Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

Milo felt a smile creeping across his face.

“I suppose that’s the truth.”

11

The Scars

The wind was on fire.

He could smell it, could hear it, and when he finally had the courage to open his eyes, he could see it.

Cinders trailing tails of stinging flame moved like a swarm of locusts, flying up and out over the street to slither across the rooftops. Some of the hellish sprites caught amidst the snowy crevices, winking out, but others found drier homes where they could nest and start colonies of flame. These colonies soon gnawed deep enough that they were sending up their own infernal offspring to reinforce the burning pestilence roiling through the air.

The wind continued to burn, and he watched it ravish the City.

But where is this?

The question struck his mind like a hammer, and the whole world rippled, even his body. He wondered if the firestorm had asked the question, and a sudden fear gripped him. If he did not answer, would the storm take him away?

“The City!” he cried out in his small voice.

His fingers tightened around the blanket in his hand, but he didn’t put it in his mouth like he wanted to. Momma had said he was too old for that sort of thing, so as bravely as he could, he stood and watched the storm, waiting for another question.

Where is Momma?

The last word came out strangely, as though the storm was unfamiliar with the word. He supposed that storms did not have mommas, so it made a sort of sense.

“I don’t know,” he said, and the utterance of the words made his throat tight and his chest flutter. He felt his eyes doing another thing Momma told him he was too old for.

“Sorry.” He sniffed as he ground his blanket against his treacherous eyes. “I don’t know.”

The storm did not speak again, but he felt heat against his back. Looking back and up, he saw that the building he sheltered beneath was now burning. One of the windows on the second floor burst into a cloud of brilliant razors that fell twinkling on the street just a few steps from him. His bare feet itched and ached at the thought of walking that way.

Black smoke belched from the shattered window, and he knew it was time to go.

Stepping down from the house, he heard two more windows break, and the roar of the flames within almost drowned out the chiming tune of glass shattering behind him.

He made it several steps before realizing he didn’t know where he was going. He looked back down the street and saw that the house he’d been in front of had spread its fiery infection to its neighbors. Snow-covered roofs sent up clouds of steam that were blotted out by black smoke. Windows shattered and doors cracked as the infection consumed more of its victim.

He looked back up to the storm again, red and vast above him.

“Where do I go?” he pleaded. “I’m lost.”

Again, saying the words prompted his eyes to betray him, and he was obliged to mop his face.

The storm did not answer in a voice he understood, continuing its crackling howl, but he heard something that made him turn back to where he’d come.

There were screams and snorts and shouts, and for a moment, his eyes could make no sense of what he saw. Shapes emerged from the corridor of flame that had become the street behind him, their gait wrong and ungainly as they moved with incredible speed. They seemed to be made from smoke, they were so dark and swift, but at the ends of their outstretched limbs were angry flickering stars. The closer they drew, the more he could hear of their hooves striking the cobbles and the more he understood their harsh, baying voices, but the less he could see of them, their forms wavering and running together. He realized that his eyes had played Judas once more, and by the time he’d swept the obscuring tears away, it was too late.

They were bearing down on him, and from where he stood on the street, he couldn’t avoid them.

“Bolshevik whelp!” “Red brat!” “Traitor-spawn!”

Stamping hooves and stars at the end of hard sticks swept around and over him, a new storm to bear. He scrambled and shrieked in fear, but there was nowhere to go. He glimpsed their faces over him, stark white faces streaked with soot, with eyes burning like the storm.

A hot, hairy flank bludgeoned him to the ground, and one of the stars was thrust toward him.

He felt the heat, but at the same time, he felt hands, small but strong, drag him up and away. He was on his feet as an equine scream, chillingly familiar, rent the air. The hands were pushing him now, moving him forward. The next scream was distinctly mannish, and there were loud impacts that made his body shake hearing them. He tried to look around to see what was happening, but the hands kept him moving, off the street and between two houses that had not yet succumbed to the storm’s infectious presence.

He’d lost his blanket somewhere along the way, and without thinking, made to go back and look for it, but the hands slammed him against the alley wall.

“What are you doing?” hissed a voice that wasn’t a man’s but wasn’t a boy’s either. “Do you want to die?”

He blinked and saw the face of a boy, a much older boy, glaring down at him with dark, angry eyes. Even with the eyes blazing, he recognized the boy’s face as very handsome, even beautiful. It took him a moment of staring to realize that the hands that held him and the beautiful, angry face that watched him belonged to the same person. He felt silly and scared all at once, and that made it even harder to respond.

“Are you just stupid?” the boy demanded, and somehow the words made it clear he wasn’t so