With the dawn of a new day, the four humans with us looked a lot less subdued and uncomfortable than during the night. Might have been due to the light showing them that the five of us weren’t just monsters tricking them or maybe because a full night of rest had helped to restore their strength and confidence. Either way, when I was preparing breakfast for all of us, Nick, the spell caster, came over and asked a few questions regarding the magic I had used to save them.

His whole attitude was so removed from the shivering, frightened mess he had been during the night, that it almost made me wonder if they had somehow managed to switch the person out.

While his enthusiasm and curiosity for magic were refreshing and somewhat flattering, I kept things general and vague, not delving into the details of what I had done, crediting the Grandmother for my abilities. He had never heard of her, his lack of knowledge giving me an opening to shift the topic away from me. While I couldn’t give him a lot of information about the Grandmother, I simply didn’t know a lot of details, but I could tell stories about her. That way, I could keep talking, without ever telling him anything about my abilities, all without the need to actually lie. For once, I empathised with politicians and the need to speak a lot, yet say nothing. Luckily, Nick had no way to verify what I was telling him and no desire to actually call me out and insult me, allowing me to deceive him.

He might have noticed that I wasn’t actually telling him about my abilities, but with the difference in power between the two groups, there was nothing he could do about it.

Finally, once the breakfast was done, I invited everyone to get some food, the humans had lost their packs during their flight and Lenore and I had no desire to go looking for them in the night. If there had been anything important in them, too bad, so sad, but not our problem.

It was somewhat amusing how much they praised the simple food I had prepared, how they tried to flatter me. And yet, hearing the praise, I couldn’t help but notice that I wasn’t as annoyed by their presence. Even my lips curled into a grin when Jenn’s praise was particularly enthusiastic.

Maybe it was similar to the way people reacted positively to dogs wagging their tails at them, to the attention and interest shown by their canine companions. There was really no need for modern people to keep such pets, they were not needed as hunting companions or, in the case of cats, to chase down mice. And yet, there were actual, tangible benefits gained by the association. Should I consider getting a human pet? And if so, where could I get one?

Shaking off the weird thoughts, I focused inwards, discussing the magic we had used last night with Lenore. How we could improve performance and if there were ways to use the mist we preferred to carry magical effects to greater effect. How to layer more effects into it, how to let it spread easier, and how to make it even more powerful.

If nothing else, it was our most utilised effect and likely the most versatile. It lacked the pure power of elemental cold, coalescing beams of Cold to strike at our targets, but while those beams were incredibly powerful, they used up just as much Astral Power. They were like a hammer, with limited utility but capable of shattering most defences.

On the other hand, using Icicles as carriers to bring an effect to the enemy reduced the consumption, the physical form much more stable compared to pure, elemental power but with that added physical stability came the reduction of impact by physical defences. If an Icicle hit armour, the armour got cold and unless it was of incredibly bad quality, I’d need a lot of impacts to get anywhere.

However, trying to avoid an area-effect as encompassing as the mist I could conjure, spanning hundreds of metres if I put enough juice into it? Good luck with that.

Using such an effect brought the conflict to a different level, where I had to prevent enemies from dispelling my magic. So far, that hadn’t been a major problem, but I had never been faced with a caster at even remotely the same level. The closest had been Dura Firebringer and we had never really competed, not while prepared and actually trying to use magic to harm the other.

Maybe that was my biggest weakness, I had never been forced to work directly against another spellcaster. The idea made me wonder, how would I prevent an enemy from doing what I did to my enemies to Sigmir and the others? I could imbue effects of Devouring and Magic into my Darkness-magic but had no idea if that would be enough. Could such a shadowy shield be overpowered or simply ignored? It should work very well against spells without physical components, like my Icicles, but if an enemy simply used magic to lob a rock at me, there’d be almost no resistance. For that, I’d need an actual, physical shield or master Darkness magic to the level that I could make my shadows tangible.

Such mastery had to be possible, I had realised how to use Darkness-magic to influence the nothingness between all matter in order to manifest minor telekineses, so there was darkness everywhere. But to turn that omnipresent darkness into a physical shield? Just the idea began to give me a headache but the good kind of headache. As if I was on the cusp of realisation but not quite there.

No longer willing to listen to the constant talking during breakfast, I stood, startling the others.

“I need to get some silence to think,” I told them, getting startled looks and a frown from Sigmir. “Love, will you get me when you’re all done and ready to move?”

With a nod from her, I was off, pushing my Avatar’s body to the limit, virtually flying through the forest. The movement was pleasant and after a few seconds of dashing, I hopped onto a low-hanging branch, quickly jumping to the highest branches that could carry my minuscule weight.

There, right at the border between the shadow of the forest and the sunlight of the treetops, I reached out, focusing on that boundary, my eyes falling closed as I started to delve into the shadows, into the boundary. And into the light.

Even as my mind was in burning pain, I could feel it, the darkness. Omnipresent, subtle and all-encompassing. It could never be removed, there would always be darkness. I realised that Darkness wasn’t the absence of light, it just was. The light could briefly banish the most obvious Darkness, but the underlying darkness that was present everywhere? That was utterly unaffected.

Pushing my Astral Power into the light and into the darkness within that light, only to feel it melting away like snow in the sun. Unwilling to concede, I focused harder, activating overflow and pumping more and more power into it. There was a feeling of cracking, maybe within my mind, maybe within reality, and my eyes flickered open, only to blink back shut and open again.

What my eyes could see, my mind couldn’t really comprehend. Hovering before me was a small orb of blackness, slowly expanding with every moment. But it wasn’t normal darkness, not simply a patch where there was no light. it seemed to suck in the light, making everything around it darker.

Not quite sure what I was looking at, I carefully reached out with my magical senses, sniffing the air. Curiously, there was no smell around it, only a faint chill as I got closer as if the sunlight around me was fading, taking the warmth with it.

More and more Astral Power drained from my body and, unable to figure anything out with my magical senses, I simply looked. First with my eyes, but they were unable to discern anything, there was nothing but a black, almost two-dimensional appearing object, maybe round, maybe many-sided, I couldn’t tell. Frustrated, I used Lenore’s sight, trying to see the magic, and almost fell out of the tree.

It looked like I was draining the faintly bright Astral Power constantly flowing through the sunlit world, the Darkness I was channelling into the spell slowly replacing it. Reaching out, I carefully and ever so gently touched it, feeling a cold, incredibly hard and solid, object.

Before I could try figuring out more, I realised that I had, in a dozen, brief seconds, drained a quarter of my Astral Power.

Calming my mind, I let the power fade, the light quickly banishing the field of utter blackness but for a few moments, it managed to hang on before melting away.

Leaning back against the tree, I was utterly flabbergasted, not sure what to think.