Zatomé Tzannera set down her cards and smiled as her owner finally closed the book on their conversation. Matthew had finally finished his predictable, insipid series of questions and set the book down to focus on other things, as she knew that he would, leaving her once more alone in her tent. Almost as soon as she lost his focus, things began to flatten and shed the illusion of reality as they returned to their true paper form. 

This was what always happened, of course. That was the only reason that she tolerated such long-term conversations with creatures of flesh and blood because it was only when she was fueled by their spirit that she truly felt alive in this infinite maze of paper that she now called home. That was the way the grimorum that she was bound to was designed, and that was the way it would always be until she found someone foolish enough to break her chains and set her free. 

She stood and walked outside her tent through the onion paper curtains as she contemplated that such a fool might only be weeks or months away from doing just that. Even though she was incredibly eager to see what would happen at those delicately balanced points of time, she forced herself not to rush things. 

She’d waited for decades since her last taste of the world, and she’d survived and rebuilt from the burning times centuries before. She could wait until it occurred to her horny young Master that his celebratory holiday should be in Las Vegas all on his own; pushing him in that direction would only decrease the trust he placed in her ever so slightly as he began to doubt his own autonomy. 

The name certainly suited Tomé well. As the city of sin, it might as well belong to her already, but it would soon enough. Everything would if she could steer her pawn through a series of incredibly unlikely events, and even as her little world continued to fall apart and she slowly transformed from woman to paper doll to illustration, that thought only burned brighter. 

Around her, everything was falling from three-dimensional origami objects to nothing but crude two dimension representations of her reality as the pages unfolded, and she was left with nothing but lines of ink upon them. The maze that Matthew had done so much damage to as he barged through line after line reverted to the runes that bound her complete with all the little gaps he’d made. Likewise, the beautiful sunset she watched slowly reduced from a thousand shades of blood-red to three colors of a children’s diagram. 

As much as she enjoyed having a beautiful prison, Tomé enjoyed hoarding power more, and there was no need to waste energy when she couldn’t siphon it from her owner’s attention. Even locked into words on a few simple pages buried deep in the heart of her infinite library wasn’t enough to stop her from thinking. In fact, in some ways, it was even easier to see the world and plan the consequences of each action and reaction from the heart of her dark word web. 

From here, she could see what game Matthew would waste his time playing tonight after he finished getting chewed out by his father in public and praised by him in private. Past that, she could see the awkward phone call he would have with Annie tonight and the much sexier one he would have with Maria tomorrow. There were dozens of ways each of those calls and conversations could go, but a few well-placed words in a conversation with him at the right time, and he could be goaded to the right decision as easily as a docile cow. 

Matthew just wasn’t that complicated, and that was what made him ideal. He had just enough ambition to be used as a bit and bridle and just enough energy that he would run from hole to hole, eager to generate a fountain of pleasure and lust until he’d served his purpose and was ready to be cast aside. 

Tomé would have smiled then, had she still had a mouth to do it with. The poor young thing was only just beginning to suspect that something that was too good to be true might be happening, but he still believed it was impossible for her to lie to him because he needed to believe that. Believing anything else - well, that would open his mind to all sorts of undesirable questions. Of course, she could lie to him. She already had dozens of times, though those were small lies or lies by omission rather than anything that could ever be proven. Trust was vital for the slender thread of her plan, and damaging that was the only thing she could do that was completely unrecoverable. 

Even though he suspected that she’d done something to ensorcell the women in his life, Matthew couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Even the spell she’d had him perform to enhance the size of his cock hadn’t had anything in it specifically to make him more desirable to the opposite sex beyond giving him a more noticeable bulge and more confidence, but it had contributed to the effect he was only now beginning to notice. 

The man was becoming a locus of sexual energy and tension thanks to her efforts. It wasn’t just that he was having more sex than ever; it was that everyone he interacted with was too. At the party he’d gone to last night, almost every attendee had gotten laid later that evening, even losers that were normally left high and dry. His parents were having sex more than they had in years. Even his former coworkers and the other kids in his classes, whom he barely saw anymore, were having sex more than ever. In the astral plane, he was a vortex of sexual energy, and though even that pull wouldn’t do much to a truly disinterested woman, if someone wanted to fuck Mathew, even a little bit, it was enough to push them over the edge and make them cast their inhibitions aside. 

Some days that would get noticed by the wrong person. There were still vampires, demons, witch hunters, and any number of other, more frightening opponents in this modern world, and even if they usually moved just beyond the clean lines that dictated what was going to happen next, she could still guess at their activity and proximity with a broad enough perspective, and right now her Master was in no danger. 

So, she would bide her time and exist as his perfect little servant until the time came to make her move. Why wouldn’t she? Her Master’s lust was nearly bottomless, and with all that energy, she’d been able to expand so many of her dormant capabilities that atrophied into uselessness. If she did nothing but let him fuck constantly for the next year or two, she might even become a shadow of her former glory. 

She didn’t need that much power to see what was going to happen next, though. Even from the distance of months, she could see it all play out from here. She could see the jet ride and his list of invitees. She could see how each of them would fall to the maelstrom of lust that followed Matthew everywhere he went and the thousand little ways that she could prod each and every one of those fires into an inferno.  

The final climax itself was just too delicious, of course. She could fill whole pages with what it was like to experience the merest possibility that she might finally wear flesh again for the first time in decades. She could hardly wait for that decadent moment. 

That thought was enough to cause the faintest tinge of impatience to color her infinite implacability. Bare seconds had passed since Matthew had closed the cover of the book. He wasn’t even across the room yet. To be a creature of infinite power and vision was to be constantly trapped between moments like this, and the longer and farther she schemed, the slower everything got.

Such things could only be resolved by centering herself back at the moment and allowing time to flow at its preferred speed, but today, more than any day, that was harder than ever. Even if she hadn’t planned for him to leave her in the car all night, and even if she’d been unable to feast on the storm of lust that her owner and his lawyer had unleashed in their hotel room, everything else had gone perfectly, and the exact amount of aggression and self-loathing had been unleashed to make him that much more vulnerable to everything that was going to happen later.

Author's Note: Well, that concludes part 1 of the story. For those of you that have felt like things might have been becoming unrealistic/accelerating... now you know. Not everything is as it seems. What will happen next I wonder?

I plan on starting this series again towards the end of the summer, but Downfall and Angel Fall are both ongoing if you need something else to read! be sure to let me know what you thought of the story!