Rod of the Heart

by Cebelius

  When the kiss broke she looked into his eyes as though pleading with him and murmured, "This is all I can do for you now ... but I will do more. I will be better. I will find a way to help you. I swear it, so please, please don't leave me."

  I can't even THINK without hurting someone.

  She winced, and tears spilled out over his chest. He remembered too late that when she was touching him, she could hear his inner monologue, and shame washed through him as she buried her face in his neck, her body undulating slowly on his as she cried.

  I am so shit at this.

  "Sshh ... it's okay. This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault. Please don't cry ..."

  He ran his fingers through her leafy hair, picking out the bark and flicking it away bit by bit as she rode him. The pleasure she brought him was undeniable, and he didn't want to deny it. In that moment, he wanted nothing else.

  He said, "This isn't about me. I know you hate hearing me say this, but I'll adjust. I promise. Somehow, we'll make this work. I'm not going to leave you. Any of you. I just ... had a bad moment, that's all."

  Her only response was a half-muffled sob, and he gently shifted her onto her back and took over, rolling his hips against hers. He shifted a hand down and caught one of her knees, lifting it and spreading her, going deeper as he watched her face.

  She gazed back up at him with a half-fearful, half-hopeful expression, and it became his goal in life to wash those emotions away with something better.

  Straddling her other leg, he shifted and sat up, resting her calf against his shoulder as his fingers drifted down over her belly to rest on her mound.

  He smiled for her — a genuine smile of love and affection — and with himself buried deep and barely moving, he played with her, fingers rolling gently, insistently.

  Lips parted, her breathing deepened and she reached for her own breasts, squeezing them, fingers twisting over her nipples as she looked up at him.

  "You're such a tease," he murmured, shifting his hips a bit, moving just a little now as his fingers picked up the pace.

  "You are ... ohhh, just like that. Ah, a little ... deeper ..."

  He obliged, and she started nodding frantically at him as her fingers sank into the soft flesh of her breasts. Her eyes widened and then rolled up in her head as her hips started to quake, and he felt the tell-tale spasms of her being close deepen into full-blown orgasm as she squeezed her tits shamelessly and let out a long, low moan.

  "Finish!" she gasped. "I need you, Tee. Please!"

  Yes Ma'am.

  It didn't take him long; her orgasm had brought him to the very edge anyway and it only took a few quick strokes to push him over.

  She gasped and quivered delightfully for him as he filled her, and when it was done he kissed the muscle of her calf before lowering her leg and slipping from her.

  As he lay down Shy nestled into the crook of his shoulder and kissed his chest once, then spit rather cutely and said, "Ugh! You're filthy."

  He started laughing, and once he'd started, he couldn't stop. He covered his eyes with his forearm, struggling with all his might not to completely lose his shit. Just because he'd made his decision didn't mean his emotion had immediately caught up. He still felt like everything was falling apart, and there was nowhere he could go. But he had long since made the decision that his mind, not his emotions, would rule him.

  Be like water. Relax. Settle into your role.

  The moment passed and he took in a sharp breath, let it out slowly, then said, "Sorry, it's been a long day."

  He met her gaze and she was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Despite this though, he could feel sadness radiating from her. Sadness she consciously throttled when their eyes met. He felt it, and knew that she knew he felt it.

  I think that's the first time I felt something from her, instead of the other way round.

  Aloud he said, "I think our bond is getting stronger."

  She nodded and smiled, then arched an eyebrow as she slipped from the bed and stood. He took a a moment to appreciate the glory of her body in silhouette as she stretched. Her curves really were fit to drive a man to distraction.

  "Come on, Tee. There are baths, and if anyone needs one, it's you."

  "Join me?"

  She smirked at him and bent at the hip to kiss his nose, green eyes glimmering.

  "You couldn't keep me away."

  25

  Changing Focus

  Terry woke with startling abruptness.

  One moment he was deeply asleep, the next his eyes were wide and staring as he attempted to penetrate the darkness in the room.

  He was surrounded by strange sensations, and as the seconds passed and he realized that he wasn't going to be seeing anything anytime soon as there was no light in the area, he started trying to sort out those sensations by other means.

  He lay on his back, and his left arm was pinned under Laina. He got several hints that gave it away including the light fuzz of hair on her hide, the substantial weight, and the snoring, which was obviously just her breathing with her mouth open. No one else that had any business being in his bed had anywhere near her lung capacity.

  The weight across his legs was a bit harder to identify, but he eventually pegged it as Euryale because when he shifted he touched something cold and metal.

  That would mean the one curled up into my right side is Shy.

  All three women seemed to be asleep, but as he thought about that, he realized that Shy was awake. She was just laying still, and breathing evenly. Her thoughts slipped into his mind easily.

  'It is good that you slept so well.'

  How long?

  'It is sometime after midnight. You've been asleep since just before noon yesterday. Ross finally got a mage in to see to Laina yesterday afternoon, she's fine. I saw to her needs so as not to wake you ... though she wanted to.'

  That made him smirk up at nothing as he shook his head.

  Not sure I'll ever really get used to that particular task.

  'You will. Just remember that you should never hide your enjoyment. She takes enormous pride in being your sole source of sustenance.'

  I never thought about it, but yeah ... I haven't eaten much of anything since I got you two back.

  He thought more deeply on that, and wondered how that was impacting his health. He never felt better than after he'd had some of her milk, but the fact that he was pretty much living off the stuff couldn't be good for him.

  'It is, Master. As long as the opportunity is there, you should take all your sustenance from the minotress. In terms of your understanding of how to eat, her milk isn't just a superfood. It's perfect nutrition. Thus spake your muscles, bones, endocrine system, gastrointestinal tract, and brain.'

  Morning, Prada.

  The feel of the sanguine devil inside his mind was like a soft touch at the back of his neck.

  'Good morning, Master. I take it you need some help getting out of bed?'

  Well, considering I'm pinned on three sides, yeah. Can you?

  'Certainly. Work with me.'

  He felt the now familiar silken sensation of Prada sliding up and over his chest, then down his trapped left arm. With liquid ease, the slime positioned itself between the sleeping minotress and his arm, and when he felt her weight ease off, he slipped his arm free. Seconds later, Prada was helping him free his legs in a similar way as Shy slipped from her side of the bed, clearing the way for him to roll off it himself and stand.

  Euryale and Laina slumbered on.

  That's handy, thanks.

  'You're welcome.'

  Shy brushed his shoulder, and then pushed him gently toward the thin band of moonlight he could now see under the gap at the bottom of the door.

  He opened it and slipped out into the main room with the dryad closing the door behind him.

  He stretched, saw that his clothes were missing, and glanced around in annoyance.

  Shy either noticed or intuited what he was looking for
and murmured, "There are clothes for you in the other room, Tee. The ones you had were cleaned and returned after you'd gone to bed."

  Padding into the other room, he left the door open for the light and snagged the shirt and pants, putting them on and then looking around for his boots before he remembered he'd cut the laces and they'd been stashed in Laina's pack.

  Need to get new laces. I like those boots ...

  His face twisted as he was reminded of Shu, but he shook it off and stepped back into the main room. Shy was waiting for him there, standing in the moonlight like some sort of goddess. Her eyes with their soft green luminescence, her leafy hair, and the way her curves pretty much forced his eye to follow them up and down, all of it drew him in.

  "I may not have said it recently," he murmured, still keeping his voice down, "but thanks, for sticking by me. You were the first good thing to happen to me on Celestine, and no one can take that away."

  She smiled at that, and came forward, draping her arms over his shoulders and leaning in to kiss him gently. "Being your first good thing was luck, but I hope you don't mind if it still makes me happy."

  Her body molded itself to him, and he held her for what seemed a long time. When she finally lifted her head, she looked him in the eye and asked, "So what are you going to do now?"

  "Wanted to talk about that actually. Prada? You too. Let's take a seat and hash out what's going to happen in the next week."

  There were only two chairs at the small circular table under the window, and as Terry took one of them he tapped the table top and said, "Up here, Prada. I want Shy to hear both sides of this conversation."

  Prada pooled in the center of the table and as her mass steadied, Terry noted that she was about three times as large as when they'd first made their deal.

  She's growing fast.

  Glancing from the slightly quivering droplet of ruby death to Shy, he said, "Several things need to happen, but first, I want to ask Prada what she knows about why my body is so torn up all the time."

  "Are you certain you want others to know this, Master?" Prada asked. "It is quite possible information of this sort could be used against you were it more generally known."

  "I trust Shy completely," he answered. "If you think someone else may be listening though ... Shy, could you hear Prada inside my head earlier?"

  Shy shook her head, and Prada spoke. "A familiar's converse with her master is privileged. I also could not hear what Shy said to you, though I am certain she did speak. I can only hear your thoughts inside your mind."

  "Mm. Just don't put it on blast and we should be fine. Tell us what's going on with me to the best of your ability."

  Prada shivered and began to almost bounce left and right, and Terry got the impression that was a nervous tic while thinking. Finally, she spoke, the words fizzing up from her body.

  "To be brief, your interactions with women here grant you power, but some of that power is of a sort you simply aren't equipped to handle. I've spent a great deal of time poking around inside you, and as best I can determine, you were simply not ready for congress with one of the Powers. Specifically Cecaelia.

  "Even so, it wasn't until your fight with Yuri in the pit that you attempted — consciously or otherwise — to draw upon that power. Once you did, it flooded through your system and essentially wrecked you. Your body has been fighting a slowly losing battle ever since to deal with the surfeit of mana flowing through it."

  "What about my fight with Laina?" he asked, thinking back. "That happened after Cecaelia, but didn't impact me."

  "You're misremembering," Prada said. "You were sore the day after, and attributed it to rough sex. Still, it wasn't nearly as bad because you didn't draw on your power. You weren't ever really trying to hurt her, despite what your guilt about the whole affair may have told you. Every punch you landed on her face was pulled. You were never pushed during that fight. You knew there were low stakes, all things considered, and Laina provided you with no challenge.

  "Yuri on the other hand, wanted to kill you, and you were very intimidated by his claws and very cognizant of the real threat they represented. It's the difference between a fight, and a fight with your life on the line. You not only weren't pulling punches, you were throwing them with everything you had. If you had actually unlocked the full extent of the power given to you earlier, you'd have torn Yuri's head from his shoulders, just as you broke Astur's neck when you hit her. Do you remember what the dark mage said when she tested you?"

  "Wait, wait," Shy said, holding a hand up before pointing at Prada. "He doesn't know everything about magic, but I know a thing or two. That's not how mana works."

  Prada shifted, but in no clearly definable way. Nevertheless, Terry got the impression the slime's attention was now concentrated on Shy as she said, "This will not be a perfect analogy, but think of it this way. Imagine that you must hold water. You have a bowl, and that bowl is constantly filling with the water you must hold. When the bowl is full, excess simply spills over. You can drink from the bowl whenever you like, and it will refill. From what I understand, Master's gift to you was to drastically enlarge the bowl you use to hold water. That water is your mana."

  Prada shifted again, and said, "Master doesn't have a bowl at all. Instead, he is forced to drink the mana to hold it. There is no way for him to stop the flow, nor can he stop drinking what comes to him. Again I ask, do you remember what the dark mage said when she tested you?"

  Terry's lips twisted and he said, "Vaguely. Something about being powerful, but not having any spells on me?"

  "Close enough. With no natural outlet, Cecaelia's gift of power flooded through you and boosted everything while at the same time ravaging your system. At a guess, the only reason you survived is due to Laina's bond gift, which accelerates your recovery and elevates your general level of health. Once you took in Laina's milk the effects of her gift were multiplied, and your body was able to do what it's supposed to when placed under stress."

  Terry chuckled and grinned as he nodded. "It adjusted."

  "Just so. That is one of the two reasons you didn't notice much soreness in the dungeon. You were still taking damage from the mana flooding your body, but you were healed more than once by Mila, which kept that damage from becoming severe. You also never again exceeded your limits, nor were you even pushing them. The ax felt like a Wiffle bat, as you yourself said. That extra power came from the mana coursing through your system. You were back to pulling punches, even if only to preserve your weapon."

  "Certainly didn't feel that way to me," Terry muttered, looking away at nothing as he tried to remember and get a sense of how he'd fought in Monsoon. It all blurred together in his mind though, and all that really stuck with him was the fear, and the constant feeling of being under threat.

  "A Wiffle bat?" Shy asked.

  Prada and Terry answered in unison, "A toy."

  Terry glanced down at his familiar and they both spoke, still in sync. "You did that on purpose."

  "I'm gonna slap you," he warned, and Prada's body flexed, a gesture that both made her bounce and sent spikes out in literally every direction. They settled invisibly back into her bulk as she burbled, "I wouldn't recommend that. I know you're bluffing anyway. You always ask a girl before giving it to her rough."

  Shy covered her mouth and Terry looked at her with a wry smile and said, "Seems like every woman in my life just loooves pushing my buttons."

  "Personally, I think I prefer 'jerking your chain,'" Shy said, laughter in her voice.

  Terry glanced skyward, then shook his head. "Anyway, point being that's why I can't actually exercise anymore. I've got this cushion of power between me and actually getting real work done."

  "You catch on quickly," Prada said. "That is, in fact, the case. The soreness you experience is all from the surfeit of mana in your body, not the work you do. Sit for more than a few days without bleeding it off, or receiving healing, and it would begin to have more serious consequences for you, akin to
what you experienced after the fight with Yuri. The longer you keep it inside you unused, the worse those symptoms get."

  "Symptoms I've been insulated from by drinking Laina's milk, which heals the damage every time I take it in."

  Prada jiggled a bit, but did not reply.

  Terry thought about that, and the idea he'd had earlier took more solid form in his mind and he nodded decisively as he said, "Well, that's it then. I need to become a theurge."

  Prada jiggled again, this time a bit more violently, and then her shape shifted. Arms with well defined but slim muscle rose out of her bulk, followed by a head with the impression of hair, ears, eyes, nose, and a mouth. It was all the same ruby red, but the moonlight picked out the details Prada obviously worked into her simulacrum as she leaned forward and smiled at him. Her lips formed the words this time as she spoke. "Yes, Master. Yessss ... become a theurge. Become a master of blood magic, and you become a truly fearsome opponent."

  "I don't know about all that," he said, a bit nonplussed to see Prada looking at him, or seeming to look at him, from just a few inches away. He could see Shy's outline through Prada's ruby body, and that just made it twice as weird. "I just need to get good enough to channel the excess, or do something constructive with it, so I don't get torn apart by it."

  Prada gave him a one-shoulder shrug, then leaned forward and kissed his cheek before settling back into the shape of a droplet. "If you wish to be truly useful to your companions, you would do well to aim higher, Master."

  He winced and muttered, "Point taken. Swinging an ax around doesn't seem to be getting me very far."

  "Can he use any other types of magic?" Shy asked, the hesitation clear in her voice. Terry looked at her and quirked a brow.

  She frowned at him and said, "Blood magic is ... nasty. I don't know that much about it from personal experience, but everyone at the college who used it was physically sickly, and mentally twisted."

  "Did Volai look sickly to you?" Prada asked, and it was clearly a rhetorical question, as she went on without waiting for an answer. "Blood magic ravages the body because its use requires channeling mana from the pool into the blood first. Volai cycled her mana through her body regularly and ate well, a technique that — given it was not in any of her books on the subject — she developed herself. You'd have no cause to know, but I can tell you that even for a great naga, she was uncommonly strong physically as well as magically. She took the same sort of damage Master already takes all the time, every day. His health, enhanced by his bond with Laina, insulates him in the same way your mana pool insulates you. In fact, given the regular infusions of minotress milk he's been getting, the mana in his blood has actually made him significantly stronger naturally than he used to be. Haven't you noticed his increase in size?"