Read The Road to Magic (Book 1 of the Way of the Demon Series) for Free Online Page A

It’s been waiting for you long enough!’
    Oleg obediently walked over and brushed the hand of the body lying next to him. The world about him began to spin dementedly at once. Instinctively, Oleg closed his eyes tightly, and when he opened them he realized he was lying on his stomach, face-down in the incredibly green emerald grass. And the world around him had changed once more. Now it was a perfectly normal forest clearing, the only difference between this one and the ones he was used to was the absence of any smell.
    ‘And nothing has changed,’ Heliona’s voice rang out above him. ‘It’s just that before you saw it through the eyes of a demon, and saw the real nature of this little place. I fashioned it in a hurry so that you wouldn’t freak out from being in our world so long. Of course, I created it out of the elements that I had to hand and your demon eyes easily distinguished them. But human eyes, which you are using now, are not so difficult to trick.’
    A long silence followed. Oleg looked at himself and at the world around him, trying to find signs of the change in his condition. Not having noticed anything special, he turned to Heliona: ‘You said I’d get some sort of magical super-powers?’
    ‘Yes, that’s what I said, and you will get them. Why?’
    ‘How can I use them?’
    ‘How should I know? I’m not a human magician, am I? You’ll have to learn the art of wielding your powers from them, and you’ll have to study long and hard. My energy will only help you to control fire a bit. The most primitive way to use it is simply to make a wish connected with fire, imagine whatever it is and exert your will. It might work, your powers are already sufficient for many things.’
    Oleg made a wish. After a few minutes of very hard straining and frowning, a small flaming sphere appeared on his palm.
    ‘Oh! A fireball! Not bad for a first try,’ Heliona passed judgement on his achievement. ‘Oh and by the way, besides practising and developing your fire talents, I suggest you develop your own strengths, too.’
    ‘My own?’
    ‘You have a natural talent for dark magic. It’s not by chance that you received a demon body here. So I would recommend you study that art, too, especially necromancy. After all, you’ve already been acquainted with death, and those kinds of meetings are never without their consequences.’
    Oleg nodded silently, but thought to himself: something is pushing me intensely towards “the dark side of the force”. Why?
    ‘You’re pushing yourself!’ the auburn ex-goddess protested at once, still shamelessly reading his mind. ‘You think it’s my fault that you have that magical leaning? And for your information, to be a master of the dark magic doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.’
    Oleg at once thought sarcastically: yeah of course, because you probably can’t become a dark magician and still be human.
    The salamander neighed like an untamed horse.
    ‘You got it! But I didn’t say “magician”, I said “master”. And that is totally within a human’s reach.’
    At this point Heliona suddenly turned her attention to Oleg’s long-suffering guitar, still hung over his shoulder.
    ‘Are you a bard?’ she cried out gleefully. ‘Sing something!’
    Oleg frowned: ‘I’ll be happy to play something. But as for singing… You see, there’s only one good thing about my voice – it’s loud. As for the rest… Sorry.’
    ‘Bullshit!’ The salamander exclaimed. ‘Take on your demonic form and sing. Demons have a very wide vocal range, after all they have to be able to tempt and terrify. Demons are wonderful singers.’
    Noticing how Oleg grimaced, imagining himself trying to play the guitar with fingers topped with hooked claws two centimetres long (and that was when they were drawn in as far as they would go) she came up with another variation:
    ‘You don’t have to take on the full form of a demon. You can just take a few demonic organs. And by the way,