Legend of Ransera

There had been ample time in summer to visit, but he had told himself he wasn't going to Silfanore while Sivan and his prick neighbor were showing Torin and Destyn around. He could have been in and out of Silfanore—and Castor's bed—without any of them knowing, but Aurin was quietly neurotic and whatever; he was here now.

The elves were fucking controlling, so he had to got to a border, cross the wards, deal with customs, and only then vault himself to Silfanore proper and, because he was a tricksy bastard, into Castor's bedroom. The half-elf wasn't there, but he could sense him. Of course, Castor could sense him too, suddenly in his home, in his room, in his space. Aurin did like to keep him on his toes—and several other positions, of course—and he was finally ready to initiate his little protégé in Traversion, so it seemed appropriate to enter into the scene with it.

"Honey, I'm home!" he called, tromping through the apartment like he owned it, homing in on Castor's location easily. He left his rucksack in Castor's room, carrying only a box of his favorite confections from Kalzasi.

"There you are."

He poked his head into the room, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face, and then the rest of his body followed. He mock-frowned.

"What the fuck? No food on the table? No naked Castor? Am I not wanted? Should I go?" He glanced over his shoulder. "I'm going to go."

It was a stupid game, Aurin walking back toward Castor's room, but he was often stupid around Castor, who seemed to always be amused and played with him in kind. He wasn't starving and while he would have been down to get down immediately, he knew Castor would be excited for the magic.

So, of course, he would have to draw it out and tease him. Everything could be foreplay if one did it correctly.

Aurin caught Castor, then let him slither around him, kissing and holding from behind and the like. Castor was excellent at love-bombing; he had learned from Aurin, after all. For his part, the ginger just preened under it as if it were his due.

"Impresario," he corrected with a mocking sneer. He didn't know the word in Mythrasi, but it sounded fancy enough in Common. "And entrepreneur, I suppose. Knower-of-things, deflowerer-of-virgins. All of the above." He caught Castor for the briefest of intense embraces, then let those clever fingers entwine with his and pull him to his bower. Of course, the flash of honest care wasn't commented upon. It was easier to play the game and pretend like there was nothing real echoing in their laughter and their moans.

"Oh, poor Castor, my prince of the alienage!" he declaimed like one of the actors back at the Golden Peacock. "I could've helped, but then they would have beheaded my human self and then where would you be? Alone in this daybed." He tumbled beside Castor, kicking off his boots and rather expertly removing some outer layers of his clothes so he could relax and Castor could slip those clever fingers under his clothes. Slut skills.

"Do I wear the red hair better than the Dream King?" He paused. "Don't answer that. How could a mere human be as beautiful as an elf? After all, you are so godsdamned beautiful, aren't you?" He caressed Castor's cheek, still as fair as the day they had met. He grinned up at the half-elven scamp straddling him. If he found it arousing, well, Castor would soon know.

He tucked his hands behind his head, smirking up at his sometimes lover, hips making little motions underneath him.

"Karnor is recovering from the Eclipse, slowly but surely. In Solunarium, they ignored it thanks to some timely help from their twin godlings. I went there for a wedding, but didn't manage to bang the holy twins, alas." Somehow, he got the feeling they would want to do things to him that would drive him literally mad, and not in a fun way. "Bored nobles in the Gelerian Imperium are fomenting a little rebellion, but mostly just evading taxes and laundering money. The Avialae continue to be huge and fling themselves at whatever creeps out of the Warrens. Ah..."

He trailed off. If Castor had specific questions, he could give specific answers, but as he was already asking after gifts, Aurin gave a bit harder of a rock and roll of his hips.

"I brought your favorite foreign import: my fucking cock. If you take good care of it, I think I have time to give you the gift of travel, make sure it doesn't break your brain, and teach you enough so you don't accidentally slam yourself into a brick wall or yank your cock off while masturbating. What do you say?"

Just because Aurin was openly molesting Castor didn't mean he wasn't paying attention to what he said.

"True. You're always trying to give me head, not take mine for a trophy." And, of course, Castor's beauty belonged to him—the full splendor for the moment, and the memory of it in between meetings. He touched the half-elf like he loved him, and sometimes he fucked him like he hated him. Mercurial was Aurin, though he always came back. He had even come at Castor's call before, when there was trouble enough he sent word via post through a gateway to him.

Aurin wasn't the sort to rely upon day in and day out, but he would be there when it counted.

He gave Castor a light, mocking smack on the cheek.

"Cream-filled Aurin cock is your favorite Kalzasern import," he declared, even if he wasn't Kalzasern by birth. In fact, he was spending more and more time out of the city-state now that he was nearly as talented a Railrunner as Valencia Grey.

And, affronted, "you open your world to me!"

But, apparently, he meant Castor's legs. He did. Later, both naked, Castor on his back, Aurin hobbling his ankles with vise-like hands, the traveler smirked down at his sometimes lover. Manhandling him, he grappled Castor's crossed ankles, not stopping, but sweeping a sweating hand through sweating hair and, without losing his pace, he pulled a mechanical pen from his nearby, castoff trousers, and began to draw on Castor's chest.

His breath hitched and he tossed the pen aside, biting down hard enough on his lip that he was able to smear some of his own blood across his palm. They were so close. Breathing suddenly ragged, he slapped his bloodied palm into the nascent runic work on Castor's chest, knocking his astral body loose and into the Aetherium.

Hot on his trail, Aurin projected his own soul after him.

He laughed, and the whole of his being felt buoyed as Aurin fell against him, into him, and so they spent a while before his world was torn apart (again).
Castor knew there were other worlds. It was an easy truth, that there were places outside of his own perception. He knew things like Spirits existed elsewhere, and that there were whole swaths of realties drowning in elements. Gods, too, he supposed had their own lands away from the mortal plane. And, as sure as he knew there were other worlds, he knew there was magic to find it.

He smiled despite himself when Aurin colored his chest with ink and blood - this, too, he knew. It wasn’t sudden, his offer of escape. Transversion couldn’t (shouldn’t) be shared through surprise. No, because there was the whole messy business of initiation. A chance of dying. Not that Castor tried to think about death, and he was lucky Aurin had fucked him so well before they tried this piece of magic.

Maybe his dick was his favorite import after all. That, or maybe he didn’t have too much time to really consider the potential of his own death, when he felt his own being break from his body. Castor screamed (or did he imagine that) as his essence ripped away from his flesh, like a piece of paper torn into two.

Then he wasn’t anywhere - or was he everywhere? He wasn’t in place as much as he was suddenly in-between, where nothing should be.

Aurin rode a wave of sexual energy into the Aetherium.

Now that he understood the thaumaturgical entanglement as it existed with his tricks, he was able to follow the scent of his own blood through the chaos to where Castor's astral body would be waiting. A fox-shaped thoughtform bounded through the slipspace, following a trail like red-tinted narcotic smoke.

Time was a little funny there, but eventually he found Castor. Only here, Castor looked like he saw himself. He was naked, perspiring from the sex, but parts of him were almost caricatures, little things about his form that bothered him, blown out of proportion. The fox frowned (because foxes could frown here), thinking he would have to beat the stupid out of the beautiful boy when the opportunity arose.

But for the time being, he leaped up and Castor caught him on instinct. The fox turned around in his arms, and then the fox was Aurin again, naked and glorious (at least in his own mind and so that was how he was here). His weight would be easy to carry unless Castor thought too much about it, thought he shouldn't be able to hold the larger man in his arms, and then his mind would try to enforce gravity upon Aurin's.

But, for the time being, light as a feather, stiff as a board.

"Hello, handsome," he said, smirking at his own quick tracking. "Welcome to the Aetherium. And the slipspace. They're not the same, and... fuck, well, I forgot to bring the book, but eventually I will remember how to explain the difference. Basically, you're in the Aetherium so your soul can soak it up. You can see the slipspace from here if you know how to look... and you can see the Aetherium from the slipspace if you know how to look. Once your soul is sopping with Aetherium, I can bring you back. This is your astral body. To your material body. And then you have to focus on climbing back in. Then, you will be able to sense the slipspace from your body and I can teach you the tricks you ought to be capable of right at first."

Time was a little funny there, so they needn't spend all that much time there before he shepherded his pretty little lamb back to his body. Still, Aurin was incorrigible.

"Ever been fucked in the Aetherium?"

Clearly, he knew how he wanted to spend the time.

He caught Aurin, he’d always catch him (he thought). The issue wasn’t catching. It was holding on, and here. where thoughts and feelings were consequential, where -

Hm. He was thinking, and there it was: a space where there hadn’t been before. All of a sudden. A glitch that multiplied the distance between him at Aurin, at first by a few fingers, then by a whole body, and then by yards, and -

“Uh -,” and he reached for Aurin, thinking of Aurin, and how he felt, his skin against his skin, and there he found him. Castor easily grabbed his hand, the space between them gone as suddenly as it came. “All of this feels strange. What do you mean, sop? I - .”

He felt his body drip. No, rain, or something like it. Clouds, he was a cloud, all light and water, lifting away and away and away -
Castor swore, and stumbled out of a rain cloud.

“Nothing about this feels real,” he says, his words, his voice, spilling off his lips. Everything still felt so wet. He moved, and it was like he was in the ocean, a current spiraling him against Aurin. He held to him, tight, still swaying in a realm unlike anything he’d experienced. “Or maybe it’s too real. Can you even fuck like this? Would it just be thinking about it?”

And then, he laughed, and something like sunlight burned off his skin.

“That feels masturbatory.”

Aurin didn't even have to answer the first question; the Aetherium responded to Castor's thoughts, which illustrated the sopping. He laughed. There was little danger now that he had found him. Castor wasn't skilled enough to escape him here and now, not yet.

So, he was standing beside Castor now, and even as the younger man stumbled out of the perceived precipitation, Aurin didn't let go of his hand.

"It is both less and more real than reality," he agreed, still laughing. There was less edge to it, though, than normal, whether that was because of the nature of the Aetherium or the elder man felt less inhibited here was open to debate. "You can fuck here. Just have to concentrate and be on the same page for the most part. Adaptable, dedicated. But we can do that training when you can hold yourself still without me."

His head cocked curiously to the side, a ripple of memory as to how he might react in their home material plane.

"Masturbatory? I mean, it's easy to rub one out here if you can focus." Aurin ran his 'hand' along Castor's 'skin' and tried to project 'pleasure' from his thoughtform to Castor's, his aura to Castor's. It was all in the mind as they didn't have true bodies here, true nerves and flesh.

Eventually, he would have to get Castor to meditate here, to truly reach out with his senses and grow to understand it in ways no book could explain. For now, though, he wanted to babysit until he had some little control and self-control, and then show him the way back to his body.