The Path of Giants by B.T. Narro (best novels to read .txt) 📕

comfortable standing so close to it, so she hurriedly made her way north with many looks over her shoulder. The beast watched her go for a short time before it started to follow her.

She picked up speed. The creature seemed to try to match her speed, but it soon fell over ever so slowly, like a tree cut to its last fiber.

“Bruuuraaaaaa!” it called as it fell, sounding utterly pitiful.

Eden sprinted away, feeling a little bad for it.

When she was far enough and could gather her thoughts again, she realized that Valinox did not want her dead, at least not yet. Otherwise he never would’ve given her this Induct stone.

She looked at it closer. It was black, but she couldn’t tell whether that was from the curse or if the stone itself was that color. She casted Identify to see what her mana could tell her.

She regretted it immediately. It was like hearing a deafening screech, pain ringing in her head. Her mana wanted nothing to do with it.

This was not a reaction she would’ve guessed she’d have, considering she had been using dteria for months now. She had noticed changes in her personality, but they were subtle. She found herself less afraid than she used to be, most of all. She wasn’t a very empathetic person to begin with, which was one of the reasons she thought she might be better off helping Valinox win this war swiftly than trying to go against him. It was only after she had come to the castle that she realized how wrong she was about herself. She cared about the people she had agreed to betray. She cared about the kingdom, even if she despised the nobles who preyed on everyone else.

She hadn’t been able to use dteria very much since coming to the castle, practicing only late at night when she figured everyone else was asleep. Using it didn’t give her the same euphoria that she saw in Leon’s reactions, when he’d used it to help the sorcerers learn how to resist dteria. It felt nice, sure, but she didn’t find herself craving its continuous use, which seemed to happen to most people.

“I hope this stone isn’t going to alter my mana too much.” She could already feel it dragging her mana to a higher frequency. She wanted to remain a mage of order first and foremost, even if dteria did sweep through the kingdoms.

Valinox had given her powerful essences of dteria to help her train. Every time she stopped, she had to wait longer for her mana to return to its natural low frequency.

The forest was misty here so close to the center. She couldn’t see more than twenty yards ahead of her. Could she really open the portal to the fae world? She thought only demigods could do such a thing.

She stopped in her tracks as she realized that she would see Gourfist soon. What should she do if he woke up? What would be the point in trying to defend herself? He was known to be huge, fast, and powerful. Some rumors even said that he couldn’t be killed. Even Valinox was frightened of him.

More importantly, what did Valinox want with the fae? Legends said that Valinox tried to get into the fae world when Airinold transformed into Gourfist and started searching for the demigods. Valinox had wanted to hide with Nijja, the demigod of ordia, but Nijja had thrown him out. Eden had been too afraid to bring it up with Valinox. He never took questions arising from her curiosity very well, especially when they made him look bad. He favored those who obeyed without question, something Eden hadn’t done since the beginning of their encounters.

It was how fast Eden had learned to use the forbidden sorcery that had pleased Valinox the most. But that had worn off as her progress had slowed. She had trouble with curses. They didn’t feel natural to her. It was only because Valinox told her what ingredients to use that she was able to make any curses at all.

Eden came up with a simple plan regarding Gourfist. If he woke up, she could lift herself somewhat with dteria. She could fly a short distance faster than she could run, but then she would be exhausted. She would hide when she had to let herself down, using the trees and mist as cover. She was small. It might actually work.

No, that was foolish. Gourfist could sense sorcery. The best thing for anyone to do if he awoke was to stop casting completely, no matter how far and safe they thought they might be.

Eden’s best bet was to run.

She made the two-mile journey slowly. Two creatures came out of the mist and surprised her at various points. One looked like the cantar that had attacked Jon, only this one was about twice as big. The other, she only saw its silhouette. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but it seemed to be just as big as the treelike creature, only this one stood on four legs. It had the head of an ugly beast, with long horns and what looked to be a beard down the bottom of its long neck. She froze when she saw it, then ran the other way for a little while.

Eden didn’t see it again, thankfully, and the large cantar had left her alone. The forest was strangely quiet here. It was as if even the wind was scared to disturb the strange peace in these parts.

As Eden started to relax, she began to notice that there were a bunch of stones on the ground all around her. They seemed to be gems of some kind, but she had never seen these kinds of gems anywhere before.

She picked up a smaller one and looked closely at it. The stone was perfectly clear, yet it was hard as metal.

She thought a test was in order. She stopped there and casted a spell of ordia on the stone, priming