Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

for his inability, but the sense of being robbed persisted. After everything he’d gone through, it felt like doors were closing to him before he knew they were there.

She gave what struck Milo as a very delicate response. “Not necessarily. Just because your sensitivity is lacking, it doesn’t render the ingredients inert. It will just make them harder to control and certain formulas more difficult.”

“Great,” Milo spat, hating himself for how childish he sounded. “Already starting off at a disadvantage, and now this?”

Imrah stared at him for a second, then took a step forward. Her eyes searched his face, and she slapped him. The bony knuckles along the back of her hand split his lip and had him staggering back a step in shock. Blood and curses flew, and Milo’s hands balled into fists as he glared at the ghul.

Arms trembling with anger, he took a step forward, ready to vent−by word or fist, he wasn’t sure. Before he could say or do anything else, he was brought up short when Imrah let loose leopard-like snarl and launched into him with cutting words.

“I thought your people sent a man, not a child.” She scoffed. “You are the first human in the annals of your fecund species to have both the opportunity and ability to learn magic. To stand upon the shoulders of sorcerers and alchemists throughout the ages to pluck a fruit long denied even the greatest among you.”

Milo’s hands remained knotted, but he couldn’t muster the will to keep his anger burning.

“I show you how to bend death and matter to your will, and you whine?” she hissed. “No, Magus, this will not be easy, and you will have limitations. The cosmos does not bow to anyone, not even the ghuls, but with patience and determination, you have it within you to bend it to your will.”

Milo’s hand uncurled and he swiped the smear of blood from his lip, silent in the face of her rebuke. Imrah turned away and walked back to the table, where she stood for a long heartbeat.

“Don’t ever waste my time like that again,” she whispered.

“Yes, ma’am,” Milo said softly, then, straightening, he added: “Thank you.”

Imrah didn’t so much as twitch in response, and they stood in silence before she finally spoke in her familiar rasp.

“Go. Fazihr will have arranged for food and reading material for tomorrow.”

Milo replied in the affirmative and joined Ambrose at the edge of the platform.

“What was that about?” the bodyguard asked quietly, nodding at Milo’s lip and shooting a look toward Imrah. “You picking fights on your first day of school?”

Milo sucked his lip, appreciating the sting and the taste of blood on his tongue.

“Just learning my first lesson,” he answered, then gave the big man a sly look. “More importantly, she told us to go find Fazihr and get some food.”

Ambrose grinned and adjusted his rifle on his shoulder.

“Now, there’s an assignment I’ll take to like a fish to water.”

“Your reading material will be sparse, especially at first,” Fazihr, who had turned out to be Imrah’s personal retainer, explained. “Most of these texts are not written in anything resembling your modern languages, so I’ve employed a scrivener to translate the bare bones of the information.”

Despite that statement, the leaves of parchment, which were packed with tightly scrawled German translations, were more than sufficient to keep Milo reading the rest of the day. In the orphanage, he’d learned that he enjoyed reading and possessed considerable retention, but he was not a fast reader. As such, despite the pounding in his head, he took the codices offered and dove into them before they’d even received their lunch. The food, which turned out to not be a prepared meal but rather bulk supplies to provide for several meals over several days, was delivered by a pair of shuffling skeleton porters shortly after Fazihr left their quarters.

The apartment they’d been given in the citadel was a small suite of rooms, with a large bedroom for Milo with an attached lavatory, a common room, a second water closet, and a small cell-like room for Ambrose. Milo had cleaned off his lip at his sink and then come out to peruse the first text Fazihr had given him.

“The dead lads brought lunch,” Ambrose said, waving a hand at a pile of sacks and waxed leather parcels.

“Huh?” Milo responded, only partially listening.

The codex was compiled from the text Awakening Moro: An Introduction to the Necromist’s Trade and acted as a primer for understanding the basics of practical necromantic alchemy. The reading was dense, sometimes relying on assumed knowledge Milo simply didn’t have, but through contextual clues and by referring back to earlier paragraphs, he was piecing things together.

“Are you much of a chef?” Ambrose asked hopefully as he hefted a few sacks onto his shoulder and leveraged a crate against his hip.

“What?” Milo muttered, looking up from his parchment and blinking. “No, not much.”

“Figures.” The big man sighed and moved toward the corner of the common room. “I suppose it's up to me then, huh? Some form of soup work for the busy Magus?”

“Uh, yeah,” Milo murmured, diving back into his book as he sank onto a low couch in the center of the common room. “I suppose.”

Ambrose looked at him and shook his head as he laid his burden on a smooth granite counter in the corner. This part of the room seemed dedicated to meal preparation since there was a small but feisty hearth where a pale green fire crackled on one wall. A small fountain set into the other wall provided perpetual cool water. Around the sources of heat and liquid were stone countertops, above which bronze cookware hung from iron pegs.

As Ambrose brought the rest of the supplies to his “kitchen” and took stock of things, Milo was piecing together the basic differences between various kinds of magic.

Milo had deciphered that ghuls, as opposed to other shayati, were magical beings who created magic that was bound up in physical