Tales of the Apprentice 01 Ch. 03

With his inner Vision he saw the blue-white cloud of his Energy, its light burning brightly within him, growing slowly as Serana's smooth, wet lips and her nimble fingers worked their magic on his most sensitive spots. She used all her skill, and the feeling of her tongue playing across the smooth, tight surface of his engorged cock-head, filled to bursting, was surpassed only by the maddening pleasure her caressing fingertips sent through his balls. It took all his focus to keep his Energy contained, to keep the blue-white sphere of light within him from bursting outward... But tonight it was difficult. If only he weren't so cold...

For a moment the chill of the air on his naked skin and the icy feeling in his toes and fingers distracted him too much, and he shivered. That proved his undoing. His control over the tightly balled-up cloud of Energy within him slipped, and with a bright flash the blue-white light erupted in a huge, silent thunderclap of release that burst outward, expanding from his very core right through his skin and into the space around him. He couldn't help groaning while his cock began to pulse and his hips shuddered as he let go, emptying himself into her mouth.

An instant later, the cold was gone. Suddenly the room was pleasantly warm, and the cold in his extremities began to dissipate.

"Hmmmm!"

That was the only sound Serana could make as his pulsing cock filled her mouth with its hot, sticky load. His sudden orgasm had surprised her, and it was all she could do not to choke on the thick spurts. Reeling slightly from the impact of the Energy that had erupted from him so unexpectedly, followed by the warmth in the air, she struggled to remain on her knees before him. She swallowed repeatedly, but she couldn't prevent a sticky rivulet of cum from running down her chin. His cock, still twitching and forcing out the final few spurts of his cum, slipped out of her mouth and she felt the last drops land on her face.

"Galen? What..." she began.

But she already knew the answer to that question. It was clear what had just happened. Which only left the question of how it had happened. Damn him! He shouldn't have been able to shape any Intent yet, much less do so without her being aware of it. What in the name of the Great Mother was he thinking? But she was honest enough to realize that her surge of anger stemmed more from shock than from a genuine irritation with him. She forced herself to calm down. Suddenly she remembered what she had seen in her initial Vision, that day he had first come to her, and she recognized it. What she had seen then resembled almost exactly what had just happened.

Inwardly she sighed. By now she had had ample indication that Galen would be a challenging apprentice, and recent events had borne that out. She could only hope that the Great Mother would give her the strength and wisdom to complete his training in the proper manner.

"Galen? Are you alright?"

Her question was not entirely unwarranted. His eyes were closed, his breathing was labored, and if he hadn't been held in place by the supports on the training bench he might very well have collapsed. The lad looked utterly exhausted. Which made sense, given that he had just expended his Energy toward an Intent for the first time in his life.

After a few long moments he opened his eyes and his breathing gradually slowed. She gave him a while to recover, then helped him off the training bench and supported him as he staggered to his bedroll before wearily sitting down on it.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Something you shouldn't have been able to do yet," she said. "Can you describe those last few moments for me, when you began to lose control?"

"I was cold... It distracted me, and it sort of ran away from me. But... I don't understand. Why was this time so much different? I've lost it before, more than once, but this time..."

"Do you remember what you were thinking, the moment you lost control?"

He thought for a moment, then nodded, a faint smile on his face.

"I wished I wasn't so cold."

Then he looked up, apparently noticing for the first time that the chill was gone from the air. Suddenly his eyes went wide as understanding began to dawn.

"Do you mean..." he began.

Serana nodded.

"It certainly appears that way," she replied.

He began to laugh when he realized the full extent of what had just happened to him.

"That is... That's just..."

But Serana shook her head, her face suddenly stern.

"This is no laughing matter, Galen. What you just did, even though you didn't intend to do it, is extremely dangerous." She sighed. "Great Mother, I'm getting way too old for this."

She paused for a few moments, gathering her thoughts.

"Most apprentices have to learn to apply their Energies to an Intent," she continued, slowly shaking her head. "With you, I looks like we'll have to start the other way around and teach how to avoid it. The next time you accidentally expend your energies that way it could hurt you. Or worse."

"Hurt? How?"

"Well, how are you feeling right now?"

"I'm alright. Very tired, though. And a little light-headed. Dizzy."

"Exactly. Right now your body is suffering from severe exhaustion. What you did, inadvertently as it might have been, was to simply expend your energy straight into your desire. While that does work, up to a point, it is extremely draining. There are ways to do it more efficiently, but I hadn't planned on teaching you any of that for a long while. Now it looks like I'm going to have to, just so you won't do it again. If you do, you are almost certainly to exceed your limits and I hate to think about what would happen then."

"I'm not sure I understand..."

Serana thought for a moment.

"Alright, let's start with those limits. If you could do whatever you wanted, if you could simply snap your fingers and make anything happen, anything at all... What you would you do?"

"I'd bring back Rall and Lera," he said without hesitation. "And Bernice. They were good people. They didn't deserve to die."

"Alright. Let's assume you tried that. It would kill you immediately."

"Die? How? Why?"

"Because that would take far, far more Power than you have available, Galen. What you just did was to take all the Energy out of yourself and apply it to your Intent. Thank the Great Mother that all you thought of right then was how much you'd like to warm up this room a little. Even so, if the room had been larger you'd probably be unconscious by now."

His look of incomprehension said it all.

"Galen, have you any idea how much Energy it takes to just raise the temperature of the air here, not to mention the floor, the walls and the ceiling?"

Mutely he shook his head.

"Well, it's a lot." Serana went on. "The wood and coal we burn in our fireplaces have absorbed the light and heat of the sun for dozens of years, and we release all that heat in a few hours or less when we burn it. Have you any idea how much accumulated light and heat that is? And still we're cold most of the time!"

"Hmm. Now that you put it that way..." he mused.

"I do, because that's simply the way it is. And you managed to supply that much heat by taking the Energy for it out of your own body. Galen, when your Energies are depleted too far, your body doesn't have enough left to breathe and to keep your heart beating. You'll die at that point."

He looked at her, his eyes wide, as he digested all this.

"Think of how you feel now, simply after warming the room," she continued. "Then imagine what it will cost you to break trough the barrier between our world and the realm of the dead. Because that's what it would require to bring back Rall and Lera. Apart from the fact that the Spirits have their own lives and generally aren't interested in returning to our plane, which is a different matter entirely, the effort itself would be more then enough to kill you. Knowing your limits and respecting them is the key to survival as a mage, Galen."

He thought about that for a few moments.

"But... If the amount of Energy we can spend is so limited... How do we get anything done at all?" he asked then.

"There are ways. Do you remember your first night on the training stand? How that orgasm you had then was so much more intense than ever before?"

"Or ever after. Of course I remember."

She nodded.

"That happened because of the way I manipulated your Energy. When you released it, I caught it and fed it back upon itself. By recirculating the Energy, you can reuse it over and over again. That's how I managed to use your limited Energy to power the spell that keeps me young, but not drain you entirely. If I hadn't done that, all your youth would have simply been absorbed into my body until there would have been nothing left. I'd have robbed you of your life in order to sustain mine."

"Like death magic, you mean?"

"Essentially, yes. That's why it is so dangerous for you to do this before you know the principles involved and the techniques to employ them. Recirculating the Energies is key to sustaining both ourselves and our magic, Galen. If you get that wrong, everything goes wrong. The universe is a closed system, a zero-sum game, and you never get anything for nothing. All energy, all life, everything in existence, has to be paid for somehow. Our magic is different in one respect, though: we can use the same Energy more than once at the moment of Release. I know of nothing else in the entire world that works that way. Perhaps it is because we work with the stuff of Life itself, and life is the most tenacious thing in the whole universe."

Galen raised his eyebrows.

"So we alone escape paying the price for what we do?" he asked.

"Well, up to a point, of course. We still provide the initial Energy ourselves. And we do have to deal with orgasms that get more and more intense on every re-circulation of the Energies."

He chuckled.

"I can live with that," he said, smiling.

The look she gave him was stern.

"Can you, really? Don't be too sure of that, Galen. Make no mistake: too much pleasure carries its own perils. If your orgasms become too intense and continue for too long, that, too, can kill you. You can die from too much orgasm, especially when your skills aren't fully developed yet." Her eyes bored into his. "As in your case, my young apprentice."

His smile faded and was replaced by a more serious look.

"Alright," he said. "So having the wrong thought at the wrong moment and not recirculating my Energy can kill me. Recirculating it too much can also kill me. And trying to do too much can kill me. So where do I go from here?"

Serana thought for a moment.

"There's no help for it, I suppose," she said at last. "I'm going to have to show you a few things that normally I'd have left for a few more years at least. But you seem to be a special case, and not necessarily in a good way. If tonight is anything to go by, I'm going to have to teach you to stay out of trouble before we continue along more regular lines, or we might not get there at all."

Galen gave her a long look.

"Serana... How dangerous is sex magic, exactly? Should I be worried? I'd sort of like to survive this, you know."

She smiled.

"You should be concerned, yes. But not scared. As long as you respect it and you are careful and conscious of everything you do you should be alright. Whatever you do, don't experiment."

"I wasn't really planning to."

"Good. Although that may not be enough. At any rate, for tonight we're done. You need to rest, and I need to think. Don't masturbate tomorrow morning."

Suddenly there was a twinkle in her eyes as she looked at him.

"Although I think that by tomorrow night you will want to," she said mysteriously.

He looked at her, eyebrows raised, but all he got out of her was a slightly mischievous smile as she rose and took the candle. Suddenly his exhaustion overtook him and it was all he could do to crawl under the covers of his bedroll.

"Good night, Galen. I'm sure you'll sleep well."

"Good night, Serana," he said, his voice already drowsy.

She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Then she sighed. Great Mother, this lad would be the death of her yet! Never before had she even heard of an apprentice who achieved a spontaneous magical working, much less had she had to deal with one herself. Suddenly she felt her age, and not before the first time she wondered where she would find the wisdom, not to mention the strength, to complete the task that had been laid upon her. This was a very special apprentice indeed. Her initial Vision, on the day she had first met him, had warned her of that, and tonight hadn't been the first confirmation of that premonition. She had seen Galen, positioned on a training bench. She had seen herself, kneeling before him, her lips around his hard, pulsing cock, his hips shuddering as he came, emptying himself into her mouth. But her Vision had shown her only that. She had noticed no sign of any magic at the time.

But was that significant? While the Vision never lied, she herself was not infallible. She might have missed it, somehow. Could she have? She didn't think so. But if she hadn't, then the only alternative was that Galen had somehow exceeded the future that had been ahead of him at that time. Serana knew enough about the nature of the Visions to know that, while not common, such a thing was indeed possible. Time was always in motion; the future was always fluid. Still, the thought filled her with both awe and concern.

She stepped into her bedroom and closed the door. She took off her robe and hung it on its peg before getting into bed and pulling the covers over her against the chill of the night. Then she snuffed the candle and closed her eyes, but it was a long time before she slept.

* * *

That night brought the first snow of winter, and by the following morning the world outside was covered in white. Galen woke up quite late, and Serana could see the fatigue on his face when he stepped into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, cleaning some vegetables. The fire burned merrily and the kitchen was pleasantly warm.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully as he sat down at the table. "I see you finally decided to rejoin the living."

He gave her a tired smile.

"'I'm sorry I overslept," he said. "Waking up this morning was quite difficult for some reason."

"Nothing to worry about, Galen. After last night it was to be expected."

She rose and, using a thick cloth against the heat of the metal, lifted the bubbling kettle from the fire. Then she poured boiling water into a cup in which she had already mixed some herbs.

"I thought you might be able to use a little picker-upper this morning," she explained. "Let it cool down a little. It will make you feel better, I promise."

"Thank you."

Her concoction revived him somewhat, and suddenly he was ravenously hungry. Serana smiled as she saw it have its intended effect on him. She turned to the fireplace and began preparations for a hot and hearty breakfast.

"You'd better take it easy today," she said.

"I'll be fine," Galen protested.

But although breakfast did restore his strength somewhat, he found that he tired very quickly when he went out to clear the snow from the porch. When he came back in, carrying a bundle of fresh firewood, he was breathing heavily and his face was ashen.

"That's enough of that, young man," Serana said resolutely. "No more for today."

Wearily he nodded as he took off his woolens and sat down while she poured him another cup of herbal tea. It warmed him, and whatever was in there made him feel better, but still he was forced to agree with her: today was not going to be a regular working day.

"We have other things to do in any case," Serana said. "You need further instruction, and this is a good day for it."

"Because of what happened last night, you mean?"

"Yes. If we're going to keep you out of trouble, we'd better go over a few things that you need to know about before something goes wrong."

She sat down beside him at the table and thought while she sipped her tea.

"Alright," she said finally. "Let's begin with the principles of magic itself. There are quite a few misconceptions about it, and you've probably been exposed to most of them, so we'll start there."

He nodded, his face attentive. Serana liked that. The lad was eager to learn and he was willing to work for it, which was far more than what could be said of most other young people she'd met in recent centuries.

"Most people think that magic can make anything happen," she continued. "You just snap your fingers and poof! Heaps of gold appear out of nowhere, men turn into toads, and enemies vanish into puffs of smoke. Just like that."

He smiled.

"I never really thought it worked that way," he said.

"I should hope so. I trust you to have better sense than that, at least. Children and peasants like to believe in sorcery, but in reality--"

"Sorcery?" he interrupted. "Not magic?"

"Yes. The fairy tale stuff is essentially sorcery. Magic isn't spectacular enough to be interesting to the uneducated, I suppose. You see, Galen, everything in the universe has a certain internal logic, a set of rules that can't be broken. Sorcery could break those rules, and it did, but only for as long as it lasted, and then, inevitably, the Fall came. But while magic can stretch and bend those rules somewhat, up to a point, it can never break them."

"How do you mean?"

"Let's start with the fairy tale example. I'm sure you've heard it as a child: a handsome young prince is turned into a toad by an evil sorcerer, and in order to break the enchantment, a princess must kiss the toad. Which she does, and then there's a bright flash and a great cloud of smoke, and suddenly the prince regains his handsome looks, marries the princess and lives happily ever after. It's a great story, but unfortunately things don't work that way. You simply can't take a man, including all that he is and that makes him a man, and cram it into the shape and size of a toad. There's no way such a small and simple form could contain all that makes the man who he is. If you would try to do anything like it, you would lose almost all of the man, and what little there would be left would certainly not make a very good toad."

"That makes sense," Galen said, nodding slowly.

"And that's only the first half of the story. We haven't even gotten to the point of turning him back into a prince! I'm sure you can see how that would work even less well than the first transformation ever could."

Galen nodded again.

"So to all intents and purposes, sorcery is the name we use for everything that is simply impossible," Serana continued. "Sorcery goes against the internal logic and the forces of nature. Magic, on the other hand, doesn't go against it, but works with it."

"But last night, when I was cold and the room suddenly got warmer, didn't that violate the rules? I mean, there was no fire and no sunlight to make it warmer, and yet that's what happened."

Serana shook her head, secretly pleased with how well he was absorbing all this.

"No, it didn't. Air, water, a room, it can all be cold or warm, and that's all completely natural. You simply changed it from one state into another. The Energy it took to do that came from you, rather than from the sun or from a fire, but other than that there was nothing impossible or even special about it."

"I think I see..." Galen mused. "So using magic to create heaps of gold out of nothing would be impossible, but using it to make someone to give it to you would not."

She nodded.

"Yes, in terms of the internal logic that governs the way these things work, you are correct. However..."