Moon, Matthew R. Davis [websites to read books for free TXT] 📗

were in sight and it was unusually warm for this time of year.
She forced herself to stand and continue on her search. She continued on for a few hours before stopping to eat. She pulled the pack off her back and opened the flap and removed the berries she put in it. It took her only a few minutes to eat all the berries, nuts, and vegetables in her pack. She leaned back against a tree and smiled, feeling content. She summoned the strength of the forest around here and said “Aseina revenia quadrianna.” The grass at her feet hardened as life was sucked from it to supply the power the spell she caste demanded. The spell would wake her before sunrise in the morning. She hadn’t realized that it was almost dark already. Wandering these woods in the dark could result in you getting lost. And in here, that was really bad to do. She smothered the fire, to avoid being detected by anyone, and leaned up against the tree again and closed her eyes. It wasn’t long before she drifted off into the void of sleep.

Pen stumbled into a clearing in the wood just off the path he had been following all day. He slumped into the soft grass and whipped his face clear of tears. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do now. He didn’t really think it through. He turned over onto his back and stared at the deep blue sky. It was lined with thousands of stars. It’s beauty soothed him. They seemed to wash away all the events of the day. and soon he found himself drifting off to sleep.
Pen ran hard. Trying to escape the dark void his soul was slipping into. Dark and twisted laughter filled his ears, deafening him. “Foolish child! You can’t escape me!.” He opened his eyes. Mathias was standing over him. His sword dug deep into Pen’s body. He was cold again. He reached up and whispered “P-p-please...why are...you doing this...t-t-to me?” There was not answer. Instead Mathias shoved the blade through Pen’s heart. His vision went black. He felt nothing. Was he dead? He could still here Mathias’s smooth voice in his ear. “Your mother should have given you to me. Now you are both dead.” Pen felt as if he were falling. He reached out, grasping at the air around him. But there was nothing. No light, no wind, not even darkness. He was cold and alone. He wished he could finish what his father started. But it was becoming obvious to him. No one would every kill Mathias. Methais could single handedly take out entire armies. How could one man even hope to kill such a monster as this? And then, Pen, was no more.

Something wet touched Pen’s face that forced him out of his sleep. He jerked upright and looked to see what it was. To his surprise it was a bear cub. “Oh, hey there little guy.” He smiled and reached out and touched the bear on the head. A small growl came from it and it shied away. Pen watched as the bear walked lazily off into the deeper parts of the woods. He sighed and stood. He was sore from sleeping on the ground, but it still didn't take him long to get rid of his camp. “I’d better get everything cleaned up. I don’t want to leave any evidence that I've been here.” Pen knew that if someone found his temporary camp, they would search for him. He didn’t want to be found by the wrong people.
After getting his belongings put into his pack, he stepped out onto the road and froze. Less than a mile away were a large group of the king’s soldiers. If they saw him, it would be all over for him. Without thinking Pen darted into the woods. He didn't stop running for anything. Branches snapped beneath his feet, he prayed the soldiers wouldn’t hear them. His foot struck a rock and his ankle twisted. Pain shot up his leg as it popped and the bones in it shattered. Even with the extreme pain, he dared not yell out. he bit his tongue to avoid screaming. Blood filled his mouth as his teeth sunk into it.
He crawled a little ways, searching for a spot to hide. He discovered a spot where the roots of a tree had sprawled out and made a hole just big enough to conceal him. He quickly crawled into it and held his breath. He was far enough from the road that he was sure they wouldn’t hear him, but he wanted to be safe. An hour passed before he crawled out of his hiding spot. Then he gently pulled his boot off his foot and examined his ankle. It was a dark purple and completely unresponsive. He was surprised to find that it didn’t really hurt that bad. That at least gave him some comfort for he had a bigger problem at hand. If he couldn’t walk, how would he keep from being discovered? Just as that thought crossed his mind. An inhuman screech filtered through the air.

Elva was sitting on a smooth bolder, meditating. An exercise she preformed a lot. It helped her to find the people she was looking for. She projected he mind forward. Searching for a consciousness. She wasn’t skilled enough to tell who that person was, but she figured it didn’t matter. The population of humans in the forest is very small. She hoped it was limited to her and her thief. She expanded her mind to reach out up to three miles. She found numerous animals and insects, but no people. She frowned and pushed her mind out even further. Still she found no people. Determined to locate the thief she pushed her mind out as far as she could. It reached out fifteen miles.
It took much longer to sort through the large amounts of consciousnesses she was encountering. She smiled as she came across a large one with the properties of a human. There was no doubt to her that she had located a person. She fixated on it and determined its exact location. It was on the very edge of her reach. But she could tell that the person was in pain, in more ways than one. She blanketed the conscious with that of her own and held it in place. The person it belonged to would be unable to move. She tried this once on the thief but he had obviously been trained to block against mental attacks. She was forced back into her own mind by the brute force of his mind.
This time was different. There was little resistance against her. “Maybe the injuries he has suffered are to distracting for him to defend his mind.” She said. She stood and hopped off the bolder with extreme grace and elegance. Then she collected her things from her camp and placed them in her pack. She started off in the direction of the conscious in a brisk walk. But the closer she got to it, the more frantic the person felt to her. After several long minutes she had closed the gap by a little over a mile. She was completely unaware that she was now running, dodging the massive trunks of the towering pines that surrounded her. The air had cooled since the day before, even so, her lungs began to burn with exhaustion. Without stopping, she reached into her pack and pulled out a water skin and drank from it in between breaths.
The cold liquid quenched the sides of her dried throat. She ran for what seemed like hours before coming to a river. The river was far to wide to jump, and the swift moving currents made it impossible to walk through. She considered using a fallen tree to make a bridge, but found that it was to rotted to hold her weight. She stood there for a while contemplating on what to do. Then she decided to use magic to make it across. She took more time to recall all the words she had been taught in the Language of Elders. Then she had to pick the appropriate combination of words to make a seamless sentence. A spell with a loop hole in it, could result in death. Then, once she was satisfied that the sentence was whole, she said “Carian ena firea waise urabe.” She used the endless supply of energy from the swiftly moving river to fuel the spell. Her body shifted and slowly rose into the air. She floated just inches above the water and landed softly on the bank of the opposing side.
“Alright,” she said. “Where is that conscious?” She searched the surrounding area with her mind and located it. To her surprise, it was less than fifty feet from where she was. She walked over to where the energy was coming from.The conscious led her into a small clearing. many of the trees had scorch marks and most of their bark torn off. It was obvious that a battle of some sort has taken place. She looked around but no one was in sight. The conscious was less then ten feet away now. She caught the slight glimmer of metal in the sunlight. It came from underneath the twisted roots of a tree that had suffered the most damage. The roots created a small hole under them. In the hole was a young man.
She pulled free of his mind and pulled him out from under the tree. He was badly injured, and even more disappointing, he was not the man she was after. Elva placed his head on her lap and scanned his tattered body to determine the extent of his injuries. She found several broken bones in his right leg, but in his left leg, the bones where almost completely destroyed. Most of the skin had been removed from his right arm and he had four broken ribs. His face was bruised and adorned with cuts. “Fixing you is going to be a challenge my friend.” Elva said to the beaten man.

******

Chapter 3: Magic, Apples, and Thought Talk

An unfamiliar feeling woke Pen from his slumber. He struggled to open his eyes, and he noticed that the pain in his leg had gone. “Don’t talk. It will only make it harder for me to heal you completely.” a voice from above him said. He felt the pressure from his swollen eyes subside and he was able to open them. His head was resting on the lap of a woman he had never met before. She had light blue eyes, black hair, and he could tell that she was much stronger than she appeared. “I’m almost done, I’ve been fixing you for the passed hour or so. I don’t know what happened to you, but you where in pretty bad shape. I had to completely reconstruct your entire left leg.” She said, giving him a reassuring glance. Pen wasn’t sure what she meant by reconstruct his entire leg. He couldn’t remember what happened to him, all could remember was the horrifying screech just before he blacked out.
“All done!” She said with a smile. Pen forced himself upright, a task that proved to be much more challenging than he had predicted. “Your still pretty weak from the loss of blood. I was almost to late. I guess it was a stroke of fate that i was here. Whats your name?” There was a moment of silence between them as Pen tried to process what she asked. He was so tired he barely able to bring himself to think.
“Pen.” He said faintly.
“Pen...I’ve heard that name somewhere before. Anyways, you need to rest. I’ll stay