Atomic Mage 3

by Carter, Garrett

  "You ever ride a dragon?"

  Nat's whoop of joy as they flew inches above the water warmed his dragon heart as they neared the panicked orc vessel.

  Gaining a few dozen feet of air between his fifty-foot body and the water, he used the feeling of his Nat's weight in front of his wings to assure him she hadn't gone swimming after his dive from their home.

  Using a bit of power he created an invisible harness around his wife's legs to hold her in place in case he had to use any evasive maneuvers if she couldn't convince the pirates to leave his ship alone.

  Coming up short on the bow of the 100-foot ship he glared at the still crew before introducing himself and Nat in passable orcish.

  "I am Cade Willmartin and this is my wife Nat, I want to talk to your captain."

  As he finished he felt Nat pat him on his scaly neck and felt her pride in him through their bond as a huge orc male stepped in front of the group and gave him an amused smile.

  "Hello Cade I am Erot Swift and I believe you are just the person we are looking for. The merchants guild has hired me and my mercenary group to escort your shipment to Mustef. I believe their message read along the lines of "don't let a sliver of wood take damage on that ship" or something along those lines. Though I see why they were so insistent that your goods arrive unharmed."

  Finding no reason to continue to intimidate the crew of the mercenary ship Cade lifted Nat off of his back with a gentle push of power and placed her on the deck before shrinking and changing into his human form.

  Joining his wife on the ship he caught a few snatches of the quick conversation between her and Erot before Nat leaped at him and they began to fight on the deck.

  Reacting quicker than the rest of the crew he had the massive orc in a headlock before Nat gained his attention with a few pats on his shoulder.

  "He's my cousin and he just wanted to make sure my human husband hadn't made me soft. You can let him go whenever you want but I think he is starting to turn black."

  Her sugary sweet smile directed at Erot clearly used to make her point about Cade making her so "soft" made him smile as he let the gurgling orc free from his chokehold.

  As the massive man dropped at his feet and took a few gasping breaths Cade understood a few of the words he gasped out.

  "Why yes my husband is fucking strong and so will the babies he gives me. Now are you going to stay on the ground like a child or are you going to congratulate my Cade on taking you down so swiftly, Swift?"

  Smiling at their banter Cade helped Erot to his booted feet and brushed the salt and dust off of his leather armor before offering his hand in greeting.

  "It is nice to formally meet you Erot, don't feel bad she kicks my ass on the daily too. I would like to clarify, are you the captain or the commander of the forces on this ship?"

  As the smiling orc shook his hand and tried and failed to crush it in his meaty hand his challenging look turned respectful.

  "Both, our clan prides itself on being prepared for any situation land or sea. Now that we have that out of the way can you tell that vessel to follow us? We have at least two weeks of travel left until we reach port and it's going to take half of that for them to stop running and turn around."

  Turning to look at the ship currently sailing back towards Zeme Cade glared at the fleeing vessel and with a fair bit of power used he lifted it out of the water and began to turn it around in the correct direction.

  As the larger ship began to fly towards their position he smiled as Nat gave her cousin a shit-eating grin as he stood slack-jawed at the ship coasting over the water towards them.

  Letting the ship float gently back into the water a few dozen meters away Cade sent instructions to the captain of the merchant ship to follow Erot's ship to port before turning to look at the mercenary captain.

  "They will follow you home. If there is nothing else Nat and I are going to head home. Dia should be done making our midday snack my now. You ready love?"

  He imagined the smile on her face must have hurt something fierce as she slid herself under his arm and pulled him down for a rough kiss.

  "Ready when you are my warrior."

  Giving the still disbelieving Erot a salute he created a platform beneath them and sent them flying home.

  After being thoroughly assaulted by Nat after their return home Cade sat around the table enjoying dinner with his family as they dug into Xandia's meal.

  "He did what!?"

  Eve's exclamation caused a chuckle to go around the table as Nat explained what happened during their little outing.

  "Yes he picked up a whole damn ship and flew it over, Erot must still be picking up his jaw. I can't wait to get home and show off our god of a husband."

  His amusement over the whole situation changed to startled surprise as two hands met over his groin and after a quick tussle of fingers, Nat and Promena decided to share his dick between them.

  Manfully holding himself together as one of them found their way into his pants, he held back a groan as Nat's smaller hand began to stroke his shaft.

  Promena's pout of loss caused him to kiss her as Nat moved from stroking his shaft to teasing the head of his dick.

  "You might as well get under the table and do it properly we can all tell that you are doing Nat."

  Beth's faux serious look drew another round of chuckles with a few giggles from his sweet and Eve.

  Giving his orc wife a kiss and a mouthed "later" he turned to the group and got their attention with a mild spike of pleasure to them all.

  "I would love to have an encore of our morning but I have an appointment with our dragon about some portal magic."

  Getting a smile and nod from Laurith he rose from the table and passed around kisses before offering his dragon wife his hand.

  "Lead on love."

  Following her into their training room he hoped that learning her magic wouldn't be too hard, alone in an enclosed space with his sexy dragon wife the possibilities were endless.

  Grumbling to himself the next morning Cade amended his thoughts from last night.

  He had expected to learn a little bit before taking his Laurith and then taking her to bed, little did he know his dragon wife could have moonlighted as a dominatrix with ease.

  Finding her to be a taskmaster when it came to training with magic had been as frustrating as it was sexy to see her frustration at his lack of progress as the morning sun signaled the start of a new day.

  "You need to form a... black... white hole between this dimension and your chosen pocket one, STOP STARING AT MY TITS!!!"

  Quickly returning his gaze to the chunk of metal in his hands he again tried to focus on compacting the material down into a microscopic black hole and not the bouncing breasts and switching hips of his wife as she wore a trench in the floor as she paced sexily in front of him.

  "Eyes, rock, now!"

  Again returning his attention to the iron in his hand he succeeded in crushing the fist-sized piece of metal down to the size of a sand grain.

  Forcing it down further he felt what he could only describe as a pop that caused him to scramble to lift and push energy into the now invisible ball of mass he felt above his hand.

  "Finally, now push energy through it, find your pocket dimension, and claim it."

  Grinning at the poorly masked excitement in her tone Cade maintained his focus through the most difficult part of this training.

  He had come to this point a few hundred times during the night and laying claim to his dimension had eluded him so far, to his and Laurith's irritation.

  Her method of pushing mass to her personal dimension wouldn't work for him, her innate dragon abilities allowed her to create her personal space to horde select treasures, and with her knowledge of necromancy and enthrallment keep a standing army in limbo indefinitely.

  Casting about with a tendril of energy through his tiny black hole he figured after his eventual success he would have to use this method every time he wanted access to
his little hideaway, which worked for him except he needed to find a place to tie his energy to first.

  Finding a dry spot with his line of power he braced himself to either sever the flow of power to this new plane or defend himself against its owner or denizens.

  Aligning a mithril spike with where the opening of his portal would be he had his powers on a hair-trigger, ready to defend himself as he widened the rim of the now white hole.

  Looking at a wide grassy plateau that dropped off into nothingness he let out a breath that he had been holding.

  That bit of caution had come when he had opened a portal underwater and got a lungful of seawater for his troubles.

  He dropped the spike to the floor in relief, no critters or eldritch horrors leaping out to try and eat him or stink up their training room with the stench of rotten fish he had just gotten out of his nose appeared in as he looked through his portal.

  Scanning the whole of the dimension he had discovered he held back a grunt of joy and a well-deserved fist pump as he found nothing but grass, rock, and breathable air.

  Creating a baseball-sized ball of energy he sunk it into the soil claiming the pocket dimension as his own before tying a sphere-shaped shield to the soil of his little getaway.

  Cutting the flow hesitantly he prevented his black hole from evaporation and as he pushed energy back into it he felt its flow pulled to his pocket dimension without his direction.

  Taking the results as a success he let the black hole evaporate and fell back in exhaustion.

  Closing his eyes he smiled as a similarly exhausted Laurith laid on top of him.

  "Congratulations my mate, you are now the proud owner of your own dimension, now you just have to fill it with stuff."

  Peeking an eye open he saw her sarcastic smile before closing it and taking a relaxed breath.

  "Maybe tomorrow."

  "It is tomorrow my love."

  Giving her a frown he kept his eyes firmly closed.

  "Shhh, sleep now, build boom boom room later."

  Shaking her head as her mate's breathing evened out in sleep she Laurith the Black held back a sob of amazement at his achievement, he being the only human to accomplish this task that she knew of in her long life.

  She had picked well in choosing him as her mate and even with the mood swings that her baby gave her she couldn't think of another mate she would rather have to be the father of her child.

  Laying her head in his broad chest she joined him in slumber, her incredible mate had earned his rest.

  Communing with the sea

  Checking to see if the two ships they had been following were securely anchored, Cade requested and received a report from Erot about the currents in the area before bringing his home to the water up current from where the two ships sat.

  "Everyone ready to take the dive?"

  Giving his wives an excited smile as they sat around the pool in their back yard he received nods all around and pulled power from the massive block he had fused to the foundation and made a shield around their home.

  Protection from the crushing depths they were about to traverse in place he slowly took their home below the rippling waters they had been flying over and set course towards the bottom of the sea and the city of Protea.

  A few hours later after seeing more than a few distant cousins to the terror he had scooped up during their first week above that water Cade spied the sprawling merman city.

  As the size of the metropolis illuminated by bundles of bioluminescent algae spread out below them he caught their welcome party in the scan he had kept going since the light from above them had dimmed to nothing leaving their home as a beacon of light in the abyssal blackness that surrounded them.

  Picking up something other than the denizens of the water around him he ended his scan and brought their home to a stop.

  Seeing the five merpeople waiting patiently outside of their shield bubble, he modified the area next to the floating group with an oval-shaped airlock.

  Sending a message on how the entrance worked he gave the group outside their home a confused look as his mental message was stopped by the mermaid's mental defenses.

  The smiles he received after his message was deflected were a little too toothy for his liking, he would not let himself be at a disadvantage as he entered negotiations with the merpeople.

  Stepping through the airlock he was subjected to the cold pressure of the depths for a moment before he created a form-fitting shield around himself and converted the icy cold water inside into breathable air.

  Floating up to the group whose leader a striking pearl-skinned mermaid completed with a fish tail recovered from her shock admirably.

  "I am going to assume you are Mage Cade, Wreston said you had a penchant for the dramatic."

  Surprised not by the words that had been spoken into his mind he was instead perplexed by the fact that they had been heard at all as he watched the toothy smile on the armor-clad mermaid's face grow.

  Searching for a path of intrusion from the floating woman and her guards his irritation grew when he found no breach in his defenses nor the strange tunneling he had been subjected to by Rista.

  "You will find that while we might not be able to compete with the land dwellers when it comes to technology we have found other ways to improve ourselves."

  Now with a shocked expression of his own as his mental shield quaked with the mental communication from the fish-tailed woman he recovered with a smile.

  "Dramatic though I might be I believe your people will benefit greatly from what I have to offer and what I could mean for your race as a whole."

  Enjoying the quick flash of amazement as he mimicked the sonar-like communication the mermaid had used he sent his first message again with better results.

  As they followed him into the airlock he had his first view of how the merpeople transitioned from water to air as he almost missed the woman's split-second shift from fishtail to scale clad leather skirt and coral-toned legs.

  "Hmm that was pretty cool, if you will direct me to where we might land our home we can begin whatever process your people use to allow visitors into your city. I should have a meeting with the king sometime today or tomorrow and I would hate to be late."

  Seating himself near where his wives were lounging he waited for the merwoman to give him directions as his Eve served him a drink after collecting a lingering kiss.

  "A mile or so from the palace should work, I am guard captain Alara by the way. I would like to formally welcome you to Protea and as long as your stay is civil you are welcome here as long as you wish."

  Hoping the captain's attitude was indicative of the rest of her race he inclined his head in thanks along with the rest of his wives and moved their home towards the area indicated by the pointed finger of Alara.

  He had made the trip to the underwater kingdom now he just needed to convince them to accept his rule.

  Enjoying a shopping trip with his wives the next day Cade couldn't help but enjoy Sabine's antics as she used her long body to cut through the water teasing her best friend and wife in a game of tag.

  Surrounded by form-fitting shields of their own he and his wives created a bit of a stir as they picked through the merchant's wears.

  Keeping a spy eye wandering among their group searching for anyone who planned on taking the few hate-filled sneers he had seen to a more violent level of distaste he otherwise enjoyed the shopping trip.