The plan, or experiment, was kind of simple really. Claih took what was essentially a remote detonator and attached it to her little Red Nightmare container, and that in turn was placed inside an old backpack.

With that ready, we set off into the mountains in search of a place to set up. I had to keep casting my detection spell to make sure we weren’t accidentally seen by our prey before the trap was set.

We chose an innocuous clearing at the bottom of a small and well forested valley. Lots of places for us to hide and watch. The pack, along with a few more random camping items, were placed down there, but that wouldn’t be enough to entice our adversaries down to look. Any self respecting ranger or scout would be wary of something like this, so we needed to make it look interesting enough to investigate anyway.

The ranger’s plan to do this was a little… gruesome. They had hunted and killed a few deer that day with the intention that they would feed us, but now they mangled them and threw the pieces all across the clearing. Blood, guts and pieces of deer everywhere in a convincing display of savagery that, quite frankly, made me feel a little ill.

It wasn’t just the carnage though, because deer and obrec had a few passing similarities that when the subject was in multiple pieces, might lead someone to confuse one for the other, so long as no intact heads were around. Basically, from a distance it looked like a group of obrec rangers had been torn apart by some magical beast.

All that had to happen now was an accidental fire to be lit, and for a bunch of obrec to scream in supposed fear for their lives. Which is what they did next.

They were convincing with their screams, I’ll give them that. Even seeing that the people making those sounds were okay wasn’t enough to stop my stomach from icing over. My hand found Grace’s next to mine as we crouched and latched on tightly. I don’t know why I reacted like this, I had always struggled with realistic depictions of pain in others, however fake they might be.

We were crouched beside a bush and a tree, which combined to shield us from the view of any overly watchful eyes. Everyone else was hidden nearby, watching as the rangers scattered to their own hiding spots.

The wait that followed was excruciating, the only thing of interest to look at being the fire down in the pretend camp that was trying its best to consume the damp foliage of the clearing. At least it was creating a hell of a lot of smoke as it slowly dried the grass out, then burned it.

“I’m so bored,” I whined quietly after what felt like hours, cuddling up closer to Grace. “Why are they taking so long?”

“I don’t know, should we ask them? I’d text them to ask why they’re late but my phone was vaporised by a giant robot,” she laughed, reaching around to run her hand through my hair.

“The ring be like that though,” I smiled, almost purring as she scratched at my scalp. “Oh, that… that… that’s good, keep doing that.”

“Whatever keeps the magical princess happy,” she said wryly, continuing to scratch at me as I’d asked.

Goodness, I knew that she was shutting me up with the scratches but I didn’t much care. It felt nice. It did actually kinda suck about her phone though. There wasn’t going to be any more phones, at least for a very long time. I wonder if we’d even live long enough to see that. Come to think of it, what was the lifespan of a mage?

I’d like to live for a long time, but only if there was a way to slow the maturing process of my mind. I wanted to live a longer than natural life only if I could stay as me, as the Ryn I was now, rather than some properly grown up and wizened old woman. It just looked like the older people got, the slower they moved through the world, and I didn’t mean physically. I wanted to keep my energy, my excitement for the world and my urge to explore it.

“Ryn,” Grace whispered urgently, her fingers leaving my hair to grab my head and point it down at the fake camp below.

They were there, five men in dark cloaks creeping out of the woods with bows in hand. Except one, which held a magitech rifle at the ready. Guess this trap was a good idea then, and Claih’s lesson had been delivered at a very opportune time.

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Squinting, I couldn’t get a clear picture of the men beyond their cloaks and their weapons, which had me frustrated. Hoping they had no way to detect the use of my magic, I carefully raised my hand and cast another of those spells that made me more than just a battle mage. The air in front of me bent and warped, becoming a lens for me to look through.

They weren’t Fennimore’s men, that much was certain as soon as I got a good look at them. Their chests held a symbol I had seen more than a dozen times recently, a blue-gray field with an orange sun at its center. Ghraiga military.

They edged closer into the clearing, the lead one stopping to inspect a dismembered hoof. I sat there with Grace at my side, tense as we waited. He had to realise it wasn’t an obrec foot right? I’d heard about the Ghraiga and obrec having skirmishes from the Stonechasers, they had to have some knowledge of the other race, right?

The man sprang up with a cry of alarm, placing an arrow into the nock on his bow in the same motion he took to get up. Crap, they weren’t to the pack yet! They’d be out of range!

A sharp crack sounded from the clearing below, confusing me for a second before I realised it was the detonator going off inside the pack. At first, nothing happened and even the Ghraiga scouts paused in confusion. They had probably expected to die with the sound of that small magical explosive going off. I could feel it though, feel the magic down there almost like it was intelligent, like it was confused as to where its cage had gone.

Slowly, tendrils of inky dark red energy snaked out of the pack, like a blind cephalopod getting its bearings. It twitched and spasmed as it did so, tentacles flickering like malfunctioning holograms, never quite occupying any single space for long.

“What the hell…” Grace mumbled from beside me, tense as the drawn bow strings of the men below. “I could feel and sort of control it before, but now it’s like it doesn’t recognise me at all.”

I was about to reply, thoughts spinning like thread into words that would be delivered to my mouth so that sound might be crafted, but all of that died when they struck. The tentacles of what looked like congealed blood lunged like vipers, one for each scout, spearing them each through the chest.

The scouts began to scream and claw at the spikes of energy in their chests, only for their hands to come away sticky with the magic of the nightmare. It began to spread under their skin like an infection, making its way for their head. The lead man began to thrash, crying and wailing as he desperately pulled his sleeve back to watch the inky red energy spread.

We stared in horror as it reached his neck and then grew upwards. That’s when his screaming became truly terrifying, animalistic and raw. His fingers turned to terrible hooks and he brought them up, wailing as he began to claw at his own face with manic despair.

One by one however, each of the poor doomed men below us went limp, their bodies hanging on the ends of those disgusting, awful spikes. They stayed like that for what felt like centuries, but was actually only a few seconds. Then the twitching began, their bodies thrashing violently once more even as the energy of the red nightmare flowed completely out of the pack.

Using its own form as a conduit, it funneled the rest of its form through the bodies of the scouts and up. Each of the five tentacles joined back up into a mass of dark red liquid above the clearing, then spread out into a flat disk.

Grace and I were shaking as we watched, unable to look away from the awful scene below. My brows furrowed in confusion as the disk of magic wobbled, then rent apart, leaving a vibrant red space where it had been.

It took me a second to realise what I was looking at, or rather, into… it was the Red Nightmare itself. The magical realm where this energy had originated. It had just torn a hole in the fabric of space and tunneled back to its home.

There was a tearing sound, wet flesh ripping and my gaze dropped back down to the bodies of the scouts, where the nightmare energy was busy pulling something violently out of each body. The things were vaguely human in shape, made of white magic, their edges indistinct. What wasn’t hard to see was the terror with which the humanoid shapes writhed, desperate to free themselves from the clutches of the energy.

It only lasted a second, two at most, then they were gone, the red magic, the portal and all. Just the bodies remained, drained of all the magic that had infected them just moments before. They fell to the ground with distant thumps, and the clearing was quiet once more.

The quiet lasted a long time, minutes passing as every single person who had been watching sat stunned by what they had just seen. I could feel Grace’s hand in mine, tense and clammy with sweat.

I gulped, turning to her. “Never use that energy again.”

“Yeah…” she agreed, her eyes wide with horror and even tears. I saw her swallow, once… twice. “That was… did it… did it rip their souls out?”

“It looked like that…” I breathed, turning to glance back at the bodies. “If souls are real. It also… it took them into the red nightmare.”

“Yeah…” she nodded, looking dazed and lost. “I know they killed that ranger… but I don’t think… they didn’t deserve whatever that was.”

Wordlessly, I nodded, placing my arm around her shoulders. I could only think of one person I knew who might deserve a fate like that, and even then… I wasn’t sure.