Bound Evil

Emily dropped down crossed-legged into the soft furs across from Ashe.

“So teach, what are we learning tonight?”

Selia entered behind Emily but moved to the far end of the tent, where she collapsed in her own bed.

Ashe smiled at Emily.

“Well, I thought of a couple of runes we could try, but first did you manage to feel your energy?”

Emily’s smile was bittersweet.

“I managed to find it but can’t get it to move how I want.”

Ashe snorted and shook her head.

“That's a given, people train all their lives to assert control over their energy. The more control you can learn the more powerful the resulting spell will be.”

Emily hummed.

“Right, well all I found was grey source, or Alex as called it ‘colorless energy’.”

Ashe's eyes widen happily.

“That's perfect, I was worried you’d have a mishmash of conflicting sources inside you, but this is good news.”

“How so?”

“Well let's put it this way, when you make a hand gesture in the shape of a rune it acts like a word, your color is like an accent, or… maybe a flavor. Anyway, the expression of your rune is determined by the energy you have.”

Emilly nodded for her to go on.

“This also means that certain runes will have a lesser effect and even fizzle out completely. In your case, because you have no ‘accent’ you can work with all available runes to some extent.”

Emily smiled at the thought of lobbing fireballs across the battlefield entered her mind.

“But let's not get ahead of ourselves, you’ll probably have a pretty hard time making adjustments to the current known spells. They’ll need to suit your style because you must use twice the number of hand gestures and energy. It might make the spells you use in combat very unwieldy.”

Emily bit the inside of her lip. It made sense. Her energy didn’t have inherent qualities like the other sources so she would have to convert it somehow. Unfortunately, this might take too much time when people were trying to shank her during battle.

“Alright well, where do we start?”

Ashe smiled.

“With a ‘lift’ rune. We’ll add on a ‘focus’ rune so the spell knows what you want to target, but this should be perfect for you as we won’t need to convert your energy.”

Ashe took out a coin and showed Emily the two simple hand gestures. The ‘lift’ rune consisted of raising an open palm with Emily's fingers curled and thumb tucked into the center. The ‘focus’ rune consisted of pointing with her index, middle, and pink fingers at the target and bringing her ring ringer back to create a loop with her thumb.

The gestures were simple but just making them wasn’t enough.

“Okay, next we’ll use the wave method because that's the easiest when you can’t control your energy that well. Start by trying to draw more power in through your bridge, and then when you feel a wave of power moving through your body, guide it to your hand as you make the gestures. Don’t worry about your control today, just try to get results.”

Emily nodded as she flicked the round over in her hands. This coin contained only trace amounts of cobalt but supposedly the metal responded well to source and made for incredible magic implements. Things made with this metal could focus one's energy in the right direction, or even be made into protective pieces, depending on how they were treated.

Right now the amount of cobalt in the coin should only offer the smallest of benefits.

Emily closed her eyes and began to feel her energy once more. Following Ashe’s advice she tried to get her bridge to absorb more of the surrounding power.

Strangely this step took no extra effort from Emily. The moment she wanted to take in more energy it was as though her body took over. Like breathing, Emily felt her bridge begin to take in all the available energy. She could immediately see the wave Ashe was talking about as the new source rushed into Emily’s body and smacked into the source already in her bones. Like a domino effect, the power sent a ripple through her frame. By the time it had reached Emily’s left shoulder, it had doubled in size. Traveling down her arm, it felt like all the blood in her arm was rushing to her hand and when it hit, Emily cast the ‘Lift’ rune, followed by the ‘Focus’ rune, pointing at the coin in her right hand.

So much power moved through her fingers that it caused pins and needles as she felt it extend beyond herself and to the coin. At this point, Emily wanted to direct the spell, but it barely responded to her commands. All she could do was set a general direction, and since it was a ‘lift’ rune, Emily simply tried to make it float straight up.

What happened next made everyone recoil as the coin shot up and out of Emily's hand with the same velocity as a bullet fired from a gun. One moment the coin was there, and then the soft sound of fabric tearing could be heard as a tiny hole appeared in the top of the tent.

Ashe's eyes widened as she stared at Emily’s palm.

“Okay, that was not supposed to happen. How much power did you use?”

Emily shrugged. She hadn’t been watching, she’d just been trying to make the spell work.

“You don’t feel sluggish? Or perhaps full? Like you drank too much water?”

Emily lowered her gaze as she tried to feel out her condition. As far as she could tell nothing felt out of sorts.

“Wait, if drawing in too much source caused ‘Source exposure’, what happens to me if I draw too much?”

Ashe had a worried look on her face but glanced at Selia, who was looking up at the top of her tent in displeasure.

“I’m not too sure, I’ve heard of documented cases of your bridge, but I never researched them in depth. So we’ll have to keep an eye out for signs. Are you sure you feel fine?”

Emily nodded.

“Then I have to assume you just have a really large capacity to handle source. All things aside congrats, it usually takes people far longer to work that out, and I’ve never seen someone do it on their first try.”

Emily looked down at her palm, she wasn’t all that surprised. She’d spent countless hours learning how to control her blood. So when something new like this came along she had experience with feeling for solutions in the dark. This was just like a new gift. Only this one was vastly more structured, but in some ways that made it all the more interesting to Emily.

“Can you try that again? But this time try to tone down the strength behind it?”

Emily licked her lips but nodded.

Calling to her bridge once more Emily tried to constrict the amount of source she actively called, but the moment the wave hit she knew the outcome. A second hole opened up in the roof of the tent and Selia looked about ready to kick them both.

“Hmm, well no matter we’ll figure it out,” Ashe said as she stood and waved her hand at the material making four quick gestures. The holes rapidly reweaved themselves together and Selia looked slightly placated.

“Actually this is good too, I can already probably use this in combat as long as I’m careful,” Emily said as she smirked.

Ashe however looked worried.

“You need to be careful, seeing as we don’t know your limit or how it will present you are going to need to take it slow.” She began rummaging through her nearby pack and pulled out a book.

“I’ll look for the runes needed to convert your energy into other colors but unfortunately I only have limited resources here. Most of my journals are back home so…”

Ashe wore a forlorn expression as she rubbed the cover to a brown leather-bound book.

Emily looked over to Selia who watched Ashe with warm eyes.

Scratching the back of her head Emily broke the quiet.

“Well, it's not a problem, I’m just happy you’re willing to help me… I can see you like magic books. I have one in my possession I could let you look at it if you want…”

The interesting thing was Emily had not seen many books since coming to the world. She already knew the paper was fairly inexpensive, so the fact that there weren’t more could only be explained by an information lockdown. As though people didn’t want records to be openly spread to the public. Especially texts on magic.

Ashe’s demeanor perked up right away.

“Really?! Yes please!”

Emily searched through her pack brought out the red book and handed it over to Ashe. The woman happily accepted and cracked the spine on the first page. The silence in the tent went on as Ashes face slowly changed from jubilant to concerned, to outright shocked.

“This is blood magic, where did you get this?”

Celia suddenly sat up and squinted her eyes at Emily.

“I got it from some people who tried to sacrifice me. Luckily I got out and they weren't using it anymore so…”

Ashe shook her head.

“Emily you shouldn’t learn this type of magic, it's wrong.”

Emily rubbed her cheek.

“The thing is, as you’ve seen my natural abilities fall in line with Blood magic. I want to study this when I’m able. I think it will help me. Right now I’ve made out as much as I can but there's too many terms I don’t understand or can’t read too well, so it’ll be a while before I get there.”

Selia placed a hand on Ashe's shoulder.

“Sis, don't. Not if it makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to.”

Ashe smiled warmly and placed a hand over hers

“I'm not that frail sister. Emily, how would feel about letting me study the book? In exchange, I’ll teach you what I learn from it.”

Emily cocked her head.

“I mean sure but you don’t look so confident are you sure you want to look at this kind of stuff?”

Ashe took a breath and let it out again.

“Emily, I’m grateful for both yours and my sister's concern, but I have a path set out in front of me. Sticking my head in the sand when something doesn't fit would only sever to hinder me. You have in your possesion something that I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on in my entire lifetime unless I was truly willing to give up being a human. At the very least I want to study this text so I know how to defend myself against it.”

Emily shrugged, only too happy to support her determination.

“Well, then I’ll leave it in your care…”

“Thank you…”

Selia was still shooting Ashe fearful glares, but the woman in question seemed oblivious, lost in her own thoughts. They chatted for a while longer and Selia shot Ashe one more look of concern before turning over and going to sleep. Emily’s eyes grew heavy as time passed, and the last thing she saw was Ashe pouring over the red-bound book by the light of a weak oil lantern.

Stars exploded in Emily’s vision, brushing up against her before smashing into the sky and dancing around the blood-red constellation. Before rushing into place around her.

17 - second threshold released at rank 25

Skill threshold released at rank 18

Active slot: Scarlet sister - access to the Scarlet sister skill tree, along with the Blood Mage skill tree.

Increased learning speed when consuming blood, this is further increased if the blood is given willingly. Increased learning speed when studying blood wards.

Passive slot: Explorer - Increased learning speed when engaged with new environments.

Passive slot: Increased learning speed when accepting missions for coin. This is further increased when in proximity to the sub-species[Rime wolf].

Emily was content with her current rank. Laying back in the grass Emily couldn’t wait to find out what her next skills would be. As far as she could tell just a single rank sat between her and her skill. The last one had made such a difference hope for something just as game-changing.