From The Ashes

Chapter Five - Ill News Accompanied By An Ill Omen

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The woman frowned down at the blood and mud spattered pages of the book. She could feel the Effervescence's aura pulsing from the pages fade as her concentration broke. She lowered her hands and the athame she held over her own cut and bleeding palm.

Her head snapped up as she glared off into the distance, where an interference had broken the flow of her ritual.

Another magical aura.

Not only that, but an extremely powerful one.

For it to annul the power of her grimoire, a source of the Effervescence that was extremely potent, as well as generations old. It had been passed down to her through centuries of witches and warlocks, all of whom having contributed to the contents and therefore power of the book. For something to just nullify its effects mid ritual...

Well, that was something else entirely.

Something completely unheard of, even implausible to her. Until now, that is.

Whatever this new source was, it was ancient, profound, and insanely dark.

Her frustration of having the ritual interrupted had long faded, and she was now eager to indulge her newfound sense of mounting curiosity.

She stood, slowly dragging her waterlogged robes out of the sucking mud with much squelching. She snapped the book still lying on the ground shut with her foot, and closed her eyes. She could easily restart the ritual later, luckily she hadn't gotten to the complex part that involved indispensable components.

She then set her mind to barricading all of the material world that she could from her conscience. All sensations; from the stagnant reek of the clammy marshland, to the vile sensation of the claggy mud slithering down her cloak and onto her ankles; she shoved them from the forefront of her mind, and concentrated on the new energy.

She was surprised, as she felt it. The familiar tingle in her fingers, the quiver it caused in the air, the way it heightened and hastened the throb of her heart, the way it darted over the distance and stabbed into her limbs, sending them into slight fits of trembling. The torrent of power it was holding back was tangible to someone as attuned as she was, to the energies beyond this world.

The pressure it held was immense, it was contained against its will. It was desperate to escape, be set free and wreak its havoc,it's might, it's chaos upon whatever environment in which it found itself.

She felt her heart leap as the aura increased. Whatever force was emitting it wouldn't break free anytime soon, but it was moving closer by the minute.

Without hesitation, she leapt from the slough and scooped up her boots from the riverside.

This would be an interesting experience, she could feel it...

***

Fenris Alivar

The glinting silver blade of the rapier slid easily in, slicing smoothly through cloth, skin, flesh and sinew, until it shuddered against bone.

The sorcerer's back arched in pain as the blade scraped against his spine. A trickle of unnaturally dark blood, pitch black blood, ran from his mouth. His eerie lamp-like eyes darted beside him to gaze at the perpetrator of his injury, the yellow light that had filled them flickering and dying.

A sickly, arrogant grin unfurled across his thin lips, and didn't leave him even as the blade was pulled from his body. Nor did it waver as he slumped to the ground like a broken doll, stone cold dead.

Fenris straightened, panting from the exertion of the previous battle.

He fell into a nearby chair, letting his filthy rapier clatter to the ground. He closed his eyes, massaging a burning stitch in his side between ragged breaths. It was a comfortable chair, high backed and plush, unlike the wooden chairs he was so used to.