Day and night Dionaea plotted, and in her mind a fitting revenge grew—it would include the lovely Feronia, Druga's beloved.... Carefully she prepared the incantation.
It is here that my story really begins. What has happened, and how it happened is of little consequence to what is to come—except perhaps to introduce you to the characters. It is very simple. Dionaea was a very evil sorceress, and Druga, most heroic of men, had long sought to bring her into his power, and to end her evil days. Armed with the white magic of Feronia, his loved one, who was also a sorceress, but one who worked her charms only for the good of mankind, he had tracked Dionaea to her castle, and there slain her. Or he would have, had it not been for Baena, the serpent....
What is past is past. It is best not to think of it. There is much in the past of all of us that would need a long, tiresome explanation to a newcomer, and you are newcomers. To explain all of the past to everyone would be an impossible task. You need know only that Druga, champion of mankind, and his lovely Feronia, face now the most awful menace of their lives, and unknowing of it, too, for thinking their arch enemy slain!
Where do all our characters live? In Fantasia, a land far away. A land where wondrous things always happen. It is of one of the most wondrous adventures of all that you are about to hear now—let the past lie, cold and dead as it is, and come with me into the present, and into danger!
Who am I? Does it make any difference? If you must know, I am the Red Dwarf, and I have seen and recorded everything! I was there, and if you can but understand, everything has happened because I was there! If it were not so, how could you be sure what I tell is true? For it is true....
It was evening. As Druga and Feronia sat talking, before retiring, the horror fell upon them.
Feronia's hair fell like a living torrent to fondle her gleaming shoulders and toy everywhere with the strangely electric invisible vitality of her glowing skin. Her eyes were molten pools, dark and liquid as the waters of the lost caverns, and the brows above them were mystic lines of beauty left by the touch of a raven wing. Her generous mouth was smiling the wondrous lovely magic that was Feronia, red as a new-born rose, dewy and waiting for Druga. Her capable hands were soft with expecting him, and cooler than the moss beneath the fern.
Her breasts were as naked as sun-bleached coral, white as a cloud in a summer sky, white as truth, white as her own teeth laughing tantalizingly at him.
Quite suddenly, shockingly, her lovely figure became transfused with a vile, interloping energy that struck at Druga's sensitivities with a sickening piercingness, so that he sprang to his feet in fear.