On the boats it was all oars out, everyone making as much headway as they could. James was laughing, using his massive blade as a paddle. An extra dwarf manned the oar opposite James to make sure the ship still went straight. If it wasn’t for the fact that they had narrowly escape with their lives and that several of them needed medical attention, then Azrael might have even found it funny.

As it was, he simply felt tired. Tired and frustrated. His night had been cut short, they’d had to run from a fight and worst of all the one thing he’d relied on as a trump card, as an ace in the hole as a final finisher – his magic – had barely been more effective than his dagger. He’d thought that he’d been strong, and while he was objectively unimaginably stronger than he’d been when he started, James had been mowing them down with a smile by the dozens, while he’d needed several shots to take one down. Rationally he knew that it wasn’t that he was weak, but that it was a bad matchup. It still didn’t make the sting to his pride any better. The fact that he should have… could have detected the problem beforehand made it worse.

Still frustrated at himself, Azrael sat down on the deck, giving himself a few moments to calm down. He let himself slide into [Meditation] the familiar, calming breathing patterns helping release some of his inner tension, while also replenishing his spent mana.

Azrael pulled in all his other sense, trusting the others to rouse him should they face sudden danger, before slowly letting them expand back out again – focusing solely on the mana around him. Relying purely on his [Mana Sense], he felt the world around him. Mana touched everything. It was in the air, in the water, in the leaves and in the trucks of the trees. Everywhere his [Mana Sense] touched, either side of the river, he could sense it.

Amongst this diffusion of mana there were eight stars, where mana gathered. Amongst them James was by far the brightest. Azrael ignored them, instead focusing on breathing in the mana around him, drawing it in from the air. He pulled it, gathered it, and funnelled it into his core. There it settled, slowly filling up his reserves.

He didn’t let it stay there long though, instead letting it flow through him again when he had gathered enough. He cast [Search], letting the net of mana expand outwards. Where it touched other mana it deformed, bouncing away, diffracted, deflected or broken.

He accepted it as it returned, building a picture of the world around him. Again, he gathered mana, drawing back the metaphorical line, before casting again and again and again. Repeatedly he cast [Search], letting it expand further with every cast, refining the threads of mana that made up the spell and every time gaining greater distance and clarity.

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He felt something twinge at the edge of his consciousness, but it wasn’t due to [Search] so he let it go. Instead, he repeatedly cast and refined the Skill, confirming that there were no skeletons chasing them or other midnight horrors ready to ambush them. He’d failed to make use of his skillset once. He wouldn’t repeat that mistake again, at least not tonight.

“Stop.”

Azrael broke two hours’ worth of silence as [Search] finally picked up something suspicious. Only briefly had they stopped rowing to bandage wounds, but otherwise they had continued on. This was the fourth hour since they had escaped the skeletons. Barely anyone had spoken during their brief rest breaks, still high strung from the ambush.

Now, as he spoke, everyone was immediately on high alert, oars drawn in and swapped out for weapons. There was only the sound of the water lapping on their hull as it quietly carried them downriver. Azrael himself kept his eyes closed, having enough mana to cast a [Search] with [Overcharge]. He never reached that point, before there was a surprised cry from the boat ahead, one of the villagers scrabbling at his face with suddenly bloodied and lacerated fingers.

In the time it had taken Azrael to open his eyes James had already leapt across the gap between the two wooden boats, narrowly preventing himself from capsizing the smaller craft. The blade came down slashing at the invisible enemy with his blade. The grown man fell to the bottom of the boat clutching his face and sobbing.

James raised his blade into the night and spoke solemnly, as if issuing a declaration.

“There is no hope, no light, no life. The end has come.”

He breathed out, letting ghostly veils of cold air drift from his mouth, as his outstretched weapon glowed with a ghostly chill. Azrael felt mana flow in James’ direction and take shape.

“[Touch of Frost]”

Like watching a timelapse, silver lines of ice spread out from the point of the point of James’ sword Those lines become a dozen, two dozen, one hundred and more, until they covered the entire region spanning the river between the trees.

Azrael let out [Search], deciding to not [Overcharge] the spell in favour of a faster cast time. It was then, when [Search] came back with multiple responses from within the trees, that Azrael realised it wasn’t a hundred lines of ice that emanated from the sword, but a layer of frost that had spread to cover a hundred hidden threads. He called out the real threat to the others, even as he heard the enraged scurrying of hundreds of chitinous legs.

“SPIDERS!”

Azrael let a half mad grin slip onto his face, his mana already flowing towards his fingertips as he prepared to cast. He was tired, hungry, slightly motion sick and above all still frustrated about having to run from a fight earlier. He recognised that perhaps he wasn’t in the most stable frame of mind, but he didn’t really care. He was just itching for something to take his frustration out on. Mana swirled and he pulled upon his half-replenished mana pool to fire off the first shot.