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20 Commitment (2)

Author: Aricka Allen
last update publish date: 2025-11-15 07:40:52
Moving black dots speckled the horizon toward which they moved. Poe had made no objection. It was a small detour that still kept them headed in the general direction of the mountains.

As they grew closer, the shapes resolved themselves into huge horned beasts. At first, there were only a few, but as they crested a rise, they saw the full expanse of the herd spread before them grazing on the low grass. They blanketed the plain before them.

“What are they?” Hunter asked.

“They are called bison. Th
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  • Foundling   7 Getaway (5)

    Hunter attacked. He had no time for this. His attack came not in any manner they might have considered, but with all the knowledge and power new to his command. Light and darkness, the will of earth, its creatures, it had been so long this affinity of feeling, this revelation of connectedness with earth. He was one with it, not separate.“How rude.” Margaret said. She was much better with the blade than Poe and there would be no indecisive compunctions routing her hand. She was also a virtuoso at flash-step. She could heighten everything around her: her senses; her strength; spatial awareness; time dilation. As an enforcer of the rules and strictures of the School and Academe, she was the one Hunter most feared meeting.“I shall bear the weight for you.” Before Poe could intercede, she attacked. Her love, her hate, her anger, a piercing dagger directed at him. In the flicker of an eye, she disappeared.It was the intensity of emotions and the tingling of his feet and ankles that alert

  • Foundling   7 Getaway (4)

    Hunter gathered sunlight from the passage’s opening, and from the corridors father back and junctures of wall, he gathered shadow, shaping them, channeling his pain and anger into a material force (The Beast laughed.), and his blade began to flicker from shadow to light, light to shadow.Hunter’s footwork was subtly changing, the stretch of arm, the looseness of wrist. The tip of his blade began to flicker in and out of the light. Riposte, lunge, parry, lunge, lunge, lunge, parry, riposte.[use fencing glossary] Shadow to light to shadow to deeper shadow then a flash of sparks along the length of clashing blades. The flash of sparks were absorbed in Hunter’s flow and returned as a blade of light. Then another, a black blade, coalesced across from the sun blade, the saber blade between them. The two strands wavered between the seen and unseen and moved in a helix around the center blade.There was no sound, only the matching force of a similar blade strike. Poe would have to expend ki

  • Foundling   7 Getaway (3)

    They measured each other across the distance. Poe wondered if he could do this. Hunter knew that he could. He had given time enough to devotion, now he must away.He rushed Poe, angling away from the poignard. Blades clashed, clanged. Sparks flew along their lengths. Swirls of ki flowed from Poe like the arms of an octopus to ensnare Hunter, who turned them away with a ki shield. Defense was the first thing taught for the skill-less and the ki-less, and no great power or skill was needed to maintain one. They could be maintained with a trickle and Hunter had far more than that.The ring of steel settled into a rhythm as did the parry and riposte of ki. Hunter tried to work his way up under Poe’s reach while staying outside the striking distance of the poignard, to move him out of the way, but Poe kept the opening to the valley between himself and Hunter. If Hunter got past, the boy was too fleet of foot for Poe to pursue, and beyond sight, ki would be ineffectual.Poe held back, delay

  • Foundling   7 Getaway (2)

    Hunter arrived at the Armory. The bow was not there. From Master Philip’s memory, he thought they would be. His calmness and focus made him unemotional. (The Beast snarled.) His emotionlessness, however, did not mean he did not care, and the absence of his bow almost broke that calm, made him indecisive. He could not remain, could not stay, but he would not leave without the bow, and if he stayed to retrieve it, there would be a fight, and in that fight, there would be blood and worse. The decision to be made was obvious, easy, and he took it along with a sheathed rapier.A moving shadow captured no light as it flowed through the corridors from cornices, across walls, along ceilings. Suspicions were not roused at its passage, no mind incited to investigate. It was as if neither he nor they existed outside the bubble of their own presence, and inside shadow, the implacable deadness of his features were hidden.The Beast mocked, whispered: Give in. Be unincumbered by the shallow regard

  • Foundling   7 Getaway

    When the alarm came, Poe was still in the Magister’s quarters. They were the first ones at the cell. Master’s Philip’s body was rigid from the cold touch of the serpent, his hair had turned white, and his eyes were wide on some horror only he could see.Poe placed his hand against his chest, and the frown that came to his lips deepened the cragged lines of his face.“There is no wound, but the cloth above his heart is wet. There is also no residual ki anywhere to be found in his body.”In the cell, every surface was covered in a watery sheen. Poe squatted to examine the metal fragments littering the floor. They were hard, brittle. Maybe, with enough force of will, and strength of body . . . just maybe?“What is left of his chains?”“Yes.”The Magister cast his eyes along the lines and face of the cell, to the bolt where a chain had once been fixed.“The room is also depleted of ki,” Poe said.“Has the twin talent awakened?”“He has never shown those qualities.”“Many things he has nev

  • Foundling   6 Breakout (3)

    It was stark and clear as if he lived the moment. But how could he, being but a babe and no more aware of the whole of the world than a newborn could be.It made him angry that such remembrances had been barred from recollection; and there were still more. But that was not a concern he could dwell on. His time was growing short. What was happening within the cell cold not long remain unnoticed by the Master outside.Mind ticked like a clock from moment to memory to emotion. Muscles taught, a spring ready to explode. He had no more time Huner stood as if the shackles at his wrists or the weight of the chains were no account. He stepped forward and the chains, held by the bolt in the floor, snapped tight. He leaned into it, curling his arms forward, getting all the leverage he could.The creeping frost edged beneath the cell door.Hunter relaxed, then surged forward, shocking the metal. It chimed. Rime fell away. Fractures quickened its length, widening into cracks. Iron fragments clatt

  • Foundling   Flight (2)

    Hunter fled, the Magi’s first rule clear and resounding in the cavern of his mind: “A Magi, on pain of death, cannot use ki to harm, except to defend, and that only sparingly.”He fled in shadow and silence, hidden from searching minds. His mind a tumult, body a mess. Cramps would assail him, still

  • Foundling   Book Two: Flight (1)

    In the hall, amidst the revelry, amongst friends who had become family, Hunter felt a stabbing pain in his head that bent him double. The acuteness of the pain disordered his senses, fractured them like a shattered pane of glass. He clenched his teeth and forced down the remains of breakfast and th

  • Foundling   26 Friends (4)

    “You have soft hair,” Kim whispered at his ear, gently stroking his locs as the ends spread across th surface of the water.Not knowing how to respond, Hunter remained silent.“Come you it by way of your mother or your father’s strain?”“I do not know, though, my mother had similar.”She pulled his

  • Foundling   26 Friends (3)

    Not resisting, Hunter was moved deeper into the water father away from his friends and a little to the left of hers until the water was up to his chest. From one step to the nest his head went from the surface to falling beneath the warm dark of the lake where nothing could be seen. Water filled hi

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