	"I have returned" came the low voice out of the darkness behind the raging fire.
	She was ready, and she knew what he wanted.  He wanted more of her.  it was the cost of creation.  It came back after each task to consume some more, to take from her more of the essence of creation.  
	She had a choice, she always had a choice, in the beginning.  She could pay, or she could lose her creation to the void, and thus,  part of her.  She had taken that option many times, as it was the smart option, the way to spend less of herself in the long run.  All she had to do was to utter the words of banishment, and he would be gone, and would never return to her again.
	The fire at which she had first created him still burned hot and crimson in the basin carved into the black marble floor.  The flame had not burned down in the two years and five feedings that had intervened since his creation.
	She had already fed him too often.  already she had given him so much of her magic that he was beginning to aquire some independence from her, to have his own motivations, his own wants, his own needs.  it was too much.  The years of training she had gone thru at the hands of her teacher and master told her to let him die of starvation or soon she would never be rid of him.  Soon he would not need her, he would be completely independent and she would lose forever the essence of herself she had put into him.  She would be forever diminished, if only by a small piece.  but that small piece would not grow back while he lived, and she would never have the means to kill him.  He would cease to be her magical creation, and would begin to become her own personal demon, forever longing to feed from her, forever bleeding her, but never again completely doing her bidding, never again controlled.
	His form began to be visible behind the flames, fading in slowly from the other world, coming to her like a moth to a candle flame.
	She wondered if he was yet strong enough to know what he risked?  she wondered if the taste of her essence had infected him in his limited awareness?  She hoped not.
	At the first glimpse of his form, her resolve began to weaken, her desire to feed him once more awoke.  In the pit of her stomach she felt the flutter of energy, the burst, like a lightning bolt from her belly, inflame her.  Color came to her pale cheeks, and on the Throne of Bone she moved her hips slightly.
	It always happened, she remembered.  And she knew why.  When she made this one, she had been in love, in lust, and frustrated.  The ritual that she went thru to make these creations had inflamed her passion, and the lust she could not control had taken the ritual far farther than she had ever gone before.  in the moment of orgasm that was the climax of the ritual, she had momentarily lost grasp of the powers that she was weaving into this new creature, and she had given it a piece of herself, in abandon.  She had never felt that powerful lust, that powerful bursting, that powerful lovemaking with any man.  It had lasted minutes, tens of minutes, while she burned in an inferno that was so intense as to be painful and so consuming that for the duration of it she had forgotten who she was and what she was doing.
	And that passion, she now knew, was to be her bane.  From it had come the being she had intended to create, a servant.  It was intended to be a simple thing, a mindless, even mostly formless, and utterly willless creature.  But the intensity of the ritual had breathed into it a vitality that she recognized.  Her desire had given it form.  In her moment of boundless passion, she had created her dream.
	
	He looked about him.  The task was completed, he had done Her bidding.  He was going home again, to his reward.  
	He did not remember the first task, and he did not really remember his creation, but he knew from whom he came.  He knew also that he was alive, and that he was not supposed to be alive.  His first clear memory was his first reward.
	The taste of Her was exquisite, he remembered.  The flood of her essence filling him, making whole his emptiness, making real his life, making solid his flesh, making valuable his very existence.
	He knew what he was, what he was created to be.  Her servant, Her worshiper, and in a perverse way, Her tormenter.  he knew this was so, and he reveled in his cause, thinking exclusively of it when no task had to be performed.
	Forgetting the task he had just completed, he willed himself into the flames, and said "I have returned" in his voice,  the voice She had given him, so low as to be almost below the capacity of earthly ears to hear.

	She sat on the Throne of Bone.  Long black hair falling over pale, very pale, skin, she sat on the skeletal lower jaw of the long dead dragon, it's huge fangs curved back and polished into arm rests.  It was black, it's bones were jet black and shining a malevolent black glare, it's empty black eye sockets stared a hateful blackness throughout the cavernous room.  She was naked, as she always was at these feeding times, her flesh pink with anticipation or lust.  her nipples stood, and rose and fell like small daggers with her breath, coming to her in short, choppy bursts as tho, seeing him, she was forgetting to breath.  Against the scarlet cushions she moved slowly, hips rising and falling in a continuous rithym.  Her pale hands clenched and unclenched as she gripped the dragons teeth as tho she feared being torn from her place.  She had drawn one leg up to her, and the other stretched before her, rising and falling with her hips.  
	Her motion gave her an undulating, pulsating appearance.
	Her eyes never left his body, and her gaze alone gave him a piece of his reward.

	He rose from the pit, his skin almost indistinguishable from the fire at first, then forming more and more into a human shape, until he stepped forward and up onto the black marble floor.
	He was a tower of musculature, and even the slight step he took showed the grace with which he had been endowed.  his form was a wedge, muscles rippling like a panther's before the burst of killing speed.  but he flowed as he moved, one motion into the next motion with no hesitation, much more like a creature than a man.  His hair was the same color as the flame from which he stepped, and his skin also, tho a few shades darker.  He looked like a moving sculpture of liquid bronze, and he flowed forward, almost floated in his grace, slowly toward her.  his arms hug loosely at his side and swung gently, slowly, in time with his movements.  He was enormous, extremely tall and very broad in the shoulders and densely muscled, as tho he had been built from a perfect mold, effortlessly, which, of course, he had.  Her perfect mold.
	He stopped perhaps thirty feet from her, and he raised his head. His eyes, which had been lifeless before his first feeding, locked with hers.
	She knew then, without a doubt and with very little regret, that she would again feed him.
	The eyes looked into her soul, into her heart, into her being.  The looked at her thus, because they had come from her, her desires and her dreams.  Those eyes knew her, knew all of her.
	She felt it coming and tried to repress it, to suffocate it, to confine it, but found that she could not.  A slight moan escaped her, and the rythem rithm movement increased.

	"I hunger" he said, in a voice so low that she felt it in her chest instead of hearing it in her ears.  the voice boomed, vibrated across the room, and echoed into the pit of her stomach, sending a shiver thru her.

	"I know" she replied.  she stared at him, at his eyes.  She told herself that she was in control, that she still had a choice to make, that she could still escape this fate.  She knew she was lying to herself, but she felt, with the thrill of seeing him again, a spear of fear in her mind.
	This was no longer her creation, she knew, but was now her desire animated, come to steal her essence, to weaken her.  She could see that in his eyes.  he was real now, independence, and very dangerous.

	"feed me, mistress"  he said, and moved slowly forward again, his smooth effortless stride captivating her.  

	Here is your doom, woman, she said to herself.  He is coming for you.  If you give in to him now, he is with you forever, feeding, and you will never have the essence you loaned him back, you will be forever diminished.
	The part of her that was not a Sorceress, the voice of the woman who saw her every dream personified in this towering yet gentle figure approaching, said to her, so be it.
	All of her life as a sorceress, she had supressed what it was to be a woman, to feel lust for a man.  Her master had spent his life denying his manhood, suppresing his lust for woman, it was common in those who practised the arcane arts.  And, most often, it was that very suppression that was both their source of power and their doom.  Absolute self control was her desire, and in achieving that absolute self-control, she had pent up the desires that had burst forth during the ritual, to create this, the embodiment of her dreams and lusts.
	
	She was squirming on the cushions and a sheen of sweat covered her body lightly, giving her pink-flushed pale complexion a glow, a reflected shine from the flames that seemed to radiate from her.  His eyes looked upon her, and another piece of reality was bestowed upon him.  He became a little more alive.
	"you are beautiful, mistress" he said, and for the first time his voice had inflection adn life,and well as the deep bass throb she had bestowed upon him.  She had never meant for him to have enough will to understand beauty.
	He was alive,  she new then.  She had lost the choice.  No longer could she banish him through simple denial.

	The realization flooded through her like a tidal wave of lust.  She was free!  the decision was made, and now the only thing she needed to decide was wether this creature would be friend or foe, would steal from her or serve her lust and passion and be fed.  And that was an easy choice.

	"come to me" she said, and the act of submission, if submission it could be called, sent another rush of lust thru her.  For the moment, the sorceress was sleeping and the woman was awake.  and that woman desired.
	He fell to his knees, worshipping his pale goddess, his creator.  he looked steadily into his eyes and he moved, on all fours and then on his knees, to the base of the Throne of Bone.
	He lowered his head to her foot that rested on the black marble floor, and touched his forehead lightly against the arch of her foot.
	the touch, the first contact, sent lightening bolts thru her flesh and she moaned.  He moaned also, a low throb which vibrated thru her.

	He realized he was pleasing her, and brought his hand to her heel, and, on his knees, began to caress her pale foot, feeling ever tremble it caused her as a flash of joy.  He lived to please her, only to please her, and only her pleasure could please him.
	He lowered his lips to her toes, kissing each gently, tenderly, extending his tongue to touch them, savoring the texture of her skin, loving the feel of her.  He wanted to explore her, to taste of her every essence, her every part, and worship her, his creator.
	She moaned, abandoning all pretenses of self control as he licked and then sucked her toes, then the arch of her foot, then her ankle.  She leaned back into the mouth of the dragon, stretched her self out with the pleasure of it, as she felt him move upward with his gentle caresses.  
	How could she have ever thought of this as doom?  she was on fire as she had only been once before in her life, and it was overwhelming to her.  her body was burning like the flames she had constructed him from, she was burning in the fire, His fire.
	His gentle, loving kisses had reached the back of her knee, and she lifted her leg and placed it on his shoulder, and looked at him, seeing a face reflecting as much pleasure as he she felt.  she could feel the heat from him, the burning, almost to pain, from his lips and tongue as he worked his way upward.  She saw there only his desire to please her, and no hostility, no malevolence at all.  the last bit of fear drained out of her, as his large, muscular hand raised to her breast, cupping it, and pushing her body back, to recline in the throne.
	She placed her hand to the back of his head, and, unable to withstand the caresses any longer, she drew his face to her womanhood, and screamed as he explored her, deeply.  
	Again, for a moment that stretched outside time, she forgot all but her passion, the melting inside her that her man was causing.  Her orgasm fed him, and she poured her energy, her magic, her essence and her self, into him.  And because he was real now, not a beast of burden nor an automaton, she felt his essence, his magic now independent of hers, a small, yet growing, candle flame next to her bonfire passion.
	She felt love.
because he was real now, not a beast of burden nor an automaton, she felt his 
essence, his magic now independent of hers, a small, yet growing, candle flame next to her bonfire 
passion.
	She felt love.
