Book 5: Chapter 42 — Severence - II
Death Valley was disturbed. Vast powers had woken and now clashed with enough force to shake the ground. Roars echoed, painfully loud, even this far away. Noah tried to stay calm and centered, focused on drawing in and filtering the overly-strong mana, but his own mind was equally disturbed.
Mana: 4%
Noah's head hurt. His everything hurt. His meditation was fragmented and ineffective. He'd underestimated just how much Zax's wards were making it possible to absorb the local mana at all.
Zax is dead.
He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it, didn’t want to believe it. But as minutes turned to hours without the dragon appearing, he found it harder and harder to deny.
When Sev woke him from his attempted meditation the first time, it was with a hand over his mouth, crouched to shush him as he pulled Noah into a darker corner. “Unseen will protect us as long as we don’t move,” he whispered, and stood blocking Noah from view as Ascendant power rolled over them.
Noah fought against the overwhelming suppression that was the Ascendant’s aura with all the mental strength he could muster. It wasn’t enough to break any of its effects, but it did net him another level of his resistance.
The Ascendant hunting them didn’t even glance at their cave, but stalked past outside without slowing. Still, it was minutes after she left that Sev finally relaxed and nodded for Noah to resume his meditation.
“I don’t suppose you have any handy exercises for internalizing mana a rank too high for you?” Noah asked as he settled back down. “My familiar said I just need to subjugate it, but I haven’t mastered that method yet.”