Author's Note: An erotic fantasy for y'all! Unlike my other stories, this one DOESN'T have incest. I see this as a story with smut in it as opposed to smut with a story. Hope that distinction makes it clear if you want to give this a read or not.
The whole story is done but I've split it into two parts. This first part contains less smut. The second part contains way more. I split the book in two to make it easier for readers to not have a billion pages to shift through. I'll be submitting the second part right after this one is posted. So if you want, you can wait for both parts to be available before you start the story.
For the people that have been waiting for me to write more incest: I promise it's coming. My time was taken up by the real world and this story. Stay tuned. Ideally, there are those among you that love fantasy stories as well.
Chapter 1: A New(ish) Face
Natalia stepped out of the coffee shop and stopped directly under the awning after noticing the lazily falling rain. So lazy that she felt that, if she was careful, she could walk around each individual droplet all the way back to the school and not get the slightest bit wet. As tempting as it was to try, she murmured a simple spell of deflection over herself. Since she was not clear in her intent, she stepped out into the rain and got her clothes wet while her hair and skin remained completely dry. She swore but decided to continue on. Had it been raining harder she would have banished the spell and tried again but she didn't mind her shirt and jeans getting slightly wet.
The rain brought chill with it and that chill was not deflected by Natalia's spell. As the rain slid right off her, it left behind vestiges of its cold. Little by little, drop by drop, Natalia's discomfort increased until it finally ran up from the base of her spine to her skull and made her shiver. Again she decided to persevere since the school was not far off, only a three mile walk. She was just grateful that her parents had gifted her a waterproof backpack so she wouldn't have to worry about casting spells properly in a town that rained more often than it didn't. Reasonably the frequent rain should result in students and teachers carrying around umbrellas but it instead made them more reliant on their magic. Magic couldn't be forgotten in a corner of a coffee shop.
"Classic mistakes." Said a man that was suddenly strolling alongside her. "Used to make them all the time when I was younger."
Natalia flinched and stumbled to the side, stopping just short of stepping onto the road. "S-s-sorry?"
"Your deflection spell. Deflecting the water but not the cold it carries, on top of letting it soak your clothes." The man smiled. "Scope and intent are easy enough concepts to understand but very difficult to carry out. Especially if your fein is troubled."
He got past my wards without me sensing him. How
? Natalie frowned at him.
He smiled at her. "You can call me Branigan."
She actively pushed herself to not think about how charming that smile was. He hadn't even cast a mesmer on her. Just a natural smile had sunk deep past any emotional defenses she had. And its familiarity. Had she seen it before? Did he live in the area? "Who are you?"
"Who I am is information you'll have to earn. Can't just be giving that out willy nilly." He smiled again. Again she felt the need to trust him immediately. "But like I said two moments ago, you can call me Branigan. You can even call me Bran."
"Not what I meant." She said, fists clenching in her pockets. "Why are you speaking to me?"
"Ah. I see." Branigan nodded slowly, then faced straight ahead and lowered his voice. "There's a gentleman following us. Well. Following
you
. As a man who doesn't make a habit of following lone women, I grew concerned. If you'd like, we can continue walking as if we're friends. If you wouldn't like that, just let me know and I'll mind my own business."
It took all of Natalia's self control to not look behind herself. Her fists remained clenched. "What does he look like?" She had a solid guess.
"Annoyingly tall. Brown, curly hair parted in the middle. Pale." Branigan said, kicking along a stone he had come across. "Wispy mustache that would look awful if he wasn't so handsome. Seriously. He's a looker. I'd understand if you turned around and your jaw dropped once you saw him."
Her guess had been right. "Stay with me, please."
"Sure." Branigan said. The stone clattered along with them. "Headed to Foxcastle?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sir?" Branigan groaned. "How old do you think I am?"
Natalia glanced at him. He had an extremely youthful, light brown face under his stubble and his eyes were like embered charcoal, glimmering with an inner light. At the most he was 18, like her. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't look at you properly before. Are you a new student?"
"Nope. You were right. You should be calling me sir." Branigan winked. "Not a student."
"Then how did you know I'm a Dra? Are you a teacher?"
"Do you have to be a Foxcastle student or teacher to identify Dra?"
"...No."
"There you go." Branigan said. "What's your name?"
"You can call me Natalia. You can even call me Nat." She said, imitating his exact tone from when he had introduced himself a second time.
"Clever." Branigan chuckled, stepping over the stone instead of kicking it. Then, when his foot was on its other side, he whipped it backwards by staging it as an awkward trip. The stone rocketed away and there was a satisfying 'OW!' a second later. "Did you hear something?"
Natalia bit back a laugh. "No."
"Interesting. Maybe I
am
old." Branigan sighed. "Hearing things."
"So sad."
Branigan shrugged. "Quite."
The two walked all the way to Foxcastle, chatting easily and forgetting the man that had been following Natalia. When they got to the castle gates, Branigan waved goodbye and strolled off towards the main building. Natalia waved him off until he turned away, then continued her own walk towards the dormitories. As she walked she had two stark realizations. One: he had avoided mentioning anything of substance about himself during their three mile walk from Foxden, including what he was doing at Foxcastle if he wasn't a student or a teacher. Two: only a powerful Dra could disable her wards and get past them without detection. Unless she had messed up the casting. Which was also likely.
"Hey, Nat." Sasha called from her bed but didn't stop reading her magazine. "You're back soon."
"Couldn't concentrate." Natalia took her shoes off, dropped her bag off next to her desk, then laid down on Sasha's bed. She cuddled up to the girl, idly reading the article Sasha was reading but not remembering any of the words long enough to comprehend it. "Lucas followed me back."
Sasha tossed the magazine aside and sat up. "What? Are you okay?"
"Yeah I'm fine. He stayed way outside my wards. Didn't notice him until someone else pointed it out."
"Someone else?" Sasha frowned, her blue eyes clouding with suspicion. "Who?"
"I don't know." Nat shrugged, still laying down. "He introduced himself as Branigan and that's it."
"Branigan? Branigan who?" Sasha frowned. That name felt familiar, teasing at her curiosity for a moment before fading away.
"Didn't say."
"Creep."
"Hey don't be mean, he helped me!"
"Did you tell him your last name?"
"Of course not." Natalia said. "He walked me all the way to the gates and then went off to the main building."
"Tell me everything from the top to bottom."
Natalia sighed then told her, starting from fumbling the deflection spell to Branigan telling her about Lucas following her to the things they talked about on the walk to Foxcastle. "It's a bit disconcerting but I think he's harmless, Sasha."
"Yeah. Totally harmless. Definitely not at all suspicious to just walk on through a Dra's wards!"
"They're meant to warn me about danger, not just anyone walking through them."
Sasha got off the bed and walked to the door. Then she turned around and began walking back, stopping just inside the spot of Natalia's ward radius. "Your wards went off, didn't they? Just like mine did?"
"Yeah."
"Are either of us a danger to the other?"
"No."
"Yet they went off!" Sasha said. "Because the potential still exists. We don't set off the defensive wards for each other, but we do trigger the warning ones." She crossed her arms. "So what the hell is this Branigan guy doing just walking on through?"
"I still don't think he's anyone to worry about." Natalia said. "So what if he's a bit mysterious? He helped me at the end of the day. And he even felt really familiar. Maybe I know him."
"The Empire and The United Front were allies during the Tundra War. Remember what happened after the war ended?"
Natalia rolled her eyes. "Oh my God don't be so dramatic!"
"To get past a ward, you have to actively dismantle it like a sneaky bastard. To do it without tipping off the caster, you have to be an
extra
sneaky bastard."
"Or you could just get through a ward without setting it off. No dismantling involved."
