The Book Lover Ch. 01

Introduction

This story is a rewrite of a story written by Married_Man_63 back in 2015. I was intrigued by the set up of the story, but found myself disappointed that he didn't dig deeper into the world hinted at in the story.

With his permission, I decided to try a re-write of the story.

I made an attempt to publish this re-write a while back, but I tried to put it into the category where it best matched for content (Loving Wives). The problem is, this is a long story. I feel like the only place it has any possibility of being appreciated is in Novels and Novellas.

There will be lots of sex in this story, but there will also be considerable time spent trying to develop a system of magic and trying to explore the characters involved. There may be chapters with little to no sex. Often the sex will only be implied. The sex will seldom be described with lots of detail.

I think it's important to give readers a warning at this point. The protagonist of this story is a young woman who gains access to supernatural powers she never imagined possible. She is in a committed relationship with a man, but ends up using these newfound powers to explore her sexual desires with lots of other people of both sexes. If you do not like stories about a promiscuous woman and her man who finds that he actually likes this behavior, then this will not be a story for you.

There will be a lot of times in this story when characters are communicating non-verbally, essentially inside each other's heads. This presents a challenge as an author because we don't have readily accepted ways to indicate non-verbal communication. There is no equivalent to quotation marks for communication that takes place entirely within one's mind. In addition, I decided that there should be a clearly understood power dynamic with this type of non-verbal communication. One of the people will clearly take a more dominant position in the communication and the other a more submissive position. I will indicate this type of communication using dashes (-) instead of quotation marks, and will put the more dominant character in bold with the more submissive character in italics to try to make it easier to follow.

Prologue

Hamid looked down at the prostrate form of his wife and queen, Jaleh, with a tear running down his cheek. He loved her more than life itself. It was a fact he was willing to demonstrate through his own actions that very evening.

It had to be that evening. He was sure of that. He held her hand in his own. He could feel the ebbing of her life force. She would not last the night, even with the continual infusion of his energy into her. It had been three weeks since she had last been conscious enough to speak to him. It had been the hardest three weeks of his entire life.

She lay, naked, on the altar he had built out of stone with his bare hands. It pained him greatly to see her naked form, looking very much like a skeleton with a coat of skin wrapped around it. She had once been one of the most beautiful women to have ever lived. He had fallen in love with her the moment he had laid eyes on her for the first time, in spite of the fact that she had been using her power to inflict pain on someone else. He had loved her and that love had changed her. Not completely, of course. She still had a long ways to go, but he hadn't been given time to teach her everything he wanted to teach her.

The disease had ravaged her body. If not for his ability to draw on the energy of others and feed it into her, she would have been dead months ago.

He closed his eyes and looked with his soul at what appeared to be a shimmering vertical sheet of the deepest black that can be imagined, extending outwards in all directions. He reached his hand out to touch the void and could see, in his mind's eye, the swirling of colors and patterns. He had learned that he could identify those patterns and touch them and then follow them with his mind to their source, which led him inside the consciousness of others.

It had been Jaleh that had taught him how to do it. He experienced it in a way that was very different from her, but once he described his experience to her, she learned how to help him navigate the paths of subconsciousness and enter into the minds of others.

It was ironic then that he found her resisting him, even after the many years of her allowing him to learn by joining inside of her own consciousness.

-I am ready, love-

-please, lord, reconsider this plan. please just let me go as you should have months ago-

-I can do no such thing. Without you my life has no meaning-

-and what about your people? do they not deserve your leadership and wisdom?-

-They will replace me just as they have replaced all my forebears. I cannot replace you-

-you mustn't do this-

-I must. And I will. We will be together forever-

-and what if it doesn't work?-

-That is not an option-

He withdrew from her stream and opened his eyes.

He lifted the book that he had created by hand and laid it across her chest. It had taken him nearly two years to craft it and to create the language that it contained. No one had even tried to write their language down before him. He had extracted the symbols he needed by observing the patterns in the ethereal realm. He needed to replicate the exact patterns of Jaleh, of himself, and of the dozen concubines that now surrounded the altar where he had placed Jaleh's withered form. He also needed to replicate the patterns of all the incantations that would be required to keep his book from simply decaying into nothingness and to allow the possibility that they could, once again, be reunited in the flesh.

Every part of the book had to be made from the skins of various animals, because skin was relatively easy to repair and would require very little energy to do so. The skins were dried and then oiled and then stretched as thin and smooth as possible to allow the inscription of the symbols he found while exploring inside the subconscious world.

Little did he know, and even less did he care, that it was from this effort that all written language would eventually spring. To him it was all about the attempt to bind himself to Jaleh and allow them to live together forever.

He cast his eyes about, looking down from the altar to the naked forms of the women from his harem. He knew he needed the energy of a dozen others to power the incantation he was about to invoke. He had asked for volunteers from among his concubines. Nearly all of them accepted. He chose from them only twelve to take with him.

They knew the risks and accepted them because of their love for Hamid and Jaleh and because of their recognition of the wonderful life he had provided for them and the incredible pleasure he had given them on so many occasions. Now he watched them as they joined in a circle of carnal pleasure, each woman using her mouth and tongue to pleasure the woman next to her in a circle that encompassed the altar.

Of course Hamid could access their energy even without this, but a person experiencing intense emotions opened the channels into their core much more readily. Sexual pleasure provided the easiest conduit through which to exchange energy.

He looked down at his own naked form. He had already begun to feed on the pleasure of the women around him and it made him turgid, his organ standing erect and ready. It gave him no pleasure, given her physical condition, to mount his queen and slide inside of her, but he knew this particular incantation would work more effectively if he did.

He laid himself across her body, the book pressed between their chests and once again he closed his eyes and entered the metaphysical realm, this time plunging directly into the presence of the book itself.

He found himself swirling in the midst of the patterns that represented all of the people currently at the altar. He separated each of them from the others and began to call to them, activating them and connecting them with the person that they described. He began to feel each of these sets of patterns being infused with the energy of their respective owners as he opened the conduits between the symbols he created in the book and the physical bodies of the people they represented.

This created a connection where the pleasure of each person was felt by, and magnified by, the pleasure of everyone in the group. The intensity of the rapture that they all felt caused an explosion of energy. It was nearly all Hamid could do to corral and direct this energy into the appropriate places in the book. But he HAD to do more. At the precise moment this energy began to be released, he searched for the symbols inscribed in the book that contained the incantations he had so diligently researched and augmented in order to create this incredible book.

He began to call out to the inscriptions representing the incantations, one at a time, in their prescribed order, vocalizing them as he infused them with the massive swirl of energy that was being swallowed up into the book. As he spoke the last incantation, he reached out and pulled on all of the remaining energy that was available, that hadn't already been infused into the book, and with great effort he opened a channel into the very core of the book and with all his effort he directed a great blast of that power into the book itself.

He felt the very last bit of energy leave his body and flow into the book before his now lifeless body collapsed on top of Jaleh.