Vitiosi Dei (Heritage of the Blood Book 2) by Brent Lee Markee Read Free Book Online

increased speed, and he found that he could jump incredible distances. His strength let him climb wherever he wanted. If he couldn't find a hand or foothold, he simply made one. Shawnrik quickly began testing every limit, trying to find out everything that he was now capable of doing.
                  Shawnrik had spent the better portion of the day doing exactly that, and his exploration had brought him further afield than ever before. He now sat upon a massive rock formation that overlooked one of a multitude of hidden valleys in the Blade's Edge Mountains. The sun was slowly making its decent towards the horizon, coloring the sky in a multitude of pinks and purples. It would be well past dark by the time he made it back to the village, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
                  Pedrial would likely not make a big deal about it—he never seemed to want to put extra rules on someone who was already well behaved. Shawnrik's run had been exhilarating, but it had also given him a lot of time to think about what was to come on the morrow. On New Beginnings three years ago, he had met his best friend for the first time, and sometime tomorrow morning ten years ago, Victor had been born. Last year, Shawnrik had spent New Beginnings huddled next to the fire in Pedrial Lightfeather's home, not yet used to the frigid cold of winter in the mountains. Tomorrow he would be off to someplace called Serenity Valley, where he would go to school for the first time in his life.
                  Shawnrik wasn't sure when his own birthday was; he thought it was somewhere in the month of Ragnós, which meant he was nearly halfway through his fifteenth year. When he thought about the fact that he was five and a half years older than his best friend, it made him laugh. Five years older than Victor, who had taught Shawnrik how to read and write Common, and speak it properly. Five years older than the boy who had been giving him advice ever since the day they met. Victor, who had disappeared, leaving only a letter that said that everything would turn out alright, even if he didn't know where on Terrazil he himself would end up. Even with his own future uncertain, he had been trying to reassure his best friend one last time.
                  A day never went by in the last year and a half where Shawnrik hadn't thought about his friend, but as time went by he found it a little more difficult to remember exactly what his friend had looked like. He knew that on the day that he saw his friend again, he would look completely different, but he still lamented the fact that his friend's image should fade into memory like that.
                  A cold wind blew through the mountains as the sun set to the west, throwing the eastern edge of Terrazil into twilight. Shawnrik let thoughts of the past drop with the sun as it dipped below the horizon, and he began looking forward to the new day. Someday he would meet his friend again, and he would be strong enough that they would never be parted again. The world was changing and he would change with it, using everything at his disposal to learn as much as he could for when that fateful day would arrive. With a sigh, he let go of all the worries for his friend that he had been carrying around and began his journey back to Tranquility Mist, and the future. 

                  “Time for another day of work, tunnel rat.”
                  The voice arrived shortly before the toe of a soft-soled boot not so gently met the side of his torso, as it had every morning for as long as he could remember. Every morning—or what passed for it in these lightless tunnels—the foreman's toady would wake him up this way. The jerk never seemed to do it to the other workers. No, he only seemed to pick on the young human boy.
                  It being the only thing he had ever known. The boy found the action a little bit comforting,