MageCrafter - 16. Chapter 16

Kotik was quite excited at the moment. His lover and master Lord Baldric said he had a surprise he was going to like quite a lot, as well as a gift that he thinks the Lynxian is going to really like. Despite this news being so heart pounding and thrilling to the lynxian, who was quite a fan of surprises himself, the Young Lord beside him seemed somewhat lost in thought. He wasn’t distant with Kotik of course. How could he with Kotik hugging him around the middle and nuzzling his face into the Young Lords side, but he could feel the sensation that Lord Baldric wanted to talk to him about something.

“What’s wrong Lord Baldric?” Kotik asked curiously, keeping his face pressed into Baldric’s side as he looked up at the older teen. Lord Baldric looked down and smiled at the adorable lynxian who was so affectionately clinging to his side. The cat boy’s tail swished about in the air in a content and pleased manner as he did so.

“Well, My sweet Kotik, sometimes my mind wanders to places that make me feel a bit out of sorts. Part of it is envy for you I suppose.”

“Envy for me? How so?” Kotik asked as he scooted upwards and draped one of his legs over Lord Baldric’s lap with an elegant bend of his knee. “You’re so wealthy and your powers are amazing! You’re super smart too! Oh and you have the most creative ideas for making me feel good! I never even thought about most of the stuff we’ve done before, but they’ve been so heart pounding and fun.”

“My sweet, that is what I am somewhat envious of.” He looked so befuddled on how to broach this particular topic with Kotik, which surprised the Lynxian. He normally seemed so sure of himself that seeing apprehension in him brought Kotik more to attention. He could feel almost a pang of fear out of the young lord, though not a flavor of fear he could readily describe.

“What do you want to talk about before you mention this surprise and gift?” Kotik shimmied over and straddled the young lords lap. He looked intently at the young lord from that seated position, wanting to get to the bottom of this particular mystery.

“You know how you had people who hurt you in the past My sweet?” Kotik nodded with a grimace, those memories were never far behind no matter how nice he was feeling. “You could recognize them as bad at the time because their behavior felt painful to you. Painful and enough for you to want to make them stop.”

Lord Baldric sat up against the bed-frame and hugged Kotik’s head into his chest as he sighed. “I had something of a bad experience myself when I was much younger, my sweet. Though I think it is on the other side of the coin of how you can get hurt. In some ways I worry If I ended up more like him than I’d care to admit.”

“Ended up like who? You’re being very mysterious right now Lord Baldric.”

Lord Baldric smiled a sad smile at Kotik. “I could show him to you. However, part of me does not want to see him, even as an illusion. He hurt me in a way I can’t readily describe like a whip mark or a mean word. He and I are...scarily alike in a lot of ways that I do not like to contemplate. The difference I know for sure is our intent and aims are realms apart from one another.”

Kotik was sitting upright now on his lover’s lap as he gripped Lord Baldric’s face in his hands. “I don’t know who this person was, but if he hurt you like how I’m feeling from you right now, then you are nothing alike at all. You’re such a giving person, and you make me feel so nice.”

“He made me feel quite nice as well my sweet.” Lord Baldric said, surprisingly having a hard time keeping eye contact with Kotik. The young lynxian steeled his resolve right then and gripped the young lord by the chin and turned him to face the lynxian’s blue eyes.

“Show me. Whoever this is, he isn’t like you. I’ll prove it.”

Lord Baldric took in a sharp intake of breath, clearly apprehensive about calling forth this particular illusion. He decided to set the stage while he worked his nerves up to summon up the scene.

“My sweet. The person I am going to show you is the first person I ever had sex with. However I do not remember this person fondly. In fact part of me is still quite scared of him because of how confused he still makes me feel. I mean that in the literal sense, and not the metaphorical sense when you say someone makes you feel something. I’m envious of you Kotik because you can remember your first time with great fondness, because I made sure I wasn’t doing anything you wouldn’t want to do. I’ve always made very sure I never do anything my partner doesn’t want to do…,” Lord Baldric actually gulped and looked nervous, “Cause I know what it's like when someone doesn’t take that seriously into account.”

With apprehension on Lord Baldric’s face, the world went black around the two of them as they laid together.

“I met him in the Bavaram circus during my first few months there. He no longer works with them now. When he did however, he was something of a Fortune Teller and a Bard that would work in one of the smaller tents in the sideshow entertainments that were stationed outside of the main event tent.”

The scene began to appear, though it seemed hazier and not as sharp as Lord Baldric’s other illusions. A very young and excited Baldric was talking with Shahnaz outside of a rather big tent with a sign that had a fortune telling orb on it surrounded by some kind of artistic representation of a strange snake humanoid with wings. The exchange between Lord Baldric and Shahnaz was quite muffled sounding and not as clear as his illusions normally were either.

“What’s wrong with the Illusion lord Baldric? I’ve never seen your Illusions this strangely fuzzy like this.”

Kotik was shocked to see a tear coming out of Lord Baldric’s eye as he looked down at his lynxian. “I’m showing it as I remember it my sweet. You’ll understand why it is this way when you see him.”

Whatever was said between the young versions of Shahnaz and Baldric, it had been something of an argument, and he was pointing at her to go away somewhere. They seemed to be moving at a slightly wrong speed, almost dreamlike in comparison than one of the scarily accurate illusions Lord Baldric usually summoned forth. Sound seem muted and muffled. Like anything around this tent he was about to enter was just not able to be recorded properly by however Lord Baldric does that.

The young Baldric walked in with an excited look on his face as he looked around inside of this strange fortune tellers tent. It was quite big, and on the ground within the confines of the tent was this strangely luminescent golden smoke like substance. It wasn’t fog or steam, it was smoke. Kotik could tell because the sense of smell from the illusion was one of the few things that was coming in loud and clear. Everything else was almost glowing and hazy. Though the illusion didn’t carry any of the effect of the golden smoke that hid the ground so completely, Kotik had a sinking feeling that it was part of the reason why this illusion was so cloudy and hazy.

The inside of the tent was black, which was a sharp contrast to the outside of it that was a muted bluish color. When the flap closed inside the tent, charcoal grey smoke billowed up from beneath the golden smoke and covered the walls of the tent, swirling and revealing the black behind it and making it seem more and more like the tent was getting bigger on the inside, while at the same time seeming to box the boy in.

Within the blackness of the smoke that clung to the walls of the tent, two bright gold eyes snapped open. Snake eyes that seemed to be luminescent and polished gold just like the smoke on the ground.

“Why hello young one, what brings you into Jaakobah’s tent this fine eve.”

Kotik’s tail bristled and his skin erupted in goosebumps at the deeply hissing sound of that voice. Something came forward through the Black smoke, while something else disturbed the gold smoke clinging to the ground. The Torso of the man was deeply tanned and quite muscular, with strange, shimmering gold lines tattooed into that dark skin of his. One of the things that took Kotik aback was the presence of two enormous black wings sprouting from the small of his back just a bit higher than where Kotik’s tail resided, and his lower body didn’t seem to be legs, but a single mass of black that slipped into the golden smoke below.

That black mass seemed to writhe and poke out in various places outside of the golden smoke, and there was a rattling sound from the tip of what Kotik recognized as a rather large snake tail.

The young Baldric tried to back up, but he bumped into this man’s snake tail, who stopped him from moving as it slowly surrounded him. The man took a drag off of something he was smoking in his hand and breathed it out, sending golden smoke out and making strange patterns in the air around the lad, showing that he was controlling and manipulating this smoke as he got closer.

“What is your name young one?” Again Kotik did not like this man’s voice. The way he spoke felt so wrong, he couldn’t read this illusion's emotions but the illusion was so hazy that the echo of the emotion practically lingered in it.

Young Baldric was in so much danger it scared Kotik.

“B-Baldric sir! I'm a new employee to the Bavaram circus! I’m saying hi to everyone!”

The man had such long black hair that draped over his shoulders and back in feathery locks. The hair seemed almost made out of the same black down that comprised his enormous wings that were closing slowly around Baldric.

The snake man with black wings moved himself so that his torso was hanging upside down as he maneuvered around the boy, his glowing gold snake eyes looking his body over as a skin crawling grin grew on his face. “Ooooh? You’re fresh meat huh? I do so enjoy meeting new recruits.”

Young Baldric was now completely surrounded by a perimeter of that snake tail that made a wall around him. The tip of it rattled somewhere, rattling with excitement as the tent grew even hasier. He took another drag off of the thing in his hands, which allowed him to breath more golden smoke, this time directly over the boy.

As he did so, the Illusion grew even hazier, things glew even brighter in it. The swirling gray smoke against the black tent walls seemed even further away.

“We-Well I said hi, so I should go and say hi to more people.”

“Ooooh you don’t need to do that.” The scaly wall of wrapped tail pulled slightly tighter as the man loomed over him, his immense black wings splayed outwards in an intimidating manner. “Just relax. Take a deep breath and enjoy yourself.”

Kotiks jaw was clenched so tightly as he shook. He hated this snake man. He made his own eyes slit even as the illusion grew even hazier, and the snake man’s voice took on an echoing quality.

“Enjoy yourself young Baldric. Do you want your fortune told?”

The young Baldric reluctantly nodded, his eyes looking bloodshot and his breathing haggard inside of this smoke. The snake man’s grin grew even wider as he moved closer, his tail rattling even harder.

“Listen to the sound of my voice and take deep breaths, and I will be able to show you visions through the smoke. You need to really breathe it in for me to show it to you properly though. Otherwise the magic doesn’t work.”

The young Baldric and everything else grew so much hazier, but those golden eyes that locked onto the Young Baldric’s gaze as he breathed more smoke onto the lad grew sharper and sharper in clarity.

“Just focus on my eyes and take in deep breaths little Baldric, your future will become quite clear very soon.”

The illusion began to warp and shift entirely as it swirled around those eyes, almost like the snake man was sucking the clarity of Baldric’s thoughts right into him.

All of a sudden the illusion was forcibly stopped by a shaking lord Baldric.

“After that first time, he wasn’t quite so forceful. He would wait for me to come to him because that smoke he uses made you feel trembling and awful if you weren’t around it long enough. He had power over hallucinations and was a MageCrafter of smoke. He could make me see and feel all sorts of things after I breathed in his smoke. I was scared the shaking wouldn’t go away if I told Lord Tugast and he left without leaving the smoke behind.”

“He-he’s so awful.” Kotik said forcefully as he stared at Lord Baldric, “You are nothing alike at all! What would make you even say that?”

“He liked a lot of the same things I like, and he used deceit to get what he wanted. Hallucinations and Illusions are even from the same pantheon.”

“But Lord Baldric, you truly are nothing like him. Even without reading his emotions every ounce of him was like some predator in the woods stalking its prey. You would never do anything like what he was doing. You are so considerate of what other people like me want it makes me feel like I should do more for you even! That thing was only thinking about himself and he didn’t care who he hurt. If I were there i’d have strangled him right then and there!”

“You are much stronger than me then Kotik, cause I didn’t say anything about it for months and I kept going back, and the stuff he did do actually felt good. If I tried to stop however; that shaking from not being around his smoke would act up again. He could even make it worse at will if I tried to resist. Like he stored the feeling inside of me to call upon whenever he wanted. Even now I worry he could call that feeling back up in me once more should we ever cross paths in life again. ”

A deep growl rumbled in Kotik’s throat as he stared intently at Lord baldric with his irises growing into razor thin lines. “If you ever see him again, You leave him to me.”

Lord Baldric wiped his eyes and let out a chuckle at those threatening sounding words out of his little Lynxian. “Now I’m wondering if I should be more nervous about the boy in my lap than him, sweet Kotik. You look positively ready to pounce right now.”

Kotik flushed and settled himself back down, smiling sheepishly. “I just did not like the feeling he gave off at all. He reminded me so much of some of the meaner people who whipped me, the ones who would grin and laugh at me when I cried. Like that fat man.” Kotik’s face grew harder again as he looked up at Lord Baldric who seemed to be settling down after seeing this Jaakobah. “You don’t worry about that thing anymore.” Kotik spat out the words ‘that thing’ like he was uttering a curse. “If it should ever be unlucky enough to meet you again, It will have me to deal with, and I will not give it time to breathe any of his stupid smoke at me. He’ll be too busy learning how much of that stupid tail of his can fit down his throat.”

Lord Baldric shook his head with an amused expression even through the jitters his body almost instinctively had from seeing Jaakobah again. Kotik may get his looks and interests in bed from his mother, but this godlike vengeful rage that could swell up within the lad was entirely from Kotik’s dad, the God Cernunnus. After witnessing the deities rage in person, he could see his fingerprints all over Kotik’s angry expression. They looked so much alike with how they got angry it was scary.

“Thank you my sweet, though I would ask you not to make a habit of threatening people like that on my behalf. We would not like a repeat of the Garden incident do we? My father is still rather peeved about that.”

Kotik blushed and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. “Can I go apologize to him? I don’t know how that’s supposed to work exactly. I talk so freely with Count Raudh and Yourself, but I don’t know how your father expects to be spoken to. I also want to keep up appearances like you said before.”

Lord Baldric nodded. “I think I can arrange something if you want to do that. My father’s a bit high strung lately but he’s a reasonable man overall. Now about that surprise;”

“Yes!?” Kotik bounced to attention, his ears and tail perking up immediately. He could tell from Baldric’s emotions that he knew this would make Kotik quite excited and he was relishing in the suspense of it. Just knowing that made Kotik squirm about in excitement even more as he stared up in expectation at Lord Baldric.

“I have been in contact with the Old Man of Old Man’s Tavern.”

Baldric felt his heart warm immensely at the erupting smile of joy and delight on Kotik’s face at hearing those words. “Wait really?! What did he say? What did you talk about!? Tell me! Please!”

“The Old Man was, shall we say, quite cross with me about making you miss your birthday party. I must confess He moved himself up the ladder on worst scoldings I ever got in my life.”

Kotik looked both amused and shocked before he grinned sheepishly and looked away from Lord Baldric.

“Oh yeah, that sounds like him.” He didn’t even question hearing about the Old Man scolding nobility. However his face grew concerned after a brief moment. “ You're not going to get him in trouble for that, are you? He’s like that with everybody! Honest!”

Baldric had to laugh at the sheer irony of Kotik being worried about someone who was in truth a literal god walking among mortals, in trouble with something as poultry as a dukedom. He ruffled Kotik’s Lynxian ears.

“My sweet Kotik, why would I get mad at a man who spoke only the truth to me about how unfair we had been to you that night? He claimed he only wanted a few hours to throw a birthday or you at the very least, and my MaidStaff and Butler would have none of it. All because they wanted you for my Birthday Party as soon as possible. When he had explained to me his take on events, on top of your own true pain you had expressed on my birthday over it, I felt like this was a wrong that needed to be rectified.”

Kotik was practically bouncing with excitement as he put his hands to his mouth. “N-Noooo, you don’t mean…”

Lord Baldric beamed, “You and I, probably Count Raudh cause I cannot imagine him not wanting to attend, and probably a small contingent of MaidStaff for protection shall be going to The Old Man’s Tavern to have a Belated Birthday Party for Yourself.”

Kotik could not spring to kiss Lord Baldric fast enough, hugging his head and performing the kiss so forcefully and passionately that Lord Baldric surprisingly couldn’t get control of it. His Kotik was quite the fast learner. He suspected Kotik might have been secretly employing the accelerated training his collar can perform to improve at things like Kissing and the like, much like he learned Bavaram dancing within an hour thanks to the Collar. He was quickly adapting to any new position or type of sex act that Baldric had for him.

The funny thing is, Lord Baldric never once asked him to do such a thing. He can enjoy adorable inexperience just as much as a practiced lover. However it was sweet that Kotik was taking this aspect of their relationship so seriously. When they finally broke the kiss none of the excitement had left Kotik’s face at all.

“When are we going?! What’s the gift then? What should I wear!?”

Lord Baldric grinned and rolled his eyes as he scratched Kotik behind the ears and worked at calming the Lynxian down a tad. He might end up gripping Lord Baldric too hard if he kept bouncing about like that, and healing items were no picnic to use.

“We’ll be leaving in the morning via teleporting carriage. Hopefully we do not have any issues with Babica while we are there. I’ve been kinda keeping you in the dark on This front but she’s still a smidgen mad at me over this border dispute we had.”

Kotik shuddered before looking determined. His blue eyes took on their characteristic slits as he growled his next words in a snarl. “She better not mess with my birthday party again.” the deep growl coming from his chest only got louder, “She already sent her minions to my party once, and although I was shocked by magic that time and couldn’t do anything, I’m well over that now. If someone messes up my party again when I just got a second chance at it...well… Let's just say I’m not going to be pleasant company.”

Lord Baldric laughed nervously at that, knowing full well they are going to be going to a party with both a God and a Gigantes present. He silently prayed to any god who might lend an ear for Babica to get the memo not to send any forces over should she find out about this party. For she has no idea what she might be waking up if she were to make an attempt.