A Journey Never Begun Pt. 04

Copyright (c) 2018 James Miehoff, All Rights Reserved.

This work may not be published whether for fee or free without this copyright.

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This is one of a series of stories set in the Land of Etherium, a place out of time where wizards channeled mana and a host of creatures we call fairy tales roamed the lands. It is said these tales occurred almost 27,000 years ago before a set of cataclysms shaped the face of the earth and the fairy folk retreated or we in our smugness, no longer saw them.

In any case, they are just stories after all, aren't they?

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This is part four of the journey of Muddle to find a new Master to continue his magical education. If you haven't read the first three parts, please do, things may make more sense if you are caught up. I'll wait.

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Muddle woke to the sound of rain. Eager as he was to continue his journey, he was reluctant to trudge through the rain again, so he rolled over and went back to sleep.

An hour later, he woke again and this time he had to piss. So he walked to what was left of the doorway and peed out into the rain. Feeling better he walked over to the fire and coaxed it back to life by feeding it some small pieces of wood and then a larger chunk.

While the fire built up, he took his cookpot out to the door and set it down to collect some rainwater. A few minutes in the rain was all it took to get enough water for his breakfast.

"It was that kind of day," he thought.

While his breakfast cooked, he pulled out the staff and looked at it in the gloomy light. It was as he remembered it. Three dryads stood equally spaced around the head of the staff. Each of the three was holding a globe upon their shoulders, their arms reaching back behind their heads helping to hold the globe up.

As he spun the staff slowly in his hands past the first two figures, he stopped and looked closely at the third figure. It was not a dryad but a human male holding up his part of the globe. "Curious," he thought.

He looked very closely at the figures of the dryads. One was a mature woman, strong and in her prime. The other was a young maiden full of the beauty of youth with a hint of a smile playing on her lips. "Amazing detail," he thought.

Then it hit him, "The Triad," he said softly.

"The woman is the tree, strong and in her prime. The maiden is the dryad, the lady of the tree, forever young and nubile. The third figure is man who gave his seed," he thought.

Then another thought struck him, "The man is me!" And he marveled at the amazing detail of the figure. It even had the small scar on his cheek where Mudpaul had cut him when they played with the swords they had found.

As he made that revelation, the staff grew warm in his hand and thrummed like a string instrument being plucked. "Curious," he thought.

He set the staff aside to keep his breakfast from burning.

After eating, he again picked up the staff. He continued his examination of it but didn't see any other markings, just the smooth grain one only finds in an oak.

"My master said that he could store mana in his wand to be retrieved when he needed it," Muddle said to himself. "But he never said how he did it. I know how to pull mana from the world around me and I know how to push it out to form spells, I wonder if I can push the mana out to the staff."

He concentrated and began to visualize pushing mana from himself to the staff. Nothing happened at first. But as he concentrated more he could feel the staff begin to soak up the mana and store it within.

Exhausted from his efforts, Muddle again put down the staff and took his cookpot out to get some rain to clean it.

Coming back and seating himself on the floor, he again took up the staff. He again visualized pushing mana from himself to the staff and this time it was a flood of mana that left him and stored itself into the staff.

Muddle put down the staff and headed for the door to retrieve his cookpot. When he got there he saw that the rain had stopped and he stepped out to get a better look at his temporary home. He saw a rainbow over the meadow behind the house. It almost looked like the end of the rainbow was touching the part of the roof that had survived.

He stood amazed and began the first few lines of the Blessings of the Rainbow he had learned so long ago at the orphanage,

"Rainbow, rainbow shining bright,

you show the colors to our sight.

After storm and after rain,

you give us hope till we see you again."

Shaking his head, Muddle picked up the cookpot and sloshed the contents a couple times before tossing them out into the forest.

He reentered the house and put the cookpot down and picked the staff up again. He looked at it and a stupid idea popped into his head. Not having anything better to do, he seized on the idea and decided to put it into effect.

Retracing his steps back outside, Muddle cleared his mind and tried to send to the staff a simple cantrip for repairing broken things. It was one of the little bits of magic he used a lot when he lived with his Master.

At first nothing happened, then a voice in his head told that the spell was stored and ready. Muddle looked around thinking that he had heard that with his ears. But no one was around.

He tried to send the cantrip to the staff again and again a voice in his head told him that the spell was stored and ready. This time he tried to tell the voice to activate the spell.

He was holding the staff sidewise when he saw the figures on the end move. He tried to drop the staff but it was fixed to his hand. The figures raised the globe off their shoulders and when their arms were outstretched, the globe shimmered in a white glow and he could feel the spell begin to take effect.

Slowly at first, Muddle could see stones begin to creep back to the broken wall and stack themselves up. The ends of the beams and support work for the roof began to grow and shape themselves back into the framework of the roof.

The stones were reassembling themselves at a furious rate when Muddle suddenly found himself flat on his back. A stone that had been flung into the woods returned and Muddle's right foot had been in the way. The end result was Muddle on the ground laughing.

Laughing Muddle thought, "Good thing I came out to see the rainbow again. I could have been hurt or worse if I had tried that while inside the house."

Just as he thought that, a shape came flying out of the woods and right through the space where Muddle would have been if he wasn't flat on his back.

It turned out that the door had been carted off into the woods as well. Once back in place, it kept trying to fit itself into the door frame but it wouldn't stay. It kept falling out and standing itself back up and falling out again.

Muddle felt the end of the spell and the frenetic activity ceased. The door fell to the ground again one more time with a thud.

Muddle got up slowly and looked, then rubbed his eyes. The falling down little rubble pile he had stumbled on last night looked amazing. The roof was complete. The thatch had grown and spread to cover the whole of the roof. The walls were upright and looked like a master stone mason had placed them. There was a barn on the end away from the kitchen and a second chimney.

As he walked around the renewed structure, Muddle marveled at what the staff had caused to occur.

Going in the other door by the second chimney, Muddle looked and tears began to form. It was a small blacksmith's shop. Complete with a small anvil and tools. He was surprised that the tools had not been scavenged until he remembered that the wall the tools were on had fallen inwards so probably buried the tools and the anvil.

Going back out, he looked at the front door and realized why it had been having difficulty standing. The hinges had been stolen off of it. He could see where the iron hinges had been pulled from the door frame and the door itself.

As he leaned the door against the wall by the doorframe Muddle thought, "I should see if there are materials in the shop to make a new set of hinges."

He went in the open doorway and looked to his right. What had been an open space with fallen timbers and rocks from the walls was now a small gathering room and two bedrooms. The beds in the bedrooms were complete but without mattresses. "Some things even magic can't bring back," Muddle thought to himself. "I need to remember that."

He turned and went back into the kitchen and was surprised at how neat and orderly it was. In fact it was so neat, his pack and bedroll were gone. After a moment of panic and some frantic searching, he found them inside the pantry. Something moving had shoved them aside as it moved into position. For the second time Muddle was glad he hadn't performed the spell while he was inside the house.

Looking out the window, Muddle could see that it would be dark soon and he needed to get some firewood before it was too dark.

When he returned, Muddle dropped the wood by the fireplace and then he saw the frog sitting by his bedroll.

"Back for another story Mr. Frog?" Muddle asked while setting up the wood.

"Re-deep," was his answer.

"Very well. Just let me get the fire started and supper cooking and I will continue the tale," Muddle said to the frog.

After he had supped and cleaned and put his utensils away, Muddle sat on his bedroll and addressed the frog, "Let me see now, where did we leave off? I believe I was about to tell you of my apprenticeship to Master Delfim."

"For the first few weeks, we would go out into the forest and he would point out various plants, just like he had done the first day. This time he was more descriptive on things and I gradually learned all the names of the plants and their properties. At the end, he would always tell me to go get a number of leaves of a plant or two.

"By the end of the third week, Master was asking me to bring back leaves from 5 or 6 plants and not all were from the plants we had seen that day. If I got it right, he would show me how to blend the plants to form various potions and poultices. If I did not get it right, I would have to go out and keep on going back out until I got it right.

"Finally there came a day when my Master told me, 'You have come as far as you can. You have learned what most hedge wizards and healing women know. To continue, you must learn the ways of mana.'

"Now I had heard of mana all my life, but I didn't know anything about it. I told my Master this and he said, 'Good. Then I won't have to make you unlearn what is wrong.'

"He had me sit in on the floor in a meditation pose. The simple one with your legs folded and your hands in your lap. Then he told me, 'You must calm your mind and think back to that day when you did the sign of opening for the ward and you felt something odd in your stomach. Think back to that day and that feeling. Now try to make that feeling happen again.'

"At first nothing happened, but then I started feeling warm and funny in my gut. My Master grinned at me and said, 'Do you feel that? That is you pulling mana from the world. You are storing it inside of yourself and creating a mana well. Good. Now let's make supper.'

"Every morning as I went out to gather the herbs and plants my Master requested, he would tell me to practice pulling mana into myself. Everything worked fine until the fourth day, I was collecting plants and mana and I started to shake and not feel well. Thinking I may have touched a poisonous plant I ran back to the house. As I did the gesture of opening I felt something odd and I felt a little better.

"When I got near to the house, I called for my Master and he came out. He could see something was amiss and when he pressed his hand upon my forehead, he actually started to laugh. I saw nothing funny in my imminent demise. He finally stopped laughing and took my hands. 'It is just the mana overflowing your mana well and coursing through your veins,' he said. "This is wonderful. I have never heard of anybody doing this in so little time. I took almost a month to get mana-sick.'

"Seeing my face he took pity and said, 'It is easy to cure. You just need to learn a cantrip or two to reduce your mana level. I will be right back.' And he left me to go into the house. He returned momentarily with a bowl I had broken the day before.

"My Master said, 'Now I want you to repeat the words I will be saying, but do it in your mind while you push mana towards the words.'

"I nodded still thinking I was going to die and he repeated the words of the catnip to repair things. I tried to focus on them but I threw up instead. He repeated the words patiently and I tried again. And again. And again. We had been trying and failing for an hour when something happened and I focused on the words and had the same feeling as when I opened the ward.

"When I opened my eyes, the world was still spinning but I could see the pieces of the bowl moving on their own. Then I threw up again. When I could open my eyes again, I felt a little better and two of the pieces of the bowl were together like they had never been broken. My Master was doing a little jig, which I later called his Happy Dance.

"When he saw me awake, he cried out, 'Excellent work boy! Do it again until the bowl is fixed or your mana levels are fixed.'

"I closed my eyes to concentrate and stop the world from spinning. I focused on the words and the feeling of pushing mana. It seemed to take forever, but when I released the mana I suddenly felt much better.

"When I opened my eyes, my Master was on the ground next to me. He was holding a perfect bowl. When he saw my eyes open, he said to me, 'Very good Muddle, I am proud of you.'

"I was not sure which I was more surprised by, his use of my name or saying that he was proud of me.

"He put the bowl into my hands and then spoke again, 'It is a rare gift to be able to sense mana. It is even rarer to be able to pull mana into oneself. One person in a thousand can sense mana. One person in a thousand thousand can actually pull mana into themselves. But the rarest is the ability to push the mana out and form it into spells. This is the basis of being a wizard. Only one in ten survives the mana-poisoning. I would really have hated to bury you.'

"With that he got up and asked, 'Did you get the things I asked of you.' I nodded and passed him the pouch. Without a word he took the pouch and headed for the house.

"It was about an hour later that I was able to get shakily to my feet. I felt like I had just run the 10 miles to town and back. As I entered the house my Master said without looking, 'Good. I was afraid I was going to have to bury you anyway.' I just collapsed on my mattress.

"The next few days were a blur. I had mana-fever, a common condition that occurs after mana-poisoning. If all wizards go through this, I can see why there are so few.

"But I got stronger and my Master taught me several more simple cantrips and I learned how to control the level of mana so I would not get sick again.

"That was also when I found out what happens when you break your concentration in the middle of casting a spell. I was infusing a healing potion with a cantrip of repair and a thought unbidden came into my mind. The thought that crossed my mind was whether a potion of healing infused with a cantrip of growth would help my friend Mudtim who was a dwarf. Well, the potion started fizzing and boiling and I was knocked backwards out of my chair and must have been knocked out. The next thing I remember is my Master standing over me. His face was a mix of concern, anger and trying not to laugh. I rolled off the chair and stood it up, then announced, 'I have to take a piss.' I'd have said anything to get out of there for a while. I was not in the mood for one of his lectures.

"I headed out to the woods to my secret garden. I had been collecting some of the plants that my Master called for that were only found far away and replanted them near the stream. They were starting to grow and I was feeling very clever at finding a way to avoid walking miles to get a few leaves.

"The plants were doing fine and I found that I really did have to take a piss. So I walked out to one of the big flat rocks that were near the stream, pulled my trousers down and near fell off the rock. My pecker was huge. It was bigger flaccid than it had ever been when aroused. I panicked and put my hand on it. It felt the same, just much bigger.

"Well, one thing lead to another and being a healthy young lad it quickly rose to the occasion. Despite the much larger size, it felt pretty much the same when I stroked it so I decided to give it a try and began stroking it in earnest.

"Just then I heard giggling and looked over to see a young maiden stepping out of the pool next to the rock. She looked to be my age or a little older and was dressed in a see through shawl. Of course I did what any lad my age would do when confronted with a beautiful maiden with his dick out. I tried to put it away and run. But it was too big to put away.

"She called out to me, 'Don't go. It is not often that I get visitors down to my river. Especially not visitors so well endowed.'

"Being incredibly conversant and confident, I of course called back, 'Who are you and where did you come from?'

"She giggled and said, 'I am Diaria, the naiad of this stream and I came from the water, silly man.'

"She came closer and I was entranced. I just stood there with my erection jutting out and my hand upon it. Not one of my finer moments, Mr. Frog."

The frog just blinked his eyes and replied with a hearty, "Re-deep!"

Muddle laughed at the incongruity of telling this very embarrassing story to a frog who answers at the appropriate times.

"In any case," Muddle continued, "that was my first encounter with a nymph whether she be water, tree, land or air. It was definitely not my last. For some reason, once I was able to control mana, nymphs began to come out and talk to me. I don't know why but as a horny young lad, I never gave thought to it. Whether the nymph is a water nymph or a tree nymph, an earth nymph or an air nymph, they are all surpassingly beautiful and they pull at the sensuous natures of men or horny young boys.

"I have rarely found myself unaroused by the sight of a nymph and truth be told a number of boys tend to try and frolic with them because, like myself, they don't have much chance with real women.

"But there is a problem with all nymphs. Even though they can have the shape of a perfect woman, they are not women. By that, I mean that their mouths do not connect to a throat because they do not eat. They do not have openings between their thighs for men to push into because they do not give birth that way nor do they have anal openings because they do not excrete as we do.

"So, the best they can do is take the head of your cock in their mouth and lick it or take your cock in their hands and stroke you till your pleasure erupts. If they really fancy you, you may be able to slide your cock between their thighs and rub your way to happiness.

"But pick your nymph carefully Mr. Frog, it can be fraught with danger."

Muddle looked at the frog, which cocked his head and made a sound like, "Gribbet?"

"And well you might ask why," said Muddle. "When playing with tree nymphs, you should always know the type of tree that is their home. Their skin is very much like the wood of their tree. Nymphs from pine trees are very smooth but tend to leave small splinters. Nymphs from maple trees are also very smooth, probably from being akin to soft woods, but like their pine sisters they leave splinters as well.

"The momentary pleasure of letting these beauties play with your manhood is offset by the pulling of splinters from the same. And if you do not get them all, the festering sores will remind you.