From alt.sex.stories.tg Tue Jun 25 23:47:28 1996 Path: mordred.cc.jyu.fi!news.funet.fi!news.eunet.fi!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-200.sprintlink.net!arclight.uoregon.edu!netnews.worldnet.att.net!ix.netcom.com!news Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.tg Organization: Netcom Lines: 145 Message-ID: 4qiod7$nef@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com NNTP-Posting-Host: mon-ca5-07.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Sun Jun 23 1:32:07 AM CDT 1996
This is my first time posting to a USENET group; hopefully, it will work out. If you like it, great! If not, please don't tell me by flames; I won't respond. If you have constructive criticism or praise, I'll respond to that happily. Enjoy!
The New Sorcerer's Apprentice
By Mellissa Lynn
As the door closed behind him, Alexander looked around him fearfully. He'd been terribly excited when the Sorcerer chose him as a new apprentice, but now that he was here in the castle, he was a bit nervous. The stories that had floated about the town after the last one had been dismissed in disgrace were only too true to believe now!
"Come!" the Sorcerer said in his deep voice, peering at Alexander from under his bushy brow. "The daylight grows weak, and there is much to do."
"Yes, sir," Alexander answered automatically. He picked up his pitifully small bag of belongings and followed his new master.
"You'll sleep here. Your lessons will start in the morning, and your chores in the afternoon. Most of the time the nights will be your own, unless I say otherwise. Is that acceptable?" the Sorcerer asked.
Alexander was astonished. To listen to the town talk, this man was an unfeeling, inhuman monster, yet here he was, asking Alexander if his arrangements were satisfactory as if he were a welcome guest. "Y-yes, sir," he stammered out.
"Good, then it's settled. Now, let's settle something right now. I can see in your eyes that you've heard the idiot villagers' stories about me. Take them all with a grain of salt. I encourage that stuff to keep them away."
Alexander's curiosity overcame his fear. "But what about your last apprentice? Didn't you kill him because he made a mistake?"
The Sorcerer grinned. "No, but I certainly felt like it! I was wringing water out of things for WEEKS! Look, what have you heard about that?"
"That he raised some kind of demon in here and the only way that you could stop it was to sacrifice him to it," Alexander said.
The Sorcerer laughed loud and long at this. "Oh, my, how the stories have grown!" he chuckled at last. "Here's the true story. He learned a spell he wasn't ready to use and performed it. He was a good lad, much like you appear to be, but just a touch lazy. Well, he performed a spell of animation - on a broom. He had it fetching water from the well to fill the reservoir inside."
"Well, he forgot to learn the last part of the spell...the part that stops the animation. The reservoir was filled to overflowing before he realized that. He got desperate and hacked the poor broom to bits with an axe, but he got the shock of his young life when the pieces all formed into new brooms and continued."
"By the time I got involved, the water was up to my room and he was swimming about, trying to stay afloat. I quickly stopped the spell, but we were quite awhile getting all of the water out and the place dry. I had a LOT of brooms, though!"
"But...what DID happen to him, then?"
"He decided that the magic life wasn't for him, but he didn't want to let his folks know that. I started a much tamer version of the story you just told me, and he left for parts unknown. The last I heard, he'd started a new line of work, something about giant-killing. Why anyone would go after giants is beyond me, but whatever gives your story a happy ending, I guess."
Alexander was quite relieved to find these things out, and suddenly realized he was quite tired. The Sorcerer led him to his bed and left him.
Alexander grew quite fond of the Sorcerer, and his home, in the next several months. He was friends with all of the animals, especially Jakob, the Sorcerer's familiar, and had free reign over the entire house...except one room.
He was only allowed in this room under the Sorcerer's direct supervision, for his own good. "There are many magical artifacts in here, my boy, and they all have a mind of their own, and a will to match. They try to tempt you into using them, so they can catch you for their own amusement. I guard these items for the safety of the land."
Alexander understood what the Sorcerer was saying after his first time in the room. The items all seemed to call out to him, whispering, "Try me, try me!" One in particular, a gold ring, seemed especially to call him.
He seemed to hear its call often after the first time he was in that room, even when he was no longer near it. Several times he found himself unconsciously standing in front of the door to the room with his hand on the handle. He fought its call, but at last it was to no avail.
It was the dead of night on a moonless evening when he finally decided to enter the room and get the ring. He could resist its siren call no longer. He tiptoed from his room through the kitchen, past the great hall and down into the cellar, beyond the arch of the workroom and at last to the door where the items were stored.
He opened the door and a faint light appeared in the room. It was emanating from the ring, guiding him to it. He passed the magic swords, twelve of them all in a pile; he passed the magic lamp that, if one listened to it closely, he or she could hear a voice screaming "Let me out!"; he passed all sorts of magic trinkets until he got to the one that he knew was right.
A slight noise in the passageway caused him to glance about in fright, but he could see no cause, and his obsession caused him to dismiss it. He stood in front of the ring for a moment, looking at it. At last, he could wait no more. He leaned forward, lifted the glass case from around the ring, and took it from its resting place. He waited fearfully for some kind of alarm, but nothing happened.
He held the ring for a while, looking at it. It gave no hint as to its powers or capabilities, looking for all the world like an ordinary gold band. The only marks at all were two symbols, very worn and almost unnoticable, on the inside of the band.
"Well, are you just going to look at the thing or are you going to try it?" he asked himself at last. And with that, he put the ring on.
Immediately he was frozen in place, unable to move. He felt tinglings from all over his body, but couldn't do so much as move his eyes to look for the cause. He was like a statue, completely rigid and unmoving.
He felt movement all over his body, as if someone was inside trying to break free through his skin. His leggings began to feel tight in the buttocks area, but loose in the legs. His tunic was quite tight on the chest, but loose on the stomach. His crotch felt loose as well. His sandal straps suddenly felt like they were on his toes, and he had the sensation of a weight hanging from his head. Then a sharp pain hit him on both cheeks at once, feeling like he'd been caught between two punches. A second hit his nose, and he winced.
As he stood there, it felt as if the room was growing larger around him. He would swear he saw the doorway move up about five inches. The whole thing was scaring him.
Suddenly, he was able to move again. Immediately, he looked down and screamed as he saw the two perfectly-formed teenage breasts on his chest, pushing his tunic out. He raised a hand in disbelief and saw a small, dainty thing instead of his own work-worn limb. He reached down between his legs to try to disprove the nightmare and found out that he was wide awake. He screamed again and fainted dead away.
Alexander woke up the next morning in his own bed. When he first awoke, he thought, "What a strange dream! The Master will get a laugh out of it, I'm sure!" He started to sit up and felt a weight shift on his chest. He looked down and realized that it was no dream.
"You've done it this time, boy!" the sorcerer exclaimed as he entered the room, Jakob hot on his heels. "Or should I say girl? You managed to find the one item I couldn't break the spell on, and now it's very likely you'll be this way permanently. What am I going to tell your family?"
"Master, I'm not even sure what happened. I can just barely remember going to the magical storeroom, but after that it's all like a dream. What exactly have I done to myself?"
"You found the Revenge of the Cuckolded Wife, and are now stuck with it. That's the name of the ring you're going to probably be wearing for the rest of your life, by the way. It was created by Zendella the White Witch of the Southwest, one of the most powerful of the Direction Witches. You may have heard of some of her sisters. One of them died horribly when a large structure landed on her out of nowhere, and another just boiled away one day when given a bath."
"Anyway, Zendella had married a man by the name of Canon, a barbarian from the land of Senarria. He was just exactly that, a barbarian. He was fond of wine, women, and song, and had no problem finding all of the above in quantity. Senarria boasts that he left behind more than a hundred scions, but you know how barbarians boast."
"Well, he was in a dire strait one time and Zendella was there to help him out of it. In return, she asked for his hand in matrimony. He'd never considered the thought, but she had saved him from a fate worse than death, so he felt honor-bound to agree."
"Of course, over time, his old ways drove him to the arms of other women, even though Zendella was a faithful wife, a great cook, and quite skilled in the bedroom arts, She caught him with a comely wench, in the throes of passion, and decided that he should be punished. She went home and performed the spell that created the ring."
"Canon hadn't realized he'd been found out when he came home. Zendella was quite pleasant to him, just as always, had fixed him his favorite meal, and later nearly wore him out i the bedroom."
"After Canon had finished and was nearly asleep, Zendella reached over and took his hand tenderly. Canon thought nothing of this, and was nearly asleep in any case. He hardly noticed the ring going on his finger...at least not for a few seconds."
The sorcerer paused for breath, then went on, "The physical effects he felt are, I'm sure, known to you now. However, he was almost double your age, and therefore the full effect of the ring hit him."
"Zendella had created a spell whereby the wearer of the ring would assume the appearance of the wench that Canon had been with that fateful day. She also stuck it with a curse that, once on, it would never come off...unless the appendage it was on came off as well. However, she still loved Canon, and thought that one day she might relent. So she put a spell of slow aging on the ring. Canon would have lived easily two, maybe even three hundred years, had he left the ring on. Instead, he died last year in a battle over, of all things, which side the two peoples buttered their bread on.
"Anyway, that was how Canon eventually was rid of the ring; he came to me and I magically removed his hand. That was the one loophole that Zendella had left without realizing it."
"The ring became possessed of a siren call after Canon had removed it. I think it was calling to Canon, trying to get him to put it back on. Did it tell you to come to it?"
"Why, yes," Alexander said still not letting himself realize what he'd done. "It called me several times, over these last few days. I thought I was imagining it."
"I wish you'd told me that!" the sorcerer snapped. "It might have made both of our lives easier. I could've blocked the call and you'd still be male." The sorcerer sighed. "Ah, well," he concluded. "At least I can make sure you have a steady job. I can train you as easily female as male. Besies, I'll have to keep you around to try to break the spell. Unless you're tired of that hand?"
Alexander finally let the realization sink in. "You mean I'm a girl for life? There's no way to break this spell?"
"Other than removing your hand, the only other possibility is finding Zendella. She may still be alive; it's only been about fifteen years since I received the ring. I would assume, since she was able to put the slow aging spell on the ring, that she put it on herself as well."
Alexander was aghast at what he'd done to himself (herself? he wondered). He now, instead of chasing wenches, had a body that would be the envy of any of them. He did a quick bit of arithmetic in his head, and realized that he could be this way for up to four centuries! "Oh Master, what am I going to do?" he asked, almost weeping.
"As I've said, there are only three choices for you. One, you become Alexander the One-handed. However, that would effectively end your apprenticeship here; Almost all spells require the use of two hands. Two, you search for Zendella. I'd advise you to wait until I've taught you all I can before you do that; time's not currently your enemy. Three, you live with it, at least until I figure out a way to break the spell. I've only been trying fifteen years; that's nothing for a good spell. I'm one of the better spell-decoders, and it still took me ninety- nine and a half years to crack the spell around that sleeping princess' castle. You remember the story I told you, about the castle covered with thorns, with an enchanted princess inside? That's the one I'm talking about."
"But-but how do I live with this?" Alexander asked, looking in the mirror. "I don't know the first thing about being a girl."
"There's only one way I can help you with that," the sorcerer replied, glowering. "I'm going to have to summon a demon and have it speed-teach you everything you need. Just so you know this, I'm not fond of demons!"