The sounds of magick echoed around the room. Cracking stone. Shearing metal. Splintering wood. Blitzing energy as the forces of the universe were twisted and bent.

All of that and everything in between echoed endlessly around Cypher. Parts of the building were starting to collapse all around him and his two companions in huge chunks. Most came crashing down without warning, and evading them had been completely reliant on luck.

The cloaked ones were closing in on the three of them, and Cypher looked at Alex and Melodi. Worried expressions painted their faces alongside their sweat and blood.

"Exucio! Exucio! Vel, Ra'ah Exucio!" Chanted the cloaked ones as they fired one of many spells of death at the trio. In six different directions, they came spinning and flashing, blue and purple, white and green.

The three dodged as best as they could by flooding their Zight Stanzas, casting barriers, and repairing countless wards. However, despite all of it, they seemed to be getting nowhere, and nothing stopped the cloaked attackers. Whenever they killed one, two more took his place and continued the assault.

“BOOOM!”

A wayward spell collided with an already crumbling pillar and the stone construct came crashing down right next to Alex. The ground shook and Alex looked in that direction for only a moment, breaking his focus. An instant later and he had been fatally hit. His eyes went blank and stared at nothing. His mouth fell open, and to the dismay of Cypher and Melodi, Alex hit the floor lifeless, a gaping hole burned clean through over half of his torso.

"NO!" Roared Cypher, but he knew it was in vain. Only he and Melodi remained now against the endless tide. But with Alex gone, the cloaked ones had one less target to worry about, and their attacks became more and more accurate as a result.

The two of them dodged and rolled, spell cast and fired arrows in what seemed like an eerie dance of death. The attacks didn't seem to have an end and Cypher worried as he felt his Orrium emptying at a rapid rate. His defensive barriers ate up an incredible amount of Zight and each attack that he failed to dodge depleted his reserves even more.

“BANG!”

A spell came flying at them with all the force the caster could muster, leaving their body a dried husk. They had no care for their own lives, their only goal being the death of Cypher and his companions. Cypher was able to send it flying into the distance with a barrier, but the reflective spell shattered instantly under the strain of that blast.

In that instant, another of the cloaked figures reflected the blast while adding to it much like his fallen comrade had done. As the orb of death, twice empowered insistently flew through the air, it merged with yet another becoming even more powerful. It even changed course at the last second and smashed into the left side of Melodi's protective barriers.

The spell tore through her defenses like they were wax paper. Her final scream of terror-infused pain echoed through Cypher's mind for a few moments, and all else fell silent. Her lifeless form fell to the ground and splayed about like a doll whose strings had been cut. It only took another moment for her entire body to disintegrate leaving behind only a pile of ashes.

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Cypher lowered his barriers and stood still, ready to embrace his own demise. His Orrium was completely empty at this point, and his mental energy was nearing the same threshold. There was nothing he could do. The cloaked ones began a final chant, all intent on ending his life. He closed his eyes and his mind wandered to every happy memory he had experienced since leaving the Galvan mansion.

His struggles had been pointless. As he opened his eyes, tears of rage, pain, and indignation streamed down his face. He watched as the bright lights came at him in a crescendo of reds and blues. His end had come once again.

.

.

.

Cypher awoke in a cold sweat, crying. He turned to stare out of a window into a blank void. The warmth of dawn was still a few hours away according to his internal clock, not that it mattered. He was deep inside a dimensional pocket underground. Those rays wouldn't reach him no matter how brightly they shone.

It had all been a dream, a terrible, awful nightmare. Of course, the entire time, he had known he was dreaming. It had seemed so real, so vivid. It was as if he had actually been there. But that wasn't the worst part.

Those final images before he awoke had been replaying in his mind all night as he slept. That "dream" had literally replayed itself over and over countless times. There were some differences of course. Minor details that shifted and changed. The color of certain spells, the order of the deaths, and even the arrangement of items inside the place he was fighting all shifted and changed. Cypher himself had even died first a few times.

Nothing about the dreams of the previous night had been normal. He couldn't even call it a dream at this point. But what other title was there? Nightmare? Vision? What did it even mean in the first place? Dreams always had some kind of meaning, even if it was something mundane. Didn't they?

Cypher couldn't simply shrug off the trauma of those dreams. He at first attributed it to his encounter with the Minus, the Vampire Lord Louis Balistane but that creature hadn't been in his dreams at all. In fact, the only real constant had been that he, Melodi, and Alex had all been in some kind of building fighting off these hooded men.

He had no doubt that they were members of the Order of Eternal Night, but he had so many other questions about his "visions" that he didn't even feel like dealing with that realization. What could he do? Avoid going out? Stop taking missions? Sure he could stay here and improve his mind and Orrium, but at some point, he would have to go out and face strong opponents to improve his body.

Of course, he considered breaking his self-imposed promise and using his training rooms. If it meant saving Alex and Melodi from some kind of future threat he would do it. However, he was reluctant to consider that his dreams were more than that. But what else could they mean?

Was he really seeing into the future? It wasn't impossible after all. Cypher had an oddly keen understanding of temporal magick. He had mastered a spell that allowed him to pause time within a certain radius for a short period. He usually only applied that radius to the mind or body of an opponent since that would cause them to freeze up in battle, but what if it had adverse effects?

Was it possible that his spell could be backfiring? Perhaps he was glancing into various futures. His mother had spoken to him from a few years in the past before, and it was no secret that she had abilities in a similar vein so it was possible that something akin to that was happening now.

He needed answers. Too much remained unknown to him. His parents, their missions and abilities, the goals of the Order, and a myriad of other things. There was only one person he knew of who could have answers to some if not all of these questions: Elaine Mikorus.

It was long past time to pay her a visit, and he would not be turned away.