Author's Note: This is actually only a small section of the main chapter here which in its entirety is called "The Final Steps Forward". As I was getting read to post this though, I realized that it does have a pretty hefty choice involved in it, and -- mainly for my fun as a maniacal author who likes to torment my readers -- I thought it'd be a nice place to actually stop the story for the night and allow folks to chime in on what they might decide to do here.

Feel free to post some comments and ideas, and let me know what choice you would make at the end of this section. Know however, that this is mainly just for fun to see how others think the two characters should proceed, and what might be best for them. The actual chapter here is already written in its entirety, and I just decided to split it so people could have enjoy thinking and talking about what they think would be best.

So, read up to The Choice, and tell me what you think the character's should do. Let's see who can get into our character's heads the most and think like they do. And remember; it's all for fun! ;)

Isabella cried on my shoulders for several minutes, until I slapped her once across the buttocks.. “There’ll be time for that later. I’ve been carving those large rats and the meat in them is already rancid. We’ve harvested and stored all we can, so it’s time to take the most advantage of the training time that we have left before we’re forced to go back out there with those beasts. This might be a ‘safe-zone’, as you call it, but even a ‘safe-zone’ has its limits. If we stay here too long, we’ll starve and neither of us wants that.”

I might’ve been a little harsher than I needed to be, but I’d get agreed to let her practice stealing my life over and over. Doesn’t that earn me the right to be a little snippy? “So,” I just had to know, “what exactly was the spell that you’ve learned already? Can you show me some magic?”

Wiping her nose, Isabella nodded and took a step back from my arms. “I think so. I haven’t actually tried it yet. Give me a moment.” Rubbing her arm across her nose, she began to mutter some strange words to herself and her pale blue eyes began to sparkle like electricity was flickering in them. A moment later and a pale blue flame appeared in her hand and hovered there. Sweat began to bead on her forehead and the flame flickered in and out of existence a few times and then disappeared with a slight crackling sound.

Isabella staged and then slowly sank down to her knees. “I’m sorry. I failed on that try.” She was breathing hard and a bead of sweat dripped down from the end of her nose.

“Failed?!” My eyes were wide with shock. “You just made a ball of lightning, or fire, or something AWESOME appear out of thin air! What the heck was that? That didn’t look like any failure to me!”

“It’s called a ‘Lifeflame’. It uses the energy I gain from taking in another’s life force and channels it to produce a flame. From the book I was reading, a true master can make dozens of them at once and control and move them all in different directions at the same time.”

Dozens of those? Moving and targeting different things all at once! Bloody Hell! My jaw dropped open almost to the point that I thought it was going to hit the floor. Here I was learning to basically skin rats all day long, and she had unlocked the power to potentially melt anything that stood in her way! I was feeling just a little bit inadequate, to be honest. Just how great a potential had she gained from that book?!

“That’s… That’s astoundingly impressive. Is there anything else that book can teach?” Not that it needed to teach anything else, in my opinion.

Isabella was starting to catch her breath again and slowly stood back up, though her knees wobbled a bit. I should’ve offered her an arm or something to steady herself, but I was just too shocked and awed right now to even think about it. Slowly, she nodded up and down.

“It has one spell in it for each of the cardinal principalities of mystical essence,” she told me.

“Whah?” What else was I supposed to say to something like that?

Seeing my confused look, she actually smiled weakly and gave a half-titter in my direction. “Let me see if I can simplify it a bit. I warned you that the book was confusing.”

I just nodded at that.

“There’re eight principalities of magic. Types if you want to call it that. The four elemental forces of magic, you might understand easy. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air.” She was getting herself under control more all the time. Her knees didn’t even shake now.

Seeing that I was just listening and wasn’t going to say anything, she continued. “Most people can probably understand those four easily enough, but magic actually has four more types to it: Life, Death, Order, and Chaos. Those eight main forces are called the principalities of magic. Fire opposes Water. Earth opposes Air. Order opposes Chaos. Life opposes Death. Like I said, it’s a bit complicated. The cardinal principalities are the intersections of two of those main principalities. Like what you just saw, that was a mixture of Life and Fire, thus a LifeFlame.

Maybe someday I’ll need to invest some points into knowledge, because almost all of that was over my head.

“Umm… You said there’s eight spells that you can learn, right?”

“There are,” she confirmed.

“How about you just tell me what those are, why don’t you. Try and keep it simple if you can.” I didn’t want to let her know she’d completely lost me, but she giggled lightly just looking at my face. Somehow, I thought she knew, but I was happy to see her getting back to her old self. I wonder if all magic is as draining as what happened last time? I’m assuming probably not, or else nobody could toss dozens of those balls around. It must get easier as one’s skill improves.

“There’s eight spells in the book. From Fire and Life, we get ‘LifeFlame’. From Life and Earth, we get ‘BarkSkin’. From Earth and Order, we get ‘Enchant Earth’. From Order and Water, we get ‘FlashFreeze’. From Water and Death, we get “PoisonSpray’. From Death and Air, we get ‘RavenSight’. From Air and Choas, we get “Phantasm”. And from Chaos and Fire, we get ‘FlameDance’.

“LifeFlame, BarkSkin, Enchant Earth, FlashFreeze, PoisonSpray, RavenSight, Phantasm, and FlameDance. Those are the eight spells that the book has that it can teach me to use, but I’ve only learned LifeFlame so far. And they’re rather difficult to learn, as it took me almost a whole day to learn one of them.”

She sounded a little worried and uncertain. “Do you think it would be better for me to take time to learn them all, even though I couldn’t skill up much in them, or would it be better for me to just focus on the LifeFlame until I can make it control it better and then learn the others later? We probably have enough meat in the fridge packaged and frozen to last for ten to fifteen days. I’m honestly torn in how to proceed,” she admitted.