Read The Cor Chronicles: Volume 02 - Fire and Steel for Free Online

lithe and supple, able to bend when necessary. She had the hard, trained body of a warrior mixed with the luscious body of a seductress, and the effect was like nothing Cor had ever felt. Many of the older boys stared openly at the exotic, beautiful and very naked woman who stood in front of them, and the younger boys giggled, though they were not sure why. Cor forced them to redirect their attention by turning and making it clear with his expression that their gazes were not required. Some still watched however, from the corners of their eyes.
    “Protecting my honor, Dahken Cor?” Thyss asked with a disdainful laugh. “I shall return by morning.”
    She held her arms to the sky above, and a slight wind blew across the grassy hills. It was almost as if Thyss caught the wind with her body and then melted into it. Cor watched as her physical form simply disappeared, turning to a mist or wisp of cloud in the wind. In a few seconds, she was simply no longer there, and the wisp of cloud rose into the air on the breeze and joined itself with a particularly fluffy white cloud. He looked into the sky longingly in the direction she had blown away and got the distinct impression that she watched him and laughed at him. Cor sat back down to brood and shook his head; the woman was truly beloved of gods.
    It was shortly before dawn when Thyss returned, and it had been a bad night for Cor. Despite her claims, Cor worried over the elementalist from Dulkur. He spent the night pacing around his refugees’ encampment, impatiently staring up into the sky in hopes of seeing any wisp of cloud that seemed to move of its own accord. Eventually, he stopped his nervousness and sat. He even tried to sleep, but every slight breeze brought him to his feet. He did not see her arrive; Thyss simply joined him from the gloom. He was exhausted from lack of sleep, and she was weak from exertion; they slept until the sun was highest in the sky.
    “Explain to me exactly what you did last night,” Cor said as they ate a lunch of nuts and dried fruit.
    “I changed my elemental form,” Thyss explained. “Your body is made of three of the four elements. It is mostly earth and water, but there is a bit of air also. I simply changed myself to a form of air and water so that I would look like a cloud or fog.”
    “You can do that at any time?” he asked.
    “Not exactly. It is very tiring, and while I gain my strength quickly, the body cannot take such stresses regularly. But, it is not the change itself that is exhausting; it’s the constant struggle to maintain my identity, my sense of self. Elemental forces are primal and chaotic. When you release your body to become one with them, you must fight constantly to not lose your mind to them as well.”
    Cor nodded; the explanation seemed simple and clear enough, though he still did not understand the actual magic itself. He never would, but one thing did occur to him as he thought her words over.
    “So, I was in no danger of losing you to a Loszian crossbow, but I could have lost you forever otherwise?” he asked.
    “I was not aware, Dahken Cor, that you owned me,” she replied. Her words carried a hard edge, but her eyes did not hold the danger that he had seen there on several occasions. He did not answer her immediately, but in fact waited a few moments before again speaking.
    “I thought,” he started slowly as he tried to piece it together, “you controlled fire?”
    “Hykan is my patron,” she answered, “but I can make use of all elemental magic. My abilities with fire are far more … potent, but I would never transmute myself into fire.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I would never come back,” Thyss said, and Cor could see by the look in her eyes that it was true.
    After their brief lunch, Thyss mapped out what she found. She could see the entire Loszian fort from the sky and committed every detail to memory. The first thing was that there were no pickets or advance guards of any kind on