Page 203 of The Shadow Wand

CHAPTER ONE

WRAITH BATS

ELLOREN GREY

Sixth Month

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’rionblade’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.”

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