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With an insatiable thirst for knowledge and having some secrets of her own, she risks it all to discover the fate of the Duodecaplets.\n\n(Also, after two \"dry\" chapters, I'm happy welcome back big, jiggly, naked boobs and long, hard dicks.)\n", "description_bbcode_parsed": "After the feline sorceress, Marmalade got the best of the wizard Zarron just as her own mother had, Anastasia Pridemoon begins to tug at his lies and deepens the rift between her and her sister, Evangeline in the process. With an insatiable thirst for knowledge  and having some secrets of her own, she risks it all to discover the fate of the Duodecaplets.

(Also, after two "dry" chapters, I'm happy welcome back big, jiggly, naked boobs and long, hard dicks.)
", "writing": "Pairs of Pumpkins Chapter 04: \nThe Unseen and the Unsteady (2nd Edition)\n\nBy Jess Faulks\n \n\nThe vixen apprentice, Anastasia stood in silence as a procession departed the manor's foyer: Zarron, the raccoon sorcerer and Head of the Household led the way, followed by an odd mix of three familiar faces and three strangers. They were all on the way to a ritual that despite her continuing education in Magic, Ana was explicitly not invited to. \n\nZarron called out some orders but she barely paid attention. She could sense his unease if for no other reason than its rarity. He was very old and powerful beyond comprehension but the sorceress Marmalade had him off-kilter since she'd arrived not long ago and made a weird night, weirder still. He owed her some debt that he appeared to be paying with three of the Duodecaplets, twelve, identical half-wolves who'd been trained as a fighting elite and until now, never separated.\n\nAnastasia was one of five who remained behind: the idling Stone, their massive brute of a barely intelligent brother standing over a similar sized, armored stallion, collapsed on the floor. The horse, Zarron's bodyguard, had been apparently knocked out by poison from a confrontation with their mother, far away in the Pale Lands but not long ago at all, due to Zarron's teleportation. After so many years of uneventful education and isolation for Anastasia and her many siblings, so much had happened in so little time in so little time and it was hard to imagine anything going back to the way it was.\n\nNearer to Anastasia stood Duayne, her dumbfounded younger brother and their elder sister, Evangeline, still frozen by magic with her fist cocked back and ready to swing at an offending feline sorceress, now long departed. With control still of her eyes, they were straining to glare, her jaw clenched in a furious growl.\n\n\"That's not going to last long,\" Ana said to herself before she moved around in front of Eva and opened her arms, anticipating she may be off balance when her ability to move returned. The spell, defensively cast by Marmalade, had frozen Evangeline's body, not stopped time and all the momentum of her attempted punch would be lost. She was lucky to have been frozen at a place where she was balanced enough to stay standing but she would be disoriented when the effect went away.\n \nThe teenage Anastasia was inherently off-balance herself, with the bulk and weight of burdensome breasts that dominated her upper body. Their lineage already tended to extremes, as evident by Evangeline's curvaceous figure and their mother that they'd only briefly seen, but Anastasia was far beyond either of them, thanks to the casual cruelty of Zarron's magic. He admitted to meddling with the very fabric of her creation before her birth and sometimes confessed that he had \"overdone it\" with her, but would follow that by explaining that his re-weaving was so effective that it was beyond the capacity of magic to undo. The wobbly Anastasia had little business trying to catch her sister's fall but Duayne didn't have the forethought to take action, nor the body mass to succeed if he did. \n\nWaiting for her sister to return to animation, she considered the earlier stalemate between the twelve Duodecaplets and Stone versus Marmalade and her two bodyguards. Marmalade claimed to be an old sorceress despite her young appearance but she'd been afraid of them. It led Anastasia to consider what magic she might use to get out of the same situation. The Duodecaplets had trained in anti-wizard tactics and had spaced out to better resist any area effects, but with their armor, Chain Lightning may have done the trick. \n \nOf course, one crossbow bolt could be enough. The smart thing to do, would have been to erect a Magic Barrier against missile weapons, but that wouldn't stop Stone. Teleporting would have been the safest way out, then find a more advantageous battle field. Teleportation itself was incredibly dangerous but in that situation the risk of death was better than certain death. Marmalade must not have been that kind of Sorceress.\n\nAt the far end of the hall, at the ritual room, Marmalade's guards posted up outside and the rest of them went inside. The doors closed behind them and a moment later, Evangeline's magical paralysis finally broke, out of time or out of range from its caster. \n \nAna tensed and braced herself. For her overabundant bust compounded by her sister's not insignificant chest, she was more likely to provide a cushion upon landing rather than stop her from falling. \n\nEvangeline caught herself in place. Her arms swung for balance until she found it, then righted herself and clenching her fists. Hunched forward, face hovering over Ana's cleavage, she cursed. \n\n\"I'm so fucking tired of magic!\" \n\nAna reached out for Evangeline's shoulders to help her find her balance but she twisted away. \"How did Mother get the best of Zarron? He's supposed to be some great wizard but he got beat up by a deadbeat slut?!\" In a lucid moment, she looked pointedly at Anastasia. \"He said she had a charm?\"\n \n\"She must have. Probably relagite or espum. Either one would work.\" Ana's arms fell and she blurted out the words, then stifled a wince. It might not be wise for her hot-headed sister to know how to resist both Zarron's and her own greatest strength. \"Relagite would be something she'd be wearing. It's a kind of metal. Espum she'd have had to consume in advance.\" It fell out of her mouth. Not often did Evangeline have any interest in the kinds of things she studied. It felt good to be able to show off. \n\nDuayne, the red fox, their younger, half-brother and the least dangerous person in the room hovered behind the raised voices and confrontation that preceded but now with the room clear, he hurried to Evangeline's side and threw his arms around her waist, looking up between his two sisters. \"You really met mother?!\" he said with a loud whisper, looking over his shoulder to confirm Zarron's absence.\n \n\"I wouldn't say we met her so much as we interrupted her having sex with Joseph!\" Evangeline hissed. Duayne winced in disgust and Eva appeared to relish in his revulsion. \"Your brother, Joseph. Her own son! Are there no lines that the witch won't cross?\"\n \n\"Why would Joseph do that!? Why didn't Zarron kill her, right then and there?\" the young, red fox barked incredulously. Anastasia craned her head aside, listening. \"Couldn't he make mother fall over dead with a blink?! Or a fireball?\"\n \n\"Relagite or espum,\" She repeated, more shortly than last time. \"Why would he try to kill her at all?\"\n \nEva cut in. \"He's probably HER best customer, Duayne. She sold her unborn children, he bought them and now grows them to sell off as slaves and servants. I just thought he would have more care for the ones he helped raise. Like us.\" She swallowed visibly and dipped her head toward the floor.\n \n\"Zarron said she sold him all her eggs twenty years ago.\" Anastasia said with a dismissive shake of her. \"Zarron had other business with Mother. Business he didn't want you and I to hear.\"\n \n\"Well, they're both awful. I'm sure there are other evil schemes they're working on.\"\n \nAna looked between her three siblings: The black-haired Eva, simmering with rage and Duayne's pining need for the eldest sister's approval. Stone stood, blank-faced without orders and that's what it took to put him in motion. Per Zarron's command, he waited for Duayne to ask him for help with the sleeping, monster of an equine, still sprawled out on the foyer floor, unconscious. Her eyes darted back to Eva, the only one left she had any chance to reason with. \n\n\"Zarron gave away three of our brothers right in front of us and he didn't find that worth hiding. But a conversation with our mother needed to be a secret. Zarron wasn't expecting her. He thought she was an intruder at first! Remember?\"\n \n\"I'm not going to try to make sense of a woman who sells her children for servants and slaves, Anastasia. Use your brain, for once.\"\n \nAna inhaled slowly through her nose and out through her mouth, the kind of calming, ritual breathing she learned as a child when mastering the energies required to perform magic. She closed her eyes and spoke distantly. \"'Do I know you?'\"\n \nEvangeline's muzzle twitched before she recoiled in confusion. \"Have you lost your mind? I'm your fucking sister.\"\n \n\"'Do I know you' was the first thing Mother said to Zarron when she saw him. Would she forget the face of the man she sold her eggs to?\"\n \n\"Zarron must've been much younger and less disgusting way back then.\"\n \n\"He hasn't aged physically in our lifetimes but she didn't recognize him. She was in HIS house and didn't know it,\" Ana spoke matter-of-factly, glancing back to the now closed doors to the Ritual Room. \"Why would she... be having sex in the living room if she expected us to find her? And why would she have sex with her own son? None of us had ever met mother until tonight, including Joseph. How would he recognize her? How would she recognize him?\" She looked back to Evangeline pointedly. \"Zarron is hiding something about mother. The only thing you know about her is whatever he wants us to believe. And you hate her for it.\" \n\n\"She sold us all for slaves!\" Duanye tried his best to add his outrage.\n \nAna sighed and looked at the young fox . \"Did you hear what Marmalade said? A Runaway Princess. Zarron never said anything about that. If our mother was a Princess and she had the wits enough to defeat Zarron twice, wouldn't she have grabbed some jewels or gold before running away from her palace or castle? What royalty would be so desperate to sell the possibility of ever having children?\"\n \n\"Because she didn't care about us!\" Duayne whined.\n \n\"Or because she never wanted us.\" Evangeline snapped and spat. \"She wanted to be a whore without the risk of pregnancy.\"\n \nAnastasia shook her head. \"It doesn't make sense, Eva. We're missing something important.\" She glanced to the far end of the hall to the Ritual Preparation Room. She was missing something else too.\n \nEvangeline drew a quick, wide-eyed breath. \"What about Joseph? Did I get that wrong too?!\"\n \nAna looked back to her sister, considering for a moment. She swallowed and brought her hand to her mouth with a momentary puff of her cheeks. After a pause and a long blink, she nodded. \"No, that happened. But I don't know...\"\n \n\"Disgusting woman,\" Eva interrupted with a hiss and Ana turned away from them, toward the outside of the room.\n \n\"Perhaps,\" Anastasia gave a shrug and another impatient glance to the Ritual Room doors before excusing herself without announcement. She headed towards the nearest staircase, one of the smaller side ones toward her chambers.\n \n\"My sister. The know-it-all.\" Eva threw up her hands before spinning and storming off in the other direction, leaving Duayne and Stone alone in the foyer to manage the unconscious stallion.\n \n\"I know more than you,\" Anastasia muttered before starting up the stairs, holding the handrail for support. \n \nWhile reserved in demeanor, Anastasia's brilliance escaped none in Zarron's house, which irritated her older sister endlessly. Eva's destiny was to be a wife where Ana would be a wizard.\n \nA Prodigy of the Magical Arts, Anastasia was slinging spells from her toddler years and now in her late teens, she was as competent an apprentice and understudy as Zarron could have wished for. The only thing in the way of her being a truly perfect prodigy was some clumsiness in the study thanks to her over-abundant physique. After some accidents of expensive and rare things being swept off tables by her turning this way and that, the two of them had summoned the Duodecaplets to rearrange the tighter spaces of the room to better accommodate her. They also raised some of the lower surfaces to prevent her chest from brushing over any of them.\n \nWith such a sharp mind, few would be surprised to learn Anastasia's memory was a trap of which little knowledge escaped but the vixen had been wise enough, young enough to keep that fact to herself. Zarron needed to have total control of her training lest she become a threat to him and he had strict rules about what magics she could study. She was not allowed to visit the library unattended, though she could check out books he approved of, to read in her bed chambers on her own time.\n \nTo not endanger access to his collection, he couldn't know how quickly she consumed and retained knowledge from a spellbook. She had played along with the plan since five years old, learning fast but not suspiciously so. She even learned to pretend-forget things at times to avoid suspicion and she had been doing so for long enough now that she was quite convincing.\n \nHer biggest obstacle to mastery of magic came from the same place as her clumsiness in the lab: her chest was not only massive enough to clear workbenches with an unplanned turn but its tremendous bulk limited the range of motion of her arms. So much so that a number of common spells became impossible to perform, thanks to the broadness and angles of gesture they required to cast. Some of those, she learned as a young girl and still committed to memory but were now denied to her, post-puberty. \n\nAnastasia's thirst for magical knowledge was insatiable, making her an ideal student but also why Zarron insisted he traveled with her when he did: he said it was because his apprentice shouldn't leave his side but she knew he was afraid for her to be alone with his library.\n\nShe commonly learned every spell in a book she checked out when she was meant to be only studying one of them. Others, she was only allowed to study while supervised. For a few key spells she was determined to know and forbidden to learn, she found she could sneak books out of the library under her robes and hide them from detection with some simple, concealment magic and her very large chest. \n\nShe arrived at the top of the stairs with audible breath, the young woman soft from a life of study and little exercise but still carrying several stone of extra bulk. She kept on, along the second floor where the Duodecaplets had deployed, then down a hall, towards her room. \n\nThere was a spring in her step the moment she was out of view of the others. She'd studied all manner of spells but rituals tended to be more tribal knowledge and poorly documented. Whatever Zarron, Marmalade and three Duocaplets were about to do was probably not written down anywhere in Zarron's library. \n\nShe had to see it herself, with or without invitation. Her secret studies of things Zarron had explicitly forbidden prepared her well and the plan was forming before she reached her room.\n\nZarron didn't want her to learn to Teleport like he did with such ease, professing the many, well-known dangers but it was too powerful of an ability to ignore for a then, twelve year old Ana. After some months of being mindful of the Conjuring section, she found the book she needed and snuck it back to her room. The risks had not been exaggerated, neither from Zarron nor the repeated warnings in the spellbook: To teleport into an inanimate object could kill her instantly and to do so into another being would be worse. \n \nAs such, she had only tried in the same room and used target sigils for extra precision at her destination. The symbols provided a focus for the spellcaster and were meant for long distance, pre-planned travel as Zarron had done to get them here but for shorter trips, they theoretically acted as another layer of insurance. After learning Teleportation, she drew a few such sigils hidden around her bed chambers both in this house and in her room in The Pale Lands to practice. She tested teleporting to them with her eyes closed and back turned, to be sure that she could without risking actually going any distance or through any obstacles.\n \nZarron also refused to teach her any Metamorphosis spells. He cited their danger and but was also aware of what the at-the-time, violently pubescent vixen's intention would be with those kinds of spells and rituals when her breasts grew beyond all normality and kept growing until they dominated her young frame. \n\nA fourteen year old Anastasia dug around on her own until she tracked down a suitable spell to permanently alter her own body. First, she tried it by growing her own head hair, which she promptly cut. Next, she changed its color, one way then another before changing back to her natural one. She tried her coat after that, doubling the length of her fur in a way she had yet managed to reverse before she attempted the big job: reducing her oversized breasts to something reasonable, so she might blend in among normal people someday.\n \nThat spell failed to do anything at all and she later learned her attempt to change herself was nullified against the more potent magic of Zarron's which made her that way in the first place. With her body fur inexplicably long and thick the next morning, she had no choice but to confess to that particular incident. He forgave her, professing sympathy to her motivation though he claimed to be unable to undo it himself. She didn't believe him but didn't press her luck. With a promise it would never happen again, she was forgiven.\n \nIt happened again. The failure to normalize her obscene and impaired figure led her to one of the most valuable spells she could steal: the ability to make herself both invisible and silent through archaic, runic magic. She found that one in a tattered, old book, one of many Zarron collected only to neglect: a tome of power runes of an ancient era. Reading it over time, his disregard made more sense. There existed more elegant and recent solutions to spellcasting than drawing symbols in blood or ash all over one's home, weapon, enemy or own naked body. Modern magic offered cleaner, faster versions of most of its contents but for true invisibility, there were no other options she'd found.\n\nShe considered Marmalade's words about magic for profit as she hurried into her room. With her accumulated sorcerer's knowledge, she had potential to make money and maybe a lot of it. Enough to support herself without Zarron, should the isolation of her existence ever become so dire to be worth cutting herself off from his vast, magical library. \n \nWith the door closed behind her, she unbuttoned her robe and shrugged it off. Her naked form was exposed to the empty room and her vanity mirror now, her thick fur a creamy ivory with a white belly and charcoal-colored socks from the elbows and knees down. Both her and Evangeline looked to be similarly patterned as their mother. \n \nThe robe stayed in her grip until she reached her mattress, where she stuffed it behind the pillows. Should anyone come to check on her, it should seem she was out of her room and not running around the house naked. She kicked off her sandals, launching them under her bed.\n \nWith a firm gaze toward the unlit fireplace and with a flick of her fingers, the prepared stack of unburnt wood ignited into a full flame. Any elemental writing would work for the runes she would need: natural dyes, animal blood and squid ink were easy enough but had a tendency to run in her long fur. The accuracy of the lines mattered for keeping the results predictable so she preferred charcoal.\n \nNot knowing when she might need to use rune magic, she always kept a few thin branches among the thicker logs on the fire, ready to write with. She let it burn for some moments before reaching in and taking two of them. She raised them to her muzzle and blew them out. \n \nAnastasia hurried to the mirror, then turned and drew the first symbol, across her lower back. She always started with the most difficult one and drawing on her own back was the worst. The invisibility rune would have to be drawn twice: on her chest and on her spine, else she would only be invisible from one direction, thanks to some ancient technicality.\n \nShe turned around and made another one across the top of her left breast but she still used her reflection to ensure it was drawn right-side up. The accompanying rune to make her silent she drew last, on her opposite breast. \n \nAfter a quick double check of all three runes, she stared into the reflection of her own, pale blue eyes then spoke a word of power in a forgotten dialect of ancient magic:\n \n\"SHONDULA.\"\n \nThe rune on her left flared a bright blue before she faded from sight. Looking in the mirror at the now seemingly-empty room induced a shiver.\n \n\"VITULAS.\"\n \nOn her right breast, the other rune warmed but the invisibility hid any other effect. She couldn't see herself by looking down, which was especially disconcerting with her chest usually blocking her from seeing a several steps in front of her. It was important to always do the Silence spell second, she had learned as she was now incapable of making any noise without breaking the drawn rune. That included any more power words or incantations.\n \nShe turned away then clapped her hands to confirm the Silence spell had worked. With a resolute nod, the invisible vixen hurried to the door and out into the mercifully broad halls of the manor.\n \nAnastasia hated the vulnerability of being undressed out of her room and she didn't often for fear of getting caught, the magic failing at an inopportune time or the simple discomfort of it but the nudity was an unfortunately explicit detail. The rune would make precisely one thing disappear. That much was clear from the spell's description. She did not however, expect it to be so literal that drawing the symbol on her robe would make it and only it, invisible, even on her body. Fortunately, she learned that lesson in the privacy of her room.\n \nShe brought her arms around her breasts at their widest, towards her opposite wrist but never unable to reach it. This was a familiar disappointment and she pulled her arms in, gathering them as tightly restrained against her body as arms that dwarfed them could manage. With the unruly mass of her chest somewhat secured, she jogged back to the stairwell. Neither particularly fit nor fit for running, the vixen was not fast but she made better time than she would in her usual, top-heavy waddle. \n\nWhen she reached the stairs, she stopped to consider her descent. Usually, she was blocking her own view of half the staircase and would go down by finding the back of each step with her heel and holding the banister for help. Now able to see through herself, it should have been easier, except she couldn't see her feet either and so she held on for support and descended by feel as she would any other time. With the power of her Runic Magic, she considered how if she fell and broke her neck, no one would have any idea until they tripped over her corpse and nullified the Invisibility effect, perhaps falling and breaking their own neck in the process. \n\nHalfway down, she looked out over the foyer. Stone, Duayne, Evangeline and Darren the stallion were all gone now. The room was empty. \n\nAfter the last step, she secured herself again before she hurried across the room, breathing hard again by the time she continued down the hallway. She considered along her way, if there were some spell somewhere in the library that might help her endurance but she had found most magic to be almost anti-athletic. Levitation or Teleportation instead of faster, longer running. Unseen forces bent the laws of nature over assisted lifting and all manner of other, over-complicated replacements for ever breaking a sweat.\n \nThe top-heavy, teen vixen panted in silence as she arrived at the giant, double doors to the Preparation Room, which led to the Ritual Chamber, still guarded by the towering bull on one side and the ferocious-looking wolverine on the other. She walked up and put her ear to a small gap between the doors.\n \nThere were spells to eavesdrop on them but neither were at her disposal just now. Heightening her material senses required speaking to activate and she currently had no voice. The other option, Clairvoyance, which she long ago used to spy on her sister and Zarron as a child was one of the many spells that had been denied to her as she grew up and out. She could no longer reach across herself at the correct angle to perform the requisite gesture.\n \nTwo males were talking on the other side of the door with similar voices. Neither one was Zarron. Ana sighed in relief, her assumption confirmed: all sex magic she knew of would need to be performed one-at-a-time. The first of the Duodecaplets had to be in the Ritual Room beyond with Zarron and Marmalade, which meant there were two more opportunities to witness the ritual. She had to be patient until the door was opened by someone else, lest either of the brutish sentries see it open its own and endanger her spell.\n \nThe wait was painfully long, sitting with her ear to the door but the study of Magic was impossible without patience. Eventually she heard new sounds beyond it and another masculine voice, this one Zarron's. She stood and backed away with nervous excitement but more minutes passed before the door swung open and a single brother strode out, dressed in his armor once again. Her focus was beyond the door as she slipped past him but she noticed his expression was curiously blank. \n \nAnastasia was only somewhat familiar with the Preparation Room. She'd visited before but most of hers and Zarron's rituals took place in the study on the second floor. This, much grander Ritual Chamber was intended for guest spellcasters or group rituals, neither of which she had personally witnessed. It was an impressive room, with patterned, tile walls and floors surrounding a set-in-the-floor ceremonial bath of steaming water for pre-ritual cleansing. The room was self-maintaining with minor sanitation spells and always appeared immaculately clean, like every other room of the manor.\n \nOnly one of the brothers was in the bath, though it was big enough for several more people. He was alone in the room with Zarron, Marmalade and the second brother all unaccounted for. The ritual must already have started while the first of the three had gotten dressed. Two pairs of boots and armor neatly placed on a bench confirmed that. She had one more chance to watch the ritual but she would need to wait for the next set of doors to open.\n \nAt the sound of a splash, she looked back to see her half-brother stepping out of the tub, with his back to her. She covered her mouth as his bare rump cleared the water. His thighs and calves followed, revealing a model of physical perfection down to his feet. His whole body was sculpted from a lifetime of vigorous exercise, especially evident now with his wet coat clinging to the every contour of his youthful and athletic body. \n \nThe half-wolf fetched a towel and started to dry himself, oblivious to her presence or gaze. He turned away from the wall and her eyes fell to her half-brother's lemon-sized testicles hanging loosely from the hot water, under a sheath big enough to fit her fist into. She flushed a deep red under thick fur, radiating heat and sweat.\n \nIn her isolated life of study, Anastasia hadn't seen a man naked in person, except for Zarron. While some rituals outside of sex magic did require nudity to perform, the raccoon wizard forced her out of the room the few times he needed to, forgetting about her Clairvoyance. For Zarron's dubious morals, he spent a lot of energy convincing himself and them that he was not any kind of pervert around his two, beautiful and large-chested, adoptive, teenage daughters.\n \nAnastasia knew her brothers had traits in common across her, her sister and the rest of the bloodline: they were all endowed beyond exception or reason. It was obvious through their clothes on Stone, the Duodecaplets and even Joseph and Duayne but this was the first time she'd seen any of them naked, at least anywhere past infancy. \n\nShe reached down to her sex with a reluctant hand, a part of her body only known through touch and mirrors since her over-development. Trepidatious fingers traced along the split in her thick, pubic fur and reminded herself how small she was in comparison. Her stomach gurgled and she looked away, back to the heavy doors to the Ritual Chamber, wondering how the more petite Marmalade was managing with the second brother but no sound escaped the room. It must be by design, either architecturally or magically. Probably both. \n \nWhat could they be doing there? What magic would be so important that it had to be done so immediately? The answers would hopefully come soon enough but in the meantime, she stole another look at her naked, half-wolf brother, who sat down on the bench, in no hurry to get dressed. There was a nervous energy to him as he reclined against the wall, his knees far apart, one foot twitching nervously. His scrotum had tightened up, squeezing skin around those heavy testicles while a slick redness was peeking out of his sheath now. He breathed heavily and stared out into space, lost in thought or more likely, fantasy. Marmalade had made a promise of sex, after all and his brother was in there with her now. \n \nAnastasia's throat was quite suddenly parched and her palms clammy with sweat as she looked on with intrigue. The half-brother shifted himself to sit on his hands, restraining them while hard flesh cast a growing shadow over his belly at a cadence appropriate for a sunrise.\n \nWith nothing else to do but wait for the ritual to finish, the vixen's curiosity tugged her step by careful step around the tub towards him, watching his swelling maleness. She arrived at his side, looking down at a monstrous tower of flesh that must be a full erection now, laying along his stomach and reaching the bottom of his sternum in his slouched spinal curve. It was slick and red, self-lubricated and pointed at the tip with a gradual swell to the thickest part halfway down, with a girth comparable to her thin and weak forearm. At the base was a second bulge of similar thickness but shorter, more of a ball or a small orange wrapped tight in glossy, wet skin. While inexperienced around naked men, she'd seen more anatomy drawings for Life Magic than most people would in a lifetime and she knew exactly what a canine penis was supposed to look like. \n \nThe glistening flesh stood in stark contrast to his color and texture. She raised a curious, open hand, wondering what it felt like but to touch anyone deliberately while invisible would break the spell. She sighed and glanced back to the Chamber doors, still closed and silent. She moved her arms to restrain her bosom again before leaning in for a closer look, her head over his lap. \n \nThere was a strong scent to it and her nose twitched with this new information. She recoiled at first at the pungent intensity, racing her heart the way that magic did when she was unsure of an outcome. It was somewhere between the musk of hard labor and the smell of the sea, if the sea were hot, almost boiling. \n \nHer belly churned at the second whiff. She twisted away and grabbed her muzzle, wide-eyed and afraid to blow it all with an eruption of her tender stomach but it thankfully held. As the rush of adrenaline passed, she became aware of the next effect beyond her beating heart and salivating mouth: a surge of warmth to her loins. A hand to herself confirmed the arrival of a hot dew at her labia, starting to soak into the surrounding fur.\n \nEager eyes dragged along his solid shaft, ballooned with blood and excitement. It formed a bridge over his abdominal muscles to his relaxed chest, pectorals built from a lifetime of martial training. The red cock that emerged from his sheath was an appendage so alien and out-of-proportion to his canine body that it almost seemed to be attached as an afterthought. His shoulders were broad from his wolf heritage and singularly-focused physical regiment. Corded, neck muscles held his head upright, as sculpted as the rest of his physique while his face and features were equally wolf-like. Only the peppered birthmarks on his cheeks and throat reminded her that they had a direct, blood relation.\n \nUnlike the Duodecaplets, Anastasia and Evangeline were raised as sisters and some kind of pseudo, adopted daughters to Zarron, with their respective and unfair destinies of Sorceress and Wife. There were but a handful of others that the sorcerer had tried to raise himself: the twin, inbred boys, Tati and Titian and later, Joseph and Duayne for houseboys and Stone, who had been sold but returned.\n \nThe Duodecaplets weren't raised by Zarron so much as quartered by him, living in the shadow of their master's uncertainty that they would ever be viable merchandise. He was a presence in their lives as a Master to serve but where Anastasia, Evangeline, Duayne and Joseph had mostly grown up together, the twelve, half-wolf, half-foxes magically split from a single, fertilized egg, had been separated from the household to ensure they never mistook themselves to be a part of it.\n \nAnd so the naked, handsome and strong young man was more of a stranger than the half-brother she knew him to be and being so near to him didn't feel as wrong as she expected it would. She held her breath and leaned over and up, her nose hovering by his cheek, studying his face before her eyes dropped back to his erection. She backed away, biting her lower lip.\n \nAfter a glance over her shoulder to the doors, her hand fell back to her sex, finding the hungry wetness accumulating. Deft fingers lingered against the damp fur and flesh, pushing her lips apart from bottom to top until she pressed her clitoris like a button, inhaling a sucking breath. She stared down his erection and pondered how easily she could mount him though anything entering or exiting her body in front of someone would break the invisibility. She wondered what it would feel like pushing into her for the first time. If it would hurt and if she would bleed. Where would it all go? How long would he take to orgasm? How long would it take her? How had she gotten so close again?\n \nHer free arm moved across the top of her chest, restraining them from bumping his leg while she bent over her half-brother, filling her eyes and nose with his pungent maleness. She pushed a finger into herself, imagining it much bigger and thicker like he was. The through of sex that had made her so physically ill, of having some man's foreign appendage crammed inside her small torso which she was already quite sure was full, didn't seem so disgusting now. Even as huge as he was, it was starting to make sense how it could all work. She gave a long, luxurious sigh as she imagined climbing into his lap and lowering herself on him. \n \nThe hybrid wolf-fox's oblivious stupor tightened at once. He felt her breath! Only his relaxed condition made him slow enough that she could observe the subtle change before she scrambled back. He jumped to his feet, looking around alerted, his stiff cock swinging in comedic echo of his every motion.\n \nAnastasia's balance was never great to begin with for her lack of athleticism and coordination and that had only grown worse as the awkward little girl had blossomed into an impractical overabundance of femininity. She backpedaled a few, wobbly steps before falling on her rump on the tile floor, frozen in terror and wincing in pain. Her half-brother scanned over her, still oblivious but eyeing all directions warily.\n\nThe Ritual Room doors pushed open abruptly before he could sit down and he righted himself to stand at attention. Their brother emerged, naked with frazzled fur and a half-hard length spilling out from his sheath, quite identical to his freshly bathed sibling but much less tidy. His expression was as blank as the first one of them she'd seen, despite what she presumed was his loss of virginity in the ritual. Were the Duodecaplets always so stoic? They certainly hadn't been at the explanation of what was going to happen. \n\n\"Hold the door for your brother.\" It was Marmalade who called out the command to him, not Zarron. He stopped and obliged. \n \nAnastasia's eyes fell to his white furred chest, which bore dark, red runes of the same, ancient tradition of magic she was using now. They were minor variations on ones she recognized: Loyalty. Duty. Love. Heart. Similar to those but also unique. Almost twisted. Marmalade must have been charming them, which made sense given the circumstances.\n \nGetting up was never easy for Ana's impractical build but at least she was practiced. She planted her feet and rolled forward on her hands, pushing off with enough power to right herself. She wobbled back, her chest sloshing with inertia and countered before she was stable enough to start after him. She was some steps behind now and hurried to catch up, reaching him as he passed by his brother and into the Ritual Room.\n \nCurious, blue eyes darted to estimate the gap between the Duodecaplet who held the door, the other side of the entryway and how much space there was to squeeze between them. Even the broad shouldered young man who entered the room before was not nearly so wide as her chest made her. Brushing against him to get past would break the spell. With the last brother now inside, the second let go of the door.\n \nAna cursed to herself as the third brother disappeared inside, leaving her a clear view of the space beyond it. She had to think fast. She steadied herself, focusing before a sharp nod of her head and a blink sent her Teleporting barely a few steps forward, past the closing door, her half-brother, and beyond the Wards that protected the doorway. Luckier still, in the low light of the next room, the remnant smoke of her teleportation was difficult to see. She stepped in, clear of the door, which shut behind her. \n \nA sigh of relief was appropriate and well earned before she looked around the room, which she hadn't visited for years. A single tapestry of occult imagery draped each wall of the hexagonal room except for the one she stood at, where the only doors were. At every corner was a pedestal of a macabre gargoyle, demon or other similarly unfriendly statue and framing them were a pair of lit candles on wrought-iron stands. In the center of the room were three steps forming a squat, octagonal pyramid with the top platform several yards across. In the middle of that pyramid of stairs stood a stone altar, some eight feet long and four feet wide, where the feline sorceress reclined, naked, frazzled and panting. Zarron stood at her side.\n \n\"They're eager young men, Marmalade. And strong,\" the raccoon explained with some conciliation. \"Maybe you should take a break?\"\n \n\"Don't patronize me, Zarron. Your boys are freaks! Too big for any normal person,\" she shook her head with annoyance. \"Nobody said magic was easy or painless. But this won't be happening again for them. I hope they enjoy it while they can.\" She looked up to see the last of three brothers had joined, looking momentarily hurt at her words. \"Oh good. At least I don't have to get this one hard. Come up here and lay down on your back.\" She crawled to the edge, making room for him.\n \nThe third Duodecaplet approached the first step, looking curiously around the room. Zarron was clothed on the far side of the altar, holding a masonry bowl with both hands. His eyes then looked back to the naked, orange feline, beckoning him over. She was lithe in build, more thin than fit but youthful and attractive. \n\nHe walked carefully up the steps and Anastasia followed behind and at his flank. Marmalade didn't move to accommodate him so he stepped around her to a clear spot before pulling himself up. He scooted up with his erection slapping his chest before laying down, flat on his back then looked to the sorceress with both expectation and apprehension. \n \nWith a grumble, she pushed herself up and maneuvered above him with the natural grace of a feline until she settled on his lap, below his scrotum and sheath. Zarron offered the bowl to her which Anastasia, now standing closer to him, saw contained a small amount of blood. \n \nShe had seen the other two brothers post-ritual and neither had an obvious injury. Looking around, she noticed Marmalade's left hand was wrapped in a bandage as she used her right index finger to dip into the blood. Steadily then, she began to draw on the still-stoic half-brother's chest. It was the same rune the second brother had worn and once finished, she dismissed Zarron with a wave of her hand. He dipped his head and stepped back. Anastasia had never seen him obey anyone! Marmalade blew out a strong breath leaning forward over his chest.\n \n\"Ammman zuuuuuk zalasta,\" the feline steepled her hands in front of her muzzle.\n \n\"Aman zuk zalasta,\" Anastasia repeated in her head, committing it to memory. It was an ancient language that existed only in magic now but some of the words were familiar from other, runic spells. They translated loosely to 'Temple of the Mind.'\n \n\"Joh tah zutana,\" Marmalade continued, reaching skyward then grasping and tugging down.\n \nThe vixen studied her, repeating the instructions. \"Joh tah zutana. Grasp from the moon.\"\n \n\"Shalah Ran Quantulara.\" Feline hands clapped together before pulling in, thumbs to the bottom of her sternum.\n \n\"Shit.\" Anastasia felt her mouth move but no word came out. Yet another ritual that she would never be able to physically perform, whatever it did. The frustration was familiar for her but it couldn't hurt to know it anyway. 'Shalah Ran Quantulara. Thunderclap to Temple of the Heart.'\n \n\"Zuuuuk Alasta Olesta!\" Marmalade reached out and planted her left hand over his heart before covered her own with her right.\n \n\"Zuk Alasta Olesta. Your heart. My heart.\"\n \n\"Zuk Alaste Calisima!\" Her hand on his heart moved to a pointed index finger, pressed between his eyes.\n \n\"Zuk Alaste Calisima.\" Anastasia thought through the translation. \"Your... fishbucket is mine?\" Such was the risk of dead languages.\n \nWith another clap, the incantation was over then Marmalade was up on all fours. Her hand reached down to grip the young canine's eager cock and she guided him up to meet her body.\n \n\"No interruptions,\" the lithe sorceress commanded Zarron. He gave a small nod to acknowledge.\n \nWith the ritual complete and secured to memory, Anastasia could now just watch and wait for the effect. She stepped around behind them for a better view while the pointed tip of his erection brushed the wet fur around her freshly-used feline sex. Her jaw fell open as Marmalade drifted back and nestled it against her lips before she started to sink down.\n \nThe curious vixen planted her hands on the altar and leaned in to watch as the feline's body began to swallow the taper of that slick, red monster, inch by inch, the vixen's eyes growing as quickly as the feline was stretching. She heard the slimy, failed adhesion of fluids meeting fluids and as the apex of his thickness neared her body, the building strain of Marmalade to fit his size inside her.\n \nShe didn't notice that her hand had fallen back to her vixenhood and fingers pushed into her warmth while she hovered near the strenuous coupling as her first witness to sex. She moved to the side of the altar, minding her breasts to gaze on the brother she had fawned for, his attention now lost in lust with the sharp-tongued witch.\n \nHe was loud in his pleasure but Marmalade scolded him with short breath. \"Don't push. I do the work,\" she commanded, sounding strong despite the clear strain in her face and body. It wasn't easy for her to take him, that much was obvious. She knew her brothers were especially big and perhaps felines were less suited to larger sizes. Maybe it was just her? Mother must have taken the whole thing with Joseph as no room remained between them and she seemed to have been mostly enjoying herself. At least until their interruption.\n \nAnastasia's thumb was pinched along her straightened forefinger with her clitoris trapped between. Her middle and ring fingers slipped underneath, trying to imagine what it would feel like for such a girth to push into her. She was a teenager with the hormones that came with that but she'd also been quite sheltered from the company of men outside of her family. This urge felt stronger than ever before and her half-brother looked like a stranger, here in the nude. She stepped around behind them for a closer look at the actual penetration, the part that the thought of made her stomach turn. \n \nMarmalade was over the thickest of his girth and sounded like it now, with more grunting than groaning from her throat and lungs. \"Hurry up and cum, you oaf,\" the feline complained and the half-wolf winced at the command. Maybe the blank expressions afterward had been justified after all.\n \nThere was a thrill of excitement, hovering near the couple, unaware of her and her illicit activities. Perhaps there were other opportunities she'd been missing around the house to see what she wasn't meant to. Her brothers bathing? Until Evangeline and Zarron were married, there wasn't likely be any more sex and that idea was a lot less appealing than this.\n \nThe vixen pushed her groin into the cold, stone corner of the altar, applying pressure below her fingers. Her chest heaved over hungry lungs, unseen and unheard by all. She glanced over to Zarron who looked just as transfixed but he showed no obvious arousal or self-stimulation. He was watching like he did one of his spells or experiments and she quickly realized he was the most uninteresting thing in the room.\n \nSex pulled her eyes back as Marmalade and the Duodecaplet moved easier than before, with the rhythm of a ship, rocking at sea. Warmth started to grow in Anastasia's lower belly and she panted excitedly, looking over the other three, oblivious to her while her body felt ready to burst in ecstasy. A wicked smile of disbelief burst over her muzzle, surprised to find an extra thrill in having an unaware audience. She held her breath for a long moment as the heat swelled, finally boiling over. It formed a wave of bliss, like a cup being poured until it overflowed. She tensed her every muscle, bracing before the tingling warmth the shook her, shocking, soothing ripples flooding out from her sex in all directions. Her knees weakened and she planted her free hand on the altar, leaning on it for support, brows high and her lungs ravenous for air. \n \n\"I should pull out! I'm going to cum!\" the brother declared with a squirm but Zarron snapped to attention. He reached out to hold the half-wolf's shoulders down, alarming him. Marmalade reacted with a panic and brought her weight down on him as well, wincing as the motion pushed him deeper into her.\n \n\"You pull out now and your mind, your soul... your very essence is just a splatter on the floor,\" she growled through gritted teeth.\n \nAlarmed, Anastasia took a shaky step back, watching the two of them in profile again. The canine struggled but not enough to overshadow an inevitable, teenage orgasm. The feline rode him determinedly, clenching in a growl as she thrust down on him, again and again.\n\nHe managed to stammer out a singular \"What?\"\n \nShe didn't answer and his body didn't make her wait any longer. He tremored and gasped before his fur stood on end, crackling with static. Was that normal? What followed was certainly not.\n \nThin wafts of steam rose from his eyes then thickened into an unnatural, bluish color and increasingly opaque, like smoke. His gaze snapped to hers as the wisps snaked between clumps of his damp, matted fur before an entire, ethereal doppleganger of his form started to lag behind his convulsions. It fell further out of sync with him, drifting slowly skyward, moving with more of its own agency, independent of the physical body. But the blueish, spirit canine didn't get any higher than the top of her head before it was caught in her attraction. Only then did the ghostly canine look down, cupping his ethereal muzzle with ethereal paws as what was presumably his soul or essence, was witnessing his body from the outside.\n \nThe wide-eyed, convulsing, physical being beneath her fell limp while the essence that had separated from it flailed now, reaching desperately but unable to hold anything in intangible hands. It was turned around in place as if by unseen winds, tossed about while squirming to resist. The struggle was futile and his pose was forced into reluctant conformity with the feline's posture. Wrestled into submission by an incorporeal adversary, it became one with her. \n \nHer short, orange coat rose with static then and the spirit canine faded into nothing, shrinking into her. The crackle of energy filled the room beyond, lifting Anastasia's fur as well. Marmalade slumped forward, panting, her hands braced on the breathing but otherwise still, half-wolf she straddled. His expression was not post-coital but every bit as blank as the other two of them had been.\n \nThat was the effect of the ritual. His mind. His soul. His very essence. It belonged to Marmalade now. Just like their two brothers before him. Like the five other siblings at the sorceress' home soon would be.\n \nSuch magics were dangerous and forbidden, Zarron had told her many times. From an unscrupulous man like him, the warning had special weight: magic should not be used to enslave. His twisted morality had allowed many hundreds of her brothers and sisters to be sold as children, servants and slaves but none had been sent off, sapped of their free will, even when other buyers had requested it. Even he seemed incapable of something this heinous. At least until she saw him act as an accomplice to this. \n \nAnastasia stepped back, reeling in an urge to escape, the dark energy of the room infecting her. Her hand held her abdomen, which was churning fiercely again. None of this was sexy anymore. It was horrifying and the worst thing a young woman afraid of sex could see.\n\nHer next, blind step missed its mark. She wobbled back on the second level, off balance yet again. It was only getting worse. Her stomach sloshed as her chest did and she caught the step but the one after that disappeared with her gaining inertia. She was falling now. And midway through, she was also throwing up.\n \nThe naked, teenage vixen stumbled off the lowest level of the platform, her every limb leaving the ground entirely. She crashed backwards into the perching gargoyle, her immense, wobbling breasts coming into her own view after a small amount of vomit escaped her mouth but was outrun in mid air. She hit the statue's pedestal hard and it fell back, then the gargoyle tipped forward. Zarron and Marmalade both turned their heads in slow motion, the gargoyle clipping her shoulder on the way down, shattering on the stone floor.\n \nFire swelled in Zarron's eyes in recognition, a brewing storm of destructive rage.\n \n\"Aaaaaannnnna...\"\n \nHe was calling her name as he raised his hands, clenching them so tightly that they tremored. Never had she seen his total loss of control. She didn't know his true power or age but she knew that she was in terrible, terrible trouble to witness him in such fury.\n \n\"...Staysssshhhhh....\"\n \nMarmalade was still frozen in the fact that she had been deceived at all, reminding the young vixen that for any lack of spine Zarron may have had with the young-looking and pretty ritualist, he was the veteran sorcerer in the room.\n \nAna needed to leave. Somewhere safe. Anywhere. This moment was the last advantage she would have. Maybe ever. Magics churned around his fists, swirling, brownish maelstroms of a spell he had never revealed to her. Dimensional magic? Destructive unweaving? Would he send her to a pocket realm or scramble her body like an egg yolk? Teleport her into the stratosphere and let her fall to her death? He wasn't in a state she could trust for any kind of reasonable punishment. Her curiosity spiked even with her life in danger but the adrenaline retook her focus.\n \nEscape. Safety. The sigil she had drawn in her bed chambers! But that would only buy her a few more moments. Unless it was her bedroom in the Pale Lands, so many miles away. He didn't know that she could Teleport! If he had found the hidden sigils, she would have been disciplined for learning forbidden magic. They must be intact. He couldn't know she could teleport and he'd said earlier that her mother, Portia, had destroyed every teleport sigil in the house. Every one he knew existed.\n \n\"...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!\"\n \nIt was her last chance before her fate was in Zarron's hands. If her mother had somehow found the seal and destroyed it, she wouldn't go anywhere. If her mother and brother were standing in the room over the sigil at that moment, all three of them would be merged into a monstrosity of interdimensionally overlapped flesh and bone before dying, either mercifully fast or in torturous, prolonged agony. That chance was far less likely to end her life as whatever Zarron was about to do. \n\nMagic swirled. She was out of time. \n\nAnastasia closed her eyes and nodded sharply, focusing on the sigil in her mind.\n \nThe world turned white. Then black. \n\nSilence.\n \nAt first, she could not open her eyes. She felt nothing for a moment but feared the worst regardless. Was she in a pocket dimension? Did she still have eyes at all or did he turn her into the gargoyle she had shattered?\n \nAs the adrenaline thinned, sharp pain throbbed from her shoulder where the gargoyle had hit her. She at the very least, still had a shoulder and so one eye cracked cautiously open. \n \nIt was her bed chambers, in The Pale Lands! Thousands of miles from her Master's Estate in a room smelling of ozone, she had successfully teleported farther than ever before. She gave an excited smile of disbelief before collapsing on the floor. \"There isn't a safe way back to the Pale Lands...\" she repeated what he'd said after fleeing from her mother the second time. Her grin popped with a laugh. \"Not for you, Zarron.\" It was a relief to hear her own voice again.\n \nShe rose with the usual effort and looked at herself in the full body mirror in one corner of her bedroom. Breaking the spells had erased the runes from her body as expected and all trace of the charcoal drawings was gone. She turned to her wardrobe and fetched another purple robe, this one a heavier material, more suitable for the harsh winter that awaited her outside.\n \nOnce dressed, she stepped out into the hall. \"Joseph? Mother?\" she called out but there was no answer. She descended the spiral stairs with her usual care, down to the main floor. She yelled for them several more times but there was no reply. A quick Detection spell revealed that the house was in fact, empty. In the time it took for the familial arguments and three rituals, Portia and Joseph had already packed and gone.\n \nHer stomach gurgled again, reminding her of the time since her last meal, accelerated from the unintended emptying of it. She walked over to the couch and slumped down, only to realize that the corner legs of it had broken off and the whole thing was crooked, including now her.\n \nAnastasia sighed and folded her arms atop the giant shelf of her ungainly bosom. She looked around and blew out a breath. She was far, far away from her Master or the fate he had planned for her. Quite unexpectedly, she was free.\n \n\"Okay. Now what?\"\n \nTHE END\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Pairs of Pumpkins Chapter 04:
The Unseen and the Unsteady (2nd Edition)

By Jess Faulks
 

The vixen apprentice, Anastasia stood in silence as a procession departed the manor's foyer: Zarron, the raccoon sorcerer and Head of the Household led the way, followed by an odd mix of three familiar faces and three strangers. They were all on the way to a ritual that despite her continuing education in Magic, Ana was explicitly not invited to.

Zarron called out some orders but she barely paid attention. She could sense his unease if for no other reason than its rarity. He was very old and powerful beyond comprehension but the sorceress Marmalade had him off-kilter since she'd arrived not long ago and made a weird night, weirder still. He owed her some debt that he appeared to be paying with three of the Duodecaplets, twelve, identical half-wolves who'd been trained as a fighting elite and until now, never separated.

Anastasia was one of five who remained behind: the idling Stone, their massive brute of a barely intelligent brother standing over a similar sized, armored stallion, collapsed on the floor. The horse, Zarron's bodyguard, had been apparently knocked out by poison from a confrontation with their mother, far away in the Pale Lands but not long ago at all, due to Zarron's teleportation. After so many years of uneventful education and isolation for Anastasia and her many siblings, so much had happened in so little time in so little time and it was hard to imagine anything going back to the way it was.

Nearer to Anastasia stood Duayne, her dumbfounded younger brother and  their elder sister, Evangeline, still frozen by magic with her fist cocked back and ready to swing at an offending feline sorceress, now long departed. With control still of her eyes, they were straining to glare, her jaw clenched in a furious growl.

"That's not going to last long," Ana said to herself before she moved around in front of Eva and opened her arms, anticipating she may be off balance when her ability to move returned. The spell, defensively cast by Marmalade, had frozen Evangeline's body, not stopped time and all the momentum of her attempted punch would be lost. She was lucky to have been frozen at a place where she was balanced enough to stay standing but she would be disoriented when the effect went away.
    
The teenage Anastasia was inherently off-balance herself, with the bulk and weight of burdensome breasts that dominated her upper body. Their lineage already tended to extremes, as evident by Evangeline's curvaceous figure and their mother that they'd only briefly seen, but Anastasia was far beyond either of them, thanks to  the casual cruelty of Zarron's magic. He admitted to meddling with the very fabric of her creation before her birth and sometimes confessed that he had "overdone it" with her, but would follow that by explaining that his re-weaving was so effective that it was beyond the capacity of magic to undo. The wobbly Anastasia had little business trying to catch her sister's fall but Duayne didn't have the forethought to take action, nor the body mass to succeed if he did.

Waiting for her sister to return to animation, she considered the earlier stalemate between the twelve Duodecaplets and Stone versus Marmalade and her two bodyguards. Marmalade claimed to be an old sorceress despite her young appearance but she'd been afraid of them. It led Anastasia to consider what magic she might use to get out of the same situation. The Duodecaplets had trained in anti-wizard tactics and had spaced out to better resist any area effects, but with their armor, Chain Lightning may have done the trick.  
 
Of course, one crossbow bolt could be enough. The smart thing to do, would have been to erect a Magic Barrier against missile weapons, but that wouldn't stop Stone. Teleporting would have been the safest way out, then find a more advantageous battle field. Teleportation itself was incredibly dangerous but in that situation the risk of death was better than certain death. Marmalade must not have been that kind of Sorceress.

At the far end of the hall, at the ritual room, Marmalade's guards posted up outside and the rest of them went inside. The doors closed behind them and a moment later, Evangeline's magical paralysis finally broke, out of time or out of range from its caster.
    
Ana tensed and braced herself.  For her overabundant bust compounded by her sister's not insignificant chest, she was more likely to provide a cushion upon landing rather than stop her from falling.  

Evangeline caught herself in place. Her arms swung for balance until she found it,  then righted herself and clenching her fists. Hunched forward, face hovering over Ana's cleavage, she cursed.

"I'm so fucking tired of magic!"

Ana reached out for Evangeline's shoulders to help her find her balance but she twisted away. "How did Mother get the best of Zarron? He's supposed to be some great wizard but he got beat up by a deadbeat slut?!" In a lucid moment, she looked pointedly at Anastasia. "He said she had a charm?"
 
"She must have. Probably relagite or espum. Either one would work." Ana's arms fell and she blurted out the words, then stifled a wince.  It might not be wise for her hot-headed sister to know how to resist both Zarron's and her own greatest strength. "Relagite would be something she'd be wearing. It's a kind of metal. Espum she'd have had to consume in advance." It fell out of her mouth. Not often did Evangeline have any interest in the kinds of things she studied.  It felt good to be able to show off.

Duayne, the red fox, their younger, half-brother and the least dangerous person in the room hovered behind the raised voices and confrontation that preceded but now with the room clear, he hurried to Evangeline's side and threw his arms around her waist, looking up between his two sisters. "You really met mother?!" he said with a loud whisper, looking over his shoulder to confirm Zarron's absence.
 
"I wouldn't say we met her so much as we interrupted her having sex with Joseph!" Evangeline hissed. Duayne winced in disgust and Eva appeared to relish in his revulsion. "Your brother, Joseph. Her own son! Are there no lines that the witch won't cross?"
 
"Why would Joseph do that!? Why didn't Zarron kill her, right then and there?" the young, red fox barked incredulously. Anastasia craned her head aside, listening. "Couldn't he make mother fall over dead with a blink?! Or a fireball?"
 
"Relagite or espum," She repeated, more shortly than last time. "Why would he try to kill her at all?"
 
Eva cut in. "He's probably HER best customer, Duayne. She sold her unborn children, he bought them and now grows them to sell off as slaves and servants. I just thought he would have more care for the ones he helped raise. Like us." She swallowed visibly and dipped her head toward the floor.
 
"Zarron said she sold him all her eggs twenty years ago." Anastasia said with a dismissive shake of her. "Zarron had other business with Mother. Business he didn't want you and I to hear."
 
"Well, they're both awful. I'm sure there are other evil schemes they're working on."
 
Ana looked between her three siblings: The black-haired Eva, simmering with rage and Duayne's pining need for the eldest sister's approval. Stone stood, blank-faced without orders and that's what it took to put him in motion. Per Zarron's command, he waited for Duayne to ask him for help with the sleeping, monster of an equine, still sprawled out on the foyer floor, unconscious. Her eyes darted back to Eva, the only one left she had any chance to reason with.

"Zarron gave away three of our brothers right in front of us and he didn't find that worth hiding. But a conversation with our mother needed to be a secret. Zarron wasn't expecting her. He thought she was an intruder at first! Remember?"
 
"I'm not going to try to make sense of a woman who sells her children for servants and slaves, Anastasia. Use your brain, for once."
 
Ana inhaled slowly through her nose and out through her mouth, the kind of calming, ritual breathing she learned as a child when mastering the energies required to perform magic. She closed her eyes and spoke distantly. "'Do I know you?'"
 
Evangeline's muzzle twitched before she recoiled in confusion. "Have you lost your mind? I'm your fucking sister."
 
"'Do I know you' was the first thing Mother said to Zarron when she saw him. Would she forget the face of the man she sold her eggs to?"
 
"Zarron must've been much younger and less disgusting way back then."
 
"He hasn't aged physically in our lifetimes but she didn't recognize him. She was in HIS house and didn't know it," Ana spoke matter-of-factly, glancing back to the now closed doors to the Ritual Room. "Why would she... be having sex in the living room if she expected us to find her? And why would she have sex with her own son? None of us had ever met mother until tonight, including Joseph. How would he recognize her? How would she recognize him?" She looked back to Evangeline pointedly. "Zarron is hiding something about mother. The only thing you know about her is whatever he wants us to believe. And you hate her for it."

"She sold us all for slaves!" Duanye tried his best to add his outrage.
 
Ana sighed and looked at the young fox . "Did you hear what Marmalade said? A Runaway Princess. Zarron never said anything about that. If our mother was a Princess and she had the wits enough to defeat Zarron twice, wouldn't she have grabbed some jewels or gold before running away from her palace or castle? What royalty would be so desperate to sell the possibility of ever having children?"
 
"Because she didn't care about us!" Duayne whined.
 
"Or because she never wanted us." Evangeline snapped and spat. "She wanted to be a whore without the risk of pregnancy."
 
Anastasia shook her head. "It doesn't make sense, Eva. We're missing something important." She glanced to the far end of the hall to the Ritual Preparation Room. She was missing something else too.
 
Evangeline drew a quick, wide-eyed breath. "What about Joseph? Did I get that wrong too?!"
 
Ana looked back to her sister, considering for a moment. She swallowed and brought her hand to her mouth with a momentary puff of her cheeks. After a pause and a long blink, she nodded. "No, that happened. But I don't know..."
 
"Disgusting woman," Eva interrupted with a hiss and Ana turned away from them, toward the outside of the room.
 
"Perhaps," Anastasia gave a shrug and another impatient glance to the Ritual Room doors before excusing herself without announcement. She headed towards the nearest staircase, one of the smaller side ones toward her chambers.
 
"My sister. The know-it-all." Eva threw up her hands  before spinning and storming off in the other direction, leaving Duayne and Stone alone in the foyer to manage the unconscious stallion.
 
"I know more than you," Anastasia muttered before starting up the stairs, holding the handrail for support.
  
While reserved in demeanor, Anastasia's brilliance escaped none in Zarron's house, which irritated her older sister endlessly. Eva's destiny was to be a wife where Ana would be a wizard.
 
A Prodigy of the Magical Arts, Anastasia was slinging spells from her toddler years and now in her late teens, she was as competent an apprentice and understudy as Zarron could have wished for. The only thing in the way of her being a truly perfect prodigy was some clumsiness in the study thanks to her over-abundant physique. After some accidents of expensive and rare things being swept off tables by her turning this way and that, the two of them had summoned the Duodecaplets to rearrange the tighter spaces of the room to better accommodate her. They also raised some of the lower surfaces to prevent her chest from brushing over any of them.
 
With such a sharp mind, few would be surprised to learn Anastasia's memory was a trap of which little knowledge escaped but the vixen had been wise enough, young enough to keep that fact to herself. Zarron needed to have total control of her training lest she become a threat to him and he had strict rules about what magics she could study. She was not allowed to visit the library unattended, though she could check out books he approved of, to read in her bed chambers on her own time.
 
To not endanger access to his collection, he couldn't know how quickly she consumed and retained knowledge from a spellbook. She had played along with the plan since five years old, learning fast but not suspiciously so. She even learned to pretend-forget things at times to avoid suspicion and she had been doing so for long enough now that she was quite convincing.
 
Her biggest obstacle to mastery of magic came from the same place as her clumsiness in the lab: her chest was not only massive enough to clear workbenches with an unplanned turn but its tremendous bulk limited the range of motion of her arms. So much so that a number of common spells became impossible to perform, thanks to the broadness and angles of gesture they required to cast. Some of those, she learned as a young girl and still committed to memory but were now denied to her, post-puberty.  

Anastasia's thirst for magical knowledge was insatiable, making her an ideal student but also why Zarron insisted he traveled with her when he did: he said it was because his apprentice shouldn't leave his side but she knew he was afraid for her to be alone with his library.

She commonly learned every spell in a book she checked out when she was meant to be only studying one of them. Others, she was only allowed to study while supervised. For a few key spells she was determined to know and forbidden to learn, she found she could sneak books out of the library under her robes and hide them from detection with some simple, concealment magic and her very large chest.

She arrived at the top of the stairs with audible breath, the young woman soft from a life of study and little exercise but still carrying several stone of extra bulk. She kept on, along the second floor where the Duodecaplets had deployed, then down a hall, towards her room.

There was a spring in her step the moment she was out of view of the others.  She'd studied all manner of spells but rituals tended to be more tribal knowledge and poorly documented. Whatever Zarron, Marmalade and three Duocaplets were about to do was probably not written down anywhere in Zarron's library.

She had to see it herself, with or without invitation. Her secret studies of things Zarron had explicitly forbidden prepared her well and the plan was forming before she reached her room.

Zarron didn't want her to learn to Teleport like he did with such ease, professing the many, well-known dangers but it was too powerful of an ability to ignore for a then, twelve year old Ana. After some months of being mindful of the Conjuring section, she found the book she needed and snuck it back to her room. The risks had not been exaggerated, neither from Zarron nor the repeated warnings in the spellbook: To teleport into an inanimate object could kill her instantly and to do so into another being would be worse.
  
As such, she had only tried in the same room and used target sigils for extra precision at her destination. The symbols provided a focus for the spellcaster and were meant for long distance, pre-planned travel as Zarron had done to get them here but for shorter trips, they theoretically acted as another layer of insurance. After learning Teleportation, she drew a few such sigils hidden around her bed chambers both in this house and in her room in The Pale Lands to practice. She tested teleporting to them with her eyes closed and back turned, to be sure that she could without risking actually going any distance or through any obstacles.
 
Zarron also refused to teach her any Metamorphosis spells. He cited their danger and but was also aware of what the at-the-time, violently pubescent vixen's intention would be with those kinds of spells and rituals when her breasts grew beyond all normality and kept growing until they dominated her young frame.  

A fourteen year old Anastasia dug around on her own until she tracked down a suitable spell to permanently alter her own body. First, she tried it by growing her own head hair, which she promptly cut. Next, she changed its color, one way then another before changing back to her natural one. She tried her coat after that, doubling the length of her fur in a way she had yet managed to reverse before she attempted the big job: reducing her oversized breasts to something reasonable, so she might blend in among normal people someday.
 
That spell failed to do anything at all and she later learned her attempt to change herself was nullified against the more potent magic of Zarron's which made her that way in the first place. With her body fur inexplicably long and thick the next morning, she had no choice but to confess to that particular incident. He forgave her, professing sympathy to her motivation though he claimed to be unable to undo it himself. She didn't believe him but didn't press her luck. With a promise it would never happen again, she was forgiven.
 
It happened again. The failure to normalize her obscene and impaired figure led her to one of the most valuable spells she could steal: the ability to make herself both invisible and silent through archaic, runic magic. She found that one in a tattered, old book, one of many Zarron collected only to neglect: a tome of power runes of an ancient era. Reading it over time, his disregard made more sense. There existed more elegant and recent solutions to spellcasting than drawing symbols in blood or ash all over one's home, weapon, enemy or own naked body. Modern magic offered cleaner, faster versions of most of its contents but for true invisibility, there were no other options she'd found.

She considered Marmalade's words about magic for profit as she hurried into her room. With her accumulated sorcerer's knowledge, she had potential to make money and maybe a lot of it. Enough to support herself without Zarron, should the isolation of her existence ever become so dire to be worth cutting herself off from his vast, magical library.
  
With the door closed behind her, she unbuttoned her robe and shrugged it off. Her naked form was exposed to the empty room and her vanity mirror now, her thick fur a creamy ivory with a white belly and charcoal-colored socks from the elbows and knees down.  Both her and Evangeline looked to be similarly patterned as their mother.
  
The robe stayed in her grip until she reached her mattress, where she stuffed it behind the pillows. Should anyone come to check on her, it should seem she was out of her room and not running around the house naked. She kicked off her sandals, launching them under her bed.
  
With a firm gaze toward the unlit fireplace and with a flick of her fingers, the prepared stack of unburnt wood ignited into a full flame. Any elemental writing would work for the runes she would need: natural dyes, animal blood and squid ink were easy enough but had a tendency to run in her long fur. The accuracy of the lines mattered for keeping the results predictable so she preferred charcoal.
 
Not knowing when she might need to use rune magic, she always kept a few thin branches among the thicker logs on the fire, ready to write with. She let it burn for some moments before reaching in and taking two of them. She raised them to her muzzle and blew them out.
  
Anastasia hurried to the mirror, then turned and drew the first symbol, across her lower back. She always started with the most difficult one and drawing on her own back was the worst. The invisibility rune would have to be drawn twice: on her chest and on her spine, else she would only be invisible from one direction, thanks to some ancient technicality.
  
She turned around and made another one across the top of her left breast but she still used her reflection to ensure it was drawn right-side up. The accompanying rune to make her silent she drew last, on her opposite breast.
  
After a quick double check of all three runes, she stared into the reflection of her own, pale blue eyes then spoke a word of power in a forgotten dialect of ancient magic:
 
"SHONDULA."
 
The rune on her left flared a bright blue before she faded from sight. Looking in the mirror at the  now seemingly-empty room induced a shiver.
 
"VITULAS."
 
On her right breast, the other rune warmed but the invisibility hid any other effect. She couldn't see herself by looking down, which was especially disconcerting with her chest usually blocking her from seeing a several steps in front of her. It was important to always do the Silence spell second, she had learned as she was now incapable of making any noise without breaking the drawn rune. That included any more power words or incantations.
 
She turned away then clapped her hands to confirm the Silence spell had worked. With a resolute nod, the invisible vixen hurried to the door and out into the mercifully broad halls of the manor.
 
Anastasia hated the vulnerability of being undressed out of her room and she didn't often for fear of getting caught, the magic failing at an inopportune time or the simple discomfort of it but the nudity was an unfortunately explicit detail. The rune would make precisely one thing disappear. That much was clear from the spell's description. She did not however, expect it to be so literal that drawing the symbol on her robe would make it and only it, invisible, even on her body. Fortunately, she learned that lesson in the privacy of her room.
 
She brought her arms around her breasts at their widest, towards her opposite wrist but never unable to reach it. This was a familiar disappointment and she pulled her arms in, gathering them as tightly restrained against her body as arms that dwarfed them could manage. With the unruly mass of her chest somewhat secured, she jogged back to the stairwell. Neither particularly fit nor fit for running, the vixen was not fast but she made better time than she would in her usual, top-heavy waddle.

When she reached the stairs, she stopped to consider her descent. Usually, she was blocking her own view of half the staircase and would go down by finding the back of each step with her heel and holding the banister for help. Now able to see through herself, it should have been easier, except she couldn't see her feet either and so she held on for support and descended by feel as she would any other time. With the power of her Runic Magic, she considered how if she fell and broke her neck, no one would have any idea until they tripped over her corpse and nullified the Invisibility effect, perhaps falling and breaking their own neck in the process.  

Halfway down, she looked out over the foyer. Stone, Duayne, Evangeline and Darren the stallion were all gone now. The room was empty.

After the last step, she secured herself again before she hurried across the room, breathing hard again by the time she continued down the hallway. She considered along her way, if there were some spell somewhere in the library that might help her endurance but she had found most magic to be almost anti-athletic. Levitation or Teleportation instead of faster, longer running. Unseen forces bent the laws of nature over assisted lifting and all manner of other, over-complicated replacements for ever breaking a sweat.
 
The top-heavy, teen vixen panted in silence as she arrived at the giant, double doors to the Preparation Room, which led to the Ritual Chamber, still guarded by the towering bull on one side and the ferocious-looking wolverine on the other. She walked up and put her ear to a small gap between the doors.
 
There were spells to eavesdrop on them but neither were at her disposal just now. Heightening her material senses required speaking to activate and she currently had no voice. The other option, Clairvoyance, which she long ago used to spy on her sister and Zarron as a child was one of the many spells that had been denied to her as she grew up and out. She could no longer reach across herself at the correct angle to perform the requisite gesture.
 
Two males were talking on the other side of the door with similar voices. Neither one was Zarron. Ana sighed in relief, her assumption confirmed: all sex magic she knew of would need to be performed one-at-a-time. The first of the Duodecaplets had to be in the Ritual Room beyond with Zarron and Marmalade, which meant there were two more opportunities to witness the ritual. She had to be patient until the door was opened by someone else, lest either of the brutish sentries see it open its own and endanger her spell.
 
The wait was painfully long, sitting with her ear to the door but the study of Magic was impossible without patience. Eventually she heard new sounds beyond it and another masculine voice, this one Zarron's. She stood and backed away with nervous excitement but more minutes passed before the door swung open and a single brother strode out, dressed in his armor once again.  Her focus was beyond the door as she slipped past him but she noticed his expression was curiously blank.
  
Anastasia was only somewhat familiar with the Preparation Room. She'd visited before but most of hers and Zarron's rituals took place in the study  on the second floor. This, much grander Ritual Chamber was intended for guest spellcasters or group rituals, neither of which she had personally witnessed. It was an impressive room, with patterned, tile walls and floors surrounding a set-in-the-floor ceremonial bath of steaming water for pre-ritual cleansing. The room was self-maintaining with minor sanitation spells and always appeared immaculately clean, like every other room of the manor.
  
Only one of the brothers was in the bath, though it was big enough for several more people. He was alone in the room with Zarron, Marmalade and the second brother all unaccounted for. The ritual must already have started while the first of the three had gotten dressed. Two pairs of boots and armor neatly placed on a bench confirmed that. She had one more chance to watch the ritual but she would need to wait for the next set of doors to open.
 
At the sound of a  splash, she looked back to see her half-brother stepping out of the tub, with his back to her. She covered her mouth as his  bare rump cleared the water. His thighs and calves followed, revealing a model of physical perfection down to his feet. His whole body was sculpted from a lifetime of vigorous exercise, especially evident now with his wet coat clinging to the every contour of his youthful and athletic body.
 
The half-wolf fetched a towel and started to dry himself, oblivious to her presence or gaze. He turned away from the wall and her eyes fell to her half-brother's lemon-sized testicles hanging loosely from the hot water, under a sheath big enough to fit her fist into. She flushed a deep red under thick fur, radiating heat and sweat.
 
In her isolated life of study, Anastasia hadn't seen a man naked in person, except for Zarron. While some rituals outside of sex magic did require nudity to perform, the raccoon wizard forced her out of the room the few times he needed to, forgetting about her Clairvoyance. For Zarron's dubious morals, he spent a lot of energy convincing himself and them that he was not any kind of pervert around his two, beautiful and large-chested, adoptive, teenage daughters.
 
Anastasia knew her brothers had traits in common across her, her sister and the rest of the bloodline: they were all endowed beyond exception or reason. It was obvious through their clothes on Stone, the Duodecaplets and even Joseph and Duayne but this was the first time she'd seen any of them naked, at least anywhere past infancy.  

She reached down to her sex with a reluctant hand, a part of her body only known through touch and mirrors since her over-development. Trepidatious fingers traced along the split in her thick, pubic fur and reminded herself how small she was in comparison. Her stomach gurgled and she looked away, back to the heavy doors to the Ritual Chamber, wondering how the more petite Marmalade was managing with the second brother but no sound escaped the room. It must be by design, either architecturally or magically.  Probably both.
 
What could they be doing there? What magic would be so important that it had to be done so immediately? The answers would hopefully come soon enough but in the meantime, she stole another look at her naked, half-wolf brother, who sat down on the bench, in no hurry to get dressed. There was a nervous energy to him as he reclined against the wall, his knees far apart, one foot twitching nervously. His scrotum had tightened up, squeezing skin around those heavy testicles while a slick redness was peeking out of his sheath now. He breathed heavily and stared out into space,  lost in thought or more likely, fantasy. Marmalade had made a promise of sex, after all and his brother was in there with her now.
 
Anastasia's throat was quite suddenly parched and her palms clammy with sweat as she looked on with intrigue. The half-brother shifted himself to sit on his hands, restraining them while hard flesh cast a growing shadow over his belly at a cadence appropriate for a sunrise.
 
With nothing else to do but wait for the ritual to finish, the vixen's curiosity tugged her step by careful step around the tub towards him, watching his swelling maleness. She arrived at his side, looking down at a monstrous tower of flesh that must be a full erection now, laying along his stomach and reaching the bottom of his sternum in his slouched spinal curve. It was slick and red, self-lubricated and pointed at the tip with a gradual swell to the thickest part halfway down, with a girth comparable to her thin and weak forearm. At the base was a second bulge of similar thickness but shorter, more of a ball or a small orange wrapped tight in glossy, wet skin. While inexperienced around naked men, she'd seen more anatomy drawings for Life Magic than most people would in a lifetime and she knew exactly what a canine penis was supposed to look like.
 
The glistening flesh stood in stark contrast to  his color and texture. She raised a curious, open hand, wondering what it felt like but to touch anyone deliberately while invisible would break the spell. She sighed and glanced back to the Chamber doors, still closed and silent. She moved her arms to restrain her bosom again before leaning in for a closer look, her head over his lap.
 
There was a strong scent to it and her nose twitched with this new information. She recoiled at first at the pungent intensity, racing her heart the way that magic did when she was unsure of an outcome. It was somewhere between the musk of hard labor and the smell of the sea, if the sea were hot, almost boiling.
 
Her belly churned at the second whiff. She twisted away and grabbed her muzzle, wide-eyed and afraid to blow it all with an eruption of her tender stomach but it thankfully held. As the rush of adrenaline passed, she became aware of the next effect beyond her beating heart and salivating mouth: a surge of warmth to her loins. A hand to herself confirmed the arrival of a hot dew at her labia, starting to soak into the surrounding fur.
 
Eager eyes dragged along his solid shaft, ballooned with blood and excitement. It formed a bridge over his abdominal muscles to his relaxed chest, pectorals built from a lifetime of martial training. The red cock that emerged from his sheath was an appendage so alien and out-of-proportion to his canine body that it almost seemed to be attached as an afterthought. His shoulders were broad from his wolf heritage and singularly-focused physical regiment. Corded, neck muscles held his head upright, as sculpted as the rest of his physique while his face and features were equally wolf-like. Only the peppered birthmarks on his cheeks and throat reminded her that they had a direct, blood relation.
 
Unlike the Duodecaplets, Anastasia and Evangeline were raised as sisters and some kind of pseudo, adopted daughters to Zarron, with their respective and unfair destinies of Sorceress and Wife. There were but a handful of others that the sorcerer had tried to raise himself: the twin, inbred boys, Tati and Titian and later, Joseph and Duayne for houseboys and Stone, who had been sold but returned.
 
The Duodecaplets weren't raised by Zarron so much as quartered by him, living in the shadow of their master's uncertainty that they would ever be viable merchandise. He was a presence in their lives as a Master to serve but where Anastasia, Evangeline, Duayne and Joseph had mostly grown up together, the twelve, half-wolf, half-foxes magically split from a single, fertilized egg, had been separated from the household to ensure they never mistook themselves to be a part of it.
 
And so the naked, handsome and strong young man was more of a stranger than the half-brother she knew him to be and being so near to him didn't feel as wrong as she expected it would. She held her breath and leaned over and up, her nose hovering by his cheek, studying his face before her eyes dropped back to his erection. She backed away, biting her lower lip.
 
After a glance over her shoulder to the doors, her hand fell back to her sex, finding the hungry wetness accumulating. Deft fingers lingered against the damp fur and flesh, pushing her lips apart from bottom to top until she pressed her clitoris like a button, inhaling a sucking breath. She stared down his erection and pondered how easily she could mount him though anything entering or exiting her body in front of someone would break the invisibility. She wondered what it would feel like pushing into her for the first time. If it would hurt and if she would bleed. Where would it all go? How long would he take to orgasm? How long would it take her? How had she gotten so close again?
 
Her free arm moved across the top of her chest, restraining them from bumping his leg while she bent over her half-brother, filling her eyes and nose with his pungent maleness. She pushed a finger into herself, imagining it much bigger and thicker like he was. The through of sex that had made her so physically ill, of having some man's foreign appendage crammed inside her small torso which she was already quite sure was full, didn't seem so disgusting now.  Even as huge as he was, it was starting to make sense how it could all work. She gave a long, luxurious sigh as she imagined climbing into his lap and lowering herself on him.
 
The hybrid wolf-fox's oblivious stupor tightened at once. He felt her breath! Only his relaxed condition made him slow enough that she could observe the subtle change before she scrambled back. He jumped to his feet, looking around alerted, his stiff cock swinging in comedic echo of his every motion.
 
Anastasia's balance was never great to begin with for her lack of athleticism and coordination and that had only grown worse as the awkward little girl had blossomed into an impractical overabundance of femininity. She backpedaled a few, wobbly steps before falling on her rump on the tile floor, frozen in terror and wincing in pain. Her half-brother scanned over her, still oblivious but eyeing all directions warily.

The Ritual Room doors pushed open abruptly before he could sit down and he righted himself to stand at attention. Their brother emerged, naked with frazzled fur and a half-hard length spilling out from his sheath, quite identical to his freshly bathed sibling but much less tidy. His expression was as blank as the first one of them she'd seen, despite what she presumed was his loss of virginity in the ritual. Were the Duodecaplets always so stoic? They certainly hadn't been at the explanation of what was going to happen.  

"Hold the door for your brother." It was Marmalade who called out the command to him, not Zarron. He stopped and obliged.
 
Anastasia's eyes fell to his white furred chest, which bore dark, red runes of the same, ancient tradition of magic she was using now. They were minor variations on ones she recognized: Loyalty. Duty. Love. Heart. Similar to those but also unique. Almost twisted. Marmalade must have been charming them, which made sense given the circumstances.
 
Getting up was never easy for Ana's impractical build but at least she was practiced. She planted her feet and rolled forward on her hands, pushing off with enough power to right herself. She wobbled back, her chest sloshing with inertia and countered before she was stable enough to start after him. She was some steps behind now and hurried to catch up, reaching him as he passed by his brother and into the Ritual Room.
 
Curious, blue eyes darted to estimate the gap between the Duodecaplet who held the door, the other side of the entryway and how much space there was to squeeze between them. Even the broad shouldered young man who entered the room before was not nearly so wide as her chest made her. Brushing against him to get past would break the spell. With the last brother now inside, the second let go of the door.
 
Ana cursed to herself as the third brother disappeared inside, leaving her a clear view of the space beyond it. She had to think fast. She steadied herself, focusing before a sharp nod of her head and a blink sent her Teleporting barely a few steps forward, past the closing door, her half-brother, and beyond the Wards that protected the doorway. Luckier still, in the low light of the next room, the remnant smoke of her teleportation was difficult to see. She stepped in, clear of the door, which shut behind her.
 
A sigh of relief was appropriate and well earned before she looked around the room, which she hadn't visited for years. A single tapestry of occult imagery draped each wall of the hexagonal room except for the one she stood at, where the only doors  were. At every corner was a pedestal of a macabre gargoyle, demon or other similarly unfriendly statue and framing them were a pair of lit candles on wrought-iron stands. In the center of the room were three steps forming  a squat, octagonal pyramid with the top platform several yards across. In the middle of that pyramid of stairs stood a stone altar, some eight feet long and four feet wide, where the feline sorceress reclined, naked, frazzled and panting. Zarron stood at her side.
 
"They're eager young men, Marmalade. And strong," the raccoon explained with some conciliation. "Maybe you should take a break?"
 
"Don't patronize me, Zarron. Your boys are freaks! Too big for any normal person," she shook her head with annoyance. "Nobody said magic was easy or painless. But this won't be happening again for them. I hope they enjoy it while they can." She looked up to see the last of three brothers had joined, looking momentarily hurt at her words. "Oh good. At least I don't have to get this one hard. Come up here and lay down on your back." She crawled to the edge, making room for him.
 
The third Duodecaplet approached the first step, looking curiously around the room. Zarron was clothed on the far side of the altar, holding a masonry bowl with both hands. His eyes then looked back to the naked, orange feline, beckoning him over. She was lithe in build, more thin than fit but youthful and attractive.  

He walked carefully up the steps and Anastasia followed behind and at his flank. Marmalade didn't move to accommodate him so he stepped around her to a clear spot before pulling himself up. He scooted up with his erection slapping his chest before laying down, flat on his back then looked to the sorceress with both expectation and apprehension.
 
With a grumble, she pushed herself up and maneuvered above him with the natural grace of a feline until she settled on his lap, below his scrotum and sheath. Zarron offered the bowl to her which Anastasia, now standing closer to him, saw contained a small amount of blood.
 
She had seen the other two brothers post-ritual and neither had an obvious injury.  Looking around, she noticed Marmalade's left hand was wrapped in a bandage as she used her right index finger to dip into the blood. Steadily then, she began to draw on the still-stoic half-brother's chest. It was the same rune the second brother had worn and once finished, she dismissed Zarron with a wave of her hand. He dipped his head and stepped back. Anastasia had never seen him obey anyone! Marmalade blew out a strong breath leaning forward over his chest.
 
"Ammman zuuuuuk zalasta," the feline steepled her hands in front of her muzzle.
 
"Aman zuk zalasta," Anastasia repeated in her head, committing it to memory. It was an ancient language that existed only in magic now but some of the words were familiar from other, runic spells.  They translated loosely to 'Temple of the Mind.'
 
"Joh tah zutana," Marmalade continued, reaching skyward then grasping and tugging down.
 
The vixen studied her, repeating the instructions. "Joh tah zutana. Grasp from the moon."
 
"Shalah Ran Quantulara." Feline hands clapped together before pulling in, thumbs to the bottom of her sternum.
 
"Shit." Anastasia felt her mouth move but no word came out. Yet another ritual that she would never be able to physically perform, whatever it did. The frustration was familiar for her but it couldn't hurt to know it anyway. 'Shalah Ran Quantulara. Thunderclap to Temple of the Heart.'
 
"Zuuuuk Alasta Olesta!" Marmalade reached out and planted her left hand over his heart before covered her own with her right.
 
"Zuk Alasta Olesta. Your heart. My heart."
 
"Zuk Alaste Calisima!" Her hand on his heart moved to a pointed index finger, pressed between his eyes.
 
"Zuk Alaste Calisima." Anastasia thought through the translation. "Your... fishbucket is mine?" Such was the risk of dead languages.
 
With another clap, the incantation was over then Marmalade was up on all fours. Her hand reached down to grip the young canine's eager cock and she guided him up to meet her body.
 
"No interruptions," the lithe sorceress commanded Zarron. He gave a small nod to acknowledge.
 
With the ritual complete and secured to memory, Anastasia could now just watch and wait for the effect. She stepped around behind them for a better view while the pointed tip of his erection brushed the wet fur around her freshly-used feline sex. Her jaw fell open as Marmalade drifted back and nestled it against her lips before she started to sink down.
 
The curious vixen planted her hands on the altar and leaned in to watch as the feline's body began to swallow the taper of that slick, red monster, inch by inch, the vixen's eyes growing as quickly as the feline was stretching. She heard the slimy, failed adhesion of fluids meeting fluids and as the apex of his thickness neared her body, the building strain of Marmalade to fit his size inside her.
 
She didn't notice that her hand had fallen back to her vixenhood and fingers pushed into her warmth while she hovered near the strenuous coupling as her first witness to sex. She moved to the side of the altar, minding her breasts to gaze on the brother she had fawned for, his attention now lost in lust with the sharp-tongued witch.
 
He was loud in his pleasure but Marmalade scolded him with short breath. "Don't push. I do the work," she commanded, sounding strong despite the clear strain in her face and body. It wasn't easy for her to take him, that much was obvious. She knew her brothers were especially big and perhaps felines were less suited to larger sizes. Maybe it was just her? Mother must have taken the whole thing with Joseph as no room remained between them and she seemed to have been mostly enjoying herself. At least until their interruption.
 
Anastasia's thumb was pinched along her straightened forefinger with her clitoris trapped between. Her middle and ring fingers slipped underneath, trying to imagine what it would feel like for such a girth to push into her. She was a teenager with the hormones that came with that but she'd also been quite sheltered from the company of men outside of her family. This urge felt stronger than ever before and her half-brother looked like a stranger, here in the nude.  She stepped around behind them for a closer look at the actual penetration, the part that the thought of made her stomach turn.
 
Marmalade was over the thickest of his girth and sounded like it now, with more grunting than groaning from her throat and lungs. "Hurry up and cum, you oaf," the feline complained and the half-wolf  winced at the command. Maybe the blank expressions afterward had been justified after all.
 
There was a thrill of excitement, hovering near the couple, unaware of her and her illicit activities. Perhaps there were other opportunities she'd been missing around the house to see what she wasn't meant to. Her brothers bathing? Until Evangeline and Zarron were married, there wasn't likely be any more sex and that idea was a lot less appealing than this.
 
The vixen pushed her groin into the cold, stone corner of the altar, applying pressure below her fingers. Her chest heaved over hungry lungs, unseen and unheard by all. She glanced over to Zarron who looked just as transfixed but he showed no obvious arousal or self-stimulation. He was watching like he did one of his spells or experiments and she quickly realized he was the most uninteresting thing in the room.
 
Sex pulled her eyes back as Marmalade and the Duodecaplet moved easier than before, with the rhythm of a ship, rocking at sea. Warmth started to grow in Anastasia's lower belly and she panted excitedly, looking over the other three, oblivious to her while her body felt ready to burst in ecstasy.  A wicked smile of disbelief burst over her muzzle, surprised to find an extra thrill in having an unaware audience. She held her breath for a long moment as the heat swelled, finally boiling over. It formed a wave of bliss, like a cup being poured until it overflowed. She tensed her every muscle, bracing before the tingling warmth the shook her, shocking, soothing ripples flooding out from her sex in all directions. Her knees weakened and she planted her free hand on the altar, leaning on it for support, brows high and her lungs ravenous for air.
 
"I should pull out! I'm going to cum!" the brother declared with a squirm but Zarron snapped to attention. He reached out to hold the half-wolf's shoulders down, alarming him. Marmalade reacted with a panic and brought her weight down on him as well, wincing as the motion pushed him deeper into her.
 
"You pull out now and your mind, your soul... your very essence is just a splatter on the floor," she growled through gritted teeth.
 
Alarmed, Anastasia took a shaky step back, watching the two of them in profile again. The canine struggled but not enough to overshadow an inevitable, teenage orgasm. The feline rode him determinedly, clenching in a growl as she thrust down on him, again and again.

He managed to stammer out a singular "What?"
 
She didn't answer and his body didn't make her wait any longer. He tremored and gasped before his fur stood on end, crackling with static. Was that normal? What followed was certainly not.
 
Thin wafts of steam rose from his eyes then thickened into an unnatural, bluish color and increasingly opaque, like smoke. His gaze snapped to hers as the wisps snaked between clumps of his damp, matted fur before an entire, ethereal doppleganger of his form started to lag behind his convulsions. It fell further out of sync with him, drifting slowly skyward, moving with more of its own agency, independent of the physical body. But the blueish, spirit canine didn't get any higher than the top of her head before it was caught in her attraction. Only then did the ghostly canine look down, cupping his ethereal muzzle with ethereal paws as what was presumably his soul or essence, was witnessing his body from the outside.
 
The wide-eyed, convulsing, physical being beneath her fell limp while the essence that had separated from it flailed now, reaching desperately but unable to hold anything in intangible hands. It was turned around in place as if by unseen winds, tossed about while squirming to resist. The struggle was futile and his pose was forced into reluctant conformity with the feline's posture. Wrestled into submission by an incorporeal adversary, it became one with her.
 
Her short, orange coat rose with static then and the spirit canine faded into nothing, shrinking into her. The crackle of energy filled the room beyond, lifting Anastasia's fur as well. Marmalade slumped forward, panting, her hands braced on the breathing but otherwise still, half-wolf she straddled. His expression was not post-coital but every bit as blank as the other two of them had been.
 
That was the effect of the ritual. His mind. His soul. His very essence. It belonged to Marmalade now. Just like their two brothers before him. Like the five other siblings at the sorceress' home soon would be.
 
Such magics were dangerous and forbidden, Zarron had told her many times. From an unscrupulous man like him, the warning had special weight: magic should not be used to enslave. His twisted morality had allowed many hundreds of her brothers and sisters to be sold as children, servants and slaves but none had been sent off, sapped of their free will, even when other buyers had requested it. Even he seemed incapable of something this heinous. At least until she saw him act as an accomplice to this.
 
Anastasia stepped back, reeling in an urge to escape, the dark energy of the room infecting her. Her hand held her abdomen, which was churning fiercely again. None of this was sexy anymore. It was horrifying and the worst thing a young woman afraid of sex could see.

Her next, blind step missed its mark. She wobbled back on the second level, off balance yet again. It was only getting worse. Her stomach sloshed as her chest did and she caught the step but the one after that disappeared with her gaining inertia. She was falling now. And midway through, she was also throwing up.
 
The naked, teenage vixen stumbled off the lowest level of the platform, her every limb leaving the ground entirely. She crashed backwards into  the perching gargoyle, her immense, wobbling breasts coming into her own view after a small amount of vomit escaped her mouth but was outrun in mid air. She hit the statue's pedestal hard and it fell back, then the gargoyle tipped forward. Zarron and Marmalade both turned their heads in slow motion, the gargoyle clipping her shoulder on the way down, shattering on the stone floor.
 
Fire swelled in Zarron's eyes in recognition, a brewing storm of destructive rage.
 
"Aaaaaannnnna..."
 
He was calling her name as he raised his hands, clenching them so tightly that they tremored. Never had she seen his total loss of control. She didn't know his true power or age but she knew that she was in terrible, terrible trouble to witness him in such fury.
 
"...Staysssshhhhh...."
 
Marmalade was still frozen in the fact that she had been deceived at all, reminding the young vixen that for any lack of spine Zarron may have had with the young-looking and pretty ritualist, he was the veteran sorcerer in the room.
 
Ana needed to leave. Somewhere safe. Anywhere. This moment was the last advantage she would have. Maybe ever. Magics churned around his fists, swirling, brownish maelstroms of a spell he had never revealed to her. Dimensional magic? Destructive unweaving? Would he send her to a pocket realm or scramble her body like an egg yolk? Teleport her into the stratosphere and let her fall to her death? He wasn't in a state she could trust for any kind of reasonable punishment. Her curiosity spiked even with her life in danger but the adrenaline retook her focus.
 
Escape. Safety. The sigil she had drawn in her bed chambers! But that would only buy her a few more moments. Unless it was her bedroom in the Pale Lands, so many miles away. He didn't know that she could Teleport! If he had found the hidden sigils, she would have been disciplined for learning forbidden magic. They must be intact. He couldn't know she could teleport and he'd said earlier that her mother, Portia, had destroyed every teleport sigil in the house. Every one he knew existed.
 
"...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!"
 
It was her last chance before her fate was in Zarron's hands.  If her mother had somehow found the seal and destroyed it, she wouldn't go anywhere. If her mother and brother were standing in the room over the sigil at that moment, all three of them would be merged into a monstrosity of interdimensionally overlapped flesh and bone before dying, either mercifully fast or in torturous, prolonged agony. That chance was far less likely to end her life as whatever Zarron was about to do.  

Magic swirled. She was out of time.  

Anastasia closed her eyes and nodded sharply, focusing on the sigil in her mind.
 
The world turned white. Then black.

Silence.
 
At first, she could not open her eyes. She felt nothing for a moment but feared the worst regardless. Was she in a pocket dimension? Did she still have eyes at all or did he turn her into the gargoyle she had shattered?
 
As the adrenaline thinned, sharp pain throbbed from her shoulder where the gargoyle had hit her. She at the very least, still had a shoulder and so one eye cracked cautiously open.
 
It was her bed chambers, in The Pale Lands! Thousands of miles from her Master's Estate in a room smelling of ozone, she had successfully teleported farther than ever before. She gave an excited smile of disbelief before collapsing on the floor. "There isn't a safe way back to the Pale Lands..." she repeated what he'd said after fleeing from her mother the second time. Her grin popped with a laugh. "Not for you, Zarron." It was a relief to hear her own voice again.
 
She rose with the usual effort and looked at herself in the full body mirror in one corner of her bedroom. Breaking the spells had erased the runes from her body as expected and all trace of the charcoal drawings was gone. She turned to her wardrobe and fetched another purple robe, this one a heavier material, more suitable for the harsh winter that awaited her outside.
 
Once dressed, she stepped out into the hall. "Joseph? Mother?" she called out but there was no answer. She descended the spiral stairs with her usual care, down to the main floor. She yelled for them several more times but there was no reply. A quick Detection spell revealed that the house was in fact, empty. In the time it took for the familial arguments and three rituals, Portia and Joseph had already packed and gone.
 
Her stomach gurgled again, reminding her of the time since her last meal, accelerated from the unintended emptying of it. She walked over to the couch and slumped down, only to realize that the corner legs of it had broken off and the whole thing was crooked, including now her.
 
Anastasia sighed and folded her arms atop the giant shelf of her ungainly bosom. She looked around and blew out a breath. She was far, far away from her Master or the fate he had planned for her. Quite unexpectedly, she was free.
 
"Okay. Now what?"
 
THE END
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