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From: Vivian Darkbloom <vdkblm-OBLITERATE-SPAM!@yahoo.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Sangrelysia 18 [rp rv]
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Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:10:01 -0400
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  Reposted for an anonymous critic, who didn't like Chapter 5.
  So there.

  To more fully enjoy this story in living, breathing HTML,
  please visit our website at:
 
    http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/vivian/www

  Now offering over 180,000 words of pure prurience!

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                               Sangrelysia

                          by Vivian Darkbloom

                                Research

   I awoke to see that Sylvia had opened up the ceiling. Above were
   dark thunderclouds, commencing to pelt down rain. Looking around,
   I didn't see her, but momentarily I heard one of the outside
   doors opening, the sound of a young girl catching her breath from
   running, then the door slam shut and bounding footsteps skipping
   up the stairs. The scent of rain-soaked jungle landscape.

   She popped into view, smiling, at the top of the stairs, then
   skipped over to me and thrust a handful of wet wildflowers in my
   face. "Here, they're for you!" she exclaimed.

   "How sweet!" I sat up, swinging my legs off the bed. "Where's a
   vase? Let's see. . ." a beaker on the desk seemed clean enough.
   Sweeping my robe around me, I fetched it and filled it with
   water, holding it while she thrust the stems of the flowers
   through the hole.

   "That was fun," I said.

   "I love you," she said.

   "Love you too," I replied, and we kissed. "This vase could be
   prettier," I remarked, waving my hands over it, replacing the
   cold scientific glass with a shapelier ceramic design.

   "A little darker maybe?" She waved her hand, altering the vase
   color.

   "Would you look at it come down!" I said, gazing out over the
   surface of the lake, now textured with the millions of tiny
   dimples and ripples from raindrops.

   "Something else I found," she said, holding out a book opened to
   a page captioned Stabilizing Anti-Venom Spells.

   "I tried it to see if it would work," she said.

   "On me? While I was sleeping?"

   She nodded. "Do you feel better?"

   I thought about it. "Yes, in fact I do. Better than before,
   though not quite up to full strength. Sylvia, you frighten me
   sometimes. I'm not quite sure what to say."

   She thought for a minute, then lit up with another grin. "You
   could say you love me again! I always like that. . ."

   She held her lips up in such an enticing moist little pucker that
   I couldn't resist kissing them again, although it kept me from
   ever finishing the sentence.

   A rumble from the skies, and a flash of lightning. I caught a
   glimpse of something from the corner of my eye.

   "Whoa, look at that!" I pointed. She saw it too, what looked like
   a mountaintop sailing across the horizon.

   She clung to me in momentary fright. "What is it?"

   I smiled. "Dragon."

   Together we watched as it glided by, then abruptly vanished
   behind a distant peak.
     ____________________________________________________________

   Over breakfast, her curious inquiring mind took reign, commanding
   the conversation with a fusillade of questions.

   "So I was wondering," she began, "If you're so worried Elwrong
   might get the access codes, why don't you just change them?"

   "Hasn't been done before, that I know of. You can help me look
   for the spell."

   "OK. So what's to stop Elwrong from sending me a poisoned
   butterfly?"

   "For one thing, the magic won't allow anything harmful in the
   message. The spell just wouldn't work. Besides, the butterflies
   are a Sangrelysia kind of thing. I doubt if they have such
   niceties as love-missives in the dimension of pure evil where
   Elwrong got her magical training."

   "The one you sent to Roderick wouldn't exactly be called a Love
   missive."

   "No," I replied sheepishly. "Ordinarily, I would have sent a
   hawk, but I figured the butterfly was less conspicuous. Plus,
   it's easier to fold."

   "But if the butteflies can figure out where people are, isn't
   there a way to know where someone is ourselves, without them? So
   maybe Elwrong knows where we are, and she's on here way here with
   an army?"

   I laughed. "It's possible, I suppose. I don't think she hates us
   that much. She just wanted us out of the way."

   "And dead."

   "Well yes, that would be out of the way. Elwrong won't be able to
   find us here, though. We're at somewhat of an advantage, being on
   the Ancient Mother's turf."

   "And what about my girls? What if Elwrong has taken them
   hostage?"

   "I don't think she would do that, if she's working with King
   George, because it would sour public opinion. He may be king, but
   if the people turn against him in a big way, he won't be for
   long."

   "Can't we just find out where they are somehow? Pleeeeeze!"

   "Finished eating?"

   "Yeah."

   "Let's go downstairs to the spell room, and see what we can do."
     ____________________________________________________________

   The marble floor of the septagonal spell room was inlaid with
   concentric magic circles, each ring of a different pattern, to
   cover all the basic symbolic languages for a range of common
   spells. For more obscure circles, the entire floor pattern could
   be altered by shifting a brass lever set into the wall.

   The vaulted ceiling was a deep translucent blue, with planets and
   astrological signs demarcated in silver, constantly shifting to
   reflect the actual positions in the sky.

   "We'll need a map," I said. "I believe you'll find one in the
   chart rack over there."

   Behind deep blue curtains decorated with tiny silver planets and
   stars which stretched across each of the seven sides of the room,
   were closets and workbenches, and shelves of supplies carefully
   organized and labeled, in giant glass apothecaries.

   The room was large enough to comfortably accommodate the thirteen
   of a coven, with enough space for dancing and music-making to
   accompany the spell rituals.

   At the center was a small circular black table, laid out with the
   objects symbolic of the seven elements, and a censer for burning
   herbs.

   "Yes, that's the map, just set it there on the floor in the
   center. We'll begin by activating the innermost ring with
   candles."

   She helped me set the long black tapers at the boundaries of the
   circle segments, each with a different mystical ancient
   Sangrelysian rune at its center."

   "Now can you bring me the eucalyptus leaves? I believe they're in
   the shelf over there."

   She placed the glass jar on the floor beside the map.

   Then we sat on cushions on the floor facing each other, holding
   hands as I began the preliminary invocation.

   "By the seven elements, by Fire, by Wood, by Stone, by Crystal,
   by Mercury, by Water, and by Air, I call into the room the
   spirits of Land and Sea, gentle and benevolent sainted angels who
   watch and protect us, and guide us on our paths.

   "Indeed, we seek to know the paths of those who are near and dear
   to us. May it be revealed. Blessed be." In response, the candle
   flames all jumped to a higher brightness, and the atmosphere of
   the room tingled and sparkled with the presence from beyond.

   "Now, we write their names on the eucalyptus leaves, one name per
   leaf. When you're done, set them in the censer."

   Sylvia wrote: Meredith, Shanon, Lindsay, and Stacey.

   I wrote: Roderick.

   "Now comes the difficult part," I said. "The spell will only
   reveal the location of friends. To find out the whereabouts of
   George and Elwrong, I will first need to forgive them for all the
   horrible wicked things they have done."

   Sylvia cringed. "Good luck," she said.

   I closed my eyes, and reached deep down for strength. "These two
   know not what they do. I release them from the wrath that I feel,
   while still maintaining the conviction that they must be stopped
   from causing harm to others. Amen."

   I wrote: George, Elwrong.

   With the candle that burned on the central altar, I lit the
   leaves in the censer. They caught with an eagerness that told me
   the spell had been successful.

   Once the flames burned down, we stood over the map and sprinkled
   the ashes. As the dust of the cinders fell, it began to glitter
   and coalesce in different places on the map.

   Each glittering locus on the map was a slightly different color.

   "How do we tell which is which?" she asked.

   "Use your heart. Listen."

   As we studied the map, it became evident from the dark green,
   crimson, purple, gold, and teal dots that the girls were at
   Sylvia's Aunt Peg's castle.

   Back home, in the Royal Castle, next to the putrid brown dot that
   symbolized George, hovered a sinister white dot.

   "It looks as if your girls are safe," I said. "And Elwrong and
   George have officially joined forces."

   She nodded in agreement, as the glittering slowly faded to ash.
     ____________________________________________________________

   After closing the circle by calling forth once more the seven
   elements, we stood for awhile in the exhilarating downpour, then
   finally tearing off our sopping clothes and running naked through
   the jungles and meadows in the steaming humidity, to plunge at
   last, laughing, out of breath, into the sharp refreshing coolness
   of the lake.

   Wading out across the silty white sand, soft against our soles on
   the bottom, until the water's depth released us from the confines
   of gravity. From a distance out from the shore, we floated
   lazily, listening to the hushed hissing of millions of fat
   raindrops as they met the surface of the lake all around.

   I played the ancient grey whale, she the pale innocent white
   minnow as we chased and frolicked in the waves, our naked bodies
   together exploring the possibilities of underwater intimacy.

   By the afternoon the weather had cleared, allowing the sun,
   perched in deep blue skies, to reign over celestial castles of
   soapstone and whipped cream.

   While I sat in the library pursuing the cure, Sylvia tried out a
   spell she had discovered for propelling a boat across the water
   at high velocity.

   "You know," bubbled Sylvia excitedly on her return, "There's
   this, like, whole huge temple to some goddess on the other side
   of the lake. Have you ever seen it?"

   "You didn't happen to run across a coil of rope while you were
   over there, did you?"

   "Rope? No. Why?"

   "Oh, never mind."

   Later we sat together amid piles of books. I now assiduously
   sought an index in each one, but still to no avail.

   "What are we supposed to do?" I wondered aloud. "Run after the
   dragon with a giant hypodermic needle, going `here draggie-poo?'
   And what're you supposed to do with the dragon's blood once you
   get it?"

   Sylvia shrugged. "It doesn't make a lot of sense. Everything I
   read disagrees with everything else I read. One book says dragons
   only come out at night, another says it's just during the day.
   One book says they have wings, another says they fly by magic
   alone."

   "There must be different sub-species, " I said.

   "Well, yes. Look at this. . ." She handed me a book with a series
   of black and white engraved illustrations, each captioned with a
   different species name: the purple spitfire, the red wevyrn, the
   golden inflamminator, the spotted tiger-dragon, and so on.

   "Is there some distinct difference between the pictures? They all
   sort of look alike," I observed.

   "You noticed that too," she said. "I guess you could imagine the
   colors they mention."

   "Are they carnivores? Has anyone ever been eaten?"

   "You're asking me?"

   "It's just that, I've never read any accounts of their feeding
   behavior. Have you seen anything?"

   "No."

   "So many stories about explorers tracking a dragon to its lair,
   some valley nested between granite crags, or a remote mountain
   cave, only to have every trace of the dragon's presence disappear
   on their arrival, vanishing like the end of a rainbow."

   "They like their privacy."

   "Hold on now, what's this? It says here `Dragon's blood has often
   been attributed with the power to heal any sort of poisoning, but
   the claim has never been substantiated,' and on the next
   page. . . Here it is! The note scrawled in the margin, like I
   remember."

   "What's it say?"

   "Oh dear. Did I ever warn you that wizards are notorious for
   their atrocious handwriting? Let's see. That looks like an `s.'
   Is that an `i' or part of the letter before it?"

   "Let me look," she squinted. "I think the first word is `see.'"

   "See Ogilvie!" I pronounced triumphantly. "But I didn't know
   Ogilvie wrote about dragons."

   "Do we have it here?"

   "Downstairs in the library, still."

   Several minutes later we were poring intently over the volume
   referred to. It was only a hundred pages or so, but the prose was
   dense, and often provided a startling or unusual insight. No
   index or list of contents, and the entries seemed to be in random
   order.

   "I didn't know that a fire elemental was the best for freezing
   water to make ice," I said. "I would have thought crystal."

   "The principle of opposition," replied Sylvia, regarding me
   through dangling locks of her silky black hair. "Inverted spells
   often have a more useful effect than the original. I was reading
   about it yesterday."

   "Show-off," I teased.

   "You bet!" she replied. "And while we're at it, `Dismantlement'
   actually is a word."

   "No way," I protested. "It can't be. I've never heard of it.
   Where does it say that?"

   "Right here, next to `dibble.'"

   "What kind of ridiculous book is that?"

   "A dictionary."

   "Sounds obscene. And what's a dibble?"

   "You've never heard of a dictionary before?"

   "Heck no. I always look up words in my thesaurus."

   She granted me the long-overdue eyeroll. "And they call you the
   Wizard?"

   Gently, I brushed her hair aside, tucking it behind her ear so as
   to better see her sweet face, stark black eyebrows standing out
   against her chalk-white skin. "What happened to coddling your
   lover's poor fragile male ego?"

   "You got the wrong girlfriend for that. I'm the princess,
   remember? What I say goes."

   "Hello, what's this?"

   We both read the paragraph silently together:

     A widely held misconception is that a dragon's blood will
     serve as antidote for various poisons. However, according to
     an elderly warlock who dwelt on the Eastern plains, it is not
     the blood, but rather the tears which are to be sought.
     Details of acquisition and application remain shrouded in
     mystery. When pressed on such matters, he merely replied:
     `Don't worry, you'll know'

   "Gee, that's helpful," said Sylvia.

   "So instead of a giant hypodermic, we should be carrying a giant
   eyedropper?" I said.

   "Where can we find a sad dragon?" Sylvia wondered.

   "If we can find any dragon, all we need is for you to sing one of
   your cheery ballads to it."

   "Very funny. But. . . true."
     ____________________________________________________________

   By evening the thunderstorm had passed, and the clouds opened up
   for the waxing moon to rise majestically against the pale blue
   sky.

   What a day it had been!

   It was as I sat re-checking all of the indeces for `Tears,
   dragon' that the red and black butterfly alighted on the wooden
   desk alongside the book I had open.

   It sat there a few seconds, folding and unfolding its wings,
   before it exploded quietly into an origami sculpture which opened
   up into a flat sheet of paper before my eyes.

   "Letter from Roderick," I called over to the princess. She too
   had been watching the unfurling.

   "Very pretty," she said. "What's it say?"

   "Let me see," I said. I read it aloud to her:

     Dear Wizard:

     Your guess was quite accurate, I must say. Yes, here we are at
     Sylvia's Aunt Margaret's Chateau. She sends her best wishes,
     as she was quite heart-struck with sadness when the princess
     turned out to be missing. She has some presents for Sylvia,
     which will have to wait until we can catch up again.

     The engagement with the marauders was surprisingly brief. We
     were of about equal numbers, and they seemed a bit taken aback
     that we had been ready for them. While it's true that they
     were flying the white and blue banners of Valeplysia, wearing
     masks mind you, but I recognized the clumsy and unimaginative
     style of swordsmanship, being the same as what I saw from
     those zombie soldiers that the King insisted I take into the
     ranks, against my better judgment. I figure it is best to keep
     quiet about my suspicions for now.

     The girls were quite shook up, as it seems the princess
     vanished out from right under their very noses, so the were
     quite relieved when they received your kind missives.

     I mention it because, in spite of the good cheer gained by
     those letters, the girls remain fastidiously diligent
     procrastinators in the area of taking up a pen to write back.

   "Yep, that's my girls," said Sylvia. "Any assignment that has to
   do with writing, they'll put off as long as humanly possible."

   "So at least we know they're OK," I replied. Continuing:

   Odd thing was, the marauders fell back after only a few minutes
   fighting, and fled off into the woods.

   I've had couriers going back and forth from here to the Royal
   Castle, and the word is that Elwrong's shown up there and joined
   forces with the King. They're spreading out the story that you
   kidnapped the princess, in league with the Valeplysians, and
   they've put out a reward for your capture.

   Most of the sensible folk, that is, everyone but George's
   gullibles, are ken to the whole story reeking like a load of
   claptrap.

   One more thing to beware of -- Elwrong's got the most vicious
   sort of beast on her tether as she prowls around the
   neighborhood, an invisible slime demon, that she sets loose to
   rough up anyone who speaks out against the king. Dissenters've
   been landing in the dungeon in large numbers, something that
   never would've happened under King Hironymus.

   Dark times are on us, I swear to high heavens, and here's wishing
   you the best of luck and speed in your adventures, and Godspeed
   in rescuing our poor nation from the clutches such evildoers as
   George and Elwrong, may they both fester forevermore in the
   scorching unholy flames of hell.

   Ever your faithful servant,

   Roderick

   The news twisted my insides like a wrung dishrag. "Obey the
   imbecile," I growled. "The only kind of free thinking they
   comprehend."

   "Shall we add `invisible slime demon' to the list of items to
   keep an eye out for? Maybe we can find a picture."

   I frowned. "We'll need to find some references on the dimension
   of pure evil, where Elwrong came from. Hopefully it won't require
   a field trip."
     ____________________________________________________________

   We slept with the roof open to the brilliantly starlit night sky,
   with the din of crickets an impermeable wall of sound. The waxing
   moon crept slowly, majestically across the shimmering black
   velvet, dancing with Venus and Jupiter, two bright pinpoints of
   light flickering mischievously with the charms of flamboyance and
   harmony.

   Our lovemaking surged to new heights, now oiled and finely tuned,
   polished with practice, inspired by the breathtaking beauty of
   our surroundings.

   Our sharing of sexual emotion sprouted and bloomed naturally from
   the comfort and ease we felt being together, the warmth of our
   friendship, the nobility of our joint quest, the awareness that
   we had each demonstrated our caring for one another by means of
   courageous ingenuity.

   I felt her tremble at feeling me inside of her, watched my taking
   of her turn her on, push her over the brink until she dissolved
   into helpless ecstasy in my arms.

   When it came time to give her my gift, my seed of knowledge, it
   was no longer into a barren fertile field, but injecting
   enrichment into the fecundity of a magic already in bloom, on its
   way to blossoming into dazzling splendor, soaring to unimaginable
   heights.

   On the wings of her rising flame, I loved her deeply,
   passionately, sobbing with the intensity of release into her free
   ferocity, feeling together the primordial animalistic sentiments
   of lust requited.

   Until we lay in perfect intimacy, between the electrical surge of
   orgasm and the quiet stillness of slumber, in that special cozy
   space of lovers, watching the majestic moon traverse her
   glittering sky, winking at Jupiter and Venus all the while.

                                                          Chapter 19

  _______________________________________________________


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