When the day of reckoning comes, we have but one hope,
The innocent one shall be our champion of light,
to struggle against the dark invaders,
the ones who hail from the abyss,
who would see our people debased.
The innocent one was the gods' final gift to this world,
living dormant until the time comes,
unaware of the trials ahead.
But if humanity yields to it's own malevolence,
the gods' avatar too shall falter and fall into dark hands,
and humanity shall be taken again to the level of it's kindred.
-Oracle of the west tide
Lumps of wet dung-colored mud catapulted into the air from beneath the iron shod hooves of the exhausted mare. The ground was wet but not saturated and the mare's hooves alternately clapped and squelched on the uneven ground. Tree limbs flashed by like enormous pieces of debris in a gale force wind. Above, bird song droned on from the green canopy overhead that blanketed the forest uninterrupted by the clattering of many hooves.
"Come on, girl. Just a little farther," Lisa pleaded desperately to her mount, " We only need to make it to the town bailey. We'll be safe there." But she could feel the mare's flanks heaving beneath her bared legs. Lisa knew her fatigued mare could not make it much farther. "Please?"
The mare caught her mistress' urgency and managed to break into a half-hearted stumbling canter for several paces and gave up. With a sigh of resignation Lisa dismounted and slapped the horse on the rear. At least her father would know something was amiss when Prenodie arrived in the stables riderless and exhausted. She could make out a thin cloud of dust floating through the treetops as the bandits rapidly closed on her.
He finally had her. For generations, he had searched for her in her various incarnations but always had she eluded his grasp. The magi council called her "The Innocent One". They strived to protect her from the hands of those like himself who followed the darker paths. One by one he had hunted down and disposed of the meddling magi council. Without their tricks to hide her from his view, she was his. The demon would be pleased, perhaps even raise him to archmage after such an achievement.
The magi fools had called him a lackey to the greater forces of darkness. He had shown them the real meaning of force, and now they were dead. He chuckled to himself. The smug bastards, thinking themselves righteous paladins of justice. He wasn't subservient to anyone, the agreement that he had with the demon was nothing more--an agreement. He fulfilled his end of the bargain because it would result in their mutual benefit...
Shaken from his thoughts by a sharp sound, the black sorcerer looked at his captive. She was gorgeous. Captured by a band of his outlaws this morning, her riding skirt was torn on one side, exposing a long expanse of thigh. Her long blond hair cascaded down her back like a golden waterfall and she had the almond eyes and sharp features of an angel. Her soft feminine curves hinted immodestly at what lay beneath. Her shapely thighs promised boundless pleasure to the man to claim them. He was amazed that his hired cohorts had not ravished her the moment they laid their filthy hands on her. But then, he was paying them very well. Her long smooth legs unintentionally sprawled apart practically begged a man to crawl between and...
"Stop staring at me. And please let me go." Lisa's silken voice broke the silence.
"Gahaha! Just you wait, little girl. You have no idea of what's coming do you?" The sorcerer cackled reveling in his victory.
"My father is a nobleman in these parts and if you don't let me go soon, he'll have our knights raking the countryside for you." She countered weakly.
"For so long you've evaded my colleagues and I, but now we have you..." Losing control of himself in glee, the sorcerer nearly broke into another fit of giggling.
"I don't know what you're talking about, you're crazy. Please, let me go!"
The sorcerer merely turned around and removed an aged leather bag from his pouch. Making subtle gestures with his hands, he began chanting in a low voice. His robes began to flutter violently in an unfelt wind. Lisa looked on curiously but with wary in her eyes. As his chanting grew louder he cast a handful of powder from the pouch over Lisa. She flinched. The powder glittered darkly even in the night air. Immediately, Lisa's senses grew distant as the world seemed to fade away.
She would be back, he knew. But he would be in no danger. The demon would shape her, change her to it's liking. It would corrupt her beyond human understanding, so deep that she would no longer resemble her former innocent self in spirit or mind. He had seen some of the demon's past playthings returned to the mortal world...women, or more often girls of unsurpassed beauty whose very thoughts and presence were seductive beyond imagination. They drew men like a lodestone draws iron. He had seen an instance where a gang of thieves had tried to rape a girl returned from the abyss only they turned on each other fighting over who would be the first at her. She patiently waited for them to finish hacking at one another and then, one by one she willingly gave the surviving five an experience like none they would ever have again.
It was said that the demon trained the girls in the abyss. Stories to be told around a campfire at midnight, he had heard that the girls were forced or tricked into unspeakable acts with the demon's pets or accomplices...tricked into willingly surrendering themselves. The girls were defenseless against the painful pleasure that would be brought about.
She was "The Innocent One". The demon had pursued her for many hundreds of years. She wasn't an ordinary girl sent to the demon to be trained as one of the demon's avatars, she was something special. She represented all that was still pure in this world. When the demon was done with her 'training' she would be released, unleashed back to the mortal realm carrying the demon's foul taint...
As she became fully conscious, Lisa sat up and gazed around at her surroundings. She was in a vast cavern, the domed rock ceiling hundreds of feet above her shone a dim green reflected from a source below. Over the edge of the precipice on which she was seated, Lisa beheld a lake of brightly glowing, bubbling green ooze which was the cavern's only source of illumination. She was at the base of an enormous black stone spire shaped like a spike which reached up nearly to the ceiling of the mammoth cavern from the dead center of the green lake.
"And what might you, a mortal, be doing here?" A pleasant voice from behind her asked. Startled, Lisa nearly jumped off the cliff into the slime below. She swiveled around and faced the owner of the voice, a puggy man who appeared to be in his mid thirties wearing a brown robe and carrying an oak staff. He seemed completely out of place in so sinister a setting.
"Please, you've got to help me!" Lisa blurted out desperately to the kindly looking man, "I don't know where I am but I don't want to be here, I want to go home!" The fat man nodded his understanding with sympathy in his eyes.