There was no fanfare when we set off the next day. Nobody to see us off, merely a polite nod from the gatekeeper of Gaber. We didn’t even use Olivia’s magic to speed up our travels, at least not for now. That would come, once we left the mountains and reached the foothills, where we could travel in relative safety.

As promised, Mal and Gilo travelled alongside us, and once again, we discussed Alchemy as we walked. There was only so much actual Alchemy we could do without a laboratory, but on the side of my own expertise, spellcasting, some things could be done. The small foci I had created before, in order to allow me the swift creation of a large wall of Ice had an additional potential I had missed. Why not infuse them with as much Astral Power as I could, making the Ice as dense and hard as possible. While I couldn’t push it into the state of Eternal Ice, making it a truly permanent item that didn’t fade back into the Astral River over time, I could make the Astral Power last for a while.

There was an interesting curve of diminishing returns, the more Astral Power was invested, the quicker it drained until I reached a point of saturation, where the invested power drained as fast as I could channel it. But to reach that point, I needed to purely focus on channelling for hours on end, and while the power level quickly dropped, the objects retained a significant amount for quite some time. So far, I hadn’t been able to get accurate measurements, but I was certain it could be used, either for rituals or for a more direct approach. As the attack on the Shadow Cleft had shown, having the ability to project large amounts of Astral Power at a distant location was rather impactful.

There were some ideas Mal had, ways to change the affinity of the Ice I was using. She had some herbs that had a faint attunement to Darkness and in an experiment, I tried to see what would happen if I infused them with additional Astral Power. It was an interesting process, finicky and volatile, prone to destroy the material in a curious variety of ways.

It was bad enough that, after the second day of experimentation, Mal decided that we’d only continue that path of inquiry if we had a source of those herbs, as apparently, simply destroying them willy-nilly wasn’t what she considered economical. Maybe there was a way to infuse the soil, letting the plants naturally increase their affinity as they grew, but such experimentation would have to wait until we had a lot more time to spend and a proper location, likely far away from all prying eyes. After all, some would say that infusing the ground with foreign, magical energies was defiling the World of Mundus.

But all that was secondary, more interesting was my plan for the night. We had been travelling a few days and it had been a little over two weeks since the ritual at the Shadow Cleft. There would be no moon in the sky tonight, the perfect night for dark deeds and dark magic. And it didn’t get much darker than magically cursing someone, using their blood as the medium.

After we made camp for the evening, I removed myself from the group, taking a bit of distance and setting up on an empty hilltop. Sigmir had followed me at my request, to keep an eye out, and I had a feeling that Mal was rather interested in what I was doing. She was still with the others, but I could almost feel her stare in my direction.

Working slowly, I set up my ritual, using Ice and Blood to draw shapes into the soil. As I was working, I attuned myself to the moon high above, invisible to the eye but a dark beacon in the night to my magical senses. The Astral River was teeming with Darkness, to the point that I felt embraced by it, power flooding into me and back out channelled into my formation. Even the Ice I was using to draw it became tinged with darkness, turning a faint purple, long before I filled the runes and symbols with Blood to empower them.

The Ritual had two parts to it, the inner part, that would use the Blood I had taken to locate my prey. It was relatively simple, infused Blood being an excellent focus for scrying and remote strikes. That I wanted to bind my curse into the Blood was just a positive side-effect.

The outer part was more complicated and would require a large amount of freeform-casting, as I wanted to use the Lycantroll-Curse I had seen in the past as a basis to weave my own curse. Though, instead of draining the target’s power to turn it into a beast, I merely wanted to use the power to give him a headache. Nothing too vicious, merely filling his dreams with the isolation of the Dark Moon. He was a Traveller, so it would be a massive headache, but it wouldn’t kill him, not directly at least. He might want to die, but that was his problem.

It took me a while, almost two hours, during which I constantly infused Astral Power into the formation but when I was done, there was a palpable shadow lying over the hilltop. Nearby, Sigmir had quietly dispatched a few Nethersprites, attracted by the shed blood and the used Blood Magic. I hadn’t used too much, just enough to strengthen my bond to the Ritual Circle, so things were still under control. For now.

“Let’s do this, my friend.” I quietly said to Lenore, before we stepped into the middle of the ritual.

Once again, we needed to channel a massive amount of Astral Power, weaving a curse that would last for a lifetime, though I had a feeling that the lifetime would be very short. Travellers, after all, didn’t truly fear death, as it was but a setback. But what a nice setback it would be.

Taking out the globules of Ice I had used to store the Blood I had stolen from Jakyl, I placed them into the prepared slots of my ritual, letting out one last breath before I started to move.

Slowly, at first, my hands started to draw shapes in the air, not runes but simple movements, guided by the shadow of the moon high above. There was no sound, and yet,I could hear the music of the Dark Moon, a howling cry of solitude, driving anyone trying to listen too deeply mad. I had touched upon it before, and today, I was using it, drawing in the power of the Dark Moon and sending it onwards. To punish the Oathbreaker, to make him feel what it meant to be abandoned by all who had ever trusted him. A warning, and a punishment.

In my mind, Lenore’s voice started to join mine, her thoughts mingling with mine, adding her own meaning to the sensations we were feeling, bearing some of the incredible strain I was under. Strain enough to break a weaker mind, both from the powers we had invoked and from the complexity needed to guide them.

Seconds turned to minutes and finally into hours, as I moved beneath the Dark Moon, more and more Astral Power filling my surroundings as a part of my mind delved through the Astral River, using the Blood I had stolen to locate my target. It was far away, the connection between us was weak, and yet, I was not dissuaded. He was out there, and if the Gods didn’t punish him, I would take their place.

My breathing came in deep, jagged gasps as the massive amounts of magic I was channelling took a toll on my body, but finally, I felt things fall into place. There was another force, gently guiding what I was doing, not truly aiding but giving hints, teasing my mind with vague suggestions that might just make things work. There was something familiar about the presence, a faint scent that I could swear I had never smelled before but was always around me. Impossibly omnipresent.

Finally, with a shout of effort, I spent the last of my Astral Power in an attempt to close the gap between what I could achieve, a last-ditch effort to make the Ritual work and let all the accumulated power go where I wanted it to go. My mind blanked, the power surged and suddenly, it was all gone, the echoes of power rippling through the Astral River as the forces I had unleashed did their work.

As I fell to my knees, utterly exhausted, the formation started to crumble around me. Even the hill itself was affected, parts of the powers I had channelled feeding back into the formation and the soil. The shadows covering the hill became deeper and a dark mist started to rise from the ground. The site would be marked, maybe forever, by the powers I had wrought this night.

As a pair of warm arms wrapped around me, a familiar scent filled my nostrils. Sigmir’s voice, gentle and yet so far away, told me I was secure and in that security, I started to feel faint. Neither Lenore nor I had any more strength and in the safest place we could ever be, we both let go, letting ourselves fall into the deep oblivion of unconsciousness.