Chapter 9

It was almost nine o'clock and time for the feast in my honour. I felt very unusual knowing I would be going out there in front of all these people who were now my responsibility.

"You'll be fine" Mary-Lou's soothing voice said. "They only want to see you and show their respect."

"I doubt that makes him feel better" Jacob said smirking.

And he was right, what had I done to deserve the respect of these people? Absolutely nothing! I'd just woken up here. But it seemed Mary-Lou was following my line of thought.

"You've raised someone from the dead Andy, this should be easy in comparison." For some reason my stomach did flip flops when Mary-Lou called me Andy. She'd never done that before I though musingly. Of course I'd never raised her from the dead before either.

I reached inward and touched the pool of magic there to calm myself.

Five minutes later we were still waiting to be fetched so we could be presented to my 'subjects' and I was getting antsy. So to calm myself I picked up a random book on magic and opened it to the first page. The title read 'Conjuration of Elemental Spells.'

This looks interesting I thought. My first forays into magic showed that it revolved mostly around imagination, visualisation and an old language that vaguely resembled Latin. It seemed to conjure fire all I had to do was imagine the energy leaving my body, visualise it becoming a ball of fire while focusing on the words they had written in the book. It looked like one of the words mean fire, while the other two were descriptors of some kind.

I figured they probably altered the spell and gave it form. So once I began to learn this Latin like language all I would have to do is focus on an element and describe and visualise what I wanted. I tried to create a ball of fire as the book said but achieved nothing.

I frowned. I looked rather stupid stood there glaring at my upturned hand especially as I was wearing a rather posh dinner jacket with a knife and money purse hanging from my belt. Clearly Jacob thought I looked funny as he broke into fits of laughter as he saw me frowning at my palm.

I looked at Mary-Lou and saw laughter dancing in her eyes and the corners of her mouth slightly upturned but not quite to the extend that she was smiling. I was surprised to find that I found her very attractive. I blushed and focused on my hand once more.

Those two clearly didn't snag to my strayed thoughts and burst into another fit of laughter. I felt a touch of irritation at being laughed at and imagined a surge of energy shooting down my arm and bursting into a fireball suspended above my hand. I was completely dumbfounded when a very real and very hot fireball appeared in my hand. I shouted in glee at my success. I could feel the intense heat being produced by the fireball on my hand and I knew that if I held the spell for too long I would probably burn myself. I glanced at the book in my other hand and quickly visualised the fireball disappearing while focusing on the appropriate words.

The spell was pretty much the same as the first but there was an extra descriptor on the end. Presumably that one cancelled the spell. I decided to try an experiment and pointing at the fire in the stone hearth which heated the room I thought the words for 'fire' and 'extinguish'

The effect was instantaneous and dramatic, it looked as if a sudden gust of wind had blown a small candle out and I felt a small thrill as I felt that slight pulling sensation in me that was the feeling of magic being performed. I thought the fireball spell again and instantly I had a roaring ball of fire, but this time the flame was a deep blue colour at the centre and I could feel the heat was much more intense.