by Zack Finley
I thought we were moving forward well with finding mundanes to join our clan, especially if several of Augun’s ex-slaves accepted our offer. We needed better ways to recruit mages. While we needed a strong core of mages to build, expand, support, and defend our keep, not all had to work for us full time at least not until circumstances forced the issue.
Our partners agreed this would make recruiting married mages and entire families easier.
We agreed to try and recruit equal numbers of both sexes. This would increase the odds of our young mages finding a clan mate and reduce the number who left because they couldn't find someone. While most young unmated mages lived with family, we could offer housing deals to entice them to check us out.
Offering newly mated pairs free rent in exchange for at least one taking a job with us was a possible option.
Retirees, mated pairs, and younglings were also needed. We had to find rewarding opportunities for them all.
I reminded them we could not afford to recruit just Klee mages. Mages could easily live and raise their families in our keep but work for another enterprise in any kingdom within teleport range.
We had a lot to do and an uncertain deadline. It had been a day on an emotional roller coaster for us all. We bid goodnight to our friends.
I might love our friends, but I was ready to leave an hour before. It was very difficult to keep my hands off of Argon. It didn't help I knew she felt the same. I wondered if this was a side effect of graal. I felt an experiment coming on.
I was so hot for Argon I began stripping seconds after we materialized in the hall teleport landing.
"You can leave the clothes here but bring your armor and weapon to the bedroom," Argon said. "My bruises are healed, but I see no reason to get any more when we have a perfectly soft bed. I also want to get these armor enchantments charged sometime in our lifetime."
I waited all day; I could wait a few more minutes, barely.
Our bond felt stronger and our connection deeper as we came together in a fierce embrace. She was hot and ready. I was poised to explode as I pulled her beneath me on the bed.
Argon surprised me by flipping me onto my back using leverage and a bit of force magic. I did not protest because I felt her burning hunger for me.
Even though I suspected she intended to impale me to the hilt, I almost exploded within her when it happened. I held on by the barest of threads as she began a pounding rhythm that took us both too far too fast.
As I jerked and shuddered emptying my seed within her, she trembled and quivered through her own release. She lay, spent, on my chest and my arms grasped her tightly to me.
Both of us knew this was only the appetizer.
It didn't take long for our lips to meet and what had been the afterglow of repletion soon took on a newfound edge of desire.
I rolled her onto her back with Happy still firmly in place and Argon's legs keeping us in a clinch.
Argon was squirming trying to encourage me to begin renewing the main event. I withdrew slowly, then pushed back in just as slowly. I kept this up until her efforts to get me to increase the pace began to get frantic. I pushed deep into her and stopped.
I kissed her thoroughly and then trailed steamy kisses to her breast and took it for my own. I began to suckle as I renewed the intimate slow stroke below. She was poised for another release, and I adjusted the stroke to push her over the edge.
By concentrating on her needs, it was easier to hold mine in check, even as she bucked and quivered beneath me. I reclaimed her lips and renewed my slow compelling thrust. She responded by matching me stroke-for-stroke with her tongue as I began the drive to the finish line.
We remained wrapped around each other, unwilling to leave any possible part not touching. This need to touch everywhere had only a slight sexual component. We didn't even shift when Happy slipped back into his pouch. The embrace wasn't particularly comfortable, but it provided a level of reassurance we both needed.
After some time, we began to relax and settled into our favorite afterglow position. I lay on my back. Argon was tucked into my left shoulder. Her left leg draped intimately across mine, and her left hand was rubbing my chest.
From this position, I could dip my head to claim her lips or cup her left breast with my hand. She'd been known to pepper my breasts with kisses and to slip her left hand into Happy's pouch and give him a thrill.
All-in-all a good place.
Allo knew we were ready to go to sleep and joined us. This time she curled up and made her nest between us.
An early morning blow job and a sweet morning quickie was a great way to greet the morning.
I told Argon she was just buttering me up so I wouldn't complain about having an energy bar and chee for breakfast. The laugh was on me as she left me wondering whether there was some truth to that.
My gear was fully charged. Argon's gear was still low on force magic. Argon fixed the charging spell so excess from both of us would charge any of our gear needing replenishment whenever it was within range.
We were the first to arrive at our Klee headquarters. We popped into our new suite to assess what was needed to move in. We'd agreed to set up wards limiting access to our new home to Allo and us. While we trusted our partners, maintaining an exclusive bolt hole no one but us could access made good strategic sense.
Argon was very interested in the new double shower. Just as we were tempted to try it out, Tobron messaged us that he and Inoa were on their way. We agreed to meet them in the basement to set the wards.
Inoa presented the enchantments she'd designed for us to execute together. She slipped into tactical control. We followed her lead layering the enchantments so they could be executed simultaneously. She tweaked and nudged the spells until she was satisfied.
She executed all four of our contributions with a single word. I felt a drain on all of my magics. Inoa said she mainly used my magic to power most of the enchantments but urged everyone to check their supplies just in case. A quick check showed my magic wasn’t significantly depleted and would recover very soon. Argon's force magic was below the top, but her other’s were full.
Inoa and Tobron both confirmed they were in great shape. We were finally ready to go to Mad Toffad's Keep.
Everyone rechecked their combat spells. Tobron gave me the teleport location. They clasped my arms and I 'ported us all to Mad Toffad's Keep.
Cleon had messaged earlier saying he was delayed, but still wanted to see the keep with us.
The teleport site was an anticlimax. I registered its location north of Klee and very close to the coast. The teleport spot once was in the middle of a roadway, but the wilderness now overwhelmed it. Looking south one could still see indications of where a road once was.
Looking north toward the keep, the boundary of the guild ward was stark. The ward kept anything but a mage with the password from entering the keep. Anything could get out, but entering was very restricted.
A profusion of plants formed a wall inside the ward. There was a faint animal trail paralleling the outside of the ward, and the plant density was much lower on our side. Few herbivores remained inside the keep based on that evidence.
The road into the keep was once paved with stone. Trees and shrubs were busy reclaiming that route for their own. I hoped we could dodge and weave through the obstacles.
Tobron shared the password allowing us to pass through the ward unmolested. He thought we'd want to put up our own basic wards around the keep before removing the current one. He said the main downside was we'd be limited to using an external teleport location until we removed the guild ward. He said we could teleport out of and within the keep; we just couldn't teleport in.
Cleon arrived just as we were about to pass through the ward.
There was no way to get a comprehensive look at the keep from deep within the jungle surrounding it. I levitated above the tree line and relayed the view to my friends picking their way through the dense undergrowth.
The first thing that r
egistered was the size of the keep. It was huge. It was even larger than old town Klee. The keep was surrounded by a 30-foot high wall made of the whitest stone I ever saw. It sparkled even after being left untended for 100 years. Plants and small trees were growing on it in places, but no roots seemed to have penetrated the heavy stone.
Guard towers were embedded in the wall on both sides of the gate and every few hundred feet along the wall. The walls were topped with crenellations on the inside and outside edges protecting a walkway wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The towers had internal stairways providing access to the walls.
The main gate was clogged with vegetation, forcing my companions to levitate to join me on the top of the wall. Mad Toffad had established a street grid within the walls anchored by a central plaza. The city, because it was significantly more than just a keep, had only a few buildings around the plaza complete. Tobron said the most impressive building was Toffad's palace. It was at least 100 feet tall and had hundreds of rooms. A few other buildings near the palace were almost as tall. I only counted 20 buildings standing within the city. Most of this nascent stone city was still a parking lot.
Toffad had planned a city to rival Klee. I wished I knew why he stopped. Had he lost interest, run out of money, or been a victim of foul play? The books said he disappeared, but there was little about why.
I could feel what attracted Tobron to this walled space. As a builder in stone, it was hard to look at this jewel and not want to spend a lifetime completing it.
Tobron and I stood together communing with the city's possibilities. Our partners were looking at the situation with more practical eyes.
Toffad had used a dense stone cap as a placeholder for most of the undeveloped zones in the city, broken only by streets and locations set aside for small parks and plazas. The stone caps had resisted the influx of vegetation better than the streets.
The streets must have seen enough heavy use in the past to open up minor cracks and seeps. Over time these allowed water and roots to dig in. They weren't helped by the numerous grown over parks and plazas which served as major beachheads in the herbaceous assault on the streets.
The eastern third of the city was covered in vegetation. I guessed this was where the crops had been grown. There were several small doors through the keep wall in the vegetation zone. These were reinforced by extra guard towers. Argon thought they might lead to other crop fields and orchards outside of the walled zone.
We couldn't see the wharf from our vantage point. Tobron hadn't seen it up close, but he heard the wards ended at the coast on the west side. He was sure the port complex was inside because that had been an important consideration when establishing the wards in the first place. Before the wards were established, pirates found the combination of wharf and port complex irresistible.
Many soldiers in the Klee King's Guard died purging the annual infestation of pirates. This was part of the justification for creating and sustaining the ward. The ward required thousands of mage hours to create. Annual maintenance of the ward was a considerable drain on Klee guild members. The king's annual payment to maintain the ward was sufficient to pay the guild's annual operating expenses.
This prompted a worrisome thought which I shared with my partners. "The mage guild isn't going to be happy to lose their annual paycheck for maintaining the ward. We should consider weaning them off rather than yanking their funding abruptly."
Tobron said he was already talking with the guild on so many other issues; he'd fold in this one, too. I suggested he consider purchasing guild services rather than providing guild charity.
The port complex was one large multistory bunker that also served as the city wall along one-third of the ocean side. A broken double-wide gate marked the dockside entrance to the city.
The more I looked, the more I was convinced the first need was to clear out the vegetation. I almost had a mutiny when I suggested removing the vegetation with a strong fire spell might be the fastest way to clean the place out.
Since all the ideas I had were destructive, I flipped it back to them for resolution. The silence from my partners was deafening.
I waited and waited until they reached an agreement.
"We need to either recruit or hire a forester," said Argon.
“Will the forest savants we rescued in Omba want to relocate?” I asked.
“It would be cruel to force them to leave their trees,” she replied.
“I know several forestry businesses in Klee specializing in fixing major forestry problems. They could at least advise us of the least destructive way to reclaim the city from this rampant vegetation,” offered Cleon.
I used my mind-reading app when we arrived to verify no one was near the site, mage or mundane. I still had it pulsing every 10 seconds and got an alert from the teleport site that two mages were there.
What had been a group of friends on a morning stroll, changed instantly. Ours was one dangerous group.
Inoa assumed tactical control again, using Argon's invisibility suite to keep us from being spotted as we turned back toward the entrance.
We had a series of stun rockets keyed up, preceded by a massive dispel blast. These would launch at the first sign the arriving duo turned hostile.
We didn't want to stun them unless we had to. No need to make new enemies over a misunderstanding.
Inoa was already using her engulf and invade mind-reading technique to crack one of the mages. Inoa was poised to trigger the stuns if her probe was detected.
After a few heartbeats, Inoa relaxed and advised we could stand down.
The two mages were our old nemeses from the Klee Mage Guild, Alanna and Goran. Argon and I met them the day we joined the Klee Guild. They'd proven to be unprincipled, having failed to contact the chamberlain as agreed. To make matters worse, they hired a private investigator on us. We'd canceled their com-cards and found more reliable and honorable guild associates.
Tobron was confident the guild did not give them the password to the Mad Toffad’s ward, and we should continue our exploration. Inoa confirmed they had no password but were tipped off we would be here this morning. They were hoping to talk with us.
I suspected they were trying to suck up to us now so we'd forget the crappy way they'd treated us when we first came to town.
Fat chance.
“Their reputation in the guild is on the skids. Most of the guild is angry because they abused their positions to spy on fellow members. They are still members but are no longer on the ruling council,” said Tobron. He added with a hint of glee, “I think several of our most vocal guild members benefited the most from their clandestine snooping. I think Alanna deserved everything being heaped on her, but Goran just put his faith in the wrong person.”
We left them at the teleport site and resumed our exploration. After another half hour, our unwelcome guests disappeared from my monitor.
We knew from Tobron's battles there were extensive underground facilities here. We agreed to leave them for another day. Tobron reminded us that thick stone masked life signs. He wouldn't feel secure here until we scrutinized every inch. While he trusted the guild's ward to keep things out, he had never been certain they had expunged every aspect of the death cult. If a malevolent artifact remained undiscovered, it could have influenced the primitive life around it over the past 50 years.
He wasn't trying to stop us from exploring; he just wanted us to be vigilant.
Tobron and I wanted to look over the wharf complex; Argon and Inoa wanted to see Toffad's palace. We agreed to split up.
Cleon went with the ladies. He said you could see a wharf anytime but to be among the first in a century to see a legendary palace was too good to pass up.
We levitated to street level and went our separate ways.
Tobron and I walked at a brisk pace toward the broken port complex gates.
"Even Inoa can’t tell what the old wards on the walls do. She told me they were complicated, but she won't know more until
we partially charge them. We can't modify them until we know what we have," Tobron said as we hiked around trees and other obstacles.
"Old Toffad used to have a lot of ships and shipments through here," Tobron said. We'd stopped in front of the wonky gates to the port complex.
"At least that is what the old mages in the guild said when we were getting ready to come in to help the king's guard. I wish I paid more attention to them at the time but I was getting ready to go into combat for the first time, and history was the last thing on my mind."
I was studying the gates and trying to decide whether we needed to prop them up before attempting to pass.
Tobron was pondering the same and pushed them with his force magic. They didn't budge.
"Looks like they are wedged pretty well," Tobron said. "But, no reason to take any chances." With this, he conjured several stone blocks to provide shelter for us if the gate shifted.