Chapter 1

"We've got to what?" asked Wenn, his face incredulous.

Crissa looked at him, focusing her huge blue eyes on his flailing hands as he spoke. "Master Marrat wishes us to receive what he calls 'classical' education," she repeated. "In addition to our normal studies."

"At the Academy?" Wenn peered out the window of their shared room, eyeing the tall spire that marked the main building of the Academy of Norboro. "But that place is full of nobles' brats and rich merchants' spoiled kids."

"Speaking of spoiled," said Crissa, giving Wenn a sidelong look. "Perhaps we should concern ourselves more with the difficulty of the instruction there than with the social worries. Hmm?"

After her somewhat chastising words, she rose from her desk and put her arms around Wenn's shoulders. "Don't worry, sweetie, I'll protect you from the bullies," said Crissa, kissing his earlobe. Her hands moved down his chest and to his lap, where she found him already growing stiff. "My mighty Wenn," she cooed, squeezing his swelling prick through his pants.

Wenn smiled and leaned back to kiss her neck and to nuzzle into her straw-colored hair. "You know, they say lushes drink before noon. What do they call a woman who wants love before noon?"

"A catch," said Crissa, flashing him a brilliant, dangerous smile before moving back and toward the door into the stairwell.

The young apprentice's smile evaporated as he watched Crissa open the door, and a small measure of alarm came into his expression. "You're leaving?" he asked.

"You implied some fault to my desiring affection in the early day," said Crissa. "I'll not pester you with unreasonable demands." With that, she flipped her long tresses over her shoulder and disappeared through the doorway.

Wenn sat silently for a long moment, and mourned the pleasure his so-called wit had just cost him. He then closed the hefty tome he had been perusing and stacked his parchment notes into an orderly pile, looking at Crissa's disheveled desktop as he did so. No discipline, he thought, but then again, she's studying a different form of magic than I.

That sentiment was more than true. Crissa, indeed, was studying a very different form of magic from the wizardry Wenn studied. She was an innate power. That is, her power was inborn, not learned. What she had to learn was to control and hone that power. Wenn, however, studied the world of spell casting. His learning was akin to mathematics, and had many formulae in common with that esoteric art of number juggling. However, instead of manipulating the concepts inherent in numbers, he was manipulating reality. Spells had to be learned, and the formulae memorized and the rotes perfected. Crissa simply had to think properly, focus her mind and things happened.

They weren't flashy things, like a fireball, they were subtle, quiet things, like turning a man's mind to thoughts of lust, or hate, or fear. She could even, now, sense the surface thoughts on another's mind, and of late, had been able to sense other things, like the air about her, and even Wenn's magical aether being drawn in for a spell.

Marrat was rather fumbling in the dark instructing Crissa, as he was a wizard, as Wenn would become. He only took Crissa on as an apprentice because he feared for her safety, and for the safety of those near to her, if her powers remained undisciplined. At least, here at Marrat's home, and nearby, he could counter most of the effects of her occasional outbursts of power and random emotional shrapnel. In the meantime, he did as much research into her abilities as he could, both through observing her, and through study of books, which came from farflung libraries about the Western Realms and beyond.

Wenn closed the door behind him and descended from the turret room that he shared with Crissa. They had been lovers since they first made the two-day journey from Morrovale to Norboro. Marrat had planned that, they later discovered. He was not particularly keen on having two apprentices at one time, but with her powers manifesting in the form of unbridled lusts and desire, he desired to have a young buck about to soak up the stray arrows.

Not that Wenn minded the extra dose of attention directed at him whenever Crissa accidentally set herself into rut on the occasion. Being eighteen, almost nineteen, he had little issue with it at all.

Soon after their arrival, Crissa had breached the subject of monogamy, and they decided, rather she decided that it would not be practical to try to hold one another to such a thing. He loved her, and she him, but they could not promise, especially with random fluxes of passion floating about the house all the time, that they would never cross that line, so she erased the line.

Crissa was making breakfast as he entered the kitchen, and Marrat was sitting at the table, looking like a petulant child who was being kept from his favorite dessert.

At Wenn's curious look, Crissa said, "He was going to eat pie for breakfast!" She cast accusing eyes at Master Marrat, their mentor.

Marrat looked at her with a squint. "I'm sixty-two years old, if I want pie for breakfast, by the One, I'll have pie for breakfast!"

Crissa spun about, her hair fanning into a golden halo, she stopped, with her small hands in fists upon her nicely curved hips. "You'll eat a proper breakfast, and you'll like it," she said, with an air of certainty. Then her face broke into a huge smile and she ducked in toward the elderly magician, hugging his neck and back. "I only wish to take care of you, you sweet man." She then kissed the top of his balding head and straightened his blue sash, the mark of his profession.

The old wizard tried to wriggle free of her grip, but was not very convincing that he did not like the attention she was giving him. Though his lips remained in a semi-scowl, his eyes were sparkling and had the straight lower lid of a hidden smile.

Wenn helped her prepare breakfast, mostly by fetching utensils from various disparate cabinets and drawers about the rather odd kitchen that Marrat insisted on keeping his way.

"The headmaster will be expecting you two tomorrow morning," announced Marrat, digging into his oatmeal, eggs, and sliced ham with gusto, belying totally his lack of desire for breakfast.

"Must we?" asked Wenn, picking at his food with the unpleasant, at least in his mind, future looming over him.

Master Marrat leaned back from shoveling food into his mouth. "Son, this is an exceptional opportunity for some formal education at the Academy. It is not every year that they have two students drop out mid-term and leave vacancies that the Headmaster wishes to fill pro bono."

"Besides, Wenn, you were the one who was all excited at living in the 'cultural center of the duchy'," said Crissa.

Wenn stared at his oatmeal for a moment. "That was before I met the people at that center."

The first week in Norboro, Wenn had come across several students from the Academy at the pub nearest Marrat's home. As he sat and drank his ale, they came over and began to give him grief. Soon it escalated to full-blown bullying, and then one had thrown a punch at Wenn, when he refused to back down from an insult he returned to the lad, with interest.

Wenn had thoroughly beaten the lad who started it, without even resorting to magic, but his two friends extracted vengeance in short order, leaving Wenn with bruises to both his body and ego. Crissa's vengeance had been swift and utter. The two lads had been caught the next morning, performing acts upon one another in the middle of the town square that immediately got them expelled from the Academy, hence the two vacancies amid term.

People about town still marveled that the two lads had managed such a thing, much less actually did it in public. When Wenn asked Crissa about it, she simply said that she knew little of the perversions that the rich and noble got up to, but that she heard it could be quite depraved.

"Sorry about picking on you about your flirting with me this morning," said Wenn as they washed dishes side by side. "It was only a joke."

Crissa leaned over and kissed the tip of his nose. "I know, dear," she said. "I wasn't truly in the mood, I simply wished to play some."

Marrat had retired to his study to work on some new formulae for Wenn to study, and probably, by the theories that both the apprentices held, come up with odious chores for them to perform. Crissa dried her hands and moved behind him pressing her body to his back and hugging him from behind.

"Still playing?" asked Wenn.

"No," replied Crissa, "now, I am in the mood." In an instant, Wenn was, too. He never knew if it was she or himself, but when Crissa wanted love-play, he knew he did, too.

He turned about in her arms and kissed her, pulling her to him and enjoying the wiggle of her body against his. He breathed deep the jasmine scent of her hair and then kissed her flawless neck as she unfastened his pants. As the thong that held the front of his pants closed came loose, his erect cock sprang forth. Crissa grasped it with a practiced hand and began stroking his now fully hard organ, smiling at him.

"How this time?" asked Wenn.

Crissa giggled. "On the table."

Wenn kept kissing her neck and ear as he moved toward the table, Crissa backing the whole way. She ended up sitting on the table stroking his hard cock in one hand and lifting her long dress with the other. She still refused to dress in the more current 'elven' style, wearing short skirts and half-tunic tops. Wenn no longer lamented that, for she also never wore undergarments and he found her quite accessible for that.

A moment later, she was prone on the table, and he was inside her, grasping her legs to his stomach and chest and driving his rod into her feverishly. This was to be a quick round, he knew, from the fact that she was not naked, and neither was he. When Crissa intended longer bouts of love play, she managed to get them nude, and usually into their room, usually.

She screamed out as her climax took her, and her fingernails dug at the wooden top of the table, which was already somewhat scarred up by her markings. As she came, a blue and yellow, coruscating light surrounded the room, and rippled as the waves of pleasure overcame her. The magical wards that prevented her stray arousal from escaping the house were absorbing her lusts. However, they seemed to be taking more effort to do so these days. Crissa was growing more powerful. Even with the added control she had learned over the last few months, she still had a lot of what Marrat called 'backlash'.

Wenn followed her example and came soon after, grunting and driving his spike deep into her as he spilled his seed into her. Crissa ran her hands over his arms and her own thighs as she cooled down, cooing and smiling at the ceiling. A few moments later, she and Wenn were dressed again and Wenn politely cleaned the table, not that they had tarried long enough to make a noticeable mess of it.

Master Marrat came in a moment later. "One protect me, girl," he groused. "You're getting stronger faster than you're getting better control." The old wizard's robe tented out a little from a receding erection as he shuffled through the kitchen and out the back door to the outhouse. "Make sure you clean the table, I don't wish to get anything on my cuffs when I eat lunch," he added as he wandered down the steps and closed the back door.

Wenn and Crissa laughed at his constant barrage of complaints. Marrat had already proven that he liked his apprentices, and his fussiness was, in his own way, his manner of showing it. They had met a former apprentice that he did not like much, and that lad complained that he never spoke at all, not to complain or anything.

They trudged up the stairs to their turret, which was on the third floor of his home. "I sort of have a date tonight," said Wenn.

"Oh?" asked Crissa, turning as she reached the door into their room. "With whom?"

Wenn blushed. "Shanelle," he replied. "You know, the girl who works at the bakery."

"Oh, her." Crissa's face took on a look of happiness. "She's very pretty, and I hear tell she is quite, well, friendly."

The lad gave Crissa an odd look. "I didn't say being friendly was bad," said Crissa defensively. "I'm a bit friendly myself."

Another impassive look from Wenn caused her to blush. "Okay, very friendly myself, extremely friendly, even."

Crissa giggled then. "You win. I'm a one girl welcome wagon," she finally said.

Wenn kissed her, pressing her to the wall. "And that is why I love only you," he said as they pulled back from the kiss.

"And I love you," said Crissa quietly.

"If you'd rather I didn't go?" asked Wenn, and Crissa saw the half hopeful look in his eyes. She knew he wanted them to be monogamous, but she was afraid to commit to that. It would hurt them more if they promised it, then she broke it in a moment of weekness.

She sighed. "Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted me to pay her a little visit this afternoon, sort of give you a little edge for tonight?"

Wenn looked shocked. "No!" he exclaimed. "Please, don't ever do that."

She shrugged. "Okay. I won't."

"It was kind of you to offer," said Wenn afterward.

Crissa grinned. "What are lovers for?" she asked.

"What are your plans tonight?" asked Wenn as they went into their room and he sat upon his bed.

She looked into the distance. "I don't rightly know," she said, truthfully. "I suppose, I could go out and be friendly."

Wenn covered his look of dismay quickly, but not quickly enough. It wrenched Crissa's heart a little to see him like this, but she knew it had to be so. She had tried, during their first week in town to remain loyal only to him. However, the first time she had been alone, things had gone far different.

Crissa had been doing the shopping for the household. Working her way through the market stalls and picking out choice fruits, vegetables, and breads, along with seeking out odd herbs and chemicals for which Marrat had given her a list.

As she had been perusing a particularly odd assortment of little vials of strangely marked chemicals, she had felt a palpable stare upon her. It was her senses again, working sporadically and without control. She turned to see a very large man standing across the narrow alley between the stalls, leaning on a tent pole, and watching her with very interested eyes.

He was a Coghlander, one of the large men from the island of the same name. He stood at least a foot taller than she, and massed, probably double her own weight.

She turned back to her studies of the bottles and once again felt the stare, this time accompanied by an undeniable desire. She could feel him wanting her.

Again, Crissa turned and glanced toward him, her eyes drawn to the front of his skirtlike kilt like moths to a candle. He noted her stare, and followed her sight line and his handsome, rugged face smiled at her as he moved his legs and stood differently, casting the outline of his organ more clearly in the loose-hanging cloth of his patterned kilt.

Crissa turned back to the chemicals, thinking, he's huge. She was now uncomfortably hot between her thighs. An image flashed in her mind of the big Coghlander behind her, with her bent over a barrel and taking her with that oversized cock he was sporting. That was no imagining of hers, the thought was his.

She swallowed and abandoned her search for rare chemicals and decided to get home, now.

With quick, furtive movements, she headed out of the market square. Then, after moving a block away, she realized she was going the wrong direction. She had walked down a dead-end alley. What am I doing? she thought.

She spun about, preparing to walk back out of the long, narrow alley. It had made a couple of minor turns around buildings since she had left the market and she could not see the brightly festooned stalls from here. However, she did see the Coghlander. Once again, he was propping up something with his massive shoulder. This time it was a wall. He was so powerful-looking that she could have sworn he really was holding the wall up.

Her breathing was now shallow and rapid. Again, the image of her lying over a barrel, and being spread open wide by his thick spike flashed into her mind. Her eyes flicked over to her right, where a barrel lay upon its side, just like the one she had seen in her vision. It wasn't mind sending, it was foretelling, she thought, One save me.

"You look lost," the Coghlander said in a very powerful voice. His Westron was passable, but not particularly good.

She shook her head. "I just got a bit disoriented," said Crissa. She tried mightily, but could not avoid looking down at his somewhat tented kilt. A moment later, she realized she was still staring at his organ outlined in stark relief by shadows on the cloth. With a quick shake of her head, she blinked and lifted her gaze to his eyes. He was smiling again. Her legs were wobbly now, and she was not at all sure she would make it out of this alley without stumbling. She sat upon a nearby crate that lay near one wall. The heat between her thighs was intense now and her mind was casting about furiously for a way out of this situation.

The Coghlander, running his fingers through his red hair stepped closer to her and sat upon another crate nearby. Her eyes tracked him, and once again, against her very will, locked themselves onto his semi-hard prick sliding and bobbing beneath the cloth as he moved.

"You a very pretty girl," the mercenary said, looking at her with deep green eyes. She felt a wave of lust wash over her as he said that. "Very tall for Westron lass, and beautiful eyes."

Crissa looked at him. "Thank you," she said, then almost reflexively added, "You're very handsome." She knew he could hear her small, gasping breaths of air, and the way her eyes darted about, but always coming back to his slightly tented kilt. His organ was no longer semi-hard, it was fully erect, and seemed to go halfway down his long, muscular thigh, she swallowed again, from both worry, and because her mouth was full of saliva.

Another image flashed, unbidden, through her mind, of her on her knees before this mighty man, servicing him as best she could.

The Coghlander's eyes widened. He felt that one, she thought, this is about to get bad. She visibly saw his organ twitch beneath his kilt, the cloth moved a good distance from where his root should start, she noted, a very long distance.

He watched her eyes for a long moment, and she finally blinked again and looked up to his. "You want see it?" he asked.

Crissa's face turned a deep crimson and she gasped. "Oh my," she said, her eyes again moving down, as if a reflex, to the pronounced bulge. Then, in a voice almost totally devoid of volume, Crissa said, "Yes." What? No! NO! her mind rebelled.

"Look if you want," he said, smiling at her. Despite her better judgement or even her own straining will, Crissa knelt before him and began sliding her hands up his muscular thighs. She hooked the hem of his kilt with her thumbs as her hands moved upward. Having lifted the kilt only a few inches, she already saw the massive knob of his cock's head, still hidden beneath the fleshy hood of foreskin. Her eyes widened at the thought of how far below his groin this extremity of his member laid. She pushed the kilt up to his waist, his organ bobbing upward from beneath the heavy cloth.

She gasped at his size and at the magnificence of it. It was two-thirds the length of her forearm and thicker than her wrist. Each of his massive testicles would fill one of her hands, she figured.

She swallowed again. "Wow," said Crissa. "That's impressive."

"You want look closer, touch?" The Coghlander asked, taking the kilt's accordioned cloth from her and holding it to free her hands.

"Yes," she agreed again. NO! NO! NO! a small voice in her head said, even as she leaned in closer.

She was over a foot from him and his pole was nearly reaching to her. Crissa looked at one side then the other, noting the large, thick veins that covered the mostly smooth surface and the foreskin that covered the head. Men of the Western Realms were almost all circumcised; this was the first foreskinned penis she had seen.

"Touch," the Coghlander said.

Her eyes went up to his face as he spoke, then immediately focused upon his cock again.

Crissa tentatively raised her right hand and wrapped it about the shaft of his organ midway between the head and base. Before she could think, she said. "I can't even get my fingers around its girth." Crissa playfully pushed the foreskin back, revealing the swollen head beneath. It stayed put when she let go, held back by the swell of the ridge behind the head.

He looked down, and indeed, there was a gap of almost half an inch between her thumb and middle finger.

Moisture was joining the heat between her thighs. "You like?" the Coghlander asked, and once again, her body betrayed her mind by nodding. "You know how cocksuck?" he asked, using a crude word, but quite adequate for describing the action he wanted her to take.

NO! NO! NO! NO! her mind shouted as she opened her mouth and took the huge head into herself. Her jaw popped as she opened it far enough to take him in. She already tasted precome, even now, and knew this would be a very juicy man. The skin of his pole was soft like silk and hot as it slid over her tongue.