Alka's green gaze was on the rapidly filling bowl of blood as he remembered that day when Syryn had fed him a few drops of his own blood. Was Lucien capable of the same? More?

"What's on your mind?" Lucien asked the plant mage. He was using a disinfectant on the blade that Magnus had just used. As a blood mage, no one knew better than him the dangers of sharing blades between friends. There was no question of who used it first. Every knife had to be disinfected and completely wiped away even if it was his own blood on the blade.

"Nothing," Alka replied.

They heard the grunts of dying ghouls as Sebastian annihilated the group without much effort.

"What does your spell do?" Sebastian solemnly asked after jogging back to Lucien.

"You'll find out soon," Lucien answered he glanced up at the sandy haired mage. "It'll only take a few minutes to cast but I assure you that this will solve a huge chunk of our problems."

"It better," Sebastian muttered. He could have been out there slaying the ghouls if he wasn't here giving Lucien a chance. The mage had grown up being told that the only good necromancer was a dead one. He warred with the doubts in his heart that told him that no necromancer could be good, not even a friend.

"Sebastian, hand."Â

Lucien was extra careful when he took Sebastian's blood because the man was the most powerful sorcerer he knew. He was a veritable tank of magic and each drop of blood was made more precious by it; for his spell relied on the amount of magic he could borrow from each of the contributors. Every drop they gave him was proportional to the amount he could take from their bodies.

"Step aside," he told the others. "And prepare to be drained of your magic."

Akida, Alka, Magnus, and Sebastian stood behind Lucien who had the bowl of blood cupped in his hands. The redhead held up the bowl to the sky and began chanting in a whisper. Raindrops splashed into the bowl but Lucien didn't seem to care.

"Remind me never to cross him," Sebastian told Magnus. He was a sensitive mage and could feel a cloud of thick power that gathered around the redhead. The mage wasn't afraid of sorcerers and other powerful magic users but he feared those that could raise the dead and set a thousand horrifying curses on the living. It didn't help that Lucien seemed to also have a penchant for blood magic. Both were forbidden categories of magic that could get them all in very deep trouble if the Sanguine were to find out about it. He was sure that Artemus had an inkling and was keeping quiet about it because he cared too much for the teenager who called him mu-mu.

"Ugh!" Alka groaned when he felt the pull of magic starting to take place. It was a very uncomfortable sensation; like a stream of something tangible being siphoned from his body.

The others made similar expressions of discomfort. Losing their magic wasn't just physically distressful. It was a loss of power, and their subconscious selves rebelled against the draining of the source of the magic that protected them from their enemies.

The eeriest experince though started when Lucien's whispered incantations began to echo in their ears. Alka placed his hands over his ears but he couldn't shut it out. The voice was now inside his head.

"-unvashin rushelkin vah-" the voice softly chanted as a massive build up of magic swelled in the air around them.

Lucien spilled the bowl to the earth and opened his arms to the forest like he was embracing it. The mages behind him felt one strong pull of magic and then a change of gravity in the air.

Lucien's spell was being released. It wasn't meant to affect the living but being so close to the source of the spell affected them in strange ways. All of them felt a sense of doom pressing down upon them. Alka felt the worse of it and he was sure that he was going to die right then and there.

____

An ear-splitting scream sounded in the air and Artemus stopped running. It was Abigail whose screaming he had heard.

The black cat turned around and leapt upon a high tree branch. From it, he began to jump through the network of thick branches between trees. Heart racing, he made his way to the place where he had left Abigail.

There he saw three ghouls shaking the tree that Abigail was clinging to. She was sopping wet with rain and shivering violently as she hugged the trunk of the tree that sheltered her.

Artemus no longer had the freedom to keep running the ghouls in circles around the forest. Upon the tree, he transformed and injured himself so that the monsters would smell his blood.

Predictably, the ghouls were attracted to the smell of his life essence. They turned around and madly sniffed the air to find the source of that sweet smell that made their hunger go wild.

The anti mage had a moment of weakness when he thought about running away to warn his family and the Sanguine about the impending danger that was brewing. He could kill Abigail so that her death would be swift and painless. All he had to do was kill her.Â

"Easier said than done," he murmured as three hungry ghouls stared up at him from the ground, their monstrous mouths leaking mucousy thick saliva. The anti mage turned into a cat and jumped to the forest floor. He was a very healthy man with great amounts of stamina but he couldn't keep running like this any more than he could kill easily murder Abigail.

The black cat with a bleeding leg ran through the forest, praying that he would find the strength in him to end Abigail's life. He was truly a monster himself to even contemplate such a thing. But when the future of many innocent lives was at stake, a man had no choice but to make the difficult decision that would haunt him forever.

One little girl's life for the sake of many.