Nicole was apprenticed to Justin and he was supposed to meet her for a quiet dinner to celebrate.

Justin was a fourth-level sorcerer; At the fourth level, sorcerers are permitted to take on an apprentice, but they can only train them to the third level according to academy rules. That usually wasn't a problem. Most sorcerers that take on apprentices are driven by greed or the desire to fund their own advancement. They hold stingily tight to their knowledge and only give it up grudgingly.

Justin wasn't fueled by greed and he was well enough off to pay for his advancement for at least the next year. He had started instructing Nicole because she had a natural curiosity for his craft. Nicole also had an almost unnatural ability to see and manipulate the sources. By the end of the first term, Nicole had already progressed further in her training than Justin had for his entire first year. Justin was quite excited by her rapid pace and seemingly tireless progression. He had told her so several times. He even joked that she would catch up to him and that he would soon have to find another teacher just to keep up with her. What he didn't tell her was that he really feared it would happen.

That's what Justin was doing that night. He was going to meet with another sorcerer that could help him advance his own skills. Just enough to stay ahead of Nicole and ensure that he could continue instructing her. Finding a higher-level sorcerer had proved to be no easy task. Justin would have preferred to meet said sorcerer on another night, but Alan had said the sorcerer would be leaving the following day and not returning until spring. If he could secure a contract that night, he would have the entire winter to relax. Spring would be more than soon enough to continue furthering his own studies.

They had met just before dusk, Alan had introduced the two and took his leave shortly after. Then that wretched sorcerer had kept Justin talking until night fall, at which time he had revealed his true nature, would have completed his awful task and disappeared without a trace. Would have, Nicole reflected, had she not decided to meet Justin at his place instead to tell him she had secured an agreement for her martial arts training. She had negotiated a contract that ensured she would be able to train for at least two terms. She remembered how proud she was and thought wryly upon how quickly that pride gave way to fear, and then agony, and then a sort of void.

She had arrived just as dusk was turning into night. She had run up the front steps and thrown open the front door, about to call for Justin when she felt someone drawing power. It didn't feel right. If Justin were practicing something new, it shouldn't have felt that way. It should have been more like a curious tugging than the wrenching she felt. It then occurred that she didn't sense Justin drawing power. It was someone else. She pushed her way through the parlor door into the dining area and saw the over-turned dining table. Her eyes went immediately to the creature hunched over Justin. Time stood still while the details of the scene slowly crept into her mind.

Justin was hurt, unconscious on the floor. There was a hooded figure hunched over his body. She had thought it some creature but realized it was human. No, she corrected herself, it wasn't human. Whatever that thing was doing to the sources, it was no human manipulation. It felt like nervous tension, fear, and dread. A cloud of it, filling the air around the two figures. As its head turned away from the body and towards her, she saw a black liquid spilling from its mouth. She realized immediately that the creature had killed Justin. It had his life essence pouring from its mouth from beneath two soul-less black orbs that stared back at her.

At first, she felt nothing. She didn't scream, she didn't gasp, she saw the creature and she saw the body. No, not the body, she saw Justin. She saw Justin dead on the floor and this creature had murdered him. It had ripped out his throat and was pulling the energy of his life and his soul out of Justin's body.

Then, Nicole realized what she was feeling; Justin's soul was being used as a source, and the creature was changing it into something else. At first, it felt like it was simply eating it away, but it wasn't so simple. This dark creature was a sorcerer unlike any she had seen, and the atrocity it was committing was indeed sorcery. Without thinking of what it meant, or of what she was doing, she reached out and grabbed what little was left of Justin's soul, she held it fast and stopped the creature's disgusting mutation of her poor Justin. The creature snarled at her, but remained there by Justin's side.

Nicole opened herself up to more nearby sources. She drew from anything that was close, but not indiscriminately. The table disintegrated and azure streaks flew from where the table used to be straight at the creature. The creature had to drop the source it was pulling in order to defend itself. There was an incredible bang as the blue streaks were averted and air rushed back into the vacuum created by their deadly path. In less time than it takes to complete a blink, the creature had moved from Justin to the hallway connecting the dining room to the kitchen and bedrooms. Nicole reached past the creature into the walls of the hallway and flames grew around the creature. It was drawing the power from the flames even as Nicole was drawing the power from the walls. She kept drawing, trying to suffocate the creature with the power, while reaching into the creature.

She was going to draw from it like it had drawn from Justin. She felt the creature stiffen in terror at what she was doing, and a mirthless smile creased her lips as she continued to draw from it. The creature immediately fled. Not down the hallway, but upwards. It went straight through the ceiling and through the roof.

Converting the wooden table into deadly shards of energy hadn't been easy, but it was easier than drawing from wood to create flame. But what she was doing then, was unlike anything she had been taught. Her anger had pushed her past her limits and she was seeing and sensing even more sources upon which she could draw. It was as though they called out to her to take them, to fold them, and to manipulate them at her will. But she didn't reach for those. She reached for that dark force inside the creature as it was making its way from the roof-top to the ground, she continued to reach for it, even as it passed out of visible space and into wherever it had gone. She could still feel it, and she continued to draw from it. She would have to use the power to do something, otherwise she would burn. The power she drew formed a ball of raw energy at her core, reinforcing her own innate ability, but if left unused and allowed to build, it would bleed off and, in the process, burn her from the inside out.

She tapped the energy where it stemmed from the creature before it could gather around her and converted it into force, directing it outwards from the center of the creature. Wherever the creature was, the force was lacerating its flesh, even though she could not see it.

There was no grim satisfaction of vengeance, the creature was escaping.