Tenebres awoke as the hand wrapped around his mouth, and he immediately started struggling.

For a moment, he didn't know where he was or who was grabbing him. He was back in his little bedcave in Kellen's compound, tossing and turning until the cult leader came from him.

Unfortunately for his attempted captors, Tenebres was not the helpless boy Kellen had so easily tied up on that distant day.

The masculine voice of the figure grabbing him grunted. "Lil'bastard is struggling… FUCK!" The lumbering shape reeled back as Tenebres got his hands around the dagger he had underneath his pillow–a precaution he had picked up from Allana back in Emeston–and lashed out blindly.

As soon as he had space, Tenebres threw off his blanket and leapt to his feet. His void brand, the hungering maw carved over his heart, seared him with its eternal anger, and for the second time in his life, Tenebres, lost in half-remembered pain, happily embraced it.

The room they were in was small, with just a pair of bunk beds on each side. He and Cadence had each taken a bottom bunk when they stumbled in, leaving the top bunks for Allana, which made it that much easier for the abductors to get ahold of them. Two shapes, made vague by the darkness, already had Cadence carried between them while a third turned to help the one Tenebres had attacked.

"Little bastard stabbed me!" the first voice cried out, the sound of it vaguely familiar. "I thought he was supposed to be out cold?"

"He must've resisted the fetter somehow," the second figure observed. "You two take her to the wagon, we'll take care of this one."

Tenebres gritted his teeth as the rear forms quickly retreated, still carrying Cadence, and he reached for the gift of the void.

[Void Invocation] activated

All three of Tenebres's imps flooded the room with howls of malicious, murderous glee, urged on by the hatred in their summoner's heart.

Kill, Tenebres ordered simply.

While the trio of minor fiends leapt upon the unprepared assailants, Tenebres reached for his other power source. His anger made it difficult to keep his formulae straight and his head, and the boy didn't even notice as the scars closest to his fingers began to weep blood as his light spell bathed the room in crimson.

Only then did Tenebres finally learn the identity of his attempted captor–Fest was on the floor, still, as his green imp gleefully clawed at the heavyset man's chest. Next to him, a younger man, one of the hunters Tenebres had seen with Garol the day before, struggled with the blue imp, the red one already dying on the floor.

Normally, Tenebres would've been stunned by the implications of these two men turning on the adventurers, apparently drugging them in a plan to kidnap them. But at the moment, Tenebres was still filled with hate and rage at the pair of them, the darkened emotions of the worst night of Tenebres's life stirred up to a lethal extent.

"What are these things?" the young hunter snarled, trying futilely to bat the fluttering blue imp out of the air with his club.

"Your doom," Tenebres replied, his tone sufficiently sepulchral to make the melodramatic words hit home. Still, regardless of his threats, it was obvious that the hunter was too skilled for the blue imp to have any real chance against him, and drained from three invocations at once, Tenebres was not exactly up to a fair fight against the battle-gifted.

So he didn't bother.

Force blast was the simplest of the new spells Tenebres had gained at Apprentice level, a fully functioning version of the one he had cobbled together at Novice level, when he simply didn't have the control needed to perfect it. Rather than a focused ranged attack, it manifested a straightforward, and powerful, burst of kinetic energy directly in front of him–and as the hunter stood directly between Tenebres and the small window of the room, it was all Tenebres needed to send him flying straight out into the darkness.

If only the Festhall had more than one floor.

"Finish him off," Tenebres snarled at both of his remaining imps. For once, the fiends didn't struggle against his orders–of course, he had never been so aligned with the chaotic little monsters' desires before, either.

Only once the imps were gone did Tenebres turn to Fest's body. The older man may have been large, but he was no fighter. He had relied on Tenebres being knocked out by the fetter–in the back of his head, Tenebres noted that the will boon his gift of the void granted was likely the only reason he had fought the drug off–and he had been unprepared for the struggle when the boy woke up.

Now he lay dying, his arms and chest alike savaged by the green imp's claws. Blood splattered in a wide puddle around him, black in the crimson light.

But critically, importantly, the traitorous man wasn't dead quite yet.

"P-please," Felt wheezed, his voice weak with pain. "Please… the healers…"

"They won't make it in time for you," Tenebres told him, his voice harsh.

"P-potion… potion… on my belt…"

Tenebres tilted his head and walked closer to the man. His eyes found the small shape of a purse, as Felt had claimed, attached to his belt. Casually, Tenebres kicked it. Even weakened from his invocations, the force was enough to draw a sharp crack from the pouch.

Tenebres took some small pleasure at the fear on the dying man's face. "W-why…?"

Tenebres stood over the man, and in that moment, there was nothing soft or cute about the androgynous boy. His washed-out skin and bleached hair were the same color as his blood-red eyes in the red light of his spell, and there was not an ounce of mercy or forgiveness to be seen in his gaze.

"Normally, I might save you," Tenebres said. "Give you that potion. Make you answer my questions. But you tried to kidnap me, and you did kidnap my friend. I have a bit of a thing with being abducted."

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Fest gave a noise somewhere between a whimper and a groan as Tenebres hunched down, meeting his eyes.

"And now, I have quite a few other people I'm going to need to kill tonight if I want to get my friend back. And unfortunately for you, your death does much more to help me in that regard than your life does."

Tenebres reached out a hand, and with a thought, it became sheathed in black energy, a glow devoid of color and light both, a fluttering matte shadow that clung to Tenebres's skin.

[Sacrificial Victim] - Active, Final - Make a physical attack that does a small amount of dark damage on a hit. If this hit kills the target, receive a moderate boost to all physical or mental attributes for a lesser duration. Minor focus cost.

"No," Fest whispered through hoarse, bloody lips. "No, NO, NOOO–"

[Sacrificial Victim] final effect triggered

[Gift of the Void] experience gained

Experience: 100%

#

"Tenebres?"

Allana's voice shocked Tenebres out of his reverie. He blinked and turned away from both his new abilities and from Fest's corpse.

"I saw that hunter go flying. Where's Cadence?" she asked.

Tenebres recognized the monotone in his own voice when he replied, a numbness of the soul he couldn't quite shake in the wake of turning his dark gift on yet another person. "They dosed us with fetter," Tenebres explained. "I fought it off, but they got Cadence."

Allana gave Fest's corpse a brief, satisfied look, and Tenebres was thankful that the girl didn't press him for details about what happened, the way Cadence and Olivia would've. The two might not have been quite as hard, as violent, as the streets of Emeston had once made them, but they were still far from as soft as the others.

"They must've taken her out the front," Alalna said, already moving for the door.

"Go," Tenebres told her. "I'll catch up."

Allana nodded and dashed out of the door, and Tenebres gave Fest's grimacing face one last look before he ran after her.

Even flush with the buff from Sacrificial Victim, Tenebres knew that there was no keeping up with Allana when she really got moving, and there was no time to waste. Even after months of travel, Tenebres's speed and stamina were fairly low, while Allana's natural agility had only been further enhanced since she got the gift of the trickster, with Trick Step allowing her to move even more quickly, teleporting around any obstacles.

Still, by the time Tenebres caught up with the girl on the edge of town, even she had been too late. In the distance, he could make out the shadowed shape of a wagon, with a lantern hanging off each corner, trundling down the road away from the town.

Unfortunately, between them and the wagon were three more hunters, all with weapons pulled and ready.

"Well?" he heard Allana asking as he approached, her tone brash and challenging. "Who wants to take the first stab at me?"

"None of them," Tenebres said breathlessly, coming up behind her. Even with his stamina increased, Tenebres was out of breath by the time he made it across town, but he could feel his body rapidly recovering, stamina and resilience alike fixing him back up. "I'll take care of these three. You go after Cadence."

"Seo," Allana warned him, "you can't take all three of them."

"I can," he insisted calmly, standing straight as he felt the burning in his throat recede. "Fest got me over the line to Apprentice. I can handle them. What I can't do is catch up with that wagon, fiends or no."

Allana's set face and stance didn't waver, but Tenebres could sense the unease in his closest friend. "You don't even know what's going on, Seo."

"Sure I do. Garol, Fest, the militia, Mage knows who else, must all be working with the hag. They tried to kidnap us, and now they're probably going to take Cadence to the hag herself. You can stop that. I can't."

Allana chewed her bottom lip. "But…"

"Go," he insisted. "I'll catch up with you."

Allana chewed her bottom lip–and then she flipped a hand at the three hunters facing them down. Instantly a cloud of smoke, barely visible in the darkness at the edge of Tenebres's crimson light, shrouded the trio, and Allana was gone, her Trick Step and a lifetime of sneaking through the streets of Emeston letting her disappear past the wary hunters.

"Okay then. Time to put my coin on the table…" Tenebres muttered to himself. Allana had bought him a few precious moments, and he had to use them.

[Void Invocation] activated

Void Invocation had changed little in Tenebres level up, not even gaining a progression. What had changed was Tenebres's level relative to the fiends he could summon.

He was no longer limited to just minor fiends.

Strength and coordination attributes sacrificed

Speed and stamina attributes sacrificed

Resilience and focus attributes sacrificed

Lesser fiends tentacular horror, spark imp, and anthroslime successfully invoked

Even as the buffed attributes Fest's death had given Tenebres poured out of him, fueling his invocations, Tenebres fell deeper inside of himself. His level up had granted him one new ability, one Kenton had told him to expect.

[Trance] - Active, Concentration - By meditating, take direct control of invoked fiends. Will and charm are required to control fiends of lesser rank and higher. Fiends of major rank and higher may break control. Duration lasts while meditating.

Had Tenebres not spent a long night talking with Kenton Everbright about their similar gifts, he might've not known what to make of the ability. But it was the crux of the silver knight's skillset, and it didn't take much for Tenebres to see the advantages of it, even if the concentration requirement was a harsh limitation.

By the time Allana's poison gas cleared away, Tenebres was the only figure in sight, still surrounded by crimson light and sitting cross-legged in the middle of the road.

"Where did the bitch go?" one of the trio asked the center hunter, apparently the leader.

"She must've gone after the wagon," he grunted. "Grab that o–"

The man's gruff orders were interrupted by a pair of surprised curses as his men were suddenly grabbed from behind. The tentacular horror was many times larger than the minor fright that Tenebres had invoked in the past, its tentacles a dozen feet long and thicker around than his leg. Directed by Tenebres's will, they quickly bound up the two rear hunters, trapping their arms against their sides and pulling their weapons away.

Unfortunately, the leader proved more able than them, and his sword flashed up to fend off the tentacles before they could reach him. Tenebres felt every cut to the rubbery appendages as a sliver of pain in his own mind, and he quickly withdrew them to instead allow another of his new fiends to drop down on the man from above.

Though similarly grotesque to its smaller kin, the spark imp was significantly larger than the minor imps had been. Its skin was a solid black tone, but it still possessed the features of the imps that speed and stamina would normally invoke–namely a pair of large wings, a prehensile tail with a bright flame at its tip, and a brilliant flame in its stomach, waiting to be unleashed on its foes.

The lead hunter once again proved himself surprisingly capable, not only managing to fend off the spark imp's first attack, but turning to run at Tenebres instead, correctly guessing that the boy's death would remove the threat of the fiends. Unfortunately, by the time he turned around, leaving his men to the spark imp's tender mercies, Tenebres wasn't alone on the road anymore.

Far more coherent and intelligent than the small slime blob Tenebres had occasionally used as a distraction at Novice level, the anthroslime lived up to its name by taking on Tenebres's shape, a doppleganger made of dense, dark green slime–which, the hunter quickly learned as he tried to push through it, possessed an even more potent version of the minor slime's corrosive acid.

Garol's hunters were no doubt capable when fighting against the monsters they were used to, or when betraying and killing those who didn't expect their traitorous attacks. But against three unnatural fiends, directed by the mind of an adventurer with no mercy left in his heart for traitors and kidnappers, they were simply… insufficient.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.