Valverno heard Sora’s loud cry while standing on the beach. Her cry was loud he could hear her crying scream from ten miles away.
He turned to see his sister running on the beach shores. Her running speed made her go ten times faster than a cheetah running at high speed running on the savanna. She ran with the greatest speed it could make Valverno’s speed look like a baby bird’s first flight. When she was close enough, she jumped on him.
Valverno caught Sora from jumping on him and they both fell into the sand. Valverno fell onto the sand while Sora remained atop of him.
“I knew you’d be back,” said Sora. “I was beginning to think you’d run off to join this fallen king and not kill him.”
“That’d you think would happen to a demigod who’d fought off an invasion with his sister and a small army of people in small clans?” asked Valverno.
“And I was beginning to think you would have died while trying to save Marina,” said Geraldus. The man who raised Valverno stood beside where Sora and Valverno who were lying on the sand. “And here I thought it would be Marina sitting on you.”
Valverno gave Geraldus a stare.
“Not to mention what Uragiru had shown us when he sent out these crystal orbs and showed us your new transformed form and I could tell by looking at you: you have unleash the power from the Pool of Shadows. Not only have you bathed and the black power changed your form, but you it contained and chained within your body.”
“I was completely powerless when I was chained through some magic barrier,” said Valverno. Valverno used his wings and pushed himself back to standing while he held onto Sora. “You should have heard me talking with Uragiru and his ancestor who bathed in the Pool of Shadows.”
Geraldus nodded.
“We all heard about his betrayal and the power flowing through his bloodline. Bors, who we heard was the ancestor of Uragiru, went into the Pool of Shadows and the power would go to be inherited into his bloodline. Now Uragiru is now in command of the Pool’s power, but more shockingly his daughter, Stephanie, is adopted. Now that gives Teutates more authority to the throne than ever.
“Other than Uragiru and his bloodline, I was beginning to think you could have been turned. It has been a week since any has seen you.”
Valverno raised his eyebrows; the time he and Marina spent in King Uragiru’s created dimension seemed very short it felt his real body was put to sleep for five minutes. However, Geraldus had said otherwise, it has been a week for him and Marina trapped in Uragiru’s throne room.
Valverno wasn’t going to question of how it has been a week. After all, both he and Marina were the ones trapped in the different dimension of illusions. He did hear Uragiru mentioned something about Time Control magic, which must have meant the few minutes he and Marina spent in a different dimension must have meant time clocking faster in the real world.
He could see how magic is becoming a nuisance to life. He was now beginning to think the time for using magic was over. He now thought humanity must use their hand and muscle to find work and not use magic as a tool. Valverno was clearly seeing magic was becoming a forbidden tool humans shouldn’t ever use, for it could corrupt them.
And Valverno learned the birthplace of the power of magic comes from the Pool of Shadows, according to Uragiru. It was where the Titans first bathed in, which would have made brainwashed them into rebelling against the gods, as he heard in the stories. And maybe it is where Lusìvar was banished to, during his fight with the Crystal Dragon.
If Valverno could destroy the Pool of Shadows, then his current form could disappear as well and all the magic in the world would disappear as well.
Then he would go to think of the creatures. The Dragons with their fire-breathing breathes. The horns of the Unicorns with their healing abilities. He thought were they magic powers and he had wondered if their abilities natural for the creatures to use or were they unnatural like a snail out of its shell or a bird without its feathers.
As his thought pondered what would happen for the consequences, Geraldus pulled out the dagger Valverno gave to him. “And I found about this dagger you gave me,” said Geraldus. “It is not made from any caves or volcanic rock nor is it a natural rock.”
Valverno looked at the dagger, which he knew was the one that gave him the scar on his right eye. Sora too looked at the dagger.
The dagger was shining black with a red-purple dim across the blade’s fuller. Both the blade and the hilt stretched about a foot long, seven inches for the blade and the hilt five inches.
“This blade is made by some magical power source, but I don’t know what from. The blade certainly looks like it was made from black glass, which could be from obsidian (volcanic rock). However, it is not obsidian. This must be a substance of Lusìvar’s making.”
“A substance I intend to get rid of,” said a man’s voice.
Valverno turned to see Teutates standing behind Geraldus. The demigod was witnessing another surprise visit from the mysterious man making another surprising appearance. A week ago he was in the Northern Region. Before that, he saw Teutates at his wedding ceremony and he somehow managed to get to the Northern Region in a short amount of time.
“I’m not going to hold back; how is it you have traveled from the capital city to the Northern Region in a matter of hours? After my wedding? How did you travel to the Northern Region?”
“Does it matter how I travel, even if it is not your business to know?”
“I am a demigod. If I get to know people more and debate if they could be
