It took Elicet a short while longer studying him before, nodding slowly, she seemed satisfied. With a puff of red smoke, she summoned a quill and ink, and upon placing the contract on his desk signed her name. She held out the feathered pen to him and, for a moment, his heart skipped a beat.
The shocking royal purple feather she had summoned was ridiculously ostentatious. As if plucked from a massive bird from some otherworldly realm - which Roger knew it might well be - the delicate, frilly object hung, dauntingly, just inches from him.
“Having second thoughts?” She asked, as his gaze lingered on the ticklish object far longer than needed. “I’m sure I could think of something much more fun for us to do…”
At that, she began to gently sway the feather in the air, and his eyes couldn’t help but follow it. Yet as he felt time getting away from him, his determination returned.
He plucked it from her grasp, but couldn'r help at gasping gently at its softness. He tried to cover it with a cough; yet worse, writing proved far more difficult than he had expected. The frills of the feather hung down, tickling the back of his hand with every tiny movement. Instantly an itch that begged to be scratched formed.
For a moment, he wondered just what else she could do with that feather. He regretted the thought when, as if confirming her preternatural awareness of arousal, she began to grope at his bicep.
“You don’t have to sign if you don’t want to. I’ll probably find some loophole in this contract eventually, after all. We might as well just skip to the part where we have some real fun together.” She offered smugly, while encouragingly squeezing his arm.
However, his determination remained grim, and he gently tugged his arm free and forced his hand into motion. The moment he had made the last grudging pen stroke and lifted the quill from the paper, he recoiled in shock as both his and Elicet’s names suddenly combusted into flame.
The smoke quickly cleared, but Roger remained leaning back in surprise as Elicet calmly took the document from his hand.
“A demonic contract.” Elicet enlightened him, with a grin. “But surely you knew that.”
She seemed to enjoy toying with him, and despite only having just met, he couldn’t deny feeling a certain familiarity growing. However, even as the thought occurred, he forced it down. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down. This woman, this… succubus, she only wanted to use him.
Roger swallowed, hard. “S-so… um. What do we do now?”
Elicet tittered at that, and lay back on his bed.
“Well I can think of a few things…” She offered, curling a finger invitingly.
“No thanks,” he replied, politely, trying to force his eyes not to wander down her body towards her luscious feet. “I spent days crafting that contract. I want the power you agreed to give me.”
“Fair enough,” she sighed, as if bored by the prospect of what would be - to him - utterly life changing. Yet she smiled an ever present smile which seemed to never waver. “Our pact requires me to aid you in gaining power using my abilities. You used a lot of language to dictate what I should do, what I had to do, and what I couldn’t do. Yet the obvious gap in your knowledge left the methodology up to me.”
He cursed himself. No doubt she had surmised some loophole he hadn’t accounted for.
“Yet I am bound to complete the task to the best of my ability… which leaves a conundrum. You see, as a succubus, I use pleasure as my source of power. I can of course transfer some of that power to you,” she paused at that to reassure him, “as our contract dictates, in a way which will leave no significant negative impact upon yourself, and to a degree which is significant to you, to be determined by you. Well worded, and fairly conclusive.”
She lifted one leg over the other, switching them, and for a moment his heart skipped a beat as both her feet loomed into his view, before dipping back below. He could only hope she hadn’t noticed. Even with all said and done, he was sure that her knowing what precisely he needed the power to overcome would be bad, and he knew that she did not have his best interests at heart.
“The conundrum then is how. I suppose I am bound to provide for you the best service possible, in a way that does not negatively impact you in any way which you personally would find significant. Hmmm…”
She idly stretched a leg out, running a hand across her thigh, deep in thought as she poured over the now-signed paperwork. It seemed almost natural to her to be constantly stretching and rubbing herself in the most sexual way possible. Perhaps it was.
“Aha!” She announced, making him jump as he had found himself ogling her once again. “I must give you the maximum power possible within the limits of our contract, in the way most compatible to you.”
“That sounds… agreeable to me?” Roger asked, uncertain whether she was being sincere.
Elicet merely beamed in response, but her words contradicted her smile.
“Well, I’m afraid the best method, and the safest for you in terms of power transferral, is rather slow and laborious.” Her smug grin broadened as Roger began to see the meaning behind her words, and frown.
With a flash in her eyes at that, she took his hand.
“I could manipulate things a bit of course, make it even worse, but you have my interest. It’s been a while since I did anything but show up and turn people into my willing fuck pets. So if you do as I instruct I'll hold up my end, and we should be prepared within say… a month?”
“A month!?” Roger asked, incredulously. “B-but the contract-”
At that, she held up her hand, only for the paperwork to float in mid air and shuffle itself until the appropriate page appeared atop the pile.
“The contract clearly stated that the priority above all else is that it must be done in such a way that you would not find significantly harmful. Thus the time constraint has to change.”
At that she stood from the bed to trace a finger up his arm as she stalked towards him.
“I’m afraid you humans are… mmm, so frail.” She put across, with mock empathy. “So… weak. The only safe way is the slow way. Nice and slow… torturously so.”
Grimly, he slouched in place. She had found a loophole after all, despite his best efforts.
“Not to worry, I’m not that mean… unless you ask me to be, of course. I am bound by our contract to increase your power in a way you find significant and that is what I will do.”
Tracing her finger across his back now, he couldn’t help but arch his chest forwards a little in response, before she came around his other side.
“Of course, that does leave one tiny problem. I can only control you as much as you let yourself be controlled, or rather, how much you let me control you. So now I have a month to figure out exactly how to do that.”
Elicet’s triumphant smile burned away at him as she stood cockily in front of him. The short, petite demoness was utterly pleased with herself. Yet all was not lost - he just had to last a month. Then he would have everything he had ever dreamed of, and more.
One month… with a succubus constantly trying to arouse him and make him give into her. The daunting nature of the task before him truly set in.
She snapped her fingers. Instantly, in a puff of smoke, she bore a deep blood-red robe similar in design to his own. Lifting the hood, he saw that her skin tone had become recognisably human. Her horns, similarly, had disappeared. Indeed, were it not for the slightly red tinge to her skin he could have sworn she had simply teleported a similar-looking woman into his room in her place.
Roger could only stare in awe.
“Well, if I were to reveal my nature to your more adept teachers, I think our contract may come to a more… premature climax?” She elaborated, giggling inanely at her joke. “I suppose I’m just a girl you met on campus from now on. A new girlfriend. I would ask if you had one before but I could smell the bachelorism on you the moment I arrived.”
She took his hand once again and made for the door.
“W-wait, where are we going?”
Elicet didn’t even turn to look back at him, however, as she pushed open the door.
“I need to know what we have available. Does this school of yours have a library by any chance?”
“Well, actually, that’s a funny story…” he murmured as the door slammed shut behind them.
*****
Descending back down the cobbled stairs to the dungeon below, he followed closely behind Elicet, not least because she kept a possessive hand wrapped around the hem of his robes and he had no desire to be rendered nude by being outpaced.
It was odd. When he had ascended those stairs he had stepped out into the daylight unaware of what his future held. Now, as he returned to the darkness below, his destiny was so close at hand. Quite literally, it transpired, as his hand accidentally brushed against her rear through her robes.
Blushing, he went to apologise, but she simply smiled back at him for a moment.
“Reconsidering my offer?” She asked, invitingly. “It might not be a long and lonely month after all if you can’t keep your hands off me for even an hour…”
It wasn’t like he didn’t aesthetically enjoy a beautiful derriere as much as the next sorcerer, but the objects of his real attraction were - thankfully - hidden beneath her folded clothing for now.
The candles he had lit the night previously were still burning, and as she stepped out into the dim circle of light around the entryway, she peered into the gloom.
“Hmmm, adequate I suppose. Though I do wonder how you mortals ever find anything when it’s this chaotic… Even we demons like some order here and there.”
Could she see in the dark? He asked himself, as he peered into near inky blackness, yet she could somehow make out the disjointed and disorganised nature of the college’s library from even a glance.
"Well the regular library is more organised, no one really uses this one but me…"
“Oh it's fine. In fact I much prefer this one for that reason. Right, let’s see…” she said, swaying a finger in the air, and leaving another glowing trail in its path. “Stay here.”
With that, she slunk off into the darkness, and he was alone.
Roger settled back onto a bench and exhaled the breath he didn’t realise he had been holding ever since Elicet had materialised in his room. What was he doing? He had summoned a succubus into the material realm, and now she was… what, going to help him become more powerful?
In a way, his study project had largely been escapism, he now acknowledged. Chasing down the mystery those books held had been a way to forget his struggles in the college above. Down here he had been pursuing a dream… one he had never expected would hold any real value. It had been a distraction. When he had found the black book, which he kept tightly to his side now, he hadn’t actually thought it would, well, work!
Down here in the dungeon, among dusty shelves, in comfortable solitude he had been himself. He hadn’t had to put on a mask for anyone. Irony upon irony, he realised, as since Elicet had arrived that had been precisely what he’d been doing. Hell, not just him, as Elicet had walked here literally in the body of another person.
For what felt like an hour he waited at the desk, craning his neck to peer into the darkness at every distant rustle, every imagined noise. Perhaps, a distant part of his mind wondered, perhaps he had imagined it all. Weeks of spending most of his days down in the library alone may have finally driven him insane. Summoning a succubus? It sounded silly now. Maybe it had all been a dream.
Slowly, he felt himself slipping into sleep.
Elicet at that moment slammed a stack of books onto the table, having appeared from nowhere, and he flailed his arms in shock.
“First thing’s first, you’re going to need a solid foundation in Evocation. If your room was anything to go by, we have quite a bit of work to do.”
He blinked in a mix of surprise at the sound, and shocked realisation that he had - in fact - summoned a succubus onto the college grounds, and hadn’t simply imagined it.
“Evocation?” The question was all he could muster.
“Yes. Evocation.” She spoke in measured words, gauging his reaction. “You… are a student here, aren’t you? It means-”
“I know what it means!” He said, irritably. “It means summoning. I summoned you, didn’t I?”
She grinned at that.
“Barely.” Elicet set on the desk, her frail form still easily imposing, and casually rested a foot on his thigh. He froze, and tried not to give anything away, hoping she would think his sudden stiffness came from her words rather than her actions.
“It looked like you just copied everything these books told you to do,” she mused, glancing at the pile of books which towered over him in his seated position, “that’s like taking all the ingredients from 12 different recipes and trying to make one cake.”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” He asked.
“Sure, but I don’t think you intended to summon me. What you did was the equivalent of painting a vase by putting it against a wall and then blasting the whole wall with paint.”
He groaned softly as her toes clenched slightly against his lap, and again he could only hope she didn’t read too closely into his reaction.
“In fact, you’re lucky it was me who came through and not… well, something far worse than me.”
Only then did he feel an ice cold chill down his spine, as he realised just what he could have accidentally summoned.
“I’m sure you’ll agree I’m far more to your liking, hmmm?”
She gently rubbed her foot on his thigh at that, and he stood up in alarm, but feigned exasperation.
“Fine. Yes. I admit I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing.”
It was hard to tell what was going on behind Elicet’s eyes, and for a long stretch of silence he merely looked into them, trying to divine her thoughts.
“Read them again.” She said, with finality.
“Wha- all of them?” He asked, incredulously, staring at the pile. He recognised most of them, but some seemed new, and one or two looked quite strange.
“Well, unless you’d rather fill me in on whatever little trick you’re using to block my powers so I can crush your resistance mercilessly under my heel, and let me ravish you in ways a mortal mind simply cannot comprehend.” She offered, in a forlorn tone that spoke of great promise, in spite of the venom of her words.
“Fine.” He said, and sat back down, grabbing the first book. “So I read all of these… then what? If you’re already here, why do I need to know about summoning?”
“You must be very popular with your professors,” she remarked, sarcastically, and leaned in closer to him, “why study numeracy? Why learn to read? It’s the basis of what you learn after, and then that becomes the foundation of what you shall learn after that.”
She tilted the book down as she leaned in closer.
“Of course as I said before, if you’d prefer, I could just fuck you until you’re my slave.”
Grimly, he took her point, and opened the book.
*****
For the first few hours, it simply felt like re-treading ground he had already covered. Yet whenever he wanted to question her, whenever he even looked up from the book, she was there. Staring. Smiling. They carried on well into the night.
It was a little off putting at first, but eventually, he managed to ignore it. Indeed, it just encouraged him to read more closely. Soon, he wasn’t merely reading in spite of her, but had begun to see her point. There was much more to this than he had understood.
To him it had made sense. You draw a circle, say the right words, draw the right symbols, it summons something.
“Do…?” He began to ask, but silenced himself when he looked up.
“Hm?” She was simply tracing her finger in the air, leaving magical trails behind it.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing. Just bored. I’d much rather be fucking you blind.” She said, evasively.
“Well, maybe you can help me understand this.”
She nodded, and slid her legs into the space beside him on the bench. Once more Roger gritted his teeth at the feeling of her being so close to him.
“Farthuan is describing… Well, I realise now what he meant. I think. The symbols don’t just open a portal…”
“No,” she said, licking her lips, “it’s far more… personal.”
He frowned. “If you know this all already, why don’t you just tell me?”
“You could ask your professors that, what would they tell you?”
Leaning back, he rubbed his eyes from hours of study, but knew the answer.
“I have to learn for myself, it’s not enough to just be told something.”
“Good boy.” She whispered.