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All Characters are 18 years or older.
This story is a continuation of the Font of Fertility series. I would suggest starting with Chapter 1 if you have not already. This chapter includes minimal sex compared to usual - the sexcapades will return soon! Fair warning to readers, this series also includes sex between people who have grown up together but are not blood-related.
Jeremiah and Lauren explore secrets, while Annalise gets what she needs...
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I heard the movement, but I didn't have the energy to open my eyes. My entire body hurt, aching from days hanging in place. My hands felt gnarled and bloated, my arms and shoulders like they were disconnected at every socket. I hadn't felt warmth in I don't know how long.
"Why, Dad?" Maya cried.
I tried to blink my eyes open, feeling the water drip away as I tilted my head.
"You aren't capable of understanding. Not until you've ascended," our father said flippantly. He was working at a nearby table in the overgrown greenhouse, leaning over and fiddling with something. His clothes were starting to show heavy wear - he hadn't changed since I'd gotten back home, since he'd taken me.
Since he'd disposed of our mother.
"But what does that
mean?
You need
help
, Dad," Maya sobbed. She was still bound across the little clearing in the vegetative chaos, held by the ivy that my father had manipulated to his will. She wasn't the prisoner I was - she wasn't hanging like in a medieval dungeon, but she was still his captive as much as I was.
"Power!" he shouted, turning as he bared his teeth at her like a feral animal. "I am one of the greatest powers this world has ever known. I control life itself! I created an oasis in this desert, and yet my children spit on my work. Fled, instead of serving. And this one," he turned, sneering at me. "This one. This mockery of me. This antithesis. This witch!" He turned back to Maya, stalking close to her. "But you, my dear. You will be the salvation of the failure that was my family. You will bloom in my image, and I will finally be rid of your fiendish sister."
Maya whimpered as he caressed her face.
Stop
, I wanted to say.
Don't touch her
. But I couldn't even get it off my tongue. I hadn't eaten in almost a week. Had barely slept, in constant pain and cold.
The fire was gone. I was dead.
Our father sighed heavily, turned from Maya and went back to his worktable. "Once I have harvested the final lifeforce of that cunt that was my wife," he growled. "I will have harnessed the magic threads of fate itself, just as He said I would."
I lowered my head, no more tears left in me to mix with the water that still misted my body. He'd dug up our mother three times now, and re-buried her again. I hoped she was really dead, and not suffering. Not like this.
Annalise? Hey, sorry to bother you, this is Jeremiah. Are you available to chat for a second?
The voice sounded like it was muffled, coming from far off. At first I thought it was our father muttering to himself, but it wasn't his. Was I starting to hallucinate? Was my mind finally breaking?
But there was something there, in my head. Something different. Something that wasn't supposed to be there. Uncomfortable, but also familiar. Uncomfortably comfortable.
J- Jerry?
I prayed it was really him, and not my own mind. Or some new trick of my fathers. He had been my only hope since the beginning. He'd
promised
this was over, but father didn't listen.
Jeremiah Grant was supposed to protect us.
...help...
It was every ounce of pleading I could muster. Even my mind was tired, my thoughts muddled.
Then it burst. Not all at once, but quickly. One moment that Uncomfortable Comfortable thing in my mind was a pinprick, then it expanded like a cartoon hose exploding with pressure, and it began to fill my head, washing through my body.
"AAaaaauuuugh!" I screamed, feeling my throat clench and tear as every muscle in my body flexed. My arms and legs pulled against my bindings as I writhed. It was pain, it was pleasure. I was filled almost immediately, in the first moment, but it kept filling me, stretching my mind, stretching my soul. I was full and it just kept pouring in, and I felt thin like a balloon overfilled. There was nowhere for whatever this was to go, and I screamed because air was the only thing I could push out of my body to make room.
Maya was screaming as well, her terror ringing in my ears as it cut through my own. Father had turned, clutching a gnarled branch of a wand in one hand and a long, black thorn in the other. The first he had carried my entire life, and I knew he used it as a spellcasting focus. The second was new, something I had never seen before until he had taken me captive. He held both implements before him like a shield, his eyes wide in panic as he watched me stretch to my limits, bending unnaturally in the air like the girl from the Exorcist.
I was going to burst. I didn't know what would happen. This thing, this stuff in my mind wasn't real. It wasn't literally filling my body. Would I explode? Would it be a violent death? Was I a danger to Maya?
"RUN!" I screamed, though I didn't know if he would understand.
And then I felt it. Deep in that murky liquid that had filled my soul to the very limit and kept pumping in. I felt it.
Warmth.
Not just warmth. My warmth. Warmth I had left behind me. Warmth that I had traded with Jeremiah Grant, the Seat of Fertility, when he shared his life with mine and our magic touched, and he shook me to my core and plundered me as I willingly surrendered to him, and then put me back together.
And with that first touch of my magic, I realized I wasn't full of a liquid that would drown me or burst me like a balloon.
I was full of gasoline. I was full of Fuel.
And I had my Fire again.
"FUCK YOU!" I screamed, opening my eyes. The world went white.
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