Chapter 26: Battle in the Desert

ONE TIME—I have to tell you about this—I met a man who claimed he ruled the world and I owed him my obeisance. He was, in fact, a powerful chieftain, but he was a little short-sighted. I won his confidence eventually and managed to ask why he felt he ruled the world. He took me to the tallest mountain around and we climbed to the top. It wasn’t even all that tall, but he’d built himself a throne on the top so he could survey his kingdom.

“Look!” he said as he pointed out to the sea. He slowly turned in a complete circle and there was nothing but ocean in every direction. “I rule it all!”

“What about the lands across the sea?” I asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There are no lands across the sea. Those who go into the sea and leave our land disappear forever.”

“But how do you explain where I came from?” I asked. It was apparent he hadn’t considered the possibility.

“You rose up out of the land and are therefore my subject,” he said.

“I assure you, there are lands beyond what you see.”

“Then I will raise an army and go conquer them!”

His frame of reference was limited and he raised an army of nearly thirty young men and began training them to go out and conquer the rest of the world. I thought of his thirty soldiers against even one of Caesar’s legions and wished I’d left him with his delusions.

I stayed on his little island for a year or more, getting to know the people and ... well, you see there was one woman, Princess Agora, who was especially nice to me. Her skin was a rich deep brown and her eyes black as night. And the king had approved our marriage according to the customs of the land. It distracted him from his ideas of conquest for a while.

“You have ruined me for other men, Bob,” she said as I parted her legs and lapped at her honey with my tongue.

You probably don’t need to hear this, but as a demon, I have the ability to alter my shape in subtle ways, not just in the way of putting on a new body every twenty years or so. When I’m with a woman who is as exciting and receptive as this one, I sometimes lengthen my tongue so that I can thrust it deep inside her. You might assume that being five or six or ten inches inside a woman is a job for the dick. But if you can push your tongue all the way to the end of her pussy, and then curl it back, it will drive her absolutely wild with passion. Agora loved to have me tickle her cervix with the tip of my tongue and went crazy when I tickled her g-spot with it. (We knew about the spot long before a twentieth century doctor gave it his name.)

Oh. Well, if you can’t extend your tongue that far and curl it, just stick with your dick. But I assure you, you will never hear the kind of joy my princess expressed at my ministrations. And then she was still just as happy to have my dick in her.

So, I was there for a year or more and she finally agreed to join me on my adventure and I introduced her to the infinity room.

It was too much for her.

Like her father, the king, she thought the whole world could be seen from the top of their little hill. Her transfer to a completely different world resulted in so much disorientation and panic that she was nearly catatonic. She had no idea how vast the world was. It drove her mad. It was the first and only time I ever possessed a woman without her asking me directly to do so. Indirectly, she asked me. It was words like ‘Make it stop!’ and ‘Help me!’ I took control of her and gave her peace. It was a near thing, though, and I almost lost her when I had my tongue inches deep in her twat and she called out for God instead of me.

“Bob! I mean Bob! Oh, Bob! Love me, Bob!”

She got along fine after that, though she was never again comfortable leaving the infinity room for the natural world. She preferred to stay inside the house with my wives and possessions and not even venture into the great out-of-doors in the infinity room. She was truly agoraphobic.

WELL, I bring up this little adventure because every ruler I’ve met is just like Agora’s father, the chieftain of his island. He considers himself to be the most important and powerful man in the world and cannot abide having another challenge his position.

Human rulers all want to rule the world. Caesar shared power with Pompey and Crassus as a triumvirate. Each of them wanted to rule the world and, as a result, needed to get rid of the other two. Caesar went north and west to conquer all of Europe for Rome. He even had me meet him with ships on the coast of Gaul and transport his troops to Britain so he could conquer that as well. Much good it did him. The Britons were a cagey people and did not come out to meet Caesar’s legions after they’d shipwrecked on the shore. I kept a number of men with me to rebuild the ships so they weren’t stranded on the island. Caesar led a legion off to conquer the Britons.

But they didn’t stand and fight like the other foes Caesar had encountered. They led him into the forest and attacked from the sides, disappearing back into the brush. When he finally found a town, Caesar negotiated a truce that called the Britons subjects of Rome. He appointed a governor and we all boarded the restored ships to head back to Rome. The Britons snickered at his back and did away with the governor.

Pompey went the other way and consolidated Rome’s hold on Asia Minor and the near east. He accepted tribute from Egypt’s teenage queen rather than invading the country, and was prepared to push eastward into the Seleucid Empire.

Crassus thought ‘the boys’ were way too reckless and just sat at home governing Rome while Caesar and Pompey competed with each other to see who could conquer the world. In Caesar’s mind, he could complete his conquest of the world by merely defeating Pompey and uniting the two armies. When Crassus died, both made a mad rush back to Italy. Pompey had an edge by getting there first and raised an internal army to defend the city and his territory. Caesar approached from the northeast.

I might have mistakenly goaded Caesar on a bit. He often called me to consult as one of his advisors—one who stayed well away from the political maneuverings of his other advisors and generals. I’d already told Caesar that by his age, Alexander had ruled the world as far as the Indus River and the only reason he didn’t rule Rome was because he considered there to be nothing there of value. It made Caesar insanely angry whenever I mentioned the name of Alexander the Great.

I’m afraid that was what happened at a small river on the Italian frontier. I’d come ashore to meet with the man as one of his advisors. They argued back and forth about what should and should not be done. There was something about a law forbidding taking his troops any farther south. I shook my head at them.

“If Alexander were here, he’d take what soldiers would follow him and march south to take what was his. He sacked Thebes because they rebelled against him. It took only days for the rest of Greece to come to his side.”

Caesar stood up and shook a finger at me.

“The die is cast then,” he said. He left the chamber where we met and, in the morning, took his legions with him and crossed the Rubicon.

And Pompey fled.

I won’t go into the details of all the battles and triumphs. You’ve got a history book, I’m sure. The rest of Caesar’s life was marked by making laws and putting down rebellions. He insisted that his front guard ride on my little ship with him as we pursued Pompey to Egypt, only to find out he was already dead. Caesar was incensed against Ptolemy XIII, who ordered the murder, and had the two men who killed Pompey executed. Caesar liked to deliver his revenge personally. Pompey was given a proper Roman funeral and Caesar negotiated his own treaty with Cleopatra.

He had a weakness for particularly passionate and lubricious females—like Cleopatra.

You probably know all about Caesar’s affair with the Egyptian queen and how Ptolemy XIII, her co-ruler, besieged Alexandria in an attempt to wrest control from his estranged sister-wife. It was during that siege that my own little ship was burned in the harbor where I was delivering some books I’d collected for the library. I’ve already told you about how I rushed to the library to save the books. And the librarians.

Without a ship, I was useless to Caesar, and frankly, I’d had enough of him. When he left Egypt and headed up the Mediterranean coast, I stayed in Egypt where there were many other repositories of books.

Which is when I ran into a very sad and mournful Cleopatra, now ruling with an even younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. That didn’t last long and she managed to get rid of him as well. She then named her infant son from her liaison with Caesar as her co-ruler.

“YOU’VE KNOWN him a long time, Bob. Will he come back to me?” she asked as we dined together in her palace. She was still only in her early twenties and as sleek as the greyhound she kept nearby as a symbol of her near divinity.

“Oh, he’ll return. Anytime there is a hint of rebellion, Caesar will return with an army. But you must know, he is married,” I said.

“He’ll divorce her,” she declared.

“Probably. But I don’t mean the woman who claims to be his wife. I mean he is married to Rome. He will cut down anything and anyone who stands to hurt his Rome and her empire.”

“Are you married, Bob?”

That was an interesting question. Nimia and Penelope were my wives. Josie and Pari were my possessions. But there had been many—dozens?—to whom I had been married and outlived. Then there was my harem—concubines, women who had sneaked into my infinity room before I knew it, priestesses of Troy. Oh, yes. Many women.

“My bride was burned in the harbor the night your brother attacked,” I said.

“Do you want me to give you a new boat?” she asked.

I laughed.

“How would you like me to set you afloat and ride you on the tides of passion?” I asked.

With any other woman, such an abrupt proposition would have been met with outrage. But Cleopatra was a woman of passion, and if she was not with the one she loved, she loved the one she was with.

I want to clarify that. Cleopatra was not a slut. No, when I refer to a woman as a slut, she is one who will simply spread her legs as a part of any relationship. If you are her husband, you are welcome between her legs. If you are her house guard, you are welcome between her legs. If you are her driver, you are welcome between her legs. If you are the man who bakes bread on the corner, you are welcome between her legs. Helen of Troy was a slut. I was the baker on the corner.

Cleopatra was a woman of passion. Her fire lit quickly and burned hot. Once you had struck a spark to her tinder, the flames could consume you. Caesar found that out. Later, Marc Antony discovered the truth of it. I lit the fire but managed only to get singed a little before she was called to Rome to stay at Caesar’s bungalow across the river from the palace.

I’ve heard people make the assumption that Cleopatra, being the Queen of the Nile, was Egyptian, a people who are generally thought to be moderately dark-skinned. But the line of Ptolemy Soter, Alexander’s general, were Greeks and Macedonians. They married Greeks and Macedonians. In fact, Cleo was the first of that lineage who even bothered to learn the Egyptian language, which endeared her to the people. She had pale skin, red hair, and a classic Grecian nose. She might have been carved of ivory, just as My Lady Goddess’s statue on Cyprus. She did not always bare her breasts, but she always wore clothes that could fall off with the slightest breeze.

And thus, when I gently blew across her bosom, the gauzy fabric parted and exposed her shapely breasts, capped with hard rosy points begging to be suckled. I obliged. We were dining, stretched out on carpets and cushions in the Arabian fashion. A simple shove with my foot cleared the table from between us, and we fell together right there on the floor.

“Oh, Bob. I had no idea your scepter was fit to rule the world! Bring it to me and rule the delta of Cleopatra.” She had a poetic way about her.

I would certainly never rule beside Cleopatra. I was certain Caesar would take that as a personal offense. But as a substitute for him, I ruled between Cleo’s legs, and that was a place to be greatly desired. My thick meat parted her delicate, sparsely haired folds and speared her to her depths. Whatever you have read about how desirable Cleopatra was, it was inadequate. Not only was she beautiful with a tight but welcoming pussy for my cock, she was an active participant. She accepted me in the dominant position at first, but when I was not being exuberant enough, she rolled us over and drove that wet snatch down on my cock repeatedly. Between her orgasms and my own, the carpets were soaked. Thinking of her now makes me hard and she’s been dead two thousand years.

Over the next year or so, she escorted me to temples and shrines, and showed me where some of the libraries were that had been untouched in a thousand years. When she received the message that Caesar wanted her to visit Rome, she was gone overnight. I was left on the shore of the Nile with naught but the satchel on my shoulder and the memory of her hot pussy wrapped around my cock.

I set about pillaging the libraries of Egypt.

NOT ALL that comes from the primordial mass is good and kind and honest like Bob. Most is not benign. This is my warning to fledgling magicians not to play around with spells and summonings you don’t understand. This happened to me on my journey from Egypt through Arabia.

Magi, adepts, sorcerers, and even necromancers have always believed they had to know the name of a demon to summon it. They scoured books (like those I carried in my satchel library) for names of demons and the rituals that would conjure them. And as time went on, they began to find names. Amazingly, the names were always in the language the mage spoke. Imagine that!

I believe ninety percent of the known names for demons came from fiction authors and playwrights. And they made them up. And if they were especially imaginative, they described the character of the demon and what he looked like. Often in terms that didn’t make literal sense, so it was open to interpretation. The demon Trogladach, for example, has a thick impenetrable skull and wields a club the size of a man. He has fiery eyes and legs like tree-trunks. The mention of his name terrifies his victims who quake in fear at him and fall beneath the blows of his mighty club. Uh ... that’s not a real name, by the way.