Elan retreated to the entry to the temple, waving for her companion as she ran.
“What is it?” the young man asked as he ran over from where he’d been, deeper in the temple.
“Trouble,” Elan said, pointing back. “I think whatever is happening is in the city now.”
Caleb paled and looked over her shoulder to where the mob of people was moving. Occasional glimpses of steel glinting in the mass and the increase of the screams he could hear told him all he needed to know. He drew his sword.
“We have to get the doors closed,” he decided, pulling Elan back into the entrance to the temple.
“What about everyone still out there?” she asked.
“We’ll hold them as long as we can,” Caleb said, “but when it’s time, there’ll be nothing more we can do.”
She nodded grimly, her knuckles white as they gripped the stave and pommel of her blade, unable to see any other option. The two of them muscled the massive wooden doors shut, swinging them most of the way, then standing just inside and watching the fighting as it drew closer and closer with an inexorable motion.
Light reflected off blades in the midst of the crowd, but they could see that most of the front wave of people were running, being pushed by the wave behind them, unarmed and in a state of panic.
Elan didn’t know what to do as she watched. Part of her wanted to fight, of course, but she’d learned the hard way that the consequences of jumping without a plan were not to be trifled with. She absently rubbed the scars on her wrists as she waited and watched, wondering if Kaern had merely delayed her inevitable end.
Dying in the cold and heat of the desert would have been over already, if nothing else, she supposed.
Caleb, beside her, looked excited. He was barely containing himself from charging out to the fight. Only furtive glances over his shoulder kept him in check as he remembered just what they were standing guard over.
The lead elements of the wave of humanity reached them only minutes after Elan had first spotted the crowd in the distance, leading her and Caleb to wave them in as they approached.
“Here! Come here! The temple is the most fortified building in town!” Caleb yelled out as the first people stumbled and straggled in past him, barely keeping to their feet as the crowd behind them pushed.
The wave of humanity almost slammed the doors shut as the two youths strained to keep them open just enough to let people pass but not so much that they couldn’t close them when the time came. Both Caleb and Elan leaned into the doors, gritting their teeth and planting their feet as best they could against the pounding waves of people that were hammering against them.
“I don’t think I can hold it much longer,” Elan confessed, her voice barely heard over the commotion. Her feet were slipping more than gripping the stone beneath her, and each hammer blow on the door was pushing her back more than she could recover.
Caleb was holding up better, though even he was clearly feeling the strain as he fought back against the forces arrayed against them. “Just a little…longer! Get as many people in as…we can!”
Elan nodded but didn’t reply. She just put her shoulder to the wood and watched the people rush by in a panic, wishing a few of them would help rather than just blindly run, but she had no energy left to spare to either curse or implore the panicky fools.
It came to a head when a heavy slam on the door flung Elan back to the ground and she had to roll clear to avoid being trampled by the mass of people, but from the floor she recognized something that sent a chill through her. The shambling, scaled, and near-rotting form of one of the demons that had tortured her.
To be sure, she couldn’t honestly say that it was one of the ones, but it certainly looked the part.
Elan rose to her feet, stave in hand and a blood-curdling scream drawing up from deep inside her. The stave slashed out, weaving through the running people to connect solidly with the head of the demon as it paused to locate the source of the scream. While most knew that iron was a key weakness for the majority of demon species, fewer were fully aware that wood was nearly as effective in many situations.
The hardwood stave met demonic bone and tissue, and it was not the staff that gave way.
The spindly demon fell to its knees, dark blood ichor spraying across the temple floor as Elan rushed in and caught it in the teeth of her boot to send it sprawling to the ground. She strode over it, eyes now looking through the crowd for more, and paused only to stomp on its head with as much force as she could muster.
Caleb, who had been looking back and trying to locate her, paled as he watched the extremely short-lived and one-sided battle. He was rather glad, in that moment, that Simone had never permitted them to spar with no holds barred. He thought that he would have been the one sporting most of the bruises then, if he were lucky.
“Demons in the crowd!” Elan called. “Close the doors!”
Caleb let go of the door and backed away, letting the press of the fighting beyond do the work for him as he felt sick in his guts.
“There are people out there,” he said as he fell back.
“There are people in here,” Elan told him, “and probably more demons too. We’ve done what we can.”
He nodded painfully, eyes on the door as it boomed from a hit on the other side, dust filtering down from above as the wood strained under the pressure.
“Will it hold?” he asked, his expression sickly.
“I don’t know,” Elan confessed. “Those doors were not built with the temple, but a long time after, I suspect.”
“How do you know that?”
“Later,” Elan said. “For now, get your blade. We have to see if we have any demons in here with us.”
Caleb nodded fearfully. “And if we do?”
Elan just cocked her head and glanced down to the motionless body on the floor.
No words needed to be said.
*****
Simone panted as she stood over the wreckage of the wall, bodies of friend and foe alike strewn around her as her sweat-slicked red hair hung limply in the dead air that seemed to have settled around them. The fighting where she was had died out, there being little reason to charge up the wall when someone had blown the doors wide open.
Well, that and there seemed to be one hell of a ruckus going on right at the outer perimeter where the shamans had been when she first arrived on scene. She didn’t know what happened to them, but frankly she didn’t much care so long as they were no longer turning their dark magics against the city.
Wearily gripping her blade, Simone began to slowly descend through the rubble to get to the ground level, where she could start tracking down those that had entered the city or, more likely, find as many of the children as she could, along with what few of their parents were still alive, and prepare to flee.
The city is lost, she realized somberly.
Simone had always half expected that it would one day come to this. Humanity seemed doomed to always be on the run from the demons, but that didn’t make it any easier now that the day had really arrived.
She was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, one that might be a little more than minor, though she wasn’t sure as it stood. The living here would shortly envy the dead if this battle wasn’t turned in short order, but even if it were, there just was no way they could secure and hold the walls against another assault. They’d just lost too damned many.
She paused a dozen feet or so from the ground, falling into a crouch as a group emerged from the shadows, running in from the outside of the walls. She waited for them to get beneath her, getting a quick count of their number, and then jumped.
The first warning the demons had of the…well, the demon in their midst was when Simone’s blade cleaved one of the rear guard through the skull and a full six inches into his torso before coming to a stop. She planted a foot in his back and pushed with a roar, sending the body toppling to the ground as the sword slid free with a sucking noise.