by Eric Vall
“Exactly why I championed him to lead the Order,” the king said with a nod. “Mage Abrus’s betrayal badly frightened the non-magical citizens of Illaria. Hell, it badly frightened me. He wasn’t the first evil mage to threaten my kingdom, but he certainly was the first to come so close to the throne. Wyresus is simply the best choice to be the face of the Order in these times when people don’t know what to make of the mages in their midst.”
“In other words,” I said with a laugh, “he’s too boring to be bad.”
“You’re never boring, Mage Flynt,” Cayla said with a smile, and I felt her hand on my thigh under the table. “Does that make you bad?”
“You tell me,” I replied with a wicked arch of my right eyebrow. “Do I lead you astray?”
The princess said nothing, raised an eyebrow of her own, and gave my thigh a squeeze. The effect she had on me was positively electric.
“You have many qualities which would make you an excellent head of the Order of Elementa someday, Mason,” King Temin said off-handedly as he took a swig from his flagon of ale. “You have courage, resourcefulness, charisma, and imagination. But you also have a few character traits which shall we say might be a problem in the position. And by that, of course, I mean no offense.”
“None taken,” I assured the king modestly. “For one, I am still a relative newcomer to these lands. I have a lot to learn still.”
“That will come with time,” Temin said, and then he winked at me. “You are also too restless by half. The head of the Order of Elementa cannot go flitting off whenever a pretty princess appears, bats her big blue eyes, and begs him for help.”
I laughed and nearly spit up my own lager between the king’s words and Cayla’s pouting reaction.
“Guilty,” I said with a grin. “That’s my weakness and probably always will be. I can’t say ‘no’ to her.”
“What do you mean ‘probably’?” Cayla said as she dropped her pout for a giggle. “I count on you keeping that quality for life.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” I said and took her hand under the table.
The king’s chamberlain appeared at Temin’s side and murmured something apologetically in his royal ear. He was a portly fellow as if someone had forgotten to say stop before he was poured in his palace uniform, but he seemed the picture of organization and efficiency.
“I’m sure it will wait, Your Majesty,” the chamberlain said a little louder with deference, “if you would prefer not to attend to it at once.”
“Unfortunately, it can’t wait,” Temin replied with a frown.
“What’s going on?” I asked, concerned and maybe a little overeager. “How can we help?”
“It’s nothing, thank you,” the king sighed and rose from his seat. “Being a king is not all chicken wing banquets with ranch dressing. Sometimes, you have to mediate between two rival barons.”
“Ah, yeah.” I grimaced. “Magic can’t help you there, I’m afraid. Good luck, buddy.”
“This is Poffret, my chamberlain,” Temin said, and he gestured to the portly fellow. “Poffret, please show my guests to the finest room in the castle.”
Aurora, who had evidently overheard, was suddenly with us.
“I’m sorry to ask, Your Highness, but could we arrange for two rooms next to one another?” the half-elf asked.
“I already asked,” Cayla spoke up. “The king has already generously offered another additional room for us.”
Temin and I looked back and forth between the half-elf and the princess.
“I’m going to take my leave,” the king said to his chamberlain before he turned back to us. “Poffret here will help you with anything you need. Which is evidently a number of rooms to be determined.”
With that, King Temin departed the dining hall. The chamberlain turned back to us and cleared his throat before speaking.
“It is my duty as the king’s chamberlain to arrange his household and accommodate his guests,” Poffret said, his eyes somewhere distant while he spoke as if he wanted to remain a professional and not break down in tears. “But I was born in Edhil. I still have family there, family that would now be dead when the hydra attacked, if it weren’t for you. I wanted you to know that your heroic deeds are in fact very personal to me. Anything you need, name it, and it will be done.”
I truly wanted to hug the man, but I settled for a pat on the back and a smile.
“We are glad to have helped your family,” Aurora said, and I could see in her emerald eyes how touched she was by his words. “All we need right now is a room with a very big bed, and another room with a smaller bed, adjoining. Is that possible?”
Poffret nodded. “Are you ready to retire immediately?”
“Thirty minutes ago immediately,” Cayla yawned. “Would you show us the way and then have our bags brought up? Most of them we left in His Majesty’s private study.”
“Of course, please follow me,” Poffret said. “Let me show you the way to your rooms, and I will arrange everything.”
“Just a moment,” replied Aurora, and then she went to Shoshanne and whispered a few words to her that I couldn’t hear. The copper-haired healer was quickly out of her seat and at our side.
Poffret led us down a passage and up a marble staircase to a landing where there were two doors. He opened the first, larger door which led to an enormous suite with a gilt ceiling and walls painted scarlet red. The bed in the middle was huge and covered with black fur pelts. I walked over, touched it, and it was as soft as a cloud.
“The room next door is rather more plain,” Poffret said in apology.
“Let’s see it,” Aurora replied as she took Shoshanne’s hand and pulled her along. Poffret led them out of the room and closed the door behind them. I finally had a moment alone with the princess.
“What is going--” I began, but before I finished the sentence, Cayla had grabbed my tunic and pulled me down, her lips meeting mine. I had questions, but I didn’t resist. How could I?
The princess tore my shirt pulling it off me, and then I reached around and grabbed two handfuls of her perfect ass. I lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around my waist while her lips still stayed locked to mine. I carried her that way to the bed.
By my hands, her bodysuit slid down inch by glorious inch. First, they released her gorgeous tits, and they burst out as if they needed resuscitation, which I was happy to provide with my mouth. I kissed, sucked, and nibbled on them, while my hands continued to push her tight body suit down past her tiny waist.
Then I rose up and pulled her long legs over my shoulders. My hands went back to the suit which I rolled slowly down her thighs and off her ass until I peeled it off entirely. She moaned, every part of her exposed except for her legs encased in the thigh-high boots, which I left alone for now. Then I pulled down my leather breeches and teased her with my erect cock. Up and down the velvet lips of her pussy, now so wet, I relished in the friction and the sweet moans that fell from Cayla’s mouth.
“Mason,” the princess groaned. “Please!”
Only then did I enter her. She was warm and tight, and her fingers ran along my back, first the top and then the bottom of my spine. I didn’t think I had ever been so deep. I rolled my hips forward once, twice, and then she grabbed my head and pulled me into a kiss as she shuddered and came.
Then I felt her hands on the cheeks of my ass as she urged me on. Sweat dripped off me and onto her as I began to move faster and faster, hip against hip. Cayla thrashed on the bed, her eyes locked on mine, overcome with passion. Neither of us could take it a moment longer. I felt the tremor and the wetness of her second orgasm, and then I spasmed as I emptied inside of her.
“Holy shit,” I moaned.
“By the gods, I’ve been on a vibrating motorcycle for two days, so this had to happen now.” Cayla whimpered. “I needed you so bad.”
“You don’t hear me complaining,” I chuckled.
She allowed me to roll off her, only to roll onto me. Her c
hin went to my chest, so I looked down at her grin and her bright blue eyes that were illuminated by the light of the moon outside the window.
“Is this why you kept pushing for two rooms?” I asked with a shit-eating grin. “So you could have me all to yourself?”
“Believe it or not, this wasn’t about you or about me,” Cayla said with a smile as she wiped her hair back from her perspiring forehead.
“Aurora was also pushing for two rooms,” I said, and then a thought occurred to me. “Wait, are Aurora and Shoshanne in the other room… gettin’ down?”
Cayla gasped and grabbed the fur on the bed to her mouth. She laughed until tears rolled down her eyes.
“I’m just saying, I’d like to watch,” I added with a grin.
“Well, I would, too,” snickered Cayla, before she got serious. “But it’s nothing like that. You saw Shoshanne during dinner. She was terrified. And tomorrow she’s off to the Order of Elementa for testing and instruction. Aurora’s just talking to her, helping her feel less alone, you know?”
“That makes a ton of sense,” I said as I wrapped my hand around the slender princesses’ bare hip.
“She always does. So do I. You should take our advice all the time.” Cayla smiled at me, and then she pulled herself up into the crook of my arm and ran her fingers through the hair of my chest. No more words were needed. We were here for each other as well.
The next morning, I woke to find that Aurora had slipped nakedly into the bed during the night, and I had both my ladies curled up on either side of me. I sat up a little to look at them, and then I lay back down to enjoy five more minutes of shut-eye. It wasn’t two minutes later, however, before I heard Aurora’s voice.
“Mason? Mason, I know you’re awake.”
I blinked at her and grinned. “Damn, this is one hot dream.”
“I really need to talk to you, be serious,” Aurora said with a frown and pulled herself away. I quickly wrapped my arms around her and pulled her back into the warmth against me.
“Talk to me,” I said as I held her.
“I spent hours talking to Shoshanne last night,” the half-elf sighed as she sank into my chest. “She is so excited and scared, but most of all, she trusts us. She trusts that we know what we’re doing, bringing her to the Order of Elementa for training as an Aer Mage.”
“Have you changed your mind?” I asked. “Don’t you think she should get the chance to reach her potential?”
“I do, but…”
“Aurora,” I said as I gave her a squeeze. “You can tell me anything.”
“Temin is right in that Wyresus is very smart,” Aurora began haltingly. “Smart as in knowledgeable. Having a lot of information, a lot of history, in his head…”
“On Earth, the term is book smart,” I said with a nod, “but not necessarily smart in dealing with the world as it is?”
“You’ve grasped what my concern is,” the beautiful Ignis Mage in my arms said with a sigh. “She’s already left a sheltered island, and I don’t want to put her back in an island of a different kind.”
“We should get to the Oculus and see what’s happening,” I agreed. “If it’s not right for her, then we can continue Shoshanne’s training away from them. We make a pretty good team.”
“Agreed,” Aurora replied with a sly smirk, “but you’re just using us to refine titanium.”
I made my face of fake outrage, and the half-elf just rolled her eyes and chuckled as always. At the sound, we heard a knock on the wall.
“You guys awake?” asked Shoshanne’s muffled voice.
“Get dressed, and we’ll meet you out in the hall in ten minutes!” Aurora called back.
“Ten minutes?” I whispered in her ear seductively as I let my hand wander up her stomach to cup one of her perfect breasts.
Cayla’s arm made its way across my thigh, and I knew she was awake, too.
“Make it twenty!” Cayla shouted before she pulled me onto her.
Making love to my Ignis Mage and the princess would never grow old. Once we’d recovered, we found the clothing we left in our bags cleaned and neatly pressed on the bureau. I took a moment to imagine the chambermaid stepping into the room last night when she saw our three naked bodies intertwined in the bed. She probably thought she had seen everything. I smiled as I imagined it.
We dressed and met Shoshanne out in the hall. As always, she wore the gray robes and cloak of the Order of Pallax, her crazy, copper-colored curls tied tight in a bun, just as the day I met her in the infirmary.
“You look beautiful as always,” I said because I knew that was the right way to begin a slight critique, “but I really liked when your hair was down, and you could see how wild and untamed it looks, like your element the wind.”
“Thank you,” Shoshanne replied, and I could see a slight blush on the caramel-colored skin of her face. “There was no point in keeping it back when we were traveling over dirt, rock, and cobblestone. Today, I just really wanted to look my best for Master Wyresus.”
“You look beautiful either way,” Cayla assured her. “Now, let’s get some breakfast and get you to the Oculus.”
Guests of the King of Illaria were treated to a spread of breads, cheese, eggs, and smoked meats in the banquet hall, every morsel delectable. After the success of the hot wings, I couldn’t help but think were there any other foods from my lifetime on Earth that I should introduce to this world? I thought of lox and bagels, pasta, hamburgers, hash browns, cherry pies, hot dogs… anything was better than sod poodle. It was low on the priority list of things that needed to be done but something to think about.
Bobbie 2.0 was where we left her in the castle courtyard. As the four of us approached, she shuddered and revved her engines to say hello.
Once we were all on board, I had Bobbie steer herself towards the secret passage in the courtyard, mystically concealed, which led to a dark tunnel. Just like the first time, Aurora conjured an orange flame to guide our way, and the fire sped along just ahead of us. As the great stone doors swung open before us, I stole a glance at Shoshanne in the sidecar to capture her reaction of the Oculus.
If there were cameras in Illaria, I was sure I had worn the same expression on my face that first day of wide-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment. To be fair, the Oculus still took my breath away. The vast cavern, a city below a city built of stone, where only mages resided. Overhead, a fissure in the rock cast sunlight over us as we made our way down the rock streets. Aurora had told me once that mages felt most comfortable in their own environment, so it was not surprising that a Terra Mage like myself immediately had a sense of coming home as soon as he entered into this world of stone and earth.
Bobbie 2.0 had never been through the Oculus in her current, enlightened state, so I reached past Aurora and took over the handlebars.
“How do you get to the Great Library?” I said in the half-elf’s pointed ear.
“It’s the biggest building in the Oculus,” Aurora said with a smile, as happy as I was to be home. “The road you’re on will lead to the grand boulevard and then directly to the library.”
She was right. It wasn’t hard to miss. At the end of the wide boulevard, the Great Library sat, a temple made of earth, fire, water, air, light, and darkness, the six elements of magecraft. Some of the contributions were more obvious than others. The torches that lit the way referred to the way of Ignis. The pools that reflected the sky above showed the waterway of Flumens. The actual stone edifice of the building itself, a massive, sprawling complex, domed with a spire, was pure Terra. Like me.
I steered Bobbie 2.0 up to the marble steps at the base of the library and looked up at a crack of thunder. Whirling around the spiral at the top of the temple were two clouds, one black and one white. They would sometimes collide and intermix, so intersections of gray and silver shot out at intervals, but it was not consistent. Sometimes both would disperse and reform. Such was the power of air, light, and darkness as I approached the library door and pulled it
open.
There hadn’t been very many mages walking along the streets of the Oculus as we drove through them, which I attributed to the early morning hours. Perhaps most in the Order were night owls and not up yet.
But the moment I entered the library, I realized this was the hub of activity within the Oculus.
It was like a massive beehive, filled with mages as they researched and discussed their craft. The dome overhead was a mosaic of multicolored glass, so the morning sun shone a rainbow of light over the wide marble hall. While I took it all in, we were approached by a tall old man.
As he got closer, I realized he wasn’t old at all, though his face was lined with wrinkles and his jaw jutted out. He had a pale green cast to his skin and long jet black hair pulled back and tied into a neat braid that hung to his waist. He wore boiled leather armor that showed off his impressive physique, and a brown cloak with a clear gem clasp around his thick neck. Shoshanne quickly retreated behind me with a frightened squeak.
“He’s a half-ogre,” Cayla whispered to me to answer my unspoken question.
Ogre? Well, that was something new. I’d never really given it much thought before, but I wondered what other species existed in this world. Elves, humans, and dwarves obviously, but now I was being shown that my worldview was rather limited. I’d need to fix that.
“What d’ya want?” the man-ogre asked gruffly as he came to a stop before us.
This was not an auspicious beginning to a relationship. Before I had a chance to speak, Aurora stepped forward.
“Terra Mage Haragh,” she said in a friendly tone. “It has been too long. The last I saw, you were on your way to the Draconius Mountains.”
“I only returned a week ago, but I’ve been updated on all your adventures. I take it this one,” Haragh said and gestured to me, “is the Metal Mage.”
“That’s me,” I replied and held out my hand, which he shook. “Mason Flynt. You’re a Terra Mage too?”
Haragh held up his green, well-muscled arm and showed me the Mages Mark on the back of his hand. It was just like mine, except without the silver line through it.
