With Rai having broken the second Divide, there naturally had to be testing. It was one thing to test his abilities outside of combat but a whole different question to use them in actual combat, even simple sparring was enough of a difference.

And so, we decided on a second day of camping and rest, letting Rai try out some of his new tricks. Testing his weapon-enchantment was somewhat simple, Sigmir volunteered, with Olivia and myself standing ready to clean up any damage. The effect wasn’t weak, causing necrosis around the wound but against an opponent of Sigmir’s Vitality, it was nothing more than a nuisance. In addition, the ability to pierce magical shielding, like Olivia’s barriers and even weaken the effect of conjured, physical obstacles, like my Ice Walls remained. It was difficult to compare just how strong the effect was, but for now, the assumption was strong enough, when he managed to shatter a ten centimeter thick wall of Ice. Breaking a similarly thick wall of Hard Ice took him a few strikes, but given that it took Sigmir just as long, if she used her red, empowering Aura, it was quite the feat.

We even dared to do some very careful testing with his Wraith-Form and even his teleport, trying to see what happened if he ran into someone with the ability to disrupt the magic. Finding out the results of such disruption in the middle of combat was unadvisable, and so, simply in an exercise of caution, we went ahead.

Even if I only disrupted his Wraith-Form, forcing him back into the physical world, he described it as being run over by a herd of deer, while getting knocked out of a very short range teleport was described as being struck by a bear. On a physical level, I was intrigued that the disruption caused bruises to form all over one side of his body, as if he had been subjected to a brutal, physical beating on that side, the side my disruption originated from. A part of me wanted to study more, but after we established the effect once, Rai was no longer willing to even test the effect.

At the end of the day, we decided that just testing his abilities amongst us wasn’t good enough, that we needed to find something that he could go wild on. With Lenore searching from the air, we quickly found a nicely sized group of undead, maybe some hundred-fifty that we could destroy.

Unlike our previous efforts, we didn’t start with a large-scale area-of-effect attack using Lenore’s recently acquired skull, instead, I got the task of opening things up. Given that the undead were milling around on one of the slopes of a wide valley, we had approached from below, past experience giving us a good idea how close we could get before they would react to our presence. Just that, that they had a very distinct range of their response, and their almost binary modes of existence with an obvious switch from careless, idle movement to focused, aggressive and ready for battle made destroying them so much easier, at least for the weak undead.

Staying outside their response-range, I conjured a sheet of Ice, covering the ground before liberally sprinkling it with Diamond Dust, creating a wonderfully slick and treacherous surface they would have to cross. In addition, I conjured up a couple walls, nothing fancy or overly sturdy, simply something Sigmir could use to cover her flanks.

Those measures were taken before we ever ventured into their range, causing them to ignore me in their mindless state. Once our preparations were done, and a suitable battle-field prepared, we sat back and let Rai do his thing.

It was quite fascinating to watch, Rai ghosting towards the milling skeletons, his passage barely disturbing the scattered dust, let alone the ground, almost invisible in the twilight. The skeletons had no chance, never noticing him, not until his blades struck, slipping between the disks of a spine, the magic coating his blades disrupting the magic animating the skeleton, causing it to crumble. For a moment, the skeletons froze and Rai moved into his Wraith-Form, slipping deeply into the boundary of twilight and moving some distance away, unseen, unheard. Maybe unremembered?

It was fascinating to watch the skeletons’ reaction, the brief freeze, a minute of frantic searching, not venturing outside their range but moving within that range as quickly as their undead bodies could, searching for the disturbance, only to never find it. And return to their previous, slow and idle milling, almost as if they had already forgotten about the attack.

“If we ever decide to seriously work with undead, we need to make them better and smarter.” I mentioned to Lenore, using our mental connection. No need to tell anyone what I was contemplating.

“Yes, they seem a little…” she left it unsaid, disappointment creeping into her voice, “But I don’t think I’ll be raising any undead in the future, I’ve been experimenting with the Nevermore-trait, I’m pretty sure it is similar to your Frozen Soul, increasing my affinity with Death-Magic but adding a limitation. In my case, the limitation is that my Death-Magic is utterly incompatible with the vital energy needed to raise the Undead.” she explained, sounding unsure if her conclusions were correct. I merely nodded, watching as Rai moved in for a second time, having circled the undead and given them a bit of time after returning to their idle state. Maybe he had also waited for his Astral Power to regenerate, or the cooldown of his Wraith-State to become available again.

Twice more, he moved in, killing a single undead and moving back out, the undead reacting exactly the same each time. His movement changed a little during his attacks and I was reasonably certain that he was trying things out, a combination of distance and his concealment preventing me from perceiving the details of his actions.

Finally, he decided that there was nothing more to gain by killing them off one by one, not against mindless undead. And so, after striking one more surprise-attack, he didn’t ghost away, instead, he continued his attack, flowing from one strike into the next. Again, there was a moment of indecision on part of the skeletons, I could almost see the mental cogs grind within their heads, switching from idle movement to battle-mode. In that moment, Rai managed to finish his second attack, his blade slipping past the bones of yet another undead, striking into its chest and a brief burst of magic made me think he had channeled a brief burst of power through his blade, destroying the undead from the inside.

And then, the fight was on.

Rai was in the middle of undead, having deliberately moved there to test himself. Without another combatant in the fight, the undead focused on him, all of them. It looked almost comical, the surge of bones going towards their middle, creating a press of bodies while Rai used his superior speed to his advantage, slipping past their bodies, dealing swift and deadly strikes in passing but it quickly became obvious that there was a time-limit on that tactic. By the time he had killed five more of them, the undead around him were too concentrated to easily move past, their bodies blocking his movement. All speed in the world wouldn’t help him if there was nowhere to go.

For a moment, he blurred, his form being replaced with one made of pure Astral Power that kept their attention for a second or three, before their attacks disrupted the shell he had left behind when teleporting away, sinking his blades into an undead at the edge of the crowd, slipping towards us as he retreated, the skeletons in hard pursuit.

It was obvious that he could have simply continued running and at some point, they would return to their area and their idle state but that wasn’t what we had planned. Instead, he moved towards us, gliding across the ice, and I could see that he was breathing hard, quite a bit of stamina and Astral Power spent as he moved behind Sigmir.

“I’ll move out again, once they are engaged with you.” he explained, before shutting up and trying to regain as much of his breath as possible. In turn, Sigmir stepped forward, moving between the walls I had set up, ready action.

The approach of the skeletons was almost comical, their fleshless feet unable to find purchase on the slick ice, causing them to slip, slide and tumble, any resemblance of order and intelligence gone. But as so often, sheer numbers won out and their undead nature allowed them to act in ways the living wouldn’t easily consider, the initial group that had fallen simply spreading their bony forms across the ice, making themselves as wide as possible, while those behind them stepped over them, forming a bridge of bones towards us.

Once again, I was fascinated by the intelligence they demonstrated in combat, the previous encirclement and this gambit showing that they were more than just mindless, in obvious contradiction to their previous, idle behavior.