Magic Ethereal

Chapter One:

It was the kind of tavern that no matter how big you build the fire it still stays cold, and judging from the dismal men clustered around the even more dismal fire, this fact had not changed yet.

The clatter of cutlery and dishes came from the kitchen. There was a grunt of agreement from a dark corner no one looked directly at because of the two shadowy characters situated in it. The bitter laugh of a lady of negotiable virtue rattled around the room. The loud talking of the few people who were involved in a game of ‘Watch Me’ and another of people arguing. There were two of them arguing, one taller then the other with another person standing behind the taller of the two, obviously his friend or just there to make sure the other didn’t try anything stupid – or rash, which would most likely be the case.

And it was to these specific three people that Riance was paying attention to.

One was a man who was so plain that if someone asked what he looked like the only answer would be ‘everyone’, and the other person was very noticeable. He was the loudest – and also the shortest – of the arguers, considering that he was about three foot six inches.

The third person – seeming in a category of human all his own – the one simply observing, was like a spider. Creepy, dark colored and looking like he just had a bug fall into his web.

‘‘Tis not robbery!’ The one with a nondescript face was yelling, which Riance had – coincidentally – dubbed The Nondescript.

‘’Tis if I can’t afford to pay you!’ The Midget – yet another of Riance coincidentally named men - was yelling back.

She was sitting at a dank table that was originally brown, but then turned black and then a kind of grey colour but was now slightly turning brown again at the edges, to which she avoided all direct contact with.

The arguing pair got a notch louder.

‘I can’t pay ye!’ The Midget was yelling now.

‘Then I’ll take it out of ye skin!’ The Nondescript yelled and launched himself at The Midget as the third person looked about, challenging others to join in.

Instantly, the room erupted into motion as men put as much distance as possible between the combatants and themselves. Riance leapt from her seat and did the only thing she could think of, gripped the edge of the table and overturned it and forced the rest of her group back and away from the fight. Marques – the type of person who had his sword out at even the most docile of events – had his rapier and a long dirk out as The Nondescript started to draw his slamanca.

An off duty soldier jumped to his feet but lost his footing and fell forward. As he tried to rise, he found his chin met – rather intimately – with the toe of Marques’ boot. He collapsed into a heap at the young mans feet. A veteran guard leapt forward executing a vicious cut at Riance’s head. Riance deftly parried the swipe with her falcata and returned a vicious thrust that her opponent didn’t dodge quickly enough. He fell like all the others did.

Marques looked over at The Midget who was currently ramming his fist into someone’s groin and smiled as he noted it was The Nondescript man. The Midget nodded his own greeting and watched as the man engaged the one man still willing to fight.

The Nondescript man The Midget had been arguing with before pulled his sword clear. The Midget ignored it and rabbit punched the man again in the groin - after he failed to fall the first time - who fell on the ground and struggled to breathe.

Marques and The Midget incapacitated their opponents around the same time.

‘Riance! Could you use a hand?’ Marques shouted.

Riance didn’t reply and The Midget turned around with Marques just as another moved into the clear space with a hoplite sword in hand and was about to over-hand Riance’s head open.

The Midget raced forward, even before Marques had taken in the situation. As The Midget reached the person about to cut open Riance’s head he jumped off his feet and kicked the man squarely behind the knees. He crumpled to the ground faster then he had ever seen anyone fall before.

But he was soon up again and rounding on The Midget, who was recovering from hitting his head on an – inconveniently placed – chair. The sword came down and The Midget looked up… and up… and up… and the sword didn’t hit him.

He blinked and looked around him, the sword lay on the ground and the mans brain matter was splattered in his lap, in his hair and in a wide arch around him. He was quite seriously dead – the other man, that is.

Riance panicked and unconsciously threw her mind out in her fear that someone would be hurt. A thread of something caught her and reeled her towards a being that was small and a glowing red on gold so bright it nearly blinded her.

The colors turned comforting and she felt herself blend into the glowing creature with such a slowness it was like treacle. Things tightened as if something more personal was touched when it was physically impossible for them to actually be touched. A voice trickled in with the same slowness and said one word that seemed to make her one with the entity, in more ways then one.

- Flame -

And then it slipped further into her mind and filled all the gaps that hadn’t seemed to be there until they were filled. Instinctively Riance knew she had found her Familiar, the guides and helpers to Witches who had chosen to do good and she also knew that he was going to help. What she hadn\'t expected was it to be a wholly sexual thing. Goose-bumps broke out on her skin and she fought the urge to sway and fall to the ground in wonton abandon.

- Allow me to handle this situation until you have the, uh…skill –

The double entendre meaning was not lost on Riance, and she came back to herself just in time to find herself swinging the middle of her sword through the top of a mans head. He collapsed and Riance saw he had been about to kill The Midget.

Riance gave him a grin that belied a beserker but quickly spun around when The Midget’s eyes went wide and warned her of another mans presence. With the help of her Familiar who was possessing her body, she barely dodged the low thrust the only one still alive or awake to fight… it was The Nondescript mans friend. Riance was filled with battle lust… blood lust… and it appeared that the man she now faced knew she was a beserker but he still yet faced her. More fool him…

Behind her, the man Marques had kicked earlier began to rise and Marques took The Midgets example and kicked him in the groin and he fell like a sack of stones. Marques grinned.

The Nondescripts friend tried a combination attack, a high, low, then a series of chops, and Riance was forced to back away. In the night, whistles could be heard.
‘Riance,’ Marques said.

The hard-pressed red-head grated out – though it was her Familiar speaking – ‘Who?’ As she dodged another masterfully executed combination attack that drove her back more. Riance spoke quietly in their shared mind.

- Me. –

And so Riance/Familiar said a bit breathlessly to Marques, ‘What?’

Marques replied, ‘The Town Watch is coming. You’d better get rid of him quickly.’

‘I’m trying,’ said Riance/Familiar, sharing her love or sarcasm, ‘But he isn’t being as co-operative as I would like him to be.’ And as soon as she spoke, her boot heel struck a pool of spilled ale or blood – she didn’t get a good look, all things considered - and she lost her footing. Her defense was completely gone.

Marques was moving as a sword – with the swordsman behind it – lunged at Riance. She twisted upon the floor, but the mans sword struck her side. Hot pain erupted along her ribs.

And at the same instant the man had opened his left side to a counter thrust. Sitting up on the floor, Riance took over the use of her body again and went for it, thrusting upwards with her already bloody falcata, catching the man in the stomach.

The man stiffened, his eyes went wide and unfocused as he gasped. A red stain began to spread upon his uniform brown tunic. He slipped down her upturned sword until he hit the hilt and gave her a perplexed look, then a pain wracked one, then a blank one as he died.

From outside the sound of rushing men could be heard, Marques said, ‘We’d better get clear of this mess,’ and he gave Riance a hand up and a look of awe.
The Midget was behind them and he gave her a shaky surprised smile then went to one knee, pulled out a small knife she couldn’t identify, held the handle out to her and said in a confused and dazed voice quivering with suppressed emotion;

‘Thee I shall serve, as thee hath served me, by taking debts unto mineself, I, Kyle ap Esher Zaen apt Baronnez apt Assassinae, shall repay thee.’

Riance was dumfounded; not those other words that you use like baffled, mystified or bewildered. She was just dumfounded.

She knew she should do something in return to him but she didn’t know what so she let her Familiar control her hand long enough to reach out and grasp the hilt of his knife, which seemed to squirm in her hand, as if a living thing. She kissed the blade then turned it around and placed the hilt of the knife she had kissed back into his waiting hand.

This action seemed good enough to him for he looked at Riance, and she guessed his new Master – or Mistress, for ‘mistress’ had a double meaning for her – and smiled winningly.

Riance glared at him and turned and walked away. She heard him follow but didn’t deign to look at him. She knew she had gotten herself into deep trouble… she seemed to have acquired herself what her instinct – and Familiar – told her was a ‘debt pledge’.

She quietly berated herself for stupidity in the semi privacy of her mind as she walked, her ribs shooting pains that reached up to her neck and down to her knee while at the same time her Familiar congratulated her in more ways then should be possible and less then comfortable for her... Mentally speaking.

- Stupid. –

- Excellent. –

- Stupid. –

- Excellent. –

- I will not fight with you over such a stupid thing! –

Her familiar drifted a little out of her mind, colors going a muted maroon color, and Riance lost the feeling of completeness and... sensitivity she had gained since his first contact with her. Well goddess damned it all! She was not here to hold hands and coddle the ego of some animal – however it was her Familiar – which she had not even seen yet!

Her familiar seemed to waft away on a breeze in her mind, leaving a hole in her head that it had filled before. Riance stopped walking to glance around her, the night seeming colder and darker than it had before, less appealing. Marques noticed her look and glanced around also, but saw nothing.

Riance shook her head and thought, Only a male would consider being called an animal when he was an animal an insult. Riance decided she would let him think it over and then he would see the fact that he was an animal and that she hadn’t meant it as an insult. Some small part of hre wanted him to realise quickly so she could explore the feelings he gave her in more detail, but the good relegious girl shoved that thought down quickly enough.

Up ahead the sound of whistles grew louder until a small army of black shadows burst forth from an alley and filled up the street leading towards them.

The black shadows turned towards then and started running in their direction, but they weren’t blowing their whistles this time, which was good because Riance didn’t know if she could stand the noise at the moment. She seemed shaky and had a headache that was so bad she couldn’t even consider what the shadow men were yelling at her as they came within earshot.

They clattered to a stop in a pool of yellow light, which spilled from an open window a child leaned out, wanting to see what was happening below.
Riance blinked a few times at the man and said in a slurred voice, ‘What took you so damned long?’


  


She… was in jail. She… was in jail! And why was she in jail? Because, apparently she had caused a bar fight. Her! A bar fight! She had tried to explain to them that she had just been along for the ride, but would they listen? No.

It was a first for her to be on the inside of the bars for a change but the novelty had long since disappeared, she still preferred being on the other side looking in.
Riance was in the Town Watches Tower, which not only went several stories upwards, but also several stories downwards. She was on one of the lower stories, meaning she was underground.

She didn’t mind being underground, it felt comforting, sort of like a den. In fact, if she used her imagination hard enough she could almost make her surroundings look like a den. But using her imagination like that was seriously affecting her headache and it was not for the good.

Riance had been sitting for what felt like an eternity, but it wasn’t eternity, just a very, very long time. She had been sitting for so long she had forgotten what her buttocks felt like and also forgotten what it was like to stand. Not that she wanted to stand, she had tried that earlier and it had hurt, apparently she had a severe injury along her ribs. But not so severe that it required the use of the Town Watches Bonesetter. But that didn’t matter, because she had long since gone past the point of exhausted pain.

She felt like she was going to suffocate. No, she felt like she was going to bleed to death before she suffocated. Her wound was still sluggishly bleeding into the straw below her.

Speaking of which, she was going to have to tell the Watch Commander about the condition of the straw when she was out of this. But somehow she seriously doubted he would change it, it was supposed to be lousy, blood ridden – thanks to her – and down right dirty. Just to make the inhabitants feel at home – the inhabitants of the straw and the cell.

Riance didn’t feel at home. In fact, she felt like she was going to have to scrub for weeks before the grime came off… if she lived long enough.

‘Okay, no thinking like that Riance,’ she thought to herself, or maybe she said it aloud. The guard at the sell door looked in at her. He had had to be posted to stop her from banging her head on the holding cell door, her brilliant idea to get out sooner, which – judging by the fact that she was still inside – hadn’t worked.

She shifted positions, a movement that sent shooting pains along her sides, making she grunted in pain. The guards’ head became visible again. She stared at him with large eyes and thought to herself, ‘This is just too much,’ then let her eyes fall shut and her body slide sideways, so she was lying on the ground.

The darkness was blessed relief to her. She floated in it and reveled in it and allowed it to fill her. She felt herself slipping more into the blackness and a strange silver cord that was attached to womb and then traveled into the darkness, became thinner and thinner.

She knew it was dangerous if the cord snapped but she didn’t care, it was dark and there was no pain, no pain like there had been when there was light.

A red spark appareled on the horizon – or in the middle of the distance, which Riance assumed was the horizon – and attached itself to the silvery cord joining her body.
It traveled up it at an alarming pace, which baffled Riance because she didn’t know why anyone would want to hurry like that in such a place.

It kept coming at that alarming speed until it exploded into her. Riance threw her arms out, a tearing feeling going through her until she felt that she would she ripped in two.

She screamed, the sound dull in the darkness and full of things not quite wholly pain.

She opened her eyes blearily, pain rippled outwards from her like some tangible thing, wrapping around her body in an intimate embrace and drawing from her a gasp of suprised pleasure. Riance didn\'t know what was wrong with her but she accepted what was seeming shoved into her.

The cord had become thinner. In fact, it seemed to be ripped in part of it. Another red light appeared on the horizon. Riance stared, not being able to do anything else.
She knew the red spark, which grew larger and larger, would engulf her, eat her away, separate the cord from her body and wherever it was that it went too.

It raced towards her, and following it was another red spark, this one seeming laced in gold. Riance screamed her anger at the sparks and what she knew they could do to her body, then she screamed her pain which quickly died in a shiver and moan of something not entirely pain as the first one ripped into her body, feeling like a needle driving into her side and into someplace lower.

The third one, the one she knew was the last, got closer. Riance screamed out again, sending the murmurs of her pain down the cord, ripping it more until it hit the next red spark, it stopped for a second and she heard another scream rend the air - if that was what you would call the darkness - this one mixed with the same amount of pleasure as hers had been.

This one cut Riance to her quick. She ripped the screaming spark towards her and drew it in, slowly and it filled her up. It took the holes that were in her and of her and it blocked them.

It took the redness of its body and sent it down the cord and where it hit the rips in the silver thread, they mended.

Riance was still screaming, but it was all pleasure now. Riance felt it take her and toss her around and around like in a wind and she let it until it dissipated and she was left gasping at the savageness (is that a word? Let me know) of her orgasm.

A voice, sweet as sunlight through new spring leaves, fell into her head like water and said in a husky wracked tone that was still lovely and melodious:

- Riance, my flame… that was probably the most interesting thing you have ever done… –

And then all was nothing.


  


Someone was calling her name over and over again. It sounded like they had been crying. This fascinated Riance, for who would cry over her?

She shifted her head and her name came again, but this time sounding hopeful. It sounded like her Aunt. Riance tried to open her eyes but they were stuck, so she tried to speak but all that came out was a croak.

Her Aunts voice came again and she stayed still. She could perfectly picture the frown – which seemed permanently fixed on her Aunts face since she was a young girl adopted by her – and the honey colored eyes.

Her real mother and father were dead, her mother in a fire disaster that she had only just been saved from and her father in a boating accident earlier the same year her mother had died in. He had been a fisherman, she a seamstress.

She tried speaking to her Aunt Doanna but her voice seemed to stick in her throat and, disgusted with herself, Riance tried again and got part of the sentence she had been trying for out.

‘Could… water…?’

Who ever was beside her rose briskly and went away on a breeze of earth scented air. They came back again quickly as if terrified Riance had left for somewhere else.
Something feeling like rough fired clay was placed on her lips and water poured out of it. Riance let it run down her lips, which were swollen shut, until she could open them without pain. The water flowed into her mouth like rain, sweet and plentiful.

All the while a calm voice was talking, but it was not as if it was to her. Then a gruff voice replied and Riance knew instantly that that gruff voice was her debt pledge, Kyle from Esher Zaen – wherever that was – son of Baronnez son of Assassinae.

She struggled with herself for a minute then snapped her eyes open. She looked at Kyle and smiled; though it felt more like a grimace – and judging from his eyes it must have looked like one too.

She made a small movement with her hand – all she could manage at the moment – and gestured him over and he came like a good little lackey.

When he was within reach, she dredged up all her strength and snapped her arm out, wrapping her hand around his neck. He made an involuntary noise but stayed still. He knew it was within her right to kill him now.

She tried to make it known to him through her eyes that it was his fault – and it most certainly was – that she was even in this mess in the first place. He had been the one who was attacked and the one that had fought back. Hell, he was the one owing money as well!

He said, ‘I know, but you can kill me later when the effort of it won’t kill you. That’s my job now, as you seem to know. That’s a bit odd, you know, that you would know an Assassins debt pledge…’ he drifted off, obviously waiting for her to explain herself. Riance just stared at him, letting her anger at him flow into her eyes. Her famous ‘smoldering glare’ as her Aunt Doanna had laughingly called it when she had first used it on her when she was very young.

Kyle sighed and lifted her hand from his neck with surprising less effort then Riance had thought would be necessary and placed her hand back down beside her, smiling all the while through her rage.

Kyle turned to the person who he had been talking to before and Riance shifted her attention to take in what was revealed, what Riance would later call a ‘women posing as a soldier’, never minding that that was probably what she looked like as well.

The woman had straight black hair that only came down to her shoulders and was tied half up and half down with an unknown clip. Her eyes were the most beautiful color of purple that seemed to have flames set within them, as though glinting outwards through glass. She was tanned, as if she had traveled long and hard in the sun and her mouth was frowning at her, even though it would look better if it were smiling.

Riance gazed at her for a long time and thought to herself in a recessed part of her mind where her instincts come from, ‘I am going to have to get along with her for a very long time.’

Then the face broke into a bright smile as she stepped towards Riance. She placed a hand on her shoulder and said in a very calm and self assured voice Riance had never heard from a woman – sexist but true – ‘My name is Juniper, envoy of the Great Mother Constancy, and I come on her behalf to welcome you to the Witching Circle.’

Riance felt as if she was sinking, the world as she knew it was going away from her very fast, and she had a feeling that it was all her fault.


Authors Note: What do you think so far? If you like tell me! If you dont... The tell me!!! Wow, this is my first kind of sexual story that I ever tried to write. Oh, later when she meets her Familiar.... You have ho idea what tricks that male can do with his tongue!!! Oh, go here and be cool:

http://groups.msn.com/amanitianempire/

Its the site that my friend and I created because of this story. I love it....... You should too. Click the link!