Interlude

(Talisman part VII)



by D. Monster



Prita left the stage and walked back to the practice room, humming to herself happily. It had been many, many years since she had performed card tricks and many, many years more since she had done so before a large, appreciative audience. Now granted, playing to a half-hypnotized audience wasn’t much more than playing to a crowd of catatonic drunkards, but she’d take what she could get.

She breezed into the practice room and the people inside looked up.

“How’d it go?” asked Kate.

“Very nicely. And I must say that it’s very pleasing to see you whole and well again.” She nodded to Clea. “And you as well.”

“Did they like the card tricks? After everything that happened before the intermission?” asked Lloyd, who was wearing a large emerald-colored ring and gingerly pushing several green pebbles around on the surface of the table in front of him.

“They loved them. Of course, with the charm I laid on them, they would have listened awestruck to me reading the phonebook.”

“Ah,” said Lloyd distractedly as he pushed two of the pebbles together and, like two water droplets, they merged to form a larger pebble. He grunted, apparently impressed by this.

“I thought I saw our volunteer Eva reenter the theatre as I was about to finish. I take it that the other assistants are well also?”

“Yup,” said Clea, “Lloyd zapped them all back. Then we told them it was time to go home…and they did.”

“And Nina?”

“Seemed a little uncertain,” said Kate, who was sitting on a couch, stroking Callie’s long chestnut hair. “But she left eventually. Kept trying to tell us about the amazing dream that she’d had. I was a little skeptical, but Clea talked to her more than I did, and was confident that she’d be okay. Right, Clea?”

Clea, whose attention seemed to have wavered, looked up at the sound of her name and nodded vigorous agreement. “Yeah, she’ll be just fine,” she said.

Prita knelt down next to Callie and looked up at Kate. “And how is she doing? Any improvement?”

“No.” said Kate sadly. “She stopped crying, but now she’s completely unresponsive, like she’s withdrawn into herself.”

“She’s had an awful shock.” said Prita with a look of concern on her face. “And staying here isn’t going to make her any better. Let’s go home.”

“Oh, by the way, how did we get here?” asked Clea. “I didn’t get a chance to see – I was squished into a little box. Was it flight? Teleportation?”

“Buick station wagon.” replied Prita.

* * *

Lloyd sat on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table. Kate might have scolded him for doing so – he hadn’t bothered to remove his boots when he got home – but she was elsewhere, tending to Callie. He’d turned the television on but was ignoring it. His attention was absorbed by the small emerald green objects in his hand.

Prita walked in and turned off the TV. She noted that he’d taken the ring off. She was impressed – he was stronger than she had thought.

“What do you make of them?” she asked.

“Hmmm?” he asked absently, not looking up.

“The talismans.”

“Fine work. These were made by an accomplished tinker, to be certain. There’s a lot of power bound up here.”

“Is this maker in your league?”

“Don’t I wish. No, way beyond me, actually . Very elegant and extraordinarily efficient. I performed seven radical transformations with these while restoring all the women and I don’t sense even the slightly diminishment of their power. It’s fantastic. There is something I don’t understand, though.”

“What’s that?”

“As best as I can tell, these were designed as a matched set – one for transformation and one for control. But they’ve been changed it. The transformation talisman can now be split up to maintain multiple transformations simultaneously… which was not part of the original plan. But that’s about all I can tell.”

“So it’s not likely we’re not going to learn any more until we can talk to Callie.”

“Nope. How is she doing now?”

“Deeply scarred. She spent a long time as two separate people…enough time to develop two distinct personalities and to obtain two sets of unique memories. She wasn’t two people though, only one person in two bodies. Neither would have lived a full life, either – separate, neither would have survived more than a few years. Life essences can’t be split that way.”

“So the Grimnar actually saved her life?”

“In one sense, but cramming her back together like that was possibly the worst way to do it. I’m not even sure I could have properly reintegrated her if given the chance.”

“Damned if you do and damned if you don’t?”

“Essentially. I wouldn’t have done nearly as much damage, but she still wouldn’t have been quite right afterwards. Whoever split her like that did her a tremendous disservice, even if they didn’t know they were doing so.”

“So, if you could have done a better job – even if it wasn’t a perfect job – of reintegrating her, why then did I have to let that beast brain-rape her like that?”

“Paradox.”

“Huh? What the hell does that have to do with…ah…wait, I think I understand. What you heard while meditating in your room…”

“Felt, more like it.”

“…felt..okay…that was a temporal echo of the reintegration. Stop the reintegration and you never would have heard the echo. Paradox. So you couldn’t have prevented it.”

“Even though I wanted to. And I’m sorry to have put you in a position like that.”

“Well, I understand now. It still burns me, though.”

“I know.”

“But I understand.”

They were both silent for several minutes.

“So how can we help her now?” Lloyd asked

“I think I can heal her mind, but it will take time.”

Lloyd shrugged. “That we certainly have.”

Prita continued. “I’ll need to care for her constantly in, well, an unusual way. In a way that takes her out of the normal world. Lets her life be simpler, gets her back to the basics. It should give her a chance to rest…and to heal.”

“Sounds pretty reasonable to me. And you have a plan?”

“I’ll need your help, though.”

“Anything. Just name it.”

“I’ll need a bit of your illusion gear.”

“Here, take these,” he said, standing up and dropping the talismans into her hand. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

Clea was puzzled. “Why is ‘Interlude’ up here?”

Kate handed Lloyd a screwdriver and looked up. “Prita needs it to help Callie.”

“Oh.” said Clea, not at all satisfied by that explanation.

Clea had never participated in this illusion before, but she had watched Kate and Lloyd do it a number of times. Lloyd would stand inside the frame and Kate would enter through the cloth panel at the back and exit through the cloth panel in the front, her body appearing to pass entirely through Lloyd’s. It was standard stage illusion, though with Lloyd’s apparatus, the assistant actually did pass through the body of the magician. Clea liked the trick a lot, but didn’t quite understand why they were setting it up in the guest bedroom.

“What can ‘Interlude’ do for her?”

Prita walked into the room and over to Callie’s bed.

“It can give her peace.”

“What…”

“Shhhhh.” Prita put her finger to her lips. Then she leaned over and began to delicately undress the unconscious woman on the bed. Kate came over to help her.

Then Prita herself undressed and walked over to the ‘Interlude’ illusion. He’d designed the illusion for himself, so he had set blocks in the bottom of it so that Prita’s tiny form would be tall enough. She stepped in and he put the front panel in place. The front cloth panel had been removed and replaced with a metal plate which Lloyd had just finished attaching.

“Okay? You ready?” he asked.

Prita nodded.

Lloyd walked over to the bed. Together he and Kate lifted Callie. She was sound asleep. They carried her to the back of the illusion. Kate reached through the rear cloth panel. Prita gasped, surprised by the touch of Kate’s cold fingers on her naked back. Kate felt her hand push through into her friend’s body. She wiggled her fingers and Prita giggled quietly. Then she withdrew her head and nodded to her husband.

Together, they fed Callie’s unconscious form in through the rear panel of the ‘Interlude’. Slowly, she disappeared into the box. Prita’s breathing grew heavier and heavier. Clea looked around to the front. The metal plate was still there, blocking the exit. Callie was entering Prita’s body from the back, but not emerging from the front.

Eventually, Callie disappeared entirely and Prita’s breath caught suddenly and then slowed.

“How are you?” Kate asked, concerned.

“Very well.” replied Prita, who’d just had an intense orgasm. “You can let me out now.”

“And how is, er, Callie?” Clea asked as Lloyd removed the front panel. Clea’s eyes widened and her mouth gaped open.

“She’s still sleeping,” said Prita with a smile, gently rubbing her now-swollen belly. She looked about eight months pregnant.

“So the sort of peace you’re giving her…”

“…is the peace of the womb, yes.”

* * *

Prita had left the room, but now returned, wrapped again in her normal silks. This time, however, she had arranged them so that her rounded naked belly was fully visible. She was radiant.

“I believe this will work. I can already sense her turmoil lessening.”

“How long will she stay there?”

“As long as she needs to. Until she’s ready to be - if you’ll pardon the expression - reborn.”

“Well,” said Kate, “I think it’s lovely what you’re doing for her.”

Prita smiled, then motioned Clea over. “Here.” she said, dropping two small objects into her hand.

They were the emerald green talismans.

“I want you to take these and put them into the vault. We will put off learning more about them until Callie is ready to tell us what she knows. Until then, we should lock them away.” Lloyd was nodding in agreement. “They are far too powerful to leave lying about.”

“I understand.”

“Good.” said Prita, yawning. “I would do it myself, but I am very tired and must rest. And besides…” She smiled. “I can never remember the blasted combination.”

* * *

Back in their apartment, Lloyd and Kate had finally explained the circumstances of the morning’s bizarre sexual encounter to one another. They were laughing.

“A condom? You wanted to be a condom? Woman, you do have some strange ideas when it comes to keeping your man faithful…”

“What can I say? I’ve always been nontraditional.” They laughed again.

“Seriously, though,” Lloyd said, suddenly sober. “You’re okay with my having been intimate with Clea?”

Kate smiled. “Of course I am. It was my idea, after all. And besides, from what I hear, you weren’t exactly in any position to object.”

Lloyd reddened, slightly embarrassed. “That is true.”

“I’m just sorry that I missed it. You wanted to give me a gift but didn’t really get a chance.”

“Actually…well…here.”

“What’s this?” she asked, examining the small elastic band he had just handed her. “Are these runes?”

“It’s something that I imbued at the same time I had Prita prepare me, just in case we ever wanted to do it again and didn’t care to go through all the fuss.”

“How does it work?”

“Simple. First, unzip my trousers.”

She unzipped him.

“Now, take it out.”

“Take what out, mister?” she asked, a look of large-eyed mock innocence on her beautiful face.

“You know very well what.” he said, smiling.

She reached in and pulled out his penis, which began to harden as she held it.

“Now, slip the band onto it. All the way down to the base.”

She did so, and as she did he became fully erect.

“Now give it a little twist and all you should…”

He got no further, as she gave his member a twist and his empty clothing dropped to the floor. She was left holding his disembodied penis. After staring wide-eyed for a moment, she removed the elastic band around its base and dropped it onto the pile.

She smiled and began to undo her own pants.

“Thank you, honey.”

This was going to be fun.

* * *

Clea closed and locked the door behind her. She walked to the opposite wall and stood before a large painting. She looked directly at the painting, but paid no attention to it. Ask her later what it was a painting of and she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Her mind was elsewhere.

She lifted the painting off the wall and set it aside. The wall behind was blank.

She carefully touched three portions of the wall, one after the other, and the door of a large safe shimmered into existence. She began to twirl the dial.

12…

37…

193,497… (it was no ordinary lock, after all)

43…

2…<click>

The door creaked open. It didn’t have to – Lloyd had installed the creak to let anyone in nearby rooms know that the vault was being opened.

Inside were all manner of papers, scrolls, and artifacts, all objects that Prita or Lloyd or Hartmut had thought too dangerous to leave lying about. Even though she had the door open, Clea would not have been able to remove any. There were additional security provisions that she would be a fool to try to test. She would be allowed to place something in the vault, however.

She looked at the two objects in her hand, a ring and a bracelet, both emerald green. She set the bracelet down on the mantelpiece.

And then she put the ring on.

Funny…I thought I would feel something, she thought.

She looked at the ring on her finger.  Strangely, it didn’t look nearly as bulky as she had expected it would. In fact, if it were a different color, it would blend in with the other jewelry she wore.

It changed color.

She jumped.

It was now a burnished silver. She looked down at the bracelet. It, too, was the same color. She concentrated again and the bracelet melted and ran like quicksilver, dividing into parts and resolidifying into three bracelets identical to the one that had been there before.

“Power.” she whispered, taking one and slipping it into her pocket. Then she concentrated on the other two, as well as upon the ring on her finger. Though the ring remained the same, the two remaining bracelets returned to their original emerald green. Then one melted and reformed into a perfect replica (though in green) of the control talisman.

“In case anyone decides to peek,” she said, placing the emerald bracelet and the faux ring into the vault, which immediately closed on its own and vanished into the wall. She replaced the painting over the spot where the door had been.

Then she fingered the bracelet in her pocket and smiled.

This was going to be fun.



To be continued…