Finde woke to a sharp snap echoing inside her head. Something beside her companions had crossed the boundary of the group’s campsite. She leapt up, dagger in hand, glinting in the high moonlight.

The embers from their fire still smouldered, struggling to drive away the darkness of night. Still, Finde found it was easy to see, with the moon bright as a second sun. The fields around her were bathed in an eerie blue-grey twilight plagued by shadows. In all directions, barley rustled and bent as unknown shapes teemed and surged toward them. She tensed as the motion grew more frantic and noisome.

Slayter, awake and on guard, gave a bellow that rattled Finde’s ears. Good enough to wake the others, she thought, though she worried about Theo: he slept deep and solid as ancient stone when the moon shone unblemished down on him. One night soon after the four had met, the thin man had slept through Slayter chopping firewood ten feet away.

Looking over to their paladin, Finde spotted Slayter swinging his greatscissors at a figure with a flair of plumage sprouting from its top. It gave a pained squawk as the sharp metal blades parted and snapped closed on its leg, sheering its clawed foot off entirely in one fell snip. It stumbled to the ground and Slayter slammed a heavy boot down on its thrashing head. Finde heard its beak gave a sickening crunch, its hooting abruptly cut off.

In her moment of distraction, one of the feathered creatures slammed into her back, giving a loud, angry honk as it tore at her robes. Pain blossomed across her back and she threw herself backwards, winding herself but crushing her attacker under her.

The creatures weren’t the oversized chickens she had assumed at first glance. They wore feathers and beaks, and seemed to communicate only through bird-like hoots and screeches, but their limbs were thin and spindly, their frames humanoid in shape.

Rolling off the sharp tangle of feathers, limbs, beak, and claws, Finde’s gaze darted around the campsite. Two of the bird people were circling Slayter, trying to flank him as they lashed out with clawed boots and short, hooked knives. Another pair were harassing Mother Brandy, still horizontal on the ground. Spinning and swirling her warhammer around her, she searched for an opening to scramble to her feet, but her assailants left her without a window, bombarding her with an endless stream of pecks and scratches that Brandy could only avoid by frantically rolling backwards, forwards, and sideways. At the edge of the campsite, Theo swung his scythe’s blade, disconnected from its handle, in blind swings, a sinister longsword’s arc cutting wicked curves through the stalks. His slashes weren’t connecting , until he dropped low and made a cut parallel to the ground. Another furious squawk fell into sudden silence.

Something zipped through the air once, twice, then again. After each sound, a strangled hoot. Was there something else hidden in the sheaf besides what had beset their camp?

More rustling behind her. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her back, Finde crawled up from the stamped ground and readied herself. Despite the fighting behind her, she knew keeping her back to the fields would only lose her more blood. She waited, crouched and ready for any movement. Her free hand twitched and she twirled her fingers, gathering arcane energy into her left palm. A ball of skarvodeen light began thrumming in her palm, its burning sepia beginning to stream light between her outstretched fingers, sparks of neon blue, green, and red dancing along her fingers. Squinting through the spell’s light, she kept her eyes focused on the stalks spread out in front of her.

Her patience was rewarded. A beak lunged toward her, and she released the bolt of magic from her hand, bringing her dagger’s point up in last defence. However, nothing met her blade’s curved edge: the creature’s head and beak had been blasted clean away, leaving a charred, ashen stump as the tallest part of a headless body stumbling to twitch in the dirt at Finde’s feet.

“A chicken without its head,” Finde giggled to herself, adrenaline sharpening her to a flickering edge. This moment of private humour was cut short moments later, as an unseen beak speared into her side. Claws raked at her legs, sending Finde screaming and crashing to the ground. A monstrous figure hooted in triumph, looming against the sky as it leapt up to come crashing down on her. Its claws screamed through the air toward Finde’s face, but at the height of its leap, its direction changed. Finde hadn’t heard the zip and whistle of the arrow’s flight, but saw it impale the bird’s head, knocking it perpendicular to crash to the dirt.

Finde rolled away and looked around in blind panic, but the fight was drawing to a close. Theo had closed on Slayter’s opponents, and the pair had left half a dozen dead bodies scattered in their wake. Brandy was on her knees, bloodied and grimacing over two dead of her own, viscera-drenched warhammer clutched tight. In front of the cleric stood a handsome boar, blood-slicked and wild-eyed as it tore at the nearest body in front of her.

As the mage watched, Theo darted toward the last standing bird-shaped figure, lunging high. The bird person ducked out of the way with a fretful squawk, putting it right in line for Slayter’s metal jaws to close around its midsection, bisecting the creature. The pair stepped back, panting and looking around for the next threat, but there was none.

Finde let out a sigh of relief, slumping to the ground. High above the death-littered campsite, the moon hung high and bright, looking peacefully down over the field as if it had not just played host to such a violent dream. The campfire’s embers still glowed; not five minutes had passed since Finde had woke.