I spat a mouthful of blood on the mud where it mixed with the torrential rain. Sheet lightning split the sky and illuminated the night in harsh contrasts of grainy light. I struggled to stand but slipped and fell again, harsh laughter ringing out through the open field. Anger flowed through me, hate and misery and betrayal all combining together along with the psychic pain of breaking the charms and compulsions laid on me by the donkeys anorak of a man that was my Master and tutor.
Pain laced through my body as a bolt of lightning crossed the distance from the tip of my master's outstretched finger to my soaking body and i writhed in the mud. He was almost a century older than me with all the skill that experience had given him. I was yet to leave my teens, still gawky and barely in control of my power. But that was what i did have, power in spades. I would regret it later, i knew that. But sometimes the deal had to be made, i would loose one future night but this night i might just survive. But not if I didn't stand up.
Using my staff for leverage i forced myself to my feet and picked my sword from where it had fallen, the blade glowing with a bluish light once I had it in my grasp. And he just laghed again. Morgan Fortier, a powerful Warlock and adventurer. He had raped my mind and bound me under his control two weeks ago, but now I was free. For almost five years I had been his appprentice but now he would pay for what he had done.
I gathered my will and tried to gain my focus to cast but before I could do so he twisted his right hand and snarled a single word in an ancient tongue. A stream of greenish acid coursed towards me steaming through the air and I had to break my cast to dodge to the side. He hadn't even bothered to draw his sword yet, the falchion he favoured still sheathed across his back. I swore continously and fluently, using the release of anger to focus my will as i formed the spell in mind and then released it. I knew it was flawed but it was all I had, a lance of flame gathered around my sword and tore towards my master.
He did not even bother to attempt to counter it but simply let it wash over his defences, smiling as the flames fizzled out.

"I tought you better than that boy, using fire magic in a thunderstorm."

I didn't reply, which if you know me shows you just how much I was having to concentrate. I dodged his next spell and deflected a bolt of lightning using my staff. I couldn't keep this up for long. I was tiring and power was all i had on my side. I tried to run for him, to close the gap and finish him in hand to hand but he simply stamped his foot against the ground and sent my tumbling away as a wave of force struck me. I snarled as i spat blood and mud.
I stood, this would have to be it. The final blow to win or else I would die tonight. I close my eyes, ignoring his demented laughter, his spells and the roar of the storm and sent my will and my mind inwards, gathering my power together and forming my spell. I opened my eyes and the pressure building within me felt as if it might split me assunder. I raised my sword to the guard and pointed it towards my master. Red light blaxed around the blade and once again my old master laughed and shook his head. I ignored him and focused, releasing the sell with a wordless roar of rage and pain.
A beam of blue-white fire as thick as mys wrist tore through the air sending up spatts of steam from the instantly atomised rain. With a ragged explosion of displaced air his defences fell and the beam contonued to strike his chest, ravaging him with its power.
He burned, and I watched as he did. It took him a long time as his skkin crispened and blackened and his fat bubled through. I did not look away, I forced myself to watch as my one time master, the man who had become a surrogate father to me, died in agony.

It was day by the time the body had stopped burning. I grabbed what little I owned, my satchel and travelling coat, and turned for the road. Heading south back towards the tower of mages and the guild. I had to report about what had happened, and I would have to face trial.

I survived the trials, I survived the questioning and the imprisonment and was released as a graduate and a fullly licensed Warlock of the guild. I was sent away on a mission, no one wanted me around. No one wanted one who killed their own master. I had my uses, I could kill. But that didnt mean they had to like it. Nor did I have to like it, at least, thats what I keep telling myself.

Pain lanced through my side as diamond hard claws slashed through the toughened leather of my waistcoat, I dived to one side away from the wulfen and brought my sword up and around to block its following blow. It danced away from the brilliant lance of pain as it lashed the wulfens arm and sparks of blue tinged magic arced away from the wound as brilliant silver fire poured untill it hit the ground where it became blood once again. All through the forrest around him similar battles were taking place as the almost leonine wulfen left their accorded territory and joined the hunt in full.

My battle was going no where near as well as the ones being raged around me, the downside of being a mortal in a world of immortals no doubt. Immortal, but not invincible as the brilliant and shinning blood spattering the trees gave its silent testimony. I ducked beneath impossibly quick claws and turned on my heels to keep the creature in my line of sight and away from the blind spot in my vision where my left eye should have been but was no longer. Now only a black patch covered the ragged and scarred socket and left a great swathe of the world blind to me unless I turned to view it. I paid the cost for that now as stars flared in my eyes and i felt bile rise in throat in what was unmistakably a blow to the head from a very heavy and very animal paw.

I struggled to rise but could only role away from the beast as it slammed both paws down onto the ground where I had been but moments before, instead of driving its fists into yielding flesh it instead struck frozen earth. It leapt into the air to bring all four paws down upon me, but quick as it was I could bring my right hand to bear that much quicker and sent a pulse of will through the silver band on my finger. The ring was simple, just two bands of steel and silver interlocked with the icon of the High Lord, but it could focus my power better than any of my other talismans. The air rippled as a blast of pure force struck the wulfen and sent it flying back through the air to slam into a tree. Without blinking I sent more power flowing through the ring and gripped the creature in fingers of force and lifted it from the ground before ploughing it head first into the ground with a wet thumping noise.

I slowly dragged myself to my feet and picked my sword up from where it had fallen and suddenly gasped as the aethyr shifted around my. Silver moonlight bathed what had once been sheer black night lit only by the glimfire enchantmants of the gloaming sidhe spread throughout the forrest. I turned and started to head back towards the main body of the hunters, sword at the ready and rune-carved rod held in my left hand already thrumming with power.

To The Left

the words spoke themselves directly into my head with the weight of thousands of mortal lifetimes and the touch of shrouded lights. I turned my momentum into a leap, spinning at the same time leaving another wulfen, this ones fur a deep chestnum stained with too bright blood, dashing past and through where I had been. I landed and winced as my ankles struggled to take my weight so suddenly and crossed sword and rod before me. I chanted a few words in the high speech and stamped my feet into the floor. Bright fire shot in a bolt across the distance and slammed into the back of the wulfen, sending it stumbling away and howling as it's fur caught fire.

I sheathed my sword, its length an encumberence in this terrain and against these foes rather than a help and grasped the rune-carved rod in my right hand. I held my cupped left hand and whispered a mantra in the lilting language of the fey and twisted my wrist whilst spreading my fingers. A tiny ball of brilliant white fire flared into being and hovered slightly above my left hand shedding its light twenty feet out from my position.

Howls echoed erily through the dark forrest and I felt a shiver of primeval fear run down my spine and come close to paralyzing my limbs with the primal terror of prey. These creatures were seldom seen in the 'real' world nor had they been for centuries uncounted. The ambient light was increasing the closer I came to the main hunting group for which I was profoundly glad. Running through a dark, frost touched forrest in the night touched heart of the fey wild inhabited by lycanthropes fully possessed by their rage-spirits was not a good place for a mortal to be, especially not a middling magister.

It was with more relief than I would normally like to admit that I entered the wide open space of the clearing lit by brilliant glimfire. But there are times when one just has to say the truth isn't there. And never be too afraid to say when you are absolutly terrified like a little girl. The sight that awaited me filled me both awe and sheer unbridled fear. Dozens of the gloaming sidhe, some members of the selee and even the unselee courts had come to join the hunt. They moved with the supple grace of starlight and the inevitable power of the ocean. Silver blades danced in the moonlight drawing howls of pain from rage-fuelled wulfen even as diamond hard claws and fangs spread too-red blood across the white frost that coated every surface.

sidhe magic flew in coruscating bursts of multi-coloured fire, of spears of liquid silver and in writhing cords of thorns and vines. A wulfen tumbled away frozen solid from the inside out as the winter magic of the unselee destroyed its victim. In the centre of the diminishing group stood a figure of excuisite beauty, although I suppose technically she was floating almost a foot above the ground. And she was weaving magic like no one I had ever seen before in my entire life.

Now lets put that into perspective, I have fought alongside the Black Mage and the Gold Mage, I've picked a fight with an outsider and I was trained my an arch-warlock. And she looked like a sixteen year old girl with flowing silver hair that reached down to her feet and wearing a pale dress the same colour as moonlight.

Each hand was casting a seperate spell as well as maintaing defensive enchantments and unweaving the primitive spirit magic of some of the wulfen. Silver fire arced from her and bolts of blue fire were thrown from her other hand, each finding its target in the maelstrom of battle.

I warily entered the frey, drawing my power around me like a cloak and preparing for battle. I ducked a bolt of purple tinged chaos-magic that made my Sight twinge with pain. I moved in the intricate mudras of battle casting, songs older than many mountains came in a warbling song from my lips as power gathered around my hands. I sent spears of force from my hands like battering rams flinging wulfen into the air howling in pain.

The battle was fought close and fierce in only thirty square yards of clearing. I felt more than saw the blow that bounced off my mage armour even as it knocked me forwards and down to one knee. I turned and drove my right fist up and into the base of the wulfen's jaws triggering the ring as I did, the concentrated force-spear tearing the lower jaw away and covering me in thick almost black blood.

With a shattering squeel my magical protections failed and it was my time to howl in pain as claws slashed down my back drawing blood. A blaze of silver moonlight flew over my head and the smell of ash reached me.

and there she was, looking down at me and her light flowed over the wounds of my back. She nodded just once to me before smiling in pure joy and danced off into combat again. I came to me feet and launched myself once again into battle. The hunt would go on yet.

only one man in the expedition knew what they had found, lovingly looking at the bone-like material shaped into an arch and set into the honey coloured sandstone of the arabian desert. They were deep beneath the ground set into the side of one of the smaller hills at the edge of a mountain range. Slaves lay panting in a heap on the floor while the cabal stood watching their leader at work. Crystals set into the archway, shaped like tears, pulsed as if in time to a heartbeat that no one could hear or feel. Their presence had been made known to me several weeks ago, I had seen them before they even found this place. Their leader may have had a vague knowledge of what they had found, but he did not understand, nor did the rest of the party of scholarly warrior-nobles. But they had to be stopped before they did something stupid.

snow was still falling thickly arround me in the moon-lit forrest, I had been led to this place by a raven but now I knew was the time. I stood and checked my gear, a shirt of elven chain gifted to me by the maiden was underneath my crimson robes, tied at the waist with a golden sash overwhich went a thick leather belt. pouches and scroll cases dangled from my belt and the satchel carried over my shoulders held my gear. I drew my sword, feeling it pulse in time with my own pulse, and firmed my grip on the rune carved rod in my left hand.

I focused my gaze and let my consciousnes rise into the lowest of the aethyrs, letting the clarity of thought guide my will along hideously complex equations with the speed built of practise and study. With a single word and an effort of Will I opened to gateway between worlds and stepped into the dark cavern.

I stood behind them all and none had noticed my arival so intent where they on their discovery. I made myself known in my own inimicable style by making a ball of cold but star bright fire flare into being above and behind my head. That got their attention and they all turned around to stare at me, snow still melting on my shoulders in the middle of the desert. I think the leader realised why I was there because he stepped protectively towards the archway and said something at his enterage that made them all reach for their weapons. I reached into a leather pouch at my waist and drew nine little rune carved disks out, and through them into the air leaving them spinning around me. The first of the half dozen warriors approached with their falcattas drawn, over-confidence evident in their eyes and in their every step.

The first one went flying up into the air as I sent a burst of force flying up to meet his chin leaving a wet stain on the low ceiling of the cave. They paused and that was all the opening I needed. I sent a bolt of flame from the rod striking and burning another man leaving him on the floor. the overseers were being attacked by the slaves as they saw a chance for escape but in their heavy chains they were being beaten or killed with ease. I let the blow of a long bladed falcatta slide off my own sword and turned on my heels around the blow and jammed the rod into the small of the mans back before casting another bolt of fire. Three left and my power was almost gone, battle magic can take it out of you quickly when one has to cast quickly.

I felt one blow spark from my wards and I followed up with a thrust which stabbed into the man's stomach, i twisted and pulled leaving a gaping wound and putting the man on the ground. I spun to bring the last two into my line of sight when I felt a massive blow against my wards sending me realing through the air. I turned my head so i could see through my one remaining eye. The leader of the little group was standing with one hand on the arch, black veins creeeping up his skin and the crystals now pulsing with a sick and livid green glow. His other hand was still smoking from the magic he had just released, the life of the flesh used up to power his spell. I drew power from the crystals sown into belgareths belt and sent a trio of force bolts into the warriors still advancing towards me, driving them into the ground and shattering their legs and hips.

"gatekeeper..." the man-thing hissed sibilently
again the pseudo-mage sent a bolt of sickly energy towards me and I could almost taint the dark influence behind it. I dispelled the bolt of magic with an effort of will and a muttered string of words before retalliating. I drew my focus to me and channeled power through tehe rune carved rod, taking longer to cast my spell but making sure i got it right. With a release of energy i produced a pencil thin beam of white fire connecting the rod to the man. He screamed and hole was blasted through his torso but still he stood, the dark veins extending out from the gate. with my consciousness in the lower levels of the aethyr I felt no emotion, simply a grim desire to keep going. I dodged his next blast of magic, fore-seeing where it would go in a flash of insight, and advanced on the man. The dark veins seemed to pulse faster and extend further up his arm but I brought my sword slashing down and cut through his arm just above the shoulder, leaving the body to fall away. He looked up at me with what could have been relief in his eyes or anger, or a combination of the two. I stabbed him through the neck and walked away to stand in front of the archway, seeing its power slowly die away as it could no longer draw on a life force.

I could shut it down, given some time, and i shucked off the satchel and reached in for my equipment even as i reached into that part of my mind that held knowledge that i really wish it didnt. I felt insanity beckoning me, calling me to give way to it and let go of my hold on my mind. I crushed it with and effort and focused my mind, cuffing the blood away from my nose at the same time.