GPCiMW Chapter 7

And here's the second chapter for today. 

Signing up for classes ended up taking about an hour, most of which was spent waiting in lines. After most of a decade studying at a mundane school with computers and digital class selections, Aglakok’s insistence on using literal paper sign up sheets was shockingly annoying, but it was what it was.

I knew that wizards weren’t completely tech-illiterate––in fact you could buy magically enhanced computers and there was an entire branch of the Council dedicated to monitoring the technological progress of mundanes––but Aglakok had so far been resistant to most such innovations.

Ultimately, it wasn’t really a big deal. It wasn’t like the school had that many different classes I could choose from as a first-year student and scheduling was pretty simple, but it would have been nice to browse the different offered classes on a website instead of flipping through a booklet.

Aglakok had a relatively simple system of time slots that all classes followed. There was one slot in the morning from nine to twelve, a one hour break for lunch, and then two more three-hour slots later in the day, one from one to four and the other from five to eight. Since there were never any classes on Fridays––they were always set aside for school-wide events like the monthly competitions––that left you with potentially up to twelve possible slots for classes, though first years were only permitted to take a maximum of seven classes.

My schedule for the year was pretty simple. I was taking seven total classes, the four required for all first-year students and the three electives I’d mentioned to Kazuma and Teveus during breakfast.

On Mondays I had Essential Principles of Spellcasting in the morning and Essential Principles of Alchemy right after lunch. Tuesdays I started the day with Introduction to Coven Management and Discipline and then had Dueling for First Years during the third time-slot of the day. Wednesdays I was free in the morning and then had the last of my four required classes, Essential Principles of Artifice, followed by Introduction to Runic Scripts in the evening. Finally, on Thursday I had my last elective, The Mind and You, in the morning and after that I was free until the following Monday.

I was mostly pleased with how my schedule had turned out. I never had a day with more than two classes and I was happy to have an early end on Thursdays, essentially extending my weekend by an entire half-day or alternatively giving me plenty of time to rest and prepare for Friday’s inter-student competitions.

I had also managed to split up the majority of my casting-focused classes across different days. From my father’s memories I remembered him always bemoaning having two magic-heavy classes one after another on Mondays and having to miss out on some in class exercises because of it. I knew from personal experience just how bad mana exhaustion could get––there was a reason most wizards didn’t bother trying to learn anything before they bond their first witch––and potentially dealing with it on a weekly basis sounded horrible.

In theory I shouldn’t have any issues with running out of mana on any specific day even if I hadn’t done so. First-year classes were all supposed to account for most wizards only having a single coven member until after winter break and I already had two, but this way I would hopefully also have plenty of energy left over for self-study.

I was sitting next to Teveus, idly flipping through a booklet of upper-year electives together, when another first-year wizard rushed into the room trailed by a wide-eyed blonde witch. He looked rather frazzled, his shirt completely misbuttoned and his robe hanging haphazardly off one arm.

He nearly ran right into Kazuma, just barely dodging out of the way of the blue-haired boy, before promptly ramming straight into Kazuma’s witch and sending both of them sprawling across the floor.

Scrambling to his feet, he looked around wildly. “I’m not too late, am I?” he called out. “I can’t be, right? I can’t believe I slept through all my alarms on my very first day!”

A number of people were staring at him, but no one responded for several seconds. Eventually Kazuma stepped forward. “You’re rather late, but there should still be a few open classes. Now, I’d kindly ask you to apologize. That's my witch you ran into.”

The tardy wizard suddenly seemed to realize what had happened and that he was still standing practically on top of Kazuma’s bond. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I was so worried I was going to miss signups that I wasn’t watching where I was going.” He took a step back and leaned over to look at the witch he’d run into. “I think she looks fine, no harm, no foul?”

Kazuma frowned. “We’ll see about that. If she’s hurt, you’re going to pay for it.”

“Of course, of course.” He bowed gracefully, “I’m Wyll Jupitor, and I will certainly pay for any care that your witch may require. My apologies mister…”

“Kazuma. Kazuma Kalari. You should go get started, there isn’t much time left.”

Wyll’s eyes widened suddenly. “Oh fuck, you’re right!” he exclaimed, and promptly bolted off towards the long table at the front of the room. His witch, who had been standing off to the side awkwardly with her hands clasped over her chest, hurried after him.

Teveus and I exchanged looks. He shrugged. I shrugged as well, and we went back to our reading. Foundations of Ritual Augmentation sounded like a fascinating class––something to consider for the coming years, though the list of prerequisites was pretty intimidating.

I didn’t stay in the great hall for much longer after that. Kazuma joined us a few minutes after confirming that his witch, whose name I learned was Haimi, was unhurt. He and Teveus quickly got into a completely inane argument––something about optimal musculature on witches that quickly shifted into an argument about whether or not tauren should just be classified as another subspecies of beastkin and not as an entirely separate fuckmeat race. They barely seemed to notice as I politely excused myself and left the slowly emptying great hall behind.

Once we were safely back in my room, I shrugged off my robe and took a seat in my well-padded desk chair. At my prompting Daphne quickly joined me, stradling my legs and resting her head against my shoulder, her breasts pressed tightly against my chest.

“So Daphne,” I asked, slowly running my hand through her smooth, silvery hair, “what was that about?”

“Teveus and Kazuma are two of the wizards in your year that I know the most about. They’re…good friends to have, I think.” Her voice was soft and slightly hesitant. “Them, and Wyll too, they’re…important. I’ve Seen…well. A lot of stuff happens around them. It's complicated, but knowing them is better than not. Probably. I think so.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” I prompted.

She turned her head, pressing her nose into the crook of my neck. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did,” she whispered. “Not yet, at least. Wait, please?”

I didn’t like it, but ultimately I’d already decided to put my trust in my first witch’s words. Daphne, well, she clearly wasn’t like other witches. I knew how a normal witch raised in Aglakok’s breeding halls was supposed to behave––I had memories of dad’s first experiences with mom and his other witches, and I’d already seen how different Grace was compared to Daphne––and Daphne completely belied those expectations.

“I’m not sure why I wouldn’t believe you,” I answered after a moment. After all, it was impossible for a witch to lie to her coven lord, “but I’ll trust you. You’ll tell me when you’re ready.” It was neither an order nor a question, simply a statement of fact, and Daphne clearly understood that.

“Thanks Severin.”

“Is there anything I need to know now?”

Daphne seemed to think about it for several seconds, then shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything important. I don’t See anything and I don’t think anything important happened before classes started.”

That was a rather odd thing to say, but I temporarily put it out of my mind. “Good. Then I’d like to get a head start on training. There’s only four weeks until the first competition and every day counts. Don’t think that just because I have Grace now it's going to get you out of this. You’re both going to be working your butts off.”

Daphne looked up at me pleadingly. “But it's only going to be one witch per coven.”

“And you have three inches and two magnitude on Grace. Do you want it to be just you? I’m sure I could work you even harder with just one witch to focus on.”

“Uh, no?”

“I didn’t think so.” I stood up abruptly, sweeping Daphne up off my lap and hefting her onto my shoulder. Then I promptly deposited her in a heap on my bed. “Don’t worry, we’ll start off nice and easy. I don’t really know much about ponywitch racing so I think today will mostly just be about getting you and Grace used to wearing the suits. We’ll stop by the library on the way and see what I can find.”

Daphne rolled onto her back, her head and arms dangling over the side of the bed. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she slumped down, her hands nearly touching the floor. Then she sighed heavily. “You’ll probably want Archmaster Konjo Clareto’s ‘Whipping Cunts into Shape’. The library has a copy and if you head down before Tuesday you should be able to check it out before Wyll does. It won’t be listed under ponywitch training, but there’s an entire guide in there somewhere about getting a witch from a complete amateur into racing shape.”

“That is an oddly specific thing to see,” I said slowly. I was really starting to doubt Daphne’s assertions about the strength of her Sight. Proper future sight was an incredibly difficult discipline that was nearly completely impossible for most wizards. It was one of those abilities that you either had or you didn’t, and it almost exclusively manifested in witches. Even then, it was supposed to be limited to vague visions and cryptic premonitions. Not…this.

“And I really wish I hadn’t,” Daphne mumbled. “This month is going to suck.”

“Well, I’ll give you twenty minutes to relax, and then we’ll go see if we can find that book and requisition the outfits we need. I’m going to take a look around. I’ve heard about how fancy these rooms are, but I’ve barely seen anything except the bedroom.”

“Okay, Severin.” Then she groaned and began to slide further off the bed. I was worried for a moment that she was going to crack her skull open against the hard stone floor, but instead she caught herself on her hands and performed an almost lazy-looking back handspring, landing easily on her feet and quickly brushing her hair away from her face. I hadn’t realized she was nearly that athletic, though in hindsight I’d felt the lean muscle under her skin when we’d been spooning together after her binding.

“I’ll join you. I should look around too,” she said by way of explanation. “Things in visions sometimes look different than they do in real life.”

The room, well rooms really, that Aglakok had provided me was both much nicer than anywhere I’d lived before and frankly made my head spin once I actually started poking around.

The main room as you entered was a bedroom combined with an office, dominated by a huge bed set against one wall that could easily sleep a half-dozen people. Across from the bed was a nice wooden desk with an equally nice and very comfortable chair beside it and there were soft rugs scattered throughout the room. Nearly the entire back wall of the room was a single massive window that looked out onto the school grounds, though currently only a tiny strip of grass was visible past the excellent black-out curtains. I knew for a fact that the windows were completely opaque from the outside, the student tower actually appeared to have no windows at all when viewed from the grounds, ensuring privacy for students and their covens from any observers.

Not counting the entrance there were four doors in the room; one on either side of the bed and one on either side of the desk. On the left of the bed was an expansive walk-in closet with a half-dozen neatly-hung uniforms and plenty of space for my other belongings. In fact, the closet was actually quite a bit bigger than the living room of the apartment I’d grown up in. I’d found my luggage, two suitcases filled with nearly all my worldly possessions, waiting for me at the center of the closet. I’d need to unpack those at some point, but that could wait until tonight. Well, realistically I was probably just going to tell Grace to do it, but that could also be put off for now.

The door on the other side of the bed led to an even larger room that was clearly set up as living space for my coven. There was clearly a lot of space-expansion going on because the coven room was nearly as wide as the main room and there was no way both it and my closet could both fit behind my bed. Furthermore, the doors along the hallway were spaced a scant five feet apart, and my bedroom was considerably more than five feet wide.

The room itself was somewhere between a bedroom, a sex dungeon, and a prison. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made from a pale wood that felt more like standing on a mattress than it did wood. One wall was covered with all manner of sex toys and bondage equipment, though quite a bit of it looked like it would be far more tortuous to use than pleasurable. Beyond just gags, whips, dildos, and other smaller items I also saw a pillory, a rack, and several other pieces of furniture designed to keep a witch tightly restrained.

The wall beside that was covered in cages of various sizes. The three cages on the floor were relatively large with plenty of padding, pillows, and enough room to fully stretch out. Grace was curled up in one of them, sound asleep with a content smile on her face. Further up however, the cages got progressively smaller and less comfortable, with the ones on top made from bare metal and looking barely large enough to fit a child, much less a fully-grown witch.

The third wall was nearly completely hidden from sight by a veritable mountain of pillows, cushions, rugs, and even bean bags piled messily together.

Finally, on either side of the door were two small areas separated off from the rest of the room. One I recognized as a cleaning area. There were three small floor-to-ceiling stalls surrounded by clear glass, each with a drain in the middle and a recessed panel in the wall with a large red button on it. Beside those was a simple shower, also walled off by clear glass, and a sink.

The other side of the door was for feeding. A row of rather phallic-looking taps extended from the wall. Having seen Daphne and Grace use them this morning, I knew generally how they worked. A witch would crawl up to one, take it in her mouth, and it would slowly dispense the same brown sludge that Daphne had been served the night before. There was also a little switch beneath each one, which could make the tap dispense water instead.

The third door led to a spacious bathroom with a large shower, jacuzzi-sized bathtub, and an elaborate marble sink. Daphne also pointed out another feature that I had missed initially. Under the sink was a small cupboard with a big stack of food bowls and another faucet that could dispense the same witch-food sludge without making my coven-members suck it out of a dildo.

Finally, the last door led to the largest room of all, this one easily larger than the other four combined. It was clearly a training room, both for me and for my witches. Though I had never seen it before, it was easy enough to recognize a lot of the equipment in the room. Most of it was just magical versions of mundane exercise gear like the treadmill that could change what surface you were running on and the barbells that weighed exactly as much as you wanted them too. However there was also plenty of stuff I wouldn’t have expected to see in a mundane gym, like targets for spell practice, a dueling-dummy that could fire back at you, and a lot more besides.

Looking around ended up taking a bit longer than I’d intended. I just kept getting caught up in examining the fascinating magic that went into everything; I didn’t know enough to really understand how it all worked, but just watching the magic moving through the furniture, equipment, and walls was incredibly captivating. Eventually though, I put my robe back on and Daphne and I headed down to the equipment office. Hopefully getting the gear for Grace and Daphne, as well as some books for me, wouldn’t take too long. Then I could eat lunch and it would finally be time to get some real work done.

Thank you to KnowledgeSeeker and Magabeast_pro01 on discord for beta reading this story.