Playing With Fire

Learning the Craft

"Wow, you got some serious repressed rage," Carver laughed as he suppressed the flames that were beginning to consume the tree. I laughed, letting the flames absorb back into my skin. It felt like every nerve ending was tingling with energy.

"That was incredible," I shouted, feeling more alive than I ever had before.

"Good cause I want you to do that at least thirty more times before we move on," Carver smiled.

For the next several hours, I practiced calling on my affinity and controlling it once it manifested. By the time we finished, I could manifest my affinity almost without thinking about it. Then we moved on to basic defensive spells. These were harder because, with the exception of manifesting an affinity, every spell required energy from the caster, and if you tried to cast a spell that required more energy than you had to give, it would kill you. Or at least that was how Carver had explained it to me.

It was dark by the time we headed back to the house, and I was exhausted. Leaning on Carver, I conjured a small fireball to light the way.

"Show off," Carver rolled his eyes, and I laughed.

"So I did ok today?" I asked, looking up at him hopefully.

"Yeah, you did amazing," Carver smiled. "I tried to give you about two years of information in one day. Just keep in mind that when we go to school, you have to remember that most of these kids have been training for years, so you're going to be behind, but I want you to know that you demonstrated real power today so give it time".

I nodded thoughtfully, feeling nervous for the first time about going to Crestworth surrounded by other warlocks. I was going to be ages behind everyone else.

"Are there any books you have about all of this that I could borrow so I'm not so behind?" I asked, feeling a pit of anxiety and dread well up in my stomach.

"Sure, I can give you some of the history and a beginners spell books, but please don't cast when I'm not supervising, ok?" Carver sighed.

We walked the rest of the way in silence. I guess I wasn't the only one absorbed in my thoughts. Before heading up to bed, Carver handed me three leather-bound three books. The first one was titled History of Warlocks in the West, a brief history of Warlock Society in Europe and the Americas. The other two books were basic spells and magical theory.

I settled in for bed and opened the history book. It began with a section talking about several different ancient warlock societies from the Druids to the Romans. It wasn't until Uther Pendragon's reign that a semblance of government was formed when four of the oldest families called a truce and bound their children together in what became the first Cardinal Coven in an effort to protect all of their king from witches, discovery from humans and a group of Witch hunters called the Council of Elvira.

The council of Elvira was formed at a meeting of the same name held by several church officials. The official purpose of the meeting was to propagate cannons that would dictate certain tenants of Christianity. However, the council's unofficial purpose was to eliminate those who could pose a threat to the church, i.e., Witches and warlocks. Since its formation, the Council had expanded to have active branches all over the world.

I couldn't find any information about why witches and warlocks despised each other, although the book was filled with evidence of the feud. On either side of almost every major conflict, you could find witches and warlocks fighting each other.

I turned to the book about magical theory, which elaborated on the different types of spells and incantations. Any objective could be achieved by chanting what you wanted to happen in Latin, but often there were more effective versions of these spells that required less energy from the caster. Most importantly was never to cast a spell that requires more energy than you have to give.