Julatsa boasted almost one hundred and eighty mages, Al-Arynaar and current Julatsans, and almost two hundred of the elven warriors had also still been in the college when the demons attacked. They were still so strong in mind and body. Truly amazing people. So determined, so resolute. They kept the college going through the earliest and darkest days. They hunted, they fought and they survived. It simply did not occur to them that they might be beaten.

The demons were wary of them too, which was the one ray of real hope they could work on. Elven souls couldn’t be taken by mere touch. Dila’heth said their god of the dead, Shorth, protected them.

Whatever it was, it meant that the elves chose to travel without ColdRoom spells when they foraged. And humans like Pheone simply had to trust them when it was their turn to provide mage back-up. She knew how effective they were but their tactics still couldn’t assuage her base fear.

There were six elves with her. Five warriors and one mage, all whispering through the silent street towards the immaculate and high-yielding farm land that had been created on the city’s borders. At one time they had developed a conscience about stealing this food. But when the reprisals for doing so had ceased and it became clear that they were as good as being catered for, that guilt ebbed quickly away.

The paradox of course was that demons still guarded the farm land. They were happy to exact revenge for attempted theft if they could while apparently conceding the necessity for over-supply because theft was often successful. And for their part, the elves were happy to take them on if the need arose.

‘We all have our demons,’ Dila’heth had said. ‘But you have named yours and they are real as well as being that dark part of the psyche we all harbour. Of course they have power over you. They are your nemesis. It is not so with the elves. Our association was never so close. Never myth made real.

‘For you they are the descent. Everything your mothers and your priests warned you about. For us they are a powerful adversary but in the end just an alternate race. They have a place in our legends but that is because they threaten Shorth’s children, not the living.’

‘You’re saying the reason we’re vulnerable is a difference in perspective? ’ she’d asked.

‘State of mind and belief are powerful. The touch of a demon can kill you. It cannot kill us unless our will is broken. Shorth protects us but our souls are bonded into our faith and our race. It makes us strong. You are individuals so you are vulnerable.

‘Humans have never really understood what binds a people. It is a shame for you that the demons do.’

Creeping through gently waving stalks of spring crops, it was hard to disagree with her. The elves had an intuitive understanding of each other. They barely needed to speak or gesture. But she remained ultimately unconvinced of Dila’s reasoning. She, like all elves, held her faith up as the reason for every circumstance. Pheone considered their greater resistance to a demon’s touch was their innate link to mana.

Ahead of her, the elves had stopped moving. Lost in her thoughts, Pheone almost stumbled into the warrior in front of her. He turned and placed a finger on his lips, then pointed to his eyes and out across the fields to the livestock barns. Darkened for camouflage, shapes moved against the walls. Demons. Dila’heth had made it seem such a dramatic name but it was what they were. To humans at least.

The raiding party crouched low in the field, out of sight unless they were overflown.

‘They are few,’ said Kineen, the leader of the group. ‘It is a chance.’

‘A chance for what?’ whispered Pheone.

‘To take breeding pairs,’ said Kineen. ‘We need more livestock.’

Pheone paused, hearing the leaves wave about her head. Ahead, a cow lowed.

‘Couldn’t we have had this discussion before we left?’ she asked.

‘To what purpose? There could be no decision until now. We know you will support us.’

‘You want to steal livestock?’ A nod. ‘And drive them back down the tunnel without killing them and without the demons finding the entrance?’

Kineen managed a brief smile. ‘The animals will not be conscious for the way back. We will deal with that. Four demons are circling the barn. We need to take them all together but we won’t have much time between casting and more arriving. You will have to be quick.’

Pheone blew out her cheeks. Her heart was crashing in her chest and sweat was beading at her hairline. She felt a shiver in her limbs. She only hoped that when the time came, she could muster up the concentration to cast.

‘Just tell me what you want me to cast.’

Another smile from Kineen. ‘Good. And Pheone. Run when we tell you and don’t look back.’

The five warriors fanned out into the field, keeping below the line of the crop. Pheone and the other mage, Afen’erei, moved in behind them. Neither prepared yet. The mana spectrum had to be kept quiet until the last possible moment. After a few yards, the two archers split off left, increasing their pace, hurrying for one end of the barn.

Pheone could just about make out the demons now. Four of them, a little smaller than man-size with wings and tails. Their vein-run skin writhed. Every inch the archetypal figures of nightmare. It was the shape most had adopted on arrival in Julatsa. She presumed they found it easier to control their human flock that way.

‘Hit them when they clear the barn to your right,’ said Afen’erei.

‘Got you.’

‘IceWind and DeathHail are best. Something quick to cast.’

Pheone nodded. She’d have preferred to crush them with a ForceCone but they couldn’t risk the barn collapsing under the pressure.

The three sword elves were running now, feet silent over the ground. They broke cover at the instant the first arrows struck the demons, deflecting their attention. The fact that the shafts couldn’t kill didn’t stop wounds hurting and the demons wailed in pain, shaft after shaft thudding home. They had not gathered themselves to attack before the warriors were on them.

Swords swept from scabbards and the blows rained in. Pheone saw it all in a kind of detached awe. The relentless motion, the speed of the strike. All to a purpose. Swords bit into heads and arms, sliced through wing membrane. Feet thudded into gut, groin and temple. Disorientating, temporarily disabling. The demons had practically no reply. They lashed out with claws and tails or tried to bite. But the ferocity of the elves made mockery of their slight numerical advantage.

Only one made it into the air at all, to be brought down with arrows crippling critical wing muscle. The onslaught was quick but could it possibly be quick enough? Already, Pheone could hear the hoots of alarm that meant the cries of the attacked had been heard.

‘Prepare now,’ said Afen. ‘No sense in delay. They are coming.’

Pheone dragged herself into the mana spectrum. It was unadorned by any casting barring the mass of activity that signified the ColdRoom lattice. She brought together the shape for IceWind, a flowing sheet of interlaced mana strands, glowing yellow with captured energy, just waiting for release when it would tatter in the face of its targets.

Almost at once, the hoots became howls and the hunt was on for those casting magic. The warriors responded, driving demons out of the shadow of the barn and into a pool of moonlight.

‘Break!’ called Kineen. ‘Cast.’

IceWind tore away from Pheone’s fingers, mingling with the slivers of DeathHail cast by Afen’erei. The effect was at once hideous and incredibly satisfying. Where Afen’s spell gouged strips of flesh from the demons, Pheone’s IceWind ignited the loose mana so freed, feeding on it as a FlameOrb did on human flesh, gorging, consuming.

The demons screamed, their voices like those of infants in agony, tearing at Pheone’s heart and dashing her concentration. The IceWind ceased but the damage had been done. Again, a solitary demon took to the air but it was little more than a mass of pure blue flame, bubbling a few feet up and crashing back to earth, wing beating feebly at the ground.