The Way of Caine ,The Warcaster Chronicl - By Miles Holmes Page 0,6

such a big place. How long before they figure out who yeh are? What then for yer dear mother?” he swore, striking Caine again. Despite the pain, Caine struggled to get Seamus off him.

“Yeh’ve helped enough! Go back to the streets! Yer garbage! D’ye hear me?”

It was the final straw. With both hands, Caine reached up, grabbing his father’s fist.

“You’re wrong!” Caine shouted.

Caine met his father’s eyes with equal wild intensity. “You’re wrong!” he spat this time, holding his father’s fist at bay. Both men now strained with the effort.

“I’ll show you, you bottle sucking drunk!” Caine’s eyes burned white. Sound sucked from the room with a sudden rush of air. He saw his father’s eyes widen above him, and his skin started to tingle. In the next instant, everything was gone. As the glare in his eyes faded, his hearth and father both were replaced with the darkened road in front of his house.

Caine walked into the night.

Four Years Ago

Summer, AR 592: Strategic Academy, Point Bourne

Caine stood straight-backed and focused, lined with a dozen more like him along the firing range. A clouded day overhead, they stood sheltered within the thick stone walls of the academy. Each was dressed in the weathered blue and grey cloaks of Arcane Tempest Gun Mage cadets. Their panoply was completed with tricorn, marksman goggles, and the trademark sidearm, a magelock pistol, holstered at the waist.

Downrange twenty paces, the crew in the pits of the intricate mechanikal gallery began to grind cogs into action.

Behind the cadets, the gunnery sergeant paced, adjusting his own goggles. Next, he tightly gripped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat.

“Cadets, at the READY!” he screamed in a tightly measured pitch.

Caine flexed his fists, and steadied his breathing. Behind his own goggles, he blinked, counting the scrum points of his corridor. He listened to the steps of the sergeant behind him. Ahead, the gallery came to life. Still, the instructor paced, on the edge of giving the word … until …

“Cadets, FIRE!”

With fluid, deliberate movement, Caine drew an ornately embossed pistol from his holster. Runes carved in the barrel faintly glowed at his touch. Steadily he aimed downrange, and watched. Within the corridor of each cadet came a kaleidoscope of colored and animated targets. Some darted left to right, others moved in patterns or sweeping arcs.

“Two minutes!” The gunnery sergeant bellowed.

Caine lined up his first target. With a whisper and a soft squeeze, the barrel of his pistol exploded with glitter-laced fire. Mystic runes swirled around his shot, streaking after it like fireworks. He had whispered Break, just as they had been drilled, day after day these past eight months. The word itself, he had learned, was not nearly as important as the thoughts it evoked. With the right thought, the will of the gun-mage was imposed on his weapon, and the shot itself was greatly altered.

Within the great frame of the mechanikal shooting gallery, a blue painted steel plate waved up and down until Caine’s shot found it, and the thing shattered like so much confetti.

One after another, cadets to his left and right followed suit, whispering their own words of power. The courtyard sang with the cacophony of spell-fire.

Caine paid no notice. He was within his own head, hands already moving to reload without him, as he fixated on his next target. Five more shots, and five more hits as the seconds ticked down.

“One minute!”

As his focus concentrated, the world around him slowed, dimming to obscurity. Only the targets down range still looked vibrant, as they darted in and out of the scrum points in endless supply. There were red targets, hinged and weighted by brick. To them Caine whispered Thunder, his shot shattering on impact with enough force to knock them back. There were also spinning yellow targets, set well back from the rest. To those, he whispered Reach, spurring his shot further and further ahead. Each time as his pistol emptied, he paused mechanically to reload it and fired again without hesitation. He had not missed one yet.

“Thirty seconds!”

Two more rounds left in his belt. A score of thirteen was impressive enough, just one shy of the record. Yet he felt a playful curiosity tug him away from the urgency of the test. He had wondered many times in the months prior if he might evoke new ways to spur his shot. Caine grinned as he reloaded. Why not try? What did he have to lose? His mind raced as he reloaded, excited to