Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 13:07:51 -0500 From: Jerry Subject: Arin 8 The following story contains scenes of boys having sex with other boys and/or men, depending on what I decided on by the time I got around to writing it. ;) It is science fiction and fantasy, and as such contains things which simply don't happen in real life. If your imagination is not good, you won't enjoy it very much. As for the sex thing, if this stuff is against your personal moral codes, don't read it. If there's anything you don't understand, ask your parents or friends or whoever you think will. If you like the story, feel free to write me a letter at jerryli@systec.com. You're allowed to do anything you like with my story with the following exceptions: 1. You may not place it on a system which charges people to read it unless you request permission from me first. I have no problem giving you permission, but there will be a slight one-time fee. ;) 2. You may not post alterations to the story, or write sequels to it, without my permission. Happy reading! ===================================================================== Chapter 36 "No, we haven't seen him here, honey. And you completely missed dinner last night." I sighed and side hugged my mother; a middle-aged, skinny woman with dark hair. Sometimes I wonder how I ever wound up with red hair, considering that she's a brunette and my late father was blonde, like Cedra. Like poor, missing, lost and alone Cedra. "Don't worry, Arin", Tarus implored. "Cedra's a big boy, I'm sure he's fine." "I know he is, I just... I wish he was here. I need to talk to him." I began absentmindedly packing my things, but all I could focus on was Cedra. Where was he? What happened? I had just given him the most I had to give. What if... what if the elves had come back? I didn't know what to think. I was a wallflower as I accompanied the others to visit the town sage. They were looking for clues to the location of the second amulet fragment. I was asked to help. It was hours of grueling searching through old and dusty books. Every now and then I was able to get lost in one passage or another about the amulet, taking my mind off of Cedra. But for the most part I just stared veinly at pages, pretending to read as I continued to worry. I looked out the window of the library and stared at two boys around my age playing with a small dog. They knew nothing of Orcs, Vampires or gold; they had probably never left this village at all. They were still children, while I had chosen to sacrifice my care-free spirit for the joys of glory, adventure and love. It had been a wonderful choice for me, with definite benefits. It was tough to remember that, though, when all I could think of was the downside in front of me. Glory risked catastrophe; adventure had long periods of monotony in it's threads; love was wonderful, but it led to loss. "Aha!", Dejana cried, ripping a page out of one of the books. "I've found the answer." I took notice that it was one of the books I had skimmed over a couple of hours ago. A stream of guilt mixed in with the lakes of loneliness and depression inside of me. "According to this", Dejana said, "the second fragment of the Amulet was taken as part of the horde of a Red Dragon when it ransacked Vhif's kingdom. There's an illustration showing the dragon carrying it off." She held up the paper to reveal a large, scaly creature carry off an upturned building in it's talons. The building was filled to the rim with the treasures of the burning city, pictured faintly below. The amulet fragment was at the top of the treasure trove. "We have to take it away from THAT?!?!?", Tarus whined. "That thing will barbecue us before we get close to it." Dejana nodded. "A large force would be pulverized by the dragon, but this was eons ago. The dragon has surely gotten old and infirmed by now. A single person, say.... a *skilled thief*" - she added this staring directly at me and smiling - "should be able to sneak in and take it without too much of a fuss." I blinked. "Uhhh ummm I-I-uhhh...", I stammered, not really sure which way would be the most proper for telling her she was COMPLETELY OUT OF HER CRAZY LOUSED-UP MIND to think I was going to try to sneak past a Red Dra-- "See?", she stated, as if I had just told her it was a cakewalk. "No problem whatsoever. Now, the route is detailed here, we should be able to get there in a little over a week if we leave tonight. We should travel at night and sleep by day anyway, seeing as how we seem to have pissed off an entire colony of dark elves in this area." The group nodded it's agreement. "What about Cedra?", I demanded. Chapter 37 The group was packed and ready to leave, and there was still no sign of Cedra anywhere. "Please be sure and tell him the route, will you mother?" My mother smiled down at me with a warmth that I had forgotten over my months of adventuring. I was sad to leave it so soon, especially since I hadn't expected to. I was supposed to be staying here with Cedra and building a new life. But if he wasn't in the village, then maybe he'd somehow gone ahead. "You really like him, don't you?", my mother asked. ~Heh, if she only knew the HALF of it~, I thought. "Just tell him where we've gone, please?", was all I could manage to say. Her smile broadened and she stroked my cheek. "Alright, Arin, I'll see to it." With that we were on our way. That first night's travel was a mass of confusion for me at first. I wanted to draw my sword and swing at whatever approached me, for fear that it was a dark elf. But I was afraid I'd accidently cut down Cedra on his way to find us, so I kept it sheathed. The others got tired a few hours before daylight, and I insisted on taking the watch. Somewhere around four in the morning I felt the need to urinate. I moved slightly away from the camp and opened my trousers, exposing my flaccid penis to the cool night air. I was in mid-piss when a hand came from nowhere, reached around, and began moving my immediately stiffening penis back and forth in an arc, playing with the stream. I turned back, startled. "Remember this?", Cedra asked me, with a playful smile. I threw my arms around him so quickly that the last of my pee wound up splatting across his tunic, my pants fell all the way down and my erection poked his belly button. "CEDRA!", I exclaimed, in an excited voice that I had to fight to contain - I didn't want to wake the others. "Hey", he said, stroking my hair, "calm down there. Easy." I sniffled in the cold air and pulled back to look at him. Now that I knew he was completely okay, I could move on to my next emotion - fury. I slapped him on the shoulder. "Where did you GO, Cedra? I've been so worried about you." I was still half-crying. Cedra shrugged. "I had some errands to run. No biggie." SLAP! The words hit me like a brick across my face. No, not the words... the *tone*. He was brushing me off. His eyes were cold and stony, a flicker of grey in amidst the normal blue. "But you didn't say anything. You just left." He chuckled quietly. "Yeah, like I *really* wanted to stay after that." SLAP! A second slash across my heart, deeper than the first. How could he say this to me? Was it me? Had I done something wrong? Did it... have to do with our last night together? I looked at him meekly. "Was it... was I not good?", I asked. His laughter grew louder, as if he'd just heard the world's funniest joke. SLAP! In a tone of absolute sarcasm, he said "Oh yeah, you were GREAT, I thought you were an expert." SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! "How can you say this to me?", I demanded. I was done being hurt. I was MAD. "Oh, c'mon", he asked, "why do we have to make such a big deal?" He began casually stomping bugs, when I noticed the second difference - his holy symbol was missing. It wasn't around his neck. "Well", he said, "I have to go. I'll be back soon, Arin. Don't worry." He started walking off into the forest. "Cedra!", I cried. He turned to face me, and the look was so cold that it knocked all the fight out of me. I felt horrible. I felt completely disconnected from him. "I love you", I said, hoping somehow to be right with him again. "I love you too" he said, flashing me a sheepish smile and turning away. SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! The deepest slap of all. Because although the words were right, they were said with no feeling at all. They were empty, vacant, a lie. He didn't even care that I existed. Chapter 38 "It's a glamour", Tarus said. "Cedra must have been kidnapped, and this was a dark elf taking his place." "No", I said, shaking my head. "It was Cedra." I had woken Tarus up and led him on a walk around the camp perimeter. It was still almost an hour before the first sun would rise on the horizon, casting light on the most dreadful evening of my entire life. But I had to talk to *someone* about what I had just experienced, and I felt closer to Tarus than to Rath or Dejana. "But you said yourself", he reminded me, as we rounded another large elm tree, "that the holy symbol was missing. Whatever it was that duplicated him couldn't wear it, because it was the symbol of a good deity. Cedra would have had it on him." "I know, it doesn't make sense, but everything in my instinct tells me that it was Cedra. He... he knew things... private things. Things only Cedra would know." "What kinds of things?", Tarus asked. "Well..." Suddenly, a cry from the camp! We drew our weapons and ran into the camp clearing. There was Dejana, frozen in place with her crossbow half-raised into the air. Her long hair was frozen as still as a painting, spread out in midair. And there, in front of her, stood Cedra. He was holding a dagger to her neck, a glint of pure evil in his eye, and speaking to the horrified Rath. "...message to deliver to Arin." I stood before him, weapon at the ready. "Why don't you tell me yourself", I demanded. He smiled coyly at me, dagger still to Dejana's neck. "It's not the type of message that you TELL, really. It sort of involves finding the BODIES of all of your friends." I was horrified, but I did my best to hide it. "Leave her alone, and deal with me." Cedra ran his free hand along her frame, from her neck down past her breats and to her stomach. "But she's so cute, and helpless...", he said. Taking advantage of the distraction, Rath threw a dagger with deadly accuracy, slicing Cedra's shoulder open. "AHHHHH!!", he screamed, and suddenly Dejana was mobile again - whatever spell that Cedra was using to hold her had been disrupted by his lack of concentration. Outmatched, he ran from the remainder of the group towards me. He stopped dangerously close to me. In a menacing voice, he said "Things are about to get VERY interesting." With that, he kissed me full on the lips, pushed me back, and walked away. He hadn't hurt me. He could have run me through with his dagger, but he didn't. He wasn't interested in killing me, but hurting me - hurting me in a way that made me wish I was dead. He had succeeded. His kiss cut me deeper than any weapon could have. The silence among the group that day was unparalleled. No one could really believe it. Dejana and Tarus would occasionally give me a sideways hug, to try to cheer me up. They meant well, but every time they did it the emptiness inside me grew. The landscape we were travelling through was some of the most beautiful on the entire continent. A beautiful four-winged bird flew over my head and landed on a nearby oak branch. A beautiful sunflower the size of a toddler sprouted out in seconds before my eyes. The wind whistled over a nearby lake with a pleasant sea breeze. I hated all of it. I hated the world and everything in it. I looked forward to my upcoming encounter with the Red Dragon, so that I could ask it kindly to eat me. There was no sense to anything any more. No reason to live. That night, I demanded the first watch. The others tried to talk me out of it, but I was adamant about it. As soon as they went to sleep, I cried. I cried for a long, long time. It felt good, but it was an endless well - I could cry for hours and it still wouldn't take away the pain. The attack came suddenly - two drow elf warriors. Both experienced masters of the night, adults with at least a foot on me each. Their long swords could slice through the wheel of a wagon and make a cut without so much as splintering the wood. They didn't stand a chance. My long sword had already been drawn, as I was etching feelings of blackness and terror into the ground beneath me. When the first of them approached, I swung around and sliced straight through his stomach, ripping his internal organs straight out of his body. I hadn't known it was someone who intended on killing me, and it didn't matter - at that moment I'd have swiped at anyone. The other elf took one look at his fallen companion and decided that he was going to run. I could have let him go - it would have been the right thing to do. But I was beyond what was right and wrong. All I felt was the desire for vengence, and I was ready to take it out on anyone or anything around me. What I did to that second elf, I won't tell you. I will save that as my own personal nightmare, and live with the guilt of it for the rest of my days. Suffice it to say, he was in no condition to hurt anyone after I was finished. The only thing I will tell you is that, just before he died, he was able to get in one critical blow on me - he said, "Cedra says hello." By the time I had come back to camp, Tarus had already mercifully sliced the first elf's throat open, ending the horrible pain that I had caused him. The others had identical looks of concern, horror, and sympathy on their faces. "Are you alright?", Dejana asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. I ripped some fabric off of the dark elf's tunic and used it to wipe the fresh blood off of my Long Sword. I moved over to my backpack and pulled out a waterskin to clean it with. "I'm fine", I said curtly. The others dropped it. Chapter 39 We arrived in a large town two days later. The others were getting new weapons and supplies for the next leg of the journey. I was already well stocked on provisions, so I spent most of the time mulking around. "Ready to leave?", I asked, with very little enthusiasm. Rath shook his head. "We heard there was an expert on the Amulet in town. We're going to see him." I nodded somberly, and kept my head low, but curiousity began to overwhelm my depression and, as we walked towards the expert's shop, my interest distracted me from the hurt I was feeling. We walked into, of all places, a church. It was non-denominational - worshippers of any good-aligned deity could pray there. Cedra would have been ab-- but no, Cedra wasn't here. It was in that state of self-pity and distraughtness that I first met Tyrin. He was speaking with an acolyte near one of the altars, who nodded and turned away from him. Then he turned our way, and his eyes met mine. He was a young man, in his mid-twenties, with dark hair and dark brown eyes. He wore a large chest plate with the holy symbol of Apollo on it's crest... ~I wonder if his God fails him the way Aphrodite failed me and Cedra~, I thought spitefully. Some goddess of love SHE turned out to be. The man was looking at me strangely, but I was too lost in thought to notice it. He smiled widely, coming over to our group. "Welcome, my friends, welcome." The second welcome was directed to me, individually. "Is there something I can help you with?" Tarus nodded. "We're looking for a Tyrin Maskerwul." Tyrin extended a hand to Tarus. "You have found him", he declared, shaking hands with everyone. When he shook my hand, he lingered there for a second longer, moving his thumb gently across the back of it. Again, I was too distracted to notice it clearly. Dejana leaned in a bit closer. "Is there somewhere more private we could go to talk? We'd like to discuss something with you." Tyrin nodded, smiling down at me again, when I allowed the truth to slowly sift into my brain - the man was interested in me. I gave him a brief look of appraisal. He was handsome enough, and he seemed nice. That may have given him a chance in hell two months earlier. Now, of course, there was none. He led us into a small antechamber which was decorated meticulously with the order and care that only a devoted priest could provide. It was seemingly a shrine to Apollo, merely being used as an office. Tyrin sat at a small wooden desk. "So", he wondered, "what brings you here?" "The Amulet of Wonders. Heard you were something of an expert on it." "You heard correctly, Mr...?" "Tarus." One by one, we introduced ourselves. I went last, stating my name matter-of-factly. "Well", Tyrin said, removing a book from the bookshelf behind him, "This notebook is a record of my research." The book was large and thick, more of a full fledged tome than a casual notebook. "As you can see", he said, smiling at the look of approval on my face, "the research is quite detailed. What is it you wish to know?" There was a moment of silence among the group, an unspoken question - how much do we tell him? I gauged the expressions of each of them, and decided that the cleric was of little threat to us. "Well", I began, "we have one of the three fragments..." That got Tyrin's attention. That most DEFINITELY got his attention. He looked at me not only in lust and admiration, but in awe as well. Then he cast a look over the rest of the group. "You people have recovered part of the Amulet of Wonders?" "Yes", Dejana nodded. "The Amulet is right here." She reached into her backpack and pulled on the Amulet chain. But instead of pulling out the amulet fragment, what she pulled out was a complete amulet. My first thought was that the Amulet had somehow managed to reconstruct itself, making our lives incredibly easier. It was on closer inspection that I realized we weren't looking at the Amulet of Wonders. We were looking at a holy symbol of Aphrodite - Cedra's Amulet. My eyes started to tear again. Dejana had a look of total confusion on her face. Tarus let out some choice words and slammed his fist into a nearby wall. It was Rath who exclaimed it for us - "That lousy traitorous... he pulled a switch on us!" Tyrin looked back and forth among all of us. "Perhaps you'd better explain." Chapter 40 We told him our tale, conveniently leaving out the fact that Cedra and I were recruited against our will. We told him of the Keep in which the fragment was kept. We told him of the box on the pedestal, and the men chanting around it. And we told him how Cedra had turned against us, switching his amulet for the artifact and allying himself to the dark elves. "I don't understand it", I said, the pain in my voice apparent for everyone now. "He's completely different from the boy that I knew." Tyrin nods. "You cared about him a lot, didn't you." It wasn't a question. I just nodded and sighed, tears slowly dripping down my cheek. Tyrin looked at me sadly. "Well, I'm afraid I can offer an explination. It's not something you're going to want to hear." I looked at him curiously. "You know what happened to him?", Tarus asked. Tyrin nodded solemnly. "I believe so. I believe that Cedra has been possessed by the demon Rynth." We all looked at him strangely. He opened his notebook and turned to a full color drawing of a dark figure with fangs and wings, towering over an ordinary, grovelling human. "This is Rynth in his original form. When he battled with the knight of Vhif, this corporeal body was destroyed, and the release of energy shattered the amulet into three pieces. The knight went quite insane, I'm afraid." He shook his head, as if to emphasize his sadness at the knight's plight. "From that day forth", he continued, "Rynth has been leaping from body to body. He started with a young serving girl who was with the knight at the time of the battle. When she died, he moved onto his next host, then the next, and so on and so on. Do these eyes look familiar to you, Arin?" I looked at the drawing. Sure enough, the eyes had a flicker of grey in them, same as Cedra had had in my dream. And.... and wasn't that flicker of grey in his eyes when he talked to me in the woods? Yes, there was. He looked at me sadly. "I'm afraid the gentleman who had clawed Cedra during your attempt to get the amulet fragment was Rynth's last host." I shook my head in disbelief. "No, he was a vampire. I saw him crumble." Tyrin shrugged. "Vampire, human, elf, doesn't matter. Rynth can possess anything. He transferred himself into Cedra at that moment, made Cedra his host." Rath jumped in. "Cedra was with us for many days after that incident, and he seemed completely normal. Why all of a sudden?" "From what you told me", Tyrin surmized, "the transferrence ritual wasn't completely correctly. Arin had killed the last host before his actual blood could be mixed with Cedra's. Rynth remained dormant inside Cedra's body." "Well then what brought Rynth to the surface?", Dejana demanded. I started sobbing immediately. Because I knew. Even before Tyrin answered, I knew. It was *me*. What had happened to Cedra had been my fault. Tyrin said, "When a demon is trapped like that, it's incapable of getting past the impure and discontent feelings that are natural in a person. There must have been a moment of pure love and contentment - a moment where the demon inside Cedra could find an opening into his soul." I got up and ran from the room. As I was bolting, I heard Tarus saying "But I don't understand, what could have caused Cedra to have a moment..." I assume at that point he registered my running out of the room, and understood the significance. "Oh", he said. And the rest of the room was silent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello everyone. I apologize for vanishing off the face of the planet for a little while there. q=) Two reasons for having done so: 1.) I found this chapter difficult to write. Not in the sense of what I wanted to see happen, but how to handle it. What you see up there is like, draft #2049, because I was never satisfied with how it came out. 2.) I took on another writing project in a different area. For any of you interested in TaleSpin, there is a group on the internet calling themselves "High Flight" which has done wonderful things to continue the original cartoon through fan fics. There's no sex, obviously, but we deal a lot with Kit Cloudkicker's past as an Air Pirate. It's lots of fun to put dark secrets into that boy's life. ;) My story hasn't actually been posted yet, because the series kinda leaks out slowly. But check out the others, you'll love them. Just don't mention the erotic story thing, some writers frown on that. ;) Coming A Lot Sooner then This One Did: Part 9, in which the group tries to get the amulet... and Cedra/Rynth tries to get the group...