A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

she’d recited so often, Ennalen’s mind drifted to more pertinent concerns, but not before weighing one last time the profound unfairness being done to poor Sala.
    She suppressed a smirk as she concluded her remarks.
    At least it was no arbitrary unfairness.
    ***
    From her balcony in the deepening night, as she had for weeks on end, Ennalen watched the road below and absently stroked the spine of the same book discovered days before. For no particular reason she regarded the elaborate cover and spine once again, this time wondering whether the person responsible for binding the volume had been driven by pride of craftsmanship or by enthusiasm for its content.
    She still had yet to open the book. She had no need. With the exception of a flourish or two specific to a given scribe, the story within would read just as it always had:
    Before the World, the fable went, there had been the Ever—the primal sea of nothingness from which all began. After measureless eons of serenity, a cataclysm brought forth from the Ever the gods and their opposites, the three-headed creature known as the Dragon Sisters. Immediately finding the cosmos abstract and inadequate, the Dragon Sisters went to the grey, wasting body of the Ever and tore open further the wound from which they’d been born. They bathed in their Mother’s blood, knowing it to be magic, and with their new and wild powers began weaving dark spells. Their first incantation created the World—a black, tangled place, but nonetheless something over which they could rule.
    Angered by the desecration of their Mother, the gods buried Her in a distant, secret place. In doing so, the last precious drops of the Ever’s blood trickled onto their hands and into their eyes, giving them, too, knowledge of magic. Now able to see the significance of their siblings’ creation, the gods waged war upon the Sisters to wrest the World from their jealous hold. The stars themselves shook from the ferocity of the struggle, and the Sisters were driven back to the edge of creation.
    With the Sisters exiled, the gods cast their eyes upon the World, and for the first time light shone. The blackness erupted into a melody of lush and brilliant greens, and the tangles withdrew back into the earth. The gods wept when they saw the unintentional beauty of what their Sisters had created, and their tears filled the huge, jagged crevasses of the World, forming the oceans. Inspired by the splendor of land, water and sky, the gods then created beings to inhabit all three.
    Afterward, in those early days, humankind and god lived alongside one another, creating music and poetry and art, enjoying prosperity and peace. Meanwhile, the banished Dragon Sisters discovered the remains of their Mother. They ate what was left of Her body and grew stronger, and watched as their siblings dwelled within the World and forgot what it meant to be gods. Once healed, the Sisters emerged, and when they fully beheld how their creation had been ruined, the Sisters descended upon the World and a final, terrible battle commenced.
    In their lessened state the gods could not counter the Sisters’ brutality and feared the World would be lost forever, until a great cacophony of war horns sounded and from all directions charged a thunderous army. Humankind had assembled its mightiest heroes to help defeat the Sisters once and for all. The tide of the conflict turned, and the Sisters realized their destruction was at hand.
    Rather than suffer outright defeat, in a last act of spite the Sisters tore open their own chest, scooped out the vile heart within and hurled it down upon the World. As it fell, the heart became an immense black gem, and when it struck the ground, it shattered into countless pieces. The dying Sisters knew those pieces one day would be gathered and reassembled, and release a power with which the children of the gods would surely destroy themselves and every—
    Ennalen’s attention snapped back to the present. A tiny,