Home / Fantasy / Foundling / 26 Friends (4)

Share

26 Friends (4)

Author: Aricka Allen
last update publish date: 2025-12-17 23:48:04

“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 face around so that their eyes met. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Why?”

Looking into her eyes as if searching for some lost mystery, she found herself at a momentary loss for words.

“I could not imagine
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • Foundling   7 Getaway (7)

    Hunter felt a strange constriction in his chest and flashes of heat and cold. It was disorienting, distracting. It was a side effect engendered by the overwhelming emotions coming at him as the group of searchers rushed to converge on them. The emotional baggage became more concentrated, the pressure building. His body, riddled with competing feelings, felt like foam being tossed from the surge of two waves crashing together. Something else he had to deal with.Slish!Clank!Clank!Clink!CLANG!Hunter scrambled to parry the slash from Master Margarete and was thrown off-balance. Footwork skewed, he could not fully avoid the riposting strike that sliced through robe to open flesh. Blood gushed to drench cloth, but none fell to the ground.From the Abyss, eyes shrouded in fire swelled, and a scream exploded from Hunter, rattling the chamber. Dust rose from the floor, and pebbles fell from the ceiling. All three flashes were blown away. When they came to rest, Margarete, revealed to be

  • Foundling   7 Chapter (7)

    Hunter extended his demense as far as he could, deepening his connection to all, to the heat of things, the emotions of the people within its purview. The roil of ki, with no Wardens to dam that flow, churned from the power of those emotions. His heart pounded, breath naked, a prickly sensation suffused his skin and lifted him on his toes. The hair at the knap of his neck stiffened, and it felt as if his locs were standing on end.After that first exhilarating rush, he calmed, even as the inflowing force filled him. It was as if a waterfall had become uncorked and fell to expand the bottomless depths of the lake beneath. Senses enlivened and enhanced, he was better able to track the movements of Master Poe and Master Margarete. What had at first been flashes, flitting ribbons of yellow and red light, slowed. No longer a blink between here and there, a crescendo of clashing blades, their movements became something Hunter could follow and anticipate, rather than react to. He realized

  • Foundling   7 Getaway (6)

    He expanded his demesne, the breadth of his keening, and what had been the brief flash of an afterimage, became a blur of emotions he tracked by their arrival and departure at a place. Not able to match their speed, the keening gave him the opportunity to anticipate where and when they would be. Readying himself, he waited for his opportunity.The clash and clang of blades was cacophonous, echoing throughout the chamber like. Their music was harsh, orchestral. In it could be heard the highs and lows of the individual steels’ tone. The retreats and advances. The bang of blade edges meeting, the scraping slash, the high ringing song of the poignard, silence between recoveries, the high tonal, clangorous flunge, was exacting and terrible to hear.How long could they endure at this grueling pace, the accelerated flow of ki. You cannot take in more than can be used was an inviable truism, and they were using internal ki quicker than they could take replenish its well. Poe had already had t

  • 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   22 Town (3)

    She had no children of her own, but had had a hand in the rearing of many a child to adulthood, nursing their ailments and their ills in that span, and was now having a hand in the rearing of their children, but there was something about this strange, slight youth (his slight build that could do wi

  • Foundling   22 Town (2)

    Hunter tried again to sit up. Successful in moving his feet to the edge of the bed, he paused to catch what little breath he could before shifting his weight forward to slide over the edge of the bed and land on unsteady legs. The floor was cold to the touch, and he was surprised that he noticed it

  • Foundling   22 Town (1)

    Bottom End began as a simple way station for the constant flow of settlers having scrimped and saved whatever they could to make the journey to the New Land. Over the succeeding years and decades, with the extension and expansion of the road to the emerging settlements and farms and ranches, had com

  • Foundling   21 While Poe Slept (2)

    “The only decree is that no one within the circle can step outside the circle,” the Shaman said. “That includes you too, Mage. If you interfere, you forfeit your life, and if either of the combatants move outside the circle, they forfeit theirs.”Hunter stepped into the intervening space between he

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status