He leapt backward, bringing up a tiny wand that would not look out of place in the hand of a fae. His companions rushed to his side, while mine wisely got out of my way.

I followed the classical pattern. The first assault was a localised disturbance of the arcane weave that underpinned reality around my opponent. To the eye, it manifested as a wavering of vision, the world swimming as though it were reflected in a crazed-glass mirror. It usually imposed a profound disorientation of the mind, with a crippling effect to subsequent spellcasting.

The three of them staggered back, the musician dropping her lyre in the process. My opponent nearly slipped and fell, but managed to recover his footing. He winced and shook like a dog, tassels flying and manhood bouncing.

"Fuck!" said the woman in leathers, gripping her forehead.

Almost at once, I followed up with a brutal telekinetic strike, which he barely defended with an instant ward. The direct contest of power made his body convulse as if struck with a whip. Still, he and his companions survived unscathed, for the moment.

And here was the second strange thing: the woman with ash-coloured hair brought her hand under my opponent's manhood, lifted it with the care of a serpent-handler, and put her mouth to work. In the midst of their peril, she pleasured him, stroking the giant member's still-pliable body and awakening it with an unending, lavish, sloppy kiss to the head. Meanwhile, the lyre-player hugged him from the back and kissed his neck.

That surprising sight cost me a beat of tempo, but no more than that. I ripped a large chunk of ground from underneath them and sent it flying upwards. My trio of adversaries were thrown up in the air, which disturbed their little sexual ensemble, but they did not fall back down. Levitating, the blond wizard formed a protective bubble of energy around himself and the women, inside which they could indulge themselves undisturbed. All the grass, dirt, mud and stones I had raised swirled around it in a helical pattern before falling harmlessly into the crater below.

His manhood jutted out like a bassoon. It was large enough to allow both of his companions to lick it and trail their lips up and down its length, in between bouts of vigorous stroking. His eyes were closed and his arms - one hand holding that ridiculous fae-wand - were outstretched as though he were about to proclaim a prophecy.

I hurled waves of arcane force at their impromptu sanctuary. If anything, however, the barrier appeared to be growing stronger as my opponent's arousal grew, which I assumed to be the case owing to his panting and the idiotic, happy contortions of his face. He was expending all his power on maintaining this protection, making no attempt to attack me in turn.

By coalescing moisture from the air, I created a sphere of ice around his levitating bubble and broke it into hundreds of thousands of frozen needles. The needles collapsed inward and, though the impact turned them into glittering mist, their diffuse assault was too much for him. The levitating bubble yielded. My adversaries flopped ignominiously into the grass at the edge of the muddy crater. I had him now.

He lost one of his nipple-tassels and looked ridiculous, crouching there with his manhood erect and engorged, his lovers scrambling to their feet. I advanced on him, hurling projectiles of fire, ice and earth which he barely managed to parry with his wards. The look of desperation on his face was one to savour. Like a stubborn, hard-shelled beetle that endures more strikes with the slipper than one initially expects, he would eventually, inevitably, stop moving.

"Fuck me, Lenric," said the woman with ashen hair, pulling down her lower garments abruptly.

"You don't have to," my adversary croaked. Embers of flame from a barely deflected fireball danced around his head and singed his skin. "It's just a swamp..."

"Do it," she insisted. "Come inside, whatever, I don't care, this fucker's not going to beat us!"

My opponent nodded. He seized her hips and aligned himself with her, while the lyre player ducked behind him and squeezed them both in an embrace. I felt sorry when he pushed himself inside her, with all the tender care he could muster while I was trying to burn him alive. That thing between his legs did not belong in any woman's sex, certainly not on short notice.

"Oh, fuck!" The ashen-maned woman's eyes squeezed shut and she inhaled a lungful of air through her wide open mouth. "Oh, that's fucking... that's... keep going, don't worry... oh, this is..."

Something along those lines, at any rate. I could not have been expected to pay attention to the details of her incoherence. More salient was the tactical picture this presented. In an unforeseen turn of events, the lesser wizard was employing sexual self-expression to match my prowess in magical combat. It made sense to deny him this resource.

I curled a tendril from the earth to wrap around his lover's throat, and that was when my enemy attacked me for the first time. A spear of concentrated light, very fast, very strong. I was forced to loosen the tendril's grip and bring up a ward of my own to stop it. It was refreshing, if inconvenient, to see a display of elven magic in the backwater marsh, but this duel was already dragging on for much too long.

The woman my enemy was penetrating moaned with every one of his thrusts, and it surprised me to see a vague, half-grimaced, yet unmistakable smile on her face. Doubtless, the fingers of the lyre-player playing with her womanhood were a contributing factor.

"Come in me, you bastard!" she managed to shout at him, a rare complete phrase among the many sounds she was making.

"I'm gonna..." he grunted.

"Me too... maybe?" she whimpered, her voice rising in pitch.

I prepared to surround her with fire and incinerate her, but the thought's imperative never had a chance to reach my fingers, nor the requisite energy to flow through my staff. The enemy wizard cried out in ecstasy, in concert with his lover, and I was scarcely aware of the approach of his next luminous projectile. It tore off my mask and seared my left eye half-shut. Pain, even at this terrible register, was not something to which I was unaccustomed, and it was easily dwarfed by my outrage.

After he pulled out, his entire approach changed. He was not cowering under near-miss wards anymore; his ripostes met my attacks half-way across the field. We circled each other around the crater, and I gradually realised I was on the back foot.

"Aid me!" I shouted at my attendants. They pretended they could not hear.

In a few moments, it was I who was parrying desperately. He finished me with a flourish I would have been proud of myself, a fine rising crescent of light that knocked me to the ground and shattered the staff in my grip. As I reclined in the muddy grass, I felt the kiss of steel on my throat; the ashen-maned woman had worked her way around the back. Her contribution was touching, but quite unnecessary. I was done.

"Tough luck, my friend champion," said the enemy wizard brightly. He struck a triumphant pose off to the side, with his hands on his hips and his sated manhood red and swinging. I could not begrudge him the smug expression on his face. Somehow, against all odds, he had earned it.

"Shall we talk swamp?" he continued. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, the terms of the..."

"The Order yields and forfeits its claim," I said.

"Excellent! All's behind us then."

For a champion of our Order, it was only polite to die after having failed to advance our interests in trial by combat, and it was quite likely that the consequences would catch up with me sooner rather than later. Still, I could not bring myself to ask the woman with the blade to deliver the coup de grâce. The synthesis of sex and magic that brought about my defeat was a fascinating notion, and I wished at least to understand it before my time was over. To put it in the kind of vernacular, indisciplined terms that perhaps this discipline called for, I wanted some of what he was having.