The Veil of Darkness
Chapter 75: Teleportation

Chapter 75: Teleportation

Annalise drank the warm tea that helped her in calming down, not like she needed it after spending time with Valerius. The man accompanied her as they both had lunch and while she tried to invite Kenric and Damian too, both of them denied her. Of course, the latter barely gave her any attention.

"Will we be able to cross the forest today?" She asked Valerius as she finished her tea and set the cup down before closing her eyes and casting a cleaning spell to wrap up everything, it was one of the first spells that she learned during her childhood.

"I don’t think so. The weather is unpredictable inside the Enchanted Forest and we will surely encounter some difficulties on our way. Besides, we won’t be traveling at night, so it’s impossible to cross the forest before tomorrow evening." Valerius answered as he helped her in collecting all the food and repacking them for their further journey.

The two of them worked in silence for a while and were soon done with the work. The sun was high in the sky and within a few minutes, they would be ready to restart with their journey.

Damian had once again disappeared somewhere and Kenric was still busy with his daggers. The latter had been constantly looking in their direction but hadn’t tried to either speak to them or approach them even once which kind of confused Annalise.

"Is he alright?" She found herself asking as she turned her attention from Kenric to Valerius who was sitting beside her.

Valerius spared a quick look in Kenric’s direction before he responded, "As good as he can be."

"Really?" Annalise once again looked in Kenric’s direction but even after the assurance from Valerius, she felt like there was something off about Kenric. "He seems..." She wasn’t sure exactly what it was that she was finding different about him so she ended up trailing off without finishing her sentence.

"Don’t worry about him. He will be back to normal in no time." Valerius assured her as he handed her a little white flower that was growing in the grass where they were currently sitting. It was so tiny, barely the size of her nails.

Annalise smoked as she looked at the tiny flower and then started playing with it as she had nothing else to do. As her eyes ran through their surroundings, a question suddenly popped into her mind. "Why aren’t using your teleportation powers to travel to Lakeshire?"

That was right! Her husbands were powerful enough to teleport which would save a lot of time and energy, but they had decided to travel on horses and carriage, it didn’t make any sense to her.

"Haven’t you learned about teleportation?" Valerius asked in return as he tilted his head to the side while looking at her and he genuinely seemed curious as if he was quite surprised by her question.

Annalise shook her head and for once, she didn’t feel embarrassed while admitting to her little knowledge regarding the magical powers and things that existed or used to exist. It was either because she had acknowledged that she had spent the past twenty years of her life without paying much attention to important matters and subjects, or it was merely because she was now far more comfortable talking freely with her husband.

"It’s one of the lost magic spells and in the past thousand years, no one had been able to master this spell in the entire Seelie Empire. That’s why barely anyone mentions anything about it, let alone teach about it."

Valerius nodded his head in understanding. "It’s indeed true, teleportation requires a lot of magical energy, and the current power level of the citizens of Seelie Empire is far too low to master it." He explained.

"Teleportation spell requires magical energy not only from the caster but also from its surroundings. The portal that helps in traveling through this spell needs a lot of magical energy and the amount of energy required depends on the distance one wants to travel. The amount of energy that we will require to travel to Lakeshire through teleportation is a lot and that much energy isn’t available at the castle."

Annalise was finally able to understand how the spell of teleportation worked and a lot of things made sense as she thought about them. "But can’t you do it here in the Enchanted Forest? I mean this place is known for the immense presence of magical energy."

Valerius shook his head before he explained, "There is indeed more than enough energy present in this forest to cast teleportation spells. However, seventy to eighty percent of the magical energy here is the dark energy that had seeped out of the Seelie Realm. Using it won’t turn out to be a good idea."

"Dark energy?" This was news to Annalise as she had never heard about something like that before but again, considering how little she and the people of Seelie Empire knew about the history of their empire, Seelie Realm, and the dark energy that had been trying to take over their world, it wasn’t really surprising that they weren’t aware of the presence of the dark energy in the Enchanted Forests.

"What else do you think made this forest this dangerous?" Valerius questioned as he looked at her with arched eyebrows.

"This does make sense a lot. Why would a forest be considered dangerous if everything is normal about it and there’s nothing more abnormal other than that dark energy." She muttered as her thoughts got pulled towards the murder and disappearance cases that had been going around the empire.

"Do you think all those murder and disappearance cases are related to the dark energy?" She found herself asking but found Valerius immediately shaking his head in response to her question. "It’s not that simple."

"What do you mean?" Her curiosity was once again picked.

Valerius looked straight into her eyes as he responded, "The dark energy is indeed spreading across the other realms and it’s involved in the weird cases going around in the Seelie Empire... but someone is directing it from behind the scenes, the true mastermind."