Chapter 28- Union
Sinaan woke up with Ra'Shaal curled up on his right side in her new, young, svartalf body. She was turned away from him, using his hand as a pillow while her plump bottom was pressed quite nicely against his side.
The priestess's body that Ra'Shaal was inhabiting had been of a minor noble house. Her name was Prodaenoff, fourth daughter of Llnodis the eleventh cousin of Drifeniel High Seat of House Hrodengae. She had been a very beautiful nobody. Barely nobility. Now she was captured in a state of spiritual suspension. Not dead, but not alive either. Her body, though it was still technically alive, was nothing more than an empty container.
Three white half-inch long, half-buried, shards of pearl marred Prodaenoff's once flawless ebony skin. The Shards of Sin Sulabha called them. The first shard, the Sin of Pride, was centered on her forehead. The second shard, the Sin of Envy, rested between her breasts low on her sternum nearest where her heart once was. The third shard, the Sin of Gluttony, was buried in the fatty skin of her smooth pubic mound just above her sex. Each pearl was embedded in bone like a sharp spear point, and then cast a spell of Keeping within the body cavity creating voids.
The Shards of Sin represented four parts of a soulstone, called Soul Pearls. Using the spell of Keeping, three shards envelop the Wells of Enlightenment, the Spirit Well, the Well of Power, and the Soul Well, in the process capturing and sealing away the internal organs that make a body a living soul and creating incomplete Soul Pearls. The fourth shard, the Sin of Flesh binds the body to the soulstone. Unlike the other shards, the Sin of Flesh could manifest anywhere on the body. Prodaenoff's was low on the back of her pelvis just above the crevasse of her buttocks.
Each Shard of Sin was a fragment of one of the four Soul Pearls, hence shattering the Sin of Pride, Envy, or Gluttony would break the Keeping and return Prodaenoff's Wells of Enlightenment to her body. However, if the Sin of Flesh was broken without the Wells of Enlightenment being released first, then the body would join the rest of Prodaenoff within the soulstone.
Shifting to snuggle closer on his left side, Sulabha laid against him, her curly, fiery-red hair covering her face, most of his shoulder, and cascading across the pillows behind her to fall off of the bed. Her hair was long enough that even with a bed as large as his, her hair still touched the floor. Some of the short strands were in his mouth and covered his nose making it easy to smell her. Vanilla root and subterranean lavender with a hint of cinnamon mixed into the oils the maids washed her hair with.
Lower her overly plump breasts, each the size of his head if not a little bigger pressed into his ribs and laid halfway across his chest like soft pillows between his body and hers. Her uppermost arm was wrapped possessively around his midriff, and a muscularly thick thigh was draped across his leg nearest her.
She was the reason that Ra'Shaal lay on his other side in a body that wasn't hers. She was the reason why Prodaenoff's soul was currently trapped within a soulstone making her into what Sulabha called, a Soulless. Sulabha was a Necromancer of dark and deadly power. An avatar of death.
At the command of her brothers she ripped Prodaenoff's soul from her body leaving it an empty shell. Upon transforming the Prodaenoff's Wells of Enlightenment into a soulstone, she then consumed it. Swallowing down everything that had been Prodaenoff to a place called the fornacem. An additional organ at the bottom of the stomach closely related to the Fallen and their nymphilli and nephellum offspring, the succubus and incubus. Sulabha thought that her power, her necromancy, originated from the Fallen since they are the only beings with the additional organ.
Fornacem meant furnace in the Fallen's language of incantation, and within the furnace Sulahba could store an infinite number of soulstones. Sinaan knew she had at least three within her furnace now. The three priestesses, but only the gods knew how many others she had consumed while under the influence of her brothers.
Sulabha was indeed a very powerful, and very frightening woman. For example, once Prodaenoff was a soulstone Sulabha was able to keep that her soul imprisoned all her life, or all of Prodaenoff's. Sinaan wasn't sure how it worked, but it seemed that despite being separated by magic, Prodaenoff's Soul Pearls that make up the soulstone and her body were still connected in some fashion. For instance blood pumped by the heart that made up the circulatory system but was removed as part of the Well of Power, still somehow pumped blood to the body's muscles, arms, legs, breasts, and skin. Eating and drinking were no longer required. The spell of Keeping kept the internal organs just as they were upon entrapment, but sex of any kind, vaginal, anal, or oral, filled up the voids within the body cavity like pouring wine into a bottle. It was very strange, and Sulabha didn't know anything more about it.
What she did know was that if the body was destroyed the soulstone would change color. Turning from white to black, and then it would slowly dissolve turning into nourishment and life-force that she could then use. It was also possible for her to feed off of soulstones right away, but in doing so she would be marked. Changed forever. So that the evil she had done on the inside was reflected on the outside.
That was only a small part of what she could do though. A soul was so much more than a spirit. A living soul was everything that made a living person alive. By that definition the Spirit Well, or Well of Mind as some call it, was the brain of the body but so much more. More than intelligence, wisdom, or emotion. It was consciousness itself, a person's self-awareness, that indescribable piece that makes a living person more than a robot or computer.
The Well of Power was most commonly thought of as the source of the ocean of life-essence and the lake of life-force, but it is also the heart, lungs, blood, veins and vessels, and so much more. It is the seat of motivation. The force that drives a person to be, to do, anything.
The Soul Well. The foundation by which the other two Wells stand. Strength. Constitution. Dexterity. Those are the enduring forces forged within a living soul, and yet, it is also the intestines, liver, stomach, kidneys, everything in the abdomen. In women this also includes the ovaries and uterus. Sulabha hypothesized that, in reality, the whole body makes up the Wells of Enlightenment, but only learning to commune and listen to the body can a person ever really achieve that enlightenment.
As easily as Sulabha could rip the Wells of Enlightenment out, everything that makes a person a living soul, and then transform a person into soulstone to be stored or consumed, she could also summon them too. Once summoned a soulstone could then be implanted inside a vacant body. What Sulabha called a mutandae corporum. It was this that she had done to Prodaenoff's body when she inserted an assassin's soulstone and sent it off to kill Sinaan's mother.
Desperate for freedom or death, she took three assassins' soulstones and implanted them inside three priestesses, in hopes that at some point someone would retaliate and either free her, or kill her. Sinaan curled his arm around his old friend's head, disturbing her vibrant red hair highlighted with streaks of gold and copper. Giving her hair the appearance of being aflame. They had been friends in another life. On another earth known to the people of this world as Midgard. He hadn't killed her as she wanted him to, and now it was weird to think of his old friend in such a way. To him, all he could see was Sulabha. An incredibly beautiful woman with the graceful edges of a svartalf and the exotically voluptuous curves of a jorndvergr.
Ra'Shaal had been the first to join him after everyone went to bed. When Sulabha came knocking quietly, it was Ra'Shaal that invited her to join them. She didn't know of Sulabha's previous life, and Sulabha may not have had eyes to plead with but she had a plump bottom lip that quivered with emotion. Years of abuse at her brother's hands had changed his old friend. Made her more fragile, and more merciless. She had come to his room completely naked, and one look at her body, at her emotional distress and he wasn't able to refuse her.
Unable to sleep, worrying about his sisters and Gunngrul and Hayden's escape and the third assassin still at large, Sinaan inhaled the soapy scent of Sulabha's hair as the previous day played out in his mind again. Ra'Shaal shifted and then turned over. When she moved, he opened his eyes and gave a start. Ra'Shaal's pale, reversed colored, shadow face was grinning down at him. Her new, younger, physical body still laid beside him completely still. Not even breathing. Its head was still in his hand and its cushy bottom was still pressing against his hip.
"I want you," Ra'Shaal signed as her lovely mouth moved to the same words in utter silence.
Her shadowy form was like all of Sulabha's grimasalas. Whatever their coloring had been in life, it was reversed upon rising as a shadowsoul. Once ebony skin was now as pale white as it had once been black. Her hair, once as white as the moon on a starless night, was now as black as the void. Only her eyes stayed any semblance of how they were in life. The whites of her eyes were black, but irises that had been as red as polished rubies were now a deep turbulent crimson. No pupils, just glowing crimson coals.
Ra'Shaal flipped over to straddle his waist. She was as light as smoke, and yet he could feel her pressing into him as solidly as if her body were more than shadows. Her skin felt like the caress of a soft breeze. A warm caress. Her pale, ephemeral knees passed through Sulabha's thigh and body like she was even there. On the other side it was the same for Prodaenoff's cushy bottom.
Ra'Shaal put a palm down on his chest and then lifted up so she could guide him inside her. It was a very strange feeling. She could solidify her body or make it intangible, and being with her, being inside her, didn't feel like any other woman he had ever experienced. Not even Ra'Shaal herself when she was alive. She was warm inside but also very cool. Too cool. It lent to a feeling like she was pulling his body heat right out of him. As she moved on top of him, grinding her sex on his, her insides seemed to stroke and undulate around him in ways that no natural woman could. She moved like a woman possessed, a woman enthralled and addicted, and if her expression was any indicator at all, the euphoria she was experiencing was way more than she ever had when alive.
"Oh goddess!" Ra'Shaal screamed exultantly though not a sound could be heard.
Sinaan only knew because he read her lips. As she peaked she lifted her head up, her mouth wide open, her eyes closed, and her body quivering like a plucked guitar string. Then he felt his own release upon him. His mind went momentarily blank as joy flooded his body, and then his seed was rushing through his groin and out and into Ra'Shaal.
She seemed to exhale explosively, soundlessly, and then her reverse colored skin and hair seemed to pulse and dim as it tried to revert back to the colors of her living body! He lay there stunned. Staring up at her. Ra'Shaal's chest was heaving for breath that she no longer needed to draw, then she opened her eyes and looked down at him. Dead or not, shadowsoul or not, she had a beautiful, very satisfied, smile.
