Page 148 of Death of a Mortal

I turned to leave with Aerie in tow, but before I could close the door behind me, Sevrin spoke once more. “Naci, don’t forget. Make friends.”

I still didn’t understand how to “make friends” with a shadow monster that didn’t speak, just felt extreme emotions, and lived in my heart. But I nodded.

The magic-blocking ring was still needed for emergencies, but if we could make a dampener for my shadow magic, maybe I could learn to actually use the shadows. There had to be something useful about them other than killing, severing limbs, and dangling people in the air…right?

Images of Thraxxus and a continent on fire followed that thought, making me shiver.

* * *

After an hourof practicing fire magic with Bramick, during which I successfully split a fireball into two and launched each at separate targets, he said I was ready to try without the flicker.

“Start tiny, no joking around, Naci. The first attempt without the flicker isn’t to burn a mountain. Just light this match.”

He handed me the small wooden stick and took the flicker from me. I focused on sending the smallest amount of fire magic from myopen palm to the match held in the other, only for the entire thing to erupt in flames over a foot tall.

With a cry of shock, I extinguished the flame, leaving nothing left of the match at all.

“Not to worry, happens to everyone on their first try. What you’ll learn is that most of using elemental magic is keeping it contained as opposed to trying to make it bigger. The elements are powerful by themselves. They don’t need much magic from us to do…stuff.”

Bramick was right. It took barely a twinge of thought to get the flames to do what I wanted without a dampener. By the end of another hour, I was doing everything I’d already done with the flicker, noting how little magic I actually had to use.

“Excellent, you’re learning faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“Don’t most fae learn this when their magic emerges as a child?”

“Well, yeah. But still.”

I snorted a laugh. “What a kind thing to say, Bramick, that I learn faster than a child,” I said, drenched in sarcasm.

He thumped me on the back, and we left the magic there for the day, spending the whole time on fire and none on raw magic.

“We’ll start working on combat magic tomorrow, so bring an extra pair of eyebrows. They’re known to get singed off with newbies to fire combat.”

“Can’t someone just glamour them back on or whatever?”

“I don’t know what fantasy books you’ve been reading, but glamour is deception magic, considered an Umbrathren ability. Not common and not my cup of tea either.”

“I didn’t know that.” I realized then that Sevrin had jumped immediately into my abilities, and we never talked about magic in general. “I don’t know much about Veythryn or Umbrathren magic.”

We walked side by side toward the classroom that Kaelor and I used for our lessons.

“Well, I’m neither of those, so I can’t give you much,” he said. “Best to ask Aerie or Dray about Veythryn magic and Sevrin about Umbrathrens.”

“Wait…Drayce is a Veythryn? And Sevrin is an Umbrathren? I mean, I guess I suspected both, but I didn’t know for sure. What’s Drayce’s vey form? And what umbra magic does Sevrin have?”

“Jeez, so many questions. Why don’t you ask the ones that those questions are about?”

“Isn’t it rude to ask fae what their abilities are?”

“Sure is.”

“Well then, that sounded like great advice, Bramick. Thank you.”

We bantered all the way to Kaelor’s classroom, where Bramick said goodbye and left.

“Sorry I missed yesterday, I was on a supply run to Fallorian,” Kaelor said when I sat down in front of the desk he was occupying.

“I wanna go on a supply run.” More than that, I wanted to go back to Fallorian.