Black Friday

by Jan Stryvant

  Roxy was a little uncomfortable at first. She'd never had a threesome before in her life, ever. She was usually a pretty greedy lover; she didn't like sharing her partners with anyone.

  But Jolene, somehow Jolene had always been different. That first hesitant time she'd agree to let Jolene try and 'feed' off of her magical essence, she'd agreed more out of a sense of adventure and daring. But the next time had been because Jolene had not only made her feel incredibly good about herself, but because it had been mind-blowing ecstasy as well. Jolene was a very talented lover, which only made sense when you realized that she needed to be in order to get her power, but the process of passing the power along was also extremely enjoyable.

  As soon as Roxy started to kiss Jolene, all hesitation fell away, they were doing this for Sean after all, and if Jolene said it had to be done, well, she trusted Jolene. Besides, Sean was one of the few men who had ever rivaled Jolene's abilities to make her toes curl, and right now, he was already well along the way to setting her off.

  Putting one hand behind Jolene's head, Roxy pulled her closer, into a deeper kiss. If Jolene needed energy to help Sean, then she was going to make sure she gave her all that she could!

  Sean's mind was spinning, and not just because he was in bed with two incredibly hot and loving women and having amazingly orgasmic sex. He could actually feel Jolene pulling the energy out of his body, and then using it to slowly take apart his mind. There was something there, something in it, and she was slowly going after it, piece by piece, tendril by tendril. He could feel that it was old, and he could tell that whoever had put it there hadn't done it for Sean's own good.

  It was an exercise in both love and lust, endurance and strength. He made love to Jolene for what seemed like hours, filling her with his essence several times all while she and Roxy made love above him. Then positions changed and suddenly he was inside his Roxy, seeking completion with her, with Jolene in a secondary role now, yet she was still deep inside his mind, still tapping the energies of the two of them, but as their beasts met as Sean buried himself in Roxy, their energy spiraled higher and he felt the thing in his mind begin to fade. It lost its power, and slowly, oh so slowly, it disappeared, until suddenly, there was no longer anything there.

  "You can be anything you want to be now, Sean," Jolene's voice filled his mind. "Make your choices from the heart, from your love for Roxy, from the joy of what we have shared here, and all will be well."

  Arching up he emptied himself into Roxy one last time as she cried out in joy with him, then he quickly fell asleep.

  "What just happened?" Roxy yawned and watched as Sean all but passed out, obviously exhausted.

  Jolene smiled and cuddled up against Roxy, "I removed a rather nasty geas that someone put on him. From what I learned in the process, I think it was done to him when his father died."

  "What?" Roxy turned to look at Jolene, "Why would anyone do that?"

  "Because his father was a powerful wizard and they didn't want his son to follow in his footsteps?"

  "Wait, his father was a wizard?"

  Jolene nodded, "That's what I'm guessing. The geas blocked all of his magical potential; I'm surprised that Sampson was even able to infect him. I guess the magic of lycanthropy is different enough that it managed to squeak past the rules.

  "But along with the blocking of his potential, it also blocked his memories. They didn't want him to remember anything about his father, or his father's work. So when he was attacked, well that was all related to his father, and his father's work. So the geas immediately went to work to block it."

  "How does a spell know something like that?" Roxy asked skeptically.

  "It doesn't. Sampson told him that it was about his father, and his father's work. A geas is based in your own mind, in a way it uses your own mind against you. So once his mind realized what it was...."

  "It triggered the geas."

  "Exactly," Jolene yawned and stretched on the bed. "I don't think I've had a magical workout like this, ever. You two are pretty potent, I must say."

  "Well," Roxy yawned as well, "I guess we're not getting any studying done tonight." Looking over at her alarm clock, she gasped, "It's three am!"

  "Yup, wake me in the morning; I think I've earned a battery recharging or two!"

  "Jolene, after last night, you might want to be gone before he wakes up. He's a lion, and he's going to start building a pride soon."

  "Oh?" Jolene giggled, "Worried about competition?"

  Roxy blushed, "Actually, of all the people I could want to be in it with me, you're definitely my first choice."

  Now it was Jolene's turn to look surprised.

  "Hey," Roxy grinned wearily, "I warned you, and I love him and I can tell he loves me. So of course I'm going to help him get the best women. Besides, it's not like we don't have feelings for each other already, right?"

  Supernatural Discoveries

  Sean woke up from a deep sleep for one reason only, his bladder was full and someone was pressing on it. Opening his eyes he could see it was still dark out, Roxy's clock said five-thirty. Roxy was pressing up against him, with leg drawn up over him, the culprit reminding him of his full bladder, while Jolene was curled up against her.

  'Want' said his lion as he looked over Jolene's naked body.

  "You and me both," Sean whispered to himself. "But first, let's use the bathroom."

  It took him a minute to separate himself, and then he padded down to the bathroom naked. At this time of night he doubted anyone would be up, and honestly, he really didn't care who saw him naked after the night he'd just had.

  Returning to Roxy's room, he spied Sampson's watch on the table, and grabbing it he put it on out of habit. It would be just his luck to forget it here and then spend weeks looking for it back in his own room.

  Climbing back into bed, he snuggled up to Roxy, who murmured in her sleep and rolled over to face Jolene as he tucked Roxy under his chin and draped an arm over the both of them and quickly fell back asleep.

  # # #

  Sean was sitting at a desk. There were a number of thick leather bound books on the desk, but the covers were all blank.

  "Hello, Sean."

  Looking up, Sean saw his father. He was wearing what looked like a chemist's apron, only it had arcane symbols drawn on it. His hair was black, like Sean's, with a slight touch of gray at the temples. He looked concerned, but not too worried.

  "Dad? What are you doing here?" He asked, sitting behind the desk, and unable to stand.

  "If you're seeing this, I'm probably dead. A number of people have begun to take an interest in my work, and not in a good way."

  "Is this a recording of some kind?" Sean asked and looked around; he was in a dream state of some kind. And then it came to him, he had just gone back to sleep with Roxy and Jolene, after a rather exhausting marathon of tantric magic to remove something that Jolene said had been bad for him.

  "I've enchanted this watch," Sean saw his father hold up the watch that Sampson had given him, "and I've asked Sampson to give it to you on your eighteenth birthday, once you've become old enough to understand magic, how it works, and have the energy to use it.

  "There are things I want to teach you, but before I can do that, you will need to learn the basics, and that's the reason for all of this. If the narrow-minded members of the five councils have their way, I'll be barred from continuing my work, perhaps even stripped of any power and cast out of magical society. And if the greedy members of certain circles have their way, well, I won't go down without a fight and I won't give up that which is mine, that which is of course, now yours.

  "I've arranged this spell so that it can only affect you, only be used by you. I have put all of my basic spell knowledge and theory into it. Simply by closing your eyes and concentrating, you can come to this place, and study these things.

  "You will also be brought here, every night, to study as well. Do not lose the watch; you must be wearing it for the spell to work. Do n
ot tell other's about the watch, lest they try and take it from you, even though it will not work for anyone but you.

  "There is one more important thing you must learn first, and you will learn that now. A magic user must decide what parts of his essence that he will dedicate to learning a particular spell or characteristic, before he can learn it. How fast you will learn it will depend on how hard you work. As you progress in skill, and in age, you will have more to spend, but remember to spend wisely. Once spent, you cannot undo what you have done.

  "Now, let us begin."

  One of the books in front of Sean suddenly lit up and had a title on the cover, 'Mastery of Self'.

  Opening it up, he started to read. It told him first about the general aspects of his mind and his body that he could improve, with time. It reminded him very much of the character creation and building process of all those D&D and video games he'd played as a kid. Well, still played to be honest.

  You accumulated energy over time and through study. The type of energy you accumulated often determined just how it must be spent, but there was a certain amount of wiggle room on some of the topics.

  So some things and some changes could be made quickly, others would take more time and effort. Some would require him to return and spend more of his energy; he liked to think of it as 'points' as it was always in the same discrete 'packets' or amounts, over time.

  Once how it worked was explained, the spell appeared in the book and it took him only a moment to learn it.

  So he cast it.

  He blinked in surprise, as he looked it over. The similarities between it and several of his favorite games were such that he wondered if those games had originally been designed by magic users to help teach their children through play.

  Either that or someone decided to go make a killing in the gaming market by simply pirating the actual system in use today.

  First there were his physical stats, and looking at them, he was rather shocked to see how high they were, after what he had read to be average range in the book. Apparently his lycanthropy had given him a huge advantage there.

  Second there were his mental stats, and some of those were slightly above average, he suspected that his time in college had raised those.

  The third set of stats was labeled magical. Those were also higher than expected, quite a bit higher, but he had no clue as to why that was at all.

  Then he looked at his points available in each of the three categories: physical, mental, magical, and something called 'scholarly' that wasn't apparently a stat, and even though it was a dream, his jaw still dropped.

  He quickly went back and looked at the book, jumping back and forth between it and his skills chart several times. It was annoying that he couldn't look at them side by side, but he started looking at each of the categories and tried to figure out just why his numbers were so different from the examples given in the book.

  It looked like a lot of the physical points had been already been spent, due to his lycanthropy, which he suddenly suspected had gotten him a more than a few 'bonus' points. In each of the first three skills, constitution, agility, and strength, his numbers were well beyond anything the book mentioned, and while agility was supposed to be a 'locked' skill like constitution was, it looked like he could still put points into it.

  That was interesting

  Then there was a box at the bottom of that list labeled 'regeneration' that wasn't even in the book! But it sounded good, so he stuck a couple more levels in to that, which turned out not to be cheap. Based on what he'd learned from the games he'd played in the past he pushed most of the remaining points into agility, and left himself a couple extra, just in case. His strength was already beyond that of a human, so he'd hold off before adding any more there.

  Under mental, there were five categories, intelligence, wisdom, reasoning, memory, and integration. Again, the last one, integration, wasn't in the book, but obviously had to do with his lycanthropy. The first two in this group were also 'locked' but in a different way. You couldn't put anything into them, but the book said they would increase on their own, as a result of your own work.

  So the work he'd done trying to learn to be a better student and to study harder, along with his years in college had apparently given him some increases in his intelligence, if he was reading this correctly. However his wisdom increases seem to have come from a life spent scraping to get by, and playing D&D with his friends.

  He found that last bit to be amusing, but the real surprise was that his years in college had left him with quite a few points to spend.

  Sean looked at that last skill on the list, the one that wasn't in the book, integration. The idea, that he could now actually do something to speed up learning to work with his beast, his lion, was pretty damn appealing. He dropped two levels worth of points into it, which was half of what he had left, apparently the lycan skills had a higher point cost per level. That done he put a couple levels into memory and reasoning as well, and sat on the last two points for later.

  There were only three magical stats, ability, mana, and will. Ability was locked and apparently inherited, according to the book, so his being high was probably just because of his dad. His mana levels however were higher than normal, quite a bit. Jolene had mentioned several times tonight that lycans had higher energy levels, so maybe that was the reason for it. Only Sean's 'will' stat looked normal, if at the high end of things.

  So he stuck a few points in mana, just because he could, but put all of the rest into will. It looked like your will was what drove your ability to cast, so it was probably the most important stat on the entire sheet, if you were a magic user.

  Skipping back to the book for a minute seemed to confirm that thought.

  Done with the 'Stats' part of the sheet, Sean came to what was labeled as scholarly. He had fifty points! He'd been accruing them for almost three years now, and of course hadn't spent a one. Again, his studies had helped a lot in gaining him more points, apparently studying logic and science had helped him quite a bit, as well as his age. The book said you normally started with somewhere between six or eight depending on your schooling until that point.

  Running down the lists of spells, he quickly realized one thing; his father had obviously been an alchemist. There were other things there, some of them were strange, and some of them didn't look all that good, either. If his father had learned some of those, he could see why perhaps his dad wasn't as popular with some people as you might expect.

  He'd have to think about all of this. A few of the spells stood out almost instantly, like healing, protection from spells, and some shield spells. Then there was a list of offensive spells, as well as just a number of ones that he couldn't make head nor tails of right now.

  He decided it could all wait until morning. He was tired.

  Taking another look around the room, he saw a sign that said exit, and as he thought about using it, left the dream and went back to sleep.

  Monday, Monday

  Sean woke up when the alarm went off, but Roxy and Jolene were both still soundly asleep. But a little coaxing using lips, teeth, and fingers Roxy woke up fairly quickly, and went from grumpy to sighing, and then moaning happily in short order. By the time he was done with her, Jolene had woken up and was demanding 'her fair share' for all of the work she'd done last night.

  Roxy kicked the both out of her room when she got back from the shower, she remembered that her father was going to show up sometime this morning, and she had class. Sean realized that he had class as well, but decided that missing one wouldn't hurt, and that being with Jolene was a lot more fun.

  "So, just how does magic work?" He asked her later, when they were lying in his bed together covered in sweat.

  "That's a question that would take years to answer," Jolene sighed cuddling up against him. Sean had definitely replaced a lot of her power this morning. She'd actually woken up because of the power Sean and Roxy had been giving off while having sex, not because they'd bee
n all that noisy.

  "Doesn't anyone know?"

  "Oh, people know, but it's just different for every type of magic. A lot of mine is very mentally based, like you saw last night. I have to be touching someone to affect them. The spells I have where I don't have to be touching someone or something, require certain sounds to be uttered while making certain gestures. Most of which are really just mnemonic keys to my own mind to help shape and focus the magical energy, or what most folks call mana, in my body."

  "And how do you learn spells?"

  "Well, some I studied, I had a master who taught me a bunch of basic spells, but then he taught me what he claimed was his greatest secret," Jolene said with a wink.

  "And that was?" Sean asked her.

  Jolene laughed, "Why would I tell you his greatest secret?"

  Sean rolled over on top of her, and pinning her hands above her head with one hand, he started to tickle her with the other.

  "No fair!" Jolene laughed.

  "Hey, you shouldn't have told me, if you weren't going to come clean," Sean laughed. "Besides, who else can you brag too?"

  "Okay! Okay, I give!"

  Sean stopped and gave her a nice long kiss, until she got all soft and cuddly under him.

  "So, you were saying?"

  "Hmmm? About what?" Jolene grinned.

  "I can either tickle you, or we can do other things," he growled.

  "Other things?"

  "Fun things," Sean said lowering his voice.

  "Oh, I like the sound of that!" Jolene said in a sultry voice of her own.

  "So, what is this secret?"

  "Oh, I just make them up."

  Sean blinked at her, "What?"