Sabra the Incarnate stood on the grassy knoll, the wind tugging at her cloak and trying to pull her westward. Her long dark-brown hair flowed over her shoulder, and her dark-green eyes were closed. She worked her jaw slightly, ready at any moment to cast a spell should the need arise.
Her aura of manna fingered through the forest around her for a good two-hundred feet, and the strain of it made sweat bead on her skin and her breaths come a bit short. The elf listened to the way the wind rustled the dark pines of the highlands, trying to detect any other sound intermingling with it. With a sigh she opened her eyes and pulled her presence back around her immediate self, and she tugged on the inside of her cloak.
She tried to think what could have happened to them. She had been traveling with three priests of the Gospel of Zarem and four Elemsran soldiers to a small town on western Tyrell's coast called Griffincall. It was supposed to be an easy task to guard the priests to a new place for them to preach. Last night they had set up camp at the bottom of that hill, and when she woke up, everything besides her –– horses, supplies, and people all –– had simply vanished. Even the camp fire had been removed, without a trace of ash or ember.
It sent a shiver of fear through Sabra's chest. It was a fear of not understanding what could have happened while she slept, and why she had been spared from whatever had taken her comrades.
Sabra made her way down the hill and to the trail that led to Griffincall. Her best bet was to head to their original location and hope to meet up with her companions. With only her clothes, armor, and dagger on her, and at least a three day walk ahead of her, she would need to hunt and gather for her food.
She wasn't too worried about finding food. She had familiarized herself enough with Tyrell's wilds that she could identify a number of edible plants, and she could summon a bow of manna to aid her with animals. The hardest part was finding the beasts. However, Sabra ignored her grumbling belly for now, only stopping at a trail-side stream to drink. She hoped to run across her companions before she had to resort to leaving the trail to eat.
She took in the scenery as she walked, enjoying the warm summer sun that filtered through the pines. It was quiet save for the garbling of the stream. Periodically Sabra reached out with her manna, and after three hours of this, she sensed something through the trees. It was almost like touching a lightning-bolt, so strong it came to her senses, and she automatically retracted her manna. She stopped walking at once and concentrated on the direction she had felt the presence.
It was...rolling through the trees. She frowned as she tentatively let her aura drift out again. The feel of it still made her senses jolt, but she forced herself to remain calm. It was drawing closer, and she wrapped her right hand about her dagger pommel and warned the magic in her blood to be ready. Her mouth opened slightly, prepared to cast words of power.
Sabra peered through the trees, anticipating its arrival. What she saw defied reality and sanity. A sparking vortex of darkness passed through trees and bushes, warping and inverting their colors, and when it passed on, the objects had simply disappeared. It floated inches above the earth, floating up and down with small rills, but it silently devoured anything else it touched.
Sabra blinked at it, then frowned.
"Okavin!" she called. A ball of blue-white light appeared before her, then rocketed at the vortex. It disappeared into its abyss. Sabra held out her hands. "Vay'vin, sa deymez!"
A semi-transparent wall of manna appeared before her, and then slid at the vortex. It tried to bend over and surround the entity. Sabra fought to mentally hold the spell as the darkness started to make it implode, and then she let it go. It exploded into bits of light, leaving behind a slight cinnamon smell, before those too vanished into the darkness.
Sabra knew she should probably turn and run, but if this thing had taken her companions, she had to stop it from taking anyone else.
"Vay'erii, sa ki!" Sabra invoked. The marking on the back of her right hand glowed bright white, and blue-white flames erupted from her body and surrounded her in a roaring pillar. To her the holy flames of the Moonstone were cool and soothing, but beyond her, it would incinerate anything that stood in her way. Sabra held onto the spell and turned the flames upon the entity.
The flames lunged hungrily at the vortex, which was only a dozen feet away now. They created a cocoon around the darkness, and then the vortex began to swallow the flames with ease.
Sabra's mind let go of the spell, but the flames kept coming from her and going into the entity. She realized that she was no longer controlling the divine Moonstone; sometimes her goddess, Luna, chose whether or not to let the flames come from the Moonstone, and She kept them coming from Sabra's body. Sabra gazed in wide-eyed horror as the vortex rolled towards her. Luna had a reason for letting the manna continue into this gluttonous nightmare, and it was the only thing keeping the Incarnate from running.
Sabra gave a prayer to her gods before the blackness swallowed her whole.