Once again, I felt a pulse of magic in the distance, the elves communicating amongst them in their hunt for us. They hadn’t been able to find our tracks, the combination of Adra and my magic enough to ward them off so far, but they were trying to create a net to trap us. The magic they used to communicate was relatively crude, more akin to shouting than a magical mobile phone, but it got the job done. They were hours behind us, and yet, I could feel their efforts, making it obvious just how strong those signals were to reach us here.

“We just need to escape until night falls,” I told Adra, trying to cheer her on as I spread my senses outward, making sure that the concealment wrapped around us was still intact and keeping us hidden.

“At night, Lenore and I can head north again and cause some mischief, that way their efforts should shift away from us,” I explained, not accepting that our previous efforts to mislead the elves had completely failed. Hopefully, the elves would assume that there were two different groups causing mischief or would even write the loss of their patrol off as a random accident, not caused by enemy action. But I could only guess at their assumptions, the intensity of their search making it obvious that they were greatly interested in the fate of their patrol. Maybe we should have let Yvla tear into the corpses, making it look like the attack of a beast, but that left other problems open.

“I don’t like it,” Sigmir grumbled, but she could see just as well as I that it was the best way to keep us all safe. We couldn’t fight all the elves and their mastery of the forest meant that once they knew where to look, they would find us eventually. So far, their inability to find us was wholly due to the wide area they needed to take into account, or they would, at some point, have broken the concealment wrought by Adra and me. To keep that haystack as large as possible I had deliberately created false trails with the feeding rituals, performing them far from the group, thus obscuring our position.

And I would have to keep doing so.

The day dragged on, the elves unable to find us, but that didn’t mean they weren’t looking. They likely weren’t putting their all into the search just yet, but even so, I could feel the occasional pulses of magic and there was a faint scent of danger in the air, the Astral River roiling with their efforts.

By the time the sun was setting, we all were on edge, to the point that Adra actually used her magic to implore one of the nearby trees to open a small cave between its roots. There, hidden in the earth, Adra and I wove a dense web of magic, trying to blot the presence of our camp out completely, only leaving a small opening for Lenore and me to leave through later. From the outside, it looked like a simple burrow, something one of the many critters living in the forest might dig. Hopefully, it would be enough to hide them.

With a new set of buffs, freshly cast by Adra to conceal Lenore’s presence against the repeated divinations of elves and dryads, trying to find those who were harming their forest, we set off. For once, feeding the Nidhogg in its prison was a side-effect, the main goal being to distract the elves from our actual position, making them think we were further north and that the death of their patrol was simply an unrelated coincidence. They might still investigate, but hopefully, the pressure would lessen.

We kept darting through the canopy, Lenore using her wind magic to fly, pushing her speed to the maximum she could sustain for longer distances and I felt the Astral Power I would normally regenerate flow into her, a benefit of being in my Hallow. Just like she often provided power to me, now it was my turn, to provide power to her.

We had estimated a position for the next ritual, based on the previous two, trying to make them assume our speed and direction based on those. It was somewhat risky, as even two rituals might have given them a good enough idea to place a trap, but that was why we only estimated the area, not trying to actually hit the right spot. The elves would likely be in the vicinity, but that only meant we’d have to vanish as soon as the ritual was over.

Finding a spot was just as simple as it had been the last time, only this time, I made sure to place some wardings around the area, trying to make sure no stupid rodents were wandering in and disturbing me.

Putting up the familiar runes was a simple, but somewhat tedious chore, yet it had to be done. I simply didn’t have the ability to throw such a complex spell out without preparing it, I needed the runes to guide the magic into the right forms, so the Nidhogg could latch onto it and complete things, absorbing the power for itself.

Once everything was completed, I took out the Soul Prison, immediately feeling the anticipation and realising that the being inside was getting more and more awake, for lack of a better term. As if the destruction of the Ancient Sapling had started the process and the feeding was giving it the energy to continue sustaining itself, even if the power was far from enough to actually break the prison. It was a fascinating idea and I truly wanted to converse with the being, as it had to know incredible magical secrets, that much I could tell from the brief moments it controlled my own powers during the feeding.

Taking a deep breath, I triggered the ritual, letting my magic burst out Death agitating the Life in the trees to the maximum, only for the Blood Magic to latch onto that life and allow the Nidhogg to tear it out, turning the formerly massive trees to dust, leaving little more than crippled husks burning with a black, devouring flame of death.

The elves didn’t disappoint me, their reaction was as swift as I had anticipated, the ritual’s effects hadn’t fully faded before a surge of magic was gripping a nearby tree, likely to open the gate I had seen before. A vicious grin appeared on my face and I forced my tired mind to follow my previously prepared plan, quickly throwing together a magical formation, using the Darkness all around us, especially those dark flames that still burned with a combination of the Nidhogg’s and my own power.

For a brief moment, I felt almost drunk with power, the sheer intensity of those flames exhilarating on a level I hadn’t ever come into contact with, the ability to Devour the entire world, to rip out the magic and life from it all. Shaking my head, I forced those thoughts away from me, focusing on the portal that slowly rippled into existence and threw a beam of Dark Radiance at it, my mind focusing on the runes of Devouring, Magic and Chaos.

The flames surged, my power still lingering within them, even if I wouldn’t be able to ignite them on my own, of that I was certain. Unless I completely missed my guess, these were the Dragon Flames of Nidhogg, a power I simply didn’t possess on my own. But I could borrow it, a beneficial partnership between me and an ancient, primordial dragon.

That thought was enough to widen the smile on my face and when those very flames, spurred and projected by me, struck into the portal, igniting the very magic within, even as it was devoured back into the Astral River, I could only laugh with glee. The tree they had chosen started to burn, crumbling under the night of the black flames and I could feel the portal destabilise, wild magic lashing out as it crumbled, destroying the tree it had been conjured in.

A scream rippled through the Astral, one of pain, rage and despair, the smile never leaving my face as I pushed myself back into my Hallow, urging Lenore to get away from here as quickly as possible. We had given the elves a bloody nose and from the notifications in my log, killed quite a few of them in the process, enough to push me to level 121, a realisation that only made me laugh harder. Finally, the cherry on top of it all, were two points in Darkness Magic, bringing that to a wonderful seventy-seven. Now, I just had to understand those Dark Flames, maybe comprehend their rune, and I would be exhilarated.

As I thought about it, my stomach clenched in hunger, and I felt famished as if I hadn’t eaten in weeks. Despite that, the smile on my face never faded, as I focused inward, the various Darkness-Runes swimming through my mind, especially the one for Devouring.

Outside of my Hallow, Lenore was swiftly fleeing, once again laying down a false trail before we would return to the others. Hopefully, this would buy us some time, maybe even enough to reach the Mountains of Ice, where the elves would have a much harder time coming after us.