From the Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

being set against each other. Unfortunately, we face the sorceries of the enemy soon and this is the only practice our shamans can get at countering opposing magicks. Without it, I fear we stand no hope.”
    His towering student thought for a moment, even as the lad in the centre finally took down his opponent, who lay gasping on her back, her hair singed and her chest heaving as he helped her to her feet.
    “This is true. And perhaps there is something that I need to do as well.”
    Stone moved forwards, towards the centre where the two duellists shook hands to the cheers of the crowd, looming over the victor as he approached.
    “An impressive show of skill, lad.”
    The youth looked up at him, sweat beading his forehead, the still-fresh connection to the spirits lending him a wariness of the immortal who had so long opposed them.
    “Thank you, Nagah-Slayer. Is there anything I can do for you?”
    “Yes,” Stone told the startled shaman. “You can duel me. And don’t hold back.”
     
    ***
     
    Stone stood opposite the youth as the crowd watched on. To any casual observer, such a duel would have looked ludicrously one-sided; on one side, a youth, wiry and slight; on the other, a warrior, towering and mighty as no mortal had any right to be.
                  Yet this was no mere contest of arms, but a test. To see how well a god-king could combat sorcery without access to powers of his own.
                  “Remember,” he told the trembling youth that stood a few yards distant. “Don’t hold back.”
                  The shaman nodded then, with no warning, raised his hands, a streaming funnel of superheated air swirling to a point before him before unleashing in a hail of piercing bolts of flame. Stone closed his eyes against the conflagration, feeling the searing heat as the embers peppered off his skin. The storm passed, the top half of his white robe now burnt away, blackened scraps hanging from his shoulders, his hair smouldering in the breeze.
                  His skin, however, unmarked.
                  “Good.”
                  The crowd gasped in disbelief at his untouched flesh as he strode forwards towards the shaman who stood, shell-shocked, yet even as the Nagah-Slayer reached out to grasp his foe, the youth sped away in a blur, calling upon the speed of the Falcon-Sight, before re-appearing behind him. Stone turned, ready to reach out again, but the lad ducked his grasping hands and lunged forwards to connect a punch to the immortal’s midriff. The small fist should, by all rights, have crumpled against the rock-solid abdominals, yet Stone was catapulted backwards to land, unceremoniously on the floor.
                  Stone shook his head as he rose, tasting a curious, minerally taste in his mouth after the brief instant of contact; the youth was calling upon the Earth Tap to boost his strength. The crowd had started rooting for the youth now, seeing that the new arrival truly was no longer the god-king Invictus of legend. Wondering whether it might just be possible for the young shaman to win this bout.
                  It wasn’t.
                  The Nagah-Slayer’s mind raced as he watched with interest the youth that closed in, the shaman growing in confidence with every cheer from the crowd. Stone had forgotten the strength and speed that could be borrowed from the spirits, but there was one thing they couldn’t lend: experience. The boy, for all his gifts, was but a youth, no warrior, with no martial training; he had never fought tooth and claw on the field of battle, never felt the cold bronze of an enemy blade or seen up close the jaws of a slavering bear.
                  So it was that when the lad disappeared, blurring into invisibility as he called upon the Falcon-Sight once more, Stone had predicted his move, dodging to one side and holding out his hand to catch the