Tina grabbed my robe. “Wait, I’m coming with you!”

“No, Tina,” I held her wrist, “it’s—”

“Dangerous? Yeah,” she cast Clean on herself and pecked me on the lips, “being your lover is like that.” The crazy lass jumped through the portal before me.

When I got there, Einar was really worried. He made a gratus. “My Lady!”

Lilith soon joined him with a bow instead of a gratus. “Something is happening in the capital city, Ivora. I feel a dark presence. We must make haste.” Despite the situation, she gave weird eyes to Tina.

“Alright, but you stay here Lilith. Tina…”

“Nope,” she promptly rejected my suggestion to leave her behind, without even waiting for me to say it.

Geez. “Alright, alright.” I placed Aether Shell on her, and Mana shield on me and Einar. “Let’s go then, Einar.”

When we got there, the main gate was reduced to rubble. A suffocating presence filled the city, and the sheer feeling of doom pounding at my heart was trauma-inducing. We rode across the skies of Ivora towards the castle, where the shuddering feeling was the strongest.

Civilians were nowhere to be seen, and those that I managed to catch a glimpse of were scurrying away from plain sight, hoping to find some sort of reprieve in hiding. I could smell the fear and hopelessness rampaging around the city, but the source eluded me. Even the guardsmen went into hiding, and those who were strong enough to weather whatever was going on could only hope to find solace in death. Many of them who laid on the ground, frozen by fear, found the resolve to end the horrifying feeling of suffering, of death, by killing themselves. It was a chilling sight, and an even more horrendous feeling.

We made it through that feeling by my constant casts of Pacify and encroached the castle with cautious winds guiding us. Down in the courtyard stood a dark creature, a demon. One look in its general direction and anyone could confirm without a shadow of a doubt that the feeling of your very end looming around the corner came from it.

It looked back at us, a male demon from the looks of it. Wings sprouted and he flew up to us. A white robe adorned some silver armor beneath, and contrasted heavily with his jet-black skin. His striking white eyes swimming in a sea of black was unmoving after it settled on me. He slowly floated towards us.

“Who is he?” Tina asked.

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Her question brought me out of my mind and back to the present. “You two, leave now.”

“What? I’m no—”

Sopor put her to sleep. “Einar.”

“Understood, My Lady. Please, be careful.” He took Tina and flew downwards to Ivora’s castle.

Soon, the demon came close enough. “You’ve been in contact with it. Where is it, lich?”

“Where is what? And who are you?” I asked.

“This façade you put up is beneath me, lich.” He outstretched his hand and a swirling blast of dark energy enveloped my body. Mana Shield quickly broke from the huge amount of damage it took in that short space of time. My body began to deteriorate like a corpse; my muscles would’ve rotted off the bone had I not moved.

I wove Aether Shell on myself and fixed my wounds with Intermediate Heal.

“I won’t ask again,” the demon warned with stern eyes and an overpowering aura.

I sighed, and decided to hightail it out of the city, but the demon was quick. He gained on me before Dreadhoof could reach the white walls of Ivora. Hand of Winter was cast on him, but he broke out of it. Ray of Sol did nothing but slow him down a little. Graveyard’s wall of bones was busted through. It was becoming clear that he was a master wizard, but he wasn’t exactly trying to kill me. He wanted something from me, but hell if I knew what that was.

We tussled with spells back and forth in an attempt to thwart each other, and even as I tried to ensure that my spells wouldn’t put other people’s lives at risk, it was inevitable that the culmination of both our magics would leave the area with a few issues. His skin was covered in armor and robes, so it was hard to tell which clan he was from. I figured it must’ve been the Bloodmoon or Hellfire clan. But the former was a mystery that were supposed hybrid creatures of elf and demon. The crazy case in front of me looked like your average demon and would fool everyone who saw him if not for his ridiculous power.

“The Hellfire clan sent you?” I asked, nearing a small stream of water that led to a lake.

His blast of shadowy magic splashed the waters upward past the top of the trees surrounding us. Another blast rocketed forth, and they kept coming, until the landscape changed into a deathly brown scene from the dead and shriveled trees.

As I dodged his umpteenth spell, my grimoire shook violently. But what was I going to do? Read it in the middle of battle? I continued defending against the enraged demon. Occasionally, he would glance back at the destruction he wrought upon the environs and grunt in frustration. After a few repeats of this, he opened a portal and teleported away without even explaining what the hell he wanted from me nor why he was in Ivora.

My grimoire shook again, so I allowed it to float towards me. Even with the lethality of the spell, he didn’t actually try to kill me. In a way, it reminded me of how Pyralis attacked, in a somewhat reckless but obvious manner. I swallowed, thinking about if he was serious; that feeling of dread stricken across the city was horrible, but not really a magical effect deriving from a spell. The demon was simply that dangerous; it wasn’t much more than our survival instincts imploding inside us.

As the thoughts of him subsided, my eyes focused on the words in front of me printed on the grimoire. ‘Demon King Fyren’, and ‘Shadowsiphon Dagger’, along with an underworld devil, ‘Knerog’.

Knerog? Another devil? The path of dead trees that suffered from the demon’s magic felt like a bad sign. That could be people…

I sighed. It was time to confront the demon king.