Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

THE CURSE OF HYSTERIA followed soon after the blood rain and swiftly, and suddenly, it was like a mad scientist—crazy-eyed from the deep trenches of the Atlantean Research Institute had walked in and sprayed the whole classroom with noxious laughing gas. Green auras floated in the hallways of various classrooms. Menacing. Gangrene. Like its name, the Hysteria Curse left many, hysterical.

The vampires and their fellow halfblood Dhampirs began filtering in as the blood rain packed up, and left the sordid duty of cleaning up the crimson splotched sidewalks to the helping fairies. The tiny winged pixies didn't mind the work. They sang like old miner dwarves as they mopped up the sludge. Meanwhile, inside the citadel, half the students had gone crazy.

Young witches ran amok with excitement, their eyes shiny with heightened emotions. The vampires flattened themselves to walls and touched one another, giggling stupidly at the feeling. It was like watching gypsies high on mushrooms. In the leafgardened [Potions and Poisons] classroom, Rafel saw the rain stop and moved away from the window's cool glass.

At the moment, only he and Sister Mercy and Professor Ivoria were in the cozy plant cottage of a room.

The few other students had run out on hearing the strange noises in the corridors. Rafel stepped out to see what the fuss was all about.

His leg was just out the door when he slammed into a long-haired boy grasping futilely at the air for stars only he could see. The fellow stumbled past Rafel in a dreamy state. Rafel looked up and spotted several others in the long corridor, equally locked in their own haze. And in stupor, they hopped and laughed and clutched the air at invisible constituents.

A few changelings were even climbing up the moss stone walls.

One spider chic was right above Rafel, dangling off the ceiling. She studied him upsude down, her wild black hair hanging down in straight falls that looked glossy under the bright white lights in the hallway. She looked very spooky hanging as she did. Her yellowed eyes twinkled as her head turned this and that on his face.

She smiled maniacally and he got a glimpse of her sharp teeth. Half transformed into her arachnid changeling form, the girl breathed out puffs of purple powder; it was weird. And her face was devoid of color. Pale as the hard ceiling on which her claws dug into. She stretched out a hand to touch him, but Rafel smacked it away.

Rebuffed, the spider girl turned around and began scratching along on her way with limbs sticking out everywhere. Rafel watched a boy come running out the direction in which she was headed. The boy was naked. His pecker flapped like fucking sails in wind.

Rafel shut his eyes hard.

"Fucking hell." He growled.

He didn't open his eyes until the smacking sounds of flaccid penis were distant in his ears. The boy's shaking butt vanished into the long hall. While Rafel shook his head and left the group of dazed teens to their shared gallore. He figured he'd seen enough. Before any other fella could take off their clothes and run about pale-assed, he turned and walked back into the classroom.

He secured the door with a chair when a crazily grinning girl tried to follow him in.

Her eyes were swirly, like she was drunk of drugstore syrup. And her pupils were so fucking big they'd size up a cup. He slammed the door in her face, muttering, "sorry, but can't let you in. Who knows if this thing is contagious."

"It is," a familiar voice said.

Turning back from the classroom door, Rafel found Professor Ivoria and Sister Mercy in the same spot as when he had stepped out. Melissandre sat in the chair. Ivy, on the desk's top. Sister Mercy was the one who had spoken; she had taken off her coal flatshoes and her stockinged feet lay on the ground. Upon further inspection, Rafel found her dark socks were a pantyhose.

When his eyes trailed up, he reminded himself she was a nun.

He forced himself to forger the sweet upcline of her legs.

His professor continued, "the vampires must have infected them. They were the only ones out in the rain."

Rafel walked forward and took the first chair, at the forefront of the class. Only three feet between he and the two women. He asked, "so the entire citadel is going to be infected with this woozy mania?"

"Not if we stay indoors," Sister Mercy replied. "The hysteria curse is airborne. It'll be over in a few minutes. But until then it'll get worse. Nudity is sure to follow." Rafel corrected for her. "Oh it has, very much so." He was thinking of that naked boy when he said it.

Sister Mercy, Rafel, and his pretty Potions professor waited the next thirty minutes in companionable dialogue. Dr. Ivy explained more about the Spell and Sister Mercy contributed to the lesson more than once.

In that time they got quite comfortable with each other, and Rafel was almost seduced into pulling his [Lust Activation] ability on the two women. It would make any female in a two mile radius horny to an inch of her slit womanhood. But for the sake of the already excited girls outside, Rafel refrained from telling Peitho to equip the lust antennas.

He definitely did not want snot-nosed, hippie high, horny maidens tearing down the classroom's door with rape in their eyes.

Well, maybe a small part of him did. But he wasn't sure the girls would be sane enough to spare the nun. For Sister Mercy's sake, he reared in his sin.

Snarking students beat against the classroom door, pleading with alcoholic gazes to be let in. Or perhaps for the trio inside to join them out. Rafel and the women ignored them. Sister Mercy was right and the mass hysteria began to wane after a half-hour. The students slumped to the floors in the corridors and hugged their own bodies, crashing into panic.

A funny thing to watch, given that they had been scary grinning just a while ago.

"Is it ended?" Rafel asked.

"Just a bit more. This is the crash back down to earth after the moon high. They'll all feel slightly depressed now as the despair leaves their systems. The Hysteria Curse mimics bipolar disorder. But no drugs you'll find works on it." Dr. Ivy explained to Rafel, looking out through the screen glass of the classroom to the bunch of school kids sliding and moaning on the tiled hallway.

It was mostly First Years.

The higher-ups: sophomores and Fourth Years like Ravenna and Bolta had taken courses preparing them for this type of occurrence. Their levels in the citadel tower had seen only a trickle of those infected by the curse.

"Are they crying?"

Rafel couldn't believe his ears when he heard sobbing in the hallway. His professor calmly replied his cheekiness. "Told you it was gonna take a minute. Don't gloat. They are reliving their worst fears and defeats, just moments after feeling like could run the world. Cut them some slack."

Rafel nodded. And Ivoria was glad he was behaving like a good boy for once, until he sneezed out:

"Pussies."

Sister Mercy hid her smile in her black and white habit. "This is one of the final plagues of the Spell. The closing bells should ring shortly now." As if waiting for the nun to speak the very words, a loud tolling went up from the bell tower on campus, rolling in ting-tongs to the citadel and its host of classrooms.

Professor Ivoria rose from the desk, straightened her floral dress and opened the doors.

Sister Mercy took the windows, and together with Rafel, the three of them helped the overfed, mood-swinged majority [First Year] population back to their seats. Olivar sighed as he fell heavily into his chair. "Shit. My brain feels like goo. The last thing I remember is kicking that damn snack pockets to let me my can of juice. What happened?"

Rafel answered the best was he knew how, ushering another girl into her seat. "You were high," he said. Olivar chuckled. "Ah, that makes sense."

Just then, the Headmistress's voice came tumbling out the high receiver at the ceiling again. Dr. Nicara Shetty announced. "Hello students. I'm sorry to interrupt whatever you might be doing right now but I need all those who are not weak from the Hysteria Spell to meet at the gates east of Salem. There's been a Wards Breach."

"East of Salem! East of Salem!" Nicara's voice drummed to a personalized, robotic AI. Even the monotone sounded serious, like a red blare on a spaceship. "All First Year cadets in transit, report East of Salem Hall to the Dragongates. There has been a sighting of a [BODYWALKER]. Threat level is Monster Epic.

All cadets! Report to—"

Rafel grabbed his maroon jacket off the back of his seat and flew out the door.

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