Rising of a Mage: Book 03 - A Mage Risen (13 page)

After that
, the traveling continued. Soon everyone was on the hill. Those who had seen the event told the late arrivals as they pointed to the mangled remains. Camp was set. The orcs were expected to arrive tomorrow.

When Rundo crossed through the barrier of the fairy forest, his world changed. In that moment he made a connection with Kalise. His senses shifted, and he froze in place. It was overwhelming. He could feel all of the life around him. He was connected somehow to everything that was living. The world was brighter. He looked around at everything. The leaves on the trees were greener and more vibrant. He could feel the energy in the staff as well. It was too much to take at one time. He couldn’t separate all of the new feelings. He closed his eyes to shut out some of them, but he could still sense all of the life around him. Then he heard a voice in his head. “You are more powerful than you know. If you choose to accept me, I will guide you.”

“Rundo
, are you okay?” Grundel asked.

Anwar hadn’t noticed. He was overcome with grief. The moment he had walked through that barrier
, peace and hope had left him abruptly. He had thought that he had lost all of that when Mariah had died, but now he knew different. With one step the world came crashing down on him. The grief was magnified tenfold, and the magic came rushing back inside him. They both threatened to overcome him. Together it was more then he could handle. He heard Mariah’s voice in his head. “The world needs you, Anwar. Help them. Don’t forget me, Anwar. Remember how much I love you.” He grabbed on to that. He replayed it in his head over and over. “The world needs you, Anwar. Help them. Don’t forget me, Anwar. Remember how much I love you.” He forced down his grief and remembered her. He remembered how much they loved each other. “The world needs you, Anwar. Help them. Don’t forget me, Anwar. Remember how much I love you.” He took hold of the magic that was roaring inside of him. He suppressed it. The roaring flame became a small, controlled flame inside him. His grief was there, and it was painful, but he could bear it. He took hold of it all and held on to his memory of Mariah. “The world needs you, Anwar. Help them. Don’t forget me, Anwar. Remember how much I love you.”

Rundo was overcome with excitement and fear at the same time. There was so much happening at once. “I accept
you,” he said out loud.

“What? What is going on? Rundo
, who are you talking to? Anwar, are you okay? What is going on?” Grundel was concerned. There was something wrong with both of them. Neither of them was responding.

An unimaginably beautiful woman appeared before them. Her golden blond
hair flowed down her back to her ankles. A large green leaf covered each of her breasts with thin vines wrapping around her body holding them in place, a short skirt of some kind of thick long grass wrapped around her waist. The rest of her perfectly toned form was bare. Her body was the perfect balance of muscle and softness. Her legs were long, smooth and tan. She looked down at Rundo, and her full, beautiful lips curled into a smile.

“Rundo
, my child. You are most interesting. I will enjoy watching you grow. Most of my children come into their power much more slowly. They learn to control and develop it as it grows. Yours is a much more difficult path. Your power has come upon you all at once. The fairy forest awakened the awareness inside you. Messah was attempting to connect with you, but I stopped her. You were being overwhelmed, and I thought that connection would be too much. For now I want you to practice controlling your connection with life. You can control the intensity with which you feel the world around you. For now I want you to try to focus on one thing, and block everything else out. Right now you are seeing with a new set of eyes while still looking through your old ones. You will have to learn to see through both at once. Eventually you will learn to open up to all of it while also keeping it suppressed so that no one thing is overpowering any other. Eventually you will hardly notice the connection, but will come to rely on it also. It will be similar to your peripheral vision. When the connection is no longer overwhelming, reach out to Messah. She will stay with you, and she will be ready when you are ready to establish the link.” Then she turned her attention to Grundel.

“Grundel
, you must watch over these two. They are both going through unimaginable changes. Keep on eye on them. Remind Rundo to focus on little things. Remind him not to take on too much at once. If he is unaware of what is happening around him, he has allowed himself to feel the world too strongly. Anwar’s struggles are greater than any man has ever faced before. Remind him to hold on to Mariah. The world depends on it. If he lets go of that he will lose himself. If he allows himself to be consumed with hate he will turn into the thing he has sworn to protect the world against. Do not allow his need for revenge consume him. He will need revenge. Help him get it, but help him control it. He must hold on to love. Remind him of Mariah often.

“Anwar
, you have been through more than any mortal should be able to withstand. You are going to go through even more. Your life is going to get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. Hold onto your memory of her. Remember how good she was. You must hold onto love. When you think you are losing yourself, think about how she would feel. Honor her memory by being the man she loved. If you lose that you will fail her. Hold on to her memory in the coming days, Anwar. You will need them now more then ever.”

Then she was gone.

They walked the rest of the way
through the forest in silence. Anwar fought the grief and power stirring inside of him. Grundel tried to watch everything that was going on around them, because the other two were too caught up in the things they had going on, and the forest still made him very uneasy.

Rundo tried to control his new connection with the world. He was able to push back against the forest, at least
against the things that were alive but not living. The trees and plants he could push to the back of his awareness. He could feel Anwar’s and Jabaal’s presences very strongly. The animals that were close were strong, too. He was very aware of the horses and of their moods. Bumbo’s connection was the strongest, though. He was interested, and surprisingly aware. He wants to help me, and then it slammed into him. He was linked with Bumbo. That was the only explanation.

“Stop!”
he shouted. Anwar and Grundel looked back at him.

“What is it
?” Grundel asked.

“I don’t know. I linked with
Bumbo somehow. I can’t see through my own eyes.”

“Of course not. They are closed
,” Grundel replied.

Rundo
hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes. When he focused on opening them he wasn’t looking through Bumbo’s eyes anymore. The link was still there. He could feel Bumbo’s emotions. Somehow he knew that he would be able to feel him no matter how far away they were. He could suppress the link. He wanted to try looking through the horse’s eyes again, but he knew that this was not the time. That must be what the link with Messah would be like. When he got comfortable with this new connection with Bumbo he was going to reach out to her. He might be able to get used to that eventually, but right now he had to control all of the other new experiences. “I’m fine now. I linked with Bumbo somehow. I have it under control now. I will explore it more when we stop again, but I think we should keep walking for a while so I can get used to this.”

Grundel looked at Anwar. “We still have quite a ways to go. We will walk, at least until we get to city. From there we will figure out our plan,” Anwar said before he dropped his eyes back to the ground and continued walking.

Rundo was satisfied. He continued to walk. Concentrating on so many things at once was exhausting. Then it clicked. He needed to stop focusing on what not to focus on. If he would just focus on any one thing then maybe everything else would fade just like peripheral vision. He focused on the horses. Not Bumbo, but the other horses. When he focused on just them everything else became less intense. He could feel the life in the world around them, but it was all in the background. His connection with the horses was strong. Not as strong as the one he shared with Bumbo—that was something more personal—but he could sense them, and he knew that they were calm and rested. The fairy forest had been peaceful for them, and they had been fed something by the fairies. He knew they were thirsty, too, but not anymore than usual. They were always thirsty; he wasn’t sure how he knew that, but it was there. Then he stopped focusing on them, and his awareness of everything else heightened again. It wasn’t nearly as overwhelming. He knew now that this was something he could get used to; it would just take time. He focused on his own eyes, on seeing what was around him with his eyes and not feeling it so deeply. He hadn’t actually thought it was going to work, but it did. He didn’t have to focus on anything: that was part of his new sense; focusing on any of his senses would work. He closed his eyes and concentrated on hearing. He heard a distinct hissing sound. Then he felt the threat in his awareness, the feeling of being threatened, the need to attack.

Before he could even open his eyes to see the snake his dagger left his right hand. The staff was still in his left. By the time he had opened his eyes and looked to where his dagger had gone the snake was already falling out of the tree. He went over to where the snake lay dead on the ground. It was as big around as one of Grundel’s arms, and at least sixteen feet long.

“That was an impressive throw. Thanks for saving me, but couldn’t you have just like charmed it or something?” Grundel asked.

Rundo realized that he probably could have made a connection with the snake
, and he might never have had to kill it. He hadn’t even thought to try.

Anwar stepped up to Rundo. “No
, Rundo, you did the right thing. This thing was about to strike. Using a new power that you are unfamiliar with is dangerous enough. This was not the time to test it out. You might have been able to, or you might not. If you had tried and failed, Grundel would be dying from the poison in his veins right now. Take it from me. If it comes down to using something you know or trying something you don’t when someone’s life is on the line, you go with what you know. Just don’t let that keep you from doing what you need to. If what you know won’t get the job done and you think you might be able to get it done by trying something unfamiliar, well that’s a decision you will have to make in the moment.”

Rundo bent down and cut of
f the head of the snake. Then he stretched the snake out. He took his knife and made a cut from where he had removed the head all the way down to the tip of the tail. When that was done he pulled the skin away from the meat, muscle, and sinew. He cut a big chunk of the meat off and wrapped it in a piece of leather. The skin he rolled up and strapped to the outside of the pack.

Anwar went and calmed the horses. When he was finished he waited patiently staring toward the light that was shining not far ahead of them. They were almost out of the forest.

Grundel watched the whole time. He was curious and disturbed all at the same time. He was curious about what Rundo was going to do with the skin, and disturbed because he was pretty sure what the plan was for the meat. He waited until Rundo was finished before he asked his questions.

“What did you cut its skin off for?”
he asked.

“I killed it. I don’t want to leave it. The least I can do is not let its death be pointless. Snakeskin makes really nice
leather. Some places can even treat it and make really nice boots. I will use the leather to make something. Whatever I can’t use I will sell,” Rundo replied.

“What about the meat you wrapped up in that leather, what are you going to do with that
?” Grundel asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

“I’m gonna cook it when we stop tonight. Snake is actually pretty good,” Rundo replied.

As they walked Rundo stopped occasionally to inspect a log here and there. Finally he chose one that was about eight feet long. With Rundo’s help he lifted it up onto the back of one of the horses and strapped it down.

“What is the log for
?” Grundel asked.

“When we stop I will show you
,” Rundo replied.

A few minutes later they walked out into the sunlight. The city was still miles away. As they walked
, Rundo went back and forth from focusing on his normal sight and pushing the connection into the background, to allowing the connection to be strong. Then he would focus on a certain part of the connection. He reached out to a rabbit that was hiding under a bush and was able to get it to hop up to him unafraid. That was a huge step for him. He hadn’t commanded it, but he had calmed it and somehow persuaded it to come to him. Once it did he reached down and scratched the back of its neck before letting it hop away.

They decided to stop with the city still a few miles away. The sun was starting to go down
, and there was a spot with a little camp already made. It was obviously used regularly. There was a circle of rock, and logs around it. The logs had been used a number of times and one of them had even been carved on. It had smooth notches cut in it, making it more comfortable to sit on. A different person had made each of the notches, which was obvious by the amount of skill in each groove. One was smooth and looked very deliberate where as the other two looked like they had been done much more hastily. They were still smoother and better then sitting on a rough round log, but they didn’t have the clean, smooth look of the first seat.