The Alchemist' Apprentice

Part 1 -

Edern poked his finger down at the page and exclaimed, "Now there is a likely possibility!"

Avedra rolled over on the rough cot, pulling a deer skin up over her head, trying to drown out the morning sun and the mutterings of her Master as he pored over some brittle ancient manuscript. This was a fit time of day only for farmers and shopkeepers, not for a girl who had toiled by flickering candle late at night ciphering manuscripts. She started to drift off again until Edern slammed shut the book. She groaned.

Edern crossed the one small room of the cottage in a few steps, deftly moving between the tables loaded high with precious scrolls and the paraphernalia of an alchemist, his wiry body grabbing the side of the cot and overturning the girl in a heap on the floor, her bare legs sprawled.

"You must be the laziest apprentice I have ever had! Get your ass out of bed, girl, and be about your business!" he thundered. He gave her a swift kick, his toe catching her left rump. She stared up at him with her tousled hair in her eyes, ready to retaliate with a sharp tongue, but she was awake enough to remember that would not be a smart thing to do with an alchemist running on a short temper.

"It's Friday the thirteenth, an unlucky day to be sure. Are you sure you really want me to gather plants?"

Edern threw a basket at her. "Take this and gather some lemon balm, and I'll hear no more of your Christian nonsense. It's a day full of ripe feminine auras, and it's lemon balm I mean to have. Make sure it's from the sunny side of the garden where the dew has burned off. I want no corruption on it, and it must be gathered now for the celestial time is ripe. Now be gone with you!"

He stamped back to the other side of the cottage, ignoring the young apprentice' glare, and was soon back with his finger thoughtfully tracing the outlines of experiments from countries far to the east, experiments which he believed would help him create the Stone of the Wise.

Avedra stood in the open doorway blinking in the sun and rubbing her backside. She hardly could see as it was and did not see the king's procession arriving until it was almost too late.

Edern cursed, muttering under his breath at the interruption. He pulled on his best robe, pushed her out the door and toward the garden, brushed himself off and bowed as the king rode a chestnut charger right through the cottage gate.

Obviously Avedra wasn't wanted. She wanted to eavesdrop on the royal conversation but that was for the likes of a Master Alchemist and not a lowly apprentice. She dawdled around the garden, not careful at all where she picked the balm, one eye back on the cottage. The old fool was trying to stay in the king's graces that much she could tell, but he was also trying to dissuade the king from something.

The king would not be put off and pointed his finger at the alchemist with a threat. Edern made a very low bow as the king galloped at full tilt down the path, his entourage struggling to keep up with him.

Edern shouted at her. "You, girl, get busy and get me that balm!"

Her eyes watched him turn back through the cottage doorway. She sighed.

Avedra gently brushed the twig broom across the rough floor, trying hard to stay out of Edern's way as he prepared the balm, grinding the essence with mortar and pestle, murmuring mysterious words over each step, gently heating the substance until a strange aroma permeated the room.

Avedra was trying so hard not to be a problem that she didn't notice where she was backing as she swept. The precious glassware provided by the king (no mere alchemist could afford the expense) clattered off the table and shattered into shards across the rough planks, spilling substances once combined with laborious precision by Edern. Startled, Edern looked up and promptly burnt his fingers and uttered a might curse.

Normally Avedra would have turned and tried to flee the oncoming wrath, but she remained rooted to the spot in her fear. Edern's face was a mask of purple apoplexy.

"That would be it, girl! You are the most clumsy, ill-mannered bitch of an apprentice in all of nature! You have spoiled the day's work and worse yet you have put me in jeopardy with the king. You will rue this day for certain," he warned.

He grabbed a handful of her raven hair and pushed her hard up against the door frame. She cried out in pain; her hands flew up to try to protect her head. Edern held her against the wall with the weight of his own body, where with the strong grip of his other hand he ripped her tunic from her.

"Don't get a female apprentice, they said. She'll be nothing but trouble, they said," he muttered to himself. "And I said but she'll be useful, she'll cast the female aura about my search, I said. The Goddess will be pleased, I said." He left the fragments of the tunic scattered on the floor and twisting his fingers viciously, he pulled her along behind him out the door.

Avedra groaned against the stabbing pain, trying not to make him more angry than he already was. Tears splashed down both cheeks as she gingerly hobbled along after him, her sensitive feet scored by the branches and sharp seeds that littered the ground. Blinded by the pain and tears as she was, she could only sense that he was pulling her along back to the garden. She stumbled over some rough stone, only held up by the merciless fingers in her hair.

Edern paused at the edge of the garden, glancing about until he saw what he was looking for – a spreading oak with stout limbs, strong enough to carry the weight of a struggling girl.

"I have just the place to hang a stubborn whore of a girl out of my way. This may really be your unlucky Friday the thirteenth," he said through clenched teeth.

He pushed her up against the rough bark of the tree; he tied her wrists behind her with rough cord. She still thought at this point that if she didn't resist her punishment might be lessened. And she knew that resistance was pointless anyway. Her father had been more than pleased to strike the unusual deal regarding her apprenticeship. This way she wasn't costing him a dowry, and between the laws regarding women and apprentices, she had been lucky to be treated as well as she had. He tied her wrists back to a loop that ran around her waist, while her tears soaked her breasts, nipples erect against the rough bark.

Edern roughly pulled her back by the hair until she landed on her ass in the dirt, her feet kicking out. She stammered in protest now that she had an inkling of what he intended for her. He lashed her ankles together as she started to kick too late. A foot came far too close to the alchemist's crotch, and he kicked her back until she stopped. There she lay in the dust bawling, as he finished trussing her. He threw the rope over the limb above and working her body up with one hand, he managed to suspend her upside down like a side of beef.

He slapped her hard across the ass, sending her body swaying and twirling about. "Now that I have you out of my way, there you will stay. Maybe I can get something done. But once I have started some processes back working again, never fear. I shall return to you. And it will be with lash that I will entertain you since you seem so bored that you must constantly get yourself in trouble this fine day."

He turned on his heel and left.

It might make no difference that she was an apprentice and mere chattel. She would not go along gently with her punishment. Not hanging upside down naked and bound in the heat of a summer day. And her body began to sway as she explored her bonds.

The raven hair dragged through the dust as she twisted, trying to get a finger somewhere on the knots that held her wrists fast. And damn him, he had prevented her from contorting her body up to reach her ankles with that loop he had tied around her waist, a convenient place to keep her hands out of mischief.

That didn't dissuade her at first as she twisted, groaning with the exertion. The morning sun climbed, the dew long since burned away, and now the beads of sweat trickling down her body were more frustrating. The tickling, the itching sensation from the back of her knees to the spot exactly between her shoulder blades, the damp, uneasy feeling of droplets of sweat mixed with her own juices caught in the dark pubic curls, made her twist more furiously until she hung exhausted upside down from the branch. There she hung in an eternity of heat and tickled by the occasional fly that decided to take a stroll over her helpless skin, plenty of time to consider her misdeeds and her unfortunate Friday the thirteenth.

Desperate she tried calling out for the Master Alchemist, begging forgiveness, anything if he would cut her down, even ease her parched throat. Yet there was no sign of him in the cottage doorway, and she soon gave that up. Now the tears really flowed down, stinging her eyes, blinking, adding them to the sweat that still soaked her in spite of the hot sun, until the beads of moisture eventually collected in her hair, the dusty tresses now matted.

"So you think you've had enough, eh, wench?"

Her eyes blinked open. "Oh, please, please I'm sorry I spoiled your experiment. Please tell the king it's all my fault. Just please cut me down? Please? I'm so dry, the sun is so hot…" Her voice trailed off as she gave up.

Edern pulled her head up by the hair, and as she cried out from the pain, he ladled lukewarm water into her mouth. He dropped her head, her body swinging some, gagging some in a coughing fit.

"I think not. You have cost me far too much today; I have no idea how I will explain to the king the loss of that glassware to say nothing of missing the most opportune cosmic junctions of the day. No, I do not think I am done with you yet. As a matter of interest, I have decided to try a little experiment with you, something I have gleaned from deep within the scrolls recently arrived from the East. Now hold still," he warned.

She coughed again and blinked. How could he think to perform experiments on her! This was entirely too much. She started to struggle again, her wrists now rubbed raw.

"I see you still have some life in you," he said cheerfully, mixing some kind of paste with mortar and pestle. "Well, then you should like this. It is rumored to produce the most irritating sensations in the female womb, taking her deep into the mysteries of the Goddess. The lust is uncontrollable, I'm told, especially when combined with physical pain. So, like it or not, you will serve as my subject just as you are. I will take notes, and you will report to me after all your sensations."

His probing fingers split her cunt lips apart, rubbing copious amounts of the paste into her tender skin. She bucked and tried to clench her thighs but to no avail. She cried out in protest, her fingers twisting once more in the rope, screaming when he even rubbed gobs of the vile stuff back between her cheeks, his finger poking past the tight rubbery ring of her anus.

Almost immediately her flesh began to burn and her cunt produced more wetness to dribble down into her pubic hair. But the burning sensation was not all; she tried to ignore the lust that had been building within her in her bondage but was now threatening to spill out everywhere. Her mind began to focus on mental pictures of forests of erect cocks against her will. Every time she closed her eyes she saw male testicles heavy with semen, and the lust grew.

She could see him step back away from her a bit, her vision blurry from the tears. Avedra couldn't tell what he was doing, until the end of the whip curled around her flank, the tip biting into that same drenched pubic mound.

Too late she screamed. Her body twisted of its own accord, her fingers scrabbling for some kind of purchase, some way to absorb the burning shock to her ass. The tip of the whip pulled away swinging her around again.

The whip took its time, caressing her from thigh to breast, lighting up her skin with burn but oddly enough also her lust. She twisted and cursed, crying out against the bite but soon enough crying out shamelessly for a raging phallus to fill her void.

Eventually the whipping stopped. She hung upside down, her body still swinging a bit but now covered with crimson stripes punctuated by the trails of sweat and female heat running down the dust. She cared nothing for the whipping; it was the lust that still coursed through her that plagued her most. All she desired, more than water, more than to be right side up, was to be thrown over almost anything belly down and ass up and to milk cock after cock in her spasming cunt muscles until she passed out from delirious orgasm.

The Master had been wrong indeed; today was really her unlucky day for she would hang tormented by her lust without so much as a middle finger to diddle her clit. And there she hung naked until a bucket of cold water was thrown on her. And somewhere within, she could hear the king.

"Ah, so this is the apprentice wench who has cost me so dear. Well, Master Alchemist, we may not have found the Philosopher's Stone this day, but I dare say we have found a recipe to drive the female lust. And for that I shall reward you well indeed!"

Edern bowed low, satisfied that the day had ended well for having begun so badly. "You are too kind by far, your highness."

The king motioned for a couple of soldiers to cut Avedra down, her body collapsing in a heap in the dust. "If you would be so kind as to loan your apprentice to my soldiers for the evening, they might not be set upon by bad luck as this unlucky day."

Again Edern bowed low, "I am but your humble servant, my Lord."

Avedra moaned as she was thrown naked over the shoulder of a soldier and carried off back into the forest. Perhaps this day would be lucky for her as well.