“We should get there tomorrow, right?” I asked Adra, while focusing on a distant image, shared with me by Lenore.

“Unless something serious happens, yes.” she replied, making me nod in acknowledgement. We had almost made it to the place of power Elder Brightsun had told us about and I had even managed to gain a level during those few days, due to the unusual hostility of the local wildlife. Not only were the monsters in the area relatively high level, some of them even reaching level ninety, they were quite ferocious, attacking us despite the difference in power. The only saving grace was that their numbers were low, not a single group numbering more than eight monsters at once. Still, the contrast between the almost peaceful journey on the ancient trade-road and the track through the mountains was stark.

“Ready?” Lenore asked, making sure that I was paying attention to our plan. It was a hunting-method we had been using these past few days, cheating with magic in order to catch the nimble, crafty and, most importantly, incredibly fast mountain-goats that seemed to be the only decent game in the region. Lenore would come at them from above, with me channelling a massive blast of mind-magic to kill them as soon as Lenore came into view. Killing them in an instant was the only efficient way we had found to kill them, otherwise they would dart away, across the cragged and rugged terrain. While Lenore obviously had no trouble to keep up with them from above and I was able to take my time killing them without the massively overcharged Mind Magic, getting the carcass in order to harvest the meat was a serious pain.

With my acknowledgement, Lenore went into a dive and I closed my eyes, allowing me to fully focus on the images I received over our connection. It was interesting how an ability that seemed to be weak at first could turn into something incredibly strong due to their scaling, in this case the ability was one I had received upon forming my bond with Lenore, called Raven’s Eye. At first, the range I could see through her eyes and channel magic through her body had been relatively low, just a few dozen meters but now, maybe due to the deeper bond between us or our increased power, that distance had increased by an order of magnitude, allowing me to be a few hundred meters away and channel magic as if I was there. It allowed me to get rid of the greatest weakness of Mind Magic, the limited range, while retaining the power and speed of that magic.

My eyes took on an inner light as I activated Overflow, letting a quarter of my total Astral Power flow out in an instant, all turned into a simple, obliterating blast of magic, aimed at one of the mountain-goats Lenore had decided on as our dinner for the night. It might just be the simplest spell I had in my arsenal, nothing but a blast of power, but that simplicity made it quite frightening. There were two possible outcomes, either the target of the spell was instantly dead, their mind obliterated by the blast, or I would suffer a backlash, a feeling that made me wonder if that was how it felt to have your brain hit with a hammer. I thought the target would feel a similar pain but so far, I hadn’t been able to confirm that.

That binary outcome made the spell useless for most fights but to hunt, when you didn’t care for fighting a powerful enemy to gain experience but simply went after weaker prey for food, it was great. And so, this time too, the mountain-goat, barely level forty, had its mind destroyed, leaving the body an empty husk, waiting for Adra and Rai to put out the light. Nobody was home any longer.

Feeling the magic blast through her, Lenore stopped her dive, even if her flight had turned a little sluggish. While channelling Mind Magic wasn’t as much of a strain to her as Ice Magic was, I had channelled a lot of power and she was paying for it.

“You can go up there, it is done.” I told Adra, as I opened my eyes to search for Lenore’s figure in the sky. I didn’t have to wait long for Lenore to return, landing on my shoulder and relaxing against my head.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.” Lenore muttered, her mental voice tinged with exhaustion. I had to sympathise, neither of us were actively strengthening our bodies, focusing the power we gained into our minds and magical abilities. While we had stronger bodies than most, simply due to crossing the first and second divide, when comparing our physical attributes with someone like Sigmir or Ylva, who were solely strengthening their bodies, the difference was vast.

Without a way to help her in a meaningful way, I simply let her grumble, giving her a stable platform to rest while Sigmir and I were keeping an eye on the area, to make sure no animal was contesting our kill.

“Did you notice?” I asked after a few minutes, when Lenore had fully recovered.

“You mean the wind?” Lenore asked in response, before continuing. “Yes, I’ve noticed. There’s a lot of power in the wind between these mountains.”

“That’s not it.” I told her, my lips curling into a proud smile. It wasn’t too often that I was able to detect a magical anomaly before Lenore, with her incredible sight but for once, I had managed. That it was something related to her element was just the icing on the cake. Opening my mouth, my tongue flicked out, tasting the wind around us, drawing in a breath to let me experience it fully, despite my dislike for the experience.

There was a lot of power, most of it having the light, airy taste of Wind-Magic, subtle and hard to pin down but not all of it. Within the wind was more, almost hidden but undoubtedly there, the painful taste of Fire along the sharp, stinging taste of Lightning. Once I had the taste fully in my mind, I shared the experience with Lenore before lazily drawing a set of runes in the air, conjuring up a block of Ice, turning it into a glass to be filled with Liquid Moonlight. Tasting fire-magic was always akin to gargling with hot-sauce, not something I enjoyed, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“Curious.” Lenore muttered as I was drinking, studying the composition of power I had noticed.

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The power is incredible.” I admitted, thinking back when I had noticed it first. At first, I, too, had only noticed that the Astral Power seemed to be skewed towards wind in the area but the day before, I had noticed those underlying forces within, making me wonder about the place of power we were moving towards. Elder Brightsun had told us that the place of power was one of Wind, but somehow, the flavour of Fire and Lightning felt deeper, more textured, compared to the wide range of flavour the Wind had.

“What worries me is that there haven’t been a lot of powerful avians around here.” Lenore admitted, the image she transmitted along that thought was one of the hundreds of Wind Raptors flying in a wheel above our heads, conjuring up a storm. For a moment, I wasn’t sure why the absence worried her, but then it dawned on me. If there was an area that should be populated by powerful avians of all sorts, simply due to their natural affinity for Wind-Magic, why wasn’t it populated by them?

“You think something has claimed the place of power?” I asked, not sure I liked that idea. Similar to the way the Grandmother had claimed the Nexus in Neyto, there might be a powerful being that had settled on or near the place of power and challenging such a being would be exceedingly dangerous.

“Maybe. But then, would the orcs know about it and wouldn’t they have been honour-bound to warn us?” Lenore admitted, her thoughts conflicted.

“We’ll have to be careful.” I nodded to myself, stating the obvious. “But we already knew that a place of power would be dangerous. We’ll have to see what we are up against before deciding further.” I added, deciding to use the night for some careful and subtle scrying. Hopefully, whatever may have claimed the place of power wouldn’t notice.

It was a risk but if we wanted to increase our power, risks had to be taken. It was simply the nature of the beast.