Once again, Lenore and I were scouting ahead, using our aerial advantage to the fullest. Below us, hidden in the trees, were a few humanoids. They were well camouflaged against detection from the road, but easily visible for a being able to detect the magical emanations of any living being.

“You think those are bandits?” I asked, observing through Lenore’s eyes.

“Are you sure you want to call them that? Wouldn’t volunteers for magical experimentation be much more fitting?” Lenore asked, rather amused at my hopeful tone.

“Why not both?” I replied and if I had lips, they would have curled into a grin. “We’ve been thinking about the best way to give Mal’s latest batch of magical black powder a go.”

At my insistence, Lenore turned back towards the others, cutting our flight short. In the two weeks since leaving Gaber, we had gone through dozens of iterations of black powder, starting with a mostly mundane substance and tinkering with it daily. It had been an interesting process, especially once I had a realisation regarding Darkness-Magic, one that solved a conflict within my own understanding.

Ever since we had wandered beneath the White Mountains, I had wondered, how had I been able to differentiate water from solid rock in a place with no light? Or why a fungus was closer to water in my perception than to rock? Why were there such sharp differences in my perception of those materials?

We had been discussing grain structures and material density when the realisation came to me. What I was perceiving wasn’t the material as such, it was the empty space, the void, between the particles. Not as individual spaces, but as a dark emptiness that was more pronounced in some, less pronounced in other materials.

That realisation, that I was detecting density and, with a bit of effort, could use the crude darkness-telekinesis I had stumbled upon a while back, to smooth out the distribution of ‘void’ within a material allowed me to slowly help Mal refine some of her ingredients. My process was time-consuming but gave her incredibly fine grain, which resulted in a marked improvement in efficiency, especially when I began to nudge the distribution of Darkness Astral Power in her material.

That, along with my prior observations, allowed us to slowly refine the black powder recipe until we reached our current product. While we had set off a pair of them, simply to see their effect, we all wanted to observe their effect in actual combat.

Stepping out of my Hallow, just as Lenore was landing, we once again exchanged positions smoothly. By now, it was a truly flowing process that obscured the fact that it wasn’t a shapeshift but an exchange of bodies. I was certain Mal and Gilo had noticed that Lenore and I weren’t a single being, but neither had asked about it.

“There are some bandits up the road,” I told them. Gilo and Mal had a rather inappropriate smirk on their faces when their heard my words, looking a little too eager to face murderers and robbers in bright daylight.

“They don’t look too powerful, so I’m guessing they’ll disappear into the forest as soon as they realise we are trouble,” I added, the smirks falling a little.

“I can sneak up on them, maybe with Rai?” Gilo suggested, fingering the pair of experimental grenades she was carrying.

“But I want to test the bolts,” Mal complained and by now, Adra, Rai and Sigmir looked incredibly amused at our behaviour. Arguing about who got to kill bandits was probably not the appropriate, or sane, reaction but there was only a limited number of them and each of us had our own things we wanted to test.

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“I can conceal you, especially if Adra helps,” I told them and Mal suddenly looked at me as if I was her very best friend in the world. There even appeared to be a bit of sparkle in her eyes, all because I gave her the opportunity to kill some people in a very messy fashion. Maybe, I wasn’t the only crazy in this group.

After deciding on a far too elaborate battle plan for wiping out a group of bandits, we continued along the ancient road, hidden by the trees and a combination of Adra’s and my own magic. Rai and Gilo were moving ahead, intent on preparing some explosive surprises for the bandits, while the main fighting would be done by Mal and her crossbow.

It didn’t take long to reach the area and with Adra’s gift to commune with the plants around us, we quickly mapped out the enemy's locations. Using a tree to hide, if your foe is capable of talking to trees, was a bit pointless.

“Let me flush them out, we don’t want to harm the trees,” I suggested, focusing on the locations Adra and I had determined.

When Mal gave me a nod, I reached out with a grim smile on my face. For once, I wasn’t using my Mind Magic to directly blast an opposing mind, nor did I try to afflict them with a lingering curse, there was no point. Instead, I simply instilled them with a deep fear of the shadows around them, wrapping them in tendrils of isolation as the Curse of the Dark Moon took hold. They were criminal scum, preying on the weak and for that, they deserved no mercy.

My Mind-Magic took hold, powerful enough to affect them all thanks to my high level and multiple traits, special abilities and titles all boosting the effect, and what an effect it had. Around us, the previously quiet forest was suddenly awash with shouts, cries and screams, as the previously well-planned ambush suddenly devolved into utter chaos, as each of the bandits felt they were the last person in the world, while dark tendrils reached out to devour them.

Like headless chickens, they tried to escape the shadows of the forest, fleeing as quickly as their legs could carry them. Their screams quickly gained the bass-rumble of explosions as an accompaniment, creating a curious melody when the traps set by Gilo and Rai began to claim their victims.

“Sing, sing as the Dark Moon dances…” I quietly muttered, laughing as I pushed more Astral Power into the Mind Magic causing the musical of mayhem around us. We just needed a fat lady to sing, and the performance would be complete.

As I slowly swayed to the melody of murder, letting wash around me, when yet another instrument joined in, the twang of Mal’s crossbow provided a quiet counterpoint to the rumbling explosions that echoed each twang, as her explosive projectiles claimed their victims.

The battle, if we could even call it that, didn’t last long. None of the bandits were ever cognizant of the fact that they were under attack, they certainly didn’t realise who was butchering them. Caught up in an utter panic, they became easy victims and got ruthlessly butchered. Looking for traps became remarkably difficult, if all you could see was darkness, all you could feel was the void closing in on you.

Given their levels, we could have fought them without going to such length, and the meagre amount of EXP we gained was certainly not worth the effort, and any thought of looting was quashed by the state the corpses were left in. The amount of coin any bandit could have was not worth digging through the shredded remains of humanoids, mangled to the point that their race was utterly unrecognisable. And yet, I felt dealing with them was well worth it, as we had gained some valuable insights and important observations.

Walking out of the forest, we began to quickly discuss the observations we had made, which of the different prototypes had the best effects, how they had interacted with the magic fed into them and so on.

We were a little engrossed in our discussion, when Adra raised a hand, stopping us in our tracks.

“There’s a group coming up ahead. Mounted, but not too many,” she warned us and our previously excited mood instantly evaporated, replaced by caution.

“More volunteers for our experiments?” I quietly suggested as we stepped towards the trees, ready to use the forest to our advantage.

It didn’t take long, maybe two minutes after Adra had noticed them the first time, a group of thirteen riders came down the ancient road, all mounted on massive, armoured goats. Even from a distance, it was obvious that the riders weren’t human, but a small race, halfling or dwarf.

Adra, as our representative, stepped forward, raising her hand in greeting as the riders slowed down, one of them closing the distance, the rest of their group waiting behind, ready to react to any hostile behaviour on our part. Hopefully, there would be no need for more combat.