GPCiMW Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Been a while since I've updated this one, but I'm still working on it. Also, keep an eye out for a couple more notifications coming in the new hour or two ;)

Enjoy!

“I…don’t know,” Daphne whispered softly. She looked nervous, almost frightened, and her eyes were downcast. She quickly shook herself and focussed on me. “But I will! I’ll figure it out! Just give me a couple of days, okay? I promise I’ll…” her face fell again and she bit her lip. “I’ll do my best.”

I stared down at her, then nodded slowly. “That’s all I can really ask of you.” I got a sense that she was scared of my reaction to her lack of knowledge on the topic, but honestly there was something reassuring about it. 

For all that she was basically my property, it was somewhat…unsettling how Daphne had always seemed a dozen steps ahead of everyone and everything. It brought to mind unsettling questions about fate and free will, and equally frightening thoughts about other wizards with access to witches like her. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that her talent was unique. Rare, perhaps, but certainly not unique.

Sure in some ways it would have been better if Daphne really was genuinely omniscient, but it was still comforting to see that she didn’t really know everything. She’d just spent a lot of time focusing on those crucial days at the start of the school year that had laid the foundation for our future, something I did rather approve of. After all, starting off strong had been my plan as well. 

Seeing the doubt on her face made her feel more like a real witch and not some sort of alien fuckmeat creature. My mind flashed back to Shella, Daphne’s features briefly replaced by the inhumanely sharp and angular lines of a sidhe, and I shuddered. Nope. No matter how effective the ancient compact was, there was no way I was putting my dick anywhere close to those razor-sharp pointed teeth. 

Daphne swallowed heavily and I realized that she’d misinterpreted my reaction. “No, really. It's fine.” I pulled her against my chest, softly stroking the sleek leather that bound her arms behind her back with one hand while the other settled on her pert backside. “If you get results, that’s great. If you don’t, then I trust that you did your best. As long as you tell me what’s going on, we won’t have any problems. Do you understand, dear?”

Daphne nodded and I placed a gentle kiss on her forehead before letting go of her. “Good. Than we both have work to do.” I leaned down and grabbed Daphne’s gag, the last piece of her ponywitch uniform that she wasn’t currently wearing. “Open wide.”

She complied obediently and tilted her head back slightly so I could slip the rubber shaft of the gag between her lips, pressing it down until her teeth slipped into their grooves. From there, the gag swiftly grew to its full size, firmly locking itself in place, and I clasped the mostly perfunctory straps of the gag behind her head. 

I gave her a moment to adjust, then pushed her lightly towards where Grace was already hard at work on her enchanted treadmill. She stumbled slightly, but managed to recover before I had to step in to catch her. Spending so much of every day in their ponywitch boots had really improved both witches' balance. 

“Go on, you know what to do.” I’d already set the machine to execute today’s training regiment and told both my witches what they’d be doing. Magical exercise equipment worked surprisingly similarly to what I would have expected to see in any mundane gym and came with much better documentation. Daphne had mentioned that she could use her gift while running so hopefully she’d be able to make some progress on that tonight as well. 

I watched her go, listening to Grace’s pounding of rhythmic footfalls and the soft jingling of the bells clipped to both witches’ nipples. Daphne climbed onto the treadmill and barely had time to get into position before the track beneath her feet started to move, rapidly picking up speed and forcing her to run if she didn’t want to get sent tumbling. 

My eyes drifted across their bodies, taking in the shifting of their muscles, the bouncing of their breasts, and admiring the way their uniforms accented their movements. Grace’s skin was flushed a rosy red from exertion and shone with a thin sheen of sweat that only served to emphasize her lean curves. 

I slowly shook my head, my lips widening into a small smile. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last time either I really had to give the High Lord credit. He knew how to dress up a witch. I was really looking forward to the end of month and not just for the chance to win myself another witch. I’d never been to a ponywitch race before, but it promised to be quite a spectacle. 

Then I shook myself and squeezed my eyes shut. A few deep breaths cleared my head and I gave Daphne and Grace one final look before turning away. It was a good thing there were still two weeks till the race, because Daphne needed the time to train. She’d spent most of her life up to this point in various cages, allowed to exercise just enough to give her a proper figure for a witch of her build. There were other witches I’d seen among my classmates who looked much more fit––some people preferred them that way, but not many. Thus, every moment we had was crucial to give her both the strength and the technique to win the race for me. And I had to win. 

I had to win. 

Everything depended on it. Grace was a good start, but I needed more if I wanted to properly snowball, to grow fast enough to keep pace and overcome the many advantages that came with being House-born. 

And I couldn’t just depend on my witches either. I needed to be better. Filling up my coven quickly would help, but wasn’t nearly enough. A single wizard could only bind so many witches and fuckmeat, though what determined that number was a mystery. Perhaps the High Lords knew––some people suspected that was one of the things that made a High Lord a High Lord, the ability to bind a truly inhuman number of members into their coven––but if they did, they certainly weren’t telling. 

But just binding a full coven wasn’t nearly enough to secure my future. Just about every House-born mage would have a full coven the minute they graduated after all, either purchased from farms or bred for them by their House. I had five years to go from nothing to Archmaster, and to do that I needed to make the most out of every second of it. 

I headed to the other side of the training room, deliberately turning my back on where my witches were hard at work. The only class I’d had today was mind magic and the exercise we’d done hadn’t used much mana, so I’d start with practicing the two spells Chuch had taught us. They were pretty basic, but the best way to hone a spell once you knew it was to cast it over and over again, slowly imprinting it deeper and deeper onto your spirit until you could cast it with barely a thought. 

Of course, there was more to it than just repetition. Like Chuck had said in class, you could easily sabotage that kind of training by ingraining bad habits that would slowly weaken the spell over time instead of strengthening it. What he hadn’t told us, something I only knew from my dad’s memories, was that casting it exactly the same way each time was also a mistake. 

Instead, what you wanted to do, particularly with a very simple spell like the ones Chuck had given us spell aids for, was to cast the spell in slightly different ways each time. Make a shield larger or smaller. Have your magic missile fly a little slower or curve slightly in mid air. That way, you could slowly but surely widen the spell’s mark on your spirit in addition to deepening it. With enough time, effort, and practice, you could turn even the simplest of spells into something both flexible and powerful. 

It wasn’t an easy thing to do. There was a reason it was taught to third years, because doing it wrong could make you lose your grip on the spell entirely. If it got too ‘wide’ before it had sunk into your spirit properly, the spell could collapse, sometimes causing catastrophic damage to the wizard’s spirit in the process. 

However, I wasn’t going to let that stop me. It could take years to modify a spell, and the sooner I started the better off I would be. I had no doubts that the House-born already knew all about improving spell flexibility in such a way. The ones in my dad’s year certainly had, and had used that head start to great effect. 

Take magic missile, one of the most fundamental combat spells there was. At its most basic, it fired a single ‘dart’ made out of magically-created force in a straight line. The spell didn’t have much force behind it, didn’t travel very far, and didn’t move all that quickly. 

However, when someone like Chuck cast the spell, there was a lot more to it than that. I hadn’t seen him do it first hand, but there were as many variations of the spell as there were mages that knew it. My dad’s magic missiles could track a target and flew faster than bullets. Some people could fire off entire swarms of the projectiles all at once, cause them to explode when they hit something, or make them sharp enough to cut through stone and steel like butter. 

I was a long way from something like that, but everyone had to start somewhere. 

I’d start with magic missile, because that was a spell I sort of had experience modifying already. My dad had learned it towards the end of his first year and developed it considerably once he’d learned how to do so. The shield spell Chuck had shown us was really different from the one my dad had learned and I didn’t feel confident messing with it just yet. 

I closed my eyes, focused, and cast. I wanted to start by making the magic missile narrower so it would fly better and pierce instead of just crashing into things. My eyes opened just in time to watch the completely standard magic missile crash into the target I’d aimed for. Hmm. I tried again and once more didn’t notice any difference. Or maybe it was just a very small difference?

I cast a third time, this time not bothering to try and change anything and just going through the exact motions Chuck had shown us in class. A third identical missile slammed into the target. 

I clicked my tongue. This was going to be harder than I had hoped it would be, wouldn’t it. 

Well, I certainly wasn’t going to give up so quickly. I’d try a few more things, then go back and cross reference my dad’s memories of his own experience with the spell while I waited for my mana to regenerate a little. And maybe I could spend some time practicing what we’d done in class today at the same time. Professor Alexandrov hadn’t fully explained what it was for, but had encouraged us to spend some time working on it every day and I trusted his expertise. He certainly knew more about mind magic than I did. 

Hours later, I lay on my bed with Grace curled up beside me. She was naked, her ponywitch uniform lying in a haphazard pile on the edge of the bed, and her head was resting on my thigh. It was late, and I’d just finished washing her and Daphne after their evening workouts. 

Typically, this was when I would be strapping Grace back into her uniform and putting her away for the night, either in one of the roomier cages in the coven room or in my bed depending on how I was feeling that day. 

Today however, it was Daphne’s turn to be stowed away. She’d said she needed some time to focus on her visions and, with how much time she spent by my side around the school, she wasn’t adjusting to the ponywitch uniform nearly fast enough. Especially not the gag, since she didn’t usually wear it overnight so she could wake me up properly in the morning. 

Thus, I’d decided to kill two birds with one stone. As soon as she’d gotten out of the cleaning stall, she’d gone right back into her uniform and into one of the cages. As much as I liked Daphne, I’d decided that it was important to remind her of her place in my coven from time to time. All the books about coven management said so, even the ones whose authors agreed with me about the increased importance of a wizard’s first witch. 

That meant it was going to be Grace’s job to wake me up in the morning, so no gag for her tonight. After some consideration, I’d also decided to set the rest of the uniform aside for tonight as well. She spent a lot more time wearing it than Daphne did since she never left my rooms, and with how obedient and dutiful she’d been, she deserved a little break. 

I slowly stroked her hair, occasionally pausing to scratch her ears or neck which she seemed to enjoy immensely. Most of my attention was on the book I was reading, but I kept half an eye on Grace. She just lay there, a contented smile on her face and her body completely relaxed. Grace knew how to serve, how to obey, and little else.

Perhaps if I hadn’t had Grace, I wouldn’t have thought much about some of Daphne’s peculiarities. Sure I had memories of my dad’s witches, but they were old memories, and I spent a lot more time focused on him than on them. I doubted I would have really questioned how oddly knowledgeable and…self centered Daphne was. 

With both of them side by side however, the differences were obvious. Daphne simply didn’t act right. More so than could be explained by her visions. Perhaps I was reading into things too deeply, but I thought there was something more going on. Whatever it was she didn’t want to tell me about, probably. 

It was the independence that really convinced me of it. Daphne should have never been taught indepence. When her visions first manifested, the very first thing she should have done was inform her trainer. It's what they were taught to do if anything strange happened. Witches with powerful gifts weren’t unheard of, but they were typically recognized at a young age because they were trained to come forward if they noticed anything and there were people watching for such things. 

But Daphne clearly hadn’t. For whatever reason, the rigorous mental and physical obedience and compliance training witches went through just hadn’t quite worked on her. Some of it had, of course. But it hadn’t sunk in the way it should have and I wasn’t sure why. But I wanted to know. I really did. 

For now though, I was content to wait. She’d tell me soon. I was confident she would. Because if she didn’t, I’d make her tell me, and then I’d make her regret making me do so, especially if I didn’t like what she had to say. There was no way Daphne didn’t know that. She was a smart witch. A very smart witch. Too smart for her own good at times. 

I looked down at my book and realized that I’d been staring at the same page for the last ten minutes. It was time for bed. 

I closed the book with a snap and set it down on my leg. Grace turned her head to look up at me, and I favored her with a smile. “Good girl. Go put your uniform away, set my book on my desk, turn off the lights, and come back to bed. I don’t think you’ve earned yourself an orgasm yet, but you have earned a reward.” Her eyes widened and she scurried to obey, her every movement displaying her eagerness. 

I laughed softly. It was so much easier to reward normal witches who’d been trained to treat any attention from their coven lord as a blessing than aberrants like Daphne. She was a wonderful witch and having her in my coven was a godsend, but who’d ever heard of a witch that wanted fantasy books to read as rewards?