Jake's Women (Wizards)

by Booth, John

  “Why did you choose me at the temple?” she asked.

  She sat on a padded bench and slid her body sideways until her head rested on her arm and her feet were tucked up on the bench.

  “Accident. Fluffy told me to look at a Representative and you were closest.”

  A glass of wine appeared in her hand. I sat down onto a cold marble bench. It was not the slightest bit like the chair I had imagined. She was playing with my perceptions. It was proving difficult not to smile.

  “There are no accidents. All Representatives are equally close in the temple. What do you have to say to that, Wizard Morrissey?”

  She sipped at her wine, which I imagined to be prune juice. For a second her lips puckered and then she took a longer, appreciative, sip.

  “Did you guide my choice?” I asked.

  A sprinkling of laughter. “I was not aware of your existence until the Conference started. I cannot remember a Conference where a Representative was hated so much before he had uttered a single word. You make history, Wizard Morrissey.”

  “The Valhallans tricked me.”

  “I doubt it was as simple as that.”

  She rested on cushions that materialized so stealthily that for a second I thought they had always been there. This woman was a show worthy of applause. She leaned back and closed her eyes as if falling asleep. Her lips parted and I struggled with the sudden urge to kiss them. Two wives and a mistress I reminded myself. And me a good boy from the valleys; or so I told myself.

  “What can I do for you?” I leaned back to increase the distance between us.

  “You are not the fool you seem to be,” she muttered. Rolling over, she looked into my eyes and this time it seemed that she examined my soul. “It appeared unlikely until this moment, but it may well be true.”

  She did something and I was a dog in heat. Juicy red spots appeared across my vision and I stood up in every sense. A step forward and her dress slid apart as a hidden seam parted. I fought against myself. It took every ounce of my willpower, but I succeeded. With considerable effort I managed to get out a few words.

  “No, I am not a toy.”

  As I turned away the feelings ebbed, leaving me feeling lost and disappointed.

  Moments later, gentle fingers rested on my shoulder. Her perfume was waves breaking on the shore. A waft of her breath caressed my ear, sunlight through leaves.

  “Forgive me, Wizard Morrissey. It was necessary to test you. What you seek lies within your grasp. You must conjure reality from illusion. We shall meet again when prophesy requires.”

  It took me a few seconds to realize that her fingers were no longer touching me and I was alone.

  The bench she sat on was still there and I dropped wearily onto it. I found her perfumed lingered. It reminded me of happy childhood days on Welsh beaches, looking for crabs in rock pools. I picked up her glass and tasted its contents. Prune juice, just as I had ordered.

  When I first viewed Issus in the temple I knew she was something special, but the reality of her turned out to be so much more than I expected. I have to admit that lust is my Achilles heel. She used my weakness to test my strength. Why was I so disappointed I had passed?

  5. Attacked

  A sound made me lift my head. Had Issus returned?

  Someone strode out of the white and I recognized the bearded representative from the Diamond Worlds. He was dressed in armor and carried a broadsword. It was so incongruous that I laughed out loud. This place was just imagination, what harm could an imaginary sword do?

  He stopped a few feet from where I sat with the glass of prune juice still in my hand.

  “I am Jorda dan Bowe. One of the Knights of Justice you slew was my nephew and I demand satisfaction.”

  I waved the glass at him, spilling juice over my fingers. “He attacked me. You had your chance with the Progenitors and you failed. I’m sorry he’s dead, but I had no choice in the matter.”

  He stepped forward and slashed the sword at me. I dived from the chair in an instinctive response and rolled away. His blade cut into the chair and stuck. It took him a few moments to free it.

  “I will kill you, Wizard.”

  He waved his sword dramatically, but I couldn’t see what he hoped to achieve. This wasn’t real, it was just a dream and you couldn’t get killed in a dream.

  I imagined a carpet over his head and let it fall. It was bulky enough to force him to fight his way out of it.

  “You mock me, Wizard?”

  I giggled. His tones of righteous anger reminded me of an old British comedy film. It was proving difficult to take him seriously.

  “This is just a dream. We can’t be killed unless the Progenitors attack our real bodies. Can’t we just sit down and discuss this like gentlemen?”

  I held out a hand in appeal. A malicious grin covered his face and he kicked the last of the carpet from his legs.

  “You are new to this place, are you not?”

  “First and last time. If I have anything to say about it.”

  “Would you endure a strike from my sword as a gesture of goodwill?” His grin changed to an unhealthy smirk and I felt a twinge of doubt wrench my gut. I was pretty sure I couldn’t be hurt, but pretty sure is very different from being certain.

  “Why would you want to waste your time?” Prevarication has long been my friend and I needed time to think. Unfortunately, Jorda had other ideas.

  Stepping forward, he swung his sword at me in a roundhouse swing. I turned away, but not in time to get my arm out of the way. The shock of impact ran through me and for a second I exalted in being right. There was no pain. Then I screamed as agony arrived a few seconds late.

  I stared at my arm in horror as I stumbled back. His smirk became an amiable smile and he made no immediate move to follow me. Cut by the blade, blood ran from parted flesh. I stared at shards of white bone and nearly fainted. I imagined it healed, but nothing happened

  There could be no doubt, this fight was real and I was acutely aware that I was standing in a robe with a smashed arm and not a weapon in sight.

  Holding my hand over the cut slowed the blood flow, but not by much. Already light headed, I couldn’t think well enough to formulate a plan.

  “Do you still believe you cannot be killed here?” Jorda asked mockingly. “There is no magic in this place and a wizard without magic is nothing more than a little girl.”

  I imagined his legs encased in concrete. He looked down and smiled.

  “At last, a show of spirit from you. But I have already struck the fatal blow and somewhere your body is bleeding to death. As for this…”

  The concrete shattered as he increased in size. He towered over me and I almost expected his next words to be ‘fee fi fo fum.’ He might well be able to smell my blood, but the Welsh are not the slightest bit English, so the next line would be denied him.

  “What now, little wizard? Your face is white. Are you going to faint?”

  I had to make him angry again, if I could. He was right about the blood loss and no amount of imagining the wound healed was making it the slightest bit better.

  I bowed my head, closed my eyes and imagined him naked. Just for effect I added a long stemmed rose stuffed up a place where the sun doesn’t shine. When I opened my eyes and looked up at him, I discovered I had achieved my objective. Now if only I could survive the consequences.

  He reached back and ripped the rose out of its soil and screamed in genuine agony. I hadn’t imagined a thorn-less rose. Angry bees buzzed around his nether regions and they stung when he waved them away. My imagination isn’t pretty, but it can be effective. As Jorda battled the bees I struggled to think.

  The sound of buzzing stopped before I thought of anything else. Looking up, I found Jorda had regained his clothes and sword.

  He struck down and hit the giant birdcage I imagined around me. His sword clattered against iron bars and flew from his hand to vanish into the white. Eyes red with rage he shook the cage and roared in frustr
ation, but it was too strong for him to break in. I slumped to the floor, noticing for the first time that my blood disappeared as it hit the floor. This wound existed wherever my body was and I only had seconds to find a way to save myself. Magic didn’t work here, but it would where my body was, if I could get my consciousness back to it, I could save myself.

  Ignoring Jorda, who fortunately was too filled with rage to imagine a spear to stab me with, I tried increasingly desperately to think. Issus’s words came back to me. She said I had to conjure reality from illusion. That must be the key. A ringing crash brought me out of my thoughts long enough to see that Jorda had created a massive battle-axe and was hitting the bars with it. Maybe they didn’t have spears in the Diamond Worlds? I was fortunate they didn’t appear to have machine guns.

  Okay, I would try recreating the place I’d seen when being suffocated. Lying down, I created what little I remembered. A tank filled with clear fluid appeared around me and a mask grew over my face. My blood oozed and dispersed in the gunk. I tasted plastic.

  Above me, Jorda held an enormous anvil. It must weigh at least a ton.

  “Goodbye Wizard,” he said, though I heard his words the way you hear things underwater. Then he heaved the anvil up into the air and let go.

  The bird cage was gone and I was somewhere else. Jorda’s words had been the tipping point and my mind had fled back to my body. He was gone and the only sound in my ears was low electric humming. Touching the magic in the space around me sent a sigh of relief through me. I was back in reality and only just in time. Before consciousness fled I healed my arm with the magic I’d learnt from Urda. Then I let the darkness take me.

  6. The Matrix

  I’ve watched The Matrix so I wasn’t surprised to wake up in a coffin shaped box. Floating in some sort of sticky liquid was more of a surprise, as was discovering tubes stuck into my lower orifices. Somehow, I expected the Progenitors to be above all that sort of poking. There were traces of blood in the liquid near the arm that had been slashed, but it seemed I had managed to save both it and me before I fainted.

  There was light outside the box shining through its opaque sides. Wherever this place was, there was plenty of magic in the air, but none in my reserves. That didn’t make any sense so I shelved the matter for later. The important thing was to gather enough energy to get out of the box as hopping home was out of the question.

  I never quite knew what the phrased drowned rat meant before that moment. I oozed gel on the floor, dripping from the hose connected to the face mask and the two pipes connected to my nether regions. The gravity felt higher than on Earth and the pipes pulled in places I didn’t want to be pulled. What they dripped from their severed ends wasn’t particularly nice either. I pulled at the mask and found there was an extra tube down my nose. It hurt and I had to heal myself as I dragged it out.

  Did I mention it was cold? I was shivering and mustering enough magic to get the gel off me was proving difficult. It hadn’t hurt when I was in the coffin, but now the gel dripping from my hair into my eyes stung like shampoo. Being naked didn’t make things easier.

  I pulled enough magic from the air to make the gel on my head vanish. That gave me the composure to hop the pipes out that were connected below the waist. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when that was accomplished.

  Normally my magical reserves build quickly, but not in this place. The multiverse is filled with magic and those of us who are able to tap it hold magic inside us. The magic was flowing into me and then straight out again. This meant I could only use a limited amount to accomplish anything. I concentrated and forced the gel from my skin. I was still cold, but without the gel’s cooling effect I was far from freezing.

  For the first time I was able to take in my surroundings. More factory than hospital was my first thought, though there was no dust. It was fortunate that the air was breathable, or my time outside the coffin would have been limited. I couldn’t hold enough magic to either hop any distance or create air. I was lucky to be alive. There was a fogginess to the air that made it impossible to see very far.

  My coffin was one of many on the floor. It was heavy engineering cast in the form of a metal box. Supporting girders and other boxes were interspersed above the coffins. The roof must have been at least a 100 feet above me; the fog made it difficult to be sure, and it was made of the same ubiquitous dull grey metal as everything else. There was a hum of power and my bare feet tingled on the floor.

  Clothes would be nice, but I didn’t have the time or magic to spare. I had to get to a place where magic would accumulate inside me so I could hop home. The Progenitors must have some kind of monitoring system and I suspected they already knew I had escaped.

  As if in answer to that thought, I heard a cry above me. Someone or something was looking at me from what must be a walkway. All I saw of them was a dark smudge close to the ceiling. There followed a string of incomprehensible words, of which all I got from the exchange was that the person shouting was angry. I ran.

  As I passed through magic I used it to make the fog denser behind me. A narrow beam of light cut through the fog, missing me but hitting the floor to my side. I was flung into the air as electricity flowed through the floor and hit me. Landing in a crouch, I made the skin of my feet non-conductive.

  That was just in the nick of time as another beam cut through the fog and sparks danced over my toes. There was a gap in the machinery to the left and I took it. One direction is as good as another when you have no idea where you’re going.

  “Representative Jake Morrissey, please stop. You are in no danger. You need to be returned to the Conference immediately.”

  The message came from every direction at once and echoed after it finished. I continued running. If they didn’t want to kill me they had chosen a strange way to show it. There was a door in front of me. Bigger than your typical door, but a rectangular shape with a handle is a door anywhere in the multiverse, right?

  Wrong. Opening this one proved that many things can lie behind an opening. In this case it appeared to be about a million gallons of water. The ensuing flood resulted in my head colliding with something behind me and the world went dark.

  Hands lifted me onto something soft. I opened my eyes but they wouldn’t focus and all I could see were three fuzzy shapes in a sea of white. Something pressed against my arm and I felt a sharp sting. Then the world vanished into a warm friendly sea of dark.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Alisandra said softly and I was instantly awake. I was standing spread-eagled in front of her, my legs and arms forming an X. Whatever was holding me in place was invisible and I tried to imagine it gone with no luck at all. At least I was clothed.

  She stood inches from me, our faces level. Moving closer she blew gently on my face, her breath sweet, warm, and intoxicating. Then she licked me from the bottom of my jaw to the middle of my right cheek. I felt a familiar tingle as certain parts of my body responded on automatic pilot.

  “You taste wonderful.” She laughed and stepped back.

  She wore a toga which she undid and let drop to the floor. “It’s our time, Jake; time to fulfil our darkest fantasies.”

  “Let me go.” I am not particularly good at being faithful, but I’m trying to be.

  “You can get out of here simply by wanting to, Jake.”

  She waited expectantly, but my best efforts to get free came to nothing.

  “But you’re still here, I see. Let’s play a game where you’re my captive and I can do whatever I want to you.”

  I struggled against my bonds and imagined walking free, but nothing happened. The rules of the Conference seemed to have changed, at least as far as I was concerned.

  She put a finger to her lower lip and tilted her head, contemplating her next move. I closed my eyes and willed myself to Fluffy. When I opened them she was still there and I was still bound.

  I was suddenly naked. A large cube of ice appeared in her hand and she rested it against my chest. It was surprisingly
cold and I gritted my teeth.

  “Is it cold, my lovely?” she murmured softly as she slid the cube down my chest to my belly button. “But we must quench the heat below, now mustn’t we?”

  I grunted as she held the ice against the family jewels. They drew up into my abdomen in response. Strangely, this didn’t stop another part of my body from remaining as hard as stone.

  “I can’t stop you. Let me go.”

  “Of course you can’t,” she giggled. “I knew you really wanted me.”

  She shuffled even closer and our lips met. I closed my eyes and imagined being alone somewhere else, but she pulled at my lips with her teeth and I continued to be trapped. Then she reached forward and moments later she had me inside her. Using me like a dog in heat. I closed my eyes and thought of England, but it didn’t stop her and my arms and legs remained pinned. There was no way to resist.

  7. Raped

  Why couldn’t I get away? Even in the aftermath when all possible lust had faded I was still trapped. No matter how many times I wished myself away I was still there when I opened my eyes. How could this have happened? My wives were going to kill me for this. Well Esmeralda was; Jenny would give me that hurt look of hers, which was so much worse.

  Alisandra snuggled against me. She appeared to have fallen asleep and was making little snorking sounds against my chest. What was keeping her upright, I couldn’t imagine. The previous contestant for that title had shrunk at the end of our tryst and was no longer playing any part in the proceedings.

  “I see you have wasted no time getting into trouble,” my dragon said, with more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

  “I couldn’t get away.” That sounded like a thin excuse, even to me.

  Alisandra stirred against my chest. “Jake wanted it or he wouldn’t be here,” she said sleepily. Her fingernails dug into my flesh and I fought to avoid giving out a girly scream.