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and to the warriors watching him with no small amount of amusement.
    Legend told that Ogre were gruesome to behold. One-eyed,
grotesque of visage and without a feature that could be called pleasing to the
eye.
    For the most part, there was some truth in this.
    Ogre were always male, large, powerful warriors whose magick
lay in the strength of strategy and war, and in the ability of their bodies to
heal. They were well honed, with no great handsomeness as Wizard Twins
possessed, and they were scarred from years of battle in the Causeway.
    Grotesque? Caedan near smiled, for he knew what the young
prince saw.
    Magick shimmered like an aura of glittering spora across the
pitch-black eyes of each male present. Powerful bodies, tall of stature and
heavy of bones, padded with precise, well-trained muscle that served them well
in battle.
    Prince Quin’s gaze moved instinctively to both Daelan and
Caedan.
    “Wizard Twins,” he whispered, as though awed.
    Daelan grunted at the thought. “Nay, young prince,” he
growled. “Wizard Twins are as princes to our land, heirs to the greatest
magicks. We are but the warriors sworn to defend their boundaries and rout from
it the humans who would destroy their worlds.”
    A smile then lit the young prince’s face. “Great warriors
you truly are,” he declared. “Beware though, my sister may be weak of body, but
she is strong of will and a certain…ability to test even the strongest temper.
Uncle Finn has oftentimes said she would tempt even the One to rain down the
fires of Shadow Hell upon her defenseless head.”
    Caedan was aware that his brother was amused, even as he
sensed the truth of the boy’s words. As well as the laughter the suddenly
far-too-pleased child was holding back.
    “Rather than roasting piglet this eve, I am beginning to
fear that perhaps roast prince would have been far better fare,” Daelan assured
the hall’s inhabits.
    “There’s not meat upon my bones at all,” the prince assured
him with the most solemn of tone, a false appearance if ever there was one. “I
have been told by strong and knowledgeable warriors that I am far too bony for
even a king’s snack. As a warriors’ meal, you would be left with your belly
growling at its lack of proper fare.”
    Laughter filled the hall.
    If there was one thing the Ogre knew a great and abiding
respect for it was courage.
    And this young prince, playful and filled with earnest
charm, had such in abundance it seemed.
    Caedan prayed to the Select and to the One simultaneously
that his sister shared such a quality as well.
    She may well need it before her ordeal concluded and she found
herself the filling in an Ogre Joining.

Chapter Three
     
    Magick, it was forbidden in the Secular lands.
    Any human even suspected to have displayed such a heinous
talent was to be brought before King Alistair before she reached her woman’s
age where all manner of perversions were practiced upon her in such cruel
manners as to scar her female spirit forever more.
    For it was said that if a magickal female is taken before
the age that her powers peaked, then forever her power would be trapped inside
her.
    Would hers be trapped since sharing her magick with the
warriors of the Causeway? They had not taken her fully. Well, unless the touch
of magick counted.
    Princess Arabella Alistair knew what her fate would be the
day she faced her father and his guards mere moments after she had crested the
path leading back to the fortress.
    They had awaited her silently, their expressions condemning
as her father ordered her taken. They had brought her back to the fortress and
to a hidden room where guards had held her still and her father had pierced her
wrist with his blade, bleeding her into a blood-stained chalice.
    There, the proof of her birth was found in the gleaming
sparks of power that infused the rich liquid like diamonds sewn too heavily
upon scarlet velvet.
    Crystalline spores of power were unable to survive within
human soil it