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

He healed the damage but the mental body of the slaver stayed deathly still on the ground.

"Braindead,"

Cade shivered in disgust as the memory of the poor woman and the guard the slaver had abused and tortured surfaced in his mind.

Not finding any reason to keep him around any longer, he mulched what was left of Oren's brain.

He was forcibly ejected from the man's mind as he died, providing no answers to his question of an afterlife.

Looking over to the wizard on the ground, he hopped into the wizard's mind much more gently than he had with Oren.

He settled into puppet the wizard to his home for a more comfortable interrogation.

Cade used his power to quickly strip the bodies down cursing to himself as he forgot what happens to bodies after they die.

The corpses all had shit themselves after their deaths, coating all the pants and some of the shirts of the dead slavers.

Removing the mess was too much of an effort for him to bother with, most of the gear unlikely to fit him.

He took the clothes and leather armor not covered by shit, along with the weapons and the packs.

Looking to the river he remembered the barge they rode in on.

He shrugged before reaching out with his abilities to drag the from the water and setting it against the cliff a few feet from his door.

Looking at his puppet Cade freed his head from the neck up.

"If you can understand me I want you to nod your head."

The wizard nodded his head slowly in reply.

A smile crossed his face as he cheered internally as his experiment with copying the languages the lizard man had known was proven to be a success.

"Good let us head inside and have a talk."

Walking into his home Cade left the door open to let the wizard walk in.

Closing it behind his puppet he pointed to one of the chairs at his kitchen table.

The wizard sat in it with a sneer directed at Cade which disappeared with a mental push from a smirking Cade.

"Good boy now stay while I take care of something real quick."

As he finished the command he removed the wizard's physical freedom, removing control over his body with a thought.

Cade placed all the gear from the slavers in the living room to go over at his leisure.

Getting some water from the fridge and a couple of cups he sat down across from the wizard and drank from his cup and decided how he wanted to start.

"Now I have been calling you the wizard in my head since I hopped in yours, it is exhausting. You are going to tell me your name, your real name mind you, and what flavor of magician you are to start with then we will get to the hard questions sound good."

As soon as he released the wizard from his power there was a veritable tsunami of word vomit flying out of his mouth.

Wide-eyed and holding up his hands he caught two things the wizard's name which happened to be Kazart or Kaz for short he was 18 a water mage and he missed all the rest.

Seizing Kaz's head with his power Cade pulled him up short stemming the tide.

"OK, that was nice and answered my questions. I am going to ask you a few questions about those mental defenses I ran into."

A look of hope ran across Kaz's face that he found so funny that he almost didn't want to bust the boy's bubble, almost.

He hopped into the boy's head and blew through his mental shields watching Kaz's face fall as he sat in the distraught boy's literal skull.

"Let us not misunderstand each other l can do this whenever I want so don't get any ideas."

Thinking back to the memories of the slavers he had killed, Cade decided to peruse Kaz's to determine how he was going to handle the little sorcerer.

Gripping the boy in his power once more to prevent any mischief he did a deep dive into Kaz's memories.

What he found surprised him and didn't at the same time.

Kaz was a cruel child a certifiable sadist, a bully in his home village, the little shit had a mean streak a mile long but not enough to truly enjoy the killing that came with the job description of a slaver.

The torture he had a ball with, a feeling of childlike glee suffusing all the memories of torture Cade had come upon.

He was also pretty new to the job this being his first official outing to do said "job".

He had spent the better part of two weeks begging to go out and “raid the tribes" as they called it.

Not knowing whether to roll his eyes at the boy's eagerness to go out and make himself a name or crush his skull and be done with it he continued flipping through the boy's memories.

Kaz had been kicked out of his village after being caught one too many times extorting and savagely beating his marks for a few more coins for his pockets or when coin wasn't in the offering the rush of power he got from the beatings he gave out.

Cade could understand that rush he had some of that adrenaline running through his system right now from easily handling the six slavers.

The difference between them was at the end of the day he wouldn't choose to go looking for that thrill and was just as happy turning the other cheek as long