God Mage - D.W. Jackson Page 0,52
the trouble the other day would have been avoided. I understand that you are still young and that it is the nature of youth to be foolish, but you cannot afford that right now. Think, look, and then think again before you act; otherwise, you will be courting death.
Bren took Thuraman’s words to heart. The staff was right and Bren had to admit it. He knew that the area was affected by a large amount of magical energy, but he didn’t give it a second thought when he went to use magic. It was calling to him, and even though he hadn’t heard it with his ears, he had seized the first chance he could to try to use it, and it nearly cost him his sanity and possibly even his life.
Coming out of his self-imposed trance, Bren looked around to see that everyone was now out of the grass forest and sitting around treating the numerous small cuts that covered their bodies. Bren looked at his own body but didn’t find a single nick on his skin. Running his fingers lightly across his bare arm, Bren once again wondered if the change in his body was a gift or a curse. Like most things, it would depend on how one looked upon it. Right now, it was a gift because it saved him from the grass’s wrath, but when he wished to feel without worry, it became a curse. Even worse, when he felt the need to use magic and couldn’t, it was like a large stone around his neck.
“If anyone needs it, I have some gut and needles,” Cass said, holding up the small medical bag he always carried with him.
“The cuts weren’t that bad were they?” Bren asked looking around.
“Some of mine were quite deep,” Cass said, showing Bren a rather large and deep cut on his knee. “Cut straight through my leather leggings and still took a chunk out of my leg.”
Bren turned to Faye and gave her a worried look. “Are you okay?” Bren asked, his voice steady but his eyes shaking slightly. It was then that Bren noticed the many cuts all over the girl’s small body. Unlike Cass and the other guards, Faye wore no armor and only had on a thin dress, which while well-made, couldn’t stop the razor sharp blades of grass from cutting into her whole body.
Bren pulled his pack from his back and checked it over and was happy to find that the grass had not touched it either. Opening it, Bren pulled a couple of his newer shirts and quickly ripped them up into small squares. Once they were a size they could easily be handled, Bren pulled out a bottle of alcohol and soaked one of the rags.
Faye protested a little at first when he began to clean her wounds but quickly learned that Bren wasn’t going to let them go as they were. Two of the cuts were bad enough that Bren had to borrow Cass’s gut to stitch them up. Once he was finished, he pulled one of Faye’s other dresses from his bag and handed it to her with a weak smile.
As she walked away, the other girls surrounded her, making a human shield so she could change out of her torn and tattered dress without the others eyes on her. When Brenda noticed Bren looking, she shook her hips a little giving him just a slight look at Faye as she shimmied out of her torn dress. Blushing, Bren turned back around to find Cass laughing. “It is good to see that you can still blush when you need to,” Cass said, giving Bren a wink. “Wish we had the horses,” Cass added as he looked out across the glass desert.
“I don’t think they would do us much good out there,” Bren said as he followed Cass’s eyes. “The ground is too smooth, they would slide and break their legs before we got a mile.”
“You’re right,” Cass said with a heavy sigh. “I would still like something other than my own feet to carry me across that though. Guess putting it off won’t get us across it any sooner.”
As Cass stood, a rustling sound came from the grass behind them. Everyone went silent and grabbed their weapons and waited for whatever had made the sound to emerge. A few seconds later four soldiers wearing the Brotherhoods armor burst through the grass.
Though the Brotherhood had found a way to follow them, it seemed they