| The time: a few ticks between the clock between the time of teleportation.
The place: the realm between realms. A certain entity finds himself interested
in a couple of people being teleported. Since 179 is on vacation....what
the heck! So, certain Astra, Fred analogs (and a few others) are having
what is something of a dream, and something not of a dream…..
Astra’s mind drifted in a white mist, awash with sensations that she
had never experienced before. It wasn’t erotic, but it was pleasurable.
It was peaceful, and things were clearer here to her than she’d ever had
experienced before within her short but eventful life!
Then she found this realm not so pleasurable.
As she looked over the past few weeks of the chaos surrounding her rescue
and subsequent recapture by the dragon fiend, she felt her heart sink as
she realized……
I can’t go home….. she said to herself with a moan and sob.
She had been captured while trying to gain the final token that would have allowed her entry into the Daughters of the Hunteress. While hunting, the hunter had become the prey, and then a bait for OTHER prey. Her target, who’s scaley hide would have guaranteed her admission into the Sisterhood by showing her skilled as a huntress, instead of killing her outright, had chained her to a wall and slowly stripped her….over the course of days and weeks…..of every article of clothing. Spells had kept her muscles from atrophying as she was bound, while other spells had removed the grime and mess associated with long bouts of being unbathed (a lure that smelled gamey was not worth anything, as Vellus the dragon had said on occasion). Then , after being rescued by Fred, after he had slain Vellus, both
had been teleported into the Calamari desert to die by a vengful Minestus.
Only by luck did they escape that fate…..and then luck seemed to turn again
against the Amazon warrior and the brave (but somewhat frustrating) Lord
Fred.
Fred had been seriously injured, and then “repaired” by the eccentric
Dr. Vincent…..but leaving him in a freakish state with scissors for hands.
Fred and Astra had convinced Vincent to undo the “improvements” to Fred,
but at a critical point in the spell…..she’d sneezed and thus had been
teleported away and recaptured by Minestus, the dragon mage.
The dragon had cursed her with the form of a demifox who had been in
season, and then released her to let nature take it’s course. Fred had
been the first person she had sensed (his scent had carried in the wind),
and the instincts of the fox had taken over.
Fred, after Vincent had cured his scissorhand condition, had then gone
out in a quest to find Astra. He had been searching the forest for hours,
and had found no trace of her, so had set up camp for the night when the
instinct controlled demifox had come into the campsite with only….er….one
thing on her hormone clouded mind. Fred had mistaken her for on of the
recent arrival of Kitsune from Nippon, and had yielded to the vixen’s demands
(for to refuse a kitsune, alone in the woods like this, would be suicidal).
Thus, Fred was infected and subsequently transformed into a demifox as
he slept after ministering to Astra’s demands.
After striking a bargain with the mysterious rogue dragoness Malachi,
Astra and Fred were left with the dying words of Malachi (who had been
fatally wounded in the final confrontation with the vile) that a dragon
gem called the Crystallic held the secret to a cure for their demifox curse.
They were to take the gem to a werebear mage known as Synizn, in the infamous
town of Walants, and give it to him. Synizn would be able to cure them.
However, through an incredible set of circumstances, the demifoxes had
found themselves at the mercy of a corrupt Walants barrister and his dwarf
lackey as they seemed to be doomed to ferry themselves back and forth between
Walants and the lair of Minestus, forever trying to get to the dead dragons
treasure Hoard. Yes, they had somehow managed to cure themselves of their
demifox curse, by DRINKING the Crystallic, but……
Things got worse, when it didn’t seem possible.
First, through the barrister toying with the Crystallic, Astra had been
changed into ebony (and I mean EBONY) beauty who’s parents wouldn’t even
recognize (nor believe if told) as their daughter. Bad enough that the
lawyer, Mater Rifts, was blackmailing her into cooperation (threatening
to reveal to her parents about conceiving children out of wedlock…..which
would lead to her loss of her inheritance as princess and subsequent banishment
from Aqualaria).
However, now Astra could see that the odds of that NOT happening would
have been long indeed, even without the machinations of Rift.
See, even if she could bring the children to term anonymously (difficult
indeed since her natural form bespoke of her identity…..with towering over
the rest of the rabble at 6’1” and having flame red hair……a sure indicator
of her Amazon heritage and her being…..who she was). There was the fact
that……she couldn’t join the Sisterhood (no non-virgin’s allowed), and she
couldn’t hide from the Sisterhood’s Elder’s her sudden….er….change in status
(they had ways of telling….let’s just say). Oh, she could lie well enough
about what had happened (thank Minerva that she finally had been able to
overcome that tendency to scratch her nose whenever she tried to tell a
falsehood), but there still remained the matter about her and the duties
of her station.
There had been several avenues available to her in fulfilling them,
but she had chosen the Way of the Huntress to fulfill the need to join,
for a time, the ranks of the priesthood before truly becoming worthy of
higher office…..of her Station in life (author’s note: this was inherited
from the Amazon’s interaction with the Romans of long ago….who the same
custom.) She had intended to join, and thus forever devoting herself to
her goddess, and any question of who would proceed her after her death
as Queen would be decided by the War Council). She’d already declared her
course of action, and was bound to it. But she couldn’t follow it, because…..she
was no longer a virgin.
The human person is amazing in his or her capacity in being able to
delude themselves and not acknowledging realities, but that ability has
null and void in this realm.
It was the realm that Seers touched that let Visions be. It was a realm were Truths and Visions were clearer and brighter. Only when the Seer return to the realm of man, did his or her human condition cloud and confuse what had been seen. Some Visions were too much for some minds to cloud (and thus protect) themselves, and there was a good chance of insanity (like what had happened to a certain dwarf……). Training in this Arte provided a shield of sorts, but also created blind spots…..like not being able to See one’s own death approaching (as a certain Oracle found out when murdered by a rogue AI). All this information Astra wasn’t aware of, for all she could feel was
a deepening sense of dispair and fear.
”What am I going to do?” she nearly whined, feeling alone and pitiful.
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