Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Candlelight Stranger
Damon plunged backward, snapped out of his fugue to smack hard against the deck -- a knife pressed to his neck.
"Stop, right now!" The first mate's dark eyes drank the light between them, and Damon blinked without comprehension.
His mouth hurt, like he'd bit the insides of both cheeks and his tongue with one fierce chomp. The back of his head ached, and he wasn't sure why. A loop of rope had clinched his arms just above the elbows, and the knot of the lasso dug at the hollow of his right shoulder.
"Leave off him, Cordell." Mateja's voice reached out from somewhere behind him in the dark. "He's stopped, already -- or hadn't you noticed?"
Cordell, and his knife, withdrew from filling Damon's vision -- allowing the much younger human male to crane his neck and see the she-dwarf, Captain Mateja Radinka Meier of the
Forge Spitter
, holding the end of the line binding his arms to his chest.
"What happened?" Damon still felt disoriented, not only from smacking his head on the wooden deck of the ship. "Did it work? Is...?"
He searched about, looking for Ginga and Abhilash -- both curled on the deck a pace or two from his feet. Ginga looked drunk and giggling, eyes shining with mirth at him. Abhilash stared at him unblinking... hunger, hatred, fear... he couldn't be sure and didn't want to think on it more. His head hurt.
"You didn't tell me you were a wild mage." Mateja's frown belied the smile in her eyes. "I don't think I'd have let you aboard."
"I'll go." Damon offered stupidly, having no notion of where he'd go other than overboard -- and no idea how far downriver they'd drifted with the current or whether anyone from Renks Cairn would be waiting for him at the shore.
"A bargain's a bargain." Mateja spat to one side. "What's it matter there's contraband in the barrel?"
"Captain?" Cordell, her first mate, gave an incredulous glance over his shoulder, hand still a fist around the handle of his knife.
"Put them in my quarters, as agreed." Mateja shook her head. "So help me, I'll take it out of the lot of them if I must."
"I can walk." Abhilash argued, snaking up to her feet with alarming speed.
"Good." Mateja nodding, approving and appraising. "Then you can move the other two and spare my crew the sweat."
...
Damon awoke just as he dropped into the water -- the cold shock blasting into his senses and shivering him into his bones. He flailed, sputtered, stammered, cursed and cried-out. The tugging pain about his chest and knees as he dragged behind the catamaran pulled his attention to the rope harness about his shoulders and legs, cutting dark slashes gleaming in moonlight between himself and the railing above.
The rope hauled upward, his teeth chattering from the mix of night air and cold river.
"What happened, now?" Damon snarled amid coughing, but there was no answer.
Above, Abhilash leaned toward him over the rail and yanked him back onto the ship. Mateja looked to be standing watch over the ork, and Damon couldn't place events in order from what he remembered last to now.
"How long?" He managed, catching Mateja looking at him with a different expression less like pity and more like disgust tangled with the underpinning lust still shining in the purse of her lips and the blush of her cheeks.
"Not long." Mateja's hurried whisper quieted him as Abhilash set him on his feet. "Just dropped you in, now let's go."
Damon was pushed and dragged between them, his new boots sloshing and squishing as he walked.
...
"See, here." Ginga pointed to the black veins in Damon's skin.
In the bolstered moonlight of Mateja's cabin, a single candle was paired to a second before the first burned away. Through the portholes of the captain's quarters, moonlight now spilled by aid of clever lenses placed where the shutters had previously been locked.
"It looks like it's... spreading." Mateja scowled. "This better not interfere with
our
business."
"I don't think it will." Damon mumbled, naked and feeling vulnerable under the intense scrutiny of three females as they examined nearly every scrap of his exposed skin.
"Show me." Abhilash reached between his legs and cupped his cock in her hand.
"Fuck off, Abhi." Damon swatted at the she-ork's arm, but she didn't budge -- and the heat of her hand wasn't unpleasant.
"She's right, love." Ginga's face twisted with apology, even as her own eagerness started to get the better of her. "Better to prove it sooner than later, right? And we've already all..."
"I know -- I know!" Damon held his hands over his face and groaned. "I realize, I just... it's been a long day, and this is..."
"Give." Abhilash leaned forward and touched her lips to Damon's chest, nudging his arms out of the way.
"Me." The she-ork sank down, her hot breath racing across the skin of his stomach and through the thicket of hair at his crotch. His traitorous cock lurched awake, forgetting the frigid water in favor of the trio of quim giving the air a properly lusty aroma.
"Seed." And her mouth slid over him, his prick hardening against her tongue.
He groaned at the feeling. Abhilash had developed some skill of the tongue (so far as his cock was concerned) in their days together, but he knew she wanted proof his magical prowess was intact.
"Can't we just...?" He looked to Ginga, and saw in her face a similar hunger that made him realize his own complaints were going to be met with little sympathy.
"Better to just..." Ginga gave a lopsided, sad smile and made a blossoming gesture with her hand. "...and then we can get some sleep?"
