M/F, centaurs, kinks, and more plot than sex. Don't say you weren't warned.
Challenge
Eina heard the bell ring in the next room, and she stood up, straightening her dress. Another hour, another customer. This one probably wanted a love spell: Those had grown distressingly popular lately. She sighed: She was getting tired of brewing frog's breath. Income was income, but she was
bored
. Ten years out of the Academy and she thought she'd be doing more by now than spending all day making boring potions for boring customers.
She circled the table in the back room, walking out through the curtain to the main part of the shop. "Hello, welcome to 'the Magic -- Chalice.'" She paused, looking up.
Most of her customers weren't this tall. Or this horse.
The centaur grimaced down at her. "I don't suppose you can cure this?" he said nervously.
Eina whistled. "I take it you weren't always a centaur?"
"What's a 'centaur?'" he said.
She shook her head. "Apparently you are." She walked over to the wall of visicks and took a half-gauge lensetter off the shelf. "How'd you end up like this?"
"My ex-girlfriend gave me the horse as a parting gift," he said, chagrined.
"Wow, what did you do to justify
that
?"
"Nothing!"
Eina looked up at him, one eyebrow cocked. "Uh huh."
"Her -- her sister kissed me in the barn, but I swear I didn't kiss her back!"
"Really."
"Honest!" he said. "I -- was going to break up with her anyway. She's crazy, but -- "
Eina chuckled, walking over with the lensetter. "But she's got lots of ass and great big tits?"
He bit his lip awkwardly.
"
Boys
," she said. "So consistent, you can set your watch by 'em." She sat down on a stool, cranking it up to its highest setting, and waved at him. "All right, come over here, let's take a look at you."
The centaur walked over and stopped in front of her. She lifted the lensetter to his side and switched out several of the crystals until a violet-colored image of tangled lines came into focus. She studied it a moment.
"Well, I can't say as I've seen that before," she said. She lowered the lensetter and looked up at him. "That's one heck of a curse you've got there."
"Curse?"
"That's no ordinary spell," said Eina. "Sex curse. Crafted by a succubus, by the look of it. That's the good stuff right there. You
really
must've gotten on your ex's bad side for her to summon a succubus. I wonder how much of her soul she sacrificed to do this to you?"
"Can you cure it? They say you're the best."
Eina grinned. "Who says that?"
"I asked around in the square, in the tavern. They say you're the best sorceress for a thousand leagues."
"Well, they're right," said Eina, grinning wider. "But this is a pretty strong curse. And you don't want to know what it's going to take to get rid of it."
"I just want my body back! Please, I'll pay you." He lifted up the small coin pouch he was carrying and poured the coins onto the counter beside her.
She glanced at them, wryly. A dozen bronze pieces, and a couple of silver pieces. That could barely buy a basic fire spell, much less cover the costs to lift the kind of curse he was carrying. He had no idea how deep he was in. Still --
Eina took three bronze pieces and slid the rest back. "All right, you have a deal. I've been needing a good challenge," she said. She ran her hands through her long, dark hair, straightening it, then stood up. She turned toward the back and waved at him. "Come on. This is going to require stronger magic than anything I have out front here."
He nodded, and followed her back through the curtain. She turned, opening a door in the wall, and she started down a deep, narrow staircase. The poor centaur had difficulty following in such a narrow passageway, but he managed.
"What's your name, anyway?" she said.
"Daen," he said.
"So now tell me what
really
happened," she said, stopping on the stairs. The horse-man behind her had nowhere to go, and backing up was almost impossible. He was stuck.
"I -- "
"If you want this curse lifted, I have to know what you did. They probably used that as part of the curse. So out with it. You didn't just kiss her sister."
"I, uh -- "
"If you want your feet back, talk. Otherwise, good luck with your new job pulling plows."
He looked down at the dark stairs. "I wasn't -- with her sister," he said. "And it was more than -- kissing."
"Uh huh. And?"
"It was -- her horse."
Eina paused, then grimaced. "
Eew!
Eew ew ew! Well,
that
explains a lot! No wonder she chose this for you. I would've too."
"I had never even -- anything! With anyone! I didn't cheat on her! I was drunk -- and it was stupid, and I don't know what I was thinking, and --!"
Eina shook her head. "Alright, you deviant, come on down, let's get you fixed up," she said, turning and waving at him. "But next time you have too many flagons of mead, just puke in the gutter like everybody else, okay?"
Daen glared at the ground, his face burning hot, and he followed her the rest of the way down the stone stairs, his hooves clopping loudly on each step. They arrived in a large, round chamber, deep underground, its walls bluish stone bricks with a hint of mildew on them. Eina waved her hand, and several torches along the walls burst into flames.
"Wow," said Daen, watching the room light up.
"That's an easy spell. The one on you is harder," she said. She walked over to a set of bookshelves against one wall and pulled down three books.
"What do you have to do to cure it?" he said.
"You don't
cure
curses," she replied, striding over to a table where she laid the three books. "You
lift
them or you
satisfy
them. We don't know what terms the succubus used to create the curse, so we probably can't
satisfy
it. Which means the only option is to
lift
it."
He clomped over to the table and looked down at the open tomes, which she was slowly paging through. "How do we do that?" he said.
"Well, it's a sex curse, so
sex
," she said, not looking up.
"What --!"
She peered up at him. "Don't get any wise ideas," she said. "I'm not doing
anything
with you. But if you want the curse lifted, you're going to have to weaken it by satisfying a part of it, and that means you're gonna have to do something sexual while I try to pry it free from you."
"Something -- "
She pointed at the chalk circle on the floor. "Go sit over there and start masturbating," she ordered.
"What --!?"
"You think I
want
to watch you jerk off?" she said. "The only reason I'm doing this at all is because it's a challenge, and I haven't had one of those in a while. So go sit over there, follow directions, and if we do this right, I should be able to lift it off of you and attach it to something else, like this bucket." She held up a bucket. "Which, by the way, if you have a stupid orgasm, make sure the jizz ends up in the bucket so I don't have to clean up after you."
He blanched. "You want me to -- "
"Don't be stupid and pay attention," she growled. She pointed at the circle. "Go sit there and weaken the curse by jerking off that horse prick of yours. Think about that mare you were nailing, or a cute girl or something. I don't care. Just play along and do what I tell you, or get your horse ass out of my store."
He nodded soberly, and, taking the bucket, walked over to the great chalk circle on the floor, which had a pair of seven-point stars inscribed within it and several ominous-looking symbols and shapes. He lay down in the middle of it, leaned back over his shoulder, and awkwardly started to gently massage his sheath.
Eina shook her head. That was easily the weirdest thing she'd seen this week. Or possibly this month. This year? Out in the Deep Forest, when she'd seen the cyclops making out with the fairy, that might have been weirder. But watching a cute guy jerk off a horse's prick was definitely not something she'd seen before.
But to business: While he was busy weakening the curse, she needed to pry it free. She got up from the books and walked over to the chalk circle, kneeling down at its edge. She concentrated, feeling the energy build up, and the chalk circle began to glow. A wind whipped up, and she let her mind sink into the astral plane. He was still there, in the center of the growing maelstrom, his body now glowing red-hot with sexual energy.
"Is it working?" he shouted over the wind.
"Shut
up
!" she hissed, losing focus for a moment.
The wind howled in the chamber, and she could see the curse now, a web of dark purple lines wrapped around him in the astral plane. The succubus had even stamped the web
E.S.
, as if she had been so proud of her curse that she wanted to label it. Eina focused, and slowly, a few of the outer lines began to loosen and whip in the wind. Carefully, delicately, she pried each line free of his body, and it started to shrink, now that the curse was no longer stretching it to shape.
"It's working!" he cried.
"Shut
up
shut
up
!" she shouted, losing focus again.
The lines tangled a little, wrapping back around him, but they were all wrong now, mispositioned and knotted on themselves. She pulled at them again, and again they began to pry free. It was harder this time, but as long as she concentrated, they were coming off. The dark black shape of his physical form began to shrink, the legs and barrel contracting. Eina grinned. She
was
the best, and she knew it.
Something tapped her on the shoulder.
In the astral plane.
A figure was standing there, dark purple and horned, but translucent, like a ghost. She had a long, spade-pointed tail, and hooves, and dark eyes with red pupils, and long black hair that whipped in the invisible winds Eina had summoned.
"You!" said Eina.
"What?" said Daen.
"You're going to destroy my handiwork," said the figure.
"Damn straight I am," said Eina, grinning. "Also, you're not the succubus. You're just a guard projection."
Eina concentrated and waved her hand like a cutting blade, and the guard projection was sliced in half, surprised at the attack. The upper half floated for a moment in surprise, and Eina watched, waiting for it to dissipate.
But a moment later, the cut simply filled in.
"What the heck?" said Eina, puzzled.
"I'm not a guard projection," said the figure.
Eina glared. "Then what
are
you?"
