Radiance - The Alight Archives Book #1

44. A Sorcerer's Impulse

The Training Hall was empty this time of day, just the way Kliff liked it. 

Exhaling slowly out of his nostrils, he fixed his posture so that he wouldn't so easily be blasted off of his spot and let his Essence leave his Core and flow freely throughout his body. He calmed his nerves, closed his eyes, erased any thoughts that would serve as a distraction to hinder him. Then, his eyelids shot open, and his attention was honed on the set of training dummies lined in a row some fifteen meters from him, each of them fixed to a wooden pole lodged in the ground.

Breathing out again, Kliff recalled his many, many training sessions with Autumn, remembering how his master would always reinforce how crucial it was to regulate his emotions, especially while he was practicing magic as dangerous as Fire Magic. 

Fire, in and of itself, was already a devastating and uncontrollable element; not just anyone could influence its mighty power. They needed to be the special breed that Kliff Dresden was, yet even he would falter every now and then.

A line of sweat drained down the side of his face, and Kliff slowly reached for the wand in its holster. Salamander Wands were special, and this one had been made explicitly for him. Much like their name implied, these wands enhanced the power and effectiveness of Fire Magic spells. In other words, it was his perfect brush. His perfect weapon. 

However, they were incredibly difficult to produce. Not just because the infernal pine bark from which they were crafted wasn't native to Incante but also because they were charged by the scale of a great-crested sunfire, one of the most deadly dragons in the world.

Kliff still hadn't ascertained how exactly the wandsmith that had bestowed to him this wand had gone about acquiring the scale in the first place, but he'd been too intimidated to ask back then, nor did he imagine that it'd be an inherently remarkable tale to revisit. Regardless, with this wand, his magic could be used to its fullest potential, and that in itself was a problem. To make a recalcitrant form of magic even more unimaginably powerful, well, Kliff would have to be extremely careful.

Focusing on the first of the five dummies before him, Kliff stomped his boot a step in front of him and thrust his wand forward. "Iganx!" A flash of orange-colored light splattered onto the Training Hall's walls, as did his blackened shadow, and a fireball launched out of the other end of Kliff's Salamander Wand. 

Five seconds and the smoldering orb crashed into the dummy, engulfing it in a wild inferno that died after a minute of flickering and roaring. Unsurprisingly, the dummy was still intact—granted, it had been scorched black from the burn marks—and this was most likely because it'd been placed with an enchantment, a type that would keep it whole in spite of how much damage it took.

Snorting on hot air as smoke arose in front of him, Kliff whipped his wand past his shoulder, and another fireball went hurtling for the next target. He repeated this again and again, each flaming comet grander than the last. By the time he reached his fifth and final training dummy, his emotions had taken over, and Kliff recognized his anger and fear as it ensnared him like a foothold trap discarded in a quiet forest.

His heartbeat thundered against his chest as the sides of his vision went blurry, the world around him losing its sharpness and definition, replaced instead by colorful smogs that bled into one another. Grating his fangs, Kliff shook his head from side to side. Focus! He needed to focus. Calming himself, Kliff took aim with his wand yet again and—

His narvala, it was vibrating, and he looked down at his wrist, scowling. Tapping the pad with his finger, the arcanetech device emitted from itself a violet-colored image, a flickering figure that was Edmond Ramming, although, in this form, the tall man was no larger than the length of his forearm.