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To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 52, Written November 2012

===

Chapter 52 - The Shepherds

"I've never heard of 'The Shepherds of Order', before," Sarina said to Asha. "But from your description of them, they sound like the sort of group that wouldn't want their existence to be publicly known. So how do you know about them?"

"I was summoned once by one of their mages, Mistress, about sixty five years ago. He performed a generic summons for a destructive fire elemental, and happened to get me. He bound me to serve him just long enough to carry out one task - the utter destruction of one of their secret society's former headquarters, and any documents or tangible evidence of their activities that still remained in it," Asha replied. "They were about to be publicly exposed, and were relocating to avoid that. But their mage was a bit careless in what he commanded me to do. He only instructed me to utterly destroy the building and several unrelated nearby buildings, making sure that any remaining documents or traces of their activities hidden there were utterly incinerated, in a way that would make them unrecoverable. But he didn't stop to think that I might find their secrets interesting myself. He didn't forbid me to read any of the documents I found there, before I destroyed them, or to make use of anything I learned while serving him. In searching their building, I found several ritual books and several files full of organizational records. I took all of those to Hell, to read at my leisure before destroying them, and then I went back and destroyed their building and four others, making it look like a nearby mage's workroom had experienced a tragic accident, which had apparently released one of my kind without sufficient controls. My actions met his requirements quite accurately. Their building was destroyed, and there was certainly no trace of their documents in the ashes for anyone to try to recover. The original documents were incinerated in Hell - but only after I memorized them."

"If they are so secretive, why would one of their members wear such an easily recognizable ring?" Sarina asked.

"Not as easily recognized as you might think, Mistress," the black fire elemental replied. "Look at the ring again, and tell me what is on it."

Sarina looked at the ring again, and blinked. The inlaid design on the onyx stone of the ring had changed. It was now a silver pair of pruning shears! She tried casting a true-sight spell on the ring, but it didn't change. It was still a pair of pruning shears. "All right, I know what we both saw. Why can't I see it now, even with true sight?"

"That is the real appearance of the ring, Mistress. The inlaid symbol on it really is a pair of silver pruning shears, which probably means something to members of that Gentleman's Garden Society," Asha explained. "The other symbol only appears if someone says the name of the secret society in close proximity to the ring. That activates a weak illusion spell, subtly changing the appearance of the symbol for a short time. Try it."

Sarina looked at the ring, said, "The Shepherds of Order," and saw that the crossed shepherd's crook and bill hook design appeared in place of the shears again, fading back to the shears again after a minute. She also tried several other phrases that included 'Shepherd', 'the Shepherds', 'Order', and the like, and found that only the full name triggered the illusion. Then she tried examining the ring as she would any unknown magical artifact, and could only detect that it had a very weak spell on it - nothing worth the notice of a serious mage.

"I see," she said. "I can detect a minor spell is on the ring, but without knowing the trigger phrase, I would have assumed it had some other purpose. The ring merely seems to have a spell on it to keep it always clean, which would be rather useful for a ring worn by someone into gardening. I had assumed that gave me a personal item that had recently been worn by my target as a way of tracking the man's aural energies, and it is quite useful for that purpose. I doubt they expected me to see the hidden symbol, or to understand what it meant even if I did."

"I would agree, Mistress," Asha said. "Not knowing the name of the Order, it would have been most unlikely that you would have triggered the spell accidentally. I don't think that whoever hired you intended to let you know Sir Jeremy was a member of that organization."

"If the Shepherds hire someone, can they be trusted not to turn on the one they hired?" Sarina asked.

"That probably depends on how useful the person is to their intended actions, and how much of a liability they think the person may be to future actions, Mistress," Asha replied. "I read accounts in their records of quite long standing and mutually profitable agreements between the Shepherds and various hired agents who were not part of their order. I also read several accounts where an agent was ruthlessly sacrificed if they became a liability, or if they opposed the Shepherds. Mistress? You referred to the one who wore this ring as your 'target'. Has someone hired you to assassinate him? That could be very dangerous, if he is a member of the Shepherds."

"Not to kill him, no. Just to make him forget what was in some documents that he apparently stole from someone," Sarina said. "And from what their agent said, I think the people that hired me are also part of that same secret society. The fellow I had you follow stated that their organization had experienced a 'security issue', and that documents of a highly sensitive political nature had been taken, and later recovered. They want me to determine if he read the documents, and to erase his memories of them if he did. The documents would have included those symbols."

"Well, a document with those symbols in it would likely be instructions on how to summon a greater demon, or records of a ceremony to do so. Are there laws prohibiting summoning creatures from Hell here, Mistress?" Asha asked. "I seem to recall we had some difficulties when we arrived here via Hell on one occasion."

"An unlicensed mage could get in trouble for summoning creatures from Hell without taking the suitable precautions, yes," Sarina replied. "That was why Lady Portia intended to send us back to Hell when we appeared in the middle of a field, without a containment circle entrapping us. But I'm properly licensed now, so the only penalties for me for summoning hellspawn would be if I failed to control them properly. It could be, however, that the documents contain proof that some highly placed politician who was not properly licensed had participated in summoning a demon. That could certainly cause problems for that person, and possibly for their political associates, as well."

"Please be careful, Mistress," Asha said. "The Shepherds are not confined to this world or timeline. They know of and can travel to the alternate worlds as easily as we can. If you become their enemy, it will not be easy to avoid their retribution."

"I'll keep that in mind. Thank you," Sarina replied. "That will be all for tonight, I think. Lord Pennington would appreciate having his 'daughter' join him in his bed tonight, as usual."

"You do realize that the old pervert's falling in love with you, don't you, Mistress?" Asha commented.

"He's in love with the idea of fucking his own daughter every night, certainly," Sarina said with a smile. "All the more so from believing that I'm a child he fathered on his own sister! He enjoys the fantasy that I act out for him, believing it to be real. I don't mind playing the role for him. It's much harder to prove that I am using sex and lies to manipulate him than it would be to prove if I was actually controlling his mind. So what if he falls in love with 'Sarina'? It just means he will die happy, when the time comes, believing he's had his most secret, forbidden desires fulfilled. It may come as a bit of a shock if he ever meets the real Sarina's soul in the afterlife, and she denies having lived past the age of twelve. But I doubt they are going to be ending up in the same place. From what I could tell, she would have gone to Heaven. I rather doubt a pedophilic, incestuous old Letch like my dear 'daddy' will end up there, no matter how much his former wife prayed for his soul. Good night."

That night Sarina gave Lord Pennington a stunning performance as a twelve year old version of Sarina, passionately writhing in bed atop her 'father' until the old fox exhausted himself and fell asleep in mid thrust. Then she calmly got out of bed, cleaned herself up, resumed Sarina's normal age and appearance, and returned to her own bed for some much needed sleep.

===

The next day, Sarina's old tavern wench persona of Heather reappeared, looking a bit older and shopworn, apparently now working the streets in the middle of the day, instead of the tavern at night. She was to be found standing near an alley and turning tricks right in front of the flat where Sir Jeremy Fields kept his mistress.

Shortly after Noon, as Heather was negotiating with her third customer of the day, she saw Sir Jeremy heading into his Mistress' home. Heather took the wolf that had just hired her into the alley and serviced him there, with her back to the wall like the low-class trollop she was portraying. She could clearly hear Sir Jeremy as he amused himself with his mistress in a bedroom on the second floor above them, blathering about a number of trivial things that apparently greatly impressed his young trollop.

When her wolf left, happily sated, Heather lingered in the alley, brushing her hair and fur out and listening to Sir Jeremy's voice until she was certain she could mimic it perfectly. She reached out gently and touched the mind of the trollop, whose name was Meghan, so she could see through the wench's eyes and get a good look at Sir Jeremy in the nude. The young girl's mind was completely unprotected, and soon Heather could see and hear everything that transpired between Sir Jeremy and his whore. Meghan was pleading with Sir Jeremy to stay a while longer. The old bulldog continued to get dressed, while he reluctantly insisted that he had to get back to the House of Lords, to speak on an important bit of business that he had an interest in. Heather was worried for a moment that it was related to the documents she had been hired to suppress. But a few moments later she learned that no, it was a simple matter of a tax of some sort.

Heather watched her intended victim leave, waited a few minutes, and then shapeshifted to resemble Sir Jeremy. He confidently walked back into the building and up the stairs to the girl's flat, rapping on the door with his walking stick.

"Oh My! What brought ya back to me so soon, me Love? Ferget somethin' did ya?" Meghan said, as she opened the door. She was still dressed in just her chemise, bloomers and petticoats - her corset and the rest of her clothes were laid out for her to get into. The girl couldn't be more than fourteen, and she was an Irish Setter, with beautiful auburn hair. Her tail wagged happily at the sight of her noble lover.

"Actually, no sooner did I get three blocks from here than I ran into Sir Humphrey, who told me that the case I was worried about had been postponed. Seems that a horse stepped on Sir Reginald's foot this forenoon, and he called it off. So it happens I have a bit more time that I can spend with you, my dear, after all!" he said, stepping into the room.

"Oh! Well, I never would turn that down, love!" she said, closing the door behind him and then giving him a big kiss.

"I didn't think you would," he said. He quickly unfastened the front of his trousers, reached under Meghan's petticoats and pulled her bloomers down to her ankles, and then bent her over the back of a chair and flipped up her petticoats, entering her still wet cunny swiftly from behind.

"Cor! Aint you the eager one now!" the whore said, grinding back against his thrusts. "Blimey! You'd hardly guess ye just filled me full not an hour ago!"

"You youth inspires me," he said, as he humped harder and faster, driving the girl to her orgasm.

As the girl climaxed, the power of Sarina's sex magic caused her to fall into a deep sleep. "You... you... uhhhh," Meghan sighed, as she sagged and collapsed over the chair while Sarina enjoyed her own orgasm and stole the whore's memories. Sarina winced at some of what she saw of the girl's childhood. The trollop was only barely fourteen, and had been whoring since she was eight - offered to select gentlemen by her own mother, who was also a whore. Meghan had been Sir Jeremy's mistress for the past three years, and his presents and generous patronage had allowed her to cease selling herself on the streets, and save her amorous talents only for him.

When Sarina was satisfied that she had all of the girl's knowledge, she erased the memories of the second visit by Sir Jeremy from the girl's mind, causing her to recall instead that she had taken a nap after her lover left her bed. Sarina stripped the unconscious whore and examined the sleeping child's body carefully, until she was certain that she knew every last detail of her appearance. Then she dressed the girl to the extent that she had found her in, and left her sleeping on her bed, with a post-hypnotic suggestion implanted and waiting to be triggered.

===

When she got back to the mansion that afternoon, Asha greeted her at the door, in her guise as a black furred vixen maid. "It went well, I trust, Mistress?" she asked as she closed the door.

"Well enough," Sarina replied. "The trap is almost ready, and I'll spring it when Sir Jeremy visits his Mistress tomorrow. With any luck, he won't suspect a thing."