Circling the Cyth clearing took several precious minutes, each one bringing the moment that the Bayne would sacrifice the next victim that little closer.

Thankfully, Verdan knew that this type of ritual would take some time, so he had a few moments to prepare. Still, he didn't know how fresh those bloodstains were. Those few moments might expire at any moment.

It also didn't help that some cyth were wandering in and out of the clearing, making it that much harder to get to the other side without being noticed.

A rustling from up ahead made Verdan freeze mid-step, a pair of cyth emerging from behind a small thicket of trees while dragging a dead deer.

Both cyth were humanoid with long curling horns sweeping up from their forehead and exaggerated bestial features like a goat. Likely these had been humans, but they could also be animals corrupted by the energies given off by a ritual like this. It was hard to tell, and it also didn't make much difference at this point. There was no going back once they were like this. Abyssal energy was tenacious once it had a hold on someone.

Waiting for them to drag the deer well past him, Verdan crept through the undergrowth until he was at the rear of the building with the two guards. He could see now that there was a definite passage leading underground, right where those two guards he'd seen before were posted.

The entrance was built into the side of the building and looked to be little more than a packed earth tunnel. The guards were bestial humanoids, just like the first two he'd seen, but these had filed down their claws and were holding spears that were tipped with a jagged blade meant to draw as much blood as possible.

'Aer,' Verdan whispered, visualising a gust thumping the door on the front of the building so that it rattled in its frame. An echoing bang and rattle from that direction cut through the air and caught the attention of the two cyth.

The guards looked at each other before turning and heading that way. The two cyth spread out slightly, levelling their spears as they looked around the front of the building for what caused the sound.

With both guards gone, Verdan edged carefully out of his hiding place, keeping low as he made his way to the tunnel. With a final look around, he headed down into the darkness.

'Disir,' Verdan conjured the softest magelight he could, affixing it to his staff as he held it before him as both a makeshift lantern and a ward against danger. The soft grey light drove back the darkness, revealing a fifteen to twenty foot long tunnel that led to a wooden door. As he came closer, Verdan saw that a heavy iron bolt was on his side of the door, sealing it closed. The bolt mechanism was covered in rust and looked poorly maintained. Any attempt to open it would be dangerous without precautions being taken. The last thing he wanted was to draw the guards down here with a squealing door bolt.

'Tawel.' Verdan split his attention further, portioning off a part of it as he'd been trained to back when he'd been in the academy. It was a difficult mental juggling act to maintain multiple spells, but it was essential for any wizard who wanted to survive a battle. His latest spell formed a bubble of sound suppression around his staff, dampening any sound in the local area.

Reaching out and pulling the bolt across, Verdan heard a faint squeak, little more than a murmur thanks to his spell. The resistance from the handle as he pulled it across let him guess just how loud it would have been otherwise. It was definitely a good job he cast that spell.

Keeping both spells active, Verdan gripped the handle and heaved back on the door, slowly dragging it back across the floor to let the light from his staff enter the room beyond.

A number of muffled moans and groans greeted his ears as he stepped inside, the suppression spell making them into soft whispers of pain. A dozen or so people were bound and lay wearily on the floor. His entrance woke them, but they were unable to do anything other than recoil from the sudden light in the room.

'Help, please, help us,' one of the people closest to him cried out, the spell muffling it down to a hoarse whisper. To Verdan's relief, they were speaking Imperial Common, just with a strange accent that he didn't recognise. It looked like they had won the war after all, not that it really mattered.

Putting his finger to his lips to silence them, Verdan leaned his staff against the wall next to the door. Binding the suppression spell to the staff as well, Verdan walked to the other side of the room, where he was outside the area of effect.

Kneeling at the first person he came to, Verdan saw a young man with a bruised face and a pale, unhealthy look. The reason for his poor health was soon revealed when Verdan examined the ropes that bound him. They were made from what looked to be threaded cyth hair and imbued with a healthy dose of abyssal energy.

The presence of such a concentration of corruptive energy against the skin would cause discomfort, pain and illness over time. Not to mention how it would interfere with energy manipulation and spell casting. The imperial academy used a similar situation to teach wizards how to cast when being afflicted with outside energy. Verdan would be able to cast when restrained like this, but it would be an intensely unpleasant experience.

'Thank you, gods bless you,' the young man whispered as Verdan undid the knot on the ropes and threw them to one side, absently wiping his hand on his cloak as he did.

'Thank me by freeing the others. You should regain your strength now you're away from the corruption.' Verdan gave the man a gentle push to one of the others as he moved to the next person himself. The man had given him a strange look at his accent but did as he was told.

One by one, all of the bound people were freed from their restraints. It was only as Verdan started to walk back to his staff that he saw a final form curled in the corner, covered in filth and excrement.

Each of the men and women he'd freed so far had blonde hair. The shades varied, but the basic colour was the same. From what he could see, this last person seemed to have black hair, though that could well be due to the filth that was caking them. Still, the difference piqued his interest, as did the fact that none of the others was moving to their aid.

'No, Master Sorcerer,' one of the liberated men stepped in front of him with a worried expression as Verdan started towards the corner. 'She's a witch, a foul creature who no doubt was the cause of this situation herself.' The malice in the man's whispered words stunned Verdan. He'd fought against witches in the past, but by and large, they were beloved by the common folk, being far more in touch with the land and nature than the average spellslinger. He also had no idea what a "sorcerer" was, but now wasn't the time to argue semantics.

Fixing the man with a stern gaze, Verdan waited until he was out of the way before walking over to the witch. She was beaten and bloody, clearly tortured by the cyth and damaged in mind and body. Checking her over as gently as he could, Verdan scowled in distaste as he found three different bindings of cyth hair, one around her neck, one around her wrists and the final one around her ankles.

Concerned, Verdan moved her hair to check and cursed softly. Faint black lines could be seen around her neck, a visible mark of the corruption eating away at her. She was at the borderline of what he could save, anything more, and he'd have been forced to kill her himself.

Burning the bindings free with a slight application of magic, Verdan took a deep breath and centred himself. He needed to act now if he wanted to save her.

'Iacha,' Verdan spoke softly, holding a hand to her face as he envisioned healing and soothing energy flowing through her to isolate and purge the corruption. Thankfully it was only the start of the corruption taking hold, so he could destroy it before it could become permanent.

A wave of exhaustion hit Verdan as the spell took hold. The drain on his magic from this one spell was equal to everything else he'd cast since he woke up. He knew why, of course, it was his poor visualisation mixed with a broad scope effect. Thankfully, Verdan had the Aether to brute force the situation like this. Otherwise, she'd be dead.

Reflecting on his magic, Verdan realised that he hadn't circulated his Aether at all since he awoke. Even worse, his gathering spiral had decayed and broken down without his oversight, putting his Aether draw rate at that of a non-wizard.

The gathering spiral was an essential thing that all wizards were trained to do, to draw in Aether. After a time, it became second nature, and he could only blame the confusion he'd felt on waking up for not starting it again.

Turning his mind's eye inward, he started to push and pull on the ambient Aether in his body, sending it moving throughout him in a very loose spiral that culminated in the core of his being. By pulling the magic from his extremities into the centre, he would draw magic in from the environment more quickly and focus more aether in his core for use.

With the spiral created, it was a simple matter to partition another part of his mind to keep it running. When he had more time, he would work to compress and tighten the circle, which would speed the flow of magical energy and improve the benefits he received. He was nowhere near in danger of running out of stored Aether, but it would be foolish to go any further without setting up the spiral.

'Thank you,' a soft voice whispered, drawing him back to the world around him as he looked down into the blue eyes of the now awake witch, his hand still on her cheek.

'Not at all, rest for a few minutes and recover,' Verdan said kindly, helping her sit up before moving back toward the huddle of people at the centre of the room. 'Now, who here knows how to fight?'

'I do,' one of the men stepped forward, his face and arms bearing a multitude of scars, fresh and old alike. 'I haven't the skill you do, but I am a fire enhancer.'

'I can fight as well,' a woman said from the back of the group before Verdan could answer. 'I am an air and water manipulator.'

'Frankly, I don't understand what any of that means, explain?' Verdan said, confused in the extreme by their statements. There were lots of ways to manipulate magical energy, but the terms they were using were foreign to him.

'It means we can channel the elemental forces of the world, like you,' the first man to speak said with a frown that was mirrored on the faces of everyone else present.

'Okay, well, you two do what you can do when we head up. Try to coordinate with each other to be as effective as you can,' Verdan said with a shrug, noting that their confused looks only got more pronounced at his instructions. Suppressing a building headache, he turned to the remainder of the group. 'Right, any of you know how to wield a weapon at all?'

'We are guards at the village. We know spears and can brawl a bit,' two men stepped forward, their faces alike enough that they had to be brothers. Verdan could see the muscle on their arms and the strength in their build. They'd do for what he had planned.

'Why didn't you announce yourselves when I asked for fighters?' These people weren't making his life easy. There was no time for him to be repeating himself to get the information he needed.

'We're not fighters. We have no Essential Essence,' one of the brothers said with an embarrassed expression. The way he said it was almost as though he was ashamed, which made no sense to Verdan at all. He'd known these people for mere minutes, and he already wanted to pull his hair out.

'Right, moving on, what're your names?'

'Tim and Tom, sir.'

'Of course, what else would they be. Great. Okay, you two stay behind me when we head up, I'll get you a weapon each, and then you guard the rest of them while us three forge a path out of here.' He gestured to the two self-proclaimed sorcerers as he did. Noting how everyone but those two seemed relieved, while the two sorcerers looked more confused than ever.

Before he could start to work out what issue they had with his plan, the door to the room swung open, and one of the cyth guards walked in. Its eyes went wide, and it shouted something that was, thankfully, muffled by the suppression spell on the staff.

The moment of shock at the scene it walked in on was enough for Verdan to throw an arc of compressed air at it with a slash of his hand, 'aer!'

A crescent of shaped air flew across the room like a chill wind, slicing the Cyth Lai's throat with a spray of black blood.

There was a pregnant pause that hung for a few moments before the fire sorcerer rushed forward and claimed the spear that the cyth had been holding, picking it up and grasping it with the easy competence of a veteran fighter. Verdan had intended to equip the two brothers with the first weapons they came across, but he wasn't going to argue at this point.

'Grab the body, drag it in and out of sight,' Verdan ordered the brothers, who quickly scurried over to grab the body and drag it into the room.

As soon as they were clear, Verdan shut the door once more and motioned everyone back. There was an opportunity here.

Verdan waited patiently by the door with another spell primed and ready to go, his patience rewarded when the door opened a minute later and the second guard angrily stomped in. A point-blank blast of pressurised air ripped most of its throat out and sent it to join its comrade on the floor.

Snatching up the spear it carried and throwing it to Tim, Verdan turned to the others 'Tom, you get the next spear. Everyone else, it's time to go, but I want at least two of you carrying the witch, understood?' He glowered at them until two people moved to gather up the witch's form. She'd lapsed back into sleep almost straight away, not surprising given how much corruption had been forcibly pushed into her body.

Leading the group out of the room and starting up the tunnel to the surface, Verdan kept a watch for any more cyth that might appear, the two sorcerers a step behind him as he advanced.

They almost made it to the surface without issue. Verdan was all of ten feet from the entrance when two cyth stepped inside, their forms framed by the daylight behind them.

The speed spell from earlier still enhanced Verdan's reactions, so he snapped off a quick air spell at them. A spike of compressed air hit the cyth on the right, drilling straight through into its chest.

A moment later, a spear flew past him to catch the second cyth in the chest, cutting it off before it could call for help.

The fire sorcerer dashed forward to retrieve his weapon, moving with the kind of speed that only magic could provide. A small voice in the back of Verdan's mind noted that he hadn't heard the man utter any words of power to cast a spell, but now wasn't the time to ponder such things. A few hurried steps brought him to the lip of the tunnel, letting him see the surrounding cyth start to realise what was happening and raise the alarm.

'Niwlla,' Verdan spoke, letting the sound suppression and magelight effects fade away as he held a hand out and released a vast plume of fog into the area. The heavy fog swirled about as it flowed out to cover the exposed area between the buildings. It rose a good fifteen feet in the air before Verdan released the spell. Once he did, it started to settle, dropping down and spreading out beyond the initial area. Spells like this had a high cost initially, but now it was in place, he was free to move his attention elsewhere. For now, he would just keep the speed effect active. Verdan wanted to conserve Aether where he could.

'Aer Torr,' Verdan used a slight variant on the spell for the arc of compressed air. This one was sharper and packed more of an edge to it. He always felt odd saying that there was an edge to air, but it was true nonetheless.

The arc of air rippled out through the fog, sending ripples of motion out into the rest of the foggy area that formed whirling vortices in a frankly beautiful effect. The dark outline of the horned Cyth Lai he'd aimed at crumpled as the projectile struck it, nearby cyth crying out in alarm as they saw it fall.

'Now, move,' Verdan hissed at the others, motioning in the opposite direction that'd he'd sent the spell. The treeline was directly behind the tunnel entrance. If they could reach it, they would have a better chance of getting away.

The two sorcerers were already on the move. The man was heading forward at a more normal speed than before. His eyes were always on the move, however, and he moved to engage a pair of cyth that came charging around the side of the building.

The woman, meanwhile, was moving forward in a more stealthy manner as she made a series of gestures and seemed to take control of a section of the fog. A fifteen-foot diameter area of fog condensed into a tight sphere around her, obscuring her completely but leaving a hole in their concealment. Several cyth caught sight of them and started charging their way, braying hunting calls as they came.

The area around them was thinner now, making it easier to see them and increasing the rate at which the whole fog cloud would decay. She had effectively ruined Verdan's plan to get away without a big fight.

The dense cloud of fog that represented the woman started to steadily move away from them, abandoning them without a second thought.

Verdan cursed her mentally but had no attention to spare right now. More and more cyth were responding to the hunting calls from the few that had seen them. The male sorcerer was still locked in combat, leaving just Verdan and the brothers to protect the rest.

'Tyn!' Verdan made a grasping motion toward a nearby cyth, yanking it forward and across the ground to him. 'Aer!' A blast of pressurised air sent it crashing down as it tried to rise, clawed hands grasping at its throat as it dropped the spiked club it had held. Cracking the creature across the temple with his staff to knock it out, Verdan kicked the club over to Tom, motioning for the brothers to start taking people toward the trees. At least both of the brothers were armed now.

A flash of darkness out the corner of his eye made Verdan whirl and pull his staff up in front of him, 'ast!' A blue half-dome appeared in front of him, rippling in place as a lance of dark energy slammed into it and exploded in a cloud of inky darkness. The Cyth Bayne had joined the fray.

Holding the shield up, Verdan kept himself between the civilians and the rapidly organising cyth. A few more streaks of darkness came out from the thinning fog, but they lacked any real degree of accuracy. Two of the attacks struck Verdan's shield, while the rest flew off into the trees. He could only hope that one hit the fleeing sorcerer in the back.

Verdan kept in between the cyth and the captives as they moved further back, but his attack spells and all of the movement had banished the majority of the fog. He could see the Bayne's slightly taller and more muscular form now, its every step announced by the rattle of bone charms that were hung from its horns.

Half a dozen cyth came charging from one side right as the last of the group was entering the treeline. Verdan turned to attack them but was forced back in position as the Bayne unleashed a series of low-power attacks at the people he could see. Each one would do little to Verdan's shield but could badly injure or cripple one of the people he guarded.

The group of ex-hostages realised that Verdan couldn't protect them from the oncoming creatures and immediately panicked. The two holding the witch threw her to the ground and ran, almost all the others doing likewise as they scattered from the oncoming cyth like rabbits before a fox.

The only two to hold their ground were Tim and Tom, their faces pale but their expressions determined as they stood their ground. Verdan wished that he could help further, but the Bayne was still releasing a seemingly endless series of weak lance attacks, keeping Verdan's attention entirely on him.