Can't Look Back (War for Dominance Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

He didn’t know how big a land mass he was on, but finding her was probably going to be difficult. Very difficult.
    After several hours of walking, he came upon a road. At first he was disappointed that the packed earth track wasn’t even as good as the road through his neighborhood back in Canada, but then he laughed at himself. Of course it wasn’t; if this was some sort of medieval world, they weren’t going to have paved roads...or cars. He’d have to find a way to get the splinter out of his foot soon; he was probably going to have a lot of walking to do in the upcoming days.
    There wasn’t a soul to be seen in either direction; apparently no one traveled by night. He had no idea which way to go and no way to find out, so he began walking to the right. At least the ground was fairly smooth and the splinter didn’t hurt as much.
    He walked about a half an hour, and then the sky began to lighten, and the sun came up. Although this was a good thing in that it let him see well enough to finally remove the splinter, it also let him see how badly torn up the bottoms of his feet were. After several hours of walking through the woods at night, they were bleeding in several places. He would have to get them treated when he got to where he was going...wherever that was.
    With the sun’s appearance, people also appeared on the road, almost as if by magic. While John had been hoping for this, the people presented a problem of their own, as it soon became apparent that all of them thought he was crazy. John couldn’t blame them; if he saw people walking around wearing only what he was wearing, he’d probably think they were crazy, too. Or French...he’d seen some of the bathing suits they wore.
    He tried a variety of approaches to interact with the people he encountered, but was unsuccessful. If he approached people slowly, they ran away in the opposite direction. If he tried to approach people quickly, they ran away even faster. Trying to speak to them in a strange language only assured them of his lack of sanity, causing them to run faster still.
    Balling his fists in frustration after unsuccessfully trying to approach a sixth group, he gave up. The loaded wagon that he had seen was heading toward the rising sun; he guessed that the closest town was in that direction. As he trudged into the sun, he realized that the day was warming up rapidly and was already starting to get hot. Great, he thought. In addition to his feet hurting and being hungry and tired, he was about to add thirsty and sunburned to his litany of woes. What a wonderful day.
    What had possessed him to go through the mirror in the first place?
     
     

Chapter 6
     
     
    “ Aqua! ” said Solim. Water poured into the cup, and he smiled as he chewed on his day bread. The night before, he had experienced some sort of transformation while he slept. He woke in the middle of the night to find his mind seemed somehow larger. He really didn’t know how to describe it in any other way. His mind just seemed larger. It was the same sensation that he heard mages reference when they moved up in level. But he wasn’t a mage, he was a beastmaster, and beastmasters didn’t level up...did they?
    Arriving at the office, he sent his assistant to find out the cantrip words for each of the different elements. The cantrips were the lowest level spells that mages first learned. He cast the earth cantrip first and was amazed to find that it worked. He had created a piece of the magical day bread that was the ‘fruit of the earth.’ Now the water cantrip worked, too? Incredible. If this meant what he thought it meant—
    The innkeeper strode into Solim’s office, pushing past the scribe outside. He slammed open the door, and his eyes swept the room. He sniffed at the poor quality bookshelves and obviously faux bearskin rug to his left, figuring that Solim only had them to lend a pretense of culture. He was a beastmaster, after all; how cultured could he actually be? His