Apprentice Qamari
Divination is an intense endeavor by its very nature. However, there are ways to raise and lower that intensity. If your conduit isn’t comfortable in the silver, it’s best to take a lower intensity approach, lest you tip them over into panic.
Advanced Casting Principles: Divination by Aurelia Laskarsis
“GOT IT?” I ASK, EXASPERATED.
I’m sure Olbric is having me repeat the poem just to keep me on my shaking legs a little longer. That smirk tells me I’m right.
“Just one more time for me?” he says, batting his eyelashes.
A drip of wetness slides down my thigh, and it’s a struggle not to press my legs together. The short, thick toy Arlon slid into my cunt is firmly locked in place by the metal chastity belt, and it makes every shift of my hips a unique sort of torture.
Olbric isn’t deterred by the withering look I give him as I repeat the poem again. If anything, that shit-eating grin only widens.
“Sorry - what was that last bit?”
I brace a hand against the wall. “Oh, fuck you,” I moan as I clench my thighs together. Olbric chuckles, and I peg him with a glare. “How are you handling this so well?”
“Conjuration master now, remember?” he says brightly. “A week is nothing for me anymore. Once you’re finally out of your stint, you’ll understand.”
I rest my forehead against the cool stone wall. I’m so randy I can hardly think straight. After three months, I’m beyond ready to be done with conjuration forever. “Gods, it can’t happen fast enough. It’s got to happen this week.”
“I think Dom got off easy not having to endure his time at the Crux,” Olbric tsks as he leans against the wall next to my head.
I laugh, though the memories of the trip out east make my cunt clench wantonly around the toy. “You didn’t see all that Alix and I did to him. And you know he doesn’t cast and tell.”
Olbric hums. “No, he sure doesn’t.”
I look at him sidelong, but his smile has gone flat. Pushing away from the wall invites more teasing friction from the thick toy, but I bite back a moan as I turn to face him. “He’s still not talking?”
Olbric shakes his head, fingers plucking at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Not really. Not yet.”
I sigh before I say, “He... worried me today.”
His fingers go still, his gaze sharpening. “What happened?”
“He’s always out of it when he’s wearing Arlon’s collar, but... he was sleeping under the desk again. Could barely remember the poem at all this time,” I say.
Olbric sighs, shoulders slumping as he says, “He hasn’t spent the night with me since before the trip out east. Said there’s no point in him ruining my sleep, too.”
Worry seeps deeper. Ever since the Tower, Dom’s been... off. As if he’s only partially here, his thoughts somewhere else entirely.
“I’m just worried about him,” I say quietly. “The fact that he still hasn’t said a word about what happened at the Tower...”
Old fears raise their head again. I know what it’s like to be left in the silver. When Margeurite dozed off after she put me in, it had felt like I was trapped for a lifetime. The sound of my own body, my own thoughts, was deafening in all that silence. It was like brushing against madness.
I was in it for minutes, at worst. But Dom... he was left in there for hours. Gods only know what that can do to someone’s head.
“He’ll talk when he’s ready,” Olbric says. My frustrations rest behind my teeth, but Olbric stops me before I can speak. “He doesn’t need anyone pressing on open wounds right now, Gal. He just needs space.”
My frustration goes nowhere as I level a look at him. Ever since we got back, Olbric’s been... protective of Dom. Obnoxiously so. It’s hard not to feel shut out. As if Olbric’s decided that Arlon and I are people that Dom needs to be shielded from when we’re only trying to help.
That’s a discussion that needs to happen eventually, but not today. “Fine.” I press a kiss to his cheek before I deliver a gentle slap to the spot. When I grab his cheeks, his lips puff out temptingly. “But do you remember the damn poem or not?”
Olbric barks a laugh before he surges forward to pin me against the wall.
“The fire that smolders behind your eyes is nothing to the heat betwixt your thighs.” A rough hand cups my crotch, and I can’t stop a breathy swear.
“Your wanton sex drips with molten need, an inferno I will douse with my river of seed.”
His teeth snap playfully by my ear before I push him away. “Do your duty, wizard,” I laugh even as I try to get my pulse back under control. “We need sending spells. Cancassi’s next, and I bet they’re as over this spell as I am.”
“Oh, they’re inconsolable,” Olbric says brightly before he saunters off down the hall. He tosses a wave over his shoulder. “Hope Arlon lets you cum soon.”
“Gods, but same,” I groan before I push off the wall and head back towards Arlon’s office. Of course Olbric made me go all the way up to his room to find him. I descend the stairs of the evocation tower, though I have to stop partway across the atrium to collect myself.
I shove the door to Arlon’s office open. I’m a minute away from taking a hammer to the fucking chastity cage. I’m about to tell Arlon as much before I see the look on his face. The letter I brought from the Chamberlain is open in his hand.
Dread douses every spark of arousal like cold water. “Bad news?”
Arlon gives a huff of amusement before he tosses the letter across his desk towards me. “Didn’t I tell them this would happen?”
I hurry to read the letter, and my stomach sinks like a stone. “Lucien’s escaped.”
“Give a wizard nothing but time and solitude in a prison cell, and he’ll find a way to make magic,” Arlon mutters bitterly. “If they’d allowed me to post a wizard on guard, we could have kept the abjuration up to prevent this. No doubt Lucien was just waiting for the barrier to fail.”
I swear as I scan the letter again. The Crown’s current understanding of magic is...
frustrating. We tried to explain that abjurations can’t just be set and forgotten.
Magic, especially abjuration barriers, have to be maintained.
But the trust between the Crown and the Crux is so badly fractured that they only allowed us access to the dungeon weekly to reinforce the abjuration surrounding Lucien’s cell. Apparently, that was not enough.
“So, in summary, they created this problem, and now they want us fix it,” Arlon says through a sigh.
I fold the letter up and return it to Arlon. “Could we try a sending to Lucien? See if we can glean where he’s gone?”
“We haven’t even succeeded in creating the damn things yet,” Arlon says, his frustration evident. “Trying to glean a location through a sending is damn near impossible unless they announce it. Besides that, we already know where he’s heading. It feels redundant to waste a spell on this.”
“But...” I say, hearing the unsaid in his tone.
“But,” Arlon sighs, “the Crown insists we get whatever information we can on his whereabouts.”
I can’t blame him for having a sour mood about this. Every time we try to recreate an exact spell, there’s a failure rate, and I think we’ve all been humbled by how difficult recreating these sendings has been.
“So that leaves divination,” I say, though I’m already thinking through the Crux’s roster.
“Alix had a relationship with Lucien, but he won’t agree to divination.
Margeurite likely interacted with him even less than I did.
There are others who knew him - Iona and Marvin did for all the wrong reasons, but I doubt they will agree to divination. ”
“And Dom isn’t doing divination either right now. Especially not when the focus is on one of Diran’s cadre,” Arlon says through a sigh.
“I could attempt it?” I say. “We have his spells. We couldn’t ask for a better divining trinket to get clearer Sight.”
Arlon raises an eyebrow, and in spite of everything, a shadow of a grin graces his lips. “Trying to get out of your conjuration already, Apprentice?”
Honestly, it hadn’t even crossed my mind. Nothing like a crisis to create a good distraction. But Arlon’s smile has become such a rare and fleeting sight that I say, “Of course I am. Rude of you to notice, honestly.”
And if his grin is good, the sound of his laugh is even better. Yet his expression sobers all too quickly as he leans his head back against his chair. “I knew Lucien well. I can go into the silver.”
But the look on his face is clear; he doesn’t want to do this.
Arlon is a caster, but it runs deeper than just a matter of preference.
In the months I’ve apprenticed him, I’ve seen it in every facet of him.
He carries a natural sort of dominance, a driving need for control both in and outside of a casting room.
Which is why divination is not a favorite school of his.
He sighs, his gaze landing on me. “I trust you’ll take good care of me.”
Warmth settles in my chest, though it’s chased by an uncomfortable realization. This is exactly the reason a Grandmaster has to have their full mastery. They are the ones who step into a spell when others aren’t able or willing to try.
“Of course I will, sir.”
Arlon gets to his feet and gives my shoulder a squeeze before he heads towards the false wall at the end of his office. It opens under his touch, but it’s only then I realize that Dom is gone from the gap under Arlon’s desk.
When Arlon emerges from the stairwell, worrying one of Lucien’s spell strands through his fingers, I ask, “Where’s your desk pet?”
“Hmm? Oh, I dismissed him for the day.”
I don’t like that answer. Dom has turned into such a recluse that aside from mealtimes, this is the one place I’m guaranteed to see him. Old worries rear their head all over again, but then Arlon drapes Lucien’s spells around his neck. His expression is drawn, his jaw clenched tight.
“We’ll use your room on the first floor,” Arlon says.
I force my worries about Dom aside. My priority has to be Arlon right now. Because there’s no worse feeling than going into the silver knowing that you are going to hate what you find.