Nothing at All

Nothing.

As he pictured her in his mind he found that no emotion came, even as images of the depraved acts she had been put through paraded across his mind he found himself unmoved in anyway.

Somehow that was worse than if he had been aroused or disgusted by her. If he had felt pity or amusement at her fate. If he had desired or hated her.

Instead he realised that he felt no more for her than he did for the wood on which he walked. The revelation was unpleasant because he was sure that he was seeing her the same way the Incubus saw everyone.

The Incubus did not wait for him to follow it, marching on now into the back entrance of the Main Hall. Aaralon followed like the obedient dog he was as the Monster took pride of place in the chair of the Grand Master. Pathfoot and Aaralon wordlessly taking up station on either side of him. He had somehow found a hood to pull up, hiding his face in the depths of the cowl as he watched the crowd in the Hall.

The small group that stood in the center of the hall confirmed what Aaralon had suspected. The Incubus had called the students of the Young Women's School of Magic through the Mirror and now they stood in a huddle in the center of the hall. Surrounded on all sides by empty eyed young men.

From here it was easy for Aaralon to tell that they had not come under the sway of the Incubus just yet. Standing in the gender destroying grey smocks and hats that was the uniform of that school, the girls were giving nervous looks around at the silent crowd.

The Young Women's School of Magic was a different beast from that which taught young men in the ways of Magic. If a young boy showed any kind of talent he was usually shoved in front of a Wizard at an early age. If he passed a few tests, tests Aaralon had hardly had to think about, then he was sent packing off to one of the magic schools. The Wizards took the burden of the costs, an act of charity that they only bothered with because letting untrained magic users do what they wanted had brought an unexpected end to more than a few of their lives.

For girls however it was another story, when a young girl showed talent there were two paths that her future could take. If she was lucky enough to be the child of someone very rich then she would be shipped off to a school like the Young Women's School of Magic. A place where she would be taught just enough about magic so she could hide her talent from prospective husbands whilst receiving an education befitting her status. If she was unlucky enough to be born poor then, depending on her age and talent, she could expect to either be beaten, shunned or driven out all together.

On a unrelated note, the most common cause of **** among Wizards is actually being killed by a Witch.

So it was that the young women, and even the smocks could not hide that truth for some of them, standing in the Hall where about as magically threatening as a kitten. The Young Women's School of Magic must have been a finishing school. Even from here Aaralon could see they were all easily as old as him. Everyone of them trying to put on the air of someone allowing their inferiors to be near them in an effort to hide the nerves.

The women who stood at the front of the group was another story altogether. The Grand Mistress of the school was not totally unlike Mistress Pathfoot in her looks and bearing. Standing maybe a few inches shorter she made up for the shortcoming in other places. Unlike the stick thin Pathfoot this was a woman who had been gifted with curves and decided to make the most of it. Her Grand Mistresses gown clung to her form in a way that suggested both the help of a corset and some magic.

She stepped forward, stopping a few feet from the chair, allowing Aaralon to get a good look at her face. In that moment, a tiny hope, so small that he had not even allowed himself to admit it, died.

Her eyes had the empty look of all the thralls of the Incubus and that meant there would be no grand escape. She had delivered her wards directly into the hands of a monster from beyond the veil.

As if on cue the demon suddenly stood up, his long black robes flowing around him as he reached up to grip the sides of his hood.

“My Daughter's!” The Incubus voice boomed across the room as the young women watched on in confusion. “Rejoice! For you are to be the mothers of a glorious new world.”

As the last word passed his lips the cowl was pulled back and Aaralon felt the full strength of the Demons power unleashed.