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

“Oh, no,” he said with exaggerated tenderness. “Have I hurt your feelings?”

“Anyways,” Ambrose replied tartly, then cleared his throat. “Erm, now where was I? Oh, yes, Morocco. So there I was—”

“No,” Milo cut in, one hand raised wardingly. “None of that. We only have so long, and I am pretty sure I still owe you an explanation.”

He tapped the breast pocket of his surcoat, lighting an eager gleam in Ambrose’s eyes

“You’ll have plenty of time for war stories on the trip up north,” Milo said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Just focus on the real issue. You say you really die, and then you really come back. I want to hear about that.”

Ambrose rocked on his heels, and his lips twitched beneath his mustache. His internal dialogue ended with a low grunt as he nodded.

“All right,” he breathed, expelling curls of dragon breath into the cold air. “It’s like a dream but not. Just like you know things in a dream, just know them for no reason at all, you also can know that you’re sleeping or that you’re dreaming, or whatever, that’s what it’s like. I’m dying, bleeding, drowning, or what have you, but then I find I’m standing on my own two legs, whole but different, and by different, you understand that I mean I know I’m dead.”

Milo nodded, studying the bodyguard’s face as his eyes became distant with recollection.

“It’s dark, quiet, and almost peaceful, you see. Certainty comes over you that yeah, this is it. But then one of the titans stirs in the dark next to me, and all the peace vanishes. Just like that, I’m a scared little boy hiding beneath his covers from the monster under his bed.”

Ambrose sucked his teeth, his eyes widening at the frightful memory.

“Titans?” Milo asked, trying to imagine what creature in this life or the next could have such an effect on the likes of Simon Ambrose.

“It’s just my name for them,” Ambrose explained, his words coming out faster and sharper. “I never see them since it’s dark, but I can hear them and feel them, and they're, well, enormous. It’s like standing at the foot of a mountain and sensing it moving just feet away from you. It seems slow, but that is because it’s taking your mind so long to realize something so massive is moving at all. And just like in a dream, I know these things, and I also know they’re bound somehow. Restrained, and they're angry. So angry.”

Ambrose shoved his hands in his pockets, but Milo could still see them trembling through the fabric of his coat.

“I know all of them hate me and want to hurt me, but one in particular, the only titan I can actually see, is looking for me. I get a quick glimpse of him, as immense and dominating as a mountain against a sky, and red stars in his huge head as he turns to look at me. He calls for me, calls me a name I’ve never heard in my life, but I know it’s mine even as I watch him start wading through the dark toward me.”

Ambrose blinked, his glistening eyes unnoticed as he heaved a heavy breath.

“And then,” he said thickly, “I feel a hand on my shoulder and a voice, a familiar voice I can never recognize, whispers in my ear, telling me something.”

Milo leaned forward in rapt attention, the meandering Si’lat search party forgotten.

“What does the voice say?” he breathed.

“All that seek shall find,” Ambrose recited, his voice barely more than a whisper. “But my spirit shall not always strive with man.”

Milo stared, bemusement, horror, and wonder, wrestling for control of his features.

“And then I wake up, hurting but alive,” Ambrose said. “I recover quickly, but each time, I get the feeling that was the very last time.”

Milo let out the breath he was holding.

“That’s...something,” he said, not able to muster embarrassment for his befuddlement. “And it’s that way every time?”

Ambrose nodded solemnly before turning back to the mountainside and wiping his eyes.

“Every time.” He sighed.

For a long time, the two of them stared into the night, the Si’lats moving beneath gazes that paid them no heed. Eventually, a chill wind rose, making Milo shiver, and he started as though waking from a dream. He looked at Ambrose, who was still staring vacantly, before chewing his lip as he fetched the tarot card from his pocket.

The grind of Milo’s boots on the rocky ground brought Ambrose back to himself, and he looked up to see Milo holding out the folded card.

“Here,” he said heavily, giving the card a shake. “You’ve earned a peek.”

Ambrose shook his head.

“No, it’s all right. Your secrets are yours, Magus.”

“Are you sure?” Milo asked, his arm still extended. “May not ever be another time I’m feeling so generous.”

Ambrose nodded and sniffed, running a hand across his mustache.

“I’m sure,” he said, squinting at a confluence of black sand. “When you’re sharing because you want to and not because of a fast-handed deal, I’ll look at the card.”

Milo hung there a second longer, card between his outstretched fingers, then drew back and replaced the card in the coat.

“And if that time never comes?” Milo asked, following Ambrose’s gaze to the veritable cyclone of Si’lats rushing toward them.

“All things in God’s good time, Magus,” the big man muttered.

The Si’lats broke upon the hillside like a crashing wave, rippling and swirling around the two men, bits of broken and charred bone held aloft on the gritty gusts. Milo focused his will and held out his hand.

The black-sand tempest swirled across his open palm, depositing a narrow sharp-toothed skull. It was cracked in several places and missing the entire lower jaw and several teeth from the upper, and the whole surface was pitted unevenly.

Milo reached out with his sorcerous awareness, feeling echoes of the life that had once been and trailing his consciousness across the pools of essence left by it.

“Hello, Imrah,” he