Excerpt: The Third Essence/The End

'Is there even any point to me asking if griffins can see in the dark?'
'They can't see as well as some other animals,' Coren answered. He was carefully avoiding looking in Kimisha's direction, and had done since her jibe earlier in the day. 'But if they're just searching for mageic, it probably doesn't matter. Sorry,' he added, as Chynor scowled some more.
'This is hopeless!'
'No it isn't. Let's make camp for the night.' Fen directed her horse off the road and into the trees.
Chynor gaped for a moment. 'We can't stop!'
'We can, and we're going to. There's no point tiring ourselves out. We can start as soon as the sun rises.'
Despite the sense in Fen's words, Chynor continued to grumble while they ate food cooked hastily with mageic. He hated mageically cooking. Everything always tasted the same done that way, and it seemed to leech the flavour out until it tasted like dried grass. He almost envied the horses their fresh grass.
'Coren, you take first watch. Wake Chynor in two hours,' Fen instructed as they got out their blankets. Chynor grumbled about that, too. First watch was never too bad, you just had to stave off the sleepiness for a while longer. Last watch was good, because you got to watch the sunrise. Second watch was just irritating. He knew he'd remain awake for two hours until it was his turn to sit in the dark and stare around at nothing.
He pulled his bag under his head, prodded a few items around inside it until they were no longer poking him, and then stretched out to look at the stars. Unwanted thoughts and images of griffins and blood and Nikara wandered across his mind until he was forced to start silently reciting the names of the constellations above him. It worked for a little while, until he closed his eyes and the images started again. Frustrated, he opened them, and saw a black shape obscuring a patch of stars. It was a griffin, and Coren obviously hadn't noticed it. Sighing, Chynor lifted his arm and made to flick a ball of mageic up at it, but a hand knocked his arm away.
The hand belonged to Coren. 'Don't kill it!' he whispered. 'I have an idea!'