The Awakening by Gary Alan Wassner Page A

you bed the boy, seduce him and bring him back here?”
    Colton asked the question rhetorically. None of the eight would answer him. They knew he did not wish to hear their opinions. He would make the choice all by himself. He walked around each supplicant, but he spoke only to Adrianna.
    “You are lovely, my dear. And you are ruthless, a wonderful trait which you alone have turned into an art. Is it your jealously that drives you? Or is it bitterness? Perhaps envy?”
    Colton grew in stature as he spoke. His raven hair flew wildly about his shoulders and his crimson cape flapped relentlessly in the windless room. His large, almond shaped, black eyes were rimmed in a deep orange glow that radiated outward with each word. He floated a few inches off the burnished floor with his hands outstretched and his long fingers twitching and extending in expectation. Sparks crackled and flew from them each time his fingers uncurled.
    In the past days, he had recreated castle Sedahar in a far different image than before. The room he now occupied was his finest work to date. The floor was polished to the point of reflection, carved from the whitest of white marble. He liked the contrast of black against white. It reminded him of the forces he contended with. The entire palace was riddled with contradictions.
    He also wished to torment himself with the memory of his recent defeat, and what better way than to be constantly reminded of it visually, in the whiteness of the floors and the whiteness of the furniture, so stark against the black background. The agony of this recollection drove him forward with greater passion and the pain caused him pleasure for that reason. He relished each glimpse of the reflected sunlight as it caught his eye, and he imagined the brightness and sparkle of the Gem of Eternity. He pictured it shrouded in black, careening headlong into the void, its light extinguished for all eternity.
    This room he now occupied had eight sides to it. The walls were solid black granite that were highly polished and rose to seemingly endless heights. An octagonal pattern was inlaid into the floor as well, spiraling round and round in concentric squared circles. From the center, a chandelier of ebony wood hung upon an endless black chain, illuminated by spheres of pure white crystal. As he spoke, it turned slowly, sending waves of prismatic light spinning across the black walls.
    The eight women barely breathed while Colton hovered near them.
    “Rise, my pretty one,” he said again to the one he called Adrianna. “Rise and join me now. I will tell you of your journey. You are the one, most definitely,” he said to her, but still she remained prostrate. “Do not fear me, my child. You need do only what I bid and you will be rewarded. Come now, the hour grows late,” he said, motioning with his hand as her body rose upward from the head, until she was perpendicular to the floor and eye to eye with Colton.
    The look upon her face was one of reverence mixed with fear, but her master could also sense the arrogance and pride that made her so delectable. She knew that the other women envied her and would trade anything to have been chosen in her stead.
    He let her drop to her feet, cushioning the fall somewhat so that she could remain standing. He released her to her own power and she gratefully stretched her long fingers.
    “May I speak, my Lord?” she asked of him in the softest and most supplicant of voices.
    “Speak.”
    “I am honored, my Lord. I will do anything you ask. Anything. Please tell me my charge so that I may serve you as soon as possible.”
    “Good, good. You understand well, Adrianna. You are just the one for this errand. You will not fail me.”
    “Never, my Lord. I could not fail you,” she said, knowing the double meaning to that sentence. Failure meant death.
    “Come. We shall retire to my chambers and I will tell you what you must do.”
    He curled his index finger toward him and her body spurted