To Dream of Darkness II - Ch 25
#5 of To Dream of Darkness, Part II
To Dream of Darkness
A story by DoggyStyle57
Chapter 25, Written January 2012
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Chapter 25 - Piercing the wall of secrecy
After breakfast the next day, Sarina prepared to explore Victoria City. She watched the street from the balcony of their home, observing several of the native Chinese who worked in the area, and in particular the males, while lightly probing their surface thoughts. An hour or so later, she went inside, to her 'husband', Lord Randall.
"I shall be out for most of the day, my dear," she told him. "I will be exploring Victoria City, and preparing for a short journey to this Chinese city of 'Canton', where the actual trading takes place. There is much to learn in this area, if I am to be of assistance to you in your trading negotiations, my husband."
"Well, if you insist, I would be glad to escort you around the city, my beloved child," Lord Randall said, reaching for his coat and hat. "I would like to see more of it myself! But I'm afraid that visiting Canton would be out of the question, for you. They allow very few foreign merchants to go there, and even I have to stop at the English Factory, outside the walls and on the river's edge, to do my business. Virtually no one goes within the city walls but their own Chinese people, and certainly no women. I am afraid they would never allow a foreign woman to even ride on the ship to the Factories outside Canton. They would insist you remain here, or in Macau."
"I will not need an escort, and honestly, you would be better off not being with me today, darling," Sarina replied. "They won't see me as a foreigner, or a woman. Have you forgotten so soon, how easily I can change my appearance, after mating with a fourteen year old version of me all night last night, and again this morning?" Her eyes glowed, and she shifted form, to become a male mink of Chinese ethnicity, with his hair in a tight braided queue, and wearing the clothing typical of the local Chinese people.
Lord Randall took a step back, saying, "My Word! I would not have imagined you could change so much! I have seen you become younger and smaller, and make yourself more closely resemble your mother. But you can even change your gender and species? Remarkable! Although if I may say, it is also a little unnerving to see you as someone so very different. Very well. But please, do not stay away for long. I shall worry for your safety."
"Worry not for me, beloved, but for any who might oppose me. If for some reason I will be out past nightfall, I shall send word to you. But you should expect me to return in time for the evening meal," Sarina said, as she turned and walked out of the bungalow.
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She went first to the dock areas, where she posed as a sailor from one of the Chinese ships, waiting for permission to load their cargo. She sat and drank tea, while gleaning information from the real Chinese sailor's surface thoughts. It did not take long for her to find what she sought. A young Chinese male, also a mink like her current appearance, was drinking tea and daydreaming about returning to Canton very soon, and to the arms of his wife. His name was Hui Ding, and it seemed he had very few friends, being a new member of the crew, and from a rural village before he signed on with the captain of the trading ship that he served on now. His body was strong, but his mind was weak. He would do nicely.
When Hui Ding got up to leave, Sarina followed him, cast an invisibility spell on herself, and then watched from the shadows of nearby buildings as he worked with others to offload crates of tea from one of the ships, and then to load cloth-wrapped bales that were filled with opium. As Hui Ding and his crewmates worked, she read their surface thoughts, until she knew each of them by name, and the names of the other crewmembers and their captain, and a few other details of daily life on the ship that came to mind for them. She determined that the ship would not leave port until the next morning, and went back to her bungalow, to enjoy dinner with Lord Randall.
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"I have found a ship that can take me to Canton," she told Lord Randall at dinner, back in her normal vixen form again. "It leaves in the morning, but I must go now if I am to go with them. I plan to be gone no longer than two weeks. If anyone asks, tell them that I have gone to Macau to visit a cousin who lives there, and tell her of our marriage."
"Must you do this?" Lord Randall asked. "We can take our time, and learn their ways here. My negotiations have been going quite well already. And... I do not want to be without you, my love."
"We do what we must, my dear," Sarina replied. "I will mate with you once more before we go, but I will do this. I promise not to get into too much trouble, darling. I will return to you before you know it."
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Two hours later, Lord Randall lay exhausted in their bed, as Sarina resumed her generic male Chinese appearance, and left to seek Hiu Ding in the harbor area. She found her victim in a tea house, drinking wine. Her eyes glowed as she implanted a suggestion in his mind, and then left the tea house. Hui Ding stood, paid his bill, and went outside, thinking he needed to relieve his bladder.
Hui Ding turned the corner into a narrow alley, and found himself face to face with what could have been his twin brother! But before he could react, the false Hui Ding's eyes glowed a brilliant green, and he fell into a waking dream. Compelled by Sarina's magic, he walked down the alley and into a back room of the tea house. There, in his dream, he thought he had returned home, to his wife, and was sharing her bed. Eyes blind to what was actually around him, he mated with a semblance of his wife, while Sarina invaded his mind through the sexual contact, and stole every memory that the poor fellow had.
Later that night, it appeared that two drunken Chinese sailors wandered down the docks, in the direction of the "flower boats" of the outcast boat people. The real Hui Ding went out onto the boats, hired three Tanka prostitutes, and ordered more wine. After watching from a distance and allowing the sailor to debauch himself for an hour, Sarina cast a sleep spell on them all, so that they would not awaken until mid morning, and would all appear to be passed out drunk until then. When Hui Ding did awaken, he could not recall his own name, or where he was from, or anything that had happened to him in the last day. He also had been infected with Gonorrhea, by one of the 'salt water girls' he slept with.
While the real Hui Ding slept with the outcast whores, Hui Ding appeared to return to the Chinese merchant ship, slightly drunk. Sarina had taken his place.
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The next day, Hui Ding worked diligently with his shipmates, getting the ship out of port and steaming up the river to Canton. No one noticed anything different about him, other than perhaps that he worked harder than usual. But they attributed that to his desire to get home to his wife.
After offloading cargo at the English Factory in Canton, Hui Ding went home, to the small house that he had outside the walls of Canton, with many other sailors and their families. He greeted his wife warmly, and that night they mated, and again Sarina used the sexual contact to invade the mind of Hui Ding's wife, and stealing all her memories.
In the morning, Hui Ding left his home, leaving behind a wife who could not recall her husband returning last night, and who was wondering when her husband would return, and if his ship was delayed.
In the next two hours, Sarina changed her appearance five times, as she took the identities and surface memories of higher ranking Chinese males. Each of her next four victims thought he was encountering his lover or wife, and mating with them, though afterward they had no memory of the delay in their activities. Those four remained unharmed, and did not even know their minds had been tampered with, or that a second copy of their body was briefly in the city. By the time Sarina reached the gates of the walled city of Canton, she was in the uniform of an unmarried Chinese military officer of moderate rank. That last victim she had mentally assaulted and forcibly taken his memories, leaving him dead in an alley, as she stripped him, took everything he had, and then incinerated his body completely with her magic. At the city gates, she presented the pass that the military officer had carried, and entered the walled city of Canton.
Using the memories of the people who she had victimized, she sought the part of the city where she might find a scholar.
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Once she found a promising lead on a scholar, Sarina changed her appearance again, becoming a male mink again, and wearing clothing similar to what the scholar inside the building was wearing. She knocked on the door, and asked to see the scholar.
The young Ferret boy that answered the door asked, "Who may I say is calling?"
"I am Feng Wu. I have heard of your Master, and wish to exchange ideas with him," Sarina said.
The boy led 'Feng Wu' inside, and then went back to the door. Sarina immediately made the boy forget he had seen anyone at the door today.
The elderly Chinese scholar was a wolf. He looked fearfully at his guest and said, "I have little for you to take, huli jing! Yes, I can see what you are, fox spirit, and sense your power! I am old, and my heart is likely to be tough and inedible, even for you. You do not want to prey upon me. Begone."
"I will not harm you, elder. I have come to you seeking knowledge, and not your life, or your flesh. I suppose you could say that I am a 'fox spirit', but I am not from these lands. What you know of the 'huli jing' may not apply to me. That is what you call a fox spirit in these lands? A 'huli jing'?" Sarina asked. "Tell me of these creatures, and why you fear I would eat your heart."
"That is how the huli jing gain power. Every 100 years, they must feast upon the hearts of ten people, so they can grow another tail. They live for as much as 1000 years, and after they gain their ninth tail, they can become a Celestial Fox, and become one with divinity. While they live, they can walk among us in the guise of a beautiful young woman, or in the form of other people, and if they mate with a normal person, they can drain the very life from them. They are said to prey upon scholars. So that is why I fear you, huli jing!" he replied.
"I told you, I am not at all interested in eating you, old one. Or in mating with you, either," Sarina insisted. "Tell me more of the huli jing. Humor me, and you will live."
"I do not wish to anger you, fox spirit. I know how vengeful your kind can be. Very well. Some huli jing can breathe fire, or make fire appear at will. They can possess the body of a person, and make them do evil things, or can drive them mad. It is true though that not all huli jing are evil. Sometimes it is said a huli jing will fall in love with a mortal, and be a good and faithful wife to him, unless her true nature becomes known. It is said that the children of a huli jing and a mortal will have very powerful magical powers, though they might not be huli jing themselves," the scholar said. "Please, I know very little more of your kind. Do not kill me."
"It was sufficient. How is it that you could see what I am, elder?" Sarina asked.
The scholar pointed at a mirror with an elegant frame, which was positioned so he could glance at it and see whoever was in the doorway. "That mirror is enchanted, to show the true form of spirits and demons, and other false appearances made by magic. Never has it shown me an unnatural creature as powerful as you are. I doubted that it worked at all, until I saw your fox form reflected in it."
Sarina looked in the mirror, and saw that it did reflect her vixen form as Sarina Randall, which she had worn so much over the last six years that she considered it more her 'true appearance' than the human form she was born with. "Are such devices common here?" she asked.
"They are not, no. That was a gift from a mage who sometimes visits me," the scholar replied.
Sarina placed a large gold coin on the table in front of the scholar, and said, "Thank you, elder. Your life is spared. I would like to meet that mage you mentioned. I will not harm him, if he will not try to harm me. I am a mage myself, and I want to talk to one of my peers from this country. That is all I ask of you now, though I may wish to talk to you again."
"And when you are gone, will that gold turn into sticks and leaves, or a dirty stone? The one I speak of may be willing to talk to you. I cannot say what he will do when you meet. Do not blame me if meeting him does not go well for you," the scholar said.
"The gold is real, as is my thanks for your information. You have dealt honestly with me, and I will deal honestly with you. Send your boy to see if I may meet with this mage," Sarina said. "I will wait here with you, for his answer."