She, Stev, and Jicks had all picked the same target. One of the strangers went down, well feathered with arrows. She picked another, but something like a bubble had suddenly shimmered into existence around him, and the arrow she loosed literally bounced off.

Not good!

Her next internal curse was one Amily would not have approved of, as she switched to another target, only to find all of them surrounded by those same shimmering bubbles. Fear—of the energizing, not paralyzing sort—galvanized her entire body.

She dropped her now-useless bow, but everything was happening much too quickly to properly react, as four of the five men shouted something in unison, the air opened up in front of them, and out stepped four—things.

She almost vomited when she saw them, they invoked such complete revulsion in her.

They were the color of rancid butter. They were vaguely human in form, but that was where the resemblance stopped. They were naked, sexless, and their hairless heads were mostly mouth. The mouths were full of needlelike teeth. They were muscled in some obscene parody of a carnival weightlifter or wrestler; their arms were longer than a human’s, their legs shorter, and hands and feet ended in claws as long as Stev’s middle finger. And almost as soon as they appeared, they launched themselves into an attack.

Oh, gods. We’re all going to die.

Abi drew sword and dagger, hoping against hope that at least one of them would be of some use, and knowing the thing had reach on her. Unless she was extraordinarily lucky, it could lacerate or grab her before she could reach it even with the sword. Her body tensed to throw her out of the way in a desperate dodge, but the thing was faster than she’d thought and it was going to—

—bounce off the shimmering bubble skin that suddenly appeared between her and it.

The thing clawed and bit at the barrier, to no avail. Everything it tried slid off. It even backed up and rammed its shoulder into the protection that had saved her, but it just bounced off again.

That didn’t seem to make any difference to it. It continued to raven at her, a mere double-armlength away. As Stev had said, the things clearly weren’t too bright. It had a target, and it had fixated on that target.

I guess Korlak found something that works against demons and is a shield. We might survive this! If this shield stayed up, she could just ignore the demon and go straight for one of the Mages—

But then, the thing opened its mouth, howled right at her, and the terror began. But this time, she had the dagger in her hand, and instead of rendering her helpless, the terror remained within bearable levels. Barely, but she could think and move, which was better than nothing!