drawing mana in

"I am the center," he thought, willing mana to be like shards of glass in his veins. It was as his teacher said: Power and sacrifice can only exist together, like an eye and the sense of sight. "The light surrounds my foes, and they are blind to all but me. If any heart will be stilled, it will be mine."

When water is tipped into a funnel, it churns an inevitable course around the axis. So it was with Gideon as the creatures turned their attention to him alone. Gideon's magecraft chimed loudly in his mind—a necessary distraction from their netherworldly cries, the blows that found his unprotected skin, and any emotion that might distract him. He coiled the metal strands of his weapon so rapidly that the air itself became like a blade. Pain, he thought. I feel it, but it does not break me. Death. If it comes now, so be it.

The shouts of the soldiers on the wall broke through his consciousness as the pile of rosy, seeping flesh grew around him. Soon the sural was still, and Gideon stood on bruised and shaking legs. Battered, but alive.

So goes the teaching, he reminded himself yet again: Pain is welcome. Death is inevitable. Honor is the only legacy a man should crave.

***

THE BATTLE OF FORT KEFF