The night wind blew in off the open plain, only to be stopped at the mushroom house's walls.
Anna nestled in her mother's arms, listening to the cap overhead creak in the wind, and slowly closed her eyes.
Her mother patted her back gently. "Sleep. Everything will be better at daybreak."
Her father, meanwhile, was with the other men who had fled the village, all of them thanking their luck at finding a cluster of mushroom houses along the refugee road, so they wouldn't have to sleep in the open.
No one noticed the shadow that slid across the night sky.
Not a bird. A bat. It flew high, circled once, and swept away into the distance.
A scream jolted Anna awake.
She heard someone shouting "Run!"
It was Uncle Hansen's voice, the round-bellied man who always slipped her candies when no one was looking.
Her father snatched up his hatchet and pulled her mother and Anna out of the mushroom house.
In the darkness outside, countless figures were moving, and familiar screams rang out one after another.
Anna hid in her mother's arms, carried farther and farther away, but several sets of footsteps followed behind them.
"Go, both of you!" Anna's father barked under his breath, and dropped back on purpose.
There came a few dull thuds. Then the footsteps behind them took up the chase again.
Her mother clamped a hand over Anna's mouth, found a hole in the ground, and pushed her down into it.
"Good girl. Not one sound, understand?" There were tears shining in her mother's eyes, but she squeezed out a smile for Anna.
The moment Anna nodded, her mother turned and ran in the other direction.
She didn't get far. An arrow punched through her heart, and Anna watched with her own eyes as her mother fell on the distant clearing.
"I saw a kid just now. Should still be close." A demon's voice came from somewhere nearby, and Anna could only press both hands over her mouth and swallow her scream.
The footsteps came toward her, over gravel, over dry grass, closer and closer.
A pair of scale-covered feet stopped at the mouth of the hole. The demon crouched and peered inside.
The hole was pitch dark, nothing to be seen. He reached an arm in and his fingertips touched nothing.
"Think it crawled deeper in?"
Another demon came over for a look. "I'd keep your face out of that opening. That's a Puchi hole. They run deep. If the kid really went in, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. Forget it. One or two slipping the net doesn't matter."
The two demons left, but Anna did not climb out of the hole.
At that very moment, a tentacle was wrapped around her ankle, drawing her steadily deeper underground.
She tried to struggle and couldn't break free.
Stretched out straight, her body just barely fit through the long earthen tunnel.
After who knew how long, the tunnel suddenly widened, and she was deposited in a hollow, landing on a big soft mushroom.
The Puchi that had dragged her there promptly vanished into some other passage.
Overhead was a weak glow: a few small glowing mushrooms.
The underground space wasn't large. Several children were already curled in the corners. Some hugged their knees. Some lay flat. Some stared unmoving at the faint light above.
Anna's eyes made one circuit of the room, and she had just opened her mouth when a boy with mycelium traced across his skin spoke first: "Don't cry loudly. Don't make noise. Everyone is very tired. The great Fungus Lord will carry us somewhere safe. Until then, stay quiet."
Anna could only nod, tuck herself into a corner, and only then dare to cry, very softly.
Time passed. After two more children were dragged in through different passages, an extremely elongated Puchi arrived before them. The boy with mycelium on his face gave a couple of grunts of acknowledgment, then began ushering the other children into the long, ribbon-shaped Puchi's body. Its body was very thin, which let it wrap all the children inside itself and still thread its way through the underground network.
It was a tight fit. While the long Puchi was moving, Anna could hardly shift her body at all.
But there was no feeling of suffocation, and she never knocked against anything; the soft mushroom flesh soaked up every bump in the road.
A long while later, the long Puchi finally burrowed up out of the ground, arriving outside the Mushroom Capital.
Soldiers were standing watch nearby. The moment the long Puchi surfaced, they hurried forward and lifted the children out. Clearly, Anna's group was far from the first.
"Damn the Empire!" On the Mushroom Capital's high wall, Farr looked down at Anna and the others and swore under his breath.
He understood exactly what each child brought here by tunnel Puchi meant: countless dead left behind.
And the Mushroom Capital had taken in nearly a thousand such children!
To force Oath City to divert its defenders, the Empire had sent detached squads to keep raiding the regions with no real defenses left, and they were hunting refugees as they went.
And right now, beyond using the Puchis to save the few children small enough to fit through the network tunnels, there was nothing anyone could do. Even the Mushroom Capital itself hardly counted as safe.
"We can't look to Oath City. All of humanity's hope is concentrated there. No reinforcements will be coming from that direction. The reinforcements the Mushroom Fortress promised. How long until they arrive?"
"Two days," answered Mirabelle from behind Farr.
Farr nodded. "That should be in time."
Yet that very evening, a demon army appeared at the edge of sight.
"This fast?" Farr's face turned as ugly as a face can turn.
Within the demon ranks, Prince Darean's expression was no better, and not because of the solid city defenses in front of him.
He was deeply, profoundly puzzled by the Demon King's orders.
Darean was no new-generation vampire like Sigmund, the kind who, before the Demon King's return, could only learn about their ruler through historical documents doctored by Mortis until truth and falsehood were impossible to tell apart.
He was one of the vampire elite who had actually lived through the Demon King's reign, who had seen the Empire in its full glory with his own eyes.
Which was precisely why he, more than anyone, could not understand this command.
What worried Sigmund's generation was the emptied rear, and the Mushroom Fortress driving into it.
What worried him was the Demon King's order: leave none alive.
The Demon King was not a bloodthirsty tyrant. At least, he never used to be.
Darean even remembered that before that human Hero destroyed everything, the Empire's final agenda had been how best to reduce the hatred its many races bore toward humans, to pave the way for one day bringing the south into the Empire's map by peaceful means.
He had attended those councils. He had heard those debates with his own ears.
The Demon King had sat at the head seat, listening patiently to every faction's arguments, and when he did speak, it was to say things like "dissolving hatred requires our correct guidance," and "brute suppression will only backfire."
How could that Demon King order a slaughter?
Darean did not understand. The Demon King since his return was every bit as composed, every bit as wise as before. So why choose a course this radical, a course that could only be called endless trouble in the making?
Gazing at the Mushroom Capital ahead, he made up his mind: when he returned, he would ask the Demon King in person what the thinking truly was.
Behind him, the runes on the great monolith glimmered and dimmed, drinking in countless souls that no ordinary eye would ever see...
(End of Chapter)
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