The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

An Apocalypse Rising

By Saddle Rider

Chapter Seven

A bed. Goddess, how good it felt to have a bed again, and to be warm and fed with well-prepared food. Bryana could count the ways life was good just now and go on at length about each. The feeling of being in a hot bath with Mistress as they caressed, pawed, nibbled, and licked one another was glorious enough, but seeing the empty little handmaidens look on with lust and a hint of jealousy made it worthy of a novel.

She lay wrapped in the furs that covered it, one leg extended outward seductively, relaxed, yet knowing full well that a hint of renewed desire from Drexa would again send her into a heat of need. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, though she was. Olive skinned, full-figured to softness with breasts that were full and lush with nipples that seemed perpetually erect. Bryana had not expected eyes like hers though; deep violet with gold flecks that seemed to channel her will all by themselves. Bryana wondered if nature had made them or if they were the result of a spell.

But that all paled against the joy of having power again. It coursed through her untamed. As much as she felt her proximity to the magic that cut through the world it was the fact that she now felt unleashed. Yes, she had submitted to her will, but Drexa was right in that there could be only one in control and she was the stronger now. “You know they are coming,” Bryana said, moving to kiss across Drexa’s shoulder. “My leaving will not change that. Killing you is too important to them.”

“I know, my pe...Bryana.” She caught herself even before the blonde’s brow could crease. “I am sorry, my sweet. Forgive me. I am so used to the empty meat in my bed that I nearly forgot that you are not that.” Truthfully she was little more than that, but she had uses for now for that mind and that power, so she had refrained from smoothing the other’s will.

That Bryana had settled so smoothly into the submissive position was no doubt due her changing as well as what she was already used to. If she could remain there, there was a part of Drexa that toyed with leaving her as she was. As much fun as blind adoration was, there was something good for the ego in having at least one person close with the ability to truly appreciate the magnitude of her genius and the victory that would bring to pass. For now though, she was simply to be used. Fingers ran up and down her spine pacifying her nicely. “I know they are coming. I want them to come. There are reasons that I have not snuffed them out.”

“May I know why?” Bryana took the arm that was around her and kissed the palm.

“You will know all when the time comes. In the meantime know that you are very important to me just being here with me. Your being gone will lessen their power, and it will keep them off balance as they seek to perhaps bring their pet back into the fold.”

“That will not happen.” Her tone was firm and resolute. “Never shall I go back to being their bedpet and guardian. I would die first. I would...kill them both.”

The hesitancy there was to be expected for now, but the fact that she could even utter the words was a fine sign of things. “Good, Bryana. See it in your mind, See the life draining from them or their surrender to corruption and luxuriate in it. Accept your power and your place. With you outside and my spy within they will be off balance enough to make them susceptible to a good argument.”

“You mean your special brand of sway,” Bryana concluded, grazing Drexa’s chin with her teeth..

“Mastery of magic gives one certain innate defenses,” she explained, stroking the other’s blonde tresses, “but there are ways in in every case. You know that now, Sweet. Your being mine helps me with one, which, in turn, helps me with the other. I only need one to fall to me and it hardly matters which.”

She smirked at the thought. “Is Deres weak enough so that I might simply appear to him in my naked glory, spread my legs and have him surrender?”

Bryana sucked a nipple hard enough to pull up the skin, making Drexa shudder before letting it go with a pop. “When rutting, he is often more animal than man, though he does manage somehow to be loving at once, and I’ve no doubt you would tempt him, but his heart would not allow him to endanger his loves by indulging in you.” She pushed away her annoyance over the fact that she had spoken affectionately of him at all.

“It was a not unpleasant thought is all. The simplest solution is usually best.” “Pel is tainted now. You know that, yes?”

She had suspected as much. “But is your general not loyal to her troops? I learned much through her. The general has guilt for bringing them at all, and for the losses suffered. Would she not accept her back?”

Bryana shed the covers as she moved to a straddling position, wanting to just look into those amaranthine eyes. “I accept that you see us as primitives and, in many ways we are by comparison, but Neral Jaye is not a fool, nor are her followers blind. Neral would not leave her behind, but I don’t know that any of them will embrace her as though nothing happened.”

Drexa sighed in acknowledgment before dismissing the annoyance as quickly as it had come. “I have already planned for that.” She fondled Bryana’s pert breasts, enjoying the hiss she got in response. “Someone within would still be useful to me, but she will behave as they expect her to. With that, and you keeping them distracted, it should be most helpful to me.”

Bryana’s tone was perfectly polite as it flirted with her. “How may I assist you?”

One corner of her narrow lips turned upward. “Just...talk to them when the time is right.”

“What will you do for me if I do?”

Drexa clutched both cheeks of that silken ass. Had there been so much as a hint of defiance in the words she would have acted instantly, but she could feel the pet was simply playing which stirred her and renewed that hope that the slave with the longest leash could settle. “I freed you from your bondage, Bryana. What more could I possibly do for you?”

She brought herself upward, leaning forward, bracing both hands on the headboard and her pussy twitched as it bathed in Drexa’s humid breath. “You could start here and I bet I can think of a few more things as we go.” She thrilled as she looked around her, as excited by the covey of women all around the room, Some had their legs spread wantonly as they sawed fingers or whatever would fit in themselves as they cried in want. Others were curled together, touching, kissing and aching, stealing glances at them.

“Mmmm..,” she breathed, making eye contact with each. Even that was a display of her power. They all wanted to be her. They would kill one another to be her right now.

She shuddered as Drexa’s tongue began to tease the pink flesh from its hood and her left hand meandered its way over Bryana’s chest and belly before resting at the head of the viper just below her navel.

Drexa’s power flowed effortlessly from her fingertips, wisps of white energy escaping from the layer at the point of contact like fingers of their own to skitter across her skin as the sorceress played her body with both magic and tongue.

Bryana screamed in blind rapture.

And, all around them, a chorus joined.

* * *

Neral and Deres stood in silence for the longest time. Neral knew there was something wrong the moment Deres woke her. The pained look in his eyes made her bolt upright. Her muscles protested, but no more so than if she’d slept too long in one position. “What’s wrong?” Her voice still sounded and felt rough, but that was mostly back to normal as well. She’d looked around quickly, doing a head count before she realized who was missing simply by seeing the untouched bedrolls before her. She’s bolted upright, still in her linens, expecting the worst.

Then he handed her the letter without a word. She unfolded it and read:

Dearest loves,

I look around and see the results of her. I look about and see the missing faces about and know that they will not return and I see myself in all of it. I wish that I could stop seeing it so, but I do. Know that I say this not to sound cruel because, as we have progressed, I had come to know them and enjoy their company: to see them fall wounded me, but it had to be done and I would have the same hand in it over and over again.

Even so, to see you fall, Neral, was orders of magnitude worse. I thought that I was watching you die and there are no words I can find to describe my heartbreak at seeing it. I have not stopped seeing that either. My eyes close to blink and I see you and Deres lifeless and far from home and that kills me, though, as you have seen, there are other fates to fall to. To see you so twisted kills my soul. You do not understand her as I do. You do not truly know her as I do. She gains joy from paring away at your spirit as much as your mind and body. Her power excites her. These things can be exploited and perhaps I can. If I cannot, it will be left to you. If I can act now in a way that even might assist, I must.

Perhaps it is my own selfishness too that compels me to go to her and try. Perhaps I need to face my reflection and see if I truly see myself in her eyes or if the person I was is now truly behind me in the distance. Perhaps, what it all comes down to a single bare truth: I am weak now; weak with my love for both of you and I would rather face her and the death that will follow than have to face it in the eyes of either of you. I love you both too much to live without you. If that’s my ultimate failing tonight, so be it as I have indulged in far worse when it comes to entertaining my selfishness in life.

Do not be sad for me. With you, I have found redemption and love in equal measure and that has saved me as much as anything else.. Even though I leave you behind, I never truly will.

I am yours in this life and the next.

Bryana

It was all Neral could do not to weep. Instead she had folded the paper neatly into fours and handed it to him as she contemplated the valley ahead and the jagged teeth ahead of them, “How could she just leave?”

Deres looked to her, his own pain hardening him. “I think to protect the people that she cares about there is very little that she wouldn’t do.”

“How does running off protect us? She is there and we’re here. Her skill helps us in the here and now and not the maybe of there.

“She was worried about our corruption at least as much as our bodies. She may have thought herself immune after the change. Assuming that she is, then it is just a straight fight and, I would wager that, when need be, she is still as dangerous as anyone else in the world.”

“Is she immune?”

“I don’t know.”

She found a renewed focus for her anger and she turned on him at that moment in more ways than one. “How do you not know? You’re the mage. You’re the one who did it to her, Weren’t you one of the few that knew how? Don’t you even know what you did?”

“It reordered her personality and changed her priorities. The underpinnings of her old personality are still there. That’s why she could access memories and such when she needed to. There is a duality that is created, then melded whole. She cannot exactly go back to the old her, The barrier between that person and the old really are inviolable to any magic or science known, but that doesn’t mean the new her is immune.”

“None of you fools in Adar bothered to test anything? Are you so sure of yourselves that you don’t even bother?”

His words became slower and more clipped as he fought back his own anger. “No, Neral, no one tested that because it’s perverse. The creature was created to save people. It was created to end their acts of violence and evil while still allowing them a mind and a life. It was created so that we didn’t have to hurt them. Who would do such a thing and then try to corrupt them again once we were certain they were whole? Magic like what Drexa uses is far more common here among the guild mages than in Adar. It’s shunned there for a reason. It’s shunned there precisely because of what’s happening now.”

His voice rose. “I don’t know, Neral. I don’t know what happened to her and I’m sorry. I can’t do everything and I don’t know how to fix everything and I’m sorry I love her just as just as much as you do. If I believed she would do what she has done I would have stopped her. If I could bring her back to us it would be done.” He sniffed and turned away, not bearing to look at her before turning back. “I wish I did know all the answers Neral...but I don’t, I am sorry.“

The anguish on his face deflated her anger and she approached him. She took his hand in hers and kissed it. “Deres.”

“Do you want me to try to find her?”

She studied him, unsure of what he meant. “What?”

“Do you want me to go down into the valley to cut a path to her body or to her? Say it and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you want me to. I knew she was troubled, but I never thought...”

“And risk you, too? No. We must stay together, now more than ever. The thing only gains by driving us apart, no matter how it happens. I am sorry, Husband. I hurt and I took it out on you. Do not leave me now Do not leave us.”

He looked into those deep brown eyes before hugging her close, resting his cheek against hers. “I really wanted you to ask me to do that because I really want to do that.”

“I know my husband. I know you would go, but there has already been too much loss. I’ll not hand the Goddess more.”

“Excuse me,” Maylin said gently. When they parted from one another to look to her she added, “It’s done.”

Neral looked to him. “That thing you were talking to plants for?”

He nodded. “Come and see, we’ll explain.”

After she had dressed and met with Dion Neral made her way down the narrow path to the place that Deres had chosen to work. She waited to put on her mail until she knew she was as steady on her feet as usual. She’d suspected Deres had packed away the signs of Bryana and she was secretly grateful for it. Her body tingled as she passed through an otherwise invisible barrier of magic and met the two to find her squeezing his arm as she spoke, comforting him.

They turned to her and Deres pulled three vials from his cloaks, each filled with the same purplish liquid. “It occurred to me after the fight near the trading post that there might be a way to help you take your enemies more effectively when it comes to swordplay again, so we studied the creatures as we found them, and we found that she augmented pieces of many of the beasts with pieces of herself.”

Maylin’s tone was mocking, “Is there any better a person to use? In her mind she is superior to us all.”

“More magic?”

“This is more a case of science augmented by magic. Without getting too complicated, every living thing carries within it the template of how it came together. Those building blocks coming together in a certain way gave you brown hair. Their coming together in other ways gave my mother her height and blue eyes.”

“I think I follow.”

He held up one of the vials.“We created a living organism that will seek out the links that are hers within the creatures and twist them. It will incapacitate them quickly and kill them in time. Either way they will cease to be a threat. Helpful, I suspect, once we reach her den.”

Neral took the one he’d held and examined it. “So it will do the same to her as well.”

“It will,” Maylin answered, her eyes carrying a measure of satisfaction if not glee at the prospect. “Paralyzed to uselessness in seconds, dead in minutes. It’s still a better fate than she deserves. It will grow and bond to your weapons and remain there, harmless to anything without those marks that are hers.”

Neral felt some satisfaction as well at the prospect of Drexa’s lingering end.

“We’ll tell the others that we’ve come up with a way to harden their weapons, which is the truth, while keeping the specifics from them.”

She looked to them each in turn, not having to ask why they contemplated witholding information. Neral didn’t want it to be true. She did not want to add one more loss to the list but there was no way she could discount the possibility with Pel being the only one to come out of the woods apparently untouched by something that the rest that, some with far more backbone than she could not resist. Still, she felt the reflexive need to support and defend those under her. “She seems no more damaged than anyone else would be if they had escaped what she did.”

Maylin would have rolled her eyes had she detected true seriousness in the other’s tone. As it was she almost took it almost as a joke. “And if she had come to you without care as Kress and the others had her fate would have matched theirs. Kress even hinted as to why they came to you as they did: to end you and wound the rest of us in the act. Coming as they did at all has done that, but there was purpose in it.”

Neral’s mind drifted. She gains joy from paring away at your spirit as much as your mind and body.

“As much as the witch has her goals and wants to achieve them, this is a game to her. We are all inferior to her and we will lose so why not play until you’re bored? It may have been as Pel said it was and I can detect no trace of Drexa pulling strings within her, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Give her nothing to use against you.”

That was something that Neral had no intention of doing.

Deres and Maylin hardened the weapons, folding in the half-truth as they prepared to depart. Now they were only roughly two days from the mountains where they would have to make their final choices, and Neral had to keep herself focused upon that and not about the larger hole in her group or the gaping one now in her heart.

“Perhaps she is all right,” Dion offered from her left As she checked her gear as she packed it with her own mount. “Perhaps she is forced into hiding and cannot make it back to us.”

Neral was tempted to hug her for the effort, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

She looked out at the path before them, “I prefer to hold onto hope wherever possible. Sometimes faith is rewarded.”

“The Goddess will provide for all Her faithful?”

Dion didn’t look at her as she adjusted the cinch of her saddle. “No offense, my friend General, but you’ve never been all that faithful.”

“Sorry.”

She shook it off. “No reason to be. We are as She made us. It is that reason that I too would have defied the law as you have. If She put a mage in my life to love, it’s fair to assume that she didn’t mean for me to set him to hang.”

“Makes sense to me.”

Dion stood, now satisfied with things before turning to her with a lightness to her in that moment that Neral always found appealing. She could go from the soldier to the person in the beat of a heart. “I am wise, General.”

“Perhaps that’s why She made us friends.”

“Makes sense to me,” she parroted. “General, I have faith in Her as much as people. You have more faith in people. Since that is true, have faith in the people in your life as you know them to be. Don’t give up on that so long as you draw breath.”

Then, a raised voice took them from their own conversation to follow the voice from the horses and into camp to find Maylin standing with Kestral, her hands animated as she spoke, her pale green eyes with fire behind them. The troops were around the center of camp having just finished dismantling it looking around at one another, but wanting to stay out of the fray. Pel was slightly off to the side of the group clearly not wanting to be the focus of anything while Deres stood with his mother. “Stop it, Kes. She didn’t have anything to do with what happened to me or any of them.”

“Of course she did. She hurt you. She ruined Major Kress and the rest. Even Bryana, Yes, she’s a mage, but at least she’s one of us. It’s on her as much as the other witch. We’re here because she asked us to come. We may be ignorant animals compared to the rest of you, but at least we take care of our own problems. She’s one of your people. She’s a threat to everything, including them sooner or later.”

Her tone turned haughty and her posture defiant. “So where are they, Mage? Why aren’t they the ones risking their lives? Can’t they just appear, wipe her out all by themselves, and go home?” She stuck her finger to Maylin’s chest, “Why are we the ones out here and fighting and dying for a people who don’t care about us and can’t be bothered to fight for themselves.”

“That’s enough,” Neral snapped. It wasn’t a raised voice, but it snapped them all to attention even if they didn’t stand. “If there is someone to blame in this it’s me. I asked you to follow me. I led you. The decisions that led to what happened to those of us that were lost were mine and they will continue to be.” She moved to stand before Kestral, her voice that of a person carrying weight rather than a commander. “Blame me.”

Maylin’s features remained tightened as she put her hand on Neral’s shoulder before coming to face the angry soldier. “It’s all right. Do you know why I did not attempt to go home to get help? Because I would tell them all I knew and the debate would begin. They would debate if she were a problem.” Her voice started to sound like a frustrated sing-song. “Then they would debate how much of a problem she was. Does she threaten few or many? In what ways? Should we send someone to investigate? How do we intervene in a way that minimizes our contact with them?”

Her tone turned sad and her shoulders sagged ever so slightly. “The outlanders killed us and drove us out. Since she is no threat to us should we even do anything at all? While we are where we are now, They would debate to the point of impotence. In the meantime, more people are killed and poisoned, and the closer she is to victory.”

The edge returned to her voice even if the sadness and frustration did not leave. Would it make you feel better if I were ashamed of my people? Then feel better because I am. Will it make you feel better to know that I mourn your comrades as you do? Then feel better. You have no reason at all to help me, but here you are. You had no reason to sacrifice for a people who have no interest in you, but here you are. Thank you, Kestral.” She looked to each in turn. “Thank you all.” Looking back to the lieutenant who now seemed spent. “Is there anything else you wish to say to me?“

She shook her head quickly and headed off to collect her gear. The others followed as Neral moved to follow before Maylin touched her. “Daughter, your soldiers and their discipline are your affair in the end, but I ask that you don’t chastise her for her words to me. I’m sure many think the same and I can’t fault them. It needed to be said, as did my thanks to them.”

Maylin groped for words as she tried to find the environment interesting, “It is... difficult to admit that your people would let others fight their battles for them. It is difficult to admit that such a powerful people can render themselves powerless so easily. She is right and it would feel like you were punishing her for telling the truth, so I ask that you don’t.”

Neral chose to let it be.

They rode uneventfully, though they did skirt several packs of beasts and more wagon loads of people being drawn to their fate. It gave time to Neral to think of what was ahead and to engage Pel. She didn’t want to speak much at first, but Neral had to draw her out, if for no other reason, than to determine if she would be capable of fighting or determine if she were an enemy.

She seemed to open a bit as the miles passed, with her friends engaging her as well. She couldn’t say that it calmed her anxiety because there were too many sources of it, but it was a good thing in a journey that hadn’t had too many good things attached to it. She kept Deres close to her because of him, and partly because it made her look behind her less and remind herself of all the faces gone.

* * *

“The choice that is no choice, Delles noted, touching the scar at her cheek as she sometimes did as a nervous tic, her eyes focused on the horizon, “Valley or not.”

Neral wanted to laugh at the absurdity and it was a pleasant feeling to want to chuckle at all given the circumstances. “I give you leave to go knock on her front door if you wish and ask her to kindly surrender.”

“If you think it will work, sir...”

Anna looked outward.“Look at them all. “Far enough from them, the creatures that congregated they looked like insects swarming or liquid congealing and flowing.

“Thousands,” Anna said in some awe.

“By tens,” Elan corrected, the soft breeze making her white hair flutter..

“She’s ready for us either way,” Deres said. “She could have unleashed everything against us and killed us outright, but she didn’t.”

Dion looked to him and Maylin. “Still no idea why?”

He shrugged. “She needs us and we’re coming to her anyway? Just to play with us? Once we’re closer I’ll risk scouting ahead. They seem to be congregating at or near a single point. I suspect that’s our answer.

Neral looked at her troops, focusing for a moment on Abren, “You just want this to be over.”

As she scowled, the lines of age and battle deepened. “Live or die, point me to them.”

“Soon enough,” she promised.

Dalen’s naturally curly dark locks were windblown. With her bright eyes she still conveyed youth and exuberance. “Ready, sir.”

“Pel?”

Her voice was strong even if her stance was slightly less sure. “Ready to follow any order you give, sir.”

“Well...my order is certainly that we’re not going to go into that valley and give them numbers and the high ground. We’ll skirt it and find ways in from there.. In the meantime we’ll find a place near that river leading away where the mountains split.“

With plan enough they veered to meet the river, Neral knew the wards helped hide their presence, but none of them could shake the feeling they were being watched, even if it was just the sense that they were doing what she wanted no matter what they did.

There were a couple of hours of good daylight left after camp was set, the wind dying somewhat as the sun made its way to the horizon, puffy clouds wandering across the sky. The party decided that it would likely be their last opportunity for a true bath before they reached the witch’s lair and, with that knowledge, Pel knew what she had to do.

She knew what Mistress commanded, not through words, but through images that bubbled up from the center of her mind to her consciousness that could not be ignored. To her, the thoughts originated with her. That which her mind could not rationalize, it simply discarded or twisted to be something it could.

What she rationalized was an urge to blunt the anxiety and sense of dirty she felt with a few moments of pleasure by finding a quiet place after her assigned tasks were performed. She excited at the idea of a bath in the river because it meant she could shed her armor the layers beneath and touch her body unencumbered. Aching for that, she stood on her knees with them sinking into the black earth beneath and her toes digging furrows into it as she clawed her smallish, round breasts.

She liked nails against her skin now like never before. She liked rough. She liked feeling taken in a way she wasn’t sure she ever did before so she gave herself that feeling by worrying her nipples between forefinger and thumb as her other hand palmed her cunt before two fingers from that hand went to flicking her clit left and right in a near blur, sending goosebumps in waves over her flesh like an invading army.

As Pel molested herself, she took in great droughts of air to fuel her heat, imagining that she was with Ahren, so mad in his need that he simply. took. Love and affection were for after. For now, in her mind, all she was was a perfect set of fuckholes for his use. As she played now with one hand, what her mind could not rationalize and therefore did not see, was the hand once at her breast picking up the waterskin she had pilfered from the group and taken with her.

Even looking down with her own two eyes on the sight, she did not see a clear fluid run from herself and past the mouth of the skin. All she saw was being taken by him in pounding thrusts that made the bed threaten to splinter, her orgasm so intense that beyond a single, quick, near impossibly high-pitched squeak, she made no sound at all. All the energy of her body was consumed with tearing through her. When it was finally over, she caught her breath, licked her fingers clean, redressed in her linen and returned with her armor, placing what she thought was hers back with the rest and waited her turn to bathe.

Minutes later she thought nothing of the sight of Kestral drinking from her waterskin. She was, after all, happy to share.

* * *

Deciding to pair off to bathe with the safety of an extra set of eyes near left the Pel that was fully herself again in an awkward position and she knew it. Her comrades and friends were trying, but they were obviously leery of her and she couldn’t blame them. Even if she wasn’t sullied in spirit, her honor was. She ran. She ran rather than stay to try to help a fellow soldier she might have been able to save. I’d shun me. She’d stripped her linen and headed from the sparse trees to the shore.

“Hey.”

Pel turned abruptly at the sharpness of the tone to find Pel standing there nude, body tight and smooth, only a couple of fine lines from a claw in the recent skirmish marking her from the nape of her neck to touch her shoulder. She held only a slight curve to her to her chest, but she was still undeniably feminine. “No one’s allowed to go out alone.”

“I was fairly sure no one was coming with me, so...”

“Somebody has to and it may as well be me, huh?”

She wasn’t sure how to respond just then beyond, “I suppose so.”

Kestral paid it no real mind. “Hm, don’t sound so thrilled that there’s someone who’s not afraid you’re possessed. Come on, let’s wash off the miles.”

They slipped into the water that was slightly warmer than expected and began to soap their bodies and their hair. It was nice for Kestral as she had been feeling a little flushed. She took a moment to let herself feel the sensation as Pel spoke to her. “Thank you for not treating me like I’m completely ruined..”

Kestral ran her soapy fingers through her hair, almost a light brown now that it was wet. “Can I be honest with you?”

When Pel nodded, she continued. “I can’t imagine leaving anyone behind, I just can’t. But...I wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was like. I can’t imagine seeing all of them fall apart like you said they did either.”

“I suppose, when it comes down to it, I don’t know what I would have done in your place, so it would be wrong to condemn you for it.” It angered her simply because it seemed so unfair a fight. “Fucking mages tearing people up from the inside like that. Draw a sword and let’s have at it. None of this waving hands and putting you under a spell business. How the fuck are you supposed to fight that?”

“They’re not all bad though,” Pel offered as she soaped her chest. “Deres is good. Bryana’s good. Maylin’s just trying to fix everything.”

“Yes, Deres is all right, but here we all are just trying to fix the acts of a single mage. Bryana’s gone, and probably the witch’s slave too by now. Maylin? Yes, Maylin is trying to fix it, but her own people wouldn’t get off their asses and help her and she knew they wouldn’t before she even started.” Kestral was slightly disgusted. “We’re better off having driven them out.”

Time passed and Pell let her head go under the water, Bringing it up and wiping her face she watched Kestral float placidly on her back, eyes closed, a slight blush to her cheeks. Words formed in the center of her mind and they wormed their way to the surface. “Can I tell you something?”

The thought took a little extra time to form. “Sure.”

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

Kestral floated peacefully, hot, yet cool and comfortable all at once. “Okay.”

“It was fucking hot seeing Hennis stand there in front of everyone naked. She looked...caught. She liked being caught.”

Kestral absorbed it; imagined it behind closed eyes.

“It was fucking hot watching Kress push her to the ground. I remember how she squirmed on her back, legs bent at the knees while Kress licked all her desire for men away. They all liked being caught.”

Inner contempt at what she had just felt at the description of her comrades falling gave her strength, to quash it. She looked at Pel not knowing what she was expecting to find in the expression she saw...perhaps some bit of contrition, or even indifference. Instead, she saw a mix of pride and lust and that only served to help Kestral find the strength to leave.

“If you leave now,” she called out in a way that seemed to caress Kestral’s ear and tickle the base of her brain, “you’ll miss out on another secret. It’s a really good one, too.”

Her body above the water should have been chilled in the soft breeze, but the heat on her skin, it seemed, could not be quenched or in the burning in her brain stopped. She turned back to see those wild eyes and that dirty smile. She didn’t want to hear Pel’s words even though she somehow knew what they would be.

“You’ll be caught, too, Kes.” She gave the other woman a look of sympathy. “It was in the water you drank. The witch caught me well before the woods. She owns me and it feels so good. By the Goddess, it feels good She’s deep inside; she’s so deep no one can see or sense her in me unless She wills it.”

Kestral had never felt as she did at that moment. She was full of rage, yet powerless to express it and part of her wasn’t sure she wanted to and it was the latter that frightened her. Fucking mages. Should have fucking chased them across the wastes and killed them all. She had a joyous vision of running the last of them through with her blade. Kes tried to move closer to shore; tried to call out, but it was no use, and that aroused her even as she tried to run the feeling through with the blade of her will.

Fucking mage caught me. The witch wants into my mind. Not just into it...she wants the whole thing. I feel her clawing at the doorway to it and Goddess, I want to let her in. Sick, twisted bitch wants to turn me into her thing. Her thing that’s willing to kill, die, fuck, or prostrate herself at the mage’s feet like Pel. I’ll betray my friends. I’ll do anything. I’ll give them to her. I’ll...lick their minds away. She was no longer sure if the thoughts in her head were fears of what she would be made to do or declarations of what she would.

Kes took two steps closer, her body rising slightly from the water. “The essence of Her in the water has only opened your mind to the truth of Her. Come to me so that She can claim you.”

Her pussy drooled, only to have the evidence of her ache swept away by the current even as she approached Pel and drove herself with her own words as her movement created its own currents in the water. “Vile bitch mage owns me. I’ll end up doing her bidding.”

“You are doing her bidding even now, Kes.”

The words aroused in a way that felt like a, sweet agony that she wanted to flee from even as she wanted to die in it. She stood before Pel, so little space between them now that their hard nipples could touch. She waited, watching Pel’s soft brows contort in pleasure as she grazed her lower lip with her teeth. Kestral stood, waiting with equal parts loathing and desire for whatever would happen. Soon she felt something hard bedevil her outer lips subtlely demanding entry. She felt nubs touch her inner flesh as Pel sighed over and over again. “Take what She offers and let it take you. You know it is what you want...even through your fear and hatred you know it.”

Kestral’s left hand moved to touch it as her eyes darted nervously. No one can see the bitch take me. No one can see her own me.

“There’s no one but us, Kes.” The first words were sweet. The last was not. “Obey.”

As much as she wanted to resist she was in such a heat and her mind so dizzy with the promise of how it would all feel now and forever that she embraced the magic she hated, now in the form of that hot thing under the water and placed it just inside her slit.

The thing between her legs came to greater life once it knew it had found its quarry. The nubs seemed to swirl in circles and dimple the insides of her feminine flesh, each one having a will of it’s own, touching her in ways that she never dreamed possible. Kes was silent, body shifting and twitching, sometimes with subtlety, sometimes as though she had been shocked.

Pel completely closed the distance between them, now no space between them before lifting Kestral’s leg by the thigh and brought it out of the water to the knee as she slowly began to thrust, loving the sensations and power that came with the thrusting and of infecting another for Her. The drives became a smooth rhythm with Her vessel pushing into the prey, hardness and width spreading Kes so that all that was left was to endure, the nubs like tiny fingers probing and claiming.

When Pel’s tongue found hers, Kes took her cheeks in both hands and helped their tongues intertwine, The kiss finally broke and first sounds from Kes that finally sounded like words were breathy. “Deeper. More. Harder.” Without waiting for any sort of response, she used her hatred to hoist herself on the thing, locking her ankles around Pel’s waist as her nails drilled into the other’s neck while Kes hissed into her ear. “Fucking bitch mage is making me do this, isn’t she?”

“You know She is. You know She wants you. Her gift has to go deep inside you. To claim you.”

She threw her head back as Pel’s strong hands supported her, bouncing her on the shaft to drill it more deeply into Kestral with each thrust until it was battering against her cervix, the shock of each drive bringing only pleasure. “Deeper inside you... Deeper.”

“Oooooo”

“Why does it have to get deeper, Kes? Tell me”

“So she can..,,take me.” Her pussy clenched and she shuddered.

“Deeper into your body.”

“Yes.”

“Deeper into your mind.”

“Yesssssssss. So deep into my fucking mind.”

“Yes, Kes,” she whispered. “So deeply that no one will see. No one will know. Not the mages,” she grunted as the gift made its way to Kestral to be absorbed, “not even you.”

Kestral’s face twisted into a mask of submissive heat at the thought and the first orgasm set her to biting Pel’s neck with ferocity. “Then I’ll do anything....anything she wants me to.” Her jaw dropped as she felt something make its way inside her. She didn’t know if it was an actual sensation so much as her own imagination, but it felt thick, dark and seductive.

“She will be part of you. You will be her machine. You will obey.”

“Kestral?”

“Mmmm?”

She put her lips to Kes’ delicate ear once she knew the moment was at hand. “You’re caught now.”

The words threw her over the edge and the feel of her gift squirming it’s way into her womb kept her there as Pel held her as she seized violently in a fit of unrelenting pleasure. She had had her eyes closed through it so tightly that, when she reopened them, they burned from the touch of light and she wobbled on her feet for a time before she found herself. “Welcome, Sister,” Pel said.

Kes gave her another kiss as she felt Her gift ooze through her veins to her brain. “Thank you, Sister.”

“Know that what will happen is only what must. We both serve Her in our own ways.”

She nodded, and, by the time Kestral’s feet touched the grass once again, all she remembered was that the bath was uneventful and she didn’t still entirely trust the other.

The night was quiet around the fire. Each had their own reasons to be so, but the result was that those not on watch went to their bedrolls early. Neral was in the midst of her own rituals slightly away to calm her mind and prepare for bed, not relishing the first night in a long time without two choices to hold. “May I speak with you, General?”

She turned to see Maylin standing in her slip, something clenched in her hand, her face inscrutable just then. “Certainly, Mother.”

“I have not had a chance to tell you how sorry I am that Bryana chose to leave as she did.” The next came with finality. “I’m sorry that she is gone.”

Neral swallowed hard, and took some of her annoyance with it. “She is not gone.”

Maylin kept her tone gentle yet parental. “I realize that it is difficult for you both to accept, but you know we will only find her gone. We will find her body or we will find her, but, either way we will find her gone. If she has survived, Drexa has claimed her and she is not the woman you knew. She is your enemy as she was the night you met her.”

There was derision in her tone as she met Maylin’s eye. “I thought she could never be that person again. That is, after all, what I was told over and over.”

Maylin’s tone remained level. As delicate as the subject was with as much emotional upheaval that she knew Neral was going through, she had to be the voice of reason no matter what. “Bryana’s case is a unique one, but it’s foolhardy to believe that she is immune to corruption. She was changed, yes, but her fallibility wasn’t stripped from her. The skill to do that doesn’t exist anywhere.”

“I can certainly understand that. I am faced with my own every day, but if the people that love me gave up on me every time my path might have turned dark I would have had no one and that path would have been dark indeed. I cannot snuff out my love for her just because you say I must. If I could, I never loved her in the first place.”

“If she is dead,” Neral began, struggling with the very thought, “then I can make peace with that. She will have died the person that she became. She will have died trying to help.”

“But I am responsible for who she became, Mother. “It was my choice that made it so.” Her voice wavered. “Even if I did not love her with my whole heart I would not mark her as gone until I had tried to reach her. I would owe her that the same as I would to anyone who fights with me.” She leaned against a tree, arm extended, eyes on the ground calming herself before she asked, “What does Deres have to say?”

She suddenly felt emotionally drained, “Much the same as you.” She thought back with a smile. “When we communed he would speak of her as much as he would you. He thrilled at her vibrancy and love of learning. He adored her.”

Neral expected that to be his position, but it pleased her to hear it all the same.

“Please don’t think me cold. “A family built has just as much value as one you were born a part of, but, how important is it to you?” Silence filled the air in a way that cast a pall over everything. “Would you go through her to end Drexa? If she is not dead, then they are together. Could you do that?”

She felt the knife in her chest at the thought twist. “If there is no choice, I will do what must be done. My ache to save countless families the same? I would do it.”

“To that end...” She handed Neral a spell-slip. The glass in the palm of her hand was a swirling mass of violet and black gas. “This may disrupt her corruption...for a few moments, but not long.“

She puzzled. “I thought you said it couldn’t be undone.”

She nodded even as she wished it were different. “Not for those without the gift of magic. Once corrupted in this way, I know of nothing to undo it. But, for those with magic...it may have a chance. Or it may do nothing, I don’t know. Touch it to her body and If it does meld with the magic within and disrupt the filth it will give you a few seconds to...do what must be done.”

* * *

As she crept in a wide arc around the camp, adhering to shadow so as not to be seen, Pel rationalized that General Jaye had to die.

It was as clear in her mind as if she were staring out at a pristine landscape. Who cared about these people? It was a terrible thing to befall them, yes, but we had to take care of ourselves first. Pel and her comrades were just a handful against all of this to begin with; fewer now with Major Kress and the others gone, essentially raped by that thing into being the undead. What hope did they have? But the general marched forward to her doom, dragging all of them with her. If she no longer had care for the soldiers with her, Pel did. She was saving them all.

Besides, she’d been laying with mages for years. Maybe she was already owned by them and this was all some sort of wheels-within-wheels plot to hand the witch Erette. Laying with them at all made her a criminal. She didn’t deserve her position anymore anyway. They would see that she was right in the end.

She kept her sword in her hand before her flat against her chest so she could measure each pace and what sound might come from it before she took it. Neral and the elder mage were deep in conversation. If they stayed so that would be wonderful. A single strike and there would be damage that no mage could fix.

She froze when she heard the soft pop of a twig snapping behind her with a whisper that she couldn’t quite make out, but that sounded like her name. They couldn’t stop her. She was doing it for all of them. She was doing it so they could all live and go home and not be used up by that thing in the mountains or the general.

She turned and started for the general, bushes rustling, leaning slightly forward to maintain her balance so she could swing the blade in one smooth, powerful strike. She knew she would only get the one chance.

“General, your right!”

Her brain responded to the warning and its tone in a way that was outside of her control. She ducked and rolled away, feeling the air and hearing the rush of it as the blade cut just above her head. She pulled her mother’s dagger from its place at her thigh and came up, ready to move again even as the sounds were already bringing others to them.

Maylin had been shocked by the cry. In the mere seconds it took her to process what it meant she saw the blade swing and Neral clear it. Seeing it was Pel, she knew the what and why enough to react. In a quick, angry stretch of her arm, her magic lifted Pel from the ground and tore through her thrashing form, her armor offering no protection. When the deed was done, she lowered the body to the ground to see wide eyes that stared at nothing.

Deres was the first to them with the other’s not far behind. Kestral emerged from the woods along the path Pel took, looking at her with regret before, “Are you all right, General?”

She nodded to both her and Deres before focusing on Pel’s form. “Thank you for the warning, Kes.”

“Of course, sir.” She stiffened. “This is my fault, sir. I..when we were bathing she...talked about what happened. She spoke as though she missed it. I didn’t realize that she...” She straightened her spine expecting discipline. “I should have reported it. I did not because I had hoped it was not so. I’d hoped it would pass, but I kept watch.”

Neral knelt, touching Pel’s face, already thinking of what she would say at dawn. “We’ll discuss the lapse later.” She spoke to Maylin without looking at her. “You detected nothing.”

“I’m sorry,” She didn’t pretend to hide her embarrassment. “She...has skills we lack.”

“So there’s no way to know who she might have touched, if anyone, before now.” Dion spoke the unspoken truth that had already been uttered via furtive glances to one another.

Deres spoke. “As you say, Captain. Theoretically, everyone or no one.”

Neral rose and looked ahead to the mountains. In the dark, and from the distance remaining they just seemed a formless, malevolent wall that blocked even the moonlight from leaving its mark She was sick of losses. She was sick of her friends and the people who trusted her to keep them safe being taken away from her.

Not to mention someone that she loved.

But she took fair satisfaction in the fact that, to play on Abren’s wisdom; live or die, it was about to be over.

To be Continued...