He broke cover at a dead run, howling at the sky.

A mile from Blackthorne and the elves saw the demons’ circling pattern change and come at them. Initially thirty, cascading from the heights and flying low to the ground. Rebraal barked out a warning.

‘Time to put all those theories to the test,’ said Hirad. ‘You up for this, Erienne?’

‘I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?’ she replied, tension edging her voice.

‘We’ll protect you,’ said Hirad. ‘Just relax, you know you can do it.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ she replied through a half-smile.

‘Remember we have to keep moving forwards,’ said The Unknown. ‘We can’t afford to get bogged down here, not when we’re so close.’

The elves moved back into the pre-arranged fighting line. Auum and Duele flanked The Raven’s left, Evunn and Rebraal right. They had dispensed with their classic uneven chevron formation this time. The line that approached the enemy was a shallow concave curve with The Unknown at its focal point. Behind the curve, the four mages ranged, elves flanking their Raven colleagues.

Erienne could barely control her heart rate. They were relying on her like never before. Without her, only mages could kill. It wouldn’t be enough. The demons were coming in low and fast. She could hear the beat of wings and their harsh calls.

Fighting to concentrate on the move, she unstoppered the power of the One and felt it surge through her body and into her mind. The sensation was terrifying. In two years of Cleress’s tutelage she had learned to control the well of power that surged around her body, but barely. And even now, the level of control her mind could exert when she released the energy to cast was minimal in the scale of One magic understanding.

Her sense of that which she contained was highly tuned. She understood very well the consequences of her failure to fully control it. What had been done could not be undone. The One was within her. She had no choice but to accept it.

She still considered the entity an enemy to be suppressed lest it should overwhelm her. Cleress had done little to disabuse her of that notion. Merely saying she would learn over time to work with what she had, not fight it for control.

But time had run out. And now the dam that Erienne had built in her mind to contain the power in her body was breached. She couldn’t afford to fail.

The One flooded her senses, dimming her sight and hearing. The Unknown said something about being encircled but she didn’t catch it before the full majesty of Balaia’s energies was laid out before her. She staggered and almost fell, her feet and legs numb, but she was held up.

She saw the raw strong energy of the bedrock pulsing through the ground; the fluxing, capricious trails of the air thickened by wind and sun; the wisps from coarse grass; the complex auras of The Raven and elves around her; and everywhere, the scattered motes that were mana. Searching the sky, she found the demons. They resolved from a cloud of muddled elements into individual powerful forms. Lattices of life with none of the gentle modulation of man or elf, and meshed firm by hard mana.

It was just as Cleress had described and the theory of the spell, like any One casting, was simplicity itself. In the myriad streams of energy she could sense about her, natural linkages were everywhere, binding the elements together. She could see the arrays that gathered mana to the demons in the natural shield that made them invulnerable to anything but magic. All she had to do was disrupt the process and scatter the mana back to its natural random state.

Erienne paused for a beat, feeling the swell of the One through her body. She drew it to her, holding it tight inside while she built the construct. In her mind’s eye, it formed. As with her Dordovan magic, she drew mana strands into the order she required, a fine-meshed net of pulsing deep brown magical energy. That was the easy part. Now she had to feed in exactly the right amount of One power to let the spell live. Cleress’s words came back to her then and she fancied she could feel the presence of the ancient Al-Drechar in her mind once more though distance surely precluded that now as the frail elf’s powers weakened.

You cannot calculate this. It is not a mana casting, just a mana construct. Mana alone will not power it, the One makes it live. You must believe, you must trust and you must feel. Be one with it, let it take you as far as you can. Always up to the point of no return but never further. Your mind will tell you. Trust your mind. Always trust your mind.

With the words running round her head, Erienne allowed the One power into the construct and held it there while it grew, clinging on with her mind. And all the time, the entity was whispering in her ear that she should feed in more, that to let go would be to win. This was her demon and she could not allow it free rein.

She could see the lines of elemental force all around her bend and reach towards her. The One sucked it in voraciously, using her body as a conduit while she kept iron control of her mind to stop from being washed away. The construct pulsed bright under the power flowing through her. A moan escaped her lips. The mesh glowed and then burst into a fine mist, every minuscule droplet still bound to every other.

She released the spell and it flooded out from her, covering everything around her, floating into the sky and across the ground, behind and in front. It washed past The Raven and it engulfed the demons moving to attack. She saw its result and knew they would not even know what had happened until the first blow was struck.

The mist soaked into them, penetrating deep into their skins where it simply dissolved the linkage that bound the mana to them. Immediately, Erienne could see the mana sloughing from the demons. Tiny particles glimmering in the mass of energy trails. Undetectable to everyone except her but, if she was right, absolutely deadly.

Dimly, she heard the thump of a sword point on the ground, rhythmic and sure.

Thraun was desperate to run faster. Demons were after him. Swooping low, raking at his back with claws and talons. Biting down on his body, slashing at him with sharpened tails. He wove this way and that, ran through thick vegetation, slewed through streams and leaped hedge and fence to enter the farm lands of Blackthorne.

His howling had brought them on as he had desired but their stench had gripped him and he was afraid. His heart was pounding and there was a shudder along his flanks that threatened the rhythm of his legs.

He dared not look around or up, instead he ploughed on. Men and women, their expressions cold, stared at him. Children with dark eyes pointed or ran. A few animals scattered but they need not have feared him. He was not hunting. He was hunted.

A demon’s jaws snapped shut just above his head. He felt a deep chill and sudden pain flared in his ear. The beast climbed high into the sky. In front of him, another dived, arms outstretched, taloned hands grasping. He did not flinch but veered at the last instant as he would from a man holding a weapon. Behind him, the demon screeched its anger.

He was past the last people now and the dwellings he ran by were silent and empty. The streets were deserted and the smell of life was gone from the ground and weak in the air. But ahead he could hear shouting, rising in volume. The sound of weapons clashing and the vibration of feet on packed earth came to him too. He pushed harder and the demons behind him did the same.

Thraun felt a tap at his hind leg and almost lost his balance. He half sprawled but maintained his momentum while the reek of demon filled his head and dragged desperate barks from his throat. From either side of the road he ran, demons closed in. So many of them, crowding his way. He howled again and ran at them, eyes open, terror pulsing in his neck.