Chapter 3: The Midnight Tithe
The silence in Cedric’s dormitory was a physical thing, thick and heavy. The lantern’s glow had dwindled to a faint orange smudge behind its glass, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to move on their own. Her scent, a pleasant musk, and something darkly sweet, hung in the air, innhis skin. It was a smell that both unsettled him and calmed his perpetually jangling nerves. It meant she was here. It meant the decisions were hers.
She had her own bed, in a room down the hall. As a humanoid summon, it was standard practice. Still, he couldn't help but feel naked without her there to shield him from the world.
He blew out the final candle and crawled into the narrow bed, his body a collection of aches—the muscular exhaustion from channeling so much raw power, the deep, bruising fatigue of a will thoroughly routed. He lay on his back, staring at the water-stained ceiling, listening to the distant drip of a gutter somewhere in the Lachrim night. He was teetering on the edge of a dreamless void when the mattress dipped.There was no warning. One moment he was alone, the next a warm, solid weight settled beside him. A small, powerful hand clamped over his mouth, the skin slightly rough against his lips. Her amber eyes were luminous in the absolute dark, mere inches from his own.“Not a sound, pet,” Vexia whispered, her breath hot against his ear. Her tail, a warm, muscular cord, had already slithered beneath the thin blanket. It traced a deliberate path down his sternum, over the flat plane of his stomach, and coiled possessively around his flaccid cock, giving a gentle, testing squeeze. His body reacted instantly, a traitorous surge of blood that made her grin in the shadows.
“See?” she murmured, her hand sliding from his mouth to cup his jaw.“Your body knows its purpose. Even if your mind is still scrambling like a startled rabbit.”
He swallowed hard, a shaky inhale catching in his throat. “Vexia, I…”
“Shhh.” Her tail tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to make his thoughts dissolve into a soft, buzzing static. She moved then, with a predatory grace that belied her size. Throwing the blanket aside, she straddled his hips, her heat pressing against him through the thin fabric of his sleep clothes. Her own smallclothes were gone; he felt the smooth, searing skin of her inner thighs, the thatch of coarse curls, and then, the damp, startling slit of her cunt as she ground down against his hardness.
He gasped, hips twitching upwards involuntarily.
“Good,” she purred, leaning forward to nip at his collarbone with her extra canines. A sharp, bright pain that melted into a throbbing warmth. Her hands pushed his shirt up, her nails scratching lightly through the hair on his chest.“You have so much in you, Cedric. So much raw, untrained power.It’s sloshing around in there, useless. Let me put it to work.”
Before he could form a question, she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and pulled, her tail assisting with infuriating efficiency. His cock sprang free, fully erect now, jutting into the cool air.She didn’t give him time to feel exposed. In one smooth motion, she rose on her knees, gripped him firmly at the base with one small hand, and positioned herself. He felt the hot, slick head of his cock part her folds, and then, with a slow, inexorable pressure, she sank down onto him.Her cunt was a tight, wet furnace. She engulfed him inch by agonizing inch, a low hum of pleasure vibrating in her throat. She took him whole, until his hips were pressed flush against her, his length buried deep inside her. She paused there, fully sheathed, her body quivering slightly with the strain of containment.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his hands scrabbling at the sheets, his spine arching.
She began to move.Not with frantic passion, but with a slow, torturous precision. She rose almost all the way off him, until just the tip remained inside, then sank back down in a fluid roll of her hips.A grinding, circular motion at the bottom made his vision speckle. Up, down, grind.Up, down, grind. Each descent was a little harder, a little faster, the wet, filthy sound of their joining filling the silent room.
“Try to hold back,” she challenged, her voice a smoky rasp. Her hands braced on his chest, her claws prickling his skin. Her amber eyes held his, unblinking. “Try to resist me. Use that pathetic will of yours.”
He couldn’t.It was impossible. Every drag of her silken inner walls, every clench of her muscles around his shaft, was a direct assault on his already shattered control. The bond between them, a nebulous thing of magic and intent, began to glow like a live wire. He felt her consciousness, cool and calculating, not just beside his, but within it, tracing the paths of his magic.
“You’re going to come for me, aren’t you, pet?” she whispered, her rhythm becoming more urgent, her small tits bouncing with each impactful drop onto his lap. “You’re going to pump that sweet, potent seed right into my greedy little cunt. And I’m going to drink it all down.Every last drop of your power.”
Her words tipped him over the edge. With a choked-off cry that was half sob, half shout, he erupted. His climax wasn't a release; it was an extraction. As his cock pulsed, shooting thick jets of come deep inside her, he felt the bond pulse in tandem.It was as if a plug had been pulled. His magic, the vast reservoir he could never properly wield, didn't just leave him—it was siphoned. He felt it flowing out along the tendrils of their connection, a rushing river of potential being diverted into her.She gasped, her body locking around his, milking him ruthlessly. Her inner muscles fluttered and clenched, drawing out his orgasm, prolonging the drain. It was ecstasy intertwined with profound depletion. Pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, coupled with the terrifying sensation of something vital being stolen.It didn't stop when his spasms ceased. She kept rocking against him, riding his softening cock, using him to coax out the last dregs of his energy. The flow of magic slowed from a torrent to a trickle, but it didn't stop. He lay beneath her, utterly spent, gasping for air, his limbs like lead. The magical fatigue was deeper than any physical exhaustion, a hollowing out of his very core.
Finally, with a sigh of deep satisfaction, she stilled, slumped against his chest. Her tail unwound from his cock and draped possessively across his thigh. She nuzzled into the sweat-damp hollow of his neck, her tongue darting out to taste his skin.
“Good boy,” she purred, the vibration rumbling through his bones.“Your power is mine now. All of it. You’ll make more. I’ll see to it that you make much, much more. And I’ll take that, too.” She shifted, pulling off him with a soft, wet sound. He flinched at the sensitivity, the sudden feeling of cold emptiness.A slow trickle of his own spend leaked down his thigh. "I'm never letting you go."
She curled against his side, a compact ball of heat, and draped an arm across his chest. “Sleep,” she commanded.“Tomorrow, the real work begins. You have a spectacle to live down, and a bitch to put in her place. You’ll need your rest.”
He wanted to protest, to ask what she meant, to question the violation he’d just experienced. But the hollow ache where his magic had been was already filling with a strange, placid warmth. Her presence, her certainty, was a narcotic.His eyelids grew leaden. As he drifted into a deep, helpless sleep, his last conscious thought was not of resistance, but of the scent of her in his sheets, and the terrifying comfort of her weight on his mattress.
As he drifted into a deep, helpless sleep, his last conscious thought was not of resistance, but of the scent of her in his sheets, and the terrifying comfort of her weight on his mattress. He awoke to a sharp flick on his cheek. Morning light, thin and grey, sliced through the narrow window of his dormitory. Vexia stood on the bed, hands on her hips, her naked crimson body silhouetted against the dreary dawn.
“Up,” she commanded, her voice devoid of the smoky purr from the night before.It was pure, polished authority.“Dress. Your physical form is a pathetic vessel.I need a strong servant, and you are weak. This changes today.”
Cedric’s body protested with a chorus of aches—the deep, magical hollowing from her drain, the muscle soreness from yesterday’s tension. He stumbled from the bed, his bare feet cold on the stone floor. He pulled on his practice clothes, simple linen trousers and a tunic, under her silent, amber-eyed scrutiny. The air between them still thrummed with the raw, wet intimacy of the night before, a sticky residue on his thighs and a phantom tightness in his groin. “On the floor,” she said when he was dressed. She pointed to a clear space between his trunk and the desk. “Push-ups. Now.”
Confused but obedient, he got down on his hands and knees, then lowered himself to a plank. The cold stone bit into his palms.Before he could begin, a weight settled on his lower back. She had perched herself there, sitting on him as if he were a bench. She was heavier than she looked, a dense, compact pressure that immediately strained his trembling arms.“Begin,” she said.
He pushed.His arms shook violently on the first descent. The second push was a ragged, grunting effort, his elbows screaming.On the third attempt, halfway up, his muscles simply failed. He collapsed face-first onto the floor with a painful gasp, her weight driving the air from his lungs. He lay there, panting, crushed by his own feebleness and her small, immovable body.She didn’t berate him. She leaned forward and patted the back of his sweaty head, her touch almost approving. “Three is a start,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact.“You will grow stronger.Because I will it. Get up.”
He rolled over, sitting up to see her standing before him, extending a hand. He took it, and she pulled him to his feet with surprising strength.“Now,” she announced, turning her back to him. “You will run.And you will carry me.Piggyback. I wish to survey my new domain.”
The thought was absurd, humiliating. Yet the command in the bond was a clear, cold current. He bent his knees, and she jumped, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms locking around his neck.Her tail coiled around his torso for added stability. She was a furnace on his back.“Run,” she whispered into his ear.“Use the path along the western wall. Do not stop until I say.”
He staggered out of his dormitory and into the misty morning grounds of Lachrim Arcanum. The ancient, overgrown paths were empty, the world silent except for the sound of his labored breathing and the soft click of her boots against his thighs with each jolting step.His legs burned immediately.His back ached. She was a small, demanding sack of grain that grew heavier with every yard.
“Faster,” she urged, not cruelly, but as a simple expectation.“Your body is capable. Your mind is the anchor.Let go of it.Borrow from me.”
And he did. He reached for that cold, obsidian will he had felt in the summoning circle. He let it flood the channels of his own hesitation, his desire to quit.It was like pouring oil on a struggling engine. His stride lengthened.His breath found a rhythm, deep and scorching. The pain didn’t vanish, but it became irrelevant data.He ran.The grey stone wall blurred beside him. He passed the silent observatory, the greenhouse with its shimmering panes. He focused only on the next footfall, the next yard, the weight and the warmth of her on his back, her breath steady on his neck.He ran until his lungs were strips of torn leather, until his vision tunneled. He ran until a commanding thought pierced the haze: Enough.His legs buckled instantly. He collapsed forward onto the damp grass, skidding slightly on his knees before pitching onto his side. Vexia dismounted with a graceful hop. He lay gasping, curled on the ground, sweat pouring from him, his muscles a seething mass of fire. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape.
She stood over him, blocking the pale sun.She looked down, her head tilted. For a long moment, she said nothing, just let him drown in the sensations of his own极限. Then she knelt, placing a warm hand on his heaving chest.“One mile,” she stated. “You completed a mile. You did well for your first time.” Her thumb rubbed a slow circle over his sternum, a strangely tender gesture amidst the brutal exertion. Then her amber eyes locked onto his, and the tenderness vanished, replaced by unyielding promise. “But I expect you to do better next time.”
"Y-yes, Mistress." He coughed between ragged breaths.
"Good boy." She crooned, her eyes burning with a possessive pride.
In the distance, Professor Elara Voss sipped her morning coffee, overlooking the two from her balcony, an amused smirk cracking her lips.
She noted the imp’s hands, one pressing into the boy’s chest as if claiming the territory of his heartbeat, the other gesturing with sharp authority as she dictated his next task. A strange pride warmed her coffee cup as she watched the boy, broken and gasping just moments before, push himself onto trembling elbows to listen to his diminutive master; the imp, for all her harsh methods, was forging something in the weak-willed student that endless, gentle pedagogy had failed to touch.
Her own familiar, a pixy of the wind no larger than a sparrow, settled on her shoulder in a whisper of displaced air, resting its luminous head against her cheek affectionately. She felt its adoration through their bond, a counterpoint to its innate, restless curiosity now fixed on the imp and the boy’s reversed, pulsing tether of power.