“I’m getting worried,” Sigmir quietly admitted, whispering into my ear as I was held in her arms. Normally, these moments were reserved for those delicious, sweet nothings that made my heart beat faster and still managed to bring a blush to my cheeks, so her confession of worry was not something I liked to hear.

“What worries you, love?” I asked, speaking just as quietly as I pulled her a little closer, removing that tiny bit of space between us and pressing against her, trying to bring some assurance to her mind.

“Adra, she’s been getting a bit…” she paused, clearly not certain how to describe it, “She’s been getting antsy, that we get hunted by the elves and you flit off to throw them off our trail hasn’t helped. She’s trying to figure out what you’ve been doing out there and I don’t think she likes the conclusions she’s been drawing,” Sigmir finished her words, uncertainty and worry filling her voice.

I let out a sigh, not sure how to react. A part of me had been worrying about Adra ever since I fed the Soul Prison for the first time. Back then, she had fallen for my misdirection that it had merely been a bit of magical experimentation that had gotten out of hand, probably because I had a history of magical experimentation getting out of hand. But as time had dragged on, the conflict with the elves, who would likely welcome her with open arms and the continued pressure from their divination was getting to her. Knowing that those living in symbiosis with the forest, a state that was likely the most natural and comfortable for her people, were hunting us would put a strain on our party bonds, even if her bond to Rai and the bonds of camaraderie formed with Sigmir and me kept her. For now.

How long those bonds would remain, I couldn’t even guess and that was where I had the biggest problem. We needed Adra, even if I wasn’t certain about my ability to trust her. If not for the simple fact that we needed her to conceal us from the Dryads and their bond with the forest, I would likely have split off from her, taking Sigmir with me. As things were, I wouldn’t even trust Rai, my disciple, to remain with us, simply due to his romantic bond with Adra. Could I trust someone after he had to choose between his teacher and his girlfriend?

Looking at my own convictions, I would fight anyone to the death who wanted to force me to split from Sigmir, I was even willing to take on the very masters of this world of Mundus to stay with her. There was no way I would trust him after splitting away from Adra.

“She’s wavering,” I finally replied to Sigmir, after sorting my thoughts, “There’s nothing we could do, I think I’ll stop my efforts to mislead the elves for the next few days and stick with you. Hopefully, that’ll give her some time to calm down. In addition, I’ll try to come up with a few suitable experiments that make it look like my efforts are in a direction that doesn’t frighten her as bad as the reality sealed within that crystal,” I told her, already trying to come up with something that looked flashy and dangerous but wouldn’t make her feel threatened. She had always accepted that you sometimes had to break a few eggs in the pursuit of power, the only question was, when would she feel that breaking off from the party was more beneficial than staying?

“I’ll help you keep an eye on her,” Sigmir agreed, not sounding any happier than me. She understood just how important Adra was for us at the moment and that her importance wouldn’t fade until we left the forest. Once we were out of the elven woods, things would change, but for now, she was necessary, as dangerous as that might be.

“I’ve heard jokes about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer. I hope Adra’s not about to switch from close to closer,” I chuckled mirthlessly, the feeling of impotence was not a pleasant one. Getting tied up and being under somebody else’s control was only enjoyable if Sigmir did the controlling and tying up. The potential to get screwed over by Adra was simply too high.

The next morning, we continued our path along the massive river, making sure none of the elves living on its shores were able to spot us. We had to slow down our pace somewhat, simply to make sure we didn’t accidentally run into someone but given our circumstances, that was simply a price we had to pay. We didn’t quite know where to go, but with the river, we had something of an idea.

Luckily, the increased population near the river meant that there were a lot fewer monsters and none that were capable to bypass our concealment unless we literally stepped on them. In one case, I failed to notice a serpent hanging out between a couple of branches and almost brushed against it but either the thing was too lazy to react to the almost contact or it simply didn’t notice me. Either way, it allowed us to move with less care and a bit more relaxation.

In order to distract Adra from the feeding sessions I had performed and maybe give her something else to think about, I decided to carefully work on my magic again, making sure to keep any effect at the lowest possible threshold, so it wouldn’t attract attention.

My first interest was, obviously, the idea I had during the night, a flame of my own. At first, I focused on Liquid Moonlight, trying to infuse minute amounts of it with Darkness-Magic attuned to the concept of Devouring, trying to get the two concepts to harmonise. Sadly, My initial attempts didn’t quite work, there were some effects, but nothing that made the two different aspects work together in a fashion that made the product greater than the sum of its parts.

During those experiments, I made sure that Adra could see me, I even let out the odd grunt of annoyance, some of them even feigned. To my great surprise, after half a day of experimentation, a notification popped up, telling me that Darkness Magic had levelled to seventy-six, something I hadn’t expected. Maybe the idea I was working on was a good one, and I only needed to push it a little further.

In the evening, I changed my focus a little, working on that odd expanding darkness, those black holes I could create. They weren’t truly black holes, at least I was nigh certain of that, but given that they seemed to be areas that couldn’t be entered by anything, it was as good a name as any. There was little progress with them, it seemed that I needed some kind of inspiration, some idea that would allow me to progress with them and so far, I was just drawing a blank.

My experimentation wasn’t made easier by the fact that we had to, once again, huddle between the roots of a tree, sheltered in the burrow of some animal, expanded by Adra’s magic. We simply were too close to an elven settlement and couldn’t risk venturing out into the open.

The night passed pretty uneventfully and in the next morning, we set out once again, travelling quickly to get some distance from the elven town. We had only seen it from a distance, but given the amount of magic inherent to the thorny hedges around their settlement, I wasn’t willing to take any risks there.

We had just managed to bypass what I considered the most dangerous area, when Adra and I froze, reacting almost at the same time. I froze due to a faint scent of magic coming from up ahead and when I looked through Lenore’s sight, I noticed a quite well-concealed figure, creeping through the forest with the aid of magic. I was pretty sure it was one of the elven scouts and, so far, they hadn’t noticed us just yet.

Adra, just like me, must have noticed them, probably thanks to her ability to commune with nature and just like we always had when faced with elven scouts, our first course of action was to hide, trying to simply let the scout move on before we moved on ourselves.

While the forest, filled with the light of the mid-morning sun wasn’t completely dark, the dense canopy cast enough shadows to make it a comfortable twilight, easily good enough to use for my magic. Once we were well-hidden and magically concealed, we set in to wait the scout out, watching as they were creeping around. They weren’t really moving away but it didn’t look like they had noticed us and were trying to stall for time.

When I heard laughter echo through the forest, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, until I focused and realised that there was a group of children, or maybe teenagers, running around in the nearby forest, making an absolute racket. Their presence allowed me to relax a little, from everything I understood about sapient creatures, one of their primary instinct was to protect their young and if the elves had noticed us and were preparing a battle, they’d certainly not bring in their young as a distraction.

As the weight lifted off my shoulders, I felt myself relax, only for the tension to snap back into full force when an arrow, accompanied by more wild laughter, whistled by my head, missing by more than a metre but being far too close for comfort. And far too close to bypass the concealment we had woven, piercing right into the shadows we had used to hide and suddenly vanishing.

Right under the eyes of an elven scout…