Free Stealing Sorcery by Andrew Rowe Page B

be pretty young,” Taelien added.
    Delaren were well-known for being born with the ability to reconstruct their bodies. According to legend, Delaren were born with a humanoid appearance and could only grow larger over time – once they had added something to their bodies, they couldn’t get rid of it. Amir Orin, a legendary Delaren king, was often described as having a layer of bony armor and tremendous wings.
    The transformation abilities of the Delaren were supposedly fueled by dominion essence contained in their crystalline hair. This essence was reportedly essential to the Delaren’s survival, making a Delaren’s hair a major point of vulnerability.
    It was also one of the most stable sources of dominion essence, since it naturally grew into a crystalline state, and each hair-like strand contained a mixture of essence of several different dominions. That made it an extraordinarily valuable commodity to sorcerers – valuable enough that the Xixian Empire had captured and bred Delaren slaves for centuries, purely to harvest their hair.
    Aside from transforming their bodies, Delaren could supposedly use their hair to enhance their physical or sorcerous abilities – but at the cost of years of their lifespan.
    “I suppose she’ll be able to blend in somewhat if she hasn’t transformed at all yet,” Landen remarked. “As long as she keeps her head covered.”
    “Yeah, at least she’ll be able to fit through doorways,” Velas added. “A fully grown Delaren could barely move around in a city like this.”
    “A good point. I wonder what their cities are like,” Taelien mused.
    “This is interesting, too.” Landen lifted a few other pieces of paper, passing them to Velas. “Valerians. You know any of them?
    Velas glanced over names on the papers. “No one I recognize in specific. This gal is from House Laurent, which I’ve heard of, but I don’t know her specifically.”
    “Unfortunate. Well, nothing else in here seems quite as exciting as that creature of legend.”
    “Asphodel,” Taelien noted, drawing looks from the other two. “Her name is Asphodel.”
    Landen nudged Taelien. “I didn’t know purple was your color.”
    Taelien shook his head. “It’s not that. I’m just tired of people thinking of me as ‘the man with the Sae’kes’ rather than Taelien or Salaris. I’d say she’s probably going to be dealing with a similar problem.”
    “Suppose that’s fair,” Velas noted, “But if you feel that way, you really shouldn’t be calling yourself Taelien. It invites people to think about you that way. And, as I said, Sal is a much cuter name.”
    Taelien sighed.
    “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

Chapter VI – Lydia II – Suboptimal Moves
    Lydia navigated the citadel’s halls by rote, reading while she walked. The book was the latest in a series on protection sorcery by Edrick Theas, the father of the murder victim. Reading the book served to both enhance her sorcerous techniques and to try to glean more information about the writer. If his daughter’s assessment was accurate, Kalsiris Theas – apparently called “Kae” by his friends – was likely murdered for political reasons connected to his father.
     
    It was during the third year of the western campaign that I began to favor the use of spells that simulated the creation of a suit of armor. I did not invent the Sorcerous Armor spell, of course, but conventional wisdom had long held that it was better to completely stop an attack with the ubiquitous Sorcerous Shield or Essence Barrier spells.
    My logic for the switch in methodology came down to two factors. First, since the Sorcerous Armor spell only served to deflect a portion of an attack, the amount of essence expended for any given strike was far less than attempting to stop an attack entirely. This meant that an armor spell with the same amount of essence invested could diminish the impact of a much larger number of attacks. Since the armor’s protection