The high-pitched screech comes again. It hits the cliff wall and bounces back against the trees, playing tricks on our ears. “How many?” I ask.

“Too many. Could be a pack.” Sel glances behind us and above the cliff, where the forest continues back toward the Lodge in the pitch black of night. I know what he wants to do, what he’s thinking. He wants to send me running back the way we came, to cross into safety behind his wards. “Go.”

“No.” I set my jaw. “I have Arthur’s strength!”

His eyes flash. “But not his wisdom.” Whatever calculus he’s doing, whatever scenarios he’s running in his mind, they don’t include me. “William, we need Gawain’s power. How much longer?”

William glances at the moon overhead. A quick check of the sky for the power in his blood. “Still a few minutes—”

Sel curses. “Too long.”

“Get Bree back to the Lodge,” William says. “I can handle this on my own.”

Sel’s eyes narrow into the darkness, seeing more than we can—and his face pales. “No, William, you can’t.”

“Selwyn!” Insult flashes across William’s face. “I said I can handle it! Stop being—”

“Oh no…” I finally see what has found us in the woods.

William follows my pointing finger and blanches. “Dear God.”

A dozen enormous, armored, fully corporeal hellfoxes emerge from the trees. These monsters may be lesser demon isels, but they are as tall as trucks. The line of them stretches thirty feet across in either direction. Green, smoky aether rises from their bodies, pluming upward into a dozen clouds with every swish of their scaled tails.

William rotates his wrists once—a sharp snap up—and two shining gauntlets appear on his forearms. “That’s not a pack….”

“No.” Sel grits his teeth. “It’s a legion.” By now he’s gathered enough aether to create a swirling cloud around our ankles—cool to the touch and perfectly in his control—but I don’t know if it’s enough. Sel and I were barely able to fight three together, and they were half the size of these and partially corporeal.

I’ve never seen this many fully corporeal Shadowborn at one time. How much aether have they been able to consume to become dense enough that Onceborns could see them?

The foxes snap at Sel’s ward. Butt their heads against it. Testing it. Ripples of aether appear on impact, fanning out in abrupt, bright circles in the air.

“The ward will hold them, won’t it?” I ask.

As if in answer, the fox directly across from us steps back and crouches low. It opens its jaw wide in an ear-splitting call—and the aether of Sel’s ward begins to flow into its mouth in a stream of silver smoke.