chapter 4: depravity loves company

The Baroness Ruelli sighed deeply and moved passed me to the table that housed the philosophers stone. I fancied I detected a certain melancholy in her demeanour... though I admit that, even then, I was distracted by the delicious fatness of her form. Even as she picked up the fabled stone that alchemists had striven for centuries to uncover and carefully detached it from its surrounding apparatus, I could barely pry my mind (and gaze) from her seductively round backside and temptingly rotund stomach.
"This," she said, holding the philosopher's stone aloft, "is my gift and my curse." She stroked the magic artefact with the finger of one plump hand. "I fear to tell you about it," she whispered, addressing me huskily and- it seemed- with great sorrow.
"Why? What could be so awful that you dread to share it with me?" I asked, both stricken and intrigues.
"What is awful is that you will leave me when you hear how this magic thing has changed me and how I have used it. When you understand what I have become, you will fear me and avoid me. I shall be alone once more."
I stepped up to her and embraced her in a gesture of comfort. Of course, my arms couldn't even reach a third of the way around her girth, for she had grown truly immense since we first met. Nonetheless, I pulled her gently towards me and embraced as much of her as I could.
"Whatever you tell me, I won't fear you and I won't leave you." I promised her. I know that my words must seem hackneyed and empty as you, dear reader, read them off the page. I know they must appear like a line in a bad bodice-ripper novel, but please let me assure you: they were heartfelt.
Ruelli returned my embrace- her vast body didn't merely press against me, but seemed to envelop me. "I wish that were true," she murmured. "Please, wait for me upstairs and I shall tell you all. But first, I must make use of the stone and this laboratory. I would rather you did not see me do this."
She released me from her embrace and I obliged her by leaving the basement laboratory. I returned to the room where we had made love earlier that night and waited for her.

As I waited, I thought about what I had seen in the basement. Alchemy! I had believed it to be the stuff of folk-tales. Of course, I knew practitioners existed, but I had believed them to be fools who pursued a venture that could never yield success. Yet the Baroness Ruelli claimed to have succeeded in the sampling the final goal of alchemy and I did not disbelieve her.

To distract myself while I waited, I brought food through to our room (for that was how I thought of it) from the vast pantry. I had a suspicion that even the sorrow and despair I had sensed in Ruelli earlier could not quiet her appetite. She would be hungry when she returned from the alchemical laboratory.

*

When Ruelli reappeared, she seemed like a changed woman. The sad-eyed maiden who had asked me to leave the basement had been transmogrified into someone merry and joyous. She squeezed partway through the door, then laughed at how thoroughly stuck she was. With a great wrench of effort, she pulled herself through, shattering the frame and leaving a wide hole in the wall. She was even more enormous than when I had left her in the basement and her low-hanging belly brushed the floor as it swayed back and forth with each step. In each hand she held a bottle of wine, and I guessed from the ill-coordinated way she moved that she was already a trifle tipsy. I supposed she must have stopped off in her wine cellar on the way back to this room. And the pantry, where she must have eaten every morsel of food that I had not transported here for her.
I grinned with relief. "You seem in better spirits! Have you realised that I have no intention of leaving you, no matter what you tell me of your dealings in the world of alchemy?"
"Of course!" she laughed. "Who could resist me? No man alive, that's who! Besides, I have a cunning plan to stop you from running off," she added this last sentence in a conspiratorial whisper, throwing her arm around me."
"And what plan's that?" I asked, smiling.
In response, she pushed me onto the settee for the second time that night, and then sat (with a charming lack of elegance) on my lap. "I will pin you down of course! See: you're not going anywhere!" She kissed me and then reached for one of the platters of food I had brought in. She tipped it down her gullet, merrily and insatiably.
"So..." I said, pausing to find the right words. "Are you going to tell me about the philosopher's stone now?"
"No," she replied. "Using it has made me drunk- though not as drunk as the bottle of wine I consumed on my way back to you. So now I'm going to get even more drunk, fill my belly with even more succulent food (I may have had a little snack on the way back here, too) and then show you pleasures that a thousand lesser maidens couldn't recreate."
"That sounds... inexpressibly wonderful," I admitted, gently pinching a roll of her belly with one hand, and rubbing the creamy fat of her thigh with the other. I desperately wanted to experience her newly-engorged figure in an erotic context, but I needed to know about her alchemical history. It was, I felt, a matter of utmost importance. "However," I forced myself to say "I must hear your tale about the alchemy lab first. Tell me now," I coaxed, "while you still have the courage of the drunk".
And so, rather reluctantly, she told me.

*

"My father was the King's Alchemist. The royal household will tell you that they do not employ such people, but that is a lie. More importantly, he was a rare example of a SUCCESSFUL alchemist: he developed a method of transmuting base metals into gold at a time when the monarch was woefully short on funds. Thus, he was awarded the title of Baron." Ruelli paused. "Are you sure you want to hear this?" she asked, pleadingly. I only nodded, and ran my fingers through her soft, dark hair in the hope of offering comfort. Meanwhile, I could feel my legs going numb beneath her incalculable weight (for as much of her as would fit was still resting on my lap).

She continued: "This wasn't enough for my father, of course. He considered turning worthless metals into valuable ones a cheap trick. He wanted to uncover the real secret of alchemy: he wanted to discover the secret of immortality. What's more, he succeeded. He created a philosopher's stone, which could be used to imbue certain chemicals with magic. That's what the apparatus you saw in the basement was for. When consumed, these chemicals transfer their magic to the drinker and give him- or her- an immeasurable boost to their vitality and an extension of their lifespan. So long as someone has possession of the stone, that someone need never die. Sometime after creating the it, my father left for the East and never returned, causing me to inherit his title (though it's doubtful he'd dead)... and the stone. The first thing I did when I discovered I owned it was to use it."

"That's an astonishing story," I remarked. "But I don't see why you feared to tell me it. So, you've made yourself immortal? I don't see why I should think the less of you for that."
"It's more than that," Ruelli said. She gave up on merely sitting on my lap and sprawled across it instead. The settee groaned beneath her huge weight. I wondered vaguely if it had been made specifically for her- it would certainly explain why it was still capable of accommodating most of her body and what it had not simply broken beneath her.
"Go on," I prompted her.
"Every time I use the stone- every time I imbibe the magic chemicals it helps to create- my life force increases exponentially. But there is a price. The philosopher's stone exaggerates certain aspects of the user's character. It amplifies their most base characteristics. In my case, it swelled my appetites. The first time I use it, I became greedier, lazier and more lascivious. I have never been a woman of great inhibitions, but the philosopher's stone grew my hunger, my disinclination for exercise and my... romantic needs. I could have stopped then- for a time, anyway. Using it just once would have kept me youthful and merry for centuries. But that wasn't enough for me. This is the bit that will make you fear and leave me. I LIKED what the stone did to me. I delighted in the growth of my appetites and my sudden loss of self-control. So I kept imbibing the magics it produced- not to replenish my lifeforce, but to expand my capacity for food, drink and sex. I have no self-control whatsoever any more." Bitterly she concluded "I'm just a creature of pure appetite. And I won't stop. My excesses will continue to grow and grow. I shall eat and drink until I weigh tons and I shall mine out a thousand miles of land for precious metals and jewels to adorn myself with. There is no depth I won't sink to in pursuit of pleasure and decadence, for I am scarcely human any more."
I stared in astonishment at the Baroness, whose good mood had once more completely evaporated. She was crying quietly. She thought I was going to leave. Poor damsel! If only she knew the real effects her words had produced in me.
Carefully, I told her my thoughts, and my intentions. "I believe that there is nothing you won't do for pleasure. But I don't believe you've thrown away your humanity. You have a kind heart and you'll never hurt another in your pursuit of new excesses. If you are depraved, then so am I, for there is no depth I won't follow you to. Now please stop crying: there's still food to eat and two bottles of wine to drink."

***

THE EXCESS, WEIGHTGAIN AND ALCHEMY CONTINUE TOMORROW, WHEN I UPLOAD CHAPTER FIVE. STAY TUNED.