A Game of Chance

Mother and I made our way down to the Inn’s main floor to get a late day meal. My sister had been there eating, some bread and stew with grisly meat, root vegetables, and a brown sauce. It was the inn's menu for today.

“I would need to earn coin somehow,” I thought. Our home lay in ashes at the farm and I would need to pay to rebuild it. I would also need the coin to make a way to the academy to become an Aether Guardian.

“Mom, you have something on your cheek,” my sister remarked. My mother promptly took the white glob on her cheek with her hands and put it in her mouth savoring the taste. My sister cringed at this.

Yes, though my sister accepted that I could channel after seeing what happened last night, she still couldn’t accept it when she woke up to find me on top of our mother thrusting into her, our mother. She, my sister, got out of bed immediately and went to freshen up and go around the village to run errands, mainly a check on our father while our mother and I busy ourselves, spending most of the day in our beds in an embrace.

I tried to follow the dreams example. I penetrated my mother’s every orifice, making her do degrading acts to build my power. My lust for her still vibrant while I made the woman who gave birth to me, bend in every which way and lick every part of me. After which I would leave the Inn and practice channeling in the nearby woods.

After multiple acts of lovemaking with my mother, I could fill the clarity of the Aether. I reached out for it and channeled it, moving objects at will and lashing out in magical energy and taking off whole branches of trees in wind-like slashes, turning to stones to ashes, sensing deer and drawing them in with my will like a beacon. I tried peeling off individual leaves off the oak trees to hone my power and precision with the channeling. The waves of invisible magic bending and twisting the leaf in the branch. It was then I had an idea for how I would make money.

“Laurel, we all need to help each other in this trying time.” my mother said sweetly dipping bread into her stew. “You need to share the load when it comes to your brother. You have seen it, he can channel.”

Laurel grumbled and just chewed on her bread. I tried to finish my meal as quickly as possible before the aether which I was still grasping slipped away.

I made my way to the tavern. There were seedy men playing dice and games of chances. They were taking advantage of a naïve Baroness’ son who was visiting his mother’s hold. The Baroness’ son, Rupp, was a jovial young man who loved throwing away his money in games of chance in our village and never appear to mind when the men would take him for everything he had with their loaded dice.

I join them and they didn’t appear to be interested in me given my shabby farm clothes. Rupp, someone I had known and spent time with and tried on multiple occasions to hit on my sister, spotted me some cash which I promised to pay back. At the hint I was a friend with Rupp, the men smiled their conniving smile and offered me a seat at the table.

I had cleaned them out. They stared in horror like dumb fools every time their loaded dice landed my way as I channeled with one of my hands underneath the table, bending the dice to my will. Unable to learn they kept going waiting for their loaded dice to land on what they knew, or thought they know, would be the outcome until I stripped them of their gold kalacans, an amount as a farmer’s son I had never seen in one place.

I smiled and put it in my coin purse, returning what I owed to Rupp with interest and thanked them for the game. The men smiled at me fiendishly with **** in their eyes, gritted their teeth and waited until I left to follow.

I could feel their presence trailing me. Although the act of manipulating the dice did little to drain my aether, it still slipped out of my control with time. I had nothing left and the fog of my lust-clouded my access to it.

I ran. The three men behind me screaming, “Hey wait up you cheat. We got a little something for ya.”