Edge of the Woods: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Lost Edge Book 1) by Andrew Rowe

Author:Andrew Rowe [Rowe, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2023-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

Waking up was a surprise.

Not just because I’d woken up in the storage shed of the sword school with no idea about how I’d gotten there. No, I was more surprised that I’d woken up at all.

The injuries I’d sustained from the sword saint … they were real. Very real, and without treatment, very likely fatal. I still wasn’t sure exactly what species I was, but most things tended to die if they bled enough. And I’d been bleeding … well, a lot.

That part hadn’t stopped. Not entirely. There was enough fresh blood on my arms, my hands, and the floor of the shed to show that I hadn’t been magically fixed.

Not entirely, at least. With a trembling hand, I reached to my throat. I found scarring there, but no open wound.

Someone must have treated it with an essence technique, I realized blearily. Or perhaps a very direct application of a healing potion or poultice.

My hands were a different story. Some of the injuries had closed, but there were other tiny cuts that continued to bleed freely onto … well, everything.

I tried to move again, tried to push myself to my feet … but no. My body failed. I succeeded only in trembling.

Agony.

There is no way to describe the kind of agony that comes with your essence being cut a thousand times. There’s something deeper inside you than any bone, any tissue, deeper even than the scattered fragments of your consciousness. Something of the self, a mess of essence, spirit, shade, memory, and layers beyond that composes the core of any individual.

… But within that same agony was something else I felt within that distant sense of self, burning beyond the pain.

It was there in my heart and in my veins, shining brightly in the wounds that she had carved.

Sword essence. That power had already flowed deep within me, deeper than I’d known, but the sword saint’s cuts had unleashed it like a torrent that flooded through every part of me. When I closed my eyes and focused, I felt it in every cut that still bled freely in spite of treatment, in every half-healed scar.

And I had many, many new scars. Fortunately, those were only on the surface of my body. Essence scars could slow the process of gathering and using essence. Enough of them could prevent advancement completely.

She’d injured my essence structure, but not in a way that had caused scarring. No … if I understood what I was sensing …

She’d done quite the opposite.

There are channels within the body that cause essence to flow from one Dianis Point to the next. There are many names for them in different cultures, but I’ll use the simplest — star veins.

I probably should have explained this before I mentioned them earlier, shouldn’t I? I can get ahead of myself at times.

Anyway, these star veins are used to process essence within the body, moving it in and out of Dianis Points. They’re basically the bloodstream, but for essence.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that there are other types of star veins, too.

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