From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [DQ] Week 13 Alita - Like a Virgin...
Date: 9 Nov 92 19:38:45 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon

She finished the incantation, dripping the blood of the sacrifice onto her
moon rag, then tossing them into the brazier.

"... One calls out between two worlds,
 Fire, walk with me!"

The mists rose again, taking her across the threshold.

She didn't really like shadowland.  But it was better than home.  Anything was
better than being with those two - they were so insipidly boring.  They hated
her, they hated everything to do with her, and they were so incredibly stiff
necked, such prudes.  She would play at donning their hair-shirts, mother
and grandmother, right, sure, she knew they were lying about that too. She was
no offspring of that wrinkled sour woman, that perpetual virgin.  So until she
was old enough to leave home, she would pretend to have no fleshly desires.
But she would also be careful not to let them know what she did at night.

It was what passed for day in the other place.  She found her way to the crypt,
and there was the docile enslaved pair, man and woman.  She knew that the
vampire wanted to feed on them again.  She smiled, and met their gaze, and gave
the little push that she had learned to give, and the hunger rose in their eyes.
She caressed them, intimately, willed them to disrobe and to begin the act.
But she didn't permit them to complete it - that was for her alone.  She held
them, writhing with ecstasy, for a good three hours before the man's heart
finally gave out, before giving the full focus of her will to the woman.
Death by pleasure was a gift, in this place.  Far superior to what they would
have gotten from their vampire master.  She dressed herself, smiling.

She felt strong.  She stepped out into the light, and her eyes grew wide.
Her skin - it had gone blue!  She had the mark, just as her mother and her
grandmother had warned her.  She had the curse.   She could never return.
She set off wandering, blindly, staggering down the mountainside towards
the city that had to be there.

Wandering through the woods in this place was not safe and she was in dire
straits.  Then she saw him.  The mists swirled, and he staggered out, a
cloaked figure, elfin, the fire of life burning bright in him.  Somehow she
knew that he was not evil, that he hadn't done the ritual, and he had no
business being in this place.  He might help.

...

Miro had refused her again.  Somehow, though he had become her friend, he
still refused to be her lover.  This was frustrating.  She wanted him,
it had been weeks now since she had come here and only the very old and
the very young had been susceptible to her.  Teenage boys were fun but they
had no staying power, and the old women were bitter and knew the moon words
to prevent her from taking their strength.

She lay, frustrated, in her hard pallet.  The vampires and their ilk were
kept from this room, both by the contract with MuchFoul, and by the signs
that Miro had traced on the door and windows, using the daggers he kept in
secret sheaths behind his back.  Miro muttered quietly, deep in the throes
of his elvish meditation, talking to people who were probably long dead.

She closed her eyes.  Then, she saw it - the image of a man, lying beside
her, a real stud hunk of a man, every fantasy she had ever had and then some,
all in one.  He held his finger to her lips, and began nibbling on her neck.
The heat rose in her, and he climbed over, on top, and she, and he, and it
was  (it was hot skin and )

like (pushing and gripping and)

becoming one (one)

person (take her now)

Memory shot through her, chaotic and confused.  She had the book, she took
it from the pack without any effort, a tiny little cheat.  She had to wait
for that cute blonde guy to leave the room, but that was no big deal.

The cave.  She was in the cave again.  There, that bastard Vornick, she
dropped down, began the Draw, fire spinning in her loins.  It was..
he wasn't - HE WAS A EUNUCH!

He spun, and threw something, and she felt it snap around her neck, and
she tried to escape it, push it away with the fires, couldn't breathe,
couldn't (black) breathe (black black) get loose 


Her body fell away from her.  It dangled, grotesquely, tongue licking
out from the mouth, spine snapped.  She was still here somehow.

She saw them moving into the cave.  She slipped past the ones in front,
avoided the monster cat-man, past the don't-touch and the beast, and
really avoided that death-stabber.  There, the cute little fellow with
the shattered magic.  She stroked his neck, and pulled back as he started
gasping and panicking.  Ooops.  She followed them.

There was a close moment - the cat-man had spotted her, she hid in the 
rock.  She followed them, ignoring the spinning thing.  There, the gate,
she dove through it, followed the spark.  They were on the other side,
Vornick and the shadow-wing and the others.  Something was wrong.
She fled, the cave was no more obstruction to her than air.

It was Ak Ir'neg.  She had come back.  Time had looped.  She floated above,
saw the warm lust rising from several places, but there, the peculiar taste
of that one.  She moved through the wall.  There, a blue-skinned girl, not
unlike herself.  Hot.  Ready.  She/He.  He chose the form, a fantasy of male
beauty and virility, and lay next to her, seduced her dream, and entered her
body.  Revenge would come and

(Yes, lover.  I will help you take your revenge.  Who are you?)
I (Alita)(I am Alita) am alita.

She sat up, confused, a whirl of memories, shifting and phasing in her head.

Who?  Something was different.

Where am I?

The darkness - it gave me power for this.

There, spinning at the core of memories, a pretty bauble, she went to it.
She focussed her will.  She focussed the heat, her Gift of Darkness.

"Hi, you pretty thing.  I think you'd best let us go now.  Now.  NOW."

<< Dispatch.Fork(*bus), TimeCoords(init-2day), SpaceCoords(Generica) >>

She felt herself being spun loose again.  Somehow she was in two places,
and in one of them, she was back in Generica, and the other, she was in the
Shadowlands.  The memories multiplied, more confusion.

<< Abort(Error, Multiple Thread Overlap) >>

----
She opened her eyes, the PCD no longer visible.

The memory chain broke, and they were free.  And around them, the minions
of the Dark Master, weapons and spells at the ready.

At the front, the bastard Vornick, somehow thinned to a wraith of his
former self.  Around him, his usual crowd of zombies, slaves, and other
toys and sword-fodder.

To the left, that wimp Krastin, finally got his wish, he's a skeletal
shape inside his black armor.  He had a small brigade of animated bonepiles
around him, human and otherwise.

To the right, the Dark Master, and a looming shadow shape behind him.

And behind, a woman, she somehow knew the woman was Noira.  A priestess of
the goddess of agony.  Shaven-headed, she wore a halo of long silver spikes,
needles that threaded through her own scalp, the corona offset by the thin
trickles of blood that ran down her skin, exciting the Dark Master.

Beside her, two men, in the animated frames of stone and wood that kept
breaking their bones, dislocating their joints, hooks tearing at their
flesh.  Their agony fed her spells.  The amulets around their necks caused
their wounds to heal constantly, so that they could suffer further.  They
were saints of agony, forever in her service.  She stroked the wooden frame
of the nearer, impaling her hand on a thorn.

She smiled, showing teeth filed to points, and the Dark Master waved a
negligent wave.  "Take them."