Chapter 31: Repercussions of Failure

The man calling himself Arlade Tinsto remained half-sprawled where he had collapsed, the upper half of his back resting uncomfortably against the front of his hard, wooden desk. Thick dust blew around in the wind of his passing, filling his nose and mouth with the dry taste of dirty cotton. Even without the dust, there was an air of disuse in the room, the dry air of a room long forgotten. Only the sound of his ragged breathing broke through the utter silence. Though there was no light, his eyes could see everything around him.

His jaw hung open, a wild look etched hard into his features. His eyes, their pupils so large as to show only a thin circle of white, moved this way and that, scanning the wall where he’d just come through. His eyebrows rose to his hairline, his disbelief echoed in the wild look of those eyes. He closed his mouth to swallow in disbelief, then let his jaw hang once more. His breathing came in quick, ragged gasps as he continued to stare at the wall where his Gate had been not moments before.

A Gate the demon had impossibly kept open, bypassing all known rules and laws of magic.

His mind kept returning to the dry, dusty tomes he’d once studied so diligently. Magic was personal. Each mage conjured spells along the same general formula – a Gate was always a Gate – but a mage imbued their own essence, their signature, into every spell. Once cast, no other mage could change the spell. They could add to it, over-write it and even destroy it, partially or completely, by patching their spell over it, but they couldn’t take over the spell.

Yet, the demon had. The Gate had been closing. Arlade had released it. The demon hadn’t added to the spell. He hadn’t over-written it. He’d not destroyed it. He’d taken Arlade’s cast off spell and revived it. He’d commandeered it.

Which was impossible.

Yet another impossibility in a long string of them. The demon had claimed to ensorcell his armor while creating it. Impossible. The demon had effortlessly changed the very nature of the metal he wore, igniting it. Impossible. The demon had changed the very fabric of reality, turning his swords into ... something else. Something for which Arlade didn’t even have words.

Impossible.

Dazed, he pushed himself to a sitting position, a pain in his back as he moved causing him to wince. He rotated his shoulders, stretching the muscles in his back absently. Still eyeing the wall distrustfully, half certain his Gate spell would flare into existence once more, he grabbed the discarded shovel beside him, and stood, the shovel thrust in front of him. He looked at the shovel, then around the room. He looked at the shovel and again looked around the room, his eyes always returning to the wall he’d Gated through. Finally, he bent and settled the small shovel against the wall. He had to consider the possibility he’d need it again if the demon somehow managed to re-activate the Gate completely.

It wasn’t much in the way of preparations – but what preparations were there for a demon of such power? What plan could he make against a creature which could flaunt the laws of magic?

The very fabric of his world had been torn asunder. In all his many years, magic had been the one constant of which he could be sure. He had based his entire life upon the practice, control and pursuit of magic. If his life’s work could be diverted in this way, then what good was he? Of what value this burden of a life?

His eyes searched the room for something to divert his mind. He needed something to pull his thoughts back from the terrible abyss upon which they teetered.

But he hadn’t been in this room in years. He’d had no time. He’d been too busy playing the part his master had assigned him. He ran his fingers along the thick dust upon his desk. Dust which had recently been disturbed by him and the...

No. He lifted his hand as if burned. His eyes still wild, he searched the room for something, anything, that could take his mind off the demon knight.

When nothing presented itself, he turned to the spells protecting the library. He would find comfort in strengthening the familiar magic.

As he set about strengthening the wards he’d laid around his apartments years before, boosting both their strength and sensitivity and even adding ones he thought he’d never need, he considered his failure. His abject failure of the single task his master had set before him.

He’d lost the princess. At the very last moment, startled by the demonic knight, he’d dropped her arm and fell through his Gate. He’d failed his master – and such failure would not be lightly forgiven. He had an excuse – a demon knight who could cast magic while wearing plate armor when all knew you couldn’t cast while wearing metal – but his master would not accept excuses. She’d given him a specific task – and he’d failed.

Punishment would follow.

Arlade spent some time cleaning his office. He knew he was putting off the inevitable, but he was still in shock over the whole encounter. Failure mere moments from his victory! It did not sit well with him.

As he cleaned – basically moving things back and forth to disturb the dust – he considered the possibility of making amends. He could Gate back to Hasp – but what if the demon was waiting for him? He held no fantasies about besting the thing. He was outclassed and he knew it. Especially chained as he was, unable to command his full powers.

There were few who considered themselves powerful enough to face a major demon. There were even fewer who’d actually faced one and lived to tell the tale. Most who attempted it just vanished, never to be heard from again.

It was the greatest lament of all Wizards. Summoning small, insignificant demons – low level imps or sprites or poltergeists – was easy enough. Taxing, certainly, but easily done. So easy, in fact, it bred over-confidence in a wizard. Accomplished with such ease, many tried to summon stronger and stronger demons. High level imps. High level sprites. High level poltergeists. The higher-level minor demons were fairly powerful in their own right.

Demonology was addictive. It seemed so easy, so much gain for so little effort. Inevitably, a wizard would try for something beyond the minor level. They’d attempt to summon a goblin or an incubus or a succubus – second level demons. Most who pulled from this level failed. If they were lucky, the demon would kill them. If they were unlucky, it would possess them.

Some, though, succeeded. Success bred a false sense of mastery. Every summoning was a new danger all its own. One never found advantage over a demon. They were as powerful the second or one-hundredth time summoned as the first time. They would often lull the unsuspecting wizard into thinking they were cowed while watching intently for even the most minor mistake. Then, once the mistake was made, it was too late. The wizard became a sacrifice on the demonic altar – either as an offering or as a host.

Thankfully, demons didn’t truly understand mortals. They didn’t know how to care for their new bodies. The hosts didn’t last long. It allowed the demon time to cause trouble – but not to do any lasting damage.

Only the foolish attempted wizardry.

Of necessity, mages were taught the risks from their earliest training. It was pounded into them at every stage. For some reason, wizardry seemed to breed both stupidity and arrogance, because every year there were at least a handful of mages who succumbed to the temptation. The call of instant power versus the long, hard road of learning to control the eldritch energies was just too much for some.

It was the fourth time he’d moved an empty vial to a new place on his desk when he became upset at his own stalling. There was no advantage in it. The longer he took, the harder his master would be on him.

Most mages lived in a rather normal-looking building. True, the buildings were often far different inside than out, but most mages tried, at least, to appear normal. It was a way of fitting in, of making their neighbors less hostile.

Arlade didn’t subscribe to such a philosophy. He didn’t want friendly, non-mage neighbors. He wasn’t all too happy with the idea of mage neighbors, either, but they were tolerable. In his mind, mages were at least a few steps above people with no magic abilities. In his world view, mages were royalty and deserved obeisance. It was evident to him the world should be ruled by mages since all other creatures were of lesser stock.

His master went one step beyond. She lived in a tower carved of the darkest obsidian, interspersed with flecks of flickering biotite which caused it to shimmer and sparkle under both the sun and the moons. The tower had been built in the very middle of a sheer side of a mountain peak with the edge of it seemingly part of the mountain itself, though the mountain was made of the more gray-ish hued sedimentary rock. The rumor was she had created it herself, using her arcane abilities to mold the very side of the mountain. He wasn’t quite sure he believed it, especially since the mountain range was not known for its obsidian content, but he wouldn’t put it past her. His master was big on gaudy displays.

Which was evident when he was admitted to her den. It had changed since he’d last visited years before. Gone were the comfortable couches, tables, desks and bookcases. Instead, the floor of the room was covered in a soft, pillowy foam and the comfortable couches had been replaced with lounges.

The bright lights decorating those tables and desks were likewise gone, replaced with dimly lit chandeliers hanging along thick chains from the black obsidian of the ceiling. Shadows were plentiful and the far walls were hidden within them. An odor struck him that he could not easily place, for all it seemed somehow familiar. It was musky and cloying. It teased at his nostrils, and he shivered as cold fingers walked up his spine even though the vast chamber was too warm. A large bed stood in the center of the room and the walls, once filled with arcane books and philosophies, now held lascivious works which made even the man posing as Arlade blush.

Soft sounds whispered along the faintest of hot breezes. He recognized the sounds almost instantly as the sounds of breathing made by many bodies. His eyes squinted as he tried to peer through the shadows hiding the walls of the chamber. They opened wide in surprise when he noted at least a dozen people, both women and men, rigidly standing at even intervals along the hard, black stones of which the walls were composed. Strangely, they were nude, their bodies on prominent display. Their heads were lowered, their arms at their sides. They were of different races and hues. All human, but tan and pale, black and white, they seemed culled from all over the Empire if not the world. Each of them was wearing only a thick, shiny, rainbow-hued collar wrapped closely along the bottom of their necks.

That hot, faint breeze also carried another payload of the scent he finally recognized. His eyes grew wider still at the smell of their sweat and lust overlying their fear and hopelessness. Above it all, rattling his nose, was another smell, a pervading smell of unchecked woman in heat.

“Isanto!” His master called.

The man who’d spent the past decade or so posing as Arlade Tinsto looked for her in stunned disbelief. He had to be in the wrong room. He had to have turned the wrong way, his years away obviously deleterious to his navigation of the tower. As his eyes roamed where the voice came from, however, he was startled to find her kneeling on the bed, as nude as her servants with her knees wide.

For a moment, he took in her short, dark hair as it curled around her oval face and the nubile glow of her skin. Her breasts were small but upturned and defying gravity. Her legs were wide with the muscles of her thighs straining in well-defined splendor. There was a light sheen upon her, a sheen of sweat and he could just make out drops of it rolling down her face. Her nose was neither long nor short but rather perfect for the oval of her face. Her eyes were dark and flashing, intent upon him. Her lips were curled in a devious smirk as she watched him askance.

His eyes followed her legs to their center. For a moment, he thought she’d somehow caused the hair surrounding her center to grow long – it seemed to hang all the way down the side of the bed and pooled slightly at the floor. Only as her hips gyrated unsteadily back and forth did he realize she was astride someone’s face, grinding her center against them.

“Mistress,” he bowed, his shock at finding her thus - finding her den changed so from a place of study to a place of debauchery - scattering his mind into making a grievous error.

“Mistress!” His master screeched.

He was about to open his mouth, about to apologize when pain flared from every nerve ending. He fell back to the floor, agony jolting disjointedly up his spine, and his arms splayed wide in abject torment. His hand scrabbled and clutched, trying desperately to find something – anything – to ease the fire burning through every single point in his body. He opened his mouth wide to scream but not a sound came from his lips because his body no longer had any breath available to make such a sound. He writhed on the floor, legs and arms flailing, but there was nothing which could bring relief from the pain flooding through him.

It felt as if he were on fire and being stabbed by a thousand knives. It felt as if he were dying.

Finally, his body managed to take in a breath even through the agony. The breath didn’t last long as he screamed and screamed again. Through the pain which seemed to grow beyond his ability to survive, his screams continued unabated.

Finally, the pain slowed and passed. He realized he was still alive, though he wasn’t certain how he’d survived. He lay still on his back, and became aware his body was sunk lightly into the foam. His skin itched everywhere as the pain receded. He went to wipe his tears only to find blood when he pulled his hand away. His eyes and nose were bleeding and when he coughed there was blood there, too.

“Do I look like one of those fucking wenches?” His master was standing above him, her face in a tight, savage snarl. She was still beautiful despite the savage look – or, perhaps, because of it. Her hair was a dark brown, cut short into a curl around a face which was perhaps just a touch too round to be called a true oval. She had piercing brown eyes above a thin, slightly rounded nose and lips which were just a bit too wide and a bit too thin for her face. At five-four, she was short, but her body was lithe and fulsome. Her breasts were pert and full, her butt round and firm. She was thin but not skinny, her body lush and luxurious.

At least, that was the image she projected. A powerful mage could control their body, spelling it to look any way they wished. Isanto, the man who’d been portraying Arlade Tinsto, could never be sure he’d actually seen the true face of his master.

“Do I look like one of those weak, pathetic bitches who serve at a man’s pleasure?” she asked with a savage growl. “No, I carve my own path! I’ve made my name in spite of men, not because of them. They plot and scheme to deny me my place at the council, but I scratch and claw in the face of them. I work five times as hard with ten times as much power to be looked at as inferior by men unworthy to so much as sniff at my asshole. I am your master, you subservient, little troll, and don’t you ever forget it!”

“A million apologies, my master,” Arlade gasped, his breath coming in short, painful little wheezes. “I-I meant no offense. The change in this room and the sight of these-these...”

“Slaves?” She supplied with an evil little grin. Her eyes almost glowed as the look of malevolence crossed her face. “Thralls? Chattel? Servants? They are all of these and so much less. What good is power, if not to bend your lessers to your will?”

“Do you like them?” she continued with a laugh as her hands waved at the men and women lined up along the walls. Her moods were always capricious but the change from absolute rage to coquettish laughter made Isanto a bit dizzy. “It took months of research to craft the correct spell. The collars are the key. They are made of a special ceramic fired from a rare type of mud found only at the base of a volcano half-way across the world. The locals call the mud pricotta. When kilned correctly, it becomes a hard ceramic only slightly less strong than steel.”

The tips of her lips curled upward into a wide smile. “It holds eldritch power like nothing I’ve ever seen. Fired into a long bar, it is eminently malleable. When the ends are joined, however – like, say, around a person’s neck – and the correct spell cast, it becomes hard and nearly unbreakable. Better still, both the joining spell and the spell of subservience are held in abeyance until the two ends are joined – but once it fires, it subjugates the subject’s will to my own. If the collar is ever broken, the wearer dies. Once enslaved, you’re enslaved forever with no will except that which I grant.”

Mystery of the Fourth Order Isanto Hamlade, who had masqueraded for the past decade and more as Arlade Tinsto, felt the blood completely drain from his face. To be forced to serve another’s will would be a fate worse than death to the old man. His eyes grew wild as they glanced towards the exit.

“Worried?” she asked, chuckling a dry, raspy laugh. She sneered, turning her face from malevolent to evil. “Don’t. I have no plans to collar you. Yet. You are far too valuable to me as you are.”