'What is...?'
The thoughts barely formed in Dust's mind when the roof came apart overhead, all at once, like glass dropped on stone.
CRACK!
Splintered wood and grit rained down in every direction as something as black as a blob of ink plummeted through the gap and struck the priest dead centre.
In the space of a single heartbeat, he was nothing but a glop of a red smear on the white stone.
A bloodied eyeball slowly slid from the side and into the ground with a wet plop.
No one had time to so much as flinch.
Everyone froze in shock for a few second and the church went silent.
Not quiet.
Silent... as though the entire world had forgotten how to breathe.
Just as sudden as the black object came the silence was violently broken by someone's horrified scream.
However, nobody moved.
Not because they were still frozen in fear... no, they were horrified by what they were seeing.
The thing that hit the priest moved.
Everyone watched as the black wings unfolded from its body with a wet, scraping sound, plates of chitin sliding against one another like blades being drawn from their sheaths.
Its body was wrong but everything about it was... wrong.
It looked vaguely like a bird.
Emphasis on the word 'Vaguely'.
It looked like someone had taken the idea of a bird and twisted it until nothing natural remained.
Black feathers clung between overlapping plates of armour. Its limbs were too long. Its body was too thin in some places and swollen in others.
And its face...
Dust's stomach turned.
Rotting flesh hung loosely around a mouth that opened far wider than anything living had any right to.
Hundreds of tiny black eyes shifted across its face.
All of them moved as they stared.
Then came the smell.
Blood. Decay.
Something wet and rotten that reminded Dust of the deepest parts of the black marsh.
His stomach lurched.
The creature lowered its head toward whatever remained of the priest.
Its mouth opened and the sucker inside began to undulate.
Dust watched in horror as it sucked up the blood, chunks of flesh and whatever else was left of the priest into it mouth.
Dust's eyes stretched wide with raw, animalistic horror, his throat locking tight as his legs carried him a stumbling step backward on their own.
Something inside Dust's chest turned to ice as the creature that had crashed through the ceiling spread its black wings and tore the silence apart with a screech that came right from the depths of Hell.
The world around Dust seemed to thin out and recede.
All that remained was the hammer of his own pulse in his ears.
That, and the thing's eyes, hundreds of small, black, and utterly without feeling, fixed somewhere past him.
Something snapped inside him but before he could do anything.
Phil snapped out of it before him.
A roar tore loose from somewhere primal in him as his boots splintered the floorboards, closing the distance faster than a blade could swing.
His arm hauled his sword free of its scabbard in a single motion, and he drove the strike straight for the damned creature's throat without a wasted inch of movement.
Blackened blood scattered as the creature thrashed and shrieked.
It never got the chance to fully take flight before Phil's blade came around a second time, and the head separated clean from the body.
Blood sprayed out shockingly red against the flat black feathers of its wings.
Its eyes glazed over before it even finished falling, hitting the ground in a graceless heap.
"Fuck! Crap! Damn it, damn it all!" Phil's roar carried more fury than relief.
And it did not take long for everyone to understand why.
Wingbeats… Dozens of them, maybe more, rose over every other sound, and his expression paled then hardened into a grim expression.
"Weapons up! We're under attack!" His voice tore through the chapel and out into the yard.
Nobody needed telling twice.
Steel rang free of scabbards in a rising chorus as the guard scrambled into motion, dawn light glinting off drawn blades.
Above the Church, and the entire village, stretching out miles and miles on end, the sky had turned black as it churned with grotesque shapes.
It was hundred of thousands, perhaps even millions of Black Mites, their shrieks drowning the world.
The fighting broke out almost instantly.
Phil's face had gone hard as stone, blade already moving. Above them, a translucent dome flickered violently as numerous holes were being punctured right through it.
"The wardings are failing! Get every villager clear. That is the priority now!"
Then, spinning back, he barked out,
"Dust! On your feet, now!"
"Dust! On your feet, now!"
Dust blinked hard. "W—what just happened?"
"Draw your blade and move!"
The cold grip returned, locking his chest tight again.
He forced his eyes to focus.
Right. He remembered now.
The roof had been torn wide open and something had fallen through it.
Oh.
They were under attack. Monsters were dropping out of the sky and tearing the guards and hunters apart around him.
Despite the wardings, despite everything meant to keep this exact thing from happening.
A hand closed hard around his arm, hauling him upright.
Phil, dragging him forward bodily. "Pull yourself together!"
He sucked in air. "...Sorry."
Phil's palm cracked across his back. "What was all that training for, then?! Move!"
Something in him steadied at that, even through the fear still crawling under his skin. Watching a man die that violently, that suddenly, had knocked something loose in him. But Phil hadn't so much as flinched. If anything, the man just looked furious.
Guess that's why he's the one in charge.
Phil kicked the church doors clean off their hinges and shoved through, and Dust followed, forcing his breathing steady despite the tremor still running through his knees…
Outside, chaos reigned.
The Black Mites moved like creatures possessed by the world's own madness, throwing themselves recklessly at drawn steel, indifferent to being run through if it bought them even a mouthful of flesh.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Dust stood face to face with the real nature of the world he lived in. Blood. Death. No filter left between him and either one.
Guards screamed and fought and died around him in equal measure, blades hacking through the dark mass only to fall themselves a moment later, armour crushed into ruin.
It was carnage, plain and simple.
Hundreds of the things now blotted the sky, thick enough to choke out the dawn entirely, drowning the village in a sickly half-dark that reeked of something ancient and malicious.
Phil scanned the sky and swore under his breath.
At this rate, they'd be overrun before the sun fully cleared the horizon.
He set his jaw, refused the urge to look back, and let the wind carry the stench of blood and rot deep into his lungs.
Then he charged back into it, sword raised.
A prickling awareness crawled up Dust's spine. It was something's gaze, locked dead onto him. He didn't wait to think, dropping and rolling hard to the side on instinct.
The fence behind him folded flat under whatever had been aimed at his head.
He came up already drawing steel, blade ready.
The Black Mite in front of him matched the one Phil had already put down inside.
Up close, it was somehow worse.
He forced a rotten breath into his lungs.
Hunger drove the thing forward, bill splitting wide as it lunged. Dust threw himself sideways at the last possible instant, letting it sail past him, and twisted into a horizontal cut before it could recover.
The blade bit clean through chitin and meat in a single pass.
Blood sprayed hot across his face as the creature let out one final, strangled shriek.
He stared, wide-eyed...The first one.
His first kill.