Rymewood
Chapter 01
The Master and the Mage
“You’re getting good at this, Sweetling.”
The man’s fingers stroked through her golden hair, running a line from the top of her head to behind her ear. These were not movements of force, nor ones of encouragement. He was letting her know he was there, that he appreciated what she was doing. He exhaled softly, his breath catching for a second at the pleasure she was causing him.
The two of them were a picture of contrasts. The man looked to be in his fifties, his frame stocky, keen eyes taking in everything she was doing. In another life he might have passed for a seasoned soldier, though the quality of the clothes he wore marked him as somebody of noble birth, or somebody of money. The woman was slight, young, a tumble of golden hair spilling over her left shoulder, pale skin unblemished by age or circumstance. Her eyes were blue, and she looked up at him with reverence as she fulfilled her duties, kneeling between his open legs.
The man, Kincaid Tylea, was supposed to be the beneficent ruler of the small backwater of Rymewood, a town known only to those that hunted fortune in the Great Beyond.
Four weeks ago, the citizens of the Valantir Empire knew the woman as Emmalyn Orthinwright, First Staff of the Unbowed Order, one of a select few that could bend the arcane winds to her will.
He didn’t use those titles when he referred to her now. Why would he? It seemed to Kincaid that ‘Concubine’ tied everything up nicely.
Emmalyn felt him pulse in her mouth, the accompanying groan that spilled from his lips telling her he was close. Her heart quickened with excitement, her movements growing quicker, more eager. She felt pride at what he’d said to her, a deep, writhing sense of satisfaction that he’d drilled into her. The woman’s tongue ran hot along the underside of his shaft, coaxing out her reward. In a deft movement, his hand slipped from her ear to grip her head firmly, never letting her stray too far from his hardness. They both knew where his seed would go.
For all his control, the excitement was plain to hear in his voice; Kincaid reaching his limit.
“Ngh — no more messes Songbird.”
She could only groan in acknowledgement, her own excitement reaching a zenith. He throbbed again, his grip tightening, a shudder, a groan. The first squirt landed over her tongue, filling her mouth with his taste. Their eyes met, the man studying her as she drank him in. She never spilled a drop.
“Ah — good girl” he breathed, lying back on his chair, basking in the afterglow of his pleasure, stroking her hair as she nursed every drop. Kincaid muttered a quiet prayer to the Gods. A man of his age was supposed to be entering the twilight of his years, not sampling the delights of the First Staff’s mouth.
It had been the Artefact that changed everything. The memory of its arrival stirring in his mind.
To all that looked upon it, the thing seemed little more than an alchemy of art and magic, a shimmering glass orb surrounding undulating clouds of purple smoke and twinkling lights. Beautiful, to be sure, but nothing more special than the other relics that the Hunters recovered from the Beyond. Even Emmalyn had made no special mention of it as she’d shown him her haul weeks ago, a welcome distraction from the mundanity of governing Rymewood. She’d been his guest of honour, regaling him with tales of hideous creatures, dark dungeons and the thrill of life out beyond civilisation.
It was only in the night that the thing spoke to him, whispering in his ear, telling of how its power, twinned with the right ambition, could unlock so many wondrous doors. Piece by piece, it broke him down, an idea becoming an obsession. It had been easy to steal. What guard would prevent their employer from taking what he willed in his own house? He brought the Artefact to his study, letting its powers wash over him, learning of its secrets. The construct could not exert power on its own, it needed somebody, an avatar, to channel its powers. It had waited for so very long.
He did not sleep that night.
His early attempts were clumsy. Animals, beasts, simple creatures. He learned to draw upon the Artefact, exerting his influence, making them dance to his merry tune. They were parlour tricks. Intelligent creatures were something different, harder. With them, Kincaid flexed his power with wanton abandon, trying to dominate the minds of his staff utterly, making them slaves to his will. The results were… imperfect. Many of the early ones did not survive, and the process left those that did with glassy eyes, unresponsive, dead in all but name. Thankfully, he employed many citizens in his service.
It was trial and error that taught him that exerting too much of an influence in a single moment would snap the minds of the higher races. Instead of breaking them, he needed to bend them by degrees. The end result was the same, but everybody shifted slightly differently. One by one, he took what remained of his staff under his control, the Governor’s mansion becoming a cult, a staging ground for his wider ambitions. The mansion was first, the town would come next.
There was a small wrinkle in his plan. Emmalyn. The Mage had been growing increasingly suspicious of the disappearances, the new ‘attitudes’ of some of his help. He hadn’t wanted to take her. The last thing his developing movement needed was the Unbowed Order taking an interest. Equally, he didn’t know how a woman of her abilities might react to the Artefact’s magic. However, her growing interest forced his hand. Capture her, or risk discovery.
Kincaid was no fool. One did not rise to rule a town through accident. His stocky frame and soldier’s stance was a carefully cultivated front. The man was content to let people look at his physicality and see little more than a warrior who had risen above his station, not understanding the keen mind that lay behind his eyes. So, he studied, delving into his library, learning what the scholars of old could teach him about the Unbowed Order. What he found did not inspire confidence. The Order trained those it deemed worthy from childhood, unlocking their potential while instilling within them a steely discipline. They were the elite of the Valantir Empire, a force that operated with complete impunity, answerable only to themselves and the Emperor. He had reached an impasse.
The Artefact opened his mind to other possibilities.
The Order demanded complete obedience from its acolytes. From first introduction to final graduation, those that were to become the sword of the Empire trained with those of the same sex. The Order instructed them to bury their feelings, to forswear pleasures of the flesh in favour of the grander glory of the Empire. While the Order’s leaders were more than happy to craft efficient killers, the idea that they might blow off some steam in the arms of another was too much. Kincaid mused whether Emmalyn was still a maiden, indeed, whether she had felt a man’s lips against hers—or a woman’s. At this, the Artefact thrummed with excitement.
The Order’s oversight provided his opportunity. Kincaid understood perfectly that if she desired it, Emmalyn could snuff out his life without breaking a sweat. But magic required concentration. Would she be able to call upon her powers when distracted by the yearnings of her body? He savoured the thoughts of such a powerful follower, one that would, in time, be more than keen to relieve his more worldly needs.
The initial arcane workings were simple enough, the Artefact having taught Kincaid so much in their time together. The genius of his plan lay in fact he was not breaking the natural order to get what he desired. Emmalyn may have had arcane wards to protect her from a fireball hurled by a warlock, but she was unguarded when it came to enhancing her biological needs.
Kincaid inflated her libido, enhanced her sensitivity, left her such that the sensation of her robes gliding over her nipples left the woman flustered, breathing hard. He delighted in watching her suffer with her new unbound desires, catching her staring at his guardsmen training. Her mind on things other than the arcane. While the mage continued her investigations into his dealings, she couldn’t muster the same zeal, finding herself easily distracted, easily led astray. Kincaid was more than eager to help her fall. Emmalyn must have believed her prayers answered when he invited her to another private dinner, thinking perhaps that she might turn the opportunity into an interrogation. Instead, he flared her desires more than regaled her with tales of his exploits at the local brothel, how the women he took quivered and moaned under him, how he delighted in stoking a woman’s inner fire.
As he spoke, Emmalyn could only squirm on her seat, trying to hide the signs of her arousal. She’d woken up wet that morning, aching, feeling an itch deep inside her she did not know how to scratch. She should have been questioning him, using the opportunity. Instead, she was quiet, rapt in his descriptions of shared pleasure. It was so easy to imagine herself as one of those women, groaning, quivering, satisfied. There was no subtlety in the abruptness with which she excused herself from his table, desperate to find release. Kincaid had only smiled, shifting the last pieces into place within her mind, inflating her desires once more and, with her mental barriers down, inserting himself as the object of her desires. He needed only wait.
She had come to him that night. Knocking on his door, waiting with her heart in her throat.
The sight of Emmalyn that night had been one for the ages. So unsure of herself, trembling like a leaf, wearing only her chemise, a thin sheen of sweat covering her skin. She bit her lip, taking in the sight of him, whimpering, unable to speak, unable to put a word to her desires. He led her inside his bedroom wordlessly, delighting in how she quivered when his hands came to her shoulders, helping her coverings fall to the floor. She was dripping. Her lack of experience was a delight, the once mighty First Staff looking like a lost animal as he eased her onto her back, spread her legs and showed her what she’d missed her entire life. Emmalyn’s moans sang out so beautifully as his tongue explored her sex, the woman’s nectar the finest thing he had ever tasted. Kincaid took his time. He’d always delighted in bringing a woman to her limits. Why rush when the process was so delectable?
For Emmalyn, the pleasure was beyond words. She had, like so many other acolytes, felt pangs of need as she grew from girl to woman. A stifled moan, muffled by a pillow, was not an alien sound in the training quarters when she was a teen. There had been moments when even she had let a hand snake down between her legs, cupping her sex, letting a finger caress her most intimate parts. Eventually though, the shame would cause her to stop, the matrons of the Unbowed Order drilling into them the ruination that followed if one gave themselves over to pleasure.
There was no shame now. The strokes of his tongue were slow, deliberate, each one sending a fresh wave of pleasure lancing through her body, causing her back to arch, moans to spill from her lips. As his pace quickened, her hands roamed through his hair, gripping him, pulling him closer as an unstoppable pressure built within her. The facade of the unstoppable mage melted away, leaving only a woman aching for release, aching for him.
She was loud when she came. Then she was his.
The memory danced in his mind as he watched her clean his cock, taking in the joy on her face as she serviced her new master. She attended to him after that, dressing him, preparing him for the day ahead. While Kincaid’s ambition was vast, Rymewood still needed running, certain plans would need to wait, enjoyable as they may be. He paused at the doorway, admiring her naked form, suppressing the urge to have her there and then.
“You and I will have a chat with your apprentice this evening, Sweetling. I think it’s time we show her your true colours.”