The King's Challenge #94

TKC 94

My mentor in Orlean, a city of red stone and blue cobbles nestled at the foot of our northern mountain in the west, told me there are devices able to aid growth. Generally they are used to help a weak child, a newborn regarded as too fragile to survive or an older person losing mobility. Healing, in other words, but he admitted these devices are able to achieve something greater. He also said they are often misused.

As Joseph and Damin continued discussing the situation on the plateau, a futile conversation, truth be told, for as Horin said, it is time to leave all that behind, I study the boy.

The manipulation he employed against the cavalry and the shield flyers – and now uses as a path to speed us along – is also an orb. We have seen him summon the green light, only to hold it as a tangible object. I doubt we can hold it as he does, though. It appears to me, the more he employs the manipulation, the more solid it is to him. He has created something tangible from the processes nestling in his mind.

Horin is more powerful than we comprehend.

And it changes him.

I do not believe he misuses the device, but it may be misusing him. He is at least a head taller than a few days ago and his frame has filled. Muscles of an older youth ripple in his arms. Two days back he was eight years old; today he appears around thirteen.

The healing devices, according to my mentor, engender supernatural strength. There are tales of ancient warriors wearing orbs as talismans. Those tales also tell of how, at peak performance, the warriors died in horrible ways. From the inside.

Horin is in danger.

I look away, for I will say nothing of this. We need what the boy can do.