This story is a continuation of chapter 9 of "Playing hide and seek in lecherous roles"
She was frozen in place for a while, until something moving on the floor caught her attention.
Spread all around, there was a multitude of what looked like tiny feybeast bouncing around, all of them perfect, albeit smaller, replicas of the blade that had been blown to pieces moments before.
Hirschur gathered all the scattered pieces. It was an easy task, even if they were all moving, because the moment she concentrated a little mana on her fingertip, all the little beings started bouncing closer to it.
But while it was expected that a manablade (or something that resembled it) would seek mana, what happened next caught her by surprise. First, the tiny manablades started to rub themselves against her finger and, second, whenever they touched, they would rub against each other and... merge together.
Before long, all the pieces had merged into one single manablade, slightly taller than an ordonnantz, and with unusual shape and color. Instead of resembling a sword, indeed, it looked exactly like a... 'sword'... complete with pouches of Beischmacht.
Hirschur turned the thing in his hands as it wriggled, observing the details. They were so perfect that it left little doubt about the fact that Lady Rozemyne, the underage Lady Rozemyne, had already welcomed winter. With whom, it wasn't even a question.
There was even something coiled around the shaft, something regular, smooth and with a metallic color. It really looked like something that Ferdinand would come up with, although just by looking at the shape she could not guess what that tool was supposed to do.
Did it heighten his and Lady Rozemyne's pleasure as they welcomed winter? Or was it some sort of aid he needed to get hard or last longer? ...She couldn't picture Ferdinand having such a defect, though.
But Hirschur's mind wandered. They had been talking about Lady Rozemyne trying to 'wrestle' the fourteen year old Ferdinand out of his feystone armor when the tool started taking shape...
Could she have seduced the fourteen years old Ferdinand in the short span of three days? Him, the boy that had been dumped by a fiancée who deemed him too cold to marry? And if that was the case, then what about the tool?
Contemplating the object in her hand, Hirschur realized that, while before the thing's height was roughly the same as the width of her hand, now almost the whole top was poking out of it.
Remembering that the thing was supposed to be a manablade, she poured a steady stream of mana into it, expecting it to grow, and she was not disappointed. She also noticed that the thing reacted to her touch as if it was a little pet, rubbing itself against her hand, asking to be petted..
She watched it grow as she poured mana into it, wondering what her student would think if he knew that a replica of his sword was seeking attention so unashamedly -and from her of all people!
Before long, the thing reached its full size -a rather enviable size- while still reaching out for her attention, absorbing mana from her hand.
"What a greedy little thing you are," she said, intrigued. To an external observer, she could have sounded almost affectionate. "I should give you a name... Liebeschneide"
Whether or not the manablade understood what had just happened, it rubbed its head against her fingers, as if to show its appreciation.
She positioned her fingers along the coil, curious to see if she could find out its use, when, suddenly, the winter blade turned into a bona fide manablade -hard, metallic, sharp, and even with a proper handle, where she could still see the coil. It wasn't particularly long, more like a dagger than a sword, but that was probably because manablades needed to be grown.
She turned the blade in her hand, examining it. She wondered if she could return it to its previous form. That would make the manablade an even more useful weapon, because it would mean it could be concealed as something innocuous.
Well, at least it could have been like that if the other form had not been a winter blade...
But that was just a minor detail, as long as she could understand how it worked. She touched the coil, sucking mana from it, and after a while the blade returned to the other form, shrinking as she kept removing mana. The mana flow stopped when Liebeschneide had returned to its initial size. It wasn't completely devoid of mana, though. It could still bounce around, following her hand -and her mana- as she moved it away from it.
"I get it, I get it... you want to be fed." She just rested her hand on the table, gathering mana on her fingers. The manablade moved closer, rubbing itself against its food provider. Meanwhile, she heard fourth bell tolling.
With her free hand, she took an ordonnantz stone and started registering. "Lady Rozemyne, this is Hirschur. You passed your exam with a perfect score. However, I want to review the process you used and study its full potential." She also had a lot of more personal questions, and possibly guidance to give, but she could think about it once she was face to face with her over imaginative student.
o
It was fourth and a half bell when Raimund arrived at his mentor's laboratory, with a message for her from Lady Rozemyne.
During lunch, the Aub was about to give everyone a quick explanation of why she had been called in the realm of the gods, when she had received an ordonnantz. She had stepped into an adjoining room, so Raimund didn't know what the content of the message was, but he was able to recognize Hirschur's voice. As soon as lunch was over the Aub had given him a message for the teacher: "I am busy everyday with exams until the Interduchy Tournament, I can not heed your request."
Raimund had wondered why she had not replied to Hirschur's ordonnantz, but figured that just carrying on her order would be easier, and so he was ready to do when he opened the door of Hirschur's laboratory.
He greeted his mentor, receiving the usual curt sound of acknowledgement, and moved closer to the only table with some free space -the one they used to conduct all their research- all the while eyeing the woman and trying to understand what he was seeing.
With her right hand she was writing something down, most likely data, while with her left... Raimund blinked over and over, waiting for his eyes to adjust and stop playing tricks on him. He couldn't be seeing that. She couldn't be rubbing and stroking something that looked exactly like a winter blade. He blinked again.
"Something the matter, Raimund?" Hirschur asked, while noting down another number.
"Uhm... Professor..." he searched for words that were escaping him. Was there a polite way to ask his mentor why she was playing with something that looked like a sword?
Did she even know that the thing she was masturba- petting! She was petting it! looked like a sword? She was unmarried, after all. She must have never seen one in her life...
The unmarried and naive woman raised her eyes. "Raimund, just ask whatever you need, so you can help me with this."
"Help you...? Uhm... may I ask what... that thing... is?" he pointed to the offending object in her hands.
"Him? He's Liebeschneide." She said, stroking it with her thumb in an obscene way -at least, that is what it looked like to Raimund.
"He?" Raimund repeated dumbly, pointedly ignoring both the thing and the fact that she had even given it a name.
"As a manablade it should have no gender, but given its shape, it comes natural to consider it a male, don't you think?"
So she knew that the thing she was playing with looked like a winter blade...
"How is that thing a manablade?" Raimund asked weakly, pointing at it. ...Was it bigger than before?
"Look." Hirschur moved her fingers away from it and, to Raimund's horror, it moved to follow her hand. She touched the metallic thread that coiled around it and soon it transformed into a proper-looking manablade.
Raimund gasped, frightened by the sudden transformation of the winter blade into a blade. That thing was really a manablade. Why in the name of the eternal five had she decided to make it look like a winter blade?
"It seems to have some interesting properties, first of all its shape-shifting." Hirschur said, now in full scientist mode. She removed the mana from Liebeschneide, reverting it into a winter blade, but she didn't bother making it smaller.
She set it in front of Raimund, who stared at it with a half disgusted expression. "Try making it change its shape."
"Sorry?" he asked.
"Touch this part and pour mana." She pointed to the metal coil, making sure to keep her fingers out of reach of the greedy manablade.
"Do I really have to...?"
"Hurry!"
Raimund did as instructed, he knew better than standing between Hirschur and her research, even if it meant doing something he didn't want to.
At the very least, it looked like the manablade wouldn't rub itself against its fingers like it did with hers.
"That's interesting..." Hirschur commented, "I wonder if that is because it recognizes me as its master, or because you have lower mana..."
Raimund closed his eyes in defeat, not daring to voice his own theory. '...I think it can just sense that I don't want to touch it...'
o
The afternoon went by doing all sorts of tests and measurements on Liebeschneide -at some point, Hirschur had convinced Raimund to use the manablade's name. The young scholar could only be glad that his own project as a graduating student was basically almost done, because he feared his mentor's research frenzy would last for a whole lot more.
When he returned to the dormitory, Lady Rozemyne asked him what Hirschur's reply to her message was. He admitted that, at first, he had had no chance to ask because Hirschur had involved him in a long series of tests. Of course, he omitted all details about Liebeschneide.
At some point, apparently for no reason at all, Hirschur had bemoaned the lack of reply from Lady Rozemyne and, after hearing the message from Raimund, she had murmured something about 'using the only existing specimen for the presentation'.
"Existing specimen? Presentation?" Lady Rozemyne replied, her eyes betraying how unsettled she was.
"She didn't say more than that. I didn't inquire, as I thought it would be bad to stick my nose in another student's presentation. Should I ask her tomorrow?" Raimund admitted, looking a bit self-conscious at his lack of motivation when it came to information gathering.
"NO! Don't you dare!" the Aub quickly said. Upon noticing Raimund's frightened expression, Rozemyne cleared her throat, forcing herself to calm down. "I mean, you know her better than me... If you do that, it will only make her more unrelenting."
Raimund nodded, he couldn't say anything in his mentor's defense.
"Anyway... What kind of tests was Professor Hirschur running?" She asked nonchalantly. The expression that she next saw in Raimund's face would be what, in her dream world, was called 'deer in the headlights'.
Raimund thought for a moment about fleeing the room, but tried hard to reign in his fear. Running away as the Aub was asking him questions would be a terribly rude thing to do.
"She was... experimenting with a manablade." He said, without articulating more.
"A manablade?" Rozemyne asked, seemingly nervous. "Did it have... any unusual features?"
'Unusual doesn't even begin to explain it...' Raimund thought. But how could he explain to a girl one year his junior that his -and hers- mentor had been experimenting on a something that looked like a blade?
It would be too embarrassing for him.
Not to mention that Lord Ferdinand would kill him.
"Nothing! It was completely plain." He lied. But even though lying to an Aub could be considered treason, he still thought it was the safer choice. "But, Lady Rozemyne, Professor Hirschur is no knight, she may mishandle the bla-manablade and cause you harm. I would advise to stay away from her laboratory as if your life depended on it. I beg you."
Rozemyne stared at him, a look of understanding on her face. What she had gathered from his words was above him, but as long as she didn't have to see that thing, and he didn't have to die at Lord Ferdinand's hands, he was fine with it.
o
A few days later, Justus was pre-reading Raimund's report to Lord Ferdinand, unusually written on two sheets of Ehrenfest paper. One was obviously the 'official' report that had been through Aub's hands, and the other had most likely been added to the package after she had read the first. Justus was impressed by the effort Raimund had taken to communicate something in secret to Lord Ferdinand. The boy usually paid little attention to it.
He skimmed the first sheet and saw it didn't contain any particularly important information. The second, though, was another story altogether.
As he read the report on Hirschur's latest research, Justus realized that the only person in Yurgenschmidt that could have created that manablade was Lady Rozemyne.
Maybe he was deluding himself, maybe the reason she had created such a thing was nothing more than the embarrassment, but...
He looked over at his master, completely immersed in his paperwork.
'Hold on a little longer, Milord. I'm sure she will not let you down.'
Some euphemism, taken from either canon or "For he is a knight of summer, and winter is coming" (KoS), the fic I co-wrote with Krymzim and thatyou can read on Archive of our own
"Welcoming winter" means having sex
"Winter blade", "sword" and sometimes "blade" alone refer to the penis
"Pouches of Beischmact" are the testicles (from KoS)
"Liebeschneide": Liebe=love + Schneide=blade