Elizabeth returned as he was scheming the exact mergers and intentions to get what he wanted. It had actually taken her surprisingly long to return, with the reason why following closely behind. She was sustaining two dozen magical trays, all of which carried a feast’s worth of food. Varied cuisine which did, indeed, smell mouthwatering. And, despite being smooshed together a bit, quite delectable looking.

  “Probably… don’t try any,” she slowly said as she immediately noticed his interest.

  “Now isn’t that a particularly cruel thing to say after bringing all this?” Irwyn inclined his head, unsure if she was being serious.

  “Remember how you had been worried that attuned cuisine might be addictive?” Elizabeth glanced back at the trays. “You had a better point than you realized. Because if that had any effect, this is a hundred times worse.”

  “Are you alright?” Irwyn immediately asked with worry.

  “The lack of physical needs in the Trial seems to cover the downsides of overeating,” she said, then snatched something from one of the trays, swallowing the handful in one superhumanly fast bite.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I think the feast is supposed to be a trap of temptation. A test of its own. To see if we can be actually distracted by food and comforts,” she explained, snatching another mouthful in between words. “Except, making it just food would be too simple, so it causes compulsion instead.”

  “Which seems to be succeeding with you,” Irwyn noted with some alarm.

  “The feast constantly replenishes. I had to grab literally everything in the room at once to even tear myself away.”

  “Which immediately makes me worry what will happen when you run out of your stockpile. Should you even be indulging any more as you are?”

  “No side effects besides the big one - which I am unfortunately a bit past mending. I think it will become a lot harder to have a conversation once I cannot suppress the itch.”

  “Then we better hurry and plan while we can,” Irwyn nodded. The pile was visibly diminishing throughout their conversation as she could move, and thus consume, at incredible speed.

  “If… no, when I try to go back, I will need you to halt me. Just you watching me will go a long way towards that. I am already dying from the embarrassment just imagining it - Elizabeth von Blackburg, cannot even control her base urges as her companion stares on.”

  “Withdrawal is not pretty, Elizabeth,” Irwyn warned. “And magic can only make it worse. Strength of will usually cannot overrule the body, even if the mind knows that way lies death. That’s not your fault.”

  “Probably leave any encouragement for when I am on the mend,” she grimaced, then ate another chunk. “The humiliation by itself should hopefully help keep the urge in check.”

  “Or make you spiral. This could go really poorly,” he reiterated.

  “I will be fine. I just need guardrails,” she insisted, dismissing his warning again. As if she didn’t understand…

  Irwyn opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Elizabeth knew so much about almost any topic that it was always startling whenever she didn’t. But how much of an issue was addiction among the upper crust of mages? Presumably, not significant. Just from her reaction, it would be a mark of shame among peers, something the mages thought beneath them, which would discourage using illicit substances in the first place. That and the competitive nature of their whole caste.

  The ambitious and talented would not spoil themselves on drugs. Those on the sidelines were already disappointing failures, so even if some of them might resort to numbing themselves as such, no one would be surprised that they could not overcome themselves again. And for any cases which didn’t fit those world views, well, life mages could almost certainly undo any physical cravings engraved onto the body.

  Maybe Irwyn was overthinking it. Elizabeth’s body was far beyond mortal. So was her will. Perhaps she could actually do what she thought she would. But then, what would be the purpose of this part of the Trial? No, Irwyn had to assume the worst-case scenario. Growing up in Ebon Respite’s slums, he had seen the ugly side of the coin. More than once and in a variety of stages. He recalled the old and rusty lessons remembered from those times and began to silently prepare.

  Elizabeth likely wouldn’t be willing listen to him right this moment, he realized that without even needing to try. Pride and self-confidence would not let her presume a failure on her part, even if just a perceived one. If things turned out fine, well, then there would be no problem. But if it came to it, Irwyn had to be ready.

  “Lot of thoughts?” Elizabeth spoke, interrupting his scheming. It couldn’t have been more than a second, but they both knew how fast the other could think.

  “If you think that will be enough, then let’s do it your way,” he nodded. “Just promise me that if things turn out badly, you will do as I say.”

  “I thought you would have more faith,” she frowned, genuinely upset.

  “Bad past experiences speaking, probably,” he half-deflected. “Please?”

  “Fine, if your paranoia proves correct, I promise to listen. But you owe me a favor for that lapse in confidence if I am right.”

  “Happy with that,” Irwyn immediately agreed. Then he had to wait to be proven right or wrong. While he could, he opened a different topic that was still on his mind. “Now, while you are finishing up, I have some questions about Concepts…”

  Irwyn proceeded to explain his reasoning for his possible future choices. As he had envisioned them not too long ago. Desolate Starfall would almost certainly be his next pick. Afterwards, he would aim for some defensive Concept based on the separation and unreachability of the Stars, though he wasn’t sure whether that should be the very next. In general, he was definitely much closer on plotting his path towards a Domain, but additional input from someone much more knowledgeable would still be helpful.

  “I agree that it’s a perfect fit for you,” she smiled. Irwyn eyed her piles of food, they were almost empty by the time he had finished explaining everything. “As for the Concept after, I think a purely defensive one is actually ideal for how you fight.”

  “What will yours be?”

  “As a general rule, the third should be either pure mobility - and thus avoidance - or area defense like your barriers. The fourth should be the other. My third will be Voidseeker. It should make slipping in and out of the Void a lot easier, not to mention navigation. A suggestion from my father, actually. He is confident it will be multiplicative with my inborn affinity.”

  “That is Void, not Temzda,” Irwyn pointed out with a frown.

  “I will balance it out,” she explained, finishing the last of her stockpiled meals. “Since the Domain I aim for first is TEMZDAFLAME, for any purely Void-aligned Concept, I need to also carve a Flame-based one of equivalent strength. A trick that works for any prismatic elements, and should also work for you if it seems useful. I wouldn’t risk going for something drastic like four such couples, but one or two pairs is perfectly reasonable.”

  “What do you plan for Flame then?”

  “Something like Inner Fire? This library could actually allow me to grasp something better. It will definitely be internal and physical, a fuel for my motion in battle,” Elizabeth reached towards an empty tray while talking. Her hand automatically snapped towards her mouth. She tried to chew and frowned at the emptiness.

  “I should look into that,” Irwyn admitted. Especially for the movement part. Starfire was not faster than Light, one of the very few attributes in which it was inferior to its composite element. “You had your own books to read. And I still have a whole pile myself.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. For the second time, her hand shot up to the mouth, followed by a frown. Then she got seated not far from Irwyn, picking up a book.

  It took about an hour for Elizabeth to show the first real signs that something was off. Everything before that had been just fidgeting. Slight frowns and ticks Irwyn didn’t remember her having. Then, suddenly, she half stood up. It was for just a moment, before she sat back down, but it didn’t go unnoticed.

  Irwyn had been reading the Book of the Name, as he was already familiar with it and thus perusing it took up less attention - he mostly wanted to see if his version was any different than what the Trial would provide. He had also placed a subtle, invisible barrier over the room’s only doorway. Nothing Elizabeth couldn’t break, but enough to give her pause if she tried. He shot her a glance over the sudden movement, but she studiously ignored him, going back to reading.

  It happened again 30 minutes later. Then once more in less than 15. Not long after, she stood up outright, starting to pace. By that point, it seemed undeniable that something was off. Irwyn immediately feared how much worse it would get. Elizabeth was disciplined most of the time, so to break that composure that openly the withdrawal had to be strong. And that was what, Less than two hours after the last dose? Following just one session of indulgence. Things shouldn’t get that bad so quickly.

  He had to hope the whole curve was accelerated, not just the start. The feast had clearly been magical, so it might not follow most elicit substances closely, but he remembered some of the worst cases could last days, if not weeks. Another problem was that he was reluctant to escalate things. For the moment, Elizabeth was just pacing, so it was unlikely she would be willing to take drastic measures yet - which Irwyn hadn’t even figured out the exact technicalities of.

  Her circle continued widening bit by bit. Soon enough, it got close enough to the doorway Irwyn decided to speak up. “Going somewhere?”

  “No…” Elizabeth shook her head, reddening with embarrassment, then went back to sit down again.

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  That didn’t last longer than a few minutes. Instead of returning to reading, she instead tried to distract herself with magical exercise, which quickly turned into half physical. Practice swings with a manifested blade, avoiding non-existent attacks with acrobatic maneuvers. When she got suspiciously close to the doorway, Irwyn stood up to get in the way.

  She pretended like nothing was wrong after stepping back and continued with the exercise. Her motions got faster and faster until she was almost a blur of limb and magic. For a brief moment, Elizabeth even disappeared into the Void, then immediately re-manifested with a frown.

  “Fine, you were right,” she suddenly turned to Irwyn. “This is going much worse than I thought it would.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like every cell in my body has turned into rusty nails,” she grimaced. “And that I have grown a second brain that is whispering to the first that I should take some blatantly unwise actions.”

  “So, bad,” Irwyn nodded.

  “It’s also making me wonder about all the ways I could get around you,” she said, biting her lip. “Which makes me afraid some of them could work.”

  “Like?”

  “Slipping into the Void, mainly,” she admitted. “I don’t think I could actually run past you, and forcing my way through is even less plausible.”

  “That is also my biggest worry,” Irwyn admitted. He didn’t have a way of catching her if she did that. The Void was simply out of reach for his magic, unless he could somehow forcefully burn a hole there - which was dubiously even possible and certainly not safe nor fast. Then it would be back to the start at best.

  “This is terrible. It’s… like my own body is plotting betrayal against myself,” her face scrunched up in an unfamiliar expression. “Blatantly and unapologetically.”

  No, not unfamiliar, just one she so rarely ever showed. Fear. Even when they had faced mighty undead, regions of monsters, or had been pursued by the Chosen, she had always shown confidence or at least bravado. The will to overcome and a subconscious certainty that they would. Yet now she was afraid, gradually leaning towards terrified. And the sight of it hurt Irwyn. Something had to be done. He wasn’t sure what was the best course of action, but he took the first one that had come to mind earlier. He stood up and approached in quick steps.

  “Irwyn?” she asked, startled. Though given the speed of her thoughts, she definitely could have reacted and dodged. Instead, she let him grab her in a hug, freezing in place.

  “You will make it through,” he promised. “And I have thought of a way.”

  “Yes, well… that is good,” she almost stammered, thoughts muddled by the withdrawal.

  Irwyn did not speak further, instead casting his magic. Before she could react, Elizabeth was wholly enveloped in a mesh of Starfire strings covering practically the whole of her body. There was a balance to it, of course. Taut enough to hold her in place but hopefully not so much so as to be unpleasant. All of them, of course, Conceptually aligned towards being inescapable. The best Irwyn could make them for that purpose, like the scorching heat of a cloudless noon.

  “Irwyn?!” she exclaimed again, significantly alarmed.

  “It is simple,” he explained. “I cannot stop you if you slip into the Void, but this should prevent you from doing so… tell me if the Starfire hurts.”

  “It doesn’t, but this is a bit extreme,” she weakly protested.

  “The next step is distraction,” Irwyn ignored that much. “I don’t know how long it will take for you to feel better, so it’s best to assume long. The History of the Great Crusade should have enough volumes.”

  “I can read my own book.”

  “Then that wouldn’t properly divert attention,” Irwyn denied. “Your mind will just slip away again in silence. I think the best way would be to keep you reading until you fall asleep from exhaustion, but I don’t think that will be an option here. So it’s just reading as long as you have to - or until your throat gives out, if it even can.”

  “Fine,” she surrendered, glancing away briefly.

  Irwyn quickly manifested a couch of sorts for them. It was probably in dimensions just slightly off of real furniture, but that was the benefit of making tools to fit the exact situation. After a few moments, they were seated in the pseudo divan, with Irwyn leaning to the side and Elizabeth sprawled over him as he held her in place with both his arm and magic.

  “This is hopefully comfortable, or at least as close to that as we can get given everything else.”

  “Do you need to be so close?” she hesitantly said after a few moments of stunned silence.

  “I don’t want to take any chances, and you are faster than me. If it comes to that, proximity should make it easier for me to react, my magic stouter. Is it a problem?”

  “No…” though the embarrassed reddening was apparent. Irwyn decided to not comment. He wouldn't begrudge Elizabeth her current state, no matter how much further it deteriorated.

  “Alright, here is the first book,” Irwyn said as he lifted it with his own magic, opening it upon the first age. “There we go. Out loud.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then followed his instruction, reading out the introduction: “It is difficult to point to the precise moment that the Great Crusade had begun. Perhaps it was when the Aspects had perished. Maybe it was when the ten had decided that necromancy must be purged. Or, possibly, it could have been the very first moment such cleansing was being carried out. Contrarily, I would and will argue that it was the very moment the Betrayer’s firstborn was attacked and consequently captured.

  It is at the last of those three where our retelling begins. Before the Rot was known as Rot. Before we knew of the Betrayer’s whispers from beyond demise, if not prior to its first manifestation. The Great Crusade began in a once unimportant cliffside on a Realm not particularly distinct from the others. Where the greatest shield was a presumption of obscurity.

  After that battle, it is now known as the Abyssal Ridge…”

  The account of the Great Crusade were, for the most part, genuinely intriguing annals. It was also a bit of a collection, as many sections were clearly penned by different authors with their own distinct styles. Some of the testimonies were firsthand, especially those of major battles where the writers have personally fought, though many were just descriptions of events written down on behalf of others that had far less attention for detail. Most of the wordcount was spent on dry summaries of locations and casualties.

  Thousands upon thousands of pages of them. Frankly, they soon enough started to skip through those repetitive segments, preferring the narrated chapters. There was not much there to glean, except maybe the sheer scale. Most of the events that were so simplified consisted of those that involved no individuals that wielded a Truth and fewer than 100 ‘leader’ undead. Some of them were so meagre as to talk about individual Liches that were not even draugr - Irwyn also wondered if the use of mostly modern terms was a quirk of translation or if they had just been used for that long.

  Elizabeth kept faithfully reading through with perfect diction despite her apparent suffering - mostly out of stubbornness, Irwyn suspected. After the first hours, she began furiously sweating, to a point where he had to raise a worry about dehydration. It thankfully seemed like the Trial’s removal of physical needs still covered as much. She was also trembling with increasing frequency and confessed that she was manually lowering her body temperature, otherwise she might have been scalding to the touch.

  But even after several hours, she was not getting better. In fact, Elizabeth got worse. It was increasingly difficult for her to keep actually reading through the escalating agony. Despite Irwyn’s prodding, it was simply no longer able to properly distract her from what she was going through. At approximately the eight-hour mark - not that Irwyn was keeping exact track - there was a change. Irwyn felt a weak surge of magic, then heard a hiss of pain.

  “What are you…?” his head snapped over to her, only to realize Elizabeth was bleeding. There were several shallow gashes across her arms where his magical bindings had cut into flesh. He had not moved them.

  “Sorry, damn it, fuck!” she exclaimed with a rare curse, looking down at the fresh wounds as if she was surprised to see them.

  “You tried to forcefully enter the Void,” Irwyn realized.

  “Yes,” she nodded, beet red yet also on the verge of tears. “It was just an idle thought, damn it. But then I was doing it before I even realized. Damn it, I am sorry. I… I don’t know what to do.”

  “That is a problem,” Irwyn frowned, trying to think of a solution. If the withdrawal could compel her to any degree of self-harm, how could they be certain she wouldn’t go all the way next time? Or in a few hours if her condition kept worsening. If she truly wanted to, it was definitely possible for Elizabeth to literally tear her body apart to escape his fetters. Just that made them immediately too dangerous to keep using.

  “There is only one way to stop my traitor of a brain,” she interrupted his thoughts, face shifting towards determination. “You have to forcefully stop me from casting altogether.”

  “How?” Irwyn asked. He could stop magic from manifesting by brute force, but he had never even heard of a method that could stop internal spellcasting like what the best of her repertoire was.

  “Just… do what Alice does for teleportation. Except with Starfire.”

  “You mean… no, that would be agonizing.”

  It was not hard to make the connection with a hint. Direct teleportation, the kind in which the caster moved someone’s whole body directly without a portal or a platform. It was the fastest and what Alice usually resorted to whenever the need had arisen, but it was also a massive exercise in trust. It required the Time mage to directly saturate the object - or body - with their mana. That in turn needed consent if the two mages were remotely at the same level of power and could easily be abused to, for example, tear the body to a million pieces instead of safely teleporting it.

  Except what Elizabeth was asking of him would be far less gentle than Time magic. She was, fundamentally, a being attuned to the Void. While not quite like a demon, Elizabeth’s Concepts and bloodline brought her relatively close to their strengths - and also weaknesses. Since Light and Void were anathema, only one would be able to exist within the body. Unlike Time magic that could bypass the issue by superposition, Irwyn would need to basically flush out every bit of mana within Elizabeth’s Vessel, then forcefully hold his own in its place.

  Yes, that would most definitely stop her from attempting to cast any Void magic. Most of Flame too, since it would be so hard to draw any out. It would also be absolutely excruciating. Probably what normal people would describe as fire in their veins. It would still be Light in a body far too close to its opposite. That would only be made worse if unruly impulses made Elizabeth attempt to draw in more Void mana from the Reservoir with disregard for the harm. When the two elements annihilated each other on contact, there would inevitably be an aftershock. An extraordinarily dangerous proposition inside someone’s body.

  “I am already in agony, Irwyn, this will not make it any worse. Might actually help. And Starfire will be a lot better than pure Light, in both pain and damage. I am not so fragile that this will leave a lasting impact if you are careful.”

  “I have never done anything like this,” he warned, hesitant. “If I make a mistake, you could get gravely injured, not to mention how much it would hurt.”

  “Good thing you have my complete trust then,” she huffed with a strained smile. “Do it, while I am coherent enough to help.”

  “Alright. Hold on then,” he said, unable to think of anything even approaching a better solution.

  She seemed to take that literally. Irwyn released the previous bindings, which let Elizabeth move around somewhat. She quickly changed position, leaning even closer towards Irwyn, then circling both hands around his torso. There she tried her hardest to cling onto him with all the power her fingers could muster… which wasn’t much with her enchantments already released.

  Irwyn was maintaining a Concept based defensive spell while Elizabeth had long dismissed all of hers. That meant that there was literally no real give or elasticity in his flesh despite her superhuman strength. Which was not ideal, since she could probably break her fingers against his body. Like trying too hard to squeeze a slab of steel.

  He diverted a part of his attention towards adjusting that. In those few specific areas, he pulled the stronger spell back, returning the spots to normalcy. But then it was superhuman strength against undefended flesh, the exact opposite problem. Irwyn managed to barely react before Elizabeth’s fingers tore two chunks of meat off of his body, overlaying a weaker spell with just intentions, which he then adjusted to an equilibrium where neither of them risked damage. She had still drawn some blood, but Elizabeth was thankfully too busy to notice, and Irwyn would definitely not bring up his embarrassing lapse of judgment.

  In the meantime, he had been also working on the bigger problem using most of his focus. With Elizabeth’s assistance, they had been pushing out mana out of her Vessel while she tried her best to cut off the resupply. The whole process took several minutes, and it hurt Irwyn to see her repeatedly cringing in the new pain throughout. But there was nothing else he could do except continue. When it was done, it was still far from over. At his instruction, Elizabeth tried to draw slivers of Void mana from her Reservoir. The reaction was, as predicted, volatile. But Irwyn needed to practice while the occurrence was at least predictable. It did not ease her suffering, nor the increasingly unpleasant feeling in Irwyn’s own heart. Though, at the very least he could be confident in preventing damage.

  And still, they had no idea how much longer this would last. Nor if it would get worse.

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