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

the backlash from the forces containing the shades nor certain he could do anything differently if he tried again.

“Why couldn’t we start with the healing stuff?” he asked, stalling for time to catch his breath. “Seems like that would be far more helpful than making a pile of murder dust.”

Imrah looked up at him with narrowed eyes.

“Who is the teacher?” she asked, a note of warning in her voice.

Milo took a step toward the soul well, but it was shortened as he turned around.

“I’m just saying, healing others like that seems a far more important thing to learn. We humans already have plenty of ways to kill each other.”

Imrah stared at him, her jaw working from side to side before she heaved a sigh.

“First of all,” she began, her tone sharp and angry, “I’m not teaching you these things to provide you with weapons, but because they are the building blocks for mastering the art. That you choose to view them as tools for murder is your business.”

Milo wasn’t sure what other use throwing witchfire could have, but he could tell from Imrah’s attitude it was pointless to argue. She would have her say, and it would behoove him not to argue.

“Second,” she continued, “regenerative formulae are much more complex and require a subtler application of will. If you get it wrong, either in mixture or in application, the results are disastrous. You are using unliving energies to force living tissue to accelerate or even override their natural regenerative processes. If you foul up repairing a small cut, you could end up creating a toxic tumor the size of your fist.”

Well, that sounds like a good reason, Milo thought as he imagined his wounded head bowing under a pustulating growth on his forehead.

“Third and finally, healing will be very difficult for you,” she stated, pausing just long enough to dare him to speak before continuing, “The ingredients you were exposed to and had a tangible response to had almost nothing to do with curatives and restoratives. They might as well have been inert stones in your fleshy mitts, while all the things that are tied to dominion and fear practically jumped for joy.”

Imrah’s dark stare bored into Milo’s pale eyes.

“You aren’t a healer, Milo, not naturally. You might learn in time, but right now, we need to capitalize on your strengths to build your experience and confidence.”

“Fear and domination,” he snarled. “That’s all I’m good for.”

Imrah stared back, neither offering comfort nor backing down from her claim, which enraged Milo further. His fingers curled, and he felt a growing urge to leap upon her, to force her to...to...to do what? Tell him what he was doing right then wasn’t proving what she’d already observed?

Milo forced out a slow breath and nodded.

He didn’t have to like it, but she seemed sincere, and her points were all valid. He was going to have to trust her, just as she had to trust him to protect Ifreedahm. With a pang, he realized he’d forgotten all about the purpose of coming back to the surface in the face of Lokkemand’s revealing breakdown.

With that understanding bracing him, Milo turned back to the soul well and fixed his eyes on the undulating shades.

“All right then,” he said after a steadying breath. “Let’s get to work.”

He reached out, determined to not fail this time.

As it turned out, he did fail again, and again, and twice more after that.

Each time, the shades piled on and overwhelmed him. Imrah’s wards kicked in, and he was thrown down with some sundering injury. Yet each time, after Imrah’s ministrations, he climbed back to his feet, took the dropped vial, and tried again.

On the fifth attempt, remembering the tempo and intensity of the previous assaults, Milo decided to try something different. Instead of bracing under the sensations and emotions, which piled on until he collapsed, he decided to ride them, plunging into each as it came. He writhed in pain, wept in despair, and roared in rage. As he did this, he began to feel he could twist the emotions, leaning into the pain until it hardened into despair, which he stoked until it flared into outrage. He lost his concentration as he allowed anger to spin him in a vortex of senseless anger, but even as he felt himself drowning in the encroaching shades, he smiled.

He had them now; next time, he was going to take one of them, and there was nothing they could do about it.

On the sixth try, practically giddy, he was back on his feet, hand outstretched to the soul well before his wounds were fully healed. He used the lingering pain and discomfort of the mending injury, a nasty gash across his chest, to propel him into the contest of wills. The shades came on. This time he didn’t resist them; he didn’t even ride the waves they brought. This time he danced with them, giving context and definition to every blind sensation they drove at him from his scarred history. The lonely nights he’d felt his heart shrivel in the orphanage, the ache in his belly on his third night without food, the fury at seeing his dreams dashed by callous and petty people. The shades were only echoes of lives, but those echoes were notes that would not be drowned out. Instead, he composed them to tell his story, manipulating them so their sensations fell in line. Their cries became the chorus that would sing his tune.

So shaped, the shades seemed to dance to his tune, moving about him in accordance with his will. From there, it was a small thing to lead one into a crescendo, free and clear of the others. Like some hungry beast from a fable, he beckoned a groomed shade, one of unquenchable longing, to emerge from the flock to sing its song, then just like the fable, he snatched it.

Milo’s mind cleared as he emerged from the energies of the soul well. Before his eyes, a