Mageslayer

(Author's note, this one is gonna be long. I want to once more thank everyone for the support of this series, especially Shanka, the author of Toofy, Drachne, and many other great works on this site. None of this would have happened without them, their advice, and their support. This chapter has had a lot of delays, and I want to thank everyone for being patient. I will still be continuing this series, and I hope this entry makes a good return to it. As you're probably already aware, this is a really long chapter, over 20,000 words. That being said, it's relatively light on erotic scenes, the focus of this chapter is story and action. So with all that, there are a few disclaimers and warnings I want to give. First off, this chapter includes a drawn out eroticized scene that includes very dubious consent. If that is a trigger that upsets you, consider this your warning. I of course don't believe anything within this chapter to be problematic, but I do encourage you to use your own discretion. If you do find the scene problematic, please do contact me at my email, I don't want to cause any harm with this fantasy story about a horny cat girl. This is a story of moral grays and complex morality. In a similar vein, this chapter includes somewhat graphic violence, though no detailed gore. With all that being said, happy reading~ Red <3)

Lori was agitated. The last rays of daylight had vanished hours ago, but she remained sat at the desk in her chambers using her natural ability to see in the dark to read over one of what must have been dozens of legal documents. Written in compact high arcano with even more confounding and needlessly complex words than humans normally used, it detailed the Magus trials, and more importantly the procedures and regulations for entering. Well, it and the however many other documents Gabriel helped her find scattered around the desk. Elz as always sat aside in a wooden chair, weaving something with her magic and staying mostly silent. Lori groaned before looking up from the antagonistically small script,

It was nice to say she was going to represent house Rose so she could keep close to her bond, but to actually do it was a lot harder. When she suggested she represent an expunged house her bond with Eter alone made her second guess herself as she felt his doubt. First she had to find out if she was even able to, so that's how she had to spend the next week. Only taking breaks to eat, tell a guard to piss off when they started causing trouble, spend some time with Eter, and help send Ember off with a bit of fun. She probably slept too, but was using her dreams to keep rereading what she remembered and going over her plan, so it all blended together.

There were a lot more regulations than she realized. The first concern was that only humans could enter, but as she eventually pieced together, anyone who could provide proof one of their parents were human was also eligible. That would be mildly difficult considering her family, parents included, were expelled, and any record of them erased from anywhere she could likely find. She was going to have to scour the old estate for something the expungers missed, she had gotten Maddie to agree to form a teleportation ritual and for them both to go there. But the moon wasn't right until tomorrow night... Or was it today? Lori groaned again.

She normally had a great track of time, intuitively sensing the phases of the moon and the timing of the moonlights. But it had started to blend together. She needed to sleep, for real. The paperwork could wait, she had almost everything sorted anyway, and was pretty sure everything she'd end up doing was legal and had enough memorized to defend herself if she needed to. "Elz. Lori is going to sleep, clean up her desk and things, and don't let anyone wake her up.... Besides Maddie if she has something important." She gave a simple command as she stood up, taking a shaky step and collapsing into her nearby bed. It had been a long time since she was this exhausted, and sleep came as soon as her head hit the pillows.

<3 <3 <3 <3

Maddie was scanning a shelf of books, taking a large leather bound tome with a mix of high and low arcano scrawled on the spine. She could only read the latter, despite the dialects sharing a common script.

Classification of Runecraft by High Scribe Mezzy R. Stans, Translated to Low Arcano by Merin Mopi.

The red leather was bumpy under her fingers, and she staggered back a bit as she pulled the heavy book off of the shelf, quickly dumping it on a nearby desk with a resounding thud.

She still wanted to figure out what the symbol the hearts formed on Lori was. She had a small piece of paper with her, a copy of the drawing she had made weeks earlier, and she flipped open the book, turning to the first few pages. Each set of pages was truly one, the left in high arcano, the right translated so she could read. She knew some kind of powerful enchantment magick was woven into the language itself to prevent those lacking noble blood from learning it. She wished she had a way to bypass that magick. The pages detailed runecraft, a key principle of both circle and arcane magic, and if truly mastered, more than effective enough to be its own form of magic entirely.

There were runes, hundreds of them, around a dozen major ones, they were like words, beautiful words. One alone meant little, a weak catalyst for only weak magic but they formed multi runes, complex patterns made of multiple runes, they were like sentences, able to carry advanced meaning, advanced magic. All runes did though was channel magical energy into useful shapes, without that extra magic, they were just shapes. Very useful for rituals, it gave mortals a much better and more consistent way to adjust the flow of magic to a precise level, a problem when most mortals couldn't see magic.

Sigils meanwhile, were paragraphs, or more like the last sentence of one. Without supporting runes and patterns, they were worthless, but when supported by a complex and sufficient series of runes, they could carry more than meaning, they could carry genuine purpose. They essentially formed a closed loop of magic, allowing a magick to form. A magical effect created without maintaining magical energy. A functional sigil, while difficult to set up, required no maintenance as long as its physical shape didn't fluctuate. Magicks could also take the form of non permanent spells, usually referred to as rituals, a sigil was formed not physically, but with ethereal shaping of magic, normally with supporting runes to help the shaping process. Then it was infused with magical energy, creating a feedback loop that could burst into a powerful spell. It was how she'd be teleporting herself and Lori over two hundred miles and then back.

The issue was, sigils and the rune systems behind them got exponentially more complex the more potent the magick. Theoretically there was no limit, as long as the proper runes existed and were known. Magic was made of three things, energy, emotion, and geometry. Circle magic was focused on the geometry, both cosmic and physical. It sought to replace the energy needed with careful geometry that amplified the power of a druid, while also requiring careful emotional control. Magical power and energy was mostly needed to adjust conditions and geometry of existing ambient magic, but circle magic instead taught the practice of waiting for the ambient magic to already, and naturally, meet perfect conditions. It then used many sigils to produce more ambient magic for a druid to draw on, the basis of a magic circle.

Maddie had a weak aura and a mind gifted at geometry and math, circle magic came relatively easily to her. The other major form of magic was elemancy, it simply disregarded geometry, and instead allowed an individual to be the catalyst for spellcasting conditions. But it meant more complex, abstract magic was impossible for a mortal, and magicks were also impossible. It required both a strong aura and strong emotions, what it lacked in the potential power and complexity of circle magic it made up for in spontaneous ability and the raw power it allowed an individual to pour into their aura. It disregarded the art of runecraft and rituals, but was intuitive and to the rare few gifted a truly grand aura, it allowed them almost unmatched power.

Maddie sighed as she flipped through another few pages. But then of course there was new magic, arcane magic. A blend of the two existing styles, an unnatural one born from studying demons. Unlike circle magic, its users didn't practice moderation and patience, the style instead focused on using practices similar to elementalism, but channeled through volatile and manufactured partial runes, to force the ambient magic of the world to adjust to fit their needs. Often irreversibly. It required magical power and little else. The magicks still needed rituals of course, geometry was not ignored, but it was only used to the barest extent. Elemancy was the practice of letting yourself be a conduit of magic, allowing it to flow through you channeled by emotion. Circle magic was the practice of finding natural conduits to channel magic through. Arcane magic was the practice of forcing magic to become a conduit for itself, rending it apart and rearranging it to the whims of the mage in the process. There was a reason mages were able to slaughter the druids, and elemancy is now seen as a lesser form of magic. It wasn't a fair fight.

Maddie let herself drift through her own thoughts. Lori, the Lord's mistress, she was some combination of all three. She clearly knew arcane magic, and used it, was at least a bit practiced with circle magic, and Maddie was pretty sure she also was herself a conduit for magic fueled by emotion. There were other forms of magic of course, or at least other magical practices, but Lori was the first she knew of to practice the major three simultaneously. And she could see magic, making runecraft almost pointless to her in anything outside of especially potent magicks, she didn't need tools to shape magic precisely. She flipped another page, and once more focused on the book, a specific diagram as her eyes widened.

It matched her own almost perfectly. Or half of it. The sigil of change. Maddie's eyes widened. On the page, it was a closed shape, like all sigils it could not be added to or subtracted from, but she was almost giddy as she flipped quickly through another few dozen pages. The sigil of magic, the largest and most common of all sigils. Maddie sketched the two separately with a giggle. How had she never thought of this? Sigils were closed and unyielding, but things were different on a three dimensional object like Lori's body. There, with the warping... Maddie grinned as she realized she may be the first person to discover a disigil, a multisigil, something everyone has always thought impossible.

She only realized she had let out an excited squeal when Gabriel turned around the shelves she was sandwiched between, looking concerned, she just gave him a grin and a wave as she began standing up. She had notes to put down in her journal, a lot of them. And maybe she could find out more about Lori than she thought.

Maddie did grimace for a moment though as she realized she'd have to deal with the guards. Ever since her encounter with Eric. Elz'ithu's protection was enough to keep her unharmed, especially when combined with Lori's, but they had been getting more frequent. They had grown more bold, their idle chatter more toxic and borderline traitorous, and Eric seemed even more spiteful than normal. He had been extra cruel to her and Sam whenever he got the chance, and did what little he could to antagonize the fae and her mistress. Something about him made Maddie's spine tingle, something was wrong. She figured he was planning on making good on his threats sooner or later, and had been finding it harder to sleep without the aid of herbal teas. She was getting scared, not just for Sam, but for herself.

She shook her head to disperse the thoughts, walking by Gabriel and offering him a polite nod in response to a question he asked, but that she couldn't hear over her suddenly throbbing head. She passed by another servant girl as she left the manor's library, bumping into her, a redhead, maybe even dyed hair, pretty too. But from the smell of it, she had been cleaning Lori's room, judging by the musky scents of sex and passion Maddie only associated with the neko. Maddie stumbled, losing balance and falling to the floor with a painful thump. The headache was messing with her balance, and she groaned in pain. The girl looked back at her. "Och I'm sorry, ye okay?"

Maddie felt her headache ease just a bit as the redheaded girl came to help her up, offering her a surprisingly sturdy hand to grip onto. She also had a distinct accent, not one Maddie recognized. "It's... Fine, I should have watched where I was going, a little fall won't kill me." Maddie forced a chuckle out of herself, using the girl's help to get back on her feet. She didn't recognize her, but that was true of a good chunk of the manor staff, considering she spent most of her time in the shed by the garden. The other girl also let out a chuckle, high pitched but deep, genuine. Kind.

"Am Brim by th'way. Nice t'meet ye." She introduced herself with a fairly excited tone in her voice, like she loved meeting people, Maddie couldn't help but let Brim's smile come to her own face as they shook hands. Before she could continue the conversation though, Brim quickly took a step back and excused herself with a slight nod of her head, hurrying off around the corner as Gabriel began to exit the library. Maddie chuckled, she didn't want to be scolded by him for standing around chit chatting instead of doing whatever she was meant to be doing, she said goodbye to Gabriel as he came out, quickly making for the one of the manor's exits.

Her headache returned, but she knew some tea could help with that, Elz'ithu had given her a healthy supply of otherwise expensive herbs for her brews. The decently long walk back to the shed was uneventful, discounting her normal meeting with Sam who was excited to see her as other, and she set up the single kitchen appliance in her shed. A small stove, which she began heating with a handful of coals. It was what kept her from freezing in winter, and how she made her tea. She then got down to recording the morning's discoveries until about noon.

She remained thankfully undisturbed, and after closing and once more hiding her journal, she left her shed to attend to her duties in the garden. Elz'ithu presumably was busy with Lori, or she would have visited, and she began to trim some of the faster growing foliage, removing some of the more pesky weeds as well. Another hour passed before Ale visited her, smiling like always. He checked on how she was doing, how the garden was doing, and had brought her a small meal for lunch, like he did every afternoon. She brewed another cup of tea and ate, before once more resuming her duties.

Watering the plants, spreading some dung to help fertilize, harvesting a few fresh herbs to dry, and planting some extra flowers in season to replace those that would soon begin to wilt. It was four by the time she was done, and then she began her extra duties, realigning some stones shifted by the rain a few days ago, double checking the engravings in the ground to ensure they were unbroken, and everything else required for the teleportation magick to work. The sun was still fairly high in the sky when she finished, it was around four thirty, but more importantly it was seven half strokes to fifth light, or about seventeen minutes. She just needed to wait for Lori, and then the two could perform the ritual spell and apparently arrive near the supposedly non existent Rose Estate.

Maddie didn't hear the neko arrive, she didn't even smell the catgirl despite her scented perfumes and attire. The mistress of Erenvloth estate was particular about smell, and Maddie had been working with Elz'ithu to use some of the garden's herbs to make perfumes that would keep her content when having to interact with mages or other apparently unpleasant smells. The gardener was used to the girl sneaking up on her, but she still didn't know quite how she did it. "Is everything ready Maddie? Lori is exhausted and wants to get this done with." Maddie turned to look with a small nod, swallowing a knot that formed in her throat. She produced a small dagger, meant more for skinning or whittling than for use as a weapon, stepping forwards towards Lori.

"With blood spilled fertilizing the roots of the wild, we shall go to the roots of the blood. Where life was made clear, where the soul was brought to the body, may we explore the beginning of your story." Maddie more mumbled the incantation than anything, all that mattered was Lori heard it, and her intent was clear to the circle beneath her. She felt a tingling feeling, almost like a deep thrum going through her body, as she knew Lori likely saw the circle gently glow with the magic of the area. The neko extended a hand, and Maddie, with as steady a hand as she could manage, slit her palm, drawing a wince of pain as the girl's blood splattered to the ground. Mages could teleport wherever they wanted, as long as they could properly picture the location and had the time and power to perform the magick, but druids needed a catalyst, something that could mingle the ambient magic of the destination with the circle they were casting from. Lori was a half fae, her blood was laced with the aura of the nymph that fused with her soul, tied to her birthplace.

They also wanted to return though, after six hours. Luckily a magic circle inherently channeled ambient magic of an area, so no catalyst was needed, the magick to teleport them back just needed a delay, tied to the rise of the moon it was easy enough to cause the magick to go off during last light, which was around six hours away. Unlike the binding ritual she had performed when Lori first came to the estate, this teleportation wasn't incredibly taxing, and she didn't need to draw on her own magic to enhance the power of the circle, which also meant there was no need for Lori to tongue fuck her. A faint blush appeared as she remembered the scene in all too vivid detail, before she shook her head to dismiss the memory. Soon fifth light hit, and they both took their positions at the circle, Maddie looked at the dagger with a shudder. She nervously brought her tongue to the blade, licking up a small amount of the Neko's blood, she recoiled at the strong taste of cinnamon. Holding back a gag, she put the dagger aside, swallowing the liquid essence of the neko. It bound her to the catalyst needed for the teleportation to also work on her. She began some chanting, Lori following her words, and soon the spell was woven, the sigil of movement, formed by two rose bushes and a sprig of holly, began to glow. A moment later, everything was black.

Maddie's eyes fluttered open, and her first thought was how remarkably dark Lori's childhood home was. Then she realized she couldn't see Lori around her, or anything resembling a manor or even terrain. She was just surrounded by black, utter darkness, she could see just fine, like everything was well lit, but there was nothing to see. She was trying to figure out what had gone wrong, because something did, when she heard a voice from behind her, and she spun around quick enough to fall, feeling the hairs on her neck standing on edge. "Well hello there little thing." Maddie found herself looking at probably the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. She was tall, with the void of their surroundings she felt impossibly tall, but Maddie rationalized that she must have been a bit over six feet, she had bronzed skin, with jet black hair framing a full, amused looking face free of blemish or asymmetry. Two canine-like ears jutted out from her head, parting her hair that hung below her shoulders, and all the way to her waist. They were the same jet back color, impossibly dark, indistinguishable from the emptiness surrounding her. Despite that, they glowed with an ethereal red glow, allowing them to still be seen, the ears were long, perked fully and each having several gold rings adorning them, though the one on the right had a bite mark, taking a few inches off of it.