Episode 3 Part 3 Sneak Peek #9

Some flavour text has been removed; some markers are for high romance/approval with Aeran. 

Darkness engulfs you. It sinks into your skin, your hair, your eyes. You inhale it and it coats your tongue, your throat, the inside of your lungs. It is beyond you, yet inside you, eating, scraping, clawing. The pressure should be suffocating, but you persevere, your body rejecting its essence even as it consumes you whole. Aeran’s hand grips yours, the one constant on this path to obliteration—a light in the dark, a reminder of what is real and what is not.

The storm rages, bits of fractured stone and wood—the citadel’s very floor ripped from beneath your feet—buffeted in the wind. A deep, booming groan resounds around you and you flinch, shadows moving in your peripheral vision. You turn, searching wildly, only to find nothing. Your heart hammers in your chest, a reminder of the life you cling to. How many mages has this thing killed? How much destruction does it seek to wreak? That you have made it this far without being ripped to shreds or dissolved to nothingness is the miracle of your very existence, the strength of a magianis flowing through your veins.

A haunting moan screeches and the shadow whispers in the corner of your eye. You raise $blade, the starlight glow of its blade piercing through the dark, illuminating at last the rustling shadow spinning in and out of sight. Humanoid in shape, the shadows of its very being undulating and fraying, rippling away from its essence like mist rising from a river in the early hours of morning. Where the darkness that surrounds you is a torrent of black and grey and indigo, this being is a true void, absent of all shade and colour. Two spheres glow white within its mass, swaying restlessly. It turns, its shriek echoing in your ears, and curves in on itself and dives through the storm, round and round, expanding in size until it encompasses you completely.

White eyes bore down upon you from within a hollow, monstrous skull. You face it with no fear, only curiosity and confusion, and adjust the grip on your hilt. The magic here is terrible and oppressive, the density of its threads greater than anything you have felt before. All magic is formed of such invisible bonds. You can bend them and break them, unravel them with a touch or cut through them with alassar steel.

But the older the magic, the thicker the bond. Magic of this kind is not so easily diffused; you can erode the edges and fray the seams, but it will repair itself faster than you can destroy it. You need to find a pressure point. Destroy the core and all else will follow suit.

You glance at Aeran, adjusting your grip on your hilt. He stares at the creature ahead, jaw clenched tight, his dagger glowing at his side. The weight of his hand is dead in your grasp. As uncertain as you are, as afraid as you are, even you carry some curiosity about the being ahead of you. What is it, exactly? How did it come to be? What does it want? These are questions that will go unanswered unless you seek the answers yourself.

But there is no curiosity in Aeran’s face. No horrified wonder, no sudden questioning. There is only one intention: to destroy it. Quickly, quietly, and without delay.