Chapter 61: Four Acts Of Weaving
Wyrmwood Academy.
Back at the Ironhold, Reynold was inside the small room.
He was sitting on the floor with the book open in his lap.
He stared at the first page.
There was an illustration of a man. The lines were blurred slightly, like who ever drew the illustration did not want people to see the face clearly.
The figure was straight, shoulders back, one hand raised mid-gesture.
Around it were faint lines curved outward like something moving through the air.
Reynold stared at it for a long moment.
He could not place who the face belong to. He tried to remember every illustration he had seen in the library books but nothing matched.
The face was not even recognisable.
But the figure was giving off a weird aura.
Reynold leaned closer.
It look like the illustration was done without ordinary ink.
Reynold could feel the magical aura faintly. Or maybe the same kind of aura he felt standing near a dragon.
Whoever this was. They were not ordinary.
Reynold eyes moved down to the bottom of the illustration.
There were three letters.
A.A.M
Reynold read them. Then added.
"A.A.M..." He murmured quietly then pause. "Who are you."
He exhaled and turned the page.
The next page had a heading.
Never let the storm decide who you are.
Reynold looked at it for a moment. Then his eyes moved down.
The handwriting was different here. Like who ever wrote it had stopped many times and thought before writing down each word.
Reynold read it.
"The academy will teach you how to summon. They will teach you how to channel. They will teach you how to control. What they will not teach you , what they cannot teach you is what it means to be a Storm Caller."
"There are four acts of weaving. The masters of the academy do not know them. They were not meant to. Master this acts of weaving and the storm will never master you."
Reynold stopped reading as he shifted with the book in his lap and did not move.
"Four acts of weaving."
He had never heard that phrase before. Not in any of magic user books he have been readily recently.
He turned the page.
What he saw on the page made him stopped.
There was no words written on the page just illustrations.
The illustration was the same figure, A.A.M and but this time the image was moving..
Reynold pulled back in shock and his shoulders hit the wall behind him.
He pushed the the book to the floor and stared at it.
The figure was moving the way a flame moves.
The arm drew back, then extended outward and something spiralled from the outstretched hand. It was Something formless that bent the air around it and more like heat rising off stone.
Then the figure reset.
And the arm was back, then it extended again and spiral again.
It did it over and over.
Reynold could not breathe for several seconds. He was really stunned.
He looked at the door and it was bolted. Then he looked back at the book.
"Oh, wow! This must be the first act."
Reynold watched it cycle through three more times.
Then the page went still and the illustration stopped moving.
Reynold exhaled slowly and turned to the next page.
It was the same illustration but the figure did not extend outward. The both arms came inward, crossing at the forearms.
The lines around the body pulled toward it.
Reynold could almost feel it.
Then the figure released.
The lines expanded outward all at once in every direction simultaneously. It burst so fast that the page almost blurred with it.
Then it reset and did it again.
"This must be a defence," Reynold thought. "Or something close to it."
Reynold licked his lips and opened the next page.
The figure was still for a moment with both hands at its sides. Then it looked up.
The lines above it shifted. The currents that had been moving horizontally changed direction and started to descend from above like something being called down from a height.
The figure raised one hand.
The current came down into it and condensed into a single point.
Then the figure threw it downward and drove it into the ground like a stake.
The page shook slightly.
Reynold pressed his hand flat against the stone floor instinctively.
The ground under him was still and was not affected. But whatever that was drawn into that illustration carried weight, and even through the page he could feel the aura of it.
He waited to recover himself before he turned to the next page.
The next page did not show the figure moving at all.
The figure was just there but lines around it were gathering.
But the figure did not move.
Then at the very bottom of the page, in small handwriting, was a write up.
"This one I leave unfinished. It is not for me to complete."
Reynold stared at those words for a long time.
Before he turned the page.
The next several pages were just text.
He read them.
"You felt it. That is how I know you are the right one. The book would not have opened for you otherwise. Vraethos is an old word, and not many people alive today would know to look for it. If you found it, you have already done something the academy cannot teach."
Reynold clean his face and kept reading.
"The four acts of weaving are not spells. Do not mistake them for spells. A spell is a fixed thing. The four acts are not fixed. They are principles. The first act is called the Release. The second is the Draw. The third is the Call. The fourth — the one I left unfinished — is the Convergence. I have seen it described but i have never seen it completed. What I am certain of is that the first three will already set you apart from everything the academy produces."
"Start with the Release and everything else will builds from it."
Reynold turned the page back. He looked at the first act again and then he set the book down on the floor in front of him. The book was open to that page of first act.
Then he looked at his own hand.
He stretched his arm out slowly. The way the illustration did. Shoulder pulled back first. Then the extension from the elbow. Then the wrist angle.
He could feel something faintly that slight charge in his palm.
He tried to release it.
But nothing happened.
He exhaled and looked at the page. Then he tried it again.
But still nothing.
He was not discouraged.
Whatever this was, it was not something some one learned in one day.
Reynold flipped through the book and stopped the third act again.
"From the sky is a storm logic," he thought.
He did not know how he though about that.
He sighed and closed the book carefully.
His eyes now at the cover again.
"To the Next Storm Caller."
He kept the book down beside him and leaned his back against the stone wall and stared at the ceiling.
He was still sitting against the wall when he heard footsteps.
Reynold opened his eyes.
A knock on the door sounded then followed by a voice.
"Reynold?"