The black mist enobled and writhed, a being in motion with its own will, spreading through the camp. Fires burned and died in the illness of the suffocating doss of darkness, consuming them. Men screamed, swords flashed, but strikes went through the fog as if they were air.
"Hold your ground! The Bael made a thunderous sound, and his shield vibrated everytime he tried to turn the troops towards him.
Elara stood, a frost magic vibration filling her hands. She could sense the cold unnaturalness of the mist, as if touching her thoughts with claws. This is not ordinary smoke.
"Varik!" she called.
Varik has already gone, his twin blades slashing through the fog—a cut for a free space, not to actually hit anything physical. His werewolves patrolled the edge of the black, hackles up, jaws snapped.
"Whatever this is," Varik growled, "it's not an attack. It's something else."
They emerges from the center of the mist, low, rumbling sibilants that damned to scratch the mind of Elara. Words she couldn't understand, layered and full of malice.
Her hand tightened on the froststeel dagger. "Bael, keep the men together! No one breaks rank!"
"What about you? Bael demanded, planting his shield into the mud as he glared at her.
"I'm ending this."
Before he could say a word, Elara stepped out, with a froststeel blade in hand, and muttered to herself. Ice produced a sound as it came to the tip of the blade. The voices in the fog became louder, the impression as of a thousand voices speaking in a single choir, all together in a chorus.
The Black Figure
There emerged at the edge of the mist, in the gloom, a figure. Taller than a man, draped in the rags of black tunics that moved like that of a liquid night. Its face was obscured beneath a hood, but its presence was overwhelming—like the weight of a nightmare pressing down on Elara's chest.
"Princess…" The voice boomed, resonant and hollow. It wasn't spoken aloud—it reverberated through her mind.
Elara's steps faltered, but she didn't lower her weapon. "Who are you?"
The figure swiveled its head, and for the first time Elara caught a glimpse of two ghostly green pinpricks in the shadows beneath the hood—eyes, burning with cold hatred.
"You stand where you should not tread."
The words hit her like a battering ram, most of them hitting her one after another.
It doesn't matter who you are, Elara snarled, unyielding. "I will burn your corruption out of this world."
Click" (i.e., the scraping sound of rusty stock on stock). It frosted, got larger, each time upon passing the camp. Soldiers coughed and staggered back, unable to breathe.
"You cannot stop what has already begun."
The figure raised an arm. The mist's tendril shot towards Elara faster than she could react. She sensed it struck her breastbone and sent her current from her body when she fell into the mud.
"Elara!" Bael's voice roared from behind her.
She coughed and tried to get up as the chill invaded her from within. Her magic spontaneously flared with ice cracking along her body as she resisted the infection trying to ensnare itself within her.
A Desperate Strike
The figure approached it, walking larger and larger paces, leaving a spooky looking scaffold of shadowy tendrils in its wake with each step. "This land will fall. All of you will kneel before the Black Lotus."
Elara extracted herself from the rubble and the blade of froststeel flickered with a ethereal blue light. Her magic screamed in her veins, cold and fierce. I won't let this happen.
"Varik!" she shouted.
Varik appeared beside her, his expression grim. "I'll clear the mist. You kill it."
Before she could respond, Varik moved. His hands danced in a throwing motion of vials. On the contact they would divide, weeping streams of silvery flame that would shatter the darkness. Fog hissed and retreated to the point of fire's approach.
The figure swivelled its head unexpectedly in the direction of Varik and its eyewitness lights narrowed.
"Foolish mortal—"
"NOW, ELARA!" Varik yelled.
Elara didn't hesitate. She pushed off the ground, ice exploding at her feet as she surged forward like a winter storm. The froststeel dagger shone with its magic, frost reaching out in tendrils towards the torso of the moving shape.
The shadow lunged to block her, but she was quicker, driven by rage and desperation. Her blade went to the body's center, and the ice expanded to seal both the body whole and the phantoms in the center.
The noise did a "scrabble" and "merrily" let us hear a noise, unlike the crash of glass, which could be made. As if cloaked in mist, a shroud, it moved and shook, contracting, collapsing inwards, with energies separating and severing.
Elara gritted her teeth, forcing her magic deeper. "You're done."
The figure's hooded shape agitated with untamed power, its emerald eyes flickered one last time, and then before a cavernous blackness expanded all around.
Aftermath
Once the blasts could be heard the camp was quiet. The mist had vanished entirely, leaving the air sharp and cold. Fire had been extinguished, the ground covered in soot and ice.
Bael ran toward Elara, his expression stricken. "Elara!"
She stood in the epicenter of ruin, her froststeel dagger still faintly glowing. Her breathing was ragged, her hands trembling from the effort of containing the magic.
"I'm fine, she said, though the words were more defiant than true.
Varik approached, wiping black ash from his face. Not a walk in the park scout," he muttered under his breath). "Whatever that thing was, it was sent—to test us."
Elara nodded, but continued to gaze in the direction from which the dark figure had disappeared. "The Jade Lotus is getting bolder. And stronger."
Bael shook his head, anger smoldering in his eyes. "They sent that creature here to kill you, Elara. You're their target now."
She turned to him, her voice cold as ice. "Good. Let them come."
The camp remained quiet as the survivors regrouped, but a shadow hung over them all. They had revealed their hand and the evil they held in control was building faster than any of them had ever imagined.
Elara sheathed her scimitar and looked towards the sky.
"This war has only just begun."