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

Milo felt his chest tighten, and his eyes roved around him, searching for escape.

“Milo,” Imrah called as though he were a skittish horse, which was how he felt.

“What?” he gasped, unable to focus on her as his mind raced.

“These are the realities of the craft,” she said gently. “There are no other sources of essence besides humans, and the only reliable way to get that essence, untainted, is from their remains. If there was another option I would suggest it, but you remember your reading. This has to be done.”

With a single heavy breath, Milo shook his head, tied up the pouch, and set it gently on the table.

“No,” he said, the word quiet but heavy. Staring at the bag a moment longer, he made a promise to himself that he would find a place to bury what remained of the little girl. He would find somewhere the sun would touch every day. She’d spent enough time in the dark.

Imrah’s nostrils flared and her eyes flashed.

“Milo, think about it,” she warned. “You are going to throw away a powerful tool just because it makes you uncomfortable. Think of the lives you’ll be saving by preventing this war. Aren’t those worth a little discomfort?”

The words struck Milo, though not in the way Imrah intended. Moments ago, she’d asked him to recall a section of his reading, and now her words called to mind another passage toward the end of the codex. Part of him trembled even as he snatched up an empty bowl and the knife he’d used to kill that cursed eel.

“I’m willing to endure more than a little discomfort,” Milo said after placing the knife and bowl down to snag a few pinches of weapon filings and crematory ash.

“What are you doing?” Imrah asked, her tone approaching a demand.

“Awakening Moro, section seventeen,” Milo said distractedly as he sprinkled the filings and ash in the bowl. “There’s a reference to further details in an unattached appendix, but I think I understand the basics.”

Milo spat into the bowl, then drew his focus to a needle point within the container.

“BURN.”

A tongue of green flame sprang up from the center of the bowl like an infernal candle.

“You can’t be serious,” Imrah hissed. “Not only is it forbidden, but it is also incredibly dangerous. Do you even know what you are talking about?”

Milo retrieved the knife and began to pass the blade through the flames, careful to keep his fingers clear. When the bronze blade began to glow along the edges, he held it up for inspection.

“Clearly, I do,” Milo said as he watched the burning light pass out of the blade, though he could feel its biting heat. “For once, I did my homework.”

Imrah stepped toward him.

“It is forbidden!” she snarled and reached out to grab the knife from him.

Milo stopped her with a baleful look.

“Forbidden for a ghul,” he said grimly, stepping over the prepared skin with eyes still locked on his teacher. “But I’m not a ghul.”

“Milo, please,” Imrah said quickly, watching as the blade drew near his open palm. “Forget rules and traditions; this could kill you, and then what good will it do?”

Milo didn’t bother to answer as he drew the blade across his hand. The edge of the blade, searing and keen, parted his flesh in one smooth stroke. A sharp, truncated hiss sounded as blood met the hot blade. Without flinching, Milo clenched his lacerated hand, drawing more blood to the welling wound.

“You’re being a fool!” Imrah shrieked, slamming her fist on the table. “For Iblis’s sake, you’re standing there over what will be a skin-coat you fit on a dead man, you idiot! You probably have more in common with the corpse you’ll be using than some whelp who didn’t have the strength to see her second year. Where’s your outrage for him?”

Blood had begun to drip from Milo’s wound, and not wasting a drop, he dribbled it across the skin.

“I’ve got to draw the line somewhere,” he said without looking up, wondering if the heady feeling was conviction or the magic taking hold. “Men, good and bad, die for so many reasons, that’s the way of it. Sometimes it’s a tragedy, sometimes it's a blessing, and sometimes it's necessary. But a child’s death is always a tragedy and never necessary.”

He felt it as the blood soaked into the prepared hide. A connection was made, like two wires making contact and the current starting to flow.

“The men we’ll be using died in the service of the Empire. We’ll just be asking them to serve a little longer. Same can’t be said of her.”

Imrah looked ready to pounce on him in her fury.

“You’re being so arbitrary, so self-righteous it makes me sick!” Imrah shrilled, scattering bowls and jars to shatter on the floor as she picked up the pouch of tiny bones. “What if the world was burning, the whole damned world, and I told you this right here was the only way to save everyone and everything? What then, Magus?”

Milo shook his head and looked at his bloody hand. Blood had been ground into the lines in streaks of crimson, but the wound was dry. The skin-coat had drunk its fill and was now ready.

“If profiting from the death of an innocent is the only way to save the world,” he said slowly, gathering his focus to start the reaction, “then I say, let it burn.”

22

An Offering

Thankfully using his blood, and therefore his life force, to power the reaction did not prove fatal. Painful, most certainly, but after the first moment of soul-shredding dislocation, Milo was pleased to find he remained alive, and as far as he could tell, whole.

Meanwhile, the prepared hide was going through a rapid cycle of changes.

First, the blood bubbled and hissed like it was boiling off the surface, though Milo felt no noticeable change in temperature from the forming skin-coat. No sooner had the vapors risen a few inches from the coat than