Chapter Text
“Classes will start the day after tomorrow,” Professor Bellafonte noted as we sipped tea in her office. We had just finished a walking tour of the campus after discussing my upcoming placement. “You will be at the courtyard in front of the library by eight o’clock to meet with the rest of your cohort. Do you remember where that is?”
“The building with the dome, right?” I asked and she nodded. I felt compelled to keep talking. “Thank you. It’s… just thank you.”
She gave me a small smile, and I was once again reminded of how pretty she was. She only looked a few years older than me - hardly old enough to be a teacher - and could have easily been one of the top five most attractive people I had ever met, even if she was rocking a kind of super-mullet - with a lot more party in the back than I was used to. The fact that her clothing was chosen specifically to accentuate her figure probably helped with that. She had a lot of cleavage showing.
For that matter, everyone we had come across on the tour had been pretty attractive. I had noticed a pretty wide range of body types on display, but almost all of them could have been models. Given the size of some of the breasts I had seen, some of them would have been porn models, but still… models. It made me feel dumpy in comparison, but I was pretty used to feeling that way.
“Think nothing of it, Ms. Hebert. We were all first year students at one point and Outsiders aren’t that rare - even Outsiders with access to magic. My many-greats-grandmother who founded the school was an Outsider, and we have always made a point of helping any that we come across.”
I nodded. She had mentioned her relation to the founder before, as it explained why a Bellafonte was the headmistress of the Bellafonte Academy for Magic without being as old as the buildings looked. I wasn’t a great judge of how old a building was, but I’d been through Boston enough times to get a feel for ‘centuries not decades’ when it came to construction. Of course, with magic that might all be out the window.
Magic was a shock, but it was just one more shock in a day that had been one shock after another. I remembered coming to school after break and being vaguely optimistic. Then there was a bad smell, someone shoving me, and… it was all kind of a blur. When I woke up, I was on the ground in front of the Headmistress’s tower with a small crowd gathered around me.
A few of what I assumed to be teachers checked me over and pronounced that I was a relatively healthy mage and also apparently an Outsider. Outsiders were apparently people that came from ‘outside the known worlds’, which was a concept I’d supposedly learn a great deal more about once school began.
“If you have any trouble, I should be in my tower at that time of the morning. Come find me and I’ll help put things right. It is normally part of the first day that you will have a tutor assigned, but given your situation, I am going to step outside of the normal process and assign you one later today. They will contact you tomorrow morning and spend some time helping you get accustomed to Geolocus in general, and the Academy in particular.”
I nodded along. “How… how do I pay for stuff?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation. I was used to not having a lot of money, but having absolutely no resources was something new to me.
“There is an Outsider’s fund that is maintained for just this type of eventuality. It will cover all tuition costs as well as a stipend for books and basic expenses. I will warn you that it isn’t a lot of money and you will likely need to find work once school starts if you want to live comfortably. If you need help with that, please come see me and we can talk about your interests and skills to see what we can find. If nothing else, there are a number of brothels nearby that are always working for people willing to work.”
My eyes widened. I had noticed a certain immodesty of dress among the people I had seen so far so it made a certain kind of horrible sense. “I-is that r-required?”
She blinked as though I had surprised her. “Oh? Oh, no. It’s just easy work and safer than walking the streets or trying to freelance.”
“I mean, d-do I have to have s-sex?”
“Ah. Oh, no, it’s strictly consensual. Well, outside of certain edge cases involving magical contracts… which reminds me: Don’t sign anything that you don’t have either I or your advisor go over first, alright?”
I nodded, feeling a little numb. I wouldn’t have to whore myself out to afford magic school, at least? I also felt a little bad for assuming that was what she was implying. “Thank you, again.”
That earned me a smile. “You don’t have to thank me, just give it your all.”
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
Professor Bellafonte handed me off to a bored third year student that looked like he was pretty sleepy. He was attractive in a scruffy kind of way, too, though a bit skinny for my tastes.
“Here we are,” Alex declared as he gestured at an archway standing in the tiny courtyard between two buildings.
“Isn’t it kind of… exposed?” I asked, looking up at the lack of a roof. There were some vines on the walls of the apartment blocks to either side, but that was about it for life in the little area. The arch kind of ruined the area for setting up a tent, for that matter.
He laughed. “Nah, I’m just being all cool and showing off. This is a dimensional gateway.” He produced a huge, ornate key which he tapped against a carving which looked like a stylized keyhole on one side. “Here, touch your hand here.”
I did as he directed and there was a surge of heat into my finger. I snatched it back, shaking it, but there was no burn.
“There, you’re keyed in. Just touch the arch and it’ll let you in.”
Hesitantly, I did so and there was another surge of heat, though not as bad. The space in the middle of the arch got hazy and after a second or two I could see the wavering image of a cabin in a field.
“Go on, you can walk through. So can anyone you are touching and anyone with the key, but that’s going back to the Professor once I leave here.”
Hesitantly, I stepped through the arch and found myself on a small hillside. Off in every direction, the ground was covered with rolling grasslands and a bright blue sky. The only features were the arch behind me, which looked about the same from this side, and the cabin.
I stepped forward to get a better look at the place, which was a little bigger than I expected.
“Most of the field is an illusion,” he announced and I jumped a little. I had forgotten he was following me. “The house is real, though. Let’s go make sure it’s suitable for habitation.”
I found him walking past me and barging into what would be my new home for a while. That annoyed me a little, but I was also happy to let him be the one to find out if someone had left a man-eating dragon in the basement.
There was no dragon. The inside of the cabin boasted four small rooms. The one inside the entryway was a living room of sorts with a broken-down old couch and armchair taking up a lot of the space. Past that, there were doors leading off to a kitchen and bedroom with a bathroom past the bedroom. There was indoor plumbing, which surprised me a little, and there were both a stove and a refrigerator that seemed to work just fine without electricity.
“Looks like they left it in decent shape, at least,” my guide declared. He seemed to be looking for something for a minute before pulling a slim volume off the otherwise bare bookshelf built into the wall beside the couch. “Here we go.”
I took the book when he offered it to me and opened it to find it had no title page. It was a hardbound journal filled with page after page of notes in different handwriting. “What is this?”
“Notes from people that lived here before. This whole thing,” he said and gestured around vaguely, “is a pocket dimension. You can learn how to make your own in your second year Mensuramancy classes, but new dimensions are always really empty. You have to build your own house, magic up water, and a bunch of other stuff. Some of it is Enchantment, some of it is Naturamancy, some of it is Mensuramancy. One of the reasons they maintain pocket planes for students to use is to help inspire them on that front.”
As rough as this place looked, that did sound kind of cool. Building my own place out of magic and then making it all work? That was kind of neat.
“Do you, uh, want to break the bed in?” he asked after a moment. He didn’t sound any more enthused than he had about anything else so far.
“I’m good, thanks,” I offered, still blushing.
“Is that a ‘no’ or a ‘not with you’, because my roommate has been going through a real dry spell and she would love to meet you.”
I blushed harder. “It’s a ‘not right now’.”
“Cool. Let me know if you change your mind.” He tapped his knuckles playfully on my shoulder as he walked past me out the door. Then he stopped again. “Cafeteria is open till eight. You should head over and get something for dinner since I’m sure you don’t have anything in here.”
I let go of a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. I hadn’t exactly been propositioned many times in my life, but they had never ended so easily after saying ‘no’.
“Thanks for showing me around,” I said, finding that I really meant it.
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
The cafeteria had been an experience. The food was good, which was a bit of a surprise, but the real surprise was the kind of behavior I watched while I was there.
Over the course of about an hour, I probably saw about fifty people at one point or another. About half of them wouldn’t have been out of place back home. They dressed normally, more or less, and just went about their business. Of the other half, about half of those were dressed much… different. Bare breasts, bulging cocks, and bondage gear - sometimes all three on the same person - seemed to be the norm.
What made that weirder than anything else, though, was the fact that the first group didn’t seem to notice. A woman with large weights hanging from her exposed nipples and a leather collar around her neck walked past while chatting happily with what looked like a wolfman in leather pants and nothing else. No one batted an eye at them.
Of course, when you considered what the other quarter of those fifty people were doing, it made sense. It wasn’t in the cafeteria itself, thank goodness, but across the hall there was a big room with a lot of padded surfaces that was hosting an orgy. I sat down at a table to eat my dinner at an angle where I could see inside and I had to marvel at the surreal-ness of eating a turkey wrap while watching a guy playing ‘hide the sausage’ with a cock as big around as his forearm. He looked like he was loving every minute of it, too.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of it and I didn’t know if that was because I desperately wanted to go join in or if I wanted to run away screaming from the insanity.
I eventually found my way back to my little cabin in its own pocket dimension and collapsed on the bed. It had been a long day and it kind of hit me all at once that I wasn’t anywhere near home.
I spent some time crying as I realized I missed dad. We hadn’t been close for a long time, but he had been safe. Home was safe. As horrible as Emma had gotten, she’d never actually attacked me in my own home. It had been my last bastion, and now I was here, instead.
Logically, I knew that I was being given a chance to learn magic. I wouldn’t have a parahuman power, per se, but it might be better since I would get to pick what I focused on. Some of the fourth year projects the Professor had gone over seemed pretty powerful, and I could just imagine myself returning home as the returning hero with something that would let me blow up an Endbringer.
I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and took a shower. The water temperature was nice and the water supply appeared to be infinite. As I relaxed, I let my fingers wander and I started thinking about the girl with the nipple clamps and the guy sitting on that giant cock. I imagined myself feeling the biting pain of weights on my nipples. I imagined myself sliding down on a cock big enough to break me in two.
My fingers wove an intricate pattern around my clit as I imagined myself being railed over and over by strangers in an orgy. In a brothel. I was a customer. I was a whore.
I came with a whimper. I was used to being quiet since our walls weren’t very thick and I would have absolutely died if dad heard me have an orgasm. Even here, all alone in a strange dimension, I stifled my cries.
I turned off the water and dried off, collapsing naked on the bed.
I’d come to terms with being bisexual years ago. Emma had been the worst kind of crush since she was very much not bisexual. We’d still talked about the boys in the magazines that she liked to flip through and I’d been honest about the ones I liked there. I didn’t really have a type, except maybe ‘strong’. Strong personalities. Strong bodies. Strong minds.
If Emma had done things differently, she could have had me worshiping at her altar like a goddess. I would have done anything for her, and I was the kind of fucked up person that gets off on that. Sometimes, at least.
I eventually fell asleep, still naked and damp, and dreamed about sex.