BARBARIENNE #8

"Mists of Silver"

by Martin Lock & Paul Noughton

This is the first half of an adventure story we call "Silverfire" - and while Memree is not in it, Charol has a key role - alongside Lieutenant Shriver, Elfren, and some of their friends from The Swan at Bay, the tavern Elfren lodges at.

After faithfully following the editorial edict that Ryder Windham had given me back when the series started, I decided it was time to have a proper sword & sorcery adventure again.  Of course, as an Eros comic we needed to have plenty of sex and nudity too - so I cunningly added as much as possible to the actual story.  I think it works pretty well, and it has certainly tempted Paul to do some extremely nice artwork.  I hope you've noticed that we are using "mouse rollover" on our sample art pages now, to give you two pages for the space of one - and usually, the "hidden" picture is at least a bit sexier... If you've not checked the earlier Eros-issue pages, we've gone back and added mouse rollover art pages there too, as well as the black & white versions of the covers.

Anyway, the story begins at The Swan at Bay, with the slavegirl Kiddi (the tale's first narrator) and her lover Foressa; they take a nice, romantic walk in the nearby park - only, in mid-embrace, to be caught by the "Silverfire" spell, and turned into shiny, unliving statues!  Luckily Elfren (our second narrator) senses this, and alerts the mage Chandravar that something is wrong.  They discover the naked pair, and Chan puts a stasis spell on them, in the hope that it may be possible to reverse it - but for that, they need to find the spell's caster!  "There have been rumours, tiny vestiges of magic's spoor, unexplained vanishings..."  Chandravar looks grim.  "But thanks to you, Elfren, we were in time to catch this magic unfinished, before the result could be spirited away."

So, naturally, the next stage is to try and tempt the magic to strike again, but with Chandravar present to try to stop it, and trace its source.  As it is brought to acts with high erotic energy, who better to recruit to act as bait than Roli and Lieutenant Shriver...?

The plan goes pretty well, and our team of adventurers are soon entering what should have been an old, unused storage vault.  Little do they know that their adversary, Shimmer, has not been letting the grass grow beneath her feet for the last few hours!