Chapter 2

The next morning Dusty got up very early, before the sun was even close to coming up, and started packing his pack for the next mission.

As he pulled out clothing to take with him he noticed the suede leather jacket and jeans that he was wearing when he arrived here hanging in the wardrobe in the corner of his room.

Seeing them once again took him back to when he first appeared in this world just under over a year ago.

A lot of things had changed.

First of all he now believed in magic. It was still hard for him to really believe in it, even after all he saw and did when he first arrived because it was such a foreign idea to him, but he had to admit the constant emersion of it and the results of his training proved its validity.

It was hard to discount something when he was able to routinely perform it. He was always amazed at the things he could do.

Melkin took to teaching him what he could do with magic. Lori even helped with his practice when Melkin didn't drop by. He even learned a lot about rankings, what comprised the circles, and what they were. Right now he was third circle in all schools and he felt before long he would be close to mastering the fourth.

The eighth circle spell he pulled off to save the ladies he was unable to duplicate a second time. Melkin said that it wasn't lost to him, he just wasn't motivated enough to use it again. But with time and practice he would be able to do that and many other things unknown to him.

The other thing he learned was that exhausting his magic as a Battlemage was dangerous.

A normal mage would just run out of power and be forced to find other means to fight. But if he exhausted his he would pass out, and how long it was for depended upon how much he over extended himself and how much needed to be replenished.

Also during that time he would be completely defenseless. The best thing he could do would be to find capable companions to watch over him if that time ever arose.

Magic was tied to the core of who he was, and there was a balance to be maintained if he wanted to use it. It was a form of forcing his body to borrow against future power for a short while, but it would demand heavy repayment every time.

Dusty always felt that there was also something else that Melkin wanted to tell him, but often didn't. He kept starting and changing the subject, but Dusty knew that there was something important that he needed to know that Melkin must not be telling him.

Once Melkin even asked him if he was one to believe in legacies and destinies and such, but he wouldn't elaborate on what he meant.

As soon as he understood the basic principles of magic he could correlate them into basic science from his world and from then on it was easier to understand. Simple magic was easy because it was really just cause and effect.

But the more involved magic's seemed to call for him to disbelieve things his engineer training told him couldn't be true. And that made the learning process slower than he would have liked even though he could memorize a spell instantly.

It was the training of his mind to think in a way that allowed magic to work effectively that was the hardest, because if he didn't believe in the result then it most often didn't actually happen.

Even White magic wasn't that hard to grasp the basics of, even though he only had basic first aid training as a member of the Hazmat Team at the plant he used to work at. At the time management wanted someone to be their counterpart to the union members on the team and he was elected.

Now some of the basics he learned were coming in handy for him to use as a basis to grow and learn more. But of them all White was the hardest by far for him to see beyond the basics with.

He easily grasped the principles, but being able to use magic to repair major damage to a body using only their principles was a different story. And while he needed to really learn how they did it to fully understand and master White, they didn't seem to have the same level of knowledge of how the body worked that he did.

But it was the only thing that he found challenging above everything else.

Blue came very easy because he was used to thinking in 3D as an engineer, that same visualization also came in handy with White as well. He found that using his mind to fashion things he could visualize wasn't all that hard.

Red was next easiest because it took very little to make it work as he intended. He only saw Red as raw power and it wasn't that hard to shape it with Blue.

Green wasn't too hard either, but it was hard to believe that he had the ability to make what amounted to a small nuclear power plant with his mind. The raw power of nature was something to never be taken lightly.

Some of his explanations or questions seemed to go over Melkin's head, but because of his industrial training it wasn't all that hard to visualize the effect he was after. He realized that he could recreate Einstein's black hole theory or nuclear fission.

He was sure he could even split atoms using that same power.

Dusty wasn't sure if they knew what they were unleashing teaching him this with his background.

In the end his ability at devastation for Green always surprised him.

Dusty would have thought that Red would be the most devastating of them all. But it was that way with all Green mages because non-mages often didn't truly understand what they could do with nature, and their ability with it was off the charts.

Or it might be that the majority of the Green mages just didn't understand how powerful they really were as well. Coming from a world of science he could see implications that Melkin didn't seem to completely grasp even as someone who had mastered Green.

As it was, it wasn't that hard to master the basics, even if it did take a while for him to gather all the energy he needed to cast. The larger the effects he was after always took more energy to gather.

He was told that he would get faster and it would be much easier with practice, but not to solely depend on magic for his protection. That was the downfall of many a young mage who became complacent in their power as their sole and only defense. As such he kept up his daily training.

Melkin asked him quite a few times if he knew or could develop of a way to store a spell and cast only what he needed later, sort of a quick cast ability. But when Dusty asked him to elaborate he said that it was a lost skill and he wondered if he could recreate it.

To Dusty it sounded what he wanted was an executable program that was entirely self contained and precompiled as an application. Not any different than building a computer program and he had taken some programming courses as required by his engineering degree before he graduated not that long ago. With his photographic memory he could easily recall the text books in question.

So that might be possible, but he hadn't given it that much though. But Melkin did seem to keep bringing it up more an more as he worked with Dusty. Dusty knew that he would need to develop it soon, if only as proof that it was possibly for him to do.

Black was the one that both bothered and interested Dusty at the same time.

Dusty wasn't that interested in creating diseases, but after what happened with his STD scare, he was all ears about what someone could do with it. He was going to make sure that he was never caught off guard and infected again.

The other thing that interested him was that he liked a good horror flick or two and the ability to used undead spells fascinated him a little. Not that he would use it, but knowing that if he really needed to it would be interesting to do.

Dusty kept seeing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video playing in his mind every time Melkin started talking about what he could do with Black.

So far Dusty hated that he could only parrot back what Melkin showed him with some of the magic he learned, and he could do the lower level stuff first time every time from memory, but he wanted to be able to expand on it so that he could make innovations if he needed to.

If anything, this world in desperate need of innovations from what Dusty could see.

He had to admit as learned he was hampered by the need to convert it to something he could draw as a parallel from the science of his world before he could then slowly understand more and more of it.

Since White passed as medicine in some form in this world, and Black as the causes of various diseases, he wanted to make sure he was protected from all diseases by understanding both if at all possible.

Even Lori had even gotten Melkin to start to teach her new magic. While he resisted the taking on of a second pupil she was very convincing that as a companion of Dusty's being well rounded would only help protect him better.

Melkin seemed to be the only male Dusty had come across able to resist her charms and Lori managed to get her way with him by being purely logical and using intelligent arguments that he couldn't dispute

She had managed to bring her Red up to sixth circle to match her blue and had learned the complete first circle in green, white, and black. She was learning at a much slower pace than Dusty, but both Lori and Melkin said it was because he was special and not many would be able to learn at his rate.

Lori always told him and others that she did this because she needed to be more rounded for the team, but Dusty knew deep down it was because Magic was always her first love, regardless of what she said about her reason's why.

There was a look of pure enjoyment anyone could see on her face as she learned, and he had yet to see the same look given for anything else she ever did, including chasing him.

But as Dusty thought about that and his arrival here he also thought more about the four women.

Marie for the first few months seemed to always be around and coming on strong to him when he least expected it.

Early on they went on a few dates into town and she seemed to still be all hands as she often felt him up or publicly displayed her interest at the least opportune time. It wasn't unexpected for her to pass him, no matter where they were, and pull him close and use her tongue as a greeting and way to say hello.

Once while he was having dinner in the hall with a couple other guild members she returned back from town, came straight over to him, pulled his chair back with him still in it while he was having dinner, faced him as she then straddled him in his chair in the dining room, and tried to use her tongue to touch the back of his throat as she draped both of her arms over his shoulders.

It was a good thing he had already swallowed the food in his mouth before she did.

Then she got up and casually went in search of her own dinner as if this was something that everyone did every day and it wasn't a big deal. She left a stunned Dusty to try and will his cock down before he could even begin to leave the dinner table.

At least he was quick enough on the uptake to just sheepishly grin, and crack a quick joke about how long it had been since they had seen each other to the other stunned looks he got while he waited for it to happen. Thankfully it was the only time she did that, but he still had no idea why she did it.

But after a couple months of casual dating and a few deep kisses she seemed as if she lost all interest in him.

She didn't seem to try as hard for his attention or try and meet him anywhere.

They still sparred from time to time, but she didn't throw out the sexual innuendo like she used to or even tried to put him in a position where either she, or he, was grabbing the other in some way during practice.

And she didn't appear to Dusty to be too depressed about it either. She started treating him like she used to when they first met. Often he felt more like her brother than someone she wanted to previously bed.

While she was still beautiful, it took stress off of him from having to keep her from putting him in awkward situations. He was just glad that she decided that they were better as friends than if they had gotten involved and then she changed her mind about him later.

Dusty wondered as he thought about it if he only had a small window in which to hold Marie's attention, and since he missed it, it was now gone. Not that it was a problem if that was the case, because it now made his choices easier for him.

But he also found that he was really hoping that Marie was only curious about sex with him and decided to move on to a more willing partner. That would mean that he didn't hurt her feelings by not choosing to be with her.

One of his biggest problems with being with her was that since sex wasn't that big a deal to the people around him, he knew it wasn't any of his business to ask her about her previous partners, but he knew he would have been desperate to know given how he caught his last disease if they became involved.

Dusty also noticed that once they arrived at the guild when he first joined Marie didn't seem to be hurting for men trying to kill each other to get at her, both in the guild and in the city when they went out, but she appeared very selective.

Men seemed to stare and drool as she went by without her armor on, so he knew her self confidence or if she ever questioned her attractiveness, would never have been an issue for her.

To be honest he found that all four of them were quite popular with the men trying to get dates with them. But only Suzan had never dated any of the men.

Dusty noticed that some of those same men took offense early on that he was their main focus, especially because in the case of Suzan as they felt they had more right to being the first man to be with her as they had tried longer and harder than he had, and put in more time with her.

It didn't help his popularity with the other men that he was assigned to the girl's team as well, at Marie's request.

Rachel attention for him appeared to Dusty to be another matter entirely. He was sure that she would be the most hurt by his decision to be with Suzan exclusively.

One of the things that often bothered him, once he reached the guild, was that she often tried to play both sides of the fence to give him the appearance that he was her sole interest, but didn't seem to realize that some men often talked in depth about the women they slept with every chance they got.

So Dusty was always aware of what she was doing.

He found the fact that those kinds of men often bragged about their conquests to be a universal truth even here.

Rachel had already slowly worked her way several times through all of the men she found really attractive in the guild well before Dusty ever arrived.

Dusty felt that was really only her business who she slept with and who she didn't. What she did on her own time still didn't detract from his willingness to be her friend. While it wasn't his business what she did, it was his choice to decide if he wanted to be a part of that life she decided to live.

He knew that he never would be able to accept it because it was also that same freedom to experiencing as many men as humanly possible before marriage that she was doing was also something that he knew would prevent them from ever being a couple.

Not with his fears of what could be transmitted and given to him again.

Even though he still knew it was all in his mind, living with the knowledge he could have died if it had gone untreated from what Lindsey gave him made him determined to never be in that situation again. Not in this backwards world.

It was a new phobia that she created with-in his mind that he found hard to escape from. He knew it would be the same if he had almost drowned and couldn't see his way past his fear of water again.

But what bothered him later on, as he found out more of what was going on around him, was that she tried to give the impression while she was with him that that she had no interest in any other males but him, and as he later learned that was only while he was around.

During those dates she tried to make her time alone with him as hot as she could, she really was quite good with her tongue as well.

But no matter how hard she tried Dusty wouldn't go back to her room, or let her into his, for a quick romp. She always tried to use her warm brown eyes to stare deep in his before she made her request each time.

If it wasn't for his history with someone who looked similar to her, that probably would have worked on him. Lord knows it always worked for Lindsey when she did the exact same thing. No wonder the men around her didn't stand a chance.

As Dusty lowered guard around her, he did realized that there were some key differences between her and Lindsey, and she did seem to have more personal integrity and never once "claimed" to be celibate, and she seemed really good at her job as a tracker.

But like Lindsey he could see where she could also suck him into her revolution if he wasn't careful.

Often times when they used to go out, she always managed to get his arm around her as she pulled him close to her with her arm around his waist. And at some point she always managed to maneuver him into a dark area on the street somewhere that she could push him against a wall and rub up against him with her body as she deeply kissed him.

He didn't want to give her false hopes, but he would be lying if he said she wasn't good at distracting him so she could do this. She really knew what she was doing.

She wasn't as overtly up front and out there in her desire to get him to be with her as Marie or Lori was, but she was more aggressively publicly than Suzan was by far. Rachel just wasn't as bad as the other two women.

Some of the men who knew about Rachel's public interest in Dusty, and were irritated by it, couldn't wait to tell him about the different late at nights, both in the past or the ones since she had returned, where she had either met with them somewhere or when she had them come back to her room when Dusty was out doing something else.

They wanted to make sure that Dusty wasn't going to stop them from enjoying her time while she was back, and they hoped he was the jealous type because a few wanted a fight with him bad enough that they could taste it. They wanted to put the newbie in his place.

Of course they also wanted to make sure that he knew they had dibs long before he ever got there and would continue to do so, but if eventually he wanted his turn in the rotation with her he was welcome to a turn, but he would need to go to the back of the line.

Dusty just ignored them all because it wasn't any his business how Rachel spent her free time.

While he disliked the rumors, he always gave Rachel the benefit of the doubt that they may have been just making up stuff because he never saw her do anything that led him to believe they were true. To him it just appeared that she seemed to be working hard at getting him to choose her over the other girls.

But it was once he got up early in the morning, or late at night depending on your point of view, because something he ate didn't agree with him, and it was on his way back to his room that he saw a man backing out of Rachel's room in the wee hours of the morning. So he knew some of the rumors were true.

He had to admit then that he was secretly hoping it wasn't, but it wasn't because he wanted to secretly be with her, but because he hoped the men were just being crude to scare him off. He was hoping that how she acted around him was her real personality, one of a shy girl who only just flirted too much.

Regardless of what he saw he didn't start to treat Rachel any differently and he still went out to dinner with her from time to time, but it was strictly platonic as far as he was concerned, and would never be one that was any different.

For him she was still one of the persons who tried to make him feel comfortable in a new world. But he did often wish that she wouldn't try so hard to lead him to believe all the time she was still waiting and holding out for only him, especially while in her free time she was still seeing other men.

At times it made him feel that she might think he was too stupid to know what she was really doing. But he forced those feelings away from him.