Changed Redux Pt. 01

The voice swam through her head and to Mary's mind it sounded somehow snappish, as if distracted, "I suppose you could say I live in the ring, yes. My soul is bonded to it, to the magic of the ring. I can no more leave the ring than you can leave your body. The difference is, I am not fully in charge of the ring. The magic has a, well, a mind of its own, so to speak. It doesn't have thoughts per se, but it does have needs. The voice paused then continued Now, please be quiet for a moment, I need to try and stop this. The magic can't be bonded to a woman. It wasn't supposed to work that way."

Mary tired a few more times to talk to the voice but it refused to answer and she eventually gave up. Oddly, she didn't feel the panic that she thought she had every right to be feeling right now. Actually, she felt quite calm and almost detached, as if watching these odd events happening to someone else. But as time passed, Mary's mind continued to clear and with that clarity a sense of alarm started to creep up Mary's spine. She looked down at the simple, dull silver ring on her thumb. She wanted to try and take it off again but her body refused to respond, she still couldn't move. Why wouldn't her body work? Was she really paralyzed? That thought more than anything finally set the beginning stages of true panic lose in her mind.

After a few minutes a new sensation started creeping slowly over Mary's body. A feeling of warmth crept leisurely through her veins, as if her body was being gently heated from the inside. Looking down, she could see the ring had started to glow again, red this time. As the minutes passed and Mary lay helpless the warmth increased and her body began to respond. Her breathing deepened and the numbness in her body faded but she still couldn't move. She could once again feel the water surrounding her but try as she might, she could not move.

Finally the voice returned. "It's no use." The voice now sounded strained and exhausted. "I cannot stop the Bonding, it has already gone too far and the magic is hungry for a new host. It has been without a host for so long , it... no, we have been so alone for centuries and now the magic won't be denied. I'm sorry my Lor... my Mistress." The voice corrected herself. "We will be Bonded."

Mary's alarm took another big step towards full blown panic, especially at the word, 'hungry'. "What do you mean Bonded? What is happening? Who are you?!" Mary screamed to the empty room.

"I will try and explain, but time is short, the Bonding has already started as I'm sure you can feel." The voice said, then continued, "The ring you put on is enchanted. It is an ancient magic, a powerful magic that I created eons ago. And it is a magic that through my own error, I was captured by and have been enslaved by for all those countless years. It is a magic of manipulation and. The magic has the power to control completely but it was a magic with a purpose. It... it was never meant for a woman to wield it. I don't know what will happen."

"Magic?" Mary asked. "But, magic isn't real. It's just something for book and movies and, and, and..." she stammered, "and kid's stuff. It's not real!" The panic that had been slowly building was now approaching a rolling boil. Mary was becoming acutely aware that the warmth that was spreading through her earlier was now changing in quality. It was no longer a simple heat, but was slowly turning into a hot flush that felt disturbingly like arousal. An arousal that was now increasing in intensity with worrying speed. Mary tried once again to get up, to lift her head, to move her arm, anything, but it was no use. She was still completely paralyzed except for her face. "And why can't I move?" She said. She had intended it to sound a little harsh but was dismayed when it came out sounding breathy, almost husky. Just the sound of it sent her arousal even higher and she had to resist the urge to moan.

"Oh, I assure you, the magic quite real." The voice said. "You can feel it's power right now, flowing through you. And that is only a small fraction of it's power. Just the little that is required to align our minds and feelings."

The word 'our' caught Mary's attention even as the feelings of heat and arousal were now transforming onto genuine passion and pleasure. "What do you mean, 'our'? You mean you.... oooooh." she broke off as a wave of pleasure rippled through her and she was unable to stifle a soft moan.

At the same time, the voice in her head also moaned with bliss.

The twin moaning was immediately followed by an intense flush of embarrassment as Mary she realized that she and whoever this woman in her head was, were sharing the same experience. The realization was mortifying but also, she was afraid to admit, intensely exciting in a way that entirely new to her. Getting control of her passion and her wanton thoughts for a moment, she managed to ask, "Are you feeling what... I feel." She gave a small gasp, swallowed hard, then continued, "Or are you just, well, getting magicked too?"

Another wave of bliss slid through Mary's body at that moment and the voice in her head moaned loudly, eliciting a sympathetic surge of pleasure in Mary's mind but she managed to control herself and keep quiet. When the voice finally spoke, it had a new, throaty, husky quality that almost made Marry gush. Something in the back of Mary's mind was deeply troubled by this reaction. Why would she be responding to a woman's voice in that way? She had never been interested in women before. Had she?

"We are being bonded together by the magic. We will be one. I will see what you see, hear what you hear, taste what you taste..." another gasping moan, then"...feel what you feel."

Just the idea of this rich voice with that exotic accent, this person, this woman, always being in her head from now on sent Mary over the edge and she cried out in rapture as her sex contracted hard. She gasped as a wave of the most intense pleasure she had ever experienced flooded through her body in a shatteringly powerful but at the same time, almost impossibly motionless orgasm.

The voice in her head cried out in unison with her which only added to Mary's delight. The rich, thick cries of pure, raw womanly lust filled Mary with a rapture she had never known. The sound of the woman's moans and cries echoed in her head and flooded down into her soul, washing away a part of what was there and filling it with something new. Again and again, she and the voice shared their passions and climaxed in unison. Mary's voice filling the small room and the woman's cries filling her soul.

Dimly, through the haze of ecstasy, Mary could see that the ring was now blazing and pulsing with red light. Almost blinding as her passions built, blazing out brilliantly as she climaxed and dimming as she cooled. Again and again she reached her climax, crying out in rapture and with each one she felt she was coming closer and closer to either blissful perfection or utter madness. She didn't know if she cared which took her first.

"Now! Now! I can feel it! It is.... Ungh!" The voice in her head gasped as a surge of pleasure more intense than any yet started building, low down in her core. She desperately wanted to be able to move, the be able to pinch her aching nipples, the fondle her heaving breasts, to be able to plunge her fingers into her needy pussy, but she was still held still but the magic as it had its way with her. The feeling in her core swelled and grew as the seconds turned into minutes. Rapture screamed in her veins as her mind threatened to break. The voice in her head was whimpering and moaning incoherently now. Gasped out fragments echoing in her mind, "Can't with a woman... " and "Too much!" and "Never like this before... " and finally as they reached the peak, a screaming, hissing, "Yesssss.....!"

An orgasm unlike anything she had even imagined erupted deep inside Mary's center and flowed throughout her entire body in a hot flood of molten ecstasy. It burned through every fiber of her being and shattered her mind like glass. Her ragged cry of complete and total surrender that was ripped from her mouth was echoed by the strange woman in her mind as the magic took them both completely. The last thing she heard was the voice in her head whispering "Mistress..."

Sensation came slowly back to Mary Calise. The heat of the most delicious afterglow she had ever known hummed throughout her body, making her feel both wonderfully alive and completely at ease. She lay there, enjoying the languid stillness of the world around her and savoring the warmth in her core.

After a time her mind started coming back from the glow and her thoughts drifted back to how she got here. She dimly recalled the bath, putting on the ring, the bonding and then, the voice. The voice. That new, strange feminine voice in her head. With a gasp, she came fully back to reality and opened her eyes. She was no longer in her bathroom.

She was outside.

Startled, she sat up quickly and turned her head about, surveying her surroundings. She was lying on a huge stone table or maybe it was an altar, dressed in a strange white wraparound gown of some kind that she had to admit, hugged her body in all the right places. She was seated on a soft red pad right at the altar's center. Surrounding her on all corners of the altar were four enormous carved stone statues. Their backs were to her, each facing outward but she could tell from their shapely backsides that they were probably statues of women. Swinging her feet off the altar she stood, looking around further. She gasped again.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. flashed through her mind, almost making her laugh since she had never actually been to Kansas. Wherever she now was, she was definitely not at her condo on Cape Cod. She was in the center of a vast, open plain that looked to be mostly reddish brown earth and rocks. The barren, almost treeless landscape stretched away before her all the way to the distant horizon. Her gaze drifted down and she saw she was on the summit of a building of some kind. Taking into account the statues and the altar, she assumed it was probably a temple of some kind. Looking closer she noted that the ground she stood on was not stone as she had first thought, but some kind of baked clay paving tiles. Tentatively, she walked to the edge of the platform and looked over the edge. No, she corrected her first thought, not a building or a temple, more like a hill with this altar constructed on its peak. Mud clay stairs stretched down the face of the hill for hundreds of feet to the plain below on the three sides before her. Taking a few steps back around the altar, she looked out over the fourth side. The back she thought but supposed it could just as well be the front, fell away to a sluggish, muddy brown river far below. Beyond the river, a city stretched off across the plain. Hundreds, maybe thousands of small buildings, flat roofed building and huts were arranged in no apparent pattern that Mary could detect. At the center of it all was a vast, sprawling, walled structure that Mary took to be a castle of some kind. She could just make out the tiny forms of people walking the streets or tending the fields that lined the riverbanks. The smoke from a thousand cooking fires rising into the still, evening air. In the distance, the Sun, huge and red, was sinking towards the distant horizon.

No, she was most definitely not on Cape Cod anymore. But where the hell was she? She felt panic again building in her chest but she pushed it down hard. "Ok, stay calm, stay calm. Look around, figure this out." She said to no one in particular as she closed her eyes and took a deep calming breath. Opening her eyes, Mary turned around, back towards the altar and the strange statues. She studied them with initial curiosity that started slowly turning to fear the longer she looked at them. They were all identical, about fifteen feet tall and depicted a woman that must be a goddess. She was almost completely naked save for a wide sash around her waist. Mary thought that 'curvaceous' was probably the most fitting term for the statues with their wide, curving hips and full, heavy breasts. Interestingly, the goddess had eight arms and Mary noted that each hand was holding a different item. One held a spear, one a leaf of some kind and one a child. Many of the other items she couldn't identify but her eye caught on the hand that was held at front and center, right between the statues huge breasts. The hand was holding what appeared to be a large ring. Unlike the other items that the statue was holding, the ring was not carved stone, it was an actual metal ring. More amazing still, the ring was identical to the one she now wore. She looked down at the dull silver ring on her thumb with wonder and fear. It was smaller, but there was no question it was the same thing. They even had the same geometric engravings and eight pointed star.

"Yes, that is the ring you wear." A woman's voice said from behind her, making Mary jump. She spun and came face to face with a woman straight out of a fantasy movie.

She was a good deal taller than Mary's five foot four, probably almost six foot. Her skin was a deep, reddish umber and her thick mane of hair was black. But what was most arresting were her eyes which were a brown that was so deep it was like looking onto a bottomless pool. Almost instantly, Mary felt herself starting to fall, deep into the woman's eyes. They were hypnotic in their enchanting darkness.

As if realizing the effect she was having on Mary, the woman abruptly turned away, breaking the effect and leaving Mary feeling disoriented for a moment. After a few breaths her mind cleared and she was able to regain her thoughts. She looked to the woman again, a little more cautiously this time. She was wearing a long, brilliant red and gold gown that was of similar cut to the one May was wearing. The gown wrapped tightly about her body, both covering and revealing. She wore so much jewelry on her arms that Mary couldn't even begin to guess how many rings and bracelets she had. Gold and gemstones of all colors glittered on her wrists and fingers. An elaborate gold circlet was nestled into the mass of her luxurious black hair. Oddly, she wore only one necklace but Mary's breath caught when realized what it was. On a simple leather thong hung an engraved, dull silver ring, the same as the ring held by the statues, the same as the one that was now on Mary's thumb. A shiver ran up her spine and she whispered, "Who, who are you? Where am I?"

"You are in what a historian in your time would call Sumer, or perhaps Samaria. In your modern times, the country of Iraq. As to the when, by your calendar, the year is 4385 B.C. Below us is the City of Akkad. We stand at the altar to my Goddess, Ama --Arhus." She turned to Mary but carefully avoided eye contract. "I have brought you here so that you may understand who I am and how this all came to be." She turned and walked to the edge of the altar, gazing out over the plains far below. "And I am Marcellene Ack-Natora, High Priestess of Ama-Arhus, Keeper of the High Temple, Holder of the Sacred Tablets, Royal Sorceress to the Emperor Uluek."

Mary looked around her, at the altar, the statues, the city beyond and then back to the woman that she now had a name for Marcellene. She was stunned but finally managed to ask, "How?"

The woman turned to face her and her full lips curled up into a slight smile, "How are you here? That is simple, you're not. This is just a dream for you. Fear not my Mistress, in a short while, you will wake up back in your home." She turned back to the plains below, "As to why you are here, I wanted you to see me for who I am, or at least who I was."

Mary looked around again, a little slower this time, trying to take it all in. "So this is where you live? Are we in the ring?"

"In a sense, yes. This is where my mind dwells when I am not with my bonded Lord." She paused, then glanced sidelong at Mary, "Or Mistress."

Mary felt a not entirely unpleasant thrill start in her sex and run straight up her spine at the word 'Mistress'. Embarrassed at her reaction, Mary blushed furiously, part of her fearing that Marcellene would notice the reaction to the word but another part of her, a part that she was surprised was in her, was secretly hoping that the Sorceress did. Flustered, Mary asked, "But how did this all happen? Why are you trapped in here?"

"I have been asking myself that very same question for over six thousand years." She sighed, turning back to face Mary. "To better understand who and what I am and also to better understand what has happened to you, I need to tell you what I was trying to accomplish. You will also need to put aside some of your beliefs. Through the Bonding I can now understand you quite well, and I know that you don't believe in magic and the powers of the Old Gods, but you must try to understand. You see, in my time, the Gods were still young and flush with power and their wonders reigned across the land. The Gods came into being because of the desires and needs of the people. They were born of the longing of the people for something greater, something to take control of the world around them and to begin to bend it to their will. What the people got was not always what they wanted or indeed what they expected, but it was oftentimes what was actually needed. Gods of great power and gods of lesser power were born. Gods of good and gods of evil, light and dark, day and night, life and death. However, all of these new gods all drew their power from those very people who's wants and needs had given birth to them. The devotion, prayers, love and sacrifices of the people were what gave the Gods their form. It was what they drew their power from."

She looked up at one of the statues, "There were some of us who lived in that age that were fortunate. Were we, these few, more devoted or more pious? Or perhaps it was just luck? I don't know. But for whatever reason, occasionally a mortal gained the favor of a God or Goddess was gifted with the ability to commune with that deity . We were more able to channel their divine energies, to work their magics for them, to bring their wonders and power directly to the people. She crossed her hands in the center of her chest and bowed deeply to one of the statues, whispering something that Mary couldn't hear before straightening, and turning to face her, "I was one of those blessed few. I was a Sorcerer Priestess of the Goddess Ama --Arhus, the Goddess of Women."

"As a Priestess, I served my Goddess first and foremost but like everyone who lived at that time and in that place," She paused and gestured at the city below, "in this place, I also served at the pleasure of whoever was on the throne at that time. The Emperor I served was a brutal man of conquest and war. He spent his whole life wrapped up in the pursuit of power. So much so that he never took a wife and never sired a single male heir. Eventually his advisers convinced him that he needed to take a wife and give create a male heir to inherit his name and power. But he had waited too long and he was no longer able. Indeed, his mind and body started to fail rapidly and it appeared the empire would fall to his sister's son, whom he detested."

"His advisers came to me with an idea. They wanted a spell or potion to invigorate the Emperor, even if only temporary, and give the ability to produce an heir. I told them I would search the tablets to see if there was a solution to the problem. After a time, I found a solution, several of them in fact. It wasn't one spell but two I would weave together and cast them upon the aging Emperor. The first was a spell of power and invigoration to give him the energy needed to complete the act. The second was a spell of control and manipulation to give him the ability to make sure the woman he chose to lie with would bear him a male heir. They would each only last a few hours I thought, but they should have been enough to ensure an heir was born."