Gilyon put his book away, he memorized the passphrases all by heart, he just needed the right one to use. He stretched his arms left and right with his open palms looking up. With the chant continuing white light started to shine on both of them. And with the time passing the lights became stronger. The magic was creating a bit of swirling breeze around them. And that point the carcasses of the animals turned to black dust.

Freyan started to cough, and eventually spit as he swallowed some of the black dust from one of a smaller animal. In that moment he was certain he never tasted anything that foul before. But he had little time mind the nauseating feeling, as the black dust started to move and gather up in small heaps.

“Gilyon?” he glimpsed at the mage, but he was totally preoccupied. Even if he heard Freyan’s voice he didn’t have the time to show it.

The small pools of black dust started to take form of a featureless human sized slug-monsters with two or three arms. They headed for the spellcaster right away after they formed. Freyan punched the closest, but it was like hitting vague sand. A little bit fall of from the creature, but it didn’t seemed to be bothered by such thing. Moreover it recovered the bits falling off even before the grains touched the ground. Freyan tried again and again with the same result. The creatures crept closer and closer to the mage wobbly waving their tentacle like arms.

Given a sudden idea, Freyan activated his dark energy aura, both in trying to protect himself and to attack. After that, his punches did seem to make damage. The dark energy sparked between the magically imbued sand particles, making even more to fall. Being a threat to the creature, now it turned its attention to Freyan while the others continued. What meant Gilyon was still in danger. So Freyan augmented his speed to attack them all one by one.

It worked. The things all turned their attention to him. As he moved, all of them tried to follow. And all were determined to attack him. Even though his aura damaged them it wasn’t strong enough to destroy their tentacles on contact which came rushing towards him repeatedly. He put all his effort to avoiding them instinctively. And this instinct soon was proven to be correct. When the creatures attacked their tentacles morphed into a blade like shape and they were quite capable slashing the flesh off their opponent. So the pain told Freyan as with time passing he made mistakes and wasn’t able to dodge all of the incoming attacks perfectly. At least with his aura on, they couldn’t chop one of his limbs right off. Though it still hurt, and his wounds started to heal slower with every new one.

A blinding white light filled the area as Gilyon reached the end of the channeling spell. He focused the energy both in his hand to one spot creating a beam. It was as if the beams hit something in the middle of the air. What ever it was trembled and sparks of that energy burst in every direction. In the end, that very reality before him vanished like as if it was in fact an illusion. The grass changed,

even some of the trees fade away and old, moldy rocks and bricks appeared made of gray stone. But more importantly there was a door leading underground.

Gilyon looked back to the fight going on only to see his improvised help impaled several times by the shadow dust creatures. The sword like limbs pierced through his body were ever they could, some of them even made their way around his ribs, as they could not cut through them.

Distracted and blinded by the white light Freyan wasn’t able evade the moving sand blades. Gilyon put up a full round shield barrier, then started to hurl kinetic blast towards the monsters. Even if it was a bit more effective, than punching the creatures with hand it had similar results. The bigger chunks of sand blasted away started to immediately recuperate. Gilyon swear silently as he tried to put more effort and magical energy into the blasts. This time he aimed for the tentacles holding Freyan. Yet it was no easy feat. Gilyon wasn’t the through and through battle-mage type. With the stronger hits some of the creatures put his attention to him. Or at least couldn’t decide what to do.

Still the mage wasn’t far as effective as Freyan. Who was probably only standing because of the blades holding him. Thankfully to the magic bombarding the creatures though the strain and pain on his body slowly started to lessen even if bit by bit. Gilyon’s presence was at least enough to stop the things cutting him into pieces. And when Freyan was able to move a little bit he took a large breath as last resort. He screamed from the top of his lung with a sickly voice releasing as much dark energy as he could. He fell to the ground as nothing was holding him after that moment.

“Freyan, move!” shouted the mage.

He looked up hearing someone calling his name. Looked to the direction of the voice. The mage was holding some kind of crystal in his hand. He could also see the creatures moving from the corner of his eye. The concentric burst of energy while damaged the sand creatures, it didn’t finished them of entirely. Freyan run up to the mage in the matter of seconds, collapsing behind him. At that moment Gilyon energized the crystal, activated it with a strange keyword and threw it towards the monsters. It lighted up in red colour flying through the air then exploded touching the ground. The flames rose high and went out in the matter of seconds leaving only black dust around.

“Are you alright?” Gilyon asked, but felt immediately stupid as he didn’t get an answer.