The Fertile Grove - Ch. 03

The Fertile Grove: Up-And-Coming (Starfall)

A "Detachable" story

By Devin McTaggart

The first couple of days with Ciara and Nina were crazy, as Ciara and I established a great rapport, forming a perfect couple almost immediately. Ciara also seemed to take great delight in putting Nina into her place, something which Nina also seemed to get off on. Ciara and I had gotten to the point where we were already finishing each other's sentences, and she'd revealed to me that she'd had a crush on me since the previous year and was extremely glad that I'd won the challenge.

From the very first night she arrived, Ciara spent her nights in my bed, well, our bed, I guess. She was perfectly at home with her naked body next to mine, and she still prefers to be there every night she can, regardless of how many of my other wives she must share it with.

Three days later, there was another knocking at my door, and to my amusement, Professor Antevestian was waiting on the other side of it with Starfall Willowdance alongside him. I'd seen her on campus before - she was something of a Big Deal with the Thermodynamics college of magics, and they were touting how her research was going to revolutionize everything we knew about heat and magic within just a few short years. Because of that, she was one of the most heavily talked about students on campus, although generally in a sort of distant, admiring sort of way. All of her studying had kept her extremely busy, and without the support network of the KJD sorority, I don't know that she would've had time for any social life. She was going to be making a lot of waves in the coming years, and I didn't have any intention of stopping her from doing any of that.

See, Starfall and I had spent a semester together as lab partners for Magical Weaving 101, and I'd gotten a chance to know her a bit back then. She was whip-smart and absolutely, positively relentlessly optimistic about everything. I'd never understood how anyone could always be so unflappable about anything. Even when her final project for that class had completely fallen apart halfway through development, she'd just seen it as an opportunity to do it again but even better the second time. And she was right - from failure came even better success. I admit, I sort of admired her determination, and it might have been a bit of an inspiration for me on my own journey.

She was a gorgeous elvish princess who was nearly twice my height, slender and majestic, with alabaster white flesh completely unmarred or unblemished in any way. Her hair was this lustrous shade of purple that I'd always admired. She wasn't very curvaceous, but thinner and willowier, refined and far more elegant than I'd ever be. She'd always smelled of lilacs, something I'd never really understood, but it was something I'd noticed each and every time we'd hung out together. If it was a perfume, she always had it on in abundance, and if it was her natural scent, it never truly faded.

"Heya Starfall," I said to her. "Hope you're not mad at me."

She giggled in a way that almost sounded like musical notes running up and down the scales as the performer warmed up. "I'm a little surprised you chose me, Wedge, but at least I can say you have excellent taste."

"I wasn't entirely certain it was you when I took the pendant off the tree, but the hair color, and the fact that it had that same scent you did, that floral aura of lilac. But I had high hopes that I was right, and sometimes high hopes and a little bit of faith are all you get to hold onto."

"May we come in, Lord Deepcopper?" Professor Antevestian said, scowling down at him. "Or would you prefer I simply deliver Miss Willowdance and go?"

"No no, I can see you've got something on your mind, Professor, so why don't you come in and we can have a conversation about it?"

I stepped back into the place and let them both in, as Ciara offered a little curtsy to the two of them. "Looks like wifey number two's finally showing up," Ciara said with a grin. When we were hanging around the house, Ciara liked dressing casually, a loose flowing skirt that hung almost to her ankles and a big puffy blouse concealing her none-too-modest chest. "Heya Starry." I'd been expecting a certain amount of camaraderie between all the soon-to-be wives, considering they were sorority sisters. They'd spent plenty of time together over the years since they'd first pledged, done tons of events together. They were going to be closer to each other than they were to me for a long time, which was why I was glad to see Ciara and Starfall exchanging hugs.

Nina, on the other hand, did basically nothing to acknowledge either of them. She'd been taking on the role of my bodyguard, and she'd been taking it extremely seriously, giving no quarter or even any sign that she had a sense of humor about the matter. She was from a different sorority all together, so she didn't have anything in common with any of them. If anything, they were something of adversaries of sorts, although I would slowly but surely get all my partners to put those old all allegiances aside and form a new top allegiance - our family.

"How's he been treating you, Ciara?" Starfall asked her as they moved from the entryway to the kitchen, heading over to the table to sit down and get caught up, as I brought the Professor into my living room, letting him sit down in my armchair as I sat down on the couch.

"So, what's the purpose of your visit, Professor?"

"Lord Deepcopper," he sighed. Ciara came in, dropped off a cup of tea for the professor and a tankard of ale for myself, before she excused herself back into the kitchen with Starfall. Once she was out of the room, the professor continued. "I am here to reiterate the strongest concerns that the High Council has regarding your selection of Miss Vanderbilt. Again, we admit that your selection was well within the parameters of what is allowed by the convention, but Miss Vanderbilt comes from a family with a great deal of influence and power, and they would like to extoll to you the virtues of making a choice other than the one you have already made. In fact, should you be compelled into changing your mind, to, say, an alternate selection, or, perhaps, multiple selections, not only would the Vanderbilts be extremely gracious, the University itself would also be significantly in your debt."

I remember the grin on my face almost hurting it was so wide. "You already tried this last time you came by, remember? The Vanderbilts, the University's influence, yadda yadda yadda. You don't have anything I would want more than what I already have, Professor. I have the one thing you cannot possibly buy for all the money and riches in the entire world."

"And what is that, Lord Deepcopper?"

"My reputation," I said with a laugh, gesturing at the air around me. "I'm the guy who not only beat one of the university challenges, but two of them. On top of that, I did so with such a flagrant style that students will be talking about it for years to come. If I wanted to, I could probably just decide to teach here, and the University would feel obligated to give me the gig. I know that more than a couple of kingdoms have pushed to try and get my services for security or defense, just to try and get me before they think somebody else will get me. My mailbox has been, as the kids say, blowing up. I've heard the underclassmen have even given me a nickname."

"Mmmm," the professor sighed, the undesired outcome of this conversation clearly taxing on his psyche. "Mr. A.P. although I do not admit to knowing what the initials stand for."

"Mister All's Possible."

"Ah yes, the children believe you cannot be stopped, that there is nothing you cannot accomplish, whether that's fair or not." There was something biting about the professor's tone that I didn't much care for.

I shrugged a little bit, in response to his suggestion. "I didn't come up with the nickname."

"No, but you haven't objected to it either."

I kicked my leather boots up onto the footstool. "I wasn't aware it was on me to comment on everything students said about me on campus," I told him. "That's going to complicate things a great deal for me in this last month of classes. I don't know if you know this, but I still have final exams to take and final projects to turn in."

"Mmmm," the professor said. "And you are not guaranteed to graduate without those exams and projects. It is conceivable that, should your professors determine your work inadequate, you might not even graduate, at which point all your winnings from the challenges set forth by the sororities would be considered forfeit, and thereby revoked."

"I truly hope you aren't attempting to intimidate me, Professor Antevestian," I said to him, keeping my voice as cold as the deepest stones my people had pulled from ice cores. Dwarven mages were uncommon at the university, but I felt like the reputation my people had of being nearly impossible to bluff should've still played here. "Because that would be in violation of the University's Code of Conduct, and would be grounds for not only your dismissal, but a settlement in favor of a student the likes of which is practically unheard of."

"Lord Deepcopper--"

"You know," I said, musing with a sort of vaguely threatening tone of my own, "Lady Bellington allows the University to operate under her discretion only while it is acting in accordance with the strict provisions and guidelines that she's set down for it, and that to violate those provisions, well, that's tantamount to insulting the Great Lady herself."

"Yes, well--"

"I believe she had the last person who insulted her drawn and quartered."

"She did."

"And she used her magics to prolong the man's life by artificially infusing blood and oxygen into his brain so that he could watch his body parts riding off into the sunset without him before she, graciously, permitted him to die a fortnight later."

"I am familiar with the case, Lord Deepcopper."

"Good," I said. "Then you can imagine exactly how strenuously my classwork and reports are being paid attention to, not just by the professors here on campus, but by Lady Bellington herself, who sent word to me congratulating me on my successes."

I heard the elf's breath catch in his throat at that. "Did she."

It wasn't a question, and I found the elf's tone extremely telling. He hadn't realized the Great Lady herself had reached out to me, and the fact that she had meant his implied threats carried all the weight of a mouse farting angrily towards a hurricane. He'd been suggesting that if I didn't release Nina from my service, they could tank my grades as a way to get my accomplishments overturned, but with the Great Lady having taken an interest in my missions, it meant that whichever teacher applied an unfair eye to my tests or projects would find themselves on the wrong end of her ire, which was really all I needed to hear. The Great Lady loved an underdog story, and if a teacher was found to have given me an undeserved poor grade, well, she'd have made an example of them, to discourage retribution on successful students.

The Great Lady hadn't come by to wish me well personally, but she had sent a very kind and remarkable missive, describing my successes as nothing less than "historically unprecedented" and how she expected this was only going to be the beginning of the Legend of Wedge Deepcopper, not a footnote in some student history book somewhere. I'd sent her back a very self-effacing letter, promising to continue to pursue great and important works, and not to be caught up in small squabbles or smaller ideals. I would never dream of being spoken of with the same high regard as the Great Lady herself, but stressed that I would aspire to reach heights not far below her own, and that my guiding star would be to constantly think "Is this worthy of the Great Lady?"

She hadn't responded to my letter, naturally, nor had I expected her to. The very fact that she'd sent me a handwritten note at all was the kind of thing I would not have believed if I had not taken great care with the letter itself. In fact, it remains to this day framed and beneath glass, resting behind the desk in my study, along with my other mementos of great achievement. The Great Lady herself has since seen it there and asked me how much inspiration I drew from it over the years, and I had to stress to her how recognition, even in just a few scant words, can power the strongest engines any of us have ever known.

"She did," I confirmed. "Is there anything else you wanted to bring to my attention today, or were you just going to make lightly veiled threats at me until I acquiesced or threw you out?"

The professor exhaled a defeated breath, reaching up to rub his eyes for a moment before looking once more at me, this time with an expression I'd not seen on his face before. "You truly won't be budged away from your decision, will you, Lord Deepcopper?"

"Nina!" I bellowed. "Come here for a moment."

Nina Vanderbilt sprinted from the kitchen to come and be by my side. While we were at home, she could move around however she saw fit, and she'd judged the Professor not to be a threat to me, at least for the moment. But hearing me summon her, she had her hand on her blade already as she stepped into the room, quite prepared to consider Professor Antevestian a threat if I proclaimed him so. "Yes, m'lord?" She was dressed in the traditional black and crimson attire which sentinels had been mandated to wear for centuries, a black dress with crimson stripes along her arms over her chest and down her back, gold filigree on either side of the stripes before they turned into black fabric.

The blade she wore at her waist she'd named Liecleaver, a gift from her mother upon her sixteenth birthday, years and years ago. It was an elegant weapon, a rapier with so many enchantments cast upon it that when she once tried to list them off for me, I politely asked her to stop a few minutes into her exhaustive recollection. Much like skilled dwarven weaponsmiths fold layer upon layer of steel, reinforcing a weapon by stacking sheets of metal together, the Vanderbilts were known to have a similar practice when it came to enchantments. They would place new magics atop old magics until they themselves could no longer remember all the various layers, meaning nothing could safely defuse a trap built by a Vanderbilt, not even a Vanderbilt.

"Nina, come over here for a moment, if you will," I said to her, offering her a kind smile.

"Do we have a problem, m'lord?" Nina moved over to stand alongside me, her hand never once leaving the blade, her eyes focused on Professor Antevestian as if he might be a threat, and if I declared him so, one she would gladly run through upon her blade.

"The Professor here seems to think you might be unhappy being in my service," I said, reaching up to slide my hand across her ass, something she eagerly leaned into. "Free of consequence, free of retribution, my word upon the name of the lineage of Deepcopper, you may tell him what you truly think of me, in no uncertain words, with no reservations."

"Are... are you sure, m'Lord? No consequences of any kind?"

"You heard me invoke my lineage, Nina. Know that I don't do so lightly. To a dwarf, it is one of the most sacred things we have. Go on. If you're truly unhappy here, you can feel free to tell the Professor so."

Nina looked down at me, nodded her head before her eyes turned to focus on the Professor. Then she licked her lips, and a wicked little grin crossed her face. "If I'm completely transparent with you, Professor, I did indeed have reservations upon my arrival to Lord Deepcopper's service, but in the days since you have seen me last and you see me now, I have discovered my purpose, and I have found... great joy in that. While you may look at my Lord and see a student about to graduate with a confident streak fathoms upon fathoms wide, I very quickly saw past that, and saw the true legend beyond that. What's more, it was the morning after I arrived here that a truth dawned on me, a truth greater than any presented to me by you, the Council, my parents or even the Great Lady herself..."

"What's that, my dear?" the professor asked her.

"Wedge Deepcopper could've had any of the women of the Wunjo Perthro Dagaz Sorority, and yet, out of all the options there, he chose me," she said, stridently, taking great pride in that realization. "This dwarf beat all our trackers, all our hunting spells, all our best labyrinthomancers, outclassing centuries of study, preparation and thought, and when all the world's riches were before him, he selected me as the greatest prize upon offer. And now, twice you have come to him, and twice you have offered him anything he wanted in lieu of keeping me, and twice now he has rebuffed you and your offers, because nothing you can offer him exceeds, in his eyes, the value of what he already has. Me." She leaned her ass comfortably into my hand, licking her lips with even more mischief in her eyes. "Should I need to prove my devotion further, I could service my Lord right here, to quell any doubts that you might have about where my loyalties lie, Professor. I wouldn't want you to have any cause to disbelieve the voracity of my claims."

The Professor nearly choked on his tea, coughing sharply. "No no, Lady Vanderbilt, I do not require such proof. I would prefer that you do not service your Lord at this time."

"Are you certain, Professor?" she said with a wry smirk on her face, taking great delight in seeing just how uncomfortable the old elf was, shifting nervously in his chair as though someone had lined the inside of his council robes with itching powder. "It's no trouble at all. You see, I've quite grown to enjoy sucking the Master's cock on those times when he allows me to be so privileged as to provide for his pleasure."

"Quite certain, Lady Vanderbilt."

"Excellent. Then might I assume you're also done threatening my Lord?" Her right hand hadn't moved from the hilt of her blade the entire time she'd been speaking with him. "Because as much as it might pain me to strike down a member of the Council, I'm sure with my reputation on the line, any investigator worth their salt would come to the only logical conclusion - that I had slain you in defense of my principal. You have been a respected professor here at the University for centuries, but I, as you have taken great pains to repeatedly point out, am a Vanderbilt. There simply no is overcoming that for you, so I think you may wish to reconsider your course of actions."

"It was never my intent to offend, m'lady," the professor stammered. "I was simply doing what was asked of me."

"Mmmm," Nina said. "By my father, no doubt, a stubborn headed man with only ever one thing upon his mind - his precious honor. This, he must learn, is what honor looks like. My fate has become inescapably intertwined with an up-and-coming legend, the sort of spellcaster who comes along once in a generation, someone gifted with cunning, wisdom and ambition. Tell my father I am happy where I am, and that if he wants to threaten my Lord, my lover and my principal again, he can come here and do it to my face, where I extend to him the same offer of running him through on my blade for daring to try and decide for me what is best for me."

The professor stood up quickly, as if no longer feeling entirely safe in my home now that he had crossed my guardian. "Yes, well, perhaps I should take my leave of you both then. I will return in a few more days with the next of your brides to be, Lord Deepcopper, Lady Vanderbilt."