text: [Themes: fantasy, fantasy, serious]
  
  Lisa's a big ghoul, she's going to have to fend for herself. Besides, the best way you can defend her is if you kill Travis as quick as possible.
  
  Since Travis likes to talk shit, you might as well respond in kind.
  
  "Okay Travis, you got me on that one. Cherish the moment because it's the last chance you're going to get. In fact, if you were smart, you'd just run now. I know deep down you're scared and just too arrogant to admit it." You exclaim.
  "Scared? Me? I'm not the one who is floundering around like kitten in the river right now. Seems to me, that you're the arrogant one who doesn't know when he's beaten." Travis retorts.
  
  You see a figure out the corner of your eye getting ready to cast a spell and you rush forward to kill it. Another illusion, but you know enough not to stick around as two bolts of lightning barely miss you.
  
  "Is this your plan? Attempt to kill all my illusions until you single me out? Shit plan and doomed to failure. I can keep this up all night. You on the other hand, will have to turn in when day breaks. And whoever that other vampire was, is going to be too busy chasing down Heather. You're alone out here and fucked. The best you can hope for is a stalemate before you run like a bitch before the sunrise. You won't get it though, vampire ashes aren't easy to come by."
  "Yeah, yeah, just keep telling yourself that and ignore the fact that you aren't pissing your robe right now."
  
  You play more dodge the magic spell with Travis and continue to taunt him the whole time. You aren't sure if it's taking him off his offense, but you're getting frustrated that you can't seem to locate him. Destroying his illusions when you can, while satisfying, doesn't bring you any closer to your goal since he's just creating more. You don't know where Lisa is in all this either, but you've got bigger concerns right now.
  
  Eventually Travis gets lucky again and one of his illusions zaps you in the chest with a lightning bolt. It tries to finish you off with a fireball, but you narrowly escape. At this rate he's going to set the whole forest on fire.
  
  As you're taking protection behind a tree and recovering, you suddenly hear screams coming from behind a cluster of rocks.
  
  "Shit...did she really get him?" you say to yourself and swiftly run over towards the screaming.
  
  And there you see Lisa partially on top of Travis and chewing through one of his arms while he desperately tries to punch her with the other, shrieking the entire time.
  
  "No, no more of that." You say and break Travis' free arm so he can't flail it around at Lisa any longer. His screams of agony don't get any longer, and in fact he begins to just stop making much noise at all.
  
  "Yeah, looks like the shock and blood loss are kicking in. You're lucky that Lisa got to you first. If it were up to me, I would have stretched out your torment a lot longer."
  
  Travis tries to speak, but all he can do is bubble up some blood from his mouth and struggle to stay awake.
  
  "Guess there's one silver lining in this for you, you're getting eaten by someone who doesn't make any pretenses of what she is right? I'm sure she appreciates your respect, along with your flesh."
  
  Lisa finishes chewing through Travis' right arm and then gives him one good chomp on the side of his neck, which finally kills him, though it doesn't kill Lisa's hunger and she continues to feed.
  
  "You did good Lisa. Thank you." You say and kiss her on the top of her head which finally allows breaks her attention long enough to briefly nuzzle against your leg before returning to eat.
  
  "I hate to break up your feast, but we have other matters to take care of, come on, let's head back to the Dornan camp. Hopefully Isabella didn't kill the other one. Oh, you can bring his arm with you."
  
  Lisa wastes no time in following you back to the camp, though there is still one thing you're wondering about.
  
  "Lisa, how the hell did you single out Travis in all the illusions?" you ask.
  "Oh that was easy. I just sniffed him out." Lisa answers as a bit of meat flies from her mouth.
  "How? I couldn't even get his scent."
  "You were right about him being scared. He had pissed himself. Easy to get scent for me after that. I hunt in the sewers all the time, you know. I can usually single out the origins of bodily waste under the right circumstances. It took some time for me to perfect that skill, I've always wanted to tell you about it, would you like to hear how..."
  "Um, okay Lisa. Maybe another time."
  
  Funny how you desperately trained yourself to try to block out the various "aromas" of the sewers, meanwhile Lisa completely embraced them. Whatever works you guess.
  
  You soon return to the camp and go through the bodies since Isabella isn't around. You don't really find much though, at least not any more that what Heather told you. Having little else to do, you decide to sit and wait, while Lisa eats one of the Dornans.
  
  Time passes a bit and you start to wonder if you shouldn't just go back home. This was more of Isabella's thing and if she's not here then you really don't have strong feelings about getting revenge on Ral. Sure it would be nice, but you've had enough of fighting wizards for tonight.
  
  Unfortunately Isabella comes back just as you're thinking on this, with Heather over her shoulder.
  
  "I'm guessing you didn't leave yours alive." Isabella asks.
  "Nope, I'm afraid Lisa's hunger took care of that, but I figured you'd show restraint since I was certain you wouldn't place too much faith in us anyway." You respond.
  "Didn't know Lisa was even going to be around since you told her to stay put. In any case I suppose you were correct in thinking that I wouldn't believe you to have as much restraint, so this one is still alive. Knocked her ass out when I finally caught up with her, so I haven't gotten any information from her yet. I guess we can do that together at least."
  
  Doesn't take long for Isabella to slap Heather awake. When she sees the two of you hovering over her, she's obviously very frightened and turns to what most do in a hopeless situation.
  
  "Oh please, Dorna give me the knowledge and power to overcome my disadvantageous position. I will make the large sacrifice in your honor if you only lend me your wisdom." She says and begins praying which Isabella puts a stop to with another slap.
  "Oh no, you aren't mumbling some prayer and casting another spell. The best you can hope for in your situation is if you don't piss me off and you get a quick death. Now tell me what you know about Ral and what's going on out here."
  "Can't we come to some sort of agreement?" Heather asks.
  
  Isabella looks at you.
  
  "Reminds me of you with all these attempts at bargaining." Isabella remarks.
  "Well, you gotta admit, it worked for me." You answer.
  "Yeah, well it's not working for this bitch, now TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU FUCKING KNOW!"
  
  Isabella's face becomes that monstrous expression that manages to scare Heather even more than she already is. She starts crying and pleading and ultimately agreeing to tell her everything she knows even though it isn't much.
  
  Heather explains that none of them really knew what to find out here and it was Elder Flynn who first sensed the magic disturbance. He wasn't sure at first about checking it out, but after much meditation (And sensing other disturbances) he decided that he needed to confront his old comrade.
  
  Apparently the Elder and Ral were old friends when they were young, but obviously had a disagreement in ideology as far as magic. The Elder of course thought it was a Dorna's most precious gift to the world and thanks must always be given to her for it. Ral on the other hand just believed that it was a force to be mastered like any other and didn't even acknowledge Dorna.
  
  She said most knew about Ral since he was a wizard of some power even if he was very reclusive most of the time, but Elder Flynn didn't speak of him in any detail until recently. Said that his experiments had probably gone too far and he would have to be stopped before Dorna's wrath was brought upon the world.
  
  Even though the Elder said the disturbances had died down and they hadn't seen anything unusual yet, he said they still needed to confront Ral since he was dangerous wild card. Heather didn't speak out, but she got the impression that this meeting was just something the Elder seemed to want more than correcting magical disturbance.
  
  "Oh, that was Flynn? Damn, didn't even recognize him, though I thought there was something vaguely familiar about his scent. If I had recognized him, maybe I would have tried a different approach. Oh well." Isabella remarks.
  "Wait, you knew the Elder?" Heather asks.
  "Yeah, he and Ral were competing for my attention when they were young! That's why the friendship broke up. Ideological disagreement my fine undead ass. Flynn wasn't hooked up in all this Dorna worship shit when I knew him. I mean he was more religious than Ral, but he wasn't a fanatic."
  "What did Ral do that won you over?" you ask out of genuine curiosity.
  "He made me laugh. In any case, I guess that doesn't help us much, but it was worth a try. Alright, let's get this done..."
  "WAIT! Please! I'm no threat anymore! I didn't even want to fight you guys! You! When we met, wasn't I reasonable to you?" Heather exclaims, trying to appeal to you.
  "When we first met, you fucking did some sort of charm on Lisa to make her docile." you say.
  "But...please! (sob) I don't wanna die! I didn't even want to come out here! (sob) Wait! I know! Make me into a vampire! I mean I could be a good one! I'm already a night owl and I could make a good apprentice! Please, I just don't want to die..."
  
  At this point Heather is groveling completely at Isabella's feet. This is such a pathetic display, you're sort of feeling a bit for the girl.
  
  "Isabella, maybe you could make her into a vampire? I mean she probably could help you quite a bit on building a new home, what with being a sorceress and all." You say.
  "Hello, my name is Isabella, I don't believe we've met. I'm not turning this bitch into a vampire just because she's begging for her life. I have standards. I only turn those that are mate potential into vampires." Isabella sniffs.
  "Do you HAVE to have sex with the person you turn into a vampire?"
  "Yes, and as I think you know I'm not into women."
  "Just pretend you're in college."
  "What?"
  "I dunno, my dad said a lot of girls at his university used to do that and then got married to some guy anyway."
  "Yeah, no. Look, if you're so keen on saving this human, then you could always turn her into a ghoul."
  
  Lisa looks up long enough from the corpse she's eating to give an angry growl at that suggestion. Lisa might be willing to serve you unquestioningly, but she still wants to be the only ghoul in your life, not that you were considering it anyway.
  
  "Too bad Heather, hope your afterlife with Dorna is a pleasant one." You say and without another word Isabella kills Heather.
  
  Isabella feeds and then you do likewise. The three of you then continue your journey to Ral's home.
  
  Along the way you start noticing discoloration of the trees and odd-looking plant life. Some of them even look carnivorous, but you guess they don't like the taste of undead flesh so they don't attack. (And Lisa must not be very appetizing either)
  
  "This doesn't look like it belongs here." You say.
  "Sure doesn't. What the hell did Ral do?" Isabella says.
  "Given all this change and how the Dornans said it dying down, maybe he's not even alive anymore."
  "For his sake, he better not be."
  
  After passing a few more landscape oddities, you at last reach Ral's home and it looks about the same as you last saw it. There aren't any creatures or anything wandering about, though you're not getting a sense of complete safety either.
  
  "Well, it's all yours. See if you can't get in." Isabella says.
  
  You don't say anything other than to tell Lisa to stay put and you'll be back in a moment.
  
  You approach Ral's home and try the front door. It's locked of course, so you pull out a lockpick and easily open it. You step forward...
  
  And nothing happens. You apparently are allowed in the house. Now to see if Isabella's other idea will work.
  
  You stand in the doorway and motion Lisa and Isabella over. Lisa easily enters the house since she wasn't barred by strange rules anyway. Isabella however, still can't get in.
  
  "Shit." She remarks.
  "I don't understand, I thought you said you were always welcome in a place that was my home." You say.
  "Eh, more weird rules. This place, while you were welcomed in here, still officially isn't your home, it's Ral's. I figured it was a long shot. I'm going to try to figure out something out here, in the meantime you need to find out what's going on. I'd rather you not kill Ral and leave him for me, but if you have to, I'll certainly understand."
  
  Isabella takes her leave and you and Lisa are left in a very dusty living area. Looks like this place went to pot after you weren't around to clean it anymore.
  
  "Well, let's take this slow I guess. Lisa, you stay very close to me." You say and begin exploring rooms methodically.
  
  The eerie thing about all this, is you aren't hearing any noise whatsoever. Usually you used to at least hear faint noises sometimes from his lab, but there is nothing. Speaking of his lab you eventually decide you might as well just search that place now.
  
  You make your way there and immediately notice something wrong. The door is open. That door was always locked.
  
  You cautiously peek inside Ral's lab for the first time.
  
  And it's a complete wreck. There is equipment everywhere; you know Ral wouldn't have left it like this if he could help it.
  
  Except he can't help it, because he's currently on the floor with a broken neck. He looks like he's been dead awhile. And then you see another familiar face. Tych.
  
  You see him flying around between various large tomes and mixing something on one of the only clean lab workbenches.
  
  This all seems a bit strange, but in any case Tych hasn't noticed you yet.
  
  > sneak up and grab him
  You figure with your speed you'll easily be able to catch Tych before he'll notice and then you can question him on what happened here.
  
  And you probably would have if Lisa hadn't been with you to snuffle about and bumping into some debris while wandering over towards Ral's corpse.
  
  Tych spins around and just narrowly flits out of your way. He's incredibly surprised.
  
  "SHIT! YOU?" he exclaims and then this is followed by him putting his hands together and unleashing a beam (much larger than you'd think for his size) of magical energy straight into your face, melting it completely.
  
  You flail about blind for a moment and you can hear Lisa snarl and shriek when she sees that you're being attacked, but those noises seem to be silenced fairly quickly.
  
  You're in no condition to help Lisa because you can't even help yourself at this point.
  
  "I don't know how you broke the geas, but I'm not taking any chances!" you hear Tych say.
  
  You've never known Tych to be able to cast spells like this. Something about this is weird, but it hardly matters and you'll never know the true mystery since Tych finishes you off by melting a hole through your chest and destroying your heart.