The Drau huffed, hot steam and black liquid flying from its snout. Casek locked eyes with the creature, willing it to charge, even as Raelynn approached it from the rear.

  It answered Casek’s challenge with a mighty bellow and launched itself forward. Its hooves sent dirt and rotting foliage into the air as they propelled it forward at a speed a creature that large shouldn’t have been able to manage. He only had a heartbeat to react. A subtle movement took him out of the path of its towering antlers, and he jutted out his sword into the charging creature’s flank.

  Once more, its power flowed into him. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. Enough that the Drau could not keep up this game for long if it didn’t start landing its blows.

  It ground to a halt, skidding through the leaf-litter to whirl round to face its prey once more, fury written across its face. The Drau hesitated, its chest heaving as it took great, gulping breaths. Raelynn drew level with Casek, and Casek could see the creature considering its options.

  Of course, there was only one that didn’t involve it dying.

  It darted away from them, trying to escape into the thick underbrush. Casek barely had time to mutter a curse at the loss of an opportunity before Raelynn appeared in front of the beast, blade flashing.

  He waited to see the creature fall and dissipate into black mist, but instead it stumbled back, aggression giving way to blind panic in the face of a far superior enemy. Raelynn’s blade had carved a deep trench into the forest floor at the creature’s feet—a line in the sand the Drau wasn’t to cross.

  Casek wondered briefly whether the deer-like Shadowspawn would understand the message, but it peered up at her for only the briefest moments before turning heel and fleeing in the opposite direction. It ran in an arc around Casek, trying to flee behind him, but Raelynn was there again, fast as lighting, to cut off its path.

  Twice more it tried to escape, and twice more Raelynn cut the beast off. After the fourth time, she looked straight past the creature, directly at Casek. To his surprise, the Drau seemed to pick up on the message. It turned hesitantly to face him, glancing back every so often at the woman behind it, before concentrating its attention on him.

  The idea that the Shadowspawn might be more sentient and aware than he’d thought fell to the wayside as Raelynn’s intent became clear to him. She was trapping it here for him. He met her eyes, seeing the challenge in them, and nodded his thanks. Raelynn rolled her eyes, and the Drau charged.

  At first, their battle continued exactly how it had left off. Casek dived, ducked and rolled away from its surging attacks, attacking wherever he could, chipping away at the creature’s strength. Problem was, the Drau grew wise to his strategy pretty fast. It slowed up, and began expecting his dodges, forcing Casek into more and more desperate manoeuvres to escape its blows.

  Casek rolled away from another brutal swing of its coal-black antlers, and darted straight towards the still recovering Drau, hoping to take advantage of its lack of mobility. Its antlers shifted as he approached, independent of its head. Before he could react, they shifted from something rock-solid to something else.

  They whipped round, intercepting him, lashing out like spiked rope. The closest struck him across the chest, and Casek immediately felt the pull on his power as the Drau drew from him. Unlike the slivers he had been taking from it, the Shadowspawn took from him in great, sudden gulps. The feeling took the breath from him, as though he was being squeezed tight around his chest by some unrelenting force.

  He squirmed away, only for the other antler to grasp him by the throat, and hoisting him into the air.

  His mouth opened, desperate for any kind of air it could find, and his sword arm lashed out. Unlike in the research building, his blade made contact with the Drau’s face, delivering a heavy slash across its cheek and through its left eye.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  A pained howl escaped the creature’s mouth, and Casek slumped to the floor, already in the throes of a coughing fit. The blow had stolen strength from the Drau, but not nearly as much as it had taken from him.

  He glanced at his wrist, and the second jewel had faded completely, and the first wasn’t as bright as he remembered.

  “I need to drain more power from it. This just isn’t enough,” he rasped.

  The more magic you use, the more powerful your attacks. As you are now, you might just not be strong enough.

  Casek peered up at Raelynn, who was watching far too nonchalantly for Casek’s liking. Was that disdain on her face, or just plain indifference?

  The Drau drew itself up straight, and Casek hauled himself upright to be ready for its next charge.

  “Then I’m just fucked, then?” he asked.

  Tauph hesitated for only a second, but given the situation, Casek found even that was significant. Well, that’s not exactly true. You don’t just have your usual power, after all.

  “The magic I used to escape the stasis crystals? I have no idea how I could use that here.”

  Do what you did before. Use your magic to force it into your sword. Imagine your magic cutting it free from the well and absorbing it.

  Casek frowned, but there was no time for any more questions. He dashed away from the Drau as it readied itself for another attack and searched his subconscious for that mysterious well of power he’d found within himself.

  He arrived at it quickly this time, only awed for a moment at the sheer size of it. Immediately he called forth his own power, allowing it to flow through him into the well, and directing it into the shape of reaching arms. It scooped up a fair amount of the power he could feel and he pulled.

  The power seemed to squirm and twist and struggle, desperate to avoid leaving its safe place to help him. Casek dragged it out into the open and did as Tauph had described. He imagined a tendril of his own power and channelled it up behind the magic being pulled from its well. He pushed it through the connecting strands of power, severing them, and leaving him with a cluster of foreign magic in his system.

  His sword blazed into life as the new power struck it. Wispy tendrils of black bloomed and swirled around the blade with growing intensity, and a fresh strength blossomed throughout Casek’s body. He felt, frankly, incredible. Faster. Stronger. Better.

  The foci at his wrist shone brightly with three gleaming jewels.

  When the Drau charged this time, Casek sidestepped the creature with ease, and his counterstrike opened a cavernous wound in its side, fully penetrating its magical defences. It staggered silently, fighting to stay upright, before admitting defeat and collapsing into the dirt with an exhausted shudder.

  Casek took a breath. Thinking quickly, he pictured a three-pronged blade popping out of the hilt of his sword, just as had happened with Raelynn’s. He smirked as a jet-black version burst from the end of his hilt, and strode over to the collapsed Drau, hoping the next part of the process was as simple as Raelynn made it look.

  He didn’t hesitate. The blade plunged into the Drau’s side, and the creature fizzed and dissolved just as the Bel’gor had for Raelynn. Then he felt it. A sharp, surging swell deep in his core; a terrible rush of alien strength flowing into him like nothing he’d ever experienced before.

  His knees hit the forest floor as the world spun around him, and he battled hard to keep hold of what little he’d had to eat that day. Casek’s blade dissipated, and he clenched his eyes shut as the deafening roar of a great waterfall filled his mind; an overwhelming sound that consumed every ounce of his attention and concentration until there was nothing else but the feeling, and that noise.

  As quickly as it had come, it disappeared, and Casek was suddenly acutely aware that he was lying on the floor where the Drau had been, earth still vaguely spinning.

  “Congratulations. You’re officially a Binder now. At least, one that might finally be a touch more useful than a literal child,” Raelynn said, smirking.

  “Wha—”

  “You bound the Drau. If nothing else, that confirms to me you are, at least, human, and not one of the more powerful and crafty Shadowspawn.”

  Casek blinked owlishly, still trying to collect himself, and Raelynn sighed heavily.

  “Get on your feet. If I wasn’t in stasis for too long, I should still have a stash nearby. We’ll eat and talk. Since you are human and everything, I should probably explain a few things.”

  She stood without waiting for him to answer, and began trudging into the woods, the light filtering down into the forest's under-story fading rapidly.

  He groaned and got to his feet. “Well, that could have gone a lot worse. You really saved my skin there, Tauph, thank you. How did you know how to do that, anyway?”

  There was no answer. Worse still, the indomitable presence of Tauph in his mind had shrunk away to practically nothing. He was still there, but was scarcely a shadow of what he had once been.

  “You okay there, Tauph?” he asked.

  No response came.

  He glanced up towards Raelynn’s rapidly disappearing figure and swore. She wasn’t even checking that he was following. He couldn’t afford to be left behind. There was little option to jog after his new companion, anxiety twisting at his gut.

  Thank you all so much for reading this far! If you've enjoyed what you've read, please consider checking out one of my other stories below - just click on the pictures to go to their pages!