The Apprentice's Apprentice

Part 17

Warren leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "You have a weakness for visualization. Since the witchlight happens to be the basic spell for that type, that's why you're failing to keep the light alive for more than a moment. This is a problem."

Cora sighed. "Okay, well if I'm not going to be good at doing the witchlight thing, we can try something else, right?"

He shook his head then held her eyes with his. "It's not that simple. I told you, visualization is one of my specialities. I have no idea how to cope with someone who has difficulties using that aspect. I've never actually met a mage with weakness for visualization before either, though I suppose they must exist. To be honest, I have no real idea of how to teach you."

"So what, I can't do magic now? That's fine by me. I'll just head home now," Cora said, levering herself up.

"No, sit down," Warren said as he leaned towards her, jaw set. "Your power's not going to go away even if you can't do spells properly. I'm sure we can figure this out. I know you're not the first mage to have this weakness. I remember having a hypothetical discussion about this with my master when we first figured out that visualization was my second strength. Your problem is that you properly form the picture in your mind but can't imagine it in detail, right?"

"I can picture stuff, I just have difficulty making up stuff as a visual in my head. Like, I was using a firefly as a reference for making a witchlight. I'm okay as long as it's something I've seen before but it's hard to just make pictures up out of nothing or even just words," Cora replied. It was hard to describe in words exactly what she meant. Then again, hearing the way other people talked about reading books was something she could really understand either.

Warren rubbed the back of his neck. "Alright. Alright, let's see if we can't work with this. Clearly we're not going to get anywhere with witchlights for today, so let's try something that requires less picturing. Not communication, I'm not great at that and I'll have a harder time helping you with it, so let's try transference."

He looked around, his eyes stopping on the brass filigreed bowl that lay on the side table to his left. Warren grabbed the tiny bowl and dropped it in front of Cora. "This is going to be the focus of your spell. You're going to follow the same steps as you did for the witchlight, except you're going to be making the bowl float. It doesn't have to be high, just make it rise up off the table."

Cora looked at him for a moment. It sounded crazy. Then again, she had apparently been able to make a light appear from nowhere, however briefly, so clearly she was going to have to start accepting insanity as everyday. Though she had to wonder what use she could have for being able to make things float.

This time Cora kept her eyes open and locked onto the bowl. She grabbed the now familiar warm feeling and shoved it out of her so it surrounded the bowl. She fenced it in tightly before she hesitated, frowning. Picturing the bowl floating wasn't going to be easy if she apparently had a weakness for this stuff, so maybe she should do something less visual. Cora focused on the warmth that was already hovering in a tight sphere around the bowl and imagined it as a kind of cushion. An invisible one so she didn't have to picture it, but just have it that impression. That feeling of her favourite pillow, like the bowl was cradled in the centre of it. She focused on that feeling, filled it with her power, and then imagined the pillow rising up, like she was lifting it. When she felt that her imaginary cushion was up to her chin, she released her power into the mental feeling.

The bowl shot upwards, stopping when it got up to Cora's face. It just hung in mid-air, like it was on an invisible pedestal. Cora couldn't help but stare at it. The bowl was floating. The bowl was floating because of her. She'd done magic. This was real.

Warren smiled. "Good. Very good. That went a lot better than I thought it would. And that's a relief. I was worried I wasn't going to be able to teach you anything and I was going to have to tell that to Selena."

Cora nodded, only half listening as she continued to stare at the bowl. She gently waved her hand all around it, feeling that familiar warmth all around it, just like the sphere she'd fenced in in her mind.

"Now, we're going to go through the last of the basics which also ties in with another of the basic spells. You're going to want to pull your magic back inside you. This avoids wasting as much power and is also so that you don't leave your signature everywhere. Not that that's always a bad thing, but noisy spell casting can cause you problems later. So what you're going to have to do is undo your spell. You can think of unravelling it, or doing the whole thing backwards, whatever makes the most sense to you I guess. I'd say picture it the way it was before but... well that's clearly not going to work so well for you."

She glanced at Warren for a moment, feeling a bit of disappointment that she couldn't just keep her spell going. She'd have liked to look at it again later. But she supposed she could always try doing it again and that if she left it and someone who wasn't a mage walked in, they'd have questions. A lot of questions.

Cora focused back on the bowl. She reached for the warmth that was already there and changed the feeling of the cushion from being up in the air to back on the table, feeling it as a slow movement, like she was lowering the pillow from her outstretched arm. She certainly didn't want to smash the furniture in someone else's house.

She focused her attention on that feeling of slow movement and released it gradually this time. As she watched, the bowl wobbingly sank back to the table's surface, landing with a little clunk. Cora turned and smiled at Warren. "There."

He shook his head. "No, not quite. You've left your magic there in front of you. You need to bring it back inside your body to be completely done."

Cora frowned, wondering how he could know all this, but turned back towards the little warm sphere that was still around the bowl. She mentally broke the fence and tried to pull the warmth inside of her. Just like when she was cold and huddled up to Zoe or her radiator to leech the heat. She could feel her power returning to that area around her sternum, sinking back into her much the way she would slowly drop herself into a hot bath.

"Good," Warren said, nodding. "You seem like you've figured out the basics."

She smiled. As weird as the whole situation was, the fact she'd basically made something fly was pretty cool. "Thanks. What next?"

He smiled. "You get to do it all over again."