“...and in so doing, I bind myself and bid myself bound thricely: in life, body, and beyond. I bind myself and bid myself bound to these before me, and to those they and I would bid myself bound, such that this continues.”

The words lingered in the air, an open parenthesis, waiting to be closed. There was tension in that, but the young man’s eyes betrayed none of it. He was collected if not calm, in stark contrast to the agitation displayed by the young women surrounding him. They shifted about as the shadows around them grew more defined--penumbras congealed to became as inky as the night between stars. True, at the beginning it could have been brushed off as some trick of the light, but by then even the light wasn’t pretending. It bent in, leaned in, drank in the words. It became full, bloated, lethargic, a mockery of true light. It painted the room like a skilled impressionist attempting photorealism. Try as it might to appear impartial, it betrayed a feeling, an opinion. The light was amused.

But the amusement wouldn’t hold forever. For a time, the man held the universe’s gaze, but it was time for other players to take the stage. There was power in the theater of it, and the rules of theatrics dictated every action without once taking away from the art. A choir of voices, twenty-seven in all, broke in. They wavered at first, but quickly strengthened.

“We accept your binding unto us and unto those who follow us, who are us, and in return offer you this: a share of our life, our power, and all of our warm desire, save a share we give to each other, as long as we make this our home. In doing so, we give you quarter, we shield you from death and age and bodily flaw, and we take from you all of your freedom, save your right to decide who may be us, and who may enter your demesne, which is this and us. That we sacrifice to you.”

The air was cut crystal, all edges and defined brilliance.

“I accept your sacrifice, and in saying, let it be done.” The final four words were spoken by all present, and the air was air once more.

a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a

Twenty-seven women staggered as they paid according to the bargain for ownership of the man before them. He was tall, though not especially so, with dark hair and a dark beard set on moderately pale skin. His eyes were brown and quick, and the mind behind them noticed the change. He felt unshackled from time, free from mortality. Free from glasses! No need for them now. He reached to his face and ponderously removed them, clearing his vision. The glasses fell to the floor.

Yes, he was freer in many ways, but as he looked at the beautiful women surrounding him, he understood his new status as property. Good. It was what he wanted. He was odd like that, and he knew it, but none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been. He would have lived out his little life for a short while, and then vanished into nothingness. Well, not nothingness as he now knew, but the point was similar. He… He hadn’t sacrificed his name, no, he was still Ivan, but it was hard for him to think of himself like that, like a person with a name and not as a… A slave? No, more a pet, but one who would be the sole carnal desire of these women around him.

Speaking of which, he noticed they were eying him, drinking him in as they hadn’t before. It was a nice feeling, being thought of in that way, and knowing you were being thought of like that, knowing like you knew the sun was hot or that water was wet. It was just the way the world worked now.

Well, that was one part down, the hoard of desirous and desireable women part. Now to test out his new power--

“Come here. Take off your clothes,” Janet demanded, interrupting him. It seemed she too wished to test out her new power. “Alright,” he replied, moving swiftly to obey, not merely because he had to, but also because he wanted to. Janet was attractive, though not the most attractive there by far. She was shorter than him and most of the other women around, and had reddish-brown hair framing a hungry face. Everyone did what Janet said because that was how she liked it. “Meredith, you too. Both of you, to my room.”

Meredith was a vision. Statuesque would be the best way to describe her. Her skin was like marble, and her light frame looked like it could break at any moment. She was tall for a woman, hovering maybe a centimeter above or below Ivan’s height, given the day, and her hair was far darker. Her eyes were an odd shade of green, twin rings that looked more like emerald than pigmented flesh. She was fair.

The whole affair had a sort of dreamlike quality to Ivan. He found himself following the two women to their room in the house, and found he could navigate it with his eyes closed. He could sense them as well, all of them, the two in front of him, as well as the twenty-five others moving about. No one talked as they moved through the halls, and they entered the room. Janet moved to shut the door, then locked it with a click. “Alright…” Janet murmured the word to herself, lost in thought, echoing Ivan’s earlier reply. She made eye contact with him, freezing him in place. She began removing her clothes, slipping her shoes and socks off with her feet while she fiddled with the zipper to her jeans. Meredith made her way to the bottom bunk bed and started touching herself lightly with her left hand while she watched the events transpiring. She propped herself up with her right arm to get a better view and moved the lumpy pillows below to help with that.

Janet was now entirely undressed, save for her shirt and bra. As she removed her shirt, pulling it off over her head, the eye contact between her and Ivan was broken, allowing him to move again. He moved his hand down to stimulate his already interested manhood, transfixed. Janet motioned at Meredith to stand and come over, which she did shortly. Janet then turned around, exposing her back, and Meredith unclasped Janet’s bra, which fell to the floor.

Her voice a clear bell, Meredith spoke. “Ivan, you know what you want to do, and you know we want you to do it.” Ivan absolutely did know. Everyone involved wanted him… closer to the floor. Meredith and Janet moved either side of him: Meredith to the left, and Janet to the right. He was nervous, but incredibly excited.

“How big?” Janet asked, for once betraying a sign of weakness. Meredith seemed strangely comfortable with all this, a steady rock in a churning sea of novel oddities. Meredith considered the question, her full lips quirking at the question.

“How about… that size,” she decided, looking down to the rigid protrusion between Ivan’s legs. “Ivan, I command your body to shrink, quickly but not instantly.”

It, his body, did. There was no sensation of pain or even of disorientation. His body acted from moment to moment as if that were the size it had always been. He’d always been just slightly shorter than Meredith. He’d always been as tall as Janet. Never was there a time he’d been taller than Meredith’s petite breasts. Yes, it was all correct, though his mind did not forget how he used to wish for this. He reached out to stroke Janet’s vulva as it passed by his head, eliciting a sharp intake of breath from her, and he turned as it left his reach to kiss Meredith’s milky calf. She did not react. A moment later, it stopped, and he was around seven inches tall, less than a tenth of his former stature.

The women loomed over him. From his vantage point, Janet and Meredith appeared approximately the same height, the head’s length between them vanishing. Janet’s strong, fit body stretched lazily into the ceiling-capped sky, and Meredith’s fragility disappeared. Her right foot, the one nearest to him, was longer than he was tall! She shifted it, twisting it slightly clockwise as she bent down. Her lower lips parted slightly from the strain and Ivan could see her moisture, but tore his eyes away as he noticed her fingers reaching for him. They were incredible, exquisitely crafted digits, the nails painted jet black. She wiggled them slightly, and he raised his hands up to aid her in picking him up, not that she needed the help. Her hand welcomed him, closing around his chest and lower body, and lifting him to her face at the same time. He maneuvered an arm over her thumb to caress it, and moved his head down give it a kiss. She smiled, and then began squeezing him very hard. It began slowly, at first it was not so bad, but it quickly became incredibly painful. He let out a gasp, and then felt himself being thrown about, still within the clutches of Meredith’s hand. Janet had risen to his defence and attempted to free him from his captor.

“Stop it! Goddamn, stop it Meredith, you’re really hurting him!” Meredith, grunted a bit at the exertion she was expending to keep Ivan away, but she managed to reply in an almost calm voice.

“You know we can’t actually hurt him, not permanently, not anymore. He’s just feeling pain.” At this, Janet stopped. “Come on, girl, just get on that bed over there. Our friend and I will be over to join you in a moment.” She went over to the bed. Meredith, however, still held Ivan. Her fist was now shaking slightly, which seemed like an awful lot to him. She was now squeezing, it seemed, as hard as she could. The pain was intense--and then it stopped. She was still holding him, but she’d relaxed her grip. A giggle escaped her lips, and she planted a large, wet kiss on his face with full, red lips as wide as his chest.

This was truly incredible from Ivan’s perspective. The giggle’s intensity was magnified hundreds of times over by the mere virtue of his proximity to the source, but his ears did not ring from the sonic barrage. No, not even that was truly damaging, though it was uncomfortable for its duration. The kiss, on the other hand, felt wonderful. It was warm and close, and his face was drenched in her saliva. Some of it had managed to get in his mouth, and it tasted like her. He was very, very conscious of the pressure her hand was exerting on his penis in that moment. He did not grow any harder from the experience, but then again, that would be difficult to imagine, for he was quite… entertained as it was.

Perhaps the reader is surprised at Ivan’s lack of negative reaction to his earlier mistreatment. It’s not really that surprising. In most cases, one doesn’t harbor that much resentment toward another who has harmed them if the harm is fleeting. In Ivan’s case, all harm is fleeting, and he expected this sort of thing. He hoped for it, in fact. It was exciting, and what was a bit of pain in comparison to something this incredible? Ah, well. I didn’t really expect to convince you, dear reader. Perhaps Ivan’s just a little bit odd. I did mention that before, didn’t I?

Apparently, they had made their way to the bed and to Janet, because he found himself deposited on a sheet after a short fall.

The sheet was not particularly soft at his size, but time and wear had frazzled the fibers enough that they filled in the spaces between them. The most daunting challenge was the shifting of the landscape as the two girls jockeyed for their positions, raising and lowering the mattress by not insignificant fractions, and pleating the material of the bedsheet. The pleats were challenging, and it was easy to get a foot caught under one as it formed. Not just that, but they collapsed underfoot when walked over, making movement tiring. The dark red fabric fought him without trying, and it was winning.

It was then that Ivan decided to exercise his newfound power over his demesne for the first time. “Calm, sheets, and make a path for me,” he spoke, and that’s exactly what they did. He could now afford to look around and get a better view, and what a view it was. Despite her earlier lapse into uncertainty, Janet had taken the lead once more, positioning herself to accept Meredith’s probing tongue. Ivan was now at the head of the bed, which was where the girls’ feet were, having moved around considerably. Neither of them were paying much attention to him.

He took this opportunity to get up close to them, Janet’s were sticking up, like great ridged walls, while Meredith’s were upside-down, sole-up as she was crouched over Janet. Ivan wasn’t particularly interested, but investigated anyway, perhaps out of some feeling of responsibility. He’d read the stories, watched the videos. Tiny men were supposed to worship at the feet of their goddesses. Whatever. He had all the time in the world, and so he approached Janet’s. She was short, and so they only barely reached above his head. The thing was, he couldn’t get too close. Their mass created deep divots in the bed, and the toes were constantly scrunching and un-scrunching in reaction to the pleasure Meredith was delivering. He decided to get too close anyway, and walked right up.

Her feet were runners’ feet, with clear signs of wear. As he had predicted, he slipped a bit into the depression her heel had made, and only barely had time to give the foot a quick kiss before his foot got caught underneath. It hurt a bit, and with each movement, he was pulled more and more in. Soon both of his legs were under her heel. Interestingly, that hurt quite a bit less than when just his foot was caught, so he relaxed some. He reached out and touched what he could of her foot. Had she not been so enthralled with Meredith, it would have been obvious. He was far too large to actually go unnoticed under normal circumstances. Janet gave a grunt and lifted her foot, which allowed Ivan to scurry out. Perhaps that was a bit misguided, he thought.

He knew where he was headed. He walked toward the center of the bed, passing by Meredith’s feet. Her bare ass hovered slightly below his eyeline, and he knelt down to shuffle forward on his knees through that incredible archway. Eyes shying away from her anus, he instead stared at her glistening womanhood. It really was something. Putting out heat like an old-fashioned lightbulb, it drew his hands and face in with its warmth, its scent. He yearned to taste it, and he realized he could. Every woman in the Gamma Tau Sigma sorority had literally told him he could, and in fact would be required to, in the form of an irrevocable binding. So he did.

It was just as wonderful as he had imagined. Her folds parted at his effort, allowing him to lick and touch, and feel. He felt wetness dripping around him, and he was moved about as her body shook from her actions toward the other girl. It was an incredible feeling. He began touching himself as well, and soon after that began, he noticed her weight lowering upon him. It was clear she had noticed him, and was enjoying it. Her hand moved down to her clitoris, which was still above him. He positioned himself better, and entered her vagina.

He found his body being compressed on all sides by her powerful internal muscles, though his lack of girth meant it felt more like a gentle hug than a vice. He did what he could to make her feel what he thought she wanted, moving as much as he could, licking and sucking, and drinking down her juices. He felt her contracting further, and noticed his feet were no longer touching the bed at all. He was almost fully inside her now, his feet still sticking out a bit. He tried to pull them in so he could feel nothing but her, but her body didn’t allow it. The hand that Meredith had been using to massage her own clit snaked downward and shoved him in farther, pushing against his feet. Now he was entirely inside. There was no air here, but he was not wanting for it. There was a slight pressure in his chest, a discomfort, but the lack of air was not really an issue. All he cared about was pleasing her and pleasing himself.

He felt his surroundings more now. They were ridged, for his pleasure, he thought with an internal laugh. The heat truly was stifling. The human female was a tropical jungle, wet and hot, and he was enjoying his exploration. This was just too much. Cut off from the outside world, he saw nothing, but felt everything. He felt her deep moans, a guttural sound more beast than woman. They reverberated around him, through him, filling him up, and bringing him to the edge. He was ready to explode, but he felt a pressure on one of his legs, then both of them. He fought it off, knowing it was a pair of probing fingers. He wanted to stay inside, to come for her, but she was uninterested in his desires, or at least she was pretending to be.

Her inner flesh grabbed at him on his way out. They were in agreement, her flesh and Ivan, but she drew him out all the same. “I could feel you in there, did you know? Amazing, but I could also feel how close you were getting. That’s not how it’s going to work. First Janet will come, then I will, and only after that will you. Janet?” A mumbling affirmation was Janet’s only reply. “Open your mouth.” Janet complied, and Ivan felt himself being thrust into Janet’s mouth. He felt her teeth graze his back, and then his legs. She sucked at him, tossed him about with her tongue. His ears did not hurt from the suction, nor did they hurt from the incredibly loud noises she was making, noises that drove him wild with desire. Perhaps at some point one of the girls had taken pity on him and compelled his body to not feel it. He did what he could to thrust his cock into her tongue, the slimy thing writhing and moving about. With the scant air he could tell that it smelled very strongly in here of both women. His head was more in her throat now than in her mouth, and he ached to enter her stomach. He wanted to go all the way through her. No part of him was outside her mouth now, her lips had already sealed shut. He was powerless as she shoved him to the left, placing the preponderance of his mid and lower body on her molars. She bit down. The pain bloomed around him, but he did not break.

Janet loved feeling him inside her mouth almost as much as she was enjoying Meredith’s efforts. He was a little large, a little cumbersome at this size, and her annoyance at this was what made her bite down on him. She bit fairly hard, then harder still. Her jaw ached from the effort, but still she tried more energetically. She knew Ivan must be in agony by the way he thrashed, but she didn’t care any longer. She reached in and dragged him out, scraping his body across her teeth, stopping just before his head would have escaped her incisors. She nibbled at his neck for a bit, cruel white guillotines choking him again and again. As she did this, she used a finger to touch his cock for him, moving it this way and that. He was in agony and pleasure, she was sure, and it made her smile. He’d asked for it. She pulled him out with a pop, and peppered his body with strong kisses. She then brought his face again to her puckered lips and allowed her saliva to drip out all over him. She moved him back a bit, and this time projected her spit, mainly splattering his head and upper body.

She had pinned his arms to his sides, and he wiggled, trying to free them to allow him to wipe away the saliva that covered his face, his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. He swallowed what he could, and after a time managed to shake and blink most of it free from his eyes. He opened them again just to see her lips pursing together again, giant pink, puckered semicircles. From where they met came another stream striking him again. She laughed, and extended her tongue, licking at his chest and head, depositing more spit than she wiped away, but spreading it more evenly. She moved him to her pussy, moving Meredith aside for a moment, and shoved him in feet first. He was only in up to his chest, his arms were free to feel her. He was facing downward, away from her face, but he could see Meredith’s as it came back in to continue where it had left off.

Her mouth neared and her glistening tongue snaked out. She started at the fourchette, near the base where Ivan was, dragging it along his body as well as the other girl’s minora. She didn’t continue upward, however, instead she approached Ivan with her teeth, gripping his chest, and twisting it counterclockwise a quarter turn or so, treating him to a dark but clear image of the back of her throat. She released him, but grazed his ear with a tooth or two, before coming back and turning his body with her teeth again so that he faced upward. Now he was in a position to be able to just barely touch where Janet surely wanted. He and Meredith worked together in concert. Meredith lapped back to front, sliding over him and Jane alike, while Ivan struggled, moving his legs as much as he could while grabbing at Janet’s clit. It was incredibly tiring, but it was worth it to feel her bucking around and beneath him. Janet shuddered in release and shoved Meredith out of the way, but used two fingers to force Ivan farther into her, and sealed him inside. She twitched around him for longer than he thought possible, and he did what he could to help. Really, though, her internal muscles were too much stronger than him for him to exert that much influence. Her movements slowed, and his face was smashed between a pair of fingers, he didn’t know whose. Whatever the case, he was outside of her, feeling very tired, but he still had much to do.

The sounds of sex happening in another room is not a particularly easy thing to ignore, even less so when you’re not getting any. This, compounded with the fact that you’ve had a not insignificant sliver of your sexual orientation flipped in a--possibly--dark ritual, while the rest of your urges now settle on the shoulders of one man who obviously is getting some, is enough to grate on a person.

Everyone in the sorority house was feeling it. Feeling the pressure, as it were, and Ashley for one wasn’t having any of it. That piece of shit Janet. Why the fuck did she get to, well, you know? Yes, they’d all discussed it and voted in traditional ΓΤΣ form, but it’s not as if it was fair, like, cosmically fair, y’know? Heck, they’d just recently formed the dang sorority. It wasn’t even a member of the NPC yet, and it likely never would be. It’s not like their rules and five-week-old ‘traditions’ really meant anything if they weren’t all fine with it. She was pretty sure Janet had just bulldozed through everyone like she always did.

Ashley didn’t think much about Meredith, her thoughts a jumble when considering the girl with emerald eyes. Meredith was there, yes, Ashley knew that much. In fact, she could vaguely remember Meredith being a part of her short college career from the start as a generally benign figure, but there was something…

Fuck Janet. That shit was not copacetic.

She, Ashley R. Horner, like many Ashleys was blonde, and more importantly was not going to take this sitting down. She had seen Election and found Tracy Flick of the first act to be a compelling and reasonable role-model, if a bit of a caricature. Her cunt demanded better! Every girl there’s cunt deserved better, not to mention Ivan, poor, sweet Ivan, who really ought to be filling her up right about now, poor, sweet Ivan whose only crime was that she hadn’t yet made him hers! Gosh and by golly, she wouldn’t just wait around. Janet might think she can just unilaterally decide she gets to have him, but oh, boy, she was going to get it, and Ashley knew just what to do.

She’d just get all the other girls to see how unfair the vote to get him first had been. They’d see. She’d make them see. Of course she could count on Hannah and Syeda to go along with her. Syeda would do what she said, and Hannah would do what Syeda said, and then the rest would fall in line like a house of cards or something very similar and clever. But they’d need to take decisive action first. They’d have to help Ivan escape the other two.

Why was she thinking like that? Her memories of Ivan involved doing normal things. Well, weird things recently, but that was just because of the Book. Normal things like moving normal objects like cereal boxes above her head, so why did she have this odd feeling he was only slightly bigger than her hand? Magic was odd stuff, and so was that fucking piece of work, Janet. She couldn’t get sidetracked. But to be fair, Ivan liked that stuff too, and so did she, now.

Syeda, her roommate, was giving her a look. Ashley realized her face’d been doing that thing again, that thing she’d gotten sent to the child psychologist for, that twitchy thing; and composed herself, flashing what she knew to be a winning smile. It wasn’t.

Excerpted from The Introductions, Chapter Four: Fey and Other Between Creatures

This Book, being in the general classification of grimoire, would be incomplete without a section on the Between. However, given their close and necessary relationship to the Screen (Ch. 2), it is difficult to form a strict and useful taxonomy containing most Between while also describing them with any degree of clarity. Given this, the careful scholar must decide for himself or herself how close to the phylogenetic stalk to cut and separate the branches.

As a particularly careful scholar, I make the case to cut as closely as possible. As I have said before at the beginning of other chapters, with any investigation, do not merely consult one work. Instead seek out other sources of knowledge. An incomplete list of other Books I have found particularly enlightening but with other opinions include:

Settling the Score

An Investigation into the Children of the Screen

Gods, Men, Other

Farmer Tolstovsky’s Bit O’ Learnin’

The Great Sieve: A Fine and Useful System

Below, I have created a chart organizing common thinking beings known to interact with this world.

Figure 4.1, Biaxial Classification of Thinking Beings, as Organized into the Six Clades

* Some would group these in the Mortal category given that they have porous souls, were invariably born mortal, and only attain their status upon death. We would hardly consider the souls of mortals in the Beyond imortal beings, would we? The difference is that the Ascended have the ability to influence our world without interference.

** Quaeram are also sometimes classified as immortal, though they do in fact die. However, they are literally impossible to destroy unless they believe the conditions they were created to bring about have been satisfied. Doing so immediately causes them to cease to exist, which is what they wish for.

This list should not be regarded as comprehensive--instead this is merely a primer. However, the kinds of beings listed therein should give a hint as to what kind of creature one is dealing with. The Six Clades are the most general and useful classification system, though not the most recent.

Let us now delve into the axis of mortality. Obviously, immortal beings may not be killed. As such, they must be bargained with, trapped, tricked, impeded, placed in an artificial state of consciousness, or extracted from our plane of existence. There is no way to cause an immortal creature to become mortal. Really, truly no way. Many of us have whittled our years down searching for a way to steal theirs. It is neither within their power or ours. Do not bother with this.

Or do. Perhaps you will be the first to find the answer. You won’t, of course, but there are groups of suicidal immortals who have dedicated themselves to this and seek help from mortals regularly. You’ll find there’s no secret cabal suppressing information. No one goes mysteriously missing for trying to find the answer. Most immortals are so secure in their position they feel no fear at all.

There is also the fact that immortals can neither lie nor break oaths. They can mislead, persuade others to lie, refuse to answer questions, deliberately misinterpret imprecise language, or do anything of that sort. Causing an immortal to break an oath will not kill them--for the sole reason that they cannot enter into an oath they will not keep. ANY ATTEMPT TO LEVERAGE THIS FACT WILL COST YOU.

Merwyl the Kind and a rather friendly immortal being named Agi attempted to work together to find a cure for mortality by going through and having Agi attempt to give the oath “The [number]-[st/th/nd] letter of the best cure for mortality begins with the letter [letter], and so I give my oath to write down this letter in the correct position so as to form a truthful, complete, and accurate best cure for mortality” while running through the alphabet and iterating the number until a complete answer had been found. Any time she could actually make the oath, she wrote it down. Merwyl wrote an account of the process as it was happening. It worked flawlessly. For a time, there was a real and true cure for mortality written in English on this blue rock.

Merwyl the Kind was found dead, having drowned in his own blood, lying on a bed of his own lengthened and woven pain nerves. Agi is currently screaming, as she likely will for eternity, in her resting place in the Hall. There is terror in her eyes, and nothing more. The cure is presumed lost, for it has not been found.

Others have tried similar machinations, thinking perhaps The Writer was only angry at the audacious attempt to cure mortality. Each met less horrific fates, but none were spared, and in all instances the knowledge was lost.

The Writer clearly does not approve of such gambits.

For more information on the limitations placed on knowledge, see chapter eleven, section three.

Now we shall turn to the axis of Origin. This[...]