Edited by: Old Fart
------
Perra and Kahrin both squealed like little girls and came together in a big hug as soon as they saw each other the next morning. After some quick chatter and complaints from both of them about being sore, making Kal curious as to why Kahrin would be sore, the two women disappeared into the back of the inn. Kal sat down next to Bren who was eyeing him warily.
“Did I do something wrong, Bren?” Kal asked.
The big man grunted and smiled, “Next time you make a girl into a woman. Pick a different room. Kahrin thought it a challenge to try to keep up with you two.”
Kal drew back in confusion then thought about the layout of the inn for a moment. His and Perra’s room had been right above Bren’s.
Kal let out a hearty laugh, “Every time?”
“You two aren’t exactly quiet.”
“That explains why Kahrin told Perra she was sore too.”
“Not that you could tell from fuckin’ her. We just got back out here after your good morning romp when you came down. The blasted woman had one of the kitchen helpers listening for you to start up again. Damned if you didn’t, too.”
Kal laughed and patted the big man on the arm as he stood up after seeing the women coming back out. His hand lingered for just a moment as the healing rune lit up.
“You’re a good man, Master Kal. You’ll be a proper saint if you don’t do the same for Kahrin. My boys need a rest from last night.”
Kal stood as the girls walked up, Perra coming over and giving him a passionate, and very minty, kiss.
“What were you two conspiring about?” Kahrin asked Bren archly.
“Just mentioning to Master Kal that I’m looking forward to him and Lady Perra leaving so I can get some proper rest,” said the large man grinning up at the barmaid.
A voice came from halfway across the dining room interrupted, “I ‘ope yer not needing too much rest,” said Ada walking towards the group. “Ya seem to ’ave forgotten that my room is jus’ on the other side of Bren’s, Kahrin. I had ta listen to all four of ya all bloody night. I’m needing a bit o’ relief m’self after all that.”
Bren stood up and met the blonde barmaid partway, picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder to the sound of her shrieks of protest. “Good day, Master Kal. Good day, Lady Perra,” he said over Ada’s half-hearted complaints that she hadn’t meant right this second. He then gave her a pat on the rear and walked into the back of the inn.
“Be back before lunch rush!” Kahrin called after them.
Perra was wide-eyed, “She can take that too?”
Kahrin laughed, “No, she just gets fingers. As big as his are, that’s enough for the lass. In return, she’ll wrap those tits of hers around him or hold her legs tight together and let him fuck her between the thighs. Bren will get his, don’t ye worry,” she said smiling.
Kal and Perra bid the barmaid farewell and headed for the stable master to pick up Bonn. Kal let Perra get up first. She was feeling pretty tender at the moment and was just starting to regret their morning activities. She winced as Kal mounted up behind her and accidentally ground her pussy into the saddle. Kal noticed and just held out the arm with the healing rune in front of her. Perra shook her head, she had become a woman last night and considered this to be a part of the whole experience, uncomfortable as it was.
Kal called over one of the stable hands. With a squeak of surprise from Perra, he lifted her off the saddle and let her down into the hands of the stable worker. He then took off his travel cloak and folded it over before laying it on the saddle in front of him. Finally, he motioned to the stableboy to pass a very indignant looking Perra back up and carefully lowered her onto the saddle.
“I would’ve been fine,” she grumped as Kal directed Bonn out of the stable and towards home.
“I know, but since you won’t let me heal you I don’t see any reason for you to be more uncomfortable than necessary,” he replied.
Perra was thoughtful for a moment, “I don’t think you should offer anymore Kal.”
“Fair enough I won’t then.”
“Not just me, silly man,” Perra’s voice took on a hint of sadness, “I doubt I’m the last virgin you will be with. From now on you shouldn’t offer to heal them.”
“Why’s that?”
“What if you healed everything right now and it brought back my maidenhead? You worked so hard to make my first time special,” her hand came up and touched her pendant, “I’d hate for all that to go to waste and make our next time hurt.”
Kal had to admit she had a point, “So, I did a good enough job to warrant a ‘next time’?” Kal asked with a smirk.
Perra half-turned to look at him and gave him a mischievous smile, “You better damn well believe it. Just give me a couple days.”
“Oh, really?” Kal said. They had just passed out of town and Kal laid the reins down, letting Bonn take them home. His hands came up to gently massage Perra’s breasts through her dress as he started lightly kissing her neck.
Perra sighed and relaxed against him, “Maybe just until tomorrow.”
------
Kal found himself in a surprisingly challenging situation, between keeping up with Ikuno and Perra over the next week. Ikuno was more insatiable than usual, owing it to not knowing the identity of the person hunting her and the added stress of a strange dream she had where she woke up with her iron club in her hand. When Kal was home, Perra seemed intent on taking every opportunity to make certain his balls stayed empty and her sex stayed full. By the end of the week, Kal was thankful that Gerda’s sex drive was subdued compared to the other two.
A week after their night together Kal was woken up early that morning by a warm wet mouth on his prick.
Kal groggily opened one eye, “Perra?”
The young woman hummed an affirmative.
“Not that I’m complaining, but why?” he noticed that while it felt good, she wasn’t bobbing her head trying to get him off.
Her mouth slid off him with a pop, “Not sure, to be honest. Part of me wanted to come in here and drain you dry so you wouldn’t have anything left for Bea. I didn’t think you would appreciate that very much.
“Neither would Bea,” he said reaching down and pulling her on top of him. He’d only meant to hold her, but she pulled up her shift and threw a leg over his hips then quickly lined up and sank down on his erection. A contented smile spread across her face as she adjusted to his size, a moment later she laid down on his chest. Once she was settled, he asked, “Still having a hard time not being my only woman?”
“Sometimes. I think sharing you with Ikuno this last week has helped. On days like today, it’s hard not to feel a little jealous.”
“What’s so special about today?” Kal asked even though he was certain of her answer.
“Because you are going to give Bea a baby.”
“You’re jealous because…?”
“Dammit, Kal! You know why!” she whispered, not wanting to wake his mother.
“No, I don’t Perra. Your birthday was a week ago and not once have we talked about children. Every time we’ve made love your breath smells of mint and I know perfectly well what that means. I was under the impression that you didn’t want to have any kids with me. Not that would I blame you, I don’t know when I’ll be setting out on this ‘grand adventure’ Ikuno keeps talking about. It will be hard for me to be the father you are wanting me to be when I’m far away studying magic.”
“You are doing it with Bea and Aradelle, well… Bea at least.”
“True, but that was after they beat it into my head that monster girl societies developed without the need for fathers, unlike human culture. It’s a luxury to Bea and Aradelle and Gerda’s sisters that I’m doing this for them and will actually care about their… our kids.” Kal felt himself start to soften and slid in and out of her a few times until he was hard again. “I’ve made my peace with not being the father to my children that I wanted to be. The real question is are you willing to bear my children, knowing that I won’t be around much, maybe even years at a time.”
“Absolu…”
Kal held up a finger to her lips, “Not yet, this isn’t a decision to make on a whim. I know you love me, Perra, and I love you too, but right now there’s a lot of lust behind that. Especially since you’ve found a new favorite toy to play with,” Kal made his cock twitch inside her. “Let things calm down some, then make your choice.”
Perra smiled, “You aren’t even two years older than I am, how did you become so wise?”
Kal chuckled, “By whose reckoning? I doubt Ikuno or mother would agree with you. However, I have been through quite a bit since we first met. Learned magic, saved lives, nearly died a couple of times. I think I’d have to be heartless for that to not change me somehow.”
Perra laid her head down on his chest, “Promise me this. You won’t leave until you have my answer.”
He ran his fingers through her hair, “I promise. You still have quite a bit of time I think. Ikuno believes that I’m quickly outgrowing the book I’m working from and will have to seek out an actual runesmith master or a better tome soon. That said, I still have a good way to go before I’m done studying what I have available. Then there’s Gerda, she and Ikuno both seem to think I have an affinity for geomancy. I want to explore that before I consider heading out.
“Speaking of heading out,” Kal began sliding his cock in and out of the girl lying on top of him making Perra’s breath catch. “I won’t be seeing Bea until later in the morning and it looks like someone wants to take a little bit of me with her for the rest of the day.”
Perra just nodded as Kal made tiny thrusts up into her welcoming sex. Occasionally he would change things up with some long slow strokes making the girl bite the blanket to keep from moaning. Kal was having a hard time maintaining his slow pace. He really wanted to flip her over and pound her pussy until they both came but couldn’t for fear of waking his mother. When Perra’s body tightened up with her climax, it only took a couple more excruciatingly slow strokes before he coated her cervix with cum.
After a couple of minutes of cuddling, Kal went soft and slipped out of the young woman. Perra gave him a tender kiss before she got up from the bed. After smoothing out her shift, she flashed him a quick smile and disappeared out the door. Kal was content she understood what he was trying to say but hoped he hadn’t overloaded the girl with such serious talk. A few minutes after she left he drifted off to sleep again.
------
Bea was ecstatic when Kal finally showed up to Aradelle’s clearing, right up until the moment Aradelle’s vines wrapped around her arms and legs and lifted her into the air. Earlier, Kal had sent a strong impression to Aradelle over their bond of what he wanted to do with the butterfly girl. He was almost startled at the enthusiasm of her response.
Aradelle wrapped a vine around Bea’s mouth to stop her complaints about being hoisted into the air. Meanwhile, Kal stripped off his clothes as he approached the women, trying desperately to maintain the cold hard stare he was giving Bea. The way both sets of eyes were drawn to his prick like magnets when he dropped his trousers was almost comical.
“Open!” he barked at the butterfly girl. Her chitin bodice clicked as it unhooked and moved to the side even as a hint of fear worked its way into her expression. Kal had decided to play on Bea’s fetish to be controlled by a strong male. Aradelle lowered Bea down and he took just a moment to line up before he sank into the butterfly girl in one stroke. He then leaned over and growled in her ear, “Time to be bred, woman.” That had been the perfect thing to say judging by the burst of happiness that came through her bond and the climax that rocked her body, and he hadn’t even started moving yet.
Two hours later, a pregnant and very happy Bea was flitting back to her home in the treetops. Bea had explained that she would give birth to an egg in a couple of months. Another month after that, their daughter would hatch and begin a voracious diet of milk and leaves for the next couple of years, hibernating with her mother during the colder months. She would then continue to feed on leaves for the next decade or so until ready for adulthood. At which point she would create a cocoon and months later emerge as a smaller version of her mother.
Kal was also surprised to discover that his daughter would look somewhat different from what he had imagined. Bea described her species offspring as looking like human babies with a smoky tint to their skin and bright orange spots running down the back to warn off predators, much like their smaller cousins. As strange as that sounded to him, he was very happy to find out she wouldn’t have big black spines along her back.
Once Bea had left, Kal stayed and talked with Aradelle for a couple more hours. Not only because he enjoyed her company, but it also allowed him to recharge for a little bit of intimate time with Aradelle before he left.
Kal groaned inwardly when he arrived at the base of the mountain and saw the hungry look on Gerda’s face. After a quick stop in the cave where they had originally met, Kal was feeling more drained than he had since his night with Aradelle. Perhaps his morning tryst with Perra had been a bad idea.
Stepping out of the rock face next to Ikuno’s home he was met with another predatory stare from the large blue woman waiting for them. Kal’s shoulders slumped and his head drooped in resignation.
Ikuno couldn’t help laughing at his reaction, “I’m well aware that you’ve been taking care of your women all day. Come inside and get a warm meal, then I think we should spar for a bit and you can spend the rest of the night studying. However, if you are interested in a little action before bed, I’ll be very happy to accommodate you.
“Knowing you put a baby in Bea today has got all of us worked up. Don’t be surprised if this happens when Gerda’s sisters arrive as well.” Ikuno turned to Gerda, “How is that coming by the way?”
Gerda seemed to still be reveling in the afterglow from their rendezvous and Ikuno had to repeat herself before she answered. “Sandy will be coming soon. Bas will let me know when she’s ready. Marble won’t come until the other two are safe. Humans almost caught her when she was young. She’s still very cautious.”
“Understandable.” She turned back to Kal. “Ready to eat something?”
------
A blue clawed foot sent Kal flying up into the air. Before he could come up with a plan for either retaliation or escape, his eyes widened in surprise when suddenly Ikuno was next to him in the air. Her upper body twisted, windmilling her leg as she spun and bringing her heel down onto his back. Kal hurtled towards the ground and hit hard enough to bounce. The moment he landed he rolled away from Ikuno and jumped to his feet, gasping for breath. The strength rune shining on his arm protected him from breaking ribs but not getting the wind knocked out of him. Kal instinctively dropped into his fighting stance before realizing she wasn’t coming after him.
“Dammit Ikuno. What’s gotten into you lately?” Kal asked, annoyed. “You seem more interested in beating the hell out of me than teaching me anything. I can’t keep up with you when you go all out yet.”
“It’s not ‘what’s gotten into me.’ It’s ‘what’s hunting me.’ How do you think you would have fared if the wolf had come from the west and ran into you first? Aradelle had the help of her ancestor’s memories and was able to take care of herself. Do you really think you would have done as well?”
Kal blanched at the thought. “No, I don’t think I would have,” he answered sounding subdued.
“Before, I could take things slow and teach you in steps, but we don’t have that kind of time anymore. You need to learn and learn fast. I won’t take a chance on losing you just because I wasn’t hard enough on you about being able to protect yourself.” Ikuno dropped into her stance, “By the way, I’m not ‘going all out’… yet.”
Kal groaned as the oni came rushing at him once again.
------
“Enough, Ikuno!” Kal yelled in frustration, picking himself up off the ground for the umpteenth time that day. “You’re too damn fast for me, I can’t even follow what you are doing anymore! How am I supposed to learn anything when I can’t even see what I’m supposed to be learning?”
Ikuno put her hands down and relaxed, “That’s exactly the point, Kal. When you explained how you chased down Bea I knew then there was a problem. Your reaction time is far too slow, so you had to plan your moves ahead of time. While I was impressed at first with your ability to use the terrain, I quickly realized that kind of thinking is useless in combat. Any plan you make will only last until you engage the enemy. This entire time you’ve been trying to plan what I will do, and you’ve lost every time, miserably I might add. What you see as me moving too fast is just me moving in a way you didn’t expect. By rights, you were doing better months ago than you did today. Remember your forms and let the motions flow through you. Don’t plan, just act and react. Trust in your training, you’ve become more skilled than you give yourself credit for.” Ikuno readied herself, “Again.”
Kal closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths to steady and center himself. “Flow, don’t plan, act, react. Don’t think, just move,” he repeated the mantra a few times before bringing his hands up and positioning his legs, but he didn’t open his eyes yet. He looked inside himself at the roiling ball of energy that was his natural magic reserves. It was many times the size of when he first learned he could see magic, a testament to how much his abilities had grown. He let that power flow into him and fill him up, “Act, react, don’t think just move,” he said opening his eyes to take in the oni in front of him.
Gerda stood up straight and stared at Kal from where she had been leaning against the rock wall by the cave and Ikuno’s eyes widened for a moment before narrowing and readying to attack. As the oni stepped in and began throwing punches and kicks Kal was able to block each one. He could tell she was moving faster this time than a few minutes ago, but he was letting his body do the work and flowing from one kata to the next with little effort.
Ikuno smiled and started changing tactics, coming from odd angles and adding feints to the mix. Her smile got even bigger as she saw Kal’s speed rune flash for a fraction of a second, allowing him to move his hand quickly enough to block a knee headed for his ribs. The oni upped the pace and began landing glancing blows on the man. His speed rune flickered in response to her attacks more often as the stamina rune began glowing to ward off his fatigue. On a particularly hard blow, the healing rune shone for just a moment, seemingly without Kal even noticing.
Ikuno managed a quick feint and even with the speed, rune Kal couldn’t get his arm up in time to block the real attack. Instead of connecting with his face, Ikuno’s fist bounced off Kal’s magic shield. Kal stared in shock at where his shield had been just a moment ago. He stared until Ikuno’s fist contacted his jaw and sent him flying through the air to land a few paces away.
When her hand hit the shield, Ikuno had spun around and aimed for Kal’s head with a full force backhand. She barely had enough time to see that his runes had gone dark, including the one that enhanced his strength and she relied on to protect him from serious harm. She only barely managed to check her swing, but her fist still smashed into his face with enough force to send him flying.
The oni walked over to Kal’s unconscious form lying in the grass and brought up her healing spells to fix what appeared to be a dislocated jaw. Ikuno looked over her shoulder in surprise when she heard the soft thumping of heavy feet coming towards her.
“Is he okay?” asked Gerda with a worried expression.
Ikuno turned back to Kal, “He will be in just a minute, he just did something that caught us both off guard.”
“What happened to his eyes?”
“I don’t know, and something tells me he probably doesn’t either. We’ll have to wait until he comes to.”
A moment later Kal’s eyes opened and he groaned in pain, though that was fading fast thanks to Ikuno.
“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” said Ikuno.
Kal worked his jaw for a moment, “Feels like I got kicked by a horse.”
“Worse, you got knocked out by an oni. Your eyes are back to normal, any ideas what happened there?”
Kal looked confused, “What about my eyes?” Then saw the golem standing behind Ikuno and not next to the rock wall “Gerda?” he asked.
“Your eyes were glowing blue. I came over to see if you were okay,” said the golem then immediately started glancing around nervously.
Kal smiled at the rock girl, “I’m fine Gerda you don’t have to stay if it makes you uncomfortable.”
The golem nodded and quickly made her way back to the rock face next to the cave as Kal got to his feet. “Any ideas about the eyes?” Kal asked Ikuno.
“Not a clue, can you tell me what was going on in your head before that last bout?”
Kal thought for a few moments then explained what he had been thinking while his eyes had been closed.
Ikuno gave him a thoughtful look, “You said that you filled yourself with magic. Can you do it again?”
“I think so?” said Kal with a hint of uncertainty.
“Try, it’s the only thing that makes sense out of what you told me.”
Kal shrugged and looked inward where he saw the sphere of magic within him. For the second time, he let that power fill his entire body before looking up at Ikuno. The oni’s raised eyebrow and Gerda’s gasp from over by the cave told him all he needed to know.
Kal was beginning to feel a bit uneasy with this latest development. “Any idea what it means?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Do you think it could hurt me?”
Ikuno thought for a moment, “No I don’t think it will. I’ve told you before that monster girls carry large amounts of magic with them. If I’m not mistaken, Gerda still has you beaten by far in raw power at your disposal. If it doesn’t affect them negatively, I don’t think it will for you either. It’s just a guess but I’m fairly confident in my reasoning.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s much reason to do it then,” said Kal as he stopped concentrating and his eyes returned to normal.
“I’m not sure I would go that far, Kal,” said the oni.
“Eh?”
“Your reaction time was far better than the last match. Also, your runes were working as an extension of your will, making sure that you were quick enough to block me along with keeping you from getting tired.”
Kal looked down at his vambraces. He didn’t remember using his runes in the fight until his shield popped up. In his mind, he replayed those last moments of the fight. He had frozen in surprise when the shield flashed into being since he had made no effort to summon it.
Kal’s eyes glowed again as he filled his body with magic once more. The shield flickered in and out of existence a half dozen times before he spoke. “I think I see what’s happening,” he said, “I’m just barely connected to all of the runes right now.” He made an impromptu light show as the runes lit up in rapid succession from one side to the other and back before all of them flashed at once a few times. “By maintaining that connection, all I have to do is give them enough power to activate them.”
“Sounds like you are wasting magic,” said Ikuno
“I am,” said Kal as he used his ability to watch energy trickle out of the unlit runes. “It’s not enough to matter though. I think the trade-off is worth it.”
“Let’s see about that,” said Ikuno moving back far enough so they could square off. “I’ve been attacking this whole time. It’s your turn now. Use whatever runes you want. Just don’t hold back.”
Kal groaned inwardly, this usually didn’t end well for him. Ikuno was a far better fighter and new counters to everything he threw at her. He also wasn’t encouraged by the new stance she was using. Her back foot was turned to the side, her hands open and arms slightly extended but down by her waist instead of up protecting her face as she taught him.
Strength, stamina and haste runes all glowed. Kal waited a moment for the haste rune to spin up before launching an attack and promptly finding himself flat on his back. Despite his speed, Ikuno had grabbed his arm and pulled downward throwing him off balance, with little more than a light pat on his hip he toppled over onto the grass beside her.
Ikuno gave him pointers on his form and how to make the most of each strike as she repeatedly, threw, flipped, and pushed Kal to the ground with frustrating ease.
“This new style of yours, is it purely defensive?” Kal asked the oni.
Ikuno just raised an eyebrow and gestured for him to come at her again.
Kal swore under his breath thinking he should have kept his mouth shut. Sure enough, when he went to attack, she stepped into him with an arm coming across his upper chest and neck. She pushed him up and back just slightly but enough to make him lose his balance yet again. Her hand hooked around his neck and she pulled sideways and down, introducing his head to the dirt at high velocity while her other hand came around with a punch to the gut that left him feeling like he had been kicked by a horse — no small feat with two protection runes active.
Ikuno hissed in pain and immediately brought up her healing spell to fix her hand which she figured was badly sprained at the very least. Meanwhile, Kal curled up into a ball, holding his stomach as his own healing magic went to work. A minute or so later Ikuno wiggled her fingers, verifying that nothing had been broken. At the same time Kal rolled over onto his back, his healing rune dark after completing its own task.
“That may have gone a bit too far, call it a day?” asked Ikuno.
Kal wiped the perspiration from his forehead, getting a whiff of his sweaty armpit. “Sure thing,” he said, “right after a bath.”
Ikuno smiled and helped him to his feet, “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”
------
As usual, there had been just as much groping going on as cleaning. Having to choose between two pairs of water slickened breasts for his hands to run over was something Kal wasn’t going to complain about. Gerda especially seemed to be intrigued by the whole concept of bathing. Kal had never noticed any odd smells from the golem so he knew she must do something along those lines. Although, he did remember that even down deep where the mana cave had been, and his fire resistance rune had been nudging its lower limit, not once did he ever see her sweat. When he finally asked her how she kept clean, she just smiled and stepped out of the waterfall. A moment later Gerda sunk down into the rock of the mountain, leaving a puddle behind her. She then appeared again a few paces away, sparkling clean and completely dry. Kal couldn’t even smell the soaps he had been using on her minutes ago.
Kal also washed his dusty, sweaty clothes. He had small mending and cleaning runes on leather tags sewed into his clothing, but he never felt that the magic did quite as good of a job as a hand washing. Then again, the runes on the tags were straight from the book, Kal hadn’t bothered to improve them.
As he laid his clothes on the sun-warmed rocks, Kal was somewhat surprised at how comfortable he had become being nude around the women. However, the hungry looks Ikuno kept giving his crotch almost made him wish his pants were dry.
The only major problem with Ikuno’s pool was that it was filled by the runoff from the waterfall. This meant that if you washed under the waterfall the water in the pool would get dirty. As they waited for the pool to clear Gerda and Kal were working on his geomancy as Ikuno looked on.
“We will start with the table,” Kal watched as Gerda waved her hand over where she wanted the table. Ghostly ropes of magic that only Kal could see stretched out from the golem’s hands and tied themselves to the stone in a circle in front of her. She then made the same motion as in the cavern where Kal had made Perra’s necklace, like she was lifting a large heavy cauldron, and a round section of stone raised up until waist high.
Kal repeated the same process, trying to match the thick tendrils of magic that Gerda had used and nearly succeeding. Copying the golem, he gathered the ropes and lifted, only to have his arms stopped dead.
Kal looked down in confusion as Gerda walked over to his belongings and grabbed his vambrace then brought it back and put it in his hand, “Rock is heavy, use that.” Kal did as asked and as the strength rune came to life, he dragged the column of rock up to waist height like the one next to it.
Ikuno suddenly burst into laughter from off to the side, “The mountain has nipples!”
Ignoring the laughing oni, Kal worked to disengage the magic cables when Gerda said, “Very good, do it again.” She lifted her right leg and Kal saw tendrils of energy race from her raised foot to the tops of the two small pillars.
“Wait! Ger…!” Kal was cut off as her foot came down and neatly flattened both tables back into the rock, dragging him along with. Kal found himself staring at the stone that a moment ago had been just in front of his feet. He finished releasing the magic cables and slowly got up checking to be sure he was okay. Other than a small scrape on the end of his nose where it brushed the rock he seemed to be fine. Ikuno was now wheezing from laughing so hard Kal threw her an annoyed look that only set her off worse.
“What happened?” asked the very confused golem.
“I was still tied to the table when you pushed it down,” he said slipping the bracer over his forearm and tying it.
“Oh… Work quicker next time. Do it again. I’ll give you a time limit to ‘untie.’”
The next two times Kal managed to make the small stone table fairly quickly but was dragged to the ground as Gerda reset the stone with a stomp of her foot.
By the fourth time, Kal was beginning to feel a good amount of heat coming off the table from being raised and lowered. This was also when Gerda stopped him and asked why it took so long to disengage from the rock.
“The magic for these ‘ropes’ isn’t really coming from me anymore, so I can’t just cut the flow and they’ll disappear. Even if I try to drop them, they are still attached to me somehow, that’s what happened the last time,” Kal said with no small amount of confusion. He was starting to long for the familiarity of his runesmithing book.
“Cut it,” said the golem matter-of-factly.
“I just said I can’t. It’s like I’m creating a physical thing made out of magic. Cutting the flow won’t work.”
“Not the magic, the rope.”
Kal had been standing there with his arms out from raising the table. He mentally formed a thin blade of magic and sliced through the tendrils he was holding to no avail, they reformed as quickly as the blade passed through. Next, he tried coming from the inside. He sent a pulse along the rope that went just past his hands then severed the connection in all directions at once, the magic cables quickly dissipated afterward. As his hands finally fell to his sides, he admitted that it worked, but he wasn’t very happy with it.
“Gerda, could you show me how you do it? I’ve come up with a way to cut them, but it seems terribly slow compared to yours.”
Gerda shrugged and pulled the column up once again, this time with Kal looking closely at her hands. A moment before she released the spell the tendril shrank like it was being pinched off just in front of her hands. A second later the same thing happened next to her foot as she stomped it down. After watching, Kal felt he had a good idea of how the golem did it.
Kal got a small blast of heat and looked over to see a glowing ring in the stone marking the edges of the column they kept raising and lowering. Smiling, he again pulled the small pillar of stone up, its sides glowing dull red from the friction. Instead of cutting the tendrils he drew the energy back into his hands, like Gerda’s they seemed to pinch off and separate almost instantly.
Having never tried to do magic with his feet Kal failed comically trying to do Gerda’s stomp method to push it back down. Instead, he overlapped his hands high up on his chest and pushed down which had the very unexpected result of pushing him up into the air. Ikuno nearly fell over laughing as a surprised Kal kicked his legs futilely in the air before severing the magic ties and dropping.
“Anchor feet, then try,” said Gerda, lifting a leg then leaning in all directions while the foot on the ground never budged.
“Magic with feet,” Kal grumbled but concentrated on binding his heels to the rock below him then repeated the motion. This time the column slid back into the stone it came from making the ring glow just a bit brighter.
“If you two are done making the mountain’s nipples hard,” called Ikuno from over by the pool, “the water is clear, but it’s still cold.” Looking at Kal she smiled and said, “I think you should warm it up for us this time.” Kal glanced over at the glowing ring then started walking towards the pool with a sigh.
------
After he had gotten the water up to a tolerable temperature, Kal and Gerda had spent some time making stone seats and benches to sit and relax on in the shallower end. Bubbles of boiling water still ran off the column that sat just below where the pool was filled, once heated, rock seemed to maintain its temperature for a very long time. Gerda was now down at the deeper end, casually smoothing the rock of the sides and bottom of the pool as if she hadn’t been underwater for the last half hour.
Kal leaned back putting his head in between Ikuno’s breasts and letting the warm water loosen tight muscles from the day’s activities. Ikuno’s hand, with magically dulled claws, was also helping him release some tension as it languidly ran up and down his oni-sized cock.
Kal turned his head to the side so he could hear, “I’m curious Ikuno, why do you think my dick didn’t shrink the other day when Bea wanted to try sucking it while it was like this?”
“To be honest I’m not sure, magic can be strange. At times it’s obedient and does exactly what you want, like any good tool. Other times like with Bea that day and with your bonds with the other girls it seems to have a mind of its own. My best guess is that the compatibility spell determined Bea’s intention and decided to let it happen since she wouldn’t be hurt by it. It’s a very old magic I learned from Kithana back when the Tower of Prentas was still standing. It was also developed by Prentas himself and the man by all rights was a magical genius. It’s hard to understand exactly how his mind, or his magic, worked. Kith just taught me the spell and gave me a quick rundown of how it functioned.”
“You did mention that he had access to magics like teleportation that no one else has been able to conquer. What other kinds of things did he do? That were unique, I mean.”
“First thing that comes to mind was magnetism. I told you he destroyed an entire army in a minute did I tell you how?”
Kal shook his head.
“He turned the metal in their own armor against them. Iron is widely known for absorbing magic and steel is largely made from iron, Prentas bypassed all that using magnetism. He created foci in the middle of every person associated with the army then created an insanely strong magnetic force at that focus. Full suits of armor were crushed into something only a bit larger than both of your fists put together without even a slight care as to the armor’s occupant. Knights and Paladins in armor, squires in chainmail, soldiers in studded leather, even the supply personnel weren’t spared, if there was a piece of metal nearby it ended up inside them. In a bit of misfortune, the cleric’s battle gear had steel pauldrons, the rest of their adornment was mostly gold which isn’t magnetic. If not for those they might have survived.”
Kal cringed but remembered that this army had killed the man’s city and a good portion of the original monster girls, “What else was there?”
“He managed to do something special with lightning, Kith was cagey about that, so I’m not sure exactly what it was. He learned how to fly using magic…”
Kal piped up, “I’ve actually been looking into that as well.”
Ikuno looked down, “Really? How’s that coming?”
“Nothing too deep just yet,” Kal drew the rune for the telekinesis cantrip in the air but didn’t activate it. “Levitas and Motus,” he pointed to each glyph in turn while Ikuno looked on nodding. “It can make small, light objects fly but I don’t see anything in the rune that limits the power, weight, or speed. It makes me think that the spell is inherently flawed. But then, it does leak magic like water through a sieve, so I think I already knew that.”
“Ever think about jotting it down and tightening it up as you did with the rest of your runes?”
“I already did that, this is the final product.”
Ikuno peered intently at it but since she never used the drawn version of the spell she couldn’t make out the changes Kal had made.
“It’s as though the rune is missing something, another primary glyph or some added dimension that I don’t know or understand yet,” said Kal.
“I wish you had mentioned this earlier, I may be of some help,” said Ikuno. She stopped lightly running her fingers along his cock and held out a hand to summon one of her magic circles. “This is a greater telekinesis spell. With it, I can launch rocks and such about the size of your head at a good speed. It hardly ever gets used with such a small weight range.”
Kal sat up and studied Ikuno’s spell intently. Most of the outer two rings’ purpose was to direct the magic back into the center, which seemed very odd to Kal. In the middle were the same two sigils only slightly different for Ikuno’s style of magic.
Kal’s eyes glowed blue as he looked up at the oni, “Activate it, please?”
Ikuno chose a rock nearby that was just a bit too big for the lesser cantrip and activated the spell, lifting it into the air.
“Ugh,” said Kal in distaste.
“That bad?”
“Worse, if the small one is like water through a sieve, this is like a waterfall through a fishing net.” As Kal looked on the outer rings were doing as he expected and directed some of the escaping magic back into the middle of the spell increasing its power. He was surprised to see that the leakage was mostly coming from the center which was unusual with far more coming from Levitas then from Motus. However, this was the only spell he knew that used two primary glyphs, he had a feeling that was the issue. As he stared at the spell he began to get feeling far off in the corner of his mind that there was a glyph that combined these two. For a moment he managed to grab onto the idea and in his mind began getting tiny impressions of a very complex glyph that should go into the center. A moment later the feeling was gone before he could commit anything to memory.
Kal sat back, his eyes going back to their natural color, “Dammit.”
“Something wrong?” asked Ikuno, lowering the rock and releasing the spell.
“It felt like I almost had it, like a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can’t remember.”
“You’re being a bit vague, Kal,” she said with a hint of annoyance.
“Sorry, there’s another glyph that should go in the middle, one that is a combination of those two and does the same thing without pissing magic away into the air,” Kal explained. “I could almost see it, but then it vanished. It seemed so intricate I almost wonder if it’s a combination of more than these two, perhaps a composite of three or four instead.”
“That’s some high-level magic, you’re talking about,” said Ikuno. “Getting runes to work together like with your haste rune is difficult as you already know. Combining runes is on a whole different level. To my knowledge, I’ve never met anyone who has ever done it. I will say that with your magic sight you are probably the most likely person to manage such an accomplishment.”
Kal smiled and leaned back against Ikuno, “I appreciate that. You seem to have so much faith in me. It makes me wonder sometimes what I did to deserve it.”
She wrapped her arms around him, “You came back to me.”
------
Kal and Ikuno sat there until the sun started dipping below the horizon and the fresh water from the waterfall had cooled the pool beyond comfort. Dried off and dressed they began making their way back to Ikuno’s home after saying goodbye to the golem. Gerda had decided to stay and continue working on the pool, as unconcerned about the dark as she was about having air to breathe.
Upon reaching Ikuno’s cavern, Kal immediately went to work on the flight/telekinesis problem. He started by recreating everything he could dredge up from his flash of insight earlier. What he ended up with on paper was less than heartening. At first, it looked more like a jumbled mess of lines and portions of sigils, that didn’t surprise him much as he was going more on feeling than memory. However, even in that jumble, he could make out hints and glimpses of the two runes he expected and one he didn’t though he was very familiar with it.
“I think one of these runes is for speed,” he said as Ikuno set down bowls filled with their supper and joined him at the small table in the library.
Ikuno’s brow furrowed, “Can I see?”
Kal handed his drawing over to her then tucked into his salad of greens and dried berries topped with strips of seared red meat and lightly doused with some sweet wine Ikuno said was from her homeland. After a couple of bites, he was already looking forward to trying this particular dish later in the season when the berries were fresh, it was quite tasty.
Ikuno handed the paper back to him and grabbed a book from one of the bookshelves before sitting again. She tapped the cover and said, “Feather Fall. Look it up. You need something like it on your bracers anyway. However, this one will be all you. There’s no feather fall rune in the runesmithing book” She glared at him as he reached for the tome, “After supper,” she growled.
Kal tried not to wolf down his food but the prospect of uncovering something new made it difficult. When he and Ikuno were done he took their dinnerware away and placed it in a washbasin for cleaning later, then nearly ran back to the library. Digging into the book he immediately noticed that it was for Ikuno’s style of magic but with some luck, he should be able to adapt it. When he came to the Feather Fall spell, he pulled up short.
“Wait a second, that looks an awful lot like the Levitas glyph.”
“It is but instead of lifting things it only makes you fall slower.”
Kal sat back, “Something is wrong, the rune is wrong.”
“I don’t doubt you but those are brave words from a novice. That spell is hundreds of years old. Regardless, flight can come later. We will be visiting the harpy and Silma soon. Gerda said she was going to fetch Sandy during that time, so she won’t be able to take us there. We will be hiking up where the air is thin, so you may need your mask.”
“Mask… Waitaminit, mask!” Kal jumped up and ran over to his pack digging out his breathing mask before coming back and laying it next to the paper with the beginnings of his flight rune. Kal cast another quick spell lifting the ink off the paper where he used another drop from the well to fill parts of the rune that he knew. He added to that, elements from the rune on the front of his mask he could see in the design.
Ikuno shook her head, “Levitas, Motus, Celeri, and now Caeli Cumulare. Four runes in this monstrosity and you aren’t even done yet. I think what frightens me most is that I truly believe it will work when you are all done.”
“I’m seeing parts of a protection rune, but I don’t understand what it’s protecting from.”
“Hmm, what about the cold? You will have to dress warmly when we go up to the harpy’s nest,” suggested Ikuno.
“I was looking into that last winter after I helped deliver that baby. There isn’t a whole lot on ice magics, near as I could tell.”
“People who use ice magics tend towards being as cold-hearted as their spells, and jealous of those who enjoy the warmth of life,” Ikuno said with bitterness in her tone.
“Sounds like a story there.”
Ikuno sighed, “Yes, there is but it happened nearly two centuries ago and it won’t help you. The woman hated me, and we never spoke of her magic. I didn’t even know she was an ice mage until she tried to kill me.”
“Could she be involved with the wolf?” he asked.
“Not a chance, she died by my hand. Even if she hadn’t, she was human and as I said, it happened centuries ago. She would have long ago died of old age.”
“Do you mind if I ask what made her want to kill you?”
Ikuno sighed, “Not right now, Kal. Those are painful memories.”
Kal nodded and set the flight rune aside before starting to figure out a way to create a feather fall rune. An uncomfortable silence descended on the oni’s small library.
------
The Levitas glyph that was an integral part of the feather fall rune floated in front of Kal. Beside him on the table were a variety of books open to the different forms of sigils and how they differed from held to drawn to inked so he could study the changes between. He hoped to eventually come up with a plan for converting the glyph in front of him into something he could use on a bracer. His main issue was that he had never done anything like this before and didn’t know where to start.
He drew a basic ring around the glyph and fed a tiny bit of magic into the floating rune, watching it dissipate almost as quickly as it touched the ink. Since the books told him Feather Fall was air affinity, he attempted to add some elements common to other air type glyphs to stabilize it. Instead, the rune vibrated itself apart as soon as magic touched it.
Collecting the ink, he once again formed the rune with the Levitas glyph in the middle. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the rune. It was supposed to be air affinity but disintegrated when anything air related was added. It still leaked magic almost like it wasn’t even there and he was just throwing energy out into the world. Worst of all, for Kal at least, was that it just looked wrong.
“Looked… Hmm…” Kal closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them they glowed blue. Again, he fed a tiny bit of magic into the rune. He began making small changes to the ink in front of him, seeing if each one affected how fast the magic dissipated. Some time later his ability to see the magic flows suddenly dulled and Kal quickly put the rune on a piece of paper just as his magic reserves gave out. Between using stamina and haste to get to Aradelle and Bea then back to Gerda later, sparring with Ikuno, practicing geomancy, and constantly using magic working on the flight then later feather fall rune; he was tapped out.
Kal rubbed his eyes as a wave of tiredness swept over him. He had gotten so caught up in his work he had lost track of time. Looking over at the bed he saw that Ikuno had stripped down for bed then dozed off sitting up, the book she had been reading laying across her stomach. He took the book from her hands and put a bookmark in it before placing it back on a shelf in the library. Touching one of her horns he pulled a small amount of energy into himself, making the oni mumble in her sleep with an annoyed tone. He used the energy to gently lift the oni enough to get the blankets out from under her then lay the large woman down in the bed.
Stripping himself, he pulled the blankets up to her waist before getting in himself. He scooted over until his back was up against the large blue woman and with a wave of his hand the torches in the cavern all went out. Ikuno unconsciously wrapped her arms around him in a protective manner and made a low growling sound that could have been either a warning to something in her dream or a purr of contentment. Either way, Kal didn’t think there was anywhere else in the world he could feel safer at that moment. Smiling, he drifted off to sleep.
