By Nicolin Odel

Ebras hovered over the dark, murky lake toward an island in its center, his black and golden robes whispering with the cool autumn breeze. The landmass ahead was shrouded in dark storm clouds. Lightning crackled through the air, and thunder boomed as he approached. Ebras had spent weeks among the locals of Southern Aurulan in the town of Narseau, listening to far-fetched, fearful tales of this island being haunted by ghosts. Fishermen avoided it, or when they strayed too close, they were never heard from again. 

These pathetic peasant folk tales and superstitions always lead to one thing—someone who can use magic, someone to strengthen my council.

The wind picked up as he approached. A funnel cloud twisted, turned through the air, and drilled into the lake before Ebras. It sucked water into the spiraling snake and surged toward him.  

“As I thought,” Ebras mused aloud. “This is being controlled.” He ignored the waterspout and shaped his barrier of telekinetic repulsion with his mind. The impenetrable barrier repelled everything away in an invisible sphere around him as he picked up speed, flying through the air. Even the wind ceased to buffet him as the water twister struck. He punched through it with a sphere of invisible energy, cutting the spinning vortex in two. Good. Let’s test your limits.

A second and third spout touched down before him. He thrust his palms at each and repelled. Again, the cylinders were torn down with magic spherical punctures, and each fizzled into nothing more than rain spattering.

Ebras grinned with anticipation as the shoreline grew rapidly ahead. A lone figure hovered just above the patchy tree line. A vortex of wind surrounded a woman—a woman in tattered garments and tangled black hair thick with mud and leaves. Yet as the wind screamed around her, she was untouched within like the eye of the storm. She was of old Aurulan descent, as were the boys Ebras had taken into his seminary. Before Aurulan was Aurulan, hundreds of years ago, it was no more than a smattering of tribes fighting for dominance. The tribe of Ebras’s heritage eventually won out and subjugated those tribes that now comprise the entirety of Aurulan.

“You’ll need to do better than that.” Ebras casually floated up and stopped before the young woman. She was heaving with magical fatigue. “You require more training, little fledgling.” He held out his hand welcomingly. “Come with me, join my circle of magi, and uplift Aurulan to new heights at my side.”

The woman snarled something in a language he didn’t understand, and her arms shot out. Knife-like blades of wind hissed through the air at him. 

The wind scythes struck and stopped mid-air. They vibrated and slowly began to cut their way through his magic. He saw the woman’s wild eyes through the humming wind around him. He grinned. “Yes, kill me if you can.”

She cried out and raised her hands above her head. Another funnel cloud drilled into existence but was thinner, sharper, and faster. 

It tore into his barrier, and Ebras was pushed back half a dozen feet. “Good, so you have some competence.” He shrugged and waved his hand, the barrier pushed back, and with a single bone-rattling pulse, the wind abruptly died out to no more than a hushed breeze.

The woman reeled back, her eyes gleaming with frustration from behind her grime-covered face.

“Yes, little lost bird,” Ebras said as he pulled a black glove from his hand and placed it in the pocket of his robe. “Your power will be mine to use as I see fit. To bolster the power of Aurulan and my council. You will hate me. You will obey me.” 

The woman moved away, her furious expression changing to an expression he longed for: fear. He lifted his other hand and made a fist. “You will learn to fear me.”

The woman screamed as the invisible hand closed around her and held her in place. She struggled futilely within his grip. The wind gusted weakly around them, then hushed as she finally went limp in his grasp.

Ebras let go of his barrier and reached his ungloved hand toward her head.

Her head snapped up, and a sharpened sliver of wind hissed at his face. He twitched his head to the side, and the knife-like wind cut along his cheek at the same time his bare palm slammed into her head, causing her neck to crane back.

Her memories flooded into him: laughing with her mother, father, and brother, going to school in town, feeling the wind whispering on her skin, feeling that power ripping out of her control, the storm that destroyed her village, her brother’s limp body in the wreckage, and that look of hatred from her own parents. Those people she thought she loved were appalled by her power–appalled by her name, Feng Yuqing. 

“It’s all right, little fledgling, forget the hurt, forget your name,” Ebras whispered. “From this day forth, you are Chanel. Chanel de Montrichard. You will be the first to come to my Convent Enclosure. You will be the storm that forges my empire. You will be mine.”   

Want to read more from this universe? Check out The Sunstone Saga!

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