Grimward

Gloom rose up over the curtain wall. Formless tide gave way to shapes that they could barely pick out in the dim light. "Looks heavy tonight, people. Compassion up front." Their leader's amplified words echoed along the bastion.

Someone without context might have mistaken them for ragtag defenders making their last stand, with their apparent disorganization and motley raiment, but their ease had more to do with confidence. They turned from their ad-hoc conversations to face the darkness, colourful tchotchkes bouncing and jangling.

The tide fell and they set to work. They seemed completely unphased by the twisted shapes clawing at them. With easy assurance, they worked in small groups to pull apart the attackers and peer more closely at them. After each diagnosis was made, they would retreat to a niche—as designed for by the battlements and defended by their comrades—with the isolated malcontent, and establish an intense and individual connection. Within moments, the shade sloughed off the critter, and they handed her or him gingerly back down the wall, to a network of ancillaries.

The task seemed absurdly big at first, their impact on the roiling volume utterly negligible. And it would have been—but their actions were fomenting strange things. Big things.

They worked steadily toward areas where the gloom was blackest and thickest and tightest. As they undid the lynchpins which affixed those places, the morass began to unravel. Recoverees were passed back up the wall, small but bright, and their efforts far surpassed those of their primaries. They could dive headlong into the mass of the tide, their work leaving long streaks of glowing embers behind them which lit up the night.

Casualties were few, but they were keenly felt. A rotund, beatific protector, reaching too boldly into the fray, saw something which froze her spirit. Darkness raced along her and into her heart, and she grew limp as her eyes dimmed. The attackers subsumed her quickly, and she wasn't seen again for many months.

Hours passed. Fatigue threatened to drain the last of the light's fighting reserve. They were making clumsy mistakes and taking unnecessary blows—the casual ease they'd shown at dusk had given way to desperation and fear. The wall had not been breached, but darkness still lay thick on the land out to the horizon.

And then the sun rose.

Its first scintillating rays melted huge troughs in the gloom–sea. It seethed and surged, creatures seeking the respite of shade, but time was not on their side. A final mountain was crested and the full majesty of pure sunlight fell on the land, and all darkness was replaced by searing brilliance.

The gates to the gleaming citadel swung open, and a tide of shimmering white spilled forth from it, each timid helper finding a fearful child stripped of its cloak of shadows, and filling it generously with warmth and love.

The next night, as seen from a high enough vantage, it was clear: the tide was turning.