Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 04

The idea of Nurcan's mouth on his wife's pussy stirred and shook his emotions in a sack and kicked at them violently until they grew quiet. She was wet, waiting, and sucking his cock after he'd just fucked a woman twice his age in the ass. What thing but love could drive a person so? It would never occur to Jyran that Prende was more the cause, but his mouth closed on Lorna's pussy with ferocious appetite. He tasted, or imagined he tasted Nurcan's own tongue mixed with Lorna's nectar -- along with some other, unknown sense of anyone else Lorna might have taken to her bed the night before.

Whatever Lorna's source of information, she wasn't but half wrong about him pumping his seed into any waiting womb... he'd had a tryst with one other woman the same night Prende had arrived, after Lorna had fallen into a sweaty, spent sleep.

Now, shrouded under Lorna's dress, his face awash in her juices, Jyran's brow was slick with sweat, and he could feel Lorna's heat bathing his face with every lash of his tongue. He pressed a finger into her, then another, then a third -- and massaged her insides slowly in time to her stroking of his cock.

Lorna moaned in delight, wondering vacantly if perhaps he could taste the seed of her brother-in-law still inside her, or if her sister had sucked it all out in her hunger. She wondered if he enjoyed Nurcan's debauched attention as much as the hag had said, and if her own arse would give her as much pleasure... she climaxed with the thought of Nurcan teaching her such indulgences, and her husband's turgid shaft defiling her so intimately, even as her belly swelled with his child.

Jyran came, groaning in pain and pleasure, his sack aching from the strain of it, and his cock threatening to burst. Lorna sloppily sucked and licked at him, swallowing his essence in a way that had taken new meaning to her since Matta had chosen Jyran as an apprentice.

A sorcerer's seed in my belly. She smiled around the softening, pulsing flesh of Jyran's spent penis.From both ends.

...

Nurcan sighed wearily, studying the ripples in the air and the ripples in the water of the wash basin. She had scrubbed herself clean, that morning, and gone to Lorna's family home to find the younger woman tangled with her sister and brother-in-law in their marital bed -- all reeking of sex and drying semen. Their blushing shyness was not endearing, but a reminder that Prende's magic was still making havoc for South-wold -- so long as the nymph remained. She'd explained what she and Jyran had done, and explained how itshould be done more properly to reduce the risk of infection -- and offered toteach Lorna, gods help her, if she were so inclined.

The older woman had to admit, Lorna's tongue was far more skilled than she'd expected in her enthusiasm, and the nymph's magic felt all the weaker for the many orgasms that Nurcan had enjoyed in just the last day. She wondered if that proved true for everyone in South-wold, or if it was some trick of her magical legacy... or her age, as her father suggested... or even something else she did not yet (or may never) know.

She pushed such considerations aside, choosing instead to focus on the few exercises Matta had taught them for summoning light. It began simply enough, as Matta said that magic often began simply, with thewill needed to bring the light -- the spell -- into being. From there, seeing the rippling, ever-shifting waves of magic all around -- like her eyes were seeing the world through a third lens along with the sight she normally enjoyed -- gave her the means to shape a small globe of purpose around a glancing mote of light already passing by in the air.

Studying the globe in her hand, she thought she could see other such motes still darting about outside... she only needed the one (according to Matta), and so she let the other light pass by and through the cage without getting stuck... as though the cage were purpose-built for the single glaring mote of light buzzing around like a trapped hornet. It moved with such speed that she could not see it clearly (indeed, it was light, and hurt to look at directly for any great length), but she couldfeel its presence in the sphere. Nodding approval to herself, she gave a low, thoughtful hum. It was something she did, at times, in deep concentration... she had noticed that, after becoming Matta's apprentice and being shown the raw semblance of magic, the ripples and lines Matta spoke about reacted to sound as readily as they reacted to her focus of will or movement of her hands.

It seemed to Nurcan that the glow increased when her voice grew higher, dimming as her throat-song grew low and quiet.

Nurcan felt sweat rolling down her face, and she deliberately ignored the salty sting of it running into her eye as she contemplated the orb of light at her fingertips. It looked to her that the orb was solidifying to her song, becoming a physicalthing in her hand. Indeed, when she thought she could contain the energy no more and she relaxed her grip -- the orb dropped to her palm with a tangible smack. It hefted like a bauble of glass, yet Nurcanknew it had no weight to it. She looked into it, but the presence of the mote of light was hidden by its movement... and her lack of focus. Straining to her feet, Nurcan held the light in her outstretched hand like it might burst into shards of glass (or worse), and made quick steps toward Matta's shack.

"I made this." Nurcan gingerly set the orb in front of Matta on the furs around the fire pit. "You did not tell us that magic is as much about song as anything else."

"Everything and nothing." Matta's gaze seemed to pierce the orb, into some far-away place beyond that Nurcan could not yet see. "You have tempered your task with a patient tongue."

"I am my father's daughter." Nurcan nodded.

"Take this light from my hand." Matta offered a yellow globe, as he had done for Deedra.

"What is the proper way?" the eldest of Matta's pupils narrowed her eyes at him, her brow raising with curiosity.

"Already." Matta shook his head, a wry smile tugging at his weathered lips. "Already, you exceed my expectation, even for one so young."

"Young, Matta?" Nurcan laughed with bitter humor, stroking her hand over her head through straw-gray hair. "Only you and my father could call me young."

"Well..." Matta's eyes seemed to lose focus, darting wildly about -- the globe of light, forgotten, winked from existence. "I meant no offense, child."

"Hush, sweet Matta." Prende swept into the small room from the smaller sleeping chamber in the rear of the shack, though what she had been doing was as mysterious as her other comings and goings in South-wold. "You are home, in South-wold, and you are safe."

"Safe?" Matta scowled, rubbing an ancient hand against his bony jaw. "I believe no-where to be safe, anymore."

"No more than anywhere else, Elder." Nurcan nodded in agreement. "Yet, we are here in South-wold."

"And who are you, Elder?" Matta's voice had softened, losing many of its years of cynicism -- though none of the weight of time itself. "I do not know you."

"I am Shaum's daughter." Nurcan forced a smile to her face, but did not think it carried very well. "You were teaching me magic, in your way."

"Shaum has no children! He's just a boy." Matta's frown deepened with his confusion, lost in a time long past. "I was there when he was born... he's... I'm..."

"Peace, Matta..." Prende knelt smoothly at his side, her flawless, golden-hued skin shining softly against the dull, wrinkly flesh of the ancient human. "My sweet Matta, how lost you must feel."

Nurcan hoisted herself to her feet and made for the doorway, even as her teacher was being coddled by the nymph.

"Fetch me when he regains his sense." Nurcan bowed with appropriate deference to the bewildered sorcerer and took her leave.

"No, I've sense a-plenty." Matta barked to her shoulder as she departed. "They have started calling me theElemental, you know. Not many Sorcerers earn a title, to go with their wizardry."

And yet they all go mad, in time. Nurcan gave a backward glance at Matta, who protested at Prende's fussing even as the nymph sought to calm him.

It was the first time Nurcan could recall Matta ever mentioning her father being young -- though she'd had her suspicions. Ancient wizards were a fantastic keystone of arcane lore, told as cautionary or inspiring tales to the young... any truth to those stories lay carefully guarded in the passage of time among the shorter-lived, mundane stock of humanity -- for wizards never offered to elaborate on the subject. The vigor of Matta, the Elemental, even when Nurcan was young, had been a sight to behold, for the sorcerer had repelled bands of giants, orcs, raiding parties of goblins, bandits, and even a few passing human armies bent on conquest of some far-flung place or monster that happened into the shadow of Renks Cairn but did not breach the city proper. She gnawed at her lip thoughtfully before she took up a perch on the rail of a fence just outside the central cluster of buildings that comprised South-wold's heart. There, she took to watching the magic rippling in the air around her. She took to singing... humming... chirping, and trilling sounds... exploring how the lines and rippling waves moved, split, or reversed course to different noises. She was careful, so determinedly careful, to not imbue her actions with willful effort -- for that was the way of magic. Nurcan only sang and observed.

With time, she came to find the experience relaxing -- and sank from the railing to the ground with feather-like slowness -- only to startle from her trance and crumple to the hard soil like an overturned cart. She had lulled herself, however briefly, and was alarmed at the swiftness with which the magic had overwhelmed her. Matta had warned of this, if not in his words... certainly the sorcerer's great age did nothing for his wits, but it was widely and commonly known that mages lose their minds with time. Magic has that kind of corrupting influence. Whether outright madness or more subversive depravation of the spirit from arcane glutting, any sorcerer that did not die in violent conflict would often rot from within and become hunted by other wizards. Perhaps, Nurcan considered as she dusted herself off and allowed the rippling apparition of raw magic to slip from view, that was how the truly ancient wizards kept order among the younger wielders of the arcane.

Keep them fighting among themselves, and the spoils are yours. Nurcan gave a cheerless scoff before turning her mind to whatever enchantment she had worked upon herself. Doubtless, Matta would -- at some point -- be able to provide some measure of clarity.

...

Jyran flicked the tiny flame from finger to finger, delighting onlookers in the lane as he strut about their midst.

"Already, I am beginning to control fire." Jyran gave a toothy smile, the flame springing from his left hand, tumbling overhead and landing squarely into the nest of his right hand. "Matta is teaching us well... perhaps a bit slowly, but he's confused..."

"Careful, Jyran." One of the onlookers chuckled. "Don't let Matta hear you say that."

"Or Prende." another offered. "She mightn't like it."

"The nymph?" Jyran's eyes remained focused on the flame as he juggled it about. "I think we all know where her magic lies."

"Here, here."

"I heard you were using some of that magic, yourself, Jeer."

"Nonsense." Jyran chuckled. "We've all found profit in it..."

He let the crowd cheer and whistle lustily in his heavy pause.

"...but I love Lorna -- a fair bit more than the lot of you..." the crowd laughed with him. "...and I think I shall acquit myself well, ere the wizards of Renks Cairn bother to show their hairy jowls in South-wold."

More laughter, howls, and whistles -- men and women both -- and Jyran drank in their attention. He decided to flourish, splitting his hand-sized flame into two parts and sending them spiraling about his head. As soon as the flame doubled, he felt his ears begin ringing and the rippling in the air became more turbulent. Sweat rose on his neck, and he wrinkled his brow in concentration... feeling his control of the spell slipping quickly.

Two flames cannot be so different from one. he assured himself and bore down on the spell with clenched jaw and straining fingers.

"Jeer...?"

"Almost." he grunted through his teeth, his vision starting to blur. Something smoldered in his mind, but he pushed it aside to divert all his attention to shaping the flames with his fingers, feeling his will clamp around the spidery lattice of the spell and demand that it exist. The ripples seemed to react to the pitch of his breathing, turning sharply toward him and rushing inward at odd angles.

"Jyran?!" someone called from very far away, but Jyran refused to be distracted.

The flame split in two, as he intended, and he gave a triumphant gust of breath, sending each of the flames up and outward in opposite circles about his head... but the magic buckled around him, in time to his breathing, and he felt a painful heat in his chest... fire erupted from his mouth, and he clamped his hands over his face in horror, attempting to stifle the fire, his breathing, even his sudden panic. The pain lanced outward from his chest, down to his bowels and up into his face, Jyran felt a cooling rush of relief as the flames flickered and vanished.

"Gods!" a scream, shrieking, a blinding flash of pain and light. Jyran erupted like kindling, his eyes exploding from the sudden heat as his skin cracked and charred. His hands clawed wildly at the air, his feet at odds to decide which way to run, and he flopped forward to the dirt and rolled about. He beat at his face, clawed with fleshless fingers at hollowed-out cheeks even as the fire consumed him like so many dry twigs.

"Matta!" but Jyran's liquified ears were long deaf to any sound, even as his tortured body danced violently against the ground in vain to extinguish the flames, his tongue a lump of cinders in his mouth and his chest a husk of blackened meat.

When Prende and Matta finally arrived, the flames had already died with their maker, and Jyran was mercifully still even as smoldering embers flashed ashes from his carcass into the air like thoughtless flies around a forgotten meal.

Nurcan and Deedra were near at hand, and Matta spared them nothing of his thoughts.

"This is why you doexactly what I tell you." Matta pointed for emphasis. "And you pups..."

Matta spat the words, a mist of spittle chasing outward. Those who had dared to cajole and entreat Jyran were as struck by Matta's fury.

"You are every bit this undoing as Jyran." Matta fumed. "Be humbled, and be glad I do not turn you inside out, the lot of you. Be gone."

"Matta, peace." Prende daubed at Matta's brow with a damp cloth, the assembled villagers fleeing Matta's wrathful shadow. "I understand..."

"No, woman." Matta growled, shrugging her off in anger and shuffling toward the charred remains of his student. "Thisboy did not understand... my pupils do not understand... they must beready."

"Then teach us." Nurcan snapped, drawing Matta's baleful gaze and the woman did not flinch in the slightest. "What spell killed him? How do we protect each other? Protect South-wold? How do we learn fast enough, when you cannot keep yourself sane long enough to teach us?"

"How indeed." Matta glared, a thick frown creasing his weary face.

...

"Can fire be so unnatural?" Ginga mused, shivering against the blankets wrapped about her in the bed she'd shared with Akuji for two nights now. The afternoon had soured with the news of Jyran's death.

"All fire." Akuji nodded solemnly, hiding his admiration of the young woman's curves beneath the covers. "Magic fire certainly more-so, but even a grass fire here in the plains..."

His voice trailed-off and he waved his hand expansively toward the wall.

"I know, Akuji." Ginga offered a small smile, dipping her head with gentle apology. "It's just... it's been..."

"Terrifying." Akuji sat beside her on the edge of the bed, wrapping an arm about her shoulders and pulling her to his chest in as comforting a manner as he could. "I know... we are all still wounded beyond mending, I fear."

"With Prende's magic, perhaps wounded in ways we should not be." Ginga blushed, her face nestled against Akuji's broad chest. She basked in his warmth and struggled with his fatherly embrace and the very similar attributes Damon shared that she so enjoyed. Ginga inhaled the smell of him, the sweat and dust clinging to his shirt and the skin beneath; the fearful soot, the deliberate clay, the barest stink of being unwashed after a laborious day of building and hauling.

Shaum had given rites over the remains and ashes during the funeral pyres, as was proper, but there always seemed to be another body to haul away to be burned, mostly orks in the outer fields -- struck down by lightning during the raid and found now days later. The stench of fire and burning corpses had become commonplace, and Ginga had begun to fear South-wold going feral as much as the orks. Now, in the shivering darkness of early spring, the heat of the day fled with the sun, she huddled closer into Akuji and embraced him with both arms. He smelled of coal and iron, wood, soil, sweat, and onion... her tongue tingled at the stink of him, and she cursed herself for being so weak against what must be the nymph's magic.

Akuji, easily twice her age, was not blind to her struggle... for he witnessed it in every face in South-wold that was old enough to know human lust for what it is. He pitied the youngest, the most likely to be haplessly caught between agonizing grief and primal lust, unable or unknowing how to find a path between or around such twin catastrophes. He remembered his own youth, and the demented caprices that came with it.

"It's a wonder we survive." Akuji grunted in ill humor, but lifted a hand below Ginga's chin to look her in the eyes. "Yet, we survive."

Her eyes were red and weeping, with tears already streaking her face, and she pressed into him and kissed his mouth. Akuji responded by cupping her face with his hands and tending to her lips with careful softness to her almost blind hunger. When Ginga's tongue prodded and tasted at him, he met her with delicate, guiding movements and caressed her tongue with his own.

So entwined, Ginga felt her urgency begin to fade as Akuji answered her lust-song.

"Is it wrong of us...?" Ginga sobbed into his mouth, ashamed in her grief and unable to stop in her need.

"No more wrong than anything else." Akuji huffed, stripping his shirt and climbing over her in the bed.

Ginga's eyes took in the sight of him -- admiring his similarity to her beloved Damon, and marveling at their differences. Akuji's limbs were heavier, more scarred by time and great labors, and his belly more soft, but his chest was a proud mass of muscle and scars that only his life could have written in his flesh. His cock profiled against the loose fabric of his breeches, but he did not strip the leggings as he laid his body over Ginga and pressed her down to the mattress. She sighed under his weight, feeling the firm insistence of his cock through the layers of coarse material between, and enjoyed the practiced ease with which his hands moved over her shoulders and hips. His mouth found the hollow of her neck, and his tongue wrote strange, meaningless patterns along her jaw and throat. Ginga's fingers tangled into Akuji's thick black, gray-streaked hair and guided his head from her left shoulder to her right... Guided or followed, she didn't care.

Akuji enjoyed the contrast of Ginga's dark, soil-black, brown skin to the red-brown clay of his own, and his nostrils flared at a familiar odor he'd noticed clinging to his son not long ago. He too, felt a shame he could not ignore, battling the lust more powerful than he'd ever felt for his own wife. Now, both widowed by the Sidero, they found painful comfort in the other's arms. So many similarly bereft, yet none so nearly or with a child of the dead between them. Akuji wondered how many of the remaining families were finding an easing of their grief in the beds of their siblings and in-laws, cousins, or parents. It was a vacant dread for the dangers whispered of orks inbreeding misshapen and sterile mules. What bitter relief, then, that his son had already sown Ginga's womb and got her with child... though Akuji was free to bury his grief in her and she to feel her own grief scoured from within, even if Ginga bedded someone nearer in blood...