From: julie@pascal.org   
      
   The revision...  better?  worse?  pointless?   
      
      
   The spell itself informed her.  The magic wove through Eileen with tendrils of   
   dreamlike meaning. "You are summoned. We have summoned you. You are a demon,   
   bound to us and our cause."    
      
   She expected to see pentagrams and candles when she opened her eyes if she   
   dreamed, or the ceiling of her darkened room if she woke.  Instead, Eileen   
   opened her eyes and saw a bowl.   
      
   She stood in the bottom of a perfect half sphere large enough and deep enough   
   that her head came only halfway to the lip. Voices and murmurings came from   
   above, proof that there were people just beyond her sight. She knew their fear   
   and could sense their    
   meaning, though she knew none of the words.   
      
   "Summoned. You must serve us."   
      
   The bowl was made of fitted and polished white marble twined with threads of   
   moss green. Rivulets of crimson tricked down shallow gold-lined channels to   
   pool at her feet and between her toes. Eileen stood in a small but slowly   
   growing puddle of blood.   
      
   She screamed and scrambled away from the pool but the sides of the bowl were   
   smooth and her feet were slick with the blood. She fell. Screaming and sobbing   
   she tried again and again to escape the bowl. Again and again she slipped and   
   fell until she was    
   covered with the blood. Finally she stopped trying to climb and stood,   
   trembling, in the lowest spot.   
      
   The voices droned on. She pushed sopping hair from her face. One channel   
   remained dry above the blood she had splashed in her panic.  Even as she   
   watched she saw the first red drop begin to flow.     
      
   The spell informed her.     
      
   A mindless demon is of no use to anyone. The spell informed her and she knew   
   that the last sacrifice had been made and the spell complete.   
      
   Eileen stood still in hope that it would delay them if she did not stir the   
   blood. It didn't delay anything. As soon as the droplet of blood reached the   
   puddle where she stood a shaft of pain ripped a scream from her throat.    
      
   "We have summoned you. You must serve us."   
      
   Eileen's body twisted and pulled. She writhed as she rose above the floor of   
   the bowl. Her screams became mere animal sounds as she expanded, as she grew   
   large and looming. Visions crawled through her mind of creatures, of people   
   with fox ears and cat    
   eyes, of individuals she never knew and would know forever, of armies without   
   names or faces and all of them dying by her hand.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)