Ronin looked at Abster incredulously and said, "What the hell are you talking about?!"
Looking sadly into the light, Abster said, "They travel only by darkness...so it's difficult to make it out at first...but I caught a glimpse of one when I pointed a flashlight at it. They're dead people, trust me. At first it seemed like just random people, some are harder to tell because of the way their skin starts peeling, and some of them are just skeletons...but after a week or two...people I knew started showing up in the hordes. People I'd thought taken by a guild or dead in an alley somewhere. They don't like the light...I don't know that it hurts them...but it deters them, so I kept this place lit...but Guildless territories are the worst maintained in the city...lights go out all the time...and now more people die when they do."
The slamming on the door stopped and Silas sat down, breathing slightly easier when the door was simply torn from its hinges, the ice shattering like it hadn't been there at all.
From beyond the glow of the light, what appeared to be a dark hand slowly made its way into the room, unimpeded by the light.
Expecting it to take some discernible form, Ronin was surprised when the hand simply remained darkness, unlight by the lamp light. It reached for Silas, silently, and Ronin yelled, "Silas MOVE!"
Turning to him, she said, "What?!"
It had taken less than a minute in total, for the door to be torn away and the hand to reach her, faster than even Ronin could have reacted unless he'd known what was going to happen.
It grabbed her by the throat and she began to scream, her words unintelligible at best. Lifting her into the air, the hand of darkness began to pull her to the door and Ronin yelled, "Activate: Speed!"
The world slowed around him as the Aether in his body began to race to his legs, sharpening his mind as it did. Thinking rapidly, he knew he had no idea what could stop this seemingly intangible arm of darkness, all he knew was that light worked on the creatures.
Moving to the lamp, he began rearranging its components and attached it to a hilt he pulled from his inventory. Holding it like a sword, he switched the strength to maximum and its light blasted into existence, the light so bright that it seemed to exude physical presence humming ominously in the gloom.
Moving faster than the eye could track, Ronin leapt at the arm and cut at it, his estimations correct, and smiled in relief as the arm withered and dropped Silas to the ground, rapidly pulling back into the hallway.
Soon afterward, the creatures began trying to force themselves into the room, but Ronin met them at the door, cutting a swath through them, carving them into small pieces and clearing a path. As soon as he moved past them, however, and the light left their bodies, they rose again, their bodies reforming and encircling him.
Sucking his teeth, he pulled a pair of specially designed glasses from his inventory and put them on, tapping in a sequence of codes on the lamp.
As he finished the sequence, he yelled, "Cover your eyes!"
Lifting the lamp to the air, he slammed it down, light blade first, into the ground and for a brief moment it seemed as though the very air lit aflame.
He heard the screams of the creatures as they were struck by the light, so bright that it left spots in his eyes even through the glasses, designed to block out light in a way as to imitate blindness.
They screamed louder, clearly in pain, and turned to ash, an air current through the room picking them up and whipping them back up the stairs.
His body returned to its normal speed and he rubbed his eyes as he walked back into the room to find Silas laying on the floor and everyone crouched over in pain.
Scalpel, the only one who had heard him scream apparently, rubbed her eyes and walked over to her, checking her vitals.
"Looks like she should be fine, more or less," she said, watching Silas slowly come back to her senses.
Looking at Abster, who was now standing again, Ronin said, "What is going on in the Guildless territories, Abster?"
Sighing sadly, Abster said, "When you guys can, sit down. If you want to know what's going on, we have a fair bit to work through.