"SILENCE!"

The words of anger didn’t come from Aeldrich, but from the man next to his throne. His voice was odd, to say the least. It was composed of two voices, rather than just his own. One was a normal voice, not deep, but also not high. The other one was delayed by less than half a second and was deeper. My ears could’ve been misleading me, but it seemed to have an echo to it, even though the room wasn’t nearly big enough to support such a thing.

On the face of the man was not a single emotion to be seen as he spoke the word. It didn’t fit the angered tone of the message, it felt… unnatural.

“I am sorry, my lord.” Chaele bowed her head in shame.

“Speak no more,” the man next to Aeldrich said, “I will get to you in a second. Firstly, what is this?”

“I am Kate, sir.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, I wasn’t talking about you. Move.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do I need to repeat myself? Move.”

Aeldrich formed a flame in his right hand as the man beside him spoke those words, a flame which was composed of the colors black and blue instead of the normal yellow and red. So I decided it would be in my best interest to do as he obeyed me: I moved to the side and revealed Val floating behind me.

“A Pure Wisp. Now tell me, how does one become so dumb, so utterly idiotic, to bring that thing to the settlement of Necromancers?”

“That thing happens to have a name.” I defended my friend.

“Oh, so now Wisps also have names? Since when did that become the convention? Since when are Wisps kept as pets? Look, ‘Kate’, I couldn’t care less about the name of your little Wisp. Answer my question.”

“I promised to protect her.”

“And to protect her you take her here?” The man laughed vividly at it, “Do you know what we do with Wisps like this one?”

“I do not, sir.”

I saw Aeldrich do a hand gesture as to call something over to him. From the shadows in the back of the room something started floating next to him. It was a concentrated form of black light, resembling a Wisp like Valentina, but with a more plasmatic and electric structure.

“Corrupt Wisps. One single drop of Mortis Essentia is enough to transmute them. One single drop to change that one from your pet to your worst nightmare, and a handy tap of Mortis for us.”

I took my place in front of Val again, protecting her with my shell. I was looking the crippled man straight in his nonexistent eyes.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, sir.”

“Would you also say that to my own face?”

The man was pointing towards Aeldrich sitting upon the throne.

“I said I can’t let you do that.” I repeated now to Aeldrich himself.

The man laughed at it again.

“And who do you think will protect her for you? I could obliterate you right here and now, and take that Wisp for my own. Give me one reason why I should not do that.”

“I could be useful to you in the future.”

“Useful? How? You are not even of The Lands. You probably can barely protect yourself against Pure Essentia, let alone Forbidden Magiks.”

“The Book of Love, sir.”

“What about it? Has it been found again?”

“I have it with me at this present moment.”

“Prove it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Prove it, or I will remind you of your mortality.”

“May I kindly remind you, great and powerful Aeldrich, that if you destroy me, you will also destroy The Book?”

He made a fist again in anger.

“Alright,” he growled, filled with annoyance, “I won’t touch your meager Wisp yet. Now to you, Necromancer.”

“My lord.”

“Get on your feet.”

“Yes, my lord.” And Chaele did as he obeyed her: she swiftly got on her feet.

“Where did you meet this ‘Kate’?”

“Not far south from here.”

“I can confirm—”

“Who gave you permission to speak?” He instantly attacked me with his tone.

“Sorry, sir.”

“You do know it is absolutely forbidden for Necromancers to leave the settlement without my permission?”

“Yes, my lord. My apologies.”

“Apologies are but empty promises, Necromancer. Besides, they don’t reverse what has been done. The punishment is inevitable.”

“I understand, my lord.” I think I heard tears drop to the floor as she said that last sentence, I could visibly see her hands shaking from fear, so I made the intention of grabbing them.

“Don’t you dare!” The man shouted at me, which startled me so much I instantly retracted my hand, “Come here, Necromancer, and show me your hands.”

Chaele stepped forward towards the throne of stone, and showed both her hands to Aeldrich, just like he asked.

“It seems you have already done half the work for me; however, this doesn’t mean I’ll cut back on the punishment.”

“I understand.” Tears must’ve been running down her face like the everlasting blue waterfall back at The Mountain, though I couldn’t see it, for she was facing Aeldrich.

“Hold up your left hand,” he demanded of her, “and don’t even think about lowering it.”

And she did just as asked. Aeldrich placed his hand about five inches above it, spreading his fingers wide, while keeping them curved slightly downwards. A black Essentia-like substance appeared from Chaele’s wound, and was channeled straight into Aeldrich’s hand. At first it was very little, but the longer it went on, the more he was draining out of it. Not even a second later, Chaele began screaming of immense pain, even more than what we had heard back in the forest.

“Make it stop! I’m begging you!” She screamed at Aeldrich, but it was all in vain.

With every second, the intensity of the screams and the amount of tears increased, while the gloomy light blue that came from underneath the shadow of Aeldrich’s hood was becoming more and more bright.

No more than seven seconds had passed, or Chaele had fallen to her knees from the sheer anguish caused by whatever curse the ancient Necromancer was inflicting on her, shouting things like: “Please!”, “I’ll die!” and “Stop it!” trying to at least get a slight bit of mercy. But it didn’t stop. It kept going for seconds that must’ve felt like weeks to her. I am positive that if he went on a little longer, Chaele would’ve either fainted – or even died – right there on the spot, but he didn’t.

After Aeldrich was done with tapping her from whatever he was tapping her from, the young woman fell to the ground completely, still screaming and crying in agony, while lying down in a fetal position, keeping her left hand close by herself. I wanted to go towards her, comfort her in any way I possibly could, but Aeldrich didn’t allow me.

“If you take one more step towards her, I’ll crush all three of you. Book of Love or not.” He threatened me, which didn’t stop me from going towards my newly made friend until she spoke to me herself.

“Don’t do it Kate. He’s not bluffing. It’s not worth it.” She screamed between the tears coming out of those magically blue eyes from before.

Neither Aeldrich nor the man next to him showed emotion in any way, shape or form about anything that was ongoing.

“You’re staying the night in her tent, outlander. But tomorrow I want you gone, people like you can only cause for troubles.”

“After tonight, I didn’t even think about staying here any longer than needed.”

I helped lift up Chaele, and together we slowly made our way back to her tent, with me acting as her support. I kept talking to her during the whole trip – it wasn’t much more than fifty feet in length, but we spend a reasonable time traversing that – trying to ease the pain at least a little bit. I didn’t ask about anything that happened there, even though I didn’t understand the slightest bit of it; I figured talking about it now would be the last thing she wanted to do.

When we arrived in her tent, I laid her down on her bed.

“You should get some rest, Chaele.”

“Thank you, Kate. So much.” She said while already drifting off to sleep. I couldn’t blame her, she had had a rough day, and her sleep was well-deserved.

“Tomorrow we’re going to get you out of here, I promise.”