Sally awoke slowly with the dawn of the next day, the warm caress of the mist rolling across the water and the low murmur of the creatures of the forest all around her gently coaxing her out of what had easily been one of the most refreshing night’s sleep she’d had in a long time. The swirling eddies and currents of the Power hung just as heavily in the air of the bog as the mist did, and to a budding mage like her, it had been as if she’d been rocked to sleep while swaddled in the softest of down comforters.
With a long yawn, the young acolyte out on her first real adventure away from her monastery opened her bright green eyes to the soft morning light filtering in through the canopy overhead and tried to rub some of the sleepiness from them.
And of course, that was when she remembered just how it was that she’d been “prepared” for bed the night before.
Naked as the day she was born, she lay suspended just a few hand-spans above the calm waters of the bog’s central clearing, her ankles and wrists wrapped snugly by vines that coiled up her arms and down her legs, spreading them lasciviously out to either side of her while still more cradled her around her waist and the back of her head. She wasn’t particularly uncomfortable per se in her makeshift bed-harness, but any movement outside of fruitless wriggling was impossible for her at that moment.
Under any other circumstances, she would have been thrashing about in a frantic attempt to escape from such a humiliating snare, but these were hardly normal circumstances she found herself in. No, she had been suspended in this lewd snare by the mistress of this bog, Modan. She was her guest, and as embarrassing as they might have been, the vines wrapped around her were an embrace from her new mistress, not a trap that needed fleeing. Besides, she remembered all too well what had happened the night before when she’d tried to struggle out of the naiad’s special “embrace”, and the thought of it made her stomach do several flip-flops in a row as her thighs involuntarily squirmed toward each other.
The memory of the voluptuous and commanding water nymph mercilessly lashing her already well-spanked bottom with a whip fashioned from one of the thick, yet supple, vines from the canopy above while she stood trapped and bent over nearly in half by ropey tendrils that refused let her do much more than clench her cheeks and toss her hair about sent a fresh surge of heat rushing up Sally’s face and a pleasant thrum along her exposed vulva, and it took a supreme effort of will on her part to rein in her racing thoughts before they could drag her away to the places she only dared to venture during those quiet moments when she lay in bed alone at night.
A sloshing sound from somewhere off to her left finally managed to fully yank her thoughts away from the memory of the way Modan’s fingers had felt as they’d caressed her tender buttocks, and turning her head atop the vine loop supporting it, she saw one of the reptilian creatures from the day before splashing around near the shoreline. Wait, no, not one, but two of them! The large, hulking masses of teeth and hard, scaly muscle were plodding their way through a shallow patch between the gnarled roots of two massive trees, pushing their oversized faces through the mud and shallows.
Hmmm… They must be looking for food…
As Sally squirmed in her harness to get a better look at them, it suddenly dawned on her that a trapped (and pre-tenderized!) mage girl suspended just above the surface of the lake they were hunting in might just look like a very tempting breakfast to the pair of hungry knuckers.
Nothing to see here, just go about your business, please, she silently willed the two of them, holding her breath and doing her best to lie completely still.
As if reading her thoughts, the vines coiled around her suddenly constricted her soft flesh in a silent admonition not to be silly.
“Ah! Hey, watch it!” she yelped indignantly, squirming anew in their tightened clutches as her breasts were squeezed hard enough to make her wince. “I’m trying to be inconspicuous here. Humph!”
A few moments later the vines relaxed their grip again, and with a fresh surge of not unpleasant flip-flopping in her stomach, she allowed herself to go limp in their embrace as her mind flashed back to the empowered signature that Modan had placed on her right sit-spot the day before. The one that would keep the creatures of the bog from hurting her.
The one that marked the young mage as hers.
The two beasts on the edge of the lake continued tearing little fish and worms out of the mud for a while longer, growling and making other, stranger noises at each other as their faces drew closer. Eventually, one of them looked up and took notice of Sally, cocking its horned head slightly while making a strange, almost gurgling noise in the back of its throat. A moment later, a stream of red fire rushed forth from between its widely-spaced jaws, but it just as quickly dissipated leaving only a little smoke behind, and with a snort and shake of its massive body the creature turned back toward its mate. The two of them then sloshed back down into the water, disappearing beneath the surface with a few ripples and leaving her once again alone with only the singing of the birds and the bubbling of the hot spring in the distance for company.
“Wow…”
Remembering that the creatures wouldn’t attack her had freed Sally up to observe them without any worries, and once she’d started, she found that she just couldn’t take her eyes off of them! She’d never even heard of a knucker before yesterday, and she’d just now been given the opportunity to observe two of them in their natural habitat.
“Goodness me, how lucky can one girl get?”
The way they moved and fished with their huge scoop-like jaws, the way they interacted with each other, not to mention the way they could apparently conjure flames in their mouths like dragons, absolutely fascinated her. And once again she was overwhelmed with that same burning desire to know everything there was to know about Modan and her mystical bog that had drawn her there in the first place.
“Alright now, let’s just see what else is going on here…”
Taking a deep breath to clear her mind, Sally closed her eyes and tapped into the swirling eddies of the Power flowing all around her. This time she didn’t actively try to impose her will on any of the plants or creatures she touched (she’d learned that lesson the hard way the day before), but instead simply allowed herself to flow along the ethereal currents, observing, touching, sensing…
Perhaps it was her tranquil state of mind. Perhaps it was some arcane connection from the clinging vines. Perhaps it was just practice. But for whatever reason, this time when she opened herself to the unseen world she was able to see the greater pattern of the eldritch currents all around her in a way that up until then had always eluded her. All around her there existed a pulsating network of energy channels; rivers that carried the Power zigzagging back and forth through the water, into the canopy, and across the clearing.
Oh my… thought Sally to herself in awe. It’s… it’s beautiful!
At first this new window into the realm of the arcane was quite overwhelming for her, but after taking some time to adjust to her new way of seeing things, she was able to trace those flowing channels she discerned all around her back to their nexus. With a start, she saw clearly now that every line of Power within her perception eventually twisted and spooled its way back into the boiling mud of the central island, coiling around the standing-stones there and then descending deep into the burning pit at its center which glowed just as brightly as Modan herself had in the spirit world.
It was incredible!
Sally felt a giddy smile spread across her lips as the greater patterns that she’d heard her mistresses at the monastery talking about for so long finally came into focus for her. So accustomed had she been to touching the less distinct and unrefined energies of the Power, that for several long moments all she could do was stare in awed wonderment. Eventually though, focusing on the nexus point emanating from the deceptively small island became too overwhelming for her comparatively inexperienced mind to handle, and she had to pull away, retreating back to the less intense flows of the trees and the water around her instead.
At least those didn’t threaten to consume her entirely if she wasn’t careful.
“Good morning, Madam Tree,” she greeted, calling out the venerable oak cradling her above the water, with a lazy yawn. “Thank you for holding me while I slept.”
In response, the vines supporting Sally began to squeeze in a bit tighter. Not quite enough to cut off her circulation, but still definitely making things a lot less comfortable for her all of a sudden.
The unexpected constriction wrung a surprised squeal from the young acolyte and induced another round of squirming. The feeling wasn’t exactly painful (at least not yet), but it certainly wasn’t pleasant either, and was definitely more than a little jarring. Plus, seeing the coils wrapped around the generous swells of her breasts starting to dig deeper into her skin only served to make her blush and drive home just how naked, vulnerable, and exposed she was right then.
“Please, Mistress Modan already spanked me! I’ve already been punished. I’m sorry!”
Despite her heartfelt pleas and carefully restrained attempts to loosen the vines’ grip on her body without actually crossing the line into actually trying to free herself from them lest she get into trouble again, the only reaction she got for her efforts was an almost vindictive constriction from the treacherous green ropes clinging to her.
She continued to struggle for several long and increasingly embarrassing minutes after that until finally she heard an amused voice from directly below her ask, “Now what did you say to those vines to upset them so?”
At the sound of the low, familiar voice coming from somewhere beneath her, Sally let out a squeak of surprise and relief. Squirming around as much as she could, she craned her head back to pout at Modan and in a panic-stricken voice cried out, “Mistress, help me, please! I didn’t do anything. I was just trying to say thank you to this stupid tree for holding me while I slept and now it’s trying to squeeze the life out of me!”
Modan just laughed.
“The trees aren’t doing anything. Think a little harder.”
She then reached up and ran a gentle hand lovingly, but firmly, along Sally’s back. Her fingers were slick with water after having just emerged from the lake and their passage along the groove of her spine tickled, but also served as a subtle reminder of what that hand was capable of.
Swallowing hard, Sally shivered and a fresh gasp that had nothing to do with the constricting vines clamping down on her escaped her lips. Taking a long, shaky breath, she did her best to try and puzzle out the meaning behind her words, and then with a sudden start she realized her mistake.
Feeling twin spots of color burst into life on her face at the novice blunder she’d been making that whole time, she did her best to once again re-center her mind as she focused on the vines holding her in place and cried out, “Madam Creepers, I am soooo sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you, I swear! So please let me go, you’re squeezing me much too tightly!”
In response, the vines immediately released Sally, falling away like cut ropes to dangle from the branches above and letting her drop unceremoniously into the warm, muddy water with a loud splash. Great flocks of birds immediately took flight as she landed, startled from their nests by the sudden noise, and Modan laughed merrily, clutching her sides and shaking with great gasps of delight.
A moment later the now soaking mage splashed up out of the lake, spluttering and spitting out a mouthful of silt as she kicked frantically and tried to get her bearings. Wiping great dollops of mud from her eyes and pushing back strands of waterlogged hair from her face, she glared up at the now placidly hanging vines and then leveled another pout at Modan. However, try as she might to be upset, she found herself smiling ruefully back at her almost immediately.
“Well, at least she let me go.”
“It’s a they, not a she,” corrected Modan, still grinning mirthfully as she took hold of one of Sally’s shoulders and wiped some of the dripping blonde hair out of her eyes. “The cauldron trees hate the arch vines for weighing down their branches and covering their lower leaves. They secrete poison to weaken them, and use sweet scents to attract insects to eat their clinging roots. The arch vines need the trees to survive, but they also fear and resent them because of this.”
She stroked Sally’s cheek with her thumb as she spoke, clearing away more silt and smirking at her.
“Appealing to the trees while in the vines’ clutches? Rather insensitive of you, don’t you think?”
Still grinning, Modan continued to float in front of the now mostly-presentable Sally and waited for her reaction.
“I wasn’t trying to be rude!” she protested, waving her hands through the water in front of her as if she could somehow shoo away the misunderstanding between her and the plants.
“Rude people seldom mean to be.” chided Modan, her face turning grim as she fixed the young mage with a hard look.
“I um…”
Feeling her cheeks flush with fresh heat while at the same time marveling at the hidden struggle that she’d been totally unaware of until just then, Sally tried her best to meet the inky black gaze of her mistress, but ended up staring at a lily in her hair just above her right ear instead.
“T-they aren’t going to stay mad at me are they?”
Softening her features, Modan began gliding backward through the water toward the edge of the clearing, keeping her pace slow enough for Sally to keep up.
“Don’t worry, the vines have thick skins,” she reassured her, her lips quirking up at the corners. “But I’d avoid any clusters of them for the next few hours though, if I were you. They might just decide your bum’s gotten a little too pale since last night.”
“Right…”
Casting a wary glance up toward the green tendrils hanging innocently from the branches above her, Sally quickly started splashing after her mistress, doing her best to stay close in the hope that any creepers with designs toward swatting her would think twice with Modan close by.
“Wait for me, Mistress, I’m coming!”
Smirking to herself, Modan led the way over to a shallow sandbar of mud and roots between the trunks of two massive trees, not unlike the one Sally had seen the knuckers foraging on earlier, rising out of the knee-deep water with her usual non-ripple.
Hot on her heels, the young mage quickly joined her, sloshing through the thigh-high muck to stand in front of her, eagerly awaiting whatever lesson she had planned next but also feeling a sudden need to restore some of her credibility as a student.
“Ahem.”
Clearing her throat, she straightened up to her full height, pulling her shoulders back to look the naiad straight in the eye and inadvertently thrusting her chest forward in the process.
“T-thank you for teaching me about the trees and vines, Mistress.”
Modan nodded, accepting the thanks without comment.
“Tell me what you wish to learn about this morning.”
She strode casually in front of the girl so that her large, curvaceous body was silhouetted in profile against the mist of the bog while she retained her mischievous little smile.
Sally noted that the flowers in her hair and skin were a little pinker that morning.
“Um…” she answered slowly, her mind suddenly feeling like it was trapped in the mud sucking at her heels as her eyes traced over every curve of the naiad’s slick form, noting every detail and the position of every flower for future reference.
Shaking her head in an effort to clear it and refocus, she ventured tentatively.
“That’s a good question, Mistress, but I’m not really sure how to answer it.”
She blushed and looked away as she continued.
“I thought I knew so much when I came to your bog yesterday, but now I feel like I’m a freshly-inducted novice at the monastery… There’s just so much to learn that I don’t even know where to begin!”
Modan smiled. Not exactly understandingly, but close enough.
“You already seem to know a fair bit about the Power itself, but not how it moves on its own,” she said as she knelt down, bringing the murk up to her waist. “Let’s have a look.”
“Um… a look?” repeated Sally, tilting her head to one side in confusion and feeling an unpleasant twinge of embarrassment at not understanding what it was that she was supposed to be doing. “What do you mean, Mistress?”
In response, Modan stood back up suddenly and lumbered with surprising speed into the confused mage, wrapping an arm around her midsection and forcing her forward so that her other hand could SMACK! her bottom hard!
“When I kneel down and ask you to look at something…”
SMACK!
Modan spanked her again, this time on the other cheek.
“…it would behoove you to do the same and look… at… what… I… am… showing… you!”
Unrelenting, she kept alternating cheeks as she lectured, keeping Sally’s arms pinned tight against her belly as her free hand arced down against her bouncing backside with the force of a hammer striking an anvil.
Surprised once again by just how strong her new mistress was – just because she looked like a human that sure didn’t mean she was anywhere near as weak as one – Sally squirmed helplessly in her vice-like grip and yelped with each hard swat that landed against her unprotected bare bottom, her wet skin making them sting even more than usual as she swished her feet back and forth through the water behind her.
“Yes Mistress. I’m sorry, Mistress. I’ll kneel wherever you want me to, Mistress!”
Half a minute and fifteen hard swats later, Modan let her go, dropping her unceremoniously back into the shallow water with a splash. Then, grinning toothily down at her, clearly not actually mad in the slightest, she planted her hands on her wide hips.
“Understand?”
Rubbing her stinging seat beneath the water for a moment, Sally leveled a pout at her mistress that just as clearly signaled that she understood she wasn’t in trouble, before gingerly climbing back to her feet. She really did feel just a little bit badly for her misstep though, and as she stood before her, shifting her weight from foot to foot, she was secretly relieved that she’d gotten spanked for it.
Then, realizing that she’d been asked a question, and not wanting to provoke any more punishment just yet, she squeaked nervously and dropped back onto her knees in the murk with a splash.
“Yes, Mistress. It won’t happen again, I promise!”
“I’m sure it won’t.”
Somehow that sounded less than genuine coming from Modan, but at the same time it also sounded like she wasn’t too terribly bothered by the prospect either.
“Now then, tell me, oh wise wizard,” she crooned, easing back into the murk herself without so much as a ripple. “Why is the Power in this place so strong and willful?”
Splashing her freshly-used right hand into the mud, she lifted a little handful of it out of the water and held it before her, letting it trickle out between her fingers.
“Why are these trees and vines so much more alive and awake than the ones you’re used to?”
“Hmmm…” murmured Sally, rubbing her chin thoughtfully and eyeing the dribbling mud before casting a speculative glance around her at all of the other plants and unseen creatures surrounding her in the bog.
Determined to impress this time, she took her time in answering, weighing the problem out carefully in her mind before finally replying with the eager enthusiasm that tended to grip her whenever she thought she’d solved a riddle.
“It’s because of you!” she exclaimed, pounding her right fist against her open left palm for emphasis. “You’re a water nymph, and you’re really old, so you’ve had a long time to learn how to channel the Power, right? Which means that all of the living things around you get to, um… absorb the, um… energy coming from you…?”
The last few words of her rapid-fire explanation started to trail off into an unsure question as her confidence in her reasoning started to dwindle.
“Um… right?”
“I’m flattered,” was Modan’s ironically dry reply, looking far less impressed than Sally had hoped she would. “But why do you think I am here, and not in some other swamp?”
“Huh…”
Horsefeathers! fretted an increasingly anxious Sally as she cast her eyes back down to the murky water in front of her, mulling over the naiad’s question and searching its depths for any clues that she might have missed.
“Oh!”
Looking back up at Modan eagerly as a fresh idea hit her, she shifted in the mud and pointed back toward the bubbling island in the central clearing of the lake that was ringed by the roots of several cauldron trees.
“Is it because there’s a big focus point of energy in this swamp?”
“Now you’re starting to pay attention.”
Modan clapped her wet hands, only a little sarcastically this time, as she went on to explain further.
“Everything has a spirit, or had one at some point. Most just aren’t strong enough in the Power for you to see or touch. I am one of the exceptions, and it is because of the hot spring water, and the minerals that it carries up from my mother’s cavern, that I dwell here.”
Sally nodded thoughtfully at this explanation, smiling in satisfaction to herself now that she was starting to draw closer to the answer Modan was trying to lead her to. However, the more she thought about it, the more she felt a fit of giggles welling up inside of her, and she had to quickly bring a hand up to cover her mouth before any of them could escape. The mention of Modan’s mother and her cavern had led the young mage to idly speculate about what a young Modan must have been like, and that thought had inevitably led to her imagining the naiad’s mother (who she could only assume was as a slightly older, gray-haired version of her) spanking her.
The prospect of the strong and commanding water nymph being turned over a parental knee for a spanking was just so silly that she couldn’t help but giggle.
“Something is funny?” prompted Modan, looming over her student with eyebrows arched and her lips pursed in disapproval.
“N-no Mistress!” Sally quickly reassured her, suppressing another fit of giggles even as an all too familiar flip-flopping sensation seized hold of her lower abdomen, forcing her to add in a rush. “I just, um… Something just swam past me and tickled my foot was all. Please, continue.”
Modan’s only reply to that was a look of utter condescension.
“Really!” shot back Sally with a quick nod and a frantic waving of her hands, digging herself even deeper into her fib despite knowing that she shouldn’t.
In an attempt to deflect her mistress’s attention, she gestured as nonchalantly as she could back toward the central island and its bubbling hot spring, asking in a fluttering voice, “S-so that muddy, bubbly water is coming from your mother’s cavern?”
Even though she’d only asked the question to change the subject, the notion of meeting Modan’s mother was rather intriguing, and she found herself adding excitedly, “Oh! Could we go see her if we wanted to?”
So preoccupied was Sally with attempting to sidestep answering her mistress’s earlier question, that the vines descending from the canopy above her head went completely unnoticed until they’d looped themselves around her stomach and chest and had begun hoisting her up into the air.
“Wha-? Aieee!”
She had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen next, but despite the sudden swell of butterflies in her stomach that always preceded a punishment, she knew that she deserved what was coming to her and didn’t struggle (too much) as the vines slithered down and around her arms and wrists, pulling them behind her back.
All the while this was happening, Modan stood off to the side, watching with a haughty smirk as the babbling mage was hoisted up just above the surface of the water. At her silent command the slithering creepers then dipped her forward so that she was angled toward the murk below with her bottom high in the air and her legs dangling freely behind her. She then strode imperiously around behind her, and gripping her lower back, started delivering the fastest flurry of swats she’d endured so far. All of them right on the centers of her two sit-spots.
SMACK-SMACK! SMACK-SMACK! SMACK-SMACK!
“Do… you… really… think… you… can… lie… to… me?”
Yelping and crying out with each and every furious smack to her upended behind, Sally struggled ineffectually against the vines pinning her arms behind her back as she scissored her ankles back and forth above the water, wriggling and squirming for all she was worth as a blazing heat exploded across her naked bottom.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Still though, she couldn’t help but be a little bit grateful that Modan was punishing her. Despite how much it hurt, she knew that she deserved it, and was relieved that she wouldn’t have to deal with the worry and shame of trying to keep her lie going anymore.
But gods below did it hurt!
Curse this mouth of mine! she wailed silently to herself as she started to sniffle. It always loved to rush ahead and get me into trouble back at the monastery, and it appears that mystical bogs work just as well for it too. Humph!
Ignoring her pleas, Modan kept wailing away at Sally’s lower chubs, bringing back the pain from the previous night’s lash marks and adding a fresh layer of heat to them.
SMACK!-SMACK! SMACK!-SMACK! SMACK-SMACK!
“Now tell me,” she demanded, making the mage howl as she delivered several extra-hard swats to the backs of her frantically wriggling thighs. “What… is… so… funny?”
Sally in turn let out a long, low wail that had very little to do with the inferno blazing across her naked rump. Knowing full well that she would have to give in at some point, but stubbornly refusing to do so right away, she gritted her teeth and took in a dozen more swats before finally breaking down and blubbering in a rush.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I was just- Ow! I was just thinking- Oh! About your- Ah! Ah! About your mother!”
Tossing her honey blonde hair from side to side, she let out another high-pitched squeal.
“Owie, owie, owie! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just- Aieee! I just couldn’t help- Ack! picturing her- Ah! Spanking you!”
Unprepared for that response, Modan stopped abruptly.
Then giggled.
And then started laughing absolutely uproariously.
“That’s… that’s…!” she howled, bending forward and clutching at her stomach as her entire body shook with great, heaving gasps of delight.
“Well, no… No, she never punished me,” she finally managed to get out a while later, straightening back up and wiping away several tears from her big, wet eyes. “And I’ll be happy to tell you more about her if you wish, but first…”
Gliding back around to face Sally, she reached out and casually snapped a long, whippy switch off of a low-hanging branch.
“Last night, you made a solemn vow that you would not defy me again.”
With a thin, cruel smile, she tipped the panting girl’s head back with the stick in her hand, forcing her to look her in the eye as she continued.
“And you just now knowingly lied to me, didn’t you?”
Sally felt the cautious optimism that had been steadily building up inside of her ever since Modan had stopped spanking drain out all at once, along with most of the color in her face, as she sagged in the vines’ grip.
Oh dear…
Feeling an electric tingle arc its way down the curve of her spine to nestle itself between her aching thighs, she started to squirm again as the switch in her mistress’s hand tickled her beneath her chin.
“I um… I-I wasn’t defying you, mistress!” she stuttered nervously, the irony of defiantly protesting how she hadn’t been defying her going totally unappreciated in her current state of panic. “P-please, I’m sorry! It won’t happen again!”
“Hmmm… Those words sound hauntingly familiar,” mused Modan with a toothy grin, tapping the switch lightly underneath the girl’s quivering chin, “Perhaps the next time I hear them, they will be sincere.”
She then sauntered back behind the mage, and at her silent command the vines let her torso dip further forward toward the water, elevating her already bright red bottom up even higher into the air.
Whistle- SNAP!
A thick line as white hot and cutting as the vine whip’s had been the night before then seared itself horizontally across the middle of both her cheeks.
Whistle- SNAP! Whistle- SNAP!
A moment later, two more diagonal lines crisscrossed their way across both cheeks as well, branding them with a bar and an X as if Sally were a particularly naughty bit of livestock.
“Ooooh, Mistress!” she howled as Modan etched her design across her arched backside.
In that moment she found herself wishing very much that she was better at channeling the Power while under duress. Maybe then she could have weakened that evil branch and made it snap.
“I do mean it, I dooo! Whatever you say, I’ll do it. I’m not trying to be bad, honest, I’m not! Please forgive me!”
In response to her pleading, Modan added another, lower, bar to her thighs. And then an X to go with it.
Whistle- SNAP! Whistle- SNAP! Whistle- SNAP!
“Gods below, I’m sorryyyy!”
She then casually tossed her switch aside and took half a step back to admire the now very elaborately decorated pair of cheeks swinging back and forth in front of her, waiting patiently for their owner to recover a bit.
Now thoroughly chastised and once again fully determined, even if not exactly confident, that she’d never give her mistress another reason to punish her ever again, Sally let herself sag in her restraints with a relieved sigh. Then, after managing to regain her composure enough to speak without a hiccup or a sniffle getting in the way, she looked back over her shoulder with a pair of watery eyes of her own and mumbled apologetically.
“T-thank you for disciplining me, Mistress…”
They were the words that Mistress Alviren had always liked to hear her say after she’d finished punishing her, and by the gods she meant them!
She’s so incredible…
Even in her drained and weary state, Sally still couldn’t help but be mystified by her new mistress. Modan’s presence, her easy confidence and mastery over the Power and all that dwelled within her domain, the sight of her looking back at her with a satisfied smirk on her face. It was all so overwhelming, and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to be just like her!
“You’re very welcome, little human,” answered Modan as she glided forward in the water and began to gently knead Sally’s tender tush, seeming to relish the pained gasps her touch produced in her.
A few moments later the vines shifted the well-spanked girl back down onto her feet, and Modan wrapped her arms around her, holding her close from behind.
At first Sally stiffened in surprise, but then melted like butter in the naiad’s strong arms. The embrace pressed her blazing backside in against Modan’s thighs, and squished her large breasts into her back as she softly massaged her body, and it felt absolutely wonderful.
“Besides,” giggled Modan, breathing her words softly against Sally’s ear as she continued hugging her from behind. “I’m sure I’ll be doing it again before long.”
She continued to cuddle and pet her contrite student for a little while longer, Sally’s sizzling buttocks pressed against her damp thighs, and her hands idly exploring the mage’s curves, before slowly letting her go with a promise of, “If you’re a good girl for the rest of our lesson, I may just decide to rub some more berry pulp on that.”
She indicated the “that” she was referring to with a little slap on Sally’s welted backside before continuing, making the girl yelp and stumble forward into the shallows, almost falling over.
“Now then, the hot spring water and minerals are filled with the Power. But what do you think happens after it flows up into this lake?”
Perking up at the mention of another rub down with those wonderful berry juices, especially given the way the crisscrossing welts on her behind seemed to be pulsing in time with the rhythm of her heartbeat, Sally vowed silently to be a model student for the duration of her lesson. Turning to face Modan, she could feel the corners of her mouth perking up. This time she was ready with an answer.
“It all gets sucked up by the roots of the plants and absorbed by the creatures that drink from the lake.”
She slapped her fist into her palm again, practically dancing from foot to foot with the joy that came from unlocking another mystery of the Power.
“And that’s why all of the creatures and plants around here are so lively!”
Modan smiled, much more warmly this time.
“That’s exactly right. It seems your temple isn’t as bad as I had feared.”
She gestured up at the tall trunks and their roof of branches and vines.
“The trees drink the water and swallow the minerals for hundreds of summers and winters. And all that time, the Power grows within them. However, they can expend but a little of it on their own, unless prompted by a quicker mind.”
She paused again and looked expectantly at Sally.
“But what else can happen to that Power?”
“Um…” she replied, drawing the word out as she looked around at the trees of the bog in the hope that one of them might shed some light on a clue.
Gods and goblins! What else could there possibly be? she asked herself in mild exasperation. Aren’t vines that hold you in place while you’re getting spanked and trees that get offended at their neighbors enough already?
“Oh!”
With a start, Sally realized that she’d been staring off into space mulling the problem over and that Modan was still waiting on her for an answer.
Unfortunately she didn’t have any.
Oh well, better be honest, I suppose… she thought with a rueful rub of her tush.
“I’m sorry, Mistress, I don’t know what to say.”
Modan just shook her head.
“And here I was starting to get my hopes up…”
Kneeling down, she fished a wriggling shrimp from out of the murk and cupped it in a muddy hand.
“The Power sleeps in the plants and fungi. They think too slowly and too dreamily, to use it for anything but growth and health unless another force acts upon them.”
Standing back up again, she held the little crustacean out in front of her.
“But animals eat the plants, and everything within them is passed on to the animal. Drinking the water of this bog empowers them. But eating the plants that have been drinking that water and storing that Power for so long? That provides a much greater increase.”
Suiting actions to words, she popped the muddy, wriggling thing into her mouth and chewed it absently.
Sally grimaced at the crunching noises she heard coming from the dying crustacean, but quickly remembered that she was her mistress’s guest, and as such was supposed to be a noble and elegant representative of her monastery, and so managed to catch herself before she could make any faces that might offend her host.
“Those animals are in turn eaten by other animals, and they inherit all the Power of their prey, each of which retains most of what it took from the green things.”
As if on cue, there came a mighty splash and then a horned, scaly head with three beady red eyes erupted from the water just a few feet ahead.
“Ah!”
The knucker glared at Sally with its glassy, reptilian eyes and growled a little bit before climbing up onto the shallows and shaking its head dry. It then opened its mouth, and with a low growl, crimson flames began to light up between its jaws.
“And of course, the oldest and most vicious predators are the ones who have the most Power.”
“I…”
Sally swallowed hard, doing her best to maintain her composure.
“I see…”
The explanation made a lot of sense, and the sudden appearance of the knucker and its mouth full of fire was more than enough to dispel any lingering doubts that she might have had.
Doing her best to keep a quaver out of her voice while also at the same time slowly inching around in the mud so that Modan was standing between her and the beast, she eased up onto her tiptoes to look at it over her shoulder in wonderment.
“Is that why you’re so strong, Mistress? Because you’re so old and you’ve been eating the things in this bog for so long?”
With an excited gasp, she added.
“Could I become as strong as you are if I ate more of them?”
She eyed the knucker speculatively, wondering just how she’d ever be able to make one of them her evening meal, before deciding with a shiver that she’d most likely have to make due with eating mounds of shrimp and gross tree snakes instead.
“Oh, humans…” chuckled Modan with a shake of her damp black hair. “Always so obsessed with power.”
“What? I’m not obsessed,” huffed Sally.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Still smiling, the naiad leaned over and gave the girl’s bottom another slap, just to make her jump.
“Ah!”
“But to answer your question: No. Ingesting the water and its essence helps to keep me healthy, but it does not empower me.”
Turning away from the knucker (which was now probing around in the mud with its snout in search of a snack), Modan leveled a look of matter-of-fact confidence at her student.
“I’m just a part of it.”
“Oh, I see…” repeated Sally, mostly not lying as she tried to puzzle out just how someone could literally be part of the Power.
It was a concept she’d never really given much thought to before. Of course she’d seen it mentioned in passing here and there in some of the books in the monastery archives, but she’d always just assumed that the authors were over exaggerating or being poetic.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
She had a feeling that this was something that she’d be puzzling out for a long time yet to come. That it wasn’t something she was supposed to fully grasp right away.
She loved problems like that!
Plus mulling over the idea of Power being made manifest in a sentient, physical form helped to distract her from her mistress’s earlier chiding. Although she knew that the naiad had mostly just been joking with her about being power-hungry, the rebuke had still hit just a little too close to home for her liking and she found herself muttering grumpily under her breath as she idly traced her fingertips over the raised edges of one of her welts.
“I am not obsessed with power. I just don’t want to be a terrible mage is all…”
Apparently though, Modan had far better hearing than she gave her credit for.
“Don’t want to be terrible?” she queried, pulling Sally away from her self-conscious musings as she glided without a ripple across the muddy sandbar toward another cluster of tangled roots, sinking down to her waist as she entered the little hollow beneath them. “What risk is there of this?”
Sally felt the spots of color in her cheeks intensify at Modan’s question. She hadn’t actually intended for her to hear her mumbling about her insecurities! In an effort to cover up her embarrassment, she scrambled off after her, making more than enough splashes for the both of them. Still though, the question wasn’t one she’d been expecting to be asked and she found herself replying without much thought.
“Risk? What do you mean, Mistress?”
“You said you don’t want to be terrible. What makes you think you are, or will be?” elaborated Modan, turning around and beckoning Sally down into the watery hollow after her. “I’ve been called terrible before, you know. It wasn’t so bad. I actually kind of liked it.”
She chuckled.
“Although, ‘Mistress’ certainly has a charm all its own.”
Modan’s candor lifted the young mage’s spirits, and before she could stop herself, she was pouring out her deepest fears to her in a rush.
“I just… I just want to be a proper mage!” she exclaimed with an exasperated sigh, emphasizing the word “proper” with a frustrated splash even though she wasn’t really sure what she meant by it yet. “I study and I study and I feel like I’m learning, but then I get around great and powerful ones like you and Mistress Alviren and I turn into a floundering mess who can barely answer your questions. And then to make things worse, I always somehow end up doing or saying something silly that lands me over your knee getting spanked!”
Feeling her stomach twisting with the familiar anxiety that she was walking a knife’s edge, half a moment away from being dismissed and sent on her way (although if she’d ever stopped to think about it she’d realize that had never actually happened), she added hurriedly.
“I’m trying my best, Mistress Modan. Really, I am!”
Modan just shrugged and beckoned her closer.
“I don’t know anything about this Alviren you prattle on about, but you seem to be learning.”
“You really think so?”
“I have no reason to lie.”
Beaming brightly at the plainspoken praise, Sally scrambled into the hollow and threw herself at Modan, wrapping her arms around her in a tight embrace and gushing, “Oh thank you, Mistress!”
It then dawned on her that clinging to an ancient and powerful water nymph without her permission probably wasn’t the most elegant or refined of actions one could take, and she made as if to untangle herself from around her water-slicked body with a blush.
“I mean… Um… Th-thanks,” she mumbled with much more restraint as she tried to ease back to a more respectful distance, keeping her gaze locked on the point over the naiad’s stomach where a belly button would have been on a human.
I guess a nymph wouldn’t have one… she mused to herself, more as a way to ignore her embarrassment than from any actual academic curiosity.
But Modan didn’t let her pull away.
“There’s still more for you to see,” she declared firmly.
Pulling the mage in tight against her taller, thicker body, half-in and half-out of the lukewarm water and holding her close so that their wet forms were pressed firmly against each other, she gave her next order.
“Close your eyes.”
Letting out a small contented sigh, the heat from her mistress’s slick body radiating into her like the warmth of a bonfire on a cold winter’s night, Sally did as she was told and waited patiently for her next command.
—
Modan grinned, enjoying the feel of the dreamy-faced girl in her arms as they stood there surrounded by fog and mist. Had she ever seen one so bright and beautiful, in this particular way? Modan’s memories became cloudy more than a few years’ past, and everything from the old temple that once stood over the bog was more a collection of disconnected images and sensations than anything else. She was sure, however, that if she had met humans quite like Sally Vinebrook before, there could not have been more than one or two of them.
She then raised a hand to the back of the girl’s head, getting a firm grip through the tangled mess of blonde hair there, and angled her face up just a little higher. She watched in amusement as a shiver of surprise rippled through Sally, but the young acolyte dutifully kept her eyes closed even as her lips flickered in surprise. As Modan knew she would.
“Good girl,” Modan purred.
After watching the girl’s quivering face for another moment and giving her handful of hair a light squeeze, Modan leaned in. Bending forward to put their faces level, she placed her smiling lips against her student’s trembling ones, sucking gently and letting her tongue explore the human’s lips and teeth.
—
It took a supreme effort of will on Sally’s part to keep her eyes closed and not flail her arms in surprise when she felt her mistress’s aquamarine hued mouth come into contact with her own, but she quickly found herself melting into the moment.
“Mmmm…” she murmured, unable to stop herself.
As they kissed, she felt an electric tingle in her mouth that spread inward to her chest and head, and she let out a low moan of pleasure from the back of her throat as her knees grew weak beneath her. Thankfully though the naiad had a firm anchor to hold her upright with in the form of her hair, and she refused to let her go as their tongues intertwined and her body was filled with rippling, tingling waves of electricity that were even more exhilarating than channeling the Power.
It was incredible!
A minute later Modan finally pulled away, still lightly gripping her student’s damp hair and holding her body against her own.
“Open them,” she commanded.
Slowly, savoring every moment and sensation, Sally did as she was instructed. She could still feel a distinct electrical tingling inside of her mouth and nostrils, as well as a deeper thrum inside her throat and chest. The sensation was not unlike that of the feeling she’d had when she’d first received the sigil on her right sit-spot the day before, and she had to fight hard not to swoon just then.
Smiling up at Modan dreamily, her bright green eyes gazing deeply into the water nymph’s inky black ones, she sighed.
“Mistress…”
“Yes?”
Blinking in surprise, Sally felt the tips of her ears heat up with embarrassment.
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud.
It hadn’t been a question or a statement, just a reaction. An outward manifestation of all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations bubbling up inside of her like some new potion she was brewing for the first time.
“N-nothing,” she mumbled, looking chagrinned before adding. “I just… Um… thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Modan fondled Sally’s back and hair for a moment longer, and then looked down at her eyes and mouth lovingly before releasing her completely.
“Follow me, now. It won’t last forever.”
With that, she turned and descended into the hollow, flooded root cave, her head vanishing beneath the muddy, steamy water without so much as a ripple to mark its passing.
