Cassandra- Magic's Hope Read online

  They stayed for a while, another cup of coffee and we talked about other stuff. The baby coming, future plans for them as well as Trent and Danielle. By the time they left I was in a much better mood, there were a lot of good things along with the bad, and it was good to be reminded of that.

  Chapter 15

  I’d had a really good night that Sunday, but felt a little like a ball being tossed back and forth, or maybe like I’d starred in a game of musical lovers. I looked over at Dina’s beautiful supple body, and cuddled up for sleep while I smiled and the past few hours ran through my mind.

  Dina had cooked me a wonderful dinner, and we had a good time. But before things got too interesting she explained she had a lot of work that she’d been putting off for tomorrow’s classes. So I was sent out the door with a lingering kiss promising more, yet failing to deliver.

  I had needed to feed so I went to the bar and had a drink, while I slowly skimmed the place over a few times. I was pretty hot and bothered as usual from doing it that way, the safer way. My nipples were almost painfully hard, and my core was quite wet and ready. I’d been considering a quickie with a rather handsome stranger since my only remaining lovers were all female, and I couldn’t live without cock in my life, when my phone went off. I grinned and answered when I saw it was Tammy.

  That had cheered me since I hadn’t been with her in three nights, so I went over to Tammy’s instead, and considering my state it didn’t take long at all before we were mussing the sheets with abandon. We played for about two hours, and then we held each other close and simply talked for at least that long again. I’d thought I would stay the night, I hadn’t last time because I had to run to magic world, but it didn’t turn out that way.

  Tammy had told me, “I’d love if you could stay, but were running a kind of middle of the night scavenger hunt. A little light hazing for our new sisters and I have to be there.”

  I understood of course, but when I had come home, taken a shower, and then walked to my bed, I just stared at it instead of getting in it. I didn’t want to be alone tonight. I had Jim breaking up with me over the phone, the dragon world issue, and I just… needed to not be alone. I had used my aura to check on Dina, and she was in bed alone, apparently done with her work for the night.

  So I decided I was in her room, and slipped into her bed completely naked. She’d woken up for a moment, but when she saw it was just me she smiled and went back to sleep. Which is where I was heading now, enjoying the feeling of her body against mine…

  “Oh goddess,” I mewled passionately as I woke up.

  My back was arched, my head pushing back into the pillow, and my legs were up in the air over Dina’s shoulders. She slid two fingers between my tight puffy wet labia with delicious silken friction, her mouth was sucking around my clit hard, and her tongue was circling and flicking it with the tip of her hot wet tongue.

  I looked down my body and our eyes locked, hers sparked with hunger and delight as she brought me inexorably to intense completion. Goddess, now this was the way to wake in the mor… I gasped cutting off my own thoughts, as my core tightly coiled just a little further and I bored down on her fingers, and then my eyes rolled back as my body exploded in scintillating bliss as I rode the pleasure.

  I came down and started to hear Dina making sounds of approval and happiness as she slowly licked around my labia, cleaning up my silken pleasure like a cat that found the cream.

  “Good morning love,” I said breathlessly, and a little dreamily.

  My body jumped in pleasure as an aftershock rocked my body.

  Dina smiled and her eyes sparked, “It is a good morning, even if we do have class today.”

  I giggled, “I should sleep here more often.”

  Dina winked, “That’s my evil plan, or half of it anyway. I needed to give you incentive. My bed is much nicer anyway… Actually that’s not true, maybe I should just invade your bedroom.”

  I smiled as she kissed my labia gently before letting my legs back down toward the bed, I was rewarded with a very nice view of a naked and sexy Dina, but my eyes stayed on hers. They shone with love, and mischief. Of course, I could also feel her love and mischief with my empathy.

  “Just half?” I asked curiously.

  She nodded innocently while crawling up my body, her knees straddling me the whole way, “Of course, here’s the other half now,” she said sultrily.

  With one hand she grabbed the headboard, and her other hand grabbed my hair and guided me quite firmly to the apex of her beautifully spread legs…

  We reluctantly got out of bed after I finished her off, and had a nice long shower together. After a quick breakfast we made plans to meet up at lunch and took off to our separate classes. Jim came in a couple of minutes late, and I was a bit surprised when he sat down right next to me. Professor Arnell gave me a few pointed looks during the lecture, reminding me he’d asked me to think about becoming a TA.

  I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought since last Wednesday. It… I was too busy. It made me feel a little claustrophobic actually, considering what I was planning with dragon world, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to stay in school. How much effort did it take to run a clan.

  If I could handle both by running back and forth, how much time would that leave me to spend time with Dina or Tammy? Plus hunting, and I hadn’t even considered my research into it yet. Granted, I had been doing all of that other stuff all along with time to spare. So I guess the only real question was, how much time would I have to commit to dragon world, and would it be my first priority.

  Sadly, it was the only thing in my life that was life and death, so it would take priority, hopefully I could work something out. My parents did with demon world, I would figure something out. I knew it was important, and I was being kind of whiny and throwing a pity party, especially considering I’d started this crusade, volunteered to do it. But… in my defense I was only twenty three years old. I suppose I could blame my mother and grandmother for being good examples…

  Plus, I was feeling both regret and hope radiating off of Jim, and I didn’t want to know what that was about. I wasn’t mad he had more than me, I was truly okay with that, but I was mad he left me. Couldn’t he have sat somewhere else?

  So it was no surprise how annoyed I was, while worrying about my future, Jim annoying me, and the lecture being only half over, when my necklace notified me the dragons were attacking magic world. At least it was just one attack this time, but I recognized the coordinates as nearby Tanner’s village, where Dawn was the first time she visited that world.

  I gave the professor an apologetic look that probably looked closer to pissed off, and headed for the closest door. As soon as I was in the empty hallway I embraced my magic, flipped on all the protection spells I’d built in to my necklace, which are all the ones I’d made up and learned from Dawn. It also held the enchantment that kept me from being overloaded with magic.

  It was just more efficient this way, than casting them all every time, plus, a lot faster.

  I closed my eyes and appeared right outside the shield of the town, I knew the portal would be clear so there was no point going to those coordinates. The locals were practically frozen in place and I looked up at the dragons as I stepped inside the protections. There were more than I could conveniently count. There were at least ten of the caster colors, golden and silver, and between sixty and seventy of the others.

  It was hard to tell, because there were a lot of breath weapons hitting the shield, obscuring how much I could see, but they’d at least doubled up since last time. The dragon blood crystals held a lot of magic, but I wasn’t sure how long the shields could hold under this much pressure.

  I hit a gold with a monomolecular lance of magic, it took longer this time, and I had to push much harder to break through. I crushed him with an annoyed thought, then speared the next, again it took time to break through, as if they’d figured out what I did last time and casted a spell to make it harder. I shouldn
’t be surprised, dragons might be brutal, but they weren’t stupid.

  I lanced a black dragon, knocked it out, and sent it back. That had gone as easily as before. So it must have been something new they were doing. I was kind of relieved actually, despite that. It occurred to me they could have made enchantments for all the other dragons, for speed and this new reactive shield they had. It was much like the one I made, just not as good.

  Maybe because the dragons wouldn’t know what a molecule was, so the shield wasn’t quite as concentrated down to as small a point as I could create. Still, it was taking much greater effort and concentration on my part for each one. It was simply taking too long and I heard a scream start a few feet away. Fire breath attack had partially gotten through the shield, and the sorcerer no more than ten feet away was slowly going up like a pyre.

  I snapped.

  I sent my magic up in the sky, experimental magic that I had made the decision just four days ago that it needed to be explored very cautiously, except right now I was too angry to care, and killing them one at a time was taking way to long. There were too many, and that villager would only be the first of many to die horribly, possibly including me, if I didn’t do something now, even if it was something very stupid.

  If they wanted a war, I would oblige.

  I didn’t create a lightning storm using my knowledge of weather, I simply willed it into being, twisting reality with my thoughts because I simply decided it was there. I used quantum theory, particles and sub particles. Not energy, matter, or magic, but the very building blocks of creation which my magic enabled me to control through knowledge and understanding, even if slightly flawed. It wasn’t a normal lightning storm, more like a giant field of energy, and it started to rain down powerfully compact balls of lightning at the speed of light.

  It was something I couldn’t have done directly, because my magic would have given out long before such a powerful storm of energy was built. But the power of the storm came from the building blocks of the universe, my magic needed to only guide that force, give it purpose.

  My only caution, was avoiding striking the village. The problem though, was my understanding wasn’t complete, but at the time I was too angry, and maybe too stupid, to care.

  I watched as the dragons were torn apart. A ball of lightning struck one and exploded through its shield and into the dragon’s body, many bolts arced out from that and struck the other nearby dragons weakening their shields and even overcoming some of them completely. And there were thousands of balls of lightning, even the black and silver dragons who could absorb lightning, exploded spectacularly as their bodies simply couldn’t contain that much energy.

  The dragons were gone in seconds.

  But… the storm wasn’t. I’d fed it too much power, too much anger, my thoughts hadn’t been exact. I’d simply released it to destroy with a will of its own save the village. It was the longest twenty seconds of my life as my anger grew to horror and dismay. At least my thoughts, which I realized hadn’t been specific enough, kept it from harming the village.

  But around the village, the storm rained hell on the earth. The village was fine, but it was completely encircled for a mile around by glass. The trees, fields, animals, bushes, rocks, even the dragon’s corpses… all of it was burned away, the ground was completely glassed before the storm simply… dissipated.

  I looked around, and all the villagers were staring at me in horror. I… was turning into a monster. I hadn’t forced a retreat, I’d killed every last dragon without mercy. And what would the town do? They’d probably lost the town anyway, even though they all lived how could they stay here? They couldn’t plant anything for more than a mile around. Would they do that, or leave?

  What was I becoming? I wasn’t sure, but… nothing good. Even if the dragons deserved no quarter, what about the rest of it?

  “Are you okay?”

  I laughed a little hysterically. Why would he care if the monster was okay?

  I looked up at Tanner and shook my head, “No.”

  He frowned, “Come with me please.”

  I followed him in a daze of self recrimination, but I was also starting to think again. Witches could transmute matter, even without using my new magics I could restore the earth enough for them to plant again. Probably not all at once, but I could get it done in patches. So they wouldn’t have to move after all. The dragons, well at least they won’t be reporting on this, there was no one left to report.

  And they were the aggressors. My mistake hadn’t been killing them fast to save as many villagers as I could, the mistake had been the indiscriminate destruction, letting anger guide my actions. When forming something from my thoughts through magic, I’d need to be more careful, and never do it in anger again. Still, I wondered if I was the right person for dragon world, would that place, while I tried to prevent an all out genocidal war, eventually poison my soul? Was it already too late after what I’d done today?

  Tanner led me into a house and turned, “You’re not a monster,” he said plainly.

  My eyes must have scrunched but he laughed.

  “You aren’t very hard to read young lady, your Dawn’s younger sister are you not? The one that has been defending our villages? You must be more careful with your magic, but did you imagine I’d not seen others lose control of their magic before? None of us are perfect, I don’t care what the witches on your world aspire to, no one is without regret.

  “It is your stunned face, and the tears in your eyes that tell me you are not a monster, you didn’t intend this.”

  I blew out a breath, “But they all looked at me like…”

  He waved a hand, “That’s why I’m the elder. I admit I was a little frightened by that display of power, but I knew it was done in our defense.”

  I sighed, “I can fix the fields so you can plant again, but the surrounding trees and life I can do nothing about. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged and smiled wryly, “Better slightly inconvenienced than dead.”

  I snickered through my tears, “Fine, and I will be more careful. I… kind of lost it when I saw that man go up in a pyre.”

  He shook his head, “Yes, do be more careful. You must be in control at all times. I can tell that you haven’t lost control often, but you probably haven’t been under quite so much pressure before have you dear?”

  I shook my head, “No, I really haven’t,” I said feeling a little lost.

  It was true, I’d thought myself under control. Control was easy, or it always had been. Yet, I’d never truly been tested before.

  He startled me by pulling me into a hug and holding my head against his chest. I stood there for a while and cried on the old man’s tunic. Finally I pulled away and gratefully smiled at him a little tremulously, but I wiped my tears away.

  I kissed his cheek and thanked him, his calm demeanor made me feel a lot better about it. I wasn’t a monster, but I’d have to be more careful or I would become one. I scanned the fields with my magic at the edge of the town, there was no life there at all so I couldn’t grow back the crops, it wasn’t possible.

  But I did spend time to restore the burnt land and transmute it into fertile soil. Maybe I could come back after they replant and grow it a bit. I shook my head and went back to the physics building. I stopped at the bathroom quick to make sure I wasn’t a total mess, and was glad I did. I casted a cleansing spell, then fixed my hair with a little succubus magic, and then managed to catch the last twenty minutes or so of class.

  Chapter 16

  I was angry again, but luckily this wouldn’t require any magic to deal with. It was just a few minutes after class, and Jim had pulled me into an empty classroom to talk.

  “Could you repeat that, I’m sure I heard you wrong,” I said in a tightly controlled voice.

  Jim completely missed the warning sign, and his tone was wheedling and set my teeth on edge.

  “Come on baby, I’m sorry. I love you, you know that, but I had to do that to get Chris
tine off my back, but I really didn’t want to break up with you.”

  My eyes narrowed, “So… what? You want to fuck me on the side in secret? While you’re pregnant wife sits at home?”

  He scoffed, “Isn’t that a bit hypocritical, you have what, two girlfriends and me on the side?”

  Okay, I was reconsidering not using magic, and I couldn’t believe this was the sweet guy from last week; clearly, I was a poor judge of character.

  “You’re an idiot if you think that’s the same as going behind someone’s back, the answer is no, now get the hell away from me.”

  That made me wonder why he’d even called to break up, his morality wasn’t all that in evidence right now. I still couldn’t pick it up through his emotions either, that’s why I didn’t notice sooner than now. He really didn’t see anything wrong with it.

  I asked accusingly, “Was she there, when you called? Did she stand over your shoulder to make sure you did it?”

  He spluttered a denial, but my empathy told me it was a lie, the surge of guilt. Not for sneaking around, simply because of lying to me.

  I shook my head and gave him a look of disgust, “Don’t talk to me again, ever.”

  But he grabbed my arm when I turned away, and pushed me up against the wall. But this wasn’t a bedroom game, so I twisted, grabbed his hand then locked his elbow and crushed his face against the wall with my elbow in his spine. I’d never actually been in a physical fight, outside of training I mean. Both my mother and grandmothers were heavily into martial arts, so no surprise my sisters and I were trained as well.

  “Last warning, let it go. You don’t get to touch me anymore, asshole.”

  I walked away, and he didn’t stop me this time. But would he listen? Only time would tell.

  I was starting to understand the true difference between knowledge and wisdom. I might actually be the most powerful witch right now, I didn’t know if Cat could do the things I’d been messing around with or not, but in the end I was finding I wasn’t a very wise person. Jim being a total tool, the fight earlier, even Tammy’s surprise commitment which had been a good thing, I’d never seen any of it coming. Dina as well.