Tales from a Lewd Fantasy World – Tale 5 – Destiny, College, and Drunken Flings

All right, Anna, this is your chance to shine!

I mean, aside from all those other chances you wasted throughout your entire life…

OK, none of that. I may lack talent in academics, swordsmanship, battle magic, politics, horse riding, poetry, sewing, … I’m pretty sure I was going somewhere with all of this other than a spiral of self-inflicted depression.

“All right, class, I know this isn’t that orthodox, but I’d like to start our studies in practical divination by going back to the very roots of it,” Mister Lucas says as he guides us through the forest path closest to Peristeri village, briefly pointing to an oak’s exposed root.

Which makes half the class groan out loud.

... Oh! I get it.

I get that at least I now know somebody as talented at humor as I am.

“As most of you should know—and if you don’t, I must wonder why did you pick this class—there are many types of fate. The Greater Fate and the Small Fate are the broader categories, and almost everything can fit between the two. The Greater Fate is the river flow, the unavoidable turn of events that carries us all in gentle pulls and roaring rages. It is the fabric of history, and most of us have no choice but to follow along or be drowned by it.

“Which sounds really ominous, I guess, but, really, most of us don’t need to worry about the damn thing. The Greater Fates are the business of greater people.”

Such a show of confidence in the potential of your students, Mister Lucas, such a dreadful proclamation of what most of us will ever amount to.

I mean, you’re not wrong, but still.

Walking in front of me, and apparently disagreeing, Iris makes a displeased face before throwing her long, blonde hair back over her shoulder.

And almost hitting me in the face.

Yeah. That’s Iris for you.

“The most well-known of the Greater Fates is that of the Demon Lord and the Hero from Another World. It is said that, when the balance of our realm is threatened by the appearance of a demon powerful enough to risk everything there is to risk, the Goddess herself will look for a champion willing to leave his former home behind. They will be granted the touch of the Goddess, and they will face the Demon Lord.

“Whether they triumph or perish, that battle will set our path for centuries. Now, can anyone tell me in what other way does the Greater Fate of the Hero affects us? Anna?” he asks, turning right back on the heel of his short leather boot and staring at me as if waiting for something.

Come to think of it, the whole class is staring at me.

Iris looks particularly annoyed.

… Fuck.

“Can you… repeat the question?” I ask the black-haired man with the perennial smirk.

A smirk that turns slightly askew as his eyebrow rises in… mocking rebuke? I’m unclear on that one, and I’m definitely not asking.

Lucas sighs and looks at the gathered first-year students of the College in a ‘what can you do’ manner before looking back at meek little me, who shouldn’t ever be the center of attention of a group of peers who’re already pissed off at what should be an easy class turning out to be a trekking expedition in disguise.

I mean, seeing as we’re all wearing our College uniforms, miniskirt and open blue robes included (in the girl’s case—most boys tend to avoid the skirt), and that the late spring is turning to heat-scorching summer, I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would be annoyed at our teacher, despite him being the youngest one in the College, not much older than us, and that almost all of my so inclined classmates have been languidly batting their eyelashes at him since we had our first divination class two weeks ago.

… I’m not much of an eyelash-batter. Even if he’s hot. And I can kinda see the appeal for girls who feel like a more mature man than our beer-imbibing classmates should be—

Ah! The damn question! He just repeated it!

Right, right, he was babbling on about Greater Fates, and the Hero from Another World, so… Most likely he was asking about consequences from the summoning? Other fates derived from it? And something related to aristocrats? Worth a shot.

I mean, I either take a chance and maybe embarrass myself, or admit I was contemplating the merits of older men with raven black hair and steel eyes when compared to somebody like Tobias.

Ugh. Tobias.

Such a slime ball.

“Anna?” Mister Lucas asks, that eyebrow doing its thing yet again.

Damn those eyebrows of his. So un-mage like. Mages should be beetle-browed, with eyebrows prominent and thick enough that they hide their eyes other than for a glimmer of bright knowledge and insight into the workings of the world, not be perfectly sculpted, with a sharp peak that—

“Anna!”

“Ah! Yes! The Greater Fate of the Hero is the root of the royal bloodline, as the Goddess’ touch lingers for generations. Plenty of noble lines have a Hero in their direct lineage, and, more often than not, dynasties are replaced when the last of the blessing fades,” I rush out to say.

Mister Lucas stares at me for a moment longer than he should, and I start to pray to Athena, goddess of slackers who didn’t pay attention in class and have to resort to trickery (or so Mom claims) before he sighs.

“Very well, Anna. That is the second most direct consequence of the Hero’s fate every time one appears. As expected of a noble to know that much,” he adds.

And the rest of the class, Iris in particular, titters at that remark.

Trying (and failing) not to blush, I stare straight ahead as I try not to think about how the College is supposed to only let in the very best of the best, those who will wield miracles at their fingertips… and how I barely managed to get in after failing at everything else I ever tried my hand at just because Mom strong-armed Auntie into letting me in.

… Going back home for the holidays will be awkward. Especially if I manage to get expelled.

“All right, settle down; I wouldn’t have asked a noble about this if I wanted another answer,” he adds, … defending me? The jury’s still out on that one. “Now, just as there are Greater Fates, there are the small ones. The flow of the river is overwhelming, but the small eddies, the droplets of water that hang in the air when it takes a sharp turn… those are easier.”

Yeah. And that’s why I’m here.

I don’t have raw power. I never will.

But… it’s often been said that the greatest seers don’t have much power. That their inner reservoirs are never agitated enough to disturb the flow of the fates around them.

It’s said that a great seer’s strength will meet the flow around it, let it in, dissolve in it.

And it’s also said that the greatest seers will tint the flow right back, their intent carried along after dissolving, their own fate turning in the eddies of the greater one.

So… If I ever want to amount to anything, if I ever want to be any kind of great magician… That seems to be my only option.

No pressure.

At all.

Really.

I mean, it’s not like I’m the last of the Arvanitaki, and that Mom and Auntie are famous mages who’ve left their name written in military history. It’s not like there’s any kind of expectationto see me thrive at this last chance before I get married off to a husband worthier than I am. No, really. Everything’s fine.

Mostly because it’s very, very difficult to perform any kind of divination while in the middle of a panic attack, so everything has to be fine, and I’m not hyperventilating—

“That finishes the history part of the lecture—” Damn it! “—so now I’d like to introduce you to the very first exercise you should all practice before we delve into more advanced topics.”

Great. I just skipped over half of his speech. I really hope he’s the kind of teacher who basically repeats the textbook.

Which is something I neverthought I would hope for.

“Remember that the river of fate touches all, that everything is surrounded by its currents. Just like a river, what comes before is a clear sign of what will come after; the flow must follow the riverbed. And, just like a river, you can see how the water moves by how it moves the things submerged in it.

“Now, many think this means a seer should go into a trance to feel the currents going around and through them, and that’s true in more advanced practices. But for beginners, that is much too unclear. Instead… We will look at the surface. We will find something floating downstream and follow its path to divine the currents beneath.”

“The... surface, sir?” Tobias asks, his tone full of oily obsequiousness.

Ugh. Tobias.

“The surface… is the world,” Mister Lucas says, voice full of everything a mage should be, of mystery, and insinuation, and secrets known yet not shared until their time comes.

…

Oh gods, please, don’t let me get a silly schoolgirl crush on the hot, young teacher. Please, please, please…

“And the leaves are…?” Iris asks, tone full of… Iris.

I bet she can afford to get a crush, unfairly hot blonde that she is…

“The leaves are leaves,” he answers with a cheeky smile before seeing the unimpressed glare that gets him. “Leaves, and birds, and clouds, and everything and anything. Fate is all around us, moving incessantly, and anything is susceptible to be caught up in it and show you hints of the greater mystery.

“Why is that, Anna?”

Fuck. Again?

“Because… we also are immersed in fate. And so, we carry that meaning with us, and we just have to let it connect to the signs that appear when we’re open to them.”

Oh. Great.

People are staring.

Including Tobias.

Ugh.

“Precisely! Now, for this exercise, this is just what each and every one of you will do: open your senses and let the world come to you. Don’t force it, just allow it to reveal what it wants you to see. The harder you look for it, the more you try to force your own views, the murkier the sign will be, and the more likely that your reading will be mere fancy. It will take you all years to learn how to be certain something is divination and not invention, but, well, you know the thing about the journey of a thousand miles,” he points out, cheeky smile yet again present as he looks at our shoes, now dusty from the dirt road.

There’s another chorus of groans. I join in.

Just to feel included, really!

Anyway, it looks like everybody is looking around them with the weird face people make when trying to not think, which usually ends up in them thinking ‘not think,’ followed by ‘damn it!’

No, I’m not bitter, nor have I done this in front of the mirror. Shut up.

But, really, looking up at the sky? Trying to see if any noteworthy clouds pass by? That’s not how it’s done, people!

Or, well, I guess it ishow it’s done, just... not when surrounded by other seers trying to do the same and forcefully disturbing the currents of fate by all focusing on the same thing. No, you need to find something uniquely yours, a piece of the world that mirrors what goes on inside of you. This is why you never share your tarot cards, and why nobody has precisely the same astral chart.

And this is why I decide to take a walk.

Despite my short legs being slightly miffed at me after the long trek from the college to the village, and from the village to the forest. I’m pretty sure Mister Lucas didn’t get any new admirers today.

Me included. Really.

I mean, it’s not like I just left behind my classmates and started wading through the still sparse forest, dry leaves crunching beneath my heels as I ponder the azure eyes beneath dark eyebrows of the one man I’ve met in here who doesn’t make me want to roll my eyes at every line that spews out of their elitist, prideful, gods’-gift-to-womankind mouths.

… Damn it.

Yeah. All right, I’ll at least admit this to myself: I like him.

He’s hot, young, and yet experienced enough to be teaching at the College. He’s a bit of a dork, with jokes so bad I can imagine myself making them. And…

And the way that white shirt of his moves when lightly drenched with perspiration after a long walk beneath a harsh sun makes it exceedingly clear that he’s an ex-adventurer and has kept in shape ever since.

A seer adventurer? Oh, that’s… whoa.

That’s like two fantasies packed in one that turns into a third, better-endowed fantasy.

Damn it.

All right, brain out of the gutter. I should be doing my divination exercise and not thinking about my hot, young teacher who’s currently working for my own family, and would you look at how interesting that particular scenario would be—

Right. Also, unethical.

So, just take a deep breath, let my mind flow out with the warm air, let the world come in with the cool current swirling inside my chest, and open my eyes to find a sign that—

Two dogs are fucking.

…

What?!

***

Thankfully, Mister Lucas doesn’t ask us to share our particular auguries. He just tells us to think about them, to let them naturally slot into anything we’ve been pondering about, maybe see if they can relate at all to something we’re undecided about or that we want to take the next step in.

I almost pass out with my damn blush.

Iris steadies me.

She spends the whole trek back making sure I don’t faint.

Iris! Helping!

Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!

All right, it may be that I’ve been slightly unfair in my mental characterization of the not-so-haughty blonde and that she’s a genuinely caring and helpful person beneath her prickly façade, but having that particular insight is not helping me, at all, with my brain trying to come up with ever more elaborate scenarios on how Fate’s personal message to me relates at all with what I was thinking right before I got it.

It’s not like I want to think about my hot teacher pining me down to the forest floor, tearing my miniskirt off and ravaging me until my tongue lolls out, and—

“Anna? Do you need me to help you walk?” Iris asks.

Damn it!

“No, thank you, Iris, I… I think it’s just a bit of heatstroke. Nothing that resting in my room won’t fix,” I tell her with a smile that’s nervous because I’ve never spoken this long with her and not because my filthy, filthy brain is filled with images of Mister Lucas ripping his shirt open, his bare chest glistening with sweat and shimmering with the dappled light filtering through ancient oaks.

Nor because I’m pretty sure I’ll be picturing just that while ‘resting in my room.’

Pinky swear.

“Are you sure? It’s no trouble to offer you my arm,” she insists, her mouth curling in something that may be concern in her, but quite frankly looks like disgust.

Look, Iris, it’s not my fault I got the wrong idea about you if you advertise the wrong idea.

“I’ll be fine, really. Nothing to worry yourself about,” I try to reassure her, briefly patting her shoulder.

Her eyebrow rises. Ah. She must not be used to being touched.

… She offered first!

“If you say so. But I really think we should at least inform Mister Lucas—”

“No!”

Aaaand now she’s staring at me.

Great.

At least now I’m not thinking about Mister Lucas pushing me against a tree, the bark pressing against my bare, soft breasts as he ruts me and I’m doing it again, why, Anna, why—

“Care to explain?” Iris, feigning disinterest very poorly, asks.

“I’d rather not,” I tell her, my palms over my heated, burning cheeks and very tempted to climb up to cover my eyes and let me pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

“Does it… have anything to do with your divination?” she asks.

I don’t deign to answer her impertinent question. Unless me keening like a wounded animal counts. Then I totally answer.

“Oh…” she says before gently (and hesitatingly to the point of aversion) patting my back. “That bad, huh?”

I shake my head. More in hopes that I’ll dislocate my own neck than anything else.

“Well, I mean… is it something I should be worried about? Maybe you could ask your aunt for help—”

“No. Please. I beg you. Have mercy.”

“… This is a sex thing. It’s a sex thing, isn’t it?”

I slowly raise my head from the yellow road beneath my feet and look at Iris’s green eyes in what I imagine is a very good rendition of that zombie Mom once decapitated in front of me.

Oh, how I envy him.

“OK, I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, rolling her eyes.

Yet again, I don’t deign to dignify that with an answer.

Other than, you know, swallowing a sob.

***

My room is a refuge from a cruel, uncaring world. A fortress all my own where my horny thoughts can’t catch me, and nothing at all reminds me of my terribly shameful first experience with the one magic art I ever thought I had a chance to excel in.

Other than, you know, the yowling cats in heat beneath my window.

Why.

***

“Stop looking at him,” Iris says while discreetly staring at her dish of rabbit stew without even giving a hint to a casual observer that she’s admonishing the blushing girl in front of her acting like a lovelorn teenager and not at all like a powerful mage-in-training.

That is, me.

My cheeks are burning. So is my neck.

Why.

“This would be far easier if the world didn’t keep conspiring against me,” I mutter as I dip a piece of fluffy white bread in the vinaigrette of my half-finished salad.

The carrots are to die for.

Which makes me think about the pair of cute, white, fluffy, rutting bunnies I came across this morning.

Why.

“The world can’tconspire against you, Anna. The world isn’t sentient,” Iris says, finally giving up on her manners and picking up a piece of bone to suck the tender meat clinging to it that has so far resisted her deft attack with knife and fork.

“Tell that to the pair of flies over there,” I answer while letting my shoulders naturally slump in a defeat I’m too tired to deny.

Iris blinks at me, then turns to her left, following my previous gaze across the solid oak of our communal table in the cafeteria (because I’m now sharing meals with Iris, of all people, which is making our classmates think that haughty nobles are naturally sticking together, which is, in turn, making me think that fuck them).

Anyway, what Iris finds next to the custard-colored, glazed jar of cool water, is a big fly. With a smaller fly atop it.

You know why.

With deliberate slowness, Iris turns to look back at me and lies a commiserating hand atop mine.

“You’re doomed,” she says.

Nodding, I try to drown my sorrows in fluffy white bread soaked with sour goodness.

It… almost works.

Maybe it would’ve if not for the flies’ insistent buzzing.

***

All right, so far, I’ve been subjected to plenty of fauna deciding to show me what, precisely, the fabric of Fate wants me to do. It’s perfectly in line with everything I know about divination, as it would be a sign of non-sentient creatures being influenced by the currents of destiny around me, the leaves being carried atop the surface of the river.

And that’s when I leave the library, having yet again tried to discreetly inquire as to alternate meanings of copulation in divination and auguries (to the very arched eyebrow of an assistant librarian who may be quickly deciding to stop asking me if I need any help).

My head’s still full of the scent of all the books, the soothing silence of the place of learning par excellence a chance to soothe my feverish obsession with a dark-haired man pushing me down on my bed, sliding my legs open, and diving right between them (I’ve managed not to rub my thighs together for almost two hours; I’m so proud of myself), and I feel about as optimistic as I have since I had to look through a thicket of verdant oaks to spot a pair of dogs very enthusiastically affirming their friendship.

That is, of course, when I spot Tobias and a giggling redhead sneaking into a supply closet.

Tobias.

Fucking a redhead.

All right, Fate, I give up. You’ve outdone yourself.

***

“It will help you clear your head,” Iris says.

“It will get me in reach of plenty of alcohol and people likely to have enthusiastic sex with one another while Fate’s out to get me. No, thanks,” I answer while half-blocking the entrance to my room with my body.

She, of course, rolls her eyes.

And crosses her arms beneath a bust I’m not at all envious of. Really.

“Anna, you’re going out to drink with our classmates. It’s not only expected of you to try and make some contacts like everyone else will be trying to do, but you need to get away from your room and breathe air that doesn’t smell of lonely masturbation.”

I blink at her.

Then I blush up to the tip of my ears.

“I… I haven’t—”

“Don’t lie to me. I can see your bedsheets.”

Before I can stop myself, I look back behind me.

My bed is unmade, yes, and it’s afternoon, that’s true, but it’s not like it’s visibly soaked or anything.

Is it?

Suppressing a shudder of self-aware disgust, I turn back to find Iris’s cocked eyebrow.

“Either you dress up nicely and come with me, or I enter your room, quickly open the window, and get you ready myself. Your choice, Arvanitaki.”

Fuck.

“You don’t want to help me undress in the current circumstances,” I tell her, mindful of my hurriedly pulled-up underwear beneath my short skirt.

Let’s just say Anna interrupted.

And that she’s now blushing in a way that seems to mirror my ear-climbing red.

Huh. Cute.

“Right. Then do it yourself. You’ve got two hours,” she says before hurriedly retreating down the corridor and almost bowling over a mousy brunette who’s not fast enough to get out of the way of hurricane Iris.

A hurricane who then quickly stops to make sure the girl’s all right and frets about her like she just found a cute, wounded woodland creature.

Because Iris.

With a not repressed sigh (because what’s the point), I get back into my room, close the door, and rest my back on it.

Then I start hitting the back of my head against the solid oak, hoping that a mild cranial injury will be enough to let me get a hold of my senses.

I don’t know why. It’s not like it has worked over the past few days.

Anyway, I’ve got two hours before Iris barges in here and strips me down, and—wow. Would you look at that.

I may be bisexual.

Damn it.

All right. Clothes. Clothes I will be wearing rather than have them pool beneath me, on top of my bed as I try my very best to fuck myself unconscious with my fingers to flee an unforgiving world. Or, at least, that’s what I tried until the dreams started.

Dreams about a fit man moving on top of me, his chest flexing as powerful arms held me in place, turning my body around so I was on all fours, eager to let him take me, to let him rail me, to let him breed me.

… Fate, it’s not too late. We can still be friends, you know?

Of course, as soon as I think that, the damn cat mewls outside my window.

Fine. Athena, goddess of the loom and cheating students who can’t be arsed to pay attention, I hope very much it won’t be an inconvenience to spank the damn fate-weavers with a wooden spoon, and I swear I wasn’t trying to make that mental image raunchy oh fuck I didn’t want to blaspheme—

Fine. Breathe. It’s not like the goddess is paying attention to me.

I hope.

Come on, time to get prettied up.

***

Results may be… mixed.

OK, it’s not like the girl in the mirror is homely, much less ugly; it’s just that it’s… well, me.

I’ve got the high cheekbones Mom and Auntie are famous for (you know, other than being monsters on the battlefield—that may be a slight contributor to their fame), and my pale blue eyes are just unusual enough that some may think them striking. I’ve also got a smatter of freckles over my pale skin which gives me a bit of color (and screw anyone who thinks they are ‘the mark of an unrefined lady,’ nobody asked, Tobias), my hair is perfectly black, with a glossy sheen that catches the light across the braid laid over my chest.

I… I look fine.

It’s just that I don’t look, you know, stunning.

My emerald green dress reaches down to my calves, which aren’t that well-defined despite my expeditions through the woods back home when I was younger and still thought I had a chance to be a decent adventurer. My bust pushes up the decolletage of the sequined fabric, but not as far as even Iris’s own chest, never mind Mom’s, and my…

Stupidly looking around to make sure there are no witnesses hiding in, you know, my room, I turn aside to look at my butt in profile.

With heated cheeks, I admit to myself that that, at least, is up to expectations.

I mean, damn. I kinda get why the slimeball always stares when I go by.

Now, whether Mister Lucas isn’t interested or is more discreet… that’s still up in the air.

With a sigh, I decide to apply just a bit of blush to help highlight my cheekbones before very carefully applying the black eyeliner. I finish my preparations with a red lipstick and hesitate on whether or not to apply eyeshadow before remembering just how terrible I am at it and that I don’t want to look like a mopey necromancer wannabe.

Not again.

And that’s when somebody energetically knocks on my door hard enough to make me jump.

Briefly grateful that I just didn’t poke my eye out with the eyeliner pencil, I open the door to find Iris wearing a frankly gorgeous royal blue dress that is still casual enough for the kind of get-together (that is: drunken weekend party) that we’re headed to.

She… blinks at me.

Then blushes.

“You clean up nicely,” she mutters.

And I glare at her.

***

Moments later, the glare comes back.

With a vengeance.

“What is hedoing here?” I hiss at her.

“What? Didn’t I tell you?” she blinks at me in faux innocence.

That bitch.

On the other side of the room filled with first-year students ambling about with a variety of alcoholic beverages, Mister Lucas cheerfully waves at me.

That bitch.

“No. No, you didn’t,” I tell her in the kind of tone one may say ‘I’ll purge your family line down to the third generation; I’ll raze your homeland to the ground; I’ll burn any traces of your name so that the future of this country shall only remember you as a ghost, as a nameless terror whose fate shall be used to scare children with—and none will ever dare pity you.’

… Mom may be kind of intense.

And I may not be a worthy heir, given the insolent eyebrow Iris answers my righteous rage with.

“Well, now you know. And you’re trapped in a room full of alcohol with the one man you’ve been touching yourself to for days. Oh my, I wonder how that will turn out,” she says with a disinterested tone that is almost believable.

You know, until the smirk.

“I shall have my vengeance,” I tell her with my best Mom tone.

It’s not very good.

“I look forward to it,” she says before shooting me a very un-Iris, cheeky grin and quickly flouncing away to haunt the meek girl she barreled over earlier.

A girl who’s blushing, stuttering, and trying very hard not to look at Iris’ cleavage.

… Huh.

I… may not be the only one who’s into girls in here. I wonder if Iris knows.

Anyway, alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol before I even try to—

Annabelle is speaking with Lucas.

Touching his arm.

And giggling.

That bitch!

***

It turns out that grabbing a mug of beer and standing in a dark corner while intensely glaring at a guy is not, surprisingly enough, the best way to enjoy a college party.

Shocking, I know.

“You’d look much better with a smile on your face,” a slimeball who’s been trying to crowd my space for the past ten minutes tells me.

“You’d look much better if your mother was an orc,” I answer him.

“Ouch! The kitty has claws.”

“Fuck off, Tobias,” I tell him, glaring at him over the lip of my mug as I take another sip of the still foamy thing.

… It’s been a while. I’m pretty sure it should no longer be foamy.

And that there are a few alchemist wannabes in the room.

Trying to be discreet about it, I pour the rest of the beer into the plant’s pot at my left.

“… You are a weirdo, you know?”

“Well, you’re the one who’s been trying to get into said weirdo’s pants since classes started, so what does that make you?”

“Charmingly persistent?”

“No, Mister Tobias. I’m afraid that makes you a stalker,” a gorgeous voice laden with mystery and danger whispers from behind him.

Or, you know, Mister Lucas comes to my rescue.

Whichever sounds less cringy.

“Ah… ‘Stalker’ may be too strong a word,” Tobias, slowly turning to face his doom, says.

“If you’d rather I use ‘clueless manchild who doesn’t know the difference between hard to get and completely uninterested,’ I shall be accommodating.”

“That sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it?”

Mister Lucas slowly raises a charmingly pointed eyebrow.

Tobias clears his throat.

The eyebrow persists.

“Ah! Fine! I’ll leave her alone, see if you can do any better!” the slimeball finally says as he turns around and flees, throwing his hands up in what I’m sure he thinks is eloquent disgust and not petulant childishness the likes of which could make any woman’s libido whither up and die unless evoking some kind of forbidden, motherly desire.

Mister Lucas stares at him as he goes away, making sure he doesn’t get any bright ideas, and then turns back to me with that same sheepish smile he sometimes dons after telling a particularly bad joke.

“I apologize. I didn’t notice your plight earlier,” he says, adorably rubbing the back of his head in a way that’s just unfair.

“You’re a very good seer, aren’t you?” I tell him.

“I mean… I’m teaching the class?”

“And you used to be an adventurer. A seer adventurer.”

He looks at me weirdly before turning around to make sure that, yes, my dark corner is still mostly vacant.

“Have I been that obvious? Or did your aunt—”

“I haven’t spoken to Auntie about you.”

“Then I havebeen that obvious—”

He catches my fist halfway to his solar plexus.

Good.

“Awareness of your surroundings, maybe about a fraction of a second’s warning of everything that would disturb the flow of your fate. And you keep in shape,” I tell him, staring up into azure eyes that narrow with every word.

“The bare minimum,” he says.

“You don’t know how badly I want to be you,” I answer, taking a step forward.

“You… what?”

“Mom? Auntie? They are monsters. They make armies shudder when they enter the battlefield. Me? This, what you have, is all I can ever have.”

“Anna… You’re fartoo young to be making that claim,” he says. Still holding my wrist.

“You aren’t that much older,” I tell him, licking my lips.

He stares at them.

And, while he does, I slowlylift my other hand to softly grab his white shirt. Why slowly, you ask?

Well, because there’s a difference between splashing in still water and softly gliding your fingertips along a current’s eddies.

So it is with great satisfaction that I see his eyes widen before I turn around and pull him along through the door to my right, which takes us to the corridor leading out of this common room, with just five more steps bringing us to a receded nook in the spiral staircase that leads to the basement.

Then all my liquid courage flees, and I realize what I’ve just done.

So I look back at him and nervously chuckle, because what else am I supposed to do?

“What are you doing?” he asks, pointedly looking at the hand clutching the white fabric of his shirt.

See? He gets it!

“I mean… it seemed like the right thing to do at the time?” I answer, hopefully charmingly rubbing the back of my head.

Going by the way his eyes slowly go from my hand to my eyes, it’s clear all my hopes are forlorn.

“Anna, are you drunk?” he asks very reasonably.

Which is when the door we discreetly exited through is noisily thrown open, and a set of hurried steps go right toward the staircase.

“I can’t wait to get to your room,” a breathy female voice says.

“I can’t wait to get inside of you,” Tobias says.

How?!

“Well, that was… unexpected,” Mister Lucas says after the steps fade away in the distance, his marvelous eyebrow rising yet again.

“Not really…” I mutter as a very familiar blush goes through my cheeks.

“What? Did you expect him to—”

“Not him, but… Look, the way things are going? I wouldn’t be surprised if Iris walked by to gather an impromptu orgy in the hallway.”

“Are… Are you saying somebody drugged the—”

“No! Or, well, maybe, because alchemists are not to be trusted around alcohol, but what I’m saying is that this is all your fault. It’s your fault that the whole world is trying to fuck itself senseless.”

The eyebrow is joined by its sibling. To complete the picture, his eyes widen in a way far more comical than most of his jokes.

Sorry. It takes one to know one.

“It’s my fault that the world is trying to fuck itself? I mean, as far as portents of the apocalypse go—”

“Not like that. As in, sex. Actual sex. Not a symbolic vision of rebirth. Not a sign of new beginnings. Not an augury of a meeting between fated souls. Just… sex. And it’s everywhere.”

“What?” he says, blinking dumbly.

And so I pull him down and mash my lips aggressively against his.

“Your. Fault,” I mutter into his shocked face.

“Anna, I—”

His first mistake was opening his mouth.

His second, not closing it before I shoved my tongue inside of it.

He tastes marvelous.

So I let myself step closer to him, to catch the smell of pine that somehow clings to him, to feel that muscled chest on my hand as I splay my fingers across smooth cloth and over warm flesh, to slide my other hand up his neck to undo his short ponytail so I can properly play with it, feeling the shoulder-length strands, twirling a playful finger on them…

Gods, he makes me so hot.

Then I push a bare thigh between his dark green pants, and I can feel the throbbing bar of hot meat pulsing back against the inside of my—

“Anna!” he says, finally pushing me back by my shoulders.

Which lets me see his wet, glossy lips, his dilated pupils, the flush of heat traveling down the sides of his neck and to the bare expanse of skin his unbuttoned collar teases me with.

As if I needed any more teasing…

“Drop your pants,” I tell him with a voice Mom may be proud of.

Somewhat.

Of the voice. Not the circumstances.

“What—”

“All! Week! You got me to see two dogs fucking after thinking about you, and it’s been non-stop since then! Everything fucks! The dogs, the flies, the bunnies, the damn cats beneath my window! Even fucking Tobias, which I guess also counts as an animal. Hell, we got a treat in the cafeteria yesterday. Do you know what that was? Ice cream cones! Dozens of young girls eagerly licking the round balls of flavored snow, catching the runny rivulets of creamy goodness as they dripped down the crispy wafer! Dozens of sweaty girls in miniskirts moaning as they licked and sucked! The world has gone mad and will only make sense again after I fuck you!”

He looks… slightly taken aback.

I couldn’t fathom why.

And, frankly, I’m kinda not in the mood to ponder such a great, indecipherable mystery, so I drop on my knees and run my hands up his pants until I reach his leather belt and start fiddling with the damn, uncooperative thing.

“Anna, I really think you’re exaggerating—”

My glare shuts him up.

Neat. Another sign I may not be secretly adopted.

“My room reeksof masturbation. Every time I try to cool off, every single fucking time, the world reminds me I’m meant to be taken by you, speared open by your thick cock. There’s not been a moment of rest, a moment of peace. I’ve dreamed about you taking my hips and shoving me against stone walls before rutting me senseless and only stopping to wipe your spent cock on my cheek.”

“I… Have you… Has this happened before?”

“What? Have I ever tried to perform a divination following the exacting instructions of my teacher just to be flooded by messages from Fate itself about how I need to get him inside of me? Oh, yeah. I think the first time was in third grade.”

“Really—”

“No, you fucking moron. Do I look like I went to school?” I ask him right as I finally manage to open his belt and tear his pants down so fast his cock shoots right up and noisily slaps my chin.

I stare at him.

He stares back.

Then he opens his mouth.

“If you answer that question now, I will bite you,” I warn him.

He slowly nods in a pacifying gesture.

And I swallow his cock.

Finally.

The salty flavor assaults my senses as much as the thick scent, but all of it pales with the sheer girth pushing my lips open around it, stretching them, prodding against the tight ring of muscle at the entrance to my throat in a way I always thought I would find unpleasant at best, but turns out to make me drench my panties as my eyelids flutter.

“Fuck! Anna, what—oh gods, I’m so gonna get fired…” he says as a hand with thrillingly long fingers wraps around my braid and hesitates on whether to pull me away or toward him.

Slowly, I push my tongue beneath his cock until the very tip slides over my lip, and then I drag myself off his cock, licking from side to side all the way.

And making eye contact with a man who’s definitely no longer thinking about pulling me away.

Would you look at that? Another thing I may not suck at: sucking.

Heh.

… I must never say this one out loud.

“So… am I worth getting fired over?” I ask him as I rub my right hand up and down his cock at a glacial speed, twisting around his head when I reach it, my own saliva making the motion smooth and seamless.

… I guess image training works.

Which means Mom was right, yet I don’t think she’d appreciate how I arrived at this particular discovery.

“That’s a very good way to make me rethink this whole thing, Anna,” he says, eyes glinting beneath his not-too-thick eyebrows in a way that’s definitely mage-like.

So I lean forward to lay a quick, gentle peck on his slit before slowly looking up at him through my eyelashes.

“Well… why don’t you divine it?” I ask with an innocent moue before I swirl the tip of my tongue around him in a perfect circle.

“What—”

“Do it. You don’t need instruments, don’t need your runes or your cards. Just… think about me, sweating, exhausted, your cum dripping over my face, my breasts, my belly, my thighs. Think about how you will feel after that’s done, when you’re standing over my limp body, with your chest drenched with both our sweat and your breathing ragged and halting. Calculate just how many flows of fate end up just like that, and whether or not the way you’ll feel is worth it.”

And then I stop.

I just stare up at him, an impish smile I didn’t know I could pull off on my lips as I take in his wide eyes while my hand remains motionless around his thick, glistening member.

I can feel it, I think.

The moment he dips his… his soul in Fate. The moment the currents around us take a hint of his scent, his color, and he lets himself get carried away to futures that may never be.

I can see it in his eyes as they harden, as they look back at me with a hunger I’ve only dreamed about through the past week.

And then…

The hand holding my braid pulls.

And, as I let him drag me to my feet, I almost come through my drenched panties.

“You’re gonna get me in far too much trouble,” he almost growls at me, his warm breath washing over my wet lips.

“I just wanna get you inside of me,” I tell him, pulling my dress up to my waist.

“Yes. Trouble,”he answers.

And his hands go down to my waist, and he turns both of us around before shoving me against the stone wall of our nook.

Finally!

I spin around in his grasp, my face and breasts pushing against the cool wall of the castle as he pulls my green panties aside, my pussy meeting air so cold that it sends a thrill through me before two slender fingers lie over it, slowly gathering moisture, spreading me open, teasing at my entrance…

“I’m… more than ready enough,” I manage to gasp out.

“I want to make sure,” he says, that voice of his still rough, yet somehow gentle.

“You made sure a week ago. You could be lying on the floor, and I would manage to slip on my own juices to fall straight down your cock.”

He chuckles.

… Score?

Then he leans over me, the heat of his body lying on my back, on the bare stretch of skin that reaches halfway down to my shoulder blades before he kisses the side of my neck.

Yeah. Score.

“Anna… Before we do this, I just want to say that… You’re a very bright, beautiful woman, and I already thought so before you tried to suck the marrow of my bones straight out of my dick.”

Oh, that’s just unfair.

“And I want to say that you’re the youngest professor in the College, so it’s a given that four-fifths of the female students want to jump your bones. I’m not a statistical anomaly.”

He chuckles.

“You overestimate my charm,” he says, his fingers briefly dipping inside of me, stretching me just enough that I have to gasp.

“You’re a combat-capable seer. I’m pretty sure you can effortlessly navigate a conversation with any hormonal student you cared for.”

“Right. Except you.”

“Wait, wha—”

And he interrupts me.

By poking me.

The tip of his cock is surrounded by my lower lips, his heat almost scorching, his girth promising to fulfill an emptiness I had never been so keenly aware of, and I just want to shove back my hips and take him down to his root, to have him finallyspearing me open, to be rutted senseless like Fate itself has been promising me all week.

But his strong hands are holding my waist, keeping me in place, my dress baring the top of my breasts to cool, smooth stone, and I have to shiver in place as I finally understand what that damn cat was yowling about.

“You… I can’tread you. I can barely get glimpses when you project your intent, but everything else is… clouded.”

For just a brief moment, I have to blink something out of my eyes as my brain focuses on something that may be slightly more important than the cock I’m currently being denied.

Barely.

“You mean…?” I manage to say.

“Yes. You’re also a combat-capable seer. Maybe you’ll be more powerful than I am by the end of the year,” he says.

And I could cheer. I could cry tears of gratitude. I could yell at the world that yes, that I’ve finally found it, that I’ve got a thing all of my own.

I could, of course, if the damn bastard didn’t choose that moment to push.

“Aaahhh!” I manage to let out before he covers my mouth with a hand no longer grabbing my hip.

“Silence. We’re in public, remember?” he says, that infuriating grin of his making another appearance.

I narrow my eyes at him.

And then I push back.

My ass impacts meatily with his pelvis, hard enough that he almost trips back and falls down the stairs as he lets out a loud moan of his own that he quickly suppresses to glare at me.

I blink innocently at him.

And he grabs me again and thrusts inside me hard enough to take my breath away.

“I’m not used… to being taken… by surprise,” he mutters in my ear as his cock goes in and out of me fast enough I have to bite my lip as I feel my face twist into something that looks very much like suffering, even if it’s anything but.

“Get… used to… it!” I answer, throwing my arms back to grab his wrists before he twists them around to take my forearms and use them as reins as I bounce back against him.

“Gladly!” he almost yells as he pulls harder on me, making me arch my back so only the clothed part of my breasts brushes against the soothing stone in front of me.

“My… My braid!” I tell him before he lets go of my right arm and wraps the length of my hair around his, grabbing me, pulling me upright, making my mouth drop open as he keeps fucking me harder than I expected but just like I dreamed.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he breathes in my ear.

“Your cock’s a dream come true,” I answer. “Literally!”

He slows down for a moment as he processes it.

Then we both laugh.

Told you: takes one to know one.

“OK, that was…” he hesitates, finally realizing just how he’s handling me, how rough he’s been with my tender, nubile body.

And so I shoot him a look and a smile over my shoulder.

“That cum of yours isn’t going to get on my body by itself, you know?” I tell him, wiggling my hips right against his drenched pubes.

And he bites his lip as he suppresses a moan.

Which… All right, now I’m moaning myself.

And that’s the last thing he needs to go back to fucking me.

His cock is… It’s thick. I can feel it stretching me open, pulling at me whenever he leaves me almost achingly empty, pushing everything back in as he fills me.

Our flesh claps, gliding effortlessly through each of his thrusts.

His pull on my scalp makes me close my eyes tightly.

And that’s what sets me off.

Because I’m no longer staring at him or at the grey stone in front of me, and so my open mind is flooded.

With everything.

Every single dream I’ve had this past week, every single fantasy that may have been a vision while I touched myself silly. I can see him coming over my chest, I can see him carry me in his arms, lifeless after he exhausted me. I can see his cock throbbing angrily at me before I made it spurt with a last lick, the torrent of sperm washing over my giggling, sputtering self.

I can see myself being fucked a hundred times over. I can see Lucas taking me as much as our bodies allow. I can see—

“Anna!” he yells.

And that makes my eyes shoot open, the visions’ shards falling down around me as he pulls out of me, his hands letting go so suddenly I have to catch myself against the curved wall before he thrusts his cock between my thighs and his hands clap my legs closed around him.

Then he keeps fucking me, fucking my thighs, once, twice, thrice, and that last thrust brushes past my engorged clitoris, and I have to swallow a scream of sheer release as something finally shatters inside of me, and my orgasm pulses from my sex, to my breasts, to my neck, to a spot behind my eyes as he grunts and his member throbs hard enough that I hear his semen impact the wall in front of me.

A curious, traitorouspart of me wonders how that would’ve felt inside of me. If it would’ve been hard enough I would’ve mistaken it for his cock thrusting against the very mouth of my womb before spilling molten heat inside…

The other parts…

Fall down.

Lucas catches me at the last moment, his sweat-soaked shirt clinging to my back like I dreamed it would do far too many times, his rough breath washing over my ear, his strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me back against him.

I can’t help but purr as I lazily rub the back of my head against his chest.

“Anna, I…” he starts to say, his tone intense enough to send a tingle through my chest.

“You didn’t cum over me,” I tell him.

“What?” he dumbfoundedly answers.

“My face. My chest. My belly. My thighs. You’ll splatter your seed all over them before the night’s over,” I explain, looking over my shoulder with a hungry, feline grin I didn’t know I could make.

But that I’m very glad to discover I can, seeing the way his throat bobbles up and down when I subject him to it.

“I…” He’s lost for words. His arms tighten around me.

It’s answer enough.

“Just… let’s go to your room?” I shyly ask him. “I’m told mine kind of… smells.”

He blinks down at me.

And then, catching me entirely by surprise, he pulls me into a bridal carry as he decisively tries to climb up the stairs before he’s forced to pause and crouch down so I can help him pull up his pants.

I giggle as my arms wrap around his neck, and then we have to stop again for a while as I finally let myself kiss him the way I wanted to since…

Since before this damn week started.

***

Monday comes, and my room no longer reeks of desperate horniness.

I’d like to say it’s because I’ve finally gotten everything out of my system, but…

Well, it turns out there are some very creative, interesting ways to hone a combat seer against another.

It mostly consists of trying to catch one another by surprise.

Yeah, you can imagine how the weekend went.

But, well, it’s a brand new day, and my brain’s no longer trying to kill me through sheer embarrassment or embarrassment-induced arousal, so I cheerfully put on my uniform and grab my things to go on the second trek planned for this divination’s course with the self-assuredness of a star pupil who not only knows she has the raw talent for the class but is also enthusiastically sucking the teacher’s cock.

… Auntie must never find out.

Mom may have to. You know, if things get… serious.

…

I’m going on a field trip! An uncomplicated walk through the forest that won’t bring any uncomfortable memories to mind! Yay!

“Anna? I haven’t seen you all weekend,” Iris says as I almost walk into her.

She sees me blush.

Her eyebrow rises.

I blush harder.

She smirks.

Damn it!

***

I manage to get Iris to leave the topic alone until we are alone in my room, so at least the trip to the forest is only filled with knowing grins, a few winks, and me and Lucas trying very hard to pretend I didn’t say goodbye to him on my knees yesterday.

It… mostly works.

Until…

“All right, class, today I’d like to tell you about a little something I left out when our last lecture ended. It’s something I’m almost certain many of you’ll relate to, but I wanted you to experience it firsthand so you’d better recognize it when it inevitably happens sometime down the line,” he says with his usual smile being visibly strained.

Then he shoots a guilty look at me, and he opens his damn mouth.

“The implicit, secret lesson that I wanted you to learn about on your own… is that of the self-fulfilling prophecy,” he finishes.

I glare at him.

He offers me a nervous smile.

Iris bursts out into some very undignified, un-Iris guffaws.

“I don’t get it,” Tobias says.

And I’m suddenly torn on who to stab first.