by Nichols, TJ
And as Angus worked his way lower, the magic took on a different vibration. While the orbs glowed faintly, the rest of the magic eddied around the room like a building storm. It lifted his hair and made the cloth walls ripple. The gold sigils on the cloth glimmered as though lit from within.
Last time he hadn’t worried about directing the magic, but there hadn’t been as much.
He glanced down at Saka to be sure he wasn’t watching. Then he lifted his hands to flick the magic to the orbs… and it worked. The magic circled the ceiling, caught in the orbs, and intensified the glow. Magic burned beneath his skin as though seeking a way out.
Angus took a couple of slow, even breaths.
This is ritual. Nothing more. I’ve done this before.
But always from the other side, from Saka’s position.
He ran his hand over Saka’s cock, which was darker than the rest of his skin but just as rough. His own twitched in response. Saka drew in a breath as Angus grazed the sensitive head with his fingers. He nudged Saka’s legs apart so he could pay some serious attention to the thick, hard length in his hand.
A quick lick and a stroke. Then just a taste of the head. He loved the rough texture of Saka’s skin on his lips and tongue, but he couldn’t get carried away. The idea was to keep Saka on the edge. His own dick throbbed with the need for attention, but Angus was determined to ignore it for as long as possible. He took a little more in his mouth as Saka lifted his hips, and Angus continued to tease and indulge himself, knowing that he controlled when it would end. That alone was heady. The power of the ritual—the magic and lust—tumbled through him.
He became lost as he focused only on breathing and sucking and making Saka squirm with need. Angus would continue until he got a taste. He wanted Saka to lose his careful restraint. But the temptation to put his hands down his pants became stronger with each beat of his heart. He swept his tongue over the head and tasted the burned honey of Saka’s come. Just a drop. Angus groaned around the mouthful of cock.
He released Saka and struggled with his own desire for several breaths. He welcomed the distraction of the building magic as lust lit the room so he could regather his fragile composure. The orbs were bright. If nothing else, he’d gathered some magic and captured it for later use.
Angus slowly moved his hand up and down the length of Saka’s cock. Saka clawed his nails into the bedsheets, and his chest lifted with each quick breath, but he managed to retain control.
He was never going to get Saka to beg for release, but it wasn’t about begging. It was about magic—building that edge of excitement and maintaining it. Saka couldn’t fight the lust in his blood, but he had learned to control its release. Angus was fairly sure it wouldn’t matter what he did. Saka would be able to hold out. Even the friction of Angus’s pants on his skin was torture on his aching cock. He needed to finish while he was still in control.
Angus grazed Saka’s balls and then slid lower to the tight pucker of his ass, and Saka sucked in a breath. Angus pressed one finger in and felt the slickness of the oil Saka used to prepare. If he hadn’t been watching for every reaction, he would’ve missed the slight arching of Saka’s back and the quivering tip of his tail.
He added a second finger and left his other hand on Saka’s dick.
Saka bent his knees and lifted his hips as though he wanted more, but he didn’t say a word. Angus’s breathing was fast, and the knot of lust in his belly was tight. The magical light made the sweat on his skin gleam. He hadn’t released any magic yet, but it bubbled in his blood, and it would be too easy to let it all wash out of him in one massive tide of ecstasy. If he did, he’d never survive the nine remaining days.
He released Saka’s cock and fumbled with the tie of his pants until he felt warm air on his sensitive skin. He’d never fucked another man, but that was all he wanted to do. He pressed his cock to Saka’s ass and hesitated for just a moment, in case Saka didn’t want it. But Saka spread his legs a little farther and offered himself up. Angus pushed in and stretched the tight ring of muscle.
It was different to being in a mouth—hotter, tighter. He groaned and almost forgot about the magic. But he rocked back and thrust in deeper.
Never once had he thought he’d have Saka blindfolded and spread before him, but it was a sight he’d never forget. His balls tightened. He wouldn’t last much longer, and he still had to hold back the magic but not his climax.
He gripped Saka’s hips. “This is it.”
Giving in felt good.
Saka used his tail to flick the blindfold away. He held Angus’s gaze. “Touch me.”
Angus wrapped his hand around Saka’s cock, and it only took a few quick strokes. Saka’s come spilled onto his belly in thick ribbons as he gasped for breath.
Angus, having outlasted Saka, shuddered and came. He drew out the sensation with each thrust, and it took everything he had not to let all the magic rush out of him. He let a few drops out, like a tap that hadn’t been fully turned off. Then he tightened his grip and stopped even that small release. His blood still fizzed, and his skin tingled. For a few breaths, it felt as though he wasn’t done. But the sensation faded as his body recognized that the lust had been sated.
Neither of them moved. The room was bathed in light from the captured magic. Saka gave a small nod. “Now to use the magic.”
Angus glanced down. “I want to know how to heal myself.”
Where the river had been, there was just a dry gulch. When Angus dug his fingers in to feel for wet sand, he had to dig down a forearm’s length. He brought up a handful and showed it to Saka. “It’s not that deep.”
“Not yet, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to raise it.” Saka sat back and watched while he made another telestone to leave there when the tribe moved on. Miniti knew nothing about the web of telestones he had laid across Demonside. No one knew, except for the mages who also left stones.
The sun struck Angus’s back hard. Even through his shirt, he felt as though he were burning, cooking from the outside in. Saka had told Angus not to bring water. And while the tents weren’t that far away—maybe one hundred paces—there was still an expanse of shimmery red sand to cross. In the middle of the day, one hundred paces might as well be one hundred miles.
His throat and tongue were dry, and they hadn’t been out there long.
No, he wasn’t cooking. He was desiccating—drying into a piece of human-shaped jerky. If he failed, he’d die. Angus tried to swallow, but there was no moisture in his mouth.
He brought up a circle and drew magical energy to him. Then he tried to drag the water up through the hole he’d made. His fingertips brushed water and he was able to scoop out a small handful of gritty liquid. He didn’t care. He drank and relished the sweetness in his mouth. Then he spit out the sand, and grit clung to his gums.
“You just wasted what you took in. A little sand won’t kill you. A lack of water will.”
Angus reached his hand down the hole, but the water was gone already. He swore. At least it was cool in the hole. It would be nice if he could climb in. “It’s sunk already.”
“If water were easy to pull up, everyone would be able to do it. You know enough magic to bring up plenty of water to stop us from dying.”
“You’re going to make me sit here until I succeed or die?”
“Are you going to sit there and question me until you are too close to death to do anything?” Saka tilted his head. His dark red skin glittered in the sunlight, and his horns gleamed. He was beautiful and as perfectly calm as though it weren’t an important lesson.
Angus shivered despite the heat. He was pretty sure Saka didn’t use sex magic to draw up water.
Blood magic?
Just the magic that was around?
He could cheat and draw from himself, but if he were in the desert alone, that would only hasten his death. He had to do it without cheating or Saka would know, and he would wear that disappointed expression that Angus couldn’t stand.
He pulled one of his sharp little knives—the handles were bone and always felt cold, which in the heat was a relief.
“Given that you can’t heal yourself, is that a good idea?” Saka asked. He wouldn’t help, but he wouldn’t let Angus fail either.
Angus stared at Saka. “Fine. Come and bleed for me.”
“And what emotion will you use?”
He was all out of lust, and it was too hot to do anything. His skin was sticky with sweat, and he wasn’t even moving. It was clear that fear wouldn’t work on Saka, and Angus didn’t want to delve into pain.
He shoved the knife away and stuck his hand back into the hole. He was about ready to widen the hole, shove his face in, and suck on the wet sand. He hesitated, but then he did exactly that. With his mouth only an inch from the bottom of the hole, he took a moment to enjoy the damp and shade. Was Saka checking out his ass? He almost pulled his head out to glance at Saka, but he didn’t.
His lips twisted into a smile. He’d thought he was out of lust, but maybe he could use it. So he reached out to the magic and to the water that he could feel flowing swiftly beneath the sand and rock. He could also feel the fissures in the rock that would let the water through. He exhaled and imagined the water funneling up toward him.
It splashed him in the face and then eddied around his ears. He drank, but not enough to make himself sick, and he swallowed the grit. When he pulled his head out of the sand, he flicked back his wet hair and put his sun hat back on.
“Water is ready.”
Saka got up and had a look. He took a small drink and nodded. “Now how will you do that when the river is deeper than you are tall? Will you waste your last few hours digging down? You need to bring it to the surface.”
Angus followed Saka a dozen paces away.
“Draw up water.” Saka sat down to continue his work.
Angus’s hair was already dry. He was hot and longed for the shade of a tent. “If I can’t bleed, then how? Why insist on me bringing the knives?” But even as he spoke, he realized it wasn’t Saka or he who should bleed. He needed a sacrifice, but there was nothing but sand and a few trees desperately clinging to life on the other side of the dry riverbed.
If there were trees, then there was life.
He turned to Saka. “And what happens when there are no more trees and nothing left to kill?”
“There is always life. You just aren’t seeing it. Creatures hibernate through the dry.”
“Is that what you do, kill to raise the water?”
“No, I can do it without. But few can. You should be able to, eventually.”
“So I have to hunt before I can drink? Won’t that eat into the last few hours I have before I die of thirst?” Although he was hungry. Could he kill something and then eat it? His stomach rolled, and it wasn’t from the gritty water he’d drunk. He’d never killed anything or had to prepare it for eating. But if he were to survive, he needed to learn. “This would’ve been done already with sex magic.”
“Yes, but what is the point of proving something we both know you can do. You need to learn the harder ways. You need to be able to draw on many skills, not one. Your life—”
“I know.” He pulled off his hat and wiped sweat off his face. “I also know that I wouldn’t be sitting out here in the noon sun doing this. I’d be fine if I could rest somewhere until dusk.”
“I thought you’d need the motivation.”
Angus scowled. His mouth was gritty, and sand scoured his throat every time he swallowed. He glanced back at the hole and wished he could stick his head back in to take another drink.
Find something to kill. What kind of person was he becoming where that even seemed like a reasonable thing to do?
Saka turned the rock over in his hand. “We aren’t leaving here until there is surface water.”
“That means you go hungry and thirsty too.”
Saka shrugged. “I was an apprentice before I was a mage. Guda was far less gentle than I am being with you.”
Angus couldn’t imagine Guda pushing Saka to his breaking point. If she had, it was all forgiven a long time ago. Saka missed her, and he still wore the scar.
Instead of reaching out for water, Angus searched for life buried in the sand. His magic touched something big in the river below, but it swam away. He had reached too deep. He wanted to close his eyes to concentrate, but Saka was trying to break him of that habit too. Angus needed to be able to see what he was doing and the magic he was using. He probed the sand, and ribbons of yellow magic darted across the surface.
Then he felt it—a stirring of life. Was it one of those eel things curled up in a burrow? If it was, it would do. And they could eat it. The eels were greasy and delicious when cooked over an open fire.
He walked over to where he was, sensed it, and began to dig close by. When his fingers brushed its hardened cocoon, he pulled it out and dropped it into his hat. It did not look as appetizing as the eels did when they were swimming, or even cooked.
Without his hat, the sun struck the top of his head as though it were trying to bake his brain. The sooner he got water up to the surface, the sooner it would be over. Angus walked back to where he’d been standing and knelt down. He had to do it right, so he made a circle, drew up everything he could without tapping into himself, and then he laid the eel on the ground. He kept a hold of it with one hand, in case it woke up and escaped, and then he took its head off with one of his knives. Its dark, greenish blood spilled on the sand, and Angus let the rest of the magic go too and used it all to bring the water to the surface.
He expected a gush, but it was more of a trickle. His knees grew damp, and then the water bubbled up around him and made a very shallow small lake. Still holding the eel in one hand and the knife in the other, Angus lay down in it and relished the cool on his skin.
“Water.” It was the most wonderful thing ever.
A shadow loomed over him. “Good. Now you can cook the eel, and we can eat.”
The sun behind Saka’s head blinded Angus, and he blinked. “I’ll gather some wood in a moment.”
“No, you will cook it with magical fire. Wood or dung is not always available.”
Angus let his head tip back. Water swirled around his ears and blocked whatever Saka said next. Would the day’s lesson never end?
It was dusk by the time Angus got to have a proper meal—eel wasn’t as tasty when he had to clean it and cook it, but as Saka had said, it was better to eat it than waste it, and he needed to know how to find and prepare food—and a shower. He’d never appreciated the water in the wash tent so much.
It was terrifyingly clear that Saka was preparing him for a time when the underground wouldn’t open the void. That was a possibility that he tried not to think about every time he stepped across to Demonside. The tribe would be there… wouldn’t it?
Or did Saka expect more trouble?
Lizzie walked into the wash tent. Angus had to either talk to her or politely ignore her. That seemed to be the only two ways of dealing with other people in the communal showers. Many people came with their friends. Angus wanted to be by himself. He was exhausted and just wanted to shower and sleep, so he opted to politely ignore Lizzie and focus on washing.
She had other ideas. “We need to talk.”
She hadn’t spoken to him since Jim’s death. And given that he had no idea what to say to her, that was fine. He turned to face her, but she hadn’t taken her clothes off to wash. There was a shoulder-high fabric screen between them, and his towel was with his clothes. Usually he wouldn’t be bothered about the naked walk to retrieve the towel, but he didn’t want to step past the screen. “About what?”
“About everything.”
The water ran out. His time was up. After seeing how hard it was to raise water, he wasn’t about to sneak a second shower the way he once had.
“Can you pass me my towel?” Couldn’t it have waited until morning… or never?
She looked at him for a moment and the
n crossed to his pile of clothes and tossed the towel to him.
He caught the cloth, wrapped it around himself, and stepped away from the shower. “I’m sorry about Jim. I tried. I really did.”
He’d spent a lot of time trying to block out the hot, sticky feel of Jim’s blood, the way he could feel Jim dying with every beat of his heart, and the panic and the realization that no one was coming to help. Jim had known the underground was being poisoned from the inside, and Angus suspected that the underground knew Jim could be bought by the highest bidder and had decided it would be better to let him die.
“I know. I don’t blame you. I blame them.” There was no sadness in her eyes. Her expression was hard, her mouth set in a grim line. “It’s them I want to talk about… in part.” She tilted her head.
Angus frowned. Then he realized she also wanted to talk about what was going on around them. “There’s been a few changes,” he said carefully.
“Yes….” She moved closer. “We need to be careful. There is very little stopping them from sacrificing us. Tapo has been teaching me how to rebalance in blood to prove my usefulness to Demonside.”
“Too much, and Demonside will suck you dry.” Angus stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You need to control how much you let out.”
“We need a plan. If Saka’s toppled, we’re dead.”
“He’s not going to be toppled. Usi has been demoted.”
“She still has supporters who’d like to see us bleed out. If the underground fails to open the void, that may happen. Saka and others threw in with the underground, but if they’re no longer seen to be supporting us, what then?”
Then they were stuck in Demonside until it gradually killed them. That was the future Saka was preparing him for. And where would Saka be in all of that? Did he expect Usi to knife him?
All relaxation and sense of satisfaction from a day of success fled from Angus as worry turned the screws on his delicate future—too tight and his life would fracture. He wasn’t ready to give his soul to Demonside. “What do you propose?”