The Assassin and the Sorceress Ch. 08

Now that I was less limited by the strength of my own flesh, I tried again to see if I could free myself from my own enchantment without using the Oculus. I gave it a serious effort, struggling... pulling... stretching... Nothing! Despite all my strength and cleverness, I couldn't get my nipples to budge! I was stuck fast! And as I struggled, my imaginary audience only grew more entertained. Their laughter grew louder and crueler with every passing minute.

'Oh my god, look at her tits stretch! That's hilarious!'

'Yeah, her boobs are REALLY STUCK! Ha, she can't pull them off the wall, can she? Poor, stupid thing!'

'I hope her nipples stay stuck there forever! The freak deserves it!'

By now this was all I could take. My vagina was throbbing, and practically dripping down my thighs. My hand darted downward and began rubbing my slit and what lay just inside. It didn't take long at all. Before long, I was gasping for air. I had to lean my body against the wall to keep from collapsing. I let out a single shriek as one of the strongest orgasms I'd ever had took over my whole body. Then I just quivered and gasped until it was over.

I caught my breath for a minute. I dared to get back up, and as soon as I returned my weight to my feet, the sudden tug on my nipples and the feeling of being completely, hopelessly stuck made me horny all over again! I took myself to climax a second time, then a third!

That was good for a little bit. As I pulled back once again, the naughty, exciting feeling of my tits stuck fast made me reluctant to end the enchantment just yet. Three times was enough to sate me for a while, so I just stood there, stuck to the wall, for another hour. I moved around and tugged, feeling my magically tough tits stretch out with every movement. I just played with my stuck tits and kept myself very entertained. I did my very best to pull my nipples free, but it was completely impossible. All of my strength and cleverness combined was powerless to pluck my nipples off the wall. Only the Oculus could do that, but I wanted to see how long I could go without tapping into it.

After another hour or two, I became horny again. I took myself another two times, and was finally so exhausted I just had to lie down. I finally admitted I needed the Oculus and freed my breasts. I collapsed back onto my bed. That had felt incredible! I was more satiated right then than I had been in a long time! Why did that thought appeal to me so much? Why did an instance of abuse suddenly manifest itself in my mind as a sexual fantasy? I had no idea. The human mind is a strange thing, even more so when it comes to eroticism. But I didn't care. I had enjoyed that more than I could describe, and I wasn't inclined to question something I enjoyed. I fell asleep, just like that: stark naked on top of my sheets, still wet and sticky from my fluids, and it was one of the most restful sleeps I had had in a while.

3

Things started to deteriorate in the coming weeks. Rebecca's suddenly rekindled hatred of me was still burning hot, at it turned out. What more, a few phantoms from my past that I thought I had put behind me came back to torment me.

I was in the town square again the next day, going about some unremarkable business. Suddenly, a reflection of the bright midafternoon sky caught my eye. It was reflected in the water of a large basin that was being used as a horse watering trough. The wind was particularly calm that day, and the image of the sparse white clouds in the sky appeared ironically beautiful, considering what it was reflected in.

I stepped closer, noticing my own reflection. I took a closer look. I had decided to be bold, and had left my breasts in their larger state. So far, I had caught a few glances, but nobody had seemed to think anything was out of place. Maybe I was finally done developing them! I looked at myself, proudly.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my back. Before I could turn around, or even react in any way at all, I felt a firm push, and the next thing I knew I was careening forward into the basin. My hips landed on the side of the basin, but it was far too late to stop my fall. With a loud splash, my head and upper torso were plunged into the water, while my feet kicked in vain for purchase above me. My arms, pinned awkwardly underneath me, flailed to find anything along the bottom of the basin to grab onto. I had inhaled some of the water, and let me tell you, that water wasn't remotely as fresh as the reflection had made it look.

After thrashing around for a few seconds, I finally managed to pull my legs into the basin, after which I could finally stand up. I coughed up a lung full of fetid horse-water once I had finally managed to get my head back into precious, breathable air.

As soon as I had stopped panicking, I stood up, water streaming down my bangs in front of my face, and looked up to see who had done that. It was none other than Orson, a large, oafish boy, the son of a woodcutter, who used to bully me as a kid. He had stopped bullying me when he was eleven and I was thirteen, and finally bigger than him. He had certainly caught up to me again, but by then I figured he was enough of an adult to have bigger things to do. Apparently not, and maybe I shouldn't have had such high expectations of him. His brain wasn't built for much more than swinging an axe at a tree.

He ginned a stupid grin. "You looked like you were considering taking a drink, staring into the horse trough like that. Thought I'd help you make up your mind."

"What is wrong with you, Orson? Are you still ten years old?" I shouted, angrily.

He laughed a deep, vacant laugh. "Careful turning head over heels dressed in a shift. I saw your cunt!"

"And woe be to you that you'll never see such beauty again," I said, stepping out of the trough, spilling horse drool tainted water everywhere as it ran off me. A few bystanders had seen what Orson had done. Some stared with shocked expressions, while a few openly snickered. Never mind that I sometimes fantasized about being humiliated in strange ways; this only angered me immensely. I paid the onlookers no mind and took a furious stride toward him.

"Orson, I swear to the highest power in Heaven that if you do anything like that again, I'll force-feed you your own anus!"

Somehow, my anger only made him laugh all the harder. What more, the chuckling from some of the onlookers intensified. I would have expected a dimwit like him to laugh at something like this, but why were others laughing as well?

"What?" I demanded, furious.

"You're butt's showing!" Orson said, pointing.

I stopped and felt behind me. My palms touched only bare skin. The soaking wet fabric of the back of my shift had bunched up above my hips in the back. Finally, there came a simultaneous chortle from the three of four bystanders, and Orson grinned so wide I thought the corners of his mouth would meet on the other side. I'm sure you know by now that people seeing my nude body never bothered me in the slightest. Looking stupid, however, is another matter. I untangled the back of my shift, and it dropped back down into place with a wet plop. I was so furious I could barely think of what to say next. Calling him 'Orson Whoreson' was all that came to mind, but even in my anger I decided that was too infantile for me.

Before I could think of anything worthy of saying, he turned, gave me one last wink, and began walking away. Only then did some of the other villagers bother to approach him and scold him for acting so ungentlemanly. Two others came to me to see if I was all right. Humor first, I guess.

I ignored them, glaring at Orson as he plodded away with a stupidly proud grin on his face. Before I could think better of it, I recalled the Oculus to my mind and looked through it. It remembered what my damaged flesh looked like after my mother had beaten me that fateful day, and it understood fairly well how inflammation occurred. I picked a few spots on his flesh and made a few slight changes. If all went well, those spots would mature into painful welts and boils well before the day was done. There were many on his face and arms where they would show, and a few more on his body, especially in a few key places carefully picked to maximize their discomfort.

"I'm fine," I said coldly to my too-belated-to-matter well-wishers, and shoved past them. Despite the bright sun, it wasn't a particularly warm day, being late August. My wet clothes suddenly began to feel uncomfortably cold. Arms across my chest, I started toward home.

On my way out of the village square, I passed the last onlooker, the only one of them to have done nothing after the incident. I only even noticed her as her venomous gaze met my eyes. It was Rebecca.

"You deserved that and more, whore," she whispered to me. I paused for only half a second, thinking of how to insult her, then decided I was in no mood to put out the effort, and kept walking. Well, she was starting to get to me, now.

...

I used to have to put up with bullying like what Orson had just done to me all the time. When I was younger, some of the other children seemed to get great joy out of picking on me. The bullying seemed to die down as we got older, but I don't think it was because people hated me any less. I think that, as they matured, they just found better things to spend their time and energy on than the weird girl. Instead of acting aggressive toward me, they became cold. Somehow, it seemed the aggressiveness was returning, and it frightened me. It made me defensive.

I wish I could say Susan, Rebecca, and Orson were the only devils of my childhood to suddenly torment me again; they were only the worst of them. I caught a few sour glances as I passed by a few of my peers. A trio of girls having a chat stopped talking and glanced at me, then began giggling wildly. There were a few veiled insults here and there, and even some overt insults as I tried to talk to some people I had seen in the tavern.

That wasn't the only thing that started weighing on me.With summer nearing its end, our gatherings at the creek were dying down for the year. Additionally, Gaius was spending more and more of his time with Susan now, bringing our quintet down to a quartet for the most part. Gaius had treated me well enough after my 'talk' with Susan, when I did see him. He seemed to understand I was off limits to him now, and even if he hadn't, I didn't intent to break my part of the agreement I had made with Susan. He never mentioned anything strange having happened to Susan, so I suppose that meant Susan had never told anyone what I had done to her. I expected she wouldn't, but it was nice to know.

After our last meeting at the creek, we agreed we still needed to spend time with one another. We talked about getting together at the tavern, meeting up for family meals together, and other things, but it still felt like our group was on the verge of disbanding. A feeling of loneliness and dread came over me, some irrational fear that things were going to return to how they were before I had found the Oculus: being utterly alone, with no friends and a family who wouldn't speak to me.

The friendships I had made that summer were my fortress to protect me from the hostility of the world. And now that I feared the walls of my fort might come tumbling down, I felt more vulnerable than ever to these returning bullies.

However, nothing could prepare me for being scorned by one of my own friends.

A few days later, when my mood was barely recovering from that particularly horrible incident with Orson, Magdalene, the last person in the world I would expect to show anger toward me, came to do just that. It was one of the last days of harvest on the Adensons' estate.

"Morgana?" Magdalene called after me. I had been working by myself for at least a few minutes. I suppose she had waited for an opportunity to speak to me alone. Her tone was different than her usually cheerful one. "I... I need to talk to you for a minute." She sounded almost apologetic as she said that.

"What? What's wrong?"

"This is about my brother. I... This is hard to say."

"Matthew? Did something happen to him?" Clearly, he was physically fine, seeing as he was working hard next to our fathers, not one-hundred feet from us. That didn't mean there weren't concerns, though.

"Well... you happened to him, Morgana."

"Me? What? What did I do?" I had no idea what she was talking about, but the concern in my voice was genuine.

"I know you and him have been doing things together. The way he looks at you... how often he talks about you at home... There's no mistaking there's something going on between the two of you." Her tone was now accusatory, which confused me more than offended me.

"Well, yes. He was a very curious boy. I indulged him a little. It's not really a secret, I just didn't think you'd want to know all the details about your own brother."

"I feel like you're using him."

"Wait, what? No, he enjoys everything we do as much as I do! Sometimes I just lay back and let him do whatever he feels like. He has just as much fun as I do."

"Maybe not using him, but... leading him on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you love him?"

"I... count him as a very close friend."

"That's the thing, Morgana. I realize you may be cut from a different cloth than most, and I accept that. But for most of us, lying together in that way means love. He's clearly falling for you, and as long as you continue to be, well, intimate with him, he'll have hope that the two of you will fall in love and be married."

"Ah. I see your concern. Don't worry, though. I've already had that conversation with him. We agreed it doesn't need to be for love. He agreed so himself."

"Good on you to be straight with him, however..."

"However?"

Magdalene sighed. "That doesn't mean he agrees in his heart. Look, I've known my brother much longer than you have. Maybe you've noticed he's a little, well, young for his age? Socially, at least. He is very easily cowed. I wasn't there for that talk, but if you had put any pressure on him to agree to anything, there's a good chance he would have told you he agreed regardless of whether he actually did."

"No, you weren't there for that talk, but we had a long discussion about it. I told him in no uncertain terms that we are friends, and anything we do together is for simple enjoyment. I told him exactly how I felt about him, and I gave him the choice of whether or not to continue. He chose to continue."

"Morgana, that's still leading him on!" I was rather startled at Magdalene's tone. I had never heard her losing her patience before. She sounded genuinely angry!

"How? I already told you I explained everything as it was and gave him the final choice!"

"And I already explained he is immature for his age! Do you really think he doesn't have feelings for you? Or maybe what you don't understand how sex works for most people. For most of us it's a highly emotional thing. Every time you lay with him, you nurture that love that you're telling him not to have for you! That's what the heart does. That's like asking these stocks of wheat right here not to grow, despite that you water them every day. Do you see how you're sending him mixed messages? I've seen it in his eyes every time he talks about you. He has feelings for you! Feelings that you are only going to crush one day, and it's only going to be harder for him the longer this goes on! And the fact that you fucked Gaius in the middle of all this is absolutely inexcusable! Laying together out of wedlock is one thing, but cheating on him behind his back just shows how few good intentions you truly have!"

"Magdalene! That's not fair! I told him about Gaius! Also, maybe if you stopped over-protecting him, you'd find your brother is more of a man than..."

"Stop toying with my brother's heart!" she interrupted She was on the verge of screaming now, and she was clearly putting out quite an effort to keep herself from it. I couldn't help but glance around to see who within earshot might have been looking at us, our fathers in particular.

In a quieter voice, she continued, "He deserves someone who can love him." With that, she turned and walked away from me.

A few minutes later, when I was good and alone again, my father came to me.

"Morgana, I've never heard you argue with Magdalene before. I don't think I've ever heard her argue with anyone like that! Is everything all right?"

"It's fine," I replied, dismissively.

"You can talk to me if you want." After I didn't reply, he continued. "Is it boy problems?"

"I suppose."

"I didn't hear much of that conversation, but I'm sure you don't need to beat yourself up about anything you did. When I was your age... well, let's just say you are at the age when most people make many mistakes when it comes to love. It doesn't matter how awkward a romance ends, as long as you come away from it having learned something, it was worth doing. Me, I wish I had been a better learner in my younger days. That way maybe I could have made a better home for you. Ah, but here I go. You're a fast learner. Always have been. I'm sure you'll work everything out with or without my help. Well, is there anything you need to talk about?"

"Maybe not right now."

"Ah. Very well. Well, I'm always here if you change your mind."

I never did accept his offer to talk about my love problems. Or my friendship problems. Or my bully problems. Maybe I should have. Though not the brightest, my father was wise to the world from his past mistakes, and humble enough to admit it: both qualities I lacked at the time. Maybe he could have helped me. Maybe he could have made things all better. I will never know.

Father left the fields early that day to see to the stables again, so I found myself walking home alone once again. On my way back home, I passed Rebecca again. I tried to sneak by her quietly before she might notice me, but at the last moment she turned and spat near my feet. This time it was all I could do to not lunge at her with my fists.

...

After that, I couldn't stop wondering about Rebecca. I was morbidly curious to know what was up with her, and my anger at her was slowly building. For the longest time since discovering I had lain with her then fiancé, she had seen fit to quietly shun me, which I was fine with. Suddenly, and without explanation, her hatred of me had flared up seemingly overnight, and that hatred wasn't subsiding. I didn't know how much longer I could continue turning the other cheek at her venom.

There had to be something going on in her marriage, I figured. There was some stressor in her life that she couldn't deal with, so she had turned that frustration to me. More than likely, her and Joseph's marriage was already having issues. It would make sense for her to misplace that frustration on me. I almost hoped that was the reason. I won't lie, there was still a shred of jealousy and bitterness at losing Joseph choosing Rebecca over me, and a little schadenfreude would feel nice. I had to find out!

That night, I strongly considered spying on them in their bedroom, but in the end couldn't bring myself to. I knew it was wrong. The next night, however, my inhibitions lost that battle. In the dead of night, after everyone had retreated to their homes, but before candles were extinguished, I snuck over to the new home Joseph and Rebecca had moved into. Their bedroom was on the second floor, but that was no problem for my magic powers. I willed myself as light as a feather.

I also didn't need to worry about being seen. I had already known I could command the atoms around me to behave in ways they normally wouldn't. There is a type of atom, which I had come to call 'shell atoms,' that are responsible for interacting with light. Incidentally, these shell atoms also surround and hold clusters of smaller, but much heavier atoms together so they can form the objects we see in the world. To remove the shell atoms would mean disintegrating the object they held together. However, I had found I could command them to simply ignore the light passing by them without affecting their other duties in the slightest. By doing so, I could make my body completely invisible!