Courage Read Online Free Page A

killed by projectile debris, or direct hits from fireballs.
    “I’d been hoping for at least a century of peace, but it’s taken them only thirty years. I can’t help but wonder if someone whispered words of poison in--Aerigo? I’ve never seen your eyes glow like that before.”
    Those fools! Aerigo pictured himself marching up the steps to Balvar’s throne and repeatedly bashing the king’s head against it. They’d warred against him and the Green Province for a hundred years, lost millions of lives, and gained nothing, not one acre of land. Then the king had signed the peace treaty with a grateful smile, so grateful that Aerigo had been foolish enough to believe it. Of course a piece of paper wouldn’t protect one nation from another, but he’d let his idealism win out against reason. They had fooled him. They had tricked him into peaceful complacency, and now that mistake had cost Aerigo his wife. They were going to pay .
    “Take her,” he whispered in a deadly calm voice. The Druid hesitated before taking a step closer and accepting his daughter’s body.
    “Are you alright, son?”
    Aerigo was too absorbed with what was stirring within himself to answer. Some sort of... power... had woken in the core of his being, something very powerful that wanted out. It felt just as furious as him. Or maybe it was responding to his mounting rage, feeding it into full-blown wrath. He turned north, towards the fires, and the cowardly army that deserved to die. He felt the power tug him in that direction, like when standing in a receding wave as it tried to pull him out to sea.
    As he started moving, he noticed the air around him was swirling. It felt thicker and hotter--not with smoke and fire, but with energy. Raw furious energy. His hands tingled, his limbs throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and his eyes burned as they glowed. This energy was trying to break free of its prison. It had to be a prison to a power so potent, such a small, hidden space for it to exist in. It pushed at his subconscious barriers with force of magma pushing to break free of a planet’s crust. Aerigo stopped walking and waited for the energy to free itself, but somehow it couldn’t. He shut his eyes, reached into his core, and punched a hole in the crust of a prison and the energy erupted forth.
    Every drop of his blood, every single bone in his body, every muscle, tendon and organ filled with the whooshing sensation of a bird skyrocketing. The force of the power pushed his bare feel into the ground as it surged skyward. The energy’s release felt freeing and he lost awareness of where his body stood. He opened his eyes and found himself from high above everything. A tornado of transparent white energy funneled out of his body, which looked no bigger than a mouse. He took in Drio as it burned, the minuscule people and livestock running in every direction, and a vast scarlet army spread out on the plain north of the village, enjoying themselves as they catapulted more fireballs. The raging energy willed him towards the army.
    Before he threw himself upon the Balvadiers, he needed fists to kill them with and a face for the country to fear, if he could control himself enough to leave survivors. Maybe he wouldn’t need to leave survivors. He could wipe out the entire army, leaving Balvar’s king with nothing but his throne to hide behind, and then he could crush the king and his throne. But that could be taken care of later.
    Aerigo forced the energy into a crude human shape. It energy resisted his will and tried to snake in other directions, but he wasn’t in the mood for disobedience. He molded crude arms, fists and a torso, and put more effort into replicating his face. Those who survived were going to remember who decimated them. Tracing the shape of the monstrous energy with his mind’s eye, he nodded in approval. The tail end of the energy picked up his physical body and carried it along like a tornado lifting off the ground. The power