[b][u][center]The Distractions of Affection
Part 4
For a-lycotonum
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]
 
 
 
 
 



Mika smoothed out her judge’s attire as the smell of smoke and ruin continued to fill her nostrils. The neighborhood that had once surrounded the western gate of the Arcanamirium had been burned to the ground following the Outbreak, as some had called the summoned outsiders that had broken free of the master’s estate. The fight to keep them from breaking through the walls had cost the city, and the properties that had once bordered the walls of the magical academy ranged from merely being turned to rubble to being completely disintegrated. The heavy use of magical fire and other spells had left a burnt smell ingrained on the very stones of the streets, and it left her wrinkling her nose as she waited for the gateman to turn up.

“It stinks,” Sivar muttered at her side.

“Deal with it,” she whispered back.

“Hmmph.”

He shifted from foot to foot, one hand fiddling with the leather breeches that she’d forced him to wear. They weren’t much, barely enough to contain his modesty and keep him from looking more like the sewer rat that he sometimes acted like, but it was better than arriving at the walls with him naked. It was going to be hard enough to gain entry without him making them look like a freak show, or experiments for some sort of magical study.

She rapped her knuckles against the great barrier of magical light. It was just barely transparent, though interrupted with magical sigils. They were familiar enough; the same sort of barrier was often placed before a judge in court. They not only blocked physical attacks, but they disrupted the gaze just enough to keep charm or hypnotic spells from working with eye contact. The Arcanamirium were certainly taking no chances that someone might bash through their barriers. Not anymore.

The wall itself had been damaged considerably. When the battle had gone down between the outsider-empowered mortals and the mages, anyone with a lick of sense darted for the nearest reinforced building, far away from the fight, and there were few eye-witnesses that hadn’t been on one side or the other. Yet, for all that the exterior of the Arcanamirium had been torn to the ground, the walls that protected the academy itself had taken hits, too. Scorch marks from fireballs and lightning dotted the dark stone, and here and there, ripples of old roots that had been forced up the walls as nature itself had joined the battle had ripped chunks free.

She had a feeling that, if her master pushed, he might just be able to break this great barrier, but knew he wouldn’t. After all, it was the first of many, and the mages would come to defend it. Even Master Brundir was not the greatest force in the world, though he was among the great powers.

At the third knock to the barrier, the gateman finally appeared. An older man, well into his forties, dressed in a red doublet and carrying two swords at his waist, stepped forward. He looked down, salt and pepper hair shaved down to a barely-visible layer, and his mustache, pulled smart and trim against his upper lip, somehow managed a bristling effect.

“What is your business at the Arcanamirium?” he grunted.

“I am Judge Halstad –”

“We know who you are.”

“Then you know that I am allowed to be here. By the treaty of Absalom, all judges are allowed free access to negotiate between different parties.”

“Save for cases where you’d make the issue worse, or when under suspicion,” the gateman said.

“And how am I under suspicion?”

“You come from Brundir. That ass –”

“You will speak more carefully of one who holds the position of ‘lord,’ gateman.” Mika shook her head, tilting her head back to look down her nose at him. “And I will have your name.”

“Deffenu Marke, but I’ll speak no more carefully of him.”

“You seek to disparage the name of a hero.”

“I know what he did. I know who sent those things here.”

There was greater suspicion of her master within the walls than she’d thought, then. Well, that was something to be marked for later, and something to make sure that the master knew about on their return. For now, there were other things to take care of. The main one, of course, being getting within the walls in the first place.

“My master wishes to offer a deal to your superiors,” she said.

“Not interested.”

“You could at least –”

“I ‘could’ do anything, Halstad.”

“Judge Halstad.”

“Judge the guilty party, then.”

“I’m not here to judge –”

“Then you aren’t getting in.”

“…Could I speak to your superior, please?”

Her brother was doing a terrible job of suppressing his laughter. She could hear the hissing grunts of each giggle trying to break through his clenched jaws. This was the first time that she had been berated to this extent by someone so low as a gateman. It was embarrassing.

Deffenu shrugged, reaching out to one side of the entryway. He pressed his hand to something just out of sight, and a spell-glyph appeared to one side, just barely visible through the light-barrier between them.

“This is Gateman Marke. Someone wants to talk to my boss.”

“[i]Who is it?[/i]” an unconcerned, but definitely feminine, voice responded.

“That Halstad woman.”

“[i]Judge[/i] Halstad,” Mika muttered.

“Pardon. Judge.”

“[i]Hmm.[/i]”

“Need a moment to think? I’m recommending keeping her out.”

Mika restrained herself from barking an insult at the gateman, forcing herself to take a deep breath and let it out just as slowly as she could. She summoned the same austere authority that she’d needed in the courtroom time and time again, forcing herself to speak slowly and with as much deliberation as she could muster.

“I am here to facilitate an agreement between the two disputing parties of one, Lord Brundir, and two, the Arcanamirium. As a gesture of good will, Lord Gralon Brundir has offered the use of his libraries to the academy, in exchange for the same to be offered to his associates. I am here as a neutral representative, as well as in my capacity as judge to determine the damages of the academy from the recent Outbreak, and how it may be resolved through the use of civil funds.

“I am not accustomed to being kept at the gate for merely attempting to do my job. If the academy wishes to keep me out, that is arguably their right under the Treaty of the Fire Tree, but bear in mind that the barring of a duly-laureled judge of the city shows a suspicious lack of willingness, particularly from an institution that has already barred itself from the city proper.

“It is, of course, up to you how you wish to present yourself to the rest of the city, but it will not play out well to continue to hold me here.”

“You think that we care about our image anymore?” the gateman asked. The older man shook his head. “Ma’am, I seriously think –”

“[i]Is our good judge alone?[/i]” the voice asked.

“…She brought a pet.”

“[i]Gateman Marke. Specificity, please.[/i]”

“Were-rat, ma’am.”

“How’d you know?” Sivar asked.

“Stance. Ain’t got the natural walk of a rat born to it. You got turned…couple years ago, best guess.”

Mika revised her opinion of the gateman. He was rude, and he was certainly abrasive, but he did know his business. If they were dealing with the academy later, he would be one of its staff to look at either retraining or quietly eliminating; that sort of talent was either to be completely taken in, or completely destroyed.

“[i]Let them in. See the judge to me immediately.[/i]”

“…Yes, ma’am.”

“[i]And Marke?[/i]”

“Mm?”

“[i]Don’t turn the next encounter into an escalation, hmm?[/i]”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The glyph faded. Mika waited, carefully keeping the self-satisfied smirk that wanted to pop onto her face off of her lips. As soon as the barrier came down, she stepped forward, and her brother followed.

“I’m glad that we could come to an understanding,” she said.

“Hmmph. Come with me.”

“I shall. And my companion?”

“Hmmph. Go where you want. There’s nothing that he can do around here.”

Sivar would likely prove them very wrong. She had seen the way that he had operated before he was arrested, and afterward, something had changed. Her brother was no longer just a were-rat. Gralon Brundir had done something to make his property better than it had to be, and she, at times, envied the extra capacity that Sivar had to serve their master. She knew that part of that was down to the fact that he could operate more sneakily, while she had to deal with the constant barrage of spells and check-ins with various individuals that would notice that sort of shift in her soul, but it didn’t stop her envy.

They left the wall behind, approaching the central building of the Arcanamirium itself. Outbuildings – dorms and other such fixtures, including minor libraries that were more useful towards subjects of history and mundane things, rather than the advanced magical texts further in – were built up all around them, some of them tailored towards the elven architectural styles, others more blocky and squat, and still others drawn up out of the earth itself in the way that the halflings would have enjoyed. The variety was quite extensive, and a major mark towards the sheer opulence of the academy compared to the rest of the city.

That said, Absalom itself was a city of wealth in a world of decay. The beggars here merely stood out all the more.

Shaking her head, she felt Sivar leave her heels once they passed through one of the great doors leading into the academy itself. There was a moment when the gateman turned, feeling the same, but true to form, he said nothing. Mika arched an eyebrow.

“You believe in your security enough to let him roam?”

“The headmistress said he could.”

“…That was the headmistress?”

“Heh, yes. You asked for my superior, I went as far up the line as I could.”

So, the academy was set up so that their security forces could call straight to the top from the wall. That meant that they could summon the most powerful forces of the Arcanamirium to the walls instantly. That was a danger to anyone trying to breach it…but also an opportunity, depending on how they viewed it and used it.

She kept thinking as she kept walking. There was a great deal to process, and a great deal more to consider.

#

Sivar shook his head at the fallen half-elf. Having fallen face-down, ass-up from the sudden blow to the head that the were-rat had delivered, the record-keeper of the academy was completely catatonic. He shook his head.

“Might have overdone it…”

That said, it could have gone a great deal worse. At the very least, the archivist was completely out of the picture, and there were no security spells to stop him from looking around and getting what he needed.

[i]No, what the fucking ‘master’ needs…[/i]

Which technically translated to what he needed, but that was neither here or there. The were-rat shook his head as he glanced around the room.

The record room was different to the libraries. Rather than a series of tomes that ran all over the place, circling down aisles and spinning back to a front desk, the record room was a collection of loose-bound parchment and scrolls, each one slotted into a different hole in the wall. The whole place looked like an insect hive, honeycombed and vast, and there was no easy way to find where anything was, at least if you weren’t used to the system.

Safe to say, Sivar was not, and he’d just knocked out the half-elf that was. He shook his head, pinching his nose.

“Ugh…fuck…”

Well, at the very least, he was alone, and that meant that he could take off the damn pants. He flexed –

RIIIIP!

And his tail and dick both throbbed up, tearing through the leather as if it was nothing more than play fabric. No point in pretending to be civilized when they were through the doors already.

And more to the point…

He had to admit that the half-elf’s ass was rather inviting in that robe. He didn’t always go in for males – they were a little coarse already, a little less fun to humiliate, after all – but a hole was a hole. While it wouldn’t be perfect, that transformation would also allow a certain level of control, and that, in turn, would get him what he needed out of the record room without having to tap his sister or someone else.

It was a perfect plan, so, of course, something had to fuck it up.

As Sivar knelt down to flick the archivist’s robe out of the way, the incubus in him felt the familiar tingle of magic. It happened so fast that there was no chance for him to react to it, and he went flying across the room, flipping head over heels before slamming into a wall twenty feet away.

“Mmph…”

The were-rat slid down the wall with a groan, thoughts jumbled, head aching, and tail more than slightly stiff and sore from where it had hit the wall before the rest of him. He shook his head, getting one hand under him as the tap, tap, tap of someone in heavy boots walked into the room.

“What’s the big idea?” he grunted. “I was…mmph…invited.”

“You were invited, until you hurt someone.”

A woman? Well, things had just gotten that much more interesting. He chuckled, lifting his head to see who it was.

Someone that looked wild, that was for sure. Though she had metal armor around her chest and torso, as well as plates of metal along her boots, she had strips of leather that hung along her forearms and down her shoulders, as well. It was an odd mix of knightly and tribal to his eyes, and the woman beneath it was all the more appealing.

She was darker than most women he saw, with skin less sun-kissed and more sun-worshiped. When she leaned against the wall, she looked almost like a blot of ink against it, and when she smirked at him, her teeth stood out like vampiric fangs in the night. Her face was flatter than others, nose slightly squashed in, but there was no less appeal for that. If anything, the distinctiveness only made her that much more appealing.

More appealing to break, that was.

He rocked himself back to his feet, shaking his head as the woman looked across the room at him. She crossed her arms under a flat chest, cocking her head to the side.

“You have three seconds to tell me what you were doing.”

“Keeping him from being an asshole.”

“Wrong answer.”
She rolled her finger, and no sooner had the gesture been made than the ground slipped right out from under him. Sivar tumbled to the ground, feeling much like the time that the guards had pulled a literal rug out from under his feet, but nothing had changed. He groaned as he hit the ground, shaking his head.

“What the hell?”

“A modified grease spell,” the woman said. “A minor piece of magic, but quite effective.”

“Nnngh…"

“Now, what were you doing here?”

“Heh…why don’t you come here, and I’ll tell you?”

“Thanks, but I’m not in the mood to deal with lycanthropy.”

“Well, maybe I’ll whisper it in your ear,” he muttered, getting to his feet once more. He fumbled for one of the nearby scrolls, found one that had a nice heft to it, and surreptitiously put it behind his back. “You are a real piece of shit for someone that’s supposed to be just a bookworm. What, you couldn’t hack it in the guards, and they shoved you over here?”

“That’s another three seconds.”

She flicked her finger again. This time, he was ready. As the floor slid out from under him – it was his feet being greased and a quick shove of force from below – he leaped to the side and threw the scroll. It flew through the air –

Then reversed course.

Sivar had a split second to see the heavy metal end of the scroll coming his way before it banged right into his forehead, sending him flying to the floor once more. He landed with a thump, groaning under his breath.

It wasn’t even that it hurt. As a were-rat, most forms of harm just bounced off him or were quickly regenerated. It was the sheer humiliation of being thrown around like a rag doll, as if nothing that he did mattered.

“What…the fuck…”

“Reverse Projectile.”

“Mmmph…”

“I am the Dean of Abjuration. My [i]business[/i] is protecting myself and others. You [i]can’t[/i] hit me. And every failed attack just reminds me that much more that you are a threat to the Arcanamirium. Last chance. Are you going to tell me what you’re here for, or not?”

“Fuck you…”

Even as he spat out his words, he was trying to find a way out. This was [i]far[/i] worse than anything Brundir had warned them about. Mika had always pushed the idea that they could end up fighting someone as strong as him, but he’d never imagined it’d be this much of a curb-stomp if it happened. The power of a were-rat had always stood him in good stead, and the power of the incubus in him had made it all the stronger, but against this…

Click.

He heard the sound of spinning blades before they fully materialized, and that was the only thing that saved him. Sivar lunged forward, shrieking as he felt a blade materialize just in time to cut the tip off his tail. He hit the ground and rolled, spinning forward and out of the way, coming to a stop right in front of the dark-skinned wizard. As he stared at the cut-off chunk, feeling the pain in his tail, he knew that he had one chance, and one chance only.

Leaping to his feet, he hoped against hope that this Dean of Abjuration had only warded herself against harm, and – more importantly – that his kiss didn’t count as that. He grabbed for her face, carefully keeping his claws to himself, and –

Their lips met.

The incubus surged forward, kissing her soul as deeply as he tongued her mouth. The moment lasted for a second, two –

“Mmmmph!”

And broke on the third as she shoved him away. He was immediately imprisoned within a seal of creeping runes, running up from the floor around his ankles and past his thighs, pinning his legs together so that he could only hop, and then, not even that. Sivar grunted as he was held tight, but a small smirk crossed his face, anyway. The kiss…

Wasn’t working.

His smirk faded as the wizard rubbed her mouth, shaking her head. Various shimmering lights appeared through her armor, and the leather wraps dangling from her limbs went bright with purple light as she shook her head. She gritted her teeth for a few minutes, and he could feel the corruption through the incubus’s power, at least for a few seconds, but it was already fading.

No, not fading, being contained. Isolated. She was pushing it down, condensing it somewhere and locking it away.

[i]Fuck…she shouldn’t be able to –[/i]

“Impressive trick…and informative. I shall have to improve my wards to counter…that.”

“Nnngh…how…”

“I am the Dean of Abjuration. My whole body of work is studying how to keep harm away from me, and those that I care about.”

Sivar was starting to understand that. The fact that she had managed to completely shut down his power, to hold it at bay, and to deal with him by throwing him around the room meant that he was completely outmatched. There was no fighting his way out of here, and considering the distance spells she had, he doubted that he could just run even if he could get free of her chains.

[i]And even if she’s the strongest…[/i]

That still meant that there were dozens, if not hundreds of students capable of magic, and each one of them could be a problem to him if he tried to run. The fact that they could strike from a distance and that their spells could seek him out in a way that daggers and arrows never could meant that his regeneration would be pushed to its limits in short order, and each one that hit would cut deeper than the last.

Even now, his tail was struggling to get the tip regrown, and he groaned as he was reminded of the pain pulsing down the damaged limb. That hit had done a lot more than he’d expected, but the fact was, he’d still got off lightly. He’d been in the middle of where a Blade Barrier was appearing, and the fact that all he’d lost was the tip of his tail was at least a minor miracle.

Yet, even as he realized all that, even as a tremor of fear started to creep up the spine of the were-rat that had terrorized the streets for months and the houses of Brundir’s rivals for almost as long, there was something that gave him hope. The fact that the incubus’s power hadn’t completely disappeared from the dark-skinned woman told him that the curse was still there, and while it was being suppressed, that only meant that it was being held back, not that it had been cured.

There was still a chance to make this woman his bitch.

She pulled him close with a twist of her hand, the binding sigils along his body pulling tighter as she forced them up and around his muzzle. He grimaced as it pulled his jaw shut tight, leaving him unable to try the same trick again when the human female leaned in close. She held him by the throat, and he was well aware of the metal on her fingers grasping him through his fur.

And yet, he still managed a smile.

The Dean of Abjuration cocked her head to the side.

“You are not like the other rodents…”

He was so far above them that it was almost funny. The fact that she was puzzled by his smile, or his power, or whatever it was meant that she would need to keep him around, and –

She tilted her head to the side, a small spell glyph appearing by her ear. She seemed to listen to it for a moment, then nodded.

“Well, it seems that I’m not the only one interested in you. The Headmistress wants you to be present.”

“Mmmph?”

“Yes. It seems that she wants to make it clear to your sister that your little trick was not appreciated.”

[i]Sister…[/i]

Oh. They knew more than he thought. Sivar’s slight hope flickered as the Dean dragged him along down the hall.

#

Mika wasn’t sure what to expect when she was brought before the Headmistress, but this wasn’t it.

To be fair, she had yet to meet the Headmistress of the Arcanamirium, but this woman was something completely different to what she had expected. The slight female on the other side of the table was so small that it was tempting to ask her if she had halfling or goblin blood to her credit, though her skin was as pale as one could imagine without going fully vampiric. She half-thought that there were elf ears beneath those long golden curls, but the next time she looked, they were as human as her own.

Slender, barely showing any signs of femininity besides her hair and the softness of her face, the Headmistress could have passed for some rich slip of a thing on the better side of town, were it not for her eyes. Those knowing, hazel eyes that glittered with a speckle of gold through the green every time that they looked at her felt like they were ready with a spell or an enchantment every time that their eyes met, and Mika had to fight to keep her focus on the matter at hand.

“Lord Gralon Brundir, of course, understands that you have a great deal of students that need access to magical texts. While he doesn’t have the same resources as you, he has made a public offer to allow your students access to the libraries on his estate grounds. As he has a modest magical collection of his own, his offer comes with the idea of a reciprocal arrangement.”

The Headmistress said nothing, merely stirring her tea with a wobble of her finger. Mika kept her own austere face on.

“It seems logical, to me, that the addition of such resources would be welcome to a damaged school, particularly one that has become disconnected to the city of late.”

Still nothing.

“With the lack of any good will towards the Arcanamirium –”

“Hmm, stop.”

Even that voice was just barely feminine, holding to one side as if gently pushed there. The Headmistress tilted her cup back, taking a delicate sip – everything about her seemed delicate, and yet, so very not – before putting her cup and her saucer down on the table once more.

“Mika, I believe your name is?”

“Judge Halstad,” she corrected the Headmistress.

“Yes. But the first name, Mika. Mika Halstad. A young woman that had a great deal of friends growing up, only to burn each and every one as she realized that she had a sharp mind and a great deal of focus that her partying, middle-class friends lacked. Someone that lost her associates as she aimed for the top, only to fall short when she realized that there was no way that she could ever reach it without connections of her own.

“Someone that had a brother, a criminal, who did what he wanted. Someone that did her best to keep him out of trouble, and when she couldn’t, buried the trouble so deep that nobody would find it. Until it caught up with him.

“Until it caught up with them.”

Mika’s breath caught in her throat. The whole point of the deal with her master was to make sure that nobody knew where she’d come from, or the stain that had resulted with her brother’s actions. That spell was supposed to [i]last[/i]. It was supposed to cover the whole city. How –

“Mika. I want you to know that here, all truth comes out eventually. It’s just the nature of things. We make a study of it, in fact,” the Headmistress said, leaning forward with her chin on the backs of her folded fingers. “Magic, after all, is the script of the universe. The spells that hold it together, the forces that knit with one another to create our reality, are the very things by which we know the truth of how it all works. And as you learn how to read that history, it becomes [i]incredibly[/i] simple to read your fellow man. And woman.

“It’s written plain as the nose on your face that you’ve been hiding this. That you owe your position to someone else. Ah, but that’s common knowledge. People know that you were helped up, but they don’t know what you were helped up from. And that…that is the mystery for many…but do you think it’s a mystery for me?”

“Perhaps,” Mika managed to say.

“Only somewhat. I know who runs you. And I know who you’re about to go running to.”

Click. Mika turned as the door opened behind her, and two people stepped into the large, circular chamber. The table was surrounded by the chairs marked with the names of each school of magic, the unmarked chair of the Headmistress, and her own borrowed chair. It took her a moment to stare around the high back of it, but when she did, her heart dropped.

“Dean of Abjuration –”

“That’s a title,” Mika said, getting to her feet as she looked between her brother – naked, bound brother – and the dark woman at his side. “I want a name.”

“You will be lucky to find it,” the Headmistress said behind her, the soft click of cup and saucer rising from the table punctuating her words. “At the top, we keep our names to ourselves. It’s an occupational hazard, you know. With the power that we deal in, names are a risk. A danger, as a matter of fact. So, you will have to deal with titles.”

“I am a judge of this city. I [i]will[/i] have a name.”

“We may trade,” the Dean said, cocking her head to the side. “My name for the name of he who wishes the information this one was trying to steal.”

Caught. They were caught. Or, no, her brother was caught. Her heart ran cold as the Headmistress chuckled behind her.

“Mmm, more or less expected. Now, Mika –” She flinched. A name, by someone that powerful, really was a threat. “I want to make this clear. You are not welcome in the Arcanamirium any longer. And I would suggest that you stay [i]well[/i] clear in any further investigations. Your lackeys, of course, are welcome to knock on our doors, but if you show your face, I’m afraid I’ll have to have you taken in by our Dean of Enchantment for interrogation. You know how it is.”

“That…is…illegal.”

“The crime happened here on Arcanamirium grounds,” the Dean of Abjuration said. “And as such, we have first jurisdiction over the criminal. You are lucky that the Headmistress does not want you detained as a potential accessory to the act.”

She was lucky, indeed, though she blamed her judge-hood for that as much as the luck involved. She could have been caught. She could be kept.

But she wasn’t.

“I will take my leave, then,” she said, hearing her own voice echoing hollowly behind her.

“Please, do. See yourself out, Mika. That’s a good girl.”

She did. She managed to walk with some dignity right up to the point where she reached the barrier. From there, she started walking faster and faster until she was outright running, charging down the streets for Brundir’s manor.

Her master could fix this. He had to fix this.

 

 

 




[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: The Halstad siblings go to the Arcanamirium to try and find some information for their master; it doesn’t go well. 

Tags: No Sex, M/solo, Nudity, Implied Sexual Desire, Fantasy, Were-Rat, Human, Headmistress, Arcanamirium, Series,