Sitting in the snow, after draining the bandits of their Astral Power, Vitality and ultimately life, I was getting a little queasy. While I had acted, I had been in a strange fudge-state, almost like a bystander, driven solely by my desire to save Lenore but now, in hindsight, I was a little appalled by my actions. Not necessarily the killing, that would be hypocritical, but the intimate way in which I had drained them.

Shaking off those thoughts, I focused inwards, taking note of the roiling mass of blood that I had ingested and of the power still in my system, that I forced towards Lenore and her Hallow, to prevent it getting used to fuel my growing hair. I started poking my senses to Lenore’s Hallow, still unable to truly get inside without her help, which was not forthcoming at that moment.

Finally, the pain coming from her abated somewhat, it was still there, but more muted. At first, I was scared that it meant she was losing grip on her existence, but then thoughts started flooding over our bond, not in the usual, formed and formulated manner but chaotic and jumbled, making them hard to understand and even harder to follow. What I managed to understand was that she was hanging on, wounded but still there. And that she needed some more power, not necessarily Astral Power, but something.

Right at that moment, my stomach clenched again, reminding me that I had ingested what would become miasma, the favourite food of Nethersprites and not something one should eat. To my understanding, it was some sort of the opposite of Vitality, the essence of rot and decay, but I wasn’t firm on that, it was just my current idea of it.

Reaching inside me, I started to grab hold of the roiling energies within me, trying to control and corrall them, with the insane idea that maybe Lenore might be able to use them. As I did, my stomach started to revolt, telling me that I was an idiot. Pressing on, I dragged the revolting mass of death and rot through the magical channels holding my body together, ignoring the feelings of disgust that caused, as if I was drinking raw sewage. It was not fun.

When the mass got to Lenore’s Hallow, I let it seep inside. I was remembering the way we had started to filter out the Ice-tinged Astral Power and was using it now in reverse, forcing something that wasn’t pure Astral Power inside, hoping that it would work as I hoped.

It was a tough, sloughing process, dragging the breaking down vitality through my body throwing it bit by bit into Lenore’s Hallow and after some time, I was no longer able to go on, my mind was just too raw, too exhausted.

Returning to the outside world of Mundus, my stomach gave another clench and there was nothing I could do to stop the revolt, nothing but bend over on my knees and emptying everything I had taken in back into the snow. Black, dead blood, mixed with rotting miasma splattered into the snow, revolting to look at and even worse to smell. If I hadn’t been in the process of throwing up everything in my stomach, seeing the disgusting mass would have made me sick anyway. By the sounds nearby, I was not the only one, but there was no way I could look up to see what was happening.

I felt a weight on my shoulder and Lenore landed in the snow next to me, looking very much worse for wear, her body expelling things I didn’t want to think about on both ends. I noticed that she looked a little different, not quite as she had looked before. But before I could think of it further, biological functions took over again and more pressing matters came to my mouth, pressing up from my stomach.

It took far longer than I had ever expected, even if I was only throwing up bile towards the end, my body revolting against the abuse I had subjected it to, reminding me that some things just should not be done. I was quite sure that it had worked in this particular instance, but I was also sure that it had been an incredibly bad idea. Not a stupid idea, it had worked after all, but a bad idea nonetheless.

After I had started throwing up, there had been some strange sounds, moaning, wailing and the sounds of Sigmir’s weapon striking something, Finally, I was able to crawl away from the mess I had just expelled, grabbing some clean snow to wipe my face and regain a semblance of composure. With that done, I looked around, noticing that Adra and Sigmir had dispatched a Nethersprite that had been attracted by my actions while Rai had lost the contents of his stomach, thanks to the vile substance I had expelled.

“Are you alright?” Sigmir asked, looking very worried.

“I’m still standing.” I told her with a wry grin, even if it wasn’t really true, I was resting on my haunches, after cleaning my face. She just shook her head, not looking convinced, but when another Nethersprite appeared, she was able to vent her worries on it.

I, on the other hand, focused on Lenore, finally taking in what had changed about her. Her head was completely white now, her beak, her feathers, everything. Her eyes were the exception but even they were changed, previously, they had looked, well, normal, plainly black eyes but now, they looked fathomless, drawing you into a black void.

Walking over to where she was sitting after her own sickness, I gently picked her up, feeling her trembling body.

“That was not fun.” I said, gently, so only she could hear me. “Are you alright?”

“I’m not sure. But thank you, getting shot is not fun.” she answered and a remnant of the feelings she had after being shot flowed through our connection, the pain, the despair, the knowledge that she would die. It had been a mortal wound; even a spirit beast could be slain, and she was not a particularly physically inclined one. But the forms of spirit beasts were less dependent on physical characteristics, or rather, there was a direct link between their physical form and their essence, at least to my understanding. It was how they were able to form Hallows and retreat into them. How else would a wolf the size of a pony be able to merge into someones arm without adding more than a coating of soft hair or how would a raven much larger than my head be able to live within one of my eyes? But with her physical form impaled on an arrow, even after retreating into her Hallow, Lenore had been dying, the fact that my body was depleted of Astral Power not helping her regeneration.

I placed her on my shoulder and we shared more information, amongst them a surprising fact that I had not expected. Lenore had, on the boundary of life and death, managed to cross the first divide, maybe because of the strange quality of the decaying vitality I had fed into her Hallow, maybe because of the experience, neither of us could say for sure. But she had managed it. That information prompted me to look into my own log, and I was pleasantly surprised by what was written there.

Grey Orc died You gain 1300 EXP. For killing an opponent without a Traveller in your party, you gain Bonus EXP . . . Nethersprite died You gain 200 EXP. For killing an opponent without a Traveller in your party, you gain Bonus EXP

You reached Level 60.

You gain one point Intelligence and one point Intuition from your class, Lunar Sorceress.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Dual Blade-Mastery [31/100]

Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Magic [50/100]

I had levelled to sixty and once I spent the points I got from that, I would have thirty Intuition, likely giving me some nifty special ability. But what caught my eyes was the ability I gained thanks to Lenore.

Companion Ability gained You gained the Companion Ability: Raven’s Calling The Raven’s cry spreads the shadow of death. Magic cast in unison with your partner carries the power of death, unbinding the souls of those affected.

It sounded incredibly powerful, even if I wasn’t too sure what it exactly meant. It could mean something simple, for example a small damage bonus using some sort of Death-Damage-type, similar to the simple Cold-Damage I could cause with some of my spells, only that I doubted that many things had death-resistance, contrary to the almost universal prevalence of Cold-Resistance I had encountered, undoubtedly a feature of the environment. It was so bad that I hardly remembered that I had those spells, defaulting to the simple measure of impaling enemies on shards of ice.

But, Lenore’s ability could also be something less predictable, like a chance that one of our spells would cause instant-death, maybe depending on the enemy. That would be a little annoying, most of the spells we used in true unison were mind-magic spells and with those, I didn’t always aimed for death.

But experimentation would hopefully clear that up. For now, I had a feeling that moving on would be prudent.