Northwestern Agolith Desert
Lukas, Valasca, and Chi Nam begin my intensive runic training that first full day in Chi Nam’s desert Vonor, a sense of urgency in the air.
Valasca opens a thick Noi runic text on the low circular table before me. We’re all seated around the onyx table in Chi Nam’s cavernous front room. Several more runic texts as well as a number of rune blades, including the Ash’rion, are spread out before us.
I take in the long columns of complicated runic shapes as Valasca brings her index finger to a line of angular Noi script.
“These all draw on fire elementals,” Valasca says. “We’ll start there.”
“How quickly can you memorize?” Chi Nam asks me.
“Pretty fast,” I say as I study the shapes, comfortingly aware of Lukas’s arm sliding around my waist. “I had to memorize hundreds of apothecary formulas at university.”
I visually match three of the runes on the page with runes marked on the Ash’rion blade’s hilt. “Did you fashion the runes on some of these blades?” I ask Valasca and Chi Nam.
“A few of them,” Valasca says, her finger flicking toward three of the smaller blades. “And I charged them too.”
“Sage must be able to charge runes on weapons as well, correct?” I ask.
All three of them nod.
“Sagellyn Gaffney can charge runes because she is a Light Mage,” Chi Nam explains. “Only runic sorcerers or Light Mages can charge runes.”
I look to Lukas, trying to work it all out. “But you can use a rune blade without being either of those things.”
“I can,” Lukas concurs. “Because the runes have been precharged with power by a rune sorcerer, and I know the runic spells that can unlock some of them. I don’t possess the ability to charge runes since I’m not a Light Mage.”
“He can amplify the charged magic with his affinity power, though,” Chi Nam adds as she and Lukas exchange a conspiratorial look. She turns to me. “And so can you.”
“Only exponentially stronger,” Lukas says, flashing me a sly grin as his finger traces a provocative circle against my waist, trailing heat.
“All right, then,” I say, gesturing toward the text as my resolve to learn how to fight strengthens. “Let’s begin.”
* * *
Chi Nam spends the rest of the day setting up complicated rune-amplification sorcery around our charging portal, while Lukas, Valasca, and I pore over the rune texts for countless hours until I’m bleary-eyed from sustained focus on the intricate shapes.
Evening arrives without my noticing, time seeming suspended within the walls of Chi Nam’s windowless, cavernous Vonor. We’ve somehow slipped into speaking Noi exclusively as Lukas and Valasca drill me relentlessly, first on individual runes, and then on increasingly complex runic combinations and their corresponding spells.
“Feh, Ur, Tey, Oth...” Valasca calls out the names of Noi fire-and earth-based runes in varying sequences to prompt me to find the runes on the Ash’rion blade’s hilt.
I slide my fingers along the hilt’s smooth surface, locating the rune combinations faster and faster, my violin training proving to be invaluable for speed in this.
One combination to throw out an explosion of fire along with the weapon.
Another to pull lightning into the blade.
Another to hurl stones alongside the weapon.
Another to open up a chasm below the target upon contact.
“Good,” Valasca finally says as the Vonor’s sapphire runic light flickers over her angular face, enhancing her vivid sky blue hue. She smiles at Lukas. “We’ll take her out tomorrow and see how much havoc she’s capable of wreaking.”
* * *
That evening, I take a walk outside the Vonor’s shielded ledge, needing to stretch my legs and clear my head. My mind is swimming with runic shapes and combinations, the Ash’rion sheathed at my side along with my Wand.
The crimson moon is high in the sky, ruby stars strewn all over the heavens. The stormwall that limns the horizon flashes with puffs of muted white light, its thunder a soft, disjointed rhythm.
For a moment, I’m filled with the melancholy desire to have my violin with me. To sound out a melody over this vast, otherworldly landscape.
I walk along the flat, curving ledge that seems to encircle the Vonor’s rocky mountain. The night air is cool against my skin as I take in the translucent dome-shield that Chi Nam has cast over her Vonor’s entire mountain exterior, including this ledge. Faint blue runes rotate slowly against the shield’s entire surface, the motion soothing.
Feeling momentarily safe here, I continue walking, curious about this strange, new place I’ve landed in. The world darkens as I move away from both the Vonor’s lantern-lit entrance and the adjacent portal’s bright blue glow.
I pause as I round a sharp curve.
Ruby moonlight spills over the scene before me, glinting purple off the edges of the Vonor’s shield runes. Countless gigantic rock formations arc over the desert, as if some god has drawn the cascading curves with an enormous brush, the sweeps of crimson paint turned to stone.
The horizon’s stormwall has begun flashing a gauzy amber light, and in the closer distance, a moonlit herd of some type of huge, lumbering beast is lazily moving away across the desert’s ruddy sands.
I crane my neck toward the gem-like splash of garnet stars, a feeling of unreality washing over me, and not just from being in the middle of this dreamlike desert landscape, clear out of the Western Realm.
A small cinder of possibility has lit inside me.
I have power. True power that I can access. Because I can amplify elemental runes with the aura of my affinity magic, even though the trees have bound my lines.
My gaze falls to the dark silhouettes of the treetops that rise past my elevated ledge.
Agolith Mesquite trees.
The grove’s branches writhe upward toward the starry sky, and I’ve an intrinsic sense of how the taproots of all these desert trees burrow down deep for water, tangle, then extend outward for leagues and leagues, bringing them into communion with the distant forests of all the lands.
An amorphous sense of unease begins to prick at my skin.
They’re watching me.
Closely.
Black Witch.
The whisper brushes me on the slight breeze coming from the desert, and it sends a chill down my spine. I can feel the trees’ sharpened focus hovering in the air.
Tension burrows under my skin.
It’s like they’re waiting for something.
Something that’s coming for me.
I take a reflexive step back as I peer into the trees’ dark hollows and my eyes catch on a hulking black shape hidden there.
My heart flies into my throat, terror piercing me as I take another reflexive step away.
Perched on a branch and camouflaged by the dark of night is a horrific bat-like beast. Big as a panther, hunched and muscular and black as the darkest mahogany wood, its gleaming dark eyes slitted like a lizard’s. Leathery wings, no neck. Just huge jaws, silently grinding its teeth.
And there isn’t just one.
There’s a whole flock of them just past the shield, hidden inside the tree canopy.
All of their focus set on me.
I move to flee and back into a warm, hard person whose hands reach up to take hold of my arms. I whip my head around, my heartbeat slamming against my chest.
“Lukas...” I can barely get the words out as I point toward the canopy. “In the trees.”
“I know,” he says, lethally calm, as he takes in the night-camouflaged beasts.
I glance back at the bat things, desperately grateful for the shield. “Are they wraith bats?”
“They are,” he states, loosening his hold on me a bit.
“I think they’re hunti
ng me.”
Lukas studies them. “They’re drawn to prey that cowers easily. And they can sense fear and amplify it.”
The creatures bare their daggerlike teeth, and gooseflesh breaks out along my neck as Lukas’s hands slide away from my arms. I turn to face him. “So they are hunting me.”
Lukas’s voice is unsympathetic when it comes. “Because you cower when faced with a physical threat.”
Ire rises, cutting through the edge of my terror. “Fear is a reasonable response to them, Lukas.”
“No, it isn’t,” he counters. “Not with your aim. And you’re armed with one of the most powerful rune blades in existence. You’re thinking with your fear. Not your common sense.”
“So, if there was no shield, you wouldn’t be the least bit afraid of them?” I hate that I can’t keep a tremor out of my voice.
“I don’t fear them in the slightest.” Lukas eyes them coldly. “I see them like I see most enemies. As a puzzle to pick apart. To find the best way to dominate.”
He sets his relentless gaze back on me, and I hold his formidable stare. It’s brutal, the way he looks at things. But I realize, in one all-encompassing swoop, that I need to learn to think like a warrior.
“How do you manage to be so fearless?” I ask him, frustrated tears glazing my eyes as I wrestle with my terrified awareness of the bat things.
“Control,” Lukas says. “And skill. You have vast power, Elloren. The reasons you cower are your lack of control and skills, and your lack of belief in yourself. You need to strike away this weakness, or your enemies will take advantage of it.” He glances pointedly at the lurking bat monsters, and my fear spikes anew at the sight of their dark forms. A heightened tension shivers through my body as their thrall worms its way into me, seeking to break down every last shred of my resolve.
To immobilize me.
My airway constricts.
“Lukas...” I force out through the rise of a swamping terror.
Lukas flashes me an intense look, then walks past me toward the edge of the ledge. Without breaking his stride, he throws his palm out toward the shield, blue rays of light flashing from the contact, and then he moves straight through the translucent dome wall.
My fear explodes as he walks over the remaining ledge and stops at its cliff-edge, right in front of the wraith bat–infested treetops.
Breaking through my terror, I rush toward the shield as another wave of horror explodes through my knotted lines, constricting my lungs anew and halting my steps.
I struggle to pull in air, paralyzed to the spot, as I shiver with terror for Lukas.
The wraith bats grow agitated as they watch him, rustling in the trees and snapping their jaws threateningly. Getting no reaction from him, they begin to sniff at the air with their flat, slender nostrils, making wet, snuffling sounds.
They draw back, as if fearful of Lukas’s scent. Four of them flap their powerful wings and fly away.
Lukas draws two rune blades and hurls them forward with sudden, violent force.
I flinch as both knives impale the trees’ trunks with whiplike cracks, thin white lightning exploding from the blades sideways in a burst of light that startles the remaining creatures.
Disoriented and enraged, the beasts let out low, snarling growls as they struggle to keep their balance on the jostled branches and Lukas holds out his rune-marked palms, his blades flying back into his hands.
Snarling and snapping teeth, the bats launch themselves from the branches and fly away.
Lukas resheathes his blades, turns, and holds up his palm toward the shield, then strides back inside it in a flash of blue light.
He stops before me, a challenging look in his eyes.
I gape at him in amazement as the bats’ psychic effect on my fear dissipates like a vise slowly releasing, but my own underlying fear remains, its daunting echo racing through me.
Lukas flicks his finger against the hilt of the Ash’rion blade sheathed at my side. “You could have taken those creatures down or driven them off solely with what we taught you today. You don’t need to cower before them.” His brow tenses. “That’s why, starting tomorrow, we’re going to be hard on you. Because a lot of what you need to learn has nothing to do with magic. You need to build up your confidence.”
Sobered by what he’s telling me, I look past him and watch the silhouette of the deadly flock as it flies away over the moonlit sands.
The fear they’ve amplified in me slides down into a sullen sense of foreboding.
We’re both quiet for a moment, the air cool and still as I move toward the shield. I can feel Lukas’s gaze on me.
I take a long, shuddering breath as I stare at the barrier of storms in the distance, lightning forking all over the stormwall. We’re hidden for the moment, in the middle of nowhere, but eventually, Vogel will find me.
“I want to learn how to be truly brave,” I say, my voice low and firm. “Like you.”
A ripple of Lukas’s fire rushes through me, and after a moment his arms slide around my waist as he folds himself against my back. A tide of emotion rushes through me, like a storm breaking open.
“I’m going to learn how to face down those bats without a shred of fear,” I say in a harsh whisper as I watch the flash of lightning in the stormwall. “And I’m going to fight Marcus Vogel. Without backing down.”
“You will,” Lukas agrees as our fires feed into each other, pulsing heat. “We’ll help you learn to harness your power.” He leans down to softly nuzzle my neck, his voice pitched lower when it comes. “You could start by learning how to dominate me.” I feel his mouth tilt into a slight smile against my neck.
He sends out more fire, and his heat tingles straight down my spine, catching on my affinity lines and sparking a hard flash of desire that has me flushing.
I give him a wry look over my shoulder, increasingly flustered by his power as I slide my hands along his muscular arms. “I have a feeling you’re a lot harder to dominate than the wraith bats.”
Lukas gives a low laugh. “I am. Which is why learning to dominate me would be well worth your effort.” He leans in closer, his lips brushing my ear, suddenly serious. “Come back with me, Elloren.”
It’s clear what he’s offering. To bed me, yes, but more than that. I can feel the longing in his fire, how everything in him is oriented toward me. And suddenly...I want him. And not just physically. I want to merge with what he is and claim it for my own. Because he’s everything, in this moment, that I desperately want and need to be.
I turn around, take his hand...and bring him back inside with me.
* * *
We pass by Chi Nam and Valasca exiting as we enter the Vonor’s cavernous front room en route to Chi Nam’s meditation chamber. Lukas grabs our bedding and the Sanjire root, then leads me through a long and winding passage that eventually comes to what appears to be a small map room inside one of the Vonor’s many caverns, rolls of maps lining shelves hewn into the stone and affixed to the walls, a black carpet marked with an ivory dragon image under our feet. The walls are a gleaming onyx stone that glitters sapphire from the runic light that emanates from a single lantern set on a small shelf.
I close the doorway’s rune-marked curtain with a decided yank that I feel straight down my spine, because this feels like something new. Like my heart is opening up to him more than it ever has before.
Lukas lays the bedrolls side by side, pulls the Sanjire root bottle from his tunic’s pocket, and sets it on a small alcove in the cavern wall, eyeing me poignantly as he does so.
We remove our tunics and weapons, Lukas’s eyes flicking up to meet mine every so often, his muscles flexing as he moves. I let my gaze roam freely over the hard planes of his rune-marked chest and his muscular arms as he pulls off his boots and the blades he has strapped just under his pants, fire rising in me and simmering through my lines
in a slow burn.
Lukas straightens, unfastens his wand sheath, the wand still inside, and sets it aside as I pull off the black Noi pants I’m wearing, now dressed only in a black linen Noi camisole and pantalets.
His gaze fixes on my body and travels over my thin, sparse garments.
We both still as our eyes meet and Lukas’s fire flashes out to ripple through my lines.
An invitation.
My breath stutters as I take him in. The familiar lines of his face. His deep-green eyes. His hard body and the way his skin glimmers green. The fastlines on his hands.
The Sealinglines on his wrists.
Heat blooms on my face, my chest, as I remember the wild thrill of our joinings. And the feel of his unrestrained power.
He’s all mine. I know it to be true. He’s given himself to me fully over and over again.
I walk to where the Sanjire root bottle rests on stone, pick it up, and clumsily unstopper it, feeling breathless and giddy with nerves. As if this is our first time again.
I look down into the bottle and realize there’s only one tendril of the root left.
“This is the last one,” I tell him.
Lukas’s expression tenses.
It doesn’t need to be said. We both know that any one of these moments could be our last time together.
“Well, then,” he says, his fire pulsing, “we’ll just have to make it count.”
I pull the root from the bottle and place it in my mouth, feeling Lukas’s attention tight on me as I set the bottle back on the ledge. The glass scrapes against the stone with a clink that sounds loud in the silent room, a combustive tension charging the air between us.
I turn to find Lukas’s eyes trained on me, his fire ratcheting up to a blaze and shuddering through me, and I’m lit up and intimidated and excited by the wild desire that’s riding with it.
I walk over and pause before him.
“So,” I say with a nervous half smile, suddenly wanting him with everything in me. “You think I’m good with my hands.”
Lukas doesn’t hesitate. He slides his arms around me and pulls me close, his lips coming to my temple as he kisses me there fervently and his fire breaks loose, intense emotion in the way he’s holding me now, in the way his fire is covetously encircling my lines.
The Shadow Wand Page 54
