A/N:

Here’s the latest chapter, please enjoy. It’s embarrassingly late, but it helped me work out some things in the end, and it might not look like it, but it’s the start for a lot of things to come. Hopefully the table shows up fine.

  Also, is there a way to insert some kind of divider line with bb code? Something similar to the html

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  Reading that much, even with breaks for food and bodily relief, does something to the brain. Words in that horribly precise handwriting, characters composed of lines thin and sharp as knives, still danced behind my eyelids, arranging and rearranging themselves into illegible patterns. At any rate, I was done. I turned the last page of the last book, flipping it over in my hands, so that the cover was facing the right way when I returned it to its proper spot on the bookcase. It slid into place, hitting the wooden back of the shelf with a solid thunk. Then I stood up, stretching, hearing my bones make sounds they shouldn’t.

  “Done, are you, boy?” Despite knowing my name, Tholmeus had never once used it. The old wizard had probably been keeping track of every book I finished.

  I’d only been able to work through a couple of the shorter ones on my first day, letting my consciousness slip away on a mattress of solidified air as dawn lit the sky. I woke up at noon, to find the house empty and a plate of food on the counter in the kitchen section of the first floor. Eating was unceremonious and quick, and I rushed through the motions of waking up, in a hurry to get back to my task.

  I read through about a sixth of the stack that day, taking notes Tholmeus had lent me the night before, not turning in until well past midnight. Several days went like this – I could probably count the times I spoke more than a single word at a time on the fingers of one hand. By the time noon of the fourth day swung around, I was done.

  That was one of the interesting things about this place. There was no window. Instead, time was kept through a set of runes cut into the stone of the roof. There were three lines, radiating outwards from the circumference of a circle. The lines were placed one to a third of the circle, and a set of interlinked runes ran along these lines at different rates, keeping time. The rune sequences were color coded: the green one completes thirty full cycles – starting from the point of the line farthest from the circle, to the point on the line closest to the circle, and back to the starting point –thirty beats, before the yellow sequence achieves half a cycle. Thirty more beats completes a breath cycle, and sixty breaths completes a pause cycle, kept track of by the red sequence, and which number only fifteen cycles from sunrise to sunrise. There was a single blue rune in the center of the circle that illuminated the house, and the light would brighten during the day and dim during the night.

  I tried a brief check for backlogged messages. Most were about wisdom increases, a handful about intellect increases, but there were a few interesting ones:

  “You have learned the skill: meditation.”

  “You have learned more about your status screen. Changes have been applied.”

  “You have learned the skill: arcane lore.”

  “Your tutelage under arch-mage Tholmeus has officially begun. Do you wish to choose an elemental specialization?”

  I didn’t feel I had enough information to pick one, so the message vanished with all the rest.

  “I am,” I said, unrolling the ladder attached to the edge of the platform and waiting until it hit the floor below before climbing down.

  There was a rope beside the ladder, a long rough piece of braided plant fiber. Pulling on it resulted in the ladder’s rapid contraction, as it rolled up and returned to its place on the edge of the platform above.

  “Good. Good. Well, we’re going out today, need to restock supplies in the kitchen. You’ll be accompanying me, seeing that you’re done with your first assignment.”

  I nodded, holding onto pages of my notes with one hand. The sleeping quarter included a large wooden desk, with a chair that matched it polished surface for gleaming polished surface. Tholmeus rose from that chair, taking his cane from its leaning position against the corner made by the back of the desk and the wall. It had become apparent to me in the days of reading that he did not need a walking stick for walking. It made me wonder if that was perhaps his focus.

  He looked over at me on his way to the door, then down at the notes. “And we can probably get you bindings for those, bring them along.”

  Curious, I tried calling up an inventory screen to attempt and store the notes in it. There was no flash of blue text, so after trying several things, I gave up.

  It turned out that the marketplace wasn’t actually inside Athels. Instead, there was a fenced off area, accessed through a road leading east out of the mess of other identical roads. If it weren’t for Tholmeus and the distinctive crack of his cane on stone I would have probably gotten lost more than once.

  At the mouth of the street, where the buildings to either side suddenly ended, and it opened up into a large flat space lined with portable stalls and bustling people, the old wizard suddenly stopped, turning to face me.

  “Next assignment, boy,” he said, reaching into one of the many pockets concealed in the folds of his coat.

  The coat was a color somewhere between dark blue and dark purple. The article of clothing itself was somewhere between ridiculous and insanely useful. It had sleeves with pockets, the back had pockets, the front had pockets, and even the hood had pockets. On the old man, who was by no means short, it reached his knees, and the arm sleeves were folded so many times over, they probably had four times the amount of pockets than those visible.

  He withdrew two silver coins and through them at me. I almost missed one, but managed to catch both in one hand. “Get yourself something useful, then meet me back here in…” he trailed off, looking up at the sky. “Two and one fourth pause cycles. Understood, boy?”

  I nodded. The silver was a peculiar mix of cold and hot in my left hand. On one side of the coin, I could buy something. On the other, it had to be something useful, or Tholmeus would probably refuse to train me.

  “And speak more, boy. Don’t just nod at me, show some respect,” said Tholmeus, smacking the ground with his walking stick to emphasize the last word of each sentence.

  “Understand you…I, sir.”

  He nodded sharply. “Good. See you later, then.” Without waiting for a response, he marched off along the open space, vanishing amidst the crowd. I watched him go, trying to think of what might possibly impress the wizard.

  Food? No, he’d complain about being able to scavenge for that, or live off the land or some such. A weapon? I’d need to train with it first, and I had doubts about being able to get anything decent here. Besides, I already had my dagger – I closed my free hand around the hilt, making sure it was still there. Clothing? I could improvise, just like food. A spell book? No, that might come off as an offense to his ability to teach me. What then? Fingers wrapped around the rapidly warming silver, I took a step from beyond the confines of the narrow street, glancing back before heading off. I blinked, and looked again. Nothing. How strange.

  It took nearly half of my allotted time to find what I was looking for, enough that I considered giving up on more than one occasion.

  Eventually though, I found what I was looking for – a stall selling unwoven cloth. There was no line for this one, unlike the neighboring tailor’s and leatherworker’s stalls, so the purchase was relatively fast. I was by no means an expert, so I just bought the cloth that caught my attention the most.

  I’d decided on a piece of black cotton, when something else snagged my eye. Less a bolt, more a braid, the muted silver of the material was almost entrancing to look at. The merchant assured me it was the most durable thing she’d seen.

  “Got it sold to me by a right strange fellow. Showed me how strong the stuff was, right in front of me own eyes – took a knife to it, went hackin’ and a sawin’ for a full minute straight, and it’s as you see it now, without a scratch to its name! Really impressive, and I’ll give it to you for only one silver, since it’s such a wee bit of cloth. Right done deal there, how ‘bout it, good sir?”

  I nodded and let half my money fall into the woman’s out-stretched hand. Her green eyes followed me, with cloth in hand, into the ocean of bodies in the marketplace.

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  The woman’s gaze was a bright green, cool, collected, and full of life. It was a sharp contrast to the fiery red of her hair. Those eyes followed the apprentice mage man, Nezz, as he became one with the crowd. Then her gaze flicked down and to the left of him, focusing on us for the barest of seconds, before sliding away. Had she truly seen us? Impossible.

  There was no change to the stall from the outside, but the darkness within it thickened with our presence. The woman, unaware, was easy prey. Grabbing, clawing, we anchored around her hair, pulling her head back to expose her open mouth and throat. We smothered the screaming – there’d be more food to be had later – forcing our way inside her, down her throat, in her nose, to the brain, heart, and finally, the soul. The beautiful green of her eyes dimmed and blackened, until they were orbs of pure darkness. She smiled. We smiled with her. We smiled as her.

  “Thank you, Nezzzzz,” we whispered through our human lips, thrumming with that spark we so craved. The world was different, as we sensed through human senses, thought through the human mind. Such an invigorating feeling, soon, our brothers and sisters would join us, they’d understand the gloriousness of being…full.

  There was a scream nearby, mostly lost amidst the raised voices of busy commerce, but we heard it, nonetheless. How foolish of them, that they would not be more careful with their new puppets, as we had been.

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  The cord of silver thread was short enough that I could wrap it around my wrist several times and tie it into a bracelet. I had to look down to do the knot; otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed it. There were lots of people here, but even still, I was counting more shadows than bodies. I focused on them, trying to count the moving shapes and images.

  “You have activated your spell sight ability.”

  If I was at all uncertain about it before, looking at the ground with that ability active banished any doubts. There were the regular peoples’ shadows. Then there were the other ones, the misshapen ones from before, a solid blackness weaving between the normal shadows. Finally, there was the last kind, the solid black shapes that had become the shadows of seemingly regular people. I shivered, not feeling safe in the press of bodies anymore. Where the Hell was Tholmeus?

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Not immediately breaking into a run was an enormous effort of will, to put it mildly. I started walking back towards the streets of the town, slipping between and around people. The sun had moved some since Tholmeus had left, but only enough for one and a half pause cycles to have past.

  To think I’d been worried about not having enough time before; I couldn’t help but feel how slow it crawled now, as I waited at the end of the road, looking at the sun, towards the crowd of people, and in the opposite direction, down the shaded street. This cycle repeated over and over; my remaining silver coin was already slick with sweat, and had been for hours, squeezed so tight in my left hand I was certain it would leave a circular mark.

  Thankfully, Tholmeus returned early, just ahead of three shadows. He was walking fast, but once free of the crowd, he ran, dropping all pretenses with the cane. Beside me, he flipped the stick over, grabbed it by the knob, and shook it, muttering something under his breath.

  There was no sound, no flash of light. One second Tholmeus was holding his walking stick, the next he held a hollow metal pipe in one hand, a sword in the other.

  “Unweave from that, boy,” he said, handing me the pipe. The curved part of the cane had fallen to the ground, leaving behind a straight cylindrical tube of metal, with a hole where the sword had been housed.

  Spell sight still active, the threads of the enchantment were visible, bright against the backdrop of the pipe’s natural construction. I reached out with the same sense I used to see the mana, taking hold of the strands of the enchantment, woven through the smooth natural metal, and pulled.

  The spell came apart, threads of lightning and fire twisting, as if they’d been stretched taught and suddenly been let go. It was like trying to hold a mass of sentient sparking wires with the hands of a newborn. Even still, I wrapped the threads around the blade of my dagger, tying them together as best I could. It was nothing as elegant as the work on the rod, but I personally thought it looked decent enough – a loose web of magic uniformly coating the blade of the dagger, warp and weft threads drawn taught across the weapon’s natural earth-centric elements.

  The shadow things flowed up off the ground to attack, throwing punches with half-corporeal fists. They moved more like ooze than mist, collapsing and contorting their bodies to dodge slashes of Tholmeus’s glowing sword. I let my focus on the individual water-like movements of mana fade away, focusing only on the physical environment. Distractions cleared, I lunged towards one of the shadows, blazing dagger in one hand, cane-rod in the other.

  The shadows stood in a triangular formation, with two flanking Tholmeus, and another doing its best to keep the wizard’s attention on it, with obvious but dangerous attacks, while the other two slowly, but steadily, wore him down. My weapon sank into the back of one of the flankers without a sound, the creature spinning around to face me, wounding itself even more as the dagger passed through more of its shadow-formed body. It opened its mouth in a silent scream of rage and pain, taking advantage of my open guard to slam a fist of darkness into my chest.

  The blow made me stumble, but not from its physical power. I suddenly felt sick, like I had the first time I’d tried to cloak myself, but worse. Color seeped out of the world, and I lost the required concentration for spell sight. Groaning, I fell to my knees, stabbing out wildly with the dagger. In the same instant, I felt some of me torn away, as if I’d just cast a spell. It was like the constant drain that came with the spell sight, but more sudden, more vicious.

  My head hurt. The sun was still in the sky, but I had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been a second, or an hour, but the street was empty, except for me, and something at my feet. I reached down, picking it up. It was a black sphere, about the size of a child’s fist. I stuffed it in my pocket, and looked towards the marketplace.

  The place was in chaos. Gates had been smashed, people were running around, blood had been splattered on the ground, and still-twitching corpses were strewn across the ruins of merchant’s stalls and other rubble. Trying to activate spell sight only resulted in the headache exploding, and giving me a nosebleed, but I could still see the flickering at the edge of my vision that meant a shadow was moving, and there were hundreds of them out there. I saw no sign of Tholmeus, and the dagger I was holding was ruined, the blade twisted and crushed into a useless lump of iron. I still had the pole from the old man’s cane, so I dropped the dagger, switching the metal stick to my main hand. What the Hell happened, anyway?

  “Turn around slowly. No sudden movements, and show me your eyes.” Every bone in my body told me to jump, spin around and swing the pipe at the voice behind me. I wrestled the instinct down, feeling my shoulders tense and my neck touch the edge of something sharp with an intake of breath. I slowly let the breath out, turning on the spot.

  A hand on my shoulder -- it felt gloved through the fabric of my shirt, -- stopped me from completing the one eighty. “Drop the stick.”

  It hit the ground with a crash of metal on stone.

  “Calling more of your friends, are you?” I should’ve thought that through – the sound might attract more shadows. I stood still, hoping they didn’t mistake me for one.

  “Or it could have just been a mistake. Finish turning. I’ll warn you though, I’ve killed at least fifteen shadows today. I am not averse to staining my blade with the taint of one more.”

  I slowly finished the turn, feeling the pressure of the hand leave my shoulder. The voice was strange, hollow and distorted to the point where I couldn’t even discern gender. It was definitely speaking Enael, though.

  Although I was standing directly in front of it, the figure was hard to make out, as if my eyes didn’t want to focus on what was in front of me. Even when I pushed through the illusion, or whatever it was, all I could see were vague outlines. Narrow shoulders, tall frame, long hair, masked face. The only thing I could make out clearly was the steely sheen of the curved sword in the figure’s hands. That wasn’t what grabbed my attention. No, what I was looking at was behind it, and getting closer.

  “I have never seen so many like this.” I didn’t even need spell sight to see them. Most were shadows, but others were worse; shadows who had gained a body, hungry black eyes staring fixedly from a face where the musculature itself seemed off.

  The figure took a step back from me. I had not meant for the words to be spoken aloud, and I’d spoken them in Nggelu.

  “What the Hell language is that? What are you saying? Do you even speak Enael?” One of the shadows drew closer, emboldened by the show of fear. At least they seemed scared, or maybe confused, but why?

  “Look out!” I yelled in Enael, ducking to grab the metal rod off the ground. Whether it was from the worry in my voice or something else, the person listened to my warning, turning around in time to meet a wave of shadow with its sword. I switched my own weapon to a two handed grip, the dregs of enchantment within the steel smoldering like coals between my fingers.

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Vitals:

vital statcurrent amountmaximum amountpercentagelife455090%spirit304075%stamina3030100%psi00n/a

Statistics:

statratingconstitutionbelow averagestrengthaveragewisdomgooddexteritygoodcharismavery goodintellectvery goodluck51%

Skills:

* Swimming 10

* Athletics 8

* Cold resistance 9

* Rune lore 15

* Void affinity 20

* Magic affinity 10

* Dagger fighting 15

* Precise striking 10

* Orienteering 35

* Literacy 48

* Nggelu language 40

* Enael language 26

* Meditation 5

* Arcane lore 9

* focus 1

abilitycurrent proficiencyminimum proficiencymaximum proficiencydescriptionappraisal5110000Instinctively know the potential danger in opponents or situations, and the value of most objects.instincts201100Humans are known for their strongly engrained fight or flight instincts.soul sight351350Passively detect the presence of invisible and magical entities.awakened1110000You have the instincts of an untrained mage, and an unnaturally bright aura.cloak essence141050With an effort of will, you can conceal your nature from the casual observer.perseverance8190Better live and adapt in harsh conditions.refine energy220200Refine natural mana into useable magical energy with your spirit.spell sight295250Achieve the  required mindset to observe the flow of mana in all things.weaver stance155350Enter the trance-like state required to weave spells.rune words5350725Understand the significance and effects of runes enough to utilize them properly.flow surgeon1715200Read the flow of energy in living thing’s, and comprehend how to influence it using physical means.

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  See you guys for the fights next chapter! I hate cliffhangers, but only when I’m reading!

*insane echoing laughter*

*vanishes*