The House of Azazel

When Salyna awoke she found herself cleansed of the come and blood that had coated her when she passed out. She was lying beneath the comforter of the great canopy bed, and the bed was clean as well without any indication of the torrid sex that had happened on it earlier. The room was still illuminated by the fire in the fireplace, and standing before the fire was a naked man. The man was beautiful; even though she was unable to see his face, he seemed breathtaking. His long, dark hair fell in a flowing cascade down his back. Tall and slim, his body was that of the most exquisite dancer.

Slipping silently from the bed Salyna crept up behind the man, her feet making no sound as she moved across the rug.

As she reached him Salyna wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed herself up against his firm body. "So, you can take on a human form as well, Azazel," she said as she rested her chin on his shoulder.

Azazel's face turned slightly towards her, and he lowered a hand to rest it on the smooth, soft skin of her thigh, his other hand moving to capture one of her delicate hands at his waist. Smiling, the firelight reflected in his warm, dark eyes, he said, "Yes, it was in this form that I moved down through the centuries, living and traveling among the humans of this world."

"That's you isn't it?" Salyna's gaze swept up to the portrait above the mantelpiece and saw the unmistakable resemblance between the man in the portrait and the man in her arms.

"Oui mademoiselle, c'est moi," Azazel said in what Salyna assumed was a perfect period French accent. "I did quite enjoy my time in the court of King Louis XIV."

"You never did answer the second part of my question earlier. Why do you haunt this house?" Salyna asked as she nestled her face more closely into his neck.

"Well I do not haunt it," he answered with a soft smile. "This is one of a number of homes I maintain scattered around the world. Since the restoration of my power almost two decades ago now, I've been working to collect my scattered property as well as other objects of power I come across. Though, I do on occasion use the illusion of a haunted house to scare off the unwanted visitor."

"Almost two decades ago, hmm… that would just about coincide with Ash-Fall and the first reports of meta-talent abilities, wouldn't it?" Salyna pondered out loud.

"Quite correct," Azazel stated. "The super-volcanic event known as Ash-Fall coincided with the breaking of the seal on the ethereal gates and the restoration of mana and magic to the world at full strength. I don't know for certain whether there is a causal connection between Ash-Fall and the breaking of the seal, but I would not be surprised if there were."

"So how did a spirit like yourself survive through the centuries with magic sealed away from the Earth?" Salyna asked.

"With difficulty," Azazel answered. "The first thing to understand is that mana was not gone; it simply became vastly more difficult to access. After the seal had been put in place and reached full strength, only the most powerful spirits and magi could access the mana, and then only to perform the most rudimentary spells. A spirit is fundamentally a coherent, highly-ordered pattern of mana, regardless of how we may manifest in the world. Most spirits were originally created by magi's conjurings. If a spirit was strong enough their patterns would sometimes persist after the magus was done with them, and they would become a true spirit, a living, free-willed entity of the ether. Though, as we were originally created by humans, it is only by continuing to interact with humans that we can sustain our patterns. Human emotions and consciousness somehow pattern the mana in their vicinity in such a way that we are able to consume it to grow and sustain ourselves. If we stop interacting with the living consciousnesses of humans, in time our patterns decohere and we essentially starve to death. When the ethereal worlds are open to us as they are now and were in ancient days, we can sustain ourselves with just the occasional interaction with humans. However, during the famine times humans could only gather and order mana sufficiently to sustain us during periods of extreme emotional excitation, such as lust, love, terror, agony, rage, depression, hatred, exultation, and extreme creativity. So we were obliged to foster those states of heightened emotional arousal in humans in order to sustain ourselves. Personally I always preferred the flavor of lust and ecstasy myself. Blood can also serve as a channel for power as we demonstrated earlier in our bonding ritual, and some of my brethren may have been responsible for the ancient pre-vampiric myths. Also, humans who possessed any latent magical talent, even if they were too weak to draw on their abilities, were particularly desirable as a rich source of energy. The spirits who remained on earth during the famine often sought out these individuals and would enter into a pact with them to facilitate the exchange of energy."

"So did you enjoy your meal this evening?" Salyna asked with an impish grin, before nibbling lightly on his neck.

"Yes, very much so," he answered and smiled. "Though I no longer need to engage in these kinds of activities in order to sustain myself, I do find I still greatly enjoy them."

"So you're not eating my soul, or drinking my life force, or anything like that?" Salyna asked, slightly teasingly.

"No, of course not—maybe in an extremely abstract sense, but no, it has essentially nothing to do with the soul or life force. Extreme states of emotional arousal are nearly always exhausting, and I suspect it was this, combined with rhetoric to scare the peasants, that gave rise to the myth of succubi and incubi draining their victim's soul. Of course, this is not to say that there weren't those among my kind that the famine did drive mad. There were those that became sadistic, brutal monsters, every bit worthy of being called Demon, that fed on human pain and suffering."

"No, you are not a demon, of course not. You just like to lure young women into your haunted house then fuck their brains out," Salyna teased laughingly as she used her free hand to poke him in his firm belly. Looking up at the golden figures dancing across the mantle of the fireplace Salyna realize something else. "That's you isn't it, both leading the procession as Dionysus and at the center as Great Pan?"

"Very good, you are quite correct, I am also Dionysus," he said, reaching up to stroke Salyna's hair. "I thought it would be too much of a stretch to claim Dionysus as well; there are certain common elements between Azazel and Pan, and Dionysus is a distinctly different mythic entity from the others, even if they are said to interact. I created the persona of Dionysus and the Dionysian Mysteries near the beginning of the famine times as a way to rapidly gather energy and consolidate my power."

"Interesting," Salyna murmured into the god's neck. "There's something I've often wondered reading about the various religions, and now that I have a god here in my arms, I might as well ask. Why do all the gods seem so obsessed with whether or not people worship them? What's it matter to a god, if they're as powerful as they claim?"

Chuckling softly he replied, "Well, you've captured the crux of it. We're not as powerful as we claim. At some point early on in human history some of us began to emulate our creators, the exiled Atlantean magi, and began to adopt the personas of deities. Either we would adopt a culture's existing personification of natural forces, or we would invent an entirely new persona and essentially force it upon a people. We found that by being worshiped and gaining followers we could amass even greater power as the hopes and fears of an entire people were focused upon us. Of course there was always still the risk a magus could come along, learn our true name, and bind us to their will. In those days there were still remnants of the long-lived wandering Atlantean exiles, and a very few dragons who had learned the arts of conjuring from the Atlanteans. We were fundamentally still creatures of the ether; even if most of us who called ourselves gods were vastly more powerful than the simple conjuring a typical magus could summon, the risk still remained."

"So the gods want to be worshiped, because the more worshipers they have the more powerful they become; is that the gist of it? The more people who fear them or place their hopes in them, the stronger they become. They manipulated human cultures and the course of human civilizations to maximize the number of worshipers they could have," Salyna said with a bit of ire. "What gave you the right?"

"Precisely, we had no right," the god acknowledged with some contrition in his voice. "I suspect it was our continuing interference in the natural development of humanity that caused the great experimenter to end her experiment, and recall the gifts of magic she had bestowed on humanity. I think she wanted to see how humanity would have developed had she and her kind never returned to Earth. So the gates of the ethereal realm were sealed. The last of the Atlanteans and dragons left Earth through the Fay-Gates to other worlds in the galaxy that the dragons had long since rendered habitable, and most of my kind followed, taking with them many of their human followers. A few of us decided to remain, probably curiosity, mostly, and stubbornness."

"Wait, let me get this straight; you're saying there are humans on other worlds around the galaxy?" Salyna interrupted.

"Quite so; the Atlanteans should be proof enough of that," he answered a little brusquely, slightly annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his exposition. "They weren't the only ones to leave Earth, and probably weren't the only ones to survive until today. For my part, I wanted to stay because I was curious to see how this world would develop from that point on, and honestly I enjoyed humanity in all its numerous varieties. Tiamat may have wanted to recant her experiment and put the genie back in the bottle, but I knew that was impossible. We had left an indelible stamp on the human psyche and the course of human history. Wherever humanity went from there, our existence would shape its course and thinking. It would be thousands of years before humanity really began to come into its own. Though whether or not that's a good thing might still be of some question, for humanity now wields powers far beyond anything we ever possessed even at the height of our power, even at the height of Atlantis. Humanity today has the power to destroy worlds, or at least render them a barren radioactive wasteland, and to create new life. You command the lightning and can communicate across the globe instantly. You have more information at your fingertips at any given instant than all the scholars of the ancient world ever possessed. Humanity collectively has far surpassed us, and they have done so, learned all this, while a massive portion of the nature of reality was closed to them. Now that it has been opened to them once again, what will be wrought by their hands?"

"Do you intend to proclaim yourself a god again, to be worshiped and to try and shape the course of humanity?"

"No, while there is no shortage of humans who would eagerly bow before the throne of a being that claimed to be a god or god's messenger, I will not walk that road again. Humanity has done quite well without us, and I will oppose any of my kind who would seek once again to subjugate this world."

Salyna moved around Azazel so that she was now in front of him, her arms still securely wrapped around his waist, and the fire now at her back. She watched the play of firelight across the fine features of his beautiful face as she leaned up and kissed him softly on the lips. She then leaned her head against his strong chest and whispered, "Thank you Azazel, Dionysus, Pan, thank you for sharing everything you've shared with me tonight. I'm really glad I took my friend's dare to spend the night in your haunted house."

Azazel said nothing, merely looking down at the beautiful young woman he held in his arms. He gently stroked his long delicate fingers through her golden hair as their naked bodies pressed closely together. They stood holding each other in their close, comfortable embrace for long minutes, before Azazel gently lifted Salyna into his arms and carried her to the bed.

This time they made love slowly and sensually. Their hands explored each other and their lips were locked in a deep, passionate kiss as he entered her. The soft folds of her inner depths easily and snugly embraced his firm, human shaft as he pushed inside her. They established a deep, intimate rapport as their bodies came together in a rhythm as old as time. As she orgasmed, he came inside her, and for an instant she felt as though the whole universe had been opened to her as the god in her arms filled her with his seed.

Azazel rolled off her onto his side, but pulled Salyna with him so that they lay facing each other, his shaft still held within her warm embrace. Salyna snuggled into him, and she let herself drift off to sleep as he gently stroked her hair.

Azazel whispered softly to Salyna as she drifted off into her dreams, "I will protect you. I have waited for you longer than you could possibly imagine, and now all our hopes and fears lie with you."

*

Author's note: I hope you enjoyed my story, it was written as a fun standalone erotic prequel to a larger set of stories I'm currently working on. This is also an entry in the 2009 Literotica Halloween Contest, so please vote.