Font of Fertility Ch. 25

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All Characters in sexual situations are 18 years or older.

This story is a continuation of the Font of Fertility series. I would suggest reading Chapter 1 if you have not already. This chapter includes mf, mff, mfff, ff, solo and Finland!

Jeremiah goes to accept an apology.

Returning Dramatis Personae

- Jeremiah 'Jerry' Grant - Seat of Fertility, aka. Powerful Sex Shaman

- Lauren Baxley - Public girlfriend, Jerry's Prime in the magic world, closest friend and confidant

- Anna 'Other Anna' - Yaroslav's Prime, magical media mogul

- Lindsey Baxley - Girlfriend/Concubine, Lauren's step-sister via marriage, girl-genius

- Angela 'Angie' - Girlfriend/Concubine, Lindsey's friend from back in high school

- Stacey Wilde - Girlfriend/Concubine, godchild of Jerry's parents, athletic

- Victorious - Ancient demonic nightmare horse-turned-muscle car

Referenced Characters

- Annalise Stoker - Concubine/Girlfriend, Fire Mage

- Esmerelda - Seat of Death, aka. Powerful Death Wizard, second-youngest Seat, weirdo

- Genghis Khan aka Temüjin - Seat of Fertility, aka. Powerful Sex Shaman

- Jordan - Redheaded writer friend, interested in Jerry and his Harem

- Ndia - Eldest Seat of Fertility, aka. The Most Powerful Sex Shaman

- Uwe - Seat of Death, aka. Powerful Death Wizard, second-eldest

- Yaroslav - Seat of Life, aka. Powerful Experience Wizard, stoner/partier

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Helsinki.

Lauren and I weren't sure exactly what to expect. On the one hand, Lauren was fairly certain that Anna wanting to host us and apologize for the fiasco with the magazine meant that we'd be having sex with her. I wasn't nearly as sold, primarily because while that certainly seemed to be a much more 'normal' thing based on what we had learned from our dinner with Esmerelda, I still had reservations about it.

Anna was the Prime of another Seat, and based on what I'd seen at the Council meeting, Yaroslav was still in love with her. Separated, apparently, but the Life Seat still very much wanted and cared for her even if they weren't together.

"What is it, Jerry?" Lauren asked as she squeezed my hand. We were walking down the sidewalk in downtown Helsinki, having teleportaled to a nearby building from the address Anna had given Lauren. The sun was bright in the clear sky but unlike back home where the snows of winter were fickle and melting despite it being early January, the weather here had a bitter bite of cold that felt like a little kick whenever I breathed too deeply.

"I'm just thinking," I said. "It's possible that Annadoes want to apologise in the 'appropriate to a Fertility Seat' way, but that Yaroslav would be against it. Hell, based on the way they spoke to each other at the meeting, she might even want to do it with us just to antagonize him a little."

"That's true," Lauren said. "But that wouldn't make it your fault if he gets angry."

I looked over at Lauren with a raised eyebrow, and after a moment she sighed out a little puff of air in the cold and rolled her eyes.

"Alright, yeah, logic doesn't need to apply," she said. "So what, are you going to turn her down?"

"We just need to be careful," I said.

Lauren squeezed my hand again and nodded, then smirked a little. "Lindsey is so jealous, by the way," she said. "She gets why she couldn't come, but she's annoyed that you keep having hot hook-ups without her. First Stacey in Miami, and now me in Helsinki. You might need to bring her somewhere exotic."

"Maybe," I said and snorted. Despite everything, it felt weird to think of just jumping somewhere in the world and looking for someone interested in sex. That wasn't what Miami had been about.

"This should be it," Lauren said, checking the map on her phone.

The building wasn't super tall, at least by skyscraper standards. It was six stories tall and long, taking up most of a city block by itself, and faced with a light brown brick with dark tinted windows lining each floor. There weren't any big signs on it or anything, but the entryway was clear in the centre of the building with two rotating doors.

"Ready?" I asked as we walked towards the entrance.

"With you?" Lauren asked with a little smile. "Always, dorkus."

Through the doors, we found a two-story atrium that was much wider than it was deep. Unlike the outside facade of the building which looked a little dated with the brick, the inside was sleek and modern with shiny marble floors and walls. A security desk sat in front of a bank of elevators, and four men and women wearing all black were working behind it.

As soon as we entered, all four of them glanced up and stopped what they were doing, their attention on Lauren and I.

It took a thought for me to release the spell I'd come up with for the trip. It was small and fine-tuned so that it wouldn't drain my magic - I basically downloaded the language skills of each of the four of them straight from their left-side brains. I copied them like files and installed them in my mind and, once I was sure I hadn't just fucked up my own mental processing, did the same for Lauren. I didn't know exactlywhat I had gained, since I didn't copy any memories with the skills, but I was fairly sure I'd at least gained proficiency in the local language.

"Good morning," I said, switching to Finnish. The language felt... gloopy in my mouth. Some of the vowels dipped in odd ways, some of the consonants were intonated differently than English, and my mouth wasn't used to making all of the sounds in the order I was making them. But Iwas making them. "We have an appointment with Anna, I believe."

Two of them, a man and a woman, immediately smiled at hearing me speaking their language and moved forward, while the other two remained passive and sat back a little bit, keeping their eyes up from their work but only glancing at us while watching through the windows at the front of the building.

"Yes, good morning, honoured Seat," the male receptionist said. "We are very happy that you have come and graced us with your visit."

"Can we offer you any refreshments before escorting you to your meeting?" The female receptionist offered.

"No refreshments, thank you," Lauren said in Finnish with a smile. The strange language somehow sounded better coming out of her than it did my own mouth, at least to my ears.

"Would you prefer a male or female host?" the male receptionist asked.

Oh, fuck me, I thought.Or, rather, don't fuck me.

I forced a smile. "I appreciate the implied offer, and you are both attractive, but whatever... meetings you have witnessed with other Fertility seats, I have a bit more self-control."

"We would be happy to provide the service," the female receptionist said, and I almost wanted to agree with her. She was a tall, slender brunette with a beautiful, aristocratic face that sported cute apple cheeks and what I guessed was a wickedly smart mind behind those eyes.

"Your offer is appreciated," I said. "But an escort to our meeting is all we need."

"You can follow me then, sir," the male said, gesturing around the desk and towards the elevator banks.

I started walking but noticed Lauren release my hand. When I glanced at her she winked and nodded me forward, so I followed the man while Lauren stepped up to the desk and leaned forward, whispering to the woman.

The man had that same smile still stuck on his face as he summoned the elevator, and after a few moments, Lauren joined us.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"I'll tell you later," she said with a little smile, taking my hand again.

The elevator arrived quickly and we stepped in, the receptionist following and pressing the button for the top floor. The doors closed, and I noticed he still had that same look on his face.

"You can relax," I said. "I don't bite."

The man flushed slightly. "My apologies, sir."

"For what?"

"I'm just... nervous."

The man had to be in his early thirties, so me making him nervous felt weird. The fact that the four of them down at the reception desk knew that I was a Seat hinted at them being part of the magical community, but I had to wonder if other Seats had visited Anna in the past and what sort of chaos those visits caused for the employees in the building.

"You don't need to be," Lauren said, trying to turn a charming smile on him as reassurance. "Remember, we're fromthis time. We aren't crazy."

That made him snort and cover his mouth as he tried not to chuckle.

The elevator ride wasn't long enough to encourage him any more, and as the doors opened we stepped into a modern, open-plan office. The floors and walls here were white, but the dozens of large screens mounted on the walls cycled through various colourful magazine covers that slowly flitted from one to the next. Some of the covers had celebrities I recognized, but most of them were people that I didn't. The magazine titles were also unfamiliar, and part of me wanted to just stop and read the article headlines because they presented as mundane like any other magazine I glanced at in line at the grocery store or something, but hinted at wildly more interesting topics.

There had to be three dozen men and women bustling through the work area, but moments after we stepped off the elevator they all went silent and turned towards us, dropping what they were doing and lowering their heads in an almost creepy sign of respect.

After five steps, led by the receptionist, I was weirded out. "You can be about your business," I called.

It took another long moment of hesitation before they started to slowly go back to what they had been doing, though the conversations that had once been filling the room were now muted and many of them continued to flick their eyes up at Lauren and I. One thing I noticed was that, among the various people working, there was a much larger diversity in ethnicities than I had seen on the streets of Helsinki or had expected for a business based there. I realized quickly that if Anna published magical media internationally, she probably also recruited internationally as well.

This business could very well represent the most diverse gathering of mages across the entire world, and it wasn't some weird cult or magical order or something.

Well, probably.

The receptionist led Lauren and I through the centre aisle down the middle of the workspace and stopped at a pair of tinted glass doors. A large assistant's desk was just to the side of the doors, stacked with what must have been proofs of different photoshoots and articles. The chair, however, was empty. Our receptionist escort hesitated, clearly thrown off by not having the assistant to hand us off to, but he was saved as the doors pulled inwards and revealed the inner office.

The assistant murmured her apologies, holding the door open and bowing her head, and I couldn't help but spare a long glance for her - my Dad used to talk about the old 'Swedish Bikini Team' beer commercials, and I'd seen a couple of them on YouTube when we'd looked them up. I'd always sort of felt like Lindsey could have been on that team, but next to this woman Lindsey was almost frumpy. She was stunningly gorgeous, probably six and a half feet tall, and there was no way she could hide the incredible bust she carried around under her tailored business blouse and coat.

The office didn't match the rest of the building. Not the inside, or the outside. The first thing that stood out was that the walls were entirely glass, but the building didn't have a corner office without brick. That was my first hint that whatever else was going on here, someone had magically modified the building. Whether that was Yaroslav doing a favour for his Prime, or some other ascended mage, I couldn't tell. The next was that, rather than being modern and sleek, the office was full of what must have been Anna's collection of furniture from throughout her history. There was a prominent central desk of exquisitely carved wood. Three amazing, huge rugs covered the floor. Standing mirrors with ornate frames, two gilded and one of bare wood, were positioned near racks of clothes that looked to be organized by decade and went back centuries. There were wardrobes, and side-tables, and divans and couches. A throne sat back in a corner, and I wondered if maybe that was the throne she sat in beside Yaroslav when they first ascended.

Anna was standing at her desk, talking quickly into a phone that looked like it belonged from the 1950s, in a language that I couldn't understand even with those I'd picked up from the receptionists. She was speaking urgently and glanced up at us, said one more thing and then hung up the phone. "Jeremiah. Lauren," she said in English with a smooth accent that was an indiscernible mash-up of Eastern European, Russian and Nordic. "I apologise for keeping you waiting. You are here much earlier than I expected."

Lauren frowned and checked her phone. "I mean, we weren't exactly waiting around, but this is the time we set up."

Anna came out from around the desk. "Ah, I should have realised- I understand the mistake I made. My apologies." She was wearing an elegant dress, almost inappropriate for an office setting if only because it was too formal. It made me think of when the girls made me watch The Devil Wears Prada and how Meryl Streep's character and all the fashion folks seemed to seek to outdo each other. It was black, backless and had a daring slit up the floor-length skirt on either side that exposed her perfect legs as she walked. Her cleavage was bulging slightly but not in an inappropriate way, and her black hair was styled in a modern, sexy way and hung loose around her shoulders and down her back.

She was gorgeous, and I was struck again by how she seemed almost morereal than Genghis Khan's Prime, Khaltmaa. Or even Esmerelda. If I had to guess, I thought that maybe Anna hadn't asked, or wanted, Yaroslav to change her from her natural beauty; certainly she'd had him stabilize her ageing to keep her somewhere in her early or mid-twenties, but other than that she just came across as a very attractive but real person.

"You expected that I'd take some time to use at least one of your receptionists," I guessed.

"And you didn't," Anna nodded. "Which, I think, says more about my assumptions than it should about you. Again, I apologise." She looked past us at the receptionist who had escorted us up and the stunning assistant. "Thank you. Back to work, now."

"Yes, Mistress," they both said, nodding and backing away from the doors so they could close.

"Mistress?" Lauren asked with a raised eyebrow and smirk.

"A little joke played on me by Yaro," Anna sighed. "The last time he visited my office, maybe a decade and a half ago, he convinced them all that I preferred that honourific. No matter how hard I try, I can't get them to call me anything else in the office. I think he enchanted the building."

"I could try and remove that if you want," I offered.

She sighed and shook her head. "If you did that, he would find out eventually and do something even more disruptive. But, please, come in and sit." Anna escorted us to a small sitting area with couches that looked like they might have been lifted out of some Tzar's royal rooms. They were stiff but, once Lauren and I were both sitting, actually fairly comfortable. "You were offered refreshments?" Anna asked.

"We were," Lauren confirmed. "Anna, please. You're acting like we're some dangerous business rivals or something."

Anna smiled with her lips pressed firmly together. "Well, thisis a meeting where I'll be apologising for a monumental fuckup," she said. "To a man who could level this entire building, and no one here could stop him."

"I think it would take alot more pissing me off to get me to that point," I said. "I'm a reasonable person."

"So were they all, Jeremiah," Anna smiled sadly.

"Well, he still is," Lauren said.

"Then, let me start again by saying how apologetic I am that anyone in my organization pried into your lives. Especially just as you were getting your footing as Seat and Prime," Anna said. "As you can see, my operation is a little chaotic. We are the only publisher of Ascended-related media in the world, and while the Seats don't pay much attention to my little 'project,' the common Ascended have come to rely on my publications for news and entertainment they would otherwise never receive. My office in America passed the article through without touching base with my editors here, or it ever hitting my desk. The author and editor thought they were getting a scoop and would rise in the company because of it. I assure you they've been reprimanded appropriately."

"Reprimanded how?" Lauren asked. Anna frowned for a moment, and Lauren pressed on. "Because, and I'm not trying to suggest that you're lying Anna, but thatwould be something someone in your position might say if they were covering for an action that actually did get rewarded because of the publicity and money that it brought in."

"Shrewd and cutting to the core of it," Anna sighed, then met my eyes. "She's going to be another me. Don't piss her off."

"I have no intention to," I said, grabbing Lauren's hand. "Ever."

"The editor was fired," Anna said. "Since he was the one who circumvented our protocols. The writer was disciplined and given some history lessons on why one does not pry into the lives of Seats and their close associates without invitation. He was sufficiently cowed, in my estimation." Lauren and I both nodded. We'd talked beforehand and hadn't exactly decided what would be appropriate, but we'd decide when we heard what happened if it was enough. Anna's decisions were tough but fair, which was exactly what I'd wanted; thankfully, that meant I didn't need to try and do something myself. "And, might I add," Anna said, focusing on Lauren again. "From one Prime to another, Lauren, I apologise especially to you. I know how... radical a change becoming a Prime can be. Entering this world without magic of our own. Without any real control other than the influence we have over our Seats."

"Thank you," Lauren said.

"So," Anna said. "By way of apology, it's only fitting that I offer a sacrifice - thankfully this didn't happen with a Death seat. The buck stops with me, so I of course offer myself for your sexual gratification, Jeremiah Grant. If you don't find me an appropriate sacrifice, however, my business covers the top three floors of the building and anyone in my organization will be made available to you. They are all Ascended, or the siblings or partners of Ascended, and are aware of the mistake that was made."

I sighed, and Lauren smiled at me. She'd called it. I felt awkward as hell about it, but she had, and we'd already decided how I needed to respond.

"Anna," I said slowly. "First, I don't think anyone could say that you wouldn't be 'appropriate' when it came to sexual gratification. And I certainly won't walk through your offices and choose random women to demand they have sex with me. If I accept your... sacrifice, though, I'm concerned how that would impact things with Yaroslav."

Anna frowned and stood up, circling around the couch she had sat on and bracing her hands on the back of it. "Yaroslav and I are not married," she said. "Well, not for a long time now. He has his life, and I have mine, and while we... collide frequently, as I will always be drawn to him, we are different people. We've both taken lovers over the years. Fewer on my part than his, but that's not saying much considering quite how many there continue to be for him."

"But were any of yours other Seats? And new ones, at that?" I asked.

Anna smiled and looked across the room at a small writing desk as if remembering something. "No Seats," she admitted. "Not in the real world, at least. In the Council chamber, yes. I've been careful over the years not to open myself up to... demands from other Seats. They've almost all visited my offices, and some of my staff have been 'blessed' by interactions with Temüjin or Ndia, but I've never been in a place to apologise like this before."