Raelynn led them through the trees at a brisk pace, moonlight drifting through the canopy and painting the forest in a silver sheen. They moved in silence, broken only by the snapping of twigs under boot and crinkling of dry and dead leaves. The lack of noise made Tauph’s absence more pronounced, and the thick lump at the back of his throat even harder to swallow.

  The only thing that kept Casek moving was the slight dragging of foreign exhaustion at the back of his mind, the one, immutable sign that Tauph was not actually gone. Something about the binding had affected their bond, damaged him or it somehow.

  Casek had no idea whether there was anything he could do to help, or even what was actually wrong, so he focused on what he could do. Keep moving. Keep them safe.

  Finally, Raelynn slowed her pace before a great, twisted hornbeam. Its thick truck was gnarled and thick with knots and crevices, the deep pockets of space scattered along its surface like a mass of screaming faces. It dominated the space its ancient branches had claimed, with its great arcing boughs reaching out across the canopy, claiming a vast area of sky as its own.

  It was so old that its great arms had grown back down towards the ground, the longest of them digging into the earth and propping up the tree’s enormous weight, steadying it against storm-winds and time-wrought weakness.

  Raelynn ducked between the supporting branches, and began feeling around the base of the trunk, investigating the valleys and crevices along its surface. She grinned, the first earnest smile he’d seen from here since she’d woken, and pulled out a weathered leather backpack.

  It was built for travel, with a maze of pockets and extra pouches, and a bedroll slung from the bottom. She dropped it to the floor and knelt down beside it, rummaging through its contents.

  Casek approached slowly, acutely aware she did not fully trust him, and sank to the floor across from her as she searched her bag.

  “I wasn’t imprisoned for as long as I feared,” she said, eyes intent on the contents of the bag.

  “Oh?”

  Raelynn pulled out a bundle of cloth and unwrapped it slightly, revealing a mess of rotted fruit and berries. “The fresh supplies are spent, but not so badly that they could have trapped me for more than a week.”

  A faint smile slipped onto his face, to mask the twinge of pain the needled into him at that. “That’s good.”

  “Very. It reduces the odds the Shadow will have moved any of my team. Not to mention in means my grandfather won’t have been alone for too long.” She hesitated then, pausing her rummaging to peer up at him. “I have you to thank for that. I can’t say that I trust you—it wouldn’t be the first time the Shadow has tried to infiltrate Oreia by stealing a man’s body—but in case you are genuine, thank you.”

  Casek shrugged. “It’s no problem, really. You’re the first actual person I’ve seen in a very long time. I’m just happy I could help.”

  Raelynn only grunted and shrugged, returning her attention to the contents of her bag. Eventually, she found what she was looking for. The small, bound bundle of tinder, together with a sturdy-looking flint and steel, had a fire going far quicker than he had managed the previous night.

  With only a few brief minutes of gathering dry-enough deadwood, they were being warmed by a generous fire beneath the arcing boughs of the great hornbeam. The feeling of safety he felt being enclosed in its low-reaching branches was purely psychological—they were no safer here than out in the open—but he appreciated it nonetheless.

  He picked at what few scraps of berry and nut he’d gathered before coming across Raelynn, as she nibbled determinedly at some cured meat from her own pack. Outside of the thank you, she had only regarded him with something somewhere between suspicion and open hostility.

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  Casek understood it. From what little he’d picked up about the state of the world, she would have been at least somewhat justified if she’d simply killed him in case he was some kind of trick or deception. But, understand it or not, he had to build even a sliver of trust between them if they were to travel together.

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around how fast you were back there,” he said, idly gazing into the fire. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  She scoffed and shook her head ruefully. “I am an apprentice binder. Second Circle, although not far off Third. Hardly what you’d call powerful.”

  “Well,” Casek said, eyebrows raised. “If it makes you feel any better, I have literally no idea what any of that means. Either way, you’re a damn sight stronger than I am.”

  To his surprise, this only made her frown deepen and her face crease up in consternation. “What do you mean you have no idea? How is that possible? Come to mention it, where are you even from? There are no other human settlements left. There is only Oreia. So, if you aren’t of the Shadow, where the fuck did you actually come from?”

  “Being as honest as I can be,” he said, keeping his tone as level as he could manage in the face of her anger and confusion. “I just don’t remember. I only woke a few days before I found you.”

  This seemed to stymy her anger a little. “How long were you trapped for?”

  He swallowed and smiled ruefully. “As best as I’ve been able to work out: longer than a few weeks. A lot longer.”

  “There have been stories for generations about people waking and getting free. Returning to us… It’s never happened—not even a single time. Once you are imprisoned in the stasis crystal, that’s it. No escape, no rescue. Life over… You really remember nothing from before?”

  “It’s strange. I remember knowledge. I can remember sword forms, but not practicing them; how to start fires, navigate, find and cook food, but not a single meal I’ve ever eaten before I woke. I can remember my name, but nobody who might have ever called me by it.”

  Raelynn leant back, rubbing her chin with her hand. “So you really know nothing?”

  “Well, that feels a little harsh, but basically, yes,” he said, a dry chuckle escaping his throat.

  She pursed her lips in thought for the briefest of moments, before hopping to her feet and taking a seat on the floor beside him. She raised her wrist, showing the thin, golden foci strapped to it.

  “May as well do some educating, then. If you are being honest, I can’t have you dying from your own ignorance before you free my comrades. Activate your foci.”

  Casek blinked, and did as he was bid, black blade fizzing into existence in his palm, a black leather guard wrapping around his arm. Raelynn gestured to his two lit gemstones, currently glowing more brightly than ever.

  “These gemstones are a visual representation of your magical power. Think of it like combat stamina. The more that are lit, the more power you have at your disposal. There are seven in total. You look like you’re nearly at your third after binding that Drau, but you’ll progress pretty quickly once you cycle its power.”

  Her hand moved up to his arm guard, towards the shining circular pattern on the forearm section of the guard. “This shows what rank of Binder you are. Once you reach a certain level of power, your foci will change. Evolve. You’ll be able to do more. Wield more power.”

  “So, what rank am I?”

  “First Circle. You’ll move to the Second Circle once you’ve grown your strength enough to overfill all seven of the gemstones on the foci.”

  “And I do that by binding or killing Shadowspawn.”

  “Binding is better. But you can only bind one Shadow entity at a time—at least until you’re Third Circle—so you won’t be able to bind another until you’ve fully cycled and absorbed that Drau.”

  Casek blinked, and Raelynn sighed. “Right,” she said. “Cycling is the process of gradually stealing a bound Shadow’s power until all of it is your own. You can use your foci, so I’m assuming you’ve found your own well of power. Well, now you have two. Yours, and the Drau’s. You can use your magic to tear away chunks of its strength and absorb it into your own well.”

  Casek’s heart stopped dead, even as Raelynn pressed on with her explanation. That process sounded an awful lot like what he’d done to take down the Drau.

  “Be careful, though,” she said. “Take too much, too fast, and your foci won’t be able to remove all the Shadow’s influence from the power. It can influence you. Even possess you entirely, if you’re reckless with it. That’s why it’s important to cycle slowly…”

  But Casek was only half listening. Instead, his thoughts raced through the events of his fight with the Drau, and his use of the deep well of black power he had within him. The more he searched for any hint that he was wrong in his suspicions, the more certain he was that he was right.

  He’d cycled something to grant himself enough power to bind the Drau, and there was only really one likely explanation for just what that something was.

  Tauph, what in the name of the Gods are you—and where has your voice gone?

  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!