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From: Vivian Darkbloom <vdkblm-OBLITERATE-SPAM!@yahoo.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Sangrelysia - Chapter 8 {Mg+ magic}
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Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:10:01 -0500
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                   Peace on Earth!
              Support Freedom of Speech!
             Defend the Right to Privacy!

             (what ELSE will I need to add
               by the time I finish?)


  To more fully enjoy this story in living, breathing HTML,
  or to catch up on chapters you might have missed,
  please visit our website at:

  /~vivian

  Now offering over 100,000 words of pure prurient prose!

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                         Sangrelysia - Chapter 8

                          by Vivian Darkbloom

   Meg and Peg. A twinge of regret.

   It was late, the very same night. The packing of my trunk long
   ago completed, I now sat watching the Princess prancing daftly
   about in delightful feathery diaphanous scarves, gaily scattering
   belongings first here and then across the room, as the gaggle of
   girls giggled and gathered.

   "We get to camp out! Under the stars!" she exclaimed, scurrying
   about in giddy excitement. "I love camping out."

   Off to visit Aunt Peg, sister of the Princess' mother, the
   ex-Queen. Vanished Queen, hence unseen. Perhaps not simply
   disappeared, but vanquished, banished. I should have prevented it
   -- I was the one -- but how was I to know? In the corner I sat,
   motionless in the shadow of remorse. But perhaps I was being too
   harsh inflicting reflexive flagellation. How was I to know? That
   the King and Queen would ride off to disappear, that the shadows
   would draw long across the lawn, that whispers would grow, and
   everyone know they should have returned? But not to panic.

   It was only then that I searched as best I could, but found only
   darkness. Only after they had not come back that I realized the
   folly of my failure to prevent the dark magic. King Hieronymus
   and Queen Megan, their laughter no more to be heard reverberating
   from the walls and flagstones, and the best magic I could produce
   was painfully inadequate.

   How was I to know? The Sangrelysia I was born and flourished into
   was a celebration, a paradise. Golden sunlight flooding rich
   green grassy fields and forests full of colorful sweet-scented
   flowers, chattering birds and prancing playful fauna. Jauntily we
   rode, thundering across the plains, while a roaring fiery dragon
   in the distance patrolled the Northern borders to turn back the
   very evils which had descended, becoming now only too real.

   It was always from the North that the vile ways of thinking would
   arrive, the chilly chaotic land where pale-skinned invaders
   schemed and fought amongst themselves. I had always thought to
   close off the border entirely, but King Hieronymus would wisely
   refuse. "A well-designed fortress always has a weakness," he
   would reply. So we, knowing the weakness, could anticipate the
   course of the intruders.

   Besides, now and again we would have a worthy visitor, one who
   genuinely did not belong in the world-without-magic, who would
   arrive and breathe a sigh of relief, settling in gently to our
   peculiar ways without a tremor.

   Back then, tales of ancient long ago battles had floated
   carelessly across the breeze on the lips of overacting bards
   intoxicated with conceit at their own storytelling. What could be
   worse than a pompous narrator, unconcerned with the feelings of
   the listener? But it was all in good fun, as it should have been.

   "What about my harp?" the Princess shouted.

   "Your Aunt Peg has one you can use, I'm sure," I said. "The
   carriage will already be stuffed full enough as it is."

   Her face fell.

   "Alright, so take it along if you want. You're the Princess."

   She beamed, running over to me, placing fingertips of both hands
   gently on my knees, and kissed me on the lips. The kiss was a
   lingering glimmer of the former joyful state, as our tongues met
   and explored momentarily. Then she was across the room,
   transporting some article of clutter from where it was to
   somewhere else.

   The Sangrelysia of my youth was pointedly carefree. We went out
   of our way to indulge in reckless abandon. It was our mission,
   our accomplishment. I grew up knowing about the dark secrets,
   books filled with spells cast to cause pain and submission, but
   why would I want to fill my head with such things?

   It wasn't until disaster struck that I found myself desperately
   skimming such tedious, grey dusty volumes, clad in the spiderwebs
   of neglect. I sat in my tower frantically seeking to fill in the
   gaps. Into the shadows I had gazed, as far as I could, but still
   nothing. Never before had I needed to look into the depths of
   night with such intensity, shadows cast by invisible demons.

   Yet unpracticed in the ways of darkness, I saw only vague forms,
   slithering in the half-light, impossible to grasp. And my stomach
   churned at the idea that someone had sought out such things, that
   these very ideas so violently revulsed my mind, were intimately
   cherished by some perverse creature, the form of whom I scarcely
   dared imagine.

   No longer innocent now, my eyes. Thief and detective must share
   the same grimy affliction, obsession with the perverse. As
   detective, forced to explore the hideous gears of criminal
   churning, dutifully I descended to the depths of comprehension,
   to follow the logic of the absurd, to trace the wires of greed
   back to their source, compiling a mental map of the terrible
   circuitry. To foil the devices of evil, one must trace the course
   of cramped paranoid desire, hunch over to occupy the grim hovel
   of dread and deceit, to reveal the tangled, obfuscated workings
   lurking within.

   Had I been looking with the eyes of today, perhaps the answer
   would have emerged. But submerged instead into the inky mud, it
   has already been enveloped in the depths. And the kingdom became
   as a ship rent by jagged reefs, sinking in mired decay. Behind
   ones back, the weeds and thorns may grow, the spiderwebs and
   mildew overwhelm all that is fair and bounteous, the insects
   devour the interior of the support beams, leaving behind only the
   thin veneer of apparent strength.

   Then the insect emperor, greatest of cockroaches, King George
   himself swept in, and toppled the beauty of the old ways. Brought
   down with the nudge of a finger, the beautiful, venerable but
   naive majesty of centuries-old wisdom was no match for the
   cold-hearted ambition of power-lust.

   Too long had we averted our gaze with carefree youthful
   arrogance. Too long had dark magic been permitted to fester. The
   ascension council bribed or poisoned, or corrupted by evil
   incantations. The council, for want of eligible heir, crowned
   George as the brother of the King. Rumors of the evil doings of a
   certain wizard Elwrong, master of darts, were instantly quashed,
   and the official news was twisted to proclaim the glory and
   virtue of the new King.

   The princess skipped, then flounced onto the bed, out of sight
   amid giggles behind the sweeping pleated curve of the regally
   amethyst velvet curtain, leaving me to only imagine the soft
   tickles and girl-snuggles within. The curtain, drawn back by an
   ornate cincture, hung from the false draped sky suspended from
   four intricately lathed wooden posts.

   In my pocket, my fingernail clicked the cold, smooth surface of
   the crystalline globe I had found, the one the Princess had
   fathomed more deeply than I (perhaps I was irrelevant after all).
   The crystal ball, I felt a need to keep with me now, disturbing
   though it was. Somehow it held the key to unlock the secret of
   the theft that had so cruelly taken place. Worse than the theft
   of an Empire, the devastation of an ideal.

   Was my struggle only futile? How long would I need to continue
   digging into the stinking bowels of deceitful lies? To disinter
   the gruesome worm-eaten carcasses? In the end, would it even make
   any difference?

   In vain, I listened for even a whisper of the voices of my
   ancestors, the nameless wizard who held the post before me, who
   so calmly instructed me in the ways of magic. I had a name back
   then (not telling, sorry!) until he conferred on me the sacred
   status of namelessness, so that he could recede into the autumn
   sunlight, to bask in the fading yellow rays. Now I could
   understand the faint sadness that I found such a mystery in my
   youth, the elegiac longing of one who had stared evil in the face
   and now reminisced on the days prior to such knowledge.

   Mercifully, he had departed, with a faint smile on his face,
   faintness to match the sadness that had so mystified me. A face I
   could almost no longer remember, as the glaze of each passing
   sunset varnished another layer of gray fog over the memories to
   which I clung.

   A scuffle and flurry, a handful of bounces, and my Princess stood
   grinning, face upturned to me. "Hi," she said.

   "Hello," I reluctantly replied.

   "Why so sad?"

   A heavy sigh, I'm afraid. "Thinking about your mom and dad."

   She thought, and shrugged, then grinned again. "You'll find them,
   don't worry. And I'm going to help!"

   Her idiotic, silly cheerful bluster brought drops of warm
   refreshing salty moisture to my eyes. She put her arms around me,
   and I caressed and held her delicate, fragile, sweet precious
   softness with my palms and fingertips. It was her future that
   kept me going. The woman she would become, and the men and women
   who would emerge childhood into a world we were now creating.

   Eventually, I let her go. I had to, so she could finish getting
   ready.

     ____________________________________________________________

                                                to be continued. . .

  _______________________________________________________


  For more stories, please visit our site:
    /~vivian



  

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