The Legend of Ara Hal

"What is the etherium? It is a place that is no place; it is a song without melody; it is a word without meaning. It is an emptiness and a void and a yearning to be filled. It is a repository of our hopes and fears, our revulsion and desire. It is our future and our past. It is our life and our annihilation. It is our redemption and our retribution." - Vandt Greersohn, speaking on the day of his execution in The Year of the Broken Starling

"Sail with me,

Sail with me,

On ethereal streams.

Dance with me,

Dance with me,

In ethereal dreams..."

-Folk song of the fey (trad.)

*

ALYSANDRE

In ordinary circumstances, the transition from the material plane to the etherium was a gradual, relatively gentle process. The callow youths who sought acceptance into the ranks of the Orders of Magic tended to hone their talents in softly lit baths or in lightless cells draped with satin and velvet. The conceptual chains that linked consciousness to the body and, less strongly, to the surrounding material world were not easily shaken off, after all. Even a diviner's use of physical pleasure had a transcendental aim; to overwhelm rather than deny the senses was the diviner's gateway to the etherium.

And that was, in fact, what Alysandre had expected when she'd asked Charlotte to dip her toes into the waters of the ethereal plane - a slow, languorous transition from one reality to another. Events had taken a different course.

And now she had entered the etherium herself and...

No, she corrected herself. Deception was extremely dangerous in a place like the etherium; self-deception most dangerous of all. She had not 'entered' the etherium.

My lady Lidmulla of the Divine Eye, protect me.

Her voice was a hoarse whisper in her ears; her eyes were still closed, but the scents of spring - of sap, and cherry blossoms, and dew-damp grass - assailed her senses. And underlying it all, the distinctive odour of human semen.

She had not 'entered' the etherium. She had been swallowed whole by it; greedily gulped down like a morsel of meat.

She forced herself to open her eyes. Her stomach twisted in a savage and instinctive vertigo. She forced her etherium-form to breathe deeply, slowly, calming her. She was floating in a sky of silver and velvet and peacock blue and the air was rich and sensuous, the slow drizzle of honey on tender, quivering flesh.

Below her, set in a natural valley between three great mountains, was a grass-carpeted amphitheatre, its empty seats and steps carved neatly and precisely into its grassy verges, the great open space around which they congregated devoid of life, save for the profusion of long grass and wild, spiky-leafed weeds that occupied it. Above her... above her...

A thing of darkness and hunger; all roiling mass and cold malevolence. A dark, voluminous thundercloud of ethereal knowledge. Prophetic, rapacious, intelligent. A wave of sheer terror swept over her. With an effort, she pushed it away from her, made herself look at the thing, wonder at it, try to understand it.

The Seeing of Yxtilien had not been like this. The etherium had been neither so distinct nor so hostile. The great dragon had been a bruise on her consciousness, a spot of tenderness she had to probe, but one that ultimately she understood would not harm her. This thing was different.

Below her, a chill wind swept through the amphitheatre, stirring the long grass and vicious weeds.

Something is coming. Something terrible.

She was being drawn upwards, as if the great cloud-thing was calling to her, pulling her in. She remembered thinking about baits and lines. She understood that it was she who had been snared, not this monstrous agglomeration of fate and foreknowledge.

She shivered. She was naked, but the coldness that assailed her did not come from without but from within. A deep foreboding had taken root in her; she was helpless in the amorphous mass' mutable shadow. As she watched, a series of tendrils unfurled from the cloud-thing's underside, sparking and flaring with angry purple light. They reached for her, beckoned her.

She licked her lips uncertainly. How long had she been here? It was impossible to tell. It felt like hours. And she was no closer to

understanding

...

A tendril, thick as a sapling's trunk but sinuous like an undulating snake, brushed against her. Its touch was warm. There was life here, not death. Or, at least, not

merely

death. She forced herself to think, but it was difficult. There was something suggestive in the tendril's movement. It inched across her stomach and where it passed she felt an impulsive, degrading lust.

She would do

anything

to know...

With something that felt very much like sly affection, the tendril slid around her waist and squeezed her gently. She shuddered. A familiar warmth kindled itself within her.

"Yes..." she murmured. "Yes. All right..."

Another tendril, extruded from the cloud-thing's main bulk, flopped against her, roughly stroking her. It was probing rather than teasing, ignorant rather than knowing. Involuntarily, her legs parted slightly.

Another tendril gripped her leg, while the first tendril coiled further around her waist, holding her tightly. Without any conscious decision on her part, her hands began to roam across her flesh, squeezing her breasts and pinching the delicate pink buds that adorned them. The weight of the tendril on her neck shifted; it stroked her cheek gently, sensuously. She felt it throb hotly against her skin and sighed. Tentatively she stroked the tendril in return, lifted it off her face and gazed at it curiously. As she watched, its conical tip split, revealing tender pink flesh beneath. A small slit at the thing's apex wept a clear, thin liquid and Alysandre stuck her tongue out to catch the fluid that dripped from it.

It hit her tongue and she gasped.

Mighty mountains, poking at the canopy of the sky. Flint-hard and rugged. An inhuman land...

The cloud-thing above her sparked and crackled. A pulsing surge of energy coursed down the tendril, first a lurid yellow and then a duller purple. She could

see

it. And instantly knew what she should do. Opening her mouth wide, she pulled the tendril tip towards her, but it twisted from her grip and plunged past her lips.

The instinct to gag, to retch was almost overpowering. Panic flared within her as the tendril thrust into her oesophagus and down towards her belly, all the while spurting its fluid with obscenely muscular pulsations. She gripped the tendril, trying with all her might to extract it from her, but the thing was muscle and sinew and implacable intent. It was far too strong for her. And still it pulsed. She could

feel

its ejaculations settling in her stomach, beginning to fill her. On a purely intellectual level, she understood that she was experiencing something with no basis in physical reality whatsoever. But she felt it all the same - the long, twitching thickness questing for a place to deposit its knowledge; the saliva-slick presence in her body, pulsing and spurting.

Despite her fear, she was aroused. There was a sweetness in such helplessness, a pleasure in such wanton submission. The sensation of penetration, of fullness, was perversely energising. Every part of her body, of the ethereal construct in which her inner being now resided, tingled and burned and shivered and shook. The cloud-thing

wanted

her, needed her to know. Despite the relentless thrusting of the thing in her mouth and throat and stomach, she revelled in its hunger.

Despite herself, she awkwardly moaned her pleasure.

The tendril that had been wrapped around her thigh stirred. She stiffened as she felt its tip brush past her inner thigh, felt it slip down, stroking her sex, pushing briefly against her clitoris, before gently teasing apart the folds of her labia. Scraping the insides of her throat, the tendril-thing inside her withdrew, dribbling its prophetic seed into her mouth and then, as it left her with a final slurping sound, across her lips and cheek. She took a deep, shuddering breath. The air was heavy with the cloud-thing's presence, - a pressure in her temples and the odours of earth and blood and human decay - but at least her breathing was unrestricted now. At least...

The tendril between her legs was joined by another. Again, she obeyed the compulsion to run her hands over her body: the tight skin of her stomach; the tender swellings of her breasts; the smoothness of her neck and upper arms. Her stomach was full and rounded; its contents shifted, ebbing and flowing in slow, unhurried motion in response to her increasingly laboured breathing and, perhaps, its own inner compulsions. The sense of something alien within her was inescapable but not unpleasant. She welcomed the presence of the seed-slime, felt her body respond to it with tiny spasms of pleasure and languid ripples of warming sensation. In time, she knew it would reveal its secrets to her.

With a furtive slithering movement, the tendril whose tip had been teasing the folds of her sex entered her, brushing past the feeble resistance of her labia and eliciting a sharp gasp from her. The second tendril squeezed its way down and around her, passing over her buttocks before seeking out and finding the puckered hole of her anus. It butted its 'head' against the hole gently but insistently.

Alysandre gasped again.

The tendril in her cunt began to fuck her. Unlike the one down her throat which had been content to stay more or less stationary while it deposited its seed into her stomach, this one seemed much more vigorous and much more intent on pleasuring her. At times, its movement was slow and seductive, filling her with a growing sense of fullness in which she luxuriated, her body a willing and wanton receptacle for the cloud-thing's desire; at others, it fucked her with a manic intensity and her mind-body shuddered and shook, completely at the mercy of its relentless power. At the same time, the tendril behind her, with an increasing, relentless pressure, pushed against her anus and, finally, gained entry.

Alysandre arched her back and let out a full-throated groan of desire. Above her hovered the bulk of the cloud-thing, sparks of light firing and flashing in its body. The sight of it brought home to her how small and vulnerable she was. She saw herself as not a Seer of the Realm, but merely a vessel, a flesh and blood instrument on which the etherium was hammering out its tune. The tight pressure of the thing's presence in her anus combined with the thrusting of the tendril between her legs to set her body quivering with overwhelming desire. It was some time before she realised that the tendrils clasped around her waist and chest were moving. Were moving

her

..

Turning her, to be precise. In small, incremental motions, the cloud-thing was positioning her to face the natural amphitheatre below. At the same time, its movement in her cunt and ass became more vigorous, more primal. She was the cloud-thing's creature now, an expression of its desire, of its basic need to be known. Suspended high above the wind-lashed weeds and rippling grass of the amphitheatre, held aloft only by the cloud-thing's will, she felt a flash of fear, bright and cold, in her mind, but the seed in her stomach was warming and content and the tendril in her cunt quickened its pace, sending her tumbling towards a cataclysmic climax.

Her pleasure gripped her body fully and, utterly without forethought, she flung her arms wide open and gave herself to it, heedless of the precarious position she was in. The tendril pumped and flexed within her, spitting its seed deep into her, filling her womb in much the same way that its brother had filled her stomach earlier. The cloud-thing's tendrils squeezed her breasts and waist and she felt a sharp exultation take hold of her even as her orgasm faded, leaving in its wake a tremulous numbness, an exquisite sensation of being thoroughly used. Some inner instinct warned her that the time of revelation was fast approaching. Below her, the amphitheatre stirred with a life of its own. Grass and weeds thrashed, as if protesting the shadow that had fallen upon them. At different places in the bowl of the amphitheatre, the ground swelled and stretched, forming raised humps like ancient tumuli.

The tendrils in her ass and cunt withdrew slowly, almost reluctantly. The cloud-thing's jism dripped from her cunt onto the ground below; something flexed and shook within her womb.

She gasped.

Where the cloud-thing's ejaculation had splashed the grass, the ground twisted and writhed, transforming into a riot of flower and stem. It was beautiful. Chaotic, but vibrant and majestic. The cloud-thing began to lower her, bringing her closer to the amphitheatre and its disturbingly fluid topography.

And then, with a terrifyingly sweet slithering sensation in her ass and cunt, it let her go.

She felt a terrifying vertigo. Aware dimly of the dozens of tumuli beneath her breaking open and disgorging figure after figure, some human, some orc, some elven, and others representing a number of races which she could not recognise, she plummeted towards the ground, her mouth open to release a scream that would not come.

The ground rushed up to meet her. The things in her womb and stomach lurched and leaped and pounded the walls of their flesh-cells. Wind whipped her hair and, above her, the cloud-thing roared in triumph.

She woke up.

Screaming.

*

EMILIA

Emilia von Kleist sat at her desk, quill in her hand, and stared at the scant scratchings on the parchment before her. She had been told to write, but, in truth, there had been precious little to record. The Lady Alysandre moaned and shuddered and occasionally writhed on her low couch in the centre of the room, her hand working at her sex in slow, arrhythmic motions. Her eyes remained resolutely shut and her skin glistened with sweat, but from her mouth had emerged only snatches of language - without context and, consequently, without precise meaning.

"North..."

"...proud peaks..."

"...changing..."

"...utterly changing..."

That last one had emerged on a gasp that had seemed to Emilia to signify pain as much as it did pleasure. That there was

something

going on in the etherium was not in doubt. What that something was remained a mystery.

And not only to her.

To her left, Charlotte and N'Gano lay, the big southerner's arms wrapped tightly about the blonde woman who, for her part, nestled against her lover's chest with a contentment Emilia couldn't help but envy. The pair's lovemaking had at first been savage, the dark-skinned man's cock slamming into the maidservant's cunt with a hungry force that set Emilia's skin tingling. But, after the first tempestuous climax and the inevitable lull that had followed it, their joining had become more sensuous, more considerate. The pair evidently shared a bond. Their gestures, their caresses and their shared looks of sardonic desire were tokens of an easy familiarity, a mutual loyalty to their mistress.

Their mistress whose head made strange little jerking motions, whose hand had acquired a sudden urgency as it rubbed at her cunt like a kitchen maid scouring a particularly stubborn patch of encrusted food from a pan.

Emilia glanced across at Charlotte and N'Gano, but the pair had already sensed the change in Alysandre. They sat up, their faces masks of solemn intensity.

The air between them and Alysandre seemed to shimmer as if the marble floor had suddenly turned to hot tar. Emilia's grip on her quill tightened.

There was something...

Quite suddenly, the woman on the couch changed position. No longer was she languidly reclining; now, she was on all fours, as if offering the fleshy slit in her body to the young scribe. Emilia gasped. There was something almost painfully lewd and undignified about the position. When the Seer started speaking, it was an effort to tear her gaze away from the raw pink flesh and start writing.

"The future... the future cannot be altered... This future cannot be altered... the powers of the North have waited long... they will have their... their..."

Alysandre was moaning now. Her breathing came in great irregular gulps; sweat dripped from her brow and breasts. Her buttocks quivered as she let out a loud, exasperated, ragged roar.

"... champion!"

And, then, her whole body shaking in an ecstasy that seemed part pleasure and part unutterable terror, Alysandre woke up.

And all hell broke loose.

(To Be Continued)