The True Source of Magic Pt. 02

Bodies... Bodies everywhere. Naked. Writhing. Pumping. Bodies on top of bodies. Bodies side by side. Some lay flat. Some were bent. Some stood. Some knelt. A few were contorted into uncomfortable looking positions. But nobody looked uncomfortable. Every face was showing expressions of pleasure. Moaning, grunting, and yelps of delight filled the chamber.

High above, there were many sun-bright magic globes that seemed to just float in the air, and they shone down on the lust-filled masses below, illuminating the whole scene. It was a scene of shameless debauchery on full display, and Kadren could not look away. There may have been forty of them, or fifty; Kadren did not stop to count. Her mind was too busy thinking: thinking of how all these people got here, how they all got to be this way, what her religious duties might be in this situation, was there any immediate danger in all this, and dozens of other tiny, transient thoughts that Kadren could not keep track of. But mostly, Kadren struggled with deciding whether she was revolted or fascinated. She knew she was supposed to only be disgusted, but she was also drawn to the spectacle, like it was some majestic wonder. Even as thoughts of how sinful this all was floated through her mind, she caught herself envying the unbridled enjoyment the horde seemed to be having. The faces, the noises they were making... they seemed to experience a freedom and pleasure that Kadren was never allowed. She hungrily took it all in, condemning and admiring, ashamed and curious... She took in all the shapes and colors... the curves, the angles, the mounds... softness, rigidity... glistening, glowing... pinkness, redness... It was a never-ending feast.

And Kadren started becoming involved. She imagined Coj as the one thrusting, and she was the one lying there receiving thrust after pleasurable thrust; or that she was the one riding, and Coj was the one being driven quietly insane with pleasure. There were some actions and positions that Kadren would never have even fathomed, let alone perform, and those bodies she glossed over. She also found less appealing the bodies with more than one partner; she found more fulfillment in being one with one. So she kept her eyes on the various lone couples that were in the arena - for that was how Kadren thought of the chamber: an arena made for contestants to grapple, and tug, and pull, and engage in the sort of wrestling that brought pleasure. The cave floor in the centre of the chamber was covered extensively with luxuriant furs, to provide soft ground for the amorous contestants to perform their vigorous deeds in comfort and with abandon. As she continued joining her mind with the sinful horde, Kadren abandoned more and more of her reason and fear, and embraced more and more passion and pleasure. She soon stopped debating herself and fully immersed herself. Her mind became awash with all the images before her eyes and her mind's eye, and her body was drowning in a soft, self-inflicted ecstasy.

"Beautiful isn't it?" said Cal, close beside her. Cal's voice was soft, but it pierced through the rapturous din like an arrow, brutally puncturing the awake-dream Kadren was having. Kadren gasped, having been so violently awoken by his soft voice. She suddenly and painfully recalled that she was living in this world - a harsh pleasureless world, a world where she was forbidden from certain things, from many things. Kadren tried to compose herself, but could not quite do so. She was dizzy from the lust... flushed, moist, and ashamed. She tried to turn to look at Cal, but staggered back into the wall of the entrance. She steadied herself against the cave wall before looking up again, and what she saw frightened her.

Cal looked unearthly beautiful, like some angel descended. He had been handsome when they first met, but now he was so beautiful that it was terrifying. Kadren could not find anything that had outwardly changed about his appearance; it seemed to her that it was she who had changed. She had just grown to truly appreciate his beauty, and was, for the first time, seeing him as he truly was - a being of heavenly beauty... a being who, when gazed upon, would render the beholder helpless and mindless. All she could think about was how much she wanted to rush into his arms, feel his lips, feel his caress, fling off his armor, tear off her own garments, feel his flesh, let him feel hers... She wished it was Coj standing in front of her, so that she could unleash herself upon him. She was holding onto her morality by a thread, hanging onto her religion, hanging onto her sense of loyalty, all of which were trying mightily to slip away from her. Cal's beauty was terrifying, because the things it made her think and want to do were so frightening to her. It was as if she was losing herself... or perhaps this was the real Kadren, and she had never really known herself... She did not know who she was anymore...

"It is my art... my masterpiece..." he said, as he moved slowly towards her. "It is the most beautiful art in the world. Desire is used to color, and passion is the brush. The body is the panel. You are my panel on which I'll happily ply my art... You don't have to hold back... You don't have to pretend... We are all very accepting here. Feed your hunger. Feed your desires... Join us."

He stopped right in front of her, and held out his hand towards her. His smile was welcoming, his face deadly alluring, and his whole appearance - his heavenly features, his tall stature, his steady posture that exuded strength - all of it threatened to consume her and enter her into a world of indomitable allure and exquisite pleasure. And while she was teetering on the edge, with Cal's beauty threatening to burn her with its searing brilliance, while the orgy continued on uninhibited in the background, with the contagious fog of lust seeping profusely from the sinful horde, she knew, at that moment, that Cal was the enemy.

She realized what she had been sensing for some time now: magic... powerful, covert, irresistible magic... all around her, pressing in on her, now inside her, having invaded her so surreptitiously, and so thoroughly. What took her so long to finally realize, Kadren could not say.

"No..." she whispered. "Stay away," she said, somewhat louder. But she feared that she did not really mean it.

He smiled. A demon's smile. And he moved in closer. She had nowhere to go.

His hand came up to her face and gently stroked her chin, his face inches from hers. It was just a simple touch, but it sent streaks of lightning radiating under her skin, from the spot on her chin to the rest of her body. It was an unbearably pleasurable sensation, weakening her knees and her resolve. It was as if her whole body had been rebuilt to only feel pleasure and nothing else. Kadren gasped and moaned, and she feebly swiped his hand away.

He straightened up, leaning away from her, and issued forth a cruel cackle that sounded oddly high-pitched.

"I love that noise you make," he laughed. "You are beautiful, indeed, my dear Kadren. I can't wait to have you. Your virgin flesh will taste so sweet. You will be my most prized student. I will teach you true pleasure, good Sister."

He stood there in front of her, not moving, just waiting, with an ugly smile on his heavenly face. The magic was emanating from him intensely now, with no pretense or subtlety. It felt so dense that Kadren thought she could almost see the magic, a crackling haze all around her; and the sinful horde, affected by the increased outpouring of lustful magic, quickened their activities. Kadren feared that, with one more move, Cal could win this twisted game instantly. With one more move, she could be completely his. But Cal seemed to be savoring his moment of inevitable victory, and was in no hurry to end the game.

"This is... sinful..." Kadren managed to utter, with incredible effort.

"The only sin is to deny yourself pleasure," Cal lectured. "God created everything. He created our bodies, and He created pleasure. Our bodies were created for pleasure. To deny yourself pleasure is to deny God!" he boomed with unquestionable authority.

Kadren wanted very much to surrender to the truths he expounded, but she thought of her own soul. She looked into the blank eyes of the horde and saw that they were nothing but slaves, slaves that enjoyed unfathomable pleasure, but at the cost of their souls. She wondered if they still had souls, or were they only a shell of pleasure-filled existence. At the present moment, Kadren still desired God to be the only keeper of her soul, so she did not wish to join them. It was better to die... better to die a clean death rather than live sullied. She also thought of Coj, and how she loved him, and how she wanted to stay clean for him as well.

And so it was, with thoughts of death and Coj and souls on her mind, that Kadren somehow mustered enough strength to counter this enticing new religion of pleasure that had been so forcefully preached to her. Her hand found the handle of her weapon, and she stumbled forward with it. The feeling of her grip was strange, a sort of numb-tingling that seemed to be on the verge of exploding into a powerful exhilaration; her feet also felt a similar sensation with every step she took. Everything felt strange: she was not in her own body. She struck at him, and he easily dodged her clumsy attack. Kadren had suddenly lost all her skill, as if the years of training and merciless drills never happened. Her hands and limbs (and the rest of her) were only intent on learning pleasure, and had forgotten the deadly, instinctual movements that had come with the long years of toiling under stern tutelage.

Cal issued forth another high-pitched cackle, and laughed even louder when Kadren swung again and missed a second time. He grabbed her by the wrists as he side-stepped her attack, and she immediately felt another lightning sensation coursing from her wrist, to the rest of the body, causing her to drop her mace, and gasp and moan. His laugh was shrill now.

"Good, good!" he cried, in a sadistically delighted tone. "Fight! That makes it..."

He was interrupted by Kadren's sudden lurch forward. Right before Kadren thought she was going to collapse from the unbearable pleasure, she managed to muster a feeble attempt at a head-butt, and for the briefest of moments she could feel a sudden flash of his surprise, and even annoyance, as Cal narrowly escaped the surprise attack. The lustful air in the room dampened a little, and there was a change in the magic all around the arena as well, though the horde was too engrossed in their activities to notice. But very soon, Cal had composed himself, and the sinful magic poured out of him like nothing had happened.

He cackled once more, less enthusiastically.

"Very good, Kadren. But we both know your body can't withstand much more. Give in to what's right, Kadren. Come, Kadren," he held out his hand once more. "Shed your armor and your shield. Shed your clothing. Shed all your trappings. Shed all those wrong beliefs. What I have for you here is right."

Kadren had collapsed onto her knees, finally unable to stand any more. She had still not fully recovered from the skirmish with the goblinoids, and now fighting pleasure and desire made her knees even weaker. Her shield was propped up in front of her, and she leaned on it, trying to steady herself. She had taken out the shield with thoughts of charging at Cal one more time, but she thought better of it, now that she was kneeling on the ground. She let the shield fall. It was no use. Her might was not enough to overcome him at the present, and probably had never been enough. There was nothing else to do now... Kadren began unfastening her cleric's robe.

"Yes... that's right... Good..." said Cal, in a soft and encouraging manner, like a father might say to his child.

It took some time, as Kadren was not used to doing even simple tasks in her changed body, but finally all her armor was off, and she was in her tunic. When she looked up, she saw a smile of victory on Cal's face, and a delighted gleam in his eye. She also noticed that a few men from the orgy had noticed her actions, and had left the horde to come over to her, their erect penises leading the way to her, like divining rods. Some stroked their members while walking towards her, all of them with a blank stare and a hungry look.

"No! She's mine," Cal commanded calmly, and the men obeyed. Most of them went back to the larger group, but a couple of them stayed standing there, staring at Kadren, touching themselves.

Even through the heavy fog of magic-induced lust, Kadren felt a tinge of disgust. It was different when their penises were inside somebody, hidden away from full view, and she could use the sight of gyrating bodies to stimulate her imagined pleasures with Coj. These men were not ugly, and neither were the rest of the men in the orgy, nor were the women. In fact, it was rather strange that there should be gathered so many beautiful people in one place, and, stranger still, it seemed that most, if not all, had some elven ancestry. But it disgusted Kadren that these beautiful men were looking at her with such blind desire; they did not even know who she was (and she did not know them), yet they were so comfortable pointing their lust at her.

Most beautiful out of all them, however, was still Cal, and she knew that his would not be a boorish act of lust, but an irresistible, sophisticated seduction. For a second, as she looked into his face, she had a compelling urge to be seduced by Cal, but then her righteous revulsion returned as she remembered God and Coj (and the boorish, beautiful men with their hands on their privates), and she acted quickly, while she still remained mostly herself.

She rolled up her sleeve and began chanting a fire spell, making the gestures with one hand while a thin flame began forming in the palm of her other hand.

Cal was caught off guard for a second time, and he stood there in silence, with a small, curious wonder in his eyes. He had probably sensed that Kadren had surrendered, but she had only surrendered to the fact that her might was not going to avail her. She was, however, not going to hand over spiritual victory that easily.

It took a little longer than usual, but, when she was finished, Kadren stopped the spell-casting, and she looked up at Cal with unshakable determination on her face. In the palm of her hand was a flame shaped like a dagger, long and thin, and she focused all that she had in that hand, which held the flame in a tight claw-like gesture.

"What are you doing? That's useless. That feeble magic won't work..."

Kadren gritted her teeth, closed her eyes tight, and plunged...

A piercing scream filled the chamber. Kadren hardly recognized that it was her own when it was echoed back to her, as she had never made that sound before. Even though she knew it was her own scream, she experienced it as if someone else was screaming. She only thought about her scream very briefly, as Kadren had no room in her being for the scream; her whole being was now engrossed in pain. But she still dared not take the flame-knife away from her bare forearm, for her fear of death was still more terrible than her bodily suffering. Her own magical flame kept searing and digging into her flesh, burning away all sin and evil from her being like an angry Holy fire, such that all thoughts of lust, of Cal, of naked bodies ceased to exist, and in that moment in time, all that existed was Kadren and that holy wrath. She bore the agony until she thought she was going to lose consciousness, and then stopped, relaxing the hand that contained the spell, and the flame, along with her screaming, ceased.

The pain did not go away, but nor did it escalate anymore, and the initial shock of it was gone. It lingered like a reminder, like an unwelcome house guest. When she opened her eyes, she saw that her vision was blurred by pain, but Kadren was seeing clearer than she had been for a while now.

She looked at Cal, and saw that he was still very handsome, but only a beautiful mortal, and obviously not an angel. The look of surprise was apparent on his face, but also... delight?... Kadren stared at the horde and noticed that the participants now looked very unhealthy, abused, and not at all beautiful. Many were malnourished, with a look of near-death darkening their faces. The spell had lifted over Kadren. Cal's magic poured out uselessly now, and Kadren knew that the power of his magic depended on how many were willing to bend to his will and give in to lust. Kadren's screams and agony had awoken the horde from the spell, or, at the least, dampened their lust. The power of the magic seemed to also depend largely on Cal's mood, and he was no longer of the mind to deliver pleasure.

Even though Kadren was no longer screaming, the pain was still all-consuming and incapacitating. She could do nothing until she did something about her wound. Most of the wound was just the surface of the forearm being burned, blistering, and even blackened in certain spots, but there was also a crevasse that gave her a nauseating view of sinew, and Kadren thought maybe even bone. Looking at the wound now, Kadren regretted having put the flame-knife to her forearm for that long, determining that she had most likely overdid it. But at the time of her desperate gambit, Kadren wanted to be completely free of Cal's magic, and so too much was better than too little. Wincing and panting, she began chanting and weaving her hand above the wound. She put a numbing spell over the area first, and this brought the pain down a bit. She then cast a spell that caused a flesh-colored, translucent mud to start forming in the central chasm of the wound. A full healing of the wound would have to come later, but for now Kadren meant to cover it so that she would not be in agony with every movement. As the thick salve reached from the centre to the edges of the wound, the pain began intensifying drastically, for it was the burned skin that hurt the most, whereas most of the feeling had been burned away in the deeper parts of the wound. Kadren grit her teeth, and grunted, but she kept up with the spell.

Kadren glanced at Cal. She was worried that he would not let her heal, but Cal just stood there with a calculating look, and Kadren thought she saw a ghost of a smile on his face, as if he was secretly delighted about something. After a short while he walked towards his horde of spiritual prisoners. His prisoners were getting restless, now that they did not have the orgy to occupy them. Some of them began shuffling about, with a dazed look. Some of them began moaning. Some were wailing. They were all lost without the pleasure they had gotten used to.

Cal pulled out the crystal that had lit the way in the dark tunnel, and began speaking something into it. Cal then turned his attention towards the prisoners and began singing a lulling melody, in a crisp, soothing tone. It sounded wonderful, and Kadren knew to be wary, but the pain from her wound seemed to help mitigate the spell's effects. It also helped that Cal was directing his focus on the prisoners and not her, so that she did not receive the brunt of his magic.

A tranquility overcame the prisoners after Cal sang for a while. They sat or lay there on the fur-laden ground, with a strange peace. Kadren herself felt just a bit calmer. By that time, she had covered all the burned areas of her forearm with the salve. The salve had hardened into a protective layer that looked like thick, ugly skin. With a new layer of skin covering her own raw, damaged skin, Kadren was able to drape her forearm with her sleeve without wincing. Seeing that Cal was still occupied, Kadren started donning her armour, as quickly as she could, grunting and wincing at certain parts of the process.