show: Rex Sebastian, Discomancer in Velvet Magic Rites at the House of Uranus

It takes a true warrior to escape the siren song of satin sheets, particularly at so ungodly early an hour as two in the afternoon, but Rex Sebastian had been trained by the best. From the darkest cannibal cults of the African veldt to the airy climes of the mountain fortress as Alamut, from the secret teachings of the Buddha Monks of Shaolin to the dream initiations of the Black-Thighed Witch, Rex knew his was a life of higher duties, responsible as the single remaining practicioner of the Velvet Magic Rites still alive on this plane of what the foolish rabble still glibly call "reality", and as this was a time when the black stars hidden behind the night sky were in conjunction there was no safety to be had. He donned his skintight pants sewn from the invincible skin of the Nemean Lion once worn by Omphale, his golden medallions taken from around the necks of his long-deceased enemies and his cloak, of which I am only allowed to say the interior was painted in sigils drawn in the biolumenescent blood of The Cruthian, only then standing before the window of his Manhattan penthouse apartment and looking first down upon the city, his adopted home, and then up into the cloud-streaked sky, into the icy black depths of the cosmos...his true home. His familiars brooded and purred quietly to themselves while his manservant the house-devil Devotos dared not bring the champion his morning bloody mary and fistful of pills. The Discomancer was not yet ready to dance.

TO BE CONTINUED