Chapter 28: Moving

-- Mikal -Torus - Earth year: Unknown --

It has been twenty-five years since the first volcano erupted.

The first twenty years were not as bad as Tory had predicted. While the planet has cooled several degrees on average, it hasn’t caused us any real stress. We still get the occasional quake, but Tory hadn’t found any reason to be alarmed by them until recently.

With the addition of the Keltrian refugees, the mermaids and their offspring, we expanded further south. Coral and Shelly the two surviving mermaids, have recovered and have proved to be a great asset, vastly increasing our knowledge of the sea and its creatures.

Many couples from our original groups have split and reformed into new relationships with the new arrivals. The additions to our gene pool have only strengthened us. Tory has only produced two more sets of six children since the others joined us.

She is looking at producing older children to populate the new regions and assist the zoetics. The expanded gene pool is also a boon to her project. She believes she can gestate them faster to the ages of about fifteen years in physical development.

With the accumulated knowledge of human development she now has, she believes the new paragons will be stable and functioning beings. They will need a year or two to adapt, specialise their talents and grow a little in a society before they produce children of their own.

She produced one set of six children, fifteen years ago and aged them to ten years of age before birth after only six months from conceptions. The second set she produced ten years ago, and they were fifteen at birth. So far these children have had little trouble adapting, and many have already found partners and produced their own children.

She has been waiting for more of our children to mature while she researched the projects full viability. I didn’t want inbreeding to become a problem in the future, so Tory’s new project should also assist us with this. The new people and older children are also supporting the project. They are willing to move with the zoetic parents to help build the new communities and educate the teenagers.

Whilst I have been limiting the number being born to me, I now have forty children to my credit. If a woman has had a child by me, it seems I am able to stop her being impregnated by me again if she is in season and we copulate. This is a relief to me. At least I no longer have a third of the population being my children.

Nearly all of my children have reddish tones to their hair like me. Some have even bested my final growth height of 220cm. Green and grey eyes seem common for them. As girls, they tend to be slimmer, but they are all nicely proportioned. They are all very strong like me and display a decent breadth to their shoulders when they change to male.

I’ve been told they all are capable of producing an above average cock (compared to the new people) and none to my knowledge; have had performance issues or any trouble finding bed mates. As females, they all seem to support a nice set of tits and are pleasing if not outright gorgeous to look at. What can I say; Tory did provide me with good genes.

Coral and Shelly have each given me a child. It was against my better judgement at the time, but they hit me up one Saturday night, and both ended up pregnant. It was an interesting and enjoyable experience for me, being with two women who were fifty years older than I was even though they don’t look it.

They became my new Tuesday night stop over. I still visit my other girls on their assigned nights, and it is a good way to keep in touch with them. Thursday is still kids’ night, Saturday is still open, and Sunday is still my night off. I seem to like my creature comforts.

My children, however, seem to have no compunction in passing on my genes. I’ve lost count of how many grandchildren I have, as they don’t always inform me, who they have mated with. I even have ten great-grandchildren that I’m aware of.

We went ahead with the planting of the new ecosystems in Rusha and Europa. These systems are thriving, and Tory believes they are helping with even higher oxygen levels in our atmosphere. That’s why she wants to send people to them.

The rainfall has even increased across Torus. The huge deserts are shrinking and creating more, arable lands that we can use. From the collective data the controllers have of Earth and the home worlds of our Keltrians, Torus is thriving and much more agreeable to the new people.

The Keltrians took some time adjusting to our heavier gravity, but I’ve not heard of any complaints, for some time. Those of the Grandteli race seem happy. Many of the children they have with my race have all been taller than their parents are and their children taller again. Even the offspring from the Pix and Genteli races by my people are taller and more muscular.

The addition of one hundred and thirty-two people to our one hundred eighteen at the time they arrived has been a boon. In the last twenty-five years, our population has increased to six hundred and fifty people. We still have close to half our people under the age of sixteen.

The new people have been more than happy to help us produce more children. I have been able to boost those children born of the visitors and the mermaids that are not genetically linked to us. Unlike us, they can’t store data in all of their bones, only their skulls like the mermaids.

I’ve added a limiting factor. If they live for centuries, they may have to write over old data just as normal humans do. I decided that this was better than the people having thick skulls and their brains overheating.

Tory and I are not sure why I can adapt her DNA in this fashion in them, the same as our other children. As we have watched these children grow, we decided it wasn’t that important as they functioned as well as ours. Only time will tell.

Not all of the children have magical abilities. Except for the first group of girls, my girls, Able, Effie, Gale, Hail, Isa and Jina, at least a quarter of the other paragons were non-magical. This has reduced with the new offspring.

However, this still gives a lot of magical people. I have over the years doled out many of the magic boxes from the ship and many others that I’ve also made. The ones I make tend to like going to the younger children when they hit about fifteen or sixteen.

Most of the kids don’t upgrade to a novice’s box until they reach twenty or even later. Interestingly, it’s mostly males without the active shapeshifting genes, whom take the longest to upgrade and males tend to make up the higher portion of non-magical people.

We have noticed that most novices that can upgrade to a mage’s box don’t do so until closer to twenty-five and some even older. Tory believes this a Genteli anomaly. Only a small percentage upgrade sooner, and most of them are related to my sister/daughter Kathy, my six girls or to me. The other controllers, Tory and I are still curious as to why this is so.

I guess we are just that little bit different.

The last five years have been more worrying.

Tory had indicated that there has been another major volcanic event brewing in Europa. It has moved away from Rusha in the previous twenty years. Europa has been putting increasing pressure on the southern tectonic plate, which hasn’t moved. When the volcano erupted, it created a new fault in Europa’s plate.

The fault has expanded and lengthened more significantly over the last couple of years, and Tory believes Europa is splitting into two plates like Rusha and our continent did. Each year since the new volcano blew I’ve taken my ship, Mia, to the area to monitor its development.

When Tory indicated greater seismic activity than normal, I decided to bring my trip forward and go earlier this year. Bella, my nineteen-year-old daughter to Coral, and Mel, a seventeen-year-old daughter to one of the Keltrian shifters, have decided they wanted to come with me on this trip.

Mel had a bluish tone to her skin, like her mother but managed a paler shade of my red hair and green eyes. Bella has her mother’s dark green hair and large purple eyes. She is shorter than Mel’s 180cm by 5cm. Bella was a 4 gem Physic mage and Mel a 4 gem Nature mage.

Nile, Kathy and Toby’s twenty-one-year-old son, also wished to tag alone. He is only the child to be born male so far that is still able to shapeshift like me, and he is a 4 gem Earth mage. He has even topped me in height, and he is now 230cm tall. We have always had a close bond.

He has very dark emerald eyes and is more light brown with copper highlights in hair colour. He is as handsome as his uncle is and I know he is no stranger to the ladies since he brought one with him. Kathy said he has been active since he was seventeen.

The identical twins Angel and Kerri were twenty-five. They were the last set of twins Tory had gestated being a split embryo. They have a dark apricot tinge to their skin, blue almost black hair and sky blue eyes. Oddly, they were the only children she has produced with this colouring.

They rock in at 190cm tall and were currently Nile and Bella’s bed buddies, but I’m exactly sure who’s. Even I have trouble telling them apart unless I look closely at their auras. Angela was a four gem Energy mage, and Kerri was a four gem Physic mage.

Interestingly they are both happy go lucky types. Kerri had the dryer sense of humour and will more often than not be in male form. But they are just as likely to swap and like to wear identical clothing just so they can confuse you as to who is who.

Our people still tend to wear our shorts with lots of pockets and short sleeved shirts that David’s people called T-shirts. We do wear longer clothes in the cooler months. Some of the people who mostly prefer being in female form, occasionally wear skirts or dresses.

The twins have a lankier body shape and can outrun a frightened camla. They like to call themselves the Dragon Ladies and scarily, they can fly damn fast too. They also do mermaid and several other forms and change form so fast that they amaze even me.

Cookie and Biscuit, two of my favourite zoetics also decided to have a holiday and come with us. At least the food would good this trip. They still do a lot of counselling with their cooking, but since Tory stopped making as many paragon children they have been a little adrift of late, so I decided they were more than welcome.

For my amusement, Vale, who was Able’s youngest daughter to Isa and twenty-three, decided to come as my bed buddy. She was a four gem Lore mage like her mother. She had her mother’s large dark green eyes, pale green hair, green/grey skin and posed a slim elegance.

Fortunately, she has Isa’s easy going temperament. She also has Isa’s bigger tits to go with her long legs and is as tall as Mel is. She was a very beautiful young woman and hard to say no too. She also has a lot of staying power. With my requirements, that just makes her more desirable, and she knows it.

While a lot younger than my fifty-seven, you do need to remember that I still look as young as she does, and being wizards, then age becomes immaterial to us as time goes by. We also don’t seem to have the hang-up about it as David’s people did. I certainly don’t feel my age in years. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still growing up.

Val also has an ulterior motive. She wants me to impregnate her. Val has two kids that she has fathered to two other shifters but wishes me to father her child. I’ve managed to not to produce any kids for eight years, and I am quite happy to keep the status quo. I have more than enough kids now, thank you very much.

Sometimes it’s tough being a Regent Wizard.

The trip to Europa took about ten hours.

I spent a third of that time in bed with Val. I did let her get some sleep. Since she has a tendency to pass out after an hour of sex, it was inevitable. None of my lovers can handle much more than an hour of me at a time unless they are sharing the job of getting me to come, with someone else.

The damn bling can make it bloody hard for them and me. It had been bad enough when I was a mage. Now it took a lot more effort on their part. The fact I could ejaculate and come several times yet not go down in between was not something new lovers were used too.

To fully recharge my magic, if I’d been using a lot of it, often took three or four discharges on my behalf. It helped if I have them coming with me. This didn’t seem to be a problem for them unless they fainted first from sexual and magical overload.

It amuses me that my lovers say that my cock felt like it was tingling in them when I fucked them. For me, the euphoria of coming was a lot less intense the first time, and it took a while to get me wound up. It wasn’t until the third or fourth time that I got more out of the act. For the girls, it seemed the opposite.

I kinda miss the times when the girls used to get me off hard and fast and then I could really enjoy the next couple of times taking my time to build them up. These days they were exhausted by the time I was actually starting to enjoy myself.

My duties seemed a lot more sporadic these days too. Our five townships were well run by my girls. I spent a lot of my time tripping between them, solving dumb problems I’m sure they invented just to keep me busy, and studying magic when at home. The rest of my time was spent setting up outposts and maintaining them.

The latest little drama at least piqued my interest. Each time I’d gone to investigate the fault, it was wider and longer. When Mia travelled along the fault, and we compared it to a layover map of the last five years, we did find a significant change.

“Wow, it’s got to be at least ten meters wider at our checkpoint, and it is twice as long Mia,” I said.

“Yes, that’s a lot of movement. This is a strange planet. Things here seem to happen on a faster time scale than our data says is normal for most planets,” she replied.

“Tory says it’s the hydrazine,” I replied as I studied the changes in the fault. “She thinks the increased oxygenation of the atmosphere is also reacting to the hydrazine. I’ve never been able to work out how that affects the rest of the planet though.”

“The ash coming back down and changes in temperature have increased rainfall. The deserts may be smaller, but the centres are also hotter after it rains,” Mia said.

“What?” I replied.

Mia replied, “The hydrazine is combining with the oxygen to form super charged water molecules. Benny, the zoetic at the station we are stopping at, says he is finding the molecules in the deep water tables.”

“His findings indicate that when the new molecules interact with the magma, it creates chain reactions causing it to become more volatile. He has noticed a lot more seismic activity in the areas about two months after a major wet weather event.”

“Hum. That could explain why the planet has become more active of late. Do us a favour and go up. Let’s grab a new sample from the upper atmosphere. I’m curious to find out if the concentrations of hydrazine have decreased since we last checked,” I asked Mia.

Mia agreed and changed her forward motion to arc up into the stratosphere. Inside of Mia, you did not feel inertial forces and only noticed the change if you looked out of the viewing windows, as I was. This wasn’t our first time into space, but we hadn’t been out of the lower orbits for at least five years.

After the first big quake, we were making a trip every year. After the first five years, we had noticed a perceivable difference, but it wasn’t a lot. For the last fifteen, we have been going up about every five years and were due again. We had noticed a moderate percentage drop each time, but it hadn’t been as much as we would have liked.

The last five years had been a lot wetter, and we had noted an increased level of in ash in the rain. The skies hadn’t been a lot different, and we still got plenty of light and heat from our sun. We had put the ash down to the last volcanic action on the other side of the planet.

I loved watching the colour of the atmosphere change as we zoomed to the stratosphere. Mia slowed when we hit the 10km mark and started taking samples at each one klick intervals until we hit the 40km mark. We hadn’t detected the hydrazine above this level on previous trips.

As Mia blasted past the last sample point, she increased speed. When she hit 120km from the surface, she rolled over, flashed her belly at the sun and followed the curvature of the planet for a distance of 1,000km.

She’d cut her rear engines at the 900km mark and engaged the underside fore thruster to slow us at the thousand. She then dropped her nose into a long arc until she was spearing towards the planet.

She had just engaged the rest of the thrusters and started lifting her nose when all hell broke loose. I found myself flying backwards into the rear of the helm as the gravitation compensators shuddered. I slammed into the wall as if I’d been swatted by a mountain.

I distinctly heard several ribs crack and then lost conscious thought, as my skull tried to play ping-pong with my brain after it smashed against the bulkhead.

My last thought was, “What the Fuck?”

It was the smell, which brought me to consciousness.

Coffee. I loved coffee. Dark roasted with lots of milk. Then the next smell hit me. Oats. Not just any oats but oats that had been mixed with butter and golden syrup (treacle), and... , yes, my favourite Macadamia nuts and then baked. Someone had cooked Anzac biscuits.

I blinked as the level of light in the room increased. I squinted at the small woman carrying the tray. ‘Damn, they are huge tits, ‘ I thought. I blinked again, and the rest of her came into better focus.

The rest of her was slim but curvaceous enough to entice any sane paragon wishing to breed. She had pale skin and a pinkness to her long blonde hair, that contrasted with her big purple eyes. Her nose was slim, and the slightly receding chin was challenged by her lovely smile.

“Greetings, Regent Mikal. How are you feeling?” she asked as she placed the tray beside the bed.

I had to stop and think about how I was doing, as I watched her eyes trail down my body and then back to my face. She looked at me with expectancy. I suddenly got the impression that while she liked what she saw, she wasn’t interested in me sexually. A first for me. That was unusual enough to raise my eyebrows.

I felt a twinge in my left side as I tried to sit up and slide back to the headboard, pushing the pillows with me. Once seated in my new position I rubbed my ribs. They were still tender, but the pain was only annoying if I moved suddenly. “Not too bad,” I replied.

“I see that your ribs have healed well. That was one nasty concussion, but your medallion shield protected you enough to limit the damage. Even Wizards have a hard time protecting themselves from going from zero to ten gees in a heartbeat,” she said as she straightened the sheet over my lap.

“Thirsty?” she added as she straightened up to her 150cm height.

She held the tray over my lap and let it go. I gasped. Expecting the tray to drop onto my lap but it held steady. I glanced at her. “A magician?” I enquired.

She chuckled softly, “Of course.”

I smiled at her and lifted the coffee to my nose. I inhaled the delightful aroma and took a tentative sip to test for its temperature. It was still on the hot side, but that was how I liked my coffee, so I happily took a longer slurp. Sitting back, I looked at the woman, “Where are my children?” I asked.

She smiled, “Nile is in the training room with my boys, Glen and Brad and our other visitors Phil and Ant. Bella and Mel are with my girls Rose and Jess. Val and the twins are closeted with Cyan and Celadon.”

I sighed with relief. They were all okay.

“I’m Penny,” she said as she patted my thigh. “My husband Davin has been anxious to meet you. When Zara displayed your unusual skeleton, he has become fascinated with you. He thought only Zara knew how to make your kind.”

I looked at her in shock. “Is David here?” I asked anxiously.

“No Mikal, but we are going to where he is, as he needs your help,” a disembodied voice replied.

“Zara!” I said in awe. “Tory is going to spit her chips that I got to meet you first, Great Mother.”

“Great Mother?” she replied.

“My race wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you,” I replied.

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” she replied.

“Penny and her sisters, Cyan and Celadon, are also of your race as you say. What have you called yourselves?” she asked.

“Torus and her daughter Troy, who David helped to make, called us the paragons. What about my friends, Cookie and Biscuit, we call them zoetics?”

“Now they are a wonderful addition. They have taken over the kitchen and are more than welcome to stay,” Penny piped in with a big grin.

“Ah, that explains the coffee and biscuits,” I said and happily sipped my wonderful beverage.

Zara chuckled, “Torus and Tory excelled themselves with those children. Cookie said you had a lot to do with their development as well.”

“The zoetics are marvellous people and became that way in spite of my interference,” I replied.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Mikal. It takes a special person to gain a Queen Wizard’s box. Although the fact you already have the Queen’s box has me perturbed. I will need to check my data again. I was unaware that I could travel through alternate realities.”