Great Power Comes in Many Witches - Chapter 4

Hey guys, I hope everyone enjoyed the first three chapters yesterday! Here's chapter 4 and chapter 5 should release at this same time tomorrow!

We did eventually head down to dinner. I was just glad that I’d budgeted plenty of time for getting cleaned up, because no sooner had we gotten clean than Daphne decided that the large walk-in shower in my room’s bathroom seemed like an absolutely perfect place to go for another round.

She certainly wasn’t wrong, and, judging from the number of conveniently positioned handholds, the perfectly elevated bench that slid smoothly out of the wall, and the dozens of anchor points of restraints, the bathroom’s designer had also known exactly what it was going to be used for.

After messing around a bit and getting clean a second time, Daphne was still raring to go again, but I put my foot down and tied her to the wall so she couldn’t go anywhere while I hosed her down. I’d never really thought that too much sex was going to be a problem I had to worry about, but in hindsight I did remember my dad writing about something like that.

The other guys I’d gone to mundane school with would be so jealous right now, but they weren’t wizards so fuck them. I didn’t just think I was better, I knew I was. Someday I was going to go back and light that asshole Rick on fire, but he just didn’t really matter anymore. None of them did.

We still made it with plenty of time to spare. I slipped quietly into the already bustling great hall, Daphne following a few steps behind me with her hands clasped behind her back and her head downcast. I was once again dressed in my regular school uniform––black slacks, a pale-green button down, well-polished black leather shoes, and an open-fronted black robe that went down just past my knees with a matching green border around the bottom to represent my status as a first-year student.

Daphne remained naked except for a leather collar with my name, student number, and year emblazoned on it. There was an entire bin of identical collars hidden in the closet, along with matching wrist and ankle cuffs and a number of other restraints and adornments that I left alone for the time being. There was very little clothing that was considered appropriate for a witch to wear and most of that was reserved for specific ceremonies or events, especially since their magic naturally kept them comfortable in almost all climates and weather conditions.

There were about two-hundred people already in the hall, accompanied by slightly more than the same number of witches and fuckmeat. No wizard would ever be seen walking around without being accompanied by a member of their coven, but it was also considered rude to have more than one witch trailing after you unless they were twins or fell under a few other specific exceptions.

Everyone was dressed mostly like I was, though the color of shirts and matching robe borders varied. Green was for first-years like me, second-years wore blue, third-years purple, fourth-years red, and fifth-years wore gold. Some students also wore emblems emblazoned on the back of their robes and on their shirts over their hearts. These were acknowledged members of Houses, wizardkind’s ruling nobility.

Any wizard that reached the rank of Archmaster could found their own House and received a seat on The Council. After that, as long as the house continued to produce a new Archmaster wizard before the previous head passed away, the House would keep its political position and many privileges. Someday my own son would wear a robe like that, our emblem emblazoned proudly on his back. Daphne was right––she may not have Seen it, but there was no way I could ever accept that I would not make it so.

I scanned the hall and Daphne nudged my foot as my eyes passed over an empty seat near the foot of the long table set aside for first-year students. It seemed as good an option as any so I headed over and took a seat. The moment my butt touched the chair I felt an awareness of choice appear at the very edge of my mind. It took a moment for me to figure out how exactly it worked, but the process was rather intuitive and soon a large, fluffy pillow appeared on the ground beside me along with a low table set with a silver bowl and tall glass.

The sense of choice pulled back, but did not disappear completely once I’d chosen a seat for my witch and I mentally scrolled through some of the other options. There were over a dozen, ranging from comfortable––the pillow and table I’d selected––to downright cruel––a metal cage lined in spikes and ridges with no place for food to go.

Looking around, I found that most people at my table had opted for one of the slightly less comfortable options––a padded mat with a doggy bowl on the floor beside it. In fact, that seemed to be the most common option in general. The default even, if I was interpreting what the magic was telling me correctly.

A few had selected some of the more comfortable options. The wizard sitting diagonally across the wide table from me had selected the same option as I had and his witch, a very curvy young woman with coal-black skin and white hair, was curled up beside him as he slowly rubbed circles on her head. Another wizard further down the table had chosen the option just below this one. It was the same large pillow except it came without the low table, leaving the food bowl resting on the great hall’s marble floor.

Others had gone in the other direction. One red-eyed witch, her face blotchy from crying, was kneeling directly on the hard marble. Her arms were bound behind her back in a leather sleeve that twisted them into a painful-looking reverse prayer position. Her shoulders were wrenched back until her elbows were nearly touching. Instead of a basic collar like what I’d given Daphne, her head was kept firmly in place by a wide posture collar and she was also wearing a spreader gag that kept her mouth open painfully wide. Clearly that relationship hadn’t gotten off to a good start.

I gestured to the pillow and Daphne knelt down beside me, her eyes darting around the room even as she made sure to keep her head downcast. I flicked the side of her head and she stopped, focusing instead on her little table. It was considered rude for a witch to meet the eyes of a wizard that wasn’t her coven lord and I didn’t need her starting any feuds today.

Over the next ten minutes, the rest of the Academy’s students slowly filed into the great hall. There were a little under five hundred students studying at Aglakok at any given time. Each year a new class of one-hundred young wizards would be invited to attend the prestigious academy and refusing was not really an option, but the occasional fatality meant that the school hadn’t graduated a full class of one-hundred wizards in over nine-hundred years and left a few spots open at each of the upper-year tables.

A green-haired and green-eyed wizard with pale skin and an elaborate runic tattoo scrawled across one cheek accompanied by a similarly colored witch, though her nearly-translucent skin was as of yet unmarked, took the open seat on my right. He briefly glanced over at me, saw the lack of emblem on my robe, and promptly chose to ignore my existence. The ground to his right flickered slightly and a woven reed mat appeared for his witch.

A few minutes later, with barely any time to go until the start of dinner, another wizard hurried into the room and stopped beside the free chair on my left. “Is this spot taken?” he asked me softly, his words carrying a very noticeable southern accent. His eyes flickered between Daphne and me and a momentary frown appeared on his lips.

I shook my head. “No. You’re welcome to it.”

“Appreciate it man. I got a bit turned around, you know what I mean? This place is massive.” He dropped heavily into the chair, then nearly jumped right back out of it before his witch’s touch on his shoulder seemed to settle him back down.

She leaned in and whispered something in his ear and his face screwed into an almost comical-looking picture of intense focus. After nearly thirty seconds, the default mat and bowl appeared between us and his witch, a very slender freckly red-head with a round face, hurried into her spot. He looked down, chewing his lip in visible discomfort as he looked at his witch and the mat beneath her knees, then quickly looked away.

My instincts told me that there was something very wrong with this picture, and it didn’t take me long to realize what it was. My mom theorized my abnormal sensitivity to mana was because of a number of rituals and experiments dad had conducted on her while she’d been pregnant, but the exact nature of what he’d done wasn’t in any of the notebooks mom had managed to salvage, nor hidden in the memories he’d stored within mom’s mind.

If I focused, I could both feel and see the connection between Daphne and myself. It appeared in my mind’s eye as a shimmering ribbon of pale light dyed with both the bright purple of Daphne’s magic––the same shade as her eyes––and the so-dark-it-was-nearly-black red of my own. Looking outward, I could also see countless more bonds filling the air of the great hall. Like me, the other first years were all connected to the witch kneeling beside them, while many of the upper years also had other bindings that extended a few feet outside their bodies and then vanished from sight.

Looking at the wizard beside me however, there was no such bond. I could clearly feel his witch’s mana––red and fiery like her hair––and his own––a tiny dancing orange spec hidden deep within his chest, but that was it. There was no second soul binding them together, no tether connecting witch to wizard. Whoever this wizard was, either they were a truly colossal fool or…actually I didn’t really know what else it might be.

I wasn’t sure what to do. It felt almost too good to be true. I’d read the student handbook cover to cover three times and it was very clear on the rules for unbound witches on campus. The collar around her neck meant absolutely nothing without a proper claim to her soul.

In theory I could just…reach out and take her. I would probably have to wait until after dinner, this was an official academy event called by the High Lord himself and I would be a fool to make a scene in front of the closest thing there was to a god on this continent, but she was right there. Free for the taking.

Realistically, I could see two options. Either I did nothing, or perhaps subtly asked the wizard beside me what the fuck he thought he was doing, and risked someone else snatching her up before either he or I could do anything, or I could seize the opportunity presented to me and try to bind her myself as soon as dinner was over.

Both options came with a number of potential risks. First of all, I’d never heard of a wizard that didn’t bind their witch on their first day at the academy. That was just…such a bafflingly stupid thing to do. A wizard without a coven was like a cheetah without legs––a useless crippled thing with no chance of survival. It was well known that if a wizard didn’t bind someone into their coven by the time they turned eighteen their bodies would simply give out and they’d die, their souls unable to produce enough mana to keep them alive without aid.

I didn’t know what was going through this guy’s head, but it was entirely possible that if I bound the witch that Aglakok had selected for him I would be consigning him to a slow, painful death. After all, he didn’t have an emblem on his robe and thus likely lacked any other means of acquiring a witch or fuckmeat for his coven outside of those provided for him by the academy’s generosity.

Furthermore, while it wasn’t specifically against the rules, everyone knew that what really mattered was what the High Lord and his staff thought of your actions. It was completely possible for students to get away with basically anything if they had managed to accrue enough favor with the High Lord. Was this something that He would approve of? Or perhaps just the opposite? I didn’t know.

Additionally, if one of my classmates bound her and then managed to place highly enough at the end of the month to receive a third member for their coven, I would be at a huge disadvantage when the second monthly competition rolled around. That could completely kill any advantage I might have and doom me to a future of weakness and irrelevance.

I hemmed and hawed internally as the last few stragglers filed into the great hall. I only had so long to make a decision and every moment I waited was potentially a risk. I knew my senses were good, but there were plenty of wizards in the room with many more years of experience and bound souls to strengthen their magic. I had the advantage of sitting directly beside the idiot and his unbound redhead, but there was every chance that someone was going to notice at any moment.

An elbow jabbed sharply into my ankle and I glanced down at Daphne, irritation rapidly rising up within me. What did she want, couldn’t she tell I was thinking?

Daphne tilted her head to the side, then looked seriously through the legs of my chair towards where the other witch was sitting. Her placid smile turned sharp for a single instant and she flashed me a thumbs up, then rubbed her head against my thigh.

Oh, right. Seer. It somehow kept slipping my mind, almost unnaturally so. Was that another aspect of her gift? Some form of memory haze that made her abilities seem unimportant?

Well, it didn’t really matter much, right? I could worry about that later. For now, it seemed like I had Daphne’s approval, and that counted for a lot. As soon as I saw an opportunity, I was going to lean over and whisper the opening words of the ritual into the redhead’s ear. The witches born in Aglakok’s breeding halls were trained from birth to accept the first binding presented to them. If I could get her to say the words without having to force anything, it would be too late for anyone to do anything about it without permanently ruining the witch’s future.

At seven o’clock, the great hall went from noisy and boisterous to utterly silent in the blink of an eye. A moment ago, the room had felt spacious and comfortably warm. Now there was a biting chill in the air and a mountain loomed over us all, filling every inch of available space with its majesty.

The High Lord did not look particularly imposing. He was short and stout and was dressed just like us students, though his shirt and the border of his robe were slate gray. He was bald except for a high ponytail at the very top of his head that was held in place by a simple gray cloth, and his eyes shone with mirth.

The High Lord did not need to look imposing to instantly command the entire room’s attention the moment he suddenly appeared out of nowhere sitting at the center of the staff table at the front of the room. It was nigh-impossible not to look at him, such was the…gravity, for lack of a better word, that he exuded.

As one, every single wizard in the room, even the idiot sitting beside me, rose to their feet. It simply felt disrespectful, unnatural to sit in his presence. Every witch that wasn’t completely restrained prostrated themselves on the ground, their training and instincts telling them exactly what sort of existence now loomed over them.

The High Lord stared at us dispassionately, his eyes roving up and down the ranks of students. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, his presence withdrew. “You may be seated,” he said softly, but his voice roared in my ears as though he’d shouted it right in my face. We sat. A suggestion from a High Lord may as well be a divine commandment, even when phrased as casually as that.

“Good evening, students. For any of you who may not know me, I am Alejandro Garcia, High Lord of America. I would like to welcome all of you to another year at Aglakok. I congratulate our newest class of students on joining the ranks of true wizards; may you all find success in your futures and I hope your achievements shall reflect well on our school.

“To all returning students, welcome back. I hope you have all had a restful and productive break. I would like to personally congratulate Gornick Shaw on winning the junior division of this year’s world dueling championship. You are a credit to this institution and I invite you to seek me out for some personal instruction later in the year.” He clapped his hands together and a moment later the room was filled with applause. A well-built dark haired wizard at the fifth-years table, who I assumed was Gornick himself, looked rather overwhelmed, his face flushed as the students around him turned towards him.

The High Lord cleared his throat and the room fell silent in an instant. “Very good. Congratulations Mr. Shaw, I look forward to an even more impressive performance next year. Too long has Africa held that particular merit.

“Now then, I do believe that will be all. Eat, drink, and be merry. Class selection will commence at nine a.m, but until then your time is your own.” And then he was simply gone as though he’d never been present in the first place, and a crushing weight that I had barely noticed pressing down on my chest the entire time vanished with him.

Daphne rolled onto her side, sucking in great lungfuls of air, and she wasn’t the only one. More than half the witches in the room were doing the same, while the rest simply remained prostrated on the ground or hung limply in their restraints. It was a great breach of decorum, but I don’t think anyone was going to really blame them, at least not in public.

I certainly wasn’t going to. My own lungs also felt starved of air, the High Lord’s sheer presence making it hard to breathe, but I didn’t have time to rest. This was the perfect opportunity, and I had something much more important to do.

Thank you to Ανόητος Ονειροκρίτης and Magabeast_pro01 for beta reading this story.