What We Do to Survive

Even though nothing had happened the night before, there was still something deeply satisfying about waking up sandwiched between two beautiful, naked women. I felt Rea shift slightly behind me, hard nipples scrapping along my bare back as she unconsciously pressed herself against me. Without really thinking about it, my own arms tightened possessively, pressing my Miranda tightly against my chest.

Without opening my eyes, I extended my mana sense, wrapping both girls in a gentle layer of my mana. Rea let out a cute sigh, her breath warm against my shoulder and nuzzled her face against my shoulder. Then I stiffened slightly and rolled my eyes as I noticed what my newly rebound pet was doing.

Despite clearly still being asleep, Miranda was rather blatantly masturbating. My cock was pinned between her pillowy thighs and she was slowly grinding against it, even as two fingers slid in and out of her sex while a third rubbed circles around her clit.

I considered doing something, then decided to ignore it, even if the feeling of her damp lips slowly shifting up and down my length was rather distracting. Instead, I gently shifted the hand looped around her waist until it was resting on one of her perfectly soft yet firm breasts, fingers digging lightly into the malleable flesh. Miranda shifted slightly and let out a breathless moan, but otherwise didn’t react.

It was rather cute, I decided. I’d never heard of someone playing with themselves in their sleep, but it was exactly the sort of thing I would have expected from a hybrid like Miranda. I wondered what she was dreaming about and if this sort of thing was a common occurrence for her or something brought about due to sleeping in a bed with two other people.

Unfortunately, no matter how comfortable I was, there was work to be done. I was calm and relaxed, content with how things were going, so there was no need to destress more just yet. Perhaps sometime soon I would give Miranda the ‘reward’ I’d offered her, but that was something to look forward to later. For now, I had plans I needed to get too, and I’d already slept longer than I’d planned.

Extricating myself from bed proved to be surprisingly difficult. Something inside me felt that it would be a shame to wake either of my sleeping beauties, which was proving difficult since I was currently lying on my side with one of them pressing into my chest and the other hugging my back. I carefully maneuvered out from Rea’s clutches, wrapping her grasping hands around Miranda as I wriggled out of bed.

Dressing quickly, I stopped to look at the two girls before I left the room. They looked rather cute together, eyes closed with happy smiles on their peaceful faces. Rea’s face was pressed into Miranda’s hair, her hands squeezing tightly around the older girl’s chest. One of her legs was wedged between Miranda’s thighs and the blonde didn’t seem to have noticed that it was no longer me that she was pressed up against.

I sighed quietly and committed the image to memory. They looked so peaceful. Safe. Carefree. I wondered if I looked that way in my sleep, troubled as it was by old memories and new fears. Someday, I hoped I could build a place where me and mine could truly live that way even outside the realm of dreams. I imagined Lea there, resting peacefully with no fading scars to mar her smooth skin.

My lips quirked up into a small smile. Now that I’d seen my old friend all grown up, it was shocking how similar she and Miranda looked. They had the same hair, similar eyes, and comparable figures. With some makeup to change the shape of their faces, they could probably pass as sisters. Maybe that was why I had been so initially drawn to my man-eating pet, some half forgotten instincts conflating two very different women. I would have to introduce them some day, though only after I’d properly coached Miranda on what to do and say.

Then I squared my shoulders, scooped up my ever present school bag, and headed off to get a late breakfast. I had two meetings arranged for today, neither overly important but still not something I wanted to miss. I also had to spend some time seriously working on my required enhancement ritual. I’d done as much work to prepare as I could already and needed to start considering what manner of creature I would be using as the sacrifice before I could continue developing the ritual.

My first planned meeting of the day was both the more casual and stressful of the two.

“Oh! Hey Orion!” Ulan called out enthusiastically.

Camille and Alan, who had been pouring over a single segment of a ritual circle drawn out on a massive sheet of paper that covered most of the table, both looked up at his loud greeting. Both smiled and waved, though it looked to me like Camille’s smile was somewhat more forced than usual.

“Ey man! Good to see you again, been a good bit again.”

I shrugged awkwardly at Alan’s words, “Yeah, sorry guys. I’ve been… busy.”

“That’s one way to put it!” Ulan enthistically continued, “My bro managed to snag us a memory of the fight, you kicked that dumb bint’s ass! That’s what she gets for trying to bully–”

He fell silent as Camille’s elbow dug not-too-gently into his side, “What he means to say is that we’re glad you’re okay. We heard you and Clarient came to some sort of agreement?”

“Something like that.”

Once again, Ulan jumped in before Camille could say anything. “Yeah you showed ‘em! I got some classmates in fourth year, they say they’ve never seen that Kwesta girl as meek as she was last week. She’s used to be always picking fights, but seems she’s rethinking some of her life choices, ey?”

“I’m sure it was a wake up call for her.”

Ulan opened his mouth again, then closed it with a click when Camille glared at him. “Come on guys,” she said after a moment, looking between the two brothers, “I’m sure Orion isn’t here to get interrogated. We’ve only got the room for two more hours, let's make the most of it.”

Ulan looked away, chastised. “He’s sorry,” said Alan for his brother, “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It's fine.” I set my bag down and dug out most of the books I’d brought with me. “What have you guys been up to? Haven’t really seen you all outside class in a few weeks.”

Camille happily took the extended opening. “Mostly just general studying. We’re looking over Ulan’s ritual right now, he’s not very satisfied with the power balancing so I offered a fresh set of eyes while he brushes up on this week’s readings.”

“Oh?” I asked with interest, “So you guys figured out what you’re doing for it?” Power balance was one of the last steps of designing a full ritual, primarily dealing with evenly distributing the required mana between different segments of the circle.

“Yeah, we should be getting the last of the materials in next week. Our sponsor found a pair of soul-linked bababoons. I used one of my consultations to meet with Professor Williams and she thinks that if we do both our rituals at the same time and align them correctly, we should be able to amplify the power of the sacrifice significantly. Wasn’t exactly my first choice of creature, but them being soul-linked makes a lot of potential issues go away so it's worth the inconvenience.”

I nodded my head slowly as I considered his words. “Nice,” I said after a moment, “A good choice I think.” The two had been somewhat worried that if they used rituals with particularly divergent effects, it might destabilize the third soul that linked the brothers together, likely with severe consequences for the twins. Using monsters that had the same rare condition would likely ensure nothing of the sort would happen, and the resonance between them and the sacrifices would likely amplify things further.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you trying to get from them?” Asking about specifics like that could be considered rather rude from what I understood of mage customs, but it would be good to know if I was going to be helping with the circle itself.

“It's fine,” answered Alan without looking up from the diagram. “Mostly just general enhancements we think. Bababoons have incredible balance and reflexes, so we’re primarily going for those. We’re also going to try and get some of its senses, they can see heat and mana but we’re worried that both might be too much for our eyes to withstand without further preparation.”

Ulan jumped in smoothly when Alan fell silent, “So we’re thinking that we’re going to try and offload those both onto our link. Then we can each access one at a time and switch when necessary.”

“Huh.” I paused for a moment, tapping my finger against the table. “Clever. Tricky, but I like it. Mind if I take a look?”

Wordlessly, Ulan shoved the stack of reference books at the center of the table aside and moved the paper into their place. “The other four segments are on other pages, let me dig them out.”

I nodded, already focused on the diagram before me. It looked like the brothers had decided on a non-standard arrangement, a five by seven instead of the more traditional five by five. That was probably a good choice for them, they had more than enough power between them to charge a five by five circle, but not enough for a seven by seven, so this would be an effective middle ground between the two.

It did mean however that balancing things ahead of time would be even more important than it usually was, since the forty-nine runes contained within each segment would be under much less ‘pressure’ and thus have more room to go out of control. In the traditional configuration, there would be two-hundred-ninety-four other runes to keep any unbalanced sections contained, while here there would be only one-hundred-ninety-six. Thus, if anything started to ‘leak’, it would take much less to destabilize the entire thing and likely horribly kill the person doing the casting.

“Are you guys planning to use identical circles?” I asked after several minutes.

“That’s the plan, though we plan to flip them to stabilize the resonance.”

I hummed thoughtfully as I flipped through the other four pages Ulan had passed me. Thankfully they were regular sized sheets, I assumed someone had used an expansion spell to make the other page more readable.

Eventually I passed the papers back to the brothers. “It looks… workable. I’m not completely familiar with all the runes you are using, I can see what looks like old dragon-runes, though I’m not sure what age, and those have never worked right for me. Still, I think you should consider doing a larger offset if you plan to do things simultaneously.”

“What do you mean by that?” Alan asked with a frown.

“Well, I understand that a portion of your mana reserves are shared, yes? So if you plan to–”

Camille gasped, interrupting me mid sentence. I had a feeling she’d just realized what I was saying and fell silent. “Oh, that would be bad. We’ve been assuming that you can charge the rituals using a standard flow pattern, but that's probably not sustainable on a circle this big. If you only have half of your shared reserves to call on…”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Camille grabbed one of the books lying beside her chair and flipped through it rapidly. “I’m not really sure how to compensate for that, I’ve never tried a ritual past five five, maybe–”

“Here.” I slid one of the books I’d brought towards them, already open to the correct page. “This would probably work? You’ll have to stagger the rows but I think it should work? Might be worth discussing with the professor though.”

Camille snatched the book off the table, forcing Alan to lean over to read it over her shoulder. “Yes, this would work better I think, but we’ll have to completely reframe the outer ring I think?”

Ulan got out of his seat and stood behind Camille, one hand slowly running back and forth through his short hair. Leaning down, he flipped the book back several pages, pouring over the section she’d already read. “Maybe,” he admitted after a few minutes, “I think we could probably just rotate it all one… oh, shit it's not gonna work that way. Maybe a one two one two one pattern on the flips? No… how about…”

The two quickly began to mumble back and forth, occasionally flipping back and forth to consult the different diagrams I’d shown them. I was glad I’d never had to deal with that particular issue, because I just didn’t have the same sort of intuition for this kind of thing that Camille clearly did, nor the time to dedicate to the study that Ulan clearly put in every week.

Thankfully, this was one of those parts of ritual magic where my tight control of my own mana came in handy, ensuring that I could smoothly charge every part of the ritual at the needed rate without activating any runes prematurely. Even if I didn’t have the reserves to instantly charge a seven sectioned ritual yet, I could hold my recharging mana back with much greater accuracy than either of the brothers was likely capable of. Thus, instead of charging things section by section per the standard flow pattern and risking premature destabilization, I simply slowly filled each rune such that they activated all at once.

Towards the end of our allotted time, Camille pulled me away from the table on the premise of returning borrowed books, leaving the two brothers alone as they redrew large swaths of their work.

Once we were away from any prying ears, hidden among the towering shelves that filled the main library, she turned to me and asked, “Are you really okay Orion?”

I stopped and turned to look at her, somewhat confused. She looked and sounded… worried, though I couldn’t really tell why. Had something happened? “What do you mean?”

She frowned, “Like, with everything happening, I mean. The last few weeks must have been really hard for you. Are you getting enough sleep? Eating well? I barely see you at the cafeteria these days and you’re always in a hurry before and after class. You used to always show up before anyone else and leave after everyone was already gone, but these days you’re running in only a minute or two before the bell.”

Oh. Was she… worried about me? If it was any of my other classmates, I would have suspected some sort of trap, but Camille had always been one of the most open of our year. She was a bit odd and had an unfortunate tendency to shy away from some of the more gruesome aspects of magic, but I’d never had any problems with her before, and I doubted someone trying to target me would use her as an intermediary. Possibly as an unknowing patsy though… No, that seemed unlikely.

“I’m fine,” I said after a moment, “Just very busy. Schoolwork, research, you know how it is.”

That didn’t seem to particularly reassure her unfortunately. “Are you sure? What about the stuff with Kwesta, is everything good there as well? If… if you ever need to talk to someone, I want you to know that I’m here for you.”

Once again, I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. I certainly wasn’t going to be spilling any of my secrets to her, that was just asking to be stabbed in the back. At the same time though… among all the students in our year, she was undoubtedly one of the few with whom I was closest. It felt… wrong to just walk away.

“It's all fine. I worked things out with Clarient, it shouldn’t be an issue going forward.” Oh! I suddenly had a feeling I knew what she wanted, “Don’t worry,” I tried to reassure her, “neither Clarient nor any of her associates should be going after you or anyone else I spend time with. I can’t speak of the specifics, but there’s a binding oath involved. You and the guys should be safe.”

“That’s… good to hear,” she said slowly, and I really expected that to be the end of it. She’d gotten the reassurance she asked for and hopefully knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t say anything more. It was relatively standard to have oaths contain sections that forbid the sworn from speaking about the oath itself, even if I had done nothing of the sort, so hopefully she would know better than to pry at that.

Then she continued, “But how are you feeling? Kwesta’s attack must have been quite a shock. I saw in the memory that you guys both looked alright after the fight, but still. It came out of nowhere, I can’t imagine how I would have felt after something like that.”

I really couldn’t see what her angle was here. “Don’t worry about it, really. It’s Avalon, stuff like that happens all the time. I’m just glad I was close enough to help.”

She looked at me strangely, then shook her head. “I guess you’re right. Avalon… it’s really something. Are you worried about it? I know Alan told me he was planning to leave after next year, but us? We’ve got four more years to look forward to.”

“It's a shame, I don’t know that there is anywhere else in the world with specialists in their abilities. Maybe they can get something from their sponsor, but I don’t really know. I can’t wait until we’re allowed to take upper level classes. I’ve heard excellent things about Professor Willson’s specialized training courses.”

Her expression shifted into something unreadable. Then she sighed softly, “You’re not at all worried about it, are you. I thought… well, I thought we were a lot alike. But you… you’ve taken to Avalon like a fish to water. Meanwhile… I’m sinking, slowly but surely.”

That was a rather odd thing to admit. Avalon preyed on weakness, and that was as clear a sign of vulnerability as I’d ever heard from someone here. Still, it was something I could use. I doubted she would like it, but I would be a kinder fate for her than most.

“I… I don’t think I’m going to make it, Orion. I’ve made friends, built connections, I practice every single day… but I still feel like I’m falling behind.” Something glistened at the corners of her eyes, and I realized that she was crying? She swallowed heavily and continued, “I thought I was doing fine, but… I couldn’t have done what you did. Kwesta would have slaughtered me, I wouldn’t have survived that first attack, much less the rest of the fight. Even with another year of classes, I don’t know that it would make a difference.”

I was so surprised that I momentarily just stared at her, unable to quite formulate an answer to what I’d heard. We’d gone from her poking at what I’d been up to these past few weeks to her suddenly breaking down in the span of just a few minutes. Was this supposed to be some sort of act to lure me into complacency? This was the library, but that wasn’t an absolute guarantee of safety like the cafeteria was. The First Librarian and her successors didn’t care about students nearly as much as that particular divinity did and didn’t spend much of their energy protecting us. Just in case, I let my perception spread out among the shelves around us, but found nothing.

I took a deep breath and decided to take a chance. This wasn’t the way I normally did things, but perhaps with Camille, honey really was the better option. I gently laid a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for trusting me, Cam. Whatever else happens, you’ve got a friend in me. If you ever need help, ask. I’ll see what I can do.”

She smiled faintly, a single brilliant tear hanging off the tip of her nose. “Thanks Orion. I’m… sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s fine. Let's just get the rest of these books put away and get back to the others before they get worried.”

She let out a weak laugh, “I doubt those two even noticed we left.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But I definitely don’t want to get teased about getting in a quick fuck between the bookshelves.”

Her startled laughter brought a small but genuine smile to my own face. Perhaps that would be fun to try. Someday. We’d see.