“So, how are your actions any different from hers?” I asked. “You seem to want to get some claws into me.”
She flushed bright red again and lowered her beautiful head. “Well... I’m different... I am truly not like the others.”
I placed my hand under her chin and tilted her head up. I looked into her eyes and said, “Well, at least you’ve been honest about your intentions.”
Salihn smiled brightly, some of the fear fading and hope replacing it. Then with a playful look, she said, “Well, what do you want to do now?”
After she spoke, she leaned forward and kissed me softly on the lips, then moved back and smiled. I was certainly affected by her advances, but not wanting to be manipulated by her, I moved back in my chair and said, “Now that you ask, I’d like to go through your book collection. Do you have any more books?”
Great deflection, I thought.
I had expected her to be annoyed at how I had redirected her advances, but she actually beamed at me. “I have some books in my inventory that are high value, but I think there are some books in the bedroom.” She smiled as she got up and asked, “Do you want to come and look?”
I got up, before realizing that she was possible tricking me and said, “I’ll let you get them.”
With merry laughter, she said, “If you're sure you don’t want to help.”
She practically danced away, only looking back at me as she left the room. I sat and looked at the book about the Valkin.
I had only just started to read it when she reappeared, skipping happily. It was as if she didn’t want to leave me for long, so she was back within half a minute with a pile of books in her arms. She placed them on the table beside me and pulled up a chair so that she was next to me. I felt the warmth of her body touching mine; she seemed to want to get as close as possible. Leaning over, I thought that she smelled great, like springtime flowers in full bloom.
“What are you interested in?” Salihn asked, looking at me curiously.
“To put it bluntly, magic. Everything about magic,” I said with an excited smile.
She half-smiled and said, “That’s a rather large subject area - anything more specific than that?”
I gazed into space, thinking. “Well, at the moment I’ve just started learning more about the natural magic the elves use.”
With a bright, excited smile she said, “You’ve come to the right place. We in the darkness of the forest may not have the elegant skill of the high elves, but we do know natural battle magic. I’ve got several books in my inventory we can study together.”
I saw her get a faraway look for a second as she pulled five books out of the air. When she placed them on the table in front of me, I was about to cast the ‘Gain Knowledge’ spell when she exclaimed, “Don’t you dare steal the books off me!”
I stopped the spell. “Sorry - was that rude of me?”
“Some of the information in them is from my family’s own research and study,” she said, quite adamantly. “I'm willing to share it if you study with me, but I won’t give it to you.”
I eyed the book with desire and she said, “Listen. It’s always better to study with somebody. I want to have you around and you want to study. So, how about I teach you all I can?”
I looked around the comfortable hideout and thought about how hectic my life had been for the past few months. I really needed to do some serious magical study, and this was as good a place and time as any.
“Are we going to be safe here for a while?” I asked.
With rising excitement, as if a trap she had baited had worked, she moved closer and said, “Yes. Nobody's going to disturb us here.”
“That’s not quite what I meant, but it will do,” I said with a smile. “I’ll make a deal with you. As long as I’m learning something new, I’ll stay if you want.”
Salihn nodded in acceptance and said, “Well, it will be my pleasure to teach you!”
“If we’re going to do this, maybe you should relax a bit about being so forward,” I said.
She smiled and leaned back, stretching her body in a provocative manner. She then laughed and said, “Well, if we’re going to be spending time studying, I guess that I can slow down.”
Chapter Six A Magical Study Partner
The following day, I woke up in the luxurious room that I was using as my bedroom in the hideout. I managed to climb off the large, soft bed and it cleaned and rearranged itself when I left. Rather than go to all the fuss of taking a bath, I just cast a cleaning spell on myself and my clothes. I went to the solid wooden door and took the immobilization spells off my door, then unlocked it. Even though she seemed nice enough, I was not ready to trust Salihn just yet.
Humming to myself, I headed into the lounge room. Salihn was already there, perched on the couch with her legs drawn up so they were at her chest. She was reading quietly from a leather-bound book that I had not yet seen. She looked deep in concentration, and must have been engrossed in what she was reading. I looked at her for a few seconds, admiring her beauty as she studied intently.
When she heard me move, she looked surprised for a second and then the book disappeared. I guessed that it went into her inventory. She moved quickly to a more ladylike position and smiled brightly at me. In contrast to yesterday, this time the happiness reached her eyes as if she was no longer terrified of me.
She was still dressed like she was going to some kind of formal event. Her dress suggested a sophisticated occasion where people would strut down a red carpet to show off their clothing. When I took it all in, I thought that she would certainly be the most elegant women at any such place.
“Chrix, come and sit next to me,” she said, patting the comfortable couch next to her. “I want to find out how good your magical skills are.”
Yesterday had been full of discussion and plans for how we would study together. I found her company to be lively and intelligent. Today was the start of the lessons Salihn would be teaching me. I had talked about my magical experience so far, so today she had plans to test my abilities.
Seeing how well she was dressed and thinking she was still heavily flirting with me, I said before I approached, “I thought we were going to slow down on the flirting.”
She smiled sweetly. “This old dress? I just threw on the first thing that I found in the cupboard. Come here, you'll need to be next to me so I can check on the flow in your magical channels!”
I nodded and said with a mock groan, “I guess that I can bear sitting next to you for a few minutes if I must!”
She stuck her tongue out and laughed a little. I sat down and listened to her instructions for a few minutes. When I understood what I had to do with the world around me, I started to draw in my magical power. It was an old and familiar experience for me. As I was doing this, Salihn remained next to me. She was so close that I could feel the warmth of her very feminine body up against mine. My mind was reeling with how very distracting her presence made the task she had just asked me to complete.
She had a look of concentration on her face as she moved her hand and cast some kind of magical healing spell that gave off a slight heatwave in the air.
When I had finished moving some of the magical energy through my pathways, she said, “Do that again. This time, try not to think of me too much, even though that is nice. It gets in the way of me being able to examine your pathways.”
I looked at her as if she was asking the impossible, considering she was dressed like that and right beside me. She smiled sweetly and moved away from me. Then with a deep breath, I repeated the process of pulling magical energy from the world around me. As I forced the energy through the magical pathways to my hand where I would focus the spell, Salihn frowned and shook her head.
She said with wonder, “Your movement of magical energy is like an elephant on the warpath, moving through a forest. Whoever taught you magical control needs to be taken back to school to learn the basics.”
Her face looked so serious compared
to her usual expression. I laughed and said, “Nobody taught me. I just had to pick it up from the magic books.”
This brought a smile to her face as she again moved closer and said, “Well, that’s good for me as I’ve certainly got a lot to teach you. How do I say this nicely… Your technique needs a lot of refinement. You must have noticed that loss in power and endurance when casting magical spells?”
“No, not really. I seem to have an abundance of power.”
“Really? That’s very strange!” she said, getting up and walking over to the bureau where she pulled out a parchment and a quill. “Will you give me your stats so I can see what we’re working with?”
Opening my book of life, I went through all of my stats as she wrote them down. By the end, she was shaking her head and muttering, “Bizarre. Completely bizarre.”
With the parchment in hand, she walked over to sit with me. This time she moved right next to me and her closeness felt almost natural, as if she not even been thinking about the effect her body had on me. It just felt as if she was distracted enough to think this was normal.
“It looks as if you were born only a few months ago, but that’s impossible,” she said with a frown. “What’s strange is that you seem to have put everything into intelligence. Why did you do that?”
I thought about the massive amount I had in the intelligence stat compared to the others and said, “Well, I want to concentrate on magic, and the other stats don’t really affect me that much.”
She grunted and shook her head. “I can see what you mean with fortitude, but the rest all have their uses. I for one would enjoy you having a higher stat in charisma.”
“Why?” I asked.
She looked away, her face flushing a deep red. “You obviously need more in your agility. If your journey here was not proof enough, we could go and jump around a few branches to prove that to you.”
“OK,” I said with exasperation. “I admit it, I definitely need some help. I was going to get some help when I selected my skills.”
“What, you’ve not selected any skills?” she asked in shock. “Where have you been all your life?”
I ignored her question about the nature of my strange origin and said, “Well - can you help with that?”
She looked delighted and said, “Yes, I certainly can, but back to the original problem. I need to teach you the basics of moving magical energies. You have the raw power but none of the grace and elegance that would greatly improve your spellcasting. Then you wouldn't need to put every stat into intelligence. Though I like you intelligent,” she added with a smile.
“Here, let's sit down on the carpet and start practicing magical flux flow through our bodies,” she said, moving to the floor.
I sat down and was shown by Salihn how to sit in a meditative pose. I found that strange, but she assured me that it was the best way to work. She sat opposite me in her elegant gown, which was still distracting me.
After a few tries of going through the exercises, she looked at me and said, “You need to focus more on what we're doing.”
“Well, you're doing a bit too well in your original goal,” I said with a smile. “The dress is a tad distracting.”
She looked surprised and said, “Don’t ever say that I don’t do anything for you. I’ll go get changed into something a little less distracting. Will that help?”
I nodded at her offer.
I was still practicing when she came back out, dressed in simpler clothing that was more like my tunic and trousers. She did a twirl and asked, “Will this do?”
“You still look too good, but I guess that will have to do,” I said honestly, smiling.
“Well, I’m not wearing a sack if that’s what you want. Right! Back to work, then. We’ve got more to do than I thought.”
--
It had been a wonderful few days spent moving magical energy through my pathways. Not only was it great to work with magic, but I was enjoying Salihn’s company more and more as the time went on. I had found her to be a patient but very exacting teacher. When we were working, she was forever getting me to do some strange magical control exercise that felt bizarre to me. As a reward when I did well, she would often kiss me quickly. I wondered who that was a reward for.
Her depth of magical knowledge seemed broad as she slowly starting to explain the magical theory that had been developed in this world, all with the help of her own knowledge and the books we were studying from.
At the moment we were out in the darkness of the deeper levels of the forest, hunting for ingredients and food. We had just traveled for an hour, practicing my movement skills that she was still despairing over.
Salihn stood close beside me and whispered in my ear, “Now, form the fireball slowly, as I taught you.”
I started to channel the magical energies through the pathways throughout my body. This time, instead of a torrent of energy I felt a slow and steady stream that was like laminar flow through my pathways, which gave little resistance to the streamlined movement of magical fire energies. In front of me I made the hand movements that focused the energy into a small, hot fireball.
With a nod of her head, she indicated for me to release it at the large mud-worm that was swimming underneath us. I flicked the white-hot fireball and it sizzled through the water, boring into its head. The creature reared up in agony as its head burned, then fell down dead with a splash of water. Salihn had already dropped out of the tree with a long knife drawn. Like the elegant warrior she was, she landed on its back with her feet in the mud and started to cut from the head backward.
I dropped down beside her with the bag in my hand. She took different organs and pieces of flesh that she had roughly cut from the innards of the monster and placed them into the bag.
She worked as swiftly as possible, and soon the bag was starting to fill up with body parts of the worm that we were dissecting.
“That will have to do,” she said nervously as she looked around. She skimmed across the mud in a quick dash and reached a vine we had lowered earlier to help us climb to the first set of branches. I slogged behind her through the mud as she ascended the vine like a gymnast. At the top, she sat on a branch with her bow out, looking around for anything that was about to attack me.
Luckily for me, this time I was not attacked by any monsters from the mud. I had time to pull myself up into the branches about ten meters above. For a few minutes we perched in the branches under the glow of a red light, watching scavengers devour the rest of the monster.
“I hate so much waste,” said Salihn as she looked at the feeding scavengers.
She had expressed this every time we had hunted such a large prey. Normally the dark elves would hunt in a big group and pull the body up to a safe area to butcher it properly, but with just the two of us we had to quickly grab the most important parts of the creature and run.
“Well, let's head back,” she said with a smile, her white teeth showing up in the dark.
Before I could leave, she said, “I want you to practice channeling that spell again and again on your way back. You did well, but it could have been better and quicker.”
With a willing smile at my beautiful task master, I followed her. I collected the magical energies from the surrounding area to start practicing.
By the time I had gotten back I was close to exhaustion, as it had taken well over two hours. Salihn had stopped me every so often to change what I was doing slightly. While watching over me with her magical spell to look at what was happening, she would make comments and get me to slightly modify the process.
When we were safely in the hideout, we were both exhausted but she insisted that we finish off the butchering. This was a slow process as there were many different organs that needed to be dealt with. The work was gruesome as we cut through the flesh of the creature we had killed. By the end the preparation room that was attached to the kitchen was a bit of a mess. I cleaned it using magic but had to repeat it many times to satisfy Salihn that I was
doing it right.
Muddy and covered in blood, we both went to take a bath before we did anything else that evening. Afterward, I found myself sitting next to the woman on the large couch, reading. I thought that she was reading like me, but suddenly I felt her head on my shoulder and looked down. She had fallen asleep with her book on her lap. For a while I just looked at her as I watched her breathing slow. I placed my book down, feeling tired enough to close my eyes as well.
--
“I really cannot believe that you’ve not selected any skills yet,” said Salihn excitedly as she looked up from the table. She had been writing out the final draft for the skill selection. When I had asked for her help I had expected some enthusiasm, but this had really excited her and I was amazed at her joy in the selection. It reminded me of a child trying to pick treats from a sweet shop. The fact that it was me and not her made no difference to her obvious happiness at the selection.
For me, it had been a long and drawn-out process. It was as if I had gone shopping with her, looking to find what best fit me. While I appreciated this, I would have just selected what was good enough a long time ago. This made me wonder why I was being so patient and when I thought about it, I knew I didn’t want to disappoint her by dismissing all her hard work, or even upset her.
My goodness, I thought, am I starting to really care for her? I hope that in return she is actually caring for me and this is not still just an act to get what she wants.
With our heads together and enjoying each other's company, we had been spending a lot of time discussing where to take my skills.
“I think that we have the final list,” she said with a smile. She waved the parchment on which she had written the list and walked over to where I sat. I moved my bottom along the couch to give her room to sit beside me.
She squeezed into the space and said, “Give me a bit more room, I can hardly fit.”
I moved barely an inch so that I didn’t lose contact with her body. She just smiled and shook her head, then put the list in front of me. I looked at it and saw a few changes that she had told me were for the better. To me, it had looked perfect several drafts ago, but Salihn had not been in the least bit satisfied.
Dirty Rotten Seizure Page 8
