Shades of magic a progre.., p.1
Shades of Magic: A Progression Fantasy Epic (Restriction Book 2), page 1
THE SHADES OF MAGIC
©2023 DK Holmberg
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ALSO IN SERIES
The Weight of Magic
The Shades of Magic
Contents
ALSO IN SERIES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Thank you for reading The Shades of Magic
Chapter 1
THE CARAVAN ROLLS
The caravan rumbled along the road, moving with a steady creak that Torian had become all too familiar with. It wasn’t unpleasant, though it was lonelier than he had expected, despite all of the people that were now with him, including his sister.
He found himself looking around, half expecting to find Astrid, but she was not there. He found himself missing her more than he should have. They were friends, nothing else, and she hadn’t even been completely honest with him, but he couldn’t shake the connection that he had known they forged.
“You should go and talk to her,” a soft voice said from atop the caravan wagon next to him.
Torian looked over to Sylvia. The smaller, dark-haired woman looked up at him, watching his face, and her fingers moved in a bit of a pattern, quickly working through some of the primary patterns as if she were testing to ensure that she had the necessary skill to make them. She’d changed into a dark green cloak that would blend into the forest around them, something that would have been far more valuable in the days leading up to this, but perhaps she did so now because she feared the possibility of another Rusav attack.
“She’s gone,” he said.
Sylvia’s brow wrinkled, and she let out a soft laugh. Her voice was accented compared to what Torian was familiar with, though her accent was subtle enough that he didn’t struggle with it. “I don’t mean Astrid, though it’s good to know where your heart is.”
“It’s not my heart,” he said. When she arched a brow, smirking at him, a flush came to his cheeks. “I don’t mean that, either.”
“Oh? And what do you think I implied?”
Torian shook his head. The wagons were moving slowly enough that they had time to look through the forest and time to see the shadow wolves that were crawling alongside them. In the distance, he could just make out the dappled fur of the shadow wolf that had brought him to Sylvia in the first place. He couldn’t feel the shadow wolf, though. Visthor claimed that over time, Torian would be able to make a connection to the massive creature but he had not yet done so. He didn’t know when or if he would be able to, though he wanted that. How could he not? He’d seen how Visthor used his connection to the wolves for quite a few different purposes.
“Why do you think she left us?”
Sylvia shrugged, sitting back and staring straight ahead. Her hands were moving in another pattern. They had been doing that ever since Aldrich had disappeared.
Not just disappeared. He had died.
Torian had a hard time with that. Harder than he would’ve expected. It wasn’t as if he knew Aldrich for all that long, but the older man had taught him so much in the time that he had known him, becoming more of a mentor than any of the instructors that Torian had at the school in Sarot.
“It’s hard to know why people do the things that they do. We found her and Johan together, but we were never helping her as much as I think she needed.”
“I don’t think she betrayed us,” Torian said.
“I didn’t say that,” Sylvia said.
Torian wanted to argue with her, to contest what she was saying, but Sylvia was right. She hadn’t really said that, though there had been a bit of implication there.
“What I mean is that you should go to your sister.”
“I’ve talked to my sister.”
On the last day, ever since they had returned to the wagons and started toward Corsalt where they would find the university, Torian had done all that he could to ensure that his sister was safe, but he felt a distance between them. Perhaps that was a mistake. His sister was the only person he had left.
“You’ve talked to her, but have you talked to her?”
“I’m not sure what the difference is.”
Sylvia sniffed. “The difference is what you talk about. You have much to grieve. Both of you have lost so much, and you are what you have left. Be thankful that you have her.” She looked along the caravan until her gaze stopped on a large, massive muscular man dressed in a simple gray shirt and dirty brown pants. Visthor was walking alongside the caravan, occasionally letting out a soft whistle that Torian knew was meant to call to the shadow wolves. “Think about what would have happened had you not even had this.”
Torian breathed out heavily, and he knew that she was right and knew that he should be thankful for Liana, but that didn’t change how hard it was for him. He had never been close to his sister. That didn’t mean that he didn’t want to protect her. Even though they hadn’t been close, he had always wanted to do what he could to ensure that she was looked after, and she had been his motivation to keep searching after their parents had been killed. But now that he knew that she was safe, Torian felt strangely hollow.
“I don’t know what to tell her,” he admitted. When Sylvia looked over to him, Torian focused inwardly. He could feel the weight that was inside of him that pressed down upon that power that he had access to. For so long, Torian could not do anything with that weight. At least, not consistently. There were times when he had been able to heave it, free to give him access to that power, only for it to sink back down and suppress his ability to do anything more than form the primary patterns. It was that access to the sahir power which connected to the Saith, the gods that granted all sahir their abilities. “I’ve changed.”
“Have you changed so much?”
It was a good question, and it was one that Torian didn’t know if he had a good answer for. At least, his experiences had been enough that he thought that he had changed considerably. He was different. And maybe that was what bothered him, or at least gave him reason to pause. It was his difference and the difference in power that he had that made him question just how much he could share with his sister.
“I suppose not that much,” he finally said.
“Are you afraid of how she will take your advancement?”
“Liana has always been better than me. And I don’t mind,” he added hurriedly as if he had to explain that to her, though he wasn’t sure that he really needed to. “It’s just that I feel…”
Torian wasn
“You feel distracted,” Sylvia filled in for him. “Given everything that you have encountered, and all that you have become, you feel as if there are other things that you must be doing. Is that it?”
Torian shrugged. Maybe that was a part of it. They were heading toward Corsalt, where they were hoping to find other sahir, though there was a part of Torian that wondered if they would encounter any. If the sahir had survived in Corsalt, why would they not have fought Rusav and kept them from all that they had done?
“I can’t tell you how to behave, nor can I tell you what you need to do with your sister, but if you keep traveling with us, then you will need to come to terms with how you leave things with her.”
Torian looked over.
“I see,” she said. “That is where your real difficulty lies.”
“No,” he said hurriedly but realized that it wasn’t true, and Sylvia seemed to watch him, though there was a bit of a strangeness to the way that she was watching. “You said that Aldrich wanted me to do this.”
“Aldrich thought that you needed a better grasp of your valsahir potential. That relies upon understanding the sahir aspect of the Saith. They are interconnected, Torian. And there is only so much that I can teach you. I will show you as much as I know, but I am not a Navarin sahir trained like your university could potentially train. That is what Aldrich wanted for you.”
He nodded. He knew that and now that he had better access to the potential that he had, he couldn’t deny that he wanted to do more with it, and the only way that he thought he might be able to do more would be by learning how to control his Saith in ways that would allow him to prove himself.
“Then let’s work,” he said.
She smiled tightly, and they spent a while practicing variations on the primary patterns before moving on to the first-tier patterns, of which there were not quite as many variations, but Sylvia still knew more than Torian did. They had been working on these ever since they had lost Aldrich, almost as if Sylvia was determined to help him find answers on his own. After a while, she got tired and said as much. Torian climbed down from the wagon and joined Visthor. His hand remained near the hilt of his Blade of Wind strapped to his belt, though he had not withdrawn it since facing the Rusav soldiers and Tamish.
“Sylvia has you working hard,” Visthor said.
“She says that I need to be ready for Corsalt.”
“Yes. Corsalt. Learn sahir. Then learn valsahir. Focus on one, then the other.”
Visthor whistled, and one of the shadow wolves came bounding over. This was a large, dark gray shadow wolf that bristled at the sight of Torian before nuzzling its head up against Visthor’s hand, acting more like a dog than a wild massive wolf.
If he never went with the others, he would never learn what it would take for him to connect to the shadow wolves. Or just a shadow wolf. That was something that he had never thought that he wanted up until it became a possibility. Now it was something that he found himself thinking about, dreaming about, and wondering if he might gain anything from such a connection. Visthor had once told him that the wolves spoke to him. If he could learn how to speak to the wolves as well, maybe it would help.
“Where’s the caravan going?”
“After Corsalt? Only Sylvia know,” Visthor said, tipping his head toward the wagons.
The paint on the wagons had long since faded, making it difficult to make out any of the writing that was on them. They caught some of the sunlight drifting through the treetops, and Torian tried to make out what had once been on those wagons, but had been unable to uncover anything. Any time that he had asked, primarily talking to Visthor and Sylvia, neither of them had answered him as if there was some secret to the wagons themselves.
“How long do you think it will take us to get there?” Torian asked.
“Sylvia, take it slowly,” Visthor said. “For the best. We need to be careful. Rusav not gone.”
“We haven’t seen any sign of Rusav in the last day.”
“One day is one day,” Visthor said.
Torian started to smile, but Visthor didn’t join him.
And he kept his gaze sweeping around him, along with the wolves prowling in the trees, which suggested to Torian that Visthor was far more on edge than he had realized. Perhaps Torian needed to be better, as well. He could use the stacked stone tracking pattern to check for anyone else and had not.
It was something that he simply forgot about. Having not had his power for very long, Torian found it difficult to think about things that others who had that power for longer would have considered obvious. None of it was obvious to him. He paused for a moment, forming the tracking pattern, and then let it flow out from him. It was a strange sensation. It felt as if he were suddenly connected to the ground and everything beneath him, in a way that he had not been before. He pushed on the power inside of him, letting it spill out through his arms, through the pattern that he formed, and then downward through the tracking pattern.
He felt Visthor and the others within the caravan. He felt the shadow wolves, including the shadow wolf that had traveled with him. And then he felt the trees. Torian continued to push outward, thinking that he might find the power spreading beyond and something that he might be able to use, but there was nothing.
He released it and found Visthor watching him. He had stopped as well, though partly because the caravan had mostly passed them.
“Have you found anything?”
“No,” Torian said. “I should have done it before. If Aldrich were still here, I probably would’ve thought about it, and I would have realized what I needed to be doing.”
“Aldrich gone. You must learn. Practice.”
Torian nodded. It seemed as if Visthor wanted to make it harder than what it seemed. Then again, Visthor often saw the world differently than Torian did. His experience had been a terrible one, having lost so much of his family through the war, and it gave Visthor a very different experience to what happened with Rusav than so many others.
But not all that dissimilar to Torian.
“What do you think that I’ve been doing with Sylvia?” He tried to smile, but Visthor watched him with a bit of irritation in his eyes. “Fine. I need to practice more. With Sylvia. With you. And I need to stay focused.”
“Always stay focused. You become valsahir. But not without focus.”
“There are times when I question that I can be this valsahir like you all seem to think.”
“You no believe Sylvia?”
“I believe that there are aspects to what I can do that are different than what I ever believed possible. But I also know what Aldrich said about this power. There’s a weight inside of me, limiting me. And if I push too hard on that weight, I can end up harming myself, burning off my own ability. What happens then?”
“You learn to do so carefully,” Visthor said matter-of-factly. “Like all things. You learn blade carefully, also.”
“This isn’t like the blade,” he said.
“No,” Visthor agreed. “This easier.”
Torian started to smile when he recognized a strange energy. He felt it all around him, and he froze.
Visthor seemed to recognize that something was going on, and he immediately whistled. There were three sharp bursts, followed by silence, followed by another three sharp bursts. The wagons rolled to a stop, but that wasn’t the only thing that happened.
The wolves howled.
The sound of their voices filled the forest. There had to be a dozen of them now traveling with them, though perhaps there had always been a dozen. That included the other wolf that Torian believed he was meant to connect to; if only he had to understand that wolf.
