Blood pumped through his veins. They rode fast and without delay to reach that cave before any major fighting took place.

An arrow motioned right past his face coming from several riders to their rear. They were getting uncomfortably close and if they weren’t taken out quickly, he would end up with an arrow lodged into him for sure.

They were nearing the forest up ahead which would make it much harder to follow or hit them with an arrow, but they still had enough time to let loose a few more arrows that might just end up hitting one of them.

Aphelia kept her hands tightly wrapped around him as they rode this horse together.

“Hey, Yorais!” Abigail yelled out. “Hit them with some more of that magic of yours!”

He kept his gaze forward but he saw bright illumination radiating from behind. A loud noise reverberated out until coalescing into an explosion.

“Did you get them?” Kiran said not bothering to look behind. “Without necessarily killing them?”

“That’s a no by the looks of it,” Abigail said. “All that remains is bits and pieces of them.” He was hoping they could ride their way to the forest without being pursued, but he knew it was a luxury to think that way. How much more blood must we spill?

Abigail sighed as she rode close to him. “I feel bad for the horses. Oh well, they should’ve chosen better riders.”

“Are there any more of them?” Kiran asked.

“Not from what I can tell. That was probably the last of them for now.”

Their entire team began to reach the edge of the forest that surrounded Lady Meredith’s estate. If anyone was coming from the hills behind them, they’d struggle to find them in here. He found a usable path for them to ride through. They quickly crossed over an old stone bridge with a river of water flowing beneath it.

His sight began to get darker the further in they went. He had taken a sight enhancement potion not that long ago, but one of the downsides to these potions was that they wore off much quicker under tense circumstances. He wasn’t sure why that was the case, but they tended to last longer when he wasn’t exerting himself as much.

He grabbed a vial and allowed the liquid to go straight down his throat. He tried to drink it in such a way as to avoid it from hitting his tongue but failed in doing so.

I’ll be lucky if I can taste any food for the next month. Assuming he didn’t end up dying from this mission of course.

The darkness of the forest thankfully began to fade. The silhouettes of hundreds if not thousands of dead trees began to appear along the downtrodden path they strode down at a fairly quick pace.

“How are you doing back there?” he said loudly enough that Aphelia would hear.

“I’m doing alright.” She didn’t hold onto him quite as tightly at this point since those riders died back there. “I’m just glad one of their arrows didn’t hit me. One of them came uncomfortably close to us.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I felt it cut right through the air in front of my face.” It came that close to hitting us. Sometimes I feel like someone or something out there is protecting me.

“Don’t let your guard down,” Frederek yelled aloud. “There’s a strong likelihood that they have people in this forest just waiting for someone like us to run into them.”

Abigail began to snicker a little. “If they know what’s good for them, they’ll just let us ride our way through.”

Considering the amount of talent they had, fighting them would not be wise. They had some of the most talented fighters he could think of besides himself. They had Abigail, Frederek, Lar, Aphelia, and Yorais. The rest were staying back with Lucias.

Messing with them would be unwise. But he fully expected them to encounter trouble. He kept his eyes observing all of their surroundings up ahead. The trees would allow for the perfect opportunity to set up an ambush. So far he didn’t spot anything out there.

That quickly changed as he began to see something ahead of the path. Something blocked the road.

He shot out his arm and began to slow down a little. “The path up ahead is blocked.”

It appeared that a large tree was covering up the road. It was a big enough tree that would force them to go off-path.

But right before he could think to do so, his horse began to let out a blood-gurgling neigh.

His body began to go down but he quickly maneuvered off of the horse with Aphelia landing on the ground beside him. He yanked his sword free from its scabbard.

What just hit my horse? When he quickly observed the dying horse, a giant gash ran across the middle section of its body. Blood oozed out and the horse appeared absolutely miserable as it found itself dying in a gruesome manner.

Everyone else positioned themselves in such a way to defend themselves from every direction. None of them appeared to know where this attack had come from.

Rather than leave things up to chance, he dug his other free hand into his pocket grasping onto the arcane root with a gloved hand.

A warm strange sensation began to rummage through him. What started out being subtle, quickly grew more and more intense. This power went straight to his head and to his toes. It swelled and filled his body with the mana that it had been empty of since entering this domain.

Through the many dead tree limbs, something began to stir ahead of him. Tree limbs broke apart from a distance only to break apart more closely to him every passing second.

He cast a barrier around himself. A flash of light burst in front of his vision. The semi-translucent barrier formed a crack until breaking apart entirely.

The mournful neighing of his horse eventually came to a stop. At least the horse’s suffering didn’t have to go on for any longer.

Whoever had done this to them remained hidden, however, not even bothering to show themselves. That was wise on their part, no matter how annoying it was.

“Show yourself!” Abigail said.

To his right, he began to see tree branches falling to the ground again. The trajectory of their arcane spell went towards someone else instead.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It went straight towards Lar.

He began to cast a barrier over Lar instead of himself. It went up just in time to protect her. The barrier shattered and their attacker remained hidden.

A golden orb began to fly towards the relative direction of their attacker. Shadows from the trees scattered around as the light swelled in intensity.

“Over there,” Frederek said.

A shadow fled through the forest. They began to pursue them on foot walking over tree branches and treacherous ground that changed elevations constantly.

Yorais maintained the golden orb ahead of them keeping it at their adversary’s heels.

Unfortunately, it appeared they lost sight of them entirely. “They’re trying to keep us busy,” Yorais said. “We should return to our horses and try to carry on towards our objective.”

Abigail began to sigh. “What an annoying little worm. We must expect that they’ll strike us again once we’re riding.”

They returned to their horses remaining entirely on guard. Since his horse had been killed, he chose to ride with Lar. Aphelia found herself riding with Yorais. Since the main path was blocked by a tree, they went off-path for a bit until returning to the main path. They strode down it quickly returning to their pace from before knowing to expect an attack at any second.

Their attacker certainly knew how to move around quite quickly. They likely had a horse of their own, although he hadn’t noticed any.

He wondered who exactly they were. He didn’t think it was Evelyn. Nor did it seem to be Felghan. This individual was one of Lady Meredith’s whom he had never seen fight before.

The only person he could think it might be was that person who would stand guard around Lady Meredith sometimes. He didn’t know what his name was though or anything about them for that matter.

They clearly could use magic which either meant he was like Evelyn and Aphelia who strangely could use magic, or he had an arcane root like himself. Whatever the case, they had to be careful.

“How much longer until we make it to that cave?” Abigail asked.

“Maybe another hour if we pick up the pace,” Lar said.

Their horses picked up speed. He continued to feel on edge, but so far no further strikes had come for them. The road was clear as well.

“Who was that anyways?”

“No idea,” Kiran replied. “They’re certainly not eager to get in a direct confrontation with us.”

“They appear far more interested in delaying us,” Yorais said.

Abigail muttered loudly. “Let them try that crap again. I’ll gladly jab one of my swords straight through that chest of theirs.”

The fact that they were encountering them was at least a good sign that they were headed in the right direction. They hadn’t gone into the wrong forest or anything silly like that. They were indeed on their way to that cave that they were desperate to keep them away from.

Lar drastically slowed her horse down. They came to a stop with everyone else as well.

A figure up ahead stood in the road. Kiran focused in on them only to begin to recognize the individual blocking the road.

Felghan?

“Yorais, throw a spell at em’!” Abigail said.

“Hold on,” Kiran said. He hopped off his horse and began to approach the man who kept both hands to his sides.

He locked eyes on Kiran who stood in front of the rest of them. He did not appear angry or showcase much emotion. There was something strange about his demeanor. It was hard to put his finger on why that was the case.

“I didn’t want to believe that you had fragrantly betrayed my lady’s trust. Yet that is very much the case.”

“Have you known what she’s been doing this entire time?”

“It matters not.”

“Really? Do you think it doesn’t matter? Tell me honestly. Did you know she’s the one responsible for causing these problems? I seem to recall you telling me that you had no idea what the cause of this darkness was. If you did know back then, that’d mean you were being dishonest to me right from the get-go.”

“Kiran,” Abigail said from behind. “Let’s just kill him and be done with it. There’s no sense in us talking to him.”

“I want to give him a chance. He did help me when I first arrived here.”

Felghan was largely responsible for Kiran to get the chance to find everyone in the first place. Without his assistance, he could’ve easily died shortly after arriving in this domain. If there was a possibility that he didn’t have to outright attack or kill him, he wanted to give him this chance.

Although, he didn’t appear entirely willing to avoid conflict. The lines on his face became more evident as his true emotions became revealed to them.

“I lent you my hand. I aided you when I had no reason to. And you have betrayed any goodwill I and others have given you. For that, there must be consequences.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Felghan hesitated in forming a response. His eyes darted away until coming back to his. “I did not know.”

“But you do now?”

“I have become aware.” He was surprised that Felghan answered him. He didn’t get the impression by his tone that he was being dishonest either.

“And yet you still willingly serve her? What madness would drive someone like you to do that? Can you not understand where we are coming from then? She has caused enormous suffering. We have no choice but to take action against her.”

“The costs of her actions are immensely high,” he said. “There is no doubt about that. But I live to serve. My ambitions lie solely with her. I am not the only one either. You tried to convince others to side with you, but they chose to remain loyal much like myself. We can’t all be wrong.”

“Yes, you absolutely can!” Abigail said. She walked past Kiran and pointed a finger directly at him. “You and the rest of them would rather sacrifice everything all for what? Loyalty? What is even the point of upholding it if it means serving one who forces us to live like this?”

“You wouldn’t understand, familiar. Your traitorous kind may not understand, but many like myself do.”

She unsheathed one of her red-bladed swords. “And here I thought the humans of this domain weren’t quite as repulsive as the ones in Liall. Come on Kiran, let me kill him.”

A bitter taste lingered in his mouth. Felghan was adamant about his position despite knowing the truth. He also revealed quite plainly his disdain towards familiars judging by his words that he hadn’t fully made clear to him before. The lady whom he served didn’t seem as apprehensive towards them, but that didn’t mean he felt the same way.

How someone could remain loyal and serve someone even knowing the truth, was somewhat baffling to him. Irrationality or justification for strange beliefs was sadly not a rarity. If anything, it was the norm rather than the exception.

“My family has served the Duvaugn’s for many generations. I will not betray her now, nor ever. If you wish to go any further, then you will have to go through me first.”

“Felghan…” Aphelia said. “Please reconsider.”

“Don’t you even begin to speak to me.” His hand began to hover above the pommel of his sword. “You owe her your life. You wouldn’t even be here right now if it weren’t for her. And yet here you are siding with them. I swear if I had been there in that cave that day, I would’ve gladly carved out your heart.”

He had made his position clear. There was no convincing him. He had chosen his side and they had chosen theirs. The only way to end this was either with him dead or to become incapacitated somehow if given the opportunity.

However, before either side went for the attack, the ground shook a little.

Several giant trees began to fall. They fell at the same time from different directions all in a manner ideal for crushing their entire group.

Without even thinking, he quickly lunged forward feeling the ground shake as the tree landed on the ground near him. More trees fell in an attempt to crush them all to death.

He managed to avoid it, and so far when he quickly looked behind, they had avoided it as well, but this sudden maneuver from another attacker caught him off guard.

Before he could think about what to do next, Felghan’s sword came straight for his neck and he had no way to counter in time.