As the final rays of light fell onto the plains, a shadow flew through the sky on silent wings. Serena tilted her head constantly, looking and watching for any movement through the grasses below. The three Beast-Kin had escaped the forest within a day, and had been on the run constantly since that terrible day a week and a half prior. Feeling the strain of her underdeveloped muscles along her spine, the Owl-Kin began to slowly glide down to the ground, and the two land-bound Beast-Kin running below her.

Landing softly in front of her protectors, Serena sighed and stretched out her large wings, stretching the muscles of her lower back in an attempt to relieve them. Mechanically, Serena began pulling out tools and equipment out of her Inventory to set up camp, as the Beast-Kin had been doing since they had to flee for their lives. She was happy for the work, both setting up the camps and the scouting missions. It helped to keep her mind off of the things that she would rather forget. The Elven corpses littering the ground of the woods, the kind and caring Ursal choking on his own blood. What the Elves would do to her people if they-

“Lady Serena.” Felicia strode up to the slightly shaking Owl-Kin, and gently placed her hands on Serena’s shoulders, the Fox-Kin slightly out of breath from the long run. “If it would not be too much of a bother, would you kindly begin setting up the camp?” The Owl-Kin stared at Felicia for a moment with unfocused eyes, before nodding slowly. Felicia smiled slightly at her, and patted her shoulder affectionately.

Felicia watched her charge slowly move around the plains, padding down the long grasses in a rough circle and laying down a pre-built campfire from her Inventory. Lupik walked up behind her, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted from the day of running. “I do not understand.” Felicia mumbled, mostly to herself, her eyes locked onto the sluggish form of the Owl-Kin. “The Mageous should have returned by now, let alone Master Mizutsune. What is taking those two so long?” She let out a low sigh, and swept her gaze back the way they came, over the expansive plains of long grasses and towards the dark line on the horizon that was the forest. “Something must have happened…”

Lupik followed her gaze, breathing heavily in an attempt to cool down his body. Pulling his tongue back into his mouth, the Wolf-Kin stretched out his legs and pawed at the ground, relieving the stress in his muscles. “Lady Felicia,” Lupik paused for a moment, thinking over what he wanted to say. “I do not know the Mageous as well as you or the Lady Serena. But, if I may ask, what could possibly keep him?”

Felicia looked towards the Wolf-Kin, confusion evident. “I am not too sure what you are saying, Sir Lupik.”

He opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, making no sound, and waved his arms through the air exasperatedly. “He’s immortal!” Finally finding his voice, Lupik almost shouted his response. Flinching, he looked towards the Lady Serena, who appeared to not have heard and was still sluggishly moving around the camping spot. Lowering his voice to barely above a growling whisper, he turned his attention back to Felicia. “From what I’ve learned, both from you and the Lady, he fought off an Orcish raiding force almost singlehanded while only using a third of his potential. A third. A force of their size would have destroyed most of one of our regiments, and they even had a twice cursed shaman on within their band.”

“But the Mageous sacrificed himse-“ Before Felicia could finish off her rebuttal, Lupik launched into another quiet proclamation and cut off her words.

“That is another thing! Death is an inconvenience to him, at most! He is a bloody immortal, and both you and the Lady worry over him like he is a pup on his first foray out of the den. “

“What are you trying to say, Lupik?” Felicia snarled and glared at the Wolf-Kin, who blanched slightly at her gaze and the small golden flames lapping along her skin.

“What I mean, my Lady, is that I do not think that there is anything in this world besides a god who would be able to even keep the Mageous occupied for any extended periods of time.”

Felicia scowled at the Wolf-Kin before turning her gaze back towards the distant woods. “Then why are he and Mizutsune not with us?”

Lupik followed her gaze over the plains, his eyes hard. “I do not know, my Lady.” Thinking for a moment, he made an attempt to get back on the Fox-Kin’s good side. “Maybe he is keeping the Elves busy within the forest? Buying us time to escape.”

The flames surrounding the Fox-Kin slowly faded, and Felicia turned around with a sigh. “Let us hope so. For all of our sakes.”

_____________________________________________________________________

Sweat dripped down Jake’s face, sizzling and snapping when it made contact with the roaring violet flames covering his body. His head snapped back and forth, keeping his two opponents in his sight as much as possible. Movement out of the corner of his eyes gave him barely enough of a warning to dive out of the way, but he was not fast enough to completely dodge the javelin of ice as it sheared through his clothes and cut a gash into his shoulder.

Landing awkwardly on his stomach, the human slammed his hands into the dirt and sent himself uncontrollably flying into the air with an explosion of fire and wind, dodging the searing red flame of his second opponent’s magical attack. As Jake spun through the air, he reached out to the shadows surrounding him and sent tendrils of darkness lancing towards his opponents.

With a blur of black and gold, Quelaag darted back and forth, dancing between the tendrils of shadow as they speared into the ground, occasionally swiping and destroying the spell with a scimitar created from solid flame held gracefully in her hand. Mizutsune, on the other hand, went with the other approach and counter attacked each tendril of shadow with a javelin of ice, the two spells crashing together and bursting with released energy.

Tumbling back down to the ground, Jake quickly righted himself and, raising his hands with wrists clapped together, shot a torrent of liquid flame towards his two companions. Quelaag darted in front of Mizutsune and held up her fiery blade. The violet flames slammed into the orange and red of Quelaag’s weapon, and the torrent of fire diverted itself around the weapon, forking out behind them and scorching the plains to a crisp.

Jake continued to fuel the spell, forcing more and more mana to be burnt in an attempt to break through his opponent’s defenses. Suddenly, the torrent of magical fire cut off, and Jake fell down screaming onto his back, a spear of ice embedded into his leg, shattering his kneecap and almost removing the appendage completely from the rest of the body.

Quelaag lowered her blade to the quiet yet excited clapping of her sister Quelana, and extinguished the magic with a twist of her hand, the fiery sword dispersing with a diluted pop. She clasped her hands to her stomach and bowed towards her partner. Mizutsune nodded his head in turn, and slowly padded over to his master who was rolling around on the ground in pain.

“Master.” Mizutsune’s cold voice echoed through the minds of all three humans as he watched Jake writhe around in the dirt. “Would you care to go again? I believe that ‘fifth time would be the charm’.”

Shut the fuck up. Jake spoke through the link, his teeth clenched to stop himself from screaming some more. This shit fucking hurts. Glancing down to his ruined leg, he quickly looked away again. Oh god, it’s about to fall off. I’m going to be sick.

Snorting, Mizutsune sat on his haunches and yawned. “I thought that you learned this the last three times, Master? What was it you said when you wanted to duel both me and your Witch? ‘I can take both you on, no problem. Let’s fucking go!’”

Jake didn’t respond to that statement, and instead waved over to Quelana. The Pale Lady pranced over to the injured human and kneeled down gracefully. Pulling out a gourd and a strip of hardened leather, she gently placed the gourd against Jake’s mouth, who greedily began to gulp down the burning liquid, only stopping to breathe and moan in pain.

After finishing off the gourd, Quelana placed it onto the ground and placed the piece of leather into Jake’s mouth, and after Jake had clenched his teeth, wrapped the strip around his head. After making sure that the strip was snug without being constricting, she bounced back to her feet and jogged over to her sister. The two Daughters of Chaos began to chat away, with Quelaag explaining the different spells she had used and Quelana giving her tips and ideas on different spell possibilities.

Jake closed his eyes and breathed deeply and rapidly, waiting for the highly intoxicating liqueur to work its way through his system. When the pain began to fade, either from blood-loss or the alcohol, he wasn’t too sure, he grit his teeth and began to cast. An orb of purple flame appeared around his injured leg, and Jake began screaming again, diluted by the leather strip being ground to fibers between his teeth.

Within moments, the human was left panting on the ground, his recently injured leg perfectly whole, his somewhat tanned skin bare to the bright sunlight of the plains since the [Flames of the Phoenix] spell had burned away the clothing on that leg. He was just grateful he had learned how to control where the spell had taken place. Now he just had to replace his pants instead of an entire wardrobe. Maybe I can wear short shorts… Never mind, stupid idea.

Grunting and groaning, Jake righted himself into a sitting position, and pulled another gourd of Firewater and a cigarette out of his inventory. He stared at his bare leg for a few moments, letting the combination of nicotine and alcohol wipe away the phantom pains from his recently ruined kneecap. God, I’m turning into a masochist.

It had been roughly eight days since the group of four had walked out of the Dark Woods, and they had been camping along its edges since then, whiling the time away by talking, practicing their different forms of magic and, in Jake’s case, getting stupid drunk and challenging his companions to a fight.

The first ‘fight’ ended pretty quickly with Jake being kicked back to Lilith’s domain for a respawn. Apparently, taking a spear of ice to the heart, a ball of magma to the chest and a bolt of necrotic shadows to the eyes would kill him. After spending a day listening to Giggles laughing at his stupidity, Jake was gently tossed out of that misty land and sent back to the land of Laeris.

After re-Binding both Quelaag and Quelana, since both of their Binding’s broke upon Jake’s death, the four agreed to make sure to not kill each other during any future episodes of ‘raving idiocy’, as Quelaag called it. Quelana, on the other hand, decided to stay away from the fighting. When the Binding broke and sent her back to her world, the pain of the curses she was under nearly broke her after being free from the agony for this long. When she was brought back, whole and healthy to Laeris, she had leapt onto Quelaag and began crying, saying that she didn’t want to go back there again.

Under the glare of her sister, Jake had promised the Pale Lady that he would do everything in his power to keep her in this plane. He added finding some way to make Bindings permanent to the top of the growing list of ‘shit he needed to know’. Once he had a larger assortment of Bindings around him, as was his plan, it would be too tedious to keep bringing them back one by one for him. It was definitely not the sight of one of his favorite characters in his years of playing video games crying to force him to look for it. Definitely not.

Jake slowly pulled himself to his feet, placing weight on his recently healed leg, checking to see if it had healed properly. Besides a slight twinge in his calf muscles, everything seemed to be working correctly, so he walked back over to the campfire situated on the border between plains and forest. The rest of his party were already there, the sisters talking to each other quietly to not disturb Mizutsune, who was lying down next to the crackling fire, breathing calmly. The meat from their last foray into the forest was spit over the flames, and the snapping and crackling of grease dripping off of it soothed Jake’s mind with its melody.

Jake sat down, and flicked the empty butt of his cigarette into the flames. Gathering his thoughts, he began to sort through the fight he had just had with Quelaag and his fox, looking for any way to improve both of their fighting styles, while also working on his own abilities and possible combinations. He had been doing this since his most recent death, fighting either Mizutsune or separately, and only recently has he moved up to fighting both at the same time.

While he was able to defeat both Mizutsune and Quelaag by themselves, it was another matter when the two worked together. His method of zoning out his opponents and overwhelming them with his nearly unlimited mana worked very well with most opponents, when it came to those two working in tandem, everything fell apart. Quelaag was, in essence, an extension of himself. She had the same amount of magical power and aptitude as he did, but she was far more able at controlling her body and maneuvering around most of his spells. The only way he had been able to defeat her was to simply create as many spells as possible and send them crashing against her like a wave.

Mizutsune, on the other hand, could read his thoughts as they were forming, and automatically counteract his spells with his own. While his brute power was lacking compared to the humans’, his adaptability with his element was easily keeping pace with the others. Mizutsune’s agile mind was able to determine the best combination of spells he would need to fight against a specific opponent within seconds, and his ability to read minds allowed him to know exactly what his target was going to do next. It was a difficult threat to face, but Jake, again, simply overwhelmed the poor fox with too many magical attacks to dodge or counter.

Jake sighed, and let himself fall down on to his back, staring up at the darkening sky above. The first couple of stars, twinkling far above, had finally started to show as the world spun and brought about night. He thought of the coming battle between the Beast-Kin and Elves, knowing that it was his fault. The face of the Elven Matriarch flashed into his mind, the terror and surprise on her face caused his stomach to twist. He pushed the image from his mind, and surged back to his feet.

“Alright, so.” Jake began pacing before the flames, two pairs of human eyes and a single lazily opened fox eye watched as he began to wear a path into the long grasses. “If I remember right, it was about a two week journey from the animal-people city to the forest by cart.” Jake paused, glancing at Mizutsune, who gave a slow blink in affirmation. “So, it’s been about… a week? A week and some change since I stabbed that Elven leader in the back. If those Elven guys that we let live when they attacked us did what I told them to, it should still be a while before the Elves mobilize and start heading out to attack the Beast-Kin.” Again, Jake paused and looked around, seeing if the party had any questions. Quelaag and Quelana both shook their heads, and the massive silver fox slowly blinked to hurry along his explanation.

“So, unless I somehow lost my ability to tell time and make guesses, we still have about another week or two before the battle actually starts. I don’t know how long it will last, but I want us to jump in about mid-way through. That should give us enough leeway to work our respective magics on both of these guys. I’ll try to think of some type of flashy entrance to get their attention, and then we just rain down hell onto their heads. After that, we sing kumbaya and dance on their smoldering corpses while we stride majestically into the sunset. Any questions?”

Quelana raised her hand high above her head and began to wave it back and forth energetically. Jake stared at her for a moment, before nodding. “You know you don’t have to wave your hand like a school girl, Quelana. We’re all equal here.”

The white haired woman lowered her hand and shook her head. “I doubt that very much, Sir Jake. But, as for the… assault, I believe would be the proper term, if I may as, how would the four of us be able to do something of that magnitude?”

Jake stopped pacing, and looked at her, blinking. “What do you mean?”

Quelana gestured to the party, waving her arms in a sweeping gesture. “We are only four, yet the animal-kind and those strange looking folk, I believe, are capable of fielding large amounts of troops to combat us. How would we be able to defeat such a large force with only those gathered here?”

Jake scratched at the patchy beard that was growing on his chin, nodding to himself. “If I had to guess, each of you are as strong as I am, in terms of combat experience.” He nodded at both Quelaag and Mizutsune when he said this, and got a small smile and a half-hearted snort in response. “If you’re power is anything like your sisters, Quelana, we should be fine. But I was planning on bringing over some more help for this.” While talking, Jake pulled up his status screen and checked his mana.

Mana: 715 (-200)/915 Mana Regeneration: 45.75 m/s

“I should have enough for… five? Maybe six more summons, I think. I’m not the best at math, but that sounds about right.” Jake cleared away the screen with a wave of his hand and turned his attention back to Quelana. “Each of those should have the same strength as you two, and if they do go down I can bring them back pretty easily. If I’m not distracted, at least.” Jake scratched at his neck, thinking. “Actually, maybe not. It takes about a minute for each cast, and I have to be focused on the spell the entire time. I doubt I would have enough time to do that during an actual fight.”

Jake paused, humming to himself. He shook his head, and turned back to the group. “Sorry, got distracted. Did I answer your question?” Quelana nodded, and pulled a skewer out of the flames, nibbling at the roasted meat. Seeing this, the rest of the party each grabbed a skewer and began to eat, with Jake taking three and removing two from the stick for Mizutsune.

“So,” Jake spoke around a mouthful of meat, before swallowing and taking another bite. “After we’re done eating, I’m going to try to get the rest of the group together. That good?” Glancing around, he saw nods and an indifferent shrug.

Quelaag finished chewing on a piece of meat, and looked towards Jake. “What are you going to Bind, Jake? Someone else from Lordran?” Quelana looked up, both excitement and trepidation evident in her eyes.

Jake finished off his skewer with a massive bite, and reached for another one. “Not this time. There was another game, sorry, another world that I was planning on getting them from.” Glancing up, he noticed that he had the full attention of the party. “It’s a place called Azeroth. It’s where most of my knowledge of fantasy,” with this he gestured around the landscape around them, “and the five I’m planning on bringing over were my demonic companions from that world when I was there.”

“Demons?” Quelaag’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You consort with demons, Jake?” Her musical voice had some edge to it, and she glared at the human sitting across the fire from her, who was tearing into his newest skewer with abandon.

Jake waved a hand in front of his face, chewing a stubborn piece before swallowing. “Different kind of demons. These are more… tame, I would think? Easier to get along with, at the very least.” Quelaag still did not seem convinced, so he tried another tactic. “If they turn out horrible, I can always just send them back with a thought. Would that work?”

Quelaag thought for a moment, and slowly nodded. Jake shot her a grin, and stood back up, tossing the pieces of wood into the flames from his meal. “Trust me, it’s going to be great.” Jake turned around, pulling out a cigarette from his inventory and began to walk into the gathering darkness. “I’ll be back in a little bit.” Lighting up his cancerous smoking stick, Jake pulled the [Rift Stave of Jer-El] out of his inventory, the massive staff leeching the light of the night sky and turning the area around him to shadow.

After a few moments, Jake paused and looked back to the camp, now just a pinprick of orange light against the backdrop of the black wall of trees. “Should be far enough…” Mumbling himself, Jake turned back around and began to twirl his staff around, almost dropping it on occasion. “Okay, so… I want the Imp, the Observer, Wrathguard, Succubus, and… shit, Voidwalker or Voidlord? Damn, they’re pretty much the same… Eh, I’ll go with the Lord.” After finalizing his thoughts, he stopped twirling his massive baton and planted the butt of his staff into the ground.

Taking a final drag, Jake exhaled a puff of toxic smoke and spat the burned out cigarette in front of him, stamping out the embers. I really don’t want to wait for all of the summons to go through one at a time… Maybe I can do all of them at once? Jake paused for a second, leaning against his staff. Shrugging, he straitened and grasped the hardened wood firmly. Worth a shot.

Jake closed his eyes, and began to breathe deeply, feeling the torrent of energy burning inside of his body, he began to cast. Purple flames, the center a sickly green, birthed upon his body, their tongues lapping against his skin and clothing with gentle kisses. The fires began to slowly spread along his arms, dancing across his body to climb up the shaft of the Rift-Stave. The wood seemed to groan in ecstasy as the flames touched the staff, their fires leeching into the hardwood and causing the intricate runes to pulse with power.

Jake continued to pour mana into the spell, the [Rift Stave of Jer’El] greedily taking as much power as possible within itself, and the two motes of energy floating above the head began to dance, slowly at first, before gaining speed. The mote of Fire and Dark interwove in a dizzying dance, hypnotizing in its erratic form. A minute later, the motes were moving so quickly that they were leaving streaks through their paths, trailing violet and black arcs through the air.

With a crack of power, the two motes shot forward and down into the earth, leaving pulsing black and purple light connecting to where the magical energies had burrowed into the ground. Jake, his eyes still shut in concentration, ignored the sound. He also ignored the slight tremors beneath his feet that started moments after.

The stone rippled and contorted where the two magical motes of mana had entered into the earth, and with the sharp retorts of breaking rocks, something began to push its way through into the night. Twin horns poked their way through the earth, their obsidian sheen reflecting the sparse starlight and the twisting purple flames around the human. The horns were attached to a skull, long and pointed like a horses, the same color as the horns above. And yet, the spell was not complete.

With increased vibrations, the monolith of Fel energy began to take shape. The skull was pushed high into the air, adorned on top of the obsidian arch. Twisted skulls and bones were etched into its dark surface, a macabre representation of the never fading presence of death. The arch continued its upwards movement, bringing forth intricate etchings of runic script that flowed along the façade like blood from a wound, glowing with an eerie green light.

With a final rumble, the portal to another dimension halted its advance. Towering over the human below, the monolith was roughly four meters tall, and the demonic skull leered down on the world below, violet flames dancing in its empty sockets. Sweat was now pouring liberally down Jake’s neck, but he continued to be oblivious to the world as the intricacies of magic pulled his attention inwards.

Light and darkness began to dance around the head of the staff, a growing orb of energy that leaked darkness and liquid flame onto the grasping hands of the staff beneath. The Heart within the cage of long fingers pulsed powerfully to some unseen drum, picking up speed as the Orb grew by the second. Within minutes, the orb expanded to the size of Jakes head, the Heart pounding erratically within its cage, and the orb ruptured.

A stream of liquid fire and shadows shot outwards from the orb and slammed into the emptiness of the arch, below the grinning skull. As the magical beam passed through the arch, it slammed into an invisible barrier and tore through instantly. A sickly green vortex appeared around the stream of energy, stretching back into the Void infinitely. The Tear began to violently suck at the surrounding air, drawing disrupted clumps of grass and dirt into the portal to another plain with a roar of rushing air. And with a snap, it stopped.

Jake gasped violently, and fell backwards to crash against the earth. Panting, he groaned as his head pounded painfully, sending spikes of pain shooting through his entire body. Groaning, he blearily opened his eyes to squint at the twinkling stars. Rustling in front of him, with the cracking and thumping of falling stone, forced him to crane his neck up and see what his spell had brought onto the world. When his eyes focused, Jake paused and blinked, unable to piece together what was going on.

The portal was breaking apart, the obsidian stones color faded into a pale grey and chunks would break off and thump into the ground. The skull’s eyes were empty and lifeless, and its left horn was missing, having already crumbled from the absence of magic. But what caught Jake’s attention was the figure lying face down and groaning a meter from the portal.

Long, pale blonde hair fell down over the head and face, unable to hide the two sharp edges of lightly tanned ears poking through the locks of hair. The person groaned again, and began to push itself upwards on small, thin arms. A revealing red dress gave no doubt that the figure was female, the insides of her breasts bare to the night sky. On her hands and knees, the woman let loose a ragged cough, and spoke.

“Ugh, what in the …” Her voice startled both Jake and the woman. “Wait, what?” The figure quickly sat up on her calves, and started patting her angular and sharp featured face. “What the fuck?” The figure removed her hands from her face, and opened emerald green eyes, and stared down at her body. Her eyes latched onto her exposed mammaries. With shaking hands, she slowly reached up and grasped onto them, giving them a little squeeze. What happened next would stay with Jake forever.

The woman screamed. A scream filled with fear, outrage and confusion. A scream, from the bottom of her lungs, heart and soul.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?!”

New Spell Created: Lady of the Black Harvest Thing 1, meet Thing 2. Mana Use: 15,000 Mana over 1 minute (Includes Mana Regeneration). Sacrifice 1,000 500 Mana to sustain the Binding (Sacrificed Mana will not be regenerated). (The power of [The Rift Stave of Jer’El] reduces the Sacrificial Mana cost by 50%).