Page 50 of The Source of Storms

“Don’t let them see you staring. It’ll go straight to their heads.”

I turned to see El tightening leather bracers over her forearms.

“You look awfully fresh after all those beers last night,” I said.

“Lots of water, and the blessing of a fae complexion.” She put a hand under her chin to display her face and smiled sweetly.

“Lovely,” I mumbled, “and completely unfair.”

“Ah, come now, your fae-touched blood must help a bit, you don’t seem too bad,” she said.

“Better than I expected, worse than I’d like to be,” I said. I turned back to the men sparring in the ring. Their wet hair clung to their foreheads and rain dripped down their faces. The ground beneath them had turned to mud, but they moved with a confident grace.

“If you want to go back to bed, I’ll tell the boys to fuck off for you,” El offered.

“If you’re all here, I’m here,” I said, stifling a yawn. “I have to learn somehow. I am looking forward to another bath in that tub after this though.”

“Speaking of learning, I was hoping you and I could run through a different style of fighting today. Hand to hand combat is important, it’ll get you through a tight spot. But Sourcery… Sourcery will win you a battle. Eilith was teaching you, yes?”

“Yes, but I’ve never tried to use it as a weapon. More just manipulations of natural forces. Moving water, starting fires, summoning plant growth. Things like that.”

“Excellent,” El said. “You’ll catch on quick then. Come on.”

She led me to the opposite end of the ring, where a set of straw and burlap dummies were staked into the ground with a tall wooden wall behind them, separating the training rings from the Ironguard Hall behind. She stopped about fifteen paces back from the dummies and blew into her cupped hands to warm her fingers.

“Do you know how to summon water? Make it rain or snow, for instance?”

I nodded. “One of the first things I learned.”

“Good. This will feel similar, but the intention behind it is different. Your intention, your will, as you know, is vital in Sourcery. The idea is to condense that power, sharpen it, and throw it.”

She drew back a hand and flicked it forward with a snap of her wrist. Shards of ice the size of short-swords answered at her fingertips, flying into a training dummy and exploding in a deadly array of cold shrapnel.

“The explosion at the end is a bonus. I’ll teach you how after you’ve mastered the ice daggers,” she said with a satisfied smile.

She showed me the motion, the nearly imperceptible touching and separating of two fingertips she had done as she flung the ice from her hand, and spoke aloud the incantation in ancient Senuan she had not voiced.

El explained, “One of the hardest things to master in a fight is drawing in sufficient power, and doing it quickly enough to land an effective shot. Unless you’re standing well back from an advancing army, you won’t have time to build on an incantation. You have to grab the power you need quickly, and expel it with precision just as fast.

“Give it a go, and don’t worry too much about speed this time. Just get the shape of the projectiles right, and enough power behind them to make them fly.”

I raised my hand to shoulder height, as she had done, mirrored her somatic actions, and whispered the incantation. The power responded instantly, rushing into me from every direction. It hit me like a herd of horses, knocking me off balance. I flung my hand forward, barely managing to aim as I stumbled. My only thought was to discharge it as quickly as I could without hurting myself or anyone else.

Projectiles of ice the length of Byrgir’s claymore and several times as thick went far wide of the dummy, exploding in a shattering cacophony. Some of them embedded themselves into the wooden wall behind the dummy with heavy thuds.

Silence followed. I felt everyone’s eyes on me at once, and I turned to look at El. She stared back, mouth agape.

“Well. Looks like control will be your biggest challenge. Not speed. And certainly not power.” She chuckled.

“What the fuck was that?” Crow called from behind us.

I kept my head low, eyes down. A hot flush was seeping across my cheeks and I wanted to hide it.

“If you’re going to insult our guest, at least make it clever, Crow,” El snapped back with a smoldering glare.

“Careful, El! She’s going to be stronger than you in no time!” Byrgir joked as they approached and leaned casually on the sparring ring rail.

El grabbed my shoulders and squared me to the target again, my back to the men. “Ignore them. They have no idea how hard it is to handle power like this. The best they can throw is air puffs to tickle each other’s dicks.”

---