Read Online Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening by Michael Von Werner, Felix Diroma - Free Book Online Page B

it.”
    After they left, Arrendis came and approached him last while the healer lady poured him some water and gave him the cup. It was his way to let Vincent stand on his own with others while watching how he fared from afar, observing how his pupil performed without his interference. Vincent drank as he came closer, following his arrival with his eyes. Vincent wasn’t feeling so eager to see him. He felt like he had let him down and betrayed the faith he had placed in him as well as all his efforts on Vincent’s behalf, but he tried his best to put on a show for him.
    The healer woman departed as Arrendis approached him, his long white beard swaying against the front of his gray robes. The staff he walked with was a twisted, furled wood that curled into a coil at the top. It made an audible tapping sound as he slowly walked along. His flat glasses with circular lens gleamed once with the reflected sunlight in his face. Beneath the wide hood that was round, not pointy, at the top, his kind old blue eyes looked Vincent over carefully, seeming to wonder if he was alright. Arrendis almost never had a scowl or overly cold or serious expression on his face, and he appeared genuinely concerned.
    When he came, he asked in his weary voice how Vincent was, and Vincent amiably told him he was alright and should recover. Arrendis didn’t ask for specifics but instead told him that he was proud of him and that he defended the keep well. Vincent didn’t argue and simply agreed though he felt like the biggest liar in the world when he did. Arrendis wished him well and then left. After he was gone, Vincent lay back on his bed and brooded.
    Vincent felt horrible about everything, but Arrendis’ visit was the worst. He didn’t have the heart to tell him he had failed, that he had hesitated when it counted most. Arrendis, like everyone else, also knew nothing of Vincent’s unproductive wanderings, investigating and seeking anything that might be traced to those who were responsible for the deaths and disappearances of so many.
    Vincent wondered if the intruders in the keep were somehow connected with it but felt like a fool for having ever tried to find them by himself against everyone’s wishes. He was clearly no match for them. He had so much trouble with killing, absolutely abhorred it, and yet he had gone in search of them anyway. What would he have done had he found them out there? He probably would have been killed. The Seal of Cheated Light had kept him safer from them, but even then he still failed. What an idiot he had been. They not only eluded his grasp when he had searched, they had also dropped right in his hands, and he let them get away.
    Two different feelings threatened to rip him apart. One was his hatred of what he had done; the other was his anger and frustration, making him wish he had done more. Overall, he felt like simply quitting.
    He now firmly realized that his own magic had in fact been mediocre and ineffective compared to others this whole time, as was his ability to succeed without it, and he had just been deceiving himself. What was he to do now? He felt like he had wasted his life, like his life meant nothing, and a part of him wished he really had died down there.
    His anguish was compounded even further when he thought of Jessica again. No wonder she never seemed interested in him. Why should she? He was nobody. Nothing. A waste of space. He was not even fit to serve in a wizards’ keep such as this. Was he even really a wizard himself? Or just some freak occurrence, a person who happened to carry a tingle of magic?
    He would quit. That was what he had to do. He would go home to his parents, to the farming town in northeast Ryga where he was born, and be a farmer just like his father had wanted. His parents would miss him and would welcome him back. Unbearable as it was, he would have to do something else first before he left. He would have to say goodbye to Arrendis and thank him for all that he had