Prelude II

It was all Ramses could do not to be completely distracted by the flash of Osira's legs under the desk. Finally he gave up and stared. She had selected a very short robe that morning which ended mere fingerspans under her hips. Each time she adjusted herself on the stone seat of the amphitheatre the robe would ride up just a little more.

Ramses carefully adjusted the writing desk he had draped over his lap and shifted uncomfortably. When he looked back up Osira was smirking at him.

He felt the blood rush to his face and cursed how transparent he was. She smiled and patted the pillow she was sitting on, drawing his attention down to below her desk.

“These pillows barely make up for sitting on stone all day do they... the stone is so... hard.”

He blushed harder and her crystal—the blue of the fourth protocol—shined with her delight. His crystal—still red, his having barely passed the tests for the third protocol—was dark with embarrassment.

“If you two are quite through?”

The Judicar—and historian—Nemada's voice cut through the amphitheatre like a knife. The other students, scattered about the amphitheatre, giggled and laughed. Osira laughed and Ramses' face broke out into a sweat.

“Very good then,” Nemada said. “Good morning to all of you. I trust you found Eudices' treatise on the formulation and intersection of the secular, divine, and magical cultures in the city-state of Heimdella informative?”

His gold crystal sparkled in the bright morning sunlight in stark contrast to his black robes, but the golden ankh staff floating behind him was dull in the sunlight as if tarnished by too much use.

“He took a different tact than we did in our discussion but I thought his thinking and his premise were original and thought-provoking.”

Ramses frowned as that ass-kisser Tarses nodded profoundly at the Judicar's words.

Nemada channeled a thread of power to the screen behind him and a Nureyev Temporal-Spatial Thread diagram appeared. The NTST chart had dozens of decision points emanating from it. A low groan came from the students.

Although thread dynamics was one of the most fascinating subjects in Fate Mechanics at the layman level, the actual understanding and study of it was grueling work.

“Today,” Nemada continued utterly unswayed by the student sentiment, “we will speak about the events causitively associated with the creation of the Globe of Anhuss around the Kahrgir Artifact in 2346.”

As Nemada spoke, Ramses instantiated a light thread of Evocation power. He streamed it down his chest and belly and then flickered it under his desk and carefully, subtly, ran the end across the inside of Osira's left thigh.

Some students looked over annoyed as she quietly gasped in surprise. Ramses smiled at her furious glare, but he was clear that she hadn't disliked it.

“...As you all SHOULD know the Third Power Arken, the then still unformed Second Power ‘Krakelovitch’, and the Fifth Power Dalian cast the Sphere. Arken and Krakelovitch were, of course, outside the Bifrost Ward and Dalian was casting from inside. This created a particularly interesting vector to the willing. Remember—Arken and Krakelovitch had very different interface points to the Prime Surface. Arken was bound by the Hell Pact and Krakelovitch was bound to literally nothing—he was only spatially related to the space at Declension Level 1.2 that the Artifact...”

“...and so that gave rise to the Balance Keeper having to choose the implementation of that balance vector. One of your homework assignments this week will be to determine the fate limitations that restricted him to four decision channels. I warn you—it is not obvious! I will go over the high level stream descriptions so you have some guidance...”

Osira re-settled herself on her pillow and slightly parted her legs.

Ramses' mouth went completely dry. He carefully took a sip of his cup of water hoping that the other students blamed his flush on the hot Tharuden sun.

“...so the first two streams had the most immediate impact. The discipline three re-working of the time line impacted a fairly small number of parties as such things must be controlled. The first was a subtle change in the strategic understanding of the four prime strategists of what would be called the Compass Alliance. That change occurred 36 days before the causitive event in the linear time stream. All four actors chose to trust Dau-Penn and their new intuition and acted. Those players of course being:”

• Naho-Tep, the Father of Tharuden himself, leading the Alliance and responsible for oversight of the fate stream;

• Riva Kay, the Incarnate of War, a holy warrior of the Second Power Antul, and a Maeran Prince, responsible for the strategic military application of Compass forces;

• Foresetti, Incarnate of Law, Time Matrix Wielder, Herald, and a Third Power, responsible for small unit tactical strikes against key positions;

• Shiro-Chen, holy warrior of Second Power Antul, a Dal-Kon clan head and Daim-Yo, responsible for extra-divine coordination.

These four were given small, subtle understandings that radically changed their missions. This led to Shiro-Chen beginning negotiations via the Emperor of Dal-Kon with the Dragons of the South Sea about...

Osira shifted back slightly as Ramses slid another evocation probe under her desk. His first probe gently hooked under the edge of her robe and pulled it up. She was breathing heavily now and could not believe she was letting this third-year red-crystal touch her. But he was kind of hot, and boy could he use an evocation stream...

“...so Forsetti took the White Staff of Techen with him and began to make plans. This third of the four decision streams was possibly the most decisive, for in revealing the location of the life matrix containers of the Arch-Mage Goram to Forsetti, this allowed for Forsetti to manage the acquisition of the five remaining missing pieces and to then support the acquisition of the Formative Pattern. But that is a direct result of the fourth decision stream...”

His heart beating insanely fast, Ramses focused his will and laced the evocation streams with a thread of divination so he could feel what he was doing and set up a feedback loop. He pushed a surge of enchantment through just to stimulate the nerve endings of her skin. As the divining threads connected he immediately became uncomfortable as he felt the hot skin of her thighs. He reversed the probes, slid them down her thighs, sweeping slowly past the inside of her knees, pausing to kiss the knees with some enchantment as he slowly feathered them by. Osira forsook any attempt to pay attention to the drivel the Professor was speaking and gripped the edge of her desk and closed her eyes.

“...so that was decisive as well—informing the Blade of Stone set in motion the events that led to the destruction of El Kahar and the retrieval of that piece of the life-matrix.

“The most direct vector shift was a three-month regression done on the Herald dedicated to the Second Power Andul, Pelleus Wyvernnsbane. In shifting the direction of his quest three months before the causitive event he took this secondary player and put him in principal position because he led the Herald to the place where he could learn of the initiating matrix, and in warning the Blade of Stone and the Second Warden of the Sindar he began what is called the ‘Gathering of Heroes’.”

“It turns out that the initiating matrix was hidden in the southernmost range of the Wisdom's Blade range of mountains on the Imperial Island of Dal-Kon. In the cliffs overlooking Cheng-Wa pass the Herald discovered the ...”

All else was lost as Osira and Ramses cried out as he brushed one thread along the back of her leg and the other touched lightly and enchanted between her legs. Connected they felt each other's passion and the one touch was enough.

Silence filled the Amphitheater. Nemada turned bright red, cancelled his projection display with a wave of his hand, caught up his staff and started to rise out of the amphitheatre. His voice boomed out.

“Fine! Since I am boring you you can EACH build me a 27-level decision projection of the Balance Keeper's invocation and your arguments as to whether he over-reacted or if the equations balance.

“I will expect those patterns in my crystal in three days.”

A groan of anguish swept through the students. Each glared at Ramses and Osira in disgust, folded up their desks, drew on their connection to the Orb, and airwalked out of the amphitheater. Soon it was just Ramses and Osira.

He looked over at her and tried to think of what to say through the haze of his embarrassment.

She cocked an eyebrow at him and her jewel twinkled blue in the sunlight.

“My place or yours?”