As anguished screams came from far away, more and more creatures kept coming at them.
Poyraz looked at the enemy before him. With his dagger he had torn off the place where the creature's head should have been, but the stubborn piece of flesh had already climbed back up its own body to rejoin it.
Around that time three more creatures emerged from the darkness. Together with the ones Poyraz and Tunay were fighting, the number of masses around the campfire had reached five in total.
Six people against five creatures. On paper they had the advantage, but Poyraz knew counting these things was pointless; the moment you split one in two, the number doubled.
The three new flesh lumps slipping out of the dark advanced on them with squelching sounds, treading through the mud on the ground. They had no eyes and no faces; like so many hungry mounds of flesh, they were simply drawn toward the group's warmth and breath.
When the spreading smell of burnt and rotten flesh mixed with the smoke of the campfire, it seared their throats and turned their stomachs with every breath.
The first to attack the newcomers was Hak. He tried to sever the creature's limbs with his dagger. First its arms fell, then its legs.
The limbs were about to fuse back to the body left behind, when a chain forged from Sezi energy suddenly appeared in the air and swiftly yanked the body toward Hak.
Poyraz was startled for a moment; he had heard of the chain reverie from Hak a few days earlier, but he had neither a clear idea of what reveries were nor of this chain. He was seeing it in the flesh for the first time.
At the same instant Yavuz had also thrown himself at the one before him. Recalling Yalaz's hammer-on-the-anvil techniques, he swung his sword and cleaved the creature straight down the middle. Naturally, the halved creature was already trying to fuse back together before it even hit the ground.
Hak, using his chain, had drawn the body he'd hauled in away from its limbs. For a few seconds the limbs moved toward the body, but when the body was pulled away they changed direction and merged among themselves, forming a smaller creature.
Poyraz felt compelled to groan.
Tunay was still trying to cut the flesh lumps apart. He had resorted to neither Erk nor Yelvi yet; he was fighting only with the pure physical strength his sword afforded.
Yavuz, on the other hand, was swinging his sword with far heavier and stronger blows than Tunay. He had most likely begun using Erk, ignoring that familiar sting that scorched his arms — but even these heavy, fast attacks made no difference in the outcome.
Hak was dealing with two small creatures bearing down on him. One he had pinned to the ground with his chains, the other was preparing to leap onto him.
Behind him, Aylin was getting ready to cast a spell. Erlin had put himself in front of her, trying to stop the creature coming at Aylin.
Just then something happened. Poyraz felt a pain on his skin.
In that moment he realized he'd been focusing too much on those around him, on the team's coordination; he had left his own immediate space completely open. The flesh he'd thought he had struck down and left motionless had already reformed and risen up on him insidiously.
The treacherous creature had approached silently under the din of battle and, with those soft, squelching arms, had wrapped around Poyraz's exposed hand, the part left uncovered by his leather armor.
Poyraz jerked his hand back in pain and pulled back a few steps.
His hand was burning horribly: the top layer of skin had been stripped entirely away, and the red muscle tissue and fibers beneath had begun to show directly. He tried to work out what had happened to his vanished skin. The creature wasn't spraying acid, and there had been no bite or tearing.
When the piece of flesh began coming at him again, he realized where his skin was.
On the creature's dangling arms was a scrap of skin; living, warm, and all too familiar. Poyraz's own skin, peeled away in pain like wet paper, had fused into the creature's body. The creature had literally swallowed a piece of Poyraz and taken it into itself.
"Son of a bitch!" His curse was lost under the din.
"Don't let them touch you!" The shout drew everyone's attention.
When they saw Poyraz's hand, now bleeding, the others regained their seriousness.
Just then an electric crackle began. At first, amid the noise, it didn't draw much attention, but the sound slowly grew louder.
Poyraz shoved the creature in front of him back with his armored arm and glanced behind him for a moment; the parasitic sound in the air had grown even stronger.
When Aylin drew one last deep breath, the crackling folded over on itself, a shrill, metallic sound rang out around the campfire, and a massive bolt of lightning shot from the young girl's hand.
The lightning struck the creature in front of Erlin first. As Erlin drew back in fear, the mound of flesh, not even understanding what had hit it, began to sear and give off a horrid smell of burnt meat.
Before the creature had fully burned, the lightning leapt to another. This time it was the one Yavuz was grappling with. It shared the same fate as its fellow.
The only problem was that Yavuz was very close to that bolt too; the uncontrolled current began coming at him as well. The lightning was about to touch him when Yavuz, on reflex, fed Erk into his legs and flung himself swiftly backward.
The lightning didn't stop. First it struck the one Hak had chained, then the creature Poyraz was trying to tear apart. It was about to reach Tunay's opponent too when it lost its power and vanished in the air.
After barely escaping this deadly attack, Yavuz, out of breath, snapped, "Give me a warning next time."
The weary "I'm sorry" that fell from Aylin's lips went unheard by anyone amid the heavy din.
Tunay turned around; from beneath his long bangs, dripping with sweat, he pointed at the creature he'd torn apart but which was still twitching in front of him and grumbled, "You could've hit that one too."
Just then Poyraz cut the flesh before him into countless pieces with his dagger. He didn't let the flesh merge; he attacked and attacked.
With every swing of his dagger, his skinned hand throbbed inside his grip; gripping the hilt was a punishment in itself now.
While he swung the dagger with one hand, he pushed the Yelvi in his head. He traced the shapes in his body: square, triangle, circle... The open wound made the passage of the energy a degree more scalding. As he turned the shapes his eyes watered; for a moment his bloody palm couldn't hold the hilt, and the dagger nearly slipped from his hand.
When the last of the shapes was complete, he thrust his intact other hand quickly toward the earth. Then the black soil below suddenly rose up and pinned the still-merging pieces of flesh like a claw.
The pieces tried to fuse, but the earth wouldn't let them go.
A few seconds later, the trapped pieces began to wither and turn to dust like ash. But not all of them vanished; only the pieces small enough turned to dust, while the larger ones still strained to break through the soil and merge.
Poyraz turned around, one hand still extended toward the earth.
"I think I've found a solution."
Yavuz and Hak shot him a quick glance. They couldn't look closely, since the lightning-struck flesh had begun to rise again, but that brief moment was enough for them to grasp the logic.
Hak immediately tore his opponent apart with his dagger; each time, he snatched a small piece of flesh with his chain and drew it away from the main mass.
Yavuz tried something more primitive but effective; with the flat of his sword he shoved the flesh he'd torn off hard, flinging it far from the main body into the pitch darkness. As the flesh vanished into the dark, he prayed inwardly that the piece would wither and not merge with another creature.
Tunay was completely out of breath; he had tried Yavuz's method of flinging the flesh far away too, but he seemed to have tired his body far more than Yavuz. Aylin, after that intense lightning spell, could barely move, her knees having buckled beneath her.
The only one who wasn't tiring was Erlin, since he wasn't fighting directly. But he wasn't idle either. Right in front of Aylin, his eyes in the dark, whenever a creature got too close to the caster he cried out in his shrill voice. "On your left!" "Behind you!" He had no sword, but he had eyes; he saw what the group couldn't.
Bringing down those first five creatures completely had cost them several nightmarish minutes. This wasn't the performance Poyraz had expected; it shouldn't have been this hard, they needed to speed up, because they didn't know how many more were out there in the dark.
When the fifth flesh lump too was slaughtered by Yavuz's sword, the group could catch their breath for a moment.
As the smell of rotten and burnt flesh spread like a heavy fog around the fire, a phrase came to Poyraz's mind. That hard sentence the old man had spoken that morning in the square as he chose them:
Dying side by side is not the same as fighting together.
His own selection had surprised him too. It wasn't something he'd expected. He didn't think himself that talented. But that sentence had stirred something in him somehow, and he hadn't objected.
First he said it to himself: 'This won't work like this.' Then he shouted it.
"This won't work like this. We have to fight together. While some of us tear them apart, others have to pin them down or fling them away."
After some nods, they lined up side by side. At their backs the warmth of the campfire, before them the creatures invisible in the dark.
And just as they'd expected, the flesh lumps appeared again. This time there were four.
Yavuz and Tunay stepped forward. Swords rose and fell — without pause, without a breath. The moment one was torn apart, the steel was already on the next. No moment to savor a victory, none to breathe.
Poyraz caught his breath. He channeled the Yelvi, formed the shapes, and channeled it again. The earth began to stir, to swallow the small pieces of flesh.
Meanwhile Hak's chains appeared in the air. The chains flung whatever they caught up into the air, far off. Hak was already out of breath.
A short while later there was neither flesh to tear apart nor any to fling away. They had managed to beat the four creatures in under a minute.
But before they could even rejoice in their victory, the creatures appeared before them again. Their numbers had grown; there were seven, maybe eight.
Faced with this steadily escalating difficulty, he couldn't help thinking, 'Is the old man testing us?' It was something to be expected of him.
But this time the creatures didn't come one by one. Before reaching the boundary of the fire, they flowed into one another, growing bigger as they walked. Eight bodies became four in the middle, then two. Instead of pieces small enough to be buried in the earth, there were now two masses of flesh whose height surpassed Yavuz.
The pair with swords tore apart those that came, the others flung them away. The creatures kept turning to dust. When the number of creatures finally reached zero, they could breathe for a moment.
Everyone but Erlin and Aylin was out of breath. Aylin had finally recovered, but now the others were tired.
The sting of the Yelvi was on top of it all. Poyraz felt his hand beginning to go numb with pain. The Yelvi he'd accumulated within was almost spent. The others were most likely no different.
"How long can you keep going?" Poyraz asked, trying to move his numb hand.
"I barely used any Yelvi, but my Erk's gone and I can't feel my arms," said Tunay from behind his long bangs.
"I can do the lightning spell two more times." Aylin stepped forward a few paces.
Hak murmured. "One more wave at most."
"I'm still fine."
When Yavuz's voice came last, Poyraz's thoughts were not very hopeful. His only consolation was that the old man wouldn't leave them on their own. Or would he? He didn't know.
When the footsteps began to stir the surrounding earth again, they all had to take up their guard once more.
The frightening part this time was that there were more footsteps.
Poyraz narrowed his eyes, trying to see what was coming, but he could see nothing.
At that moment the clouds covering the sky began to disperse. He wondered if their luck had turned.
The light of the two stars and the countless Moons lit the steppe. At last the group could begin to see their surroundings.
"Can we even beat this?" Aylin was trembling.
"I suppose bad luck is following us?" Tunay's voice was flat.
Yavuz and Erlin said nothing, but the expressions on their faces gave everything away.
Poyraz simply cursed.
"Screw this."
Then he shouted.
"Aylin, ready the spell, fast. Once you've cast the first, don't stop, start on the next!"
Aylin could only nod.
"Tunay, Yavuz, Erlin — draw them toward the center. Don't let them get away!"
Tunay and Yavuz stepped up; the little boy hesitated for a moment but accepted it, and he too moved forward.
"Hak, the two of us will bring the ones gathered in the middle closer so the lightning can hit them all!"
Hak said nothing and began readying his chains.
Without realizing it, Poyraz had taken up the group's leadership, and in this moment of chaos no one objected to his resolve; there was no need to, anyway.
As countless flesh lumps flowed toward them from every direction, Poyraz was making merciless calculations inside.
This attack wouldn't be enough to kill them all; the lightning would only slow the wave. Should they run? He looked around, but couldn't see a single gap to break through the encirclement.
"Old man, where are you?" he muttered inwardly.
At that very moment of hopelessness, far away, he saw a pitch-black silhouette leaping and bounding over the gray rocks at an impossible speed.
"There you are."