"Now, price of midnight curses, it's time to just what you remember of your witch education?"
"I can't believe I'm back on this continent," Sam mumbled to himself, looking at the witch who dragged him here. He could definitely make some kind of break for it, but what then. Keep running from here. 'yeah, that's a great way to spend the next 50 to 100 years,' sighing, he looked at his teacher and around the herb forest garden.
He had memories of working around this, harvesting and nurturing plants. avoiding getting eaten by plants. Such a mix of good and dull memories. a few of them were going to be helpful real quick, will start with simple astronomy."
"simple, indeed." as someone whose most potent spells are tied to the night and the moons and stares. He knew a lot, helped by the years he spent wondering where he spent nights staring into the vast sky.
Of course, she was nothing if not thorough and grilling, pulling out the obscure facts. If Sam got something wrong, she spent an hour correcting him and ensuring he got it right. The thoroughness of someone so long-lived was enough to drive a normal person up the wall.
thankful Sam had experience with her, enough to stop her from going on more than an hour any topic. His patience for getting lectured wasn't that long. Plus, he had school, and he wanted a diploma.
"Why do you want a diploma?" she asked as she served her specialty soup. Sam looks at the bubbling titanium bowl, picks up a titanium spoon, and stirs it. " Well, I joined the school to get a diploma and want to finish. I've already left some things unfished and broken promises."
"that something you shouldn't get used to." the witch stated." as someone who lived for almost a thousand years. You must be careful about how you feel about certain things. never think that it doesn't matter, that you have time to do whatever."
"you make it sound like I don't." aero stated, and he had an idea of how she thought why. A half-remembered thing, seeing her cry a few times. "you have time, but everyone around you. The people, places, and culture. Food and events pass by so quickly or linger for so long." Her laugh was humorless." Stop dumping out the soup."
"hell no!" knowing he was caught, he threw the bowl to the side, its contents melting through the ground. pretty far, "I've eaten dozens of poisons and different dangerous materials. But I wouldn't eat that."
"my cooking isn't that bad? my food tastes good."
"taste is not the problem; you add too many supernatural herbs." they quickly turned to argue about her food. Sam fully believed it was a weapon, pointing out all the people it knocked out. the beast human, vampires, undead, spirits, Hermes that one time, demons!
"It wasn't that bad!"
"You're in denial!" Sam stated from where they had moved into the kitchen, and he was making sandwiches. That wouldn't burn a hole in his instance thanks to an overuse of magical herbs. "so what if I am!" she shot right back," I like it, and so did my husband and kids."
Sam opened his mouth, then decided against what he was about to say as it had a significant chance of making her cry. "so what's the next part of the test." his teacher realizing she had said more than she had wanted." geology, mostly the crystals like you know."
"I'm not chipping my teeth again." he knew part of the test would be identifying the minerals by taste. The first time he did this, he stupidly tried to bite a crystal and went to the dentist the next day. learned he didn't like people pocking around his mouth. or getting his rotten teeth pulled.
The dentist learned he needed stronger restraints.
"oh, I've got a potion for that. I'm not paying another insurance payout." The witch glared at him, but Sam remained unbothered. "All right, what's the first question," she answered by setting out a black and white marbled rock; it had a sharp scent and quickly sharp taste. The marbling was reminiscent of lightning strikes.
"Lighting marble is typically found near mountain tops or places with frequent thunderstorms. contains both lighting and earth energy. which makes it a good bind agent for spells that use them. Like the sand thunderstorm spell. A mid-class weather manipulation spell that's mid-class because its range cannot increase over that of a medium-sized city."
"Good." with a flash of her hand, she changed it to an emerald-like mineral; its taste told him it wasn't emerald. too light, and not bitter enough. "mmm, this is rare. relative to emerald. Possible zephyr emerald but not light enough... unless it's not pure or high quietly zephyr emerald."
"correct," her smile was wide and proud." yes, now let's see if you can get this one." a new mineral appeared, a strain of quart. It took Sam some time to identify this one, but he got it along with the following. Each mineral brings up memories he had somewhere.
"your memory is good," the witch smiled as she moved around some things. Next, I think of gasses and liquids, and then we'll move on to combine these things." Of course, each of these tests took days as witch magic used many kinds of ingredients. If you could put it into a pot, it was an ingredient.
after four days, aero remembered something." oh right, I've gotten into some new trouble."
"that's not surprising." she looks away from the lighting in the bottle he was being tested over. " so what is it?" Sam gave her the cliff notes about the beast and his methods of dealing with it. "well shit, I thought I'd seen a lot of things. Not only are aliens real, but so is a universe-creating God. Sweet creation and herbs. I'm not going to super hell or something." she shook her head, grabbed a little bottle from her clothing, and poured it out.
Sam covered his nose as the potion melted through space, opening a portal back to his current residents. "improved the recipe?" he asked, stepping through the portal, which Vaulgy felt like getting hit in the gut. which was an improvement when it felt like getting hit by a truck." yes, I modified the liquid space before I mixed it into the main concoction. even cut down the amount of time this needs to marinate by 12 months."
"oh, that's good." turning, he greeted his dad, who had definitely spent the last night creating. The bags under his eyes, the five o'clock shadow, the slight mugs of color on his fingers. Definitely the sight of him creating." ah, your back, oh, thank gods."
"yeah, just got back. Mostly to show the witch something." Sam was original, just going to show her the lust thing. like the small statues he was making. but as they walked up the stairs, Sam remembered a few things, like the thing he had wrapped in leaves. If she couldn't help him get rid of the bad shit he collected, she at least had better places to hold it.
"What in the rings of Christian hell?!" she was right, shocked and disgusted with it. "why not just throw it into a volcano." Sam scuffed at that, closing the leaves." you think I didn't test that? It corrupted the magma, killed the sea, and drove people mad. so I carried it for years. I'm not sure about the exact number."
"Well, I have a safe it will fit nicely into while I call a coven meeting." A coven meeting involves many things with witches; it depends on who called it and for what. Most of the time, it was gossip hours, a reason for everyone to gather and talk. Catch up, but it was also like calling a war meeting or disaster prevention.
His teacher, calling one, was definitely going to cause a ruckus when they saw this thing and the other cursed and harmful objects Sam was sending over. "Mmm, are they still making those tangly fruit biscuits?"
"oh, yes. He's made a new version. so is this everything you want me to show them."
"Everything I currently know the location of. I know there more shit out there. I got drawn to it, or it found me." he knew this was probably an effect of the witching hour. That or he had some serious luck,' I can never decide it is good or bad.'
After collecting all the stuff he needed out of the house, he showed her the marbles Sam used to storing lust, the liquid lust he had in jars. Notes he's hardly made, her face was nothing but disappointment. "I know I taught you better about working with hazardous material. None of their jars and marbles are reinforced.
"ah well," he couldn't just tell her that was reckless and cockiness. "my room is quite reinforced and sealed; if something happened, it wouldn't spread too far." that was mainly attributed to a setup in the middle of his room, in case someone tried to blow him up.
"oh yeah, what have you so confident. she asked as she tried reinforcing the jars with runes. " he tapped his foot around the center of his room a few times. Until a circle of runes appeared, the witch looked them over and understood what it did? "oh, interesting, when did you figure that out?"
"I stole it from some drug lab."
"what drug lab had something that could disperse the force of an atomic bomb?" Sam replied he never said it was a straightforward drug lab, "it was also about the size of four football fields?" when she asked what kind of drug they had been making, Sam couldn't remember much except that it smelt like brimstone and river stones, plus the ghost hour was not pleased by this.
"Okay, let's come back to that concerning information later. What exact idea are you looking for with its energy?" Sam licked his lips, "just some kind of use for it. I see myself collecting a lot of it over the coming future. Also, I'm hesitant to straight out destroy it."
she nodded," Okay, coming up with a use for the collected energy itself should take too long, at least a hundred years. I know a few witches looking for new topics." that was good, and if he spread out the collected energy, it wouldn't seem like too much in a hundred years. "yeah, I think that's going to work."
Tapping her earring-shaped holo device, she started making calls." hey, it's -" Sam walked downstairs to get them some snacks and catch up with his father. 'I totally could have caught her name just now.' he bluntly realized.
"so, another person from your four hundred years of wondering." Sam nodded, reaching into the fridge and grabbing some cloud orange juice, "Yeah. I feel terrible about not remembering her name. though she was very forceful about it. She taught me what it meant to be a witch. How to control that part of my powers."
"Do you resent that she was forceful?" he asked, looking upstairs and wondering if he would have to fight in the name of his child. Sam paused to drink before shaking his head; walking over, he leaned against his father." I didn't think well of myself there first few decades." his face pinched at the memories, "her forcefulness got it through my head. it's okay to be weird; being weird didn't make me bad."
"Oh, definitely, he raised his mug of coffee." Sam clinked his juice against it. they returned to their drinks for a moment. Enjoying nothing more than each other's company." so how many embarrassing stories does she have."
"less than the walls I could put you through." Natale nodded, setting his mug down. Before making a break for the stars, he didn't make it up the first one before Sam's weight hit him. Crackling, he turned and threw his fingers into Sam's side. Causing him to howl with laughter and attempting to counterattack.
This was the sense the witch came upon when she descended the stairs. For a moment, she just watched the father and son play and wrestle. She had a small, almost wistful smile on her face before she turned and joined the wrestling." ah, no fair!" Sam cried, only to be shot back with." you've won a twenty-vs-one fight!"
Sam would have pointed out that the fight was hard as hell; he had to drag it out over two days, making use of hit-and-run tactics, traps, and the natural flora and fauna to win that fight. In the end, he still had to regrate an arm and several bullet holes.
Of course, that argument didn't work cause he won, and he wasn't losing this wrestling tickling match. "tap out, tap out." Natal patted against the leg around his neck as Sam focused his fingers against the sole of his teacher's foot, even with another leg wrapped around his neck.
Sam didn't move; he knew this wasn't enough force to actually hurt the man he called dad. In the same way, that man wasn't actually using force or technique, he needed to break free of the hold.
Sam realized he was being lured into a false sense of security when the man started ticking his foot. With a screech, Sam released him, flipping around to improve his hold on his teacher, who was mostly just sitting them and letting it happen.
At the moment, most of his attention was on Natal. She stepped on Sam's arm, causing a feeling to spread out through him. "you highjacked my nerves." he howled with laughter, configuring his mana to take back control of his sensory nerves. it was such a delicate operation as he could quickly turn good to bad, making his nerves overly sensitive or too dull.
"... and that was how I learned he disliked alcohol." the two physical adults were sharing stories." same, having a drink for myself. he gets a whiff and kinds of flips out. Thankfully, I drowned the rest of it, and he calmed pretty quickly." the female scoffed she had not had such an easy of a time.
they thought at least part of it was the several hundred years between the two events. But they also knew it was probably several events and interactions. Either way, Sam had mellowed out over the years.
"ah!" they both cried when Sam tackled them, having recovered from the witch's spell.