Rahkim spent a short time to devour the flames in the remaining skeletons before turning his focus towards his Life Well. As his senses brushed against the seemingly pitch black sea of energy there was a feeling that it had grown compared to the Life Well he had originally had. While his Life Well was full of energy its size was almost twice the original size, and Rahkim was certain that it'd take over a dozen casts of the basic form of Ice to drain it. Satisfied with the results of the hunt he turned and began to sprint down the alley hoping to get far away from the scene of his fight before it was discovered.

Reaching into his makeshift bag, Rahkim withdrew the Void Gem and cast a part of his sense into as he stretched towards the power of Darkness contained within it. With a thought he forged a connection and his world seemed to explode outwards as the shadows became his eyes and ears. Not only the entire alleyway, but even the adjacent streets and roads became clear as day to Rahkim revealing a much larger patrol passing by the entrance ahead.

He could sense about ten of them in the patrol ahead and he knew that hiding was not an option, after all he was standing completely out in the open far from any other pathways. However, as Rahkim thought about it there really was no point in hiding, he might as well accept this gift from the Heavens and devour the meal delivered before him. With a sense of joy welling up inside of him, Rahkim raised up his hand and forced his Life Energy out into the world to form the one spell he knew how to work.

As the magic formula finished the patrol was already at the entrance and the first of the skeletons had noticed Rahkim, though far too late. The air rippled for a moment and then the world turned white as the six of the skeletons were entombed in ice, the flames in their eyes growing dim as the cold invaded their very being. Without giving the survivors a moment to respond, Rahkim grasped the hilt of the sword he had plunged into the ground before charging towards the closest soldier.

Unable to respond in time the soldier's remains collapsed to the ground as a sword sheared through its neck separating the skull with ease. Turning from the first kill, Rahkim slashed upward and stopped the descending axe of his would be killer before throwing himself forward with arm raised to slam into the attacker's chest. In an attempt to regain his balance the axe wielding skeleton backpedaled a few steps, but before it could raise its weapon to attack a second time Rahkim swung his blade down.

The sound of bone and metal grinding against each other filled the air before a series of cracking took the skeleton's axe holding arm at the elbow. Before Rahkim could finish off the disarmed skeleton he sensed the other two soldiers had closed in on him and dove to the side to dodge the two spear thrusts meant for his back. As Rahkim avoided the stabs they cut through the air where their target stood and stabbed into their one armed ally, with a clatter the one armed skeleton seemed to crumble as its body fell apart.

Unable to do anything to stop him the last two skeletons watched as Rahkim turned and sliced down on the spears with all his might causing the shafts to split apart. Having effectively disarmed his opponents Rahkim turned to raining as many blows as he could down on the two skeletons causing them to falter, entirely unable to fend off his attacks. Within moments he had dispatched them and had begun to look down at the recently slain undead as if he was looking at some great treasure.

Kneeling down beside a corpse, Rahkim quickly took his sword to the skeleton's armor and revealed the small flame hidden away underneath. With a thought the black light began to surround his hand and he stretched it out to devour the flame in the hopes of gaining yet more strength, and as the flame began to disappear Rahkim could feel a sense of fullness and power. However, mere moments after he devoured the flame an intense pain crashed through his mind and he fell to the ground as it began to feel like his mind was tearing itself apart. Confusion and fear filled Rahkim's thoughts as he turned his sight inward to his Life Well to find the usually black sea roiling as flashes of red tore across its surface.

The red lights in his Life Well seemed to move in time with the waves of pain that that stabbed into his mind, and the more he watched the black sea seemingly crashing against its confines, the more he began to notice cracks starting to form in his mind.

'No, dammit! I did not expect the foreign energy to fight against me, at this rate its going to shatter my Life Well and everything will be pointless...'

Unsure of what lasting damage this would cause, Rahkim could only think of forcibly trying to will his life energy to suppress and purify the rampaging energies. With difficulty Rahkim brought his full focus on the energies within his Life Well, and began to enforce his will upon the malicious power within thus forcing it to seemingly surround the red energies. In moments the red energies were all forced into the heart of his Life Well and the black sea had ceased its assault on his mind, but despite that the foreign power was still fighting against him.

Turning his sights on these rogue energies, Rahkim forced his own life energy into motion as it started to churn around the red lights and began to grind these ferocious elements down into usable energies. The process was slow and crude, but that was to be expected as Rahkim was sure that something like this wasn't supposed to happen to a Magicians Life Well. With his limited experience it took Rahkim hours to refine the red lights, but when he was finished he felt his power was more stable and had grown if only slightly.

Sighing, Rahkim brought his focus back out to the real world, and looked at the numerous undead he had slain before muttering,

“I was hoping that I could devour all their life energy and make a decent jump in power, but if I'm right I can only devour three of their flames before I need to refine them like I just did. If I try to devour all of them the chances are that my Life Well will shatter with the damage it's already taken ...”

After devouring the flames from the three unfrozen skeletons, Rahkim looked at the remains of the patrol with a hint of sadness before reluctantly dashing across the main road into the far alley. After going down a few more side streets and allies Rahkim made his way into a random building, and slowly checked the building for any enemies before sitting down to refine the rogue elements once again.

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First time actually leaving a message, but I wanted to let those of you who have read this story so far know that I am sorry for the gap in updates. I will be getting back to updating this as often as I can, and am hoping to get three chapters out a week at the least. Thank you all of those who have read this so far, and I hope you are enjoying it.