"Amun?"
"Yes?" Turning, I saw Scarlett peering her bulbous eyes down the stairs.
"Um. Good morning." She meekly sidled in with a bow.
"Good morning." I squinted at her. Particularly at her paled, blanched skin. "Are you alright?"
"Hmm?" She turned back to me with raised brows and bulging eyes. "Yes! The forest is whispering for you!"
"Huh!?!" I recoiled.
"Yes!" She stepped closer. "This has never happened before! It's so exciting! Come!"
With a strength that beguiled her size, Scarlett pulled me upstairs and outside to shoo away anyone who came close before she leaned in to whisper.
"I don't know who it is, but it's not the headmaster. And I'm not allowed to ask questions"
"At all?" I squinted.
"Now or never!" She shook her head with a beaming smile. "And your secrets safe with me. Now, over there!" She threw her arm towards the south. "Twenty-seven kilometers! It will find you."
"Are you charmed or something?" I leaned in close to study her. "How can you hear the forest? You're unevolved."
"Dunno." She shrugged. "But I can tell you it's natural."
"Uh-huh." I rolled my eyes. "What's it saying."
"Summon the dark one!" She wooed as if she were telling a ghost story.
"Ugh." With a sigh, I looked around for Doyle and, thankfully, he was nowhere to be found. "I guess this is an excellent trust-building exercise?" I smirked at her. "I'll be back."
Under the influence of an Artificial Well, a single leap pulled me up into the sky and sent me rocketing into the distance. Just a few seconds later, I came to a gentle landing in a clearing some 27 odd kilometers away and looked around to see nothing but flora.
Sighing to myself, I pulled out a blunt and took the first step in an ambiguous direction before a shimmer of light came from behind a tree.
What followed was a creature that left me both awed and excited.
It had a strong body coated in pure white fur. Its hooves were cloven, shrouded in a plume of illustrious white hair that matched the length extending from its chin. Its eyes were like that of a goat's- horizontal slits like embrasures against carved into an autumnal wall of oranges, reds, and golds. A thick mane of white hair coated its neck and shoulders like a divine scarf, and so too was there a plume at the end of a leonine tail.
But the most remarkable feature of all, and the most notable, was the large spiraled horn protruding from its head.
It was a unicorn.
A Divine Celestial.
After several moments of silent study, I probing feeling started to pang against my mind. Preceding an overbearing echo that rang in my skull. 'The humans who occupy the lake. You are their leader?'
'I am.' I replied in my head without any noticeable sign from the outside, yet he still seemed to understand me.
'It has been ages since I've seen one of your kind.' The unicorn said as it circled me slowly. 'Simultaneously, never have my eyes fallen on a being such as yourself. A Devil who has swirling in harmony within him, the Vacant Shadow of Death and the Divine Brilliance of Life. Tell me, Elfling, what are you called?"
I stayed still, kept my eyes mostly forward as he circled me- studied me carefully.
"My name is Amun. And I'm only half an Elfling."
After positioning himself just before me, he shook his horn in disagreement. Causing it to wave precariously close to my brow while his voice rattled my brain into pudding. "All the same, an Elfling. Like a torrent, the Feywild runs through you, I can see. And so too does the Plane of Shadow. The Underworld. And… Emptiness."
"And what is this Feywild?" I asked with genuine curiosity.
"We have no intentions to civilize anything." I shook my head. "We only aim to seek shelter in the cave behind the waterfall two out of ten days per week. You have my word that my peers will refrain from attacking or threatening the denizens of the forest. And one of them should impose on the residents of the forest, I will personally intervene."
"The forest and lake have long-since been imposed on. You fish. You hunt. You fell trees and pluck forage as your heart desires."
"Quantities aside, how is that any different than what naturally goes on in the forest?" I quickly countered. "Predators hunt for their prey. Other animals consume vegetation. They all alter their environment to make their dens and nests. What we've done is no different. We've felled a few trees to construct our cove and won't be taking much of anything else. Only food, as all animals need to eat, yes?"
"There is logic to your words, on the surface." The unicorn admitted. "Beneath them lies misunderstanding. The denizens of the forest have no concern with those you call your 'peers.' They are concerned about the Dark One. You. As a guardian of this forest, I cannot allow you to remain."
"Then that poses a problem." I sighed, removing all traces of friendliness from my face and voice. "Cause I'm not fucking leaving."
"Then I will remove you myself."
In a flash of white, the unicorn raised back on hits hind legs to nearly smack me in the chin with its hooves before I could jump back and withdraw some mana.
Neighing loudly, the unicorn responded by slamming down to send jagged cracks arcing out in every direction. As they spread, the ground crumbled and broke apart to reveal a mass of vines whipping forth to grasp onto me while the unicorn lowered its horn to charge.
With my avenues escape closed off and my unwillingness to void everything, I could only stand in place to flood as much Shadow Mana as possible into my body before the horn dipped into my ethereal sternum.
Despite my efforts, a blinding flash of light bloomed in front of me just before a searing pain ripped through my chest.
Before I knew it, the ground turned beneath my legs and I was falling. Or rather, being pushed.
Spitting blood, I thrust my arms out before me. Sending a wave of purple mana past the unicorn and into the ground behind it. Its stomps grew louder and eventually, the unicorn began to heave and trudge in the dirt.
'You affect the environment to negate my magical resistance.' It huffed at the mounds behind its hooves.
"You're not supposed to talk during a fight." Spitting again, I reached out a gravity-infused palm and gripped the horn. Then gripped it with my death-filled free hand and pulled.
With gravity acting on my side, the horn spiraled out of my chest like an auger set in reverse with minimal effort. But the pain was immense. Choking blood and ripped organs, I released the domain I spread behind him in favor of spawning an Artificial Well. And with a blood-filled scream, I hurled the beast over my shoulder.
In a blur of white and tan, the unicorn rocketed into the distance. Leaving in its wake a cloud of tree dust and leaves standing high above the canopy.
Wasting no time, I released one of the ethereal hearts formed in my Spiritual Body.
Like a bomb, it burst into a dense cloud of necrotic mana that swelled around my chest to reform bone and restitch flesh in the most painful way imaginable.
Before I was fully healed, another flash of light came from my right.
Jumping back, I wheeled around in time to see the last of its scars heal just before the light shifted. Then intensified into a blue fluid that shrouded its body like a second skin.
Squinting, I threw out a bolt of lightning and, sure enough, the arc of electricity bounced off to slam into a nearby tree with a resounding crash.
With my suspicions confirmed, I Bamfed the Reaper into my hands.
But not before the unicorn Bamfed away in a flash of white.
Before I could even turn, a pair of wrecking balls slammed into my shoulder blades. Lifted from the ground, I somersaulted forward and almost habitually spawned an Artificial Well.
Gripping the Reaper overhead, I front flipped in midair just as the unicorn finished rearing back on its hind legs and sent a sliver of Death Mana through my hands.
The mechanism hidden within the Reaper responded with a sharp click. A moment later, a second snap pierced the air as the joint slammed into place. Adding just a bit more force behind the blade as I swung the weapon down.
As I front flipped beneath it and came to a gentle landing, the unicorn thrashed and howled as it fell into my ascending blade.
I spun in time to see another flash of light spread through the forest just before another pair of hooves swung toward my face.
Like limbo, I fell back to hover inches above the ground. Right below the freshly healed belly of the beast as its hind legs came down to stomp me flat.
But the weave was on my side.
Through the ambient mana alone I calculated where its hooves would land and nestled myself between them instead of rolling over. And with palms fueled with Death, I reached out to either heel just before they could summon more of those annoying vines.
With the slightest touch of my finger, Life began surging into me at a rate I never thought possible. A little strength as well, but not before the unicorn began thrashing.
Refusing to let it get away, I mixed Gravitational Mana into my hands and the unicorn responded with an immediate dip. Its legs drug across the dirt on their way back to my hands. Causing its screams and howls to rise to an ear-piercing crescendo.
It thrashed harder, eventually causing me to lose my grip and flick a Gravity Bullet at it in protest.
Still, it scrambled harder. It kicked and thrashed and howled as it bucked itself to its knees, where it managed to land a kick square my jaw.
Releasing my focus on my spells, I Bamfed a few meters away and cursed under my breath while I healed.
It's what I got for experimenting with my opponents, I supposed. Something I would've never done in my past life. Telin's words may have influenced my personality for the worse. I wasn't as unfuckwithable as I thought I'd be.
After tossing both my weapon and my amiability aside, I assumed an open-palm stance and charged. The unicorn responded accordingly, its head lowered in preparation to impale me through for the second time.
Just before we made contact, I arrested my momentum with a powerful stomp and pulled myself back with an Artificial Well. With the unicorn's horn now inches before my chest, I molded a bit of Void Mana into the shape of a knight around my finger and flicked my arm upward.
With wide eyes, we both watched the horn cartwheel in the air between us. I reached out for it. He dug his hooves into the ground. Then, I accelerated myself forward with a gravitational pull that exceeded that of the Sun's.
Like a bullet from a high-powered rifle, the horn bored through the unicorn's head to force bone, blood, and brain matter through the path of least resistance. As the sonic cracks rippled up my arm to amplify the sound, viscera plumed from the eyes, nostrils, and ears from the unicorn like a fleshy volcano before the entire head and much of the neck spread to the four winds.
All that remained was the bloody and once-graceful body of the unicorn slumping to the ground like a sack of meat.
"Finally," I growled in satisfaction. I felt no remorse or loss for the dead unicorn before me. It was his choice to fight me. On the contrary, I only felt a burning excitement that I haven't experienced since I first began to use magic.
At long last, I could test the theory I'd thought about the most since being born in this world.
But first.
I pulled out my knife to make an incision in the artery and made a quick Artificial Well to pool what wound up being over 60 liters of blood into sealed bottles. And then came the butchering process.
With the help of my Doppelganger, I managed to store the meat, a few bones, the organs, hide, and of course, the horn in my Pocket in just under half an hour.
If everything I learned was true, the paltry pile of bones before me was all I needed to raise the unicorn as a Shadow Undead. The conditions of a corpse was only something to consider when I wasn't the one to slay it. But the creatures I killed myself would always belong to me.
With that in mind, I pulled mana through my Void Core. First through the shadow layer, then through death before I withdrew it from the sides of the organ to guide it towards my throat to be concentrated into a dense mass while I focused.
I imagined its soul ascending from the Under to plunge through the window that was its shadow. The shadow, not the flesh. That's what it would use to assume a material form on the Mortal Plane.
In reality, it wasn't necessary. But this was a one-time deal. So I took a moment to reaffirm the result before I layered the mana into my voice and muttered.
"Report."