To understand the Gai Shift & to review the characters in this story, check out this useful guide: Gai-Shift Encyclopedia of Knowledge
Chapter 1: Megan the Witch
"Entrée," Lady Petunia Goldwaith responded to the knock on her chamber door. The girl who entered was Indian, her lithesomely svelte torso garbed with a modest sari. "Ah, Rani! How good of you to visit. How are your preparations for your expedition into the Pit coming?"
"Very well, thank you," the dark beauty replied in clipped tones. Her ink-black eyes flickered to a poor girl who was cruelly and thoroughly bound to a chair facing the corner. With a shoulder-wrenching twist, tear-wet eyes cast back a gag-silenced plea for help. Rani gave little reaction to her plight. Whatever the reason, the girl was tied and would stay tied until Lady Goldwaith deemed otherwise. It was her lab, and she was its queen-bee. The Indian beauty composed herself and amended, "We should be ready within the month."
"Very good. I look forward to reviewing your preparations."
Rani noticed that her Ladyship was reading a book. She tilted her head slightly to better make out its title. "Magic? Certainly my Ladyship only follows the true sciences?"
"Oh, Rani, you must learn to understand all sciences, even the boundary ones. For example, my expertise in programming and robotics produced the MI programs, and my researches into biology produced the break-through of Orgasium."
Rani nodded in acceptance. Her Ladyship was unquestionably a genius, deserving Rani's respect. Only last night, while Rani had been alone in one of the labs, an MI unit accidentally still active triggered. Before the Indian lass could throw the emergency shutoff lever, steam-powered hands had grasped her wrists and ankles, dropping her gently face-down on the floor and pinned her fast. There had come the whir of rope-dispensers and her freedom vanished into a degrading hogtie (the most humiliating of positions, in Rani's mind). There was little the poor brown lass could do save grunt into the gloved mechanized hand as clever manipulators trussed her into a taunt little package. How embarrassing to feel her sari ruck up to expose her long brown legs, and the ropes across her swelling nipples had brought her no end of discomfort. Once the final knot had gone home and the cloth gag most thoroughly seated, she'd been left to wait thought the long cold hours until help arrived. All this complements of Petunia's ingenious mechanisms.
She cast thanks to a hundred Hindu gods that a single first-year lab apprentice had found her and released her in the morning. Had a pack of senior girls come across her, she could quite easily have been carried off to a nearby bedchamber for some 'sport'.
She sighed at the thought. Perhaps she had not been all that lucky after all.
Petunia's chipper voice brought her back from her sultry thoughts. "You know that after the Gai-shift event occurred decades ago, woman gained the ability to self-procreate, even to pick the sex of their offspring. Mannis became redundant and hence weak. Now women rule. The world is a happier place."
"This I know."
"Yes, but did you know that our species is still changing in wondrous ways? That there are confirmed cases of magic in some of the small villages? Imagine that - true witches. Oh, I'd love to get one of them tied down for a full examination."
Rani smiled. If Lady Goldwaith ever got a witch tied down, the poor girl would not need a stake to feel flames. Her ladyship's passions were legendary...
=< O >=
Megan was precisely the type of girl Lady Goldwaith would adore trussed and helpless. She was elfin, her limbs tomboyish, her thick yet short pageboy cut adorned with a yellow bow. Her oval face was expressive, her cricket-patch green eyes devoid of guile. And she was a witch.
She sat with her tiny chin propped up by an arm, trying to make sense of the ancient and dark tome, Majickes foor Dummolts. She understood what the book was telling her, that witches could only specialize in a single aspect of magic, but why was hers what it was? How it had frustrated her life.
Her gloomy thoughts turned to her childhood, she the youngest of a set of daughters of a water-mill owner. Both she and her single brother had been picked out for torment by the three older sisters. And that would not have been a bad thing in Megan's mind; she would have loved to have experienced some of the playful cruelties she knew her sisters would be apt to dispense. The problem was, she couldn't stay tied. They would truss her up in a closet, promising the young girl ticklings and pinches if she couldn't get loose in short order yet as soon as the door closed, the ropes would fall away. She'd even try to stay tied up, but the older girls would quickly see through her mock captivity and the game would end. Depressing.
Then, one night as she neared adulthood, she found herself weeping in frustration. Mother had bound up one of her older sisters to the slowly rotating wheel downstairs, leaving the poor girl to slowly orbit through the night. Megan had watched from the high stairs, mesmerized as her sister had begun her first slow cycle, her face puffy beneath the tight gag, her slender limbs held outthrust and captive by cruel ropes, her nakedness moonlit. Megan had thrown herself into her little bed, crying that she would never know such a wondrous ordeal.
A thought came to her. Fetching rope that was so readily available in this world, she carefully trussed up her coltish legs as completely as if she were binding up an imaginary lover. Then, in the blue light of the moon, she watched.
Seemingly by their own accord, the knots backed out as if untied by invisible hand. And Megan suddenly realized that she was a witch. Or cursed.
She left home shortly afterwards, seeking out Madam Johnston, a reputed witch living in a village just to the west. She was admitted into a small cottage festooned with strange maps and a telegraph slowly spitting out weather ship data. The gray-haired yet tight-bodied lady of maturity nodded, sensing something Megan could not feel. "Yes, my dear, you are blessed. I shall apprentice you for training."
But her schooling in the dark arts was abbreviated. Madam Johnston preferred to keep her students safely trussed up for the night; it was her way. But no amount of ropes would keep Megan secured. The Madam would see all her efforts slowly unravel and say something like, "Pity. And I had such ghastly plans for you this evening. Oh well, go to your room." And Megan would sob into her pillow through the night.
With abbreviated instruction (for how could teacher and student enjoy the rigors of training if the knots wouldn't hold) Megan left Madam Johnston's cottage and found one for her own on the outskirts of another village a short distance off. There, she tried to use her powers for good, as did all witches. At first, there was little for her to do. Oh, she could coax toy balls off roofs and open locked doors for key-forgetful residents, hardly the stuff of dark legend. But then, one night when Ms. Fogarty's baby came early and the doctor's train was delayed, she managed to rotate the infant into correct alignment with little trouble at all. After that, the village supported her. She now had everything a witch could want. Except, of course, the bliss of captivity.
And so she poured through the forbidden books, seeking a way to nullify her power of manipulation. But the words seemed focused on gaining powers, not losing them.
Then came the knock at her door.
She opened it to find two darkly dressed women waiting in the midday sun.
"Hello," greeted one, a slightly chubby yet cute lass with curls the color of autumn leaves, "I'm Tameran."
"And I'm Zelda," her darkly wiry counterpart finished, critical eyes lancing her over her nose-perched wireframes. "Come with us."
"Come with you?" Megan looked over the contrasting pair, plump and post-like, friendly and dower. "But why?"
"Because," Tameran told her, "We're witches and we're forming a temporary Coven, silly."
Megan had hoped that they would fly on brooms across the windswept sky but it was nothing so glamorous. They bicycled.
It was only a short distance to Stonehenge, that monument to the unknown, sitting atop its windswept hill. Unlike other parallel worlds, this one was not surrounded by chain link fencing and disgraced with car parks. The women of the Gai-shift world respected such things in their entirety and gave such sites due respect. The stones were open to the winds and skies, as their druidic erectors had intended.
Two women waited for them atop the windswept hill. One was a voluptuous woman with pendants of scarlet hair, whose eyes held a worldly cast and whose figure a sultry promise. She introduced herself as Sasha in a voice as smooth and intoxicating as brandy. Sasha eyed Megan up and down, a lazy smile gracing her sensuous face. "Oh, I'd like to get this number traced up in my croft. I'd paint a pentagram on her belly and finger her twat, to see what I might summon up."
"You'll find that difficult," noted Madam Johnston, the final witch. "This girl has a disturbing knack of coming undone. Ropes simply cannot hold her."
"A pity," Sasha said with honesty.
"Oh, you poor dear," Tameran fawned. "If you'd like, I could try to tie you up. I've got lots and lots of rope in my loft. Perhaps if I took away every stitch of your clothing...?" A hopeful expression. Megan shook her head in sad negation.
"Bury her up to her neck in beach sand," Zelda said, critically looking over the shorter girl. "That would hold her."
Tameran frowned. "But what good is it to have a girl in your power with only her head exposed?"
Sasha smiled a dreamy smile.
"Ladies, if we can get back on topic," Madam Johnston requested. From a large sack, she drew forth a staff, long and knobby. "I was recently looking through the old listings in Witches' Witch and discovered an intriguing mention. Sandra MacPhee, an expert in the fields of fortunes in the last century, evidently found that if several witches combined a power-building spell, executing them simultaneously and equidistant, they could charge up an item."
"Charge up an item?" Megan was not sure what this meant.
"Silly girl," Zelda said harshly, wireframes flashing. "You know how you can sometimes build power if you are trying for a very big spell by slowly rotating clockwise?" Megan nodded, remembering Ms. Fogarty's baby. "Well, this is the same thing."
Madam Johnston nodded. "Except the build-up is stored into an object, on tap for whenever needed. If we cooperate, we could produce a true staff of great power."
"But witches cooperate like wet ferrets in a bucket," Tameran noted.
"We'll have to be true and fair with one another. We'll leave the staff here in Stonehenge, which is located roughly in the center of our residences. Tonight, when the moon rises, we will individually focus on this staff and rotate for precisely one hour. It takes a while for the magic to drift here, so the staff will not be ready until sunrise tomorrow. At that time, we will meet back here to claim it."
"But who gets to use the staff," the redhead asked.
"We shall all take turns with it. We're sisters of the dark arts. We can trust each other."
"Of course," Tameran replied, perhaps a bit quickly.
"Certainly," Zelda agreed, wireframes flicking to the others as if sizing them up.
"Without a doubt," Sasha concurred, her sultry smile curling upwards.
"Oh yes, we'll share," Megan added, clapping her little hands with honest enthusiasm.
And so the staff was laid upon the central stone and the witches peddled off, each to her own abode. For Megan, she was finally part of something... witchey. The day seemed to drag. She idled around the village, watching with disinterest as a coach came through, a runaway servant girl bound across its roof. Little girls carried away trussed little boys in their traditional games of Indians and cowboys. The sun couldn't set fast enough for her.
Finally it grew dark. Moonrise was a little more than an hour away. Restless, Megan prowled the twisting streets. In the village square, a milkmaid guilty of some trumped-up charge sat in the stocks. Her sensuously broad feet were gathered in the central hole, toes bound together and laced to a high hook, presenting her inviting and exposed soles. Her wrists milled through secondary ports placed further out. Hunched forward, cruelly gagged, she could only watch as the little village witch drifted over, a wicked twinkle in her eye.
Megan knew, as a member of a coven, that she had to be terribly cruel. It was part of the image.
And it would be a fun way to pass the time.
Leaning on the top of the stocks, she grinned elfishly at the pilloried girl. "Oh, Elsa, what have you gone and done now?" As she purred, she ran a finger along the straining soles. The trapped milkmaid shivered as if shocked, blue eyes flashing open, muted whines redoubled. Megan just stood there, chin supported in one hand atop the stocks, her other hand dancing along the trembling feet. Nervous sweat glimmered on the prisoner's forehead. The pinioned feet trembled from the teasing abuse. It was so fun to torment Elsa so, to trace instep and heel, to diminish her efforts towards a false stop before placing a fingertip on that sweet spot, to see the poor girl's tear-filled eyes fly open. Eventually she did stop, fearful that if she continued, she might do the poor girl serious harm.
"Elsa, you've been a doll to pass the time with me. And for that, I have a treat for you." Attempting to duplicate Sasha's predatory grin, Megan fetched a discarded carrot from the cobbles of the nearby marketplace. Returning, she leaned once again on the top of the stock planks, her cupidic face resting on her forearms. And then, with a simplistic motion, she tossed the carrot through the opening where the pinioned girl's raised legs lifted her peasant dress. Then she closed her eyes and concentrated.
Elsa looked at the lithe girl in confusion. Then her eyes widened in shock. Down within her clothing, the bulbous head of the carrot was rotating, slowly manipulating its way deeper into the warm chasm of her inner thighs, making its way ever deeper towards her velvety...
She cried out into her thick gag as the thing wormed its way into her, spinning and thrusting so seductively, wobbling and gyrating against her excited inner flesh. She couldn't move, couldn't shift away. She could only sit on her hard bench, with her feet so painfully raised and her widely-pinioned arms causing her back to throb, helpless as the carrot took her like some forceful manni, demanding more and more from her, regardless of her willingness.
Her cheeks flushed as the first orgasm took her. But unlike a manni, forced to gather himself before a secondary assault, her tubular assailant continued, forcing orgasm after orgasm, a non-stop climax pulled from her like a string of sex-slick pearls. She could only wobble on her bench as the indecencies flared through her.
She didn't notice Megan drift away. The little witch had tossed enough energy into the spell to keep it running for another quarter hour. Besides, she had things besides Elsa to do. The eastern horizon was tainted with moonglow.
What followed was anticlimactic. Megan stripped off her clothing and carefully set the hourglass upright the moment the moon pierced the horizon. Then she spun slowly, feeling the energy drifting off her like smoke, wafting upwards and away, floating towards the distant temple. She kept it up until the last of the sands fell through the gap. And then, her promised task complete, she settled into bed and dreamed sweetly erotic fantasies.
And elsewhere across the darkened countryside, other witches worked feverishly upon their wicked, wicked spells...
18.08.09
story continues in Gai-Shift - Magic 2: Plotting of Witches
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