Voodoo Priest: Chapter 4 - Learning

by Piper

mc; mf; mg; fdom; oral

Elizabeth lingered for a moment after she and Daniel parted ways. She tilted her head as she watched him walk off. Not as muscular as she liked, but he had a cute butt. He could have been an amusing boyfriend if he was not an acolyte. She wondered what would happen after she won the priesthood competition. If he lost his power, maybe she would make him her boyfriend for a couple of months.

Before she reached the edge of the forest, Elizabeth remembered that she had kept her ghoul with her today, suspended. Ordinarily he would have been making adjustments to Chris, her current boyfriend, but today she had wanted the demon close in case she needed him immediately for the competition. Now that she had several hours before the contest began, Elizabeth decided to send the ghoul out to fetch Chris.

“Temmer,” Elizabeth called sweetly. A light chill crept into the afternoon air as the ghoul answered her summons. The shadows cast by nearby trees and stones began to stretch unnaturally towards a spot a few feet in front of Elizabeth. The blonde teen watched her own shadow swivel around her feet and reach towards the pool of darkness formed by a dozen overlapping shadows. The effect had captivated Elizabeth when she had first summoned the ghoul, but like so much of magic, she treated it as mundane now.

As if the darkness was portal to the Abyss itself, a form began to rise up from the ground. First, a stark white dome pushed up in a sudden contrast to the inky shadows surrounding it. The ghoul's head appeared to be sculpted marble, with only slight impressions used to show the general location of his eyes, nose, and mouth. As the demon rose further, it was difficult to tell whether the jet-black suit it wore was rising with it from the ground or being woven from the shadows themselves as the ghoul entered this world. The effect ended as the demon's shiny black shoes settled above the ground. The creature was over seven feet tall but his suit was perfectly tailored to his lean body. His hands had the same creamy white appearance as his bald head.

Temmer had only had two masters before Elizabeth. His first master was an acolyte who had discovered that Temmer lacked the ability to speak. Ghouls are the only class of demons that can ever lose their speaking capacity, and it happens to one out of every three of them. Few priests and even acolytes would bother to summon a ghoul who could not answer them directly, so a significant number of ghouls are rarely forced into servitude. Temmer's second master, though, had preferred to use a demon who was less likely to let slip his master's activities. That voodoo priest had an indiscriminate attraction to little girls and boys. That master would often send Temmer out to collect children for the priest to use in his sexual gratification. Soon the man grew greedy and used Temmer to collect every attractive child that he saw. It led to a respectably large harem for the priest, but no one could fail to notice the rash of disappearances in one town. Other priests stepped in when two pictures of Temmer leaked online. They sent their own demons after the priest while Temmer was away, collecting more children. In short order the priest was killed, which freed Temmer from his service, and the other priests used their influence to force a human to claim credit for the 'fabricated' pictures.

“You're as cute as ever,” Elizabeth said, smiling up at the ghoul's featureless face.

It was the same joke she always used to greet him. Temmer did not know what she got out of it, since it was not like he could show any reaction, let alone reply. He had spent more time in this form than any other, so he still used it reflexively. Ghouls cannot change their forms as fluidly as djinn, and it would take him time to craft a new body if Elizabeth had not allowed him to continue using this one. Strangely, she had been thrilled with it when she had first summoned him a little over a year ago. From what he could gather, Temmer was the star of a virtual human game thanks to the leaked pictures from his escapades with his old master. Elizabeth even began calling him 'slenderman' outside of official summons and he had taken a liking to the title.

“Okay, Slendy,” Elizabeth began, crossing her arms. Although she was pretty, her breasts had not finished filling out, so the effect of crossing her arms and pushing them together did little to entice the boys in her grade. Which, of course, was why she had needed the slenderman's help in getting Chris to be her boyfriend. Elizabeth waved her hand. “Go bring Chris to my house for me.”

The ghoul bowed so low that his head was finally level with Elizabeth's. He vanished before he had fully straightened up. The only indication of his departure was the subtle rise in temperature as it returned to normal. Elizabeth pulled her iPod out of her backpack and began humming along with the music as she left the forest and continued home.




Rebecca bolted from the old house as soon as Miss M dismissed the younger acolytes. She did not want to be the last student alone with the intimidating woman. Eric and Mia had spent the entire time researching demons which, as far as Rebecca could tell, meant they copied names from dusty old books into their own, new books. So, for over an hour, Rebecca had the undivided attention of her new teacher. Miss M had not been impatient, but neither had she paused to make sure Rebecca was keeping up. The little girl had written furiously in the back of her school notebook and hoped she could decipher the scribbles later.

Elizabeth had already mentioned some of the things that Miss M had talked about today, but most of the lesson had been new to Rebecca. She wondered how she was going to keep up with it all. When Elizabeth had first told her about magic, it seemed like a fairy tale. As she learned more, that illusion had faded somewhat, but today Miss M had crushed the last of it and scattered it to the winds. Demons are evil by nature, Miss M had said, and they will hurt you if they can no matter how nice you are to them. Rebecca shuddered as she conjured the image in her head. The Abyss. A world outside of ordinary reality, filled with creatures of nightmare in possession of the power of gods, all of which want to hurt her. The vision was almost scary enough to make her want to quit. But Elizabeth was learning this stuff. She loved it, and she was strong. Miss M had said as long as you were strong, there was nothing the demons could do to hurt you.

The sun was inching its way towards the horizon as Rebecca stepped out of the forest and started walking parallel to the road that led to her house. It was a two mile, half hour, walk that gave Rebecca plenty of time to think. Elizabeth had told Rebecca about the two laws of voodoo magic a long time ago. They have a variety of applications to magic but in today's lesson Miss M had only explained the first, and most critical, use. Summoning a demon was a simple process according to Miss M, although she had not bothered to explain it to Rebecca. But once you summon a demon, you have to bind it to your will, and that is where you need to understand the Laws. Every practitioner of voodoo magic creates a sigil uniquely tied to her soul. Sigils are connected to their creators because of the Law of Contagion. As products of pure magic, sigils are tied to both the magic user and her magic, and subject to the Law of Sympathy.

The Taboos were something Rebecca had never heard of, and she wished her sister had mentioned them when she was was first introducing Rebecca to voodoo magic. They are both relatively straightforward, although like the laws, there are hundreds of nuances that Rebecca would need to learn. The first taboo is summoning a demon more powerful than your magic can handle. If that happens, rather than ending up in the pentagram, the demon follows the stream of your magic and ends up possessing you. Under ordinary circumstances, only ghouls have the ability to possess humans, but something about the summoning procedure changes those rules. The demon's power erodes the bonds of the pentagram and so you end up summoning it inside of your own body. Miss M had explained it had something to do with the second-tier sub-rules regarding the Law of Contagion and a first-tier sub-rule of the Law of Sympathy. Rebecca had not understood those references, but she had dutifully written them in her notebook.

The second taboo was not to make a self-link with anything. Miss M's explanation had left Rebecca very confused but the overall concept was simple enough. Voodoo practitioners can use their magic to forge links between things because of the Law of Contagion. Depending on how they shape the magic, the Law of Sympathy governs what happens next. This is why voodoo dolls are so common that even non-magic users have learned of them. If Rebecca took a hair from her sister and used magic to merge it with one of her dolls, the Law of Contagion says that the hair is still linked to Elizabeth. If Rebecca then fueled the doll with more magic, she could make changes to the doll that affected the real Elizabeth. Or, if she wanted, Rebecca could reverse it so that when Elizabeth made changes to herself, they were reflected in the doll.

Binding magic like this is very common among voodoo practitioners, although there are many uses beyond voodoo dolls. The danger, the taboo, comes when a priest or acolyte forges a link between herself and an object, rather than someone else and an object. When this happens, the magic user's soul is tied to the object. That kind of magic gives the object absolute power over the magic user. It can be useful, as long as the creator keeps the object. If you keep it safe, there is very little anyone can do to harm you, as long as you use the right spells to channel the magic that way. When Miss M had explained this part, Eric had looked up from his book and muttered something about Horcruxes before Miss M glared at him and he hastily buried his nose again. Miss M had gone on to say that this kind of magic was forbidden because of what could happen if the object fell into another's hands. With your soul tied to the object, there is no way to resist the Law of Sympathy. Your mind, body, and magic are completely subject to the whims of whoever holds the object. There is no escape because, unlike ordinary links, this one cannot be terminated. Your own magic feeds the connection, and the connection is so strong that destroying the object would kill you.

Rebecca shuddered despite the warmth of the day. Her thoughts had turned dark as she reflected on the lesson. It was one thing to hear about getting possessed or enslaved when you were just struggling to copy down the words. It was something else entirely to process them and understand that these things could happen to you. Of course, the reason why she was told this in her first class was so she did not break a taboo on accident. Miss M had said that she would not even summon a demon until she had studied and trained her magic for a year. Much of that time would be spent learning the limits of her magic so that she could calculate when a demon was beyond her ability. Miss M would begin teaching Rebecca how to form links much sooner, but only under careful supervision. So, there was little danger of Rebecca breaking a taboo. Rebecca was much more worried that her big sister would do something like that. That kind of recklessness sounded like just the kind of thing that Elizabeth would try if it meant winning the competition.




Rebecca paused in front of Elizabeth's closed bedroom door. Rebecca had never been placed under the enchantment that Miss M used on the acolytes' families, since Rebecca had accepted Miss M's invitation to study magic. That meant that Rebecca was always aware of Elizabeth's activities, and the liberties that she took without having to worry much about their parents getting involved. Rebecca pressed her ear to the bedroom door and heard faint wet sounds from within. She sighed. Elizabeth would not mind if she came in. A few times Elizabeth had even invited Rebecca in to watch. Rebecca turned the handle and pushed on the door.

Elizabeth looked up as her door swung open. The blonde teenager was sitting on her bed with her back against her headboard. Rebecca kept her eyes firmly on her sister's face as she stepped inside the room. With her peripheral sight, Rebecca identified the muscular, broad-shouldered boy on the bed as Chris, Elizabeth's current boyfriend. He was wearing jeans and a tight striped shirt that probably would have showed off his upper body wonderfully if he had been standing. Instead, he was lying on his stomach with his head buried between Elizabeth's thighs. As so often happened when Chris came over, Elizabeth was bottomless. Aside from the small smirk on her face, Rebecca's big sister gave no indication that she noticed Chris eating her out. She was even using his head as a stand, propping up her book, which Rebecca recognized as her grimoire, against his wavy black hair.

“Hey, Becca,” Elizabeth said sweetly. Including her name in the greeting was probably her big sister's way of needling Rebecca for interrupting Miss M earlier. Elizabeth closed her book and set it down on Chris' head. She wanted Rebecca to mention the boy.

“Hey,” Rebecca echoed, not rising to the bait. She plopped down on Elizabeth's chair and pointedly ignored the soft slurping sounds coming from her sister's legs. Before Elizabeth could ask about her first lesson with Miss M, Rebecca rushed to ask the question that had brought her here. “Do you know what you're going to do for the competition tonight?”

“I'll probably send my demons off to go fight him,” Elizabeth waved her hand carelessly. After she spoke, Chris stopped licking her for a moment, until she gently lifted her grimoire and let it fall back down on his head. The licking resumed more energetically than before. Elizabeth closed her eyes and took a steadying breath.

“Really?” Rebecca forgot about Chris for a second. Elizabeth was not known for thinking ahead, but this just seemed foolish. Even though Miss M had given the acolytes no real direction about the competition, Elizabeth could have at least tried to come up with a plan.

“Nah,” Elizabeth shook her head. “But I set up some defenses in case he tries to send his demons here.”

“Really?” Rebecca asked hopefully. At least Elizabeth had prepared something.

“Nah,” Elizabeth shook her head again. Rebecca ground the palms of her hands against her temples. “Relax, I'll do it. I have until midnight.”

Rebecca had never seen Elizabeth forced to do anything, but she could be cajoled. Pretending to be as worry-free as her sister, Rebecca asked, “Can you do it now so I can see? I've never seen real magic before. And you're allowed to show me all the cool stuff you can do now that I've started to study.”

“Umm,” there was a pause while Elizabeth considered. “Okay. Sure.”

Elizabeth was either unashamed about being bottomless, or more likely, trying to get a reaction from her little sister, as she swung her thigh up and over Chris' head to disentangle herself from him. As Elizabeth scooted to the edge of the bed and stood up, Rebecca glanced down at her sister's waist without thinking. Elizabeth had a light dusting of hair between her legs, not quite thick or dark enough to be called pubic hair yet. It made sense that she was getting hair down there, since her boobs were clearly coming in. Even from across the room, Rebecca could tell that Elizabeth's cunny was wet. Whether from arousal or saliva, Rebecca did not know, but Chris had clearly not confined his tongue to the inner folds of her sister's cunny.

Elizabeth held her index finger out in front of her, on level with her chin, like a conductor poised to begin. As she moved her finger around in a series of loops in front of her, a ribbon of light trailed behind. When she finished, Elizabeth dropped her hand but the light hung suspended in front of her chest. It looked somewhat like a flower, or a Celtic knot, to Rebecca, and it was perfectly flat, even though there was no way Elizabeth could have held her finger that steady when she drew in midair.

“That's my sigil,” Elizabeth said as she looked at Rebecca through the holes in the glowing symbol. “It's the basis of all spells, even the ones we use to bind demons. But it can do a lot of other things.”

As Elizabeth spoke, she reached up with both hands and began working with the sigil as if it were dough. She stretched some of the lines of light, folded others, and twisted them through each other. Rebecca was lost, even though her sister was not going particularly fast. It looked random, but Elizabeth was clearly working with some design in mind.

“There we go,” Elizabeth smiled with satisfaction as she held the remade light structure out for Rebecca to see. Before, her sigil had not possessed a single straight line, but now it looked like a series of interlocking triangles. “This is a pretty basic shield spell. Its strength depends on how much magic I put into the sigil when I drew it.”

The construct grew brighter as Elizabeth spread her arms apart. It became an indistinguishable ball of light that expanded into every part of her room, momentarily blinding Rebecca. The little girl blinked and her eyes began to clear. After a few seconds, she realized that the light was seeping into the walls. She looked back at Elizabeth and her amazement must have been evident because the older girl laughed.

“You can do it invisibly,” Elizabeth explained. “With 'light' that only you can see. Which is good, otherwise it'd be a real pain to cast spells without people catching on. I put it into the visible spectrum so you could see what I did.”

Not that I learned much, Rebecca thought dejectedly. It might as well have been invisible for all the tips that she had picked up. She did not even have a sigil yet, let alone the knowledge to warp it into something else like Elizabeth had done.

“So, that's that.” Elizabeth had no problem steamrolling forward if Rebecca was going to remain silent. “I'm going to spread a bigger one over the whole house, but I wanted my room to have double protection. Actually, for the one over the whole house, I'm going to use this new trick I learned. If a demon breaks through the shield, there's this trigger-spell that automatically pulls one of my demons out from suspension – Oh my god!”

Rebecca flinched as Elizabeth ended with a shriek. Her big sister was prone to sudden excitement. Fragments of ideas would occur to her and she would switch tracks in a moment. The real trick was getting her to follow through on any of them. Rebecca sighed as she saw Elizabeth's promise of laying a second shield spell over the house slipping away.

“I never showed you my demons!” Elizabeth said excitedly. “Miss M always said- doesn't matter. You can see 'em now that you're an acolyte.”

Chris, who had been lying prone on Elizabeth's bed since she had stood up, stirred and sat up. Rebecca frowned as she looked at him. His eyes were vacant in a way that she did not like. He was looking at her without recognition, which was particularly strange because they had talked several times in the past. Granted, she had never seen him right after he finished eating out her sister, but it was still unnerving. Elizabeth pulled the boy's arm until he stood up next to her. Like his girlfriend, Chris did not seem embarrassed, although he at least was fully-clothed.

“Not yet,” Elizabeth said with a mischievous smile. She put a hand on Chris' back and propelled him gently towards Rebecca. “Play with her first.”

“W-what are you doing?” Rebecca asked Chris. She tensed nervously, prepared to bolt from her seat as the muscular teen lurched towards her.

Chris looked at her silently as Elizabeth answered. “Chris is always telling me how much he wants to eat you out. I figured he could do it while I show you my demons.”

“But...” That reminded Rebecca: Chris was not supposed to know about demons. She had ignored him while he had been lying on the bed, and she had blithely talked about the acolyte competition. But Elizabeth had not stopped her. Was there a chance that Chris was allowed to know because he was her boyfriend? Or maybe Elizabeth would alter his memories afterward. Rebecca was so caught up in her own thoughts that she almost jumped out of her skin when Chris settled his hands on her slender hips.

“Jeez, relax,” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. Of course she did not think it was a big deal that her boyfriend was unbuttoning Rebecca's shorts, she had been bottomless for this whole conversation. “You'll like it. Why do you think I keep this meat-head around?”

That was Elizabeth. She always had a hot boyfriend, always treated him like trash, and always somehow kept him hanging on her every word. Elizabeth had rarely been that callous with Rebecca, but she still liked to make sure Rebecca remembered who was the big sister. If Rebecca kept pushing Chris away, Elizabeth would see it as a sign that Rebecca was challenging her authority or something. With a pained expression, Rebecca helped Chris pull her shorts and panties down to her ankles. He looked at her hairless cunny in silence, and with a disinterest that was even more unnerving. Was Elizabeth lying? But then Chris lowered his head towards her thighs. Rebecca snapped her legs closed out of instinct. It was only under Elizabeth's sharp stare and with a surprising amount of effort that Rebecca forced herself to spread her legs apart.

The touch of the teenager's lips against her cunny was so alien that a shudder worked its way through Rebecca's whole body. Everything she had been taught about privacy rebelled against having this boy's mouth between her legs. She squirmed uncomfortably as he dragged his tongue up the length of her slit and spent several seconds working into her folds to give undivided attention to her tiny clit. By making a conscious effort, Rebecca managed to relax her body in stages. She stopped staring down at the unruly head of hair in her lap and returned her attention to Elizabeth. It became easier to ignore Chris once she stopped thinking of him as a person and only focused on the beginnings of pleasure from her cunny.

“Everyone settled in?” Elizabeth asked. Without waiting for a reply, she said, “Good. Now let's give a round of applause for my first demon: Balenirese.”

The name seemed to echo unnaturally long to Rebecca, or perhaps the room had somehow become more quiet than before. Bands of light seemed to solidify and twist on the carpet in front of Elizabeth, filling with colors that had not been present moments ago. With a quiet pop, the last grainy details of the creature resolved themselves and Rebecca could examine the diminutive figure. The first thought that occurred to her was that it looked rather like the Geico gecko, but a closer inspection revealed otherwise. Although the imp was green, scaly, and a half-foot tall, the similarities ended there. His features, particularly his face, were sharp and exaggerated by protruding scales which formed wicked-looking points. Dark green claws extended from his fingers and toes and a longer spike capped off his thick tail. The demon bowed in the direction of Elizabeth. He thumped his tiny tail on the carpet and, impossibly, launched himself all the way from the ground to Elizabeth's shoulder. It was not until Rebecca noticed that he was actually floating an inch above Elizabeth's shoulder that she realized the imp had not needed to use his tail at all to propel himself up.

“Bale here is a companion imp,” Elizabeth explained as she stroked the creature's scaly back. She made a gesture and the demon dissolved into streams of multicolored light. “The first demon you summon is probably going to be even weaker than an imp, which is saying something. Imps are the weakest level of demons that are worth keeping around. You'll probably have at least one suspended all the time, just 'cause they use up, like, no magic.”

Rebecca nodded and tried to look appreciative. Chris was becoming very distracting and she was twisting a little on the chair, torn between wanting to pull away and wanting to grind his face against her cunny. For a second, it looked like Elizabeth was about to smirk at her little sister's conflicted state, but then the moment passed. Instead, Elizabeth turned away and stooped down by the foot of her bed. Rebecca watched her sister's butt jiggle as she bent down and quickly straightened. Elizabeth had picked up her discarded lower garments: a skirt and panties. She slipped them back on quickly. Rebecca was offended. Had Elizabeth only been staying bottomless to convince Rebecca to allow Chris to take off her own clothes? Then Chris' tongue found a sensitive spot and Rebecca promptly forgot about being offended.

Elizabeth looked indecisive for a minute and finally said, “I have two other demons right now. One's a djinni. They're strong and I'll show mine to you sometime, but I don't want to waste my magic right now. My last demon's a ghoul, in between djinn and imps. You've kinda already met. Slenderman, come out and say hi.”

The confused look on Rebecca's face grew more pronounced as Chris suddenly collapsed and fell unconscious to the ground. Some kind of inky-black liquid was seeping up from underneath his clothes and spreading like blood. Rebecca half-shrieked and jumped out of her chair as the living darkness began to stretch upward from the teenager's limp form. Rebecca backpedaled rapidly, almost tripping over the shorts around her ankles, and not caring that she was still half naked. Elizabeth was making a rapid hand gesture. The whatever-it-was had begun to take on a humanoid shape. Rebecca had almost reached the bedroom door, slowed by the clothes binding her feet. Suddenly, the door slammed shut, as if a powerful wind had hit it, and Elizabeth dropped her hand. Rebecca tried the handle but the door would not open. She stood with her back to the door, wearily watching the featureless white head for any signs of malice.

“Oh come on,” Elizabeth's exasperated sigh broke some of the tension. “I know he's taller than Bale, but old Slendy isn't going to hurt you. He's my slave too.”

But there was a difference between a tiny lizard-thing that could have been almost cute in the right light, and this looming, silent figure. A looming, silent figure which had apparently been eating Rebecca out moments ago, wearing Chris as comfortably as it was wearing its suit. Rebecca shuddered. She felt violated and vulnerable under the demon's eyeless gaze. Slowly, Rebecca bent down and pulled her shorts back up her legs. She kept her head turned up toward the slenderman the whole time.

“Is this...why Chris is your boyfriend?” Rebecca asked without taking her eyes off of the ghoul. Elizabeth was pretty enough to get a guy like Chris, but Rebecca had never understood how her big sister kept guys around with her attitude.

“I'll pretend that wasn't rude,” Elizabeth said magnanimously. She sat down on her bed and made the gesture of dismissal. The slenderman faded from existence like a shadow under a rising sun. Rebecca stayed standing by the door, not wanting to return to her seat when Chris was crumpled in front of it. Elizabeth continued, “The slenderman makes it easier to keep guys interested. When he possesses someone, he can kinda push their thoughts in a certain direction. It's not very strong but as long as he does it every so often, I can keep any boy I want.”

“Oh,” Rebecca said. She did not think she would want a boyfriend like that. It sounded creepy and mean. Did Elizabeth not care about the boy's feelings at all?

“It makes everything easy,” Elizabeth said, a little defensively, when Rebecca did not express more enthusiasm. “Most of the time we can be a regular couple. But sometimes I have needs. Those are the times when I send Slendy inside Chris. So I can have a hottie eat me out without worrying about what he'll tell his friends. See, once Slendy leaves, Chris' memories become a blur.”

“Oh,” Rebecca said, with no more support than before. This sounded shallow even for Elizabeth.

“Sometimes...impressions are left behind though,” Elizabeth added. She flicked her eyes over to Chris. “When he wakes up in a couple minutes, you might notice him paying more attention to you than usual, even though he won't remember actually licking your little vagina.”

Well, that makes it less creepy, Rebecca thought sarcastically.

As Chris began to stir, Elizabeth mused, “Slendy did a good job today. Maybe I should let him play.”




Streetlights flickered as the slenderman drifted through the air above the houses, heading for Chris' home. Temmer had spent the early evening after his dismissal in a suspended state, watching through Elizabeth's eyes as she played the part of a normal teenager with her boyfriend, until Chris had left for dinner. Once it was late, Elizabeth had sent Temmer off to claim his reward for doing a good job with her and her sister. Had Temmer possessed lips, he would have been licking them by the time he reached the boy's second floor bedroom window. Ghouls alone among all of the classes of demons have the ability to truly possess humans. Some imps develop the talent, but none are strong enough to actually influence humans once they have slipped inside. Further up the spectrum, once ghouls have gained enough power to become djinn, they become too solid for possession, as well as other ethereal abilities.

Demons traditionally gain power by consuming weaker demons. An imp might devour several thousand knits, a bug-like species of semi-intelligent demons in the Abyss, before it has amassed enough strength to be classified as a ghoul. The types of demons that one consumes determine the way its power grows. A ghoul consumes lower demon-life until it becomes a djinni, a djinni does the same until it becomes an ifrit, and so on. However, ghouls, thanks to the singular nature of their powers, are able to feed on the life of the humans that they possess in addition to feeding on weaker demons. Humans are too weak to make the enterprise worthwhile normally, since draining too much vitality at once will kill the human before its body can replenish its resources. But over a long period of time a patient ghoul could amass a respectable amount of power. Temmer is very patient.

Invisible and intangible, the slenderman drifted through the pane of glass and into Chris' bedroom. The clock on the table depicted '12:09' in dim red light. Temmer paused at the foot of the boy's bed, towering over his sleeping form. Chris would never live as long as he would have if Elizabeth had not entered his life. Elizabeth often allowed the ghoul to feed on Chris as he slept, as a reward for good service. Although Temmer was careful never to draw enough vitality to cause visible symptoms, his accumulation of the boy's energy meant that Chris would most likely never see his 50th birthday. The slenderman did not care, and Elizabeth did not seem to care either, as far as he could tell. His mistress was only interested in satisfying her desires in the present. She knew that Chris would be out of her life long before the ghoul's effects robbed him of his years. Perhaps it was cruel, but really she really just did not care enough about Chris to trouble herself over his fate. The ghoul had concluded that Elizabeth was not malicious, she was simply selfish. She considered herself above non-magical humans, and she was only interested in what they could do for her.

At seven feet tall, it would have been laughable to think that Temmer could “fit” himself into Chris' much smaller body. However, size meant nothing when it came to demonic possession. As long as the ghoul was touching the boy's skin, he could slide his essence inside. Once that was accomplished, he could brush aside the human's weak thoughts and control the body as his own, as he had done earlier at the command of his mistress. Or, as he planned to do now, he could lie in the boy's body like a parasite and draw in his youthful energy. Chris had pulled his sheet up around him as he slept, leaving his ankles exposed. The slenderman had to bend down, accommodating for his great height, to rest his flawless white hand on the boy's foot. Still intangible, the demon's hand passed slightly through the boy's skin, but even this pseudo-contact was enough for possession. The ghoul was about to enter the boy when a slight movement caught his attention. He straightened and turned towards the source.

In a corner of the room, near the boy's headboard, stood a little girl. Her petite form was swathed in darkness, out of the path of the street lights streaming in from between the blinds on the window. Her hair was dark, but lighter than the black shadows that hugged her. She was very small, though doubtless she appeared even smaller thanks to his unnatural height. Perhaps she was the boy's younger sister. She was pretty, Temmer supposed, but he could not tell if she resembled the boy. Humans looked much the same to him, as if they were the ones who lacked facial features. Oddly, she was not dressed in nightwear, though surely she should be in bed at this hour. In fact, her clothes were even stranger than he first realized. He had never seen a female that young showing so much of her skin, except at the beach, in the bath, or in his former master's harem.

She was looking at him. That was not possible. He was still invisible. No human could see...no human...she was not human. She still had not moved. It was not her body's movement that had attracted his attention when he had been about to possess Chris, it was the air around her. Within the shadows, something much lighter was swirling, growing, around the girl. Smoke. White smoke. It was drifting around her undeveloped body lazily, slowly thickening. The slenderman took a step back and prepared to lash out with his power. Whatever this demon was, it was stronger than him. Even from across the room he could sense a vast power building. His only chance at survival would be to distract her and then flee to his mistress.

The ghoul turned his head from side to side. The window...the walls...the ceiling...the floor. Blocked. They were shimmering, ever so slightly, every surface in the room. From that pale sheen, wisps of white smoke drifted out, growing larger. He was trapped, boxed in by the other demon's magic. He looked back at the corner. The white smoke was swirling so thickly that he could not determine whether it was blocking her, or whether she had forsaken her physical form altogether. He tried to float upwards and found that the smoke coiling around his shoes held him in place like bands of iron, despite his intangibility. For the first time in his centuries of life, Temmer was truly trapped. Cold fear swept through him, although he lacked the face to give form to the feeling.

One last chance. It might not even work. The ghoul turned his gaze to Chris' sleeping form. Perhaps the boy's flesh would shield him from the other demon's jaws. Perhaps not. The ghoul had no concern about putting the boy in harm's way if there was a sliver of a chance of saving his own life. The walls were gone, obscured by smoke. Everywhere except the bed in front of him was a featureless white void. The slenderman was out of time. He reached forward. His skeletal fingers stopped, inches from the boy's leg. He strained, pushing with all his strength. His hand did not move. Smoke was twining around his arm, its slow eddies belying its power.

“Good idea.” The appreciative whisper came in the voice of a young girl, but from everywhere at once. “I'd tell you to be faster next time, but, well...”

There was no feeling, no pain. The slenderman looked down at himself. The ivory smoke was dissolving his illusory suit like acid. Scraps of black fabric tore free and then disappeared as they fell into the white void. The smoke grew thicker until it was completely opaque and the slenderman lost all sense of where he was. Everywhere was white and he could not even see his own body anymore. He could feel it though, for a while. He became aware of numbness spreading from his extremities. No, not numbness, loss. He was being consumed. The demon girl was sucking his essence into hers. As he had done to countless imps. So this is what it felt like. No pain, that was nice. A nice change from the human masters who used pain to compel obedience.

Temmer had no body anymore, only his thoughts. He could feel those eroding too. Soon nothing of the slenderman would remain, and the demon girl would be stronger than ever. It was bad luck. To become a truly formidable demon, you had to live for millennia, consuming lesser demons all the while. He had worked so hard during the centuries he had been alive, acquiring power so he could rise through the ranks of demons. Now she was stealing it all. It was like his efforts did not even matter. Of course, they did not matter to him anymore because very soon he would no longer exist. The slenderman's last thought was to wonder how such a powerful demon had ended up in the bedroom of his mistress' boyfriend.

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