The duo continued traveling for most of the day, only stopping once when they’d gotten out of Direwolf territory. Lucas refused to go any further without patching Fay up. Despite her claims that she was fine, she'd still gotten a bit cut up during her fight with the rest of the Direwolf pack.

  It hadn't taken long for Lucas to douse some bandages with a minor level healing potion and wrap them around the blonde's cut up arm. She wasn't nearly as bad off as Lucas himself, but Lucas didn't want to continue with her still injured.

  With that small stop done, they pushed on. The only other stop they made was at a small stream to wash off some of the blood from their bodies and clothes. After that, the two kept going until the sun set. And by that point, they'd made a good deal of progress, more than Lucas had expected with his injuries. The greater healing potion helped a lot more than he'd expected.

  Once they'd gotten set up, Fay began to work on making some stew for them to eat. Dusk was practically dead to the world after Lucas gave her some jerky to eat. After that, she passed out. With all the hard work she’d put in, he really couldn’t blame her for being exhausted. He was tired too, but there was something he needed to do first before he could rest.

  While the memory was still fresh in his mind, Lucas dropped to the grass below and closed his eyes. Assuming the meditative pose that Fay had taught him, he began recalling the fight. The panic, the way his heart pounded in his chest, the desperate need for something to help him. And he remembered how his mana had surged and rushed through his body.

  There was a distinct difference between the way his mana felt when he'd been using his illusions and when he'd managed to call on his Darkness affinity. It wasn't like his mana had changed, but the way it had surged through his body was entirely unlike the small, steady trickle that he felt when he conjured an illusion.

  “What are you doing?”

  Fay's voice dragged him out of his focus and Lucas smiled as he looked up to see his girlfriend standing over him with an amused look on her face.

  “I managed to use Darkness magic before. I'm trying to figure out how to do it again,” He explained, an eager smile on his lips.

  Fay's jaw promptly dropped as she gawked at him. “Wait, what?! When did that happen?”

  “During the fight with the alpha. I thought you saw it?” Lucas pointed out.

  Fay scowled and reached out to poke Lucas’ forehead. “I was a bit more focused on you being hurt to notice.”

  He flinched at that and couldn't quite meet Fay's eyes. “Sorry.”

  Fay's expression softened and she joined Lucas on the ground, sitting beside him and wrapping her arms around him.

  “If you really want to apologize, try not to get that hurt again, ok?” She offered.

  “I'll try.”

  It was the best he could do. He didn't plan to get badly hurt again, but he also hadn't planned on getting jumped by an alpha Direwolf.

  “That's all I can ask for.”

  Lucas couldn't hide the smile when Fay leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek a moment later.

  “So,” The blonde visibly perked up as she nudged him. “What did you figure out with your magic? What does it do?”

  “Somehow I managed to make a sword out of solid shadows and darkness. I'm still trying to figure out how to do it again.”

  Fay looked dumbstruck. “You can do that?”

  Lucas laughed a bit and nodded. “I guess so. I'll show you if I can figure it out.”

  As he went to meditate again, Fay stopped him.

  “Before you do that, let me get those bandages off of you,” She suggested. Though she was already pulling up his sleeve as she said it.

  “Is it done already? They were pretty bad,” Lucas asked.

  “That was a greater potion, Lucas. Those things work really fast. You were probably fully healed halfway here,” She pointed out.

  And Fay was right. As she pulled away the gauze from his arm, Lucas was surprised to see perfectly healed flesh beneath. His arm didn't even look red and raw and there wasn't a hint of a scar.

  “I really need to thank the old woman,” He mumbled.

  “She's going to kill you for calling her that one day,” Fay warned. But Lucas could see the corner of her lips curl into a grin.

  “Eh. She likes me too much to do that,” Lucas joked.

  That was enough to get Fay to crack and start laughing.

  “Ignore me. Try and do it again,” She prodded, putting a bit of distance between herself and Lucas.

  Taking her advice, Lucas closed his eyes and tried to focus again. He thought back to the moment he'd managed to use his Darkness magic. The more he thought about it, the more his mind kept coming back to that feeling of need and how his mana had responded to it.

  He focused on that feeling, forcing himself to recall the image of those horrid, hateful green eyes. He remembered that desperate struggle and the frantic need for something, anything that would let him protect himself.

  Lucas felt his mana surge again, drawing a small gasp from his lips as a faint chill washed over him. He let it loose, keeping a close eye on how his mana flowed and rushed through his body. After a second, he could feel something solid press against his palm and gripped it. And when he felt the familiar grip of his sword, he smiled.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Fay wasn't the most patient person in the world. She much preferred to be moving or doing something instead of waiting. But for once, the blonde was content to stay quiet and wait as she watched Lucas try to call upon his second affinity.

  Illusions were much more well known, so she had expected a lot of what Lucas had been able to do with them. Darkness magic, on the other hand, was something she’d never even heard of anyone possessing. So, when she found out that Lucas had an affinity for it, she’d been extremely excited to see what it could do.

  Of course, just because Lucas had an affinity for the magic, it didn’t mean that it was entirely easy for him to use. With no experience with magic at all, Fay realized quickly that it might be a bit before she ever saw Lucas figure out how to call upon his second affinity.

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  Predictably, when he told her that he’d been able to use his Darkness affinity, Fay had been beyond happy for Lucas. That it had also saved his life was even better. So, if she had to wait a little while to see what Lucas had figured out, then she could manage for a little while.

  Minutes ticked by in the soft quiet of the night. The ambient noise of the forest and the crackling of the fire filling the silence. Fay watched as Lucas’ expression shifted, his face scrunching up in concentration as he tried to repeat his earlier feat. She had to hold back a giggle at how cute he looked.

  Then he relaxed and Fay gasped when she noticed the shadows around her boyfriend. The shadows, normally wavering and shifting in the flickering light of the campfire, had all become completely still. The area around Lucas himself seemed to grow even darker as the shadows around him were pulled towards the dark-haired teen.

  And before her eyes, Fay watched in stunned silence as the very shadows began to coalesce into the form of a blade, sat across Lucas’ lap. It only took a second, but Fay watched as the shadows condensed and molded themselves into a shape she’d seen Lucas train with day after day. And where had once been empty space, was a xiphos so dark that it seemed to actively draw in the light around them.

  When Lucas finally opened his eyes again, Fay grinned and cheered for him. “You did it! This is incredible!”

  She would have thrown her arms around him and pulled him into a hug if he didn’t have a very sharp blade between them.

  “I’m surprised I was even able to do it again,” Lucas admitted as he looked down at the blade with a smile. “I didn’t really know what I was doing the first time. It was all instinct.”

  “Well, it looks like you figured it out now,” Fay pointed out.

  Lucas nodded. “I think so, yeah. I’m gonna have to practice with it a lot, but I think I know how to do it now.”

  Fay couldn’t help herself any longer. “Can I?” She asked, gesturing towards the sword in his lap.

  “Go for it,” Lucas laughed. He held the blade out to Fay, one hand gripping the handle.

  Carefully, Fay reached out and poked at the blade, wondering if it was really as solid as Lucas made it look. To her shock, not only was it entirely solid, it was also ice cold. She gasped and pulled her hand back out of reflex.

  “It’s cold,” She mumbled.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a bit cool to the touch,” Lucas replied.

  The casual way he said it, and the way he so easily held the blade in his hand made Fay realize something. Lucas likely didn’t feel how cold the shadowy construct in his hands really was.

  “No, Lucas. I mean it’s freezing cold. Like ‘cold as ice’ cold,” She explained. When he looked skeptical, she reached out and gripped the blade. She felt the cold under her touch as she held it for a solid ten seconds. Then, she gripped Lucas’ wrist.

  “Shit!” He jumped and pulled away from her touch, much to Fay’s amusement. “You’re freezing!”

  “I know,” She shot back. That’s how cold that thing is to me.”

  “Huh…”

  Lucas looked down at the blade in his hand, turning it over and slowly running a finger along the length of the shadow-forged creation. He didn’t seem to feel that same frigid cold that she did, though.

  “I guess it isn’t as bad for me. Maybe since it’s my magic?”

  “That makes the most sense to me,” Fay replied with a giggle.

  As Lucas held his sword up so that it could catch the light of the campfire, Fay watched as little wisps of shadow seemed to trail behind the blade. It definitely made the weapon look a lot cooler.

  “So, you can make a solid sword out of shadows?” Fay asked, curious about her boyfriend’s magic.

  “I don’t think that’s all I can do,” He replied. “It felt like I could do more. But I was a bit too distracted fighting to really try before…”

  He trailed off as he pulled the sword back into his lap. Staring down at it, Fay was shocked to see the solidified darkness seem to ripple and begin to shift. It was almost like watching her father mold and shape metal with his magic as the xiphos in Lucas’ lap slowly shrank down into the same shape and size as one of her new daggers.

  When she looked back up at Lucas again, he was wearing a massive grin.

  “You can do what dad does? Make any weapon with it?” She asked.

  “I think,” Lucas slowly replied. “I think that I can do a lot more than just weapons.”

  The shadow dagger shrank even further as Lucas clenched his hand. When he opened it, a sphere of pure, pitch-black darkness rested in his palm. Then it shifted shape, first to a cube, then a pyramid, then a five-pointed star. The change in shape was slow at first, but as Lucas ran through more and more shapes, the speed increased.

  Lucas laughed suddenly and Fay looked up at him to see him smiling wider than ever. There was a look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite place. He looked like he’d finally figured something out, though.

  When he lifted his hand, the shadows were gone. Or at least, Fay thought so at first. But then she spotted what Lucas had done when she saw a strange, bulky ring on his finger made entirely out of darkness and shadows.

  “A ring?” Fay asked.

  Lucas, who seemed to have forgotten that she was there for a moment, went a bit red in the face and quickly let the shadows fade away. Idly, Fay noted how the shadows around Lucas began to return to normal when he’d let go of his control.

  “Sorry, just some silly idea I had. I kinda realized that what I can do with my Darkness magic is really similar to a Green Lantern.”

  Fay was more than a little confused by that. “What does a lantern have to do with your magic? And what kind of lantern is green, anyway?”

  Lucas looked just as confused as she was at first, but then he started laughing again. He only stopped when she pouted and glared at him.

  “Sorry, sorry,” He chuckled. “I just thought that was really funny. You really don’t know what a Green Lantern is, though? You’re able to get stuff from the Ordinary side of the world pretty easily. Do you guys not get any superhero comic books?”

  “Oh!” Realization dawned on her and Fay rolled her eyes a bit. “So that ‘Green Lantern’ you’re talking about is some superhero? Lucas, why would most people around here read superhero comics when we basically all have our own superpowers?”

  As a demonstration she flicked a finger at him and watched as his hair was blown back by a sudden gust of wind.

  “Huh. I guess I never really thought of it like that,” Lucas admitted.

  “I think I’ve seen some comics before, yeah, but they’re not really popular so you don’t see them often.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  While Lucas might have understood, Fay could also see that he seemed a bit upset as well.

  “Hey.”

  She slid over and sat beside Lucas, resting her head on his shoulder and grabbing her hand in his.

  “Just because I haven’t ever seen the comic before doesn’t mean I’m not curious to learn about it. Especially if you think that it relates to your magic.”

  Lucas leaned his head back against hers and Fay smiled when she felt his fingers intertwine with hers.

  “You sure? I’m a bit of a comic nerd. I can ramble about this stuff for hours,” He warned playfully.

  Fay didn’t mind. The way that Lucas had perked up when he’d mentioned the comic book character was something well worth spending a few hours talking about.

  “I’m sure. Now tell me about this superhero of yours,” Fay replied.

  Lucas’s shoulders shook slightly with muted laughter and Fay grinned.

  “Ok, so I’m not going to go super in depth about this because I’m sure you don’t want to hear all of it,” Lucas began. “Green Lantern is a character who gets his power from a super powerful ring that he wears. It turns his willpower into fuel to create constructs out of solid, green, light. Anything that he can think of, he can make, so long as he has the power for it. Weapons, armor, barriers, tools, anything.”

  The more Lucas explained, the more Fay’s eyes widened as she realized what her boyfriend was getting at. While the character he talked about was focused around using light, it sounded a lot like what Lucas had been able to do with his Darkness magic.

  “Oh…”

  “Yeah,” He agreed, his hand squeezing hers. “I think that I might be able to do a lot of the things that the character could. I think I can make just about anything with my affinity, as long as I can imagine and visualize it.”

  What Lucas was suggesting left Fay stunned. There was certainly going to be some limits to what he could do, but even then, what Lucas was thinking of would make his affinity so much more useful than any of them had ever expected. Stealth and hiding away had been what they’d all thought Darkness magic would be useful for, but Lucas had managed to find an entirely different way to use it.

  “Well, now you have to tell me more about that character of yours,” Fay mumbled as she snuggled up against Lucas’ side. “I’ve gotta hear what kinds of things you’re thinking of doing.”

  His shoulders shook again and Fay smiled as she heard her boyfriend’s quiet laughter.

  “Ok, but remember, you asked for this,” He joked.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~