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Image Credit: Modified from Quizilla.Teennick.com - Eden. ~Landing

Author's Note: There is no connection between the novel by Harlan Ellison and my story except perhaps that we both just chose something simple that describes the story. :)

This is a fan fiction, the Whateleyverse and all canon characters are the property of their respective writers. If you find your life being depicted in this story you it is purely accidental and you have a hell of a lot more to worry about than suing me. No canon characters have been hurt in the writing of this story...yet.

Many thanks to GinnCaster5 for the editing help, without Ginn this story would probably be unreadable. And to Pmanpman and Rozarius for their read through.

This is a Whateley Academy fan fiction story, you can find the Whateley stories at http://www.crystalhall.org/ I highly recommend them. ~Landing

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Chapter 4
 

I felt the rumble of the car’s engine and heard the sound of other traffic around us. I loved these family trips we would go on. The family would pack enough for a week or two in the summer or over spring break, and we would go on a road trip to different parts of the country. It was great to get a nap while we would eat up the miles to our next destination. I would just lean back in the seat and let the world go by.

I turned in my sleep. Something was wrong; the car seat didn’t feel right. It was too flat to be just leaning back all the way, and it was hard, too hard for the leather seats. That’s when my head started to pound, and I knew I wasn’t on a family vacation.

“How much farther is it to the exit, Zerg?”

“Another quarter mile; after that it’s all back country roads.”

“It’s almost time! Once we bring the sacrifice, our god will arise!” said a third voice I recognized as Khaki guy.

“Damn it, Raymond, stay still! Your arm is torn up from that mutt, and we don’t want you to start bleeding again,” said the first man.

“Once our god is with us, all our injuries, new and old, will be healed; he will raise us up and make us kings of men!”

“Shut up, Raymond, we all know of the rewards we will earn,” said the man the other had called Zerg. “Just be quiet so Jameson can drive in peace.”

I remembered what had happened, about the three men that had been in my home. What was going to happen? Was my Mom okay!? And, oh god, my dog, they had shot my dog! I must have made some kind of noise at that point, because I then felt a boot in my side.

“Hey guys, I think the kid is waking up!” said the voice of Zerg. I didn’t know if he was the fat one or the tall one of the clowns, since I didn’t want to open my eyes. I just knew, with the way my head was pounding, that any kind of light would be blinding; besides I was half hoping that if I just closed my eyes tight enough it would just all go away. A childish wish, I know, but in situations like this we sometimes revert to the patterns of our youth, even though I knew my dad wasn’t going to come in and tell me there was no monster under the bed. The monsters were real and they had me.

“I told you that first knockout dose wouldn’t last long enough; give him the other needle that the boss gave us to keep him quiet.”

I felt a pain in my left shoulder. and then slow, cold, numbness crept though my body until it reached my mind and all I saw was black once more.

~o~O~o~

I slowly came to, head pounding fit to burst. My back was leaned up against a wall of some kind that felt hard and cold, so I knew I wasn’t in the car any more. I hesitantly opened my eyes. I didn’t want anyone to know I was awake yet and give me another shot of whatever they had given me in the car. From between my silted eyelids, I saw I was in a dimly lit room, actually more of a cell than anything. It was illuminated by a single weak light bulb hung high on the ceiling. The walls were made of a yellowish stone, roughly finished, and probably not something that would pass a building code inspection. There was a heavy looking door in the wall across from me that I would bet a lot of money was locked.

I thought I was alone at first until I saw a slumped figure against one of the walls. I immediately shut my eyes, hoping that they hadn’t seen me looking. After a while with no outcry, I tentatively opened my eyes again too look. The person was still slumped against the other wall. This time I noticed that there appeared to be chains running from the wall to his or her arms. Maybe they were a prisoner like me?

“Hey, psst! Do you know where we are?” I tried.

I got no response, even after I tried a couple more times, getting louder each time. Keeping an eye on the door, I moved over to where the other person was. I reached out to shake their shoulder, thinking they might be out of it like I was, and when I did, their head, which had hung forward, lolled to the side, and I could see their face. I threw up. What had once been a face, of man or woman I don’t know, was now a mass of rotting tissue. Most of the lips were gone, leaving a wide grin of yellowed teeth. The eyes were gone as well; they were just black pits that seemed to stare sightlessly at me. I scrambled away from the corpse as fast as I could and huddled in a corner as far away as I could get.

What the guys that grabbed me said came back; they wanted me, they were bringing a ‘sacrifice’ and would be rewarded. I got the cold shivers then. My dog was dead, my Mom might be as well, and I might end up a corpse like the one against the wall. I started to feel my eyes burn with incipient tears. No! I thought to myself, resolve hardening me. I wasn’t going to break down; I wasn’t going to lose it. I was going to survive this, and if they had hurt my family, I was going to make them pay, whoever they were.

I got up from that damn corner and strode to the door. I pounded on it till my hand hurt, yelling for those bastards to come face me. It was a while before I got any kind of response. Finally, the grate at eye level slid aside, and a pair of hard fanatical eyes glared in at me.

“It looks like sleeping beauty is awake. Quiet down before I have to give you a lesson in proper manners around here,” he said in an evil little voice.

Yeah, that was going to shut me up, not. I spat in his eye and started telling him what I thought of his parents. Who I explained were respectively a cross eyed goat and a monkey who liked to put his peanuts where the sun doesn’t shine. This did not seem to amuse him; maybe his mother was sensitive about being cross-eyed.

There was a jingling of what sounded like keys, then the door flew open, knocking me back. I quickly recovered and stood in the middle of the dank room as the greasy haired man, with my spit still on his face, came in with what I guessed was a policeman’s club.

“You’re going to regret that, little boy,” he said, wiping the spittle off his eyes.

I guess he expected me to wait for him to make the first move, because I caught him completely by surprise when I rushed him with his hand still up cleaning his face. I hit him hard and low, ramming him against the side of the door frame. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and I thought I had him for a moment, but it wasn’t going to be over that easily. He managed to push me off of him enough that he could deliver a hard jab with his balled up left hand to my ribs. This made me back off even more, giving him enough room to bring up the black plastic baton. He brought it down on my left side, and even though I dodged as best I could, my arm still felt numb from the shock of impact.

I knew if I gave him room to use that club, I would be in a major disadvantage, so I did my best to rush him again, slamming him back up against the door jam. I shoved my forearm up against his throat, trying to cut off his air supply. He didn’t seem to like this, because he started clawing at my face with his hands, dropping the baton in the process. I tried to turn my face away from his fingers, but he still dug at me. He had one thumb in my eye, but before he could do any real damage, I bit the fingers on that hand. I tasted blood in my mouth but didn’t let go, I just tried to bite down harder.

I suddenly felt myself falling backwards. The greasy little man had kicked my legs out from under me. I flailed with my hand, trying to grab hold of something to stop my fall. What I ended up seizing was the guy’s grimy shirt, but that didn’t stop my fall, it only brought him down with me. I twisted as we fell so that we both landed on our sides. The impact made me lose my grip on his fingers, and I spat out the blood. That bastard and I rolled around on the floor for a few minutes each trying to get the better of the other. I was glad he was a pretty small guy since, while I wasn’t small for my age, I was still a sixteen year old and not as big as most full grown men. I got my chance to end this when the little guy was starting to roll on top of me. I managed to get a leg up and kneed him in the coconuts. There might be some men out there who can take the pain of a viciously placed knee to their testicles and keep on fighting; this guy wasn’t one of them. He doubled over in pain, and I soon had him off me and was on my feet.

My dad had taught me how to fight, he also taught me that there were some things you didn’t do in a fight. One of those things was kick a man when he was down. Since at the time he explained this to me we were talking about confrontations I might get into at school, and the topic of what to do when you have been kidnapped by crazy people who want to sacrifice you to some made-up-sounding god hadn’t come up, I decided to add a caveat of “unless you really need to,” to the rule. I kicked the bastard quite a number of times. It was really cathartic. I stopped when he stopped moving. No, I didn’t kill him, but he probably would wish I did when he woke up.

Now that my captor was down and out of the game, I needed to decide what to do. The answer, of course, was get the hell out of there. So I cautiously stuck my head out the door and looked around. I was at the end of a hallway with cells on either side of it. At the other end was a set of stairs leading up. I guess the only way out of here was up. I gathered the baton from where it had fallen and also rifled through the little unconscious man's pocket to find the keys I had heard jingling earlier.

I cautiously crept down the hall, trying not to make any noise. I didn’t know if this guy had any buddies. When I got to the foot of the stairs, I stopped to listen. I heard a sports announcer nattering on about some game from a TV upstairs somewhere. Good, hopefully that will mask any sound I made as I got the hell out of here.

I made my way up the stairs slowly; they were made of stone so it wasn’t like they could creak or anything, but I was trying to not to make even the slightest noise. At the top of the stairs was a landing with an open doorway on one side and a closed door opposite it. The sound of the sports announcer was coming from the open doorway. I peeked around the open door, keeping my movements smooth and slow so as to not attract attention should anyone be in the room.

The room on the other side of the open doorway wasn’t that big. It looked to be a kind of break room with a couch against one wall and a TV against the other. Luckily for me, this meant that the two guys sitting on the couch had all their attention on the boob box. Unluckily, it also meant they just had to turn their heads to the right and they would see me.

I pulled back out of sight and stopped to consider my options. Since I had seen no other exits, it meant that the closed door had to be the way out. And in order to open it, I would be right where they could see me. I could try to sneak into the break room, and club them with my stolen baton, but since I wasn’t a ninja who could move like a shadow in the night, I didn’t see that happening. That only left opening the door and hoping like hell they wouldn’t notice me. I hoped these guys were as big a couple of sports fans as Brook was and would be too in to the game to notice anything as incidental as a prisoner escape. I wondered what Brook was doing right now; maybe she was watching the same game? Weird to think that at the same time as my safety was hanging by a thread my best friend could be doing something as mundane as watching grown men mess about with some ball. Thoughts of Brook led me to think of how other people might be doing, of how my Mother…no, now was not the time to think about that; I had to stay focused.

I leaned the baton against the wall as quietly as I could, and, promising myself I was going to find that ninja after I got out of this and start taking some lessons, I reached out to the door knob and slowly turned it. Or at least I tried to. It turned the barest fraction of an inch before it stopped. I tried turning it harder but it did no good; the thing was locked!

I backed out of the line of sight of the two men and cursed silently. Then I remembered the keys, which I was clutching in my right hand, by the way, so me forgetting them just showed how preoccupied I had been with staying silent. There were four keys on the ring, and I separated one from the others and tried it on the lock. It was a no go. I tried the second one and it too didn’t fit. I don’t know if it was the sound of the keys or if one of the men just happened to look over, but as I was trying the third one, I head a cry of surprise from the couch potatoes. I turned to find the two guys hastily getting to their feet. Crap.

I grabbed up my stolen baton and made ready to at least hit them a few times before they got me. Or maybe not. One of the guys pulled out a heavy looking gun and pointed it at me. I might be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them, at least that’s what I tell myself. So I dropped the baton, put my hands in the air, and tried to smile at the guys approaching me.

“I uh, seem to have gotten lost looking for the restroom. Could you point the way?”

“Don’t move kid.”

“Not a problem. won’t move a muscle.”

“That includes your mouth.”

“Right, got ya.”

The guy made his gun make a clicking noise that sounded much more threatening than it really needed to, and I decided to zip it. They marched me back to the cell, gun pointed firmly and uncomfortably at my back. I was really hoping they weren’t all that great of friends with the little guy I had kicked earlier. If they were, I might be in a spot of trouble for what happened. Of course, I wasn’t sure how much more trouble I could get into anyway, so that might be a moot point.

“Jesus, he did a number on Eddy, will you look at that,” said the guy without the gun when we got to my cell. He bent over the little guy and checked him out. “You’re going it pay for doing this, kid,” he said in a dark tone.

“Save it, the master wanted to know right away when the kid woke up, and we don’t want to get on the master's bad side. He might use us as one of his sacrifices. Take Ed upstairs and get him looked at. I’ll tell the master,” said the man with the gun.

The guy kneeling by Eddy gave me a dirty look that promised revenge at his earliest convenience, picked up the little man, and carried him out of my cell. The other man backed out of the room, not bothering to say anything to me and locked the door behind him.

I slowly grinned; they had forgotten to take the keys from me! I had been holding them in my hand the whole time and they hadn’t noticed! Now I just had to wait until they were likely to be gone and then… There was the sound of the door being unlocked then swung open. They guy with the gun was back and looking annoyed with himself.

“Give me the keys.”

Damn! I gave over the keys. It was no use playing innocent, since I was still holding them in my hands when he came in. Besides, it wouldn’t have really done any good anyway. It wasn’t like they had key holes on this side of the door. I went over to the wall opposite the door and sat down, leaning against it.

I have done a great job so far, I thought. I have managed to fail at escaping, and added to that, I got my captors really pissed at me. They are probably going to come in any minute and drag me off to the old sacrificial stone where they will have amateur night open heart surgery night. If this were a novel there would have been some kind of secret passage out of here, or I would have found a helpful professional escape artist as my cell mate. I looked over at my cell mate; the guy wouldn’t be helping anyone escape, except maybe my lunch again if I got too near it.

I sat there brooding for a while, idly scratching at the dried mud on my arm, thinking today was definitely not the day to buy lottery tickets with the way my luck was going. I had just gotten to the point in my brooding where I was gloomy enough that even The Brain would have said ‘tonight I’m just going to stay in and eat food pellets’ to Pinky, when there was a sound of booted feet in the hallway.

I sat up straighter but didn’t bother to stand; it wasn’t going to do much good anyway. The door opened, and in strode the two men from before and behind them was a third, taller man. He was dressed in elaborate black robes with the hood drown up to so his face was hidden in shadows. The whole ensemble just screamed evil cult leader. I bet for two pins he would have brought a demon headed staff with him as well. God, I hope he doesn’t monolog; I don’t know if I could stand it.

“You may leave us; I am in no danger from this mortal,” said the guy in the robe in what I guess could have been an intimidating evil voice if it wasn’t for the fact that the whole thing just made you want to groan and roll your eyes.

“So,” he said after his two minions had obediently trooped out. “I have finally found you.”

“All right, stop, I know where this is going, and I have to tell you I am not the love of your life. I know, I know, you have been searching all this time but it’s just not going to happen. You’re an evil maniacal cult leader, and I am just a high school student. It just wouldn’t work out.”

He didn’t seem to appreciate my snark since he grew visibly agitated, well as visibly as someone hidden in a voluminous robe and hood could.

“You will be silent!” he roared before getting control of himself. Maybe I hit a nerve.

“Perhaps, my young friend, you do not fully comprehend your situation here. I would be very glad to apprise you of it,” he said, a bit of gloat creeping in to his words. “You see, you are my prisoner, a prisoner of the cult of Cochul’relk’thultul.”

“I bet you can’t say that ten times fast,” I said.

He ignored me and contented on with his monologue. “I have been searching for you for a long time. That old witch thought I would never find you, she mocked me! But I have proved her wrong, and soon I will achieve my true power. Then the world will learn to fear Whippoorwill the soul stealer!”

Okay, this guy was definitely not playing with a full set of cards; he probably only had a couple of jokers and that card with all the rules on it.

“Would you like to hear part of the prophecy? You are central to it,” he said, smiling evilly. He took up a pose and spoke in sonorous tones.

“Know, oh stealer of souls, that the one who is master over the one who is Named shall have true power over all things named and unnamed. He shall write large the words of power, and he shall be fated to decide the destiny of the Earth. Seek you then the one born in the land of the dog lovers who was conceived as Al Sadian’s comet flamed across the sky. This one, born the son of the Oak, is the one who shall lead you to your fate. Through him will your dreams come true.”

He looked at me as if expecting some kind of response. I yawned, showing him how exciting I found him to be.

“You are the one named in the prophecy, son of the oak, and I will be your master! But I can see what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that just because I am holding you that does not make me your master. You still have your free will after all.”

That hadn’t really been what I was thinking. I had been thinking ‘yep nuttier than squirrel poo under an oak tree.’ But I didn’t raise any objection. He seemed to be on a roll, and I had a bet with myself about how long it would be before I heard an evil villain laugh.

“That is just the kind of deception that old witch would try to pull on me. She would word it in just such a way to trick me, but I got her figured, I did. You see I will not leave you any free will! I have plans for you. I think it is time you meet my son,” BD or bathrobe dude as I decide to call him, said standing back and gesturing with both out stretched arms.

In the space in front of him, seeming to arise out of the very air itself, a shape took form. What I ended up seeing wasn’t very pretty. It was a monstrous being half glimpsed in shadow. There were tentacles and mad red eyes and more mouths with sharp teeth than any natural creature would ever need. Not that this creature could ever be mistaken for natural.

“Fathhher,” came a deep, rumbling sound that I guessed came from the half seen creature in the air, though it sounded like it came from everywhere.

“Ah, my beautiful, beautiful boy, how are you doing today?” BD asked in a loving voice.

“I tire of waiting; when will I get my body? You promised you would find a way for me to exist on the physical plane.”

“Soon my boy, soon. I now have the body you will wear. It is just a little longer and you will be a real boy, just like I promised. I just have to prepare everything so it’s perfect. Can you wait just a little longer for you old father?”

“If you ask it of me father, I will do it,” said the creature as it faded out of view.

I got a really bad feeling about what body BD intended to use to house his ‘son’. Have I said yet how shitty a day I was having?

“Do you like my son? I found him a number of years ago. He is the offspring of some unfortunate spirit-walking shaman and an ancient demonic being that exists outside of our world. That poor shaman went in to places that man was not meant to go, and only managed to get back to our astral plane long enough to violently give birth to our Cochul’relk’thultul before her spirit shredded itself apart from the horror it had seen. Poor little Cochul’relk’thultul was left all alone until I found it. I raised it as my own son. But you must be wondering why I bring up my son. You see, little son of the oak, I intend to give your body to my son. I will force your soul out and allow my wonderful boy to take over. Of course, your body isn’t fit to house my son as yet. It is nowhere near grand enough for him, and certain modifications need to be made so your body doesn’t melt or explode when he enters it. But I will take care of that shortly,” he said. Though I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt him staring intently at me as if expecting something.

I tried to think of something witty to say, but couldn’t think of anything, so I went with my gut.

“Blow me, you psycho bastard.”

I could almost hear the cruel smile behind his next words. “Such nasty words for a lad so young. Are you upset about what I intend for your body? Then you probably don’t want to know what I intend for your soul! But I am going to tell you anyway. There is a reason I am called the soul stealer. You see I can capture a soul as it flees the body, and when I do, I consume it! Muahahaha!”

“You owe me twenty bucks,” I said.

“What?” he said, seemingly nonplussed.

“I had a bet going that it would only take you five minutes before you did the whole evil laugh routine. I won, so I figure you owe me some money.”

“Do you think you’re funny? You will not be laughing soon!” he said before turning to the door and opening it. He yelled for his minions, and they rushed back to him.

“Take him to the Grand Hall; we will have the Ceremony of Transformation soon,” BD said before leaving me with the guards.

The two guards got an evil look on their faces before they began pushing and shoving me out the cell door. They kept me between them as they marched me down the hall and through the door I had tried to open earlier. On the other side of this door was a maze of hallways and rooms that would have gotten me lost if I had managed to get through that door earlier.

Eventually I was led, if you want to call the jerking around those two guys did leading, to a large chamber that I had to admit probably deserved the capital letters of Grand Hall. It was longer than it was wide, and had a vaulted ceiling with large fat stone pillars supporting the sides of it. It reminded me of some of the old cathedrals in Europe I had seen on TV before, minus the rows of pews. At the far end from where we had entered was what would have been an religious altar if it really was a church, but instead, what rested there was a large stone slab that, to my horror, looked like a sacrificial stone complete with ropes to hold down the hapless victim.

Holy poop on a popsicle stick! They were leading me right to that slab! A slab I now saw, besides having lengths of rope to tie me down with, also had red stains that looked suspiciously like dried blood.

“Hey guys, you know I was uh, thinking, and I think we got off on the wrong foot, definitely the wrong foot. Yes, I beat up your guy and I was kind of snarky to your head honcho, but now that I have uh, come to think of it y’all are really a pretty cool group of people. How about y’all let me join y’all's little cult and we forget about this whole ceremony? Huh? I mean, I really like wearing robes too, they are very very uh, unisex? I could be a great addition you your group. If y’all have a track team, I am pretty good at running and…uh…”

I realized I was babbling, so I shut up. Besides the only reaction I was getting were wide predatory grins from my two guards. I also noticed that the room was quickly filling up with other people. Some were dressed with robes similar to but not as grand as BD’s, and others were dressed in normal street clothes. I even saw one guy dressed in a three piece suit. I guess you want to look your best when you're butchering helpless victims.

They drug me up the short set of steps that raised the sacrificial stone up so everyone could get a good view. They had to drag me, since by that time I was desperately trying to get the hell out of there. The larger of my two guards grabbed me around the middle and half flung me on top of the altar stone. I tried to roll off of the other side, but there was already someone over there that just pushed me back to the middle. I felt myself being grabbed by lots of hands that started tearing my clothes off.

“Come on, those are my favorite running clothes!” I said as I tried to fight off the grabbing hands. For my trouble, one of the people back handed me so my head hit the stone I was resting on with a resounding crack. I started seeing stars, and I kind of lost track of what was happening for a while.

~o~O~o~

Neil Cunningham nodded happily to himself as the chosen sacrifice was lead to the altar and stripped. At ninety-four he was both the oldest member of the cult of Cochul’relk’thultul and the longest attending member save the master himself. As such was given much respect. He had long been the leader of the rites and had guided the congregation through many different and difficult ceremonies. The Ceremony of Transformation was to be the pinnacle of such rites. He was tasked with focusing on what new form their god was to take on this mortal plane. He had been studying the ancient scriptures that his master had provided that gave the description of how the god looked, and he had spent many months meditation on the demonic glory that was to come. He was sitting quietly in his appointed place waiting for the time that the ceremony would begin when he overheard a couple of the younger members talking.

“Hey Bob did you see that new show about super models that was on last night? Oh man, there were some HOT girls on that show!”

“I know! I saw it! Man I wish I could meet some girls like that in real life. Why can’t we get some hot girls in this cult? I thought that once I learned the mystic wisdom of the ancients it would help me impress the girls.”

“Yeah, I thought so too, if I was a girl and someone came up to me and said they knew the secrets of the universe I would be all over them!”

“What, if you were a girl you would do a guy?”

“Hey! Of course not! I’m not gay! Knock it off!”

“All right, all right, don’t get in such a huff. Jeez.”

“And you know I thought there would be hot girls in the cult as well. I mean, aren’t there supposed to be wild orgies in a cult and stuff?”

“There is Susan, she’s in the cult. But I mean, who would want to bang her? She is cross-eyed and fat, and hardily ever baths!”

“Shut up man! She’s all right.”

“You did her didn’t you?!”

“Shut up!”

“You totally did her! Man I am going to tell everyone!”

“Dude I’ll give you twenty bucks to shut up about it and keep quite.”

“…alright”

“Back to the topic before we got sidetracked…”

“What topic?”

“Hot girls!”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So what do you think the hottest girl in the world would look like?”

Neil listened to this conversation with half an ear. It was interesting conversation to him. He thought he was the only one that Susan had been sleeping with. What would the hottest girl in the world look like? He knew that one! He started to slip into a day dream about the perfect looking girl. Hmm…

~o~O~o~

When the lights stopped dancing in front of my eyes like demented fireflies I was naked and roped down on the alter stone spread eagled in a really embarrassing way. There was a low humming all around me, and I saw that the Grand Hall was now full of people. There had to be at least fifty or sixty. About a dozen of them were circled around me with the rest kneeling down in the long hall facing us.

The humming suddenly started to develop into chanting in some hideous language I was glad I didn’t know. The volume of the chant was rising and falling like the breathing of some enormous beast. The circle of robed people suddenly closed in around me. They placed cold objects on top of me and some of them started cutting into my flesh. I tried to scream but my voice seemed locked in place unable to make even a sound. My eyes locked on to the guy I called Bathrobe Dude as he stood at my feet waving a wand made of some kind of polished black stone. He was chanting in stark counter point to the rhythmic chanting of the others. His hands seemed to be glowing and as I watched one of the other robed figures brought him a cup that was full of my own blood. He dipped the wand in the cup and suddenly it seemed to catch fire. Oh great did this mean I was going to be picked to participate in some magical interschool contest?

As this was going on I felt cold wrinkled hand place themselves on either side of my head at my temples. These hands held firmly to me and I started to feel a strange warmth coming from them. The chanting of Bathrobe Dude was starting to reach a crescendo with vile words that no person should ever hear punctuated with arcane acts involving my burning blood.

I suddenly started to feel different. I don’t know how I can describe it. It was as if every atom of my body was vibrating but at a frequency unknown to anyone on earth. It then started to become a sharp pain in my gut that spread to all of my body. The people on either side of me loosened the ropes holding me as if expecting something. I suddenly know what it was as my body seemed to pull in on itself. I felt myself shrinking slowly, though not by much.

That wasn’t the only think that was happening my hips were hurting like someone was hitting them with a sledge hammer and I heard a crack as they suddenly seemed to break and shift. I tried to groan with the pain my body was feeling but still nothing would come out. I looked at my arms as they grew slender and the hair that had lightly covered my forearms fell out. Speaking of hair my head felt like it had ants crawling in it. As I was looking at my arms I suddenly noticed that I could actually see my hair! It seemed to be growing and changing color.

What the hell was going on? What are they doing to me! I wanted to scream with the pain and even more with the fear of what was happening and finally my lungs would obey. I let out a long scream, at least I thought I did, but all I heard was a scream that sounded like it might have come from some horror movie where the teenage girl is being stalked by the horrible monster.

I probably should have been able to figure out what was going on, I am sure you have, after all it’s not that difficult to come to the right conclusion what with the information given. I can only say in my defense that I had had no experience with magic and had no idea something like what happened to me could really happen. To me it was the stuff of bad internet fiction.

I heard some swearing coming from some of the people at my sides along the lines of “Oh shit, god I hope it wasn’t me that screwed up.” and other such utterances that you hear only when something has gone badly wrong and your boss is around to see it. I looked back at Bathrobe Dude and while I still couldn’t see his face I could feel the anger coming off of him.

“Who is responsible for this? Who has ruined my plans!” he yelled and all the other chanting cut off into fearful silence.

There was a guilty sounding “auhauhauh,” at my head and the hands holding me there let go. Bathrobe Dude must have heard this because he looked right at the guy. I was too shell-shocked to look up at him myself so I’m not sure what kind of expression he had on his face but his voice sounded like someone really worried about something.

“I-I think I’m going to g-go and uh, go supreme grand master, uh bye!” said a quivery old voice from above my head. I then heard the sound of running feet but not for very long because BD ordered a couple of his guys to head him off.

“Look what you have done you old fool! You have ruined the Ceremony of Changing!” screamed BD, spittle flying from his mouth.

“I’m sorry grand m-master,” said the panicked voice of the old man.

“You fool you! You have ruined everything! I the great Whippoorwill will destroy you! None shall stand in my way! I will rule the world and punish you with a thousand cuts! I will…”

“Oh, shit!” said one of the people next to me in a whisper. “He is Dricking out! Someone go get his medicine!”

“You go get his medicine! I ain’t moving! Remember what he did to the last guy that caught his notice when he was Dricking out? We could never find enough of him left to bury!”

BD was really laying into the old guy in between ranting about how great he was and how he was going to take over the world. Cords of black energy were extended from BD’s hands and were striking the old man like whips. Each hit left deep gashes that would have been a bloody mess if it wasn’t that the cords seemed to be burning the wounds closed at the same time. The only sound in the hall was the sound of DB’s ranting and the low moans of the old man. The noise seemed to take on a rhythm, a deep bass note that thrummed dangerously. It was only after I had been listening to it for a minute that I realized that the note had nothing to do with what was going on in the hall. It seemed to be coming from down one of the corridor that led from the Grand Hall. The rhythm got louder and it was only when some dust started drifting down from the ceiling that BD noticed.

“What is that noise? I, the great Whippoorwill, demand to know!”

The others in the hall stared around in confusion, obviously having no idea what the sound was. The one thing that could be discerned was that it was coming closer. It was almost as loud as a rock concert, and it was with that thought that I suddenly realized what the sound was. It was as loud as a rock concert because that was what it was! It was what sounded like a band of rockers, and it was headed this way. I was sure at that point that I had lost my mind. Not only had some bozo cult guys done something strange to my body, but now I was being nearly deafened by loud, guitar lead music!

Just as the music hit a high note, a man came stalking into the Great Hall in a way that would have done credit to any entrance in an action movie. His fairly tall body stood framed in the entrance way. With his mane of ultra-curly, golden, shoulder length hair seeming to blow in a wind that only affected him. His face was long and delicate without being feminine. But his eyes were what drew the attention the most though; they were a shining gold that seemed to light up his face. His hand moved and struck cords from the guitar he had slung in front of him. The strings screeched like girl that had just discovered why Casanova was so popular with the ladies.

“I’m looking for a boy named Adam. Any of you bastards seen him?”

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To Be Continued...