Hard Teachings Part 1

Before Samuel could even touch the stone, he felt a darkness shape in his mind. As he was only a moments touch away from the stone it cracked and imploded in on itself making Samuel and even Bregane flinch back in surprise ensuing a sudden silence. Bregane broke it after a while. "Well, seems like you are extremely attuned to death. Almost like one could believe you were an undead or something." Bregane shrugged knowing the young man was indeed no undead having scanned him with magic already.

"Well this does not change a lot. You have one affinity for an element we certainly wont be training a lot because its a dangerous one to mess with when starting out training." Bregane gave him a nod to sit down. "Take some time to recover because soon hell is going to start!" He started taking out several books from a bag and putting them on a table.

After Samuel had rested for a short bit and stopped sweating so much he finally felt ready to start again. Bregane handed him all the books, "Study those books during whatever free time you got. But do not practice anything outside of simple cantrip spells alone! Got it!" He held on to Samuel while looking him in the eyes for a long bit to make sure he had understood.

"Now moving on to the next step, you can spend however much time you need to feel the elements in these gems!" Bregane put out several new gemstones like before, but many of the same element of all the basic ones, a few life and darkness ones. "The goal is simple! Get a feeling for the magic and shape it using your mind. When you have a clear vision in your head - break the gemstones by crushing it, and then keep holding that shape from your mind visualised and make it become reality."

Samuel nodded and did as instructed, failing many times over and over again. Every time he visualised it he lost some focus when he crushed the gems with his hand which made the elements come close to shaping but failing last second. He had to take many breaks in between to rest, it felt like his strength got zapped with every failure. At the end of the day he had still not succeeded, he was tired and hungry and frustrated.

Bregane did not help him much at all and just nagged at his every mistake simply standing there judging him, or at least thats what it felt like to Samuel.

One final fire gem and Samuel imagined a small fire snake coiling around the floor while Bregane yawned. "Another failure just waiting to come true!" He grinned at Samuel who in his anger turned to him. "All you do is stand there and complain and nag at every move" Samuel yelled out in anger not even noticing that he clenched the fire gem so hard it broke.

He instinctively tried to throw the fire gem on the floor, making the fire suddenly come alive into a small snake that started slithering around for a few seconds before vanishing into a puff of smoke. While Samuel just stood there completely flabbergasted. "Finally!" Bregane said with a small cocky smile. "Passion, anger, love, your emotions are the strongest conduit for spells so long as you dont lose yourself in emotion because then the spells just fade like your little fire snake." He said while nodding to the ashes.

"Emotion but not too much emotion?" Samuel said amid pants trying to calm down. Receiving a nod from Bregane. "A calm and collected mind is how to start off, before adding passion to your spellcasting, treat it like its a living being tomorrow and you will be off to a good start." Bregane started collecting his things.

Only then did Samuel notice it was dark outside, they had trained longer than they were supposed to because he did not give up out of stubbornness, but in the end that same spirit was the fact that he pulled through in the end. With a nudge from his teacher in the right direction although he had not even realized that Bregane had goaded him into it until it was over.

After leading them back through the portal Bregane took his leave. "Same time tomorrow here, do not forget!" He yelled as he walked off. Samuel finally felt all the days work come crashing down on him, working with magic even though just simple things had left him exhausted enough times during the day.

The only thing he had the energy left to do was to go eat not caring about the mess he was at the moment. As soon as he was finished he left for his room, where his only neighbour seemed to return at the same time as him waving to him and bidding him a good night with a smile. To which Samuel returned the smile and nodded.

The next thing Samuel did was clean himself and then instantly fall asleep in his bed. Too which he woke up after rolling off the side and landing on the floor. He felt like he could sleep for several more days, but he decided to get up to go find out the time. The clock was only a corridors walk away. So he saw the big clock and realized it was only an hour away.

So Samuel decided to go get some breakfast and then made himself presentable, before leaving for the teleportation room where his master would be waiting. As he locked his door he heard a tired "good morning" opposite of his door. He turned around to see his neighbour Erica also locking her door and leaving.

"Good morning." Sam quickly replied with a morning tired smile, thinking that she must also be a hard worker to get up this early. Not paying the matter anything of importance to him as he quickly walked to meet his master. After a while he noticed Erica was heading the same direction as him, but he awkwardly kept going until he reached the teleportation hall, where two people were waiting in silence.

One was his master Bregane and the other one was an elven woman with blonde hair and kind brown eyes, Bregane and the woman seemed to ignore eachother, so Samuel walked up to Bregane and gave him a small nod and receiving one in turn. Samuel quickly noticed his neighbour Erica also walked into the room and greeted the elven woman. 'It would seem I am not the only one with a personal mentor.' Samuel inwardly noted to himself as he turned to his master and they teleported once more to their training location.