Sydney was the first to wake. She blinked against the light of the sun, and when she moved, her body ached from sleeping on the ground.

  She looked herself over, careful as twinges of pain shot through her body. She was still wearing her full adventuring gear, bow and arrows included, but there was a large gash that stretched from her collar to her hip.

  Shit. Her health was barely hanging on by a thread. It was a wonder she wasn’t dead yet. The last thing she remembered was being dragged away by a team of demons. She and her team had fought with everything they had, but they were too heavily outnumbered.

  Why was she alive?

  And not just her… Two health bars, equally weakened, rested above hers at the corner of her vision.

  Sydney sat up carefully. Frederick and Philip lay next to her, their arms splayed awkwardly out like dolls that had been thrown to the ground. Beyond them, demons guarded the area.

  She shrank back into herself, but the demons didn’t seem to notice that she had stirred. Or didn’t care? It was hard to tell with these ones. They had craggy faces lined with magma, and aside from their general humanoid shape, there wasn’t much human about them.

  Either way. There were only three of them, but in their weakened state her team wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Frederick shifted and let out a low groan. Sydney scooted to his side and clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “Quiet,” she hissed. “Demons.” She waited for him to nod before she released him.

  He sat up slowly. He wore heavy armor, and Sydney winced every time the plates scraped against each other. The handle of his axe was clenched in a death grip in his hand.

  Still, the demons didn’t move.

  Frederick looked at Philip. The healer was the most fragile of the group, and laid out like that, he looked it. His robes were enchanted to boost his skills, but they were made of thin white cloth. He swore up and down that white held the enchantments better, and maybe it was true, but Sydney couldn’t help thinking that they made him look even thinner, paler, and more scuffed up than he already was.

  Philip’s eyes blinked open. He raised a palm to his forehead. “Whaat the hell — oomf!” Frederick clapped a hand over the other man’s mouth.

  “Look around!” he whispered.

  Philip’s eyes darted left and right, then widened. Frederick removed his hand.

  Sydney gestured helplessly at Philip in what she hoped was a “Can you heal us?” motion.

  He looked at her confused for a moment, then his eyes widened again when he realized how low everyone’s health was. He muttered a spell, and Sydney recognized the familiar feeling of magic seeping into her skin.

  Philip chose the smaller of his two spells. Whether that was because of the mana cost or strategic thinking, Sydney didn’t know, but she was glad of it. A boost to regeneration was far less detectable than a straight health increase, and there was no telling what it would take to set off the demons. It didn’t make any sense that they were alive. It made even less sense that their guards were allowing them to sit up and move around. There had to be something else at work.

  And there it was. Her eyes lit on the three stone circles which surrounded them. Once she saw it, she realized that the demons were all standing outside of the interlocking rings.

  They really had to get out of there.

  Sydney tapped Frederick on the shoulder and pointed. He stiffened, then nodded curtly.

  Summoning circles were bad news. In the demon camp especially, they only meant one thing, and Sydney was not interested in waiting around to watch a demon summoning and be its first meal.

  Frederick gestured to Philip, and Sydney clenched her teeth. If they jumped out of the circle too quickly, they’d be too weak to fight off the demons.

  Philip realized the same thing. He cast his regeneration spell again. It was still the same soft spell, but doubling the cast would speed it up.

  Sydney split her attention between the red bars, which filled with agonizing slowness, and the demons, which remained staunchly immobile.

  Until at last, they were ready to go. Sydney fired off two arrows in quick succession as Frederick charged in. They’d perfected this maneuver long ago: as long as she fired before he charged, and as long as he made first contact, those two shots didn’t count as her turn.

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  Frederick’s axe collided with the demon’s leg.

  Your party has entered combat!

  The world seemed to slow.

  Frederick’s axe cleaved all the way through the leg. Bark-like shards of demon flesh sprayed outwards and smoldered where they fell. The leg fell to the ground, and though the demon’s balance didn’t waver, its health dropped by a third.

  Then the two arrows thudded into its chest, and its health sank below half.

  A little hourglass appeared at the top of Sydney’s vision, and she felt in her bones the start of her five second time limit.

  Double shot. With the assistance of her skill, she nocked two arrows and released the string. They flew true and buried deep into the demon’s neck.

  Another chunk of health, gone. Just a sliver remained.

  Her timer ran out, and Philip sprang to life. He cast Mana Bolt, the basic attack that every mage learned. It was one of precious few attack spells a healer could learn, not as flashy as Firestorm, but it was better than nothing.

  The demon fell.

  EXP +5000

  Philip used his last two seconds to run between Frederick and Sydney, and then his time ran out. He barely made it. It was better for him to be well behind Sydney and Frederick, safe from any direct damage, but the other two demons flanked the group. There was no “behind.”

  Then it was the demons’ turn. Monsters were dumber and weaker than humans of an equivalent level. They received their skills at random rather than being able to choose them and find synergies between them. The flip side was, unless there was a significant disparity in their levels, they took their turns in tandem.

  Both demons charged the group. One went straight for Frederick, while the other targeted Sydney. That was ideal — neither targeted Philip — but it still wasn’t good. Sydney’s armor was better than the mage’s, but it was heavily damaged.

  The demon was smart enough to hit her where it hurt: right in the chest, where her armor was weakest.

  Claws shredded what was left of her chest plate and raked across her skin. They burned where they touched her, and Sydney screamed with pain.

  If she made it out of this alive, she was going to invest in some serious armor. Forget saving for the future; she wasn’t going to have a future if she couldn’t stay alive in combat.

  Her health drained dangerously. She would be able to continue fighting, but another hit like that would kill her.

  The enemy turn faded, and with it went the pain.

  Sydney sighed with relief. Her armor was in tatters, but at least the pain was over. Philip should get another turn before the demons, and he’d give her a boost. Besides that, her regeneration was still running strong. Regeneration was next to useless mid-combat, but even a few points could make all the difference.

  She just had to keep fighting.

  It wasn’t easy to summon a demon. The cost at even the lowest tier was a human soul, and many of the stronger creatures cost more. More souls, or souls with relationships to each other, or any number of nuanced requirements. Raising a demon army was devilishly difficult.

  Pun intended.

  Malachai stood at the edge of the cliff. Wind whistled through the cracks in the mountain behind him and tore at his hair like an angry lover.

  He glared down at the valley below. He had expected to see a demon lord. He had expected to see the bodies of his sacrifices splayed out within the summoning circle, the demon lord feasting on their hearts.

  This one had presented a particularly difficult challenge. It required the light of a full or half moon, as well as the souls of an entire, balanced party: tank, range, healer. The longer they had fought together, the stronger the demon lord would become.

  Finding a party that met the requirements was difficult enough; capturing them was another challenge in itself. It had taken a force of ten demons to bring them in, and the mage had nearly died in the process.

  The summoning should have happened overnight. The team was drugged and left in the circle for the demon lord to devour at midnight.

  And yet - no demon lord. No summoning. The drugs wore off in the morning, and the adventuring party was wreaking havoc on the lesser demons.

  Verrin thought the whole thing was hilarious. “That’s what you get for bringing heroes behind enemy lines!” he cackled. His laughter was high pitched and hysterical. Edged with insanity.

  The doll-sized faerie hung from a chain at Malachai’s belt. He was locked in an iron cage which swung nauseatingly whenever the Demon King took a step.

  “They’re not heroes,” Malachai growled. “Fledgling adventurers at best.”

  Verrin just laughed.

  Not for the first time, Malachai considered gagging the faerie. If the creature wasn’t so gods-damned useful, he just might. As far as Malachai knew, Verrin was the last of the fae to remain in Grimora. The rest had fled when Malachai uncovered the summoning circle and absorbed the Abyssal Thorn.

  Verrin had been… optimistic. Naive? Perhaps he’d hoped to unbalance the scales by remaining.

  But Malachai knew how the fae worked. As a child he’d explored the forests. He knew how to call the faeries, how to dance with them and return whole in the morning.

  He also knew that the fae could not lie and that when provoked could reveal deep secrets.

  Such as how to summon a demon.

  Malachai watched the adventurers fight. It was tempting to step in. A single Deathbolt per adventurer would put a quick end to the battle.

  That would, unfortunately, defeat his purpose. He still needed them alive, and none of his spells were weak enough to allow that.

  He crossed his arms and sighed. Perhaps he’d better think of it as a training exercise. Demons could be taught, albeit slowly. Whichever ones survived this encounter would be better fighters. It would cost a few lives, but as a training exercise, it might be worth it.

  “But why didn’t it work?” he wondered aloud. That was the real issue. It was one thing to recapture the party and try again in two weeks — frustrating but manageable — but what if the problem persisted?

  “Only one summoning per day,” Verrin giggled.

  “I know that,” Malachai snapped. He gritted his teeth. It was the most irritating limitation. The longer he waited to invade the Aurorian kingdom, the more time they would have to prepare themselves. But there was nothing he could do, no way to speed the process.

  The second demon fell, and the party converged on the third.

  “Enough of this.” With a wave of his hand, the Demon King called a group of five to join the fight. He whirled and stomped back to his castle. He had worked to do.