There was quiet confidence in both her words and mannerisms that all but demanded it. Hal watched as Laurel gave a small shrug and let her protest die a silent death. Cadrian looked back at Hal.
“We can leave whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Bring the weapon that you used in your encounter with the bear.”
So Laurel told her about that? I wonder what she thinks of my little attempt at magic…
Hal followed Cadrian across the green grass outside the homestead. Somehow, she managed to stay several strides in front of him despite being slightly shorter and carrying a long bag under one arm. He still had his apple, and slowly munched on it as they made their way into the trees at the edge of the valley, where the land sloped upward into the mountains to the north.
Cadrian didn’t say anything to him as they made their way up the densely forested hillside. She occasionally stopped to gesture which way they’d be taking forward, or hold back a branch so it wouldn’t whip him in the face, but she seemed to value the silence.
The dirt crumbled underneath Hal’s feet, and several times he slipped and fell to his knees, sliding a few feet downhill before regaining his traction. They climbed as much as walked for the better part of an hour before coming to a stop in a small, level clearing in between two slopes.
There was a brilliant view of both the homestead and desert to the south, and Hal could just barely make out the far distant buildings of Lorne, which almost blended into the sand. Cadrian placed her bag down in the center of the clearing and stood next to it, waiting until Hal turned his attention back to her before speaking.
“Tell me of your encounter with the sand bear,” she said. “Specifically, the spell you attempted against it.”
“Sure.” Hal recounted the event with as much detail as he could recall, spending a minute talking about how it had felt to channel the essence from his gemstone. Cadrian’s expression remained stoic as she listened, and she nodded slowly when he reached the end.
“Show me your gemstone,” she said.
Hal walked over to her, pulling it out of his shirt and moving to take it off. Cadrian grabbed it before he could, holding it and drawing him in closer almost like someone might lead a dog on a leash. She raised an eyebrow when she saw it, but said nothing. Hal resisted the urge to ask questions.
Cadrian has her own rhythm when it comes to teaching and explaining things. Better to wait for her to decide to tell me.
“You used up all of the essence inside of it when you attempted your spell,” said Cadrian. “It will take time for you to refill the gem’s stores.”
Hal nodded, though he had only a murky understanding on how gems were filled.
“It’s from my emotions, right?” he said. “They’ll feed into the gem, over time?”
“Exactly,” said Cadrian. “That is the correct way to refill a gemstone.”
Her phrasing made Hal curious, and he couldn’t resist asking a follow up question.
“And… the incorrect way?” he asked.
Cadrian smiled.
“The Temple of Lyris has their own doctrine regarding the proper way for a gem knight or gem mage to restore essence to a gem,” she said. “They consider it to be base and uncivilized to allow gems to work as nature intended. Instead, they use various herbs and tinctures to generate emotions in controlled environments.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Hal.
Cadrian licked her lips.
“It is as I told you,” she said. “Emotions are not just the fuel of gem magic. They are also the catalyst. There is a reason why the Temple so rarely produces gem holders that can reach Ascension. Their methods are flawed and utilized for their reproducibility, rather than effectiveness.”
Hal nodded, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he understood.
“Ascension?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Another enhanced casting state,” said Cadrian. “Think of it as a step above a Trance, which itself is a step above Baseline, the default casting state. I’ll explain more about both soon enough.”
“And the Temple’s teachings prevent people from reaching Ascension?”
“True emotion and the mastery of it is something that can never be realized through outside means,” said Cadrian. “Sorrow, for the sapphire. Curiosity, for the diamond. Calm, for the topaz. Presence, for the emerald. Passion, for the ruby.”
Cadrian was standing close to him, and she stepped even closer. Hal felt his heartrate accelerate. She smelled of incense and the desert sand.
“Do you understand what passion is, Hal?” she asked, reaching out with her hand and gently cupping his cheek.
Hal was too shocked to say anything. Cadrian’s hand slipped off his face, reaching down to touch the gemstone around his neck. She lifted it up, moving in to stand close beside Hal, her breasts pressing into his arm.
“Watch the gem,” she said, handing it to him. “Keep your eyes on it. Watch what happens.”
Hal kept his eyes on the gem, a shiver running through his body as he felt Cadrian’s hand sliding lower. She undid the simple cloth belt Laurel had lent him along with the clothes and tugged his pants loose.
“What… are you doing?” he asked.
“Teaching you,” said Cadrian.
Hal was already aroused, but he nearly gasped out loud as her fingers slipped into waistband of his pants, coming to a stop less than an inch above his crotch.
“Watch the gem!” she repeated, more forcefully.
Hal stared at it, and was shocked to see red mist fogging up the inside of it, slowly deepening in color as it spread to fill the clear vessel. It gave off a slight glow, and as Cadrian went further, touching Hal’s cock, the glow intensified.
It’s a direct connection. My emotions are feeding the essence.
“Anger, hatred, and even love will all serve to ignite your passion and fill the gem,” said Cadrian. “As will lust.”
Cadrian pushed him backward, walking him to the edge of the clearing until he was leaning against a broad tree. For a second, Hal thought the demonstration was over, but Cadrian reached down and freed his shaft from his pants.
“Keep watching,” whispered Cadrian. Her hand stroked him off with soft, slow movements, as though she was trying to draw out what she was doing for as long as she could. Hal stared at the gem, though more than anything, he wanted to look at her. Her breasts grazed the side of his arm again, and he felt his lust surge in time with the gem’s bright red color.
“It is a simple process.” Cadrian let her thumb run over the tip of his erection. “It just takes time, effort, and a willingness to live for the moment. You must make passion and its indulgence into a cornerstone of your life.”
She breathed the words into his ear, her grip on his cock tightening as she pumped up and down. It was a complete seduction. It was an abuse of her new role as his master, taking her fresh faced apprentice and doing whatever she wanted with him. And it all seemed as casual and natural to Cadrian as the spell she’d shown him two days prior, or the way she’d approached her painting.
“It’s not enough for you to receive,” she whispered. “You must learn to give pleasure as well as how to take it, when you choose to. You must learn to be aggressive, to be playful. To seduce and be seduced. You must learn all of these things, Halrin.”
Her words echoed the message the Desert Lady had imparted to him. He felt Cadrian’s lips grazing his earlobe and neck. The pace of her hand accelerated. Hal tried to turn to face her, wanting to see if he could get a head start on the aggression and seduction she’d mentioned. Cadrian gave his shaft a chastising squeeze and pressed her body into his, keeping him pinned against the tree.
“Watch the gem,” she said.
“Cadrian, I…” He felt himself getting close. She stroked faster, her hot breath tickling his ear.
“I’ll train you well, Halrin,” whispered Cadrian. “But it will be very hard for you. There’s a reason why I don’t often take apprentices.”
>
The pumping of her hand grew even quicker, making Hal appreciate her dexterity. Her hand kept his cock in a soft grip, her fingers and thumb squeezing and caressing all the right places. It was too much for him. He let out a gasp as he came, leaning his head back against the tree trunk as he blasted his seed onto the grass and Cadrian’s hand. The pleasure of it was unreal.
CHAPTER 21
Cadrian gave Hal a few minutes to compose himself afterward, silently checking over the things in her bag in the center of the clearing. The experience had bewildered him at first, but once it was over, Hal understood what she was trying to teach him.
If I want to use my gem, I’ll need to learn to live with more emotion. Especially passion.
She didn’t linger on the experience, and so Hal tried not to, either. He found it extremely hard, if not impossible. He felt as though he was leering at her whenever he looked at her, his eyes running over the curves of her breasts and but, his mind eager to supply ideas of what their training might hold, further on.
Hal felt guilty about it, until he stopped to consider that perhaps his reaction was exactly what Cadrian had intended. She wanted him to become passionate and aggressive. Maybe her plan was to cultivate those traits in Hal by sexual force. But then again, why would she start with that sort of lesson on day one?
He was still feeling conflicted when Cadrian carried the bag over to where he was, dropping to her knees as she sat it down in front of him. Hal sat down across from her and watched as she pulled three wooden swords from the long bag, each a slightly different length.
Without a word, Cadrian reached out and took Hal’s hand. She pulled his arm out straight, and then began holding each of the wooden practice swords up to it, measuring their length against his appendage. After a few seconds, she placed one of the wooden swords in his hand.
“Try it,” said Cadrian.
Hal felt a sudden surge of excitement. He’d wanted training in swords ever since he’d been a little boy, and never been allowed it. It had been something he had dreamed of before, in a literal sense. His arguments with his father over whether or not he should be trained as a duelist, intense as they were, had been a testament to his desire for sword training.
And I took it all out on him. I never apologized to him for that, before his death…
“Hal,” said Cadrian. “Swing the sword.”
Hal nodded. He gave the wooden sword a few clumsy test swings. It felt heavy in his hands, and a little clunky. Cadrian watched with appraising eyes, and it made Hal feel a little bit foolish. He was just a child to her, despite being a grown man. No weapons training, no knowledge of magic, and no place in the world.
“Not that one,” said Cadrian. She took the wooden sword he held from him and gave him another, the middle length one. It was a little shorter than the dueling long swords Hal had seen back in Cardvale, but still long enough to serve as an effective slashing weapon.
It felt much more natural in Hal’s grasp. He could keep its momentum going more easily, and the slightly reduced length gave him more room to maneuver it with his wrist. Cadrian watched, her singular hazel eye taking in the scene as though she could see right into his soul.
“Good,” she said, after a minute. She picked up one of the wooden swords and faced off across from him. “Attack me.”
Hal hesitated, watching her and sensing that he was about to learn something important. His sword felt comfortable enough in one hand. Cadrian held hers in two. He tightened his grip, making sure it would not fly loose on contact.
Hal rushed forward, sweeping his wooden blade down in an overhead arc. Cadrian blocked it, as he’d expected her to. What he hadn’t been expecting was the intensity of her follow up. He managed to clumsily block her first retaliatory slash, but not the second or third, or the fourth, which struck the back of his legs and crumpled him to the ground.
“Ow…” Several points on his body throbbed with pain, and he knew he’d have a nice collection of bruises come morning.
“Stand up,” said Cadrian. “This time, I will attack you.”
Hal pulled himself to his feet, though the simple act took so much willpower that he almost impressed himself by managing it. Cadrian was going to attack him. He had to focus. He needed a strategy.
She knows what she’s doing. And she has a longer sword than I do…
That was as far as he managed to bring his chain of thought before Cadrian was upon him, swinging her wooden sword hard and fast at Hal’s head. He reacted without thinking, drawing not from his nonexistent sword fighting instincts, but of all places, from the Kye Lornis.
There’d been many times during flow sessions when the dancing had intensified between him and Mauve to the point where it became a game to see how close they could come to hitting each other. The two of them would launch at each other with elaborate, impractical kicks and flips, but the movements they used to get out of the way were always simple, efficient, and above all else, fluid.
Hal dropped his head to the side, keeping his eyes on Cadrian’s sword. He watched as she twisted, shifting her momentum, and knew where the sword was coming next. He dodged again, this time leaping over the blade as it cut at his shins and rolling across the grass. He almost lost his own training sword as he came to his feet, a fallen leaf clinging to the space between his hair and his ear.
Cadrian attacked again. This time, he blocked and then dodged, and then got hit, though with a surprise elbow strike, rather than her weapon. He took the blow in the stomach and fell to his knees, expecting more. Instead, Cadriand lowered her sword, smiling broadly.
“That was excellent,” she said. “You have good instincts when it comes to movement. The short sword will compliment you well.”
“Thank… you…” managed Hal, still winded from her attack.
The sword training went on for another few hours, though the focus shifted from sparring to more direct instruction. Cadrian taught him the basic blocks and drilled him in them, attacking with telegraphed strikes until he could use them effectively.
She taught him how to kill with a short sword, if he had to. The weapon was long enough for him to hold his own in a duel, but short enough to be effective and deadly if he could get within his opponent’s minimum range.
“Though, as a gem holder,” said Cadrian. “Your most powerful weapon will always be your magic.”
Hal nodded. Cadrian set her sword aside and nodded for him to do the same.
“Show me your thesis,” she said, standing across from him.
“My… thesis?” asked Hal.
“The spell you attempted,” said Cadrian. “Any novel use of gem magic is known as a thesis in its early stages. Spells are developed over time, strengthened as the caster learns to visualize them more clearly.”
“Ah,” said Hal. “Well, it isn’t really a spell yet. It’s still… a work in progress.”
He winced, remembering how it had burned his hand when he’d cast it the day before. Cadrian gestured for him to get on with it, fully intent on seeing what her new apprentice had up his sleeve.
Her eye widened slightly as Hal pulled out his pistol and cocked it. He reminded himself that pistols weren’t commonplace in Krestia’s Cradle, or as far as he knew, something that had even been invented yet. He could use that to his advantage against a real opponent.
Hal took aim at a large stone across the clearing, steadying his shoulder and wrist as though preparing to fire an actual shot. Pulling his gemstone loose, he focused on his target, creating an image of what he wanted to do in his mind and tying his emotions to it.
He pulled the trigger, and the gun all but exploded in his hand. The flames only moved a few inches beyond the barrel before expanding outward and back over his fingers. He dropped his weapon with a grunt, feeling the burns from the day before screaming out in pain as the new heat exacerbated them.
“That’s all,” muttered Hal. “It doesn’t work yet.”
Cadrian had a thoughtful look on her face.
She disappeared into the forest for a moment without a word of goodbye, returning with several oozing, gooey leaves. She took Hal’s burned hand and rubbed the leaves all over it. It felt cool, and afterward, his hand went slightly numb.
“It is still a thesis,” said Cadrian. “Clearly, it is. But it is a true thesis, an original spell crafting. I can see where it will lead, in time. It will be a far more effective spell, once complete, than most of the gem holders under the Temple’s tutelage study at Baseline.”
“Thanks…” said Hal. He smiled, feeling pride well up in his chest. Cadrian didn’t give praise easily, and it felt good to know that he’d done something worthy of it.
“You must hold your will in focus for longer, in order to craft a proper spell from your thesis,” said Cadrian. “Your heart must know what it’s doing, and where to push the spark and the flame.”
Hal nodded slowly, and then had a sudden thought.
“Could this same method be used for defense?” he asked. “To block, or to divert, a flame attack directed toward me?”
Cadrian’s expression grew serious. She took her time before replying to him.
“Laurel told me some of your story,” she said. “Specifically, of the dragon who you say brought you to this land.”
Hal waited, sensing that she might not fully believe his incredible circumstances. But Cadrian left it at that.
“Would it work, though?” he asked. “Could gem magic be used defensively, to block fire?”
Cadrian nodded slowly.
“It would take more skill than you have, however,” she said. “Even a ruby mage with some practice at Baseline would have trouble with it. One in a Ruby Trance could manage it, but it would take a large amount of essence from their reserves to do it effectively.”
“Can you explain this to me a little more?” asked Hal. “I’ve heard you use the word Trance a few times, but I’m still not sure I understand what it means.”
“It’s an enhanced state of spellcasting,” said Cadrian. “It’s distinct, more than just channeling a powerful spell. Both the Trance and the Ascension, the level beyond it, have specific features.”
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