I am working towards longer chapters, eventual goal being 4k to 5k words. Also, I know formatting of things is not the best, if someone could tell me where to find a list of commands for editing/formatting text,, that would be awesome.
Skills and things will eventually be explained, though whether or not I'll be doing that from an in-universe perspective or not I'm still not entirely certain.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy.
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The clouds were gone when I awoke, replaced by the star-studded mantle of night. It was still cold, colder even, but the wind had gone out of it. The sky shown bright with the millions of constellations, and, save for the hunger gnawing at my stomach, I felt better. From my prone position on the ground, I caught a glimpse of something that cut my admiration short, a group of shadows only visible from the edge of my vision. They looked vaguely ape-like, but horribly deformed, with extra or grotesquely twisted limbs.
Scrambling to my feet, I drew my dagger. Its presence was reassuring, despite its uselessness in this particular situation. I started running, away from the ledge of the cliff. The terrain vaguely reminded me of that battlefield, the sparse, half-dead plant life and the sharp, unforgiving stone underfoot. Chased by the shadow-things, I experimentally tried asking for abilities.
“You gain the following special abilities from your race (human):
Appraise – instinctively know the potential danger in opponents or situations, and the value of most common objects.
Instincts – humans are known for their strongly engrained fight or flight instincts.
You gain the following special abilities from your bloodline:
Soul sight – detect the presence of invisible and magical entities.
Awakened – capable of learning magic, at the cost of an easily detectable aura.
Cloaked essence – with an effort of will, you can conceal your nature from the casual observer.
You gain the following special abilities as an adventurer:
Perseverance –better adapt to harsh conditions.”
That was nice, I thought, still running. I had a feeling the only reason I could see these shadows was because of that soul sight thing. That same intuition told me the only reason they were chasing me in the first place was because of my tasty magic.
The shadows were much faster than I was, and would definitely overtake me in a matter of seconds at this rate. They also didn’t tire as fast as I did, flowing over the ground as fast and silent as mist. But maybe…I broke off my headlong charge, turning sharply and leaping behind a large smooth boulder. I rode the spike of adrenaline, milking the surge of power for all it was worth as I attempted to activate my cloaking ability.
The intuition was similar to what I’d been experiencing with the shadows. I drew power from myself, and then forced it all into a sphere in my chest. It lodged. At first, I thought something had gone wrong; funny, the things you don’t notice until they’re gone. My vision felt different, less sharp, my repressed magic manifesting as a throbbing headache.
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Food, at last. It had been so long since they’d feasted, and this meal would last them months, maybe years, if they were careful. The figure seemed asleep.
They cautiously crept forwards, red eyes blazing like balls of hellfire in their malformed shadowy faces, careful to make no noise. Something that bright though, it was bound to sense them. It awoke, aware of the danger and, without hesitation, already running. It was slow; they were faster. United in purpose, they rushed at their escaping meal, snarling with silent rage. Then it suddenly changed directions, and vanished. Confused, they stopped, flying a wide perimeter around the space where their prey had vanished. No bright signal, nothing above the ambient levels of mana. Enraged, they dissolved into black mist, flowing into the vein-like network of hollow tubes that gave them refuge and passage, The hunger relentlessly clawing, sapping away their strength.
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I’m not sure how much time past as I sat there, breathing hard, listening for something. Minutes? Hours? It could have been days, except for the still night, the world’s shattered moon still visible, hanging full in the sky.
I took it slow, using the boulder for support to stand. Not slow enough. Groaning, I leaned to the side, throwing up on the ground. The vomit – I self-pityingly noticed it was mostly bile – pooled in an irregular shallow dip. Forehead against the boulder, I focused on my breathing, getting it under control. Sweat formed on my skin, despite the temperature.
Another eternity went by as I scraped up the courage to try standing again. This time, I managed a drunken stagger, leaning against the concave inner surface of the rock, careful to avoid the jagged spikes that ran along its top. The thing wasn’t part of the ground, but it was large enough it might as well have been. Its shape was somewhat tooth-like, a quarter-sphere, concave on one side, the side I’d fallen behind, convex on the other. A series of sharp triangular cracks adorned the top of the rock, on the side facing me, as if the rock had been hollow all its life and torn off a larger chunk.
I suppressed another grown of pain at the headache, raising a hand to my head. I felt like I could start walking again, if slowly, so I pushed off the stone and went on my way, hoping I’d encounter civilization soon.
“You’ve adapted to your suppression sickness.”
The headache had in fact lifted slightly in the last hour of walking, and I didn’t feel quite as dizzy. Except…were those lights in the distance? I picked up the pace as best I could, daring to feel hope.
The explosion threw me backwards a good two meters, and I landed hard, tucking my head into my chest at the last instant. Breath left me as my back hit the unforgiving ground, ears ringing from the sound of the explosion. The impact sight was scorched, glassy streaks left in the stone where the lightning bolt had struck. Yet the sky was perfectly clear, and it was definitely too cold for heat lightning. I sat up first, and then carefully moved to a crouch, blinking away the afterimages of the painfully bright flash to start looking for the source of the attack as I cautiously got to my feet. Not that I’d be able to fend off something able to cast down lightning bolts on a whim.
“Hello?” My voice sounded horse, rusty, like a disused machine. In this dead place, however, any sound was like thunder.
The old man was tall, and dressed in loose white clothing. He limped towards me, using a cane of black iron for support. He stopped in front of me without a word, tapping the ground with the walking stick while looking me up and down. The cane looked heavy and old, despite a lack of rust on the gleaming black metal. The end in contact with the ground was a large irregular lump of glass, and it may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that writhing lines of fire danced and slithered in its depths, twisting, shifting worms of bright light that continued to dance behind my eyelids, jabbering maddeningly…I tore my gaze from the thing, shoving down the sudden urge to look back.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He snorted, breaking the silence. “Most inefficient cloaking I’ve seen in a long time. What has the art of spell-craft come to?” He measured his sentence with periodic taps of the cane. “What’s your name, boy? Who’s your master?”
He spoke Enael faster than I was comfortable with, so it took me a few seconds to extrapolate the meaning from his words.
“Nezz, is name. Master? Master, I have none. Shadow…things, attack. Needed hidden.”
He made a face. “If that’s why you’re using the poor excuse for a cloak, then you can drop it, the wraiths won’t be coming here. What do you mean no master? Who taught you, boy?”
I shook my head. “No master.”
He let out a sigh, reaching up with the hand not holding his cane to run it through his hair. Long and uncombed, it looked less like hair and more like a foot of snow had been dumped on his head. I had never been able to imagine icy brown eyes before, but the old wizard’s gaze gave me the evidence I needed to prove the concept true. They drilled into me, cold, calculating.
“Alright, suppose you don’t have a master. What is your native tongue? You don’t speak fluently enough for it to be Enael.”
I recalled my skills. There had been another language that I was more proficient in. The Nggelu language.
“My mother tongue is Nggelu,” I said, in Nggelu. It was the strangest feeling, the words were words I could understand, but the sounds of the language were alien to my ears.
He blinked, smacking his cane against the ground. “Your lack of a master makes more sense now. My apologies, wanderer.” His head dipped forwards in a shallow bow.
The confusion must have shown on my face, because he laughed. A raspy, old man’s laugh, like the wind scraping together piles of dry, dead leaves. “No, not many would know. Drop that cloak and come with me. If you wish, I can teach you what it means to be a native speaker of that language,” he said, turning back to face the direction he’d come from, as if he had no doubt I’d follow.
Cane cracking against the ground, he started walking at a surprisingly brisk pace, especially for an old man with a walking stick. I struggled to keep up; my concentration was split between trying to puzzle out how to undo whatever it was I’d done to activate the cloak ability, and walking.
The lights of the small town grew more distinct as we neared it, and soon I could pick out individual building silhouettes. Although there were guards walking a perimeter, there were no real defenses. They gave us curious glances, but it was clear the old wizard was well known here, so they didn’t stop us as we walked into the town proper; a sign declared its name to be Athels.
The buildings were low to the ground, and most were carved from heavy slabs of stone. The streets were narrow, and the rough rock of the plateau had been smoothed out and patterned in a grid of small squares. Athels was small, and I saw almost all of it on the way to the old man’s house, as we worked our way through the winding streets. There weren’t any true turns or corners; streets in the town were always curved.
The wizard’s home turned out to be one of the ones carved out of a single piece of stone. The walls rose naturally from the ground for two stories, and there was firelight visible in the windows – squares cut into the walls, the town was far too small and poor for glass. It must have been later, or earlier, than I thought, by the time we reached the door of the house the stars were already fading from the sky.
“Stand back,” he said, raising the cane. Remembering the lightning bolt that had turned rock to glass, I did as instructed.
He swung the cane at the door, cracking the glass knob on its end in what seemed to be a specific pattern. I tried to memorize it, but the steps somehow slipped from my mental grasp, like hands clutching at the rain. He chuckled, somehow aware of what I’d tried to do.
“Maybe once we get to know each other a little better, I’ll key you into my wards,” he said, still chuckling a little as the door swung inwards.
The house was two stories, but made so that every part of the house was visible for any other part. Both floors were wide open, the kitchen, sleeping area, shower and living room taking up their own personal quarter of the first floor. The second floor was less a floor, more a platform near the ceiling. It seemed to be where the old mage did most of his experimenting. There were bookshelves, a desk, and, strewn across the desk and hung on hooks on the ceiling and walls, strange arcane implements, although…was that a frying pan? I thought it better not to ask.
“What is your name?” I asked. Ever since I’d spoken Nggelu aloud, the words felt right in my throat, more comfortable than Enael.
“Tholmeus,” he replied. “I’ll need to work out something for your sleeping arrangements, been the only one living here for a while. Also, if you don’t want to be burned, or killed, don’t speak that language in public. Foolish superstition is everywhere here. They barely tolerate me, just because I’m a mage, even though I’ve healed their broken bones and sealed their opened wounds for longer than their parents have been alive.” The last half of the speech was less speech, more dark muttering as he kicked things out of his way on root to the quarter of the first floor devoted to his bed.
“Your first task, as my apprentice, is to read through all the books that have a vertical blue line down their spine, in the shelf with the quartered circle.” He pointed to the ladder in the middle of the room and gestured up, turning his back to me. I nodded to his back, looking for the first book with a blue line painted down its spine. Being up here was strange, the skin on the back of my neck and the palms of my hands kept prickling and tingling, as if from a constant field of popping static. It wasn’t uncomfortable though, only distracting. Pulling the book from its slot on the shelf near the ground, I sat down cross-legged, ignored the prickling from what probably was proximity to the wards Tholmeus had been talking about, and started reading.
The cover was brown and worn, with no title, as were the thick yellow pages stained with the black ink of writing. The handwriting was cramped, the lines from which each character was composed so thin as to appear illegible at first glance. But whether it was due to the ink used or some trick of the lighting, each character was cast in sharp relief. I looked down at the book open on my lap, then back to the shelf with the reading material. Two…four…eight...fourteen…eighteen…twenty-four, twenty five. Twenty five books I’d have to read, as part of my first assignment. I stretched preemptively, mentally preparing myself for the hours of reading ahead.
There were several backlogged messages about taking damage and discovering the town of Athels, but the latest message was the one that caught my attention the most:
"So much reading to do...You have new-found purpose." Turning the page, I idly wondered if having purpose meant having a quest or goal.