Eldritch Enactment
Copyright© 2025 by Carlos Santiago
Chapter 27: Magic and Science
Horror Sex Story: Chapter 27: Magic and Science - After his father's passing in 1822, Silas Wolcott returns home to discover he has inherited a fortune beyond necessity. However, soon, he must uncover the secrets of his House and bloodline. From a seductive vampire to a university that wants knowledge, a tale of hubris, fear, and destruction unfolds.
Caution: This Horror Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Ma/Ma Coercion Consensual Hypnosis Mind Control Gay Heterosexual Fiction Historical Horror School Science Fiction Alternate History Paranormal non-anthro Vampires Anal Sex Cream Pie Squirting Voyeurism Geeks Halloween Royalty Transformation Violence
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke, “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination,” in Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible (revised edition, 1973). Commonly known as Clarke’s Third Law. The essay first appeared in the original 1962 edition; the famous formulation was later formalized in the revised edition. Originally published by Harper & Row. Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke. All rights reserved.
He leaned over his desk while alone. The quill pen was quick and purposeful in its scratching on the paper.
Dear Silas Wolcott,
You have proven ever to be a Dreibruch man. Through your gift, we have made incredible leaps in medical and surgical techniques. I humbly request your presence at the campus. I believe there are some subjects you might be capable of offering illumination on.
Please, if at all convenient, bring more of your samples if you have any.
With respect
Dean Theophilus Ashcombe.
The words were written, and he breathed more easily. He believed Kaufman might have the right of the situation. When all other avenues had been explored, they needed to look beyond. He had already started looking up fairy tales, but he also had The Library by Apollodorus and Theogony by Hesiod sent up along with English translations of the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda. There had to be answers in some of the material.
He looked up to see the clock and saw that the hour was late, and he knew bed was lightly the best solution to his exhausted body.
He set his quill down, waved the letter in the air, ensuring the ink dried before putting it in an envelope and putting a wax seal on it.
Sleep did not come easily to Dean Theophilus Ashcombe that night. When unconsciousness finally claimed him, the slumber did so in strange intervals filled with half-formed impressions and distant sensations that threatened to linger unpleasantly long after waking.
Blood was moving through veins that pulsed in a cavernous arena that surrounded him. He heard whispers in the walls but the voices were not ones he did not recognize.
Theophilus looked left and right, trying to find the source of all of these things.
An endless groaning started to overtake the mutterings within the walls of flesh and veins and blood. The sound of icebergs scraping against one another struck his ears, causing him to call to his knees when a fog rolled in.
It spread across the floor in pale sheets beneath a black and starless sky. There was no moon overhead and the walls were collapsing into nothing. The ground beneath his shoes morphed into something resembling wet cobblestone slick from rain that did not fall. Further still, no city existed around him.
Ashcombe was alone. Of that, he felt entirely certain.
Then, as he looked around, a figure started to appear out of nothingness. It was as if he were many miles away before all of a sudden he was several yards before Ashcombe.
The Dean tilted his head in baffled confusion. In this, he was certain he was dreaming.
A man stood with his back turned beside a dead iron lamp-post whose flame burned blue instead of gold. The stranger wore dark clothing not unlike Ashcombe’s own manner of dress: long coat with a fitted waistcoat.
However, where age had taken its time on Ashcombe, his counterpart appeared much younger than the Dean. This stranger was perhaps thirty years of age at most.
His posture possessed a confident vitality Theophilus vaguely recognized in himself from before he was a professor. Administrative burdens and sleepless ambition had hollowed portions of his identity that youth had preserved.
Most striking of all was the man’s hair was white, not gray or silver from age.
Slowly, the stranger faced Ashcombe completely.
Ashcombe felt his stomach tighten involuntarily from the confrontation of this youthful mirror of him.
The face staring back at him was his own, but superior in almost every way. Where the Dean was weathered by time and had the burden of human imperfection, the specimen before him was sharper by contrast, more symmetrical, which imbued this younger version of him with a terrible beauty that was fit for only the finest marble statue.
Regardless of the attractiveness of this being, the eyes disturbed Ashcombe, for they were not human eyes. Behind the pupils, there moved a fluidity that could not be human and spoke of entire galaxies drifting beneath thin membranes of flesh.
The younger man smiled faintly.
“Hello, Dean Ashcombe,” he said pleasantly. “It is nice to finally meet you.”
The voice nearly matched Theophilus’, which (for obvious reasons) caused the Dean to remain still for several moments before answering.
“Who ... No ... What are you?”
The younger version of himself let out a laugh at the inquiry.
“That question is more difficult than you might imagine.”
This did nothing to put Theophilus off.
“I would still like an answer.”
The pale man chuckled softly.
“I know you believe that this is a reasonable response, but I promise it is a complicated answer that you might not be ready for.”
The fog shifted strangely around his feet. To Ashcombe’s observation, the fog also seemed to crackle like makeshift lightning when it was in proximity to his counterpart. It was as though the reality they found themselves in was rejecting this stranger.
“At present,” the figure continued, “I am wearing a shape more agreeable to your sensibilities. A human mind that is not prepared to accept what they will see goes into shock, and I need you in working order.”
Ashcombe grimaced before scowling outright.
“You’re not answering me.”
“No, I suppose I am not,” the stranger conceded gently. “I am being careful in my responses, both to be honest, but also not to break laws you do not comprehend.”
The blue flame in the lightpost beside him flickered sideways despite the absence of wind.
“I am not truly human, Dean Ashcombe, nor do I exist beneath the laws that govern your species.” He smiled again. “You may think of me as a deity of sorts if such terminology helps organize your understanding.”
Despite the absurdity of the statement, Theophilus did not laugh. He spoke with Kaufman about fairy tales and monsters, and then a god comes to him in a dream. It was all too convenient.
“What was the reason that you chose my face?”
“In part, because men trust themselves more readily than strangers.”
The answer came without hesitation.
“A mind can only handle so much change. Show a caveman a blunderbuss, and he will believe that he had witnessed a god, but show a caveman laser mounted on your arm, and they might try to make sense of what they cannot understand, so their mind goes into overdrive, and they risk going into shock or rupturing part of their brain.”
“What does that have to do with your appearance?” Ashcombe asked.
“Had I approached you in my natural form, your mind might have ruptured beneath the strain of perceiving me.” The figure’s smile widened slightly. “Your generation of humanity does not even know about UV lighting. Imagine what your mind would do when it tries to perceive colors outside of the visible spectrum...”
He made a motion at his cranium and expanded his hand to mimic an explosion.
“Appearing similar to you seemed kinder. Though,” he added with a smile. “I was also feeling nostalgic.”
That word unsettled Ashcombe more than the revelation itself, but he did not have the wherewithal to question the statements more. Instead, his focus was elsewhere, and that is where his line of questioning would go.
“What do you want from me?”
“To encourage you.”
The response came so quickly it almost sounded rehearsed.
The younger Ashcombe stepped slowly through the fog while speaking.
“You stand upon the threshold of extraordinary discovery. Your experiments with the blood have already altered the course of countless lives and therefore, the course of human history, but there is still so much more you do not understand.” His pale eyes narrowed slightly. “You must continue.”
“Why?”
At this query, the figure’s expression changed subtly. Just a drop of his warmth vanished even as the fog darkened around them.
Far above, where the heavens should have been, something enormous shifted behind the void. Theophilus could not see it directly, yet some primitive instinct within him recoiled in terror all the same.
The younger Ashcombe continued speaking softly.
“Your species believes itself alone because isolation comforts fragile minds. It is easier to imagine mankind standing proudly at the summit of creation than to accept the greater truth.”
“And what truth is that?”
The being regarded him silently for several moments.
“For some, it is the truth that you are not alone in the Universe. For others, it is accepting that there are gods or a God above them ... higher powers if you will. The truth I bring is a mix of both, and yet something so much greater still: There are powers older and greater than your small world.”
The words seemed to vibrate unnaturally through the dream itself.
“Some civilizations once called them Old Ones. Others named them Great Ones, Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, Elder Gods...”
He waved a dismissive hand.
“The names do not matter. Primitive creatures always invent titles for phenomena that they cannot understand, much less stop.”
Theophilus felt coldness creeping slowly through his limbs.
“What matters,” the figure continued, “is that their arrival is inevitable.”
The blue flame extinguished itself, and the darkness swallowed the lamppost instantly.
Ashcombe’s pulse quickened despite himself, for it was the instinct of humans to fear the dark, but still there was mild illumination; though, Ashcombe could not say where.
“You talk as though this supposed-invasion is certain.”
“It is. Some are already here, but many are coming”
The younger man’s answer carried no emotion whatsoever.
“They move between dimensions your sciences cannot yet measure; potentially, you might not even fully comprehend what dimensions are.”
The younger Ashcombe shook his head.
“That does not matter. What does matter is that regardless of the ones that sleep, hunger, or even just merely observe, enough of them prepare to consume this world.”
Theophilus swallowed carefully.
“And what has this to do with me?”
At this, the stranger stepped closer.
Ashcombe now saw faint fractures moving beneath the false skin of the creature’s face. Tiny lines spread and vanished again like cracks forming through porcelain.
“You possess ambition,” the being said quietly. “Under normal circumstances, this could be used to bring out the end of this world, but you might be able to overcome this.”
“Why?” Ashcombe asked.
He was a man who knew what he wanted, but there were countless men all over the world like him, so he could not understand how and why his brand of ambition was any better than anyone else’s.
“You possess intelligence and you’re in an isolated part of the world, but you are near the Heir. That, coupled with the willingness to continue walking where lesser men would collapse into fear, can aid you in the battle ahead.”
Its pale eyes gleamed.
“The blood you study is not merely medicine. It is supernatural in nature. It is the body fluid of a vampire, a half-demon creature of the night.”
The fog thickened violently around them.
“However, a half-demon’s stolen blood is not enough; humanity is weak, Dean Ashcombe. The species has admirable qualities and is occasionally brilliant.” A faint smile touched the creature’s mouth once more. “But on the whole, they are weak.”
Theophilus tried to speak, yet the thing continued before he could.
“When the greater powers finally arrive in fullness, your species will perish unless it evolves beyond its present limitations.”
The younger Ashcombe extended one pale hand outward.
Within his palm appeared brief impossible visions.
Cities drowning beneath black oceans. Cathedrals collapsing inward beneath impossible stars. Creatures larger than mountains moving beneath thunderclouds shaped like living flesh.
Then the vision shifted to hospitals and universities. People were being healed en mass. Children spared from famine and plague. Technologies of light and metals better than modern steel were being constructed.
The images vanished instantly.
“You stand between two futures,” the entity whispered.
The voice now resembled cathedral bells heard underwater.
“You may help prepare mankind for what approaches...”
The cracks beneath its skin widened further.
“ ... or you may doom them through inaction.”
Theophilus stared at the creature wearing his younger face.
“And if I refuse?”
For the first time since the dream began, the being fell silent.
The facsimile of Ashcombe smiled with a mouth full of too many teeth.
“Then, you doom humanity,” he said. Then, he let out a scoff. “But you will not refuse my advice.”
“And why won’t I?”
The fog folded inward.
“Have you not figured out who I am?” he asked. “I am you from another world, another time, and I ascended through perceptive insight. I saw the powers of the Old Ones, and I helped save my world at great cost, and I became a god!”
The ground bent unnaturally around the feet of the being. The younger Ashcombe’s body stretched upward in impossible angles as the human disguise began to fail. It was exploding and cracking all at the same time, and something immeasurable looked out through those cracks. The borrowed face was going away.
Theophilus could see more at that moment than ever before. There were tendrils. Multitudes of eyes, shapes that defied geometric understanding in relation to physics and gravity.
And somewhere within that infinite, watching abyss, Ashcombe believed what his counterpart had said.