A beauty with long, white hair looked at the statue in front of her with her eerie, blue eyes, her delicate fingers lightly stroking a purple gem that hung in between her breasts on a black chain.

After a moment a voice came out of the gem, when her strokes intensified.

"Irwen, what are you doing?"

"Sex." She said bluntly. Since her transformation, there were moments she was too open-minded for Toby's tastes.

"You know that technically I am touching more than ninety percent of your body right now and you still have the sense of touch." She added when Toby remained tactly silent.

"Right, and what am I gonna squirt out? Marmelade? Think with that rotten brain of yours sometimes!" Toby felt uneasy because all he could see was Irwen's breasts or fingers, as his surface functioned as his eyes as well.

"Mmm, but I can tell your voice sounds disturbed, like you had trouble concentrating." Now only one hand was covering Toby's front side, obstructing his vision.

"Hey! Where is your other hand? Don't you dare . . " The next moment, the hands switched places, but the other hand was completely wet.

"Oh, do you feel how wet I am right now? I cannot help myself when .. "

"Irwen? IRWEN!" Toby shrieked.

"Calm down, it is only water. You are no fun." Irwen clicked her tongue and stopped her rubbing.

"Well, and from where did you get that water?" Toby asked icily.

"Where? It is flowing all around us!" She gestured with her hand all around them.

"We are in a sewer Irwen! Can't you smell it?" Toby regretted that he had the sense of smell.

"Mildly, but come on, it is not out of norm!" She acted like a child that was being scolded, despite doing nothing wrong.

"Maybe not out of norm for an undead, let's complete the job quickly, I need to wash away that stench." Toby focused back on the statue in front of him.

That was a disaster as well!

He presented Irwen as an architect in many cities, but he had found out a painful truth that the structure most cities needed, was not a palace, castle, tower or a residental area, but a sewer. Many cities in the demon world had no sewer system or the one they had was crumbling, or inadequate. He ended up walking around, constructing and repairing sewer and water supply systems, his dreams of magnificent skyscapers shattered and forgotten.

This client even wanted pissing statues! He had already constructed almost fifty of them in various poses, but when he was about to finish the job, the. . .plumbing began failing all over the place, because of non-liquid waste that was. ..

"Toby, have you already figured out how to get the shits out of their penises?" Irwen asked casually.

"No." Toby replied, annoyed by the stupid problem.

"What about increasing pressure?" Irwen tried to be helpful for a change.

"We have not enough height, besides the statues would be pissing at each other if we increased pressure." Toby responded in a dull voice.

"What about making them aim upwards?" Irwen started to rub him again, but only with her pinkey.

"It would all trickle down the walls and ceiling. No, we need another solutin. We need to increase diameter."

"But the statues should have been life-like sculptures." Irwen teased him.

"I do not care anymore!" Toby gave a command to his acolytes, but was suddenly startled by their absence.

"What the .. ! Hey, Irwen!" Toby fell to the gtound, when all his acolytes together with Irwen vanished without warning.

Along with his companions vanished his sight, sense of touch and smell, all his sense was uddenly gone as if someone had turned off a switch.

After a time of relative peace as an architect of sewers and a builder of pipes, Toby was afraid.

Concentrating more on his surroundings, his senses were not truly gone, but everything was a mess. After a few desperate minutes, he looked around and saw blurred colors at most, feeling like a cripple that had been robbed of his cane and was trying to walk without it.

Trying to discern more details in his surroundings, he felt a light tug, the remnants of his sense of touch telling him that something or someone pulled on his chain.

"Status." He said in his mind, but nothing happened.

He wanted it to be a bad dream, but he was unable to wake up, as he was being slowly dragged by something that he could not even see properly with his incomplete vision.

* * * *

His expression full of hate, Fealdin was looking at the mural where life-like depictions of demon lords were battling with the so-called saviour, Verdun. All of them were filthy demons, and in the past rivers of blood had been spilled because of them, elven blood.

His niece was lost, with no demands or any other signs of blackmail, he could only presume the worst.

Enough of self pity, coutless lives were hanging on what he was about to do. He thought that he had finally discovered the right way to strengthen the seal. His eyes stabbed into the faces of the hated figures for the last time and he had the feeling he could see more detail than usual. The skin of the demons seemed to be not as grey as always, a breath of deep red present where only the grey color of stone should have been.

"Impossible!" Faeldin's heart skipped a beat when he realized what was happening.

The seal was failing in front of his eyes!

One of the heads turned to face him and he flinched when his eyes met with two red burning flames in black eye sockets. The three meters tall figure stepped out of the mural and its step thundered with the weight of its massive body.

Faeldin gulped and unsheathed his sword, he failed in his mission, but he had still enough pride in him to not go down without resistance. The demons had surely already released their magic, as he felt weaker, he instinctively knew that any sword art he would try to use would fail and so with a roar he launched forward a simple pitiful stab in his last display of defiance. The demon bared his teeth in a smile and gestured with its hand. In the next second, Faeldin's sword penetrated the demon's heart.

What! Was it an illusion? Was the demon playing with his mind? Faeldin could not understand the situation, observing the stupefied expression of the demon.

So be it! It would not make him falter!

Faeldin unsheathed his second slender sword and began to fight with the rest of the demons in the earnest. To his surprise his opponents seemed to be in more shock than him and offered little resistance, just frantically waving their hands in strange gestures that did absolutely nothing.

It was the most weird fight of his life, in a minute he had made a short work of all the demon lords including Verdun and that was it. He stood there surrounded by blood and bodies with a silly face.

That was all? These were the monsters they had been afraid of for centuries?! What a joke!

Faeldin began to laugh like a madman, he could not believe how it all had ended, his all life seemed like a bad joke. He failed to notice the many people that had been alerted by the noise fell to their knees in front of him, even the most ardent opponents of his unable to oppose him after his shocking deed.

In that moment the first elven king was born.

* * * *

"Sir, we have another batch of refugees. What should we do with them?" A robust soldier presented a few humanoid figures to Randolf.

"I brought a few with me, because I do not know the species. It is quicker to show them, sir." Randolf gave the refugees a quick look.

For someone home, they would have never guessed the demon world was inhabited by a creature looking like this. They reminded him of elves, but their ears were bigger, covered with fur. The same fur grew on their long tails that they could apparently consciously manipulate like a third hand. The remaining notable difference that set them apart from ordinary elves was that their fingers were longer than normal, sinewy and tough. Their hair was short and the color of their hair and fur was the same, the fur of the specimen in front of him was black, brown and green.

Two of them flinched when he looked at them, obviously scared like wild animals. However it was obvious they were no animals, given the spark of intelligence in their eyes.

Randolf sighed, what should he do with them?

His orders were clear, they should be exterminated.

"How many are there?" Randolf questioned the soldier who was obviously more into physical combat than casting any sort of spells.

"A few thousands sir, but we expect there will be many more in the forests in the north."

"First, gather them together in one place." Randolf could not bring himself to give the order.

This was not why he had entered into the service of The Guild!

He started as a simple mage, fascinated with magic. Yet there was little to research and explore, because the power came rather from killing than understanding or research. After finishing the basic classes, he slowly moved in ranks starting as a scout, but hungry for power, he applied for a position of a dungeon explorer and had been transferred later on to intelligence department, because of his invaluable ability to teleport.

There, he had come in contact with the darker side of The Guild that was hidden from plain sight. When he had reached his current position of the thirteenth battlemage, there was no way back anymore. He knew too much and could only continue to serve the guild, or "disappear" by the hands of the ones at the top.

Randolf stared at the huge interplanar portal in the distance that connected the demon world to his home world and wondered if there really was no way out. Many looked at him in awe and envied his power, but in a sense, he was a slave of his position. An ordinary soldier had more freedom than him!

An unexpected flickering of light of huge proportions captured his attention, it was like the sun had a malfunction.

It was the portal. It flickered a few times and went out.

"What is going on?" Randolf tried to use a number of magical tools to determine the cause, but to his horror none of them were working. It was like someone had switched all magic off.

Panic and pandemonium was being held off only by the fact that this was a military camp with high discipline, but uncertainty and fear appeared in the eyes of many soldiers around him.

* * * *

An old man with white beard and hair had finally concluded his mission and could see a massive edifice towering to the sky at the horizon. It had been a long journey, but he had to make it in order to keep The Guild on the right track. After all, it was his duty to explain history to those who had not enough time or talent to understand it. Still, his place was here at the headquarters, not in the field.

. . .and not in the harsh environment of a tent, but in a soft warm bed, he had to admit.

A sky shattering noise startled him and made him look closely at the destination of his journey that was the base of the tower. For a second he thought that he was senile and the tower bowed to him, greeting its returned resident, but his eyes widened in shock a short moment after.

The tower that housed the headquarters of The Guild was crumbling, it seemed that its base was being crushed under the immense weight of the mass above it. A huge cloud of dust obscured the scene close to the ground, but The Keeper of History could see that the whole structure was pushed down, being ground to dust against the ground and began slightly leaning to the side. It resembled a demolition, but he was sure that no explosive devices had been placed, just the idea of that was ridiculous.

Before long, there was only a huge cloud of dust where the famous landmark had stood, leaving The Keeper with his mouth wide opened and knees wobbling.

"All the records are gone!" He whispered in a small voice.

* * * *

Mesmerizing. .. . and yet, irritating to no end.

One white and one black eyes looked at a huge holographic structure in the center of the white room.

To a human's eye, the structure would resemble brain cells under microscope, where nuclei of the cells were only barely present. To the women this picture represented the known universe, with the sparingly present nuclei being the swarm cores and the dendrites and axons being trees consisting of many branches that were filled with clusters of worlds.

She waved her hand and all the uncountable worlds turned blue, except the ones near the swarm cores, those were the ones not under her control. She could not help but wave her hand again, dismissing the holographic projection, irritated by the damnable swarm cores. The universe should consist of matter and energy, but the swarm cores were the source of another kind of substance that was neither and eluded all research, ether. All she knew was that ether was connected to souls and in the worlds close enough to the swarm cores, it was the source of magic.

Magic, an unexplainable, pestering phenomenon that the soul-imbued creatures enjoyed to research so much!

That was exactly the cause why The Collective was able to conquer those worlds only with great difficulty. Not possessing a soul, they were unable to use ether. They had tried multiple times to turn soul-possessed creatures into machines, but for some elusive reason, a soul appeared to be unable to survive in a fully artificial state.

She sat behind her desk and gave a few commands, today was the day to finally bring order to sector NWK-45F. The fools thought that "the system" was there to help them, but she had introduced it to limit the enemy's imagination and research by giving them a strict framework. Although The Collective knew close to nothing about ether, they used the simple fact that accumulating souls increased the flow of ether and that was how they powered the system in NWK-45F, it was just a soul-trapping mechanism and its efficiency was terrible, but that was the whole point, a truly developed ether-based civilization would have blasted their invasion into smithereens with how close the sector was to the nearest swarm core.

In addition, switching the system off would provide her not only with a tactical advantage of a surprise attack, but would enable her to destabilize the ward for a time. The ward that had been constructed by one of their own, a defective member of The Collective, the one that they had imbued with a soul and naively expected his loyalty.

She knew that the engine generating the ward was too old and nothing could last forever without any maintenance. There was surely some secret cult maintaining its function, but they used the magic within the framework of the system, as there was no other magic at the world that the engine was build on anymore. The system had slowly wormed its way in via the numerous injections, providing seemingly quick and easy power ups and everyone embraced it early on after the first war, they had no clue how ineffective it truly was at the late stages. Now, the system was like a virus that was waiting for her command to shut everything down. Sure, they would be free of its fetters the moment it happened, but that would be too late! The branch would be conquered before they were able to find out the truth about magic, before they managed to develop the true power of souls.

With a smile, she pressed a button on her translucent screen, causing system shutdown in the targetted area. A split second later, a mobile galactic fortress initiated warp sequence in the neighbouring system.

The second invasion of The Collective began.