Dragonmancer

by Simon Archer

  “Are you done yet?” she taunted.

  “Not a chance,” I sneered.

  Suddenly, she sprinted at me. The full force of her weight speared into the center of my chest, and my teeth clicked in my head. We fell to the ground, and both of our swords clattered out of our grips.

  “What the hell?” I growled as Aron’s lithe body pressed into mine.

  Even though she’d knocked us both on the ground, my body still responded to the feeling of her on top of me. She must have felt my obvious erection, because she looked down between us and narrowed her eyes. Her hands flew up suddenly, and my defenses took over as I grabbed her wrists. Aron immediately struggled against me and glared.

  Her black-brown eyes bore into mine haughtily. “That’s not how this works. I’m the one in control.”

  I wrapped one of my legs around hers and abruptly rolled us so that I was pinning her against the floor. She growled in frustration and tried to wriggle free. Miraculously, I held on, even though she was one of the fiercest women I’d come across.

  Suddenly, she crushed her mouth against mine and nipped my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The coppery taste of blood hit my mouth, and I gripped her wrists harder. She tried to use my distraction against me again, and she tensed underneath me as she tried to get up the momentum to roll over. I pressed my hips down into hers and immobilized her before she could reign triumphant.

  One of her hands struck out like a snake and clawed into my hair, and I growled. “Careful, Aron.”

  She licked her lips. “Or what?”

  She pressed her mouth into mine again. Not to be outdone, I pushed harder against her lips and forced them open with my tongue. She responded just as hard and deepened the kiss. I let go of one of her wrists and wrapped her thick braid around my hand. I used it as leverage to arch her head back forcefully so I could bite and suck on the soft skin of her throat.

  She clawed her free hand tighter into my hair and forced my mouth lower. During our struggle, her small, perky breasts had freed themselves, and I wasted no time sucking one of her painfully hard nipples into my mouth.

  “Bite it,” she growled, and I obeyed.

  My cock twitched painfully as she gasped and wiggled against me. I kissed across her chest, which was deliciously salty with sweat, and nipped at her other nipple, fully enjoying the sounds she was making. I let go of her braid and ran my hand down her lean torso to nestle between her legs. I pressed the heel of my hand into her pussy and felt the throb and heat of her through her clothes. Her hips bucked against my hand, and it wasn’t long before I roughly slipped a hand inside her bottoms to dip two fingers into her wetness.

  Aron gasped and writhed against my hand again with a loud groan. “Fuck me, Blake.”

  “Oh, I intend to,” I said, then ran the tip of my tongue over her lower lip. “Now who’s distracted?”

  I released her other hand finally, and she eagerly hooked her hands into the waistband of my pants. Adrenaline from the fight still coursed in my veins, and it burned anew at the idea of being with Aron. I pushed up from the ground a few inches to look down and watch as she freed my rigid cock and gripped it in her powerful hand. I took my wet fingers out from between her thighs and rubbed my pre-moistened hand down the length of my member.

  Aron looked up at me with a face somewhere between a snarl and a smile as she used her own juices to stroke me. I slid my hands under her ass and yanked her bottoms down. Aron took the opportunity to wiggle out from underneath me and scramble backward gracefully.

  She narrowed her eyes. “We’re doing this my way. Take off your clothes.”

  I wasn’t willing to give up control, but my cock twitched painfully. I needed release soon, so I obeyed. I undressed completely, and Aron’s eyes roamed over my torso with a black, hungry look that only turned me on more.

  I returned her intense gaze. “Your turn.”

  She slid off the remainder of her clothes and revealed the rest of her taut, athletic body. She looked like a work of art, and her breasts and tight ass looked strangely delicate without her usual outfit on.

  “How do you want it, mistress?” I asked with a smirk.

  She tossed her black braid over her shoulder haughtily, then, to my surprise, sank down on all fours. “I want it like this, Blake, and believe me when I say I won’t break.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.

  The sight of Aron on all fours was shocking, but insanely sexy. She lifted her ass higher into the air like an invitation, and I settled in behind her. I ran my hands up the backs of her thighs teasingly and watched as her pussy quivered slightly in the room’s dim light.

  I couldn’t wait any longer. I used her hip bones like handlebars as I pulled her back toward me and sank into her depths. She whimpered and pushed back against me, urging me to go harder. I pulled out and teased her momentarily before slamming back in. She groaned loud enough to echo in the vast room, and I picked up my rhythm. Each time I thrust, Aron pushed back as well, until we were slamming into each other with a pulse-pounding force. The muscles in her shoulders tensed as she picked up the pace and began to pant loudly.

  I reached a hand around to her front and played with her clit as I continued to fuck her. It didn’t take long for her to reach her peak, and as she did, she wiggled eagerly back into me and forced my erection deeper. The feeling of her tight body convulsing around my entire organ was too much to handle, and my fingers bit into her hips as I filled her completely.

  I leaned down and rested my forehead against her back softly. Our breathing was ragged, and both of us were slick with sweat. We’d certainly gotten a workout. Before I pulled out, I laid a soft kiss on her back, and she sighed happily against the floor.

  Once we’d regained our strength and were well-rested, we returned to training. That time it was a bit easier to focus, although occasionally, I found myself wanting another go at her. Within a matter of hours, I was just as skilled with a sword as Aron was. She took some time to make sure I knew the strategy behind sword fighting as well. She was driving the point home that I’d have to be creative when deciding where to swing my sword at an opponent when a sword symbol and a potion bottle symbol showed up on my arm in a swirl of yellow light.

  She looked at me, brow raised to make sure I chose to advance my sword skills before returning to her instruction. I touched the sword symbol and watched it spread, filling in yet another one of the circles on my arm. After that, she taught me how to read their body language and figure out what their next move would be.

  23

  By the time evening rolled around that first day, I’d mastered sword fighting, and Gale fitted me for my own battle attire. That consisted of an hour of measuring every inch of my body, having to pick out the color and texture of leather that I’d prefer, and designing the most protective configuration of the straps and pieces. Once we finished, Gale left with the information, and I was on to training with Heather.

  Heather’s training duty was to familiarize me with basic battle potions. She made a cabinet appear with the wave of her hand. She opened it up and pulled three full bottles of different-colored liquid, a bowl, mortar and pestle, and three empty bottles, and set them on the top of the cupboard.

  I hadn’t spent much time with Heather, and I found the grace with which she moved to be fascinating. It was like she was liquid flowing as she moved various body parts through the air. She was also wickedly intelligent. From the way she spoke, to her ability to explain things in an understandable manner, she was extremely comfortable to be around, and I was beginning to understand the gift that Witnesses have for homemaking.

  Her first lesson for me was how to make a non-lethal poison that one could dip bullets and arrows in. The purpose was to introduce the poison to the enemy's body, which traveled quickly through their system, causing them to become completely paralyzed without killing them. She pulled out a small bottle of green powder, one filled with purple liquid, and handed them to me.

&n
bsp; “You can only add four granules of this powder to that amount of the liquid,” she said. “Too much will kill the opponent instead of paralyzing them.”

  I took the bottles from her and set them on the cabinet. Popping open the green powder bottle, I saw how finely ground it was.

  “How am I supposed to get just four tiny particles out?” More than four had come out with just the air pressure change from opening the bottle.

  “Great question. You will take the bottom of the bottle cap, blow the particles off of it high into the air, and then catch individual ones as they float down. Just hold the liquid bottle under the particle as it falls. Be careful that two aren’t close together, and both get sucked in, though,” she instructed me.

  “So, basically, there’s really no way to mess it up. Easy peasy,” I joked sarcastically.

  “Just give it a shot and stop whining,” she shot back, giggling a little.

  I did just as she instructed. When I blew the powder into the air, however, there was so much of it that the particles didn’t really separate for me to let them fall into the bottle.

  “I’m finding your method a bit skewed,” I told her, looking for a modification technique.

  “Stop and think. You saw what happened, now what would you change to make it work next time?” She was tapping her foot impatiently, but I could tell she was a bit humorous.

  I examined the powder bottle and the liquid bottle. I put the cap on the green powder and took it off again several times. I noticed that the amount of powder on the bottom of the cap when I took it off was rather significant. So, on my next try, before blowing the particles off the bottom of the bottle, I tapped as much excess powder off it as possible. With fewer particles flying through the air, they floated down separately, and I managed to catch four of them in the liquid.

  “How’s that?” I asked her, proud of myself. She smiled and nodded.

  “Better than most. People don’t take the time to learn from their mistakes, so you are way ahead of the pack.” She took the potion I’d made, and the powder from me and stashed them back in the cabinet.

  Next, she taught me how to make a different poison that made death painless for the opponent. She explained that while Warriors didn’t mind blood and battle, Witnesses strived to make necessary battles as humane as possible. She pulled out a dried stem with shriveled leaves drooping from it and laid it next to the mortar and pestle.

  “You’ll need to grind six of the leaves from this stem and add one drop of this,” she told me, holding up a sky-blue bottle with a clear liquid in it.

  “Sounds pretty easy,” I said, waiting for the catch, but none came.

  I picked up the stem, and all the leaves fell off. I looked at Heather and raised my brow.

  “You could’ve mentioned I was going to break the thing,” I snarked. She laughed back at me.

  “We can sweep them up, don’t worry. I just thought it would be a good idea for you to see an example of how delicate these ingredients are,” she said. I stuck my tongue out at her before going back to the potion.

  The leaves from the stem were tiny. Picking them up one-by-one proved challenging, but I was finally able to get six into the mortar. I ground them into a fine powder and picked up the liquid bottle.

  “How do you measure out the liquid? Is there a pipet in that cabinet somewhere?” Again, she smiled.

  “And here I was waiting to see if you were going to pour out just one drop.” She reached into the cabinet and handed me a small pipet.

  “You’re so hilarious,” I responded sarcastically, dipping the pipet in the liquid.

  I added one drop to the bowl of ground-up leaves and looked at her for further instruction. She handed me the tiniest spoon I’d ever seen and a small ziplock-type bag but said nothing. I scooped up the mixture, which was rather dense, and spooned it into the bag.

  “Now what?” I set my tools down.

  “Leave the bag open and set it on the cabinet,” she replied.

  I did as she asked, and before I could barely get my hand away from the bag, she slid a cockroach-looking bug into it. I hadn’t even seen her holding anything so where the bug came from was anybody’s guess. The gross-looking crawler only made it to the middle of the bag before killing over dead.

  “That’s how fast that mixture kills, so don’t get it on your hands when you make it,” Heather said, nonchalantly. I stared at her, half wanting to wring her neck.

  “Thanks for letting me know that before I was handling it,” I snapped back. She responded with a tiny giggle as she pulled out more supplies.

  As we continued, I learned that potions, in general, were pretty easy, but took a great deal more focus than sword fighting, which I wasn’t expecting. You had to measure everything so precisely that even a granule or two could throw off a recipe and ruin the whole thing. A few instances occurred due to such mismeasurements that made the potions inactive, while other failed attempts made them volatile.

  Once, I mixed a blue liquid used for putting people to sleep that I believed to be correct. However, something had gone wrong, and it ended up having the exact opposite effect. At that point, I was happy that it was a relatively benign potion it had gone wrong. For as many potions as I learned, though, I was rather shocked I didn’t mess up a ton more up than I did.

  It surprised me to learn that a lot of potions were simple mixes of herbs and natural ingredients and didn’t require any magic at all. Once we’d exhausted that list of potions for me to learn, we were going to move onto the magical ones. However, Heather noticed that it was well after midnight by that time. She decided to continue the training the next day, scheduled to start at five in the morning. She packed up the cupboard and made it disappear as easily as she had conjured it.

  Gale, who I’d thought had gone to bed hours before, showed up just as we were leaving the training room. She made the room disappear, as Heather had done the cupboard, and turned to Heather and me. She didn’t say a word but nodded at Heather, who immediately went to the far flight of stairs and headed up them. Gale looked at me, fatigue in her eyes, and without a word, the two of us headed in different directions, off to our rooms.

  24

  The next morning came way too quickly. I woke up sore all over from the sword fighting practice, and with stains on my hands from potion-making. A quick, ultra-hot shower took care of both issues. I dressed, went to the meal hall, fed, and waited at the place where Gale created the testing room within a half hour.

  My eagerness for training coursed through every fiber of me. I craved the knowledge I was soaking up like a drug and was even mildly irritated that Heather wasn’t already available. I could forget my irritation by thinking about everything I had learned the day before, making certain that there weren’t questions I had forgotten to ask. Within minutes, Heather showed up with Gale, and we got started again.

  Once Heather had her cupboard arranged the way she wanted to again, she turned to me and paused in her work. Her hands were fiddling with an empty potion bottle, and she appeared to have something to say but wasn’t sure how to say it. Finally, she put the bottle down and motioned for me to sit beside her in a chair she had magically conjured.

  “Yes?” I tried to give her a more comfortable opening.

  “I do not mean any disrespect, but I need you to tell me if at any point you feel like the magic we are going to use is draining you. I mean, draining you at all, even the tiniest bit. It’s very important.” Her concern for my energy was nice and all, but just that little request didn’t explain her extreme seriousness.

  “Why is it so important to you?” I was gentle in how I asked because Heather had been showing me signs of respect and reverence more with each encounter we’d had, and I didn’t want her to feel like I was coming down on her.

  “The last battle this realm fought was brutal and took everything we had. Now, I realize that we fought it without a Dragonmancer, which is why they almost overtook us. However, with you being so new to m
agic, and the ways our weapons work, having your magical reserves full at all times is more important than you memorizing potions and spells. We need your magic to be available to you at all times right now.” She held her breath, searching my face to see if I understood her.

  “I will not let anyone invade our home, Heather. I do understand your request and will comply. I won’t let myself be drained. After what happened at the river, my stamina for magic seems to have increased exponentially. I don’t want you going light on me with the things you want me to learn. Deal?” My stamina had indeed increased. While I’d nearly collapsed at the river, healing Brave and visiting her memories hadn’t drained me at all.

  “I will not go easy on you. I am going to teach you the best magic potions for battle, but then we will be switching to fine-tune your natural powers,” she replied, visibly relaxing.

  “Sounds good to me,” I told her, trying to cheer her up even more.

  Heather stood up and smiled. The curve of her waist, accented by leather straps and silver chains, was at eye level, and that obviously distracted me. I had to shake my head to make myself pull my eyes away and refocus on the lesson at hand. I joined her standing, she handed me a bottle and a small slip of paper with a potion recipe on it, and we got started.

  Two hours later, when Heather had taught me all the potions she’d planned to, not only did I not feel drained, I felt stronger and more powerful than ever. I figured it was my growing confidence and knowledge base causing it. Whatever the reason, it was like the best natural high I could ever imagine. I felt like I could take on any foe without fear, or difficulty. Of course, I knew that was not the case yet, but the more I learned, the more I knew I could protect my new home and its people.

  We switched to honing my natural magical skills after we got the potions cleaned up and put away. I was not certain about how much information Gale had shared with Heather about what I could do. So far, Heather had only seen me use magic at the River, and with the Living History Journal. She turned to me when she was ready to start and put her hands on her round hips.