Chapter 68: It’s Magic!

“F. GOTCHA!” I called. “H! Has anyone seen G?” I got hit in the back of the head and a message came up: ‘Game Over.’ I took off my goggles and turned to Sally. “What was that for?”

“New realism I’ve built into it. Now if you get hit in the game, you get hit in real life,” she giggled. I had a feeling she was just using that as an excuse to hit me! She could be very physical at times. Sometimes that was a very good thing. I pulled her into my lap and before long one of those times was taking us to a peak as I thrust into her. “Oh, Bob. I need to figure out how to build that into a game,” she panted.

“People would never stop playing,” I said. “When are you going to name those characters instead of just having them labeled with letters?”

“I’ll get around to it. This is only a pastime I use to unwind after I’ve been studying,” Sally said.

“And how are the studies going?”

“I think I’m making progress,” she said. “Nimia has been a great help, but every time I think I understand something, we end up having sex.”

“That can be a problem.”

“Naw. I like that as much as studying. Nimia knows more about all the magical stuff in the library than I ever will,” Sally said.

“She told me to ask you about this. She said that while you were working on the portal research, you came upon various binding spells like the one we used for bricks back in Bathra.”

“Oh, yeah. It was cool. And the librarians brought me five other scrolls that had similar spells and a manuscript from the Middle Ages. I did some comparisons and it looks like the fundamental elements are all the same, but there are different invocations used. It was a bit of a rabbit hole that I dove down, but I’ve got my head back in multi-dimensional portals now.”

“Right. How would you like to have a discussion with another researcher who has been looking at how the structures of the fourteenth century were created without the aid of modern tools and technology? She could use a little demonstration of how the spell works.”

“I’d love to meet and talk to her,” Sally said. “But just because I can read the spell, doesn’t mean I can work it. I um ... tried,” she said as she tucked her chin down on her chest.

It wasn’t against any laws to practice magic in Areola, but no one had unveiled any real talent for it. Areola provided all the magic they could want. Actually, they worked magic, but didn’t recognize it as such. Developing a screen and network to project entertainment onto was considered science and engineering. The thing was that they used little understood foundations of Areola that were decidedly outside the science of the natural world. Their science and engineering were built on Areola’s magic.

“Hey,” I said, lifting her chin so I could kiss her. “Why don’t we try it again in the natural world. It might just be the environment.”

“Hmm. Dimensional interference,” she said. “This could help in my study of dimensional portals. If the sorcery of one world doesn’t work in another world, it might mean the portal sorcery would be different in Areola than it is in the natural world. Let’s do it!”

I laughed and left Sally to her plans in Areola while I caught another flight to Rome.

I’d promised Mia a long weekend away to show her the spell for binding and adjusting the sizes of the bricks used in precision building, like the duomo in Firenze. I wanted to be well away from the city for our weekend, so I picked Mia up in Rome and we headed out to one of the islands where I’d rented a villa. It was beautiful.

“Are you sure you didn’t invite me out here just to take advantage of me and plunder my womanly charms with your big plunder stick?” she giggled as I wrapped my arms around her on the balcony overlooking the Mediterranean.

“Mmm,” I said as I kissed up her neck and around her ear. “Plundering your womanly charms has a certain attractiveness to the sound. Perhaps I should change plans and just focus on that.”

“No, no. Binding spells first, then plundering.” I turned her so I could capture her lips with mine and kissed her passionately. “Maybe a little plundering before spells would be a good thing,” she whispered. I carried her to bed.

Who would ever have thought that a 4,000-year-old demon would ever get so much pleasure enjoying the love of a twenty-seven-year-old nun? Mia’s order did not hold to the celibacy of nuns or priests and thought it ridiculous to pretend to it when no one abided by it. I whole-heartedly agreed and Mia welcomed me into her body as happily as any lover I had ever had.

After we had made love all afternoon, we then walked to town for dinner and drinks at an osteria, owned and run by a local family for some centuries. Then we walked back to our villa. I’d gone into the cellar at the villa when we first got there and opened a gateway so Sally and a few others could enter. They stayed out of the way until we’d left for dinner, then it seemed they’d decided to party and were all playing in the pool.

“Bob? Who are all these women? I thought it was going to be just me and you for an intimate weekend.”

“Well, I invited Sally to join us because she has the scroll I wanted to show you and has studied it most recently. She decided to bring a few friends. Don’t worry. I’m sure they won’t bother us.”

“Not as long as we can keep our eyes off their naked bodies out there. Should I be concerned?”

“No. If your eyes stray to them, they will probably display themselves more prominently for your viewing.”

“Oh, my.”

“Sally!” I called. “Please join Mia and me in the salon.”

Sally’s light brown hair had become even lighter since she joined us in Areola. Not quite blonde, but light brown. Her slight, five-foot-two frame was an ideal foundation for the prominent breasts she sported. I rather thought those had grown a bit since she’d come to Areola, so perhaps she’d been remaking her self-image over the years. She grabbed the scroll and walked into the salon as if she were a six-foot model on a catwalk. She stepped between Mia and me and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she placed the scroll on the table.

“You just carry around an ancient scroll with you as you stroll nakedly through the world?” Mia asked, a bit perplexed.

“It has a kind of preservation spell on it,” Sally answered. “When we put it away at night, it sort of rejuvenates itself, I think. I’m studying what occurs when one crosses from alternate dimensions into and out of the natural world. You smell good. Did you and Bob already make love? You did, didn’t you? Mmm. Just smelling you makes me horny.”

“Sally,” I reprimanded her gently. “We’re here to talk about the manuscript and the binding spell that was used on the temple ... or cathedral, I mean.”

“Yessir. You’re Mia, right? I’m Sally. Let me show you what I found. I chose this manuscript because it is in Latin, so you can probably read it. It takes me forever to get through a Sanskrit manuscript without help.”

“So, you think this actually works?” Mia asked after Sally had unraveled the spell for her and told her how it was supposed to work. In the meantime, she’d also managed to wiggle onto Mia’s lap and get her clothes partially off. Studying these manuscripts just affects certain girls physically. I hadn’t seen this side of Mia before as she talked about the spell and softly caressed Sally’s breasts.

“I haven’t been able to make it work, but Bob thinks it might work here in the ... uh ... Italy. My special area of study is really interdimensional portals and multidimensional crossovers.”

“Oh, that sounds fascinating. I wish I had time to study everything I want to.”

“I do! That’s one thing about being with Bob. You have all the time in the world,” Sally said. She kissed Mia and both girls moaned. I poured another glass of wine for each of us.

“Let’s try it. Do we need to cast a magic circle or something in order to put it together?” Mia asked. Her head was filled with magical rubbish.

“Bob?” Sally asked.

“I don’t think so. You cast a circle to protect you from outside forces, or to confine magic inside so it doesn’t leak out. In some instances, a circle might give a sorcerer some extra focus for his power. If Brunelleschi worked this while he was laying bricks in the cathedral, he couldn’t have used a circle.”

“What will we use to bind together?”

“I found a couple of loose bricks in the garden,” Sally said. “Uh ... earlier when I was exploring.”

“You’ve been here ever since we got here, haven’t you?” Mia accused.

“Um ... sort of. We tried to stay out of the way.” Just then, seven naked nymphs came in out of the moonlight by the pool. I think Mia had forgotten they were there. They filed by and kissed me and Sally before going up the stairs. What a lovely sight that was.

“Guest room,” I said to Mia. She nodded slowly. She looked strangely at one of the nymphs and I realized Julie was among them. The darkness and the excitement about their experiment kept Mia from recognizing one of my crew from the first season.

Sally led us out to the patio where two bricks were lying on a table. Mia immediately picked them up to examine them, pushing them against each other to see if they would stick. When she was satisfied they were not rigged, she faced us. The only thing she was still wearing were her panties. She seemed to have just noticed and shrugged.

“Okay. I’ll hold them together and you work the spell,” she said to Sally.

“No!” I said. “Set them down over there on the patio. We’ll stay behind the magic worker. You don’t want to accidentally be in the path of her spell.”

“Ew! I can imagine. Okay.” She set the bricks down touching each other on the patio and stepped back behind Sally. I stepped up and put an arm around my little scientist.

“I think you can do this. Remember what the manuscript said about putting your will behind it as you chant the spell. Do you remember all the words?”

“Yes,” she said weakly.

“Just focus on the bricks and when you can feel them with your mind and everything else fades away, point at them and chant the spell.”

“Okay, Bob. I can do this.”

I stepped back beside Mia, who had decided wearing panties wasn’t necessary. She put her arms around me and we watched my little apprentice. We weren’t sure anything was happening, but Sally was gathering her focus. We saw her hand gradually come up to point at the bricks and heard the low chant of the spell. It wasn’t long and she repeated it to make sure she had it correct, then dropped her hand.

“Is that it?” Mia asked. “No bolt of electricity or flash of light?”

“That would make it a worthless spell if you planned to work in secrecy as you were laying bricks,” Sally said as she sagged against me. “Did it work?”

Mia went to the bricks and gingerly touched them as if they might be hot. Sensing no surprises, she grabbed the edge of one and pulled at it. It didn’t move. She pried at the other and it didn’t move. She pulled at both of them and they refused to budge.

“They’re stuck!”

“That was the intent,” Sally said. “It worked!”

“Yes, but they aren’t just stuck to each other, their stuck to the patio. I think if you moved them, the whole batch of bricks under them would move. This is amazing. They could have built the whole dome like this if they had a little more control.”

“Thanks,” Sally said. “I’m so tired.”