Stray, chapter 6
Mike gets a bright idea and sees a way out
I was in heat for eleven more days. We had the run of the house and the front yard, since Tom didn't want me near Thor or Lucifer in the back yard, and we pretty much screwed every chance we got.
I had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right as the love spell slowly started to wear off, but I was one horny bitch so it didn't really matter. Besides, I knew I was already pregnant, and I wanted to experience having puppies of my own as well. Just the thought of breastfeeding them from my own milk swollen mommy teats made my tail wag in expectation, and I was enraptured by the thought of raising them and teaching them and parenting them.
And God I loved being fucked by him: having his big strong warm furry body on top of mine felt so intimate, and he had this huge wolf cock....
Our affection for each other didn't end when I came out of heat. We made a lot of small talk as I tried to learn about him and where he came from, which seemed like a very magical place. So I asked Wise to teach me magic. And he agreed. So I spent the days learning lot's of theory and trying to learn to meditate correctly so I could learn to allocate mana.
I really got along with Wise, despite how alien he was. "I love sunlight so much", Wise once told me as he stretched in the mornings rays. "Warmth feels so comfortable."
It was moments like that which made really enjoy being his friend and lover, and even the mother of his demon-puppies. One day I told him that it was important to hide Tom's shoes and socks and chew on them, because all canines did that - so he did. That was funny. He was a little upset when he finally got caught and reprimanded, but he did enjoy the joke. But as the love spell rapidly started to wear off, I kept wondering how in hell I could actually be in love with a demon-wolf.
Tom insisted that I learn how to become a show dog, so since I was out of heat he could safely let me into the back yard, but I had to learn all the standard show dog tricks, which really annoyed me. Wise would watch me in bored interest, too. The only fun part was playing Frisbee - that got his tail wagging and I also enjoyed the exercise, and I have to admit I really reveled in how fast, powerful and agile my body was now.
I did have fun playing with the other mommy dog's puppies, though. Granted, it was mostly hide-and-seek with something of animal intelligence, but it did bring me a strange pleasure. And I knew I needed to know how to raise puppies, because I was pretty sure I would be having a litter of my own soon enough.
Then came the day I felt a hard little lump in my lower belly - in my womb - and as the days passed it started to grow. By then I was pretty unsure about the whole Wise thing, but I knew it would be best if I just played along. Besides, I was learning magic, and I had just learned my first cantrip,"light" Wise told me that "light" was the oldest game in all of reality, but that it was one thing to be able to conjure mana, and another thing to be able asense it around you. He would teach me that next next, he said.
Then I started to grow teats - my nipples started to itch, and the the flesh around them started to get hard and sensitive, and sometimes warm. And then they started to bud, and I was sure I was going to be a mommy doggy at this point, and also that I would be giving birth to demon-spawn.
I told Wise that I was pregnant, and he licked me on the face and muzzle and told me he was happy the experiment had worked, wagging his tail. Yeah, that didn't make me feel very good, but at least he was happy about it.
Steve started to show up occasionally to take Wise off for brief periods for magical experiments or other duties, but we still had time to practice magic together, and I learned how to cast "detect magic", a very useful cantrip.
Over the weeks as my pregnancy grew I came to realize that I could distinguish individual shapes in my womb sometimes. One quiet night I tried to count them, and I was shocked to realize it was a lot! I was thinking at least six or seven....
But it was really starting to become clear that Wise didn't understand human emotions or really people at all. He would lick your nose or wag his tail, but those where canine instincts, I guess because that was his body now. He did ask me if he was being a good father once, and he was trying, and episodes like that did make me smile, despite the fact that what was happening to me was really starting to sink in.
Then one day I awoke with a clear head. And I was shocked. I reached down to feel my bulging belly and I whimpered. And my budding teats hurt. And then, I felt one of the puppies in my womb squirm, and that woke others, and I was staring open-eyed in astonishment as I felt the new life we had created together moving within me.
When they finally calmed down inside of me, I got as still and relaxed as I could and tried to count them again - and I could definitely count eight. I cried out softly in horror as I realized I was going to have eight God-damn mother-fucking puppies, and the father was probably the demon. And I lay my muzzle down in my paws and I started to cry.
My anguished cry awoke Wise, and he looked at me with concern and then got up and stretched and then licked me on the nose. "You made a classic sound of despair. What's wrong, Mike?", he asked.
"Nothing", I wept.
"No, you seem to be in pain", he said, licking the tears away from my eyes. "Is it our puppies? Did something go wrong with our mating?"
"No", I sighed, unable to help myself from smiling at the memory. "The mating went fine."
"You did seem to enjoy it more than I did, so I was wondering...", he said. "So why are you crying?", he asked.
Then I got an idea. It just came to me like bolt from the blue: there was a way to escape my curse! "Wise", I said "I'm not happy with my progress learning magic."
"Hmm. Now that you can detect the mana you are using, it may be time to teach you a first level spell. I suggest 'arc of fire' for its defensive value", he said, still licking me comfortingly.
"I want to learn 'dispel magic'", I replied.
"That's a third level spell, and I would have to study it with you since I can't cast it either. I just don't understand dimensions where you can actually make magic go away. It could be a few years before we are able to cast it. And you need to learn more cantrips as well", he replied.
I sighed. So I was stuck this way for years. But at least I could finally see a way out.
So we spent as much time as we could on magic and also Frisbee as my pregnancy continued to progress. And it wasn't long before my belly became really distended and I actually felt fat. And the eight demon-puppies or whatever inside me moved constantly! It was hard to sleep!
My teats kept growing as well, but still they seemed a little small. But then new-born puppies aren't that big.
We started to talk about which first level spell I should learn first, and he went through about thirty of them, all he knew about.
If I could cast 'charm person' on Tom, I should be able to get him to take the Collar of Obedience off me and let me go. But if you can cast a charm spell, you can also cast the counter-spell, and I was pretty sure he had more experience at minor magic than I did. Also, where would I go?
I liked 'alter self', because that could make me male again, but it only lasted about ten minutes and casting it blew through your mana. Also, it didn't change your basic shape by much so I would still be on four legs. So I was limited to things like panthers and miniature horses.
The criminal in me wanted telekinesis, because how useful was that? Especially now that I didn't have hands.
I told Wise what I was looking at, and he looked at me a little concerned. "You should choose either 'arc of fire', 'mana bolt', or the 'shield' spell", he said. "For your own safety".
I had to stare at him when he said that. I still didn't get Wise. Did he actually care or was he more concerned about his accursed masters breeding experiment? Because sometimes it was really hard to tell.... But then he was a demon, so the answer did seem to be a little obvious.
I was able to convince him to teach me 'telekinesis', though. I told him I could use it to disarm my opponents and then tear their throats out with my teeth. He seemed a little dubious at first, but he did accept that.
The first thing he told me was that I wasn't pure enough. I was like "Um, I'm sorry?" He told me that I had to master the purification ritual if I really wanted to conjure that much mana here on the Prime Material.
Ritually purifying yourself to do even first level magic turned out to be really annoying. You had to specifically do everything deliberately, and the meditation part took longer than forty-five minutes, which means you have to cross the Abyss as they call it, the part where your mind automatically tries to snap you out of your meditative state with thoughts and images. And that's hard to do.
Then came the day that I looked up at Wise and said "I have no head", and levitated him. He was actually really proud of me for that, but with him it was hard to tell if he was proud of his teaching ability or my progress as a student. The fact that he was a demon was never far from my mind.
I guess the key was understanding what mana really is. It's the force that flows through nature that makes a seed sprout and grow into a plant that flowers and then bears seed itself. It makes an egg hatch into a chick that grows up into an adult bird that can itself reproduce and even feel love. It causes all things to attempt to attain a more noble state. Some even go so far as to call it "the breath of God", noting that it blows though the multiverse. But it also has rules, and those rules are local - that is, it's properties vary from dimension to dimension.
But as time passed, and as we played and got to know each other better, the puppies kept coming up. Tom examined my belly and told me it wouldn't be long, maybe two weeks, and I started to get sort of worried.
And I couldn't believe how massively pregnant I was becoming. I mean, it really sucked. You had to eat and pee constantly, you got no rest because of the puppies constantly moving around inside you, and my teats hurt. And every day it got incrementally worse, my belly and teats slowly growing.
And then came the day when I was there as one of Tom's expectant mommy malamutes gave birth to her puppies. It took hours, and she had five. And it did look sort of hard and slightly traumatizing too, but not anywhere near as bad as a human birth, and that sort of gave me hope - unless giving birth to demon puppies created it's own kind of horror. Still, just watching it made me put my paw to my own swollen womb and turn a little green. I couldn't believe I was about to go through that....
And it was only days away....