As dusk slid into night, Zev and all one hundred and eighty of his pack melded into the amber and gray rocks they stood upon. The scent of fear was close. The molochs were following Shawna’s trail as predicted. The wolves would bar their advance through the high pass, hopefully giving Shawna’s company more time to locate the last realm. Zev sniffed the air. He smelled his human pack, the villagers, in hiding and ready to fight if needed. He smelled the autumn spice of decay, the leaves turning into earth as the trees prepared for new growth in spring. He smelled darkness and malevolence. The air was acidic with it. Every pair of yellow, brown, and blue eyes turned towards this new stench of acrid animosity.
These creatures, they were not born of clay and stone like the wolves, not water and soil as the humans, or even lightning and sky as Antares; these were beasts of vaporous thought, more mist and air than solid form, and far more dangerous. The wolves tensed, ready to die fighting. Zev gave a rumbling growl. From the ridge above the town poured a wave of decaying human bodies, and beasts of black fur, burning eyes, and glinting tusks. The molochs were upon them.
There were hundreds of them, then thousands of them, perhaps millions. They oozed down the hillside, then through the town, weaving around buildings like tarry sludge while the villagers hid safely in the forests. Good, the villagers need not fight; at least the humans of his pack would be safe. Then all the wolves bristled. The molochs halted. As one mind they turned their monstrous heads to peer into the surrounding forest. As one they shifted and began streaming towards the trees.
Zev heard a yell answered by a thousand more. Faolan suddenly led his attack on the molochs. The wolves snarled and howled in anger, racing down the mountain to aid their people. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The molochs scattered as the giant wolf guardian leapt into their midst, shattering many of them into nothingness, but there were so many of them. The battle was valiant but swift. The villagers, both men and women, fought with pitchforks, axes, and crude swords. Faolan hacked many of them down, but always there were more. The wolf pack howled, snarled, and rampaged with teeth bared, sacrificing themselves for the sake of the humans they loved and vowed to protect. Yet, no matter how valiant they were, the molochs still swarmed like ants.
Faolan fell, a moloch devouring him from within. His eyes turned red with fury, and his body morphed into something unrecognizable, something dark, and gruesome. His wife screamed, holding a sobbing Mia close. The women and children in hiding had turned for the hills, but the monsters were upon them, snapping, salivating, changing them into what they feared most. Mia fell from her mother’s arms, dropping her fur and cloth wolf. She cried in terror for her parents, for her Ant-aewy, then she too was silenced. Every villager, every wolf, was no more. They were overwhelmed. Zev let out one last desperate howl before his golden light diminished.
The molochs surged forward again, their purpose fulfilled. Over two thousand twisted, gruesome shadows of wolves and people followed with hate in their clouded minds, death in their hands, and fire in their eyes. The monsters continued to flow through the town. Their numbers had swollen by the thousands and thousands of victims during their relentless pursuit across the land. A little wolf doll lay trampled and forgotten in the dirt. It quickly disintegrated into fragments under the flood of shadows and was blown away by the rising wind.