Life Sorcerer: Life Sorcerer: Book One - Return of Magic: Book Two Read online

  She had a better feel of it now, a subtle urging. She needed to go northwest first, then to the southeast. That could mean a couple of different things. Either there was something or someone to the northwest that she’d needed aid from to address the balance problem in the southeast.

  Or, she’d just been hit by two balance issues simultaneously. Based on Merlin’s journals, the former possibility seemed far more likely, but she wouldn’t close her mind on the idea yet. That was a good way to get killed, making assumptions. All the feeling told her was where to go, nothing else at all.

  She knew that had to do with the limitations of the gods. Gaia was a major goddess. Her domain was the earth itself, and all within it including all the minor and lesser gods. The more powerful the gods, the less they could interfere. Lesser gods could speak with their followers, but they were limited in what they could share and how much they could influence. Minor gods like Nim, could actually walk the earth and interact like any other mortal being.

  Point was, as the most powerful goddess, the creator of Earth and all within it, Gaia was limited to one follower. She was also severely limited in what she could pass on. Really, outside of her special staff which chose her and allowed her to cast magics through it to increase her magical abilities, and the feeling to go in a certain direction, that was the sum total of aid. That was the limit of the aid she received from the goddess to carry out her purpose and fulfill her mantel.

  She closed the book she’d been studying and headed for the bath. It might be her last chance for one for a while, though she had her magic to keep herself clean it wasn’t the same. Nothing beat hot water and soap. She cast a spell to let John know it was time to go, since she wasn’t sure exactly where he was.

  She frowned and studied herself as she turned her head back and forth as she looked in the mirror. Her magical studies had gone very well, but they hadn’t gone perfectly. She was just twenty-five, but the face that looked back at her was at least ten years older than that. The few mistakes she’d made while studying and practicing spells had prematurely aged her ten years.

  Well, ten years in appearance, but given the longer lifespan she should have enjoyed it was truly closer to thirty lost years.

  Her hair was still a rich and lustrous light and straight brown, and her hazel eyes looked just as sharp. She just had a few age lines on her still softly attractive face. Her body… well if anything her body was even more toned and in shape than five years ago with all the workouts and martial training. Her ass was still tight and supple, and her generous breasts had yet to start sagging. She had an hourglass body in perfect proportion, and she admitted to a bit of vanity as far as that went. She did look good. She just didn’t look young anymore, and her complexion wasn’t quite as perfect, her skin not as supple and silky.

  John always told her she was beautiful, and he still seduced her into bed on a regular basis and loved her wildly, so she had to take him at his word. Still, she hated looking older… being older, than she was supposed to be. It was a constant reminder that magic was dangerous, and she’d also have to go into her regenerating sleep much earlier if she chose to live another life as the servant of Gaia. But… that would last almost two hundred years, so she was in no hurry to do so.

  Still, she’d learned some hard lessons, and it’d been almost three years since the last time she’d made a mistake and used far too much magic in a spell. Also, sorcerers had an enhanced life force, if she didn’t make mistakes, she could live up to another two hundred years in this lifetime, before she’d need to sleep. Which meant, eventually her John would catch up to her appearance, and bypass her.

  He’d grow old and die long before she even finished this first life. It was something she tried really hard not to think about.

  She could still safely fill the staff once every day, at the very limit of her magic. So she still filled it once every two days just to be cautious. She used that magic to practice her spells right before she filled it back up, it was the course of wisdom not to be at her limit when she could be called upon at any time. Practice was important, since a spell didn’t have a set cost in magic. It was variable based on experience and her level of focus. Once she’d perfected a spell, it usually cost around a third of the magic it cost the first time she cast it. So, it was worth the risk to practice, as long as she was vigilant and didn’t make more mistakes.

  She walked into the bedroom after drying off, and she opened the dresser drawer. Elven sorcerers and priestesses wore robes, but she hated the things. It was the one thing she stubbornly wouldn’t do, no matter what their expectations were. Instead, she pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a light red blouse, with a black skintight top underneath it.

  Her clothes should’ve long ago been old and faded, but she was a sorceress, and they looked even better than the day she’d found them in an abandoned house. More like fresh off the rack. Sizes weren’t an issue either, since magic was good that way, and could tailor her finds to her body.

  She turned around to leave the room and track down John, when she froze. Sitting on the mantel of the fireplace was one of her first runic creations. It was a collapsible staff that acted very much like her staff of the mantel. It could collect magic from the world around her with a recharge glyph and would enable a sorcerer to cast spells through it using very little magic, letting the staff’s magic do most of the work of supporting the spell.

  For a sorceress, that meant casting a lot more magic before reaching their limits.

  It’d been difficult, but she’d figured out how to do it with a lot of study as well as trial and error. The recharge runes had been the easiest part, allowing it to charge with a lot of magic, with a much smaller expenditure of magic from her. The difficult part had been making it act as a part of the caster, so any spell could be cast through it, and share that nature magic.

  She’d done it though. Of course, it wasn’t as good as her staff. Mostly because her true staff of the mantel had been blessed by Gaia herself. It was indestructible for one, and secondly it held about three times the amount of magic as her created staff. That wasn’t that big a deal, because she could safely charge her created staff three times a day, instead of only once.

  Still, it’d been an exercise and experiment when learning and studying runes. Runes were just complete spells. Just add magic. A spell required words and intent to cast. A rune while carved took on both the word’s meaning, and the intent to which it was made for. It made it a mostly limited thing, since once inscribed its purpose couldn’t be modified, but in the case of increasing her available magic use it was extremely useful.

  Point was, her collapsible staff was glowing. That meant she’d need it in her quest to ensure the balance. She had no clue why that would be true, but she didn’t doubt it. The last time she’d seen that glow, it’d been around two soldiers in the national guard five years ago. The staff fully extended was six feet long, but it was only two feet long in its collapsed form, the size of a baton. She grabbed it, and then slipped it into her pack.

  She closed her eyes, and she cast a spell to locate John. He was in the practice cavern, sparring with Bria. Bria was what all her friends called her, but she was really a silver dragon named Brianthenia. She was a great friend, and Bria had taken it upon herself to make sure John and Katie were ready to face any threat, be it magical or martial in nature.

  Katie owed her a lot. Dragons were a bit wild and high strung by nature, and next to John, Bria was one of the best friends she’d ever had. Even pre-emergence. The dragon was very much worth the occasional grumpy attitude and fits.

  She smirked as she walked into the large cavern, “Didn’t you get my message?”

  The two were fighting fiercely with practice swords. John was still gorgeous, even at twenty-seven. He had a handsome baby face, that often was filled with confidence. He had black hair and gray eyes. He was tall at six foot two, and he had a body like a linebacker. If anything, he was even more muscular and toned after the las
t five years of intense training.

  Bria was a silver dragon, an inescapable fact and easily observable due to her long silver hair and yellow ochre eyes. Her silver hair shone in the soft light and was as shimmering as her scales were in her other form. Her face hadn’t changed in five years, she still had an ethereal angelically beautiful face, and a sumptuous body that even Katie envied at times. She looked soft, with a very curvaceously built for sin body, but hidden under those soft curves was incredible muscle tone, and the strength of a dragon. If lessened in human form.

  John turned to look at her, and said, “You were serious, we have a…”

  He was interrupted by Bria’s kick which sent him on his ass, and her sword pressed up against his throat.

  He groaned.

  Bria said pointedly, “Never look away from your opponent.”

  Bria grinned, and pulled the sword away from his throat, as she reached down with her left hand to help him up.

  Katie said, “Yes, we need to get to the Seattle area. Then we need to get to the east coast, and I’m not sure how long we have. It’s not urgent yet, but that’s a far way to go.”

  The Seattle area, because the cities were still a death sentence to anyone that went inside them. She believed they’d eventually be okay again, but even then a pretechnological society couldn’t support a city and high rises, not without electricity and mass transit, delivery trucks and freight trains.

  Even if they built cities again anytime soon, it would have to be surrounded by farms with lots of horses and carriages, and a whole lot smaller. The world was still recovering and there were still a lot of outlaws out there. A few governors had survived, being outside their cities at the time, and had brought order to small areas. There were also a lot of others that had formed farming communities and traded necessities. But there were still far too many evil men who’d built communes and raided the innocent.

  The elves had made some strides in forming peace with the humans, but it was all very fragile and very dependent on circumstance. To be fair, that was half the elves fault. They were arrogant as hell and tended to rub even the most tranquil humans the wrong way.

  Bria frowned, “Your best bet would be to teleport back here, and then portal to the east coast. I’m sure the council would allow you to use the permanent gate between our settlement here, and the elven and dragon settlement in… I think your people call it Virginia.”

  She could only teleport to a place she’d been, or move through permanent gates which were not common, but there was one between every elf and dragon settlement around the world. Each of their settlements were also inside a magical forest, having sprites, naiads, dryads, and many other of the fae magical races.

  She’d been to the east coast before of course, but only pre-emergence. So that wouldn’t help her, she had to have been there to feel the magical signature of the place after emergence in order to teleport.

  John nodded thoughtfully, “That makes sense. We could ride along I-ninety-five south along the coast at that point to get where we need to be.”

  She pursed her lips, “I was thinking of teleporting back to the old farm, but you two are right, that would be a lot faster than even that. Still, we need to get going. It’ll take us three or four weeks. Seattle is almost thirteen hundred miles from here and we’re going by horse.”

  Bria said, “You two are still hopeless in a fight, want some company?”

  She smiled, “Love some.”

  Not that she believed the dragon’s assessment, but she’d take the dig if it meant the company and backup. Oh, she couldn’t face down an elven or dragon blade master with her staff and expect to win without magic. But human thugs with bats, machetes, or even a sword wouldn’t stand a chance against her anymore.

  Bria said, “We’ll also have to watch ourselves. The elves sent a delegation that way once, and they got into a fight with zombies. They managed to disengage and retreat. They haven’t gone west of the Rockies since, so who knows what kind of dark magic or societies we’ll run into.”

  She nodded. She’d heard the same thing, but her feelings told her that’s where she needed to go.

  It was time to pack up, saddle their horses, and head out.

  The basement room was dimly lit, and bare of any comfort whatsoever, with the exception perhaps of the soft white light that filled the usually pitch-black windowless room. Not even a rug on the cement floor, as Mara and the other fifteen women exchanged helpless and fearful looks. Another deep agonized scream reached their ears, and they shivered. At least the screams were short. That gave Mara hope, simply because their captors lacked the mercy those short screams implied.

  Mara was twenty-one years old and stood at a mere five foot three. She had lustrous and wavy dark brown hair that could easily be mistaken for black in a dimly lit room. She had exotic almond eyes, full lips, and soft high cheekbones that gave her face a mixture of exotic and soft beauty thanks to her Eurasian ancestry. She had lightly tanned fair skin, and her body was tightly athletic and limber, like a gymnast, with lovely and soft womanly curves.

  She’d known better than to travel alone, and she hadn’t been. She’d just been sixteen when the day of emergence had come. She’d been lucky in a way, because she’d found her goddess the very next day. She was a priestess of the Goddess of protection and healing, Vadea. She’d also been a capable young woman thanks to her outdoorsy parents, and she’d hidden in the forest for almost a month before her goddess had guided her to a decent farming community.

  Her parents had been killed in Seattle, and she’d been alone for so long she was more than grateful to see people again.

  She was almost instantly accepted in the village when she’d performed feats of healing on the sick and wounded, and she’d started to cleanse the water and food of contamination. Her protection spells had even aided them from raiders who had a sorcerer with them, enabling the strong but non-magical men of the village to face such roving threats and survive.

  It’d been a good start, but her calling to serve and her empathy had required more from her, and a little over a year later she’d become the mid-wife, healer, and priestess of four separate but relatively close farming communities only two or three days apart. She’d also become somewhat of an ambassador, as one community built a beer business, while the others specialized in other things and she helped to open up trade.

  She’d never lain with a man, though there’d been plenty of offers that way, and her protection magic ensured no man had taken that from her by force. She was no warrior, but her power allowed her to turn away violence. She wasn’t a prude, nor was she immune to the stirrings in her body when viewing a well-built man. She was simply waiting for the one for her. She’d know him when she saw him, or at least, something deep inside of her due to her goddess’s magic, blessings, and her own intuition had told her all the others hadn’t been the right one for her.

  A month ago, her life had taken a dire turn while travelling between villages. She still felt horribly guilty for that. She’d been asleep when the evil men in this commune had snuck into their camp and killed her escorts, knocked her unconscious while still fuzzy headed from sleep before she could cast even a single spell, and they’d stolen a wagon filled with trade supplies for another town.

  She should’ve set a protection spell before she went to sleep. But it had been so long since there’d been rape gangs or roving raiders in the area. The villages in Washington state had been safe for almost two years, and she’d assumed it was safe. Her assumption had gotten three good men killed. It’d just taken two years to do so, after she’d lessened her vigilance under the illusion of safety.

  She’d never do it again, and she swore to herself she’d practice vigilance in the future.

  She’d woken up in that basement room among a bevy of other women who had horror in their eyes and that had filled her in. If she wanted to eat, she’d serve her captors in all ways. Her remarkable beauty had drawn looks of pity from the others instead o
f the usual jealousy she encountered, and her stomach had turned at the descriptions of what went on. Their captors were twenty men who moved around often, preying on a group of villages and then moving on before their victims could organize against them.

  She’d prayed, and her goddess had advised her to sit tight, and wait. That if she did stay and persevere some good would come of her capture. So she’d cast her spells. Create water and food had kept her and the women fed for the last month without having to sacrifice their bodies to unholy lust and evil men. While the spells of protection she cast each day had kept the men out of the basement. They couldn’t leave their captivity. The reinforced steel door only opened from the outside, but nor could the men come in through her wards. Her purification spells took care of their daily waste and kept their bodies relatively clean, if not perfectly so.

  It wasn’t perfect, since some of the women were always out of the basement for one reason or other, and by saving the fifteen with her she’d doomed the three that had been serving at the time to keep serving those men non-stop. She’d learned long ago though, that she couldn’t save everyone, and she focused on the ones that she could.

  The women were grateful, but they did not share her hope. The current situation couldn’t last indefinitely. They couldn’t see past the horror of their current existence, but perhaps when the promised deliverance came, they’d finally take a step toward the offered light.

  Another horrific scream rose to rend the night, and she shivered. Perhaps deliverance was already here. Her goddess was peaceful, and out of respect she’d never wield a bladed object to protect herself. She was a healer and protector, not a warrior. But she didn’t judge the ones who were, who righteously fought against the darkness this world had to offer. In fact, she often had shared her protection for those men and women going into battle to protect their lives and property.

  Three more horrific screams rose almost back to back, then there was silence. The bolt on the thick door up the basement stairs was thrown, and she felt a stirring nudge from her goddess. She smiled as she stood up.