Chapter Five
Seon screamed, flailing. A rough hand smashed against her mouth, stifling the sounds, obscuring her vision.
“Oh, shut up, you beast. You think anyone’s gonna miss you here? Rats like you, scurrying on the mountains, thinking you’re safe. Nowhere’s safe,” the lead wyrm hissed, eyes darkening in lust as the front of Seon’s robes were ripped open. “It's offensive for you to even think you can get away from us.”
She angled her face enough to bite down on the fleshy part of the wyrm's palm. In the air she snatched as he jerked away, she managed another scream. Pain exploded in her jaw as knuckles impacted it. Now she started sobbing. A foot made contact with her side, bruising her ribs. Her legs buckled, but her body was supported by the wyrm's choke-hold on her. The wyrms laughed raucously, their faces full of hate, seeing nothing but a bug to squash.
A deafening roar cut through the air, as if the mountain itself had gained a voice. The wyrms froze. Seon whimpered as a huge, dark shape barrelled into the human-form wyrms, sending her sliding to the ground and skidding. Wedged at the bottom of the path in a groove, she saw a drake tearing into the wyrms, dagger sharp teeth shredding them apart.
Two had died by the time the others morphed into their wyrm forms – but in a cacophony of screams and bellows, the drake slammed into the side of one wyrm. The wyrm tumbled, bouncing off the mountain with agonized screeches. The last wyrm, although much bigger than the drake, found it difficult to balance himself on the thin path and fight. The drake fought to kill. It fought to make the wyrm suffer.
Seon gasped as she saw Artiz bite into the wyrm's throat and bite deep. The wyrm collapsed in a ring of dark red snow.
Artiz came for her. Artiz found her. And not a moment too soon.
Seon shivered. She didn’t feel the slightest glimmer of pity for those wyrms – only relief. Hatred coursed through her veins.
They deserved it. Every stinking one of them.
Artiz prioritized survivors before Seon. He headed straight for the wyrm who had tumbled down the mountain.
Seon did up her robes with numb hands in leather gloves. A few moments later, Artiz soared back up to the mountain, sniffing around for Seon. When he detected her again, he flapped closer, hovering and stretching out his talons. Blood dripped from his snout. He bobbed with each wing flap.
Seon stepped into the talons, and Artiz lifted her away to the school.
They arrived and Artiz rushed her to the medical bay, morphing so he could carry her in his arms. He sat by her side as the healers checked in. A kindly old mage helped accelerate tissue healing with a light touch. Skin re-knitted under his care. The cold evaporated.
When the healer finally left Seon alone with Artiz, she received a death-glare.
“You, woman, are a walking disaster.” Strong fingers threaded into her hair. “You need to be more careful.”
Now this was unfair. “You think I asked for all that to happen? Do you?” Seon attempted to sit up in the bed, but Artiz gently applied pressure on her shoulders, keeping her down. Electricity seemed to crackle from his gray eyes.
“If you didn't intend for that to happen, you could have fooled me. You went into the run mad. Distracted. You looked ready to murder when you left me. Why?”
Seon’s cheeks flushed at the audacity of that statement. How dare he? “I’m not a whore.”
“What?”
She exhaled sharply. “I don’t like you implying that I’m a whore. I get enough flak from it without my own teacher saying the same.”
“When did I ever call you a… oh.” He hesitated. “Is that why you ran away?”
“I didn’t fucking run away! I fell!” Seon stuck her arms up in exasperation. “I fell, and when I was trying to head back, I bumped into four wyrms who thought it appropriate to try and rape me!”
“Did you antagonize them in any way?”
“No!” Now Seon gaped in utter disbelief at Artiz. “How could you even say that? I walked. They blocked the way. I asked if I could get past. They said no.” She brimmed in indignation. “I’m a woman on my own on a lonely mountain trail. What more antagonizing do they need?”
Artiz pinched the bridge of his nose, gathering his wits together. “Alright. I apologize for my assumptions. Forgive me. I was... just worried about you. When you didn’t turn up for your third lap, I wondered what had happened.” He bit his lip. “I saw the skid marks from the path, and I feared that you died from the fall.”
“You saw where I fell? And you still shout at me with these accusations? That makes what you said even worse. Just leave me alone.” Her words came as a venomous hiss.
“I’m sorry.” His face twisted into a peculiar expression. Pain? Regret? Annoyance? “It's easier to be angry at you than to be scared.”
Seon didn’t speak for a few moments. Artiz showed no signs of leaving. Curse him, really. She didn’t want him to go. But she didn’t want him to stay, either. As long as he didn’t see her as anything else but the product of her past, and not the person she was today.
Eventually, a little reluctantly, she told him about the soul she encountered. About hearing it in the snows, and finding the frozen body and locket. She told him of releasing the soul, though she still wasn’t sure if it had worked as effectively as she wanted.
When she had finished, Artiz remained silent for a respectful moment.
“Let me see the necklace.” She gave it and he examined the engraving and blonde lock inside it. “I don’t know who this is. But we keep records of former students. Maybe we can find out from there.” He tucked the locket away, then gave Seon a small smile. It lifted up her spirits to see it. “You did good. I think the training is paying off. And maybe you were supposed to find that body. It sounded like that soul needed you.”
Seon didn’t believe in fate. “A lucky coincidence.”
He reached out to touch the top of her hand. She stared at that hand connected with hers, unwilling to pull away. Enjoying the contact. “I know you’d much rather be flinging fireballs around, but what you do is incredibly important. More important than anyone else in this school. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Keep up the good work.” He bent to kiss the top of her knuckles, and she flushed. Such gestures might go to her head if he kept up like that. Treating her as if she were the most valuable thing in the room. Or in his eyes.
When he departed, a strange emptiness settled in her. If only he could have stayed longer. She didn’t want to be alone, replaying the thoughts of what happened, thinking about the terrible loneliness of that lost and ravenous soul.
Isera visited her a short while later, bringing food that she’d made herself, flat baked bread with honey. “Congratulations on surviving the wyrms. Everyone’s talking about it right now.”
“Oh?” Seon accepted the bread, now curious. “They are?”
“Yes,” Isera said with a grin. “They’re worried you ran into them so close to our school. They’re wondering if it means the wyrms are aware there’s a school teaching magic in the mountains and are searching for it.”
“I thought about that as well. Why else would they be up here in a place where they're not supposed to be?” Seon scowled.
“Right,” Isera said. “They're so cold-blooded, they practically freeze to death sitting on the mountains.”
“Can't they just walk up the path like I did and find it?” Seon wrung her hands, afraid of the idea of all the humans in this place being discovered and killed by those monsters.
“It has anti-wyrm magic on it. They shouldn’t be able to find it. But it does mean that if they suspect it’s here, they can just camp outside, so we can’t leave the grounds.” Isera tapped her foot thoughtfully. “Either way, not good.”
“Artiz thinks there could be traitors in the school,” Seon said. “It’s why he doesn’t want me to reveal my magic to anyone. Not even you. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I understand.” Now Isera squeezed Seon’s hand, blue eyes crinkling. “And at least you’re alright. Just… be careful. Okay? If you’re as valuable as the teachers think you to be, then don’t do stupid shit.”
“Noted,” Seon replied dryly. Though she already knew it was a little too late for that. Isera grinned and sat there for a while longer, talking to Seon until leaving for her next lesson.
The medic came to check Seon a few hours later and announced her free to go to her quarters and rest. No lessons for the day. Only rest.
Seon obeyed reluctantly, not wanting to sit around and do nothing. She wanted to talk with the teachers more about what she experienced. She wanted to find out who the owner of the locket was, and what happened to her so long ago.
People would have loved and cared about that girl once. Maybe the hair belonged to a lover or someone close to them. Maybe when she fell, she hoped someone would save her, but instead froze to death in the snow. Would it have been blizzard conditions? Did people search for her? Did people weep for her?
The questions swirled like a blizzard.
Seon went to the library instead of her bedroom, and asked to see a record of past students. The librarian, a crusty old man with spidery veins in his hands, pointed to the back of the library. Shadowy stacks towered.
“Restricted section,” he said in a dull voice. “You need permission from a teacher to go through there.”
“She’s with me,” a deep voice declared. Artiz. He emerged from the Restricted section, clutching some papers. “Come on in, Seon.”
The librarian squinted suspiciously at them as she walked past, hesitant about entering the dark stacks. The smell of old, stale paper permeated the atmosphere, and an eerie hush seemed to settle over the shelves like a blanket. The scratches and rustle of paper when they brushed over them were as if the books had come to life, whispering their secrets.
Artiz handed her a ledger and they got to work together. It took her a while to get used to the format of the ledgers, in which were scribbled in tiny writing the names of students who had been permitted into the school, stretching back centuries.
It soon became apparent to her that looking at the names served no purpose. They didn’t tell Seon the physical descriptions of the students. Just their names, ages when they entered, and magical powers, along with if they graduated safely or not.
She closed the ledger and rubbed her eyes before starting on the next. Even without a physical description, she could find something fitting the name. She stumbled over an Arnold Winstace from eighty years ago and sighed, the brief excitement fading. By the time she finished the second book, her eyes were drooping.
Seon's drake companion observed her for a moment, seeing how she barely kept her head above the desk. “You’re still clearly exhausted from earlier. I’ll take you back to your room.” Artiz closed the ledger he had of former students over a thousand years ago, yawning. Seon rubbed her eyes, the lamplight flickering.
“I really wanted to find out who it was. It’s not right. Maybe if she has a living relative, we can pass the locket on.”
“I appreciate the sentiment. But it’s unlikely we’ll find a living relative. However, Seon, you did something amazing. You’ve freed her,” Artiz said softly. They passed a student in the corridor as they walked out the library and clattered boots along the stone. Their robes swished. “She might have been trapped there for a long time, and you freed her.”
Seon nodded, a lump in her throat. Her heart pounded faster when she considered Artiz with those vibrant gray eyes. That bent-in nose. That crooked smile of his, which held a roguish quality about it. Easy to let her thoughts run away, to think about him in certain scenarios. Easy to forget that he was a teacher and she the student.
The way he tenderly looked at her conjured a smile on her lips.
I wonder what kind of lover he'd be? She knew of many, and few put the effort in. Would he be like them? Or would he take the time and worship her body, help bring her to orgasm with lip and tongue, legs and arms?
She shivered at the notion, and desperately grasped for a subject to keep her thoughts from veering in that direction. “Did you mean what you said earlier?”
“Hmm?” He appeared distracted when looking at her, as if his thoughts lay elsewhere. “I said a lot of things. What do you refer to?”
“That you worried about me. That you were afraid for me.”
“Ah.” They walked around one corner, passed a classroom where two witches crackled lightning between two metal rods. “Yes, I did. Of course I’m afraid for you. Why wouldn't I be?”
“As a valuable student, or as a person?”
“I value all my students. I know where they all come from, I know what they strive for. Even you – you stay here not because you like it, but because you thirst to find out more about your powers. Even if you don’t like your powers at this stage in time.”
Seon shook her head, disappointed. Not the answer she wanted to hear. The hot flush hit her cheeks, and she no longer wanted to be in his presence. “Never mind.” She began to walk faster, as if trying to escape.
“Wait.” He reached to grab her elbow. “Please.”
“What for?”
Artiz gave her a sheepish, almost embarrassed grimace. “I know I’m avoiding your question. And the answer to it, Seon, is that I do care for you. I found you. I took you. I trained you. I watched you endure. And I had to steel myself to it, because it’s necessary for your training. But truthfully, I hate seeing it.”
“And yet you don’t have a problem saying mean shit to me,” Seon retorted before she could stop herself. Instantly, she mentally started berating herself. Artiz was trying to be nice. To reveal something to her. And what did she do? Snap back. Maybe she was just a little too much on edge with everything.
Artiz winced. “Yes, in hindsight, it wasn’t very wise of me. You deserve better than thoughtless remarks. Can you forgive me?”
They stopped outside Seon’s door. Electricity hummed in the air, and it seemed to pull them close together. Her green eyes examined Artiz’s gray ones. They trailed over his blond hair and crooked nose. Part of her wanted to just go fuck it and take him by surprise, drag him into her room and rip off all his clothes. See where the winds blew on that particular front.
She tried to remind herself that she didn’t like drakes, but struggled to remember why that seemed so important. Besides, all the students here thought she was a whore anyway, even Artiz – so what did it matter?
She bit her lip, reigning in the flare of arousal, instead resorting to a quick peck on the cheeks. “Thank you, Artiz.” Her hand lingered upon his waist for a moment. She wouldn’t have sex with him, she decided. Just tease him. She could maintain a cool distance. It wouldn't be too much of an issue. She'd be fine.
That plan didn’t work out so well. No sooner had she stepped into her room when Artiz followed her right in.
“You know I can smell your arousal, right?”
“Get out–” Seon started, before Artiz closed the door and seized her lips in his. She gasped against his mouth, at first trying to push herself away, before melting into the kiss. Melting into his touch. Her body shivered like a nervous animal, and fires ignited within.
Perhaps... it had been too long. She never realized just how much she desired this, or perhaps desired any kind of intimate contact, until he had her trapped within his lips. Emotions swelled like a flooding dam. Water crashed through her veins. Through all that, her nerves seemed to crackle in excitement, yearning for him to keep going, to never stop.
He groped at her and kissed hard. She heard his heartbeat through the palm she pressed against his chest, felt it. It must be even faster than hers.
“Fuck it,” she whispered against his mouth, before pulling him out of his robes. He did the same to her, his hands eager, almost clumsy in their desire to take everything off. They slowly started backing towards the bed, their clothing leaving a conspicuous trail. Under those robes lay a broad, lightly furred chest, with a mix of blond and dark hairs. His nipples hardened under her touch as she kept caressing over his front. She loved the roughness and the way it tickled her palms.
Naked as well, she endured Artiz’s hard hands over her skin, which grabbed at her sides, her front, her breasts. She hitched a strangled whimper as he squeezed her there, before rolling the sensitive tips between two fingers which were splayed out against her.
“You’re just as soft as I imagined,” he whispered into her ear, before pushing her onto the white bedsheets. Smirking, she spread her legs before him, and he arched an eyebrow, before falling on top of her, kissing her neck before sucking hard at it.
She glimpsed his erection, standing to attention, bigger than she had expected, though she had no way of knowing what package lay there under the robes. The men Seon had seen had nothing particularly impressive there, but Artiz, well – he certainly had a lot of… length.
He lifted himself and stared at her body for a moment, admiring her trembling skin, the fluttering breaths escaping her throat, and the way her black hair fanned out about her.
He lowered himself again, this time pressing his erection against her entrance, deftly parting the folds there, before sliding all the way in. Seon moaned, bending her spine, rising from the bedsheets. She dug fingers into his shoulder muscles. She wrapped her legs around him as he dove into her, faster and faster.
The pleasure rippled through her, far better than when she got herself off alone, or with any of the men before. What made Artiz different? Was he a better lover, in the way he thrust into her, smiled at her, admired her? Or was it because he actually cared for her in his own way, and she liked him for it?
She didn’t have the answers. But she certainly didn’t want him to stop. It embarrassed her in a way when she felt herself climaxing before Artiz had released himself. She never came during sex. Ever. She needed to get herself off afterwards if interested in popping an orgasm.
Yet with Artiz, something about him triggered a chain reaction in her body. He made her gasp and cry out as she tumbled into orgasm. Her heart beat so fast, she thought it might burst out of her chest.
He continued to move in her after letting her ride out the apex of the orgasm, and she happily encouraged him along, her inner muscles contracting to form additional pressure down there. Really, she felt as if she were floating in a sea of bliss, with the drake guiding her right along.
When he came as well, sweat trickled down his body from the effort. She fixated on one trail of sweat as it slid from his neck to one of his pecs. He examined her in wonder, a smile upon his lips.
The other thing Seon wasn't used to either was the cuddling that happened afterwards. Usually, things became awkward as the guy dressed up and left. Some might try to ask for extra. Seon had also learned in those times to get her payment up front, because people tried to get away with not paying if they could. They also tried cursing and belittling when she suggested they do so, which meant to her that they never planned to pay in the first place.
Not that any of that mattered right now. Her mind wandered a little, even as Artiz wrapped arms around her and tugged her in close. They rested together for a moment, before he leaned over to kiss her on the forehead.
“I enjoyed that.”
Enjoyed seemed like an understatement to Seon. “Me, too.” Seon let out a short breath, slightly dizzy. Just as she considered reaching over to hug him back herself, Artiz peeled away, getting up to start dressing.
“I’m sorry, I have a lesson to get to. Or I'd stay longer.” He kissed her again on the lips, held her chin for a moment and gazed into her eyes. “Beautiful.”
She blushed, squirming in delight as he left the room, gently closing the door behind him.
She lay there for quite some time, wanting to preserve the memory of the moment. Wanting to relive it in her mind.