Chapter 4 part 2

Stirrings of Power

Faerwald sat cross legged in meditative state, with his eyes firmly shut. After a short time of balanced breathing he began to feel oddities that circulated in the air around him. Even though his eyes are closed he could feel them throbbing; brightening then dimming in a constant pattern.

Faerwald instinctively felt their faceted nature; multi-coloured and great in number. As the particles began to become clearer to him, they drifted closer to him. The more he saw, the more they approached. Closer and closer they came.

His mind perceived a bright blue particle extremely close to his face. It drifted nearer to him until it gently brushed against his nose. Suddenly the mysterious magical sense expanded into his own body. Faerwald’s sense began at his head. He saw flashes and sparks around his entire brain. The sense starts to descend, seeking the region of heat and light he could feel in his chest.

He goes deeper still, down into his neck and sees a world of pure force. Lines of energy ran down into the heart of his magical body. It wasn’t the flesh and blood heart that throbbed in his physical body. Rather it was a rotating blue sun, pocked and spewing its own blue flares. Faerwald realised it was this ‘heart’ that attracted the particles in the air.

These particles must be the mana. This sun must be beginning the formation of my mana well, so beautiful! The speed of its rotations increased and he watched in awe as the particles were drawn from the outside and devoured.

All colours were absorbed and the sun flashed like a rainbow showing no signs of slowing. Like a baby yearning for its mother milk, the sun yearned for the mana in the surroundings. It formed a rotational vortex as the mana particles were sucked into its centre.

A shimmering glow enveloped Faerwald and his surroundings. Faerwald opened his eyes and the sense began to fade. He could still feel the mysterious sun taking in mana particles at a phenomenal rate unhindered by its host opening its eyes.

I can already feel my body recovering. Faerwald thought as slivers of the decomposition pains began to recede and his otherworldly strength flooded in to replace it. I even feel lighter on my feet, I guess Auraleos was being serious when he said I’d be stronger than your average human.

He shivered and looked around feeling a pair of eyes on him, he looked around until he settled on a familiar soul tome hovering in front of him. An even more familiar small old magician sat on top of it. Speak of the devil, or in this case the annoying old mage man, and he shall appear.

“Well, hello again. Luckily you managed to create a mana well before you died, and a rather big one at that. It still hasn’t ended its absorption phase, quite a natural talent for magic. Congratulations. The young lady you were taught by seems to be an adept teacher, or had some very good teachers. Very succinct.” Auraleos drawled completely relaxed.

“Wait, you can see everything that’s happening to me”

“Of course, I’m not inside you soul tome for nothing.”

There goes any privacy I thought I had.

“What did you think, you could understand all languages in this world by yourself!”Auraleos continued, “you speak in the universal tongue that the Antarian mages developed. It converts everything to the language of your home world. ”

So I can understand Maia because of that, no wonder, I thought she was speaking in English.

“I see. Does it not work for all the glyphs in the ruins I was reincarnated into” Faerwald replied.

“We restricted the different Antarian glyphs you can understand. They are too powerful for you to use, the amount of mana required would kill you. However, you did unlock two more Antarian glyphs. You can probably channel mana into the glyphs without the tutelage of your little compatriot. After all, they are much stronger than current magic of the D’lrow from what I can tell, she’s just an intermediate mage.”

“So all I have to do is call out the glyph like Maia does?” Faerwald questioned.

“Figure it out yourself, if you can’t get stronger by yourself you’ll never complete your memories or even return home. Besides, your powers too weak to keep me in physical form for more than a minute, or even unlock much of your memories.” Without even a murmur off goodbye, the old man sank into the open soul tome.

Great, now I need to figure out how to use the glyph I saw without Maia’s help.

Faerwald finally felt his mana well settle. The perplexing sun had dissolved and a vast ‘well’ was left in its place. He got up and checked Maia had not awoken.If she saw that little spectacle, she would get the shock of a lifetime. Luckily she was still resting in a deep recovery sleep, the mana healing crystal formation slowly growing over her side again.

I better look through and see what kind of new glyphs appeared.

Feeling the glow on his chest he realised the glow only appeared when the soul tome was out. I must find out how to summon the soul tome at will, otherwise I’ll be stuck helpless in the middle of a battle. Looking at the first page of the book he realised that these were the glyphs from the walls in the Ancient Antarian ruins. Luckily, I won’t be limited to just the one spell.

Կրակ

-still shifted to fire allowing him to understand it. Most of the others flickered, their letters morphing but staying the same.

There’s two more that have changed to the universal language according to Auraleos Faerwald thought excitedly, as he closed the tome. He still saw Maia resting. I better go somewhere Maia can’t see me, I’m not sure what these glyphs could do.

Finally picking himself of the ground Faerwald began to walk westward, the opposite direction of where the master class beast appeared a night ago. The closed soul tome still glowed and floated in front of him while he walked. Sweat began to pour down his body and the sun scorched his head. I think this is far enough ,stopping from the heat. Looking around he could barely see the carriage.

Finally, I can check the other two glyphs.

Faerwald opened the tome and saw that under fire, two more glyphs had indeed morphed so that he could understand it.

հրավիրել -------summon

Բուժել-----heal

Now he had three glyphs he could understand, fire, summon and heal. I wonder what summon does. I definitely know what the others do, I better try those first, before trying summon.

“Fire” Faerwald spoke the word. Nothing happened, the soul tome remained idle and he couldn't feel any changes in his mana well. Laughing, Faerwald thought; Well, it couldn't be that easy. I don’t want to mention the word fire in a sentence and catch on fire.

“Didn’t Maia say to imbue the words with mana when casting magic, although it isn’t for Antarian magic, it’s probably the same concept.”

Faerwald began to fall in the same trance when forming his mana well, breathing deeply he opened his internal senses. He began to practice moving the mana itself around. Wow, this is pretty hard . After attempting to move the mana around he could only illicit ripples across the surface.

After many attempts he began to move the mana and separate it from the well. As soon as it separated Faerwald could easily move it to wherever he wanted inside his body. Where should I bring the mana, I can’t really infuse words with the mana until I speak . A sudden breath escaped his mouth and he began to move the mana upwards through his chest and even higher. He kept moving it until it reached his mouth.

Կրակ

He spoke expecting the word to come out in a semblance of English. Instead his voice became layered with multiple voices. Some were deep and some were high all imposed onto each other. The result was a loud unsettling voice. As soon as the word finished leaving his mouth, a huge wave of fire blew out of his mouth. Exploding into the desert air and savagely burning his mouth.

" auuughhhhjuu "

A high pitched primal scream burst from his mouth. Tottering on his heels, he fell on his back writhing in pain.

Bringing up the mana from his well he tried to infuse the mana and invoke the heal glyph on his mouth.

" hegyeal " Faerwald sputtered. His tongue was destroyed by the blast. I can’t form words, in English or Antarian.

The pain making him lose his grip on reality, he almost let himself fade into a blissful state if unconsciousness. In a last ditch effort, Faerwald traced the glyph on to the ground.

Բուժել

Channelling the mana through his hands he touched the ground and allowed the mana to flow through into the floor.

The floor began to glow an ethereal white light. Faerwald willed his mouth to heal and watched in amazement, but still in pain, as tendrils of the ethereal light began to snake towards his mouth. They touched his lips and they healed. Slowly, but surely his entire mouth was filled by the light.

Faerwald sagged in relief and exhaustion. The heal had almost taken his entire mana well to invoke, even with its unusual size.

Faerwald lay in wait, his stomach grumbling and the soul tome still floating beside him. Hiding behind a crop of rocks he patiently tracked the movement of the Two Tongued Lizard. Maia really wasn't joking, there really are so many crawling around the desert. He began to hunt the lizards to improve his skill and get rid of the hunger from almost draining his mana well.

I can feel about 60 % of my mana. Maybe enough for a couple more fire blasts. I had to wait so long just for it to regenerate.

The lizard crawled forward over some markings on the floor. Faerwald tensed and activated the mana he stored on fire glyph traced on the sand earlier. The sand erupted with fire and roasted the beast, killing it instantly. Faerwald jumped up with punching both hands in the air in celebration.

"Yes"

He walked over the smoking body of the lizard and waited for it to cool. Taking a seat on the hot sand he began to dig in, ripping into the flesh of the recently slain monster. I thought this would be disgusting, but it’s surprisingly is delicious. But then again, that could just be my extreme hunger.

Faerwald could feel his mana well start to re-fill. Seeing the floating soul tome in-front of him he decided to try the last spell in his tome. I learned my lesson now, I better trace it like before. Maia can probably use fire because she's Draconian and has some resistance fire." he deliberated, tracing the glyph into the ground and infusing mana into it. Walking to the rock again, he hid behind the rock and activated the dormant mana.

Faerwald waited for a full minute without anything happening. I definitely felt a change in my power. Something did happen. Standing up he could see no apparent changes and he carefully approached the patch he drew on. It had disappeared!

The glyph definitely activated, it even consumed the actual glyph. I must not have seen the heal glyph disappear before because of the pain. Faerwald had a peculiar feeling, he knew he was missing something. Trying again he called the spell through his voice, again the unnerving, unsettling voice rang out.

հրավիրել

Feeling something shift in his peripheral vision he glanced down and saw his floating soul tome. Could it be?

Invoking it again the glyph on his chest glowed and the tome sunk into the chest.

I see, it just summons my tome. I was hoping it was a beast of some sort. No matter, at least I won’t have a suspicious book floating in front of me all the time.

Finally Faerwald began to walk back to the camp.

“Amazing, you already formed your well, and such a large one at that!" Maia exclaimed.

She had finished resting and packing up when Faerwald appeared from the desert and then told her that he had finished the formation.

I'll probably wait till she teaches me some magic before using any if the glyph magic I know. I felt that it was pretty big, but I figured everyone’s must be that big.

“Is it really that large?”

“Well, it’s not that big compared to a higher level mage. But for a beginner it’s quite sizeable, you must've been a talented magician before loosing your memories!” Suddenly as if realising her mistake she started to apologize.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that".

"It's fin...."

Faerwald was interrupted by a deep rumbling. The floor began to shake, shocked both Faerwald and Maia frantically searched for the source of the rumbling. Seeing a cloud of sand rising in the distance they could make out a procession of carriages led by two large identical Triple Threat Blood Lions.

“What a coincidence, it’s two of the monsters that attacked last night” Maia said worriedly.

Noticing the crinkles on the face of his fair companion Faerwald enquired of her; “Do you think that monster attacked us was from them?”

“No, that beast was definitely untamed. But having two master class beasts means that the owners be at least an insanely strong master class or even a sage class mage. But since those type of strong respectable mages usually travel in small groups or train in seclusion, they must be under the employ of very, very prominent noble family. We can’t afford to offend them” Maia responded worriedly and began to wait for the approaching procession while wringing her hands.

Oh, a noble. I’ve never seen one before, this should be interesting.

As the two beasts gradually became clearer, the splendour and quality of the carriages became apparent. Polished wood made the frames and gold inlay the corners, doors and patterns. Large intimidating pack beasts pulled each carriage in the procession and at the front, the two majestic Lions were reigned by a handsome young man. That must be the noble, must be a son of a big family. Behind the young man, Faerwald spotted two figures. One robust and well-muscled, well over 6 feet and lopsided smile on his face with flaming red hair down to his waist. The other was an older man with a staff and stern visage.

The second looks like a mage, but the first doesn’t really fit the bill. Faerwald thought just as Maia whispered under her breath.

“That’s a warrior, could even be master class, first time I’ve seen one.”

“Are they rare?” Faerwald whispered back looking at the approaching convoy.

“At that level of power, definitely. Warriors take much longer to get stronger and under much more pressure. At the same rank, they can defeat a magician counterpart of the same rank most of the time. That man is quite young, he must be a genius.”

Faerwald studied the two men behind the noble, a new-found respect colouring his thoughts. The two beasts and the procession behind them halted in front of the travellers and a clear voice rang out…

//Part two done

//Question for anyone who knows about formatting. I want to have the glyph calls in the window that doesn't take the entire row only as much as the word. Anyone know how to do that?

//Thanks for reading as always!!!!!!!!!!!