Various dialogue and events from Chapter VII:

As she emerged from the deep waters of the earth, the daemoness of these northern mountains was nude of all worldely clothing or belong, besides the small vial I saw nestled between her breasts. But to me she only smiled grimly and turned to her familiar, the same great wolf who had warned me when I first began my ascent. He snarled somewhat at seeing me here, and I cowered as she stood next to him. As he began to lick those nativital waters from her body, I could not help but to stare in amazement. Here were two beings from the worlde that had arisen before my King was master over his domain. These were things older than I might ever hope to be, and they shared a familiarity I could not hope to imagine. It stirred my memories of the Garden of Zais, and for a delusional moment I longed to return to that freedom and grandeur.

It was not to be, though, for soon enough they remembered my presence, and looking to me she spoke these words, "Welcome to my humble lands, o ye who have travelled far from your Home. Do not be afeared of my minions, and I beg your pardon from the harsh treatment you have received here. In years to come though, you shall thank me for these things, for I have a power to share with you now that you have suffered so much."

But at this her wolf spoke the name of my Father, which I am forbidden by law to record here, and he muttered something else, though to only part I could catch was the word 'blood'. I knew my form, if not my garments must still be stained with the dire stench of His blood, and I cowered down into my self as his gaze met mine. What is one to hold in his heart as the messenger of the gods stares without mercy into the centre of your being? He snarled again at where I crouched on the floor, and I could feel again the torments I had so recently endured. My bones, I felt, must be issuing from all parts of my body for the pain! As I write this I do not know how I endured such pain and remained conscious enough to remember and record this for the ages.

While I stood in the wolf's gaze she had turned to lounge on him, reclining against his furs as she slowly dried of the deep waters of the earth. At tymes her small delicate looking hands sought the vial, which she twirled. I longed to steal this thing back from her, but much as I might will it, my body would not so much as move from where I knelt in my own inner hells.

As her powers loosened my bonds and I tended to my wounds, the heat of those waters wafted from her form that I stared at as if it held all the secrets of creation. She was at one and the same tyme blessed and terrible to behold, for all her beauty I could not help but think this Mistress was some abomination against nature as nothing of humanity shewn from those cruel and cunning blue eyes. They had locked me in, and I could almost feel myself sinking into them.

As the pain came and my vision proceeded, my thoughts crept to other things, other ages my life seemed to have passed through. I cannot remember a tyme in my youth that was ever filled with hardship. The Great King had always been kind to me, and granted my every whim and wish. Even as I rose in rank to become a Poet in the olde ways, He did not question or deny my entrance to the Garden. The horrible vision dancing before my mind now was of no earthly garden though, I could feel only sand about me, mayhaps these were the sands of tyme. Cling as I might, none remained in my grasp. Despair had settled in my soul, and of futures I could imagine none. There were only the sands, passing through my fingers like so much water, wasted and burned before I might retrieve it.

When at length I had awakened, the initial sensation I felt was the tugging of my leash. At first it was only those blue eyes that I could see, and staring into them I could feel their emptiness anew. It tore into the very fabric of my being, and the insanity they unleashed has ever been etched upon my soul. In them was both lust and grief, and I could not but feel these same things as I felt my body so close to hers.

I knew part of the Garden was in my soul now, and though she was all the mountains and their crowns of ice and snow, I could feel some of my warmth flowing into her. This meant it had left me, and in turn I was faced with the great inner flowing of tundra and wasteland. There were spiders crawling all under my flesh then, and I shivered till my teeth rattled in my skull. Still, she held me tightly over her, our bodies pressed together against her great wolf, and for the moment it was all of the worlde that I knew, or had ever known.

The pain of the torture had blocked out everything else, and it was only those eyes, those cold blue steel eyes that contained my entire being. They whispered to me of death and rebirth in the same breath, and I could feel my lungs beginning to pant as her hands lingered over my body, pressing against my bruises and broken bones. As terrible as I thought this might be, her soft touch brought some comfort to my beaten flesh, and as my warmth began to flow into her, I could feel some of it returning to where her hands touched me.

It was then my stare fell to her lips, which now quivered in passions I could scarcely imagine. Her hands had found their way into my hair then, and I could feel the ice of her touch against my scalp where she pulled me closer to her. In my condition, I could offer no resistance, and though I longed to struggle against the pain of her fingers through my hair, I fell against her.

For a moment of serenity, those eyes closed as our bodies made contact, and her tongue flashed over those lips. Even they were blue, and against my garments I could feel her colde hard nipples pressing against me. As her back arched and we were further pressed together, I could sense some of her longing, and the deep feeling of release that stole over her. She began to tremble then, and her icy hands came to cradle my face in their dread grasp. As they so did, her legs moved sinuously over mine, up and down my body as I lay upon her, and through some powers I could not begin to understand, her arousal seeped into me, and I felt those parts of me so long untended come back to renewed life. This only increased my confusion though, and I sought once more to struggle against her.

As her hands sought my hair again I rose somewhat from her, though this only proved to press our hips together further. I could feel the warm juices of her body through my garments then, and something in me called out against this. I could feel myself slipping into two spells: one was the untold blasphemies of this place and its terrible Mistress, the other I could feel so close to me. My feeble mind reeled from all this, and though I had risen somewhat over her, my arms shook with the pressure needed to hold me up.

One of her hands then released its icy hold on my hair, and once more took up the vial I had lost. This she held before my face, and when I moved to try and take it back she tugged violently, so much that I thought my long tresses would be removed from my scalp. The entire tyme this proceeded, the wolf made no movement, and though we struggled and thrashed against his massive frame, his head never rose from his paws, indeed his breathing seemed to have moved into the deepness of slumber. This was his land of course, and this was his Mistress I struggled against pathetically. He knew I held no power here, and as such saw me as no threat to him or his. Whatever dreams or nightmares he chased as our bodies pressed together I would never know.

As I observed this her other hand had moved to clasp me about the neck, and with the first she removed the stopper of the vial and placed it to my lips. There were hells unspoken and depths I hesitate to even write therein, and of the draught of Plathotis I have told much of since it first tore down the full length of my soul.

When I heard my name steal from her trembling lips everything returned to my present situation, which had doubled and tripled in horror now that the sinister drug was in me. She must have noted the shock in my face at hearing the name my Father had given me, for her persuasive and suggestive movements increased, and her hands moved once more to press me close to her colde open form, and from the corners of my eyes I could still see the mysts rising from her body.

I could feel the movements of her breasts as laughter moved through her, and her swollen nipples seemed to stab into me. Still, I was trapped here at her mercy, and with this new poison in my system I could no longer think of struggle. It was then she said, "Does my father still light the fire high atop the stone as of olde? Long has he lit those fires, and who can say what persons or things might have seen them and been drawn to his granite keep? Oh, that he might share his crown of sympathy with all the worlde, though not with me, his only daughter..."

At this I recoiled, if only internally. But to my horror and shock, she continued, "Ah, but I am not his natural daughter, no flesh of his flesh for as you must know my father is barren as the Keep he holds over the River Styx. I am as much of his blood as those granite stones, and it may as well be those hellish waters that flow in my veins in the place of blood. Do you not know, O Poet, that I was forged of aeternally forbidden al-khemy? The breath and spark you felt in the arms of your mother I never knew, and it is my burden now to never know of these things. The taint of this has spread over my own lands, and I fear they have become as poisoned as the blood that has flown from the vial into the water of your life. Aye, and I am his daughter, though he unleashed me unknowing and innocent upon the worlde, for even as I left the wretched vats from which I was birthed did I ever seek some land of my own, in which I might establish some hold over the worlde, and in it seek the one I have long called to. It was my dreams you fell into before his iron gates, and I have too long watched your footsteps in the stars of the heavens."

This was too much for me to bear, and I think tears began to flow from my eyes. I could feel their saline warmth touching my hair and my garments, and though her hands and legs still moved over my body, I could no longer feel the fear of being so close to her. In its stead, I could feel only sorrow and pity for this being that had trapped me in her wiles. She who had never known love or kindness... She who was trapped in this land of death and colde... She who had taken on so many aspects of this asperian place... What was I to feel but sadness?

But I was allowed no solace in which to find peace, for her terrible litany went on, "You are to have a new name if you are to pass through the hells before you. Let this stand as firm proof of your metal, for the deep fires of the earth have turned to forging you, and by their light I call you by your new name." This she whispered in my ear, and in doing so once more I could feel the chill of her breath upon me. A spasm passed over her body as she did so, and I could feel all of her shuddering beneath me in its wake. As it did, her terrible eyes closed again, and her tongue lashed out over her lips once more, and I could feel its wetness passing so close to my ear.

"You are charged, against the thrones of heaven and the dreamer that even now rises from the infernal dominions to seek the answer to this riddle, the puzzle of the Great Unrest. There are powers and forces that shall come to your aid, though there are many more that shall seek to waylay and destroy you now that your light is cast upon the earth. You shall have neither rest nor recompense in your sacred duties until these things have been found. And though all the worlde should turn against you, still you must seek this out," she whispered in a husky voice that caused the draught in me to burn anew. I could feel it everywhere now, and even her colde flesh became a remote point of reference against its fire.

The rest to me has too much sorrow to recall here. I have found courage enough to see that my words have been inscribed elsewhere, and again I would call you to them if need be. The memory of it is too much even now, but there is still some I have left to reveal.

When we at length stood in the deep waters of the earth, those nativital waters she had first emerged from and her great wolf had left to stalk what prey he might find amongst this final bastion at the end of the worlde, she spoke to me again.

"How I have longed for this moment, o childe. I have dreamed my dreams of ice and colde, and sought only your embrace to end it all. In your release I might find some reprieve against my long years of isolation in this place, and if the worlde were different I would have loved you in ways no other could imagine. How I have long dreamt of the day I might carry a son or daughter of our conception in my womb, and thus establish some new hope against the nightmares that are yet to come. But all this is not to be, not now, and mayhaps not ever."

Here she raised the vial to her own lips, and draining the contents into her mouth, she pulled me close. All I could feel then was her body; it was all that seemed real in the worlde of illusion and hallucination I was falling into. Horrid worm-shadows had crept along the walls in the flickering of candles here, and in the distance was the echo of howling. But none of this was to last, for she pressed her bluish lips against mine, and against what little will I could muster she forced the remaining blood from the vial in to my mouth and down my throat.

If I thought the initial suffering in the draught of Plathotis was deep I found a new bottom that led only downward. I began spiralling then, and somewhere far away I could feel her lips still pressed to mine, I could feel her warm tongue passing over mine somehow through the drug.

Somewhere in all this I saw the first tear fall, and staring into her blue eyes I could see all my pain reflected like a double image. She knew what I was going through now; it was going through her as well. I tried as best I might to keep the words she had spoken to me in mind, and I scrambled for the new name she had given me. But she placed her hands upon my shoulders, and before the next tear fell I sank beneath the slowly lapping waves.