There were three of them, and they walked with the slow, sure confidence that anyone from the Roving Band would use to walk up to a weaker goblin. They saw no threat in the two smaller figures, and frankly that pissed Demon off.

There was enough Mardun mana in his staff to cast life drain, so he immediately began to pull the life force out of the rightmost Corrosi as he charged right at him. The grotesque warrior seemed mostly unfazed by the loss, but he swatted at Demon as he got close. Demon ducked under his arm and smacked the Corrosi with his staff, but even with mana-blade reinforcing it, he barely nicked the opponents skin.

A mace swung at Demon and though he got his staff up in time to absorb the blow, the sheer strength of it still sent him flying. Faynel screamed in the distance for him to escape, but the three Corrosi stood between them and she bounced on her feet, torn between escaping herself and wanting to help her new friend.

Demon was injured, but not down. He’d pulled enough mana from the Corrosi to activate life drain again, and the reinforcement kept him strong. He ran up again and juked around, baiting the Corrosi into attacking. This time, Demon dodged the mace swing, and with his spare hand he pulled out his sword and stabbed the wrist of one of the Corrosi’s extra arms.

As blood fell to the streets, the other two Corrosi involved themselves in the fight. All three advanced on Demon, and while two of them bore gigantic maces, the third looked to be channeling a spell.

Demon reached down and pulled stones from the ground. He kept his distance from the maces and flung stone after stone at the three attackers. Each bounced uselessly off their fortified skin, clattering to the ground, but he didn’t stop. He kept backing up, dodging periodic mace swings, and throwing stones.

When the two Corrosi stepped aside, he knew what was coming. The third Corrosi lobbed a gigantic green orb up into the air, and chuckled. Even if the small thing ran, the spell was empowered enough to fry the area. The caustic residue would make the streets impassable for a day at least. This city was defenseless before their strength.

That’s when he felt a pinch and a sharp pain in his side. He howled and turned, but then several more piercing strikes landed up and down his sides, and the Corrosi swung his fists wildly, unsure where or what had injured him.

Faynel was steps away before the fists came anywhere close to where she had been standing. The Corrosi’s body was too durable for any of those wounds to be fatal, but she hoped the injuries would pay off. She sprinted into a side corridor, hoping to be able to circle around before the caster could target her, but was thrown to the ground by a shockwave. Debris fell from the ruined buildings above her, and she covered her head and crouched low.

Demon meanwhile grinned wildly and triumphantly. His limbs were numb and he felt like something had snapped inside of him, but two of the Corrosi were puddles of goo in front of him. The only Corrosi who knew he had a spell to deflect their attacks had died in the woods, but now there was one still alive.

Without hesitation, Demon leapt over the caustic ruins that remained in place of the streets and charged at the caster. If the caster had been stunned to see his attack reflected, he didn’t show it. He bellowed a challenge and began to fling small orbs of acid at Demon. They had none of the explosive payload of the stronger attack, but any one of them would melt through his skin.

But Faynel’s strikes had proven themselves useful. The Corrosi moved stiffly, aware that each time it turned it aggravated the wounds and sent sharp spikes of pain up its sides. This delay was minor, but enough for Demon to react and avoid the spells as he closed the distance. Once he was in range, he threw himself at the Corrosi, trying to bury his sword in its chest.

The Corrosi swept out with his arm, and Demon flung back against a wall, nearly biting his tongue off on impact. He hit the ground and rolled, and could smell the bitter pungence of the acid. Growling, he pushed himself to feet on shaky limbs, and rushed again.

This time, before he was close enough to be struck, he stopped and doubled back. The caster moved after him but Demon ducked leapt over a pool of acid that he suspected the Corrosi couldn’t clear easily. He was wrong, but Faynel’s attack was hurried enough that he didn’t get to find that out.

She planted herself behind the Corrosi as he ran at Mason and funneled nearly half of her available mana into a force spell. As soon as the Corrosi reached the edge of the pool and looked ready to jump, she pushed forward with force and then pressed it down like gravity. The Corrosi staggered under its effects and fell face first into a pool of acid.

Unfortunately, Corrosi were largely resistant to acid, so he flailed and splashed as it singed his thick skin. Before he got up though, Demon smashed his boot into the Corrosi’s face, and then plunged his staff into its chest.

Faynel saw his face as a wicked thing then. His scalp was lined with horns, and his skin was a swirl of black and red. The mana that swirled around his was turbulent and aggressive, nothing like what it had been when she had touched Mason directly.

Demon was not Mason though, not entirely. He didn’t share the few hesitations that the human had, and he was far less ignorant of his capabilities. He dug into the staff, looking for the rune which enabled Soul Steal, but rather than relying on the fundamental capacities that had led to Mowrytal and Geralt’s imprisonment, he used the full spell as it was meant to be cast.

All of the dark mana around Demon shot like spears into the struggling Corrosi, and it reached like undead hands into the caster, ripping and pulling its soul and mana apart, taking it in fragments and pieces back to the staff.

To Faynel’s mana sensitive eyes, she had never witnessed anything more appalling. It was no less terrifying than if Mason had pulled its flesh apart with his bare hands and chewed it all in pieces, and the Corrosi screamed in a way that made Faynel weep. His soul was being eviscerated and consumed, and there was nothing the girl could do to stop it.

She grit her teeth then, and looked at Demon. She couldn’t stop what he was doing, but she could save Mason from him. Taking advantage of the concentration it took to mangle a soul like he was, Faynel charged. She grabbed him around the waist as she sprinted at full speed and threw him even as she pulled him off his feet.

The human fell back and smashed his head on the ruined street, but she didn’t care. The staff was still in his hands. Without breaking stride, she ran to where he lay and stomped on his stomach, feeling no pity as he coughed and spluttered. She stomped again, this time on his wrist, and watched his fist loosen around the staff.

Faynel kicked it away, and then pulled out some rope from her pack. She bound his hands and dragged the nearly unconscious human out from the center of the road, then poured a health potion down his throat.

There was no telling who he might be when he woke, but she hoped she had intervened in time. Maybe letting him use that staff had been a mistake from the start.

She looked back at the pools of acid and the ruined shells of nearby buildings, and then looked back at Mason’s chaotic and dim aura of mana. She wondered a familiar cliche in almost any world; At what cost power?

~~

“Demon.” It was the word that roused him from his pained sleep. It was full of disdain and distrust, and spoke of hesitant regrets. It also was a symbol of another strained relationship. Had she ever called him that before?

Mason roused slowly. In part because of a level of exhaustion that would have been incomprehensible had he not been experiencing it directly. Just imagining opening his eyes seemed to hurt somewhere deep inside of him.

It was like when he had forced himself to use Analyze while out of stamina, how each attempt shot pain through him. But this wasn’t a skill. He was exhausted on a cellular level, so even trying to work his muscles casually was too much.

And there was the emotional exhaustion to deal with. Waking up to find that the person in this world who seemed friendliest with him could speak with such disdain was unpleasant by itself. But fatigue played tricks on the mind, and in his depressed state, it was just one more sign that it was hardly worth waking up.

Why return to a world that didn’t want him?

“Demon.” How many times had Faynel called him that while he was asleep? Was she shaking him awake? He couldn’t feel. He couldn’t move. He was trapped within himself.

A brief spark of panic made him tremble. He had used soul steal again. Was there a Corrosi waiting angrily within him? He wracked his brain but could hardly comprehend what he saw of his memories. He remembered the thrill, the power. Pulling mana, stamina, and life into himself at volumes he should never have handled.

Winning.

He heard a sigh, and compassion leaked into Faynel’s voice as she said quietly, “Mason, please.”

That was a reason to stir, but he just couldn’t. He reached toward his mana, hoping he could send a spark of it out to let her know he was there, but the font which it normally flowed from was just shy of bone dry. His mana would return, but there was no telling when.

He couldn’t even muster up the energy to move to his soul place. If he could speak with Mowry or Geralt, maybe he could make sense of what happened. But he was stuck as if his mind were trapped in stone. As if his body were paralyzed.

Too far. The staff and its strange powers had pushed him somewhere he hadn’t anticipated. How many times had he snapped at someone for warning him of the risks of it? He needed the power, needed to change and grow. But was Demon someone he was willing to become?

A nervous, twitching part of himself recognized the truth. Demon was a part of him, and there was no avoiding that. He couldn’t give up the power and hope to survive. Quite likely he couldn’t give up the power at all.

Mason didn’t know what that meant for him.

“Source, I don’t want to do this. Please let this help.”

Faynel was crying as she knelt over Mason in the small, underground cellar she had dragged him into. It had been hours since they had fought the Corrosi, but sounds of battle had filled the air the whole time. She heard the roars and shouts of goblins and Corrosi spreading throughout the area, and even an anguished wail which she suspected was the discovery of the ones they had slain.

But worst was the crackling of intense flames and the tremor-inducing explosions. The Corrosi weren’t just attacking the city. They were trying to remove it entirely.

Faynel regretted not just picking Mason up and carrying him to catch up with the Band. She had the strength, and definitely the speed. But something had made her hesitate. There was a wariness of what Mason might be when he woke up. She had been there when he had taken Geralt’s soul, and everyone had an opinion of the consequences of that.

But back then he hadn’t been nearly as vicious, or even slightly berserk. Moreover, back then he didn’t matter to her at all. If she were to follow the teachings she had been raised on, she would have abandoned Mason. He might even have survived with whatever strength lurked within him. But she had touched his mana and felt his mind. Whatever he had been during the fight, it wasn’t the human she had known.

So with tears in her eyes, she extended her mana to her hands and took both of Mason’s, spreading that power over and into his torn up body. Where it had felt intimate and comforting that time in his house, reaching into him felt cold and unnerving now. No Marran could survive with so little mana in their body.

Mason may be full of soul energy, but he was a shell of mana. His body was not yet fully transformed, he wasn’t nearly mana-born in the way she was, but still there should be more to it than there was. She bit her lip as she tried to connect with what little wisps of mana were still in him, and willed herself to not recoil at the feelings of pain and rage and sorrow she felt as she did.

Faynel lacked soul sensitivity, so she had no way to know that she was pulling fragments of shattered soul force together, drawing them through the channels of his mana back to his soul where they could be processed and used. The soul steal spell Demon had used burned through his available mana before it had been even halfway complete, but now her own mana was reenergizing his body, allowing it to continue the process.

She felt him turn into a vacuum for mana, no longer passively receiving her ministrations, but pulling it into himself at a great rate. Her heart raced and she panicked, but she could feel the excitement within him. It wasn’t a greedy feeling, it didn’t feel like the evil she suspected of Demon. It was the thirsty lappings of someone long in a desert, so she let it happen.

When most of her mana was gone, she felt the spell activating within him. She would have pulled away then, would have left and run and let him deal with his own fate, but his fingers tightened around hers and he spoke, “Faynel.”

Every piece of her tensed, from the tiny muscles around her eyes to the powerful ones in her legs. She was torn in her compassion and her fear, but Mason’s eyes were open and his mana was flowing back through to her now. She could still feel fear, but she sent him traces of hope. Together they sent an emotion which belied the intimacy of the connection. This was no mere mingling of mana, but a full binding. Every bit of the mana flowing between them had originated from her, and only some had been transformed in that essential piece deep within Mason.

“You saved me,” he croaked, knowing full well that was only half true. He would have survived. There was enough ambient mana in the air, and Mason generated it slowly on his own. In time, he would have pulled through. But that did not change the feelings of optimistic trust he sensed in her.

“Mason?”

He nodded slowly with stiff muscles. He still felt like an overwrought sponge left in the sun. Dry, and brittle.

“Thank god.”

Both of them smiled stiffly then, and Mason whispered, “I’ll be able to move… soon. I fucked up. But I’ll be okay.”