Book One – Chapter 3

On the ground, on his knees, Yves bent forwards and curled up into a tight ball, pressing his chest and forehead against his knees and his arms around his head. It was a purely instinctive reaction. If you tortured wizards by circulating energy rush, they all did the same thing. In the feeble attempt to preserve itself, the body understood that this pose restricted energy flow as much as possible.

From there, Yves’ training in the duelling arts took over. He took in the pain and countered all instinct to fight the deadly torrent. With all the power he could muster, he used glass magic upon himself. He focused his remaining innate energy to rebuilt and strengthened his fractured physical form. From his core outwards and, simultaneously, inwards from the outermost layer of his body, he weaved the already broken shards of ashen light that built the intricacies of his body back together into a more solid structure. It was brutally painful work, but ever so slightly, he could feel the paths of the stream narrowing. His own energy was not enough, so Yves turned the shards that surrounded and protected his centre inwards. As he did, he heard horrible, long-drawn screeching and realised that he was screaming. It was the first time that he screamed, the first time that his fractured body had ever made a sound. It felt as if he was cutting himself into pieces from within. But with the shards turned just right, Yves could split off and capture and redirect fragments of the rushing energies into the core of his form, ebbing their flow, anchoring them within, using them to further shape and strengthen his own form shard by shard. The fractured shadow silhouette that he had been in the mirror world began to shift, becoming more solid and substantial, until the intrusive torrent subsided and Yves had regained full control over his energy flow.