After aptly demonstrating just what I thought about the stooges and making plans to upload the video onto the forum later, after some creative editing, we made our way to the gates. I noticed that the guards seemed a little more friendly towards us, not that it was easy to notice, trolls didn’t seem to show a whole lot of emotion, but their frowns were not quite as deep as they had been. I kept my eyes open, just in case the bandits were having us followed but it seemed that we had dodged that particular bullet, there was nobody that stood out to me, nobody that seemed to be taking a special interest in us.

That lack of interest caused me to have two contradicting sensations at the same time, one was a sense of foreboding, as I wondered what I was missing, if I simply didn’t see them, whoever they were, and the other was a sense of relief that I wasn’t seeing the bandits I had seen before, waiting for us to leave town, so we could be caught.

Once we had left town, Sigmir summoned our horses - I was still lacking the Astral Power to do so - and Adra turned herself into her goat-deer-whatever-it-was form, running along. I asked Lenore to fly scout once again and she kept an eye on us from the air, making sure that we wouldn’t run into any ambushes along the road. I had considered using the frozen river as a non-obvious route away from town, but in the end, decided against it. The biggest advantage, beside the fact that it was wider than the road, without foilage nearby, was that it would give me a massive boost to my magical attacks; snow was nice and all - compressing it gave me useful projectiles and allowed me to conceal things - but compared to the ice of a river, with bone-chillingly cold water underneath? That would give me options I could normally only dream about; on such a battlefield, I would be able to vanquish armies, if they had no strong magical support, and even if they did, I had some confidence to get away.

Alas, those dreams of magical mayhem were dashed by the cruel reality that my hair was still not grown back, sapping me of all my power. Shaking my head, I mounted Elding, letting Rai have Hringur, while Sigmir was running. Something about that tickled me a litte, that the one who supplied the power to summon our mounts was the one not using them. At the same time, I realised that, thanks to my inability to generate power, we would be slowed down, my mount limited in speed as the consumed power was directly related to the speed, at least up to a certain point. Still, I wanted to leave the town behind me as fast as possible.

We made good speed over the morning, leaving Kolyug behind and it was near midday when we had to slow down, even with the magical boost the road was giving us. Incidentally, we simply decided to have some lunch, dismounting and making camp near the road. Lenore returned to me, after scouting the whole morning, retreating into her Hallow, squawking about the cold.

During the afternoon, now with us moving a lot slower, Sigmir suddenly raised her arm, getting all of us into a state of alert. Not sure what was going on, we closed ranks and, just to be on the safe side, dismounted. Having our mounts attacked and dematerialised was a good way to end up in trouble, so avoiding that was key. With my reduced combat capabilities, I was resigned to remain in the middle of the formation when Sigmir explained that there was something, a bad feeling in her stomach. We all knew that she was not prone to flights of fancy and carefully continued onwards, Lenore and Ylva coming from their respective Hallows to scout.

Just as Lenore emerged, I heard something almost like a musical note, like the twang of a badly tuned guitar, and Lenore vanished from my shoulder in a flurry of feathers and the only thing I felt over our link was pain.

The world slowed down; the pain told me that something was very wrong, even if it was not my pain. Around me, the others started moving, even faster than I did. That first twang I heard was quickly followed by a three more twangs, but forewarned was forearmed and neither Sigmir nor Adra or even I were confined to normal, mortal standards. Three more arrows shot from the bushes, two were blocked by Sigmir, one was simply caught by Adra, right before she turned and the arrow shot back, leaving an azure trail. There was a satisfying scream, moments later. I, on the other hand, was almost brought to my knees when Lenore turned back into light, vanishing into her Hallow once again. It was… unpleasant, but there was nothing I could actually do at that moment. We had bandits to kill.

Staying together, we did the only thing we could do when confronted with an ambush, we charged to enemy line, hoping to break through their line and either escape or fully engage, depending on their numbers. There was wave of hasty shots, those so sloppy that we didn’t even need to dodge, they simply missed.

Sigmir led the way, breaking through the shrubs, causing snow to fly around and we had four archers in front of us, all of them clad in simple leather clothes - I wouldn’t even call them armour, they were that shoddy. At their feet were four bows, similarly simple looking, while they were just pulling their murder-implement of choice. I think one simply picked up a log, not even bothering with a real weapon, it was just a club, one had a hatchet, another a large axe, made to split stubborn logs, possibly by hitting the axe with a hammer, and the last had a rusted butcher’s knife.

Their competence with those weapons was about as highly rated as the quality of the weapons, and if I hadn’t been in considerable pain, I would have left them for Rai, as training dummies. I heard some movement, behind us, though, coming from the other side of the road, so I knew that it was sadly not to be - we had to finish them before their buddies arrived.

Calling it a fight would be generous, we fell onto them like wolves upon a flock of sheep, simply striking with speed and force they couldn’t muster.

Sigmir was the first amongst them, the axe she had looted from the Grandmother’s dungeon so long ago easily batting aside the butcher’s knife before hacking into her target’s torso from above, causing a brutal wound and shattering his collarbone. Adra was right behind her, simply stabbing her target into the stomach as he had raised his axe, as if he was splitting logs. Such an attack was great, if your target was not moving faster than the average log, and even then, it might miss. Against someone like Adra? I would have laughed, if not for the pain. Rai demonstrated that there was a reason for the extra large and sturdy guard on the butterfly blades I was training him with when he used a simple punch on his foe, breaking his arm, before following up with another punch, breaking his face. And lastly, my own foe. Even in my weakened state, I doubted that I would have had problems with him, but thanks to the arrow Adra had thrown back, he was pinned to a tree, making my part even easier. A swift stab to the side, and he would bleed out soon. As soon as those four were on the ground, or rather three on the ground, one still pinned to the tree, we had to focus on the other group, behind us.

Just as I did, a renewed surge of pain came from Lenore’s Hallow, this time succeeding in driving me to my knees, but it allowed me to get a better look on our opponents. They didn’t look like much more than the four fools we had just taken down, maybe slightly better weapons and not as shoddy armour, but still, none of them was a challenge. I wondered what drove people to such stupidity, but my mind quickly focused inward, on Lenore. I felt that, what little Astral Power was in my system, siphoned away by Lenore’s Hallow, undoubtedly trying to keep her alive, maybe even heal her. But it wouldn’t be enough.

“Don’t kill them!” I shouted, as an insane plan formed in my mind. I needed more power. And where better to take that power from, than from those who attacked us?

The other’s obliged me, while I forced myself to my feet, stumbling through the snow, towards the one with the worst wounds. He was dying, quickly, and I needed to get the power, that juicy vitality seeping into the frozen earth.

Blinded by pain, and more by memory than anything else, I pulled my athame, wetting the blade in the bleeding wound, hoping that the supplemental effect might help me to draw the power in, despite my absolute Astral Power depletion. No such luck.

When another idea started to form in my brain, I started to giggle, maybe I was getting a little deranged from the pain.

But, if I wanted to help Lenore, I had to try.