Chapter Twelve
Master Samantha was a master spell binder plain and simple. She looked like she was in her early thirty's or late twenty's, but like everything else her appearance was under the influence of her shockhaven. I had to admit that she was beautiful, but the fact the her beauty was manufactured made it impossible for me to appreciate it. I didn't understand why someone would use their skills for something so vain. Once I had worked up the nerve to ask her about it and what she actually looked like.
"You're a man, or at least one day you will, so I wouldn't expect you to understand yet." she said, and gave me a smile that was a wicked grin that held the bitterness of untold years. "But you are an immortal. In a hundred years time when your youth is withered and gone and you stand in the face of immortality without eternal youth and you hold the power to change this you might understand."
She was cryptic and liked to speak in hypotheticals. She always found ways to dance around a conversation so that she could give answers without any certainty and there were times that I thought of her as less of a teacher and more of a riddle laden sounding board.
"The term 'spell binding' gives most people the impression that it's some form of magic or cosmic wizardry that allows us to impose our will upon the universe. The truth is far less mystic." she said with a voice that was heavy with loss. For all her beauty at times she seemed like the saddest and most jaded woman in the universe, filled with the disappointment of the knowledge that her twisted form of immortality brought her.
Oh she was an immortal, but not in the traditional sense. Most normal immortals simply age slowly and can regenerate cell loss from the power of their spiritual purity. In a sense once they reach a certain age they simply stop aging on their own. Master Sam however was not a normal immortal and she didn't have spiritual purity. She hated the way of the universe and I suspected with as detached as she was that she had seen, and possibly even taken part in, many acts of evil. At the time I wondered how such a dark individual could make herself at home with such a noble organization like the GPF. Now I know that she was perfectly at home with them.
"The truth is that its nothing more than another form of shockhaven control." she said. "The difference is that with spell binding you're giving your shockhaven a command and your shockhaven acts on it's own as oppose to controlling it out right." My confusion must have shown. She sighed heavily and I found it hard to believe that someone with so many years could be so impatient. "I suppose you would prefer a more practical demonstration." she said and with a roll of her fingers a glass orb appeared in her palm.
"Yes ma'am, that would help." I said with a nod.
"I know you're only trying to be respectful, but please..." she began, and then made long uncomfortable eye contact. "Don't call me ma'am or miss. It makes me feel old." I paused uncomfortably not knowing what to say or what to call her. "If you feel the need to call me something then my name will do just fine." she said, and turned her gaze back to the glass orb. "Now how would you make this levitate?" she asked.
"I would surround it with my shockhaven and lift it." I said confidently. Levitating and moving things with my shockhaven was one of the first things I'd learned to do.
"Yes you would. Go ahead." she said and held out the orb in the palm of he flat hand.
I reached out and gently took the ball from her hand with my shockhaven and let it float in the air between us. From the moment I took it in my shockhaven it started to shine bright white with the color of my shockhaven.
"Now, remove all thought and concentration and keep the orb in the air." she said and the ends of her lips curled up into a grin.
I thought hard about what she was asking me to do but I kept coming to the same conclusion. It wasn't possible. Some level of thought was needed to keep control of the ball and no matter how small there had to be some level of concentration to control my shockhaven. "I can't." I finally said.
Her slight grin curled up even more. "And that's the point." she said, and grabbed the orb out of the air. "At least that is the reason it would be practical for you to learn the art of haven spell binding."
I thought back to the first strike I'd landed on Master Jason and it made sense. "In the heat of battle I could maintain my full focus while my shockhaven acted on its own." I said.
"That would be a practical application for you. However it is unwise to let anything with a direct connection to your shockhaven completely leave your mind." she said.
"In case the strain of maintaining the spell becomes to much for your shockhaven to bare." I interjected as I began to understand. She was right too, as again I thought back to the landing that strike on Master Jason. Where as his spell had done a good job at protecting him it drained a good bit of his shockhaven and I still managed to recover from the spell before he did. In a battle to the death that spell would've only delayed what it prevented. Still that might have been enough if he had just been caught off guard.
"But don't worry there are ways to protect yourself against such problems." she said, pleased that I was catching on.
"You mean that when you bind your shockhaven you can set limits on the amount of shockhaven that the spell can draw directly from your shockhaven well." I said thinking of the most obvious way. "Or you could cast another binding to counter act the first." I added trying to think of more than one way.
She smiled. "Limits are difficult to properly explain and impose as orders to your shockhaven, since there's no standard unit of measurement for shockhaven energy. Counter binds will draw on even more shockhaven and unless you bind the counter spell in a way that will only drain shockhaven from the original binding then you'll wind up draining yourself dry while the two spells fight each other to follow your orders." she said, shooting both of my ideas down. "Try again."
I tried to think of ways to sever the connection of the bind, but nothing came to mind. At least not anything that didn't take more concentration than conventional haven control. I needed to narrow down some of the more abstract ideas and get a better idea of the direction she was trying to guide me in. "Could you restrict the binding to a certain portion of your shockhaven from the beginning." I asked.
"That's possible." she said.
I was on the right track so I continued down that train of thought. "If you could, then could you sever the connection to that portion during the binding or even before to avoid the binding from reaching into the rest of your haven well?" I asked, although it was less of a question than statement of understanding. Master Sam nodded in approval so I continued. "So really you could form a haven orb and instead of giving the order of the binding to your whole shockhaven you could give the order to just that orb."
"That is the easiest way to do it for bindings that you plan on using immediately but as you know shockhaven that is separated from the body will naturally begin to dissipate as time progresses." she said.
"So for bindings that you want to have an extended life expectancy, like last line defensive spells, you would have to rely on a direct connection to your shockhaven." I said as more of a statement than a question.
She raised an eyebrow in a look that said she clearly wasn't expecting my response. Unlike all of the other Masters, Master Sam loved to show her emotions. She'd show her expression and then gauge how well I could read her by my reaction. Or so I thought. It was entirely possible that I was being overly analytical and she was just making a game of it. Still it was helpful in my understanding of human interaction.
"I was recently on the receiving end of one of Master Jason's defensive spells and saw the tole that it took on him physically." I told her and she gave me a hesitant nod. "We were working on a new technique and he wasn't expecting me to activate the spell." I added. I had seen how Master Chen had reacted when he thought Master Jason had over stepped his bounds as far as teaching me and I didn't want to cause him any problems with Master Sam.
"I was going to ask if you've had any experience with any of the other masters and hav
en binding, but I suppose the more fitting question would be if you've had anymore experiences with spell binding." she said evenly.
Evenly was never good, but it wasn't bad in and of its self. Evenly meant that she was in between emotions and my response would tip the scales one way or the other. "No that was the only time I ever encountered spell binding. Master Jason simply told me that it was a defensive spell and that it was not his place, nor did he feel comfortable, teaching me an art that he hadn't mastered himself." I said.
"A wise choice on his part." she paused, and I assumed that I had avoided the worst of it. "You just seem to be a little more knowledgeable about the subject than a first time spell binding student." she said giving me a narrowed eyed stare.
"Where as this may be my first class in the art of spell binding, I have been a student of many other forms of shockhaven control for quite some time. Also I've known of the existence of haven spell binding since that incident with Master Jason which has allowed me ample time to think about the subject on my own, but I assure you that you are my first and only teacher in the art." I said. I was glad that all of this was getting out of the way in the beginning in stead of later on.
"Good. You're not completely ignorant, but you're also not caught out on bad habits from others. It's far easier for me to teach a new student and for you to learn new things without me having to argue with the teachings of someone else. Now pay close attention." she said, as she held out the ball.
I opened my haven awareness and focused on the details in front of me, happy to have moved on.
"Levitate." she said. Normally someone's voice causes waves in my haven awareness, but when Master Sam spoke the wave was less noticeable and there was something else there. A dark black tendril of energy snaked its was down her arm and into the glass orb. It was just slow enough for me to be able to see it at a blur but still considerably fast. She moved her hand from underneath the orb and it stayed there suspended in the air giving of the same dark black glow that the tendril of energy had.
As the orb hovered there she turned her attention back to me. "You must speak directly to your shockhaven, and the order must be clear. Don't try to over complicate it. With as deep as your shockhaven well is I doubt that there's any danger in this small task. Last and most important, to end a spell simply," she said as she placed her hand under the glowing orb, "order your shockhaven to stop." With stop the orb dropped to her waiting hand. "Are you ready to give it a try?" she asked handing the ball to me.
This didn't make sense at all. If all I had to do was tell a spell to stop then where was the danger that I'd heard so much about. Secondly Master Sam had been speaking to me not her shockhaven when the Orb dropped so she hadn't given it an order at all. Whatever she was trying to do I was not going to be fooled or made a fool of. I focused on my shockhaven as a whole and spoke to it just as though it was a person. "Levitate until I order you to stop." The words felt just a little bit heavier as I felt the flow of my shockhaven going into the orb. I let my hand fall from under the orb almost expecting it to fall as well and shatter on the stone floor, but it didn't. It hung there with the brilliant white glow of my shockhaven. I could feel the drain if I tried but it was so insignificant that it was only a fraction of the speed that my shockhaven regenerated at so it really didn't matter.
"Congratulations." Master Sam said, with a grin that looked almost as disappointed as pleased. "You've passed you first test, which means you're not a fool or a completely mindless idiot."
"You just told me that counter commands would drain your shockhaven and kill you. Did you really think I was going to test it. Which, by the way, what would you have done if I had just followed your lead and done what you said?" I asked. I couldn't help but be upset with her for that.
"If you had failed the test then I would have told you before the beginning of your second test for the day and it would have just been another handicap that you would have to keep in mind for the second test. Just like in life when you make mistakes they hinder you in the future." she said and she placed her hand on the orb.
To her credit there was never any danger until I would've tried to drop the orb. Still That did not mean that I appreciated her attempt to trick me in the slightest. "And just what would this second test be." I asked, making my attitude known.
She almost laughed leaning on the orb that still wouldn't budge. "Let me tell you a little story and we'll see if you can guess." she said, with another wicked grin. "There once was a game or really more of a contest. It was a type of battle to the death for spell binders. In this game they would take a glass orb just like this one and use it to see who was the most powerful. The rules of the game were simple in the beginning. The challenger would make the orb levitate like you are now and the person being challenged would make the orb fall. The winner is decided when the weaker of the two's shockhaven is completely drained."
All of my attitude was gone and replaced by horror when I felt the drain on my shockhaven increase almost to the point that it was draining faster than it regenerated. She couldn't possibly think that she could over power me could she? Regardless of the fact that she was a Master, the depth of my shockhaven well dwarfed her own, and in a test of power she was sure to lose.
"But, you see spell binding attracts the most clever of havenists and only a fool would risk his life to play by the rules." she said, as the strain continued to increase. "Gravity manipulation was the most common for of cheating in the beginning."
The strain had begun to drain my shockhaven well quicker than it could fill itself, but it still wasn't bothersome yet. I could intervene, but I didn't want to start going back and forth with someone who had done this for many times longer than I'd been alive. "And I'm sure that the ability to cast silently helps in all of this trickery." I said. Even if she was using some other way to try to make the orb fall it still had to be costing her some shockhaven and the difference between the depth of our haven wells was enough that I didn't have to follow her act of dishonesty. "Ma'am what is the point of all this?" I said slightly upset that she felt the need to do this the first time I tried haven spell binding. Upset or not she was a Master of her art and I was a student so I tried to not judge her technique against my other teachers.
"I told you before not to call me ma'am." she said, and the strain jumped dramatically. "As I was saying, the nature of the challenge changed. It was not only a battle of power but it had become a game of skill and intelligence as well."
If she wanted to test my intelligence along with my power that was more than fine with me. "Vacuum." I whispered thinking of the orb and the area around it. It wouldn't matter how much she messed with the gravity around the orb if I centered a vacuum on it.
"Clever." she said, as the drain on my shockhaven nearly ceased. "Mastering the art of silent casting increases the challenge of the game."
She nodded and the drain on my shockhaven returned. As much as she tried to hide it I could see through her calm demeanor and could tell that this test was also proving to be a strain on her shockhaven as well. If I was going to beat her I needed to out think her. She'd bypassed the ideas of gravity faster than I'd expected. If this was simply a contest of power then there would be no contest, but she was more experienced in the trickery of this game then I was. Then an idea came to me in a flash and I'd already opened up my haven awareness before it was finished. In my haven awareness I focused on the orb and where it was in the three dimensional plane and said, "Stay," then quickly focused on the area around the orb and said "Resist."
The drain on my shockhaven was immediate and more than I'd expected. It was too fast for it to have been Master Sam reacting and I felt like a fool. "Annihilate!" I shouted at the orb and it vanished from existence. The problem that I couldn't believe that I missed was that I tried to hold the orb in place as well as the room around it but that would mean that tearing the moon apart since the moon and really everything in the universe is constantly in motion.
"I belie
ve that we'll call that a drawl." Master Sam said. Her smile was a little shaken but still somehow present. "You did well."
Besides the part where I almost killed all of us, destroyed the moon or just took it out of orbit is what I wanted to say. "Thank you." I said instead.
"As you can tell the possibilities for what can be done with the art of spell binding are practically limitless." she said.
That was an understatement. There were limitless possibilities but they came with a price. Spell binding was the most dangerous form of shockhaven control that I'd come across yet. I would have to try out every spell before using it in live combat. Still Master Sam had just taught me a skill that I was already finding uses for. "The conscience that is imprinted on your shockhaven when you give it a command is a version of your own correct?" I asked trying to make sure that I was understanding things clearly.
"Who's else would it be?" she said answering me with a question.
"Fair point." I said with a smile and a nod. "So then it would be safe to assume that your shockhaven would have the same knowledge as you."
"It's never safe to assume, but until proven otherwise it would seem logical that it would. Your point?" she said.
I smiled but bit my tongue instead of pointing out that her statement was in it self a contradiction. "My point is that if you gave your shockhaven a complex command that bound it in a physical form resembling your own you could expect it to behave as you would?" I asked.
The way that her eyes widened along with her smile told me that I was on to something. "Yes you could." she said and then paused like she was thinking something over to herself. "It's called haven cloning and although there are many different varieties of it they are all some of the most advanced forms of spell binding you'll ever find."
Even though it had all just started as speculation on my part the fact that it had a name meant that someone had already done it. I had no doubt that it was beyond what I was comfortable and capable of doing now, but I could work towards it and eventually become as skilled in the art of spell binding as I was with my sword.
"That's enough for today as far as I'm concerned." Master Sam said. "You have plenty to think over tonight and tomorrow we'll work on some more advanced things but for now your draw won you some rest."
I didn't protest or argue. If I was going to try to continue spell binding I would prefer to do it without felling as though my shockhaven well was more than half drained. I returned to my room and continued to think about the different possibilities of spell binding.