Adventure 2 - The Drunken Mayor (2)

Valon waited. And waited. Then waited some more. Ed didn't vomit or become sober, and remained passed out. "What the..." Valon mumbled. This was not what he'd expected at all. "Oulders, help me spread him out on the bed."

With Oulders help, Valon began a full-body examination of Ed as he remained passed out. The external examination didn't take long; they stripped him, and Valon was too filled with a growing concern to even spend any time ogling the squat manhood dangling between Ed's legs for a moment longer than necessary. Wiping his fingers off on the sheets after shoving them up Ed's asshole, Valon's frown grew.

"I don't understand. That's a cure that's supposed to work. Something else must be going on, but I can't see..." Valon paced the room, muttering. Something was going on, clearly, and it must be magical because it prevented his spell from working. He should have been able to detect it, but he detected nothing. He could feel Oulders eyes on him, which didn't help. He wondered if this is how everyone else at college had felt all the time: unable to grasp anything that was happening. He checked everything in the room, shooing out the servants that tried to barge in; he was sure they would have pressed him if Oulders hadn't been there. Valon was still pacing when someone else came in. "Oulders, are you or the wizard gentleman interested in having a drink?"

A flash of insight hit him. Valon turned, seizing the manservant with a wide smile and shouting, "Of course! You're brilliant! Yes, a drink is exactly what I want. Get me any ale or wine you have, just a little bit; I'll give you a gold coin if you can do it as fast as you can!"

The servant disappeared, returning a moment later with a small glass of wine. Valon seized it out of his hands, forgetting his promise of payment in the rush to prove or disprove his wild idea. Standing over Ed's naked body, he pinched the nose and tilted the head back, opening the mouth. "Careful," he muttered to himself, allowing a drop of wine to fall down Ed's unconscious throat. Yanking his head up, he felt it slide down, and then...

It was a flicker - only a flicker - but it was there.

"Aha! I got it!" Valon yelped, his eyes shining wide. This curse was particularly clever: it remained almost completely dormant until any time Ed drank; then it would activate, causing his craving for more to increase as the curse fed off of the actual alcohol in his body until it had had its fill. Everyone would just see another drunkard, and he'd be too inebriated to ever ask for help, let alone think he'd been cursed. Whoever had laid the curse had gone through a lot of effort to make it subtle, too. Too much effort, Valon thought, to target the mayor of some backwater village. Someone must really hate Ed, even more so than just wanting to see him dead; either that, or someone just wanted to show off. The idea of another strong wizard or witch involving themselves in Ganic's Stand didn't sit well with Valon at all. They would probably be watching, too; just in case they tried finding a cure.

"Here you go, my good man!" Valon stated, one hand resting the wine glass on the floor, the other fishing into his coin purse and pulling out three gold coins. "Here's one I promised, one for the inconvenience and another to keep your mouth shut about what you saw here."

"Y-yes, sir," the servant agreed.

"And as for you," Valon said as he turned to Oulders, "I think we've done all we can here." Under his breath, he whispered, "and I'm not exactly sure we should be sticking around in this house. After you."

They proceeded to leave, Valon's mind abuzz with excitement, which faded into nervousness. He hadn't come here to get involved with anyone with actual power, not until he felt he was ready, but it would only be a matter of time until he got found out if someone had done something that subtle to the mayor.

Once they were out of earshot of the mayor's estate, he tugged on Oulders's arm; Oulders obligingly bent down, and he whispered, "We've got a lot of work to do. Someone - maybe in the village, maybe not - has put a fairly insidious curse on Ed. I'm going to have to assume it's not you; unless you breaking your back was a spectacular ruse. I suppose I'll find out one way or the other.

"We need to figure out who; Ed has a very dangerous enemy, and I don't want to go into a fight with someone who'd make that kind of curse unprepared. I'm going to need a lot of magic, and sadly 'milking' you isn't going to cut it."

While Oulders blushed, Valon asked, "Yes or no: do people looking for dangerous come through Ganic's Stand often?" Oulders shook his head. "I didn't think so. Is there anyone here, do you think, that would be willing to do something dangerous for a lot of money." Oulders shrugged. "That's getting somewhere. I assume you'd know anyone who might be likely to leave to nearby towns that can spread a message?" Oulders nodded. "I see. I think I have a plan." Valon handed Oulders the keys. "Go through and wait for me."

Valon turned the other way, heading towards the Two-Headed Pig. He knew he had to be careful, so he slowly made his way up towards the bar. "Wizard!" Yhrbold greeted him. "In for an early drink, or are you here to help me that little problem we discussed earlier."

"Actually, I'm after something that should help with a lot of problems in the village. Wizards need certain resources to do their work, and one of those is a source of magic. The more I can get, the more I can spend solving problems. I'm getting a little tapped out, so I want to go after a pretty big magic source. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly equipped to go after them by myself, so I was wondering if you could keep an ear out to anyone who might be in need of money. Ask anyone who comes in that you think might be interested in a high-risk, high-reward adventure to either meet me here or come over to see me at the town hall."

A couple of coins appeared in Valon's hand a moment later, sliding across the inn's bar towards Yhrbold. Yhrbold grinned, and pocketed them. "I think I can do that for you."

"Good! I'll be back over in the hour; have an ale waiting for me?" Valon pushed away from the bar, heading across the road to the town hall.

"Oulders?!" he called out, stepping through the portal. Oulders's head peaked in through the window. "Good! Come in here!" Hunting around for a quill, some in, and a piece of parchment, he lay them down on the table. "From what I understand, you know how to write. I want you to, as legibly as you can, write down the names of anyone in the village who might be leaving over the next fortnight that is also reliable enough to pass on a message."

Oulders picked up the feather, and scrawled clumsily at the parchment, filling it with a list of several names. He paused to think, but Valon halted him. "That's plenty enough. Get undressed and head outside."

Not allowing himself to be distracted by Oulders's nakedness, Valon occupied his time by writing out several copies of a message; one for each of the names on Oulders's list, and a couple more. By the time he was done, Oulders had been outside for some time. "I'm sorry, Oulders," Valon exclaimed, "but I'm going to need to remove the glamour now. I need to save on magic, and it might be a good idea to measure how much you've reverted."

Reaching up, he twisted the charm on the collar around Oulders's neck. Oulders's human form disappeared in a blink; his bovine one dropped to its hooves on the ground. Valon gave him a quick look-over, frowning. "I don't see much reversion," he noted, petting Oulders's heavy head. "If this plan works, that won't be much of a problem. I'm going to go on a monster hunt. As you can imagine, monsters are either large, very magical, or both. Their seed holds a lot of magic, and I'm going to try to find a nice wellspring of magic. I was going to do this eventually, but this business with Ed has meant I've had to advance my plans ahead a little more than I had planned."

Instructing Oulders to continue to clean out the field, Valon returned to the Two-Headed Pig for his drink. He explained his issue with Yhrbold. "I'm in a bit of a dilemma; I had Oulders write me a list of names, and I could have gotten him to show me where these people were, but I wanted someone with a little more experience with people to give me something a bit more to work on." They went through Oulders's list, and Valon went to visit the best candidates, paying them to pass on his message to anyone who might be able to spread the word. With careful timing, he went through the portal he had to the wizard's college, skulking through the familiar passages to post more messages at various guildhalls that the wizards wouldn't pay too much attention to.

The following days passed slowly, with Valon waiting anxiously. He did some of the odd jobs on his list: curing blights from crops and plagues on livestock, healing wounds and sores on the villagers as they accrued them. In his downtime, he researched telepathy and looked into unusual methods for removing curses. Oulders left each night, with his glamour on; Valon went with him the first night to have the first proper conversation with Alb, Oulders's father, about selling his wheeled chairs in the capital. He returned in the morning, to be transformed back into a bull.

Valon's earlier nervousness dissipated as he noticed Oulders's humanity returning. It wasn't as fast as he was expecting, but every day he found himself noticing more details: the tail or horns would be shorter by maybe as much as an inch, or his hooves would appear as if they were splitting. The bullish stockiness slowly became leaner as Oulders's real body began to align more with the one he had as a glamour.

The gradual reversion made Oulders's nude moments all the more alluring to Valon. It didn't help that neither he nor Oulders could afford to indulge; Valon needed Oulders to remain chaste in case he needed more magic later, while Valon didn't want to force himself on Oulders and Olgate was obstinately avoiding him. Instead, he drank, growing more dour every night Yhrbold confirmed that no, nobody willing to risk life and limb for money had called into the inn that day. Occasionally, he thought about nipping through the portal to visit one of his favourite spots, but he was already risking his luck as it was putting in the groundwork for Alb and checking up on his messages.

After a couple of weeks of forced celibacy, Valon was feeling backed up. He wasn't the only one; he'd wandered out to check up on Oulders, finding him in the half-torn-down old barn, half-fingered, half-hoofed hands gliding along his slick, pink pole. He watched for a couple of seconds, guiltily enjoying himself, until Oulders finally noticed him. "Morree," Oulders rumbled, his hands darting to the sides.

Valon patted him on the head. "I know the feeling. Trust me." He closed his head, his weakening resolve fighting off the want to sit in Oulders lap and press his face into the half-human chest, feeling that huge hot cock pressing against him. "I think I'm getting close to figuring the telepathy out." It was the only thing he could say. "Come on, why don't you and I go for a drink, hmm? Trade one vice for another."

With Oulders's glamour restored and his human body dressed, the two of them headed over to the Two-Headed Pig. By now, Valon felt like a regular patron; he smiled at the villagers he'd helped, slinking over to his usual table. "Yhrbold! A couple of your strongest-"

For a man of his stature, Yhrbold zipped over to them at a startling speed; Valon would have been shocked if he'd not been facing Oulders and trying not to jump across the table. "Wizard! Someone wants to talk to you!"

"Tell them I'll deal with them in the morning," Valon mumbled, "we want a couple of-" He stopped, eyes widening, and turning abruptly. "This isn't just another village issue, is it?"

"I'll get you those drinks you're wanting," Yhrbold stated, grinning like a madman, "but you might be wanting three."

"Well, well!" Valon stated, reflecting Yhrbold's smile towards Oulders, who smiled slightly himself. "Things finally progress! Where are they?"

"Just getting settled in, I suspect," Yhrbold shrugged; "either that or they've gone out back to piss. I'll point him in your direction when he returns. I told him you'd probably be over tonight. I see you almost as much as Ed these days..."

"Let's just stop the comparison there, shall we?" Valon said curtly. He chucked some coins in Yhrbold's direction. "I'll be in a much better mood with a drink in me."

"Coming right up!" Yhrbold agreed, his pudgy fingers grinding the coins together as he returned to the tavern.

Turning back to Oulders, Valon grinned. "Looking out for Ingrid, or are you partial to one of the others?" He watched, enjoying Oulders blush strongly at the suggestion. "Of course," he added quietly, "if you find that that's not quite as enjoyable, you're always welcome in my..."

"Over there!" Yhrbold called out.

Valon turned, looking at the sound of the man coming towards them.