I made Rai demonstrate his Shadow-Meld skill a few more times, carefully watching just how the magic worked, before trying it myself. It felt a little strange, but after trying around for a bit, I managed to get into the shadows, as he did. It added a bit of confusion, as I was unable to make out where he was, even when melding into the same shadow. When we compared notes afterwards, it turned out that while we both had felt a strange feeling of presence, different, more acute, compared to the one I felt anyway when melding into the shadows, it seemed that the shadows were able to hide us from the other.

The obvious next step for me was to move while melded into the shadows, I considered it the next step to understand how I had teleported through the shadows once, but the strangeness of the melding into shadows was enough to cause me to fail. Learning how to meld into the shadows and the continued experimentation gave me a nice boost to my Darkness Magic, bringing it to fifty-three. I would have to experiment with it a little more, but when I consider how, Lenore suggested that both Rai and I looked as if we were about to fall asleep standing up. When she mentioned it, I noticed the exhaustion I had previously ignored and by acknowledging its existence, it gained power over me.

We staggered back to our camp, where Sigmir and Adra were still waiting up for us to finish the lesson. I made a beeline to Sigmir, stripping some of my armour of as I moved, before placing myself on her lap, draping one of her arms around me and putting my head onto her chest, closing my eyes. Then, I knew nothing more, falling asleep as soon as my eyes closed.

It was late morning when I awoke the next day, still snuggled up to Sigmir but she had moved us from the log she had been sitting on, into our shared bedding, making sure both of us were comfortable. That was the first thing I noticed when waking up. The second was that I had gained a nice chunk of EXP, rewarded directly by the system, for poisoning the Centaurs. It made me wonder a little just what was rewarded there but I felt that questioning it wouldn’t help, so I just accepted it. The message also noted that the one responsible had drawn the hate of the centaurs but there was no change to my personal reputation, so I could only guess that it was something that was suspended until the centaurs connected the poisoning and general trouble I had caused them to an individual, namely me.

It took me a second the realise that games were suppüosed to be balanced so, most likely, somewhere, there was a centaur who had given out a quest to “find the vile poisoner” or something along those lines, with me as the target.

If that was the correct answer to the question why I had gained enough EXP to boost me to level 66, then the next step was quite obvious: Make sure that the centaurs had many more reasons to give out quests to hunt me.

“Lenore, do you want to try out how much stronger our ritual magic is with the new ability?” I asked mentally, before even leaving Sigmir’s comfortable, warm embrace.

“It would be… intriguing. The centaurs are weakened right now and in dire need of water. It would be a shame if a sudden weather-phenomena, say a freezing cold winter-storm, would occur, forcing them to choose between going out and freezing to death or drinking the poisoned water. Yes, it would truly be a disaster.” Lenore agreed, snickering as she spoke. Not for the first time, I was reminded that there was a reason why a group of ravens was called and unkindness. But it could be worse, she could be a crow.

“First, breakfast, then, magical mass murder.” I suggested, before looking up and noticing that Sigmir was watching me with an amused expression.

“Did you sleep well, love?” she asked, before easily shifting me upwards her body, to give me a morning-kiss. Maybe both, breakfast and magical mass murder could wait.

It was about an hour later, that Sigmir and I decided to leave our comfortable furs, joining Adra and Rai at the merrily burning fire. The two of them had prepared breakfast, or maybe calling it lunch would be more appropriate and while we ate, I explained the plan Lenore and I had hatched. It was simple, go to the edge of the forest near the camp and find out how big a storm I could summon, with merely my own power. I doubted that it would be even close to a natural storm but at the same time, I had confidence to bring a great deal of pain to the poisoned and weakened centaurs. Unless they had something major up their sleeves, some of them would die, I couldn’t be sure how many, but I would be rather disappointed if Lenore and I failed to murder half their number.

It was early afternoon when Lenore and I had decided on a clearing and started to prepare our magic circle. We had discussed if waiting for the night and using the bonus from my class would be a good idea but decided against it. The sooner we brought the pain to them, the better.

Just like the last time, we used my newly made staff to channel our magic only this time, the plan was to go from zero to hundred as fast as we could, a sprint instead of the marathon-casting me had used last time. The moment we began casting, we joined our minds in the Avatar-state, pumping a great deal of power into the staff, our joined mind helping to merge the different flows of Astral Power into a cohesive force, ready to batter the world.

And battering the world, we did.

Together, Lenore and I set our will against the world and under the weight of our magic, the world obeyed, moving as we desired. The wind around us sprung up as we started to move, fluttering around us and for the first time, it wasn’t us that danced with the wind. For once, we were leading and the wind was following.

Faster, we danced and faster the wind moved, stirred up into a storm, carrying thin needles of ice, sharp enough to draw blood and cold enough to freeze the wound afterwards. I felt Lenore’s elation in our unity, she was revelling in our combined power over the wind, the power to have it blow as we pleased.

I felt soft laughter bubble up in me, as we directed the storm towards the centaur-camp, the wind driving the hail and the cold freezing the wind, it was a marvelous piece of magic. But I also felt that Lenore and I had limits, what we had done was draining us at an insane rate, just the short minute we had taken to stir the local winds into a tempest of sleet, hail and cold had taken almost half of our Astral Power. There was no way to sustain such a working for long. But we didn’t have to, it would only take minutes to shred the centaur-camp, scatter their supplies and savage their people.

We felt the difference made by our new ability, even after unleashing the storm, I could feel it, follow it, even direct it, without needing to directly control it. It was a marvelous feeling, as if we were one with the storm, while keeping our own ego tethered to the body we shared and the magical circle around us.

“What’s that?” I felt Lenore questioned, when she noticed something she didn’t understand so I joined my focus to hers, looking at the same thing she did.

From the central tent, a large centaur had moved into the storm, holding a strangely glowing crystal. I had no idea what exactly it was but there was a small part of me that clenched when seeing it, a strange, foreboding feeling in my stomach. My unease must have been transmitted to Lenore, because she acted on it, pulling back our control, letting the storm rage as it did and it was good that she did.

Despite taking that metaphorical step back, I felt as if someone had hit me with a hammer, causing me to stagger and lose track of the ritual, causing the backlash to scatter the circle around us, break the unity between Lenore and me and give me a savage headache.

“What happened?!” Sigmir asked, crossing the circle and picking me up from the cold ground. I had no idea how I had gone down, but I knew that something had gone wrong.

To make matters worse, Adra’s voice cut through the fog that was clouding my mind.

“We need to go, the centaurs have just left their camp en-masse.” she called out, making my blood run cold while Sigmir simply picked me up, carrying me like a small child as they started to run.