A loud yawn escaped Linea’s mouth. In the last few days her nightmares had gotten better, but she was still tired from the traveling. Nora subconsciously mimicked her and like a wildfire everyone yawned after that. Even though they only had been on the way for two weeks, most of the time they sat on horseback. Minu on the other hand didn’t seem to be tired at all. On the contrary, Linea had to be cautious to reign her in whenever she wanted to gallop. But it was this temperament, which Linea loved so much about her horse.

It was shortly after midnight as the group mounted their horses again after they had taken their obligatory break.

“When we’re in Taldira, I’ll go to bed and not leave it for a week,” Aruna announced and yawned again.

“I would prefer Famnir over a bed,” Senia said.

“Me too,” Linea agreed and smiled at Senia, who quickly evaded her eyes.

‘Our talk didn’t seem to have much of an effect,’ Linea noted to Sarah.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sarah replied. ‘She doesn’t seem to be as aggressive as before. Perhaps she needs time to think about it? Perhaps she is just embarrassed about how she treated you?’

‘You think?’ Linea asked doubtfully.

‘I don’t know. Can I try to read her mind?’

‘No, we don’t read the minds of friends and family!’

‘Well, she is not my sister…’

‘But mine! Leave it!’

‘Fine…’

This was a discussion, which happened rather often lately. Ever since Sarah had learned that she was able to gain more psionic skills, she constantly tried to train herself. Some of those skills like pyrokinesis were not really a problem because it was rather simple. Sarah already managed to let a candlelight dance around her fingers. Nothing bigger than that, but it was impressive enough in such a short time.

But when the topic broached telepathy, Linea was against Sarah’s idea to try it on some of their companions. While Sarah had no qualms about it as she saw it as a necessity to learn, Linea was very apprehensive about it. They made the compromise that Sarah was only allowed to test her skills on Linea’s mind.

“Something’s not right…” Fenandir suddenly said and stopped before he mounted his own horse. He put a finger on his lips to signal them to be quiet.

Everybody fell quiet and tried to listen into the woods.

“I hear nothing…” Senia commented after a while.

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Fenandir commented and drew his sword. “There should be sounds of nature. Owls and such. But it’s awfully quiet.”

Linea frowned about the implications, but Senia was faster in expressing the suspicion, they both seemed to have.

“Torra!” she said and drew her Fulchar. Upon uttering the name, a commotion broke out as everyone armed themselves and took a defensive position around Linea and Senia. Evira took control immediately.

“Let’s get moving. The faster we are in the city the better,” she ordered, but Fenandir objected.

“Too late! They’re here!”

As if by command, the sound of stampeding beasts echoed through the forest. Evira cursed loudly. Their position was lousy with no cover beside some trees. The street was rather narrow in this part of the forest and didn’t allow them to maneuver well with their horses.

“Dismount!” she ordered her guardsmen and looked at the Baroness Saliara. “Take your men and Lady Talura and flank the beast or whoever is controlling them. We’ll stop them right here.”

Lady Saliara nodded and with a few orders she rode into the forest away from the incoming horde.

Evira looked around and noticed a small elevation a few meters away from the road.

“Take a position on that little hill!” she ordered and motioned towards her intended target. They herded the horses to their new position and then took a defensive position. Nora tried her best to hold the nearly twenty horses together, while Senia and Linea took position behind the line, which was formed by the guards. Fenandir and Aruna stood with them.

“Get ready!” Evira said. All the guards raised their left hands.

Aruna invoked her holy magic as well.

“Avalithanoniva,” she said and all of them were enveloped in a faint golden glow. Linea looked quizzically at her.

“It’s the spell ‘Shield of the Righteous’. It’s supposed to prevent the Void corruption spreading through your body if you’re wounded by a Torra,” she quickly explained.

“What do you mean by ‘supposed’?” Senia asked with a frown.

“Well, I’m a priestess of the Temple of Luna’sindranar, not of the Void Hunter Guild. I have no experience with this spell.”

“Better than nothing,” Linea noted.

“Now!” Evira suddenly shouted as a horde of boars, wolves and even a bear crossed the street and charged them.

“Talaniva!” All guards yelled in unison and a transparent blue wall appeared in front of them. Linea and Sarah felt the warm magical energies forming the wall, but Linea still flinched slightly as the beasts rammed the wall. A sickening crunch told them that at least some Torra had died on impact. The wall however broke shortly after when even more beasts slammed into it. 

The ensuing fight was nasty, because the beasts fought recklessly and even though Evira’s guardsmen were skilled, the Torra pushed them back. Luckily, the Torra were not intelligent enough to try a flanking maneuver. They stubbornly fought the Moon Elves head on and were sliced up by their swords. But the sheer number threatened to overwhelm Linea's group. They must have killed twenty or thirty beasts already, but ever new enemies reinforced the horde. One wolf was able to slip by and ran towards Senia, who took a casual side-step and stabbed the beast in the back as it ran past her. Linea inspected the wolf. It had gray fur, but his eyes were completely black, and tendrils of the same all-consuming darkness stretched from them over his head.

Linea breathed heavily as her pulse climbed up. This was so far out of her comfort zone that she had problems concentrating. But it didn’t escape her notice that the Void-Energy dissipated towards somewhere behind the attacking horde.

Before she could tell anyone though, Evira cast another spell.

“Thuracaia!”

The earth trembled as the Ley-Energy streamed into the soil to their feet. But at the same time Void-Energy followed it from the same source to which the Void-Energy of the wolf had gathered.

And with that the trembling stopped and nothing happened, apart from the Torra stopping their attack.

“It seems we’ve come to a stalemate,” a deep, rattling voice announced its owner. A person which Linea couldn’t even describe as human, stepped from behind the bear, which had yet to attack them. He was humanoid, but his ashen skin and bald head made him look like dead. His teeth were like fangs and his eyes were black as the night. He had the same tendrils coming from his eyes stretching all over his face.

‘Is that the dark mage?’ Sarah asked.

“That’s an orc!” Senia said as if she had heard the question.

‘It’s an orc. A non-magic person corrupted by the Void,’ Linea explained. ‘They aren’t that dangerous normally, but I don’t know how he canceled Evira’s magic or how he is controlling those Torra.’

“I suggest a fair deal,” the orc said with a smile which made him look even uglier somehow. “There is no need to kill all of you. I just want the princesses. Hand them over, and I will let the rest of you go.”

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Evira didn’t even bother to reply as she launched another spell on him directly.

“Inalena!”

For the second time, Linea felt the magic gathering, but before it could manifest, the magic was canceled. This time however, they all could see the man holding an orb which emanated Void-Energy.

‘I think he is using Void-Energy to destroy the mana fueling the spell,’ Linea noted to Sarah.

‘Do you think my psionics will be bothered by that?’ Sarah asked with glee. Linea noticed Sarah's giddiness about a possible fight.

‘I guess not. But be careful!’

When Evira’s spell fizzled out a lot of things happened simultaneously. Another group of beasts suddenly emerged from their right flank, which was completely open, the Torra in front of them attacked again, and Lady Saliara charged from the other side of the street towards them. A lot of cursing were thrown around by everyone including the orc.

Linea ceded the control over her body to Sarah, who instantly charged towards the right flank. Before Senia or Fenandir could even ask what her plan was, Sarah had already put up a barrier, not unlike what Evira and her guardsmen had done earlier, only that her barrier was invisible.

With her left hand, she let her Psy-Energy stream constantly into the barrier, while she used her right hand to grip one beast after another. She lifted them up in the air one by one and slammed them into the ground with such a force that only a bloodied heap of flesh remained.

The orc suddenly seemed to be confused and irritated by the turn of events. He obviously had planned to distract them enough to allow his second force to attack them in a pincher attack. But instead he saw his second force being obliterated by one of his targets, who was supposed to be too weak to fight. And besides that did he found himself in encircled by Lady Saliara’s forces.

He raised his orb again and the Void-Energy manifested itself in a kind of dark lightning bolts, which spread from the orb to its surroundings. The lightning bolts hit not only some of the fighting Moon Elves, but some of his beasts as well, and the effect was rather gruesome.

One of Lady Saliara’s men was hit straight into his chest and a huge chunk of his torso suddenly vanished without a trace. His face was filled with horror but then he fell from his horse and didn’t move anymore. A few more of their group got hit, but not lethal. One of Evira’s guardsmen lost his right arm, and some other suffered from flesh wounds. 

A high-pitched cry from behind her send a chill down Sarah’s spine. As she turned around, she saw Nora falling to the ground. Linea took over control in a fit of panic, which ripped Sarah from her concentration. Her barrier collapsed and the remaining Torra attacked instantly. To Linea’s luck, only a handful of them remained for Fenandir and Senia to clean up. Aruna was the first to reach Nora, who laid crouched on the ground. She examined the belly wound where some of Nora’s guts were missing and the rest was spilling out. The soil beneath her soaked the blood, which was pouring out of Nora.

Aruna didn’t wait a second to cast her healing spell.

“Sulani sa Sethano panu Mura fa nurathi!”

The spell had some effect, but it was not nearly enough to heal Nora completely. Aruna breathed heavily.

“Oh my god, Nora!” Linea said in a panic and looked at Aruna. “Can you save her?”

Fearing the answer, she grasped Nora’s hand.

“I don’t think I can,” Aruna admitted, while still pouring the spell into the wound.  “I’m not a fully trained healer. This is way beyond my skill level. And I don’t have access to enough power to just overload this spell to work a miracle!”

“But we need to do something!” Linea pleaded with tears in her eyes.

Aruna went silent for a moment but looked at Linea.

“You need to do it. As a chosen you should have enough power at your disposal to make it happen.”

“But I can’t do it. I never have…”

“You want to help her?” Aruna asked with a firm voice. “Then stop whining! Just do it!”

‘I’ll help you!’ Sarah said encouragingly.

Linea doubted herself, but she knew she had to try. She laid her hand over the wound and try to calm herself. A strange sensation washed over her when Sarah sent waves of encouragement and tranquility to her mind. It helped to bring Linea to a point where she could at least feel the Life Force of Luna inside of her. But when she tried to reach it, her concentration was broken by the ongoing fight as another Void lightning bolt slammed into one of the horses nearby. The poor stallion dropped dead instantly as his head simply vanished.

Linea tried again, but this time she was interrupted by the pained cry of another warrior.

“I- I can’t concentrate,” she said, tears streaming down. The fear of losing Nora due to her inability was growing stronger by the minute.

‘Give me control!’ Sarah ordered angrily. ‘I’ll annihilate this bastard and his minions, and then you will have enough peace to heal her.’

‘Please! I can’t lose her!’

They switched again in an instant and Sarah looked at Aruna.

“Keep her alive as long as you can,” she said after wiping away Linea’s tears. “I’ll make sure I can perform this undisturbed.”

Aruna raised an eyebrow but got to work again.

“But make it fast, I can’t hold it for much longer.”

Sarah nodded and turned towards the battle. The formation of guards was broken, and everyone was fighting on his own. Fenandir and Senia tried their best to keep the charging Torra away from Aruna, Linea and Nora, but the beasts wouldn’t relent. Just as a wolf had buried its teeth into Senia’s left arm, Sarah intervened. With her telekinetic powers, she gripped the jaw of the wolf and opened it again, so that Senia could free herself. After that Sarah just threw the Torra against a tree. The tree broke in half and the wolf didn’t move anymore. His Void-Energy flowed back towards the orb of the orc.

With angry steps, Sarah walked towards the orc and shredded every Torra, which came into her path. Even the bear, which tried to protect its master, was no match for her. She stopped his attack by just ripping its head of. A move that costed her more power than she had expected. 

The orc noticed her approach, but before he could do anything, the telekinetic powers got hold of him as well. But instead of just ending him, Sarah wanted to make him suffer. She put enough strength behind her telekinesis to rip his arm with the black orb from his body. The orc cried in pain and covered his shoulder with his remaining hand.

“How can you cast magic?” he yelled, but Sarah didn’t bother to answer him. She simply severed his left leg.

With another cry of pain, the orc fell to the ground. Instead of trying to talk himself out of the situation again, he made a last-ditch effort and reached for his orb with his remaining hand. He barely touched it before Sarah let it fly away from him.

“Too late!” the orc yelled and laughed manically. Sarah frowned but realized that the orc had done something with the orb in the fraction of a second he had touched it. All the Void-Energy around them, even the energy in the Torra, was taken and flowed into the orb. Sarah could feel that something bad would happen. She quickly broke the neck of the orc hoping that his death would stop whatever he had done to the orb.

Since the Torra couldn’t survive without the Void-Energy, they all suddenly dropped dead. The remaining fighting force of Linea’s group was confused, but Evira was the first to realize that something strange was happening.

“Linea? What are you doing with the orb?” she asked walked to her.

“Stop! Don’t come closer!” Sarah replied, while the orb hovered in front of her. “I don’t know what the orc has done to this thing, but I doubt it is something nice.”

Before they could discuss it any further however, the orb crumbled, and something poured out. Whatever spilled from it was sinister and it made Sarah’s flesh crawl. Judging by Evira’s reaction, she must have felt the same.

‘This feels like a manifestation of the Void. Like the Void lightning earlier. Just more potent.’ Linea said and sounded concerned.

Sarah tried to manipulate this Void with her telekinesis as she hadn’t had the slightest idea what else she could do. To her surprise she felt that the Void manifestation was a bunch of little particles, and they reacted violently with their surroundings. Sarah finally understood what the orc had tried to do. Similar to anti-matter, which is supposed to react with matter to create energy, the Void particles seemed to react with matter and energy to annihilate everything around it.

And the orc had just made a large chunk of this Void to avenge his impending death.

Sarah formed a plan, but she had no idea if it would work. She created a psionic barrier around the Void manifestation and pressed it hard enough to expel everything from within except the Void. She managed it just in time as the Void reached critical mass and tried to absorb its surrounding. Like an explosion the Void expanded a hundredfold to the size of a small house. Sarah quickly pushed it far enough away from her.

Now a black sphere of doom was hovering in the air just in front of Sarah and the remaining group.

“What in Luna’s name is this?” Lady Talura asked what ran through everybody’s head.

Some tried to apply some kind of first aid to the wounded, but Evira, Fenandir, Senia, Lady Saliara and Lady Talura gathered around Sarah.

“I don’t have the time to explain it properly,” Sarah said. To her horror the barrier ate at her power reserves fast.

‘I can’t hold it much longer,’ she said to Linea. ‘Any idea? I can overcharge my psionic abilities and try to squash it, but I don’t know if it will work. And I wouldn’t be able to use my powers for a few weeks.’

‘Not a good idea,’ Linea answered. ‘We’ll need them against the dark mage.’

‘Options?’

‘I don’t know…’

Sarah was about to ask the others for opinions when she suddenly noticed something different emanating from the sphere.

It was dark, and hunger washed over Sarah. And yet for some reason it felt… good. It invited her. As if something was calling for her. It was confusing, but for a moment she thought about releasing the Void and let herself being dragged into it.

‘Sarah!’ Linea screamed loudly. ‘Don’t do it! I can’t take over now, because it would explode, but you need to come to your senses!’

Sarah realized that she had been like in a trance and had slowly started to open the barrier.

“Shit!” she exclaimed loudly.

“What?” Evira asked and gripped her sword even harder.

“I’m losing control!”

Sarah was still confused about the Void calling for her, but now she was aware of it. 

‘Can you try to release it away from us?’ Linea asked in a desperate attempt to find a solution.

‘How would I…’ Sarah wanted to ask but when she thought about the idea for a second, she concluded she could probably do that.

‘This could go horribly wrong and we could all die,’ she said to Linea.

‘But if you do nothing, we’ll definitely die!’ Linea argued.

‘Good point.’

Sarah manipulated the barrier to open itself away from the group. The Void took the opportunity instantly and exploded away from the group. The barrier broke like a dam and Sarah had to use all her strength to stop the barrier from collapsing completely.

She managed somehow and saw, like everyone else, how a black beam with a ten-meter diameter raced through the forest on the other side of the road. The whole thing only lasted for a few seconds, but for Sarah it was like an eternity.

But finally, the Void had depleted itself and Sarah could drop the barrier.

The aftermath was devastating. The forest on the other side had a literal hole in it as the Void beam had cut a swathe into the forest as far as they could see. Sarah noticed a few trees, which had been damaged, fall into the gap.

“That went well, didn’t it?” Fenandir noted with a crooked smile.

“This is not funny,” Senia said, but her gaze was still fixated on the devastation before her. “We have dead and wounded soldiers. Some more respect, please.”

That little side note pulled Linea and Sarah back into reality.

‘Nora!’ both suddenly thought.