Hearing her tone take on a note of concern, Alistar placed the clothes that he had collected into the wash basket near her four-poster bed and then returned to the table. He detailed what had transpired in Caedmon’s study with careful words, avoiding specifics when it came to the truth of his lineage. Even after all this time, he still hadn’t explicitly told any of his friends that his mother was the fourth child of King Glenden, since he had promised his uncle that he would keep his parentage a secret.
Lessa spoke after directing a tepid glance at the door, her voice barely above a whisper. “So, you can’t tell them who your parents are, and because of that they both might think that you’re their son? What a difficult situation.”
“When I first moved here, Uncle Caedmon told me that if our relatives ever found out about me then they would try to use me for their own benefit. I think he was right.”
Anice leaned back in her chair, balancing herself on its hind legs like an absentminded student. “You think our uncles are trying to use you? What could you possibly do for them?”
“Nothing, at least not yet. But the fact that they also want to keep me a secret from our grandfather sends a pretty clear message.”
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s…it’s probably better that you don’t.”
Alistar might have been young, but he was no fool. Once he reached adulthood, so long as his grandfather remained ignorant of his existence and thus never forced him to undergo the curse of compulsion, then he would be the only Silverkin in the kingdom that could openly challenge the man for his throne. If it were anyone else in their house, then the king could simply order them to commit suicide and be done with it, but such a thing wouldn’t work against Alistar. How his uncles might manage to place him into such a position was difficult to determine, but he felt in his heart that the two men weren’t worthy of his trust and that he had to remain wary around them in the future. Antoine especially, for he seemed to have high ambitions hidden behind his analyzing eyes.
“To think that the dukes are planning to send an expedition into that dungeon,” said Lessa, trying to steer the subject away from Alistar’s predicament. “Wait until Zech hears about this. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to tag along with them.”
“Jaden too,” said Anice, who didn’t seem averse to the thought. “They hardly hangout with us anymore anyway, so it wouldn’t matter.”
“Don’t say that,” said Alistar, who was fully aware of how hard his friends were working. “They come around as much as I do, and you can’t exactly blame them.”
“Tell that to Lily. She’s been so quiet lately, it’s depressing.”
“What does that have to do with Jaden?”
Lessa put on a knowing smile. “For all your smarts, Alie, you can be pretty oblivious sometimes.”
“Hey, I told you not to call him that.”
As the girls began to fuss over what Lessa had said, Alistar focused on the main message of the sentence. Lily was acting differently now that Jaden wasn’t around? Everyone in the group knew that the big, broad-shouldered boy fancied the eldest of the triplets, but based on what he’d just heard this affection wasn’t completely one-sided.
Should I tell him? Judging that doing so would make his friend the happiest person in town, he resolved to share the sensitive information with the other boy the next time that they sparred together.
Alistar stuck around for the next hour or so before he excused himself and retreated to the cool, stony confines of his room in the basement. After checking to make sure that his precious objects were still hidden away in the bottom drawer of his dresser, he locked the door, retrieved Haussen Scuff’s grimoire from beneath his pillow and then took a seat at his desk to resume studying from where he had left off earlier in the week.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He had already read the grimoire in its entirety and had nearly memorized all of its contents down to the letter, yet he felt it necessary to read through it a second time in order to familiarize himself with the theories and instructions that its long-dead author had recorded within.
Feeling a rush of curious excitement, Alistar found it interesting that Haussen Scuff repeatedly stressed the importance of a particular spell throughout the entirety of his work. That is, a reinforcement spell that essentially hardened surfaces, with a versatile effect of sharpening edges with carefully arranged inner energy. There were various stages of progression for this spell, some requiring far more energy than others, with each adding more utility to the technique. The majority of Haussen’s spells were meant to be used in tandem with this reinforcement spell, which in its peak stage could apparently make a simple stick far harder and sharper than a sword of fine steel.
Thinking of the little daggers of ice that he had been able to create as of late, Alistar began to bubble with anticipation at the thought of reinforcing them with this new technique. Judging from the amount of inner energy he possessed, so long as he could hone his control over his internal reserves then he shouldn’t have any problems in the future with making use of the reinforcement spell’s final stage.
Just imagine what I’ll be able to do once I master these techniques.
The more he read about the subject, the more fascinated he became. This was a graded spell, after all, meaning that it could be used by mages of various levels, with novices able to use incomplete versions until eventually working their way up to its full potential.
Alistar spent the next hour or so visualizing each step in the casting process of the reinforcement spell’s most basic version, imagining how it might feel to move his inner energies in specific ways within his body and also to match its arrangement to that of the element that he was hoping to manipulate. The key to using elemental spells was to first inspect the way that magical energies were assembled in their natural state, such as examining the energy within and around a candle’s flame to get a feel for how to mimic its arrangement with one’s own energy. Alistar was fairly familiar with the process of lowering the temperature of water in order to instantaneously freeze it, especially now that he had experienced winter several times. If he could get to a point where he was able to create and reinforce multiple pieces of ice at once, then such a skill would surely enhance his combat capabilities when the time finally came for him to rescue Kaila from Crystellum.
Just two more years.
Suddenly sad, he recalled his tiny, teary-eyed friend and found himself wondering how she might look after all the time that had passed. As she was nearly two years older than him, Kaila would be fifteen this year, and had likely begun mining her own share of magic crystals many months ago.
Please be alive. Just hold on for a little longer and I’ll make sure that you’ll never have to cry again.
He looked up from his book as he noticed that Calum and Edmun had both entered the empty bedroom beside Anice’s room, their auras idling around a sofa chair that sat along the wall that separated the two quarters from one another.
Wiping at his eyes, he wondered what they were up to and decided to monitor them with his magical awareness in order to make sure that they didn’t attempt to harass the girls one last time. Evidently Anice and Lessa sensed the boys as well, for both of them promptly left their room and began to make their way to the lower levels of the house at a fairly quick pace.
Alistar wasn’t left wondering after their destination for long, as it was only a short while later that he faced his bed from atop his chair, contemplative as he stared at the two of them where they sat along the edge of the feather mattress. Lessa, whose pajamas were similar to Anice’s in style but coloured a light, pleasant blue, was taking in everything in sight with interested eyes.
“So this is Alie’s room. It looks exactly as I thought it would.”
Anice sent her friend an annoyed look that went unnoticed by the other girl.
Lessa’s eyes trailed over the work desk, which housed an inkwell and quill, several sheets of blank parchment, a few notebooks that he had been compiling information of interest in over the years, along with over two dozen books arranged in alphabetical order that were sandwiched between a pair of rectangular bookends of solid brass. Nearby to the door was his wooden practice sword, mirrored on the opposing wall by his dresser, wash basket, water basin, cleaning rag, and spare bucket that usually contained extra water for the basin. Everything in the room was orderly, from his perfectly-made bed to the recently dusted furniture and the wash basket that was half-filled with dirty laundry.