The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

An Apocalypse Rising

Author’s Notes:

I have gotten more than a few feedback requests here and there that boil down to, “More Cassea.” I’m happy to get the specific feedback as it means that people are actually reading these longer tales and I thank you for that. Anyway, after some due consideration, I figured out where she could and should be. For those that asked for her, I hope it suitably scratches the itch.

Chapter Two

Deres looked down at the young girl’s leg, seeing it as the mess that it was. The cut itself hadn’t been such a terrible thing, only about three inches long where calf met ankle, but now it was far more serious. The area around it was red and hot to the touch, and, also, swollen around the cut so that it appeared now more like a large boil that had burst. If the red spider veins around it hadn’t screamed infection, the weeping pus and the smell certainly did.

A young woman with her mother’s doe eyes she looked at him look at the wound while her mother, looked on with barely disguised fear. “She cut herself on some loose metal when we were setting up our needlework displays. I used the usual poultices, but she just...keeps getting worse.”

He kept his tone casual. “I’m actually surprised that she’s not running a fever yet.” Inside though, he was truly surprised that she was still ambulatory at all at this point. The girl had a strong constitution indeed, though that wasn’t uncommon from those that lived in the poorest parts of the city. It could be unforgiving and not a place for the weak. Had he not learned to trust his instincts and make his own way in his younger days, it surely would have swallowed him whole in one despicable way or another.

But now, as a healer of some renown in the city of Erette, he worked to use his gifts to make life better for those left behind. “Not to worry though, he said, giving the young Edina a reassuring smile, “it’s not too bad that a bit of magic can’t fix it.”

He looked to Cassea whose big, blue eyes watched placidly. “We should have some actual crutches for this young lady around somewhere, don’t you think?”

“We do,” she said. As a matter of course, she could rattle off every bit of inventory there. It wasn’t all that much different from running a House in that regard.

“Because...I won’t be able to walk after you fix it?”

Edina’s eyes widened, looking to her and to him. “Goddess, say it isn’t so. I tried...”

“It’s not so,” he said firmly before his eyes met Edina’s to explain. “It’s because the magic will continue working inside you after you leave here, mending what’s broken and killing all trace of the infection. You’ll be sore and it’ll just be easier for you to get around for a couple of days with the crutches.”

“He’s quite skilled,” Cassea told her with a sly smile, “despite appearances.”

“She’s so mean to me,” he told Edina with a grin.

“We all have to be true to ourselves,” she said almost melodically as she headed down the hall, which surprised Deres not at all. She liked the last word whenever she could have it.

It broke the tension the rest of the way and young Edina smiled.

“Now, young lady, do you want the scar or not?”

She shook her head firmly. “Not at all, if you can manage it.”

The corner of his lip turned upward slyly. “I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t going to be up to you.”

With that, he placed his hand a fraction of an inch above the wound. Even as he spoke he seemed to be concentrating on something else. “The magic will also deaden the pain as I work, but not right away. The bad news is that it is going to hurt like mad. The good news is that after a few seconds it’s not going to hurt at all. Ready?”

She nodded quickly and in a reminder that the young woman wasn’t so far departed from little girl, when her mother clutched her hand, she gripped it back just as tightly.

As soon as light appeared in the space between their flesh Edina screeched in pain, tears already erupting as she involuntarily worked to break her mother’s fingers. In the space of half a dozen heartbeats though the pain was a memory and they watched the magic work and Edina watched with curiosity as Deres’ face stressed and his eyes moved beneath his closed eyelids as though he were chasing something in a dream.

It wasn’t so far from the truth though. Part of his mind focused on the state of the wound, eliminating the necrotic tissue and nudging along the natural mending process as the magic destroyed the pools of infection within the wound while his mind searched her body for any trace in blood, flesh and bone, giving the remnants of magic that would remain something to hunt. It was a living thing in some ways; an expression of instinct as much as will.

The magic he called upon would do his bidding at this point without his active direction, so he opened his eyes and pulled it back within himself as a conduit and back to its natural paths in the universe. Once the magic now within her followed his will it would simply fade away. As the visible link between them faded he already knew what he would find: clean skin, slightly red from the mending. “The redness will fade. Promise.”

Edina grinned from ear to ear as she touched it tentatively. It felt a bit tender, but not painful. “Thank you, Healer.”

“Deres is fine.” Out of the corner of his eye, he spied Cassea at the doorway, crutches in hand. “There’s the mean young lady.” He looked to Edina as he spoke. “Tell you what, why don’t you let Cassea show you how to use those while your mother and I talk, all right?”

She put both feet on the floor and winced as her healed leg protested the stress.

He reached out to help her. “All right?”

“Yes. Still kind of hurts like you said, but I can do it.” She braced herself against the examination table and then took the strong arm Cassea offered and let herself be led out in the corridor.

When they were out of earshot her mother let out days worth of anxiety in three words. “Thank you, Healer.”

“Deres is fine for you, too. I’m just glad you brought her in when you did. Another day or two might have been too late, but, she really will be all right.”

She wanted to weep. “Since her father left she’s all I have. You know, she really does talk of wanting to be a Healer herself when she’s older, but, to be honest, the magic scares me.”

He tried to reassure her.“It’s just a tool. And, for the record, I think she’d make a fine Healer. If she still wants to when she’s older, I think she’d make a wonderful apprentice. She’s smart and unafraid.”

“That one is fearless,” her mother agreed, reaching into a deep pocket of her worn, dark, woolen skirt and pulled from it a small pouch. Untying it, she poured out a dozen gold coins into her hand before placing in his what was probably years worth of savings for them and all there was. “Take it. Take it all. If it’s not enough, you can have whatever else is mine, too.”

He shook his head, placing his other hand over hers before pulling them away. “Not all. There’s no honor in overcharging for services. I don’t fleece my patients.” He took a single coin and gave her back the rest.

She shook her head. “It’s not...not nearly enough.” She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t get a Healer in the upper quarters to even see her for less than three, much less make her well. I...”

“They charge what they charge and I charge what I do, and if you were in my offices in the upper quarter three is what it would be to start because you could afford it. Here and now, it’s one gold and that’s it.”

She embraced him warmly, doing her best to crush ribs. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“You are both welcome.” He rode out the grateful vise and followed her out to the waiting room as Cassea kept a guiding hand on Edina’s front and back to be there for a quick catch that already seemed unnecessary. “Excellent, Edina,” Cassea praised. “You have a warrior’s balance there.”

“I’d rather be a healer,” she said determinedly as she tested to see how much speed she could make on three legs.

“Careful, now,” Cassea admonished gently.

“Just make sure you find a nicer assistant,” Deres told her as he came in behind mother and daughter while they made their way to the door.

Cassea glanced in his direction. “If you would be less, well...you, you might find me a more amenable assistant.”

“Promise?”

“Try, she dared, “see what happens.”

With Edina and her mother heading home, they began to lock up for the day with Deres doing what cleaning needed to be done while Cassea updated patient records and handed some of the other clerical minutia that came with running a place such as this. There seemed to be no end to it, though Deres had to admit she made it all seem effortless. She was indispensable here and, beyond that, he cared for her a great deal.

That he was responsible for her in many ways didn’t make or break those feelings. It simply was, and his feelings were separate from that. She was beautiful, energetic, acid-tongued and in some ways would never be tamed. That she had handed him the collar in the form of a heavy necklace of braided gold and silver and begged him to use it was monumental for a woman like her.

Now though, he noted as he cleaned Edina’s exam room and thought of her, in a sense, to know her really was to love her. Love her he did. Beneath that acid tongue and boundless attitude was a bright, witty soul with a gentle heart, though she was loathe to display that often or to many.

So focused on thoughts of her was he that he failed to notice her at the doorway as she watched him scrubbing down the walls. She stood in a black dress with silver buttons down the center before it flared into a long skirt. She always dressed down a bit, finding a balance in clothing that would fit both here and in the upper quarters without disrespecting her station, her family’s, or that of House Jaye; the House she was now irrevocably tied to.

As her former employer’s House fell, other Houses rose in prominence, with House Jaye rising higher still. Her own family had been briefly terrified as House Voss was seemingly left adrift in response to Tonn Vesik’s ‘insanity’ that led to the sudden and complete dissolution of his House, but Cassea had transitioned so quickly and seamlessly into House Jaye that her parents simply assumed that she saw the cataclysm coming and had positioned herself, and by extension, her House supremely well. Her mother only half-jokingly wondered if it was Deres or Neral that she had started sleeping with first in preparation.

Deres only really cared about appearances at the most official of functions, and those to which Neral’s mother had specifically invited him, but he had taken Tessa’s and Cassea’s aid in those elements very well. He is at least trainable, which makes him superior to most men. He still had no use for the politicking of the House, and, in all fairness, neither did General Jaye, so Cassea had taken that task as her own and no one complained.

She kept House Jaye in the better if not good graces of the other Houses, though, to be honest, she admitted that the fact that Neral and Queen Evaline would likely die as sisters in bond if not blood was all the connection that would ever be required. That every other House knew that made her job in the political realm that much easier.

Cassea watched him in that brown shirt that was one of the extras there, as what he would come in with occasionally ended up soiled, and those dark trousers as he scrubbed the walls. He is a good man...for rabble. He gave of himself to others to a fault. He gave all he had and then somehow found more when needed. For him, family and the love they shared was all that mattered.

And he loved her.

That seemed a bigger mystery to Cassea in some ways than anything else. She was his. Bound to, claimed by, and owned by until one of them passed to the next world. He could treat her as a slave and she would endure it if not adore it. He could use her as an outlet for any dark depravity that he found his precious Neral and Bryana too pure for and she would do it and be the person he needed to be that could without complaint.

Instead, he wanted to know her. He treated her as her own person. He asked her what she thought about things and it mattered. She could even browbeat him into doing what was best for him from time to time. He treated her like he didn’t own her body and soul. In the deepest part of that soul, she admitted that she doubted she would treat a person she so owned so well. When he promised her he would treat her well she didn’t expect that that meant he would treat her as the person she’d always been.

Whether she loved the man alone or that she simply loved her master because she had to, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She liked that feeling of enthrallment almost more than anything. She rapped her knuckles on the door frame. “All settled for the day.”

He didn’t look at her, but she heard the happy in his voice. “I saw you with Edina.”

“Your eyes function? Wonderful. Your patients will be pleased.”

He paid the comment no mind. “You like it here. You like the work. I see how you worry about the people here in ways that you don’t when we work the upper quarter.”

“I am human, Deres. I have sympathy for those who are ill or injured through no fault of their own as with young ones like Edina. She didn’t ask for an infection that would kill her. Some foolish southie adolescent racing horses with a belly full of ale? He can suffer the pain of his foolishness. Some noble that cannot get his belly through the door and snorts like a pig about his life of ale and a forest’s worth of fatty animals and wants it all fixed? I care not at all. That you can speak sympathetically to both galls me.”

“We all have our failings,” he mused.

“We do.” She slowly began to unbutton her dress. “One of mine is that I am constantly, hopelessly in want of you. The Goddess’s saving grace in that is that it’s entirely your fault.”

He turned to see her undressing as she came towards him, eyes locking on the cleavage provided by those pert, firm breasts.” He spoke as he put the sponge in the pail and dried his hands, letting the towel fall to the floor. “Terrible to be so in want of a southie cock, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea.” She unbuttoned his shirt slowly, revealing that muscled body, kissing just above each where each button rested. As she spoke, her voice cracked as she made love to each descriptive. “That long...thick...filthy...animal thing inside me.”

“Inside such a cultured, well-bred young woman,” he breathed lustily, kissing her neck and biting the flesh his lips had touched, making the nicest little high-pitched sounds come from her.

“How you disgust me,” she snarled, ripping at his trousers even as she bit him in return. “How being your...mmmm...slavetoy disgusts me. How looking upon you with want and love while my cunt dampens at the thought of your next touch disgusts me.”

“I told you before that I will take that away anytime you wish. You wanted the slavery, Cassea. You wanted the owning. You begged for it.” Her dress piling on the floor he grabbed that almost inhumanly firm ass. “But I can take take away the loathing as you please.”

She kissed his lips over and over as she grabbed his cock with a whispered, “There’s that vile thing I need.” She began to tug it in pleasurably rough fashion as she spoke more loudly with a disdainful huff. “Even your offers of mercy disgust me, Deres. Because you fucking mean them and I know you fucking mean them, and it twists the knife inside me that my answer is, ‘Don’t you dare.’ My disgust and ache for one so beneath me soaks me beyond words.”

“You like knowing you are lowering yourself to fuck me. Without that necklace you begged me for you’d never go get the guttersnipe cock you like so much.”

She stroked him faster. “Only this one. Because….mmmmm...Goddess, I am its slave. It’s so hard,” she gasped. “It needs...servicing.”

“It does. I do.” He sucked a nipple into her mouth and she quivered.

“Then say it,” she snapped before her voice wavered. “Please.”

“Service me,” he commanded.

She hissed through her teeth. “Goddess, yes,” as she slipped to her knees, kissing down his hard belly to that proud thing, giving it reverent licks and inhaling its scent. “I dream of this scent, do you know that? Is that my collar, too?”

“Noooo,” he moaned, “that’s just you being a slut.”

“Your slut. Your fault, all of it.”

He grabbed that midnight black hair that was almost always in layered in soft curls. “Suck it, Cassea.”

She whined and took it deeply into her mouth. She wasn’t suited for taking it deeply. Beyond the halfway point her jaw and throat protested, but she always pressed on. She choked herself on it because she relished the evidence of her depravity that was gagging a river of saliva onto her lips, her chin, and his cock. She relished how, if she pushed herself long enough and hard enough, her eyes would tear and her nose would run and she knew she looked like the filthy beast she felt like. She relished it because it pleased them both.

He pushed her head down with zeal and she shook. “Do better, Cassea. Neral can take it all. Bryana can take it all. Bryana showed her how. Should I have one of them show you how?”

She growled from deep in her belly as she cupped his balls gently, rolling them in her palm as she pushed herself to take more before coughing it out, all the while looking up at him as she began the rough stroking again.

“Yes, you love-hate that, too...that those two can do anything better than you can. And they aren’t even my slaves.”

Her lip curled even as she closed her eyes to feel the filthy truth. “I like that word. I like that word because it’s fucking true. This necklace is my collar and I feel it even if I don’t wear it. I feel owned all the time because I am owned and that makes me wet enough for ten whores just walking down the street.”

“And that’s what you begged me for.”

“I could bite this thing, you know,” she purred, closing her teeth along the side just enough.

“Bite it,” he dared. “Or kiss me and tell me you love me.”

Her brows knotted before she huffed at herself as much as him before rising and sliding her tongue into his mouth, turning and twisting her tongue with his. “I do love you, guttersnipe. I am spoiled for you.”

“And I love you, you stuck up little bitch.” He picked her up without effort and sat her on the table, beginning a slow, loving torment as his lips, tongue and hands worked down her body and past her breasts before she stopped him. When he looked up in confusion, her smile was the one reserved for precious few. “No. Not that this time. I mean, every touch of your body to mine is bliss. If it pleases you to do, then do it for yourself.”

He kissed her breastbone tenderly. “Then command me, Cassea Voss.”

“Delicious irony, that.” That rare smile faded only slightly and her tone took on that of a once House Mistress. “Do nothing but use me this time. Defile me. Disgust me with your words and that pauper cock. Make me walk home with you as though all is perfectly normal as my shame lingers unspoken the rest of the night.”

“So you can rub yourself in the dark and remember.”

“Yessss, you southie fuck that’s unworthy to even look upon a feminine form such as mine, much less own it.”

And it was a fine form, impossibly trim and fit. She had a warrior’s body even though she’d never picked up a sword. “If that is your wish.” His voice turned sinister with a hint of whimsy as his blue eyes met hers. “If you want to be plowed like a slave whore, get on the fucking floor.”

She hissed at him but rushed to comply all the same, placing herself in the middle of the room on all fours as he rustled about behind her. “Head down, cheek on the floor, slave. And thank me for not making you kiss it.”

Her smooth cheek touched the rougher floor and her knees spread wide before squealing as both his hands struck her ass. “Thank me,” he struck her again, “for not making you kiss it.”

Her anger mixed with her heat and she had to bite it all back. “Thank you...for not making me kiss the floor.” The exhalation that followed was one of utter contentment. She began to shiver as though she were naked amidst a snowstorm when she felt his fingers spreading a cool liquid at the crack of her ass. “You know what’s coming, Cassea?”

“Yes, I do.” She played with the thought, “something whores do for a few bits of silver. Or slaves.” That last word came out as pure lust.

“I love it, girl,” he said kissing that ass and biting it hard enough over and over to make her jump each time. “I released you and you crawled back. If I released you again, you’d crawl back. Who do you hate more, Cassea? Me? Or yourself?”

“It depends on when you ask,” she spat.

“Drive me as I drive you, Cassea.”

“I...Goddess.” She began to mew and whimper and her chest heaved as he worked his shaft into the blistering tightness of her ass.

He closed his eyes, surrendering to the sensation. “You feel so good, Cassea.”

“Use that word; only that word,” she mewled. “Please.”

“Your ass is nice and tight, slave.”

“Mmmm...your ass is nice and tight, Deres. It is yours.” She made guttural sounds as his shaft threatened to split her in two. “Hurt your ass. Shame and defile me.”

He finally worked in to the balls, then slowly withdrew until only the head of his cock was visible to him until he pushed in smoothly, this time the, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh...” sound from her reverberated through the walls.

“You love watching me do this to Neral. You can’t stop rubbing your slave pussy watching it.”

“How...could I stop? No...oooo...no woman with an ounce of breeding could...could watch that and be unaffected. The head of… arguably the greatest house beneath the queen and she...she’s naked and being sooo...oh, ohhhhhh, yessssss, lewd..filthy...improper with a mate she should never have.”

Cassea loved the thought as he began to not only move through her, but slam her. “She… a noblewoman, becomes an animal for you.”

He talked as he grunted into her. “She becomes what she is free to be with me, slave, no propriety then. She can be the animal that she is and enjoy her body and mine and Bryana’s. You higher class women just think sex is supposed to be...uhhhhhhhh...proper, too. In the dark, man on top….mmmmmm...sheets carefully covering you. You think that, but...you never seem to do it yourselves.”

“You lay with two women at night and...fuck my ass….” She seemed to refocus from the broken thought and started again. “You lay with two women and still crawl into my bed...needing.”

“And you spread like a good slave, he sneered, watching how he disappeared into her over and over like a machine. “You suck like a good slave. You obey like a good slave.”

“Because I must.” She whined as her orgasm drew closer. “My owner demands...and I must. Owner of my...my leash...pulls it and I must obey. And I hate it...and I love it. Feeling both at once with your wicked cock in my ass, I want nothing else. Ever. Hurt me with your cock until I weep. I beg it.”

They drove each other on and on, each drive of his cock shaving a bit more of her physical and mental resistance until she was crying incoherently, shrieking out an orgasm on what seemed like every fourth or fifth thrust as he rained sweat onto her back. Finally, even his powerful body reached its limits. “I’m going to cum, slave. I have to.”

“Do it,” she screamed through a blubbering sob, “shoot your seed into my ass!”

His body obeyed, almost helplessly in the end, using those final thrusts and his weight to push her to the floor as his chest heaved, panting so, that he blew her hair around with each breath before he rested his chin on her shoulder.

“Shhhhhh,” she cooed. “Relax. Breathe. Did your slave please?”

“Yessss.”

“Mmmm...excellent. If that’s my place, I may as well excel.”

“That you do. If it pleases you, Cassea, willing slave or no, by the time it’s over, you always win.” He kissed her shoulders, finally beginning to soften inside her. “My body can never resist yours for long.”

She laced her hand in his, kissing it even as she happily endured his weight. “As it should be, she said, as though to suggest anything else was lunacy. “I have had men plea for my kiss while you get whatever urge you have tended to as you will.”

“Still hate me?”?

“No question, southie scum; as it should be for a woman of my birth to have a man like you sate himself in me.”

“Still love me?”

“Always,” she said softly, that tenderness returning, “as it should be.”

* * *

Deres walked the smooth stone path that led to his home feeling quite good about the day and still tingling pleasantly from its ending. The healing of others with the magic at his command was not only virtually the only way for him to use the magic without finding himself with a noose or a blade at his neck, it was his calling. That he could take away their fear and pain and get them back to their lives brought him as much peace as it did them. With the other only acceptable public display of his abilities being pyrotechnics and mundane tricks as a traveling showman or a hired feature at rich children’s birthday parties, he believed he had chosen the right path. That’s not to say he never engaged in the latter, as he would soon.

“I really don’t know why you waste your time,” she snipped as she marked her notebook.

“Yes, you do, Cassea.” he said patiently.

She rolled her eyes. “Because you’re nauseatingly sweet and noble.”

“Because the poor children, like I was once, cannot wait for the public shows in the parks because they could never afford to have a performer at their party. I see no reason not to give that to them when I can. Goddess knows that life in the southern quarter is usually hardship enough.” Much of the city was content to let them be “those people,” and look upon them with pity or scorn.

She finished marking the date and placing the notebook back in her leather satchel before declaring victory. “Because you’re nauseatingly sweet and noble.”

“Did you ever have one?”

She used one hand to exile an errant curl of raven black hair from her forehead. “Yearly. My parents insisted. I waited for them to be over. Magician before presents, never after,” she said, mimicking her mother’s gently authoritarian tone. She thought back to those days, having come from a well-to-do family with close ties to that now-dissolved House. “Yes, yes, yes...sparkles. Pink ones. Lovely. I just stared at my gifts and clapped appropriately.”

Deres looked upon her with his own blue eyes. “Your mother was right. Open before and you’re so focused on your presents that you are paying no attention to the entertainment that they paid good money for.”

She gleefully loosed an arrow to pierce his logic as they turned up the path to the main door of the manor. “Entertainment that I was paying no attention to anyway because there were gifts piled and hidden from me, their ornate paper and flowing ribbon...mocking me. If they had given them to me before the entertainment at least I would have had them instead of having to wait.”

He looked over the perfectly manicured hedges and the wildflowers that dotted the courtyard with satisfaction, their frenzied clashes of color somehow coming together in a way that made sense to the eye like an abstract painting. The courtyard had originally been nothing but hedges and manicured grass, but Neral had had the grounds redone as a gift to him because he loved the wildflowers so. Indeed, they were one of the things that drew him back home. “I’m sure you were simply a joy to parent.”

Her pride was obvious. “Ask them and they shall tell you that I was the crowning achievement of their lives.”

He laughed, brushing her hand. “Would that be news to your sister? You know, the one I hear referred to regularly by those in our shared circles as ‘the nice one?’”

She brushed off the comment with a huff and an exasperated voice. “That I am saddled with such a blindly optimistic, perpetually-happy-in-the-face-of-almost-any-reality little princess so close to me in bloodline is a constant trial by the Goddess.”

“And it’s one that you bear well.”

She narrowed her eyes at his tone, willing him to burn nothing. “You are making light of the horrors in my life.”

He smiled as the door grew closer. Not at all. I am simply standing in awe of your absolute mastery of hyperbole.”

“Stop it.”

Before he could reach the door it had been opened by Tessa, House Mistress for the House of Jaye. Her emerald eyes went to each as she smiled in way that showed all that it was common for her as her red hair caught the sun..”Master. Cassea. I trust your day went well?”

She took their cloaks as he spoke. “A very good day all around and it is good to be back home at a reasonable hour. I assume the general is still in progressing through her day and will be home for a late dinner.”

“The general is in the living room, actually. The queen canceled the scheduled meeting.”

He turned to her after beat of his heart that was slightly faster than the one before. “Lovely. No problems for her, I hope.”

Tessa shook her head. “None that I am aware of. The queen simply decided that the last meetings could wait and that she was finished for the day.”

“Excellent.”

He made his way down the corridor to the living room and the sight there made his heart sing and body ache in equal measure. Swaying gently together and kissing tenderly were his wife and Bryana, the woman they both loved. It was not always so, what with Bryana having been hired to corrupt Neral into the plot against the queen.

He liked looking at them, each so different in their own ways. They stood roughly the same height, both tall and proud, Neral’s body a warriors body, muscled and proud with the marks of battles fought and won, hair that dropped below her neck when she let it down, and eyes of liquid brown that only accented her sculpted, regal features.

Bryana’s blue eyes alone could whisper sweet nothings or yell at you from across the room. Her lissome frame could make her appear to glide wherever she went and her soft features made her appear far more youthful than her years. Which he loved more could change depending on the moment. “I appear to be interrupting.”

“I was able to break her away from her forever immersion in your magic books, Husband.”

Bryana reverently caressed her cheek as she teased. “Forgive me for wishing to learn skills that require finesse, General. I suppose I should stop now and simply learn to hack and slash my way through every problem.”

“Hack the problem’s legs off and, generally speaking, the problem is no longer a problem.”

Bryana grinned wickedly. “Burn it to ash and it can’t crawl after you.”

Neral tried not to smile back and mostly succeeded. “I can concede that, I think. You are such a bright woman; one of the many things I have grown to love about you.”

“List them,” she teased.

Before Neral could respond, he found a place between them and simply relished the sensation before answering. “She is an extraordinarily-skilled mage.”

She knew he spoke the truth. Bryana was so voracious in consuming the spells and magic lore he’d brought with him she’d essentially put herself in the position of apprentice once again because there was so much more to know than she could have conceived of in her wildest dreams. It was still intoxicating.

Still, he was her mate as well and he had unwittingly talked himself into a trap. Relationship etiquette demanded that she spring it. “Thank you, Deres. Since you’ve started off, why don’t you list all my fine qualities?”

The tactician in Neral saw where it was leading and, naturally, piled on. “Name mine, too.”

Bryana narrowed her eyes, making him the center of the universe. “And don’t miss any.”

He felt their eyes on him, but didn’t dare wither. Instead, he gave them both his most charming smile, “I’m starving, so let’s make that our topic of conversation over supper.”

Neral nodded slowly in approval. “Excellent tactical retreat. Perfectly acceptable response and you buy yourself some time.”

“I try to learn from both of you wherever possible.” He stopped himself in mid-thought as a tingling sensation crept along the base of his skull like nerves coming awake after you’ve rested on a limb for too long and he turned his head tilting it toward the feeling.

Concern played over Neral’s features and she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Deres?”

He turned on his heel and moved briskly through the house, to the kitchen, and down into the maze of tunnels under the manor only glancing at the looks of confusion from the kitchen staff over their looks and hurried pace. Calling it a small castle was actually more appropriate, but deference to the fact that it was dwarfed by Queen Evaline’s home gave it the lesser title. “Deres, what’s the matter?” Neral’s voice carried an edge now.

“Nothing. I think. Follow, please.”

His weak reassurance did very little to allay her fears, but she decided to cling to it for now all the same. She glanced behind her as she walked. “Is this a magic thing?”

Bryana responded with a guess.“I would expect so.”

They moved through the tangle of pathways meant to confuse invaders and allow escape for the occupants as only those that knew every foot could. Neral’s mother would take them through sections blindfolded so they could learn them. Siege and infiltration were things far in their feudal past, but it held allure as a place for her children to play, and since she couldn’t stop them or have them watched day and night they needed to be taught. That, and A’marin Jaye was just paranoid enough regarding the game of Court politics that she wouldn’t completely dismiss the possibility that they might need the knowledge to save their lives.

They made a hard right turn that led to a small room that Deres had claimed as a meditative space. It was covered floor to ceiling in polished white marble with snuffed candles surrounding a small silver box on a pedestal at the head of the room. He flicked his index and forefinger and the torches that lined the room flared to life. On the floor, in the center of the space was a maze-like glyph within a circle and etched into the floor.

Moving to the box in three long strides, he opened it and Neral saw his hand emerge with a sphere of luminescent green floating above his palm. Apparently by force of will, he sent it into the center of the glyph before walking around it to stand again with her and Bryana while the fluid seeped into every groove. It seemed to Neral that there shouldn’t have been enough of whatever it was in the sphere to fill the space, but fill it it did, giving everything around it a muddy brown hue.

She watched Deres look on with a hint of a smile and clear anticipation. He took her hand and Bryana’s lovingly.

Once the glyph was filled she could see the liquid flow briefly before flaring in what should have been a blinding flash, though it didn’t blind. In the center of the glyph now stood a wisp of a woman with strawberry blonde hair past her shoulders and eyes of ice blue under sharp brows. Few wrinkles marked her face and her black dress hugged her frame. Modest jewelry adorned her in the form of rings and necklace. It all came together to create a picture of fierce elegance.

Next to her was a black backpack and she surveyed the room with satisfaction before smiling upon Deres. Even if he hadn’t told them endless stories of her and described her perfectly, Neral would have known her simply from the way she looked upon him.

He beamed. “Mother.”

She opened her arms and met him in the middle. “Deres.” She squeezed him with considerable strength and relished the hug in return. She ran her fingers through his close-cropped dark hair before grinning at him. “You simply must grow that out so I can muss it. I miss that.”

“Why do you think I cut it short?”

She shook her head and nudged his shoulders. “Tsk, you and your endless rebellions,” she joked, kissing his cheek. The women behind him looked on in wonder. The notion of him as rebel was amusing. Not that he was stiff by any means, but ‘rebel’ was not an apt description of the man they knew.

He extended his arm towards the women in his life. “Maylin Xon, my wife, Neral Jaye.”

She gave a respectful nod and a grin. “I’ve heard much about you. Magister, is it?

She literally waved it off. “I only use that when I must. ‘Maylin’ or ‘Mother’ is quite fine. I’ve heard so much about you as well.” When Neral looked puzzled, Maylin elaborated. “We commune, dear. It’s magic and complicated I’m sure you’d rather I didn’t put you to sleep talking about it.”

“I’ve actually learned some of the fundamental theory. It’s quite fascinating, if also, as you say, complicated.”

Her eyes twinkled in amusement.“Now you have me curious to test you, if only to see how well my son can teach.”

“Speaking of,” he interrupted, “my apprentice and mate, Bryana Lia.”

She bowed deeply, profoundly respectful of the title and the skill she knew the other must possess to have the title. “Magister Xon.”

“Same goes for you, Bryana. To claim you as a mate means you have a piece of his heart, so you are family all the same.”

“I am honored.”

Maylin touched the aura of the other and then looked at her with a more critical eye. “You have been changed.”

Bryana was slightly taken aback that she could simply know by looking. Magister indeed. “Yes, Magis...Maylin. It was necessary.”

Maylin gave her son a look that Neral saw in her own mother when she demanded explanation without saying a word. The method used to change her was the ultimate punishment and control in Adar, his adopted home. Magic and science came together and reshaped those rare few that were irredeemable in any other way. There were few that had the skill to create the means and it was a crime to use it on another without cause or due process. She returned her gaze to Bryana. “May I touch your mind?”

Without hesitation, she tilted her head forward and waited for Maylin. The magister brought her delicate fingers to and around her left temple, muttering the spell as she went. Bryana lowered her guard and allowed the entry. It was deft and considerate of her. Maylin looked for what she needed to and ignored the rest as Bryana spoke. “I would have caused much death and pain. I might have ignited an all-out war. It had to be done. I understand that.”

Maylin’s eyes moved as though reading, which, in a real way, she was. Slowly, she nodded, pulling away. “Yes. I believe it did.” The gray that fell upon her contemplating what else that would have to be done took her from the happiness of reunion. Her eyes met her son’s. “I need your help.”

She explained what she saw in her investigation and moved to who she believed was behind it as she circled the room. “Drexa was a great magister, and perhaps one of the greatest. She had a great intellect and greater curiosity. That benefited us all, but her curiosity turned to...dark things.” She was visibly disgusted contemplating some of those things. “There are some magics forbidden even in Adar; magics that create the unnatural or that can only exist at the absolute expense of others...magics that do not create or sustain a balance regardless of scale.”

“All magics create something unnatural though,” Neral offered. “Close a wound that would have otherwise killed someone and you have prevented a death that arguably should have happened.”

Maylin, nodded, having had this discussion often with young students. “It is believed that that disruption balances out over the life of the individual. They may do good things or bad, but that fate puts the magic within reach of the one healed suggests that it is to the benefit of the universe that that person get the aid they need.”

Her words were pointed, as though she were putting forth immutable truths. “That is not this. That is not creating, for instance, things that would never possibly evolve to be without using magic to absolutely twist physical law just to see the result; that is the type of she advocated. If we were to truly master magic, we had to brave it without limits.”

“She was rightly shunned. Even those that were curious shied away because they could see the downward spiraling path of her position. Her disdain for our reticence turned to hatred for her people, and, to a lesser extent all people. We were holding her back, and if we could not be convinced, we were no better than those in the more primitive reaches. It was rumored that she’d already started her work on a small scale, but with Adar being a closed environment, she was limited. When the Council began a formal inquiry, she banished herself. After that, the matter was dropped.”

Neral tried to control her anger. This was precisely why magic was so tightly controlled and its misuse punished so severely. “So what you are saying is there is now an exiled mage in the world, who, in a snit of under-appreciation is raising an army of abominations to prove her, and magic’s superiority?”

She stood, accepting the judgment of the emotion beneath the words. “You have summarized things well enough.” She looked to her son. “Whatever will come, I am unsure if I can do this alone. I need your help. I regret bringing this into your life, but I have no choice. Know that, even so, you are free to refuse me.”

He spread his arms outward as he shrugged. “How can I? My mother comes to me and begs me for my help when all you have ever done is give to me? Even if that was not the truth, if you fail, how much life will there be for any of us anyway?”

He turned to Neral and she saw the resolve in his eyes and the pain in his v0ice. “I have to go.”

She couldn’t look away from his expression as her heart twisted. She could not bear to see him go, but she knew he was right. She saw the look she now carried on the faces of other spouses as she led their loves as her troops to parts unknown. Her heart carried that pain beneath her stoic expression each time her father went off to battle.

Including the time he didn’t come back.

We have to go,” Bryana said fiercely, unwilling to stay behind as he left, and as anxious to face an enemy as the person she once was would have been. “The cause is just, Magister. My power is yours to wield.” The fire in her eyes gave way to tenderness as she looked to Deres. “Time to show you I know what to do with all you’ve taught me, love.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she simply shook her head. “Leave without me and I will find a way to follow. You know I will, so think of it as me being safer going with you.”

He knew it was so, so he said nothing.

“Yes, we have to go.” Neral now spoke with authority, sounding every bit the leader of her kingdom’s armies. Looking to Maylin, she did not flinch. “If this all comes to pass I will have to face them anyway in what will likely be a slaughter and not one that favors me. It makes more sense to try to stop it while there is still a chance. She looked to her two. “And, where they go, I will follow. You do whatever it is you need to do to prepare and I will make what arrangements I must. We leave tomorrow at noon. I assume we’ll be transporting...rapidly?”

Maylin nodded, gathering the meaning.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have arrangements to make.” Now that she had a goal and a plan, there was no reason to linger, so she didn’t.

* * *

Deres found his mother wandering the back courtyard as the sun began to set, head swiveling casually to take everything in as she walked the polished stone pathway. “They grow better in the gardens of home, I think.”

He bent to smell one with violet petals that spiraled upward “They grow well enough here. Besides. I can go to where there are miles and miles of them. “No garden there can manage that.”

“What arrangements did Neral have to make?”

“Speaking to the queen to inform her that she was leaving for a time, and probably to enlist some help.”

Maylin smirked. “Inform her of what? I’d be interested to listen in on that.”

“Truth enough. There are rumors of a disturbance on the border and she is taking a scouting party to investigate.”

The military commander would do this here?”

“Queen Evaline knows well that her General does not lead from behind.”

“I imagine she does not.” Maylin began to laugh at humor at first known only to her. “I still think you are insane, Deres, so needing to come back here to have your life.”

He smiled at her. “Is that why you haven’t come to visit? So comfortable that you cannot get by without electricity anymore?”

She studied his face and, finding humor and no accusation, she dropped her gaze back to the wildflowers. “I had always intended to. I would have soon without this. You seem settled and to have found your place. I was waiting for that. Sooner and I feel I would have been a hindrance. You left to find your own path. You deserved to do that before I came calling.”

He came closer to her. “The woman who gave me life in every way save birthing me is not a hindrance.”

“Even so.” She paused. “I know the answer because I have listened to you speak of them for so long, and now I have seen how you look at them, but, as your mother, I need to ask if you are happy.”

He thought of them. He thought of the life he built. “So very.”

She nodded at the answer she expected. “Then, while I still think it an act of insanity, you were correct to return. And I am sorry to take you away from your life here for this.”

“Neral is right. There might be no life here to have otherwise. Are you happy?”

She gave it a lot of thought. “For a long time there was just me, then there was just us. Going back to just me took some getting used to. But I have my work and my friends. Yes, I am.”

“Then all is as it should be.”

She closed the distance to embrace him. “It is not,” she brushed her fingers through his hair with such ferocity that his head bobbed on his neck, “not until you have hair I can muss, foolish boy.”

* * *

The three of them slept little though none of them were tired by sunrise. They curled closely to one another in the oversized bed, planning some, but mostly whispering the things that needed to be said in case there was no time later. They each tended to last minute things in the home. Neral wanted to give Tessa some last instructions and to say her good-byes. Given how their own relationship had evolved, Neral had found it necessary to be more forthright with her about what was happening.

Because of that, Tessa found it more difficult than all the times before to watch her go, but House Jaye had been a military family for generations, and House Jovis had served them almost as long, so she knew as well as Neral did how to straighten her spine and wish Mistress well. The gentle soul was iron when need be.

Bryana stayed close to Neral. She couldn’t help herself. As much as she was lover, after the change Neral was, in some small way, her charge. It was to her that she’d owed the debt of her crimes and that left its mark.

Deres spent some of his time with Cassea. She would be in charge of the clinics in his absence. She knew enough about the potions and poultices now to make do, but, for things more serious, she was allowed to send them to a healer that the House would pay for. She listened as they walked and he talked, though there really wasn’t anything about covering his absence that wasn’t glaringly obvious to her, so, like the magicians of her childhood, she waited for her cues to acknowledge him politely.

When they got to the door and to the walkway beyond he saw Neral at the gate, on her steed, in her full, gleaming armor and his breath caught in his throat. The horse was one of her favorites, Stenna, black coat shining almost as the armor did. Neral looked majestic and ready to take on an army alone. Bryana watched him watch them both and the corner of her mouth turned upward knowingly.

“Is there anything else, or are you just going to stand there and ogle them all day?”

He turned, making her his focus. He shook his head. “No. You’ll do fine.”

“Of course. If not for the magic, one could train any person or several types of primate to do what you do.”

Oddly enough, her acerbic tongue was a balm just then. “Just so you know…. if I don’t survive, you’ll know because the binding will break.”

Other than a barely perceptible nod, her features were inscrutable for a time. When he was about to step away, she broke the silence. “You will return.” It was a statement of fact. “I have grown quite...accustomed...to my work, and my hating to love you and loving to hate you, and I don’t like change.”

He shook his head as he laughed at her. “Yes. Because everything in the world is about you.”

She looked at him like she was humoring the hopelessly dim. “Only because somehow, and in some way, everything is.”

* * *

They rode in silence until they reached the clearing, well away from prying eyes. In a semicircle facing the path they knew the three would take were a dozen troops, all female, and equally divided between infantry, cavalry, and archers. Neral had gone to Major Kress even before coming to the queen, only telling her that a mission was to be undertaken mostly in secret and that she needed a dozen volunteers that were skilled, willing to die for that mission, and, live or die, could be trusted never to speak of it until they went to the Goddess no matter what they saw and endured.

Some of them she knew by sight, some not, but it wasn’t necessary for her to because she trusted Kress. They snapped to attention, knowing full well they were being inspected even as the general trotted up. Even the horse’s movements were formal and measured. Bryana and Deres stayed back. This was Neral’s time and place. She guided her steed next to Kress, continuing to look upon them as they did not flinch. “Some of them look...young.”

Kress, older than Neral by better than a decade, had rejected promotion because she hated any military duty that didn’t involve being on the ground with the troops. Beyond her current rank were meetings, briefings, and the rest of the bits that, while she knew they were necessary to good order, they were useless to her. Her hair shaved off regularly, leaving a black with a little gray stubble that drew the eye to her hazel ones and the long scar down her left jawline. “Not that young, it’s just that we’re old.”

Speak for yourself,” Neral told her. “I’m the youngest ever to hold my post, man or woman.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The ones I don’t know are reliable are reliable?”

“I knew my orders, General.”

Neral sounded slightly apologetic. “Of course you did.”

“Don’t fret, General. I knew you’d ask.”

Neral inspected the line again, meeting the eye of each of them. “Major Kress assures me that you are among the best soldiers Erette has to offer. Is that so?”

The response was loud, crisp, and immediate. “Yes, General!”

“You are ready to face any enemy?”

“Yes, General!”

“You are ready to kill that enemy?”

“Yes, General!”

“You are ready to give your life so that enemy can be defeated?”

“Yes, General!”

“Excellent. You have been selected for a special mission. This mission may well save, not just Erette, but the world. What I am about to tell you requires your word that it will never be spoken of except for those who stand with you today. Not to your spouse. Not to your children. Not to a priestess as a confessional on your deathbed an old woman. It requires your word on your life, your honor, and the honor of your House. Do I have it?”

“Yes, General!” The affirmation was perhaps the loudest of all.

She moved back and forth before the line, pausing for effect.“Forbidden magics exist in the world. They exist and we are going to fight those that wield them as well as their creations so that they do not threaten other men, women, and children that cannot stand against them.”

The eyes of several of the assembled darted to those next to them to gauge their reactions.

“We may be victorious. We may die. We may be stranded. I cannot say what will happen to any of us, save that we will face it together. If the uncertainty of the truly unknown is something you cannot bear, then you may return to your posts with no loss of honor in my eyes or of those who stand with you. I know that I ask of you something that has never been asked of others in your place.”

“Stand away.”

A heartbeat later. “No, General!”

She flushed with pride and felt the weight of their loyalty on her shoulders. “You honor me, my fellow soldiers. Now we march” she began, admittedly feeling a perverse pleasure at the notion of them witnessing some of that forbidden magic. It had been a secret that she’d grown to enjoy holding in a way.

From behind Brynn and Deres, Maylin appeared. Had the troops been paying attention they would have seen her literally appear from nowhere, handing her pack up to Deres before making her way well in front of the group, extending her arms, dress fluttering in the breeze, jeweled talismans in each hand that seemed to draw energy from her words and the sunlight.

Neral didn’t know what she expected to see as Bryana and Deres guided their horses to either side of her as Kress moved between them and the troops. Thinking about it, perhaps Neral thought she would see clouds build, hear thunder clap, and see lightning snap all around them as reality was ripped asunder. What she didn’t expect was seeing how the grass before them and mountains in the background seemed to ripple like a flag in this day’s breeze.

Two steps forward from where Maylin stood, she vanished, bringing gasps from behind her.

“Steady, soldiers,” Kress urged.

With an excited Bryana to her left, tense Deres on her right, and her finest soldiers behind her, she spurred her Stenna forward.

To Be Continued...