A dark corridor could be distinguished around him, like that of a castle. How strange, Ludan thought. It had been a long time since he had seen a building. Something didn’t fit with the recent events. But he didn’t have much time to dwell on it. Some loud noises began to disturb his peace.

  He tried to decipher them. They couldn’t be horse hooves. They were much stronger. They were grotesque, like a battering ram striking a wall. Whatever it was, it disturbed his calm. He felt he had lived through this before. A strange sensation came with that experience. It was an old feeling that every creature in the world, no matter its race, could sense. Fear in its purest form.

  The elf felt tiny in the wide corridor. Then a memory pierced his mind. He was supposed to be in the open field, with his vampire partner, behind an army of humans riding their horses as fast as the wind. He couldn’t remember the country’s name. He only had the vague memory of many cities destroyed, reduced to rubble. There couldn’t be a castle there.

  At some point, he must have fallen prisoner to some local lord, and his consciousness held by a spell until that terrifying moment. He couldn’t reflect much on it. The noise was getting louder, more disturbing.

  He had lived this before. The memory through fear came like a loop of consciousness. But familiarity didn’t erase the terror—it was deep. It was the apex of fear, the kind that freezes. He tried to run by instinct, but the corridor remained the same. He didn’t know how long he ran, but no sweat fell. Soon he felt tired. It wasn’t a physical exhaustion, but a psychological one. He felt smaller and smaller before the hallway. It’s the castle of a giant, he thought. He wished the hundreds of years he had lived would vanish forever, returning him to eternal darkness.

  The noise grew stronger. The giant would appear at any moment to crush him. Suddenly, a small light appeared in the distance. It was so tiny that it would have been imperceptible to any other being, but not to the eyes of an elf in his prime.

  He ran again toward the glimmer. It grew larger as he approached. An aura, he deduced as he got closer and closer. A sun in the midst of that dark firmament his world had become. A small, fragile figure lay in the center of the light.

  A lady, Ludan thought, seeing the vision with increasing clarity. She’s beautiful. Though he felt exhausted, inside and out, he kept running toward her. It was like finding an oasis in a vast desert.

  Her hair was blond and long, reaching her waist. That perfect body—slender yet voluptuous, with toned arms and wide hips—could belong to no one else. It was Xyrna.

  In disbelief, the elf slowed his pace. He didn’t want his eternal love to see him defeated and breathless. He walked toward her, looking in all directions, as if any creature of the night could spring from one of the flanks and kill him with a precise strike. It had to be a trap.

  He didn’t know how he had come to that place, but there she was, and that was all that mattered. It couldn’t be anyone else: her green eyes, her upturned nose, her elven light-sword shining at her belt.

  His lost lover began to walk toward him slowly. The noises that had threatened to crush him like a rat had vanished. Suddenly, the place wasn’t so dark. The bright aura illuminated everything. A beacon amidst a storm.

  When she was only a few steps away from Ludan, her green eyes shone even brighter. She extended a hand toward him. Her full lips remained closed. She hadn’t aged at all since the last time he had seen her, that afternoon on the docks of Maladir, that fateful afternoon he never thought would be the last.

  Her eyes begged for forgiveness. That gaze hypnotized him. His masculine pride suddenly rose in his chest. Would he really keep running toward that elf woman, that lady warrior who had played with his heart like a rag doll?

  It was absurd. But her sorcerous eyes drew him like honey. It was impossible, he realized. He wouldn’t stop. They were chains that had bound him since the first time she had looked at him.

  There’s nothing sweeter than reconciliation, he thought. A lasting love is not the same without the occasional quarrel, a skirmish that makes one fear the definitive loss of affection.

  When he stood before her, he stopped. Ludan hesitated. He had the vague feeling that something was wrong.

  But there was Xyrna. Perhaps she had always been behind him. She had made an alliance with those steppe riders, luring him into a trap, only to reclaim him. To tell him it had all been a game. A revenge for some mistake he had made.

  “Here I am for you, my love,” she said. Her voice was sweet and melodious. Another of her irresistible spells. She was a mage disguised as a swordswoman, an arcane full of enchantments and tricks like that one. “Give me a kiss.”

  “Why did you leave me? You said you’d wait for me.”

  “You took too long. I was young and na?ve.”

  “It was just a season. Elves have patience for such things. When I came back, you were gone.”

  The lady fell silent, looking aside, guilty. Suddenly her green eyes—like a forest in the late afternoon—turned red, like the mouth of a volcano.

  “I had things to do, my love, but here I am for you.”

  Her voice was no longer hers. It was guttural, horrifying. Her teeth were sharp, fangs like a vampire’s. They weren’t the straight teeth of his lost love.

  “I searched for you for so long but never found you,” said the elf, her voice monstrous. “Now you’ll be mine forever!”

  She lunged at him. Ludan tried to flee, but there was no escape. The corridor was gone; a high, salt-stained wall blocked the only way out. He looked forward again, where that terrifying being was almost upon him.

  There stood his lost lover with a demonic face and wide-open red eyes—a beast hungry for blood.

  He tried to draw his sword, but it was no longer at his waist. It was his end. That thing was not Xyrna. It was something that had taken her form to lure him, to possess him.

  With a leap in his chest and a scream that could awaken a dragon, Ludan awoke in the darkness, seized by panic.

  The cold wind of Ilar filled his lungs. Beside him was Sarric. He had never felt so relieved to see his pale face, though his fangs reminded him of the false Xyrna’s. Vampires didn’t sweat or pant, but his eyes were wide, and he breathed furiously. The stress of an intense struggle was reflected in his body.

  He’s been struggling, the elf understood. With something… with me. Not with me—with my body, with what tried to possess it. But that was over now. Relief returned to him as he breathed deeply. He had never been so happy to return to reality. He felt the valley’s cold air fill his lungs with each breath. The cursed fortress that had imprisoned his subconscious was gone.

  “Everything’s fine, my friend,” said Sarric softly.

  Ludan tried to speak to thank him, but exhaustion prevented it. The attempt at possession had left him drained. His body trembled.

  Damnation, he thought, he had forgotten to say the proper prayers to the goddess again. The memories of the previous day came to him like a cascade. They had chased the steppe riders for three nights in a row, always heading south through increasingly wild paths, harder for their mounts to traverse.

  The pursuit had left him exhausted. He had barely managed to set up the tent so that rain and cold winds wouldn’t disturb his sleep. He had forgotten the prayers.

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  “Sorry, old friend,” he finally managed to say. The vampire looked as if he had fought three giants, with large dark circles under his eyes.

  “It’s fine, brother. You’ve survived, that’s all that matters. But that… thing is getting stronger. I don’t know if you’ll be able to withstand the next one.”

  “There won’t be a next time, I promise. Yesterday I was too tired and forgot to invoke the protections.”

  “It was also my fault. I didn’t remind you. It’s been a long time since it happened.”

  Ludan sighed. It was true. The matter of the war had him so immersed that everything else had faded into the background. It had been a long time since he’d lived that nightmare. He felt as though his heavy, exhausted body had swum hundreds of leagues through the sea of Elnia. Maybe that day would be lost—he wouldn’t be able to continue chasing the horde—but it was the price to pay. He had survived the possession.

  Sarric took out a twig and began to chew it anxiously. Though both mercenaries were too skilled to fear external enemies, they shared a demon that haunted them from the inside flank, an astral creature that had pursued the elf ever since he had meddled with forces he shouldn’t have.

  Little by little, the elf managed to sit up. It was deep night in the Eresin Valley, the southernmost valley of Ilar.

  Their tents were camouflaged against a rocky ledge surrounded by trees and tall undergrowth. In the distance, a wolf’s howl echoed. It was a full moon. That could be one of the reasons why the entity had attacked with such ferocity.

  Ludan chewed on some mana biscuits to regain his strength. After a while, he was able to stand and step out into the open. The icy air filled his lungs, reviving him. He still couldn’t distinguish between reality and the nightmare. He splashed water on his face to make sure he was awake.

  He remembered the fateful afternoon when that torment had begun, many years ago.

  If only I had kept my mouth shut… The memory of the days before the demonic harassment saddened him. But that was his new reality, and he couldn’t escape it.

  Not long after Xyrna had vanished from his life, the elf had taken refuge in beer and wine to forget her, to bear reality without her.

  He spent his days in the forests hunting any lowly creature—giant spiders or warg wolves—to sell their limbs in the market of whatever town or city he found. Then he spent all his earnings in taverns, drowning himself in prostitutes and drink until the money ran out, and he had to return to the forest.

  One of those afternoons, he had told a merchant about his sorrow for his lost love. The frothy beer had gone to his head, and the attentive man had listened like a worried father.

  When the story ended with tears in his eyes, the robust old man had touched his shoulder earnestly.

  “Do you want her to come back to you?”

  He looked at him with his deep green eyes full of sadness.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a way…” the seasoned traveler had said. “But it has consequences.”

  “I don’t care,” Ludan had replied. It felt like centuries had passed since then. “Anything, as long as I have her again.”

  “Then come with me.”

  The old elf had led him down an alley to the hut of a dark sorcerer, so ancient he could barely move his arthritis-ridden bones.

  “This is Mahred,” said the merchant. “Only he has the power to make her return.”

  The old man had looked at Ludan with eyes full of pity. An elf that old must have lived over a thousand years. The experience in his gaze screamed for Ludan to flee, to repent of what he was about to do… but at that time he was still a young, stubborn elf.

  He insisted the old man help him get her back.

  “Very well,” the sorcerer finally said after due warnings. “It will only cost you ten gold coins.”

  That had seemed a trifle compared to having Xyrna in his arms again. He knew he could recover the investment in a single day of hunting… what he didn’t know was that the true price would come later.

  The prayers lasted the whole next day. The old man chanted and prayed in a forgotten tongue, so old even the elves themselves no longer remembered it. Ludan only remembered smoking tobacco through most of the session, leaving him nearly unconscious, and repeating invocations to entities that didn’t belong to the common elven pantheon.

  Then came the blood ritual. The memory was so disturbing that recalling it made him shudder. He returned to the present. Little by little, his body began to recover from the astral attack until he finally felt restored. The mana biscuits were magical indeed.

  The dawn of Ilar helped dispel the bitter memories. Sunrays filtered through the oaks surrounding the clearing where they had camped.

  In the distance, a dark smoke cloud stained the indigo and violet hues of dawn.

  “Looks like our friends are still at it,” said the vampire, chewing his twig. “How do you feel about riding?”

  “I think I can manage. Just give me a few minutes.”

  When he felt better, he began to flex his legs and stretch his arms, while the vampire folded the tents with the ease of daily practice.

  After a while, they resumed their journey southward through a secondary path. Before long, they began to see the clear signs of the Klurzite riders’ passage. Hundreds of hoofprints marked the muddy roads, and no building stood after their advance, no living creature, save the carrion crows feeding on the corpses of sheep and cows.

  The invaders had plundered so much that they left livestock carcasses riddled with arrows along the way.

  Even so, the two mercenaries had managed to give them quite a hard time.

  Taking advantage of the ethereal trace left in the air after the riders’ passage, Ludan and Sarric had become a thorn in the side of the Cursed Horde.

  The greenish magical cloud allowed them to infiltrate deep into the enemy camp at night, to poison wells and assassinate shamans and careless chieftains who strayed from the main troop. Then they vanished like ethereal beings.

  That had certainly slowed their advance. The steppe hordes, though powerful and fast in open field, had a weakness: their men were superstitious to the core, from their general to the humblest pawn.

  Just like me, Ludan thought, shivering more from the memory of the nightmare than from the cold of the Ilarian road. Though elves were a pragmatic race, their intelligence was sometimes clouded by a halo of shamanism rooted in their minds, inherited from their most primitive ancestors.

  As the heat began to rise as they advanced southward, the elf remembered once more that fateful afternoon when the dark magic ritual had ended. He had felt weak as a newborn when he left the tavern, but the old man had assured him it had worked.

  “From now on, we’ve set in motion forces beyond our comprehension. She won’t take long to start looking for you like a madwoman. If I were you, I’d hide,” the old man had said mockingly as Ludan left his den full of potions and scrolls.

  Ludan’s first thought was that he had been scammed. Such trickery couldn’t work, but within a week, the elf’s letters began to arrive.

  Forgive me, my love. I didn’t know what I had until I lost it.

  When he received the first one, while in western Orendil, his homeland across the sea, his soul returned to his body. Without a doubt, it was her handwriting.

  The letters kept coming, and it was clear they would meet again once she returned from the far north, where she had gone to see the northern lights she had always wanted to witness since childhood.

  Despite the distance, she kept writing insistently. But when she was only a few days away by ship, an enormous sense of guilt began to grow inside the elf.

  Was it really her who wanted him? Or was it what controlled her? Was it worth being with a woman ruled by a spell or a demon?

  He still loved her, but whatever it was, he would never have the same Xyrna again, even if her body belonged to him.

  He never reached the port of Gaelar, where they had agreed to meet and where she had surely arrived on the set day and hour. Regretful of his actions, Ludan rode back inland to find the old man in his hut, where fortunately he still remained.

  “Is it possible to reverse the effect, my lord? I don’t want a sex slave. I want an elf who wants to be with me for who I am.”

  The old man sighed.

  “Yes, it’s possible, but what we’ve summoned will return. The spells are ancient and powerful. You won’t get rid of it so easily.”

  “I don’t care. Make her stop seeking me, my lord, by the old and new gods, I beg you.”

  The rites to reverse the spell had been more intense—fervent prayers to the goddess and sacrifices of many innocent creatures.

  After that, Ludan had spent a long time bedridden, on the brink of death, but eventually recovered. Soon, Xyrna’s letters stopped arriving.

  “It worked!” he exclaimed joyfully the afternoon he returned to the mage. “She’s stopped looking for me!”

  “Don’t celebrate yet, my son. The nightmare is about to begin.”

  Indeed, Ludan’s nights were never the same again. Peace had abandoned him. Luckily, the old sorcerer had turned out to be a good man despite working with dark magic and had given him prayers to keep at bay the forces of darkness that now tormented him.

  But, as on the previous night, if for any reason Ludan forgot to invoke the gods for the protection of his soul, things got ugly.

  Yet those same invisible forces, in which the steppe riders so strongly believed and feared, were what allowed the two partners to keep them terrified day and night.

  Though they didn’t understand their language, it was clear from their body language that terror had infiltrated their camp like an epidemic.

  The sudden deaths had them terrified, as did the false and true signs the two companions placed along the paths, misleading the riders to make them take the wrong routes.

  Once isolated, they ambushed them and used their superior combat skills to annihilate them in the deepest darkness. Just two warriors were managing to slow the advance of fifty thousand men toward the borders of Anen.

  Even so, their sabotage wasn’t enough. The bulk of the troop, led by its commander, was getting closer each day to the country the two mercenaries had sworn to protect.

  It was only a matter of time before they crossed its borders, and with most forces in Ixtul busy with the invasion… only the gods knew what would happen next. Things weren’t looking good, especially with a demon still haunting Ludan during the nights.

  The two companions continued their relentless march south. Whatever happened, they had to keep their swords—and above all, their wits—sharp for the events of the coming days. If only we could kill their leader... It was a difficult task, but not an impossible one.

  Each day they drew closer to him, and with his death, that horde of riders would become a disordered force far easier to handle. They only had to trust in the ethereal trail that lingered in the air after the enemies’ passage, and in their cunning—honed through centuries of war.