The soldier beside Beorn drove his sword through the creature’s forearm at the grip point. The flesh split under the pressure but did not come apart cleanly.

That was enough for him to pull his wrist free. The skin across his wrist had tore in three separate parts where the multiple small fingers had pulled it apart. He pressed it against his coat and held position.

Harr took the fourth creature from the side. His sword went into the upper front of its body at the point he had taken as a weak spot, and the barricade creature went down, its limbs pulling the barricade forward as it fell.

"Hold it! Push it back!"

Two soldiers drove the barricade back.

The fifth and sixth came through in close succession. The fifth reached the barricade and was stopped by the front rank. Two pistol shots and sword work followed.

"Fire!"

It went down across the top of the barricade, falling backward into the passage side, its corpse adding to the stack developing across the staircase mouth.

The sixth used the height that stack provided. It cleared the barricade three inches faster than the fifth and came over before the nearest soldier had raised his pistol. The impact drove that soldier back into the man behind him.

"Down! He’s through!"

Both went down. The rotation pulled both men clear before the creature could follow up, and two replacements stepped forward. One drove his sword through the upper front at the kill point. The creature went down.

"Forward! Close the gap!"

The engaged soldier’s left ribs would not serve him anymore. He went to the wall.

The pile at the barricade was bigger by the seventh creature. The fluid from the dead had spread across the library floor.

"Watch your footing!"

The boots of the man to Beorn’s right made a distinct sound each time he adjusted his footing in it.

Harr ordered two soldiers to clear the pile in the gap between the seventh and the eighth.

"Clear it! Move!"

They got one corpse off the top before the eighth appeared in the passage, and they resumed position.

The eighth and ninth came fast. Both were dealt with. The eighth by pistols, the ninth by sword work after it got through the first volley.

"Reload! No, blades!"

But the ninth’s limb caught a front-rank soldier in the face before it went down. An open-palm impact. His nose spread sideways and the blood came out at once.

"I’m hit!"

He stepped back and did not return to the front rank.

The tenth creature used all its limbs on the walls and floor simultaneously. It cleared the barricade over the pile before the front rank had fully reacted, its mass driving into the line at the near side.

"Above it! It’s over!"

Wex had been in the rotation that brought him back to the first rank for this emergence. His thigh, the one that had been cut to the muscle in the warehouse district and had never fully shed the stiffness, was a half-step slower than the rest of him. The creature’s forward limb caught him across the neck as it came down.

The crack it made was short and fast, and Wex did not make any sound in response.

"Wex!"

Two soldiers pulled the creature off him. They drove swords into its upper front and midsection from two directions, and it stopped moving.

"Finish it!"

Wex was against the wall. He was not breathing.

A secondary limb from the same creature, still moving after the creature itself had stopped, extended along the floor toward Beorn’s position at the right wall.

"Still moving! Watch it!"

Beorn moved back, and the limb found the chair he had set upright against the stone. The multiple small fingers closed around the chair and pulled with the continuing contraction of a limb that had lost the thing directing it. It scraped across the stone and disappeared under the pile of dead at the barricade before anyone could move for it.

The engagement continued.

"Right side! Breach!"

Harr intercepted the monster before it reached the soldier behind him. He grabbed it with his off-hand and drove his sword through the creature’s upper front with his dominant arm.

The secondary limb in his grip was stronger than the twist allowed for. The creature went down and the limb went with it and Harr’s off-hand went with the limb. The hand broke into a direction it should never be possible.

Harr pulled free when the limb slackened. He bite his lips to contain the pain and moved his off-hand arm to his side and adjusted his sword to one arm.

Godric moved him back one position from the barricade’s absolute front.

"Back one. Rotate!"

Three words and a gesture to the soldier who stepped into Harr’s place.

The barricade had no pistol ammunition left. The last shots had been fired against the eleventh and twelfth creatures.

"No powder left!"

Every soldier in the front rank was sword-only. The rotation pool was visibly smaller than it had been at the engagement’s beginning.

A creature cleared the barricade’s left side by going up the wall rather than through the breach. It came off the wall toward Godric’s position. Godric was one step back from the front rank, calling the rotation.

"Left wall! Incoming!"

The creature’s leading limb reached forward.

A soldier came off the wall to Godric’s right and drove his sword through the creature’s upper front from the side before the grip closed. The creature went down.

"Got it!"

The forward limb, carrying its inertia through the full arc of the reach, made contact with Godric’s jaw and neck. He went back one step and caught himself on the wall. He stepped forward again.

"I’m fine. Hold line."

The small pressure releases through the floor had been present throughout the engagement. Three came in close succession in the engagement’s later stages, each one strong enough to make the standing soldiers be pushed back.

"Floor’s shifting!"

The crack at the staircase passage lip had reached the ceiling. Two new fractures had opened in the library ceiling plaster, running toward the room’s center.

Then the creature sounds from below stopped.

The silence of it was ominous in a way the engagement itself had not been.

"Why’d they stop?"

The guttural sounds had been continuous since the barricade went up. Their absence changed the room in the space between one breath and the next.

Then it came through the floor, through the stone, through the bones of the building, into the chest before it reached the ears. Low, drawn-out, something being torn apart from the inside, coming from no direction and every direction at once.

"What is that-?"

It was felt in the ribs and the jaw and the back teeth before it arrived as sound. The soldiers who had never heard it stopped completely. The ones standing beside them stopped too.

"Move! Don’t freeze!"

The staircase passage broke down. The stone at the lip dropped in sections into the room below. Cracks ran outward from the expanded opening across the library floor in radiating lines.

"It’s collapsing!"

Two sections of floor stone at the dropped out of sight.

The limb pushed through.

Pale, membrane surface, wet-looking, the masses beneath pressing outward as it moved. The diameter where it forced through the passage was wider than the opening had been before the stone fell.

"Back! Back!"

Where it pushed through, the floor and dropped. The wall to the left of the passage entrance broke from floor to ceiling.

The limb’s skin carried secondary appendages at irregular intervals, each one at the scale of the full creatures that had come through the passage. They were already moving.

"More of them on it!"

One reached toward the barricade. One extended along the floor. One reached upward toward the ceiling fracture above it.

Along the upper flesh, eyes were distributed at irregular intervals, each one approximately the circumference of a large man’s fist, moving independently of each other.

"Eyes... it’s covered in eyes-"

Some oriented toward the militia. Some toward the ceiling. One toward Beorn.

The main limb came to rest against the barricade. The shelf and the desk went across the library floor only the mass coming to occupy the available space.

"It’s pushing through!"

One course of stone and plaster from the ceiling above came down across the passage entrance area. Dust from the impact spread through the room.

Harr was already moving the front rank backward. He did not need an order for this.

"Fall back! Now!"

The secondary appendages on the limb’s flesh were reaching into the space the militia was moving through.