The Galactic Mage Read Online Free PDF Page A

sometimes, when the pain is great, to fits of rage.
    Just the thing to kill a Six.
    With all of his anger teeming, boiling like a cauldron in a fire, Altin prepped the last stone in the box. He was going to be goddamned sure this infernal stone got to Luria if it was the last blasted thing he ever did. He closed his eyes and reached out into the night, seeking the mana. His rage was further frustrated by the lack of mana; he’d tapped most of it from the region with so many attempts tonight. His patience was gone, and he was not about to wait for mana to flow back into the sky. He found himself absently cursing Tytamon for likely having used some mana too. A thought flickered across his mind then; somewhere deep inside, he heard the alarm go off. He’d lost his focus. But he caught himself in time.
    He cursed silently and let the wisps of mana slip past him without drawing any more in. He shook his head. Definitely just in time. One does not draw mana in without having a use for it. That was a great way to blind one’s mythothalamus forever and never cast again. He let out a long breath, chasing the mana back into the night, then opened his eyes and slumped to the floor against the parapet wall. Discipline. At least he had that. But by the gods it was so damnably frustrating.
    He took several moments just to catch his breath. He was exhausted. He hadn’t slept long enough today. Rather doggedly, he raised his head and stared back up at Luria with defiance in his eyes. “You’ll see,” he rasped. “One day you’ll see.”
    But it wouldn’t be tonight.

Chapter 3
    T he meadow was vast and verdant, as level as any surface back on the ship, and the enormity of it allowed Ensign Orli Pewter to run more freely than she’d ever run before. She was jubilant, even ecstatic, as she ran. The sunshine was warm upon her face, caressing her pale skin, ghostly white after ten years trapped beneath the fluorescent lights of an interstellar ship, and it touched her with golden rays of honest radiance. A breeze blew through the meadow, bending the shiny stalks of grass in shimmering waves as she ran against it, adding her own speed to the velocity of the floral scented air. Touched with hyacinth, sage and wondrous varieties she’d not yet catalogued, the fragrant wind drove tears of joy from the corners of her eyes as she sped along, salty rivulets blown over her temples to mix with the sheen of perspiration that cooled her alabaster flesh. There was so much space down here, on this planet, on Andalia, so much room to run. Andalia was a real world, a world of soil and trees and grass. A world of bugs and birds and temperatures above and below sixty-eight degrees. Andalia was freedom. It was paradise.
    Except, it hadn’t always been. The truth of the matter was, Andalia was the scene of a great and mysterious tragedy. Andalia was a world that had been populated only a few scant decades in the past, and not just sort of populated by animals and bugs, but completely populated, with people. Humans. Just like back on Earth. Andalia had been filled with people and dotted with cities that glowed brightly on its surface like a phosphorescent skin, thousands of cities, their electric lights shining into space. Orli had seen the images a hundred times before. But they were images taken by satellites that no longer orbited this world. Images of lights that no longer shone. The Andalian people were gone, and their cities were as well. In fact, this very meadow where she ran was supposedly the site of a large Andalian city called Persepiece. But there was no city here, and no trace that there ever had been one; there was only this vast, suspiciously level meadow where Persepiece should have been. At least if the maps were right.
    And the maps were the most vexing thing of all, and what became so troubling to the fleet. There were no ruins here either. There were no ruins anywhere. There were no bodies. There were no wasted towns or lines of