Country Mage 2, page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Country Mage 2 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Thanks
Other Work
Special Thanks to...
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Copyright 2022 Jack Bryce
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
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To whomever invented thongs.
Country Mage 2
Chapter 1
James took a deep breath of clean forest air as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
It was time for a break.
He squinted up at the sun as he placed his axe against the sturdy trunk of a tree. With a satisfied sigh, he sat down — his back against the tree — and took a moment to appreciate the silent beauty of the forest.
He only recently moved into his cabin in Tour County, but he already felt more at home than he ever did in the city. This was the place for him; somewhere he could make his own place without the rat race of city life trying to pull him in.
But he had to work hard for it. Felling trees for lumber, making repairs on his property, and befriending the locals — although that was often more fun than work — were all high on his agenda.
But so far, it was all worth it.
He took a sip of water from the bottle he had brought, then unpacked the lunch Sara had prepared for him: sandwiches with sliced sausage, cheese, and tomato. The food was savory, the ingredients fresh, and James bit down with relish, washing it all away with fresh and clear water, which was a blessing on this warm, late summer day.
As he relaxed and ate, his eye fell on his axe, leaning against the tree trunk.
He had bought it at Lucy’s general store a few days ago, but the edge was already getting blunt from the hard work.
No surprise there, James thought. I’ve been taking down trees for two days nonstop.
He needed lumber for his project; he wanted to expand the cabin.
At first, he had planned on only building a workshop. But his magical powers gave him the means to scale up his expansion. He was going to build an additional room on the north side of the cabin that could serve as a separate kitchen. Doing so would free up the current living room and kitchen combination, allowing a dedicated living room with more space to relax.
The new wall on the north side would double as the wall for his lean-to workshop.
On the west side, he would build an expansion that would double the sleeping room in size.
It was an ambitious plan, but his magic would ease the hardest part of the job — preparing logs and boards for the walls.
When James finished his sandwich, he picked up the axe and ran his thumb along the edge. When he felt how blunt it actually was, he shook his head.
One tree in particular had been rough on the tool. Sturdy and old, and with James’s lumberjack skills still burgeoning, the blade got notched pretty bad…
This won’t do...
But he hadn’t brought anything to sharpen the tool with.
As he considered the blunted edge, a strange but familiar sensation rose inside him. It was a powerful combination of arcane might and willpower — the foundation of his newly discovered magical abilities.
The sensation heralded the coming of an ancestral memory. Those memories allowed him to acquire new magical spells by tapping into the collective knowledge of his ancestors — the High Mages of the House of Harkness.
James pushed away all outside influences, focusing only on the edge of his axe, visualizing it as it should be — sharp, keen, honed to perfection.
And as he pictured this, he willed it with all his intent, bending his resolve to the desired result: a sharpened blade.
Magic burgeoned within him — mana blazing in his core — until the power almost overwhelmed him.
And then, just as Sara had taught him, he turned all that intent inward to seek the ancestral memory that would help him fulfill his task.
The light around James intensified, as if someone dialed up the sun, and mists seemed to billow up from the very earth to envelop him, to carry him away to some distant place where an ancestor of his Bloodline had applied the kind of magic he was now looking for.
It was a beautiful experience — something that made James at one with the many generations that went before him, carving their own paths in the world to achieve happiness.
He let those mists rise and envelop him, and they took him through the vast spaces of time — to learn and to improve.
When James opened his eyes, he found himself in the forest still.
But it was a different forest — all pine under a gray sky with a bleak and distant sun.
And all around him rang the laughter, chatter, and voices of men. The steady thrum of axes biting into wood underscored this cacophony, almost as if it were a rhythmic beat.
With a smile on his lips, James followed the sound through the massive boles of towering pine trees. The traces of men working lumber were everywhere — stumps, the branches of limbed trees, and the beds of needles on the forest ground.
With every step, the sounds grew louder, until James broke out of the tree line.
He came upon a clearing surrounded by a ring of massive pine trees. Some men were chopping and sawing at the trunks of the pines. Others held ropes tied to the branches and pulled at them, making sure that — once felled — the tree would fall in the direction of their choosing. And then there were men relaxing, taking their breaks as they sat on freshly cut logs, eating and drinking and laughing.
They could not see James, of course. In these visits to his ancestral memories, he was little more than a ghost. He could pass through solid objects and remained unseen and unheard. Here, James was a spectator; he could not influence the past.
He studied the men for a while, and soon enough learned that they spoke English in a similar fashion to how he himself spoke the language. In addition, their dress appeared simple but relatively modern. They wore winter outfits — thick coats, sturdy workman’s pants and boots, and they shielded their hands and heads from the cold with gloves and hats.
These facts led him to believe that this ancestral memory did not go back for centuries. He had had those before, where men dressed in furs and leather spoke in a language he did not understand.
Finally, James’s eye fell on a familiar face.
Throughout the ages, i
One man with such features sat alone at the edge of the clearing, running his thumb along the blade of his axe almost exactly like James had done a few minutes ago.
Or rather, as James would do many years in the future…
The man looked hardy, weatherworn, as if he had a life full of hardships behind him.
“Oi, Beckett!” one man — the team leader — called out, and James’s ancestor rose to attention.
Well, this can’t be too long ago, James thought. He has the same surname as me, after all.
“Aye?” his ancestor called out.
“I need you and your axe up here,” the team leader said. “We need a big flow of logs down Go Home River before the sun sets.”
The team leader looked at a few of the other men still lounging. “Come on, guys,” he exclaimed. “Damn break is over!”
The whole clearing came to life as burly men — lumberjacks, all — hopped to their feet, jostling and joking as they took up their peaveys, saws, and axes to resume the work.
But James’s eyes remained fixed on his ancestor, who rose slowly, made sure no one was watching, and turned his back to the group of men picking up their work again.
When he was sure that he remained unseen, the man gripped his axe with one hand, the other hand hovering over it as he closed his eyes and focused his will on the blade.
Then, almost a whisper, the words nearly drowned by the din of the lumberjacks, James’s ancestor spoke the magical words that James wanted to learn.
“Vanbotta tod skerp.
“Bawerckinghe, maacken. Kraft.
“Vanbotta tod skerp.”
The man opened his eyes, looked at the axe, and ran his forefinger over the blade — first along one side, then along the other.
His touch sharpened the axe as well as any tool, man, or machine could. All grime and dirt was gone. Even the notches in the blade from the intensive use had disappeared. It was as if the blade had only just been forged.
With a smile, James’s ancestor turned around and rested the axe on his shoulder as he walked over to his fellows, exchanging a joke with a man in passing.
And as the men resumed their work, the memory already faded away, the mists of time rising to take James back to his own place in his own world — to his own time.
Chapter 2
James’s eyes shot open.
He had returned to the same place, back in his own time. He knew from experience that only a few minutes had passed while he explored his ancestral memory.
And in those minutes, he had learned a new spell.
A smile formed on his lips as he rose to his feet and picked up his axe.
He would write down the magical words and the circumstances in which he learned them later in his Grimoire. He kept meticulous track of these things, because it was not the magic alone that interested him.
Learning magic was his primary goal, but James loved learning more about the history of his family. He had not been close to his father, and he knew little about his own ancestry — about the trials and tribulation of the House of Harkness.
But first, he wanted to test his new spell.
James copied the acts of his forefather, holding the axe in one hand and letting his other hand hover over it as he focused his willpower on sharpening it.
When the mana gathered in his veins, he spoke the words of power of the Sharpen spell he had just learned:
“Vanbotta tod skerp.
“Bawerckinghe, maacken. Kraft.
“Vanbotta tod skerp.”
The magic blossomed in his veins, and when he ran his finger along the edge of the blade of his axe, his potent magic restored the tool to great sharpness, as his ancestor’s magic had done in the vision.
James also noticed this spell was not as intensive to use as some of the others he had learned.
Although it was difficult to quantify mana, it was clear to James that it was an expendable resource that renewed with rest and good food. So far, he hadn’t run into his own limits when casting spells, but that didn’t mean he had none.
Like any new skill acquired and practiced, it would take time for him to find the boundaries…
And then, of course, try to move them.
With his axe sharp and a smile on his face, James turned back to the job at hand — felling trees for the planned expansion of his cabin.
He stopped short.
A fleeting shape in the forest.
Something darted and weaved through the trunks, then disappeared.
“What the…” James muttered.
He narrowed his eyes and found comfort in the firm grip of his axe. He thought he recognized some part of the shape. Did he see legs and a tail?
Either way, someone was watching him.
James intended to find out whom.
He shouldered his backpack, took his axe in hand, and strode forward, He crouched low as he followed in the direction the skittish shape had taken.
James kept his bearing as he ventured deeper into the forest. He had not gotten another glimpse of the limber shape, but he believed he was going in the right direction.
His pace slowed as he entered a wilder area where the trees competed for sunlight, leaving the scraps for the bushy and thorny undergrowth. There was no sound but the creaking of branches and the rustling of leaves in the wind.
In a place like this, James could have been the only human being on earth.
He stopped to listen for sounds — anything that might indicate where the other was hiding. But he heard nothing.
He started walking again, and the underbrush grew thicker and taller with every step. He was now deep in the dense wood, and he found no trace of the shape that he’d been pursuing.
Looks like I lost the trail, he thought.
Still, he wouldn’t give up just like that.
He continued walking, and after a few minutes, he was certain that the other eluded him.
Who was it? he wondered.
He remained fairly certain that the shape had been watching him — or rather, following him — but he saw no face or defining features besides legs and a fluffy tail.
Just as he turned around to get back to work, there came a rustling from the undergrowth, and a branch snapped.
“Oops,” someone muttered — a female voice.
James whirled around. His sharp gaze found a pretty little face hidden away in the shrubs.
She peeked at him with large eyes — one blue, the other green — from under an unruly mop of ginger hair.
Two cute fox ears crowned that pretty head, now folded back as the fox girl regarded him.
Kesha.
“Hey there,” James said, raising his hands to calm her.
At that, she bolted off.
She was quick, but James saw her now. He called out again, then gave chase to her as she careened through the forest.
He wanted to speak to her, wanted to ask her why she was following him around. To him, the fox girl posed yet another mystery of the woods of Tour County, and James loved a good mystery…
She was fast, though.
James had to put in everything he had to keep up with her. And carrying a backpack as he ran didn’t make it any easier.
She darted through the undergrowth and between the tree trunks with the grace and speed of…
Well, of a fox.
Soon enough, the distance between them increased, and James feared he would lose her again.
“Please stop!” He called out after her. “I am not going to hurt you!”
But she ignored him and kept running, her three fox tails — ginger with white tips — billowing behind her as she cleared bushes and ditches with impressive leaps. Her long, coppery hair flew behind her as she ran, and the bouncing of her firm butt in her tight shorts added to the allure of the fox girl.
Kesha disappeared behind the next row of trees, and James took off after her, hoping that he wouldn’t lose track. But she was faster than him — at least in the forest — and he was by no means slow.
