The Stones of Magic

by A.W.Chrystalis

  Chapter 11

  Mach left the group for the isolation of the Guardian’s cavern in the hopes of sorting out his thoughts. Down the way they had come, towards the direction of Watesa’s lake, he sat at the edge of the still water and removed his boots. Gleefully he slipped his feet into warm water and sighed with content.

  He had expected the water to be freezing, since the water flowing from the cave was icy but was happy to find that it wasn’t. He had been sore since leaving his home so many weeks ago and though the hot bath he had soaked in the night before had helped considerably, the cold of the storm raging outside and his own worries had begun to overwhelm him bringing with it aches that normally would not be there.

  What was this that he was feeling? At first, he could easily ignore the small things. Now it had moved on to much larger things that may become problems. It felt as if he could feel the presence of energies that people like Mendoll were using. He was no historian, he almost failed that portion of his training back home. But as far as he knew, only a Mage could feel the powers that other Mages used to cast their spells.

  Did that mean that he was indeed a Mage? It was not entirely impossible. Most of the time a Mage’s gifts were passed down by bloodline. However, there were plenty of Mages that were the first in their line, or the powers had skipped several generations. Still, him a Mage!

  That was just something he did not think he could handle. The visions he kept having were bad enough, but those could be attributed to bad food and nightmares or an overactive imagination.

  He closed his eyes and thought of the mountain back home. The way the suns would ascend over them and how the sky would turn to a fiery red at sunset as the last sun dipped below the horizon. He remembered staying out late in the evening, high up in the hills, just so he could honestly say he was the last one to see the sun set.

  He recalled how he used to walk through the woods up to the city of Madtu and how he would bring special shipments up to Madtu when a special order came in by ship. Being able to hunt and fish to feed himself and his mother. Those were the good days, when his only concern was what he would do when it came time to gain an apprenticeship. Hell, he even missed the old schoolhouse where that cranky old woman, Miss Agatha, taught him and the other children.

  Even with the death of his father, he never felt this helpless or alone. It felt like a great tidal wave had washed over him and was dragging him out to sea.

  He tried to ease his mind of his troubles and let it wander as old memories bubbled up from deep within. He thought back to when his father had died. He had only been six. For years, it had been a tradition for Mach to wait at the docks for his father to return from one of his journeys.

  He could remember it vividly now.

  The sun shined so brightly that day, the sea crashing into the coast reverberated through him but was soft enough that he could hear all the laughter and joy around him. One ship was coming into port, its white sails bellowing in the wind. As he approached the dock, his heart raced wildly. Only a handful of men were on the top deck as the ship touched the piers. His father could always be seen up in front to gain the first sights of home. Instead, all he could see were the men that were charged with tying off the sails and securing the ship to the dock. He had stopped before ever reaching the dock, his eyes fixed at the empty spot and the lack of the familiar face.

  From somewhere below deck, a large group of sailors marched up and off the ship. A wooden stretcher carried between them and a white silk wrap lay on top of a hidden body.

  The white silk that was best known as the cloth of the dead.

  More men followed as the group exited, marched straight down the road toward him, and toward his home. As the group of sailors walked passed him he knew immediately who it was that had been wrapped up so carefully.

  His father would have been one of the men carrying the body had he been alive, that was just the kind of man he was. His eyes were glued on the white silk as they passed him, tears already forming in his eyes.

  A hand fell on his shoulder, startling him with a firm but gentle grip. The same kind of grip his father would use every time he was preparing himself to announce bad news to his son. He looked quickly at the man, half praying it would be his father standing there. Instead, it was a stranger in long white robes, the healer of the ship most likely.

  He could not remember the sound of the man’s voice, but the words continued to haunt him to this day. “Come along son, we need to talk to your mother. You should be there as well.” His father was dead.

  They told his mother the tale, a tale that he had envisioned ever since.

  A ship had come upon theirs, surprising the crew and Captain. A new weapon had been sitting on deck in plain sight, a weapon that the Captain knew of, even if he had yet to see it in action. If they were to fight, the whole crew would have surely died without ever being able to defend themselves. Mach’s father had hailed the enemy ship with a flag of surrender.

  It was apparent to the man telling them the story that Dan knew the one in charge and what he needed to do for the survival of his crew. The only possible course of action was to challenge the opposing leader to a duel. The invader had an attraction to the challenge of a good fight, so when offered the chance, he quickly accepted the challenge. If he were to be given a good fight, more people would live through the ordeal.

  As the man spoke of his father’s duel Mach left the room. All he knew was that in the end Dan had wounded the invader at the cost of one wound to himself. The problem was that the one wound he received had been a mortal one, steel through the heart was not something that someone could live through. He learned later from his mother the conditions of the duel. For the price of a duel to the death, Dan had requested that his crew be let go without harm regardless of the outcome.

  Bravery in all its glory, and all its stupidity.

  Mach cleared his eyes of tears and looked out into the lake cavern, where the glow of the orb shone through the darkness and sighed. He thought of merely returning to find his mother and settling down in a quiet place to live out the rest of his life. Maybe take a small piece of the wild lands of the forest and make it his own, to live the rest of his life hidden away in some corner of the world. Visions of that fateful day his home had been destroyed flashed through his mind as a reminder of why he was out here.

  Rage and the hunger for vengeance swelled up inside of him, it burned inside him again like a wildfire. He wanted to make the man who took everything away from him suffer. He wanted to make the world safer for his mother when she finally healed from her injuries.

  As suddenly as his thoughts turned to his mother, his surroundings changed and he found himself standing inside a hut. It was becoming easier and easier for him now, and though ease of the transitions between the real world and whatever this was worried him, right now he felt his worry was miniscule.

  It was dark except for the dancing flames burning in the fireplace, its light barely revealing anything around him, casting its faint glow around the room. He thought of trying to force his mind back to return to his body, but curiosity got the better of him. After all, if no one knew he is having these dreams, why not try to find a use for them? Maybe, just maybe, he could control it eventually.

  As his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, he began to notice the shadows dancing on the walls. A man sat beside a bed and a single, half-burned candle sat upon the table beside him. The man was bent over a woman, changing bloodied bandages.

  The man discarded the bloodied and soiled ones for new ones, all the while being as gentle as a woodsman would be with an ailing fool. It appeared he had changed the bandages on her chest already and was now tending to the ones wrapped around her head.

  “It is ok, dear lady,” the man said softly. His voice was deep and scratchy as though he never used it, but it contained a certain gentleness Mach’s own father had once possessed. “I am almost done. How do you feel?”

  The woman ga
ve him a penetrating stare. Her golden hair was pulled into a loose tail behind her head. “I understand, my lady,” he said soothingly. “The pain is bad, in both ways. The herbs I gave you should help with the physically pain and I have much more so let me know when it wears off. But I assure you this, I am looking for what you lost. I have friends out now looking for signs of his passing.” Her eyes widened with fear suddenly.

  The man chuckled slightly and smiled down at her. “Don’t you worry, lass. No one will know you are here unless you wish them to know. My friends are not the talkative type, at least not with anyone else other than myself. You can rest assure that no one will find you unless you want to be found. I promise, you are protected here.” Her eyes softened slightly but sharpened as he pulled the last of the wrap tight about her head.

  He said nothing more and simply put his hand over her head, her eyes unfocused for a moment as though relief had come at last. He blinked quickly to clear his sight of the tears that burned red hot and found himself sitting beside the lake. Sehto was sitting beside him. The tracker was looking out at the altar on the far end of the lake, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

  “I wonder sometimes… what I have gotten myself into.” Sehto said after a few minutes in which Mach used to get control of himself. “I mean, like now, with that Mendoll. Here I am traveling with a Mage that is purposely trying to learn the forbidden arts. All my training in the Kings Guard is yelling at me to kill him here and now. But then I look at myself, and then I think of the town here on the island.”

  “What about it?” Mach asked quietly to buy himself more time to gain control over his turmoil. Had the tracker said anything before Mach had returned to his place beside the lake?

  “I found out something about those two, something that would surely get them executed, as it would most likely get me executed for just being with them. Almost every one of the thousand some people here are Mages of some sort. Mendoll and Bastra have both spent a lot of time out of the country looking for Mages and rescuing them. Some were known Mages in service, others were only known by reputation and they interfered with their execution in some way. Hell, the guy I just got done talking to before we left didn't even know he had any kind of abilities or gifts or whatever they are until Mendoll walked up to him and told him so.”

  “So what are you saying?” Mach asked slowly. He wasn’t sure where this conversation was going and he was not sure if he was comfortable talking about such things. One wrong word and he might sat too much. Granted, he felt as if he had told Sehto too much already, but there may still be things that may push the tracker over the edge.

  Sehto sighed and looked him square in the eyes, there was worry and concern there that was so like his father’s that he almost reached out to the tracker as he would have done with his father. “Mach, we both know what you are experiencing is more than simple dreams. Both of those two have gone to great lengths to help Mages escape a death sentence. Even if you aren't a Mage in itself, you still have at least one gift that could get you killed.”

  Sehto turned his head toward the glow across the lake and then looked back into Mach’s eyes. There it was again. The look his father used to give him so often when he was a little boy. “Tell them, lad. Tell them about these dreams and any that you have later. Mendoll especially. As I said, he may be able to help you.”

  “Are you all ready to leave?” Mach jumped at the sound of the voice. He looked behind him to find Mendoll walking toward them, slowly and with evident pain but on his own.. In the little time that he had rested, he looked worlds better, the color had already returned to his face. He looked a little shaky still but had the look of a man who was ready for just about anything. The strength this old man has was something to be admired.

  Mach and Sehto rose from their seats in silence and followed Mendoll through the cave where Bastra was waiting for them. Immediately Mendoll took the lead, lighting the crystal on his staff as they started upward.

  The temperature dropped as they climbed upward toward the exit but plummeted as they stepped out of the cave and into the open fields. Once again, the wind cut into their cloaks and Mach was shivering fiercely and wishing he were sitting in a tub of hot water. Night had fallen during the time the group had spent underground and the storm had only increased in its ferocity. He missed the calm air of the cavern.

  They trudged their way through the snow and straight to the gates of the city. Mach was thankful when they entered the underground city. He felt as though he were frozen solid from the wind that cut like knives through bread. A hot meal was waiting for them and the four quickly fell onto the meal as if they had not eaten for days.

  Mach lost his appetite as the cold he felt inside deepened despite the warmth of the room and the meal in front of him. A single thought of his dreams was enough to make him push his meal away. He gladly left the comforts of the eating room in favor of another hot bath. He slid into a tub of hot water, pain shooting through his body as the water enveloped his body and he sighed with relief as the heat began to relax the muscles that were tight and strained.

  He privately wished for the chance of having another one of these baths in the very near future.

  Aware he was beginning to fall asleep, his head nearly dunking under the water, he clambered out of the tub and quickly toweled himself dry. Leaving behind the wet towel he went straight to his room. He found it gloriously warm and welcoming with a fire roaring in the fireplace. Without bothering to take his damp clothes off, he flopped into his bed and was asleep instantly. The darkness took him through what he knew and hurtled him off once again into visions of the unknown.

  He stood beside a man in clothes of purist black. The man’s black eyes were wide with excitement and euphoria. Before him was the fiery Guardian Sytie. She looked different than he had remembered when he and the others had seen her last. Her eyes seemed to be harder and gleamed more dangerously then when she had presented Mendoll with her power. At least to Mach's eyes, it looked as though the Guardian was furious.

  “I will tell you again demon, give me the Stone.” The man beside him threateningly. He looked at the man again and realized who it was that stood beside him, King Rubious. There was something different about him already. Something that made Mach shiver in fear but he could not identify what it was.

  No less than a hundred men stood behind Rubious, as they were packed onto the cavern pathways behind him there was not a single direction that any of them could move without slipping to their deaths.

  “THAT I CAN NOT DO. ONLY THOSE THAT HAVE MASTERED THE SKILLS OF POWER MAY BE PERMITTED TO RETRIEVE THE STONE. THESE ARE THE LAWS LAID DOWN AT THE TIME WE WERE GIVEN THE STONES.” She said with words of patience that her eyes did not mimic.

  “Than I shall test it on YOU!” Rubious roared as he brought his hands up sharply. Flames materialized around her feet, swirling like smoke caught in a torrent, the flames rising up to envelop her body. He clamped his hands into tight fists and the fire tightened in on itself, enveloping and crushing the Guardian in a great ball of flame.

  A whip-like crack thundered loudly and an intense light flooded the cavern to the point that Mach nearly blinded. The soldiers were bent over rubbing their eyes vigorously trying to clear their vision. As the light dimmed, he saw that Sytie stood unharmed among the flowing flames that were now under her control. Furious, Rubious brought his arms back, clenched his fists once again and thrust them forward. Two arrows of fire shot from them and swirled around each other in a deadly dance of destruction. They collided with Sytie and exploded in a shower of sparks and embers.

  Mach watched as Sytie flipped head over heels and fell unharmed from the air into the molten rock below, her spectacular dive into the fiery lake caused not even a ripple. The moment her body was lost to the molten lake, a torrent of fire like a crescent tidal wave rose from the lake. He watched in horror as the wave swept over him and washed away Rubious and his soldiers. No pain came as he had expected, though he cou
ld feel the heat of the flames as they moved over his body, licking at his flesh, he did not feel the death that he had thought would come.

  The tidal flames fell back into the lake. He looked to the bodies of the soldiers, skin burnt black and smoking in their once shining armor. They lay motionless unlike their king. Rubious lay where he had stood, his own armor smoldering, his skin blackened but alive. Pain and rage were heavy in the king’s eyes as he knelt panting.

  There was a rush of armored men that spilled into the room from the far end of the cave. Shouts and orders came from one of the men and a group of soldiers immediately sprinted to Rubious’ side and hefted him onto their shoulders. As quickly as they had come in, they rushed back out, leaving behind the fallen soldiers to smolder and to be forgotten.

  He moved to follow them but found himself no longer in the cavern of the Fire Guardian. Instead, he stood in the room of a small hut. The coals of a small fire were burning gently on the hearth and the soft moonlight of one of the moons was shinning in through an open window, its moonbeams illuminating what was left of a meal of vegetables and meat.

  He glanced over to where he knew he would find the sitting area. A man lay sleeping on a wood pallet, his body swaddled in thick blankets. A few feet from him was a bed of far softer material. The woman he believed was his mother lay on it, her bandages gleaming white from the reflection of the cool moonlight in the darkness. He moved closer to her, better to see her face in the low light. The last time that he had seen this woman, she had been in so much pain he could not bear to look at her. But now, she was asleep and there was a chance that he would be able to obtain the confirmation he so desired.

  When the two of them had lived in Selane, he often checked on her several times throughout the night. His desire to protect her from pain drove him most nights to watch over her to assure himself that she was all right, it was after the death of her husband that he began checking on her. More often than not, he would watch her closely all night on those days that seemed to wear her down the most, such as the anniversary of his father’s death.

  Now he looked down into the face of the woman in the bed and grieved. Always in the past when he had looked at her while she slept, she was always in peace. No matter how bad the days were, she could always find peace and solace within her own dreams. Now, as he looked at this woman, he knew that this was his mother and his heart yearned to wake her and tell her he was coming for her.

  Pain was etched into her eyebrows as she slept on into the night. There were no longer any signs of peace in her mind anymore. Slowly he laid his hand on her forehead, praying to all the gods and goddesses that there were in this world and the next, that she would be able to take strength from him. That somehow he could take the pain away from her and put it into himself. He closed his eyes in prayer and when he opened them again, he was laying in his own bed staring at the ceiling, his arm outstretched into the air as though he had really been standing there beside his mothers' bed.

  Hot tears burned in his eyes as he lay there thinking of what he had seen. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to stop these dreams from invading his mind. It was unbearable for him to see anymore. Day or night it was like a never ending torment to his heart.

  He wanted more than anything to take her place. Yet he knew that it was a futile wish. If it had only been him that had been injured when his home was attacked, he knew that his resilience and youth would have allowed him a speedy recovery that she lacked and that all would be well enough. He closed his eyes again and drifted off into a blessed dreamless sleep.

  “Alright lad, time to get up! It is time for us to take our leave of this place.” Mendoll’s voice rang in Mach's ears, waking him from his sleep as a hand roughly shook his shoulder. He lay still for several minutes staring into the blurred image of burning coals of the dying fire as a shadowy figure left him to gather his wits.

  These dreams he was having were getting more and more real as well as more frequent. This last one, he actually thought that he might have been able to touch something there. He could almost feel the cold clamminess of his mothers’ forehead on his palm.

  And the one involving Rubious seemed so real that Mach had to look at his hands to ensure that they had not been burned. The heat from the blazing inferno he had experienced in his dream lingered and he felt the hairs on his arms stiffen from the memory of it. He needed to gain control of these dreams or visions, whether or not he was ever going to use them. That was the surest course of action that he could take.

  He needed control.

  If these dreams were accurate, if they were truly happening and not just his imagination, than there was one thing that he could be sure of. They were out of immediate danger. With Rubious presumably injured by Sytie, the king would not be able to make any kind of good time towards the next destination on the map.

  However, when it came right down to it, Mach and his crew had a lot of trouble ahead of them still. Rubious seemed to now have the knowledge of one of the Guardians and already knew enough to attempt to kill with it. He could only imagine what that spell would have done if he had used it on an average human.

  Mach felt confused. Should he tell the others about his dream? Surely Mendoll could help him gain the control he needed, but should he really place that much faith in people that he barely knew?

  Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions, as his teachers had often claimed he had a tendency to do. Could all this merely be the work of his overactive imagination? Was it that his mind was attempting to make sense out of dreams that truly held no meaning on what he was seeing? He rose from bed and changed his clothing as he continued thinking over all the information that he knew to be true and what he knew to be false. By the time he was dressed and packed for departure he found that there were still more questions than answers.

  Sehto and Bastra were waiting for him in the dining hall, their packs already slung across their shoulders. “Are you ready?” Sehto asked him the moment he entered the room. “We will have to eat on the move. Mendoll says that we need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  The seriousness in Bastra’s voice startled Mach slightly. “He is just uneasy at staying in one spot for too long. He was never very good at waiting. And with the King of Sirunre possibly coming here next, I can’t blame him for thinking on the safer side of things.”

  They did not wait for Mendoll’s return and instead left the city to plow through the icy winds of the city above. Snow was falling thick and fast, bombarding the travelers with pellets of white flurry that covered their tracks as quickly they made them. They found Mendoll at the ship, already preparing for their departure. He did indeed look anxious to move from the area as he kept glancing out into the open waters and muttering to himself.

  Was it the need to continue their journey or maybe something else entirely that was driving his actions? Mach thought of the dream he had last night and wondered if perhaps Mendoll had one similar last night.

  As the second sun was rising in the west, they cleared the storm cloud’s radius and turned their heading further into the west. With a steady wind at their backs, pushing them into the west, there was little that could stop them at this point.

  The same landmass he had seen earlier could be seen to the south and east. According to the map, a crescent shaped island lay between the four islands that they needed to visit. Mendoll said that it had once been home to many villages that belonged to the Mages before the Damnation and the Great War. Now, the only things that lived there were the animals that had been there since the Goddess Kriasta created the world.

  Mach felt a sense of belonging as he stared at the visible portion of the island. It felt similar to how he felt about Selane and the home that had once been his families. It was as though something was calling to him to return home and it was a feeling that he did not think would leave him any time soon.

  Their heading changed sharply to the south and he turned his eyes to the island that was
slowly rising on the horizon. As the island came into better view, he noticed something different right away The two previous islands had been all but empty of forests. Only sparse trees had been seen on the island that held the Guardian Sytie and as for the most recent, he had not seen a single tree.

  However, the island they were approaching seemed to be one single vast forest. The map they had obtained when they had taken the ship showed that the island was small but there were no markers to signify that there was any kind of village or city.

  As the afternoon wore on into early evening, the ship came close enough to the island that he could begin to see the individual trees as they rose and fell throughout the island. They drew near the island with growing apprehension, there was no telling whether it was wise to enter such a place but somewhere out there was one more of the Stones.

  There were no ports between the high walls of the cliffs and the raging waves of the sea, Sehto doubted they would survive a voyage to land in the rowboats. If they tried to move near enough to the cliffs to try to climb up, they would find the ship flung against the cliff walls.

  Left with little choice, they cautiously sailed around perimeter of the island looking for some way to safely reach land. As the last sun began to set, all hope of finding a safe spot began to vanish. There just did not seem to be any way for them to get ashore safely, however it was Sehto’s keen eyes that spotted a cove that was hidden among the trees as the darkness began to settle in.

  Just as the last sun dipped below the horizon in the east, they dropped anchor and the three Humans boarded a rowboat while Bastra launched into the air with several mighty beats of his massive wings. In the growing darkness, they took great care not to crash into any of the sharp rocks below the surface of the water as they made their way into the cove and into calmer waters.

  Sehto guided the boat to a small beach near the trees and the three pulled the boat up to shore. There, they waited for Bastra to return from his scouting trip.

  Mach heard the powerful thrumming of Bastra’s wings signaling his return just as the last rays of light faded from the sky. A moment later, the Gargoyle landed beside Sehto with hardly a sound aside from the movement of his wings. Once again, Mach was amazed that something so large could be so stealthy.

  “Anything?” Mendoll asked as Bastra folded his wings around his shoulders.

  The Gargoyle shook his head. “Nothing substantial. There were a few patches of open land but every one of them was difficult to see. There was one spot, however, that every time I got near enough to see anything worth reporting, my vision would blur and darken making it damn near impossible to stay level. When I left the area, my vision would clear. It appears someone or something does not want to be found from the air.”

  Mendoll smiled oddly. “Interesting. My guess would be that another Stone is somewhere in that area. Apparently, we will have to search for it by land. Shame really, I kind of liked the ease in which we have found the others.”

  “But not tonight, I think.” Sehto said, his eyes scanning the trees for any signs of movement. “Let’s find a secure spot to camp for the night. Bastra, did you see any decent sized clearings nearby that are practical enough for a campsite?”

  Bastra pointed toward the tree line. “I did. Just up here about a thousand feet or so is one that may serve us well enough.”

  Sehto grabbed his pack and walked away in the direction that Bastra pointed. “That will work fine. I don’t want to be too close to the shoreline, but I don’t want to be too far either.” Sehto said as he lit two torches Mach had not remembered loading onto the boat.

  The clearing came into view after a short walk through the trees. Several times Mach had thought he might have seen something moving around ahead of them, but every time his eyes caught sight of something, whatever it was disappeared before he could actually train his eyes on it. Perhaps he was imagining things, making mountains out of molehills, as his mother would say. Or perhaps there truly was something watching them.

  Just as it was in my dreams, I am seeing things that are not there!

  The night deepened and turned pitch black by the time they finished setting camp. A fire roared in the center of the campsite and as he watched the flames leap about, he begun to wonder what kinds of creatures were out there among the trees. There was no telling what horrors were on this island. For all he knew, a pack of chimeras lived here. The last time he encountered a chimera, it had been only young cub. If it came to fighting an adult, or a whole family, he did not think that they would be able to survive.

  That is if there isn’t anything more dangerous out here.

  Just as he was about to curl up in his sleep wrap for the night, Bastra approached Mach. “Lad, you are going to take first watch tonight.” Mach opened his mouth to complain, after all, he was exhausted from the last few days and he desperately wanted to sleep.

  Then he realized the moment before he spoke that he had never been asked to take watch before. It normally was either Sehto or Bastra who took the watches at night. They seemed to think him ready for such a task and for that, he felt honored. If they truly thought of him as a companion on this quest rather than a runt they were babysitting, he would not mind pitching in with the more dangerous chores. He quickly shut his mouth and smiled, happily accepting the task from the Gargoyle with a nod and a small salute.

  How dangerous could it possibly be out here on this tiny island, anyways? Surely Rubious would not be capable of making it out here in his current condition. Let alone coming close enough to the group without alerting every single creature on the island of his army’s presence. As for the creatures here, he felt confident enough that if he kept his mind focused and if concentrated he could hear just about anything coming up on the camp.

  If Rubious were working alone or chose to only bring a small elite group with him, like Mach and his group of new friends, than perhaps he might be able to sneak up on them. But considering the man seems to prefer an entourage of soldiers, Mach felt confident that nothing would get near them this night.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  As the others finished their meals and began to drift asleep one by one, he found himself slowly pacing along the outskirts of the fire’s gentle glow. The trees here were alive with hundreds of different types of creatures he had come to expect in a forest.

  But the sounds that accompanied these critters of the night he did not recognize in the least. That made it more difficult for him to tell what was friend or foe among the shadows of the night. All this noise, however subtle, made it hard to distinguish one noise from the next. He could not tell if the rustling in the trees were produced by a nest of buzzing insects, or if a nocturnal creature passing through. It was entirely possible that a single careful person could sneak up on him if he was not vigilant enough.

  Opening his mind to what was around him, he started thinking of his dreams and visions to keep his mind from wandering off to sleep. Many of his dreams concerned his past, not unnatural really, considering they were his own memories. At least the ones that were not vivid enough that he woke thinking he was still there.

  Then, there were the visions of the present involving people he was not acquainted with, things and places that he had never seen before. Places that his father had never even told him about in any of the stories he used to tell him. It seemed to him that what he was seeing, what appeared to be occurring every time one of those visions hit him, was that he was seeing other places but in the same time frame that he existed. It did not seem like the past, nor did it feel like the future. There were too many signs that told him that he was seeing the present during those particular dreams or visions or whatever in the world they were.

  If this was truly the case, in which he really could see these things, the events that were happening at that time but miles away. Did that mean that he could use that power at will? Could he use it consciously to search the trees for life? He had thought more than once about gaining control o
f these dreams so he could stop them completely. However, maybe he could utilize this power to his benefit and foresee any potential dangers.

  He sat down on the stump of a fallen tree and closed his eyes. He let the sounds of the forest wash over him, mingling with one another then separating them by pitch and volume. Slowly those sounds began to fade from his ears. For a moment, he chuckled to himself as he thought of himself using a Mage's gift so willingly.

  As he felt his will begin to take effect, a wave of calm washed over him. Mage gift or not, this was an ability he had, and he planned to use it to its fullest.