“There are way too many of them,” he said, landing silently beside me but not dismissing his energy wings.

  “Like, freakishly many for one area. It’s like they’re pouring out of somewhere in a continuous stream.”

  “From some kind of portal?” I suggested.

  “I don’t sense any portals nearby!” Elza spoke up; she was fighting next to us and had heard our conversation.

  “What if it’s a shadow portal? Leading from the flip side?” Calypso suggested.

  “And we just can’t sense it because we don’t have a shadow nature?”

  “Soon inquisitors who can deal with this will arrive,” I said uncertainly.

  “There are a couple of people among the inquisitors who can sense shadow portals like that and close them, Moris and Flo. They’re helping in another part of Forland right now, they’ll head to us as soon as they’re free.”

  “By the time they get here, so many creatures will have come through that we’ll be drowning in them,” Calypso grumbled.

  “What do you suggest? Merge our auras again for a targeted search? Think it’ll work here? There’s so much interference…”

  “Won’t know until we try.”

  To amplify our auras, Calypso took my hand, and we both focused on our sensations, looking around carefully. Physical contact significantly enhanced our sensitivity to magical fluctuations. And now we almost immediately found what we were looking for: seven murky, dark vortexes right on the ground, located at various distances ahead. Because of the flood of creatures, these vortexes were barely visible — shadow sight was essential here.

  “The creatures are coming from seven shadow portals,” Calypso immediately contacted Zael through his communicator bracelet.

  “Where? How do we close them?” Zael asked briefly.

  “Moris and Flo won’t be free for another five minutes, they’re closing shadow portals in Gelion City right now.”

  “Lora and I are near one of them, we’ll try to shut it down.”

  “But how?” I asked when Calypso ended the call.

  “You’re not a shadow mage, you can’t work with portals like these…”

  “And despite that, I’ve managed to ‘tame’ shadow magic quite well,” Calypso smirked.

  “Plus other mages can close these portals too, it’s just difficult, and ordinary mages can’t easily detect them on their own. But I happen to have a couple of spells I developed recently that I haven’t had a chance to test in the field…”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “No more dangerous than hacking away at these creatures,” Calypso shook his head.

  “And no more dangerous than all the spells in our training sessions.”

  With Elza covering us, we quickly made our way to one of these portals and got to work immediately. My job was to constantly maintain the energy connection with Calypso and keep powering him up — I always had such an excess of it that sharing came easily.

  And the further we went, the stronger I felt the magical connection between us. It no longer felt like a thin golden thread, but more like a stable beam of light.

  I supported Calypso’s aura, put up a dense protective fire sphere around him while standing a bit to the side. He got as close as possible to the shadow portal, making complex hand gestures as he went, and directed a narrow golden beam of light ahead of him. His eyes flared with bright white light, which spooked me for a moment.

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  But only for a moment — then his eyes returned to normal, and the shadow portal burst into bright purple flames, visibly shrinking to the size of a dot before disappearing entirely. The slimy creatures had nowhere left to emerge from, and Elza quickly cleaned up the remaining ‘anteaters’ around us.

  “It worked!” I exclaimed joyfully.

  I even jumped in place and clapped my hands, pleased with the quick result. And proud — not of myself, but of Calypso. Although I did well too, managing to maintain Calypso’s aura at the proper high level. Without my help he wouldn’t have had enough power, but together he combined our magic and multiplied it, creating something new.

  “Excellent,” I heard Zael’s voice from the communicator artifact on Calypso’s wrist.

  “Close the other portals, Elza and I will cover you.”

  Whew… I’d never worked like this before: when you’re trying to do the impossible alongside your warden, and the First Arma battle pair is protecting you from dark creatures. Indescribable feelings, let me tell you.

  Calypso and I closed the portals one after another, Zael covered us from the air and dealt with the flying demons, Elza took out the ‘anteaters’ on the ground, not letting any of them get within a meter of us — which was quite difficult given how dangerously close we were to the shadow portals.

  The air hummed with flashes of spells and bursts of magic while Calypso and I continued our monotonous work. The hardest part wasn’t even closing the portals, but getting close enough to them, because the creatures kept getting in the way, ferociously targeting specifically me and Calypso.

  As if they sensed that we were the ones interfering. Or rather — clearly ‘someone’ had ordered the creatures to take us out specifically. Who? And where was this ‘someone’ located? Somewhere nearby or observing us from a distance through some kind of artifacts?

  Either way, the sharply increased creature activity was seriously complicating things for Calypso and me. I could see, could feel, how it was getting harder for him to concentrate on each vortex… And that destroying each shadow portal was taking longer and longer. But he stubbornly pressed his lips together and kept casting. His hands were glowing with golden light, and at one point I thought they were becoming translucent…

  “Close the fourth portal, Moris and Flo will handle the rest, they’re joining us now!” Zael shouted down to us.

  This fourth portal took Calypso not just a few seconds, but a full minute.

  His eyes burned with pure white light the entire time, and now it wasn’t just his hands that had become translucent, but his whole body. I was seriously scared when I saw this and realized that at this rate he wasn’t far from losing his physical form entirely.

  So I decided to direct all my power at Calypso. I took a risk and pulled off my gloves, dropped all my defensive shields so I wouldn’t waste any magic on myself, and directed everything, down to the last drop, at Calypso. Risking becoming a target for the ‘anteaters,’ I rushed to him and hugged him from behind, hearing only my heart pounding with fear.

  Please let me make it in time…

  I immediately felt that it had worked. Calypso almost instantly stopped being translucent and quickly closed the fourth shadow portal. Though this time his eyes didn’t immediately return to their normal color, and he shook his head as if clearing away a fog.

  “Are you okay?” I asked in a whisper for some reason, turning Calypso to face me and searching his light eyes, which were slowly returning to their usual color.

  “Just in time… Thanks,” he whispered back, massaging his temples and grimacing as if in pain.

  “This magic is complex. Or rather, controlling its effect on the magical Spark under this much pressure is complex. I’m not used to this kind of flow, I need to train more…”

  “I’ll give you ‘train more,’ I growled threateningly.I’ll give you so much ‘train more’ you won’t know what hit you!…”

  Only now did I realize I’d been trembling slightly with anxiety the whole time. I hadn’t even noticed until now how tense and stressed I’d been.

  “Moris and Flora are here, they’ll handle the last portals,” I said, noticing flashes of spells from the direction of another shadow point.

  “You and I are leaving. Teleportation is glitchy near the shadow portals, let’s head back.”

  “We should help clean up the area, there are still a lot of creatures left…”

  “We’re leaving!” I repeated firmly.

  “You’ve already been through enough, you’ve already done way more than was expected of you.”

  “But…”

  “We’re leaving, I said!!”

  Calypso looked at me with a strange expression and a slight half-smile.

  “Interesting… I’m sensing energy from you now like from a Guardian, whose orders a Fighter can never resist. Our battle bond isn’t manifested, but right now you’re so determined to get me to safety that I felt that energy of yours. You’ve found your ‘voice,’ so to speak. Your energy voice. Decided to boss me around?…”

  “Yes!” I said harshly without a trace of a smile, pulling Calypso forcefully back with me, away from the active combat zone.

  “Because you don’t know how to stop in time on your own, like you have absolutely zero survival instinct.”

  I wanted to say a lot more, but the next moment I choked on unexpected hellish pain in my chest, as if a thousand sharp needles had pierced my heart all at once… or rather — claws.