Welldark B2 Ch. 03

Admittedly, I was making the lesser sacrifice.

The whole affair left me excited. I neither had to resist the urge to masturbate nor indulge in it, as I had next to me a straight-laced woman who I could drag to the bedroom and reliably excite. It pleased me to no end, to have this woman of powerful character submit to me so eagerly in matters of passion.

Besides the letter, the time between their return and our shift at the Café Served was spent as usual. We talked, worked out, Aclysia cooked, and when I felt like it I checked the quality of the mattress. By that I meant that I observed how long it took for Esther's outline to disappear after I pounded her into it. The length of our engagements varied wildly, anything between five and forty minutes. The regularity of them tilted endurance towards the latter. Also, I tended to employ alternative means whenever I knew I wouldn't last long. Even when I overestimated myself, I did get Esther to climax. It was a matter of pride. When penetration failed, fingers would have to do.

Eventually we did go to work, had a regular shift, headed back, and went to sleep after another round of sex and a shower. In that order, by Esther's demand.

And then came Sunday.

___________________________________________

At the heart of Welldark's campus was an octagonal building. Although following the general colour scheme of the university, a mixture of gothic and luxurious elements, it seemed all around humbler than what lay around it. Less gold and silver had been used in the construction. The wood of the doors and the stones of the walls had been allowed a degree of degradation from the weather, where the rest of the campus was kept in pristine condition through effort and magic. The windows were simple, crystal clear panes of glass held in wooden frames.

The exception to it all was the large stained-glass relief that decorated the front of the four-sided tower that extended far above the slanted roof. It depicted a splendid bull on a radiant background that gave it a sanctified appearance. Even though the university had continued to grow all around the first building, that tower was the highest of its kind. Tall enough for that bull to watch over all that lay beyond.

There was very little activity anywhere around me, including the building when I entered it. It had that particular smell that only old institutions of knowledge could produce. A mixture of leather, old wood, and the various chemicals used to scrub the floors. I passed humble classrooms that almost reminded me of my time at high school. The notable difference was the quality of the chairs. It appeared Welldark had always cared about the comfort of its students.

My steps echoed in the corridor. Somewhere in the distance, I heard someone pushing a cart. Cleaning personnel, most likely. I checked my shoes to make sure I wasn't dragging any dirt onto the meticulously cleaned, dark grey slabs. Not anymore than was reasonable, by my estimation.

The structure of the building was straightforward. Each of the main entrances along the cardinal directions had broad corridors that went simply ahead. Ignoring the various forks eventually brought me to where all four of these corridors intersected: a circular hall with a pillar at its centre. A pillar that was, on short inspection, revealed to be an elevator shaft. I pushed the button to call the elevator and inspected the hall as I waited.

It was a simple gathering area with tables and chairs for students to lounge, work, and converse. Although kept nice and tidy, I could not imagine it saw a lot of use these days. Each of the thirteen branches of the institution had their own hangouts, then there were the cafeterias, and, given the season, the sprawling green areas. This seemed to be nothing but a remnant of a time long passed. That, in itself, made it valuable to be maintained.

A loud ding notified me of the elevator's arrival. Black-painted doors parted, retreating into the sides of the gothic pillar. I stepped inside. The hard carpet felt quite different compared to the stone. The quiet was bothering me a little bit. I liked activity around me. I distracted myself by wondering what the five greyed out buttons on the panel before me were. Rooms only the administration was supposed to access, perhaps? Maybe Taurus' personal sex dungeon? If I had this much space, I would have at least two of those.

'Not like I have a lot of choices here,' I mused to myself. Two buttons were left and one of them was the floor I was currently on. I put my finger on the magical interface. The little square of stone yielded to my touch, then pushed back out, as any mundanely engineered button would. Smoothly, the doors closed and the entire elevator rose at a leisurely pace.

After ten seconds, it stopped. Another ding. With a whisper, the doors opened again. Now I found myself in a foyer.

The difference from the hall below was stark. Gone was the simple cleanliness of the old institution, replaced with a complex that had been retrofitted considerably to move with the times. The gothic designs here were in keeping with the splendour displayed by the newer buildings. Paintings, weapons, and ornaments hung from the walls, invoking a vague sense of symmetry. The floor was black marble, white veins running through it. By no doubt supernatural means, all of them came together underneath a wine-red, semi-circular desk at the far end of the room. Like a red sun radiating white mist.

Behind the desk were two women. One was working on a computer, wearing the kind of long-sleeved white blouse often associated with the secretary image. The other I knew already, a woman with long, silvery-white hair. She was of pale complexion, had emerald green eyes and ears that were notably pointy, without being much longer than those of a regular human. Standing behind the secretary, her maid outfit was on full display, from the frills that covered her petite breasts, over the corset that covered her midriff, down to the long skirt with the two frontal slits.

Surprisingly little separated Derilea's looks from that of her daughter (specifically the one I was currently living with). Their difference in age was not as apparent as it should have been, given that it covered several hundred years. Between her species and the potent magic in her veins though (personal and Anomalia in origin), aging must have been a crawling if not completely halted process. Because of this Derilea looked like the world's least wrinkled thirty-something.

Both the redheaded secretary and Derilea turned their eyes to me. "I will return in a moment," the Queen of Taurus' Anomalia announced and circled around the table. I had to keep myself from checking her out too much, as we walked towards each other. There was much to behold in how her thighs peeked out of her slit skirt with every measured step. The likeness to her daughter did extend to her bottom heavy figure.

One of my primary principles was to not covet another man's woman (more exactly it was not to covet another person's partner, but I had not yet found myself wanting someone who was engaged in a lesbian relationship). What made me weak in this instance was that Aclysia came so firmly after her mother that I could gleam what she would look like in a couple hundred years by watching Derilea. Keeping the inappropriate gazes to a minimum, I could tell that I was in for a very happy future.

"Hey there," I greeted with a casual wave. Immediately, Derilea gave me a raised eyebrow. It appeared she still held some scepticism towards me. My natural expressiveness had rubbed her the wrong way during the introduction ceremony and I had not given her a chance to redeem myself. Clearing my throat, I reminded myself to behave in an approvable way and bowed my head respectfully, "I'm here on invitation of the headmaster, I hope I did not come at an inopportune time?"

"Only the usual pains of administration," Derilea responded.

"Unruly programs not doing what they are supposed to?" I took an educated guess. I wanted to add a joke or three to that, but if I had learned anything during our last encounter, it was that the Queen of Welldark's founder appreciated briefness and sincerity.

"Exactly," she responded in a neutral tone. Much like moving into a dirty apartment after living on the street, her ambivalence was already a step up.

I raised my head. Derilea was mustering me, analysing me in a way only parents could muster potential suitors of their children. It felt a tiny bit like I was some cattle for sale, but it ran much deeper than that. "Will you require the card?" I asked, reaching for the blue shoulder bag Esther had lent me.

"That won't be necessary. Come along." Derilea led the way to one of the two corridors to the sides of the secretary's desk. Step for step, I was brought into the headmaster's domain. The deeper we got, the less it felt like a place of administrative business and more like a home. It had those various marks of being lived in, from the placement of objects that had been adjusted to purely personal preference to the many small doors that isolated private areas.

At one point, we came across a dark-haired, human woman holding a young child, around three years old. She gave Derilea a smiling nod, and the maid returned in kind. It occurred to me that she must have been another one of Taurus' Anomalia members and, by extension, that the boy was Aclysia's half-brother.

Human sensibilities were a bit weirded out at the prospect of a family still growing after several hundred years. Having spent a lot of my time in Hell, however, I didn't really have any of that left in me. Not that there had been much to start with.

I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from any attempts at banter. Whether Derilea was always this stuck-up or if I had to whittle away at her exterior over the years would remain to be seen. I hoped it was the latter. Having a steadily annoyed mother-in-law sounded like the kind of misery I wanted to spare myself.

In silence, we made our way up the flights of stairs. The surroundings narrowed, as we ascended from the main building into the tower. We walked all the way up. I couldn't help but wonder why we weren't using the elevator, but did not dare to ask.

Eventually, we made it to a wide-open, double-sided door. Stepping through came with yet another change in scenery.

We were behind the stained-glass window now. The depiction of the bull glowed from the sunlight that fell through, casting its form on a large assembly of glass cases on both slides of me. All throughout the room, distributed with no particular pattern, sometimes tightly clustered, stood trophies from various worlds. There were mighty weapons, odd statues, and a few locally contained magical phenomena. From my brief observation of everything, my favourite must have been the ball of slime that was endlessly falling into one portal and then emerging from the other. It was doing so at a speed almost too fast to properly track.

At the back of it all, right in front of the window, stood a desk that was almost humble. In form and function, it certainly did not match the gathered glory of the trophies in the room, the rafters of thick wood, or even the dark grey tiles of the floor. Its size was all that seemed to fit with the sheer immensity of this space.

A concession, I believed, that the man sitting behind it had made purely because of his own size. Arustius Taurus was a man over 2,20 metres tall and he was, to use crude but apt language, built like a brick shithouse. With arms like logs and paws like that of a bear, he could have snapped the average sized person in half and continued to write with the other hand. That was the impression I got before I even considered just who he was.

What softened the look of this weather-tanned, middle-aged man was the awkwardly tied bow tie around his left horn. He had never worn anything like it before and his otherwise proper attire led me to believe that there were circumstances other than his personal choice of clothing involved. Something about one of his children or haremettes, most likely. The dark colour of the cloth did compliment the black-tipped white of his smooth, bull-like horns.

Carefully, the headmaster put aside the pencil he held. It was of an above average size, doubtlessly necessary to allow him to handle it with finesse. Even then, his handwriting was limited to signatures. There were two monitors on the left side of the table. The right was kept clear of any larger obstacles, three chairs in front and around it.

"Take a seat, Karitas." The voice hit me alongside his gaze. Unlike the last time I met him, there was no magical element to the intimidation. It was his sheer physical presence that created a little knot in my stomach. I prided myself on keeping a clear head in most situations and, outwardly, I did. One did not meet a man such as Arustius Taurus under the context of dating his daughter without feeling at least a bit nervous though.

"I will leave you to it," Derilea announced. In a much warmer tone she added. "You know you can always call me, beloved."

"I almost certainly will," Taurus added in a similarly warm tone. He looked after his Queen, while I took a seat. Openly, he was staring, focused intently on something behind me. I could imagine and, in the same situation, would have done the exact same. Patiently, I folded my hands in front of my stomach and waited for the sound of the doors getting pulled shut.

At which point, the dark eyes of the headmaster snapped back to me.

"One day," he said. "A good time."

"How long do suitors usually take?"

"Between an hour and never." Taurus leaned forwards, placing his own folded hands on the table. "The serious ones come quick."

"I never really considered myself a serious person," I responded with a little quip.

Taurus seemed at least somewhat receptive to this kind of banter, blowing air out of his nose in an amused fashion. "Diamond Anomalia?"

"Yes, I do make it pretty obvious, don't I?"

"The first impression first. Are you never serious?"

"To speak without jest or other amusement, in pure sincerity, I can be serious. I am certainly serious when it comes to my Anomalia. I want that to include Aclysia."

"Have you had sex with her yet?"

"No... sir," I added the title only because I somehow felt it was expected.

"Kissed her?"

"No, sir," I responded a second time. "Would it be a problem if I did?" I inquired.

"It would have told me something about you," Taurus stated. Without further words, he reached under the table. The distinct sound of a fridge being opened was quickly followed by a small container of ice cubes being placed on the table. Two glasses and a bottle containing a golden, no doubt alcoholic, liquid were next. All of them were combined into half a glass full of whiskey standing in front of me.

Taurus raised his glass. He wasn't offering. I wasn't declining. We toasted. I took a sip at first and, upon realizing the headmaster was downing the thing, did the same.

I could taste the oak barrel and the strong alcohol content and wheezed. "Not my liquor of choice," I confessed and placed the empty glass on the table. The ice cubes clacked together. I had to wonder what the purpose of them was. Who needed ice if we were just going to down it anyway?

Taurus refilled the glasses, answering that question. "We drink that one slowly. Don't forget to smell before you sip." he told me, then continued right on with the topic at hand. "Aclysia told me it was on her initiative that she moved in. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir," I went back to that mode of talking. Taurus radiated paternal, low-key approval, so I was continuing with the strategy that made me popular. Hesitant, I grabbed the whiskey glass again. It really was not my beverage of choice. It was also placed there with some expectation. I wasn't sure if Taurus wanted to use the alcohol to loosen my tongue or if he was doing it to be a good host. For all I knew, he himself was uncomfortable with having these kinds of conversations. Could have been all of the above.

"What are your plans for my daughter?"

That was the standard question that men across all ages, worlds, and languages had been asked. There were many answers, few of them truly satisfying, hardly any that balanced briefness and clarity of intent well. I chose to dispense with the former. "I have no specific plans for your daughter," I said, continuing quickly before the stern gaze could turn annoyed. "I lo- greatly appreciate her maidly disposition. Truly, it is a quality I greatly admire in potential partners, being of a straightforward and demanding mindset myself. It feels like she completes me. However, I do not wish to impose myself too much on her. I think that it was natural compatibility that brought us together, so I didn't make any specific plans for her. Where the whims will take us will be good enough."

Taurus grunted enigmatically and initiated another sip from the whiskey. I followed his example, even if it made me shudder. "Acceptable," he stated. "A daughter of mine, however, is not something I part with easily."

"I would not dare to assume a precious jewel is bought for cheap. This one, if I may elaborate, I take is acquired not through money but through respect."

After another sip he shook his head. "She is not acquired at all. In the end, it is their choice who their partner is. What I think of it is only important if she cares."

"She cares a lot," I said with certainty. "I think you raised a daughter with a good sense of family -- which takes a good family."

"What about you, Neverborne?"

"I would like to acquire one," I responded sincerely. "My relationship with my father is... My relationship with my parents was complicated long before I became a Neverborne... but my mother did try to teach me appreciation I learned all too late was wise." I grabbed the whiskey and took a huge gulp. Then I said nothing else on the matter, for fear the alcohol did succeed in loosening a bit too much. "I would like it if we had your blessing, sir."

Taurus stared at me for a while. I wasn't the only one doing social calculus around here. Rather obviously, he was considering whether he could or should push me on my familial situation. More defiantly than before, I stared back. "My blessing comes on two conditions," he continued with what he had invited me for. "I must believe that you are a good influence on my daughter. That's what any father would want." I nodded. "Secondly, I must believe you have the potential to protect her. My name carries weight."

"I understand fully."

Taurus emptied the rest of his second glass and I mimicked the motion. "Time will tell me about the first. For now, you strike me as an interesting young man. Everyone has phantoms haunting them. Yours aren't in control."

"Thank you, sir."

"The second, is more direct." Taurus folded his hands again. "You will have to withstand the full brunt of my presence for a minute."

I gulped, audibly by accident. Astral Capacity could be projected outwards to intimidate prospective opponents. It was more effective the larger the difference. I had been subjected to his aura both times we had met. The first time he had used it to immediately silence the entirety of the freshmen. The second time, he had done it to force the argument between me and Imrult, the Master of Order, to stop. Neither had been the full brunt of it. One knew such a thing instinctively, like one knew that only a limited amount of water made it out of a faucet.

"The choice of when is yours. You can try as often as you can ready yourself for it," Taurus eased my mind a little bit. "I do not expect a freshman to accomplish what others have only managed to do in their last year. You can leave now, if you want." The headmaster began to put away the glasses and whiskey, while I pondered.