The Soulmate Conspiracy - Chapter 3 of 4
Chapter 3 - The Greening
Davin gestured toward The Truth causing the sign board to spontaneously burst into flames. It was a petty act, but no less enjoyable for that. The latest Truth hadn't been entirely bad either.
The new Prelate of Salisarum had apparently met an undignified end, having fallen through the garderobe and then after a desperate few moments of clinging to the shit- greased wall, twenty feet further to the midden below. Apparently someone had removed the wooden seat that sat above the hole and a new servant had then replaced the lavender filled cushion not realising that there should be something solid under it. Tragic.
Davin stroked Quiliam's head with one finger, the tiny dragonet acknowledged the attention by nudging upward with his tiny head. As the 'accident' hadn't been a part of his plan, it could only mean that it had been Chiraevon. It eased the pain in his aching soul to realise that Chir was as murderously determined to be reunited as he was. Although Chiraevon couldn't be told of his plan, he took the Prelate's 'accident' as a signal that his beloved Prince would approve if he did know; that was important, because the next step was the irrevocable one.
Below in the valley sat the great library of the Empire of All, the place where the really dangerous knowledge was imprisoned, or had been until the night before. It was said that there were things that it was unsafe for normal men to know and yet should never be forgotten. With a logic that only a Protector could follow, The Library was also a maximum security prison, the people tasked with knowing the unknowable couldn't be let out, and therefore it made sense to use people that you were going to lock up anyway. Left to himself Davin would have simply blown the bloody doors off, but through Quiliam, The Green had made it known that it liked this valley and wished to grow there.
A week ago Quiliam had flown down dropping a sprinkling of seeds at strategic points around the library's fortress-like walls, not only inside but over a wide area surrounding it. The seeds in the surrounding woodland germinated a few days later sending vines into the local trees and transforming them, some growing rapidly taller than was natural, one weeping willow in particular beginning to dwarf the pine trees around it. Not to be left out the fir trees put forth flowers and large delicious looking fruits that no fir tree had any business hosting. Naturally the local wildlife had feasted and were themselves changed into far more dangerous forms.
There was no particular trend in how the animals evolved and it seemed that even creatures that had started out as the same species evolved to fit different functions within The Green. Davin had watched intently as a small herd of deer ate of the fruit and were changed by it. Two of the deer became human-like, retaining only their original heads and staggering about unsteadily on human legs as they became used to two legs. Another of the herd became like a smaller version of a centaur, developing a boy-ish torso and head, but retaining his antler buds dimpling his forehead.
Some changes were less drastic than others, at first he'd thought that the red squirrels that made the fir trees their home had been immune... until he had spotted some of them sharpening branches and holding them like miniature spears. Davin was not surprised to see that several fairs of Dragonets had also hatched and busily flitted from tree to tree looking for unchanged creatures to breed with. The last day had been the most tense; although the Library didn't yet know it, it was surrounded. Impatiently he'd wondered if The Green intended to attack or if he'd not understood its intention.
Quiliam nudged him with his head, bringing him back to the present, signalling that The Green was moving. With what seemed scarily like military precision the seedlings around the walls and within the exercise yards germinated punching through the ground just as the 'scholars' were let out into the yard for their exercise hour. Vines as thick as a man's torso covered sections of the wall near the gate and then sent runners outward pulverising the stones to dust one by one.
The assimilation began with the vines doing something that had a profound and instantaneous effect on the female prisoners, drawing them to itself, and a few instants later sending back muscular green-tinted dryad versions who had no thought but to catch and copulate with the nearest male prisoners. Davin assumed that the vast majority of the prisoners were willing to take advantage of the sudden bounty, not realising that the Dryad's juicy embrace was doing magical things to their cocks, making them larger, furrier and judging from their cries of lust, exceptionally sensitive to pleasure.
As soon as a Dryad felt the tickle of furred cock within, she would discard the man and begin hunting the next. The surprised victims were left to cope with a permanent erection, a need for relief and the gradual spread of fur outward from the crotch and down the legs. Some of the victims exclaimed in alarm, whilst others caressed their members lustily, already lost. One after another the victims ejaculated, releasing transformative energies that seemed to detonate in perfect spheres of sunlight-bright energy. Where the human had been, now a naked satyr stood, where others were within the area of effect, they also began to change.
A Knight Protector decapitated a Dryad and begun hacking at the base of one of the vines, believing it to be no faster than any normal plant. The vine whipped around like a snake, the tip flowering open like a starfish and sending a thousand silk thin strands shooting through the eye slits of the knight's helmet. The Knight had convulsed once and dropped his broadsword. At a more leisurely pace the vine's flower closed around the knight's head leaving him dangling from it like the bud of a crocus flower.
Davin's attention drifted elsewhere and when he looked again, the knight, still dangling, had burst out of his clothes, his body long and blue, like the creature he'd seen on the world with the floating mountains. A moment later the vine released revealing the new creature's head, its eyes larger than human, the nose flatter and with a smaller version of the vine growing from its head like a ponytail. Lacking a name for it, Davin decided that it must be some form of Elf.
The blue elf strode through the panicking inmates, a colossus in strength and size. The ex-knight grabbed a man's head in one long fingered hand, lifting him high so that he was within reach of his elfish head-tail. The new limb lashed out attaching itself to the back of the prisoner's neck. As Davin had half expected, the captive arched his back ecstasy, a blueness expanding outward from the place where the two were joined. Once the blue skin colour covered the victim entirely, he seemed to go through an instantaneous growth spurt becoming the same size as the first elf, joined to the first by own head-tail.
The Green didn't have it all its own way however, the Library's defenders were trained Knights and the transformed tended to be disoriented at first. The battle almost became a bloody stalemate. Davin began forming a spell that would slow the defenders, but before he could release it a section of wall finally gave way allowing the creatures of The Green outside to stampede through. As was the way of The Green the remaining defenders were soon pinned down and on their way to becoming willing components of its ecology.
Davin waited an hour before cautiously entering the shattered library. There was a risk that an eager new creature might try to assimilate him but he was impatient to be moving on. He needn't have worried; the orgy-like victory celebrations had abandoned the ruins and headed toward the glades that would be their home.
It was entirely unsurprising to find that the Protectorate had considered a vast quantity of information to be unsuitable reading for the common folk. Equally vast was the store of objects, each one placed in an identical wooden crate and placed on equally identical rows of shelving, the number branded on the end the only way to determine which contained what.
Fortunately Uncle Solly had once mentioned this practice; it was a security measure so old that it was more to do with tradition than anything they'd thought through. Solly had also found out that it had become tradition to store all the really important artefacts as near to the front door as possible; after all, why wander down miles of dusty corridors checking crates on the list were still there, when you could put them all on the one shelf and use the searching time for a quick drink or a game of cards.
It took only a half an hour to find the right one and carefully extract the two gold bracelets.
* * *
Davin sat alone next to a small campfire looking at the pair of bracelets. Quiliam was gone now, flown south to merge with the rest of the fair; his mission to pass a spellpaper to Chiraevon. Reviewing the words he'd spoken into the enchantment, he realised he'd sounded shallow and arrogant, it would have been better to have redone it, but he'd only had the one spellpaper and therefore only one shot at saying it. Fortunately he'd at least remembered to tell Chir that he had a way that would free him from his palatial prison.
It was said that out on the plains far beyond Salisarum there was a place called The Stand, where any spellcaster of centaur blood could use the primordial rock to wield powers that could shake worlds. The Sunlit family had that little bit of centaur blood going way back, the snag that had prevented them from exploiting the knowledge centuries ago was that the power of The Stand was proportionate to how much Centaur blood you had, and after all that time no one had much centaur blood in them at all. There was also a story passed down in the family about the Cursed Gold of Centaurs, only a centaur could touch it and if you weren't centaur enough, the gold would make sure that you were. This was where Davin was one up on his ancestors; he had no problem at all with becoming a centaur if it meant he and Chiraevon could be together again.
Decisively he took the bracelets and pushed them both over his left wrist. Disappointingly nothing happened; it seemed that Centaur magic was slower than The Green's. On the other hand it was probably just as well that it wasn't so fast, a mythical beast riding the high roads wouldn't go un-noticed.
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