A girl by the name of Annabelle, clad in the red and silver uniform of the Collegiate, is poking worriedly along one of the ridges.

"Christa!"

She calls out, having just realized she hasn't seen her friend all day.

"Christa!"

Aire is far enough away that she can just barely make out Annabelle’s voice. Rather suddenly, she forms a plan. The first step is to suddenly swap out which of her bodies is going to the outside world. She'll need to have as many of Christa's abilities at her disposal as she can manage. Christa's mind is gone enough that it should be difficult to get more than associations out of her, but even that will be useful, and easier to get if she's physically present.

She’s fortunate that Christa happened to be relatively curvy and within half an inch of her height. She didn’t need to alter her clothing at all to fit. And thus, her disguise is already partially complete.

It takes her a moment to dredge up the right syllables to illusion up her face and skin-tone to match Christa’s, but it doesn’t take her a horrendous amount of time. Soon enough, she’s finished her preparations, and puts her plan into motion.

“Hello? Who is that? I’m lost!”

Annabelle perks up at the faintly echoing shout and hurries to the mouth of the cave it came from.

"Christa?! Is that you?! It's me, Annabelle!"

"Christa" moves down to meet her halfway.

Aire spent a while interacting with Christa and watching her think. Most of that time was spent with Christa rather intoxicated and then more than a little overstimulated, but it shouldn't be too hard for her to imitate Christa's general demeanor.

When she reaches Anabelle, she says, "Oh, Anabelle! It's so good to see you! I may have done something rather silly and wandered off and encountered a bear. And then ran into a cave to hide. And then fallen asleep. But I'm okay!"

"A bear?" Annabelle gasps. "That's so scary! I'm so glad it didn't get you!"

Annabelle glomps on and hugs 'Christa' tight.

Annabelle has hugged Christa before. Something is different this time. A scent, a feeling, an urge...

Annabelle squeaks, leaps away from her friend, and starts rapidly reciting alchemy recipes in her head as she turns and hurries back down the ridge.

"Well c'mon okay? We should get on back. It's getting late and we wouldn't want to be late, right? Right! C'mon!"

“Christa” really does smell nice, doesn’t she?

“Right!” she says. “We don’t want to be late!”

Aire keeps tight control over her arousal. Too much from her lust aura would perhaps be enough to arouse suspicion where just her pheromones would not, and she doesn’t know how distant the place they’re going “back” to is.

She does, however, want Annabelle attracted to her. So, she catches up to Annabelle and makes sure to walk in a way that makes her chest jiggle and her hips sway just enough to be noticeable out of the corner of Annabelle’s eye. Little enough for it to look accidental, natural even, but enough for it to grab her attention.

Annabelle is very conspicuously not looking. Alchemy recipes. What is wrong with her what was that she hopes Christa didn't notice ALCHEMY RECIPIES. ALCHEMY RECIPIES ARE REALLY INTERESTING AND SHE'LL GET TO TRY NEW ONES WITH ALL THE NEAT HERBS SHE GATHERED. LAB FUN AWAITS.

Shortly, they are back at the cozy village. Little brick houses with chimneys and a solitary pole lamp in the center round with a light enchantment on it. Flowerboxes in the windows and cute little fenced gardens.

A gaggle of chattering red and silver in cargo vests and mini-shorts fills the small village round, where Ser Kalar and Miss Polie are calling roll off a scroll. A few of them greet 'Christa' and Annabelle with friendly waves, a few others look down their noses at the two.

Ooh, apparently her new identity comes with people looking down their noses at her. Interesting. She wonders why.

She's careful to wave back at those that wave at her, of course. It's what Christa would have done.

Is there anything conspicuous separating those who are friendly with those who aren’t? Amount of jewelry, for example, or ethnicity, or anything of the like?

The slightly-sexy walk continues, as do her pheromones. Aimed primarily at Annabelle, of course, but any collateral damage is more than welcome.

Annabelle continues to be very focused on her alchemy recipes.

The friendly ones are mostly thinking generic friendly recognition-of-that-nice-person-I-know things, though one of them is thinking about... nothing. Her mind is shielded.

The snobby girls are mostly thinking about how Christa is a telepath and therefore so creepy she should stay away from the people who matter... though one of them is instead thinking apologetic thoughts tinged with fear around something she's trying not to think about---some kind of petty crime that Christa seemingly already knew about...

"Girls! Girls!" Miss Polie calls. "Please return to the wagons in an orderly fashion!"

Telepathy stigma is not what she’d have guessed. The ability is useful enough she would have naively expected it to lead to increased respect. But now that she has people to observe, she can see the tangle of fear and jealousy and instinctive distaste of the different and realize how that would shape things differently. Such knots they tangle themselves into.

She’s learning so much. It really is a good thing Aire can read all of these thoughts, or else this would be rather a lot more difficult.

That petty crime there is a wonderful opening. Not that she really needs it, she suspects the combination of her sexual skills and her pheromones would be enough to get most people to do nearly anything she wanted, but still, more levers are better.

And oh, this wagon trip is going to be delightful. All of those people in such tight proximity to her, vulnerable to her pheromones. Off she bustles to the wagon, seating herself next to Annabelle.

The wagons are large, with metal frames and large, rubberized wheels. Each is sumptuously appointed with cushioned seats and beverages.

The teams of Guardian Dolls that pull the wagons at Ser Kalar's command have been vandalized again. Lewd comments and crude drawings adorn the hard grey rubbery skin of the golems' bodies. Most of the crude drawings are of the entirely unoriginal but at least slightly artistic attempts to add nipples and vulvae to the Guardian Dolls' featureless lack of anatomy. (They're made in the likeness of cute young women because the magic that animates them operates more efficiently that way, much to the amusement of many young males across the Empire, and much to the misfortune of whoever gets stuck with the job of scraping the graffiti off.)

The girls who join 'Christa' in her assigned wagon are mostly the friendly ones. They chatter about their plans for the rest of the day and tomorrow, about what they'll do with what they learned and gathered on this trip, and about the generic polite gossip of high society.

Occasionally they drag 'Christa' into this, but it isn't hard to read in their thoughts the response they expect, and more than once one of them thinks about Christa being too nice to say anything bad about this bit or that bit of rumor.

Aire decides to be cautious and sticks to within the constraints of what people expect Christa to do. She could push slightly, but she doesn’t feel like she has enough information to get a particularly solid handle on how to do that without arousing suspicion.

The only exception to her general plan to act perfectly in character is her decision to allow her pheromones and the barest hint of her lust aura to creep out. Ideally, this will slowly give people the idea that maybe Christa is more attractive than they realized while still being subtle enough to avoid notice. The more primed their attraction to her is, the easier seducing them will be later.

From what people are thinking, who here is Christa closest to? Aire thinks the answer is most likely Annabelle, from a combination of Annabelle's thoughts so far and the vague impressions she can see in her pet's mind, but better to be sure and not take the risk. 

The girls get more playful and touchy-feely with each other as the aura of lust has time to work on them, but they all seem to flinch away from the obvious next though. Some of them are thinking up plans to masturbate later, some are fantasizing about boys in too-tight uniforms.

It does seem like Christa was closer to Annabelle than anyone else. A stray thought reveals that the two of them are roommates, in addition to friends.

The wagon train continues along a well-kept road between crop-fields for several hours, proceeding north and east.

Oh, is there some sort of stigma against same-sex attraction here? How odd! That must run entirely off the distaste for the different, unless there’s some grand power only wieldable by women who fuck other women.

And good, that Annabelle is a roommate is a stroke of good luck. If she works on her enough, she should be able to get her to the point where, even if she learns, she won’t care than Aire isn’t Christa.

Aire allows the bumps and jostles of the wagon to ‘coincidentally’ squish her into Annabelle more often than would be normal and escalates her level of physicality with her and the other girls to match.

Annabelle is repeating a mental refrain that this is just normal affection between Sisters and whatever strange feelings she's having are probably because she tripped over something Corrupted while she was playing with herbs.

She shoots 'Christa' an apologetic, pleading glance, thinking about monopolizing the bathroom for privacy when they get home along with a wordless promise that this is Annabelle's problem, not Christa's.

They've arrived. The wagons make the last turn of the approach and enter the City of Arcadia properly, massive walls and gleaming spires scraping the sky.

The wagons park just inside a massive hall of arches that serves as a parking lot, and the Sisters are soon dismissed for the day. But not before the wagon train containing their age-cohort of Brothers arrives as well. The boisterous young men are giddy with excitement and shout flirtations comments at the gaggle of Sisters. It seems that while the Sisters were out learning Herblore, the Brothers were petting dragons at a dragon enclave. A lucky few even got to ride along with the Dragoons, flying through the sky on dragon-back.

A few of the girls experience a pang of longing jealousy at that, but not many. This is just The Way Things Are.

She pats Annabelle on the arm reassuringly. Christa understands!

That is quite the city. Aire is suddenly concerned there might be people here capable of seeing right through her illusions, or at the very least noticing her channelling them. Well, no way around that problem but through. If worst comes to worst, she has another body a distance away.

The Way Things Are is quite the tangle of concepts! And oddly enough comes with no sense of justification, or rather a sense that justification simply isn’t needed! How odd. What are the limits of that? How unfair and skewed can things be, before they even notice it as something to mentally remark on, rather than justified simply because it is?

If this is the level of cognitive sophistication she can expect to see in general, more people will be falling victim to the obedience-encouraging effects of her pheromones than she’d guessed.

Annabelle is grateful.

As the genders mingle on their way onto the wide, bustling street that abuts the parking hall, there are quite a few boys thinking about how they never noticed that Christa girl before but she sure is pretty!

White stone and canals wend their way through Arcadia, latticed and bridged by clean streets and colorful shopfronts beneath large townhouses. Electric lights hum softly, casting their steady, warm glow over building faces.

On two separate occasions, as 'Christa' follows Annabelle back to their shared flat, someone passing them on the street suddenly squints at her, their mind honing in on the presence of Illusion Magic. But none of them know 'Christa' personally or have any idea that she shouldn't have Illusion Magic. They both simply conclude she is one of those girls using Illusion Magic in place of cosmetics and hair dye. They could look deeper, but neither does, having peeled back one layer of untruth already.

Their shared flat is a spacious area with luxurious furniture and a private bathroom, as Aire saw in Annabelle's thoughts. Annabelle locks herself inside as soon as they arrive, and proceeds to take a very long bath.

Well, the squinting magic users are frightening. Fortunately, Aire has rather good control of herself and manages to just look sort of embarrassed when the people on the street squint at her, reinforcing their impression that she’s just a girl trying to make herself prettier.

When Annabelle goes off to the bathroom, Aire carefully allows herself to grow more aroused at the thought of what Annabelle is doing. Or, rather what her ability to cause Annabelle to do that implies about her ability to wrap the girl around her finger. As she does, her lust is channeled outward by her lust aura. She keeps it low enough that she can, if required, kill off her arousal. The goal is to enhance Annabelle’s bathing experience, not drive her to throw herself at Aire. It’s a rather difficult needle to thread, but her willpower and telepathy mean she thinks she can manage it.

Annabelle has the best orgasm of her life, and she totally fails to think entirely hetero thoughts as she does.

When she emerges, she gives 'Christa' a smile but can't quite meet her roommate's eyes.

She organizes her haul from the field trip, then changes for bed and turns in. She reads in bed for about half an hour, then falls asleep.

Once Annabelle is asleep Aire goes over her illusions again. Can she make them more refined, more difficult to notice- no, that’s not the universally right choice here. If she’s interacting with people who know Christa, yes. But if they don’t, she wants her illusion to seem clumsy. It turns out her spellcasting capabilities are rather advanced, and “illusion as cast by someone who barely knows what they’re doing to make themselves a little prettier” is rather easy to manage. Her original illusion, rush job as it was, turns out to be difficult for her to improve on, however.

Well, now that that’s sorted out, the only question is whether she wants to seduce Annabelle tonight or give her time to marinate. Either way she’d have to be careful not to cause enough damage for anyone to notice. And before any of that, the first thing she should do is plunder the sleeping Annabelle’s mind for information.

Aire reaches out with her telepathy. Who’s nearby, just Sisters or more potentially dangerous people? How close are they, are they sleeping?

Annabelle is having a peaceful dream about being in a colorful garden that is also a deep jungle cave that is also a bedroom and the bed is a carriage and its being pulled by clones of Christa and then she's back in the colorful garden with a Guardian Doll and telling it how it doesn't need to be graffiti'd since it has naughty parts in its heart. 

Annabelle shares a wall with one other flat. The people who live there know she's telepathic and did something so that her telepathy doesn't penetrate the wall. Or maybe Christa did. Below her flat is another apartment occupied by the owners of the ground-floor shop; a married couple who somehow don't know that Christa is telepathic, due to a coincidence of scheduling that's resulted in them and Christa never exchanging more than a handful of words the entire time she's lived here.

The people who pass by down on the street below are mostly thinking about various generic nonthreatening things like getting home to rest or to spend time with their families or to avoid spending time with their families or things like that.

Oh good, she isn’t somehow sharing a building with a master of mind magic who’ll instantly notice any of her actions.

Well, the question now is whether to use mind magic or telepathy to ferret out Annabelle’s longer-term memories. Telepathy is defter, she feels, and most likely has a substantially higher skill ceiling. And will also not risk detection by someone passing by who can notice her casting. The issue with that is that Aire isn’t particularly practiced with her new telepathy, but her old instincts from before she got trapped behind that barrier are apparently completely online for her mind magic.

Perhaps she can get the best of both worlds? Inspect her mind magic instincts for what, precisely, to do to Annabelle’s sleeping mind to read her memories, but actually implement the procedure through telepathy?

Christa isn't so powerful a telepath that this is easy, but with continuous effort Aire can indeed steer Annabelle's dreams from random hallucination toward recalling memories instead. What is she looking for?

Aire plans out what order to do things in.

First, she will steer Annabelle’s mind towards memories of Christa, particularly the most salient ones, reasoning that she’s likeliest to reference those in conversation and not think about them in enough detail for Aire to appropriately respond. This would be the most disastrous to leave uncompleted if Annabelle wakes before she’s done. As long as her disguise holds, she can make more progress the next night, but if her disguise fails it is likely her infiltration would do so swiftly afterward.

From there she plans to move on to general information, to contextualize what she learns next. Where does she find herself? The city, the nation, the world? She should have memories of having various aspects of all of that explained to her at one point or another.

And then, last, the specifics of the situation she finds herself in. What classes do she and Annabelle take, does Christa answer questions in those classes, how dangerous are their teachers? Who are they likely to encounter that would be immune to Christa’s telepathy, or dangerous in other ways?

She expects finding all of this information to be quite difficult; guiding Aire to memories at all was somewhat difficult. If it's slow enough she can switch to mind magic, she supposes.

She does have all night.

Annabelle's perception of Christa mostly matches the impression Aire already had from their brief encounter before Christa got too lost in continuous orgasm to have any awareness of her environment.

Arcadia is the capitol city of the Dragon Empire. The Dragon Empire is ruled by the legendary King Drago and divided into twelve districts based on the twelve former kingdoms that King Drago conquered and united. The Dragon Empire rules over the northeastern half of the Untainted; the region of idyllic low-corruption land in the heart of the western half of the continent. Their main rival is the Aurum Empire, and Annabelle's concept of the place, based on various history texts and popular culture, is that they're overspecialized around their anti-slavery moralizing and are a bunch of loud obnoxious thugs about everything else, stupidly crippling themselves with a ban on all but Holy-element magic.

Annabelle and Christa are both Sisters of the Collegiate, which seems to be a government title: essentially they are professional scholars under contract to learn certain skills in exchange for being granted jobs working directly for the Empire. For boys, the Brothers of the Collegiate, most join in the hopes of becoming dragon-riders. For girls, ambitions vary more. Annabelle in particular is on track to be employed as a state alchemist, brewing advanced potions.

There is a local institution called 'Library Gemini' where members of the Collegiate are offered specialized training, and which organized the field trip they just got back from. But it would be incorrect to describe Annabelle or Christa as 'enrolled' there. It's more like a marketplace of knowledge than a school, where learning is sold piecemeal to whoever can afford it. The only teacher who stands out as possibly-dangerous is the geologist. There's just something off about him, in Annabelle's impression.

Well, that geology teacher stands out as a a potential danger. Also a potentially valuable target, once she's figured him out a bit, although maybe one to be avoided if her telepathy won’t work on him. The two are regrettably closely correlated.

If she’s going to be undertaking nefarious deeds here, it’s probably wise for her other body not to be in a location easily traced back to. At the moment, if someone notices something odd Aire’s current fallback location is the obvious source. She sends her secondary body off from her cave to create distance between anywhere Christa has ever been and its location.

Does Annabelle recall Christa’s chosen course of study? Are they studying the same things, going to classes together? That would be ideal; she'd have a relatively Christa-informed source of knowledge with her at all times.

Annabelle actually recalls Christa liking the geologist. It has been a small, quiet source of tension on occasion.

Christa, though interested in not all the same things as Annabelle, is also on track to be a state alchemist. They do in fact do a lot of scholarship together. Their similar schedules were a large factor in how they became roommates.

Hmm, what time of night is it now? She’s finally had the satisfaction of having Christa after years of desire, she wants to break another toy. Annabelle would have to be left mostly intact, and so would be much less satisfying, but while a bite is not as satisfying as a full meal it is still better than nothing.

It is a few hours after sunset, but Annabelle did go to be a little earlier than is her usual habit.

It was a long day.

Also, they're both signed up to catalog their herbs with an herblore witch at Library Gemini first thing in the morning.

Oh, that early morning activity really is too bad. Aire will wait, then. She doesn’t want to, she wants to corrupt Annabelle, but she should ensure every bit of information she's heard sticks. After all, she doesn’t know what Christa does, and needs to ensure she absorbs all of the information she really should know for her chosen role.

She heads off to her own bed, slipping a tentacle out to fill herself with for comfort, and goes over everything thought she remembers. By morning, the apartment should be filled with enough pheromones to make Annabelle's attraction to 'Christa' come back into full force, even without use of her lust aura. She'll have a "supportive conversation" with Annabelle in the morning before they head off to encourage that, she thinks.

Their morning routine is brief. They both have all the standard hygiene mutations, so a quick splash of water, a few seconds of hair-brushing, and a clean copy of their uniform is most of it.

Annabelle and Christa usually walk from their flat to Library Gemini along a wide main-street lined with multiple restaurants, and usually get their breakfast to-go along the way.

Well, she guesses her talk with Annabelle will have to wait for later.

On their way to what Annabelle is thinking of as their usual spot, they pass a very expensive looking place with a scent wafting out from it that Aire finds vaguely familiar until-

Christa is floating along in a warm haze, deliciously snuggled, when-

Ooh! Nice smell! Tasty!

-she realizes that’s Christa’s familiarity she’s feeling. There’s still enough of Christa left for her to root around in her associations and realize that this place most likely sells her favourite food. Regrettably, she gets the sense its too expensive for her to go in and have a try; she's picked up the concept of money, at this point, and a vague feeling from Annabelle suggesting how much of it they have.

How long is it before they’re at Library Gemini?

It's about a five minute walk from the street of food before they reach a large archway where tall gleaming buildings give way to a well-kept park.

The pair of castle-complexes that make up Library Gemini sit in the middle of the well-tended park, straddling a small brooke that winds between them. The complex for feminine learning is gleaming white stone and red rooftiles, while the complex for masculine learning is shiny silver-gray with aquamarine rooftiles.

The well-trodden stone pathway through the park to their destination is another few minutes of walking by itself.

Well, the implications of having separate buildings for each body-shape because they’re supposed to learn different things is rather large. Aire’s felt these people’s minds, there isn’t, actually, some sort of innate thing where women or men can only learn certain things; anything that different in mental structure she would have felt.

Oh, this walkway looks private enough to have her talk without it appearing out of character for Christa.

She adds telepathic emphasis to certain parts of what she’s saying, making them echo in Annabelle’s mind as true. From the weakness of Christa’s telepathy its clear Christa never practiced at this. Fortunately, her own skill with mind magic translates again, or else she’d be unable to do this at all.

So, she says, “Um, Annabelle? I just thought I’d let you know that, um, I don’t mind. The stuff. I think you were right when you thought you got something corrupted on you. You never thought that way about me before. So, um, it’s not your fault. And it’s just thoughts, you know. So, it doesn’t matter if it’s too hard to stop it. You felt really guilty, and I don’t want you to feel that way. You shouldn't feel guilty!”

From what Aire knows, this is very nearly exactly what Christa would have said. She’d have said it without the vague implication that Annabelle should feel free to fantasize more, but the general tenor would be the same. Even the bit where it all comes out in a rush fast enough that Annabelle doesn't have time to get a word in edgewise.

Annabelle glances around to make sure no one is overhearing and then blushes and buries her face in her hands.

"Thanks, Christa," she squeaks embarrassedly into her palms.

Annabelle knows Christa is a too-trusting sweetheart, so really, she isn't surprised that Christa would be nice about this. But Annabelle is still wishing the other girl hadn't brought it up out loud. Annabelle had mostly managed to stop thinking about it, and now she's thinking about it again and she knows Christa knows she's thinking about it, and...

"You're right though, and you're a really good person, so, thanks for saying it."

Aire pats Annabelle comfortingly on the arm. “If you want, I could listen to you less? It wouldn’t be too hard, I think.”

"Would it make a difference?" Annabelle asks curiously, shaking off her embarrassment. "It might be more, distracting, to wonder if you're listening, all the time. Besides, you told me, you don't get that much detail anyway, don't you?"

"It would make a difference, I think! Part of not getting too much detail is, like, me already trying not to on purpose? And I think I could do that more, if you wanted? And I could let you know if I messed up. I've been getting better at using it over time, even if it is slow!"

Come on girl, take the bait, don't you want the opportunity to fantasize to your heart's content?

Annabelle is friends with Christa and it should not be surprising that she has traits in common with Christa.

"I wouldn't want to make you feel like you had to! You're really good at, um, not saying anything. Usually. I do trust you not to use my thoughts against me, Christa. It's just embarrassing sometimes, but I don't really mind, if it's you."

She giggles and hugs Annabelle faux-impulsively.

“You wouldn’t be making me feel like I had to do anything! A favour for a friend doesn’t count! And anyway, I actually think it might be good practice!”

Annabelle giggles and hugs back.

"Okay."

Shortly, they reach the base of the castle of feminine learning and begin to ascend the steps toward the entrance hall.

Aire, of course, doesn’t actually stop listening to Annabelle’s mind. Whyever would she do that?

She continues her general practice of just enough sway and bounce for it to be noticeable without it looking like she’s doing it on purpose. The stairs put rather a higher ceiling on that. Hopefully Annabelle will feel free enough to pay a bit more attention, now. Even if only out of the corner of her eye.

Not on purpose. Not consciously. But Annabelle's mood is shading a bit more horny than her usual baseline.

The herbalists gather in a solarium that overlooks the brooke, where Miss Oliva the herblore witch is set up with various equipment to demonstrate how to examine various herbs for their potency levels and other properties, for those who don't already know, and then allow the various participating Sisters to do so with their own herbs and label everything for later use.

She carefully memorizes everything she can. This might be important information later, and at the very least she should already be familiar with some of it as Christa.

And if, while she’s grabbing some of her herbs to measure their various properties, she happens to bend over at the waist in front of Annabelle a couple of times, well, surely that must be a coincidence.

It genuinely doesn't occur to Annabelle that Christa would do that on purpose. There aren't even any boys around!

The herblore witch, a Miss Julos, meanders around and helps anyone who's having trouble discerning fine grades of distinction in herb properties, and giving occasional advice on notation schemes.

She’s careful not to be too over the top in public like this. Somebody is bound to be less confused than Annabelle about how this all works eventually. Best not to get into bad habits.

How easy is it to read Julos’ mind? Is she thinking any interesting thoughts?

Julos is thinking about the controversial new covert-action training being sold by a woman who strikes Julos as a 'frigid bitch'. Julos is thinking about how after this session they'll likely bump into each other in the preparatory office in the north wing, and wondering if she should try making friends again; maybe it'll go better if she doesn't gush about her husband?

Any more thoughts about that covert-action training? That seems like the kind of place she might meet interesting people. Alas, it’s rather outside of Christa’s established character to look into. Or, wait, ‘Christa’ did just have an encounter with a bear. Perhaps an emphasis on the danger of looking for herbs out in the wilderness without any recourse for self-protection?

She can sound that out after she’s corrupted Annabelle a little more, she thinks.

Beyond that, she spends most of her time soaking in as much information about herblore as she can; she has rather a lot of catching up to do.

Women are sneaky. This is one of their advantages, both in social conflict and in survival situations. Or so the assumption goes. However, the new stealthcraft instructor is teaching skills that are not as far-removed from combat as they ought to be, to be properly feminine. Julos has nothing against this herself, but that's what the controversy is about.

It would be pretty plausible, actually, for a bear-scare like the one 'Christa' is claiming, to motivate a girl to sign up with Miss Lavich for that very reason.

Eventually, everyone has their herbs cataloged and prepared, and girls start leaving the solarium in ones and twos. Annabelle finishes somewhere in the middle, and amuses herself pondering what sort of boy Christa might date while she waits for Christa to finish too.

Well, Aire thinks she has something to discuss with Annabelle after they get home! Multiple somethings, actually, given those musings in her head about boys.

What else do they have anything else planned today, if anything?

It suddenly occurs to Aire that Christa likely had some place she was recording her schedule and plans. She seemed like that type of girl. Well, something to check when she gets back to the flat.

They won't be going home for a while, actually? They've got all day to learn and practice and neither of them are accomplished enough to slack off. They've still got a lot of progress to make before they can try for a Certification, so going home right after the lesson would just be lazy! Nigh unthinkable! They're here to get their money's worth and Library Gemini is so much prettier than their flat.

Also, one of the dance cohorts is rehearsing something new in the south wing today, and that might be fun to watch if they do need a break. But for now, books! They don't call this place Library Gemini for nothing. Now that they have detailed stats on all the herbs they collected, they can go look up and chart out which recipes they have sufficient potencies for!

The stacks and the lounge are spacious and well lit, with plenty of little nooks and corners where two girls might have a private conversation while reading in comfort.

Books! Aire is, in fact, very pleased about this! The more information the better.

And all the while, she'll be in the middle of the library, well-positioned to listen for any interesting thoughts in passers by. So far this place is on the inside what it looks like on the outside, but some faint instinct from before she was locked away whispers that things are rarely so simple. Does she hear anything to validate that instinct?

While she reads and listens, she finds herself feeling somewhat distracted. It's not enough to noticeably impinge on her will, but the her desire to do to someone else what she did to Christa is slowly growing. Would anyone notice if Annabelle decided to drop out and spend all her time fucking herself silly? No, no, that's not the best path here, and so it is not the one she will take.

She hears a few Sisters here and there worrying to various degrees about their work. They're allowed to attempt Certification at any time, but the trials are expensive even for the nobility. You get your deposit back if you pass, but that just means the tests are as difficult as possible without starving the Empire of useful personnel.

Every so often, Aire will notice someone who's mind is shielded, like that one girl from the caravan. There isn't an obvious pattern, among those she can't read, at least not one that she can see immediately. Although, here's a girl she can read, who is thinking about one of the shielded girls, remembering heat and desire and soft lips and rolling waves of pleasure. Coincidence?

Annabelle finishes a calculation, smiles, then stretches in her chair. She gives her friend and roommate a curious look. "Christa? What is it?"

Oh, she rather hopes that isn't a coincidence.

"Oh, um. I'm doing really well on not hearing you, but. Someone just thought something naughty."

She wiggles slightly in her seat, attempting to give off some of the air of a flustered and slightly aroused innocent.

"Naughty?! You shouldn't tell me that..."

Annabelle fidgets.

"I meant, you've been looking at me like you want to talk about something?"

“I didn’t tell you who! There’s loads of people in here!”

Obviously she can’t tell the girl she was thinking about breaking her mind. What’s the thing that Christa would most likely have been thinking about? Well, Christa liked girls, so there’s an obvious way for her to be reacting to Annabelle’s earlier thoughts.

“It’s. Um. Some of the thoughts you had about me before. Were. Nice. It’s nice that you think I’m pretty. That’s part of why I don’t mind.”

"Oh."

Annabelle blushes and smiles. A complement like that shouldn't make her feel all warm and fluttery inside, but it does anyway. Christa has been acting weird all day, almost like-

"Christa..."

She can't say it out loud, she can't, but thankfully she doesn't have to.

Annabelle was so embarrassed by her own sudden inappropriate urges that it hadn't even occurred to her that Christa might have been... Annabelle's mind is now stuck on the possibility that Christa has those kinds of deviant urges herself? Commonly? It, it kind of seems like she might? See, all of these memories of Christa getting flustered around other girls in a way that in retrospect is kind of suspicious?

Aire hesitates for a short while, and then ducks her head down behind her hair and nods slightly.

As she does, she allows her arousal to grow slightly and lust aura to unfurl. Enough to make sure that Annabelle's reaction to that is lust, rather than anything less useful to Aire.

Annabelle's blush deepens dramatically.

Christa has been lusting after me. All along? Did I just not notice?

She is a boiling cauldron of conflicting emotions and her heart is pounding and thinking about this is terrifying but...

Annabelle shivers.

...something inside her is still pleased, is hungry. Not that she has any idea what to do with this revelation.

"Maybe when we get home today. We can. Talk?"

She bites her lip in a way that very strongly suggests that she's thinking of doing more than just talking.

"A-About what?"

Annabelle knows about-what but something in her hungers to hear Christa say it.

Hmm, what euphemisms would a girl like Christa use in this situation?

“About. Um. Maybe. Sharing a bed? And perhaps using that bed for slightly inappropriate purposes.”

By the end she’s trailing off into mumbles.

"What kind of, of inappropriate... purposes?" Annabelle asks breathlessly.

Aire bites her lip.

“We could kiss? Or. Um. Anythingelseyouwanttodotome.”

Annabelle's mind fills with images of kissing Christa.

It's so, so wrong, but also... so, so thrilling. Exciting. It shouldn't be, but it is.

"Kiss," Annabelle squeaks. "Oh gods."

Oh goodness, that innocence is delicious, she can't wait-

No. Composure. Mental composure too, even.

Well, that's rather a lower lewdness quotient than Aire was expecting. 

Fortunately Aire was paying enough attention to her face this time to make sure her sudden spike of desire wasn't visually apparent to Annabelle.

She lets out a giddy-sounding giggle.

Annabelle starts giggling in turn and can't stop for a few minutes. They can sit in mutual giggly gay panic for a while.

Eventually, though, they do both have work to do, even if there's no one who's job it is to make sure they're actually doing it.

They both have lab-time bought and paid for, and they need that time to start experimenting with their herbs. Annabelle's thoughts reveal that they'll have to split their stock between brewing practice of public recipes (results of which they can sell) and figuring out something new. To pass the Certification, an Alchemist has to invent a novel potion from scratch. It doesn't have to be a useful potion, but it does have to be stable and drinkable.

Annabelle fails to keep her mind entirely on her work, constantly inundated with images of her and Christa laying in bed kissing, laying the bath together kissing.

As they clean up and leave the lab to get dinner, Annabelle doesn't even notice one of the mind-shielded girls giving her and Christa piercing, speculative glances.

While Annabelle and Aire giggle, Aire recognizes a slight feeling of, fondness? What?

Muzzily, through an almost dream, Christa recognizes that sound. And that face.

Oh, Annabelle! Friend!

Huh. Aire was under the impression she’d done more damage to her pet’s mind than that, but if, even in her semiconscious state, she is recognizing things often, and that earlier thing with the pastries isn’t a fluke, odds are she was wrong about how this worked. Apparently non-her people are oddly configured enough that they can forget their own names temporarily in the moment, and then sleep it off? Maybe she’s the same way? Odd.

Well, this does mean she can keep doing her favorite thing in the world with one person, over and over again. This is the second best news she's ever received, after sweet little Christa telling her she'd agreed to let her out.

Hours later, while Annabelle might not notice that stare, Aire does. Oh, that staring girl is mind-shielded, that's interesting. Perhaps there is some grand power only wieldable by women who fuck other women, and that power is mind-shields? After all, Aire has mind-shielding, and she fucks other women.

No, no, don’t jump to conclusions. How would that even work?

Did Aire notice anything different about the girl besides her shielding? Equipment showing what other things she was learning, recognition of who she was in Annabelle's mind, anything like that?

The staring girl isn't one of the Sisters working in the lab. She appears to have been waiting for one of those girls, but is herself dressed in a different variation of the red and silver uniform, this one more of a leotard with a short pleated skirt. (Ambient thoughts will clue Aire in on this being how the dance classes dress.)

The girl she was waiting for is not herself shielded but... is totally gay. She's checking out the shielded girl, fully aware of her own desire, though it is furtive and guilty. The readable girl is thinking about a promise the shielded girl made to 'help' her with her 'problem', her mind highly unsettled about what that means.

They also cross paths with the geology teacher. His mind is shielded.

Also also, the park around Library Gemini is dotted with couples enjoying the evening, few of them thinking anything interesting, but one or two of the boys also have shielded minds.

Well, from the look of that it seems like Aire isn’t the only one taking advantage of all of this lovely innocence.

The geology teacher is shielded. Possibly bad news. Christa liked him for reasons Annabelle apparently didn’t know, and she can’t learn any of what Christa would already know from his thoughts if she can’t read them. There’s a decent chance that there’s information there that Aire needs to know.

Well, apparently Christa’s mind is more intact than she’d thought. She could always let her recover enough to ask questions. She’d need to do that anyway, if she wanted to take Christa from a sane, thinking individual and reduce her to an unthinking thing consumed by her own lusts all over again.

Annabelle is both eagerly anticipating and sort of dreading the privacy of their flat. Also, hungry. They got a snack from a vendor but Library Gemini does not itself have a proper food court.

"Want to get something nice for dinner?" Annabelle asks.

"Sure!"

It's what Christa would say, made even more likely by Gay Panic pushing her to delay getting home slightly.

Then they can stop at a restaurant and share a tasty meal. Almost like a date.

They can order something that Christa is particularly fond of, Annabelle isn't picky.

Aire pays attention to see if Christa evinces any opinions on the various scents emerging from the kitchen. Sure enough, she’s very fond of a particular smell and, in the absence of continuous molestation by Aire, is together enough to recognize it as a particular pasta dish.

Aire orders, and as Christa recovers enough to slowly express more sleepy opinions about things, leans into imitating them. 

One of the semi-private corner booths is available, where they can sit out of the way and not be seen. Their order is taken by a girl with subtle scales in places. Not a dragonkin, but descended from one.

The food delivered to Annabelle and 'Christa' is hot, fresh, and not terribly overpriced either.

While Aire eats, Christa happily basks in the twin joys of tasty food and Annabelle thinking she’s pretty, still fuzzy-headed enough to not really find it odd that she isn’t controlling her own body. After all, her body’s saying what she’d say!

Yes, it is, but mostly because Aire’s reading out Christa’s muzzy thoughts, brushing the muzz off, and repeating them.

She chats with Annabelle while they eat, noticeably a bit less flirty than earlier, but only because of what comes across rather clearly as a sudden attack of Shy.

It looms over them, making them both more nervous and giggly than usual, but they have a nice time eating together.

Then the food is all eaten and paid for and, really, they could probably find some additional excuse to stay out together and have fun in a platonic way instead of turning in together to have fun in a far more naughty way, but will they actually?

Aire certainly won't. Christa's recent adventures with Aire have made her keen enough on the idea of More Pleasure to overcome her natural shyness, and Aire’s moved on from imitating Christa to translating for her while she comes back online.

Eventually Christa is going to recover enough to ask Aire some questions about what, exactly, she’s been doing with her body, but that isn’t happening yet. 

Annabelle and 'Christa' arrive home.

Annabelle nervously goes through her usual habits upon returning, and then... well, Annabelle isn't going to make the first move.

Apparently, this moment is the one that’s enough to shake Christa fully awake.

We need to talk. 

“Um. Sorry,” she squeaks out, “but first there’s. A thing. I have to do in the bathroom. I’ll be back quick!”

And off she runs.

What have you been doing?

She massages Christa’s mind with all of her seals and tattoos to ensure she focuses on the lewd implications of all this, and doesn’t bother to think of anything too complicated, or worry about anything as silly as the ethics of delaying in telling her friend she has a skinsuit now, and maybe that's why she suddenly finds her so attractive.

Then she shoves her memories of her behavior, but very much not her thoughts, or her uses of Christa's telepathy, outside of her mental shielding for Christa to peruse.

Why, she only did what Christa would have done, of course. Christa was pretty out of it after they finished having fun, and Aire didn’t think she’d want to risk people learning about the whole skinsuit situation so she used her skinsuit telepathy to read Christa’s mind and do what she would have done in her place.

All true. She didn’t actually get much useful information out of Christa until recently, but she doesn’t need to know that.

That. Does look like what Christa would have done, if she hadn’t been floating in a warm daze instead of doing much thinking? But she seduced her friend! Like Christa always wanted to! Without her there! Rude!

Aire’s sorry! She would have woken up Christa earlier if she’d realized she could! She was sort of worried she’d caused permanent damage when Christa conked out like that!

But. Annabelle is waiting for them outside the bathroom. What should they do?

Pulse goes the throbbing lust from her arousal seal.

There’s an obviously satisfying answer to that question. Won’t Christa take it?

She cedes control over their body to Christa. It's her choice.

Christa is tempted, very tempted, to resolve to just keep things hidden.

But no. Annabelle’s her friend! She can trust her!

But a long conversation about her new living clothes would maybe delay the kissing. And maybe more, if Annabelle turns out to want that after a while.

Maybe she can compromise?

She steps out from the bathroom shyly, holding her hands together in front of her chest.

(Unbeknownst to her, the primary effect of this is to emphasize her breasts)

“Um. There was. Something I found out in the cave when I was hiding from the bear. That I should probably tell you about. But I really want to kiss you.”

She loosens her control over her arousal and lets her lust aura unfurl and fill the room.

Wouldn't they both rather just kiss and not worry about that?

"Um..."

Annabelle would honestly rather just kiss and not worry about it but she's still too nervous to make the first move and also attentive to what her friend thinks is important so it's going to be up to Christa whether they talk first or kiss first but really she'd be fine with either she has no idea what's she's doing except for being full of gay feelings.

Christa is easier to influence than Annabelle. Since Annabelle doesn’t actively tell her to stop so they can talk, she nervously steps forward to wrap her arms around her friend, and leans in to kiss her gently on the lips.

It’s different than with Aire. Aire basically opened the conversation talking about sex. Annabelle is her adorably shy friend who must be gently guided into the lewd.

It's not actually Annabelle's first-ever kiss.

Okay so it's like her third-ever kiss.

Point is, she has just enough of an idea of what to do that the kiss is a kiss and...

Pleasure and bliss floods Annabelle's mind as the formerly-straight girl's eyes flutter closed and she moans and all her reservations blow away in the warm glow of fulfilled desire.

Also some new desires. Like feeling more of Christa's skin, and Christa feeling more of hers. Make that all. They've seen each other naked before, did Christa always have the same thought Annabelle is having now?

Christa giggles. She did have that same thought.

And. There's no reason they couldn't take of their clothes if Annabelle wants.

The remembered pleasure of ejaculating inside Aire bubbles up through her mind. She wants to do that with Annabelle. But no, her friend doesn't even know she has a penis now.

Oh, don't bother thinking about that. Just focus on the pleasure you could get if only you can persuade Annabelle. And look at the way she's panting, doesn't she look easy to persuade?

Here, I'll take over taking off our clothes.

See how moving like this makes our breasts jiggle as our top comes off? See how bending over like this as we take our shorts off makes our ass look lovely?

And then she's naked.

Is Annabelle naked, or does Christa have to help her with that? She honestly isn't sure which she'd prefer.

Annabelle has shed a few layers on sheer momentum but she still has her underwear on.

Christa suddenly realizes that for all her lust at the idea she hasn’t actually ever taken someone else’s underwear off. She only ever had the one boyfriend, and he always took care of that himself!

So, what would be hot if Annabelle did it to her?

She gets down on her knees in front of Annabelle and, staring up into her eyes, slowly pulls her panties down her legs.

This is very effective and Annabelle squeaks about it then shivers at the feel of air, of Christa's breath, on her nethers.

Her heart is pounding, thundering in her ears, at the tips of her breasts, between her legs. Her body is hot and trembling and eager.

Now that she’s naked Aire’s pheromones are much less impeded in reaching the air. Christa’s closer to where they’re emerging from, so they effect her first, but both of them are going to end up pretty effected by them.

Christa stares, spellbound, at Annabelle’s pussy. So close. She can just lean in.

And lick.

Annabelle shudders in pleasure, her legs wobbling, and sort of accidentally sinks forward, pressing her pussy onto Christa's mouth and grabbing on to Christa's head for balance.

It feels so good, and Annabelle trusts Christa. Her guard is down. The sensations crash through her and she welcomes it, glad to go wherever Christa is leading her.

She reaches around to greedily grope Annabelle's ass while she licks her out.

She's been dreaming about doing just this for a while. 

There's no need for her to interfere. The aphrodisiacs in her saliva and her lust aura rather ensure that, even if Annabelle orgasms, her reaction will be a desire for more, rather than anything resembling satiation.

Everything is going precisely as she wants.

The orgasm crashes into Annabelle without warning and she isn't thinking enough to ask Christa to stop before she gets too sensitive... but then she doesn't get too sensitive and the craving bubbles back up as soon as the orgasm is over.

Yes. Yes. Trusting Christa. She should just go on trusting Christa. Christa can do whatever she wants.

Whatever she wants.

She's letting her cock out of its sheathe before she realizes it.

She stands up to talk to Annabelle. Her cock ends up trapped between her legs, the head pressing against her pussy. 

She shudders. She was going to say something, but the sensation is distracting enough that the thought flies from her head, and she spends a moment standing there, stunned.

"W-What? Christa? That's..."

Extremely unexpected but even more arousing. Annabelle catches the firm rod between her thighs and helplessly grinds her pussy on it, one slow thrust of her hips that happens all on its own. Her body is screaming at her to get that thing inside her and that screaming ache of need is holding its own against the confused curiosity. Has Christa always had a dick? Is it new? Did she get it just for Annabelle?!

She thrusts helplessly, rubbing her cock against Annabelle's thighs.

"It's. New. From the cave."

She wants to put it in.

Remember what happened in the cave? Christa needs to be careful she doesn't fuck herself stupid again.

Her cock twitches at the reminder.

She wants to do that again.

“Let’s go to your bed.”

That’s where most of her fantasies with Annabelle take place, after all. Now that she has the opportunity to make all of them real, why not?

Annabelle's bed is right there, and she can fall onto it and Christa can fall onto Annabelle and Annabelle can spread her legs and grind her slick pussy against that hot throbbing shaft...

And Christa can guide her cockhead to Annabelle’s opening and thrust inside.

It doesn’t do the same brainmelty “must cum now” thing to her that Aire’s pussy did, but that’s all for the good, it’s better if she can make sure Annabelle enjoys it, rather than just pound away chasing orgasm. She leans down to lick one of Annabelle's nipples, listening for whether she enjoys that.

A vague awareness blossoms in the back of her mind that she’s not actually sure if her new cock can get Annabelle pregnant. She should be careful not to cum inside.

Aire, of course, knows full well that she’s sterile. It’s better, though, if Christa is trying to control herself and fails.

She neglects to inform Christa about her inability to get Annabelle pregnant, or the resonance tattoo she has that means she’ll orgasm as soon as Annabelle does.

Annabelle is so turned on, unnaturally turned on, she's never been this turned on. Anything Christa does feels like ecstasy, including nipple-licking. And with Christa's (Christa's! Christa has a cock! Christa is making her feel so good!) meat thrusting away inside her, another orgasm is already welling up in her and she's helpless to stop it.

And when Annabelle’s orgasm rolls over her, Christa begins to cum too. The unexpectedness of it means she has half a second for her just-formed resolution not to cum inside Annabelle to battle with her desire to thrust into her as deep as she can.

Her lust wins.

She presses into Annabelle until their hips are locked against each other and lets herself cum, spurting deep inside her friend again and again and again, all concern for anything farther away than the next burst of pleasure erased from her mind.

And, of course, the fact that Aire’s fluids are a powerful aphrodisiac should ensure Annabelle doesn’t have the presence of mind to care either.

It's not like they couldn't afford a discrete fleshcrafter if they needed one, but no, Annabelle is also swept away in the waves of orgasm.

She clings to Christa and cums, and kisses her and cums and clings harder and cums and her hips move on their own and she cums. It's going to take a while for her to even notice that so much time is passing during orgasm, that the orgasm is going on and on, because it doesn't feel like a dragged out orgasm, it feels gooy and hot and present like she's just gone over the edge no matter how long it's been.

And, of course, the resonance tattoo ensures Christa’s orgasm lasts just as long as Annabelle’s. Christa’s even more impaired in noticing anything odd than Annabelle, Aire’s body shifted and changed and tattooed in a dozen ways that ensure she’s swept up by the pleasure.

Eventually, however, it ends.

The primary thing she feels, once she’s come down enough to feel anything beyond pleasure, is a desire to do that again. She keeps thrusting.

At this point they’re both so bathed in aphrodisiacs, pheromones, and lust aura that she couldn’t have done anything else.

Neither can Annabelle.

Annabelle doesn't have any stamina mutations, so she at least is eventually just going to pass out in exhaustion during a lull in the orgasms, if they don't get ahold of themselves and decide to stop. Meaning, if Christa doesn't get ahold of herself and decide to stop. Annabelle is not making any decisions about anything right now.

Christa isn’t making any decisions either. The siren song of one more orgasm has too much of a hold on her thoughts for that.

Once Annabelle’s not actively thrusting back against her, Christa compulsively thrusts her way to one more orgasm, and when she comes down from it her own exhaustion is finally able to get the better of her and she collapses on top of Annabelle, unconscious.

Aire, still awake due to her own lack of need to sleep, decides to do again what she did the night before, this time focusing on the new information she’s learned from lessons, labs, and teachers in addition to just what she’s overheard. Now that Christa’s back to something resembling functionality it isn’t quite so urgent, but she thinks she’s been picking up on things Christa wouldn’t.

As she does, she tries to put together the pieces of what she’s observed.

Lesbian dancers.

A shielded geology teacher.

A new stealthcraft class, scandalously teaching things actually combat-related.

A vague suspicion that anyone interesting is shielded.

What kind of society has she found herself in?

Well, if she manages to drag Christa and Annabelle out of slumber not too long after sunrise and not set them fucking endlessly again, Aire will have plenty of new chances to find out, today.

It requires a substantial exertion of willpower, but she manages it. She can directly turn down Christa’s libido to something more sensible through her arousal seal, and she wakes her and Annabelle early enough that that the two of them can take a quick bath to divest themselves of all of those aphrodisiacs. The pheromones are a bit harder to manage, but once they're in the water the effect of them should be blocked. And she can keep control of her own arousal enough to prevent her lust aura from setting them off again.

Annabelle will perhaps stumble off to the bath masturbating, but getting the aphrodisiacs off along with the rest of it should result in that being a temporary state of affairs rather than how she spends her day.

Annabelle is giggly and affectionate in the bath, but with sanity restored she has the presence of mind to prioritize.

She really wants to impale herself on Christa's cock and have more sex, but, later, she promises herself and Christa both.

Despite this resolution, as they walk sleepily down the street toward Library Gemini, Annabelle's mind is less focused on her alchemy work than dwelling on just how many little corners and nooks there are in the castle of feminine learning, corners and nooks and other places that might provide privacy... and coming up with more than a few just from memory.

Aire’s stepped back a bit to let Christa do most of the walking and talking while she pays extra attention to the thoughts she’s picking up. She’s informed Christa that she thinks she’s picked up some vague hints of weird stuff going on in the last day, so she’s obligingly spread her telepathy out to passively read passersby. Aire’s pheromones helped that process along, subtly encouraging doing what she wants.

Aire pays close attention to the passing minds on the street. Does she hear anything strange?

There are a lot of people on the street, and most of them are thinking about their jobs or their families or someone they want to date or someone they are dating or are shielded or are thinking about food or a lost item or the glory of the tentacles turning all the girls into sluts or a play they saw or a book they read or what they need at the market or how their shoes are uncomfortable.

Nothing particularly interesting.

No, no, Aire rather thinks that bit about the tentacles turning all the girls into sluts is very interesting. When she picks up on that she focuses her attention closer on that mind. What else is it thinking?

It is a Brother of the Collegiate, also on his way to Library Gemini. The images in his mind are hard to interpret, like he's partially shielded or something similar. But he's training to be an artist and he has a girlfriend now who can't get enough of his cock and its all thanks to his art teacher and something something paint closet something something secret door something something tentacles.

This is very interesting! The partial shielding suggests that her suspicions were correct and all the interesting people learn to do that rather than just leaving their thoughts out in the open for people like Christa to pick up.

So, apparently the art teacher has a secret door in the paint closet that leads to tentacles. Or something like that.

Well, one more thing to add to the pile. Although rather the juiciest, so far.

Another day of study and work. They're signed up for an Astrology session that evening but are otherwise free to spend their time as productively or nonproductively as they choose.

Annabelle plans to continue her potency-chart, even if it is probably going to be hard to concentrate on it. What does Christa (or actually Aire) plan to do with her morning?

Christa’s in complete control of herself, thank you very much! It just makes sense to do whatever Aire tells her to, when listening feels so good, and she lets Christa cum so nice.

Aire wants them to see about signing up for that stealthcraft class, it sounds interesting, and maybe useful after the whole bear scenario, or for the weird stuff she keeps picking up on. Maybe also watching that dance cohort if they’re rehearsing again today. Aire picked something up through Christa’s telepathy yesterday suggesting some of them might be a bit like her and Annabelle.

(She'll listen in for any more information about the possible tentacle cult, but doesn't feel she knows enough about how she stacks up there to risk involving herself on this little information)

What does Annabelle think of these ideas?

Annabelle doesn't see why not.

'Christa' can go find Miss Lavich and sign up for her next session, and then later they can go watch the dance cohort together. Annabelle tries not to think about what it could mean if the pretty dancing girls are... like that. It's a very distracting thought.

And so, off Christa goes to talk to Miss Lavich!

Miss Lavich can be found in the studio on the west side.

The woman is a giant. Eight feet tall, with an imposing presence, visible muscles, and huge breasts barely contained by a slinky black floor-length dress with detached sleeves. And four arms. There's a feeling that surrounds her. An air of power. Of alluring danger. A draw. A pull. An ominous gravity. Her mind is seemingly unshielded... but seems to be empty of thoughts beyond what she says or does.

If a woman such as this can go unnoticed, underestimated, dismissed, clearly her stealth and deception techniques are well worth learning.

When she sees 'Christa', Miss Lavich regards her for a long moment, smiling strangely, before waving her over. "What can I do for you, little Miss?"

“Um, hello Miss Lavich. I, um, recently had an unexpected encounter with a bear. And I was thinking of signing up for the next session in your stealthcraft class? If that would be okay?”

Aire is very sure that this woman is shielded and wielding that shield at least as well as Aire can. This is concerning. And so is that look on her face. Aire is used to that look being on her face.

"Quite, quite okay, my dear."

The huge four-armed woman glides across the floor of the studio to loom over 'Christa'. Her other students are various girls that Christa is vaguely familiar with at best. Almost half of them are... fuzzy, not quite shielded but illegible to telepathy.

Lavich produces a sign-up form, listing the lessons for sale and their prices.

"Today we are merely reviewing our experiences, aren't we, girls. Tomorrow, however, we shall be going out, to learn by doing. How do you feel about learning by doing, my dear?"

Christa feels an urge to squeak, but powers through!

“Um. It’s sort of scary when the thing I’m learning by doing is how to hide from a bear. But as long as we’re not starting with that, it sounds good!”

This is mostly true. Christa prefers books, all else equal, but she still enjoys learning things in a more hands-on way.

Aire, meanwhile, watches and waits. She feels uncomfortably observed here, like perhaps Lavich knows she’s there. She hopes her presence is overlapping enough with Christa’s not to be noticeable to telepathy.

Lucky for Aire that Lavich is not a telepath.

"Good to hear, good to hear. Why don't you sit nearby. You may turn in that form at the end of today's review, and in the meanwhile, catch a glimpse of what your money will get you, hm? You arrived just in time to see something interesting."

Lavich turns back to her other students.

"Gather 'round, girls."

She claps her hands... and a darkness descends over the studio, light attenuating despite not being obscured by anything, plunging the room into twilight. Then, in full color like it and it alone is still receiving natural light, a miniature diorama of the interior of what looks like some noble mansion forms out of mana and light.

Miniature copies of the girls in the room appear in the diorama, and Lavich starts narrating in her sultry voice, critiquing and suggesting, pointing out where, when, and how each girl failed to be entirely stealthy.

Christa watches, spellbound. This is such a good way to teach! And so cool! She's going to get to infiltrate a noble mansion! This is great. She's so glad Aire persuaded her to sign up.

Magic, then, in addition to the pure physical strength implied by that body. Aire isn’t exactly a combat powerhouse, herself. She’s more resilient than normal, regenerates, and could use Protect magic for shields. She can cast illusions herself, but doesn’t think she has the control to do so as well and as quickly as Lavich. And she could do some more esoteric stuff with Protect, Mind, or Sex magic. But her instincts tell her none of that would be enough. Lavich is dangerous.

Well, her first strategy was never combat, was it? If it comes to it, she’ll offer up her body for Lavich to use, and rely on her ability to entrance those over-exposed to her scent and the pleasures she offers. That, she thinks, is less likely to fail her.

The Illusion Magic replay and review continues, going through each of the girls in turn.

First one of the unshielded girls... then another... then another...

One by one, each of the girls with unshielded minds goes first. Not a single one of the shielded girls is reviewed before all of the unshielded girls are finished.

Nothing happens, nothing changes, when Lavich finally proceeds on to give the first of the shielded girls her turn. Except maybe the reviews getting shorter, simpler...

The girls who've already had their review start trickling out of the studio. One by one, they all leave. A few of the shielded girls leave too, but as Lavich completes the final review, all five of the girls who remain are both shielded... and maybe a little anticipatory.

As Lavich glides over to 'Christa', one of those five casually leans against the studio entrance archway, almost like a lookout.

"Intrigued, my dear? I presume you'll be joining us, since you're still here."

Christa is not the most observant person in the world, without her telepathy to lean on. She doesn’t pick up on anything besides the fact that the (Pretty! Tall! Sexy!) teacher is asking whether she ‘s still interested in signing up.

“I’ll definitely be joining you! It was all so interesting.”

She’s managing not to stare at Lavich’s breasts, but it’s taking noticeable effort, and her eyes are still flicking down occasionally.

Aire is paying more attention. She notices the pattern where the unshielded go first, notices that they’re all that’s left, and realizes one of the girls is playing lookout. Given how Lavich is acting this probably isn’t going to devolve into an attack on Aire. No, more likely this is a situation like the tentacle cult, and they're considering inducting 'innocent little Christa'. Not something she needs to interfere with.

The other four Sisters come up to flank Lavich on either side, forming a wall of red-and-silver-clad bodies that just so happens to trap 'Christa' against the wall of the studio. The four girls are all smiles, though. Fervent, inviting smiles with an edge of anticipatory glee behind them.

     "You'll love it with Miss Lavich."

     "What's your name?"

     "You're a cutie, huh."

     "You should join us!"

Lavich takes the signup form from 'Christa' and glances over it. Taps the promised-payment section with a mysterious smile.

Then two of her four hands descend to gently rest on Aire/Christa's shoulders. "I suspect I shall enjoy having you as a student, Miss Christa. You seem so eager to learn."

Christa is actually getting kind of excited! The last time someone looked at her like that it was Aire right before she let Christa feel as good as she liked. She’s not really consciously noticing that fact, but her heart rate is picking up and she’s blushing slightly.

She giggles at all the enthusiasm about having her present and let’s out a quick, “I’m Christa!” and, “Um, okay,” when she’s asked her name and told she should join up.

When Lavich’s hands rest on her shoulders she shivers slightly.

“I am! Um, eager to learn, I mean.” she squeaks out.

Lavich smiles at how receptively Christa is responding.

"That's good. I suspect I have so very much to teach you."

The hands on Christa's shoulders suddenly slip down to grip her under her arms, while Lavich's second set of hand firmly grasp Christa's hips. Lavich lifts the smaller girl off the floor with effortless strength and presses her up against the wall so they're eye to eye.

"I have a bit of wisdom to impart right this moment, in fact, and it will cost you only silence."

The four flanking Sisters move at some unseen signal, reaching up to grasp at Lavich's slinky floor-length dress and pull it down. It falls, rippling through the air until it is pooled around Lavich's feet, leaving the woman's massive breasts bare and her body nude. Lavich slowly moves in until her breasts are touching the wall, and Christa's torso is nestled between, surrounded and embraced by soft flesh. Something brushes against Christa's knees, and by something we mean the pair of huge but invisible cocks standing up from Lavich's groin.

"Be my good little whore," Lavich whispers kindly, hotly, teasingly, lips just barely touching Christa's face, "and I won't take a single gem from you for your stealth training either..."

Christa squeaks again when Lavich lifts her, and waits, frozen, for her to speak. She’s feeling fear, but also something else. Something nice.

The sight of Lavich's dress coming off leaves Christa stunned. Those tits. So perfect. So big. She can’t look away. And then, so gradually, she’s trapped, pressed up against the wall and between them.

When Lavich’s lips sounds out the word “whore” against her face, Christa lets her cock out of it's sheathe, forming a noticeable bulge in her shorts. She can’t help herself. She hopes that thing brushing between her legs is what she thinks it is.

“Um. Okay.”

"What a good girl... I had a feeling about you the moment you walked in, little Christa. I knew you were just waiting to be mine."

The invisibility illusion dispels, revealing the pair of massive cocks jutting up and pointed between Christa's legs, though Christa herself can't see over Lavich's boobs and can only see the cocks reflected in the mirrors off to the side.

     "Do it, my lady," one of the flanking girls urges. "Show this wanton soul your glory."

     "Take her, show her, make her understand," another breathes.

     "Look at that," a third whispers covetously, peering into the space just below Lavich's boobs. "She's a genderfreak. She'll only be safe with us."

Lavich casts a new illusion, this one of an empty studio, to hide everything happening from anyone who happens to pass by.

Then, she pulls away from the wall and turns around, holding Christa out in the air. "Strip her."

Lavich's followers eagerly seize on Christa's clothes, pawing at and groping her body all over as they yank her shorts and underwear off and then peel Christa's shirt and vest away, Lavich shifting her grip to hold Christa around the waist and by each thigh.

"You may disrobe as well," Lavich adds, and the girls who aren't busy stripping Christa eagerly take off their own uniforms.

All four---no five, the lookout is getting naked too---all five girls reveal a hard throbbing cock, jutting up from their crotches. Three of them also have pussies, while the other two don't.

When Lavich’s cocks are revealed Christa turns her head to the side to look into the mirror and stares. She wants them. And then hands, hands all over her, pawing at her, groping her oh so sweetly. She loves it. She jerks slightly in Lavich’s arms and rubs her cock up against her each time a hand brushes her in a particularly sensitive area.

Suddenly everyone else is naked too. Christa pants. So much naked flesh. So many cocks. She has the sudden desire to watch them all cum. To feel them cum. She wants to fuck all of those pussies, one after the other.

But more than anything else, she wants the two cocks between her thighs. Oh, if she wiggles just right, can she get Lavich to put them in? She wants them.

Once they’re naked, Aire’s pheromones seep out into the room, arousing and eroding inhibitions. Not that both of those weren't already pretty well taken care of.

Those pheromones are definitely trying to flip a switch that is already thoroughly jammed in the 'on' position, yeah.

"I find your lack of reluctance impressive, little Christa."

Lavich casts a Sex Magic spell, her mana slithering into Christa's guts and oozing around her pussy and ass. Then, for a moment, Christa is weightless, as Lavich tosses her up in the air to spin her around.

Lavich doesn't catch Christa on the way down. As soon as Christa is facing away from her, she grabs Christa's hips again and slams her down harder than gravity onto both cocks at once, her massive meat pillars spearing into Christa's body, stretching both her pussy and ass to and beyond capacity, filling Christa's entire torso with cock.

It doesn't hurt. It feels like it should hurt. Under the much stronger impact of transcendental pleasure, like she's just been pushed off the cliff and is falling into an ocean of orgasm but is still in breathless free-fall before the eruption, it feels like all of her internal organs have just been pulverized. But there's no pain, and her organs continue to function even so squished, protected by Lavich's Master-level Sex Magic.

Then, just as her acceleration toward climactic ecstatic eruption is about to crash over her, Christa feels something else. Something flexes in both of Lavich's cocks, and a thick knot suddenly punches outward, swelling to twice the girth of Lavich's shafts, one deep, deep within Christa's pussy at the tip of Lavich's lower cock, crushing her womb into her ribs. Another, just inside Christa's ass, at the base of Lavich's upper cock, locking her hole in place.

Lavich lets go of Christa's hips, leaving the girl suspended in mid-air by nothing but cock, right as Christa's orgasm erupts.

She's never actually had something inside her, since she got Aire. Even if Lavich didn’t have such utterly massive cocks, she’d be nearly insensate with pleasure.

With those two massive cocks, she can’t control herself at all. No, instead her hips attempt to jerk forward before she's stopped by Lavich's knots and she sprays cum all over the floor in front of her. Her orgasm just keeps going, not that she has the presence of mind to notice this. No, instead all her mind bothers to feel is, as each clench around Lavich’s cocks and each spurt of cum comes to an end, a sense of giddy anticipation of more. And then the next clench begins, and the next thick rope of cum spurts out, and it starts all over again.

Christa is two clenching holes and a spurting cock.

Aire grabs just enough control of their body to channel Christa’s helpless jerking into something specially designed to feel as good as possible for Lavich, not that she has much ability to direct things, impaled as she is. Lavich is probably noticing right around now that Aire’s orifices feel far better than she’s used to from her students, very nearly as good as it's possible to get without enhancing the pleasure with Sex Magic directly.

Basking in the pleasure of the one of the better orgasms she’s felt, she doesn’t bother to control her lust aura and it unfurls to fill the room. As her pheromones taint the air and her lust aura caresses everyone's minds, Aire is pleased.

She wants more. She wants to take all of these lovely students of Lavich's and make them cum themselves silly. She wants to make Lavich cum herself silly.

Lavich's followers all stroke their cocks as they watch 'Christa' have all that hot gooey cum fucked right out of her, watching eagerly as Christa's cock helplessly spasms and spurts.

A chorus of eager gasps echo through the studio at the feel of the lust aura. They recognize this. Lavich reaches down and catches one of Christa's spurts, getting a palm-full of cum. She takes a small lick, then smiles and flicks a few droplets at her followers. The four girls in front of her light up in excitement. They recognize the aphrodisiac too. How could they not when their demonic goddess grants the same blessing?

"Oh my," Lavich says, still sounding composed even as she groans in pleasure and her cocks twitch powerfully, making Christa bobble in the air. "You naughty girl. Mine is not the first corrupting touch to caress you, is it. You come to us already... blessed."

     "Miss Lavich, Miss Lavich, may we, may we?"

"Yes, my dears. Drink."

Lavich grabs Christa's hair, and pulls, until the cute girl's spurting cock is pointed forward more than down. The first of her follower's dives forward and wraps her lips around Christa's cockhead, both hands wrapping around the girl's shaft and stroking madly as she swallows spurt after spurt of hot aphrodisiac. Then she moves aside and the next girl latches on and sucks, drinking eagerly. Then the next, then the next, then the first one again.

Inside Christa's pussy, Lavich's lower cock flexes again, and the swollen knot crushing her womb suddenly rolls down the length of Lavich's shaft, stretching her already-stretched walls until it bumps up against the ass-knot through her inner walls. Then the knot in her pussy reverses course, driving back out to the tip of Lavich's cock. The knot keeps going, rolling up and down Lavich's length, like Christa is getting fist-fucked while also already being stuffed full of giant penis.

Christa floats in the pleasure of a never-ending orgasm, the sights and sensations taking up so much of her mind she barely has space for anything else.

A hand in her hair. Spurting forward, and spraying cum onto the approaching face of one of Lavich’s students. Hot wet mouths suckling at her cockhead, one after the other. Hands stroking. A thick knot moving up and down in her cunt.

She’s in paradise.

Aire’s getting off more than a little on all of these people intentionally imbibing her aphrodisiacs. The more they drink the less in control of themselves they’ll get. It’s a shame Lavich only took that one handful.

They don't want to be in control of themselves. At least, not those parts. But they all have experience. They've all built up a tolerance. None of them fight the lust, they ride it like a wave, and hold onto a semblance of sanity, if only to better-appreciate what they're being made to feel.

Once all of her followers have had their fill, Lavich releases Christa's hair, leaving her once more suspended in the air by nothing but cock. Twitching cock. Throbbing, pulsing, spurting cock, pumping a flood of aphrodisiac cum deep into Christa's holes. Lavich smirks, making a sound of deep relish.

     "Poor thing. Mindbroken already?"

     "She's so weak."

     "The little sweetheart really does need our guidance."

One of the followers grabs Christa's face and pulls it down, down, down to meet the follower's own cock. The new angle tugs on the knot in Christa's ass, pulling against the ring of her muscle to hold her in place. The follower thrusts into Christa's mouth, violating her throat and cumming instantly into Christa's stomach, her own cum aphrodisiacal as well.

Five sinuous tongues slither out of Lavich's mouth even as the huge woman continues to ejaculate. One goes to lick up Christa's spine and then wrap around the girl's neck to lightly choke her. The other four wrap around the remaining four cocks in the room, coiling around their lengths and stroking, milking out their cum to spurt it all over Christa from every direction.

When they stop sucking her off one after the other, her orgasm starts to taper off, and something of herself emerges, a bit.

And then Lavich starts to cum, and that rather stops being the case as the flexing of Lavich’s cocks and the knowledge of what exactly that means sets her off all over again. She happily goes back to spurting all over the ground.

A tiny little voice in the back of her head pipes up when they say she’s mindbroken to giddily think that actually she can cum lots more before she completely conks out. This thought manages to last an entire quarter second before being blown away by the urgent, renewed need to orgasm more being inflicted on her by Lavich’s aphrodisiac cum.

And then everything dissolves into the bliss of squeezing around those perfect cocks and cumming onto the floor. When a cock is forced into her mouth it’s just one more form of stimulation.

And then she’s covered in aphrodisiacs, they’re soaking into her from inside and out, and her orgasm just keeps getting better and better and better.

That composure in Lavich’s voice is concerning. Aire doesn’t actually have a way to turn things up past this without her until now unused sex magic. She rather doubts the same is true for Lavich. Well, it’s not like she’s getting fucked silly here, she can take it, even if Christa can’t.

Oh fuck, all that aphrodisiac is good. It’s like the times she really got into it in her cave, stroking away a week in fantasies of escape and mindbreak, except now she has company. She lets herself sink down pleasantly into the bliss of orgasm.

At some point aphrodisiac reaches saturation, and more volume doesn't have any additional effect. At that point, the constant mind-numbing orgasms can actually outpace the buildup of lust, and why wouldn't you cum harder, if you could.

Lavich is far from done, but she'll need Christa conscious for what she's in the mood for next.

Her cocks flex, and both knots deflate, leaving her shafts smooth. Christa slides forward, propelled by a deluge of cum oozing out both of her holes and pushing her off Lavich's cocks to plop onto the floor in a small lake of white goo, face-down-ass-up and surrounded by dickgirls being gently jerked off by prehensile tongues, groping each other as they cum.

Oh good, Aire was actually becoming somewhat worried that this would lead to Christa losing enough of herself not to be useful for multiple days. Hot as that would be, this level of mindbreak is enough to temporarily satiate her, and she can slake her lust for a better version on people whose minds she doesn’t need intact.

Once she actually learns how to that.

Christa manages to pull herself together enough to position herself on her knees looking up at Lavich surprisingly quickly! It only takes her most of a minute! Well. Most of a minute after she’s finished helplessly cumming onto the floor, making the lake ever so slightly larger. But that doesn't even last that long! A few last spurts is all!

Once the last spurts stop and Christa raises her head, Lavich isn't there to look up at.

Christa is sitting in her pool of cum, on a paving stone set among the neatly trimmed grass of the parkland surrounding Library Gemini, with the sun shining down on her and her bare cum-soak body completely exposed to the dozens of Collegiate standing around staring at her. She's on the boy's side of the park, and the thin crowd is more male than female.

A lot of them seem to be pointing at her and muttering things to each other in a disgusted tone.

This manages to shake her into something resembling normal functioning!

Well, this is terrible. She's not going to keep things a secret at all if this is how Lavich ends it. Really, it's what she should expect someone to do if you drop them off, all covered in cum in the middle of a park.

And then all the aphrodisiacs in her system get the better of her.

This is sort of hot, isn't it? The way everyone can see? Her cock twitches.

Surely they couldn't blame her if she gave herself a few strokes. Just to help her get her bearings. She's so horny after all.

And it's not her fault. She's covered in aphrodisiacs.

She shakes her head. No! No need to make things worse!

She stands up to go find the nearest restroom to hide in, barely able to keep her hands in front of instead of around her cock.

Well, that whole "normal functioning" thing didn't last very long at all, did it?

This is obviously an illusion. But she’ll let Christa figure that out for herself. She’s honestly curious whether she ever will.

The muttering gets worse as she strokes herself. One of the watching girls stalks forward.

As soon as Christa tries to stand, that same girl steps into the puddle of cum with a goopy splash and gives Christa an angry shove.

Christa's naked, cum-soaked body falls against something behind her. It feels like metal, but oddly textureless and neutral in temperature. Like a spring-loaded trap, her off-balance collision moves and triggers some mechanism that causes (oddly smooth and texturless) leather straps to spring out and snap closed around Christa's wrists and ankles. A second later, the straps retract, hard, stringing Christa up against the X-shaped metal frame, pulling her limbs out in all directions.

More straps spring over her body, then cinch themselves tight against the frame, pinning Christa's lewd body on display like a butterfly. Straps for her upper and lower arms, upper and lower legs, hips, waist, chest above and below her boobs, her neck, and one strap even pulls tight over her mouth.

The girl who pushed her is nowhere to be seen, once the trap has finished springing, but the rest of the crowd's muttering has gone from disgusted to amused and mocking.

Christa's immediate reaction is mostly to feel surprised and incredibly embarrassed.

Her cock doesn't get the memo.

It's jutting out from her body, rock hard and twitching.

And her more complicated emotions can only block the way for so long on so long in the face of that need. 

She wants it touched, she wants it stroked, she wants it buried inside a tight wet pussy and spurting.

She should have stroked herself more while she had the chance.

The crowd closes in around her, pointing at her twitching cock derisively.

They spit on Christa in disgust.

Every last glob of spit lands directly on her cock, hot and gooey and sending tingly waves of needy ache coursing through her loins.

She's so horny. Oh, she wants more. Who cares if they're doing it because she's gross, she wants to cum.

Oh, soon, just a bit more and she's sure she'll cum.

She doesn't cum. Not yet.

The crowd ignores her cock, now, as they crowd in around the metal frame she's strapped to. Their hands roam over every bit of the rest of her, though, stroking her abdomen and mauling her breasts and squeezing her arms and thighs and tugging on her nipples and fondling her pussy and kneading her ass... taking her right up to the edge, but not enough to push her over, not quite, and she's strapped in too tightly to help herself along in any way at all.

What will Christa do, if this just continues for a while?

She's somehow floating at this shockingly pleasant place just before an orgasm. Normally when she edges herself, she manages to find some strange mental state where she doesn't really care that much that she isn't cumming, and just basks in the pleasure. The aphrodisiacs are preventing that this time, causing a building, flaring urge to cum. She spends a while dreamily thinking, "more, please, yes, more, so nice," nearly on repeat before the fact that she still hasn't cum manages to penetrate her the warm glow of lust and pleasure.

(In the back of her mind, fleetingly before it's overcome by lust, is a thought. These people obviously don't actually find her disgusting if they're groping her like that. They were just pretending. She's so glad! She didn't like thinking people thought she was gross!)

She helplessly tries to rub back against their hands but doesn't have the freedom of movement. She tries forcing out an orgasm by clenching the muscles at the base of her cock over and over but that doesn't work either.

She really wants to cum. Maybe if she begs? She works her mouth out from behind the strap over it.

"Can I cum? Please? I want to. Please make me cum!"

A few of the crowd confer in conspiratorial whispers.

Someone chants out, "Fiichirr pretkenva."

A set of ghostly female hips appears in the air, tinged green and rippling with eddies of Air-element Mana. The air mage turns the set of hips around bringing its ghostly pussy to the tip of Christa's throbbing dick. Carefully, oh so carefully, the air mage slides the construct onto Christa's cock, moving so slow, until finally the ghostly butt is pressed against Christa's hips. It feels... almost exactly like a balloon or other inflatable toy, the squish of air-pressure giving it form.

"Ront."

The ghostly inflatable masturbation toy locks in place.

Hot breath hisses in her ear, "Make yourself cum, slut."

But she can't. With the construct of an inflatable fucktoy wrapped around her cock, one tiny thrust would be enough to make her erupt, but she can't manage even one tiny thrust: the straps are too tight. The crowd disperses, leaving her alone in the park to struggle.

No, no, she was going to cum! Just a bit more! 

Aire! Aire! Please help her cum!

No.

But she wants to. Doesn't she understand, she so horny. Please.

No response.

She looks around. There's nobody there! But she can't turn her head. Maybe there's someone behind her? 

"Annabelle, please!"

Nothing.

And then an idea. Maybe Miss Lavich left her here because she thought it would be hot? Maybe she's watching.

"Miss Lavich? Are you there? Please I want to cum so bad! I need it!"

When she calls out to Miss Lavich, the sun fades out of the sky. It doesn't get any darker, but the blue sky of day is replaced with swirling prismatic streams of tentacle-stars.

The shift in light reveals a figure, a massively tall woman with four arms and two cocks and pallid grey skin, standing naked before her. She reaches down and cups Christa's cheek.

"I'm here, little Christa. I'm here. I'll take care of you."

Lavich swipes her hand. The inflatable fucktoy construct gently pops, releasing Christa's dick, and then the metal frame suddenly launches itself backward, rocking Christa onto her back. Once the frame settles in its new position, Christa is face-up, her desperate cock pointed at the starry sky like she's about to fuck the spiral vortex of tentacle stars above.

Lavich steps up, placing a leg on either side of the frame. She faces away from Christa, glancing over her shoulder at the tightly-bound girl, before smoothly squatting down.

Christa's cock sinks into Lavich's ass, finding a slick sheath of tight, smooth flesh that wraps around and embraces her cock. Her huge firm butt engulfs Christa's hips as she sinks down all the way and clenches.

She's close enough to the edge that the knowledge that she's finally going to get to cum is almost enough to push her over all on its own. Her cock twitches and jumps at the prospect of getting to be inside Lavich. She's so grateful.

Her orgasm starts to bubble up as soon as her cockhead begins to sink inside. And then Lavich clenches, and it's here. Finally, finally, it's here. Even better than all of the others for how long she's been waiting. Her cock spurts over and over, each time accompanied by another gooey pulse of perfect pleasure.

Lavich swivels and rocks her hips, wriggles and bounces her ass, milking Christa's dick with her hole as her body looms over the strapped-in girl in the brilliant starlight.

And she keeps cumming, spurting again with each drop of Lavich's hips.

She's so happy Lavich is here to make her cum.

Eventually, when Christa comes back to awareness again, she's back in the studio, like she never left. The frame she's strapped to is the ghostly blue-white of a mana construct, not metal at all, and the straps themselves are gone. Her cock is still deep inside Lavich, the huge woman still sitting on Christa's hips. Her five followers are draped over Lavich, watching Christa warmly as they fondle and stroke Lavich's cocks.

Oh. An illusion. That probably should have been obvious.

"So it wasn't real then?"

Relief, but a tiny fragment of disappointment. There was something nice about the world where the thing people did if they found you in a puddle of cum in a park was tease you, grope you, and only spit on you in ways that made you feel good. It's nicer if things only have lewd consequences, instead of life ruining ones.

Isn't it just.

"It was real to you, when you called out for salvation and received my graces."

Lavich slowly stands, rising off of Christa's cock. She pivots gracefully on one foot to stand beside the frame instead of over it.

Keeping her eyes on Christa, Lavich crouches down to touch the floor with her fingertips. A wave of creeping, purplish darkness spreads out from her, spreading under the pools of cooling cum. Then, she stands, and the sheet of purplish black mana rises with her, curling into a ball to contain the mass of liquid.

The floor is dry. A purple-black ball containing enough cum that it probably outweighs Christa hovers in the middle of the studio.

Then, Lavich clenches her fist. The orb suddenly and violently shrinks until the cum is filling every bit of the sphere, then it keeps shrinking, a soft but kind of awful screeching-sizzling sound, purple-black smoke misting off the surface of the sphere. Slowly, the sphere shrinks to nothing, and is gone, with no trace of the Christa-sized mass of semen remaining.

"So, my dear, have we learned anything valuable today?"

Sometimes people have two penises, and this turns out to be a very good thing.

That’s too silly to say out loud.

She doesn’t quite manage to hide the fact that she just thought something very silly and then heroically refrained from saying it, but she doesn’t say it, and that’s the important part!

“Miss Lavich is really nice and will, um, take care of me if I need it? Even if no one else will?”

That seems like the thing she was trying to tell her, with the illusions and all the sex and being the only person there at the end to let her cum. She’s not sure though.

And there's hope there, underlying the words. She doesn’t want this to be something Lavich did to her for momentary relief of lust and with no care for anything else. That would be sad. She’s not sure why, but she knows it would be.

As the followers help Christa stand up, Lavich comes over and pats Christa on the head.

"Something like that."

Lavich snaps her fingers, and her followers scramble to gather up everyone's clothes and return them to the correct person. Two of them entirely prioritize draping Lavich's slinky black dress once more upon her imposing body.

"I shall enjoy teaching you, tomorrow. Even should that lesson prove less... pleasurable."

Christa's looking forward to it!

But, first, before it is tomorrow it is the rest of today. What time is it, has she missed the dance cohort, or has she somehow missed her evening Astrology session? She, uh, rather lost track of things there.

It's been about three hours.

Christa has just enough time to grab a snack for herself and Annabelle before she meets her friend at the dance hall.

Well, that was a more than slightly nerve-wracking experience. Fortunately, it seems to be over, and without real risk of her discovery at that. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy it; watching Christa get pushed over into that barely thinking state was a very enjoyable use of her time. It’s just that she felt a heartbeat away from being discovered for most of it, and she isn’t actually comfortable taking a risk like that just yet.

She’s not entirely sure what Lavich’s game is, but she rather doubts she’s as kind to her pets as she’s portraying herself to be.

Off she goes to retrieve snacks! Snacks are of the utmost importance!

It’s sort of sad she can’t tell Annabelle about this, but Lavich was clear about keeping things a secret. It’s just like with her telepathy; even if she knows Annabelle wouldn’t react poorly, that isn’t her choice to make.

There is the bit where she had sex with someone else. Rather a lot of someone elses. From Annabelle’s thoughts she doesn’t think that would make her sad, it’s probably more likely to make her. Um. Excited. But she doesn’t want to keep secrets from her friend! And what if she’s wrong!?

Maybe she can try to get permission to tell her friend from Lavich tomorrow? Not about all the mutations, but just about the having sex bit.

Once she has her snacks she bustles off to meet back up with Annabelle.

Annabelle is there as expected, with a shy smile and a hug.

It's a semi-open space, with the dance hall at one end. The dancers are used to being watched, and Christa and Annabelle aren't the only ones watching. It's a popular spot to hang out, especially when they have a visitor from the boy's castle to provide music. There's a boy here today, meek-looking and playing a cello.

Made obvious by the contrast: some of the dancers are rather focused on the boy, and frustrated at how little attention he seems to be paying them. Others are glad the boy isn't being annoying, and are quite focused on each other.

Hug! Hugs are good!

Well, that’s more gay thoughts than she’s used to hearing!

Nothing that looks more interesting than that though, or not just yet. Do any of the dancers have any more focused thoughts than that, or is this a considerably more innocent group than Lavich’s turned out to be?

Mostly innocent... some telepathic shielding... more no-boys-allowed sentiment... fantasy about dancing naked...

There are hints of something else, the longer she listens. Surges of sensation or emotion at odd times, about seemingly random things, and a sense of something watching, a sense of something more telepathic than Christa, turning its attention toward her... but it doesn't seem to be coming from anyone or anywhere in particular, and its faint enough she could be imagining it.

Christa diligently attempts to ignore all the sexy thoughts! She is partially successful, but still getting a little hot and bothered as the remembered sensations get to her, just a little.

Aire has been right often enough about things being weird today not to second guess her sense that something’s telepathically watching Christa. All the odd surges of thought just reinforce that.

Aire herself is shielded, and coterminous with Christa, that sweeping probably won’t notice her. If she understands how telepathy works. Which she maybe doesn’t, because she has decades of memories of a cave and three days of memories of the outside world, and no experience with telepathy broader ranging than what she gets with her hosts or stronger than what Christa has.

Well, at least her shields are strong enough that just about nothing should get through them. Even if this presence notices she’s there, that’s all it should notice.

And Christa is a sweet little innocent easily manipulable to all sorts of ends. She couldn’t possibly be listening for nefarious reasons.

If the presence notices Aire, it gives no sign. It also gives no sign that it hasn't notice, but.

As snacks are eaten the music winds down. The boy switches to a different song, and the dancers take a break.

The boy is thinking... mostly he isn't thinking about anything but the cello. He's sort of distantly aware of all the gorgeous femininity around him, but isn't even bothering to look at it. He's playing the cello because he was told to play the cello and no one's told him to stop so he might as well keep playing even though they're not dancing anymore.

Christa mostly thinks that that boy’s ability to focus on his cello is honestly pretty impressive. She certainly isn’t managing to focus on anything besides all those cute girls for very long. There’s so many of them and they’re all wearing skirts. Admittedly they’re wearing leotards underneath, but those leotards are tight. 

And Aire stays still and quiet, hoping to fade out of Christa’s thoughts entirely as she’s distracted by all the pretty women. She doesn't quite succeed, Christa still has the occasional vague thought referencing 'Aire', but she doesn't explicitly think about 'Aire' being living clothes.

The feeling of being watched may or may not follow them for the rest of the day. It's hard to tell.

But, nothing obvious comes of it, nothing unusual happens, and at the end of the day Christa and Annabelle can head home together like usual.

Aire manages to resist the urge to make them both so horny they decide to go fuck in an alleyway. It would be hot, but honestly it’s just not worth the risk.

Which means Christa is the one making most of the decisions! Mostly sanely, even! But. Aire’s body makes her at least a bit horny all the time. By the time they get back to their flat it’s been hours since her last orgasm.

As soon as their door closes, she turns to Annabelle and squeaks out, “Um. Do you. Wanna have sex again?”

Annabelle nods shyly but eagerly.

"I've been thinking about it all day."

She blushes and starts stripping out of her uniform.

Christa is mostly beyond blushing with embarrassment at this point! She can hear how much Annabelle wants her, which really helps with that. That’s not to say she isn’t blushing at all though. Just. For horny reasons instead.

Christa strips fast, nearly leaping out of her clothes. She's excited. And a little impatient, she's been looking forward to this too. But she can wait if Annabelle needs her to!

Annabelle does not need her to wait.

She giggles giddily as their nude bodies meet, and this time she isn't twisted up inside about being a deviant; that ship has already sailed, so all that's left is doing what feels good with her friend.

Probably, though, they should not push things by missing sleep two nights in a row.

This is wise! And for some reason she actually has the self-control to stop herself this time! Weird.

Actually, Aire's just hiding from what she's pretty sure is a watching telepathic presence, so she doesn't do anything foolish like ramp up her lust aura and drive them insensate with arousal. She wants to, of course, that's most of the fun of sex. But she already got to watch and participate in driving Christa to that point once today. She's satisfied enough not to take the risk.

While they sleep, she watches and waits to see if anything comes of that thing she's mostly sure she's actually sensing.

The night passes, and nothing comes of it.

Aire definitely isn't being observed by a mysterious telepathic entity on behalf of a cult or anything.

When nothing continues to come of it, she starts to think that maybe she was wrong. She’ll stay a bit less overt for the next few days until she can be sure, she thinks, but not restrict herself to taking literally no actions.

Christa is blissfully unaware of any of Aire’s suspicions! She’s just excited about getting to start in Miss Lavich’s class today!

As they walk to Library Gemini, Annabelle is actually kind of excited too.

"They really infiltrated a noble mansion? That's so crazy. What do you think you'll be doing this time? You'll tell me all about it, won't you?"

“I think they probably had permission? But yes, they did! I don’t know what we’ll be doing but I hope it’s just as interesting! And of course I’ll tell you everything I can! But maybe we will be infiltrating another noble mansion and this time they will say, “sure, you can do this, but don’t tell anyone I own six hundred erotic novels” and then I will not tell you about the erotic novels.”

Annabelle bursts into giggles and gives Christa another hug.

The two of them have another short session with the herblore witch, and then...

It's time to see Miss Lavich again.

And off she goes! Maybe a little bit blushy about her memories of yesterday. But she's new, everyone will just think she's nervous.

Well, everyone except the five of Lavich's followers who know better, who catch Christa's eye and smile.

Lavich sweeps into the room and glides to a spot by the mirrors. She also catches Christa's eye for a bare instant.

"Be welcome. If you're here, you've signed up to participate in an exercise in the art of deception and evasion. I will be your guide as you challenge your cleverness, your dexterity, your skill. Today, you shall be testing yourself against this."

With an elegant gesture, Lavich begins casting a scale-model illusion.

Christa watches closely, trying to memorize as much of the unfolding shape as she can. 

Aire, I think you're smarter than me, could you help with remembering this?

Oh sure, why not. She'll be memorizing it herself anyway, and it's not like it costs her anything.

The model that appears is about the size of a housecat, but it depicts a full-grown dragon with dark red scales. On closer examination, something is wrong with this dragon. It's body is lumpy, misshapen, and most conspicuously has wriggling tentacles poking out of its eye-sockets and no eyes. It flares its wings and silently roars.

"The scenario is thus: One of our fine nation's decorated war-mounts has been infected with unspecified tentacle worms and driven mad with lust."

The illusory model dragon shrinks, revealing its surroundings as Lavich conjures the backdrop of her scenario. A large military palace with high walls dividing it into various indoor and outdoor training yards and other facilities.

"You are delivering potions to the quartermaster here."

A small figure appears in one of the yards.

"The corrupted dragon flies over and catches your fertile scent."

The model dragon swoops over the model palace.

"Without hesitation, the beast will attempt to capture you, mate with you, and impregnate you with corrupted dragonkin."

     One of Lavich's followers giggles under her breath. "Sounds like fun."

A couple of the other students give her disgusted looks. Lavich merely shoots her a quelling smile, before continuing.

"You are challenged to avoid this fate and send the dragon on its way however you can. Your resources are yourself, your own abilities, and anything that isn't nailed down within the palace complex to which we shall travel presently. Questions?"

“Um, is this actually happening with an actual corrupted dragon or is it just a training exercise with an illusion dragon?”

She’s mostly asking because she wants to know if messing up too much might result in a quartermaster not getting potions that they need. But also a little bit because she wants to know if maybe she’ll be participating in lewd actions with a dragon if she fails.

"We'll be borrowing a Dragoon-trainee and his young but very well-behaved dragon. The corruption will be an illusion. The dragon will be playing pretend."

Well, mostly pretend. Even entirely sane and untainted dragons still get horny and still find human girls appealing sometimes. And Lavich happens to have discovered that this dragon's rider has trouble arranging for his dragon to have an outlet. It'll be a fun challenge, covering it up should an 'accident' occur.

Christa nods determinedly. She will do her best!

Her immediate first plan is to find something relatively impenetrable to air to block her scent and try to stick close to places where she can run through doors too small for the dragon to enter. Sticking inside the entire time besides the part where she delivers the potions would be best, but since that’s so obvious probably there’s something about the route they have to take preventing that.

Or the dragon is fast enough, has good enough senses, and the yard is big enough that she won’t be able to solve the problem just by running very fast with a mostly-blocked scent and staying inside the rest of the time.

It’s that second one, isn’t it.

While certain cute little whores are pondering things, Lavich fields a couple more questions from her other students.

     "Are we delivering real potions?"

"No."

     "Can we hide before the dragon gets there?"

"The scenario is such that the dragon arrives without warning. It is a surprise rape-dragon. Not a planned rape-dragon. As such I will be assigning your start locations, and preparing the environment in advance will not be allowed."

Okay, Christa's definitely going to try to find a tarp or something to keep her scent mostly contained, there should be something like that in a military palace that large, the only issue is finding it. She's usually a fan of the fact that their uniforms are somewhat breathable, but now it's a handicap. Have any of the other girls done something clever and brought along different clothes to change into, in retrospect she probably should have done something like that; red is a color that's very hard to hide.

She doesn't want to rely on Aire too much to help her plan here, although she will want Aire to, like, keep Lavich's illusion in mind and feed Christa an ongoing mental map of the area, Christa can have a bit of trouble with stuff like that.

Yes yes, she can do that just fine.

Changing into different clothes is not allowed. That would be advance preparation and not in the spirit of the exercise. Lucky for Christa, one of the other girls has the same idea and Lavich shoots her down.

Lavich leads the class out of the studio, out of the castle, and across the parkland of Library Gemini. At the entrance, they're met by Ser Kalar, who does a manful job of not looking intimidated by Lavich even though he is totally intimidated by Lavich.

The knight escorts them through the city to the carriages.

Knights! Carriages! A military palace and a dangerous delivery mission and a dragon. This is all so exciting!

After a short ride, the class arrives at their destination.

It is an older military palace complex, with squat roofs and a labyrinthine interior. It doesn't appear to actually be currently in use by any active operations, but there is a skeleton crew of Guardian Dolls to let them in and to pose as the quartermaster. Anything of value was cleared out, though the rooms and yards aren't bare; they still contain old equipment, furniture, and various surplus that got left behind.

The main building is several stories high, with a spacious balcony the rest class can use to observe each turn with the dragon.

Speaking of the dragon.

A shape of leathery wings and dark red scales soars over head. It banks, circling around them before gliding down to land on that very balcony. It's huge, up close, but still smaller than expected, not being quite full-grown yet. The flesh beneath the scales is white, and the leathery membranes of its wings are pink.

It sniffs curiously at the class, pausing on 'Christa' for a moment with narrowed reptilian eyes, before sitting itself upright on its haunches to look down at them majestically.

The dragon's neck twists, as it plucks a human boy off its back and sets him down on the balcony in front of it.

It's the same boy who was playing the cello yesterday. He's wearing the form-fitting red and silver Dragoon-trainee uniform, this time, though, rather than the musician variant. He glances up at them, briefly, before letting his eyes fall back to the floor.

He doesn't say anything, but he reaches up to pat his dragon's jaw.

This continues to be incredibly awesome! A dragon stared at her! A boy is patting a dragon right in front of her. The cello boy who was very good at not being distracted by all the pretty girls, even. She’d already thought he was impressive just for that and his cello skills, but apparently, he also rides a dragon!

But! She must focus on more things that just that! Does the various discarded surplus happen to include tarps? She rather hopes it includes tarps! At the moment she has no other viable plans!

There might be a tarp in one of those storage lockers, but there do not appear to be any tarps out and visible from the balcony.

Christa's fellow Sisters are pretty evenly split between assessing the arena and cooing at the dragon. (Most are doing both.)

"Yes, go on, pet the dragon. Take a moment to indulge yourselves and let it learn who you are."

Lavich waits a decorous length of time to allow the girls to get it out of their system, then begins weaving an Illusion.

The boy's blood-dragon bulks up as she weaves additional heft onto its body. Its coloration shifts to become pallid and engorged. Illusory tentacles sprout from its eyes. And, with a subtle Sex spell, its genuine draconic cock spurts out of its sheath and bobbles firmly in the air.

A couple of the girls who are closest yelp and jump back, giggling nervously.

"You'll be going one at a time, my dears. Gather 'round and we'll draw lots to determine when you'll get your turn."

She got to pet a dragon!

No, focused, determined Christa is what is required here, not happy giddy Christa!

She really hopes there are tarps in those storage lockers. Maybe if there are old uniforms she could try layering a few of them to keep her scent trapped within?

She steps forward to draw lots.

It turns out to be pretty boring, waiting for her turn.

Lavich uses illusions to obscure the details of each attempt, so the Sisters can't cheat off of each other.

Some attempts are over very quickly. Other attempts drag-on for a while. One girl gets very quietly scolded by Alard for injuring his dragon. Thankfully, blood dragons have natural regeneration. Another girl comes back blushing and flustered and mortified, with Alard quietly scolding the dragon, for getting a little carried away. (Lavich smirks to herself, even if it was only a close-call.)

Christa's turn comes up.

Christa is directed down to one of the open yards, instructed to stand in front of the Guardian Doll posing as the quartermaster, holding this crate of empty bottles. She is to wait and do nothing until the dragon dives at her.

Her plan is to use Aire's mental map of the palace to immediately dash for the entrance to the palace closest to a door smaller than it can fit through, not all of them can be dragon size, lose it as best she can, and then see if any of those lockers contain tarps, or anything else usable for blocking her scent if that isn't enough.

She waits patiently for the dragon to dive.

Shortly, a tentacle-infected dragon comes swooping down out of the sky.

It pounces from mid-air, reaching out with its claws as it descends in an attempt to knock Christa over!

Christa dodges as best she can!

Her abilities there are entirely unenhanced by natural skill, mutation, or practice, so she's not the best at it, but she was prepared.

It may be a surprise rape-dragon but it is not itself a stealthy surprise rape-dragon.

It hits the ground, bending its legs before hopping forward a few times to bleed off momentum, its claws scraping and its wings flailing as it struggles to turn around. Christa has plenty of time to pick a direction and start running.

There's guaranteed to be a shortest path to a door too small for a dragon, and she has Aire's strong memorization skills to guide her on the matter of what exactly that path is. She starts running and follows it.

The dragon bounds and flaps after her.

It's fast!

Running in a straight line, she can't keep out of reach long enough to reach the door in the next yard over that's too small for a dragon. She'll have to dodge again if she doesn't want to get pounced-on.

She can hear it behind her. She dodges to the left. Maybe she can zig and zag around enough to keep going generally doorward without being caught?

She makes it to the door!

The dragon skids to a stop, making a whining sound as it looks around. It peers into the interior space through the slats and windows on the next wall over.

Christa is now in a barracks, with several rusty bedframes and a couple of moldy old footlockers.

The dragon can't follow her in through the side door, but at the other end there's a pair of large double-doors that the dragon could fit through pretty easily. The small side door and the large double-doors at the end are the only ways in or out of the barracks. She can hear the dragon already heading in the direction of the end with the large double doors.

No time to scout out the footlockers! Probably nothing she could actually use to disguise her scent anyway.

She's listening closely for the sound of the dragon. She'll wait until it's around a corner from the smaller door and then duck back through it. If it responds with confusedly searching through the room, she can try to quietly sneak away. If it instantly realizes what's up, she can run.

The dragon bursts into the barracks through the double doors just as she hoped!

It knocks a bedframe or two over as it skids to a stop again and makes a confused sound. It sniffs around for a few seconds, but there isn't really anywhere to hide. It makes a frustrated sound and knocks another bedframe over on its way out.

The dragon jumps and flaps and pulls itself onto the roof of the barracks, stalking forward toward the other side where it can look down into the yard and spot Christa if she's still visible.

And back inside she goes! Hopefully she can discourage the dragon and make it think she's gotten away somehow. She's sort of worried it'll just about instantly realize what she's doing, dragons are supposed to be smart. 

This dragon is indeed pretty smart.

It drops off the roof and lands right in front of the big double doors.

Staring at her.

It doesn't try to enter the barracks. It's caught on, and is ready to leap to whichever side of the smaller door Christa tries to put herself on.

Well. Where's the nearest small door to a room with two small exits? She probably should have checked for that in the first place, honestly, and Aire would have let her know to do that if Christa hadn't asked her not to. But there's a reason she didn't ask for Aire's help too much, she needs to learn to handle this on her own. What if Aire's too busy with her magic to give Christa advice? What if she has to leave?

The dragon sits there, staring. It's cock throbs, pointed at her.

There are other interiors, but the nearest one with two dragon-inaccessible doors is three yards away in an 'L' shape. Does she try to make a run for it? Chances of making it don't look good.

Wow. That cock is really big. Maybe if she helped it get off the dragon would let her go?

But no, her task was to escape the dragon, and so she will do her very best at that! 

She doesn't think an actual corrupted dragon would lose interest, so waiting is out. Her only option is to run. Or, well, the only option she can think of at the moment.

Is there anywhere between here and there where she could pull the same trick she is here? It's giving her breathing space and she'll get tired quicker than the dragon, she thinks.

Nope!

No roofs and no archways between yards too small for a dragon.

Well. That rather restricts her options. 

Does the big door look like it conveniently locks? If it does, she can try baiting the dragon into charging her and trying to outrun it around the outside of the building to the main doors. It's slow enough to turn around she might be able to make it, if she's already sprinting in the right direction and it has to slow itself down enough to avoid breaking the walls and then accelerate again in the direction of the main entrance.

The big doors have handles and empty mounting brackets on them. If she had something to wedge through a few of the brackets, the doors would probably stay stuck shut pretty well. Conveniently the dragon broke one of the empty bedframes, and she could probably work that sidebar loose if she tried.

Now the question is, how is she going to lure the dragon into the barracks?

The dragon’s supposed to be corrupted, right? So, she should probably use herself.

Is that broken bedframe close enough to the smaller entrance that she can duck in, try to work loose the sidebar, and back out without the dragon thinking she’s close enough to pounce on? She doesn't think she can work it loose fast enough to escape if it's pouncing on her. She's not that strong, and Aire doesn't help with that.

Actually, how readable is the dragon to her telepathy? Does it seem easy to influence? It is young, after all.

The dragon's mind is... blurry... but unshielded. She can make out that it is having fun and innocently obeying it's rider's current instruction and also separately feeling really horny and the cute soft squishy human sure does look like an appealing place to stick its cock but it is Not Supposed To Do That even though it wants to.

Christa might have to dart out of the doorframe and drag the bedframe closer before she can work on it, but it is already much closer to her than to the dragon.

She will do that! While trying not to be too distracted by its thoughts.

When she does, does it pounce at her? Worst comes to worst she'll just have to duck out the small door, she supposes.

It rises off its haunches and takes a single step forward, before stopping and growling playfully.

As long as Christa stays in the small doorway, it knows that pouncing in one direction will just send Christa fleeing in the other.

Once she's done prying the sidebar loose, she moves on to the next stage of her plan.

She uses her telepathy to start sending the dragon lewd thoughts. Images of her standing in this doorway without clothes on. Bending over to present herself for it. Thoughts of what it would feel like if it didn't bother listening and decided to just stick its cock in her anyway. 

She moves a little bit further in. Not enough it would actually have a chance of catching her, but enough to plant the idea in its head.

Doesn't it want to pounce on her? If it catches her it can make all those lovely thoughts real. 

This... works. Maybe a little too well.

The dragon lets out a horny whine and then forgets all about the chase. It doesn't pounce. It just ambles into the barracks at an eager pace, its tongue lolling out like a dog's. It barrels up to her in a pose that might be describe as 'cock-first', if it wasn't a quadruped. 

Well. That's not ideal.

Wait! She has an idea!

She slowly backs towards the small door as it approaches, and when it gets close enough ducks out it.

Then she fills the dragon's head with thoughts about how she'll come back through that door any second now, and then it can fuck her.

She feels sort of mean doing this to the dragon. Hopefully his rider will be able to arrange for it to satisfy itself later? 

The dragon finds this suspicious! If Christa wasn't using telepathy to do this it would never work.

As it is, the dragon freezes in place for a long moment of indecision instead of immediately wheeling around and going for the double doors.

Run! Run very fast! And block the door! Quickly, quickly!

Does she manage it?

She can just barely get the metal bar in place before the dragon slams into the doors!

The doors buckle outward and the metal bar bends hard, but it holds. The dragon is trapped! Maybe not for long but long enough!

Christa can run off and find somewhere else to hide, and then when the dragon gets out, it'll fly around for a bit before returning to Alard a failure.

Aire, Aire, where's the quickest route to a spot she won't be visible from the air?

Well, she'll want to go this way-

And off she runs!

And eventually...

Christa has successfully evaded the dragon!

Good job!

Christa may now return to the observation balcony so the next Sister can take her turn.

She passed! On her first day! This is so great!

But no, she'll control her joy. She doesn't want the Sisters who couldn't manage it to feel sad.

She returns to the balcony.

The dragon is there, getting pats from its rider.

It perks up when Christa appears and its cock visibly throbs.

It's mind... it is still confused, and still... sort of expecting Christa to get naked and bend over for it? It knows it was tricked, but it doesn't realize that the sexual offer was part of the tactic.

Its rider is holding it back, though, and it is a Good Dragon and knows that its rider Knows Best.

Oh no! Poor dragon! She should. Probably tell its rider, so he knows what's going on? It's really awkward to talk about though. Maybe she can talk to him over telepathy? She should ask him permission first, though.

She waits until the dragon is off on its next mission, marshals up as much bravery as she can, and walks up to the very impressive dragon-riding boy.

"Um. There's a thing I should probably say to you but it's really embarrassing can I say it over telepathy?"

She isn't actually aware enough of what this looks like to realize it's likely to have gossip-related consequences.

Alard is kind of startled to be addressed directly.

Is the pretty girl upset with him for some reason?

"Um, sure."

Um. I'm a telepath. And that's what I used to get away from your dragon. Um. I noticed it thought I was pretty?

(Through the telepathy comes the understanding that that's a euphemism, and what exactly its a euphemism for)

So, um, I got it to follow me into a barracks that I locked it inside by. Um. Sending thoughts suggesting that maybe it could. Um. You know.

(Vaguely around the edges, a few of the images she sent bleed through. Mostly the one of her bending over in the doorway)

And now it's very confused, and I think it thought that was an offer, and so. Um. If your dragon's acting a bit oddly that's probably why. I'm sorry. But I thought it would be irresponsible of me to do something like that and not let you know. So. This very awkward telepathic conversation.

"Oh."

He tries for a reassuring smile.

"That was clever of you. You don't have to worry. Yui is very well-behaved. It won't hurt you. Or um. 'Attack' you."

Unsaid, is that he feels a little guilty. It's his job to see to his dragon's needs, but it's not like he has magic like some riders, and its not like he can afford dragon-rated sex toys. And it's definitely not like he can arrange for an actual girl who's into getting fucked by a dragon; where would he even start asking. He might be a prince on paper but he grew up on a farm and the first time he met his father, the man basically threw a dragon at him and abandoned him to take care of it on his own.

Oh no, cute dragon boy is sad, what do?

(And also apparently those rumors about the dragons fucking girls sometimes are true? She really thought they weren't.)

(And also again, cute dragon boy is a prince? Who grew up on a farm? It's like something out of a story! And also very sad. That backstory is very sad.)

Oh, wait, she thinks the idea of getting fucked by a dragon is hot. She has an opportunity here to get fucked by a dragon and help cute dragon boy at the same time.

Um. I. Heard the thought about arranging for a girl. And. Well. I'm into that?

So.

I could do that?

But, um, no dragon babies for me, I think? I'm not ready to be a mom! Even a dragon mom!

(in addition to the embarrassment and faint arousal, there's also a sense of warmth over Christa's telepathy. She doesn't know this boy well, yet, but she's heard his thoughts a few times and she likes him and thinks he's cool!)

O.O

Did she mean to send that-

"Um."

That would be a huge boon to him and Yui, actually. He would really owe her.

...is she for real though? If she's serious then what's a girl like her doing in the Collegium.

"Um." Well. They can talk later? About this? Maybe?

The thing a girl like her is doing in the Collegium is becoming an alchemist!!! Who says she can't be an alchemist who occasionally fucks dragons? Everybody has their hobbies!

She does not send this. 

Instead, she sends a confirmation that yes, she is for real, and also a yes on the talking later.

...okay then. If she's sure.

Maybe they can have dinner together.

No, wait, maybe they can have dinner together, her and him and Yui.

Does she know where the dragon stables are? He can show her the way. And cook for her. No, wait, being a boy who cooks is way less weird than being a girl who'll take dragon-cock. Someone like her wouldn't judge him for his skills, he hopes.

It is way less weird! Objectively speaking her thing is pretty rare, she should know, she reads a lot of people's minds. Boys cooking is way less rare than that. And she doesn't know the way, she appreciates his offer to show her there.

Um. She'd prefer it if he didn't, like, tell people about her? People would be mean.

(She's sort of a bit sad about some of the way he's thinking about her, it feels sort of icky, but she can feel that there isn't anything even sort of resembling malice in it. He just doesn't know some stuff, that's all.)

He really doesn't.

It's not like he's thinking less of her. It's just so different from what he's come to expect of people.

Eventually, everyone's had a turn, and its time to ride the carriages back to Library Gemini.

"Well done, girls. Every one of you put in an admirable effort. Some of you, however, got more return on that effort than others. We shall meet at the usual time tomorrow in the usual room, to review your performances."

Lavich gives Christa a lingering look before stepping into her carriage. She didn't miss the exchange there, and she's feeling a little smug about turning Christa on to being a dragon slut. Maybe the little creampuff will seduce the boy too, and she'll have a small scandal to play with.

The carriages make the trip uneventfully and drop everyone off at the Arcadia travelport like usual.

(Someone is watching. Someone is watching. Someone is watching. Or are they?)

Someone is definitely watching. This has been going on for long enough that she's stopped thinking it could be a coincidence, there's definitely something there. 

Is there any pattern to it? An increase in the feeling that someone's watching at some times, a decrease at others?

Well, it mostly left them alone while they were out on the exercise.

It started again when they reached the outskirts of Arcadia.

It is particularly focused when Christa is approached outside the travelport by a young Dragoon. It gets downright blatant when Christa accompanies the Dragoon boy elsewhere.

Should she warn Christa about this? Or simply guide her towards not doing anything untoward where the telepathic presence can see it?

No, she thinks she'll let all of this play out. Encourage it, even. She wants to know what's going on, and the risk of a negative reputation is worth that, she thinks. She's only sticking around here because it's fun and convenient. If Christa ends up kicked out of the Collegiate and working as a 'dragon tamer' she doesn't think she'd particularly care.

Alard attempts to make conversation as he escorts Christa through the city.

"Um. You're an alchemist?"

Alard seems like he feels awkward. That’s entirely understandable! Christa will help by giving him a bunch of things he could ask questions about, that way he doesn't have to talk much if he's shy!

“I am! It’s just so interesting how everything effects everything else in all sorts of ways. Every time I feel like I’ve got a good handle on it all I learn about an entire new family of plants, or a new effect of the stars. Which you’d think would be frustrating, but I actually find fun so far! There’s so much!”

Alard knows any things about plants. Seasonings are an important part of cooking.

He doesn't really know anything about alchemy, but he can sort of hold up his end of a conversation about herbs.

Christa knows many things about herbs! Did he know that a few are actually used as spices and alchemy ingredients? She knows because cooking is an important part of alchemy.

There, now they can talk about cooking stuff, since he knows so much about that.

Wow. They can, actually, talk about cooking stuff. Talking about cooking stuff with a cute girl is kind of fun, too.

Alard will venture as far as to talk about what he plans to make them for dinner, and how making that dish works.

Christa is very interested in his dinner plans! She has a solid enough understanding of what he's talking about for it to neatly slot into her head as new information.

It's nice, to talk about cooking with a cute boy. She fully agrees with Alard's sentiment there. Not that she says that bit out loud, of course, she doesn't want to make him feel embarrassed.

Alard leads Christa to an estate on the northern edge of the upper ring, within view of the Temple of Light itself.

He ignores the main gate, instead walking around the outer wall until coming upon a small guard station 'manned' by a Guardian Doll. This Guardian Doll has no graffiti on its body but is for some reason wearing a light-blue wig. It seems to recognize Alard, and lets them in. Then it shuts the wall behind them and silently follows them into this outer courtyard.

Inside, there is a small cabin build against the estate border, next to a much larger domed but very short tower. A covered nest, on a pedestal. A dark-red draconic head appears over the side, and perks up at the sight of Christa.

Christa blushes slightly and waves at the dragon. Do dragons understand waving? Fortunately she's a telepath, and doesn't have to wonder.

Yui hops down out of its nest and bumps its head into Alard once before swiveling over to sniff at and nuzzle Christa.

Alard gives his dragon scritches and smiles quietly.

"I'll start dinner," he says after a few moments. There's an outdoor grill he plans to use, but the larder is inside.

He heads into his cabin to collect the ingredients he'll need, leaving Christa alone with Yui for just a few minutes.

Hello Yui! Dragon nuzzles! This is probably the fourth best day of her life, after the days where she met Aire, had sex with Annabelle for the first time, and was in that orgy with Miss Lavich.

Wow, a lot of the best days of her life are pretty recent, aren't they? Thank you Aire!

Christa really is the cutest eager little corruption target she could have found, isn't she?

She gives Christa's body a little squeeze in response. Got to provide positive reinforcement for thoughts like that, doesn't she?

Rummaging and gathering concludes, and Alard emerges from his cabin with an arm-full of food, puffing a little as he balances the weight.

He sets it all down on a clean workbench, then uses his elemental aspect to flick a droplet of blood from his fingertip without cutting himself. The blood lands on the grill and the bindings on the grill light up, energy pulsing through the runes in a rapid wave before a thin sheet of fire appears under the cooking surface. (He laments that he can't just activate the grill with an effort of will, but he's still saving up for a Scroll of Chirr and only halfway there.)

Alard turns to the workbench and starts spreading seasoning onto meat as he quietly hums to himself.

She wiggles slightly in place to the tune of Alard's humming as she waits for food, adding the occasional cheerful comment on how he's preparing their meal. He's good at it!

Oh no, hopefully that doesn't make him embarrassed.

It's nice, actually.

Usually he doesn't have anyone to talk to except Yui and the Guardian Doll for his berth, and that is obviously not the same.

As for Yui, the dragon continues to solicit petting and scritches from Christa. It isn't as horny now that the sex magic has worn off, but it's still pretty horny, spending all day teased without release. Christa's softness stands out in its mind as it curls around her and nuzzles its face against her squishiest bits. The distraction provided by the scent of cooking meat is the only thing keeping Yui in its sheath.

Well. That's hot. But she will deal with that later, now is food time!

She will provide as many pets and scritches to the dragon as it wants as Alard finishes up his cooking. And then, dinner!

Dinner!

Yui's dinner is much simpler fare in much larger portion sizes but it is still made from the same ingredients.

Alard, it is proven, is a good cook. The dish came out just right, and is delicious.

Distant dragon-noises echo occasionally, Yui cocking its head to listen before returning to noms.

It's so good! Christa's been making a habit of grabbing whatever she can on her way to classes and it's just not the same as a proper home-cooked meal. 

Wow that's a lot of meat the dragon is eating, that must be expensive. Well, she guesses that's why they don't just have an all-dragoon military.

Well, actually, they get a lot of their meat the hard way. Yui hunts, and Alard knows how to fish. There's no way he could afford to feed Yui if he had to get all its food at the market.

Eventually the meal is finished, and Alard smiles at Christa and just kind of awkwardly wonders how to sustain the niceness.

Yui slurps up the last bit of its own food, rubs against Christa some more, and then... In its mind Christa can sense a fairly complicated wordless concept, which shakes out to something like: Yui's rider is there to, among other things, perform tasks that require manual dexterity with his nimble little hands, and the task he should be doing now is getting Christa's clothes off so Yui can get at her pussy, since Yui is a Good Dragon who will not damage Christa's clothes.

This thought is expressed by Yui knocking Alard onto Christa's lap. "Waah!"

"Eep!"

She giggles.

"Um. Yui seems to think now is sex time, and has assigned you the job of taking off my clothes. If you were wondering why this."

"S-Sorry. Yui's pretty smart about some things but... often misses the obvious."

He's not going to ask if she would rather undress herself than have him undress her. He's just going to get off her lap. Because really. She's here for Yui, not him. He wouldn't be any good even if she was.

"Um. I've actually got a thing. That means that if my partner enjoys themselves I enjoy myself? So no matter what, it would be at least as nice for me as it was for you."

Is she actually offering?

She's going to fuck a dragon today. If she wants to also have some fun with a cute boy that's rather less extreme. And he's been so cute throughout this entire date, she feels an overwhelming urge to bundle him up and snuggle him tight. Which is combining with her general high levels of horniness in interesting ways. And is also paradoxically inculcating a desire to lightly bully him. But just in ways he likes, she can check! Or maybe not, it might be mean.

Well, she can try the obvious thing. 

"Why don't you come sit back down? I'm comfy! And, um, you can take off my top if you'd like. It unbuttons!"

She reaches out to his hand to lightly guide him back to sitting down on her lap.

There, if she's pulling him around he can't possibly think she doesn't want him.

She also feels a little bit like she's being an evil sexy seductress. It's fun!

Oh, she's reading his mind, that's right.

And then it hits him what she's saying. That she doesn't consider him merely an interface for dragon-sex. And she does, actually, want him to take her clothes off.

His fingers start performing the task requested of him before his mind fully catches up to what he's doing, delicately undoing the buttons of Christa's vest. He slides it off her shoulders and proceeds to the shirt beneath it, his hands steady even as the rest of him is kind of freaking out but this is what he's doing and the habit of doing the task in front of him is too ingrained for him to stop or even hesitate unless prompted, regardless of how much he's panicking.

Those... are a cute girl's naked breasts. Oh gosh they're pretty.

While he is staring, Yui's hard cock quietly spurts out of its sheath as the dragon looms over Alard's shoulder and then sticks its tongue out to give Christa's bare breasts a lick. Yui's mind regards the sensation and also Christa's body as a whole in kind of the same way a human might look at a blob of aphrodisiac slime or at a tentacle mouth, or a high-quality-but-visually-boring sex toy. Not attraction, but a visceral anticipation of sensation.

She grabs one of Alard's hands and places it on her breast. See, they don't just look pretty, they feel nice too!

They really, really do.

He winces in pain at what his pants are doing to his dick, actually.

Also... he doesn't want to think this but he's thinking it anyway: Yui's needs are more important than his.

His mind goes on to provide justification for that bare fact: He's had sex exactly once before in his life, at a brothel, and never really felt motivated to go back, but when his body needs it he can just jerk off. Yui's been without any release at all for... a while. Much longer than him. Long enough that he was previously trying to psyche himself up to stroking Yui off himself out of sheer guilt. (A bundle of sub-thoughts: its not a line a dragon-rider can casually cross; it would open a floodgate that would be impossible to close and also if anyone found out, a boy getting fucked by a dragon is approximately a thousand times more humiliating than a girl getting fucked by a dragon. The Dragoons might literally just murder him to spare the institution the embarrassment. And Yui'd like it less, too.) It would feel mean to make Yui watch and wait while they did lewd things with each other.

At no point during this thought do his hands stop fondling Christa's boobs.