The Oracle Paths

When the group walked out of Prince Edric's villa, Aisling was beaming while Jake, who was walking a few steps ahead had a conflicted expression on his face. From time to time, his facial muscles would twitch uncontrollably as if he were restraining a brutal urge to pin her to the ground and rip off what was left of her tattered clothes.

" Bloody hell, when are you going to stop doing that thing?!" Jake yelled angrily as he suddenly turned around. If his Body Control wasn't so high he'd be waddling around with a glowing pole between his legs by now.

Gently placing her finger on his lips, the mesmerizing young woman crooned with an innocent air,

"I don't know what you're talking about..."

Now that Jake had turned to face her directly, he realized the big mistake he had just made. Luckily, his gaze immediately met with Aisling's instead of roaming down to her neck and the top of her tantalizing breasts or he would have forgotten what he wanted to say.

Still, while riveting his eyes in hers he felt like drowning in two wells filled with molten ruby and if he had not stabbed his claws in his leg again, he might have regretted the outcome. Taking a deep breath, he snapped a little more curtly than he intended,

"Stay away from me."

"Hahaha..." Haynt, who was walking behind them laughed outright when he saw Jake's hilarious plight.

With his level 90, his soul was naturally immune to Aisling's charm. Not to mention that he was an Astral, an energy being whose behavior was not dictated by the needs of the flesh. Even to reproduce, Astral beings resorted to a kind of mitosis and all newborn Astral beings were essentially identical before they found the star or constellation that would define them throughout their lives. In fact, before developing their personality, the Astrals had an unstable appearance and when they took their physical form their silhouette was only a bunch of indistinct contours. It was only when they grew up that they would adopt their final appearance which would then become permanent.

Astral people could also copulate like normal humans, but it was such an unnatural urge that very few of their kind would ever try it and grow to enjoy it. In his long life, Haynt was one of the few Astral people to have fallen in love with a human and experienced the pleasures of the flesh, but he had long since lost interest in that kind of flirtation.

From his perspective, Aisling's teasing and Jake's miserable face were extremely entertaining and if he had a bag of popcorn he could keep watching this drama all day.

Trailing just behind Haynt, but more than fifty steps back, the old elf Rifalen sported an utterly different kind of expression. His face was red and burning like a male in heat, and he was walking strangely, squeezing his legs to hide a prominent bulge stretching a certain area of his pants. His bulging eyes reflected his puzzlement and fear, but also his shock and shame at the dirty and unspeakable thoughts that constantly surfaced in him and threatened to overtake his mind.

'What the fuck is happening to me? Since when did the leader possess such a fascinating charm? Even my dead wife never put me in this state. Get a grip Rifalen, Aisling could be your granddaughter!'

Rifalen and Jake were enduring a similar torment, but their thoughts were vastly dissimilar. While the aging Half-Elf was consumed with lust, shame and guilt, Jake was racking his brains trying to find a solution to his embarrassing symptoms.

'Xi, tell me you have a solution...' Jake sounded out his Oracle AI's opinion in a troubled tone. 'Aisling is one of us, and aside from the inconvenience and humiliation that comes with it, I can handle the consequences. But if this technique is used by an enemy it could be dangerous...'

Xi obviously understood his concerns and for once she didn't dare tease him about the kinky, not to say depraved thoughts that kept filling his mind. Their consciences being interconnected, she didn't dare to admit it but she was also affected. If Jake could see her face, she would definitely be blushing. For this reason, she too wanted to find a solution as soon as possible.

[Vampires are known to have a high Charm. The purer their bloodline, the greater their innate Charm. The Charm stat alone amplifies the attraction you feel towards Aisling, and every movement and word she utters, even the most ordinary ones, will seem incomparably hot and sexy. However, unless her Charm stat has surpassed 100,000 points, you shouldn't with your current mental stats be affected too much beyond viewing her as the most attractive woman you've ever met.]

'So what's wrong with her?' Jake pressed her anxiously, stifling new lewd thoughts and a furious urge to let his growing insanity run wild. 'I don't think she's using a spell or she would have stopped it long ago.'

Xi, was also struggling with her own fantasies, and it took a few seconds before she offered some semblance of an answer.

[Like Charisma, these attributes affect both the body and mind of their users, and many techniques and spells depend directly on them to be cast. As with the Luck stat, these are abstract concepts that do not exist by default, but when their existence is acknowledged they affect our perception and the workings of the universe at its root. Aisling's Charm is such that it represents a substantial source of energy that goes well beyond her physical appearance and as such she can control it to some extent. Earlier, she repressed her natural Charm, but that must have been almost as unnatural as holding back from eating or drinking when you're starving. It's the same kind of effort you'd have to make if you were asked to walk on eggshells without breaking them at your current weight. Although you can do it, it's certainly not as easy as it sounds. For reasons of her own, Aisling suppressed her Charm for a very long time and finally decided to let go. Although... I have to admit that this Charm is a bit weird... Rather than love or idolatry it triggers something more...]

'Sexual?' Jake suggested.

[Yeah! That's right...] Xi nodded a little too enthusiastically, but then immediately sank back into silence to cover her embarrassment. After a moment, she said in an unexpectedly shy voice, [Vampires have a great Charm... But the nature of it is not so lewd... Therefore, I can only think of one other explanation.]

Jake immediately understood what she was getting at.

Her Demon quality.

Once the cause identified, it became easy to identify the true origin of such a Charm and why Aisling had so decisively chosen not to use it.

"You're a Succubus." Jake blurted out out of the blue without looking back, shaking Rifalen who was listening to their conversation from far behind them.

Her secret revealed, Aisling stopped grinning so teasingly and a mixture of sadness, shame and anger, close to self-loathing, slowly blackened her gorgeous face.

"I didn't choose to be the way I am. Do you regret accepting me?" She whispered against his back, her tepid breath blowing on his neck.

There were only two possible reactions once a man learned she was a Succubus. Either they would run away, scared to death of being bewitched and having their life force sucked dry. Or their lust and self-confidence would override their rationality and they would use this as an excuse to unleash their baser instincts, justifying their actions by claiming that a Succubus would probably like it anyway.

As for women, contempt was most often the norm while the rest would be wary of her and do everything to keep her away from their sons and husbands.

In any case, her value as a person would be demoted to that of an object and no matter how hard she tried or how talented she was, it would all become insignificant next to her despicable nature.

There was, of course, a third possible reaction, like Haynt's. Those who were educated on the subject and had absolute self-control had no reason to fear her presence.

This was especially true when sex carried no particular connotation in one's culture or society. In many races, it made no difference whether someone needed meat, blood, saliva, perspiration or seminal fluid to survive. After all, on the scale of the universe, and even on Earth alone, there were many cannibalistic, scatophagous species that had adapted to much worse diets. The fly was a perfect example.

But this was not knowing Jake well. While it would be a lie to say that he didn't entertain smutty thoughts in her presence, he wasn't among the previous three categories of men either. Having undergone a bloodline change himself and all the physiological and psychological alterations that go with it, he was well aware that it would be rather petty of him to judge a person by their birth species.

"Regret what? I've never regretted anything in my life." Jake finally replied as he began to walk again. "If I can't resist your Charm, it just means I'm not strong enough yet. You can keep testing me as much as you want."

A radiant smile blossomed on the young woman's face, sweeping away the gloom that was clouding her face. At that moment, her loveliness became so dazzling that even the roaming ghosts nearby who witnessed this unforgettable scene began to get nosebleeds. Silent tears streamed down her face, then after wiping her eyes clean with her sleeve she trotted back behind Jake, this time in a much happier mood.

The suffocating Charm that enveloped her also dissipated, causing Jake, Rifalen and all the men in the neighborhood to sigh with relief as their sanity returned.