The men slept fitfully in their tents.
The night crept and stars coldly reflected overhead occasionally providing inanimate life to a sword buckle left lying outside.

The campfires were reduced to embers hidden in the wood. The stew was empty.
The patrol, of six men, stood guard. Two by two, one group watched the road. One watched the north and one watched the south. They did not speak for fear of breaking the unnatural silence that engulfed the encampent.

Rest, as much as could be had, descended upon Aldren’s men.

In the darkness of the morning, just as the sun started to peek and the shadows began to grow, something began to grow.
It congealed, pulling shadow and darkness together, solidified by the recognization of the sun’s light, the nothing gained form.

First small, it grew large, perhaps just a little bigger than a man. First one, many soon followed. They were birthed from the shadows of tents, jugs, and horses. Their bodies were transformative, only vaguely defined by what had given them form.

The men on patrol were unaware that they had become mothers. Their six shadows rose, not from the ground, but from the place between light and earth. That was the place shadows dwelled. With strands of dull gray, they wrapped around the necks of the men. Sharp protrusions pushed through their backs, through bone, through muscle, through fat, and exited the skin on the other side.

Each of the six men slumped before they could raise an alarm. Held upright, only for a moment by their necks, the shadow people tossed the bodies that brought them forth aside into the forest.

The thuds and snapping of twigs woke Grubs. At first, he shrugged off the noise and turned over in his cot. They were just normal morning noises. No more. No less. But, there was something about the sounds. Something heavy. Something finite and they were not followed by additional sounds. His brain awoke.

Grubs fingers closed reflectively over his mace as he stood quickly and looked out of his tent.

All around him, murky shades exited the tents. He froze. Michael, the boy who cared for the horses, — or what was left of Michael, was tossed in front of him. Michael’s head rolled away, removed by… by something… that was feasting on his torso. Blood dripping to the ground in fat droplets shining in the newly rising sun.

Sylas, Josh, and Hadden, men he grew up with, lay strewn about. All with a look of surprise and terror cemented on their faces. Pieces of their bodies were being devoured or cast aside, sharing the same quick fate as Michael.

Further down, a couple of men had woken. The feast of the silent assassins did not go entirely unnoticed. But, those men quickly succumbed to their own offshoots. Their terror was more prevalent. Although they did not know what was happening, they knew what was coming.

Grubs’s mind sparked. For some reason, he was the lone witness to the death that had descended on the camp. There had to be a reason. There had to be an intelligence behind the massacre. There had to be a reason why he was not dead. Or, rather, wasn’t dead yet.

There had to be some selective intelligence behind this attack. His mind backtracked and rethought the sentence. This wasn’t an attack. It was a slaughter. It was a quick, quiet, and bloody slaughter.

Aldren.
Grubs knew he had to get to Aldren.