Atomic Mage by Garrett Carter (short books for teens txt) 📕

had smiled shrugged and lifted the glass panels he had laid out at the foot of the cliff into their proper places with no further issues.

So with his body in order and food and water taken care of a little fun time was in order.

Sitting down on the river bank he expanded his power till it reached the opposite bank and began his training.

Sensing the fish and other animals, plants, and insects vibrations in the river he began by doing a wide scan of all the deep water before him he started his game of catch and release.

Cade would startle the fish by grabbing them with his power then release them only to try and catch the spooked fish again as he tried to track them through the water.

He found to his surprise that he could feel the fishes... he didn't think they were feeling, they were more what drove the fishes on a daily basis.

The most prominent of those instinctual directives was to feed their hunger and protect their little territories along Cade's little swath of river.

After a few hours of this, he was pretty happy with the results, he could reliably catch his chosen fish with minimal effort and concentration.

During his training he had found another caiman, the hunger he felt from the large reptile causing a small amount of rage in him.

He had taken perverse delight in tossing that oversized belt with an overblown opinion of itself a couple hundred feet in the air to smack down hard on the river.

Was it petty, why yes it was, did it make him feel better....hell yes!

He wasn't going to be another snack pack for a predator ever again.

Watching the corpse of the river croc float down the river gave him pause though.

The question of how he had felt the instinctual thoughts from the denizens of the river was a quandary he hoped to solve.

The fact that he could sense what another being was thinking would come in handy he was sure.

Sitting on the beach thoughts of the electrical impulses of brains in his mind he felt something enter the range of his senses coming from upstream on top of the water.

As he stood up and looked to his left he saw a decent-sized barge floating downstream, a handful of people standing on it.

A small burst of excitement coursed through him before he ran through his two options, would he run or stand and greet these strangers.

Settling on a mix of the two he backed 20 feet up the bank towards his home and waited.

As he watched them approach he had to admit the crew of the barge wasn't bad, skillfully bringing the craft effortlessly to the shore he had just vacated.

Taking a headcount of the men on board he counted six of them in nondescript black leather uniforms reminiscent of a mid-evil fair.

"Hello there", Cade waved as he greeted the men as they stepped onto the sand and gravel of the beach, "what can I help you with".

A wave of uneasiness went through the group as he watched them glance at each other in confusion.

"Guess they don't speak English around these parts."

The largest one, a monster of a man who looked to overtop him by at least a couple of heads, looked to his far-right and said something to the shorter but still stocky man next to him.

He watched the shorter man take off in a sprint back towards the boat they came in on.

A faint rattling sound reached him as he saw the man grab what looked like chains from the bottom of the boat.

"Yea.. no that's not happening."

Cade began to turn to leave these assholes who thought they were about to sell his big ass into slavery if the chains were any indication.

He was distracted by thoughts of Roots running through his mind as he looked back to the other five assembled men.

As a soft clatter of wood on wood broke the silence Cade noticed one of the shorter slighter men releasing an arrow from a bow that he had overlooked at his first inspection of the group.

The arrow slammed into the meat of this leg causing him to stumble slightly.

"Well, that gator skin did sweet fuckall," Cade said through gritted teeth as his leg started to throb.

Pulling the arrow out of his leg with a grunt he decided these fuckers were going to hurt.

Feeling the pain fade from his leg he took off at a dead sprint towards the five men.

A split second later surprised expressions greeted him as he laid a haymaker into the face of the short archer who had decided to make him a pincushion.

His hand caved in the man's googly-eyed black face and snapped his head back with an audible crunch as the vertebrae attaching his head to his neck crumbled under Cades metal-reinforced punch.

As he backed up from the four remaining men Cade felt good about that hit as he felt the pain from his bruised knuckles fade.

He had to give it to the group of slavers, they reacted fairly quickly jumping back and drawing weapons.

Looking the men over Cade identified a human man with skin bronzed by his time in the sun with a long sword in his grip.

To the right of the human, he saw what he assumed was a dwarf, shorter than him by close to 2 feet and sporting a beard that reached his knees and brandishing short axes in each hand.

The massive man next to the dwarf caused Cade to do a