The Gravity of the Mountain

A flick of the wrist on both sides of the battlefield to cast back the cuffs of our sleeves, and the duel begins.

As expected, my opponent is brash and bold. She advances rapidly with a quick step of her feet across the stone and pushes towards my comfort zone. Her gilded red robes have the dual appearance of an exotic dancer and of a martial knight, wrapped across her chocolate skin in interlacing layers of strict firmness and fluttering showiness. Her clothing has trailing red sleeves and a flowing red skirt that catch the eye and demand attention, and the billowing silk is kept in relative order by the solid bracing of a silvery breastplate over her chest, a thick, black belt around her waist and wide bracers with gold filigree on her upper arms. I spy rings and bracelets on her fingers and wrists as she splays out her hand towards me. And from between her thumb and forefinger, she lays her chestnut eyes on me with a fiendish, predatory grin. Her bob of black hair, dyed at its tips into a fiery orange, makes a halo about her head as she pushes for first blood.

"

Between light and shadow, a spark of ember calls my name...!!

"

It's the opening line of the Crimson Overture, and her sharp, sulphuric tones confirm my suspicion that she is a Capital-trained mage. As if her flashy outfit didn't give that away sufficiently. The name she used to briefly introduce herself before laying into me was not a familiar one. But this Magna of the Eighth is typical of urban mages I have met in the past. The Academia Capitula is the cultural centre of human magical research, so they want their students to show off as much as possible. As the first licks of flame are manifested at her palm, called to life by her mana and the words of the song, I ready my defence.

"

O Olympus, illuminated curtains of moonlight...

"

My boots send up a clatter of scree below me as I slide one foot around in a semicircle and bring an arm about to shield my face from the coming flame. I hear the sound of distant waves in my ears as the mana in my blood attunes to the gravitational influence of the moon. The cold and dark domain of the persona Olympus will be sufficient to counteract my opponent's fire for now. And the moon is a rocky and barren place, just like this cliffside campsite of mine near the peak of Mt Gekuro. Summoning the power of Olympus is simple when his domain matches my surroundings.

Ethereal darkness rises wave-like from the little rocks below my feet and roars upwards into a shielding curtain of twilight. I step back on my worn boots and let the strands of arcane black ripple around my leather workman's trousers and about the waist of my tan jacket. The wind ruffles my hair and the green of my cotton cloak as I take a lengthy backward stride. I've dressed for climbing and study today, not for a theatrical stage like this Magna has. I almost wonder how she knew that I was a mage at all.

But I can't spare the time to wonder right now, not when I'm trying to avoid being caught on the back foot. The fiery Magna spins about onto her other leg in a striding pirouette and lets her red robes flow about her as her lips continue to recite the second stanza of the Crimson Overture. She will burn away my protective shadows if she is allowed to conclude the chorus. I have to return her aggression with some of my own if I want to stop her in her tracks.

"

Harken the pull of the void!

" I shout with a lunge sideways towards the mountainside. "

What binds thee? Naught but age! Stagnate not in the restive seat of the earth!

"

"

Wildfires unchecked screech a battlecry!!

"

Our voices clash and tangle like wyrms of sound in the air between us. I notice that Magna is scowling as she aims her volley of song-conjured flame in pursuit of my steps. She will not have heard Shintao's Conceit of the Eclipse before, the words that I am using to defend against her. I myself only learned the lyrics and movements thanks to my time living in the far east where mountain worship is rife. They do not teach such things in the Capital. She will not be able to anticipate what this incantation will do, and that is making her careful. As such, it does not surprise me when her next blast of flame is aimed downwards instead of straight ahead, creating a searing explosion of heat directly in front of her. She is using an aggressive spell defensively so that she can continue the Overture without leaving herself open. And rightly so, as a wave of loose stones rises suddenly from beneath her feet and batters at the undersides of her arms and legs. The woman's recitation takes on a frustrated hissing quality as the bouncing rocks cascade upwards around her. And then again as they scatter down on her head.

"

And I am left in the quiet...

" I whisper.

The sibilance of the Conceit chains neatly into any of the Elven language incantations that I have memorised, and I choose The Silent Chamber. The meditative pumping of my blood as the background magic takes effect, metronomic in its consistency, will allow me to focus on preparing something bigger and more active to immobilise her. I simply hope that I can do so before she reaches her crescendo. The final lines of the Crimson Overture are legendary for their destructive power. I need to throw her off before she gets that far.

"Gekuro, can you hear me?" I utter under my breath. It's not an incantation, just a simple plea to the mountain that I have been studying for weeks. "Lend me your weight."

Before me, my red-garbed aggressor has one hand raised to prepare a ball of flame above her head. Her other hand is tucked tightly behind her back.

"

Sol's strength is mine own!

" Magna growls out her recitation from between her painted lips. "

And her heat...!!

"

"

We are dust, drawn ever downwards!

" I counter. I'm sweating from the vicious flames and the effort of all my leaping about. "

Come, O children, to thine place of genesis!

"

"

Take the heart and seal it...

"

Her musical voice is merely a whisper. But still, it causes my chest to lurch anxiously. That is not a line in the Crimson Overture! The fireball overhead wisps out of existence as my enemy abandons her song and swaps seamlessly into something else. Words I've never heard before.

And while I am frantically reconsidering using the incantation I designed in my studies to end this fight, that hand she had tucked behind her slender waist emerges in a flurry of red silk and dark skin. It's holding a white paper package, and a wick of string is fizzing angrily from the bound neck of the projectile. She tosses it at my feet. I step backwards but come up against the rocky wall of the mountain. And then, a burst of brilliant light.

I am blinded. The shadowy protection of Olympus has been growing ragged under the fiery mage's onslaught, and now it provides no shield at all to the incandescence. I slam my wounded eyes shut, my ears ringing painfully, as her handheld firework explodes with a shriek around me. And an eerie, unexplainable bout of vertigo overcomes me.

I am up against it now. This is dire indeed. I must rely not on thoughtful planning, as is my want. I must act on instinct. And with Gekuro a towering presence at my back, his stone is all I have on my mind. I finish my spell.

"

O-Obey the mount!!

"

It's an incantation of my own creation, the product of my lengthy study into terrestrial magic. I lash out my hand into the blinding light towards where I think my enemy stands. And

something

happens. The power rushes out of me at the call of my voice. Whether that power takes effect or not, I can't presently say. Still, I lunge forward on my other leg and plant my weight heavily in a forward-leaning stance.

"

And now, by the Oath of ages, be silent!!

"

I gasp as I launch my spell into the white void. It's a desperate play for control. And I have no means of seeing whether I have been right to bet on stone and chance. Not until the colourful lights in my eyes have faded. I am forced to wait. I take deep breaths, and I wait.

When the last of my blindness fades, I stare. Magna of the Eighth is kneeling in the rocky rubble of the plateau. Her arms are being pulled downwards by a powerful, invisible force. Specifically, the metal in her rings and bracelets is being drawn magnetically to the core of Mt Gekuro beneath her knees. Her breastplate also appears to be slipping downwards, so perhaps that silverwork is just painted on. She has a frustrated snarl on her full lips, and her brown eyes are alight with fury. And around the skin of her neck, a glowing band of mana.

The Oathseal. It's one of the very first spells any decent master teaches their pupils. It silences the resonance of an opponent's incantations. It renders their spellcasting null, in other words. Easy to defend against if you know it's coming and you have your hands free to make the countersign. But thanks to my new spell holding her in place, Magna was powerless to do anything about it.

I take a step backwards and lean against the cold stone of the mountain, breathing deeply. My skin is laced with a sweat that soaks into my cotton undershirt and drips into my eyes. But the chill of the cold mountain air is soothing on my skin. It rushes in over the pine treetops far below the edge of the plateau, all the way from the distant peaks of the mighty Naga's Spine mountain range to the south. I had just about become jaded with this glorious natural sight. Today, with my battle victorious, it is as though I am seeing it once again for the first time.

Lyrical laughter breaks me out of my exhausted reverie. Magna is smiling, and it's quite a sight. She has her head tipped back, and her short mane of carnelian-tipped hair is brushing her red-robed shoulders. I cast my eyes over the sharp features of her expression, her straight nose and smooth cheekbones, and discover once more that she is very beautiful. These Capital girls really know how to draw the eye, after all. Magna fixes me with a proud smirk from her entrapment, and I feel a rush of excitement in my chest at her attention on me. No longer prey for consuming, now an equal to be parlayed with. It's a nice place to be.

"That was well fought..." she says with a sigh, "...What was it that you said your name was again?"

"You didn't give me the chance to say," I remind her. "It's Bram, though."

"Bram," she repeats with a wry smile, her lips twisting as if savouring the taste of my name on her tongue. Her voice is confident and deeply musical, a natural mage's voice. "Of the?" she asks, tilting her head to one side.

"Of the nothing," I tell her. "I'm not Capital-trained. I'm homegrown."

"Ah, a heretic? That explains a few things." Magna remarks with a chuckle. "I have never faced an opponent who song-chained from the common tongue to Elvish and then to... was that Dwarvain I heard?"

"Gekuro is the mountain's name, but yes, it's Dwarvain. It means... s-stout bottom."

"Does it now?"

Magna's teasing grin causes flame to light up my cheeks. I defeated her, right? So, why is she acting as though she is in control? She is behaving like a tutor praising a star pupil, even though the two of us must be roughly of the same age. It mystifies me that she is able to remain so aloof from a forced kneel with her clothing so dishevelled. It must be something they learn in the Capital. I swallow the nervous lump in my throat with effort.

"Very well then, Bram of the Mountain," she sighs suddenly. "By the ancient Oaths of magery, I confirm thy hard-won victory. Now, what would you like?"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, come now!" she tuts. "Even a hermitic heretic like yourself must be aware. I challenged you to a duel under the ancient Oaths. As victor, you may take one favour from me. What would you like me to do?"

I had heard of something akin to this tradition, yes. Something about ritualised martial contest, common among the mages of this metropolitan continent. A means of limiting unnecessary deaths among prideful trained mages. Avoiding such distractions to my study was one of the many reasons that I retreated to a life of solitary writing and contemplation on the plateaus of the mountain. I narrow my eyes at Magna.

"I would like you to return down the mountain and leave me in peace," I tell her.

"You cannot be serious!" Magna laughs loudly. "You have won a dear prize, Bram! I would advise that you do not squander it! I may even

insist

that you take something from me. If word gets out that I was allowed mercy after losing a duel of incantations, my classmates will not let me live it down!"

"Alright, then." I fold my arms and adjust my lean against the wall of the mountain at my back. I'm starting to regain the sensation in my extremities, thanks to the ongoing influence of the restorative words of The Silent Chamber. My fatigue feels far away. "If

you

had won, what would you have taken from me?"

"Is it not obvious?" Magna asks with a toothy grin. "I would have demanded a read of your grimoire."

"My... book of incantations?" I ask.

"You are here for some sort of study, yes? I would have read and noted your progress in whatever it is you have been dedicating your time to. Then, I would have taken what I learned back to the Capital, where I would have filed in a scrivener's office to have your studies licensed as my own."

I let out a hot breath through my lips. That was dirty. About as dirty as using a firework in a magical duel, actually. But my mind recalls the old stories of my teacher, the ragged, black-cloaked mage known only as Mantle who lived in my village. Something like Magna's plot had happened to him when he was a fledgling magician, I remember him saying. It was why he had hidden himself away in rustic secrecy as an unrepentant misanthrope, as he was when I met him.

"Then it is a good thing that you were defeated," I say with a stern frown.

"Do not judge me so harshly," Magna retorts with an unabashed smile. "It is how we play in the Capital. This game of ours can have only one victor. And our art, Bram,

your

art, is at its heart a selfish one."

"You say so, even when you make use of incantations developed by generations of previous mages," I scoff. "What selfishness is that?"

"Oh, I am sorry," laughs Magna. "Did you ask for permission to make use of the Elvish words you threw at me earlier?"

"That is... a different issue!" I snap. "The Silent Chamber is a well-publicised incantation that anyone may access!"

"And who composed it to the page, do you think?" Magna sneers. "A human mage, no doubt. Not an elf. A thief."

I shake my head dismissively. As right as she may be, I don't feel like bandying words with her. Not when I beat her fair and square!

"The Silent Chamber, then?" Magna smiles, and her lips are a good deal softer now that she has ceased arguing. "That explains how you were able to summon the Oathseal after the... whatever it was that you did to pin me here. Would you mind letting me free, by the way? I can do much more for you with my limbs unhindered than trapped like this."

My finger taps on my sleeve uncertainly. "Are you going to behave?" I ask her. "You did admit that you would steal my research if you had won."

"I am under Oath," she shrugs. "As you should well know, while sealed, I cannot move against you in any way I believe you would deem unfair. Not until the next full moon. And may the Oath seal my heart's beating if I ever manage to do so."

I narrow my eyes at her. It's tempting to trust her pretty smile...

"I would so like to be released, Bram," Magna smirks. "Unless... you had plans for me on my knees?"

She bites her lower lip as she recognises my embarrassment, and she laughs when I cannot muster the breath to argue.

"I hope that our duel showed you that I am skilled with the use of my mouth," she teases. "And I do enjoy having a man's wand inside it. Why not give me a chance?"

"Th-That's...!" I stammer.

"Yes, how about that!" she giggles. "Bram of the Mountain. By my Oath, I agree to remain sealed until I bring thee to climax! Over and over, until thou art satisfied! I think we will both enjoy such a reward, don't you?"

I swallow. Her smile is heated and potent, and a throbbing stiffness has begun in my trousers. My mind, seeking to reestablish control, attempts to locate some physical blemish on the lovely woman still sealed by her wrists to the mountainside. But whenever my eyes think they spy a wrinkle or bruise or anything at all that would detract from her beauty, it vanishes as if it was never there. Her smooth skin like varnished, aged wood. The starlight glittering of her eyes, the lush tones of her dyed hair. I wonder briefly whether some act of magical glamour is responsible for this pristine beauty, but then I recall her resonant bonds. She could not focus on such an incantation while sealed by Oath. My eyes rove to the way her metallic bodice has slipped down her chest. The plating is currently squeezing the underside of her breasts and pushing a staggering expanse of cleavage up and out from the hem of her red robes.

And it has been awfully lonely up here on the mountain.

"You are certain?" I ask, pushing myself off the rocky wall and approaching her slowly.

"I have set my Oath, and I shall not relent," Magna chuckles. "Come here and allow me to repay my debt."

While I am still tucking my thumbs into the waistband of my trousers, Magna opens her red-painted lips wide to receive me. She sticks her tongue out with a lusty gasp and stretches her neck towards the mound visible beneath my clothes. It has been a long time since a woman has done this to me. I wonder if it feels as good as I recall.

I tug my rod out into the chill mountaintop air, and Magna chuckles approvingly. I tentatively thrust myself towards her face, and she makes up the distance with a greedy lick of her tongue. Her wet flesh draws across the underside of my cock in a long line that ends with a kiss on my swollen head. She kisses my member all along its length, even down to where my shaft connects to the swinging lumps of my testicles. She is very flexible, even bound to the floor as she is. Then she runs her lips once more up along my sensitive skin with a proud smile.

"Don't dally," she whispers against my tip. "Have your way with me!"

I slide my cock into her mouth, and she begins to suck at once. It feels just as I remember. Magna's tongue lashes about me possessively as she begins to bob her head along its length. She moans out little sighs of effort from receiving me, and each one is a note of music in a concerto of pleasure. An incantation of desire. I feel my knees weakening as she draws the hot, wet sensation out of me. I feel my eyes rolling back in my head.

Magna releases me with a smack of her lips suddenly, and she laughs at my frustrated scowl. "You are putting my classmates to shame, Bram," she giggles with the red of exertion in her cheeks. "They really do grow big, strong boys out in the villages, don't they? But fear not. I have sworn an Oath. This mighty member shall not overcome me. I will drink your come yet!"

She opens wide once more, and I waste no time planting myself into her again. I thrust against the movement of her mouth, and I feel the very edges of her throat like a wet vice around the throbbing of my tip. Is that the buzzing of the glowing Oathseal that I can feel through the inside of her throat, or just the reverberations of her moaning? I can feel the hissing of her breath from her nose against the tangle of my pubic hair. And when her pace begins to relent, I slip my hands into the sleek smoothness of her citrine-tempered locks and pull her into heavier bobs of her head. I groan out my pleasure into the crisp air. I relish the burn in the muscles of my thrusting hips with perverse joy.