Life flickered erratically around him. It was like the entire world was thin as a reed, and a distant, howling wind was constantly blowing. Lucas felt like a tree in that gale; still swaying, but much more solid than everything else. The demon’s influence was still hitting him, would uproot him and send him careening into the maelstrom of chaos if he’d let it, but his will had far more of an effect on himself than it had before.

  Aided by Jamie and the lunar mana, he was actively solidifying his existence, establishing himself in the world in a way he hadn’t been able to on his own, when previously he’d had to rely on rage-fuelled determination. He didn’t know what the monstercat really was or where it had come from, but he was fairly sure he knew what it was meant for. Whether it had been born naturally, created in a laboratory, or was simply some freak occurrence of demonic corruption turned against its progenitors, Lucas was almost certain that Jamie’s purpose was to fight demons—it was just incomplete. The who, what, when, where, why, or how didn’t matter to him so much. Not right now.

  Right now, his focus was on the plant life. Valerie wouldn’t let him get any closer to the town, and his only hope of having any effect from a distance was with the magical discipline he’d been cultivating since he found himself in this world. He was no master, not even close, but it was the best he had.

  And when it came to floramancy, the most impressive display he’d seen was the plant network that had covered Pentaburgh. Set up by “Lady” Claire, for decades it had defended the city from all comers, and undoubtedly agents of chaos counted among that number. Lucas couldn’t hope to match the Great Wand’s masterwork right now, but he desperately hoped he could affect some approximation of its effects.

  It was the only plan he could think of, and thus it was the people of Taunton’s only chance of salvation.

  Lucas took deep breaths, focusing on the feeling of the grass and weeds and meadow plants against his back, arms, legs, neck, head. He wasn’t sure how much lying down to give him more points of contact with the vegetation would help, but he was willing to fight for every tiny advantage.

  His plant mana was already roaring through his channels at the absolute apex of his speed, and he was pushing it out into the air as fast as he could, spreading it as far as it would go around him and directing it into every plant in his range. Merging the lunar mana with Jamie and uniting their causes had given him a great boost, but his range still couldn’t have been much larger than fifty metres in any direction. Not even close to enough to reach Taunton from this distance.

  But if things went to plan, it wouldn’t need to.

  Jamie matched every movement of Lucas’ plant mana with the new lunar mana, following his machinations step by step with barely a second of lag. Lucas didn’t know how much the monstercat grasped of his plan, but he supposed it didn’t need to. Jamie knew that Lucas bore the demon ill will, and it needed nothing more.

  The very air was becoming saturated with arcane power. Slowly, steadily, the plants around them were starting to glow a ghostly white, like they’d grown on the moon and been magically transferred down to Aerth. A ring of luminescence was building, with Lucas at the epicentre.

  It was undoubtedly a beautiful sight. But it was only the beginning.

  High above, somewhere beyond the clouds, the true moon watched over them. He could feel the tiniest hint of its celestial mana poking through the clouds, so faint it was barely there. That was fine. As long as the moon’s influence was greater than zero, he could make this work. He hoped.

  When he felt the plants in his range were sufficiently under his influence, with Jamie’s lunar mana piggy-backing on his plant mana, he delved deeper into the memory of the plants. Information unfurled in his mind, a genetic archive of life. There were millions of blades of grass in his range. Thousands of different species of weed. Countless small flowers and shrubs and wild vegetables. His mind flicked through all of them, noting their properties, purposes, and possibilities. Knowledge flooded through his consciousness, and he took it all in an iron grip, mushing it together.

  What resulted was a tangled amalgam of genetic information packed into a tiny space, the mana memory of thousands of plant species inhabiting a place where only one was supposed to reside. Something strained, fighting back against the impossibility. Without his influence, none of these individual plants could’ve held this much information.

  But all of them together, linked? That was another matter entirely.

  In his mind’s eye, he imagined the mana memory spreading out, diffusing over the massive amount of plants currently under his soul’s sway. It went easier than he expected, like the magic itself already knew what to do now that he’d activated the ‘spell.’ Soon, the strain on the mana construct started to fade, and by the time it had fully dispersed, he didn’t need to hold it together at all.

  I have a plant network. Basic, and it currently relies on me, but still.

  The thought was a giddy one. No doubt a manic grin was splitting his lips. It was hard to tell, when his conscious mind was so dispersed through his mana like this. He felt like he was a cloud floating around the outside of his body, connected but diffused. Valerie stood guard nearby, a shining silhouette in the area of his influence, interposed between him and the distant town. Her mana held the same celestial radiance of Jamie’s, but… darker, somehow. Something to ask about later.

  Like this, he could barely hear the screams. It was almost peaceful. Part of him wanted to drift off to sleep and let the moon carry away his troubles.

  But he couldn’t. No matter how tranquil the lunar mana made him, he could never escape the duty he’d imposed upon himself. Lives were in the balance.

  Back to work.

  He had his plant network, or the beginning of it; a rudimentary form of the masterwork that guarded Pentaburgh. Right now, it was little more than an area of potential. If he left it to its own devices now and came back in a year, he’d probably find blades of grass that had grown thorns, and weeds that sprouted petals, and a general mixture of colours and traits that wouldn’t have naturally occurred in the wild. Maybe after clear nights under the light of the moon, his patch of grass would turn white and give off a calming aura to any who treaded through it.

  He needed it to do more than that, and he needed it now.

  When Lucas delved deeper into the newly formed plant network once more, this time he focused on the lunar mana that had been copying his movements from the beginning, courtesy of the creature residing in his soulheart. Lunamancy was quite literally new to him, so this was going to take a lot of improvisation. Trial and error, but hopefully with as little error as possible.

  The most important part of lunar mana, as far as he was concerned, was its resistance to demonic chaos, but it was hard to wrap his head around how it was doing it. It was, at its essence, a passive effect. As Valerie had explained, the moon was an ancient, unchanging sentinel, and thus was the mana it radiated down on the world. It resisted chaos by its very nature, its steady passivity granting it the stability to maintain order against demonic malice. It was a symbol of peace, of tranquillity. Far removed from Aerth and its mortal concerns.

  Somehow, he needed to tap into that ability and make it active, while still maintaining its resistance to chaos. To that end, he focused deeper and deeper until his entire mana sense was trained on a single blade of grass, suffused with the aura of moonlight. Around him, the demon’s chaotic influence still tried its damnedest to warp the world in its infernal image, but this single blade of grass stood strong.

  The moonlight seemed to reinforce it. The blade of grass was just more there than such a small plant had any right to be. A greater presence.

  Oh, he could feel the influence of the chaos. It was much like when he’d first faced the beasts alongside Valerie and the rest of the party, on the first night he’d met them all. The beasts’ screams had messed with his mana pathways, and he’d been assaulted with the horrifying sensations of seeing two different versions of his mana system interposed upon each other; the way his mana system was supposed to be, alongside the tangled monstrosity the beasts’ rudimentary chaos was trying to transform him into.

  The same was true here, when he looked close. It was hard to see beneath the lunar mana suffusing the plant, but there were multiple faint outlines of chaotic mana pathways, changing every second. While the grass’ regular pathways largely followed the blade of grass itself, the chaotic ones looked like wild scribbles. Lucas couldn’t even imagine what the grass would end up looking like if the chaos had its way—and he was confident at this point that he’d never have to see it. The chaotic pathways couldn’t find any purchase, the light of the lunar mana chasing them away every time they tried to solidify.

  “Okay,” he whispered. He felt Valerie tilt her head, listening. “I’m going to try the potentially inadvisable part now.”

  “It shouldn’t place you in any danger,” Valerie told him. She wouldn’t have let him try it otherwise.

  “We’ll have to see.”

  Valerie nodded, and Lucas delved into the plant network once more.

  This time, he was there to give instructions. Both to the plant mana, and the lunar mana. What he needed was far more complicated than what he’d messed around with before, back during his experiments with the stinging nettles, but he’d already established that he could give mana rudimentary commands and leave it to operate without his direct input. Experimenting with changing leaves’ colours as they travelled had proved that long before he’d figured out the truth of the plant network of Pentaburgh.

  But it had to be done. Lucas focused on the lunar mana first, holding that image of the mana resisting chaos in his mind. With a force of will, he changed the mental image, pushing it. Instead of white light trapped in the form of a blade of grace, he forced it to radiate out, to glow, pushing back against the chaos in the air.

  Immediately, he felt the strain of mana rushing out of his body as the construct drained more lunar mana as required. Jamie was up to the task of producing more, but the increase in power needed for just that much was a bit alarming. His mana was moving way too fast through his network. Any other type of mana aside from lunar, and it might’ve burned him from the inside out.

  The pale light on the back of his eyelids grew steadily brighter though, which encouraged him enough that his worries fell to the wayside, forgotten. He licked his lips, his heart picking up.

  “Don’t get too excited yet,” Lucas muttered. “Focus.”

  Taking deep breaths, centring himself, Lucas did his best to hold the shape of the entire construct in his mind. Information flooded into his brain, mapping out a 3-D image of his network. He dismissed most of the finer details, focusing instead on the whole, in abstract. Just as he’d done for the lunar mana, he took the picture of the current state, and imagined it changing, becoming what he wanted it to be.

  He pictured the construct drawing on the ambient mana of the moon, powering itself, growing. He imagined its power radiating out, combatting the chaos.

  And then came the part he wasn’t sure was going to work at all.

  He imagined it growing brighter and brighter, reacting to where the chaos was greatest and advancing against its antithetical enemy. In his mind’s eye, his invented construct pursued chaos like a giant agent of a world-scale immune system. He had it reach out tendrils of lunar mana to other plants, inducting them into the network to become part of the glorious crusade against demonic influence, and where it found living beings affected by chaos, he had it perform the very same cleansing it was doing on him, imbuing the memory of its calming effect deep in the network. It would spread and spread and spread, ever seeking out infernal influence and bringing order to the world, freeing living beings from madness. As long as it had power, it would fight chaos.

  Immediately, Lucas’ capacity to produce mana reached its limit, flooding out of his pathways in an endless torrent. The glow against the back of his eyelids grew so bright he was sure the moon had been dragged down into the atmosphere and was about to crash into him, and at the same time, the amount of Lunar mana Jamie held in his heart was draining away alarmingly fast. The product of decades would be gone in mere minutes, if he let it. He was forced to cut it off—or, more accurately, ask Jamie to—lest he lose access to lunar mana forever.

  His eyes snapped open, and Lucas found himself surrounded by moonlight.

  Lunar mana spread through the plantlife like a slow wave, flooding towards Taunton. It moved agonisingly slowly, but where it moved it grew. Already, it had spread a good dozen metres beyond the original plant network Lucas had created, and it was still going, like a lake that had overflown its banks. Slow as it was, its growth was exponential, inducting hundreds—maybe even thousands—of new plants into its ranks every second. Every moment, it got brighter. Soon, it’d be painful to look at.

  And it was doing all this without Lucas’ input. He and Valerie retreated to the edge of the lunar mana’s range the moment he felt his new ‘spell’ was complete, no longer needing his input. With Jamie helping him, his effective range of influence was about fifty metres, so the area he’d affected was about a hundred metres across in total.

  Standing at the edge of the original circle, the lunar plant network already had to stretch at least a hundred fifty metres ahead of them, and every second it ate up more distance. It was incredible to behold, beautiful in a way no mundane plant could ever match. It radiated pale light, bathing the world in tranquillity and order.

  He could still feel the demon’s chaotic influence, but it was… muted. Distant. Everything was. The construct was working. Just as it had been when Valerie’s moonlight pendant had rested around his neck, the moonlight was picking away the edge of his emotions, keeping him at a placid equilibrium.

  Which reminded him of something. “I’m sorry about your pendant,” Lucas said, his voice coming out far too even for the scene playing out in the distance.

  “That’s okay.” By contrast, Valerie’s voice sounded oddly strained. “But you’re going to have to stick close to me, for a while. Until we get back to Dawnguard, at the very least.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Lucas glanced at her. Her attention was on Taunton, her eyes slightly vacant, lips parted. Tear tracks still stained her cheeks. It was an odd look on her, when he was so used to her unflappable visage, but he much preferred this to the demonic, ghoulish mien she’d gained when her emotions heightened.

  Abruptly, Lucas understood what she was saying. “Right. I guess I’m gonna have to take over the role your pendant previously occupied.”

  Valerie nodded slowly. “It shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’ve become adept at identifying when I need to dull my emotions, and I’ll be sure to let you know I need it. The technique to calm me isn’t a complicated one; looking at what you’ve achieved here, I doubt you’ll struggle to replicate it.”

  Lucas hesitated. If it weren’t for the lunar mana construct’s calming effect, he might not have worked up the courage to ask: “What happens if your emotions aren’t dulled?”

  “Bad things,” Valerie said. She let out a slow breath, shoulders slumping minutely. Her eyelids drooped closed. “I’ll tell you all you want to know, Lucas. But not now. Not when we’re still standing within a mile of a rampaging demon.”

  Lucas flinched, abruptly snapping his gaze ahead. A towering inferno raged at the edge of Taunton, the fire sheep still deep in the throes of their frenzy. He hopes the lunar plant network would be able to help them, as he’d instructed it. There was always the chance that humans and animals would work differently, and the command he’d imbued the mana with would be incompatible.

  The lunar mana had spread further at this point, reaching a good two-fifty metres ahead of them, eating up about a metre per second, but that wasn’t fast enough. Lucas grit his teeth as frustration and impatience spiked, but the emotions were swiftly sanded down by the lunar mana. Frustration rose again, trying to rail against the dulling effect—he wanted to feel something, damn it. But the lunar mana just dulled that too.

  A part of him was tempted to take a few steps back, leaving the mana’s area of effect. But that was a stupid idea. Even here, the demon’s influence wasn’t being fought off entirely. The chaos was merely muted. Taking the full force of the chaos didn’t sound like something he wanted to do, even if he was barely receiving a fraction of the demon’s attention. That could change at any moment.

  Still, it was mildly unnerving to be able to hear an endless chorus of blood-curdling screams and animal fear mixed with a roaring supernatural inferno, and experience no stronger emotion than discomfort. It made him feel like some kind of psychopath. Lucas was a pretty empathetic guy, by nature. This felt wrong to him on a visceral level.

  “Do you think this will work?” Lucas asked with a tremor in his voice. He could just about see the rippling, mirage-like form of the demon as it raised itself up over the town once more, the screams spiking to a crescendo in response.

  “I hope so,” Valerie replied.

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then we run.” Valerie looked at him, and a hint of steel flashed in her icy blue eyes for but a moment. “I will not allow you to step into danger. Believe me when I say that I want nothing more than to rush in there and save every last one of those people. All my heart and soul burns with the desire to rend that demon to pieces.” Heat was entering her voice as she spoke, the lines on her face deepening, but the moonlight emanating from the plants seemed to fill in the lines before they could darken, and her anger abated as fast as it had came. “But I cannot risk your safety. Not with this.”

  Lucas nodded. Swallowed. “So we won’t stay around to try anything else?”

  “No,” Valerie said.

  “Okay.” Lucas took a deep breath. “Okay. Then this has to work.”

  Valerie nodded. “For what it’s worth, I hold out hope your construct will make a difference. There are risks to leaving such an open-ended enchantment unsupervised, and the potential ramifications of this are unforeseeable. If this thing can truly sustain itself, let alone grow independently, who can say where it will end up?” She looked around, her gaze panning over the lunar plant network as it continued to reach towards the town. “I can’t predict what will happen here, how this thing will evolve, so I choose to be hopeful that it will be a force for good in the world.”

  “A magical enchantment that seeks out and suppresses chaos has to be a good thing, right?”

  “We can only hope.” Valerie tilted her head back, looking up at the moon. “Whatever happens, I prefer this to leaving those people alone to die. At least we tried something.”

  Lucas nodded. “I just wish I could do more.” His fists clenched at his sides, then relaxed as the lunar magic worked on him once again. He stared at the rippling form of the demon, taking in its wrongness, its malicious perversion of reality. “I wish I was powerful enough to make that thing regret coming here.”

  “You will be, some day,” Valerie said with gravity in her voice. “But not today. Today, you’ve done your best, and you’ll have to make your peace with that.”

  “Do you speak from experience, there?”

  Valerie sighed. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been forced to concede ground in the face of one of these monsters. Of how many people I’ve had no choice but to leave behind.” She raised a gauntleted hand, her white armour gleaming with the same luminescence as the nascent plant network. “Believe me, Lord Lucas, this is a decent outcome, all things considered. There’s at least some hope.”

  It was then that the lunar mana finally reached the fire sheep. The conflagration had been going out of control, yet somehow hadn’t spread, staying in the confines of the pen they’d been sent to just outside the town walls. He could still see the shapes of the sheep themselves, frantically charging about within their pillar of flames. It reached higher than any building in Taunton, trapped in an area that couldn’t have been much bigger than a basketball court.

  The flames themselves were hot enough that they were nearly as white as the lunar mana, the two blending into each other from a distance. However, with heightened senses granted by Jamie, Lucas could just about see the line where the lunar mana was forced to stop; the fire sheep had burned away any hint of plant life in their pen at this point, and thus the lunar mana had nothing to transfer to. Instead, it was forced to go around.

  Luckily, the firesheep weren’t directly between the spot where the lunar plant network had been born and Taunton, so it was only a minor diversion. Still, it was a delay. One they couldn’t afford when the screams carried on the air were notably lesser in number than they had been ten minutes ago.

  Lucas crossed his arms. His foot started tapping. Nervous energy tried its best to flood through his body, though it was muted by the lunar mana. He tried to strain his hearing to see if he could pick out individual voices among the chorus of horror, but quickly gave up on that—he probably could’ve done it, but it would’ve haunted him to the end of his days, and for little benefit. With a shaky breath, he pushed himself in the precise opposite direction, trying to shut the screams out. Listening to that horrible noise yielded no benefit.

  The thing was, it felt viscerally wrong to just be standing here, watching, waiting, hoping. He knew Valerie had the right of it: they had just as little chance against a demon as anyone else. If they went charging in there, they’d just meet a horrific fate. He knew that. He did.

  But knowing that didn’t make standing by any easier.

  A gauntleted hand came down on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Hold it together,” Valerie whispered. “Just a little longer, and we’ll see whether your efforts have borne fruit.”

  Indeed, the lunar mana seemed like it was gathering speed. Whether that was cause for concern or not fell by the wayside as he saw it start to surround the fire sheep, glowing brighter and brighter to match their raging flame. Soon, it had wrapped around the pen on both sides, and was undoubtedly spreading out around the back, too. In no time, it would have the pen entirely encircled. What happened next would be telling.

  More long, agonising minutes ticked by. His emotions kept spiking and being suppressed, nerves and fears rising and falling. It left him feeling emotionally exhausted, getting duller and duller over time, as if the lunar mana was adapting to his moods and heading him off before he could feel too strongly.

  It felt like hours had passed by the time the lunar mana started to reach Taunton’s walls. The network must have picked up some kind of lichen, moss, or vines at some point, as it immediately started climbing over and through the wooden palisades, luminous white patterns soon covering the wood like veins. A quick check of the plant network’s mana memory confirmed it for him. It had picked up hundreds of new species on its steady advance, though none of them were particularly impressive in their own right.

  The town started to gain a holy, otherworldly feel. At this point, pale light covered the entire field between them and the town, using him as its mana battery. He felt like he was standing on the surface of the moon.

  “It’s beautiful,” he whispered.

  “In other circumstances, I might join you in appreciating it,” Valerie said.

  At that moment, as if in response to their words, the lunar mana finally finished surrounding the fire sheep. The effect wasn’t quite instantaneous, but the fire noticeably started to die down. Over the course of a few seconds, the flames stopped reaching so high, transitioning from a raging spout of fire to a controlled burn. It seemed to sway, as if moving with one great mind, testing the air. He could see the sheep within, still darting around, but there was greater purpose to their movements now. It was no longer a mad dash, but something more controlled, if still fearful. The lunar mana was taking the edge off their panic, stabilising them against the chaos.

  And then something truly unexpected happened, a possibility he hadn’t even accounted for. Before his eyes, a sheep approached the edge of the fire and poked out its head, nosing down at the lunar mana. Then, as if the sheep was breathing it in, a tendril of lunar mana reached up, threading its way into the sheep’s mouth.

  The sheep lit up from within as the lunar mana spread through its body, turning its burning fleece to an ethereal, ghostly shade, more transparent than regular fire. It moved back into the fire, where it chased down its fiery brethren, butting its head against theirs, and where it touched, it spread the lunar mana it had absorbed. When it ran out of lunar mana, it ran back to the edge of the fire to consume more.

  The effect spread rapidly through the rest of the sheep as more of them followed the first’s example, the fire itself gaining that ghostly pallor even as it lowered and lowered, coming under their control as they gained a resistance to the demon’s chaotic influence. It was only as the sound of the flames died away that he realised how loud it had been before, his forced-calm mind tuning out the dull roar.

  Hope flared in his heart. A grin found its way to his lips, and he turned his gaze on Valerie, expecting to find a similar expression of triumph and joy on her face.

  But she was frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucas asked.

  Valerie glanced at him briefly, before turning back to the town. “Can’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “The screams have stopped.”

  Lucas’ heart dropped.

  Suddenly, the effect of the chaos on him doubled, then redoubled, then doubled yet again. In moments, he felt like he was at the centre of a mad storm, the entirety of the demon’s focus bearing down on him. His mana went haywire, slamming from side to side, writhing like a snake thrashing around inside a narrow tube. Phantom mana systems overlaid themselves on his being in his mind’s eye, and it took all his concentration to maintain the true system, the one he knew to really be his. Rage wouldn’t help him here, even if the lunar mana would let him summon it.

  Pain hit him a few seconds later, as if his body hadn’t initially realised what was happening, and only now understood it had to sound the alarm. His entire body network throbbed, then started to burn. A small, keening scream tore its way out of his lips, and he dropped to his knees. He drew all his mana back inside himself, desperately snatching for any respite. Sweat slicked his skin.

  The light of the moon shined on him, but it was no longer the only colour in the world.

  Red. The red of blood. The red of flesh. The red of his heart that felt like it was getting pummelled. It creeped into the edges of his vision like spindly carmine cracks, as if his sight was shattering and letting impossibility bleed in. Even when he closed his eyes, he could still see them. Jamie was thrashing in his chest once more, raging against the chaos despite the moonlight suffusing his very being.

  Something started to build in Lucas, then. Something primal. Instinct guided him, tugging on qualities that civilised, sane humans typically left buried in the distant past.

  The scream still shredding his throat started to turn, going deep. Soon, it was a guttural roar, a sound he never could’ve imagined his throat making. Jamie added his own voices, bellowing his rage from the mouths of a hundred different maws, and Lucas’ defiant cry turned truly inhuman.

  Snarling, he surged to his feet. Something latched onto his arm, and he spun round, ready to tear whatever dared to delay him apart.

  Valerie stared back at him, her face as gaunt and ghoulish as he’d ever seen it. Her eyes shone with malice, the sclera uniform red and the irises black as tar. They seemed to look into him and through him, and they were wide as she whispered, “Get a hold of yourself.”

  Lucas’ top lip curled back, and her grip on his arm turned tighter.

  “Focus on the moonlight,” she said, sounding far too calm, her tone incongruous with her furious, demonic visage. The hand not gripping his arm was trembling. “Remember the tranquillity it brought. Picture the light it shone on the darker parts of your soul.”

  “I don’t want to,” Lucas growled.

  “You must.”

  “Must I? This seems way better than dulling my emotions to me. This way, I can actually fight back against that bastard.”

  “No, you cannot,” Valerie said shortly. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. When she reopened them, the sclera was white once more. The lunar mana seemed to glow brighter, chasing away some of the darkness on her face. “It’s manipulating you. Drawing you closer is exactly what it wants.”

  That gave Lucas some pause. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  “Believe me, I have long experience with what you’re feeling. If you let it overcome you now, you’ll never be able to get rid of it.”

  “I’m tired of feeling afraid,” Lucas said, voice much smaller than it had been a moment ago. Jamie had gone quiet, his attention on Valerie.

  “I have experience of that too,” Valerie said. “Giving in to that temptation doesn’t make you feel better. It never will..”

  Lucas stared at her for a long moment, watching the way the moonlight washed over her. It gave her an almost saintly appearance, if he ignored the gaunt cheeks, sunken eyes, and ghostly pallor. “You gave in to the anger?”

  “Never, ever allow a demon a foothold in your soul, Lucas. Never. Because you can be sure of one thing: it will not let you go.”

  Lucas looked at the town, where the fire was burning higher once more. He looked back at Valerie. “Will you tell me about it?”

  Her lips pursed, some red bleeding back into her sclera. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, as long as you channel the fucking lunar mana right now.”

  Lucas nodded, settling back down into the grass with jerky movements. Valerie stayed standing, looming over him as a silent sentry, but he ignored her. Once his mind was set, stabilised, it was a relatively easy matter, compared to before. Back in the town, the moonlight pendant was an outside phenomenon, forcing calm upon him. Here, the pendant’s effect began inside him, right in his heart. A simple mental request to Jamie, and lunar mana flooded into his pathways. It wasn’t as thick as it had been, with so much of it expended on the plant construct, but it was within him, so not much was needed anyway.

  The effect was immediate, like he’d been burning, and the mana was dousing him in cool water. And it didn’t just put out the metaphorical fire, but soothed the burns with the world’s most effective salve. A buzzing in his ears he hadn’t even noticed was washed away. The chaos-induced mana pathways all faded until they were barely perceptible—none of them could hope to have an influence on him when holy celestial light was coursing through his system.

  Opening his eyes once more felt like being reborn as a new person, granting him an entirely different perspective on the world than he’d held just a minute ago. Now, with the placid rationality if magically induced calm, he saw that trying to fight the demon would be fruitless. It had turned its attention on them when it realised they were contesting its influence, and it had acted to overwhelm the interlopers who were trying to restore order to its rabid chaos. Trying to attack it directly would have been doing exactly what it wanted.

  But it wouldn’t give up after only one effort. “Beasts are coming,” Lucas said absently, as if the problem was a distant thing. They were pouring out of Taunton’s gates. Dozens of them.

  “I know,” Valerie said, reaching down to pick him up by the arm. Her strength was immense, hauling him to his feet like he weighed nothing. “We have to flee.”

  “Do we?” Lucas asked.

  The firesheep were finally moving.