Clear as Crystal by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-15T23:00:00+00:00

Yokïmi tried to maintain her calm as she finished weaving the rune patterns in the air necessary for casting her Razor Beam spell. There was a conspicuous absence of any sort of iron in the chamber, ensuring she didn’t accidentally call upon that material to power her spell.

Which meant pain was coming. She flinched as she called out, “ Incroive zi akai – vir .” A small hitch in her voice wasn’t enough to stop the magic from activating. She’d cast the spell too often. The pattern was so familiar. She kept the small errors within the margins to still achieve success.

But then it was time for the unfamiliar part. As the final elements of the spell came into line, the magic demanded an energy source to bring it all to life. Normally, this was the point where she would build the bridge to the material components, open the path, and then use her physical Tolerance to keep the path wedged open long enough for the spell to exhaust itself. Instead, she turned the spell’s hunger on herself.

Sizzling pain lanced through her, crawling under her skin and burning along her bones like she’d grabbed hold of a small bolt of lightning. Her concentration evaporated and her fists clenched. She sucked her arms in against her sides and let out a seething hiss as she fought to dispel the magic before it carved into her any deeper. Her vision whited out with the pain, then slowly cleared as the magic ceased its demands.

“Ai ya! It’s like willfully cutting myself with a knife. Only it hurts a hundred times more!” she cursed aloud.

Not far off, Yeztinass folded his arms, tucking his hands into the wide openings of his crimson robe’s sleeves so that only his serpent-like snout could be seen. “The pain will never fully vanissh. But it sseemss worse than it iss. The nature of thiss pain is wholly different from anything you have experienced before. Your body iss ressponding more intenssely to warn you. Thiss iss a natural reaction. But it iss one you musst ssuppresss.”

“Easier said than done.” Yokïmi grimaced, shaking her arms as she paced back and forth to bleed off the nervous energy clinging to her crystalline form. “It’s worse that I know it is coming. It’s like trying to leave your arm on a chopping block even when you can see the sword falling to hack it off.”

“Conssider that metaphor,” replied the ChiKiln master. His tone remained smooth and unhurried. In all the months she had learned from him, the zaskran had never slipped from that innate sense of calm.

She did consider it, even as she considered him for the thousandth time. Unlike Taliskhan, she’d never developed any sort of personal rapport with the ChiKiln. While her Bellatir master wasn’t an open book, Yeztinass was definitively a closed one. She’d never seen him without his robes. Didn’t even know the truth of his physical nature, beyond knowing his height was around three quarters of the way between five and six feet.

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