bones breaking beneath his sole, and Scorio hurled himself back, staggering wildly to crash into Leonis, grabbing the monster by the base of both ears and wrenching it away.
Its jagged maw tore free in an arc of blood.
He fell to his side, the beast writhing in his arms, then Lianshi was beside him, hammering her fist down over and over against its head, not really hurting it but keeping it from getting back up, from twisting around and breaking free.
A roar sounded—Leonis, hoarse and furious, and he lurched up and dropped down upon the monster, his entire weight behind his elbow. The blow was a terrible one, and Scorio felt the imp shudder and go still as the architecture of its skull collapsed.
Leonis rolled onto his side, only his legs still in the light. Lianshi, sucking in great, ragged heaves, took hold of Leonis’s feet and began dragging him into the light.
“Help, Scorio. Help!”
He flung away the corpse, climbed to all fours, and seized Leonis’s leg. Pulled. The man was impossibly heavy, but together they dragged him into the white islands of light.
Scorio almost wished they hadn’t.
Leonis lay with his lips pursed, jaw set, hand shoved hard into a deep wound in his neck. The blood pouring out between his fingers was so dark in the harsh illumination as to be nearly black, and quickly began to flood out across the pale stone.
“Oh no,” moaned Lianshi, letting go and sitting back on her heels. “Oh no, no no no.”
“I’m fine,” said Leonis. “Just need a moment. And…” For a few seconds, he lost focus, staring past Scorio, then came back to himself. “Just need a moment and a new neck.”
Scorio laughed helplessly. “I’d give you mine if I could.”
Leonis didn’t seem to be in pain. His face was weirdly swollen and pale. He considered Scorio, gaze steadfast, musing, then grimaced. “You know, I almost believe you. Nice of you to say.”
Emotion suddenly caused Scorio’s throat to close up, and he leaned over Leonis, a hand on his chest. “Don’t leave us, man. Come on. Please. Don’t go.”
“Apologies.” Leonis’s voice had grown thick, grown slurred. “Feeling… losing my… yeah. Words. Find that god, yeah? Kick it between…”
He blinked, slowed, stopped.
“Oh no,” sighed Scorio, sitting back. “Oh damn.”
Lianshi bit her lip, then pressed the back of her wrist tightly against her mouth.
For a moment they remained thus, then Leonis faded away and was gone, leaving a large pool of blood in his place.
Neither of them spoke. Scorio realized he’d completely let down his guard. If there had been a fourth of those imps, they’d have been history.
But there hadn’t been.
“Three of them,” he said, forcing himself to speak. “One for each of us.”
Lianshi stirred, dropped her hand to her lap. “You still think this is a test?”
“I’ve no clue. But that… the odds of that being a coincidence are small, don’t you think?”
“Your arms,” said Lianshi, reaching out but drawing back her fingers at the last moment. “This isn’t good.”
The imp’s talons had cut several deep lacerations in a crosshatching pattern from his wrist up to his elbow. Scorio regarded the wounds. He felt bemused, numb, as if his arms belonged to someone else.