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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 573296" data-attributes="member: 143">Book VII, Part 25Guthan groaned as he stirred.  He was cold, and his body cried out in several places as he looked around.  It was dark; they must no longer be in the Portal Chamber.  No, not ‘they’; he was alone.  There was no way he would have mistaken her presence.  He suspected he’d know even she was on the same plane, after what she’d done to him last night. Now, now, a voice in his head chided him.  But as he stood, his groan deepening as his body resisted his commands, he couldn’t help but grin.  Despite the pain.  When he was standing he belatedly checked himself, to make sure he was still... intact.  He wouldn’t have been surprised to find certain components missing.  Normally he would have been more concerned about what was inside, his life essence, but he already knew that she would have left that undamaged.  He would not have been able to complete the charge she’d given him, the command of his Master, if she had drained him.  He shuffled a few steps blindly through the darkness before he remembered his spells.  He called upon a minor magic through the Link and summoned a light spell that cast a bright glow from his hand.  Normally he would have cast the spell upon a small disposable object, but he was naked, and he had no idea where his clothes and items of power were located.  Hopefully she hadn’t taken too many of them when she returned to the Abyss; he would have given her anything she asked for freely, last night.The room was barren, empty, with a single open doorway for an exit.  He trudged slowly into the adjacent corridor.  It didn’t take long for him to recognize his surroundings; he was still in the shrine, at least, in one of the empty wings that he’d only briefly scouted before finding the Portal.  He felt a chill as he walked through the dark tunnels, and it wasn’t from the cold. Although it was cold.  He hastened his pace slightly, turning down another passage toward the entry hall.  He’d left some gear there, and some spare garments in his saddlebags.  And food; it felt as though he hadn’t eaten in a week.  Once he’d donned a clean robe and eaten, he walked up to the entrance and looked out over the valley.  The sun was still lost in an unbroken expanse of gray clouds that hung low over the mountains, and a steady drizzle was falling.  At least it wasn’t snow, he thought grimly.  He felt solemn standing there, alone in the world.  It was a feeling he was well familiar with, in those times that he allowed himself to touch the dark, empty core that lay deep inside of him.  That small part of him that still felt normal desires wanted a woman, and he laughed.  He was glad that he was so far from civilization; he suspected that G’hael had ruined normal women for him.  Even remembering it made him shudder.  Even before his original patron, the shadowy god Mask, had turned from him, he had been a creature of sensual needs that made the carnal desires of the roughest mercenary raider seem tame by comparison.  Not that the sensations he sought—he craved—were merely sexual; he hunted pain as well as pleasure, savored the stabbing hurt of personal loss as much as the fulfillment of freely given love.  He was intelligent enough to recognize that the experiences he clamored for were just a way of filling, albeit temporarily, that cavernous emotional chasm inside of him; in fact, he sometimes forced himself to remember his own history as a way of tormenting himself, sucking the emotions from his own battered past.  Although strangely, his memories did not penetrate farther back than his early teens; beyond that point they vanished suddenly without even a faint hint of recollection to provide clues to what came before. Given who and what he was, though, it was perhaps inevitable that he had gravitated toward his current patron.  Even among his kind, that one was known for his sensuality, a blessing that extended to his servants.  Guthan suspected that he would be able to fill his need for many days just sorting through all of the things that G’hael had done to him, and she had been constrained by the need to avoid... damaging... him.  Not that he would have minded that, in other circumstances... With a shake of his head, he cleared his head of such thoughts.  He had no time for such retrospections now.  The words of the succubus were burned into his memory as indelibly as the rest of his experiences at her hands.  Her mandate, passed on from his new Master.  The succubus had commented on the irony of the situation, and he could not help but laugh at it, even though it was at his own expense.  Her words grated in his memory like a knife drawn across slate.  A delicious paradox, my kitten, wouldn’t you agree?  The final key needed to bridge the gap and open the Portal, and you once held it in your very hands... for a time.  And now you will get a chance to revenge yourself upon that one, who began your downward spiral not so long ago...Without thinking, his hands tightened into fists.  Yes, that would be a sweet opportunity indeed.But you will not be able to handle him alone, my pet.  No, don’t bristle; I do not impugn your precious powers.  Even with your newfound allies, you will find the tiefling and his friends a potent challenge.  But our Master will not leave you to struggle alone against this adversary.  I will instruct you on a new summoning you are to use, a calling to bring a new ally to your side, to recover the key.Another demon? He had asked her.  Even with the power that... our Master has granted me, I could not draw anything more potent than that vrock, and they can only remain a short...She cut him off with a sudden movement that sent tendrils of delicious pain flowing through his body, followed by an equally powerful warmth that suffused his bones and seemed to melt him from within.  No, thrall, the aid that you will be sent will be more than that.  The Great Lord has something... special in mind. And with those words, she did something else to him, something that dragged a scream from deep down inside of him, down from that chasm where he had thought nothing lurked but the emptiness.  The memory jerked him back roughly into the present.  Guthan realized that tears were running down his cheeks, and he was laughing—that new, unsteady, uncontrolled laugh—as he rushed heedlessly back into the darkness, back toward the Portal Chamber.  There was much to do.</blockquote>

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