Eight hundred years ago, humanity lost the night.

It was never their natural time, of course. Humans were a visual species. They craved light, gathered most of their information through it, and while they could do without it for a time, or survive without it entirely as individuals, they depended on it for society, civilization, culture. The pale glow of the moon and stars that let nocturnal animals function was not enough, so to endure the dark they brought fire, from campfires and hearths to torches, lamps, and candles, pushing back in tiny increments.

Then came the Nightlord. The master of demons. All of humanity knew the story, of how he sought to drown the world in Eternal Night, and was struck down in battle by the First Saint Ludegert, sealing him away to save the world. The victory had not been without cost, however. The Nightlord's Blue Blood rained down over the world from his wounds, and every droplet wove its corruption into whatever it touched. People, animals, plants, even simple inanimate objects were infused with a force that was never meant to mingle, breeding a new form of life: the fiends. They prowled the darkness, preying upon any human they encountered. No amount of artificial light could slay the fiends; all humanity could do was to lurk away behind walls and gates and pray for the next dawn.

For all intents and purposes, Earth had become a land without night.

At least, thought Gregori Antonov, that was how it had been.

Several decades ago, though, something had changed. No one knew what, exactly, or if they did they weren't saying. Not the kings and presidents, not the priestesses of the Curia, not the blank-faced scientists in their mechanical hellscapes. But it was there nonetheless, a subtle shift, as if some driving presence had been taken away from the Night. As desperate as things were, humans had begun to win, to gain here and there, to drench their roads and boulevards in light and walk fiend-free, above all to dream of a day where the night would be theirs to walk once again.

Or else I wouldn't be out here, he thought. The darkness was cold and cloying, and his weapons gave him little comfort.

He glanced to his left, knowing what he'd see before he looked. As always, Vladimir Konin's face was wreathed in an eager, toothy smile. Action was his raison d'etre, the desire to visit violence on the fiends. Antonov had heard the gossip, that Konin's family had been killed by fiends in his childhood and he was taking revenge, but even after ten years working side-by-side with the man, Antonov had no idea if the story was the truth.

Around them, the other eight men and women of his unit had fanned out in a loose arc surrounding their target, the mouth of a crevice leading to a cleft in the hillside that a nest of fiends had made their home. They'd been tracked back, and now it was time for the humans to strike a blow. Antonov knew any meaningful gain would be more symbolic than tangible; a handful of fiends slain might mean a few lives saved but very little in the larger scheme of things. Rather, it was the act that mattered: taking back even a tiny fragment of the night.

Antonov drew his knife. The blade was edged with silver, fifteen inches long—nearly a sword. It glinted in the moonlight as he gestured. Past Konin, Irina Nazarova raised a metal tube to her shoulder and fired, a spitting, smoking projectile arcing out with a dull whump! of compressed gases released. The fuse-bomb vanished into the crevice, and seconds later detonated with a brilliant flash. Even obscured by the rock walls as it was, the flare was still stunningly bright to dark-adjusted eyes.

At once, a cacophony of howls rose, punctuated by yelps and angry growls at the hated light. As expected, the fiends began to emerge, surging out of the narrow crevice. Antonov's soldiers fired their pistols into the seething mass, taking advantage of the bottleneck so three or four could put silver bullets into a fiend, then reload while the next group took the next fiend. Though the fiends' bodies looked like they were largely made from writhing shadow, Blue Blood sprayed from bullet wounds as if the silver slugs had punctured flesh.

Three fiends fell, then four, then five, but they kept coming with an unrelenting drive. That was the terrible thing about them, the insatiable chaos and violence of their demonic transformation made fear or self-preservation almost beyond them. Once aroused, they were consumed by the endless urge to devour.

Antonov fired his fourth shot, realized there was no time to reload for a fifth, and holstered his gun. Being able to shoot left-handed gave him precious seconds as his blade was already at the ready. Then it was knife-work, stabbing and slashing while fending off swipes of forepaws like clawed hands and snapping teeth set in bony muzzles.

It was ugly, savage business. The yelps and screams of the fiends combined with the grunts and war-cries of the fighters—and more than once their cries of pain as the fiends worked past their guard. Antonov's soldiers were all taught to fight fiends at least two-to-one—better three or four—and yet it seemed that they could not, that the fiends were boiling out of the crevice too fast. Worse, with each step that the soldiers had to give ground, there was more room for the fiends to get out, to escape the bottleneck.

Good God, how many of them are there?

He hacked and stabbed with desperate focus, but Antonov's peripheral awareness told him of the things going on around him. Nazarova going down, he belly torn open by the monsters. The fresh-faced young Rozovskaya writhing as Blue Blood splattered her face, the demonic essence burrowing into her eyes, the membranes of her nose and mouth, and how Konin ripped his knife across her throat to give her a clean death before she could be corrupted into a fiend.

They were going to lose. All ten of them would end here, one way or another, before this hellish army.

A grim satisfaction came as the word "army" crossed his mind. Humanity had risen beyond "prey," hadn't they? They were forcing Eternal Night to wage war.

Even if it is a war we cannot win, Antonov thought as the shadowed tide consumed him.

~X X X~

There was an anger that seethed beneath the skin of Ruenheid Ariarhod every time she walked the halls of her new home. It showed in the sharp, staccato clicks of her hard-heeled boots off the ancient Roman tiles, in the stiffness of her arms and shoulders, in her tight-lipped, intent expression. Ruenheid wore her emotions openly and (at least so far as the less tender ones went) without shame.

The headquarters of the Lourdes Order lay beneath the fallen capital of Eurulm. The city was where Ruenheid had grown up, the seat of her prestigious family's estates and authority, where she had made her memories with her dearest friends. Now it lay abandoned by humans, left to fiends that prowled its alleys, crawled from its canals and lake. She could not help but think that just a dozen feet above her, the cradle of her past lay in the hands of monsters, as it had for the past three years.

One day, she thought firmly. One day, we will sweep these streets clean again.

As always, though, that anger dimmed when Ruenheid walked through the arch at the end of the corridor and into the high, pillared hall. There were no furnishings there, just a large, rectangular pool of water, a lustrous blue in color. The pool was ancient; some days Ruenheid thought it had once been part of a Roman bath, while other days the fanciful thought possessed her that it was some oracular mystery, descending to untold depths.

The room had only one other occupant, a woman with hair as gold as Ruenheid's own that sat on the far side of the pool, her bare feet dangling in the water. Her dress was long and white, leaving her shoulders bare. The strip of dark cloth that ran from collar to waistline then fell freely was sewn with a criss-crossing pattern in gold that made Ruenheid think of the links of a chain, and the way it dipped into the water called to mind the image of some Delphic priestess chained to her duty. It was an image easy to call to mind, emphasized by the very real bindings she wore, the strip of cloth over her eyes, the brass fetters chaining her ankles, the leather strap holding her legs. At a glance, she seemed the very picture of enslaved frailty.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

"Lady Loergwlith, I have come as you asked," Ruenheid said, bowing deeply at the waist. The ghost of a smile played at the blind woman's lips, and Ruenheid blushed, afraid that her formality had somehow made her look ridiculous.

Damn it, why do I have to be so self-conscious? she blazed at herself.

"Thank you, Ruenheid; I know that I can count on you."

"Of course!"

There were those who might have called Ruenheid a traitor. Her family, after all, had given loyal and diligent service to the Curia for generations, and she herself had enrolled in Espheria Academy to be trained as a Holy Knight, one of the front-line fighters against Eternal Night—only to abandon that duty to join the Lourdes Order, the Curia's open rival. One might expect that a girl who so fiercely carried her pride as a noble and a knight would feel the weight of all her forebears' discontent at her actions—but she did not. On the contrary, Ruenheid was convinced that the past generations of Ariarhods would applaud—no, would demand her actions.

"I have need of your sword, Ruenheid. It will be arduous, but if you succeed, it will save countless lives."

"It would be my honor," Ruenheid declared, then winced at how pompous she sounded even to her own ears. Again, the smile danced across Loergwlith's lips.

"Be at ease, Rue," she said, even her chiding carrying kindness.

"I…just want you to know that you can trust me to serve as your knight," Ruenheid said. She looked down and away, unable to meet Loergwlith's "gaze" even though the woman's eyes were blinded and bound.

"As I do, more than I think you know. But it is not the strength of your arm that I need—though that, too, will be put to the test. It is the strength of your heart."

Ruenheid's eyebrows rose.

"I don't understand."

"You will, in time. I need you to go east. There, you will find…"

~X X X~

Stefan Ilyich slammed the wood-and-brass handset of the phone down into its cradle. He took one deep, ragged breath, then two, a faint tremble running through his limbs. There was fear there, and anger, but most of all a savage frustration.

Colonel Ilyich did not like feeling helpless. Indeed, he gave off the impression of being a man who knew no such emotion: tall, strong-jawed, erect posture, close-cut gray hair, and sharply pressed uniform. But that impression was a lie, for like any man, he knew the feeling all too well. As a youth he had proudly denied it, declaring that in the face of trouble or opposition he would win through in the end, believing in his deepest heart that so long as his spirit was pure and his effort unyielding no loss could touch him.

Thirty years ago he'd had that pitiful delusion ripped from him when he'd watched his wife, his Natalya, die beneath the jaws of a fiend. Ilyich had emptied his weapon into the thing as it pounced, and it had had no effect—none, that is, but to spill the fiend's Blue Blood, so that it splashed across the body of their youngest child as Natalya had tried to shield little Sasha from the fiend.

Ilyich still heard the screams when all power, all hope was denied him. Silencing that voice was what had driven him relentlessly, fuelled his ambition for himself and his command for three decades. There was no silencing those haunting echoes now.

He fished in his pocket for a thin black cigar and his gold lighter. The flame shook with his hand as he lit the tobacco, but he took two long, slow drags, the harsh, bitter smoke helping to calm his reeling mind. Better. Ilyich turned, took two quick steps to the table and unrolled a map from one of the several stacked at the edge. It wasn't the one he wanted, so he swept it to the floor and unrolled a second.

There.

He could not trust the hysterical panic of the officer who'd relayed the scouts' reports to him. The facts, yes, but not the conclusions. If there was hope to be extracted, it was in keeping a cool head.

Ilyich had written down the details phoned in to him, and now he plotted those details on the map. Times, places. The conclusion was inevitable. The horde of fiends had already overcome two villages and a platoon of hunters. That fool Belikov had thrown a company of conventional soldiers in their path to no effect at all, as if steel and powder could lay the Night. In two days they would reach the city. Perhaps the defense would hold, perhaps not, but either way the death toll would be horrific. Evacuation was a pipe dream; there was no time to organize—

Wait.

Ilyich looked down at the map, studying the path made by the creatures. He—and the man who'd reported in—had based their assumptions on the fiends following the terrain, but that wasn't right, was it? Here they had crossed right over a ridge line no human force would pass, while there they had turned aside and taken the harder route. But to avoid…what?

No. Not to avoid.

To consume.

These fiends were not waging a military campaign. They were more like a swarm of hungry locusts, driven to the human fodder they craved. They would not reach the city in two days. They would reach it in four, because they would turn aside twice along the way.

He checked the map again, to be sure there was no mistake. He measured the distance along the river, ran through the calculations in his head. It would be hard going, doubtless.

Colonel Ilyich's teeth bit down unconsciously, cutting through the cigar. Hard going, but not impossble.

He spun on his heel, heading for the door. The echoing screams were—for now—snuffed out.

~X X X~

"Damn it to a thousand hells!"

Dr. Katya Travnikova was not what one would call a spiritual woman. That was perhaps an oddity, given that her principal fields of study were the fiends and literal demons of the Eternal Night. But not for her were the pomp and circumstance, the ceremony of the Curia. If there was such a thing as God, surely He was a cold and remote entity who was inclined to leave His children to help themselves, and Katya had no interest in wasting her time on pleas that would go unanswered.

That didn't stop her from wishing the blood sample on her microscope's slide to the deepest pit of flames.

Another failure.

This was what came of rushing things. Of pushing for results before they were sure of the underlying principles. Oh, they had had successes, breakthroughs, even glorious ones, but…

They were dealing with the Blue Blood. There were no easy answers, and the victories were all written in someone's pain and suffering.

She looked up at the six-foot-tall tank, glowing from within from the luminescent green fluid.

"I'm sorry."

Katya massaged her temples. Her aching eyes and throbbing skull were clear signs that she was pushing herself too hard. But what else was there? Like everyone else on the project staff, she'd made her choice. No, choices, even if she'd been too deep in the sunk costs fallacy to recognize them as such at the time. That was a hard trap for anyone to escape, let alone where the "sunk costs" were measured in human lives. And now she really was out of choices. Only success and failure remained.

Except thus far there was no "or," just the bitter pill of failure and inevitable loss to swallow.

The creak of heavy door hinges and the echoing clang of fast-moving steps on the laboratory's metal floor gave her respite from her self-recriminations with another emotion.

"Why are you disturbing me?" she growled, spinning to face the intruder. She was gearing up for a blistering stream of invective, but snapped her mouth shut when she saw who it was. "I beg your pardon, Colonel Ilyich," she forced herself to say.

He didn't so much brush her outburst and apology aside as he ignored them completely.

"Dr. Travnikoka, how are things progressing?"

"I am making progress. I believe that we are on the verge of another sustaining breakthrough." It was not entirely a lie; there had been some productive hints in the prior battery of experiments, even if they had not yet led to anything.

"That is good. I hope it will allow you to conduct the necessary maintenance when the next operation is through."

"I hope so, too. I will keep you apprised of our progress, and let you know when we are ready to proceed."

The Colonel shook his head.

"That is not what I meant. The next operation begins at once."

"That's impossible!"

"It is fact. I need her in Mirny no later than three days from now."

"You can't be serious! I've told you that field operations are out of the question until I've found a way to stabilize the deterioration of her organs. Using her abilities only accelerates the process. She could be irreparably harmed by a field mission."

Ilyich exhaled sharply.

"Then that is the risk we must take."

"Why? What political point is being scored? Which ministers needed a favor to keep funding the Special Operations (Anti-Fiend) Group?"

"This is not about politics!" he shouted, and Katya flinched at the heat in his voice. Ilyich's expression softened at once and he reached out to grip her shoulder in an attempt at reassurance. "I do not order this lightly," he said, making sure by his word choice that she did not misunderstand and think he was in any way asking. "There is a veritable army of fiends moving northward. If they are not stopped, they will reach the capital, and the death toll will be in the thousands—if we are lucky. The only hope is that they will move off the direct route for the purpose of seeking closer prey. In three days, I calculate that they will reach Mirny. That is enough time for Veruschka to get there."

"And then? Alone against an army of fiends?"

"This is why you worked so hard on this project, isn't it, Ekaterina Sergevna? The politicians, the generals, they wanted to create a half-demon warrior for their own purposes, a weapon to hold over other nations, perhaps even the Curia itself, but not you. For you, the half-demon was for one thing only: to kill the Night and all its creations."

A long, ragged breath ran through her. She knew he was right, she knew it, and yet…

"All right," she said. "Three days. We can make it. We get her on the train, have her taken as close as possible, then finish the trip on the ground."

"Taken? Why not just send her?"

"The deterioration of her body is too advanced. If you want her to be at her best in battle, we need to keep her under maintenance until the last possible chance. Plus, if we can get her back into the capsule and under stasis immediately following the battle it will maximize our ability to make further repairs."

"Do you think that will be possible?"

"I don't know. I have no idea of the specifics of the battle or her likelihood of surviving it," Katya pointed out. Information was what she needed. The accuracy of scientific conclusions rested upon reliable data. "But a battle against the number of fiends you suggest will cause the absorption of far too much Blue Blood to be easily handled. The stress it will place on her system will be immense. I have to try to stabilize her as soon as possible and make the necessary adjustments if there's to be any hope of saving her."

"You? You're not a fighter. You can't go into a combat zone!"

"Veruschka is my masterpiece! She's the only successful half-demon we've been able to create. I'm not just going to abandon her. Besides, you know that her death could cost us months of research towards her replacements, to say nothing of the price to field operations. You know that the project committee would back me up on this."

Colonel Ilyich scowled.

"I can't allow—"

"You know it's the best way. We're willing to risk Veruschka to save the lives of thousands, and I should be willing to face risk as well, for the sake of the future. Or what if the next time there is no Veruschka?"

The colonel's upper lip quivered, but Katya knew the man. There was only one decision it was possible for him to reach.

"Fine. Go. But keep yourself from trouble as best you can. Your role is support, not to bloody your hands."

"I will remember," she said. But as she thought of the past, of what had been done already to make Veruschka what she was, all she could think was, How wrong you are, Father.

~X X X~

A/N: I can only hope to have gotten Russian names, patronymics, surnames, and nicknames anywhere near correct, and I apologize in advance for any errors. As for Mirny, I picked that name on the one hand for the fictional town that will be the battle site because there is more than one Mirny in reality, and because I'd read that the name means "peaceful," which if true is suitably ironic.