Welldark B2 Ch. 04

"Nothing that dramatic. He just wouldn't give his blessing, but that essentially just means he won't be happy about it."

"That seems pretty lenient."

"I think it's perfectly reasonable."

"It falls in the scope of lenient, not sure if I would take that stance... more of a protective guy myself."

"I don't think I really know how I'll react until I have a daughter. Impossible it is for a man to judge the state of his parental mind, until the hand of his baby clutches his thumb."

"That's fair." Crocko rolled his shoulders. "Well, I'll let you get back to your girl before she pierces me with her eyes."

"Her vision is based on movement."

"Hah!" the crocodile man laughed and we separated. I did indeed go back to Esther, while Crocko went ahead and impressed himself on all the still available ladies around.

Every space had someone that was in command of it, that was just the nature of instinctual hierarchies. When it came to the foyer of the Astral Cultivation room, Crocko was definitely the one in charge. He was friendly with everyone around, even the women he had no chances with. Even my anti-social lady at least gave him a friendly nod when she saw him. Most of his command over the room was entirely earned by his charisma. The rest came from me willingly giving up my own claim to interest and socialization. This was one of the classes I shared with Esther and I'd much rather concentrate on her during this time. There were no other women, from their looks and the limited intel I got through social osmosis, who intrigued me anyway.

In our own time, we transitioned from the cramped foyer into the meditation room. All that had been separating us from it was an unlocked door, made from stained glass. It depicted a large sun over a green field. We left behind our bags and our shoes.

Silence enveloped us. An unnatural silence, swallowing all sounds after a short distance. I could see the mouths of other people in the room moving, but at best I heard a distant whisper. What was said was indiscernible. Even speaking to Esther, who was directly next to me, was like listening to her and my voice in mono. "So, where do we sit today?"

"All that matters is that you are next to me, my Karitas," Esther responded with such direct sincerity it made my heart flutter. Having a lover high in directness made for some incredibly sweet honesty, even if the banter was not necessarily as entertaining. Trade-offs in everything.

I randomly picked one of the midnight blue mats and we sat down there. The firm material was a nice separation between us and the black marble floor. Just like Taurus' office, and a few other places in Welldark no doubt, the white veins that ran through the stone all concentrated in the middle of the room, where a soot-filled depression was located. The black spot served to invoke the impression of an eye.

The room itself was circular, with a dome as the ceiling. There were twelve, equally spaced-out windows of stained glass around the room. Each depicted a different celestial body or formation, each had a golden, slanted window sill underneath that had the name of the depicted object engraved in it, each of them was illuminated by the dull sunlight that shone through it.

Obviously, that made no sense whatsoever from a physical perspective. The chamber, with its dark, curved wall, was a circle. It was impossible for sunlight to fall in equally from every direction simultaneously. The location of the chamber was an enigma. There was no circular appendix to the outside of the building where this classroom should have been located. Also, the windows changed every week.

To put it in obvious terms: the Magic Branch of Welldark sure was magical.

"Begin your meditation," Esther whispered to me. The intimate tone served no other reason than to caress my eardrums. It worked beyond well. Her voice was always like evenly spread honey over warm oven bread and half-melted butter, but those quiet, love-filled whispers... those were like a fragment of divinity was travelling its way down my eardrum, hit my brain, and then spread down my spine as pure joy. Someone this stern should not be allowed to have a voice this soft, feminine and sultry.

Actually, as the benefactor of this unfairness, I would have been a fool to complain.

"It is good manners to wait for the teacher," I responded, trying my best to match the intimacy of her tone. Compared to hers, my voice was sandpaper on wood. My personal opinion mattered little, only that she inched a little closer and caressed my neck. The rub of her finger against my skin was a dangerous invitation.

"His only addition to this room is oversight and music," she told me. "Close your eyes, mysterious Karitas." I followed her instructions. The gentle caress turned into a gentle massage. She shifted around me. Her boobs pressed against my back. A worldly presence fundamentally opposed to the efforts of mediation. "I'm being selfish when I ask this of you," Esther whispered to me, "but you are the one who I can be selfish with. To Aclysia, I feel a kinship. If she were our first addition, it would ease my uncertainties, manifold as they are." The message turned into a hug; her arms wrapped under my shoulders.

She said nothing more, but I understood. I had known that she wanted Aclysia in our Anomalia. What I had failed to see was that any delays from my side would increase her uncertainty. Aclysia had taken all the necessary steps to appease my Queen when it came to her jealousy and Esther was preparing herself to reveal her scars. Esther wanted to have Aclysia on lockdown for our first addition, because she was the perfect candidate for the lady of my love to ease into opening up to more future haremettes.

We could have continued as we wanted without applying the actual Anomalia ritual. Ignore the mark of the soul and indulge in physical relations regardless. Even I did not find that to be a satisfying conclusion. In order to give Esther the confidence she needed to handle further expansions of my harem that would follow, this needed to be a success -- an emotionally resonant one, optimally.

"Hum a little something for me," I requested.

To the sweet melody created by Esther's voice, I let my mind drift away from physical sensation. The presence of her nubile curves turned from distractions into pleasant heat, into nothing at all. Soon the sounds were swallowed by the universal trance I entered into. Like control over my dreams, so too did the ability to lose myself in meditation come naturally to me.

All I felt was relaxation.

Then, between my drifting thoughts and the lack of physical awareness, appeared a new sensation. It was cold, like the void between the stars. A chilling touch that would have made anyone of sound mind snap back. The Dimensional Truth reached out to my soul. An ephemeral awareness, guided by no will, following no purpose. Raw energy, permeating and seeping into the cosmos. Astral might, whose capacity to wield we all were here to increase.

Close to my awareness, it stopped. Close enough that I could have communicated with it. That I could have joined drifting fragments of the universal power with my own soul.

The Astral Essence, resting against my solar plexus, sent silver light in every direction. It pierced my mental form, on its way to the edge of my soul. A myriad of pathways were created, needle-thin voids of light. The Dimensional Truth rushed in, eager to find another host. It touched my mind with an eldritch lack of intent or curiosity. Like water flowing where it could rest the easiest, so did the power fill the space of my awareness. It reached the Astral Essence. Then it filled my mental form. Like a smooth piece of ice being slammed through my forehead, I felt freezing cold and pain pulse through my brain. I resisted the urge to inhale forcefully, as my eyes flew open.

Nothing.

Around me was a vast expanse of nothingness. Midnight blue, gradient towards black, endlessly in every direction. I took a deep breath. My projection needed no air, but it was a habit that made it easier to maintain my presence here. If I grew too uncomfortable or agitated, my body would snap out of its relaxed state and my awareness would be pulled back where it belonged.

"Fairly dull around here today," I remarked, looking around the void for any sign of something. "Perhaps I should know better than to scout the Astral Sea for distractions," I mumbled. I had meant to think that, but my mastery over projection was not yet so far that I could think in a body constructed by my thoughts. Any word I formulated would just drop out of my mouth. "Do I even have a mouth right now?"

I looked down at my hands. They were rudimentary, thin constructs. Sticks of light with wiggly end bits more than proper limbs. A showcase of just how insignificant my capability to wield it was compared to the might of the Astral Sea.

Extending my will into the void, I pulled tiny threads of silver, sparkling energy from the environment. They originated somewhere close or infinitely far away, moved crawlingly or with immense speed, the lack of reference points made that impossible to judge. Streams of starlight, the finest of threads, joined my left arm.

Through skill and determination, I willed the Astral Energy into the form of a human arm. Well, the core of one. Joints and bones, slowly, meticulously, crafted with the same care as a smith would need to carve the gears used in wristwatches. Focused, working hard, I pushed my mind like a physicist on the edge of solving a formula.

The Astral Sea became part of me. Energy was the medium in which I stored the information. The more details I added to my form, the more I expanded my Astral Capacity and the power my will had in this realm. This was the core of all cultivation that we, observers of the Dimensional Truth, did.

Beyond my arm, I saw the darkness shift. Something moved inside it. A remnant of a thought that had stayed here, perhaps, or a figment of this ocean of untapped creation that had developed a mind of its own. I knew what swam these waters. Most of it was ambivalent to my existence, some of it was benevolent, some of it would ravage my thoughts and reave my soul.

Vastness protected me. I was a speck of dust in an endless expanse. A tiny fragment, a visitor, who, even if found and hunted, would yield little to no sustenance.

I continued my work unabated. Just when I had finished with my skeletal lower arm and was starting work on my elbow, I felt a distant shift. After a few seconds, I realized what it was. The music the teacher had put on had stopped. The class was coming to an end. Sorting out dual senses was a bit difficult, but I had ample practice in it.

I unravelled the paths that the Astral Essence had laid through me. Without ways to reach me directly, the Dimensional Truth had to retreat. As it ebbed away, it filled my mind with images of distant stars. Cold balls of barren rock, circled close to an abomination of metal and fungus. Twisted it gnawed and cried like a goat mid-bloodletting, as tendrils of-

The vision was gone, the Dimensional Truth ebbed away and in the absence of its absolute cold came the heat of reality. It burned on my skin. I was stepping out of a blizzard and dropped into a steaming hot bath, with little transition. Inhaling sharply, I opened my eyes. I closed them again immediately. Even the twilight of this room was too much initially.

I stretched, revelling in the fact that at least my muscles were my own and functioning without complaints. After about ten seconds of readjustment, I opened my eyes a little and gradually managed to get back into reality in its entirety.

______________________________________________

"You can do it, honey!" I shouted over the sound of flying lightning bolts and cracking stone. Esther shook her head slightly in disbelief. That was all the acknowledgement she had for me. Her concentration lay with the stone that was flying towards her at moderate speed.

"I don't think she likes you anymore," one of my fellow students poked fun at me. Malana, was her name, a busty woman with bright red hair and eyes, harmonizing nicely with her caramel skin tone. She was definitely a stunner, fun to talk to, and single. That she continuously sought me out in conversation made me wonder if she wanted me to change that last fact.

If she did, I sadly had too much on my plate at the moment to invest time into that.

"She loves me," I assured her with a broad smile, "for many good and varied reasons." Just because I didn't have time to pursue a new relationship at the moment did not mean I wasn't going to flirt.

"I bet," Malana purred.

I opened my mouth in response. "No need t-" I stopped there, the scream of magical lightning, like a songbird crying at full volume, overpowering my voice.

In Esther's raised hand, a myriad of blue electric arches danced. As she drew her arm back, the energy, incapable of discharging outside the bounds of her demands, crackled and formed itself into a lance. It fused into a single bolt of lightning, arching and writhing in her grasp. Always, it retained a straight core.

With the power of her magic and physical prowess, she launched the condensed lightning. It blasted through the crack an earlier attack of hers had made in the defensively raised wall of rock. Once through, the seal that kept it all together was suddenly undone and an explosion of electrical energy ravished the air. Spasming, clothes partly charred, my Queen's opponent fell to the modular floor of the artificial battlefield.

Esther reached up behind her head, fastened her ponytail, and walked away. The white feather that adorned her tricorne bobbed with every step. The teacher shouted out Esther's victory.

Today's exercise in the Battlefield Training class had been to fight utilizing only our magic, likely to stay in theme for the reveals everyone was supposed to get this month regarding the varieties of magic and how our innate soul-types interacted with them. I had dropped out in the first round. Gravity magic really did not lend itself to this type of exercise. Without my Artefact, all I could do was run up to people and try to tag them. Even if I did that, without a punch to follow, slowing them down was only a momentary inconvenience.

So I had just thrown in the towel. The teacher had not been able to condemn me for it, considering there was literally nothing I could have done, short of revolutionizing my field of magic by coming up with a working ranged attack.

For the entirety of the class, I had watched Esther fight her way through the other contenders. As per usual, she proved herself highly capable. A fight purely on magical grounds, even without Artefacts, against her was incredibly unfair in the first place. Esther was one of the few freshmen who had immediately jumped into the Advanced level of her magical inclination.

"Once more, I stabilize our finances," Esther remarked.

"I didn't even get the chance this time," I complained, while greeting her with open arms. She stepped right into my embrace, which swiftly turned into a deep, passionate kiss. We were no strangers to public displays of our affection, but this one was charged, to say the least. The last class of our day had concluded and, like every Tuesday, our excitement had reached a veritable peak. Barely, I managed to pull away from Esther's lips. "Well, goodbye Malana, love calls."

The redhead just smiled and waved, while I grabbed Esther by the hand. Not bothering to change back, we grabbed our bags. We hurried our way to the train station, felt one another up most of the ride, walked as quickly as was possible to our mansion, and made our way to our bedroom.

I wasted absolutely no time. Esther had barely pushed down the handle when I was shoving her through the door. There was no other floor to land on than the soft mattress. Excitedly, Esther looked over her shoulder, but did not turn on her back.

With my foot, I closed the door, and descended on my Queen. A dull sound filled the room, as my hands smacked down on her butt simultaneously. Esther gasped and raised her hips. The already tightly sitting fabric of her pants seemed ready to burst at the seams, around her bubble butt. I couldn't help myself, and drummed her overabundant backside for a little bit, just enjoying the confined jiggles.

That only increased my appetite. When lust overpowered patience, I reached under her and swiftly undid the button and zipper. Immediately thereafter, I treated myself to the unpacking of her alluring ass. The difference between her narrow waist and wide hips was stark and some force was involved in dragging her pants over the hill of her displayed backside. Bit by bit, the juicy, smooth spheres came into view, in all their taut glory. Then, suddenly I was past the widest point and her pants were yanked all the way down to her thick thighs.

I did not spend a fraction of that time on her practical panties, just pulling those obstructing things out of the way. Tongue extended, I leaned down to her exposed pussy. A long lick let me taste the sweetness of her honeypot, mixed in with a bit of fresh sweat from the earlier fighting. I penetrated her tight folds, feeling them shift and clench around my tongue.

She was wet. Without any action from me in this bedroom, she had already been plenty wet. Teasing her the entire trip home definitely paid off. Still, I wanted to hear more of her cries. Face buried between the symmetric halves of her heart-shaped pillow of an ass, I spanked her, harder than before, creating sharp sounds born from the impact of my palms directly on her smooth, lightly tanned skin.

Each time, she erotically cried. My masochistic love had her lust spike and her sensitivity elevated. Scientifically speaking, the pain was agitating blood flow in the area and releasing a cocktail of chemicals linked to heightened awareness. Realistically speaking, I was doing it because I liked the little rush of power almost as much as her ecstatic cries. Strange that the people I enjoyed hurting the most, be it only in these harmless manners, were those I was the most intimate with.

Further thoughts on that line were eliminated by the lack of attention I paid to what my brain wanted and the attention I directed to what my lower half wanted. Whatever that was, it had nothing to do with unpacking the reasons for my mild sadism.

Her cheeks red, the imprints of my hands faintly visible, I stopped and instead concentrated solely on eating her out. Every day, I studied her sensitive spots. Our first time had gone splendidly and I was better at pleasing her now than I had ever been.

"S-stop," Esther cried.

Confused, I nonetheless obliged immediately.

"Your cock," she panted, wiggling her firm, full ass. "I want to climax from your cock."

"Just what did I do to deserve you?" I asked and gave that presented butt one more smack. Tensing all over, so close to orgasm that even a spank almost set her off, Esther screamed. Pussy juice dripped onto her pulled-down panties, while I rapidly removed my own legwear. I did not bother fully pulling it off. Halfway down the thighs was enough to get my erect manhood out.

I got on top of her, mounting her like we were both animals in heat. Wet as she was, I still had put force behind my plunge to penetrate her tight pussy. I grunted, savagely, while her quivering quim surrounded me. Every last enthusiastic opinion I so openly declared regarding sex was instantly validated by the pleasure we shared.

Almost fully inside her, I pulled back and then slammed back into her down to the hilt. Esther screamed, the impact pushed her hips back down on the mattress and set off that orgasm she had been so close to.

I held her by the back of the neck, kept her pinned down, and kept aggressively panting. When she was in this mood, when she was in any lustful mood really, the sounds of my pleasure were something she desperately wanted to hear. Men and women were more alike than different, in most regards.