Cascade Fire

9. Lustrations

Jess stood me in front of a full-length mirror, both of us nude, and made me see how much my aging had reversed, from a body age of 47 to maybe 33, and how much weight I'd lost - I was now under 205 - and how much lean muscle I'd gained, though I was still a bit soft in the belly and around the edges and could probably lose another 10-15 pounds. The women had stopped shaving me and I was becoming uncomfortably itchy where my chest hair was growing back, but the one really discordant note about my appearance was my teeth, which looked like those of a middle-aged man, one of them still broken.

"Fix everything you can," she told me, and my broken tooth magically mended while my fillings and my one gold crown came out, my teeth and gums regrowing so that I no longer had cavities and I was once again starting to look like a nice-looking youngish man just past his athletic prime. I regrew brown hair on my head and let Jess fuss with the length and the cut until it was just how she wanted it, and then the hair on my chest until it no longer itched, most of the hair on my shoulders and back and my ears falling away, Jess' hand around my waist from behind, grasping and tapping my cock while she smiled and said "This, I like just how it is ... any bigger and I couldn't get it all in, and I really love the way it feels inside me, and now I want you to teach me how you just did all of that," and tugged me backwards to the bed, which caught me behind the knees so I sat and she pushed me onto my back, straddling me, and then levitated us to its center. With a knowing smile, she put my hands to her lovely broad firm shallow breasts and said "Make them bigger and let me see them through your eyes," and I let her into my senses, growing her, fingertips maintaining an electric contact like a potter's hands on clay, like a musician's hands on a slide electrotheremin, changing their size and shape and firmness, letting her feel what I felt as she guided those changes through my eyes and hers.

"I love you just the way you are," I said, and she smiled, giggling a little, pressing her hands more firmly on mine.

"Bob, honey, I'm a girl, and we always think something about us could be better even if you don't," she said, "but I love you for saying so," and she kissed me and said "Now my nose."

And her straddling me and watching through my eyes, her hands on mine, guiding the adjustments I was making to her until she looked just how she thought she wanted, her feet came up to cup my balls and she rolled clit onto frenum and said

"Now let's test drive the new Jess," and off we went and Jess was so good with her feet and hands that any time she was going to make me come that way it was probably going to be even better for me than so tight inside her, but she wanted this control over her body without having to rely on me, so she scooted down and took me in.

Her breasts were quite full and her lips were puffier and her nose was smaller and she was about two inches taller, now 5'3", and I was a little sad about all of that even if she was as tight as ever, but with her extra height I was no longer against her cervix where she liked it so much and so she said "grow your cock and teach me how I can do that to you," and at just that moment, me obediently getting longer until she could swirl against me again, Callie walked in.

"Oh dear," she said, seeing my hair grown and the changes I'd made to Jess, suddenly uncertain exactly what she'd stumbled into, and Jess gasped

"Help me with him," and I was good and ready from what her feet had done to me and she was as turned on as I'd ever felt her, struggling to hold back her orgasm but then it crashed over her and she enveloped me and crashed over me, and I was completely on board with teaching her what she wanted to know and as worked up as I already was I came so hard under her, now staring deep into Callie's beautiful upside-down concerned eyes and that was just a completely different world and Jess was coming again, harder, and goddess I loved her sounds when she was coming like that, the most multi-orgasmic woman I'd ever known.

"What did you do?" Callie asked from between us once we were all lying down together, breathing mostly back to normal.

"I asked him to change me and then show me how," Jess said.

"Are you sure that's a good idea," Callie asked, "when you're pregnant?"

Which wasn't something either of us had considered, and Jess was suddenly short of words.

Callie turned to me. "Sati wants you in her bedroom," she said. "I'll tell her to give you another half hour ... I don't think anyone expected you to get so busy so soon after ... that business with Taylor."

"Taylor isn't ready," I said, eyes on the ceiling. "She's going to have to learn how to control a violent, cruel man, which Stuart and I are not."

"I won't do that anymore," Jess said, her thoughts still on how we'd changed her. "Maybe my face and my boobs, a little."

"Did he change, too?" Callie asked.

"We made his cock longer," Jess said.

"He needs to change that back," Callie said sternly, "I liked it very much the way it was," which made me smile.

"Jess should go back to the same height she was before," I said, my eyes still on the ceiling. "And she should be extra careful about the baby when she does. I don't think this was a good thing to have taught her."

Jess pouted.

"Now you have to teach me, too," Callie said. "But not anyone else."

"I didn't show Dani or Kelsey how to make a portal," I said. "It's the only thing I didn't show them. At first because I couldn't decide, but now I'm glad."

"Then don't show Sati or Ingrid, either," Callie said, and I nodded, and Callie rolled toward Jess and held her, my hands massaging Callie's lovely shoulders, as Jess shrank herself to the same wonderful petite height she'd been before, but kept her altered breasts and lips and nose, and I shrank my cock down to exactly the size Callie and Jess used to like it, and then we cuddled. It was still just Noon.

Dani knocked a few minutes later to let us know that Sati expected me. Callie asked her to let Sati know that Jess had taken advantage of me in my vulnerable suggestible state and I would appreciate another 20 minutes to recover. I knew right then that Dani wanted to come in and lie down with us, but she nodded and closed the door instead.

20 minutes later, as we were stirring, I said to Jess "You need to change your breasts and nose and lips back. Everyone will wonder what happened if you don't." And then I kissed her and I kissed Callie and ungrew my hair and reverted my damaged middle-aged teeth and then I was out the door on the short walk to Sati's suite.

Sati was there, in a diaphanous peignoir playing silent peekaboo with a laughing Lashe on the bed, Dani brushing Sati's lustrous golden hair, Ingrid rubbing Sati's shapely shoulders and arms sleek with oil. Sati handed Lashe to Dani, then Dani left us, two goddesses and mortal me, surrounded by the sights and smells of my first time with Sati here, soap and cream and apples and roses and oil and perfume that smelled like outside, ripe and glowing with the barest hint of a growing baby bump in a filmy gown that hinted at so much of her treasure, which so many had given so much for but she had all of it still. A vision of feminine archetypes blended: loving mother, almost unattainably desirable lover, wise grandmother, a goddess to worship and obey.

I bowed deeply, my nose and eyes and ears and hindbrain remembering how it'd been, how thoroughly she'd owned me, and it made my knees just a little weak even as another part of me knew that Callie and Jess and one other also possessed me.

"Beautiful Lady Setenaya," I said.

Sati sort of enigmatically smiled, sort of didn't smile at all. Ingrid tensed, looking like she wanted to get up and end my pestilent pestering of this Earth at just that moment, once and for all.

"Iris," I said, bowing deeply to Ingrid, not quite so deeply as to Sati, and when my eyes rose again to a point where I could see her, she seemed somewhat mollified, but since I hadn't used the name I knew would've been even more appropriate, there was still an unresolved thing between us. Sati's smile had turned from enigmatic to somewhat appreciative.

"Robert," she said, "you did a very helpful thing with Taylor this morning."

"Thank you, goddess," I said, which brought a look from Sati like she knew I wasn't telling her everything I knew about her, which of course was true.

"We are leaving soon," Sati said.

"Taylor needs more experience," I said.

"There isn't time," Sati said. "Ingrid ... Ingrid will make certain Taylor gets whatever help she needs."

Somehow, somehow, that sounded ominous.

"But now, it is time to share this knowledge you have gained with Ingrid and with me," Sati said.

I nodded. "Yes, my goddess," I said, eyes downcast again. As they needed to be.

Details of that sharing will not be forthcoming, as enjoyable as they were for all of us - it just feels wrong given what I sensed would be coming. It's enough to say that it involved more edging and time on my knees within a trance like Taylor's than usual and I came obediently whenever and however instructed and not a moment sooner, they learned everything Callie had learned from me except the extradimensional portal, which was a physics this particular goddess really truly didn't need to know, trust me on that.

Later, after dinner and before packing, we all sat together and rebuilt the magical protection around this magical place, stronger and bigger than before, stronger than the one Callie and Jess and I had somehow erected in the caldera together. No dark magic could be practiced here unless by a *

much

* more powerful mage.

But that night I got to sleep with Callie and Jess and Dani, and unresolved issues aside, was that the best night I've ever had? It's hard to know, the bar keeps rising. Jess had her bigger boobs and puffier lips and smaller nose and while none of that mattered to me, she was excited to do everything she could with these changes she'd wanted for so long, and her being so excited meant that much more excitement for me. But of course that meant Dani divined what Jess knew and wanted to know it herself, and after a little internal conflict I gave it to her and of course I'd already given it to Callie, and just a few minutes later, surrounded by three perfect, yes, perfect women in various states of exhausted accomplishment, me satiated beyond measure between, all of us sleeping or on the edge of that abyss, the only thing Dani didn't know that the rest of us knew was the portal.

And Dani knew not to tell Sati or Ingrid that all four of us knew how to reshape bodies.

It was getting very complicated. And I was really going to miss this.

Wait, where had that come from?

Next morning was time to leave.

Sati, Ingrid, Taylor, me, Stu, and Lashe. Not Dani or Kelsey or Jess because they were pregnant. Sati would come even while pregnant because this was her operation. We had a last-minute crisis about Callie. She could come, she should come, Jess and Dani had braided Callie's hair so it could be more out of the way in action, but in the end the only reason she didn't was because she loved me and I loved her and Sati was afraid what we felt for each other might compromise the mission.

The. Mission.

Shit, if anything sounded ominous before, how could it sound more ominous than that?

We took two vehicles, Stu driving Taylor in the battered econobox I'd arrived in, the rest of us in Callie's comfortable climate-controlled late-model crossover SUV. Taylor in an opaque bodystocking that I saw exactly once at a rest stop, and goddess, that must've been a challenging drive for Stuart.

Sati and Ingrid picked up on my recovering verbal acuity, including me in what conversation they might've had otherwise.

"Sleeping sorcerer is waking up, perhaps a little?" Sati asked. Her accent seemed to be creeping back.

"I can't ... remember," I said, which was mostly true. We were driving on the highway past Crater Lake, which the forest obscured, but it was there in my extrasense, the heat and the fire and that other potent sleeping thing under the cold snowy deep lake. Then through Klamath Falls, the only sizable town we would pass through. On the other side of Klamath Lake was Mt. McLoughlin, a prominent pointed peak that reminded me of how Callie's lovely breasts looked from below and also of Cassiopeia, and with that memory I sighed, missing Callie already, intensely, though somehow the image of acorns interwove with remembrance.

"I said you would enjoy your time at my school," Sati said.

"I didn't know I could fall in love," I said quietly.

"Enjoy what life brings while you can," Sati said. "Everything you thought you knew can change." And that made her seem sad, and old, which is an odd thing for the most beautiful woman I'd ever imagined to seem.

"Did you know Pythagoras?" I asked, out of the blue.

"Pythagoras was interesting man," she replied, considering. "Probably you like him, or maybe not, but he was smart, truly. Also wrong about so many things, and not good at listening to women. Aristotle was better."

"Socrates?"

"Always arguing."

I was smiling and Sati saw it.

"Why you smile so much, sleeping sorcerer?"

"I hardly know where to begin, Sati ... Setenaya," I said.

"Then close your mouth until you do," she said. "Like Pythagoras and Socrates should have."

"What's in the elixir?" I asked, and it was Sati's turn to smile, perhaps because I already understood at least part of the answer and couldn't know it yet, but she didn't reply.

"Aphrodite," I said after a long pause, and then "Qetesh." Then "Inanna," which made Sati sniff while Ingrid shifted in the driver's seat.

Then there was Mt. Shasta. Like Newberry and Giiwas and Walum, but more. Hot and active, massive and tall under a vaulting sky, dominating the landscape. I became inarticulate.

We stopped in its shadow, in Weed, to gas up and rent a car they had me drive alone, a nondescript late-model Kia with a hot motor and a manual transmission and California plates, and Sati, um ... bought me a T-shirt ... and then we all somehow reached our destination intact.

Redding. De facto capital of red-state North California. God and guns and things are more like they used to be now than they ever were. A dark mage was here, central to a drug distribution network, controlling the local syndicate(s). Sati had ridden past on an interstate bus two years ago and noticed that something wasn't right. Nothing specific, just a sense. But everything she'd learned in her long, long life told her that if something didn't feel right in a certain way, there was probably magic behind it. And that magic would've come from something, or more commonly someone, and if she came in unsuspected, she might have an opportunity. So she'd decided to look deeper but needed help, before her school, before she knew any of us but Ingrid, because if that dark mage had a grimoire and mastery of as much as she'd felt, then Sati. Wanted. That. Grimoire. And that was why she'd built her school and brought all of us together in the first place.

We slept overnight in a cheap motel with adjoining rooms. Me sandwiched in a queen-sized bed between Sati and Ingrid, Taylor with poor defenseless Stu. Some switching occurred overnight. Not a lot, but some. I'm still in my not-sharing-details mood, so I'll just say it was a better night than most other people will ever experience in their lives even though I spent a good bit of it on my knees worshiping Sati, or Taylor, or both. Thank you, beautiful Lady Setenaya.

Next day was a brothel. Sati and Ingrid and Taylor. Sati under a glamour that made her appear to be a little old woman. Taylor enhanced even beyond her natural gorgeousness, truly a vision of voluptuous feminine perfection. Ingrid appearing exactly as she was, ready to split whatever skull came between Taylor and whomever Taylor attracted, if ever and whenever necessary.

Men came in. Sati made it clear to the madame in residence that this was a fully agented situation. Taylor made everything worthwhile, every customer satisfied far beyond anything they could've previously conceived, and the women in charge of that brothel realized it immediately.

Taylor attracted men, and two women who loved women, like kittens to milk because the prize was Just. That. Good.

Thinking that made me feel a little thrill of recalled pleasure. Because, yes, she was. Taylor, I love you forever.

Two days later, Taylor's price far above anything anyone had ever attracted in this brothel or any other in Redding, California, a man came in. Confident, powerful, dripping newly acquired wealth. He wanted the best. Taylor wasn't in the usual lounge where customers could inspect everyone else available. She wasn't far, but that door was closed to anyone who didn't provide a VIP ante.

This man did and was allowed entrance and saw Taylor just stacked into her bodystocking, and like every other man who'd had even the slightest glimpse of her, he was hooked at first sight. But he wanted to take her violently. Which is when Ingrid got up and demonstrated her forward flip. And that man, stupefied, Taylor just that much hotter sitting confidently serene next to glowing warrior-stanced Ingrid, he still wanted her. And he got her, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she got him, and oh, goddess, what he got, Ingrid helping whenever it could facilitate still more pleasure. And that man, that completely dominated man, got his money's worth and much, much more.

He came back three days later, mostly recovered, shaking his head in disbelief at what he remembered of his experience, which was far from all of it. Taylor, completely non-magical Taylor, was better than ever even without her glamour, and afterwards, all his incomplete memories and dreams and fantasies confirmed and multiplied, he made the madame an offer.

And because this was the reason Taylor and Ingrid and Stuart and I came to Redding in the first place, Taylor assented, though not without a trepidation that only the rest of us could know ... this man purchased Taylor like a slave, and the amount of money he paid to Sati after the inevitable negotiation was astounding. The brothel owner took an agent's share but Ingrid was excluded so Taylor would be going alone, then Taylor, wearing nothing but an opaque crotchless bodystocking and panties and heels, this man wearing nothing but boxers and socks and a suit jacket with a leash around his neck, led Taylor to his huge black SUV, her fingertips on the owner's end of that leash while he carried his shoes and the rest of his clothes in a frilly pink bag, opened her door, kissed her daintily proffered foot once she was seated inside, closed that door, and drove her away. We knew where they were going since we'd already discovered its magical protection, as strong in light magic as the new one around Sati's school but quite a bit stronger in dark magic, which meant the mage who cast it was even stronger than all of us reinforcing each other, which Sati knew he would be, which is why we were here. But once Taylor was inside that magical protection, we had no way to know what might be happening to her.

That house, really a mansion, was enormous, on a big estate, really a compound, in forested foothills with a private drive, fenced all around, no way to get close enough for a proper surveillance, except ... most drones until recently have been loud and annoying, sounding like huge angry bees and almost impossible to miss, but Stuart had been doing Internet homework, wanting before all else to keep his beloved Mistress Taylor safe, so now we had the quietest drones non-military money could buy, and at night we flew one of them around that house and its grounds and got a sense for the place.