The room smelled musky, with a heady scent of perfume. The scent was so out of keeping with the rest of the ship, which reeked of fear and blood, that Aaralon nearly sneezed in its thickness as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The captain's quarters were very spacious but sparse, with little affixed furniture besides the mission-style bed and a scarred cherrywood desk upon which burned the single dim lantern in the room. The walls were lined with pegs from which hung runed staves, oddly shaped vials of arcane powder, and fetish talismans, along with several sharp-edged tools of darker purpose. Based on the evidence on the walls, Aaralon could tell that the stories surrounding Crystal Gorehound had substance indeed. She was clearly an accomplished demonologist and practitioner of the illegal magics.
The captain was kneeling in the center of the room, and in the center of a very large and nearly complete pentagram. In one hand she grasped a rough oblong chunk of chalk-stone which moved in mesmerizing patterns across the floor before her, etching out the final layer of glyphs in the pentagram. Her other hand sought between her thighs and moved in rhythm with the slow strokes of the materializing arcane symbols before her.
The longing throbbing in his loins surged as Aaralon's eyes settled on the blood sorceress. He futily attempted to suppress the primal urges by concentrating on Stanton's bleeding body hanging not fifteen yards away, up on the forecastle. Aaralon tried to steel himself with the thought that Stanton's fate could very well be his own. But the sorceresses magnetic attraction crushed his resolve, and Aaralon was unable to stop himself as he hungrily examined the supple curves of her body, artfully wrapped in thin strips of black leather that clung to her like a second skin.
Despite the obvious intrusion made evident by the spill of moonlight through the doorway into the room, Crystal paid Aaralon no mind. Her sharp features openly displayed the blood sorceresses concentration at her task at hand. From the corner, a second woman in a revealing scarlet gauze evening gown regarded him with eyes that glimmered in the darkness of the room. That she was a demoness and not simply a perfectly proportioned human was made evident to Aaralon only by the orange tint of her skin and the hint of tiny horns covered by her long red hair.
The pentagram was large and far, far more complex than anything Aaralon had ever considered attempting in his brief experimentation with the Tome of Fire Flesh. It spanned the entire open space in the captain's quarters with runes that seemed to shift and squirm in the dim light, eminating a dark and wild power that could be barely contained by the confines of the room.
Crystal adorned the magical construct with meticulous care, her movements graceful as she traced the thick brick of white chalk across the floor with a faint sound of soft stone grinding against ironwood plank. Aaralon recognized the runes as those of powerful warding, chains of magical power designed to hold something large and frighteningly dangerous at bay.
When she finally looked up, his eyes accidentally connected with her deep and piercing emerald ones and he felt a shock like electricity run down his spine that ignited a renewed and unbidden firestorm of lust in his loins.
The sorceresses lips formed a pout as she rose slowly to her feet.
"I had not expected your curiosity to bring you here so soon," she said, as she righted the dripping leather strips around her crotch, as if in some mockery of modesty, "this was to be our after-dinner entertainment."
Crystal Gorehound stepped out of the pentagram and closed on Aaralon, careful to avoid contact between her bare feet and the intricate patterns on the floor. Her hand settled lightly on the hard bulge in his breeches, and her eyes locked with his, sending off alarms and warning flashes in Aaralon's mind but paralyzing his body as effectively as the most potent nerve toxins.
She brushed up against him with a growing smile and began to whisper breathily in his ear, "But since you're here already, and the moon is up, and my sailors on deck seem to be done breaking in the stars of the event, I don't see why we shouldn't start immediately."
The demoness standing in the corner of the room spoke for the first time, her voice flowed like silk and cream, "But let us leave it to the boy to decide which of his companions shall be our entertainment, Crystal."
The captain flashed the demoness an irritated look, and Aaralon again found himself in control of his body. Then, with a quirk of her full lips, Crystal appeared to warm to the idea.
"Perhaps we shall," she said, again gently pressing her curves against him and caressing his granite manhood through his pants, "I'm certain you know what that pentagram means. Which of your companions would you enjoy seeing in its center?" |