Font of Fertility Ch. 13 (Beta) (Patreon)

The following is the Beta Draft of Font of Fertility Ch 13. As a Beta draft, this is not the final work and may see minor changes prior to final posting out in the wide world.

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All Characters are 18 years or older.

This story is a continuation of the Font of Fertility series. I would suggest reading Chapter 1 if you have not already. This chapter includes casual sex, anal and some mild exhibitionism. Fair warning to readers, this series also includes sex between people who have grown up together but are not blood-related.

Mild warning, this chapter contains a scene with a non-sexual but mildly graphic depiction of a corpse with wounds.

Jeremiah begins his hunt for clues to the rebellious George Stoker, and starts laying plans for his magical and personal life.

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“Holy shit,” I said, looking back at the doorway we’d just stepped through.

Lindsey and Annalise were both holding one of my hands as we teleportaled into the New Mexico winter air - that is to say, it was definitely warmer than it was back home. After Annalise and I had cleaned ourselves up a bit, we’d touched base with the others. Lauren had stayed with Annalise's sister Maya at the B&B, while Stacey had taken the car back to our place to cover with the various parents.

I had opened up my telepathic spell with Annalise so that she could show me her memory of the front door of her house, and then we’d used Google Maps so that I could get a top-down view of the area. In the satellite photo the house was clearly defined, along with a couple of vehicles parked out front on the dirt driveway and a greenhouse structure out back. The Stoker family had lived out in the middle of nowhere, which I had to assume was a choice made by their father so that he could do his magic in peace and without getting interrupted - a decision made much earlier than his turn to whatever the ‘dark side’ was in my new world.

Was there a ‘dark side’? Magic obviously wasn’t the Force, but even Harry Potter had that nebulous corrupted ‘well if you do this you’re evil’ kind of thing going on. So far it didn’t seem like it to me - people with magic were still just people, and capable of good, bad, and mistakes all in equal measure.

“Yeah, it’s… not good,” Annalise said. She let go of my hand and stepped back, looking up at what remained of her childhood home. The front half was still standing, though I had to wonder if it would collapse in on itself after the first big windstorm. The back half had been blasted apart and looked like a tornado had torn through, but was also singed at all the edges.

“It’s amazing, is what it is,” Lindsey said. She put a hand on Annalise’s shoulder to try and comfort her. “I may not be an expert on magic, but I’ve taken enough chemistry and physics classes to know you must have produced an amazing amount of force and heat to do this. And even if that came from using Jerry’s magic as a fuel source, you still controlled it enough that you and your sister are alive, and the damage is relatively contained.”

Annalise just shook her head and sighed. “I… appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it still feels like shit. And you haven’t seen the back.”

She led us around the side of the house. In the back, where the greenhouse was supposed to be, was a crater. Not a deep one like some impact site, but wide with a clear swirl pattern where wind and fire had twisted on itself. The ground was scorched black except for a small bare bubble in the centre.

“This is where Maya was,” Annalise said, gesturing to the bare spot. “The greenhouse started about here and went forty feet in that direction. This place used to be like an oasis, full of beautiful flowers and plants. My father- well, I don’t know. What exactly are we looking for?”

“Clues,” I said. “We don’t know what he was doing, or planning for you and Maya. Did he have an office in the house?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That was out here as well. It’s all gone. I-”

“You didn’t mean to,” Lindsey said. “It’s alright. If you can, can you run us through what you saw again? I don’t mean to poke my finger in your trauma, but maybe we can figure out somewhere to start.”

Annalise took a breath and nodded. She started at the beginning, explaining how her father had discovered her Fire magic almost as soon as she ‘ascended’ - a term I learned was supposedly common among the magic community for someone who went from a normie to a magically gifted person - and turned on her pretty quickly. She skipped over much of her life, just mentioning that as her brothers moved away things got worse, then she moved away to get some distance but that hadn’t helped. Then she explained what happened the day she came back, and about where she thought she’d been held trapped, and the odd things she’d seen George Stoker doing. Where his desk and tables had been. Where he’d held Maya. The strange things he’d said, which didn’t mean anything to us yet but certainly sounded ominous.

And where her mother was buried.

“I- don’t mean to be a bitch here,” Lindsey said. “But if she’s buried around this spot, underground… and your father was doing some sort of experiment on her…”

“She might be our only lead,” Annalise swallowed. “I know. It’s- We need to dig her up again.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, my stomach churning at the idea but knowing it was necessary.

“No, I need to help,” Annalise said. “She’s my Mom. I didn’t always get along with her, and I told her enough times that she was a doormat for letting my father walk all over her like he did, but she was still my Mom.”

“OK,” I nodded.

We managed to find an old shovel in a tool shed on the far side of the house, along with a rusted-out lawnmower for a nonexistent lawn. I wondered if, before he turned, George Stoker had been planning to cultivate a lawn for his family out here in the desert. With his plant-based magic I had no doubt he could have done it, but there wasn’t any evidence that he’d gone ahead.

With only one shovel, I let Anna do the digging and I got on my knees and helped clear the debris with my hands. I could have done it with magic, but even with her offering to me not an hour before, I was still low on power in the pool in the back of my head. So while I got my hands dirty and Anna dug, Lindsey kept watch for us and asked Annalise seemingly random questions. I had a feeling she was just trying to keep the woman talking.

We found her Mom a couple of yards from where we started, the distortion of the surroundings throwing off Annalise’s judgment of the correct distance on our first couple of tries. Mrs Stoker’s body was that weird greyish colour that I’d only ever seen on TV shows, but I didn’t immediately see any signs of rot or anything. Then again, I also really wasn’t sure how fast that kind of stuff should set in.

It took us almost fifteen minutes to carefully dig her out, Annalise getting down on her hands and knees with me and only using the shovel sparingly. I carefully dragged her out of the ditch we’d dug, my hands under her arms.

She was naked, and I had a flash of my most morbid of perverted thoughts from sometime in the past - the question of would my horny mind find a naked dead body appealing getting answered with a solid No. There was a very clear difference between a naked alive body and a dead one.

Well, that’s something, I thought to myself ruefully. I’m not the most fucked up possible.

Whatever George had been doing, it had clearly been something to do with her side. There was a large wound there, the flesh carved enough to expose her broken ribs. I managed to suppress my urge to vomit by keeping a stone face and trying not to see the entire body all at once. Annalise carefully started to clean the dirt away from the wound but broke down crying and heaving.

“You take care of her,” Lindsey said. “I’ll see what I can see.”

I pulled Anna away from the body, sitting on the ground and pulling her to cradle her head on my shoulder and try and hug as much of her as I could. She sobbed, clutching my shirt in her fists, and I softly rubbed her back and didn’t say anything.

Lindsey seemed the best of the three of us, also stone-faced but seemingly able to tackle the scene a little more clinically. She cleaned the wound in the side, peeling the skin back and wincing only a little as she looked inside.

“I think it might have been the same thing that Maya had,” she said. “It’s gone, whatever it was, but it’s the same spot and her ribs are broken and out of position.”

Lindsey carefully rolled the body and sucked in a breath. “Fuck,” she gasped. From where I was I could see there was a big chunk cut out of the lower back, enough to expose bone and cold organs. “I- oh God, I think he… I think he took something.”

“What?” Annalise asked, turning at that. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m not a fucking doctor, but I think he’s… extracted her reproductive organs.”

Now I did gag, and had to roll away from Annalise to not puke on her.

Lindsey broke as well, stumbling away from the body to throw up.

It took us more than a few minutes to get ourselves together, and we ended up huddled a little ways away from the body. “I think I might have an idea,” I said. “It’ll take some power, and it might be fucking stupid because it’s me mashing up different ideas from movies into a spell, but it could tell us something.”

“What is it?” Annalise asked. “I don’t… I don’t want anything more terrible to happen to her.”

“It won’t,” I promised her. “I think I can do like a hologram sort of thing, and turn back the time on the hologram and maybe we can see what George did the last time he was here.”

“Oh, like a flashback,” Lindsey said.

“Sort of?” I nodded. “I think if I tried to actually see into the past it would take a lot of power. But the way I’m thinking of it can help reduce that.”

“OK, do it,” Annalise agreed.

I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, then went and stood a couple of feet from the ditch we’d dug and pulled the body out of. I closed my eyes and focused on the idea of the spell. It was a mishmash of things I’d seen in movies, and I envisioned it sort of like the Doctor Strange magic in my head. Putting concepts around the spell helped, and limiting the scope helped. Limiting how far back I could see helped more. Limiting who could see the hologram helped as well. I could have narrowed it to just myself for maximum effect, but I needed Lindsey’s eyes and Annalise deserved to see if she wanted to.

I’d come up with every limitation I could think of, and it was still going to be a slightly hefty spell. More costly than the Teleportalling for the three of us, but less than the healing I’d done on Maya.

I pushed the spell concept into the pool of power in my head and felt it slowly begin to dissolve and take shape.

Raising my hands, I opened my eyes and saw a small film of shimmery gold was laying across everything in about two meters squared. A disc of the same magical energy was wrapped in shimmering circles around my wrist and hand.

“Spooky, but cool,” Lindsey muttered. “Did you try to make it look cool, Jerry?”

“Not consciously,” I said. “Let’s see if it works.”

I slowly twisted my hand, and the golden field started to shift. The outline of the corpse slid back into the grave, and then the golden ground built back up around it until the golden field was flat.

“Now what?” Annalise asked.

“I can’t just skip it to the next time there was activity,” I said. “It’s like rewinding a tape, give me a minute.”

I kept reversing the timeline, both girls watching for any motion in the golden field. One thing I’d had a moment to notice was that there had been a golden outline of Annalise while we’d been digging, but not of me or Lindsey. It must have been an effect of the spell I had cast on both of our families to protect us from ‘divination’ of any sort - this time-based spell must have counted towards that.

Good to know, but also not - if something ever happened to someone I cast it on, I wouldn’t be able to use this trick to find out what had happened. The tradeoff felt worthwhile now when I could protect our privacy, but would it feel the same if one of my girls was kidnapped? Or if someone murdered my parents?

Fucking magic, I sighed to myself.

“There, stop,” Lindsey said.

I stopped the rewind process, then moved it again until things settled and then let it play. We watched as a golden humanoid walked in from outside of the space and waved his hand. Golden spikes of grass grew rapidly and then split the ground apart, lifting a golden body out of the ground.

“That’s my father for sure,” Annalise said.

The golden George Stoker knelt next to the golden corpse and seemed to consider it for a long moment, and I couldn’t imagine what was running through his mind. Then he turned it over and went to work, using some sort of a sharp branch he manifested with his magic like a surgical knife. It was hard to watch, but he did reach into that hole he had cut and extracted… something. It didn’t look like an organ, it was too… uniform for that. It didn’t look floppy or anything. Then he rolled the corpse onto its back and re-buried it, and used the grass to make the ground look like it had before he’d disturbed it.

“What the fuck were you doing, you old fuck?” Annalise growled.

“I don’t know if we’re going to get any answers until we find him,” I said.

“Wait,” Lindsey said. “Reverse it back just a little bit.” I did so, and Lindsey walked around me. “Who the fuck is this?”

George was just finishing up cleaning the site and hiding the evidence in the main area of the spell. Behind me, right at the edge of the spell area and only for a second or two, another person stepped into view.

It was hard to tell their height or even their gender. It was like the golden time field was distorted around them for some reason.

“Any ideas?” I asked Annalise. “Did your father have some evil friends or something?”

“I- I don’t remember him having any friends over the last two decades, honestly,” Annalise said. “And I definitely can’t recognize this person, but… I think I might have seen someone? When I was tied up, I was in and out of consciousness a lot, and one time there was another person with him. I might have hallucinated it, honestly, but I’m sure someone was talking with him.”

“So George might have an ally,” I said, frowning.

“None of this has been helpful, has it?” Annalise sighed.

I let the spell drop, the golden field dissipating, and stepped to Annalise and took her hand in both of mine. “We know he was doing something shady as hell, even beyond kidnapping his own daughters,” I said. “That means there’s got to be a trail to follow, we just need to figure out what it is.”

“And worse comes to worst, it might cost a lot of power but Jerry can just cast a super simple spell to find out where he is,” Lindsey said. “And if we need to juice Jerry up quickly, we can always get someone pregnant.”

“Linds,” I said, my eyes going wide.

“Wait, what does she mean?” Annalise asked with a frown.

“I really don’t think this is the time or place,” I said. The corpse of her mother was just a few feet behind me.

“She deserves to know the whole truth, Jerry,” Lindsey said to me, then turned to Annalise. “We all know Jerry gets power from sex, but apparently he’ll get a whole ton more if he actually impregnates a woman. The way I’m seeing it, sex is to friction what breeding someone is to fire. They both get warm, but one is just a hell of a lot more potent.”

“I’ll do it,” Annalise said. No hesitation.

“No,” I said.

“Jeremiah, if this is something you need to do to track down my Father and make him pay-”

“Stop!” I said and glared at Lindsey. She shrugged and looked a little uncomfortable, knowing she’d only offered up an option but also how fucking frustrated I was with her, too. “Annalise, it’s not happening. Maybe someday I’ll be ready to do… that, but I’m not ready and there’s no way I’m rushing into something like that when we have other options.”

Annalise looked like she wanted to argue, and I stopped her from saying anything else by tugging her closer and putting both hands on her cheeks, pulling her into a kiss. She didn’t exactly give in to it, but she let it happen.

“There are other ways,” I said once it ended. “And I’m not just going to willy-nilly impregnate women just for magical power.”

“OK,” Annalise said. “But… if you need to, for this or for- If you need to, I’ll do it.”

“OK,” I nodded. “I promise I’ll keep that in mind.”

It was an awkward and emotional next ten minutes as we carefully put Annalise’s Mom back into the hole and covered her back up. Annalise was quiet as we did it, and Lindsey helped out this time. When we were done it was more obvious that something had happened, but it didn’t feel right for me to try and erase it using some magic.

“Do you want to say anything?” I asked Annalise when we were done.

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t know where to start right now,” she said. “I think- I think maybe once George is dealt with, and I can talk to my brothers, then I’ll be ready to do this.”

“OK,” I said, and squeezed her hand. We stood there for a long time as she looked down at the disturbed earth, until she finally turned away.

We spent the next twenty minutes helping her scavenge anything useful out of the house. Anna focused on getting more clothes for Maya since her own small wardrobe was at her apartment in town. I spent most of the time trying to be as vigilant as I could, ready to pull the girls out or quickly form a spell if the house started to collapse. Thankfully that didn’t happen, and once Annalise had gathered what essentials and keepsakes she could we went back around to the front door.

“We’re not going to be able to come back here any time soon,” I said. “Is there anything else you can think of?”

“No,” Annalise said. “I left here a long time ago now. Maybe Maya could think of something else, but she was the only thing I left here that I actually cared about, and that was only because I couldn’t take her with me.”

“OK,” I said, and started to form the teleportal spell in my mind. It was more costly to jump to the Bed and Breakfast than it was to my home, or the Baxley’s, since I knew them better but it made sense to go back where we’d started rather than playing car tag to get Annalise back there.

So we stepped through Annalise’s front door and stepped out into her room at the Bed and Breakfast.

“Don’t say anything to Maya about what we saw,” Annalise said. “She doesn’t need to know.”

“Of course,” I said.

“You should tell her eventually though,” Lindsey said. “Not now, obviously. But don’t try to bury it. Take it from me, I know what it feels like to bury your trauma and it can come back to bite you. Hard, and repeatedly.”

Annalise frowned - a real frown and not just her version of a smile - and nodded. Then she turned back to me. “Do you need another…?”

“Sex?” I asked. “No. Well, I’m not trying to tell you no, but it’s not- You don’t have to.”

“It’s fine if you do,” Annalise said. “I can make it work.”

“Yeesh, OK,” Lindsey sighed. “Girl, I like the initiative, but don’t push yourself so hard. He’s got three girlfriends, plus another friends-with-benefits beyond you. Powering up his batteries isn’t landing on you, alright?”

“I do appreciate the offer,” I said. “Just not right now.”

Annalise scrubbed at her face with both hands and sighed, not realising she was spreading the dirt on her hands to her face. “Ugh,” she grunted. “I’m just- I don’t even know.”

“You’re stressed to hell, you didn’t sleep last night, and you spent the last most of a week kidnapped and getting abused mentally and physically,” I said. “You need to sleep, Annalise.”

“Well, first shower,” Lindsey said. “Then sleep.”

“I just need to check in with Maya first,” Annalise said.

We went across the hall to the other B&B room, knocking and getting the clearance to come in. Maya was sitting cross-legged on the bed across from Lauren, their knees touching as Maya held Lauren’s hands in hers while they talked.

It was a quick reunion, Annalise dodging questions from Maya and Lauren giving Lindsey and I a look that said she wanted the unabridged, unredacted version of events. Maya agreed that a proper nap in a proper bed would help both her and her sister, so Lindsey, Lauren and I made our goodbyes, with me promising her that I would work on her eyesight when I was able to.

We left, Lauren taking the driver seat and Lindsey the passenger while I slipped in the back with a groan, wanting to lie down but buckling in instead.

“Something wrong?” Lauren asked as she backed us out of the B&B parking lot and onto the street.

“So much,” I said. “It’s been one weird, fucked up day.”

“And it isn’t even lunchtime yet,” Lauren said.

“Fucking really?”

“Well, it’s almost noon,” Lauren smirked.

“Ugh,” I said.

Lindsey started telling Lauren what happened on our little jaunt, and the only interruption was when Lauren pulled over onto the side of the road so that she could punch her stepsister in the arm for suggesting the pregnancy thing to Annalise.

“Seriously, Linds?” Lauren asked. “I mean, come on. Timing!”

“I said it without thinking,” Lindsey said, holding up her hands in surrender. “It just came out. I’ve been trying to think of all these ways to speed up the battery process for Jerry and the only guaranteed way is pregnancy. I didn’t actually mean to suggest it to her.”

“Well, now it’s in her head,” Lauren said. “This is the same woman who drove halfway across the country and offered her body to Jerry for a judgment.”

“Technically, she offered to be my sex slave before we left,” I filled in. “She wanted to do that in exchange for me healing Maya’s eyes.”

“Jerry-”

“I obviously said she didn’t need to do that,” I said.

“But then you did have sex with her, right?” Lauren asked.

“Well, yeah, but that was about refilling batteries,” I said.

“No, that’s good,” Lauren sighed. “I just- look, we’ve already got Lindsey. I don’t know how many sex slaves we can handle at the moment.”

“Hey, I’m right here,” Lindsey said.

“Yeah, and?” Lauren grinned. “We’re concubines aren’t we?”

“True!” Lindsey chuckled.

“Oh, God,” I groaned. “I need a nap.”

Lauren drove us to my place, and we avoided my parents as we went upstairs. Lindsey ducked into Stacey’s room to tell her what had happened, while Lauren followed me to mine.

“Jerry, Baby, you look like shit,” Lauren said. “I mean seriously.”

“It’s been a long morning,” I sighed, sitting on the edge of my bed. My room was a mess, mostly caused by the various clothes-sortings that had been happening over the last day.

Lauren climbed on the bed behind me and kissed the back of my neck, then started giving me a massage with her thumbs. “We have time now,” she said. “Do you want to shower first, or sleep?”

“Sleep,” I said.

“OK, babe,” Lauren said. She slowly pulled my shirt over my head, then got my pants off and I got up onto the bed properly. Lauren got behind me, taking the big spoon position for once, and kissing my shoulder. “Rest. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I love you, you know,” I murmured, letting my eyes fall closed.

“I do know,” Lauren said, and I could feel the smile in her voice. “And I love you, too. We all do.”

* * * * *

I woke up alone, which wasn’t my favourite way to wake up, but I was also under the covers so once I had my bearings I realized it wouldn’t have been a good look with my parents if they’d walked in to find Lauren and I in bed in the middle of the day. Together. With me in just my boxers.

I rolled and stretched, then realized how filthy my hands were from all the digging earlier.

And it wasn’t just garden dirt. It was grave dirt. Ugh.

Before anything else, I needed a shower. So that’s what I did.

Coming out of the bathroom I shared with Stacey, a towel wrapped around my waist, I was met by Lauren in the hallway. “Your parents are downstairs,” she said quietly, slipping me a quick kiss. “Get dressed then come to Stacey’s room.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

She goosed me as I turned from her, and I grinned and darted after her, giving her ass a pinch in return and getting a good-natured glare from her, then a quick laugh.

Once I was dressed and went over to Stacey’s room, I found the three of them all working on laptops or other devices. “What’s the word?” I asked. “Any chance we can get some lunch?”

“In a minute,” Lauren said. “We’ve been doing some thinking. How do you feel about Tala Jensen?”

“The vaguely Asian girl from school with the dimples?” I asked.

“She isn’t Asian actually,” Lauren said. “She just plays up her makeup to accent some of her native American features. I asked her about it once, she’s got a complicated background. And she’s the captain of the dance team.”

“Wait, our school has a dance team?”

“I was on the dance team, Jerry,” Stacey said.

I rocked back on my heels. She was? I feel like I should have known that.

Stacey snorted. “I’m kidding, you gullible idiot.”

“Fuck, I thought I was losing my mind for a second,” I said, walking over and giving her a little shove on the shoulder before I sat beside her. She punched my leg in response as she smirked at getting one over on me. “What about Tala, though?”

“I’m just trying to figure out who we can get you to fuck,” Lauren said. “Obviously we want to pick out attractive girls for you if we can, but you do kind of have a type so far.”

I choked on my own spit for a moment. “Um, I do?”

Lindsey laughed. “Babe, beyond girls who really should be out of your reach, you like big tits. Me, Lauren, Angie? Annalise tops the cake at the moment, obviously. You even helped Stacey out.”

“Which I do appreciate,” Stacey said, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. “You goldilocks’d them, by the way. Not too big, not too small. Just the right size.”

“Anyways,” Lauren said. “Tala is petite. She’s got a cute butt and a nice smile, though. You interested?”

“I, um,” I said. “I mean… yes? I didn’t realize we were moving into ‘pimp my boyfriend’ land already. I know we were joking about it, but-”

“But nothing,” Stacey said. “Look, I’ll admit I’m not the most thrilled about it. I don’t think I’m going to get off on it like Lindsey and Lauren do, at least.”

“Hey,” both blondes said, blushing.

“You do need this though,” Stacey continued. “And there is no way in hell I’m letting you put us all in danger just because you feel awkward about the idea that we can wing-woman you effectively.”

I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say.

“I think we broke him,” Lauren laughed.

“Hold on, I think I know a reset button,” Lindsey said, then set the tablet she’d been working on aside and crawled across the bed to me and kissed me.

‘Resetting’ took a while. And two orgasms, one with Lindsey and one with Stacey, so they could catch up with Lauren from that morning.

And I never did find out the plan with Tala Jensen.

* * * * *

The rest of the day, once I eventually got to eat some lunch, was dedicated to research. Well, not entirely - I was getting sex every two hours on a regular cycle as well. But research and planning were the name of the game.

Lindsey focused on making up a list of all the bank accounts in the files, compiling location notes and which ones would likely be easier for us to access than others. While she was doing that, Stacey and Lauren were working on a ‘special project’ they wouldn’t tell me about.

They left me to my own devices, at least when one of them wasn’t on or around my cock. It was tempting to just crash and relax with a video game, but I had to stay on the ‘offensive’ so to speak.

The first thing I did was go back to something I’d been asked earlier in the day - did I know how to wizard fight?

Obviously the answer was no, and eventually I would need to. The honest-to-God problem was that I had a sort of choice-paralysis issue. Annalise fought with fire because that’s what she had. George Stoker would fight with plants because that’s what he could do, and we’d already seen that he could be devious and creative with them.

But even though my powers were fueled by sex, I wasn’t limited in their scope. Sex didn’t define my outcomes or medium.

“I’m a writer,” I muttered to myself, laying on my bed alone in my room. That’s what I was, or wanted to be, before all this. I hadn’t done any writing in weeks, but I was a little busy.

I considered just jerking off a little to summon Adama and ask her how wizards fight, but that felt like a cop-out and that I would just end up doing what people might expect. I needed to be surprising. I needed to merge my own ideas with the best advice I could get.

So I turned to Google. Why not crowdsource, after all? ‘How to fight’ brought up plenty of little articles and youtube videos that seemed halfway useful if you could manage to remember their tips and tricks in a street fight, but I realized I had to boil down the lessons into philosophy so that I could apply them to magic.

Philosophy One. Don’t fight if you don’t have to. It felt cowardly, writing that one down. But realistically I wasn’t some violence machine. Other than decking Benji the other day, I hadn’t been in a fight since grade school, and early grade school at that. If there was another way to handle things, even if that meant retreating, it was probably better than getting in a fight for me and anyone else involved. And that might mean running, or negotiation.

Philosophy Two. Protect yourself. Lots of the videos talked about things like not letting people get on either side of you, or keeping a hand up to protect your face. It all really boiled down to don’t just try and inflict damage and leave yourself vulnerable. But what did protecting myself mean with magic? That was my first real note on a new page I titled ‘Spells to Develop’ - immediately ‘shields’ came to mind, but how I would create them was something I needed to formulate more. But there also had to be more creative ideas.

Philosophy Three. End it quickly. One common theme a lot of the instructors, or at least the people making videos, agreed on is that you didn’t want a fight to last longer than it absolutely needed to. Getting tired, gassing out, meant you got sloppy and if it happened to you before the other guy that was very bad. Decisive and brutal was the name of the game. Women’s self-defence was about inflicting as much pain as quickly as possible by targeting vulnerable areas, and that made a hell of a lot of sense.

A new note on the Spells to Develop page - ‘what vulnerabilities does everyone share?’

I got interrupted by Stacey coming to my room for her turn at fucking me, and when we were done she sighed as she looked over my notes. “I don’t like this,” she said.

“Am I missing something important?” I asked.

“No, I just- I don’t like the idea of you fighting,” Stacey said. “You’re my Jerry Bear, always have been. I’ve never thought of you as someone who would use their fists.”

“Yeah, that’s the point of Philosophy One,” I said. “Everything else is Just In Case.”

“Except it’s not,” Stacey said. “You’re going to need to do something to stop Annalise’s father. He’s not just going to surrender. That means you're preparing for a fight, not the vague possibility of one.”

“I know,” I said with a determined frown. “But if I can come up with a plan, or catch him by surprise, maybe that helps keep things… clean?”

Stacey set my notes down and sat down on the bed in front of me. She’d already put her shirt and panties back on, and she took one of my hands in hers. “What does that mean though, Jerry? He deserves justice, everyone agrees on that. What he did to his own family is unforgivable. But as far as we know there isn’t some Magic Jail where you can throw him. So what are you going to do?”

“I-” I hesitated, and took a long, deep breath. “Annalise and Maya both want me to kill him.”

“Is that what you want to do though?” Stacey asked. She was frowning, her brows creased in concern as she searched my face.

“No, of course not,” I said. “But-”

“But,” Stacey sighed. “Jerry, I just don’t want you to do something that’s going to change you. I love you.”

“I know, Stace,” I said, pulling her closer into a hug. “I know.”

When she left, back to whatever the girls were doing, I sat down at my computer again and opened up a new Google tab. ‘Most powerful magic’ was useful for ideas. I ended up going through lists of superhero abilities, and magic from books and movies. It’s not like the writers were going to sue me for copyright infringement if I figured out how to give myself Wolverine’s super healing, Superman’s heat vision or anything else.

The super healing went into my ‘Defensive’ list of ideas, as did various kinds of shields. Then I realized I needed to zoom out my focus - I wasn’t picking superpowers off a list, I was trying to figure out the most powerful, decisive magic I could use to end conflicts as they were starting. George Stoker could use plants. What could stop plant magic in its tracks? What did it need?

A new page in my notebook. Plants needed water, air and sunlight to grow, but that was just natural growth. We’d seen, and Annalise had described, George as not necessarily requiring any of them. All he needed was a seed. And if that was true of other mages with other sorts of powers, then I needed to be even more meta.

What were the unifying features every mage was going to have?

My notes were becoming a mess, and by the time Lindsey came to me I had crumpled up papers all over the bed. She was interested though, and I slowly fucked her from behind in a prone position as she looked over my notes and ideas.

“I think you’re on the right track with this one,” she said, waving one of the crumpled notes over her shoulder at me. I was currently balls deep in her pussy, but I took it and saw it was a thought path I’d started down on all mages being human. “You can’t account for what their powers are, so you don’t know how they’ll defend themselves. But you can account for them being limited by the same things you are.”

“Like what?” I asked, pushing her hair out of the way so I could kiss the crook of her neck.

She grinned, arching her back a little more and pressing her ass back at me. “If magic requires thought and concentration, then the universal weakness is the space between action and reaction.”

“Time,” I said. “Fuck, it was so obvious.”

Lindsey chuckled and contorted her body so she could turn to kiss me. “You were almost there, babe. You were just thinking too hard. Now, fuck me raw and put a load in me.”

I did, and when she sauntered out of my room wearing nothing but her shirt and with my cum slowly leaking down her thighs, I went back to the well again. Time magic,

There were lots of options out there. Freezing time seemed the most obvious, but when I formed that idea in my head as a spell concept I got a splitting headache. I didn’t even have a chance to start thinking up limiting factors, it was just too big a concept and I assumed would cause too many issues even if I did it locally.

So if actually freezing time was out, then could I simulate the same effect? The next functional idea was to make people perceive time as frozen so that they would ‘freeze’ in place even if the world outside of the spell effect continued on. This spell was more manageable as I conceptualized it, and I was tempted to try it out but remembered the teleportaling issue and unintended potential consequences. So I started another page and tried to think up all the possibilities.

The first on the list, and the most terrifying one, was that I realized I could have killed everyone in the house if I pushed ‘pause’ on their brains. The only difference between Pause and Off was that I was holding on to the ability to turn them back On, but what happened while they were paused could in effect shut down all their bodily systems. Shut off someone’s brain and they would stop breathing.

Lauren found me in the washroom, rinsing my mouth out as the toilet was flushing down my vomit. She saw the look on my face and just hugged me, not even asking what was wrong. She sat up on the counter of the bathroom and held me for a bit before giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Have you texted Angie today?”

“What?” I asked.

“I figured that would knock you out of it,” Lauren chuckled. “So do you want to talk about it, or do you want to answer my question.”

“I haven’t texted Angie, and I just sort of scared myself again with how much I could have fucked things up any number of times in the last couple of weeks,” I said.

“Well, what does that mean?” Lauren asked. “If this is about Annalise’s father-”

“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s about the magic. I just… it’s dangerous, Lauren. One bad idea I rush into could literally kill people. I almost did it when I was trying to figure out Teleportaling, and just now I… if I’d done what I’d thought might have been a safe spell and hadn’t hesitated, I would have accidentally ended everyone in the house.”

“But you did hesitate, Jerry,” Lauren said, rubbing my back. “That’s the important thing, right? You stopped before diving in. That’s what’s important. You’re experimenting, it makes sense you need to take things slower than we might like. Now, you need to distract yourself and call Angela.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s got her own life going on, and I don’t want her to think I’m being clingy or something. We spent the last three evenings together and I don’t want to scare her off.”

Lauren smiled sweetly at me and leaned in to kiss the tip of my nose. “And that’s why I love you, dorkus. But you also spent the last three nights fucking her in three very different circumstances and she’s probably trying to figure out how she feels about that. You want to keep seeing her, right?”

I flushed at that, but nodded. Admitting to my girlfriend that I wanted to keep fucking another woman - one who wasn’t in our weird polyamorous harem situation - still felt sort of insane.

“Then you need to text her. Or better yet, video call her,” Lauren said. “All you have to do is say you wanted to check up on her and ask her how she’s feeling. That’ll let her know you care, but you’re not being pushy.”

“Alright,” I nodded.

Lauren gave me a look.

“Right now?” I asked. “In the bathroom?”

“Might as well,” she said, then slipped her hand into my pocket and pulled out my phone and thumbed it open. It was such a casual but intimate gesture that it struck me. What other couple did I know that would do that, or be OK with it? Sure, I could see some crazy girlfriends or boyfriends at school wanting access to each other’s phones because they were jealous or paranoid about cheating. But Lauren and I… it was like we were the same person. We acted as one. We weren’t a couple.

“I love you, by the way,” I said as she brought up Angie’s contact info. “I also feel like I’m having Deja Vu or something.”

“I love you too,” Lauren smiled, and then handed me the phone. It was ringing on FaceTime. Then she started undoing the zipper on my pants. “You should really just stop wearing jeans when we’re at home,” she said.

“Are you honestly doing this right now?” I asked, a little shocked.

“Yeah, why not?” Lauren grinned, getting my fly open and fishing out my hardening cock. “Angie knows what's up when it comes to us and your amazing, magical-”

Boop-bwoop.

“Hey, Jeremiah. What’s up, is something wrong?” Angela asked. Her face was in frame, and she was walking in a dim hallway.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, forcing a smile to try and cover the fact that Lauren had bent down to take my cock into her mouth. “I just wanted to check in. I know we went a little hard together the last few nights and we’ve had a lot of fun, but I wanted to see how you were feeling.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Angie said. “Hold on.” The phone waved around for a minute and I caught a couple flashes of laggy images I thought was her room. It settled quickly and I recognized Angela’s headboard behind her, so I realized she was sitting on her bed. “Honestly, it might be a little too sweet, you calling me to check in. You know women like bad boys, right? I think you’re supposed to be negging me, or making me wonder if you’re with another woman to string me along.”

“You know I’m with another woman,” I smirked and reminded her.

“I know, that’s why I think you being sweet is cute instead of naieve,” Angela said. “How many times have you had sex today?”

I made a show of doing some mental math and counting on my fingers, which made her snort. “I’ve had sex with each of my official girlfriends today,” I admitted. “More than once.”

“Horndog,” Angela laughed. “And now you’re calling me. I gotta be honest, I don’t think I could do another hookup tonight. I had the day off and I’m still a little sore from the pounding you gave me. The good kind of sore, but still. A night off was definitely needed.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s the good kind,” I said. I was needing to do some work to keep my face from showing the pleasure Lauren was giving me. She’d slipped her own pants down to her thighs and was fingering herself as she blew me. “But I was serious about wanting to check in, Ang. More than just on how you are doing physically.”

Angela sighed, and then looked off from the camera at her door as if checking if Suzie, her roommate, was listening. “Honestly, Jerry? I don’t know where my head is at emotionally yet. You are without a doubt the best fuck I’ve ever had, barring Lindsey and even then it’s an even playing field. Fuck, to be honest I’m getting a little wet just talking to you. If you were single, I’d probably string along the friends-with-benefits thing until I self-sabotaged the hell out of it when you showed interest in someone else. But you already are with more than one someone else, so I don’t have that out to fall back on and it’s making me wonder if I want more.”

“Do you want me to give you space to think, or do you want to talk it out?” I asked.

“Ugh, damn it, Jerry,” Angela sighed. “That’s the kind of shit you do that makes me frustrated. Most guys would either call me over for a booty call at that point in the conversation or start fawning over me trying to convince me I should date you. But you say the one thing that makes me keep wondering if this might actually be the right thing.”

“Sorry, not sorry,” I grinned. “This is what you get when the guy you’re interested in grows up surrounded by strong women. Lauren and Stacey would both punch the crap out of me if I did either of those things.”

“I guess they have you well trained,” Angela laughed. “OK. I don’t want to talk now, but I will soon. Is that alright with you?”

“Your decision, your timeline,” I said.

“Bastard,” Angela sighed and chuckled. “Hold on.” She set the camera down and there was a shifting sound, and then she picked it back up. “Look at what you’re doing to me,” she said, then pointed that camera at her pussy. It was flushed with arousal, her inner labia just a little spread open and slick.

“God, that makes me want to taste it,” I said.

“Are you getting hard looking at my pussy?” Angela asked, bringing the camera up to her face again, biting her lip teasingly.

“I was already hard, Angie,” I said with some chagrin.

“Show me,” Angela said.

“I dunno,” I said, starting to panic. Lauren hadn’t stopped blowing me, and I wasn’t sure how Angela would react to knowing our conversation hadn’t been entirely private.

“Wait, what was that look?” Angela asked. “Are you not alone?”

Fuck.

“Is one of your girls with you?” Angela asked. “Who is it? Lindsey, you bitch, are you sucking his cock while we have an emotional talk?”

Lauren looked up at me, my cock still between her lips, and nodded with an obscene grin.

“It’s not Lindsey,” I said and flipped the camera around to show Angela.

Lauren slowly pulled off my cock, letting her lips stretch as she sucked hard and popped off the top. Then she put on a lewd display of licking the side of my shaft in a long, slow move before grinning at the camera and resting her chin next to the root of my dick. “Hey, Angela. Long time no see. You want to jill off while you watch Jerry fuck my ass?”

“God fucking damn it,” Angela laughed. “You and Lindsey are… Yes, I would, you little slut.”

“Only for Jerry,” Lauren grinned. “You know how it is.”

“I do now,” Angela said.

We didn’t spend too long on the whole thing. Lauren bent over the counter of the bathroom, peeling her ass cheeks apart herself and urging me quietly to fuck her ass hard and fast. I held my phone in one hand, steadying my cock with the other, and with a mental spell I lubed up Lauren’s ass and then thrust inside as she moaned quietly into her arm. As I started fucking her it took a lot of will to focus on keeping the camera straight and splitting my attention between Lauren, and the view of Angela I had. My brunette ‘friend’ pulled off her shirt, her tits popping free, and while she wasn’t really trying to give me a show even just watching her face as she masturbated was hot.

Lauren worked up quickly, playing up the visual experience for Angela by looking back at the camera often with smokey, sexy eyes and whispering dirty ‘Fuck my needy little ass’ sorts of comments. As she pushed towards her orgasm I grabbed her hair the way she liked, pulling her back towards me a bit, and that made Angela groan.

I came first surprisingly, somehow the weird situation overcoming the fact that I’d dropped almost a half dozen loads that day already. My cum pushed Lauren over the edge and she hung her head low and gritted her teeth as her whole body tensed, trying not to cry out loud and alert my parents downstairs.

As soon as her orgasm was rolling down to a trickle, Lauren pushed me back and spun around, going to her knees and sucking my cock into her mouth.

“Holy fuck, you filthy whore,” Angela groaned and started her own panting orgasm as her camera rocked and jiggled as she got off on watching the ass to mouth. She didn’t know that Lauren and I both knew her ass was completely clean thanks to my usual ‘cleansing spell’ ritual whenever we got sexual. It was probably even cleaner than blowing me after being in her pussy, if I was being honest.

As Angela and I both panted through our exertions, Lauren stood up and took my phone from me, flipping the camera around so that she could talk to Angela directly. “Angie?”

“Y-Yeah?” Angela breathed out her stuttered response.

Lauren grinned. “Next time, you can eat his creampie out of my ass.”

“Filthy fucking bitch,” Angela laughed.

Lauren snuggled up next to me, getting us both in the frame. “I am, and so are you,” she said.

“Let me know when you want to talk, Ang,” I said. “And tell Suzie if she wants to talk about anything from last night, she can call me. I know none of us were expecting what ended up happening.”

“Call you, or call you?” Angela asked. “You’re the first guy she’s fucked in years, and definitely the first who finished inside her. I think she’s OK, but a little confused.”

“Either,” I said. “She seems cool, but I don’t really know her.”

“You didn’t really know me, either,” Angela pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s different with you, Angela,” I said.

“I gotta go,” she said, cutting off the deeper conversation. I could tell she was a little nervous to go in on it.

“I’m gonna call you in a couple of days,” Lauren said. “Lindsey and I are working on a thing.”

“A thing?” I asked.

“Shush, you,” Lauren said.

“Sure, Linds has my number,” Angela said.

We signed off, and Lauren coaxed me into the shower and enjoyed me putting my hands all over her to get her clean.

Then she kissed me as we dried ourselves off, and quickly dressed and went back to Stacey’s room. The whole thing hadn’t taken longer than thirty minutes since I’d entered the bathroom.

My parents came up later, happily surprised when they found Lauren and Lindsey hanging out in Stacey’s room instead of Lauren in my room with the door closed, and invited them to stay for dinner. The rest of the evening was surprisingly wholesome - Lauren and Lindsey stuck around for some card games after dinner, then Lindsey got a call from her Mom and they decided they should probably make an appearance at home. I walked them out to their cars and kissed them both goodbye in the dark of the evening, and sent my girlfriends off.

When I got back inside, Stacey waved at me from the top of the stairs so I went to her.

“Lauren told me about Angela,” she whispered, holding onto my waist and kissing me. “I know it’s not fair of me to say really, but I want to remind you that we need to be careful. The three of us are bought in on this thing, this weird relationship we have. We don’t know how Angela will react to the full truth.”

“I know,” I whispered back. “But you’re right. I hadn’t really been considering that. I’m- she’s-”

“You’re falling for her. Or at least the parts of her you’ve gotten to know so far,” Stacey finished for me. “It’s OK, Jerry. Lauren, Lindsey and I have talked it through already. We know how you are, and now that you’ve been testing the ‘care more, gain more power’ it sort of cements that we need to be OK with the harem growing. Annalise is a sweet girl even if she comes across a little rough, and she’s got those tits. We approve of her, too.”

“I don’t know if-”

“We all know about the offer she made, Jerry,” Stacey cut me off. “She wants in, she just doesn’t know how to ask.”

“Fuck,” I sighed. “I- I wish I could just get a minute to let things settle a bit. Figure out how to get stable.”

“You will,” she assured me, hugging me closer and I wrapped my arms around her. “You know I still love you like my pain-in-the-ass little godbrother, right?”

“Is that an invitation?” I snickered, reaching down and squeezing her amazing bum.

“Maybe some other time,” Stacey chuckled back, squeezing my ass right back. “When the adults aren’t in the house to hear me struggling to fit you inside.”

I let go of her, laughing and stepping back. “Well, I don’t know if I could make it work right now anyways.”

“Long day?” she asked with a smirk.

“You know exactly how long,” I said. “You know, I don’t think I had a chance to say it, but I had a lot of fun with you at the bank earlier, Mrs Grant.”

“I had a lot of fun with you too, Mr Grant,” she grinned, taking my hand in hers.

“Now, I think I could actually use your help with something,” I said. “Other than checking in with Annalise and Maya tomorrow morning, we don’t have anything super planned, right?”

“Not that I know of,” Stacey said. “Our date to go lock in the new apartment lease is in four days, and with you there that shouldn’t be a problem. If we take the next day to move over mine and Lindsey’s stuff that leaves a couple more days before New Year’s and the council meeting.”

“OK, good,” I said. “If we have three days before the apartment, then I’m not putting it off any longer. Don’t tell Lindsey because I want to surprise her, but I’m taking her on our date day tomorrow. Then you the next day, and Lauren the day after.”

“Really?” Stacey asked. I could tell she was excited but was also being realistic. “What about the hunt?”

“I need to be as powered up as I can for that,” I said. “So a delay is probably better. Let him settle in and get comfortable. He can think whatever he wants, I’m not doing this on his timeline.”

“You’re confident,” Stacey said, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

“I just had a realization earlier is all,” I said. “I’m still not sure I know what I’m going to do, but I know I’m capable and I don’t want to let him ruin our time together.”

“OK,” she nodded. “You know, confident Jerry is pretty hot, right?”

“Thanks,” I snorted. “Now, do you want to help me plan my surprise day with Lindsey?”

“Um, yes?” Stacey laughed and grabbed my hand, pulling me towards her room. “Come with me. I have ideas.”

“I have some ideas too you know,” I protested.

“And I’m sure they’ll be great additions to what you’re actually going to do,” Stacey said. “But your girlfriends know best, right?”

I grinned and rolled my eyes. “Yes, dear.”

Stacey turned in her doorway and kissed me, smiling through it. “Good.”