Location: On the road to Monthaven
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52st Year, Spring
The Night of the Ritual
Alyssa watched as Emcorae slept, utterly oblivious to what was about to happen to him. The boy’s weapons lay near him—the very tools of Fate the goddess had supposedly moved to place in his hands. Her hubris was boundless; she believed she could control this mortal’s momentum of destiny – she was wrong.
The Goddess of Love quietly stole up beside the Amorosi horse and whispered a spell of deep sleep into Joanne’s ear, ensuring the intelligent beast would not be awakened. She then waved her hands over Emcorae’s eyes, propelling him deeper into the dream realm where, one can only assume, he was happily drooling over more of his grandmother’s cooking. Next, she made sure no other mortals in the forest – be there human or beast – could interfere with what she was about to do. Then, with all potential witnesses silenced, the goddess did set to work carrying out her wretched plan.
Throughout the rest of that night, while the moon traced its arc across the sky, the Goddess of Love performed the ancient and arcane Ritual of First Sight over the innocent young man. It was a spectacle of calculated lunacy: incorporating special flowers, mysterious potions, and more than a couple of carefully paced dance steps. The goddess, consumed by her own theatrical performance, sometimes seemed as if she herself were the one under a hypnotic trance, hovering around, beside, and even overtop of the sleeping figure of Emcorae Azop.
Eventually the scene descended into a vile, cosmic comedy. At certain times during that nighttime rite, varied animals and creatures were called to assist her—some common to these woods, others strange and little seen—yet all playing a pre-ordained role in Alyssa’s master design. You might think of them as her pathetic, four-legged chorus line. At critical points, the goddess would lift up her sweet voice to the surrounding trees while also raising up her arms, only afterwards to hush and point down at Emcorae, staking her monstrous claim to the sleeping boy with the wild world as her witness.
The entire time, neither Emcorae nor Joanne awoke. No one came to disturb this scene. This was because Alyssa used The Veil of Order spell to control the moment – allowing the goddess to commit her crime undisturbed.
Understand this – Alyssa’s magic was not a ritual of creation; it was a ritual of theft. The sheer force required to strip a soul of its future choice is immense, yet Alyssa was driven by the shame of Alfranco Azop’s rebuff and she now was pouring the entirety of her wounded pride into this magical construct.
At last, just before the dawn, the goddess concluded her rites by carefully sprinkling a magical dust around the eyes, lips, and heart of Emcorae. The dust itself was made from ground-up rose petals, Alyssa’s own silky hair fibers, and sunflower nectar, among other sweet, yet mysterious ingredients. [Much, gag with with a spoon!]
The Best Laid Plans…
The end result of all the many years of Alyssa’s work, as well as her final magic on this night was this: when Emcorae Azop awoke in the morning, the first woman he laid eyes upon would be the one he fell madly and hopelessly in love with for the rest of her life. The Goddess’ magical spell was so powerful that no other person could ever compare to the attraction Emcorae would have for his love – and he would forever do anything to be with her. Most importantly, the goddess had forged an absolute, unbreakable bond: no magic—mortal or divine—could reverse this spell.
Fact – Alyssa was beautiful beyond compare and did not need any additional help to win the heart of any mortal. Yet, she was still paralyzed self-pity from the fifty-year-old scar of Alfranco Azop’s unprecedented rejection. She had been utterly crushed when she lost her “perfect lover.” To ensure this would never happen again, her solution was to strip his grandson of the very free will that had allowed Alfranco to walk away.
This time, she left nothing to chance.
As Alyssa looked down at her soon-to-be lover, she whispered to the wind, “Forgive my allowing the gargoyle to terrorize you, Emcorae. Yet know that your Alyssa has taken care of everything. The alliance with the baal was unholy, yet you emerged the unscathed and the ordeal has led you to me.”
The fact that she was about to take away the “power of choice” from this virgin young man did not concern the immortal in the least for Alyssa felt in her shallow heart that she could reward Emcorae for this sacrifice beyond compare – even though the rewards she offered him amounted to nothing more than a beautiful ‘cage.’
Nonetheless, destiny was about to unfold. Her rites completed, the goddess then stole away into the shadows nearby. She then removed her garments. Her flowing golden locks cascading down her naturally tanned skin, she was the picture of passionate womanhood—a perfect, desperate spectacle.
The rest of the plan was simplicity itself – with the rise of dawn, Alyssa would reveal herself to Emcorae Azop. The magic of the Ritual of First Sight would then assure that Emcorea would fall madly in love with her, and they would thus spend the rest of his life together in blissful [read: sickening] happiness.
As the last moments of the night began to seep away, Alyssa smiled as she anticipated her prospects, “Yea though I did lose my fruits of passion with Alfranco, that will I surely have forever with Emcorae! For we will be as one for the rest of his magical life and I will satisfy him like no other for all time…”
And the goddess licked her lips in anticipation.
IV. A Primal Surprise
As the first rays of the new day began to fracture the dark clouds and the sun ascended the horizon, Alyssa, the Goddess of Love, stepped forth from the shadows and into the little glade where Emcorae slept.
She was literally glowing with The Passion of The Gods as she stood in front of her would-be lover.
And just as the goddess opened her mouth to break the spell of sleep holding her intended victim bound, the cosmic order she had so delicately constructed ruptured. Suddenly there appeared behind her a new divine presence!
Pan.
He did not arrive in a flash of gold or light, but in a surge of thick, earthy musk and sudden, brutal heat. And in a flash, the God of Fertility did steal away with Alyssa!
What Alyssa didn’t know is that Pan had been summoned to these very woods, and upon his arrival, he had instantly sensed the magic of Alyssa as it had reached its climax. A god of wild lust, Pan must surely have surmised that Alyssa—his on-again, off-again long-time lover—had performed the arcane ritual to summon him. He immediately captured her. Alysssa’s muffled cries and struggles were barely heard in the mortal world. They were swallowed by the sound of his primal laughter and the sudden, violent air displacement.
Just as quickly as the God of Lust had appeared, so too did he vanish with the Goddess of Love as his captive!
Pan did not take his lover to a place of eternal bliss; he dragged her instantly back to his home realm on Arcady Island—a place of unending, chaotic, animalistic debauchery. There, his subjects witnessed the god’s ravishing, as their own eternal, feral celebrations continued non-stop around the divine pair. Alyssa’s perfect, controlled, sentimental love was annihilated by pure, untamed, magnificent chaos.
In the end, the universe had, in one instant, corrected the goddess’s hubris. Her decades of careful plotting were obliterated by a simple, raw case of mistaken identity, a flash of primal urge, and a disastrous delay.
Honestly, I couldn’t have orchestrated events any better – bravo!
Yet, it’s what happened next that was even more delightful – remember, Alyssa’s spell was still active, only the intended target now gone. Thus the stage was set and the magic still had to be satisfied – and so it was that The Game of Love was about to fail in spectacular fashion!
The Apocrypha of Azazel 