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Being both a man of science and a man of magic, I am told by many colleagues and opinionated naysayers that my life stands in contradiction. They cannot believe I can hold true to both the laws of science as a geneticist and to the laws of the arcane science. I've told these unbelievers that magic is not an exclusive gift, that all can use its powers if only they choose to believe.

To this day, few believe the words I speak, and either hold me in some unwarranted high regard or fear me as some kind of witch. It is true that the unwritten rules of nature and science directly conflict with one another. The rules of nature: all things (living or not) must be created to exist, then eventually they must cease to exist. But the rules of science are much more simplistic: the rules of nature are meant to be broken.

Thousands of years ago, during the golden age of our ancient civilizations, the natural powers of magic flourished across the galaxy. Back then, magic was commonplace, it healed us, defended us and even sheltered us. The arcane science was a gift to us from the machine-god known as Technon, It's powerful secrets intrusted to the cults that worshiped him. From these ancient cults, bizarre and powerful machines were constructed to aid us in all aspects of life.

Though the arcane science, we constructed a vast network of cosmic gateways, created immense vessels that traveled through the depths of space. We even became like gods by creating living automatons. But like all great civilizations, our golden age eventually collapsed into a dark age. Our corrupt governments fell into civil war, our machine cults dispersed, destroying their machines and taking their secrets into hiding. Even our gods abandoned us, leaving us to fend for ourselves like the feral kindred they evolved us from.

Eventually our civilizations recovered from this dark age, although the scars left on us are still there. Medicine, engineering, robotics, mathematics and other kinds of scientific learning took the place of the arcane science in our everyday life. Though the power of magic is still with us and our machine-cults have long sense reemerged, we as a civilization no longer require the powers the gods bestowed unto us.

So while all sentient life has the power within them, most simply dismiss their gifts, or deny the existence of magic completely. Science isn't to blame for this, just the interpretation of science by our modern civilization. Mathematics say the laws of probability cannot be changed. Psychology says one is disturbed if they see things that are not there. Even the fact of our evolution does its best to try and dismiss the existence of our ancient gods.

The saddest part of our civilization, so quick to deny that there is power within us all, is that denial kills the power within a sentient being completely. There is no age of awareness for magic, the power reveals itself to a creature when the time for them is right. Most deny the power when it first shows, they cannot come to believe something so incredible can even exist. When one denies the gift of magic, the power leaves them, never can they draw on it again and they loose whatever the power gave them.

For those of us that still believe in magic, it is both our gift and our curse. Magic is not the awesome power most believe it to be, magic is deceptive and sometimes uncontrollable. Magic comes in many different forms, but never can it be divided into "good" or "evil" archetypes. Magic is a tool that can be as helpful as it is harmful, it aids us in every aspects of our lives, but it is a fickle thing. For every power possessed, there is power unrealized, for everything magic gives you, there is something it will deny you.

I myself am the best example of what I'm trying to say. Using the formula I just set forth, the powers I personally possessed were necromancy, dream-magic and divination. Divination was my strongest power, my power of dream-magic was my second, it was also the medium through which my divination was used. The power of necromancy was a minor power, it allowed me to summon spirits and give life to lifeless objects, but rarely more than that.

Through my power of divination, my perception of reality was elevated to that of a demigod. When I slept, I traveled across time and space in astral form, visiting many places both marvelous and mundane. I dreamed of the spirits around me and visited others I know or once knew. I even dreamed of the past and future of my friends and colleagues. It was through this gift that I knew things about others that I shouldn't know. Their hopes and dreams, their fears and deepest regrets, even details of their past and future were revealed to me.

This power is what made me both feared and respected by my colleagues and friends. With but a nights sleep, I could return to work the next day and recant tales of my colleagues, usually informing them of what they did last night or telling them deep secrets only they knew. Hilarious as I found doing this, I never overdid it, nor did I ever abuse my knowledge... unless someone really pissed me off. But with every benefit of magic, there is always a drawback.

The ultimate cock-slap of this powerful gift of mine, is that I could only see the future of others and never my own. My personal future was always concealed to me, draped in shadows that would only part as the event unfolded. When my future coincided with the future of another, the visions became dark and construed. I could still see the future event, but with greater ambiguity than otherwise. The closer someones future coincided with mine, the more distorted the vision became.

The perks of my powers usually outweighed their drawbacks, especially when it came to astral projection and other types of dream-magic. I loved to spend my nights spying on others in a form they could not see, or infiltrating their dream and becoming part of it. Most nights I did this with my slave, partially because the psychic imprint I left in his mind acted like a beacon, but mostly because there were things I could only do to him while he slept.

While not necessarily real, a dream is influenced by ones emotional state. Happiness, sadness, anger and lust all are invoked by your subconscious to influence the makeup of your dream. My slave's dreams were always pleasant, or lustful if he had gone a few days without sex. Even after a night of us fucking he could still be aroused. That is why I loved influencing my slave's dreams, his lust-filled subconscious would make him think and do things he normally wouldn't while he was awake.

I used this time to influence my slave into kinks that I enjoyed but he did not, mixing them together with things he did enjoy to insure his dream would sustain itself. Too much of something he didn't like and his dream would change direction, too much of my dark fantasies would transform his dream into a nightmare. The trick was using a light touch, or planning my influence on nights when he was especially susceptible to my will.

Tonight was one such night. Not only had we fucked, but I enticed my slave to ponder some of my fantasies and I also got him doing some things he hadn't before. Granted, fucking my face wasn't all that astounding, but having him lick out my ass and making him think about threesomes with wild horses was. While not exactly what my slave was fantasizing about when I locked him in his cage, these thoughts aroused his lust and influence his dreams all the same.

Once asleep, I immediately sought out my slave already within his own dream realm. I found him wandering his dream inside a white stucco-walled labyrinth that resembled my apartment complex. The labyrinth was dark, its endless shadows broken only by a moonlit night shining through randomly placed windows.

This setting alone should be enough of a metaphor for anyone to chew on. Darkened rooms usually indicate dread or an encroaching ominous presence. Typically one finds themselves feeling lost, afraid or even that they are being perused while in such places. For my slave this represented his fantasies, the soft moonlight coming through the windows represented his subconscious desire. This setting my slave had built for himself was the perfect setting for a rape fantasy.

I loved the setting of my slave's dream realm. My own perverse logic merged with the dream and I became the ominous presence that filled the labyrinth. I quietly stalked my slave as he wandered aimlessly among the pointlessly winding corridors and empty rooms. Soaking in this realm of his was quite enjoyable all on its own. Dark, imposing labyrinths such as these were welcomed places for me.

I followed my slave as he wandered aimlessly about his stucco-walled labyrinth. He walked slowly through the randomly placed doorways and corridors, peaking in and examining mostly empty rooms. I was never a few feet behind my slave, watching him wander and stopping only when he occasionally turned to look behind him. He always looked in my direction, but he couldn't see me, I could feel his emotions and he felt he was being followed, but he didn't know by what.

I found the most interesting thing about my slave's realm was that he appeared a little different. Transformation within the dream world was nothing new to me, nor anyone else familiar with dream-magic. Most obvious was that my slave was smaller than he really was, about the size of a wolf or large dog as opposed to the "lion sized" body he actually had. His wings were missing from his body as well, not surprising to me because he never used them, rarely did his dreams acknowledge he possessed them.

Seeing as this was my slave's dream and not my own, my perception of his dream was based solely on the rules his subconscious was setting forth. He could have been smaller, but I could also have been bigger. My body still felt feline, my muscles felt strong and lithe, I could even feel a feline tail lashing about behind me. Even though my representation in the dream was feline, that didn't mean my slave was dreaming specifically about me.

Felines by nature are notoriously predatory, stalking their prey in utter silence and ready to strike when their prey is unlikely to escape. That would be one reason why the ominous presence I assumed the role of was represented as feline. My slave might have been dreaming of me on a subconscious level, but it wasn't something I wanted to influence. I preferred that my slave not be aware I was in his dreams, lest he become uncomfortable around me in the waking world.

I followed my slave down a short corridor that resembled the hallway in my apartment. He made a left turn into a room about the size of my living room. The room was lit in the same moonlight as the rest of the labyrinth, although there were no ill placed windows here. As I followed my slave inside, I noticed the room wasn't empty. Across the doorway, in the far right corner of the room, stood a peculiar looking dream apparition.

The apparition appeared as an old world mannequin, its body smooth and wooden, its limbs held together with shiny metal joints. The mannequin was without any identifiable facial features, it stood in the corner of the room in total silence. The apparition wasn't evil, ambiguous though it was, its disposition based solely on its actions. Within it's mitten-shaped hands, the mannequin held a small potted sunflower: a metaphor for peace and tranquility.

My slave walked right over to the mannequin without pause, as if he was expecting it to be there. He sat down in front of it while the mannequin held out the potted flower. My slave leaned in and sniffed the flower, the scent quite pleasant to him. He smiled at the faceless apparition and wagged his tail happily. Peace and tranquility indeed, this to me was the opportune moment to guide my slave's dream in the direction I desired.

From the labyrinth's moonlit shadows I materialized, noticing my dark, naked form was quite tall when the tips of my ears brushed against the ceiling. I supposed the labyrinth might have been smaller than expected, but when you remember none of this was real, the physical dimensions of the realm didn't matter. What mattered was sneaking up on my slave before he had time to run, which was going to be easy with his back turned to me. He never looked behind him, not even when the mannequin reacted to my presence.

The mannequin tilted its featureless face up, as if looking at me. Its wooden body shook with fear at my sight, causing itself to drop the potted plant it held. The mannequin quickly ran away, passing through a doorway along the far right wall that wasn't there before. My slave remained seated and watched the mannequin run, looking perplexed when a heavy wooden door closed over the doorway. My slave didn't know I was behind him, but I let him know by placing my foot on the back of his head and stomping his face against the floor.

I shifted my weight and lowered my stance, holding my slave down as he struggled to free himself from under my foot. Stomping on my slave like this wasn't going to affect him, unless the implication was distressing to his subconscious. It would be easy to tell if it was distressing, something would happen to get me off of him or the dream would alter its direction. At worst the dream would end completely and my slave would wake up.

Nothing came to rescue my slave, nothing implausible happened while he struggled, nor did the dream end or suddenly alter its course. That was a good sign, even while my slave growled and struggled against my foot on the back of his head. I placed my other foot on my slave's tail, shifting my weight to allow his head up while keeping him pinned. My slave shot up to bite me, but I grabbed his maw and held it shut. I pulled up his maw and looked him in the eyes, hissing at him while he struggled.

"Please, fight more. Hurting you gives me pleasure." I hissed at my slave, my voice sounding evil and dark.

I emphasized my point by grinding my heel into my slave's tail, pushing my weight down and twisting my heel left and right. My slave shook when I did this to his tail, his deep growl changed into a pathetic whimper and he started to cry. I let go of his maw to hold him by his studded collar, watching him sob as I smiled at him. His tears were fake, although not deliberately so. I could feel my slave's subconscious stimulation growing, playing the victim was enjoyable to him.

"Please don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you want." My slave sobbed.

Although this was what I wanted from my slave, it disappointed me how easily he was giving in. I honestly wanted a fight out of him, something rough and vicious that would make breaking him all the more satisfying. Thinking back, I shouldn't have expected a fight from him, his own rape fantasy was strong and he wasn't exactly what I would describe as a fighter. I had no reason to complain, my slave was so easily influenced that I'd soon have him dreaming of whatever I wanted.

I placed both my hands on my slave's studded collar, slowly sliding my fingers around the hard leather and metal band. I placed one hand on the D-ring positioned at the back of of his collar, materializing a leather leash already clipped on. Drawing objects from the dream world was a very simple aspect of dream-magic, similar to transformation and just as useful. I pulled the leash tight, wrapping the slack around my right hand before I shifted my weight to stand back up.

"Come along now, like a good dragon." I said, pulling on my slave's leash.

My slave sniffed and nodded, following me willingly when I tugged on his leash. I took him from the room we were in, ducking my head through the door and crouching in the small corridor outside. The labyrinth was indeed smaller here than inside the room, but that wasn't going to stop me from dragging my slave around. I took him to a doorway I had seen before entering, but one my slave had yet to explore. My intent was to lead my slave away from his established labyrinth, and into an unexplored area he had less control over.

I had to duck my head to make it through the small doorway, but I made sure the corridor beyond would befit my size. I slave was reluctant to enter the new hallway, his subconscious sensing the lessened control it had over the realm beyond. I pulled hard on his leash and started dragging him through, he gagged when his collar pulled tight, but then he willingly followed. I yanked his leash again for spite, reminding him to follow, otherwise I'd be more rough with him.

My slave understood perfectly, whimpering softly and lowering his head as he followed. Watching him act all sad and innocent like that was a real turn-on for me, granted this was a dream and I thought this of him anyway. We walked on in silence down this larger labyrinth corridor, the further I took him from the doorway behind us, the stronger my control on his realm became.

There was another doorway on the right side of the corridor, I pushed my will ahead of us and made it our new destination. I opened the door and walked inside, standing aside to allow my slave to lurk in the doorway for a moment to view the interior. The room was spacious, identical to every other room in his labyrinth including the moonlit ambiance. The room itself wasn't empty, along the left side of the far wall was a mirror and in the center of the room was a large kennel cage.

The mirror itself was an apparition, a living automaton that freely floated in front of the wall and panned itself to constantly face my slave. The unremarkable flat surface of the mirror was all that could be seen of it, although the most amazing thing about the apparition was that the images it reflected were lit. Even in the moonlit shadows of the open doorway, my slave could see himself as clear as day, nothing about him escaped the perfect reflection of the mirror.

The kennel cage, on the other hand, was just a kennel cage. Composed of heavy wire crossed vertically and horizontally, the cage was four feet wide and just as tall, but eight feet long. Inside the cage was a naked, anthropomorphic female leopard. The female's body was sleek and athletic, her tits were round and plump with an almost perfect shape. She knelt inside the cage and flicked her tail like a feral cat, purring affectionately at myself and my slave.

The leopard's appearance was not necessarily of my doing, although I did plan for it to be female. Just like the lithe, yet masculine shadow feline that I assumed the role of, so was this feline a representation of my slave's subconscious. As mentioned once before, my slave was most likely having a dream about us and what we were doing before he fell asleep, although this wasn't something I directly influenced.

My slave had spent long enough lurking in the doorway of the room, looking at himself in the mirror and gazing into the lustful eyes of the caged leopard fem. I tugged on his leash, signaling him come along. Instead of doing as I commanded, he lay in the doorway in outright defiance of my gesture. I pulled harder on the leash, my slave gagged from being choked, but he dug his claws into the floor and anchored himself in the doorway.

I growled and acted angry at my slave, but in truth I was quite pleased he was putting up a fight, passive though it was. I stepped back through the doorway and over the top of him. I wrapped my arms around his body just behind his shoulders and lifted him up in the same manner one might lift a disobedient dog. My slave's limbs and tail hung impatiently as he watched himself being carried into the door via his reflection in the mirror.

Once he was through the doorway, I dropped him hard on the floor and turned myself around to kneel over him. I pinned his head and shoulders down between my ass and thighs, pulling the leash tight around his tail to clear it of his backside. I held his ass up by the thighs with that same hand, keeping my left hand free. Pinning my slave down like this faced him directly at the mirror that always showed him what was happening to him, as I intended the object to do.

"Bad dragon!" I hissed at my slave, giving him a firm slap to his backside with my open left hand.

My slave howled and struggled to free himself from under me as I beat him. I could feel his shame and his arousal growing as he watched himself being spanked in the reflection of the mirror. I slapped his exposed ass harder the second time, getting him to cry and tremble. As I brought my hand back for a third slap, I realized I was gripping a bare wooden paddle. The paddle lacked any outstanding features, but what was curious about the wooden object was that I couldn't let go of it.

The plain looking paddle was not created by me, but by my slave's own subconscious desire. Even as he cried and struggled to free himself, his arousal for his humiliation and pain was great. He loved being beaten by objects rather than with bare hands, so this made sense to me. It's not as though I could drop the paddle anyway, so I just beat my slave with it. I brought the paddle down hard on my slave's exposed rump, his sobbing instantly becoming a loud bawling.

"Oh gods, stop! I'll be good, I swear!" my slave screamed as I beat him.

"Liar!" I yelled at my slave, beating him with the paddle. "You told me that once already!"

I beat my slave's ass mercilessly, choosing steady, strong strikes in order to land each blow more accurately. I struck my slave's ass just below the tail, swatting him occasionally across the thighs but always did I land my blows to the same locations across his backside. My slave's pathetic bawl eventually relaxed into a heavy grunt each time his ass was struck, the pain he was subconsciously experiencing was beginning to merge with his masochistic fantasies.

I struck my slave directly across his cute dragon ass a few more times before I noticed a firm erection between his legs. If he was hard here in the dream, then back in reality he was sleeping with a boner. I struck his thighs with the paddle and my slave let out a moan, pushing his ass back against the smooth wooden object. This made me smile, I rubbed his ass firmly with the paddle and he moaned and pressed his ass back. I brought the paddle back and struck my slave across the thighs, just as before, he let out a moan, pressing his ass back as he was struck.

"You little slut. You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I asked my slave, tough I already knew the answer.

"No I'm nah-" I'm slave tried to lie again, only to have his final word broken by a loud moan when I interrupted him with a strike across his thighs.

"Lying little slut." I said to him, rubbing his thighs with the paddle.

I averted my attention from beating my slave, to rubbing his firm erection with the paddle I couldn't drop. My slave openly gasped, keeping his rear still and his tail up even after I relaxed my grip on his body. I gave his cock a very light slap with the paddle, making him moan before trying his best to grind on the paddle rubbing his cock. I turned my head to look behind me, seeing my slave's lustful gaze in the mirror as he watched himself being used.

My slave looked back at me through the mirror and smiled, his cute dragon tail wagging when we made eye contact. His lustful expression had lost all sense of fear, completely forgetting how "forced" my detour of his dream had begun. Watching my slave, watch me, made me quite aroused. Through the mirror I saw the tip of my cock just poking out from around my body, feeling my slave's tail brushing against it. Without turning around, I reached for my cock with my left hand, forgetting about the paddle I couldn't let go of.

Slapping my own cock with the paddle didn't hurt, but it was quite annoying. I turned back around and focused my efforts on shaking the wooden paddle free of my left hand. A few hard shakes and the paddle was free of my hand and being flung out the open doorway. Once I was finished with that, I took the time to examine the cock that rose from between my shadowy thighs.

The flesh of my cock was the same dark and shadowy tint of the feline I had assumed the role of. My cock was ribbed from top to bottom and was as thick and as long as my lithe, yet muscular forearm. It was quite obvious to me that my slave was dreaming about that obnoxiously oversize dildo I had stuffed in his ass before I put him to bed. I stroked my cock with my open left hand, finding the texture like rubber, but still feeling my touch as if the cock was part of me.

I growled with lust when I squeezed my new cock, stroking the rubbery flesh and pushing out a blue pre-cum, which the tinting of was strangely specific. The blue tinted fluid dripped down my rubbery cock and all over my slave's backside. It was quite a bit for just one squeeze, although making my slave slick early was fine by me. I took hold of his tail and pulled his appendage around my rubbery cock, finding his tail to have a similar consistency.

Why my slave's tail bent and twisted like it did, was because my slave loved this treatment of his tail, but had no desire to have the appendage broken. Something so cruel and dark was a fantasy of mine. A dream was a consequence-free environment wherein I would love to feel his vertebrae snap, but if my slave didn't want that, I wasn't going to force the issue. In any case, pulling on my slave's tail while wrapping it around my huge erection, stroking myself and oozing that blue pre-cum all over his tail was getting me off.

My slave writhed under me, moaning while I pulled on his tail and jacked myself off with its rubbery surface. He watched me do this from the illuminated reflection of the mirror, lifting his ass up for me even as I pulled hard on his tail. His loud moaning became a heavy panting when I started thrusting my huge cock through a knot I tied in his tail. The rubbery appendage was like a giant cock ring, although thrusting through the knot I tied in his tail was mostly silly to me.

"Oh gods," my slave moaned. "Please, fuck me."

"You want to be fucked now?" I asked my slave, taunting him a bit. "Does that mean your going to be an obedient dragon?"

My slave nodded, which shook his head up and down under my ass, making an agreeable hum from his lips as he answered me. I untied his tail from around my cock before I dismounted him, freeing him from under my ass but keeping myself knelt next to him. I wrapping his leash around my right hand and pulled him to his feet, facing him towards the leopardess in the kennel cage within the center of the room.

The leopardess was kneeling just as she had been, although the apparition had become inanimate while neither myself, nor my slave were paying her any mind. Once our focus was back on her, she started moving as if she was never inanimate. She pushed her nicely round tits against the mesh of the cage, purring as she reached between her thighs to stroke her sex. Although she had just started fondling herself, the fur on her thighs was already wet with her own juices.

"You want my cock? Then you'll do whatever I want." I informed my slave.

"Yes, sir." my slave answered, although his lips didn't move when he spoke.

I dragged my slave over to the kennel cage, which wasn't really that far in relation to us. Once I had my slave near the cage, I held him by the tail and the back of his head, lifting him up and pushing his nose into the mesh right where the fem's face was. I let go of his head, but kept a firm grip on his tail and knelt behind him. The fem slid her arms through the mesh to touch my slave's face, rubbing his chin and cheeks while she licked him sweetly across the lips. My slave whimpered from her affection, turning away from her to cast me a confused look.

"Give her a kiss!" I hissed at him, pushing his head back into the cage, before wrapping the leash around the mesh to keep his head in place.

My slave whimpered and struggled against the leash that kept him secured to the cage, all the while the fem within the cage purred sweetly at him. He relaxed after a moment, his tongue sliding out to reluctantly lick the leopardess' face. She purred louder once his tongue was out of his mouth, kissing his thick tongue back and softly rubbing the back of his scaled head.

The licking motion of my slave's tongue became more bold with every passing second. It didn't take too long for my slave to start enjoying the affectionate fem. The tip of his tail wagged as he held it high, proudly licking the fem while she rubbed her face against his tongue. She pulled her right arm back into the cage to reach between her thighs and stroke her wet sex. She pushed her tits hard against the cage and moaned, before catching my slave's tongue in her mouth to suck on that thick appendage of his.

I smiled and stroked my rubbery cock as I watched these two kiss. The fem at my indirect control was giving me a good show, as well as increasing my slave's lust for his dream. I noticed that my slave was bound with more than just the leash tied to the cage, his front and back legs were bound together by heavy shackles. Just as with the paddle before, these chains that bound my slave's legs together were of his creation, not mine. They were extensions of his lust, reinforcing his position in the dream as being the submissive one.

With my right hand gripping the base of my slave's tail, I pulled hard on his rear and caused him to briefly choke. His tongue was still being sucked on by the fem, he withdrew from her mouth to moan in her face as I pulled on his tail a second time. He hadn't forgotten I was behind him, always keeping his tail high, pushing his ass back for me. His attention from the fem had been distracted for a moment, he moved down from the her face to nibble and lick the nipples on her full, round tits.

The fem growled out her pleasure of this attention from my slave. She pulled her other arm back into the cage, focusing herself on rubbing her dripping wet sex and pushing her tits firmly against the cage for my slave to play with. Gods, I was loving this scene before me. I rested my cock across my slave's backside, grinding the huge shaft over his rump and along the base of his tail. Even with my slave's attention on the leopardess' tits, he still pushed his ass back to grind on my cock.

This level of play was not enough for me, more than ever I wanted to violate my slave's dream and give him a sexually explicit memory to wake up with. I took my cock away from his ass, gripping his thighs in my strong hands to spread his rump apart. My slave's ass was strangely gaping, stretched within the dream from having that three inch dildo stuffed in his ass during our play that night. I leaned into my slave's rump and spat lewdly into his gaping hole, lubing him with strangely blue-tinted spit before I stuffed my cock inside him.

My slave howled out with lust as I penetrated him, pushing back to me as I pounded away at his slutty little ass. I moaned myself as I gripped his thighs, pushing myself forward rather than dragging him back. His ass was warm but not very tight, rubbery like my oversized cock, but at the same time pleasing to fuck. Although my slave had stopped licking The fem apparition's tits, she wasn't going to be left out of the scene. She turned around in the cage and got on her hands and knees, pushing her ass against the cage and presenting her sex to my slave.

As I pounded into my slave's lustful backside, he moaned and panted into the hot fem leopard sex, barely managing to slide out his tongue to lick into her cunt. I could almost picture how that felt and how the fem tasted to my slave. His thick tongue seemed to grow thicker as he licked out the apparition's dripping wet pussy. She cried and gripped the back of the cage, grinding her hips into my slave's face just as he grind back against my powerful erection.

I'm sorry to say, dear reader, that this is where the collaboration of the dream between my slave and I came to an end. It wasn't my intention how this came to be, but of fate and of the denizens that exist beyond the realm of mortal understanding. I was loving this kinky little dream as much as my slave was. I loved fucking his unrealistically rubbery ass while watching him lick out a sexy pussy that in of itself was just as unreal.

I was loving my slave's fantasies while making him act out my own. I was even planning to get him on the cage, to fuck that wanting leopardess pussy as I took him from behind. For the moment, I rode my slave hard, drooling strangely blueish drool down my dark and shadowy chest, growling lustfully while occasionally slapping his thighs. I started to set the scene for the finale, when I noticed movement out the corner of my eyes.

I couldn't tell what it was I was seeing at first. The thing lurked along the far right wall, motionless as it watched my slave and I fuck. Being knowingly watched while I fucked was one thing, but being spied on was another. I turned my head to growl at the thing, my focus immediately drawn away from my slave and our kinky little dream. I didn't even know what the thing was and already I wanted nothing more than to destroy it.

Even in the moonlit ambiance of the stucco-walled room, I could clearly see the thing. It stood at a height just shy of the ceiling, making it as tall as my shadow-feline body, although that was a poor size reference. The thing stood there like a statue, there was nothing truly defined about its shape, other than it was bipedal. A horrid looking quilt made from various pelts was draped over what was its head and covered what was its body. It had no exposed face from under the quilt it wore, only its invisible aura let me know it was intently watching me.

Classifying a denizen is different from classifying an apparition, as they are not the same. An apparition represents a personal outlook of ones own subconscious, its very existence is merely an extension of the dreamer that sees it. A denizen, by contrast, is an entity that exists outside of the dreamer's perception. They exist both as apparition's within a dream and as spirits outside the mortal realm. The best fitting description I can give this thing before me, would be a wraith.

A wraith is a horrid collection of mortal souls, fused together during death from a mutual anguish. Whatever event that led to the souls being fused varies, but what is key is that the souls loose their sense of individuality and become a pseudo-demon. A wraith itself exists to feed on weaker lost souls, such as the souls of suicide victims and cubs that died of SIDS. As a wraith feeds it grows stronger, eventually it will feed on stronger lost souls or even minor spirits.

The evil nature of a wraith remains separate from the victims it has eaten. While the fused souls make up its body, the wraiths victims are fused together into a shield to protect the wraith and augment its energy. While wraiths are potent entities, they are still mortal souls that lack the raw energy of a true demon or other Unborn. A wraith without a shield is nothing more than a collaboration of tortured souls, easy prey for another denizen.

Just as every wraith has a different motivation, so does each wraith have a different pattern to the shield it fashions its victims into. Commonly a wraith will choose a simple pattern, such as a robe or a cloak. Rarely will a wraith choose a more complex pattern, but always will the shield cover a wraith completely. Not only does the shield protect and strengthen a wraith, but also hides the wraith from the self-inflicted torment of its own existence.

The wraith spying on me in this stucco-walled room was a very ancient wraith. The quilt it choose to fashion for itself was incredibly dense: many pieces of pelts and hides had been crudely sewn into its flowing surface. A hundred or more souls had been eaten by this monstrous thing, and even then its power was dwarfed by mine. I had to laugh in that brief moment I and the wraith's aura clashed, truly I was baffled why this thing would dare spy on me.

Dark spirits feared me, there were even Unborn that dare not speak my name. I was quite impressed by this bold wraith that stood before me, unafraid of what I might do to it. If not for the sexual dream I shared with my slave, I would have taken great pleasure in tearing the wraith apart and freeing its victims. I pushed my aura against the wraith's aura and overwhelmed it, still the wraith stood. I felt no fear from the thing, instead it seemed amused by how powerful my aura was.

I noticed the wall behind the wraith opening inward into a hidden door, beyond which was nothing but a veil of impenetrable darkness. The wraith backed away slowly into this open door, vanishing into the darkness veil as soon as it passed through. The door didn't close behind the wraith, instead remaining open, I could feel the wraith's aura calling to me from somewhere beyond the veil of darkness. The wraith was challenging me, daring me to follow it through the veil of darkness.

I scoffed at the wraith and its challenge. I had no intention of going anywhere, surly not during the climax of the wonderfully dirty dream I shared with my slave. I turned away from the door, back to the sweet dragon ass I was tapping before so rudely interpreted, only to find that I was no longer part of my slave's dream.

I was so distracted by the wraith that my slave's dream displaced me so it could continue without me. Directly in front of me was the living mirror, reveling in brilliant clarity that I had returned to my Mackerel Tabby body. Naked and kneeling in front of the mirror, I could see that my slave and his sexual apparitions were still where I had left them. The shadow-feline had my slave's fore-claws on the cage, taking his rubbery ass from behind while he fucked the leopardess' wanting pussy through the cage; just as I intended before I was displaced.

I turned and watched my slave play for a moment, before letting out a sigh of both frustration and self loathing. My slave was happy, I couldn't be upset about that, it was my own fault that I had let myself become so distracted that the dream passed me by. I couldn't return to the dream now, that would only displace the dream within a dream and alter it's course altogether. No longer a part of my slave's dream meant I was invisible to him. I could very well stay here and watch him finish, but another plan began to burn in my mind.

No matter how much this was my own fault for being so careless, I was going to take my anger out on that fool wraith. I stood from my sitting position, hitting my head immediately on the ceiling that was comically too low for how tall I seemed. I didn't think too much about that, I looked to the hidden door the wraith had made, finding it open and still feeling its aura beckoning me from the darkness.

I crept along the far wall to avoid the scene with my slave and his apparitions, as not to disturb them. Once at the door, I stepped right through, passing through the ominous darkness that concealed whatever lie beyond the door. It felt as if I was walking through a heavy curtain, the veil had mass and flowed like cloth as I pushed myself through it. What corridor lay beyond the veil widened drastically the further I walked. I might have gotten lost if not for the wraith's aura, leading me through the veil of darkness to find myself safely to the other side.

The ominous darkness parted with a brilliant flash of light, the radiant glow dimming into an overcast sky when I found myself on the other side. I looked away from this familiar sky to find myself standing atop a high cliff overlooking a vast beach. The cliff where I stood was flat, but the beach below was twisted into an ominous landscape. The unreal landscape was composed of a macabre sediment of countless animal bone, even the cliff was composed of this hard sediment. Although rough looking, I found the ground smooth and quite cool under my bare feet.

I could hear the ocean roar as it crashed upon the shore of this rocky beach many miles below the cliff I stood on. I could see the ocean waters churn as if whipped by a strong wind, although no wind was blowing. The air all around me was deathly still: no sounds of birds or any other life, all I could hear was the crash of the ocean waves. Although the beach was quiet and bleak, I felt a sense of oneness with this place. I had been here many times in my life, this place was like a second home to me.

This bleak beach with the ominous sky was Purgatory: the desolate coast where dead souls come after their passing. Just as described by poets and scholars alike, this plane of existence was the first level of the afterlife. Purgatory is neither heaven nor hell for the the souls that wandered here, instead it exists as an expression of what one has lost or what emotions still linger for a wandering soul's previous existence.

Most souls are of a strong will, or accept their death once they pass, however this doesn't mean they are ready to end their life's journey. Some souls choose to stay here for as long as desired, waiting or searching for friends and loved ones on this desolate coast. Others remain introspective about their life, or wish to meet or relive their past lives before allowing themselves to move beyond Purgatory.

However, some souls are too afraid to cross, for fear the karma of their life was not in balance. For these souls damnation into the merciless ocean Chaos is almost certain. Once the dead are ready to pass, the dark god Death comes for them, sailing across Chaos in an ominous longboat to land on the shore of Purgatory. Once a soul boards Death's longboat, Sleipnir, they will be judged. If their life is found in balance, then all is well... if not, then Sleipnir will drop them from its hull and into Chaos; into Hell.

Death's judgment does not reach beyond Chaos, hence why many powerful spirits are spawned on this shore. Some (like the wraith I followed here) are inherently destructive, others are simply lost. The souls of dead children, and others who's death was meaningless, are easily lost to Purgatory. Unable to coup with their own death, these souls are easy prey for negative denizens, or likely will become one themselves. I and others like me are called here to free these souls of their torment, although not all of these souls will allow themselves to be easily freed.

Suicides are arguably the the most tormented of souls lost to Purgatory. So miserable in life, they choose to cut their own existence short in hopes of finding peace on the other side. This peace is rarely ever found, as the guilt and depression that caused them to choose their fate lingers with them long after death. To these few souls, purgatory is hell: a never ending suffering of their very last moment in life.

My mother was a severe manic-depressive, she chose her death before I was even old enough to drive. Many times sense then, I found myself looking out over this high cliff and hearing my mother's cries of anguish from below. Always did my mother cry for her pain to end, but never would it come so long as her emotions lingered. Many times I tried to free her from her own torment, but never would she allow herself to come to terms with her own passing.

The mania I suffered from was inherited from my mother, as was my low-level psychic abilities. My mother's ability were non-combative, as opposed to my combative ability. Her body generated a higher than normal magnetic field, which she had a limited ability to amplify and focus. My mother could stop watches or erase magnetic storage devices while holding them, but this was a trivial use of her ability. My mother used her ability to generate heavy magnetic fields within the mind of a willing participant, causing hallucinations and out-of-body experiences.

My mother's psychic ability made her a powerful tool for religious experiences, as well as the spiritual significance of her unique appearance. My father and her were both tabby and while my father had a Clouded Leopard pattern, my mother was blessed with the beautiful Calico pattern. Her patches of orange and black over a stark white coat signified good fortune to her and the cult she was born into. Along with her natural feminine beauty, my mother was given the honored rank of priestess within the order of her cult.

My mother was born into a cult that followed the familiar god Behemoth: the god of strength and of monstrous beasts. Most Behemoth cults follow strict religious ideals based on Middle-Eastern traditions, my mother's cult was no exception. Although my father and I were never indoctrinated into her cult, the elders had no problem with my mother living a life outside of their teachings. She never really pushed her beliefs on my father or I, but always did she hold herself to her cult's standards.

My mother was expected to set an example for the other females of her cult, she did, but outside the watching eyes of her cult, my mother was miserable. Her mania would always get the better of her, she would often worry she wasn't a good mother to me or a good wife to my father. Splitting her depression in three directions wasn't helped by the fact her psychic ability was always active. It was hard for her to distinguish depression from her body's own personality-altering magnetic field.

The more time that passed, the more my mother became depressed, stretching her fleeting psyche in so many directions that she was about to break. Although my parents tried to hide their conversations from me, I remember hearing my mother cry at night, disturbed by dreams of her own death. My father wasn't an atheist, his own spiritual beliefs and scientific understanding couldn't deny the truth my mother spoke. My father did all he could to help my mother, but in the end the choice my mother made was her's alone.

Even now, on the still air that echoed with the crashing of ocean waves against the rocky shore, I could hear my mother cry. The sound of her voice filled me with a mixed sense of sadness and frustration. No child should be deaf to the misery of a parent, but then her anguish would never end so long as she permitted it. Her religious belief in life affected her torment in death: to her cult, suicides are weak and lose favor in the eyes of Behemoth. Part of this is true, but then this goes back to my mother emotionally torturing herself.

I didn't spend long standing on this cliff, listening to the sound of the ocean waves mixing with the cries of my mother far below. My immediate impression of the situation was that the wraith led me here as part of a challenge to save my mother's soul from being eaten. My mother's misery was great, she would be easy prey for the wraith if I hadn't already enchanted her prison. I had placed magical barriers around my mother to protect her, there was little chance the wraith could break through all of them before I caught up with it.

The cliff of macabre sediment on which I stood was one portion of a massive plateau that stretched out for miles behind me. The nearly rounded top of this massive rock stood out among the lower hills and broken terrain of Purgatory. There were many winding paths that circled around the plateau which one could take to reach the surrounding hills and the beach below. I wandered these paths many times when I was young, trying to find the quickest path to my mother. Eventually, I realized the simplest path was the most obvious one.

When the neophyte finds their self in Purgatory, they will always try to apply the logic of the living realm to the realm of the dead. Purgatory doesn't apply to the rules of reality, so making this assumption is very common and quite easy. I stepped off the cliff and into nothing with the same lethargic attitude of taking a step down a flight of stares. I kept my feet together and my arms out from my sides, floating away from the cliff, gliding on the still air towards the churning ocean, Chaos.

From the high altitude of the cliff behind me, the rugged terrain of Purgatory appeared impassible. It's chaotic highs and lows clustered with enormous rocks wasn't as imposing as it appeared. What the high altitude also concealed, was that many geographical features were actually bizarre structures ranging form the mundane, to the monolithic. Composed of the same macabre sediment of Purgatory, these structures were markers: each one representing an aspect of a soul that created it. Some of these markers radiated with the energy of its creator's soul, others lay silent, long ago abandoned by their creator.

One such marker stood out against the rugged highs and deep lows of Purgatory. Rising from the ground like an enormous tree was the disembodied hand of an anthropomorphic rat. The statue rose two-hundred feet from the wrist at its base, to the tips of its long fingernails. The slender fingers of the hand curled inward the palm, as if the hand was clawing itself from the ground, reaching up towards Purgatory's perpetually overcast sky.

Whomever created the Hand had long ago abandoned it for places unknown. Lost and forgotten to the endless beach, the Hand was without an echo of energy when I first discovered it. No other denizen had claimed it, so I infused it with my energy and made it the marker for the outermost barrier of my mother's prison. This barrier was the first and subsequently the weakest of my barriers. The softly pulsating energy enhanced the natural ominousness of the towering Hand, frightening negative, lesser denizens away from this place.

My age was young, my spiritual power unrealized when I created my outermost barrier. At the time, it was the strongest force I could muster to drive what negative denizens I could away from this place. Imps were my major concern back then, those nasty little things would always be here when I arrived, tormenting my mother and the other weak souls nearby. The effectiveness of this early barrier was eventually made irrelevant by my later barriers, But I kept it active as a reminder of just how much I've grown.

Ironically, the first of my barriers was the last one I'd expect to stop the wraith on its path towards my mother's prison. My inner barrier certainly would stop it, but this one was so weak, it posed no harm to the wraith. It wasn't likely that it would slow the wraith down either, or serve as any form of distraction that might allow me to catch up with it. Although my rapidly ending descent was landing me near the base of the Hand, there was no reason for me to stop here once I was on the ground.

My plan was to keep on moving, as fast as I could to my inner barrier and stop the wraith there. As my descent brought me closer to the Hand, I realized that no energy pulsed from the immense statue. That realization stunned me for a moment, even while floating hundreds of feet in the air. I reached my aura out to the Hand, searching the silent statue thoroughly and finding no trace of the echo I placed there long ago. I didn't understand why this was, or what was really going on, but I had many possibilities forming in my head.

My immediate impression was the wraith had cleared the barrier, believing a flood of lesser denizens would distract me long enough for it to defeat my inner barrier. Perhaps the wraith wanted to use the resulting flood of negative aura as a screen to hide itself from me; or possibly it wished to feed on these lesser denizens before it fed on my mother's soul. I didn't believe the wraith wasn't aware that I had other barriers here, not even for a moment. Wraiths are cunning hunters, it wouldn't be playing this game without knowing what defenses I had in place.

Nevertheless, my descent had taken me within a short, hundred foot drop of the macabre ground and I was quite ready for this game to end. I let myself fall the rest of the way down, landing hard on the macabre sediment before taking a running leap into the air. The Hand wasn't more than a hundred yards away, my powerful jump landing me onto the sloped palm of the immense statue. I dug my claws into its rough surface, climbing the stone statue much like a lizard climbing a brick wall.

From the palm I scaled the middle finger until I was sitting on that digit's nail; the highest point on the hand and the best view of my surroundings. I could see the waves of Chaos smashing against the shore another mile or more away, half that distance inward and the twisted ground dropped off and smoothed out into a flat, shale mass that followed the shore for several miles. The shale terrain lacked the macabre sediment of the surrounding beach, instead it was covered in hundreds of tidal pools that varied in size and depth.

Each tidal pool was, in its own right, a marker either left by some tortured soul, or was currently occupied by one. My mother was lost among these pools, although she was the only tormented soul imprisoned there I could see and hear. That stretch of beach was my training ground when I was a neophyte, I spent just as much time exploring the depths of those pools, as I did trying to free my mother's soul. Another hundred yards or so inward the Hand was where my inner barrier began... I still didn't believe the wraith could get farther than that.

There wasn't anything more to see outside of the twisted landscape that rarely ever changed. But then, it wasn't as if I was expecting to see anything moving around, but I was expecting to feel the presence of many hidden denizens and lost souls. I reached out across the landscape with my aura as far as I could, searching for any sign of the wraith, or any other negative denizen that happened to be here now that the Hand was silent.

The wraith's aura left a deliberate trail that headed in the direction my inner barrier, but there nothing else. That wasn't possible, not for this place, nor for any portion of Purgatory! There were quite a few denizens and lost souls that called this portion of Purgatory their home, not counting the occasional visitors of lost souls and lesser spirits alike. Without the Hand pulsing an ominous energy to frighten those damn imps away, I expected at least to feel them lurking around. But there was nothing here, the energy of Purgatory was as still as its stale air.

A sudden feeling of adrenaline poured over me and I found myself jumping from the Hand, heading in the direction of my inner barrier. My jump took me a distance equal to my last, landing me atop a large mound covered with petrified bird nests. I ran quickly across this mound and took another jump off the other side, clearing a fissure just beyond the mound and landing atop a terribly jagged terrain feature. From one horrid landmark to the next I jumped, running whenever the ground flattened enough to permit such movement.

I became quite angry with myself as I moved across the beach, I was so focused on how weak the wraith was, compared to myself, that I underestimated its cunning. The thought occurred to me that the wraith may have already fed on this place, then issued this challenge to taunt me for its sick pleasure. If that was so, then the cries off in the distance was the wraith disguised as my mother. The thought filled me with such hatred that I had to push it out of my mind, there was no reason to assume the worst, not until I was certain my inner barrier was gone.

From a deep slope, the ground rose up into the bones of a whale at least eighty feet long. I ran up the tail section of this petrified skeleton, then across its wide spine, taking another leap off the top of its skull. I cleared at least fifty yards with that jump, floating towards an immense stone marker resembling a horse's skull, one of many markers that comprised my inner barrier.

Sixty feet long and thirty feet wide, the large stone marker lay with its mouth open, forming a small cave that penetrated deep into the ground. The marker curiously faced the Hand, although I never got the impression that the two markers were a pair. I was optimistic for a moment while I floated towards the marker, again I was disappointed to find my echo gone from the marker before I even landed my jump.

My growing rage and despair began to manifest around me as a black aura, burning into the air and causing my fur to glow like fiery embers. My emotional state chipped away at the skull when I landed on it, etching my footprints into its ageless surface. It was harder to calm myself this time, I needed to relax my thoughts before I proceeded further. Destroying the land around me would serve nothing, except to make me a target for every enraged denizen nearby... at least it would, if I wasn't convinced the wraith had already eaten them.

I took slow, deep breaths to calm my thoughts, the destructive aura slowly fading as I became calm. With my mind thinking clearly again, I reached out with my aura and searched for the echo of energy where my inner barrier should have been. The skull on which I stood was but one part of this barrier, I had imprinted my echo into many other markers to form a perimeter around the place of my mother's prison.

I intentionally chose markers within a strong jump of one another, so their individual aura would overlap with their adjacent markers. The idea was that if one marker fell, the nearby markers would extend their influence and keep the barrier whole. In order to breach this powerful wall of radiant energy, a denizen would have to defeat several of these adjacent markers. Very few denizens were that committed to a task, fewer still actually had the power to break through such a defense.

I searched as far as my aura could reach, sensing nothing from the nearby markers that should be radiating an echo my my powerful energy. There was nothing, even the markers beyond the closest ones were silent, as far as I could reach, the land around me was still. I didn't think it possible, but somehow the wraith had not only breached my inner barrier, but had annihilated it completely. For what reason I could only fathom, but if this barrier had fallen to the wraith, then it was safe for me to assume that my other barriers, including my mother's soul, had fallen to the wraith.

I felt the horrid cloak of anger and hopelessness creeping up on me again. I shook those impulsive and illogical emotions away, acting on them now would serve nothing. If the wraith had eaten everything, then there wasn't a rush for me to save my mother, as there was nothing left to save. Although that realization enraged me, I had to stay calm, I had to stay lucid long enough for me to deduce what was really going on. I was still confident that there was no way the wraith could have done all this damage on its own, so I had to assume that more than one denizen with a grudge against me was lurking nearby.

Not far along the plateau, opposite the cliff that faced Chaos, a dark cave shaped like the open mouth of a wolf was the marker of a mad soul. The mad soul called himself Eliheim, and he had resided within that marker of his since before the Dark Age of our ancient civilization. Eliheim was a powerful warrior-mage in his lifetime, devoting himself to the impossible task of ridding the universe of evil and corruption. Elihiem's motivation in life is unclear, as far as historical records are concerned, and naturally he died never realizing his life's ambition.

Eliheim took many lives in the name of justice, focusing his efforts initially on the necromantic cults that worshiped the goddess Leviathan. The cults that followed the Witch-Goddess reveled in death and suffering, spreading to the far corners of our ancient civilization like a plague. It shouldn't come as a surprise that many witch-hunter cults were formed to directly combat this unambiguous threat, often battling the death-cults with their same dark magic. Eliheim was no different when compared to other witch-hunters, and like many of these cultists, his quest didn't end, even after the death-cults were vanquished.

By the end of Eliheim's life and fleeting sanity, it wasn't about justice, it was about vengeance. His enemy was no longer the unambiguous threat of the defeated death-cults, but now the corruption within the greatest of ancient powers; the Draconian Empire. Eliheim killed many during his new quest, striving to rid the world of the corrupt draconian houses that held many planets in tyrannical rule. But waging a personal war against a political entity is not the same as waging a war against cultists, the houses Eliheim choose as his enemies gladly fought back at him with their vast resources of wealth and armies.

Eliheim fought without fear or mercy against the armies of soldiers, mercenaries and machines sent to kill him, but eventually he was captured by House Neebian, known for its use of psychological warfare and secretive, ritualistic treatment of its prisoners. Although historically Eliheim was a minor figure, there was quite the political debate in his time as to whether or not House Neebian should be allowed the pleasure of executing him.

House Neebain was not a ruling house within the Empire, but it had many cunning politicians. Historical records at the time indicated that house Neebain reached an agreement with the other houses that wanted Eliheim dead; they would forgo their private execution methods and have Eliheim publicly tortured and executed in accordance to Draconian law. Beaten, burned and eventually beheaded, Eliheim's body was then quartered and thrown into the deep oceans of the Neebian homeworld. I feel it safe to say Eliheim's death was quite excruciating, but he never screamed, nor did he cry or even beg for his life. He died laughing, cursing at his executioners, and the multitude that came for the spectacle.

I pause this tale to talk briefly about the kind of man Eliheim was, in order to better explain why Eliheim despised me so, and why I called him a mad soul. He was mad (insane, if you prefer) because that was how he lived and how he died... Hell, to this day I'm not even sure Eliheim knows he is dead, or even that he cares. Even in death, Eliheim still peruses his never-ending quest to rid the living world of wickedness and corruption, genuinely unaware of the wickedness and corruption within his own soul.

The first time I met Eliheim was during the months following my mother's death. I had come to her many times, listening to her howl from below the cliff, where I always entered this place from. I had only seen my mother once in her prison (the very moment life passed from her body) and I badly wanted to see her again. I didn't know then that gravity held no meaning here, so instead I wandered the back side of the plateau, searching for a safe path that would lead me to my mother.

It was on this search that I stumbled upon Eliheim's marker. The dark cave pulsed an energy that seemed to push at my very soul, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I ventured into Eliheim's cave, but it was probably an encounter Fate had already planned for me. Eliheim was sitting, cross-legged, near the mouth of his cave, facing out the mouth and in the direction of my younger self. I wasn't sure what Eliheim was when I fist saw him, he sat so still, his eyes closed. I wasn't even sure he wasn't part of the cave itself, or even that he was a wolf and not some kind of hideous rat.

His body was shaved bare, naked, scarred and burned all over with symbols and short phrases in various languages, each brand labeling him forever with a crime and who it was committed against. I felt sick when I stepped closer, noticing the rips in his flesh along his shoulders, his hips and even his neck where his head was severed. The cut on his neck was a clean line across his collarbone, but his limbs were more obvious, especially the left where the skin and muscle still hung loose from. I'd have to say it was his cheeks that startled me the most, the flesh had been cut clean from his teeth, forever exposing them in a horrid snarl.

When Eliheim first moved, his eyes snapped open to look directly at me, the sudden movement in his face caused me to fall backward in fright. When Eliheim stood, I realized how tall of a man he was: over six feet and quite thin, appearing thinner than he should without a thick coat of fur to cover his mutilated body. When Eliheim took his first step towards me, I heard a growl coming from his skinless muzzle, I could feel the anger radiating from his body and I knew I was in trouble.

When Eliheim spoke, I never saw his mouth move, but I could hear his voice as if it beat against my very soul. He announced me as an intruder of his sanctuary and that I was an assassin sent by House Neebian to murder him. Naturally I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't have time to explain that before Eliheim also accused me of being a necromancer, judging me thus by the black tint of my aura.

None of this made any sense to my younger self, although my aura was black at the time because I was still emotionally suffering from my mother's death. Explanations meant nothing to Eliheim, because he never stopped his advance long enough for me to explain myself, or ask him what he meant. From the very air around him, Eliheim produced a falchion of a crude appearance, striking me across the chest with its heavy blade.

I woke that instant from my sleep, screaming, my chest burned and itched across the line in which Eliheim's blade had passed. I got out of bed and rushed to the bathroom to examine my self in the mirror, noticing a bright red rash across my chest, clearly visible through my black and gray fur. When morning came, I showed the mark to my father, who knew exactly what it was, he calmed my nerves by telling me one simple fact: No matter how powerful a denizen is in the afterlife, it cannot do more to a living soul, so long as it remains in the afterlife.

After that first encounter with Eliheim, he and I clashed many times more on Purgatory's desolate landscape. He bested me a few times, but eventually my power grew such that he couldn't beat me any more. That wasn't going to stop Eliheim from trying his best to kill me, after all, in his illogical mind I was an obstacle for him to overcome. Only once did he manage to follow me all the way back to the living world, manifesting as a far more dangerous poltergeist. Eliheim couldn't kill me, and after that final battle of ours, I drove him back to Purgatory for, what I hope, is forever.

Eliheim never tried to kill me again, for many years after that final battle, I never saw him again. Well, that wouldn't be accurate, I saw him many times, through the veil of time and space, watching his life in brief intervals. I watched Eliheim at the beginning of his quest, an attractive young man filled with great zeal for justice against the death-cults. I watched him degrade in appearance and sanity as his time went by, becoming like a feral beast, killing commoners and nobles alike as they begged him for mercy.

I was never able to deduce much of my old nemesis from these brief glimpse into his past, for the longer I would silently watch, the more aware he would become of my presence. Always would my sessions into his thoughts and feelings end with Eliheim glaring at me, driving me away from the other side of the veil. I suppose I could have visited him inside his marker (however deranged that idea might seem), but I felt that might start our war all over again.

It wasn't until after my college years at the Martian Institute of Advanced Technologies (MIAT), that I had the chance to attend a seminar on occult warfare and the role it played in both modern and historical battles, did I learn of my old nemesis' dark past. That night I traveled to Purgatory to confront Eliheim, armed with this new knowledge, but had been so long sense we last met, that Eliheim didn't even recognize me.

He sat near the mouth of his cave, cross-legged, meditating as he always did. When he opened his eyes to look at me, he greeted me... which, needless to say, was surprising. He addressed me as a witch-hunter, welcoming me to his sanctuary, he commented on the purity of my power, seeing the rich silver tint of my aura reflecting off the walls of his cave. When I confronted him about his past deeds, Eliheim immediately became angry and demanded that I leave him alone. That was the last time he and I spoke.

I couldn't imagine why Eliheim would side with a negative being such as the wraith, for that matter, how could the wraith even convince Eliheim to side with it. Could the wraith's powers of cunning and deception be so great that it could deceive Eliheim? Clearly, it had deceived me, but then I had also allowed myself to be drawn into its trap. Eliheim would never give the thing such a chance. Even if the wraith managed to devour some long lost love of Eliheim's to disguise as, Eliheim would strike it down, just to be certain it wasn't a fake.

Could it be that Eliheim thought of me as two individuals instead of one? The me as I was now, was so different from the me back then. It was conceivable, all the wraith had to do was disguise itself as my younger self, then lure Eliheim to my training ground, let him breach every barrier that stood in his way, then eat its fill of lost souls. But then how would it know who I was unless it had followed me throughout my life? If that was so, then why would it strike at me now when I was at the peak of my power, but then...

The surge of adrenaline that had me jumping from the Hand suddenly returned, causing me to pause mid-thought, and jump from the skull on which I stood. All reason and lucid thought seemed to vanish from my mind, once more I found myself running with all haste in a futile attempt to save my mother's soul. I knew quite well what I was doing, but I didn't know why, nor could I stop myself before I slid down the shallow embankment that separated the shale flat from the macabre sediment of the surrounding beach.

I dug my bare feet into the soft, flat surface of the shale ground, my quick momentum dragging on a distance before I stopped, just short of falling into a tidal pool. I couldn't understand what had come over me, I had been plotting my next move, trying to decipher the wraith's little game when suddenly I had forgotten what I was doing. But as I stood beside the murky pool, deducing what had happened, I lost control of my body a third time, leaping over the tidal pool and making another unwilling sprint before I could stop myself again.

At that moment, I realized what was happening, why my barriers were gone, why there was nothing here but the cries of my mother and the blatant trail of the wraith. The wraith hadn't broken through my barriers, it hadn't recruited assistance from another spirit, nor had it eaten anything here. Everything I expected to be here was gone, because it never was here to begin with. This wasn't Purgatory, but a dream realm crafted to artistic perfection. Truly the wraith's powers of deception was great, it had managed to drag me this far, unnoticed, though its perfect little illusion.

I compressed my aura inward my body, scanning my self and finding the wraith's claws gripping my extremities and my face, blinding me to the truth and dragging me towards the not-too-distant apparition that resembled my mother. I pushed my aura out from the claws, breaking their fingers and sending them back towards the weeping apparition, and the center of the dream. Free of the wraith's influence on my lucid mind, I pushed my aura into the seams of its elaborate lie, ripping at the realm until the land around me cracked, and the sky above me split.

The ocean sank into a great fissure, silencing the crash of the waves from the false Chaos. The whole realm around me shook from the might of my will, but it would hold as long as I deemed fit. The realm was mine now, I could easily destroy it, but not before I had found out from the wraith exactly what it planned to accomplish by all this. I searched the boundaries of the realm, but I couldn't find the wraith at all, he was hiding somewhere, but I couldn't figure out where. All that was here was myself, and the female apparition not twenty yards ahead of me.

I took my time crossing this short distance toward the apparition, I assumed, held the answer to my one and only question. My rage expanded into a hot and fiery aura that leaped from my body and burned the air around me, the ground beneath me shook and was scorched wherever I stepped. The many tidal pools that, normally, would be filled the the murky sick of another tormented soul, were filled with nothing but tar and lies; I walked effortlessly across them, rather than wasting time navigating around them.

The closer I came to the weeping apparition that looked like my mother, the more I had to appreciate the wraith's artistic talents. The flat ground became naturally cracked the closer it came to the bathtub-sized pool that perfectly mirrored the one my mother was imprisoned in. Bloodstains marked these spiderweb cracks, becoming thick and scabby over the top of the ground the more dense the cracks became. At the edge of the tidal pool, the blood flowed freely, seeping into every crack and coating the shale red. Just as it was with my mother, the tidal pool overflowed with blood, perpetually dripping from the deep cuts in the apparition's forearms.

The apparition even looked like my mother; slender and feminine, not much older than thirty, the age my mother was when she killed herself. The apparition sat upright in the shallow pool, her waist down hidden under blood, the upper half of her otherwise beautiful fur coat forever stained with blood. The apparition had her back to me, so I only could assume the rest of her looked like my mother. Morbidly curious if her face correctly mimicked my mother's miserable expression, I stepped around the apparition, but every step I took, the apparition turned with me, keeping her face hidden.

"Please...please stop...stop, stop..." the apparition cried over and over again as I walked around her.

I felt a bit sad for the poor thing, my raging aura settled some as I recalled a distant memory of my real mother. She was terrifying the year following her death, she didn't just cry, she howled, her soul for a while a banshee, releasing the inner torment she hid so well in life. It's strange when you forget memories you couldn't imagine yourself forgetting, but when they return, so do all the emotions attached to them. Rage. Misery. Terror. I didn't truly know what these emotions meant, not until I first saw my mother like this.

But this thing wasn't my mother. She was nothing but a collection of half-truths woven into a perfect lie, designed to lure me into this place for whatever sick game the wraith wanted to play. As I walked around the apparition within the bloody tidal pool, my rage began to escalate anew, she kept turning around, hiding her face from me, until we had circled back to where we had started. She kept on crying, begging me to stop what I was doing, her voice so perfectly mimicking my mother's only fueling my rage.

"Stop? I haven't done anything to. Not yet anyway." I said to the sobbing apparition. "Now, tell me where that damn wraith is. Are you it? Tell me before I rip you apart."

"He's dead, he's already dead..." the apparition sobbed, switching the rhythm in her voice.

"Who's dead? The wraith? Of course it's dead!" I shouted. "The only fucking thing alive here is me! You're not alive, you're not even fucking real! Now tell me where the fucking wraith is!"

The apparition repeated its new chant without missing a beat, my rage overflowed and I split the ground around the bloody pool, draining the blood and exposing gnarled roots where the apparition's kneeling legs should be. Every detail indeed, the wraith even took into account the roots. Those horribly twisted things were part of my real mother, as they were with every tormented soul like her. They were the manifestation of emotions, physical pain and everything else that bound the soul to its disbelief and self-inflicted punishment.

The apparition repeated her chant again and I lost control. I stomped over to her, causing the ground to quake and the apparition to flinch with each angry step. She persisted in keeping her back to me, covering her face with her hands, hiding whatever unreal expression she possessed. I gripped her right shoulder in my left hand and dug in my fingers, ripping her perfectly simulated pelt as I turned her around. She screamed, but couldn't fight me, the roots that bound her body broke away as I lifted her from the empty tidal pool.

I expected to see many different things from her face before I even took my first

glimpse at it. I never expected to see a tearful expression of my mother, I was quite certain that wasn't what I was going to see. What I expected to see was a blank face gawking silently back at me, or a void of nothing where a once beautiful woman's expression should be. I still felt that the apparition might even be the wraith, expecting to see a veil of quilted pelts covering a face of nothingness.

"Stop...please, stop..." The apparition begged, holding her hands against her face and turning her head defiantly away.

Begging wasn't going to stop me from manhandling the apparition as I was, I shook her around by the shoulder, trying to dislodge her hands from her face. That didn't work, so I shook her harder until the apparition's shoulder started to break from the treatment. She yelped in pain and kept begging me to stop, persisting in keeping her face covered even while I shook her around. Before the treatment tore her arm off, I changed my grip from her shoulder to her wrists, forcefully pulling her hands away from her face.

What I saw of the apparition's face surprised me, it shook my very being and filled me with a sense of despair so cold and deep that it took away both my hold on the seems of the dream, and my lucidity. From the neck down, the apparition was the body of my mother, but the neck up it had the face of my dragon slave. His lovely face of smooth, green scales was tainted with a look of utter terror. His eyes were swollen with tears, his voice wailed with a sadness resonating with the darkest of nightmares.

"Master! Please, stop! He's dead! You killed him! He's dead, he's already-"

When the apparition spoke, pleading me to stop what I could only assume was murder, I became so terrified that I slapped my hands together, crushing the face of my slave between my palms. The apparition's skull ruptured with a sickening splat, coating my fur and my palms with a bizarre red paste. With the voice cut off abruptly, and seeing the red gore where the perfect likeness of my slave's face once was, I screamed. I let go of the now headless apparition, watching in horror as it's motionless body flopped back into the drained pool.

When extreme emotion and adrenaline combine, sentient and feral minds alike will likely draw on one of two primal instincts: flight or fight. What this means is when it comes to survival, the two primary instincts is to either run and hide, or stand and fight. I've never been in the former category, I took after my father when it came to primal instincts such as these. But I wasn't lucid right then, I was lost, for the moment, in the wraith's dream. Within that state of mind, I honestly thought I had killed my slave.

I fell to my knees beside the empty pool, sobbing as I scraped the red paste from my fur and combined it with the paste oozing between my fingers. I carefully crawled into the shallow pit and propped the motionless torso upright, adding the ball of paste in my hands to the gore sticking to the neck of the torso. That amount of paste wasn't enough, so I fished for more from the bottom of the pit, and from out the fissure before it slid out of my reach. Once I had more, I tried to reconstruct the head of the apparition, but no amount of effort, or red paste, was going to bring the likeness of my slave's face back.

It was a strange sensation, having the conscious and subconscious halves of my mind battle over control of my astral body. Part of me was still lucid, still aware of the dream around me, watching my astral body act upon lingering emotions of fear and despair. I babbled to the torso as I tried to shape the paste back into the likeness of my slave's face, telling the torso I could bring it back to life, provided I could make its face all better. I could hear my lucid mind screaming at me, trapped some place far away, demanding that I stop my foolish responses and recollect myself.

Get a grip, you dumb shit! Focus, remember where you are and snap out of it! My lucid mind shouted from its far off place.

"Can't... K-killed him... Need to..." My subconscious mind babbled incoherently.

Stop being such a little bitch! He's not dead! Look! He's where you left him!

The torso my subconscious was attempting to reconstruct the head upon had vanished, yet my hands still acted out the motions of molding the paste into the face of my slave. As my conscious swore and shouted, the duality of my mind began to recollect. Slowly, my astral body obeyed my lucid will and started looking past the dream. The bloody, shale ground before me faded into the light of an early dawn. The soft illumination drove away my fear and despair, when from out of the light, the silhouette of my slave's perfect face appeared.

He was alive, resting peacefully before me, his large body curled up nose to tail like a sleeping house cat. I reached out to my slave and lightly touched his face, my fingers running over his trimmed horns, then down his cheeks and across his lips. His smooth scales were as they should be, his closed eyes and cheeks were dry of tears. I felt a sense of joy filling my once depressed soul, for the moment, I embraced my sleeping slave, stroking the sides of his beautiful face in both my hands.

My slave suddenly stirred, lifting his head towards me, although his eyes were still closed. I withdrew my embrace and watched him, expecting him to wake, to open his eyes and greet me with a groggy smile across his broad maw. Instead, he flopped on his side, drawing his bound wings together before rolling over. Now he lay on his back like a dog, his four limbs curled upright, his mouth open with tongue hanging out and he snored. I let out a chuckle as I watched him sleep, finding it quit odd how his tail was bent upward.

I find it quite embarrassing that I had no idea I was back in my apartment, even though I had spent a while kneeling on the floor, touching my slave's face. The explanation being that my subconscious and conscious minds were still recollecting, and as they recollected I became more aware of my surroundings. My slave's tail was bent as it was, because he slept inside a cage. The rounded metal bars and hardwood base of the cage came into view, slowly, the rest of the room around me followed.

My slave's room was smaller than my bedroom at the end of the hall, but even in that respect it was quite accommodating. The four foot high, interlocking walls and base of the cage was, at its base, the same dimensions as the queen size futon my slave slept upon. The large cage was pushed against the far wall, leaving plenty of room to maneuver between the closet behind me, and the bedroom door just to the left of that. The wall to my right possessed the window, from which the light of the early dawn shown through the slits in the vertical blinds.

My dual mind-states had recollected and I was in my right mind, remembering who I was and where I was. A minor point: but I wasn't physically in my slave's room, touching his face through a cage and watching him sleep. I was in astral form, my physical body was sleeping peacefully back in my room. Physical matter meant nothing to one in astral form, I could pass through the bars of the cage, or even walk through walls if I wished. When my invisible hands caressed my slave's face, my presence had disturbed his sleep. I dared not touch him anymore, lest he wake and see my silhouette for even a brief moment.

I turned around and made a brief search of my slave's room to see if anything had followed me from the dream to this place. There was nothing here but myself and my slave. Even from the perspective of astral form, there was nothing astounding about what lie in the room. No artificial light sources or sources of electrical power blurred my perception of the room. My slave had a few personal possessions in the closet behind me, mostly sex toys and small busts of comic book characters I cared little about. No energy came from the closet either, the room was at peace.

I thought back on the wraith's dream and its dark metaphors. I regretted allowing myself to be dragged though its little fun-house, but the wraith's true intention illuded me. I remembered the apparition, with the body of my mother and the face of my slave, how it screamed, and the uncontrollable emotion of despair. It seemed that I was being told something, a vision of an intersecting future perhaps, it wasn't as if such a thing was new to me. I didn't wish to rationalize the dream anymore, only the wraith could answer my questions and it had slipped away.

I lifted my head up and looked at the plain stucco ceiling. I let out a sigh, my astral breath dropping the temperature in the room by a few degrees. I wasn't worried about the room becoming cold and waking my slave, it was the summer months here in the territory of Nevada, as soon as the sun was full in the sky, the air would be hot and dry. I slid back and spread out my feet, being careful not to pass any part of me through my slave, watching him for a moment more.

I was about to leave the room and wake up, when I heard the door behind me open. I never kept the door shut because I wanted to check on my slave as he slept. I debated removing the door completely once, just to deny him privacy, but I decided having a door to shut out prying eyes was a better idea. The doors hinges were old and creaked, often it would sway with the vibrations from the street outside, or from the neighbors moving around. When I heard the door creak, I didn't realized the sound wasn't from the apartment swaying, but form the door opening. Something was entering the room.

I knew what it was the wraith the moment I felt its negative aura spreading around the room. I growled low at the thing, never turning around or even standing up, pushing its aura back and filling the room with my own. Just as we met in my slave's sexual dream, the wraith stood against my oppressive aura with ease. The thing let out a giggle, like the sound of many children playing in a distant playground lost to time. My anger was roused and the walls around me knocked when I pushed my aura against them, the wraith giggled, this was a game to it after all.

"Why do you play these games with me, wraith?" I asked the thing as I remained seated on the floor.

"This one loooves him." The wraith's voice was soft and eerie, like an inward breathing whisper.

"You have a twisted sense of love, monster." I said, standing, turning to face the wraith.

The wraith was just as I had first seen it, no taller than myself, straight and silent, imperfectly round at the sides and top. Its narrow silhouette was like that of a bowling ball atop a stone or wood pillar, that someone had carelessly thrown a quilt of mangled pelts and tanned hides over. It had no identifiable curves to its body or even features to its face underneath the quilt. There was no way to tell what sort of tortured souls composed the frame of its quilt, or how many, only its aura told me which direction it was looking in.

"He-watches, is a monster. Many would say this one is like him. Why does he judge this one?" the wraith asked.

He-watches, that was the name the spirits gave me. As it was that my powers of divination and dream-magic were my greatest strengths, they were also the powers that attracted many spirits to me. As I dreamed beyond the constraints of time and space, I watched many things, rarely interacting with the shadows of past or future events as they played out before me. The spirits called me thus, because that's what I did. It was a name they used to describe me, it was a name many whispered when they knew I was watching them.

"I'm not like you, and you are nothing compared to me." I hissed at the wraith. "Now, why do you follow me? Tell me before I rip you apart."

"This one follows him for protection. The dark-ones do not look for this one, so close to He-watches. This one follows him not long, followed Pretty Horsey before, now follows He-watches."

"Hiding with the lions, for fear of the snakes." There was a pause as the wraith pondered my metaphor.

"This one hides well from He-watches. He does not see this one, unless this one wants to be seen."

My hatred for the wraith began to grow, the knocking in the walls becoming a heavy scraping, as it exuberantly answered all my questions. I could think of many that would've silenced the wraith by now (my father in particular), but my morbid sense of scientific curiosity compelled me to learn all I could about the thing. I wanted to know how it knew so much about me, and if my impression of the apparition within the dream was correct. Once the final question was answered, I wouldn't hesitate to rip the wraith apart. The wraith giggled at me, it seemed to know my intentions, it answered my next question before it was asked.

"This one watches things too. This one watched Pretty Horsey... she is looovely. This one watches He-watches... now loooves him. Many wonderful memories, many delicious-"

The wraith said enough, the little monster was watching my past, that's how it knew about my mother and my training grounds. I didn't care to let it finish talking, it was apparent that if it could see into my past, then it could see into my future. From across the walls, the floor, and ceiling, I focused my aura against the wraith, my oppressive aura slamming hard against the wicked thing. The wraith's giggle changed changed instantly to a shriek, it couldn't stand against direct force and it backed away. It tried to escape through the doorway, but my wave of energy closed the door. I had it trapped, there was no escape.

My aura wrapped around the wraith, and I dragged it towards me. The wraith's shriek became a howl, as if a pack of ravenous wolves had been released onto that playground lost to time. It shook itself from side to side, trying to free itself. The ends of its quilt folded into sharp claws, desperately trying to anchor itself to the floor. Nothing it could do was going to stop me, even when the claws shot up to rake at my face, I swatted them away. I took the wraith by the top of its quit, then a claw that tried to attack me again, tearing the quit from the wraith's body.

The wraith howled louder, fighting me for hold of the quilt, its shield, and by extension a part of its body. Fighting only made the pain worse, the room echoing the sound of tearing flesh. As the quilt was torn from the wraith, its shape began to change. Every inch exposed to the light of early dawn shown that much more of the wraith's twisted form. Feet. Legs. Hips. A disfigured torso. Finally, the arms and shoulders were free. The wraith begged for mercy, writhing from exposure to my oppressive aura, the structure of its voice changed before its head was exposed.

"Our skin! Give us back our skin! Please! We beg you!" Two distinct voices composed the wraith's new voice, yet it was hard to determine age or gender of either. Their pitch and tones were deep, and hollow. Voices of mortal souls that long ago forgot what being mortal was.

Judging from the position of its merged body parts, I knew what the wraith looked like before it was fully revealed. The two souls had merged chest to chest, with one side being completely fused. The thing had three arms and three legs, positioned in a triad formation, with the fused limbs on the opposite side of its other two limbs. The fused arm and leg were bulky and ridged when compared to the other four limbs that were thin and boney. It's torso was tuned inside-out, its bones and organs exposed. Three lungs and one heart, the other, less noteworthy organs jumbled together in a chaotic mass.

I jerked hard on the quilt, to remove it from the wraith's head. It tried to hold onto its quilt with its small arms, but it wasn't strong enough. With a loud snap, the head was exposed, the wraith fell onto its knees, crying like a child from the weight of my oppressive aura. What a ghastly face the thing had; three eyes, with the one at the back of its skull large and bulbous, its mouth forged from the side of two long muzzles fused nose-to-nose. No matter how many tears the thing could shed from its expressive eyes, its face would still be a nightmare to even the most stalwart of creatures.

The game of psychological torment was now mine to play. The sobbing wraith tried to stand, but my aura pushed it back down. It tried to reach for its quilt, but I kept it just out of its reach. I giggled myself as those boney arms flailed about, reaching for the quilt as I drew it back. The wraith lunged, clawing at my body to try and stand, I kicked it back, dangling the quilt just out of its reach. Again, the wraith tried to take the quilt back, I balled up the quilt and held it above my head. The wraith sobbed, kneeling, reaching as high as it could without success.

"Please... have mercy... the dark-ones are coming!" the wraith bawled at me as it clawed my thighs. I kicked it back again and it gave up, curling up small legs to small arms in a fetal position. It lay there and sobbed.

"They can have you, when I'm done with you." I laughed at the thing. I felt no pity for something so wicked at its core.

From the living-room down the hall, I could hear the sounds of faint voices, whispering amongst themselves a conversation I couldn't understand. They started coming closer, moving slowly down the hall. More whispering voices joined the inaudible conversation, until the whispers became a soft chatter. The many chattering voices stopped just short of the door, the hall beyond now completely silent. I could feel a power aura pressing against the outside of the door, like a dozen pairs of ears were just outside, eavesdropping on the goings on inside the room.

The room darkened, shadows danced across the floor in the light of the rising sun. There was movement outside the window, as if someone was peeking into the window through the blinds, to see what was going on inside. Although the shadows cast a perfect silhouette of a figure, the was physically nobody on the other side of the window. The closet was next to follow suit, shadows massed along the bottom corners of the darkened closet. Little figures poking heads and shoulders around, their silhouette were nearly perfect, but no mortal being could be peaking from around a corner, where just behind a solid wall began.

These were what I can only describe as the dark-ones. They are everything, and yet they are nothing at all. They have both scientific and metaphysical explanations, yet their very existence applies to the logic of neither. They are what some scientists will call "dark matter", the undiscovered bond of inert mass that is believed to hold the very universe together. They are guardians, the veil of darkness that separates the mortal and astral planes. They posses only rudimentary intelligence, they have no individual desire or purpose, they simply are.

The dark-ones are the lingering emotions of the dead and faint echoes of the past. They have absorbed the energy and emotions of countless mortals, and spectral denizens, sense the beginning of the universe. Their visual and electromagnetic presence can be measured and recorded, they can even communicate with mortals and denizens, to a limited extent. They are the entities paranormal investigators catalog as proof of paranormal activity, although they exist merely as a residual footprint of things that once were. My father called the dark-ones "shadow figures"; I find that to be an appropriate description.

The dark-ones sought the wraith for the sole reason they sought out anything within the cosmos: to feed. While not technically alive, the dark-ones were still driven by this primal instinct, their source of nourishment being emotional and electrical disturbances. Places of great pain, or spiritual harmony, were the nesting grounds of the dark-ones, as well as any natural or artificial body that generated high magnetic fields. Normally, the dark-ones didn't feed on actual denizens on passed souls, only the emotional energy they left behind. But every so often a spirit would find its way to the physical plane and the dark-ones would hunt them.

The more powerful the spirit, the more aggressive the dark-ones would hunt them, the threshold being a spirit so powerful the dark-ones couldn't feed on it. Eliheim was such a spirit, when he returned to the mortal realm as a poltergeist, the dark-ones left him alone. The wraith was strong enough with its quilt it could hide from the dark-ones for a while, indefinitely as long as it shadowed a living creature. But now the wraith was weak, stripped of its quilt, easy prey for the dark-ones.

"Please, He-watches. Our skin... we don't want to die." the wraith cried, its bulbous eye, darting from the door to the closet. Its dreaded face full of fear as its other two eyes watched the dark-ones gather at the window behind me.

"You're already dead!" I shouted at the wraith. My rage spiked and the double-pane window cracked along both inner and outer panes. The sound of fracturing glass was so loud that I instantly turned to my slave, expecting him to be wide awake, but he wasn't. He was still laying on his back, unaware of the sound of breaking glass. I had to chuckle, that big dragon could probably sleep through a train wreck.

I returned my attention to the wraith, and the matter of the dark-ones gathering outside the room. The burst of rage and pushed them back, but they were collecting in force now, crowding around the window and the open closet. I could hold them off for a while, but soon they would amass and overtake my aura. There was still time to torment the wraith, I unfurled the quilt and tore a strip of the tattered fabric off. The patches in the strip separated and dissolved into a fine mist. I could hear the sound of children laughing as the mist faded.

I tore off some more as the wraith watched, begging me to stop what I was doing. Another strip, more souls freed from an endless torment. A woman's voice with a child that seemed to be her's. The wraith had eaten them separate, choosing the mother as bait for her child. They had been rejoined by their captor, but now they were free. Another soul from the strip sighed with the voice of an old man. The soul was not a pleasant one, an evil man who killed his wife in a jealous rage... Perpetual existence as part of the wraith was preferred over the fate he knew awaited him.

"We are sorry, He-watches. We didn't mean to anger you." the wraith cried, its heart beating rapidly, its three lungs hyperventilating. The mass of its organs moved no blood or air, they only served to express the terrible fright it felt, as its existence came closer to an end. "We saw your future, you can't see it, we know you can't. Fate demands we show you. We didn't want to... we were compelled!"

"The future of my slave you mean?" I remarked, tearing a small patch of the quilt away. The hideous laughter of a mad soul echoed off the wall of the room, fading with the mist that spawned it. I can't imagine what that soul had gone though, but I was certain that the universe would be a better place if it had stayed as part of the wraith's quilt.

"Strong of Body, Weak of Will...there is more He-watches must know about his future."

I found it curious that the denizens had given my slave a name, as I hadn't felt much from him that would warrant their notice. There was magic in all living things, and yes, most do deny the power, but my slave was not one of them. But he also had yet to embrace his power, whatever it might be. I had always hoped he would. It was a wish of mine to take on a student, to teach them the arcane principles I had learned, both on my own and from my father. I never thought that student would be my slave, however, the things he would learn from me would conflict with who he was.

"What's to know?" I laughed, although pondering the apparition of my slave, back in the wraith's dream, left me feeling cold inside. "I'm going to kill somebody and he's going to see it. So all I have to do is not kill anyone. Prophecy averted."

The dark-ones finally amassed themselves to the point where my oppressive aura barely held them back. Shadows of hands crept from under the door, dark fingers clawing for the wraith just out of their grasp. I didn't want to loose the wraith just yet, my aura held them back. More hands came creeping from the closest, down the window sill and across the floor. Many dark hands reaching for the wraith, the thing went into a panic, trying to rise against my aura and scoot itself away from the closest set of hands. Try as it might, the wraith wasn't going anywhere.

"Please, He-watches. We swear our loyalty to you, if you let us live. Please, give us back our skin. We will tell you all we can. We must. You must listen!"

I tore another strip from the cloth, instantly the room was filled with a dark mist that rose out of the floor and seeped through the ceiling. The aura was strong, the dark-ones retreated for a brief moment from the terrible aura suddenly unleashed into the room. The aura made a throaty growl like that of a large carnivorous beast, before vanishing through the ceiling. The creature wasn't even a soul, it was a demon. A horrible beast now free to find its own victims. The power of the aura wasn't nearly the equal of mine, but it was enough to make me wonder just how the wraith managed to feed on such a thing.

What was I hoping to accomplish by tearing the wraith apart? Punishment for playing minor head games with me? Distracting me from implanting sexual fantasies into the mind of a twenty-something male already overflowing with them? Refusing to disobey Fate, the divine ruler of all things that will be? I would be a fool if I was expecting every soul the wraith had eaten to be pure and good. I knew all too well the universe did not distinguish between such things. A murderer, a psychopath, and now a demon had been freed by my hands. My actions were becoming more harmful than helpful.

I looked down at the wraith. Cuddled in a ball of twisted limbs, encircled on all sides by the many, shadowy hands that longed to touch its ghostly form. The wraith had found knees and elbows with which to bend its larger, stiff limbs, curling them along it back and sides prospectively closing the gap between it and the many hands. It looked up at me with that ghastly face, sobbing ghostly tears and silently begging me to its quilt. I pondered what doom I was about to condemn the wraith to, the fate the wraith knew awaited it at the mercy of the dark-ones.

The wraith would no longer be the wraith, in fact, it would become nothing. When a spirit is absorbed by the dark-ones, it ceases to exists, its aura dispersed into the background radiation of the cosmos. A fate wore than death, literally so. Only mortal souls know death, as they are the only spirit that is allowed to know life. Denizens are Unborn; they know neither of what is mean to live, or to die... But even they fear nothingness. At the hands of the dark-ones, to be nothing at all, I for one would prefer Hell. Pain and suffering would, at least, remind you that you exist. There is always hope of redemption as long as you exist, but as nothing...

I know what my father would do if he was here. He would scold me, and demand I spare the wraith, for at least as long as it took me to drag it back to Purgatory. Even at my age, I would hang my head low at the scolding and comply, because he would be right. You could argue that all this was insane; Why should anyone feel compassion for what is already dead? I would call you a fool, because even spirits know what compassion is. Compassion is emotion. All that exists beyond mortal understanding is emotion, without that, there is nothing.

There was no need for me to do this to the wraith, there was no justice, nor was there vengeance for anyone outside of myself. There was only cruelty and dark lust for the suffering of another. Freeing the souls from its quilt was incidental to the pleasure I was experiencing in listening to it beg. But that emotion was fading to the harsh reality that the wraith spoke the truth before. It and I, at the core of our being, were very much alike. You'd be surprised how easily it is to ignore the harsh reality of ones self when it's convenient. As old as I am, I still find myself remembering things about myself I conveniently forgot. The wraith reminded me, even if it never meant to, curled in that sad little ball, surrounded by the hands that longed to consume it.

"We... looove... yooou..." the wraith pleaded one last time, to whatever spark of compassion was left in the emotionless gaze I was casting down at it.

I couldn't imagine what poor souls had met such a terrible fate, that the only comfort they could find was to merge together, and become this pseudo-demon laying before me. Murderous psychopaths... perhaps. Soldiers that died together on some forgotten battlefield... equally likely. It was even possible they were once small children, butchered by a parent out of some misdirected rage. Still, the wraith begged, its twisted sense of love coming off as both heartbreaking and genuine. I laid out what remained of the quilt over the wraith's body, and instantly the ambiance of the room changed.

The dark-ones were gone. No more shadows creeping around the window outside, or from the corners of the open closet. No more shadowy hands creeping across the floor in search of a helpless denizen in which to feed on. The room was brighter, cheerful, the early mourning sun was shining through the blinds, and all seemed right with the coming day. The wraith wasn't a sobbing mess of limbs and flesh, laying in the middle of the floor, it was standing. It stared silently at me from the very spot it had fell not long ago.

The wraith looked different, souls had been torn feel of its quilt and it had changed the pattern to compensate. The wraith now appeared as a hunchback, covering its deformed posture with a large blanket. The crude looking blanket encircled a shadowy face, from which no features were distinguishable, except for a pair of glowing red eyes. The wraiths aura had diminished, but it still stood against the weight of my oppressive aura. Its inner-breathing voice returned, hissing softly at me, quite angry from all the torment it had been forced to endure.

"Tell me you name, wraith, I'm curious to know who it is that hides in my shadow."

"This one obeys, it has no choice." The wraith hissed, remembering the vow it made if I spared it. "This one calls itself, Whispers. Would He-watches like to know what this one has to tell him now?" I nodded, although I really didn't want to hear it. But if Fate was insisting and Whispers was her instrument, then I couldn't refuse. Whispers continued.

"Before the suns set on this day... Strong of Body, Weak of Will.... What he perceives as reality will shatter, and he will know what it means to suffer. He will pray to die, but his death will never come. Power within him will grow, and he will become strong." Whispers paused for a moment as I listened. "He will be a slave to none, except his own devices." Whispers paused again, then added a clarifying remark. "He will be a warrior, one He-watches will be proud of."

"Warrior or not, he doesn't deserve the fate you speak of." I told Whispers, trying I best not to destroy the messenger because of the message. "I will stop it, whatever I have to."

"He-watches cannot defy Fate." Whispers laughed with that eerie sound of distant children. "He-watches is merely the instrument of Fate. It is He-watches that will shatter the reality of Strong of Body, Weak of Will."

"Why does Fate insist that I know this!" I yelled, my aura rattling the walls of the apartment for one brief moment.

"This one doesn't know. Fate says that He-watches cannot see his own future, yet he must know Strong of Body, Weak of Mind's future. He must not stop it, He-watches, he must not-"

Whispers, and the room were gone in an instant, silenced by a loud ringing echoing in my head. It was the alarm software install in my bionic eye, ringing its annoying tone intended to let no living creature find peace, although only I could hear it. I was back in my body, naked, resting on my back although I couldn't quite move. Sleep paralysis hadn't wore off yet, and I was forced to endure the ringing and the floating icon of a ringing clock being displayed inside my bionic eye. I struggled to move my arms, growling and shaking off the final effects of my comatose-like sleep. Finally, I could think clearly enough to silence the chime.

The chime was silent, the icon gone, I lay as I had slept, not wanting to wake up but I already had. I was beside myself with a mix of emotions that always lingered with me the moment I woke, exasperated greatly from the nights dreams. Depression. Anxiety. Rage. Many different emotions mixed together in my mind and filled the depths of the mania I inherited from my mother. This wasn't a day I wanted to wake to, because, for once, Fate had insisted I know details of my future, so I wouldn't try to defy her will. I still heard Whispers final plead echoing in my mind, insisting that I not stop whatever horror I was about to subject my slave to.

Why did Fate decide that my slave needed to face the horrible things that most of us already know so well. He was almost innocent in a lot of ways: naïve if you will. He was peaceful, he always had a positive, upbeat attitude despite his genetic ailment. His parents had sheltered him growing up as their "disabled" son, although it left him with an odd kink, he was still a kind man. The cruel world we all grew up in didn't phase him. Why did Fate want to ruin that?

The harsh reality of it was, that everyone needs their innocence beaten out of them at some point in their life. It was the cruelest aspect of life, some had to experience it so horribly, that even I felt sorry for them. To me, this was Karma, the inanimate aspect of the universal causality, kept in place to keep everything in a state of positive and negative balance. It was the only logical justification I could think of, as I lay on my bed, wishing to return to sleep. Karma had looked upon my slave and his undaunted, positive outlook on life and just couldn't stand it anymore. Something had to be done about it, that was certain, and what better tool than a bitter, crazy old man like me.

I understand that this will come as a terribly grim, but it's a foolish fantasy to believe that Karma is just. Karma is not some kind of motherly presence, holding our hands and nurturing kindness while simultaneously punishing wickedness. Yes, ones life must find balance when they board Sleipnir, lest they fall into hell, but this balance isn't necessarily decided by Karma. Karma is a sentient equation of cosmic probability. It decides the fate of all things, living or not, and keeps the universe within the realm of mathematical consistency. To attribute ideals like "compassion" or "fairness" to Karma are unjustified. After all, how can emotion be quantified within the boundary of mathematics?

Just like the Law of Nature, that everything must exists, only to cease to exist... so too is the simplicity behind Karma. For Karma, balance is order, regardless of who must suffer because of it. There is no justice or even reason behind Karma, it simply does what it must to keep the universe within mathematical probability. Perhaps the man that wishes the kill himself, for fear of piling debts and a deteriorating health, is the balance point Karma has chosen for the man that lives comfortable, happy, and in perfect health.

I hate Karma.