Book 1 | Agent 34 and the Desert of Beasts

Chapter 7 | Spellweaving

Arenia was frustrated with Agent 34, and didn't exactly wish to speak with the elf. It has been a day since he found the gem, and no words have been exchanged between them. There was a few grunts and coughs, but other than that, interactions were uneventful.

They had covered a lot of distance along the desert, but it was only a small portion of it. They still had days worth of travel left, and that didn't include the setbacks assassins and other enemies would give them along the way.

They surprisingly hadn't encountered another assassin from Braunick, but they had seen a few weak humans pass by. They were intimidated by the elves, as elves were way stronger than weak humans. A few elves could wipe out nearly a third of a city populated by humans.

Braunick's soldiers consisted of humans and elves alike, and humans were enchanted with spells that gave them the strength of elves. There was no way to make their strength greater than that, or they would faint and then die. The gems are a different story though.

Arenia stopped their walk to rest up, because the sun was starting to set and the sky turned to a light red. She set her backpack down in the sand, and pulled a blanket out from it and spread it down on the ground.

Arenia pulled out a pair of raw porkchops, and then pulled out what looked like a stick engraved with special designs. She pointed the stick to the raw meat and uttered a few words, then flames surrounded the meat and disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared.

The porkchops were now fully cooked. Arenia handed Agent 34 one of them, and she began to eat the one she had.

"How'd you do that?" Agent 34 asked, bewildered.

"That was spellweaving. Sorry, I keep forgetting you have amnesia. Since you have the gem, hopefully it gave you the ability to spellweave. Here, take my wand and tell it to cast a flame at, uh. Well, no. Not a flame. Just tell it to levitate your porkchop. Yeah, that seems like a simple task."

Arenia handed Agent 34 the stick she had used to cook the food, and he accepted it with bewilderment. He moved his fingers along the engraved wood, and saw a green stone at the end of it. The wood was beautiful, and looked like it had been made years ago.

"How old is it? And who made it?" Agent 34 asked.

"It is hundreds of years old, and that is dwarf work, but that isn't important. Tell it to levitate your food."

Agent 34 groaned a little, and then pointed at the porkchop he was holding with the wand. "Levitate the porkchop." The elf commanded to the wand. He felt the porkchop tingle a little, and Agent 34 let go of it, and it floated on its own. Agent 34 felt some of his strength sapped out of him, which startled him a little.

"What happened?" He asked her.

"The spells require your energy. It takes the energy from your body and uses it to cast the spells. But you don't seem as tired as most people would be while casting a simple spell like this."

Arenia nodded approvingly. Agent 34 tossed the wand back to her, and the porkchop dropped to the ground and fell into the sand with a thump.

"Aw, I got a sandy porkchop now." Agent 34 moaned, and picked the meat off of the sand and tried to brush off every grain of sand.

"You cannot take your contact off of the wand—if you let go of it or someone else makes contact with it, every spell you have cast with the wand will be broken and stop themselves. The energy taken from you will not be given back," Arenia explained. "If you do not wish for the spell to end, simply say goodbye with the wand in your hand and then remove all contact from it, and it makes the spell permanent unless you told the spell to be temporary."

"Kind of confusing, but I think I get it. How much farther until the Zena?" Agent 34 asked.

"A while," Arenia nibbled on her meat. "It could take a while. With your speed, it would take you half the time it takes me."

"I cannot leave you, I have no idea where to go."

Arenia shrugged, and continued to eat her pork. Agent 34 picked as much grains of sand off of his porkchop as he could, and once he thought they were mostly gone, he began to eat his as well.

Once both of them had finished their meals, the sun had disappeared and the moon was in its place. Night had fallen, and the heat of the desert was replaced  by a cool breeze.

Arenia pulled some logs out of her backpack and placed them in front of her. She uttered some inaudible words, and the logs caught fire, warming everything around it.

"Goodnight, Agent 34." Arenia said, then laid down on her blanket and shut her eyes.

"Goodnight, Arenia." Agent 34 said in return, and did the same. Some last minute thoughts flickered in the elf's mind before he drifted to sleep: Agent 34 was a spellweaver.