Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 15

"I'll take the letter of credit." Damon blurted suddenly. "And your word you'll tell no-one of our passing through here, you keep the coin's true value for yourself."

"Don't be stupid, lad." Came the squint-eyed grimace of reproach. "You think I can fool Ser Majesty that I just happened on the damnable thing through my own mercantile charms? No... no, Hitsuyo will learn of you, later than sooner if you are very lucky. I can only say that I assume you are traveling the north coast road... stop! Say no more of your pilgrimage."

"Alright." Damon sat back, taking heed of the interrupted rebuttal.

"I know a bowyer that could perhaps supply you with a good hunting bow and arrows... can any of you shoot?" He looked among them, licking his lips and mussing his whiskers.

"I'm a fair shot from a hunter's blind." Damon shrugged. "I wouldn't... I've never shot at a person."

"Spear plenty orks." Abhilash grunted, then laughed.

"You don't carry yourself like a practiced soldier... can you wield a spear?"

"That's..." Damon blushed, looking down. "I'm as you say: a hedge-wizard."

"We could use some armor... maybe gambeson or..." Ginga blurted before falling to a murmur, "...maybe a cheap brigandine."

"I'll stop you there, lass." The admonishment caused those red-and-gray whiskers to dance left and right as he shook his head. "Armor in a fray is all well and good, but more than something to protect you from thickets and the occasional wild cat is only going to make you a more tempting target... bandits don't rove alone, and the poorer you look the less they'll try to steal from you. Might even leave you alone."

"Except our bodyguard makes us a more tempting target." Damon pursed his lips and steepled his fingers in front of him. "So perhaps something more discreet? Maybe you know a hedge-wizard willing to take on my letter of credit?"

"That token's not fool-proof... But, I think I may ken the artificer you need... one who'll honor the token -- and pay me what I am owed for the staves and all."

...

Abhilash bristled visibly... audibly, a growl rumbling in her broad, wrapped chest and her claws flexing with dangerous intent.

It was an elf. The artificer was Paxon Jagara's associate or comrade-in-arms, from what the grizzled red-headed smith let on after formal introductions were concluded. He hadn't mentioned that the artificer was an elf, only that Jagara's Forge had done business with the fae through this shop in particular. Paxon seemed to indicate there was history between them outside their mercantile craft, but it was uncertain whether and how the ties binding them were woven.

"Messer Jagara." The elf bowed too low for a peer or former ally. A subordinate or deliberate mockery, perhaps.

"Stow the formalities, Crys." Paxon grunted, but the smile on his face told Damon that the jest was well received from the elf. Whatever was between them was well-seasoned and part of their every movement. "I have a real business opportunity for you. One I think you'll like."

"I do not like." The elf shopkeeper, Crys, wrinkled that slender, walnut-brown nose slightly when looking at Damon. "You bring merizi into the House of Jayana, and she does... not... like..."

"...she loves it." The elf closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose.

Damon's eyes and mouth opened wider, and Ginga gave an irritable sigh. Ginga and Crys were nearly of a height to each other, though Crys was lithe and slight of frame -- her bust almost invisible beside the human female. The elf stepped too-close to Damon as though following her upturned nose to some unseen flower or beckoning savory before settling back on her heels and looking up into Damon's eyes.

"When did this happen?" The elf's hand reached up and caressed the wiry, web-like scars on the left side of Damon's face. From so close, the difference in height to Ginga was more noticeable. The close press of her chest, and the firm little mounds of her breasts just dimpling the fabric of Damon's tunic pulled his attention downward even as her face crept closer and closer. He could feel her breath stirring against the fabric of his tunic at his chest, then up over his shoulder and through his hair.

She smelled faintly of hawthorn and clove, making his mouth watery and muscles tense at the same time. Something about the casually intimate way she was touching him made him uneasy, and her under-developed shape -- if voluptuous by elf standards -- made him think of Wanda and Tomas back in South-wold. She had similarly orange-red and amber hair, like turning leaves. Her eyes were curious hazel, with speckles of brown darkening them as she looked over the lines and traced them about.

Her velvety, dress-like robe split vertically by three hues each of red, blue, and yellow; and was belted with a fine silver chain just at her waist. It was violently colorful, and Damon found his eyes searching the shop for something else to look on. Looking the elf in the eyes also seemed an equally troublesome idea.

The growling of the she-ork stopped, and Ginga took a breath to say something... that's when Damon noticed some other sound pricking his ears.

"What?" He asked, which caused the elf to step away from him with a smirk of amusement and secret mischief shining in her eyes.

"You've no idea what you bring me, dear Paxon." Crys smiled and gave Paxon a curtsey that could have been genuine and mocking. "Thank you."

"He's not a pet." Ginga stepped forward. "We're here on our business."

"Quite?" Crys pouted. "Crysanthias Jayana is chastened -- humbled before you."

Another curtsey -- this time the mockery stirred Ginga's ire, but the human knew better than to meddle with a hedge-wizard... even if she were some puckish elf.

"Here, Crys." Paxon held out his thick hand, turning the sovereign's token between his thumb and forefinger. "Have a look, and you tell me if it's worth the bother."

"Tashin hankali!" Jayana exclaimed, clapping her hands closed over the coin and trapping Paxon's hand in her much daintier fingers. "How'd you manage to get one?"

"It's mine." Damon straightened, trying to get a grasp of his wits. "I was paid them, by the captain of the Forge Spitter."

Ginga hissed him to silence, warning against revealing too much. Abhilash kept her narrowed eyes focused on the elf, grumbling something under her breath that was far too long for a simple "stupid" rebuff. Unperturbed, Crysanthias -- Crys -- eyed Damon with more wonder and amusement.

"And are the two related, hm?" Crys smiled sweetly, her voice light, airy. "A sovereign token for a sovereign token?"

"No." Damon shook his head, but started to wonder at the possible meaning of what the elf was saying. "Not... No, not in the way you think."

"A pity and a joy." Crys was beside him again, her tiny breasts pressing into him as she was near enough to him that loose strands from his braid billowed around her face as she breathed. One strand landed on her head and gave Damon something to focus his attention on that wasn't the obvious pressure of small elven breasts against him, the sensation of her knee gliding along the inside of his leg. The sickly-sweet and spiced aroma rising off her. The glint of her eyes and the slightly too-wide smile of her mouth.

"This must have hurt terribly." She feigned a pout, her eyes still lit with laughter. "You poor dear..."

Then she laughed, bubbling and sighing as she shifted away from him.

"Not your own magic, clearly." Her mirth vanished into a clinical survey of his person from three paces away. "And I'm not familiar with what you've done to yourself... may I study it?"

"No." Damon's eyes narrowed, and he instinctively held his arm out to stall Abhilash from doing... whatever the ork's louder growl might've suggested.

"And what are they hoping to buy from me, Paxon?" The elf looked intensely bored of the exchange, as though their very presence had become embarrassingly tedious. "A stake in my shop, perhaps? A curated tour of the fae lands and a gateway to the Other?"

"Protection." Damon answered. "Deal with me, I am the rightful owner of the coin."

"Are you?" Crys gave an awestruck stare, as though the revelation were truly a confounding, impressive notion. "Protection from what?"

"Bandits." Ginga and Damon answered at the same time, but Crysanthias turned on the human woman with a face twisted in fury.

"It's not your coin, is it?!" The elf demanded, scowling and her walnut-brown skin darkening noticeably. "Be quiet unless you have business in my shop."

"Crys." Paxon urged, his voice low, soft, and nearly drowned-out by the spitting of ork threats from over Damon's shoulder.

"You're right!" the mercurial elf's demeanor changed again, and Crysanthias' tone was friendly as though her momentary wrath had never been. "Where are my manners, do please come have a seat in my parlor. No sense standing about in the workshop!"

...

With the formal bargaining finished, Damon felt much better about his lot in life at that moment. The eerie, alluring and unsettling elf hedge-wizard wasn't looking to cut him open, poke, prod, or milk him... all things he'd initially feared at her intense interest. Her aid came in the form of two letters of credit and three enchanted trinkets: a cloak, a necklace, and a braided leather coil she called a belt that was far too long to be worn about the waist.

Crysanthias explained that the necklace warded the wearer against attack, though exactly how it did that involved language which neither Damon, Ginga, nor Abhilash had any familiarity. The cloak could be used to fashion a large camping shelter, having hidden layers, catches, and pockets that could fold out and a command word that allowed it to become rigid as though set with poles, stakes, and rope. The "belt" was worn wrapped about the waist as many times as needed to fit snug and -- once fit -- would enhance the wearer's strength immensely.

"She can't wear it." Crys warned, pointing at Abhilash. "Jotun skin won't strengthen another jotun."

"Wait, this is skin from a giant?" Damon's mouth flapped in disbelief. "Where'd you get it?"

"Skin from three giants... from three rather unpleasant and uncooperative giants, I expect." Crys shrugged. "Traders, trappers, and sell-swords deal in all manner of esotery goods. Test it, if you like, but it won't help her at all. Maybe a little."

...

"Interesting." Crysanthias was making notes on a prepared sheet of vellum with a reinforced quill that used a metal nib and a special ink. "I'm impressed with how thorough this enchantment is... and you did this yourself?"

"It took time, and I didn't do it all at once." Damon sighed, trying to ignore his erect cock that had spurted twice (on command) during Crys' "examination" of his enchanted genitals. "I think it was a few days, and maybe three or four enchantments."

"Definitely wild magic." The elf nodded vigorously, eyeing him with that predatory intensity he'd come to dislike. "Intuitives usually find it easier to add magical enchantments onto their earlier work. You're lucky you didn't explode, or worse."

"It hurt, at times." Damon agreed, his cheeks flushing and his prick refusing to stand down in spite of Crys' indifference to his condition. "I would stop, find... find what felt right."

More notes. Mumbling in her native elf dialect -- or what he assumed was an elf dialect -- that made the absurdity seem so much easier to bear.

"And when did The Elemental do this?" the elf's hands were running over his shoulder and neck, up the left side of his face and across the wiry lines of black scar tissue. "Before or after?"

"Before?" Damon couldn't lean away from her -- his prick was already caught in her robe and the firm bumps on her chest kept pressing his naked flesh every time she got that close. "It was during an attack."

"Wait -- so you suffered a blow to the head and then The Elemental..." Crys' eyes widened with new understanding. "That makes much more sense..."

More notes, dashing back to the podium to scribble and mumble to herself. Casting her eyes up at him, Crys' smile faltered momentarily.

"That doesn't explain..." The elf set down her quill and drifted back to him, eyes narrowed and looking through him as she neared. "He had to have embedded... spirits -- would it have been a piece of himself? It had to be something absolutely..."

She mumbled again in that musical language, her slender brows knitting above her eyes, returning to scratch more notes on the vellum.

"Sacred? Zhu..." the elf came back, hands reaching up toward his face. "Open your mouth."

He opened his mouth, and she peered into his mouth as though trying to look through a keyhole. She dipped a finger between his cheek and gums, feeling about as if the thing she were looking for might somehow reveal itself if she only prodded further. He gently pushed against her shoulders when his gums felt scraped and dry from her questing finger's invasion of his mouth.

"That's enough of that, ser." Damon took a deep breath and tried not to look Crysanthias in the eyes. His cock throbbed eagerly, the elf's many-hued robe once again caught on the barely cowled head.

"Incorruptible!" the elf chirruped, clapping her hands together with delight. "That's the word! Oh, so silly -- I was so busy... slipped my mind."

"An incorruptible piece of... the Elemental?" Damon ventured, arms limp at his sides and the ache of his erect penis momentarily forgotten as Crysanthias was making more notes with that dancing quill with the metal nib.

"Yes, exactly! I don't know how he did it... he must have had a grimoire, at some point." She waved with one hand as the other wrote. "The madness... senility, derangement -- whatever we choose to call it -- and let's be honest, half the time it's someone else who decides which wizard or wild mage is a threat and which isn't -- but I expect you already have a thought or two about that. If he was losing his mind, I wonder what pieces had gone missing first -- and why."

"Wouldn't the pieces he deliberately gave away matter more?" Damon shuffled his feet and wondered if he could put his clothes back on.

"Of course, and he wouldn't want to..." Crysanthias' eyes grew wide in amazement again. "Could it all have been an act? No, but he could've set aside contingencies... fail-safes and plans, agents and... copies?"

She furiously scratched a few more notes, then looked up at Damon.

"He couldn't have performed that kind of ritual in the middle of fending-off a bunch of orks."

"I never said..."

"Anyone who knows The Elemental is dead knows his village was razed by orks. South-vale or some-such." Crysanthias drummed her fingers on the podium and chewed her lip. "I can make ten-thousand guesses how he managed it -- but the formula... without his grimoire, or the spell he used..."

"South-wold." Damon answered, turning to get his clothes. "I'm getting dressed."

"One more hour!" Crys' called at his back. "Your women will be back by nightfall, and I'll even give you a prepared book to start your own grimoire... you can't keep using the wild magic, if you want to stay hidden. You need to learn something more -- I don't want to say simple exactly... something more in keeping with being a hedge-wizard, or Guild hopeful. Start small... I have some basic spells that I could prepare for you to study."

"Fine." Damon gave another long-suffering sigh. "For those spells and some -- I don't know -- study techniques? I'll start my own grimoire and keep my head down."

"Excellent!" Crysanthia gleefully cheered, twirling in her dizzying robe with its silver chain belt. "I want to get some samples of your semen... and we'll see just how much you can produce!"

Damon groaned.

...

"Stupid. Weak." Abhilash thumped Damon's shoulder, her grin cruel. "Alive."

"Don't be smug, I saw how you were watching the door while we were waiting." Ginga adjusted the jotun-hide belt beneath her new gambeson jacket. "If I hadn't made you wait, you'd have rushed through the door for the smell alone."

Damon sank dizzily to the couch in the parlor, for once unconcerned with the nauseating patterns all around as he closed his eyes.

"Our host says food and drink will be provided." Damon whispered, trying to ignore the drumming pain in his skull. "And a place to sleep for the night. How'd it go?"

"Better than it went for you, it seems." Ginga crossed her arms over her chest, though it pushed her breasts flat beneath her coat, and for a moment Damon thought Abhilash might approve of the gesture. "We secured a sturdy canopy for the cart, a couple draft mules, two milking goats, and ordered ration and kitchen enough for two tendays... this gambeson and her brigandine."

"So much for being inconspicuous." Damon grumbled.

"Some of us couldn't spend all afternoon balls-deep in elf quim." Ginga scowled.

"It wasn't like that."

"He not rut her." Abhilash shook her head. "Wrong smell."

The last actually made an impact in Ginga's mood, and the human female grimaced by way of apology.

"Embarrassment and being handled like livestock aside," Damon winced, shifting on the couch and trying to find a more comfortable position, "I agree: I had the easier task."

...

Much better. Ginga cooed softly against Damon's chest, basking in the sweaty glow of their sexual labors. The man had made a point of servicing her, and she wasn't about to complain about the slow, steady build-up to climax... the kind of orgasm she had -- she hesitated at the notion of "routine" orgasm, but there it was -- when Damon was still a mere mortal man. The steady, buoyant wave of pleasure that slowly descended and cooled as Damon approached his own pinnacle. She didn't bother bracing herself when the world fell away and the oceans of euphoria tossed her about without regard for her sanity. Now, he cradled her to him as the she-ork set about her own habit of sucking the traces of Damon's first orgasm from his softening dick.

When he growled softly, Ginga rolled away from him -- not wanting the she-ork to accidently trample her in haste.

"Don't give her more than two." Ginga shuffled to the side of the broad bed and gave Damon a critical look before rolling over and trying to ignore her own mixed feelings on the matter.

"Right." Damon gasped, feeling Abhilash's folds slip over his hardened dick.

The ork glanced at Ginga, then down at Damon. Silently, even as the she-ork slowly ground her pelvis as firmly against Damon as she dared, she held up one clawed finger. It took him a moment -- mostly because he was baffled by the idea of Abhilash showing any sexual restraint -- before he held up a finger in response.

One? he mouthed the word, eyebrows skewed with the question.

Abhilash nodded, working her hips a little more before leaning down over him and smothering his face with her breasts. Damon wriggled a little beneath her, getting her left nipple into his mouth first. Teasing, he rolled his tongue around the hardened peak even while trying to take more of her breast into his mouth. Then, drawing back, he bit down -- much harder than he would ever dare with Ginga -- until Abhilash hissed with approval and pressed lower on him. When he let go, he tasted -- or imagined he tasted -- a single drop of milk in his mouth before he swallowed and gasped for air.

The she-ork looked down at him, her broad hands caressing his sides as she rolled her hips around and around, back and forth... his body had a softness that no Sidero had -- at least not before his magic changed them. She was having trouble remembering much outside the maddening desire for him in those first days. It still gave her a sour taste in her mouth, one that spoke of fear, to think about how powerful that desire had been. She blamed his magic for that, too, even if she blamed his magic for just about every inconvenience she perceived.