The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Two days passed without incident. Neral was grateful for the discipline taught her from the moment she could remember. It made it somewhat easy to carry on her normal routine, though it didn’t hurt that she believed Deres when he said she wouldn’t see either of them anyway. All she’d do is alert the witch and that was the last thing she’d do willingly. It was more amusing to imagine all the things she’d do to her to repay her for what had been done.

Riding home she’d wondered again briefly why she hadn’t gone after the queen or set the city afire or something in response to the fact that she now knew what happened to her. The simplest explanation was that the witch had been so sure of herself and her power and that Neral was so enthralled with it that there was no need to plan for any other contingency when it came to at least her. The thought enraged her and shamed her at once. It enraged her for the obvious reasons and shamed her to her core because without Deres it would have been true. Truthfully, if he could help her end this before it began, what he asked of her as far as marriage went was a small price to pay. The crystal was another matter and made her draw her her cloak closer to her body to banish the thought.

Or perhaps more what the idea of it made her feel. She consoled herself over it by telling herself that it was just a side effect of the workings of the witch on her mind. The rest of her evening was uneventful and, after a light supper, a bath, and a bit of reading she was finally able to drift off.

This city was filled with such small people that sometimes it was all the woman could do not to laugh or wretch. They milled about, living their lives oblivious to the world around them and their betters. She and her kind saw more of the world than they could conceive and these petty creatures were happy in their ignorance.

For her, it was just a job. She’d been paid a rather handsome sum to let the enemies of these people draw blood on some anniversary of some event that happened generations ago that hardly mattered anymore. The noble who hired her spoke with the passion of it happening yesterday and as though he were in the middle of it. The particulars bored her, so she’d listened for the times to nod and did so and feigned outrage alongside him in hopes that he might pay a like-minded soul a bit more.

Even though it was just a job to be done there was plenty of enjoyment to be had. Gold was always nice, and even after the guild took it’s share she’d do well. There was also something to be said for teaching these pitiful souls a lesson in humility. The fear that would crash through these people like a tidal wave would be sight to behold as the realization that one person had unleashed such mayhem to send them screaming from their complacency. In their minds it would be their much vaunted General Jaye that had torn their dull little world. No one would know of the woman’s hand in all of it.

But she would know, and that would be more than enough. She would know that one person had enough power to all but destroy a kingdom

The streets were all but deserted at this time of night, save the sentries and the beggars and the whores. She scarcely had to use magic to be unseen here as the damp back alleys did more than enough when it came to offering concealment. It was only when she neared the general’s home that she truly began to weave the magics around her form, melting her into and yet beyond her environment so completely that someone could be next to her and have no clue she was there.

She slipped into the manicured courtyard, making no sound in the near-ethereal form as she made her way to the east side of the manor before spreading her arms from her sides and lifting herself from the ground, gliding upward until she reached the small balcony attached to the third-story window. She could have simply unlocked the front door and made her way to the general’s room, but what fun would that have been?

It took her a moment of concentration to shift the fields of magic around her so that a flick of her fingers unlatched the double-pane doors, not dropping her concealment until she was inside the bedroom.

Where she stopped.

There was something, something that stirred her senses for the briefest moment like when you’re nearly asleep and believe you hear a sound. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, sending out wisps of her own magic unseen by anyone but her to search the air for any hint of what it might have been. Much like that imagined sound in the night though, the more she attempted to focus on it, the more impossible it was to find until she finally dismissed it as a flush of excitement over a job nearly complete.

She moved deftly to the side of the bed and looked down at the sleeping Neral, using yet another bit of magic that allowed the witch to see her now peaceful form better in the dark. Truthfully she’d have been done already except that dear Neral was remarkably resistant to killing her queen. Her loyalty ran deep, which was commendable, the sorceress supposed, but so did her love of the effects of the magic. In that, she was like every other upon whom she had weaved the magic, whether for fun or profit. Eventually they craved control and sometimes it amused the witch to make them beg to be given a command to obey until they cried for it.

This one had spirit and might be fun to toy with until her will was ground to nothing, though that was not to be Neral’s fate. She sighed inwardly. It was a pity, but there were always new toys to be found. She stopped indulging her own thoughts and began to focus on weaving the energies around her with the movements of her hands creating intricate patterns in the air over her prey while her mouth uttered, nearly silently, a chain of spells in a druid dialect that was dead to most and each layer designed to deepen Neral’s sleep temporarily and make her mind easier to touch when the time came.

The chanting and weaving continued as the witch lowered herself to the bed, bringing her hands ever closer to Neral’s flesh. As expected, the woman of the house turned from her side to her back. The action had been seen often enough in others. The body knew it wanted long before the brain admitted the same and gave in.

All her fingers caressed Neral’s face now, each moving slightly this way and that, making a new pattern on the skin, touching it the way a lover would, down, sparing not an inch, from her cheeks, over her chin and across her lips, deepening the spell. On the fourth pass, those full lips parted to release a long sigh as she seemed to sink farther into the bed, her heart skipping a beat as the spell began to take hold.

Neral’s eyes snapped open as every nerve in her body began to sing the same glorious song. She remembered now as she felt her nipples harden against her lace gown. She remembered because she was meant to. She knew how it would be; the pleasure would overwhelm her mind and then the words would ooze into her mind to become what drove her. “No.” Neral tried valiantly to lift her arms to try to stop those fingers from sapping her will, but she only managed to lift her wrists an inch or so.

Her voice dripped pity, “Oh, you always try so hard, but it always ends the same, sweet.”

The woman stayed focused and waited for her victim’s breathing to become more shallow and panting. She grinned once the body bent to her will that way as it meant that victory was imminent. Her left hand stopped its ministrations and her palm wandered down the front of her nightgown, pushing the quilt down with it to reveal her form.

“Noooooooo.” This one was a shivering plea.

The mage ignored her and let her hand slide under the gown and between Neral’s thighs, feeling the damp heat before she even touched that slit. “You’re so ready for me, aren’t you, dear? There used to be so much more struggle.” Her voice hardened, “Open your legs.”

Neral’s thighs knotted as she mustered what meager defenses she had left, but the sweet poison was filling her. Her body was a live wire and it felt like she was drowning in pleasure, every nerve in her body whimpering in joy and there would be more. All she had to do was…

“Open your legs.”

The command shook her to her core. Her world started to narrow to only that touch and that voice, sinking into both. It would be so much easier to obey.

“Open your legs as your mind opens.”

Neral’s chest heaved, almost unable to take in enough air. Gone was any notion of resisting. Her blanking mind managed to pull a thought together. How can a person feel this good?

And she would feel even better if she just gave up.

She was almost completely unaware that she could move her legs even as they bent at the knees, with them spreading them as widely as her joints allowed.

“Good girl, Neral,” she purred. “Mind as open to me as your wet pussy now.” Two fingers slid in fully with no resistance and the last image Neral’s mind could conjure even as she came screaming was the witch’s fingers spreading the folds of her mind in just the same way and she welcomed the blissful darkness.

The sorceress grinned wickedly as she watched the woman’s orgasms crashed into one another, the screaming giving way to grunting and shuddering as Neral’s back arched and her hips churned and twisted in a frenzy. It was always the same: mind open and defenseless while the body sought the near endless pleasure. Thoughts and memories were forgotten in the face of it and her puppet master was free to rifle through them like letters on a desk and change words, phrases, or whole chapters to suit her whim. It was all open to her now.

While Neral’s eyes were closed, mouth hanging slack, arms now free to come over her head and white-knuckle the headboard to aid in her own corruption, The sorceress began skimming through those thoughts, glancing at this page and reading that one, working her way to the memories and bits of her best changed or replaced to finally make it possible for her to do the final task that would be required of her.

It didn’t take her long to find something else.

Someone with magic like her own had followed after her. Its afterimage was as clear as hoof prints on the road after a light rain. She found the pages that were marked by him, pages he hadn’t bothered to conceal. He was powerful, having crushed the careful blocks that had been built without effort. It interested her to have a rival of some sort so she focused more deeply. Each guild often learned and worked the same spells in slightly different ways so, if one was skilled, one could examine the traces and determine the guild if not the person, but she recognized nothing, so she flicked through more pages of the book that was Neral to find more of what had been going on while the woman was left completely unaware.

Neral’s whimpers lost some of their appeal to the witch’s ear, “What have you done, girl?” She continued to pick through memories even as she contemplated how she would track the upstart and make him pay for his interference when her blood ran cold at the instant she came across the page that showed her watch with interest as he weaved his snare throughout the room.

“No,” she hissed. She drew her hands from Neral as though they burned and jumped from the bed, already beginning to weave the best ward she could muster. How could she have not seen? For magic as powerful as she now knew it must be to leave only the faint trace it did the weaver had to have skills no one in her guild or any guild she knew of had.

Too many questions and no answers and the only important thing now was escape. Her ward only had to hold for the few feet to the balcony that now seemed miles away. She knew once in its center as she was, the snare would trip almost the moment she moved. Ward in place, enveloping her in a flowing, gauzy violet, she stared at the door with all the focus she had. The doors flew open with such force that the heavy glass of the right pane cracked.

She could make it, she assured herself. She would make it. She would make it and they would both pay.

Her leg pushed forward to begin a running stride and as soon as it found a place on the floor next to the foot of the bed the entire floor and all four walls lit in yellow fire that burned her eyes. Runes were everywhere, symbols on top of symbols that flowed into new ones before turning back upon themselves in ways she recognized and in many ways she did not. As her ward sparked and evaporated around her and her limbs turned leaden she realized her understanding of magic was like a mewling baby trying to understand language compared to what he knew.

She wasn’t afraid when her body moved without her to put her standing ramrod straight, facing the bedroom door. She wasn’t afraid even as she knew without trying that she’d be unable to speak. Such was the nature of any snare, in those that she had created as well as those in the rare times she’d been caught. She consoled herself with the fact that both the weavers who had captured her in her career were dead by her hand.

Accepting that she was now caught, her mind shifted tacks. Any confrontation with this creature had to be carefully managed, as she might only get one chance to exploit a weakness and strike. She didn’t relish a fight with whatever this man was and would prefer to avoid it if she could and it was at least possible. He was a rival, but she had resources he might value. He was a male and she had wiles and charms and skills not magic as well as those enhanced with it, so she could make her value known there as well. Immediately, perhaps she could use either or both to secure her release. Ideally, she could forge an alliance and learn what he had to teach. With that power and the guilds unified under it and her, they could be formidable enough to come out from the shadows and take their place among the kingdoms of the world.

One step at a time. She calmed herself and waited.

Moments later, the lamps came to life and the runes disappeared, though their magic still held their captive like chains around her flesh.

Deres moved swiftly, though calmly through the door, completely ignoring his quarry to take the same place the witch had. He looked at her now sleeping form and felt some shame at doing so, but it couldn’t be helped. From her lean body, long legs that seemed to stretch forever, and to her full breasts gently straining against that rumpled gown that was still damp with sweat, she looked like sex.

His voice was like a soft breeze.“Neral.”

When she didn’t stir, he touched her cheek and called to her again. This time she whined and turned her head toward his hand. Her eyes opened slowly, squinting for a second against the light, then widened as she recognized him and remembered bits of what had just been through the now dissipating haze of lust. She gasped and propped herself up rapidly on her elbows before looking down to truly take stock of her disheveled state. The color drained from her face, “Goddess.”

She scrambled up like a recruit tossed from her bed for a late night drill. The heat of her shame and anger seemed to bring the room’s temperature up a hundred degrees and the suddenness of her movement sent Deres up and away as quickly as he could to give her room. She grabbed the patterned quilt and used it to try to cover herself before looking down at it and realizing how pointless modesty was at this instant. She tossed it away, more angry at the fact that her soul still felt more bare than her body than anything else. She glared at him, the decorum drilled into her by mother and military all but gone, “How long before you woke me? Enjoy fucking me with your eyes? Take any other liberties while you were at it?”

“I didn’t,” he said, looking away for a moment, then meeting her eyes in a way she could respect, “take liberties, that is. I wouldn’t. But I looked. You’re beautiful and I looked. I can’t quite apologize for that.”

She felt a twinge of regret at her outburst. He had tried to help and gave his word to keep doing so. So he looked, so what? Men were men and she was a sight tonight for certain anyway. Her adrenaline began to wane a bit before she looked at the bed, then back at him, “Why did you let her get so far with me? You know the things she wanted me to do.”

Now he was on firmer footing and it showed in his stance. “As it was I didn’t know if she’d sense the trap. I couldn’t follow right away or she likely would have detected me. I had to wait to get closer until she was distracted.

She glanced back down at the bed, her mind working as her training demanded. She should have seen it, of course. “Bait.”

“That I do apologize for.”

She looked at him, mind now in a mode that could push away the feelings still coursing through her, “Don’t. It was necessary.” She suppressed a start at seeing the hooded form on the room standing like a statue next to her bed. “She’s caught?”

“For now,” he said. “Magic this strong and intricate is particularly finite. She’ll be able to try to break free in twenty minutes, give or take.”

The captive rejoiced. She knew how long she had to wait before she could make an attempt, assuming he told the truth.

He came to the witch and placed fingers at her throat, “You can speak, but don’t bother trying to cast. I can shut you up before you can do anything that matters.”

“I believe it.” She was pleased that it had returned with its usual strength. “An excellent snare. I’d only ever been caught as young sorceress. I can usually detect them from far away these days. My compliments to your teacher.”

He gave her a crooked grin, “She would thank you...just before leaving you as a scorch mark on her marble floor.”

“Pity. I suspect we might get along under other circumstances.”

“She has no taste for mercenaries.”

“A job’s a job. It wasn’t personal.”

Neral’s anger flared and she rushed forward with the momentary intent of crushing the woman’s throat until she gurgled her last breath. She settled for yanking the hood from her head to finally see her tormentor and puppeteer. She was beautiful. There was simply no other word for her. Blonde hair cascaded down her back. Her smooth skin contoured over soft, rounded cheeks and a sharp jawline. Then there were the eyes that Neral remembered from that first day: blue and of seemingly infinite depth. One could fall into them and be lost with the way they seemed to look into one’s soul.

A spot of heat blossomed in Neral’s belly, her body still remembering her seduction and a part of her eager to be taken again. She tried to ignore it. “Murder isn’t personal?”

“Do you remember everyone you’ve hacked to death on the battlefield?”

More faces than she cared to remember. There would be more, too, most likely. All out war hadn’t happened in a long time, but there were often skirmishes as the smaller lands tested the defenses of those around them. “That’s different. That’s not murder, it’s war.”

Her reply was full of disdain, “Like that matters to the conscripted farmer you’ve run through; thrown in a wagon in the morning and barely knows how to hold a sword and by afternoon he’s doing his share to turn the field red. He didn’t want to fight and didn’t know how and you kill him anyway. That sounds like murder to me. What a warrior you are.” The witch smiled a fake, syrupy smile. “You should thank me. I took you away from that for a while. I pleasured you. Sure, you were empty, but you were guiltless and shameless. You were free, even as I had my way.”

She held on to the anger for all she was worth, “Free to kill my queen, you mean? Free to kill a woman I played with as a child? You tried that and you failed.”

She dismissed Neral, “I was caught is all. Sooner or later you would have. I admit that you’re one of the strongest I’ve ever worked when it came to killing one close to you, but no one has escaped doing what I wanted. You enjoyed doing what I wanted.”

The certainty of the last hit her like a fist. Her entire life had been about discipline and control and the burdens of being in charge. She wore them all proudly, but they had worn on her, too. To be weak was delicious. To let go and defer and be submissive was the same way a warm bath with her mint extracts was peaceful. It was bliss.

“You had someone you could let go with, even if I did have a job to do.”

She mirrored Deres’ words in her own way whether she meant to or not. They tugged at her and Neral wondered if the witch was using what she’d done before to influence her to act to free her. Or something. She felt the pull again and it scared her. There was a knot in her belly that even now that whispered to her to obey. The very word promised and tormented.

Deres’ voice, strong, resolute, and tinged with his own unique brand of mirth even now snapped her to with it’s certainty. “Neral’s going to marry me in return for my bitch- trapping, so she’s really not going to be alone anymore. Aside from that,” he began, before turning to her and smiling at the sight of those brown eyes, “I love her.”

She almost laughed until she really looked at him. It was the vulnerability in his eyes. He was more exposed to her emotionally as she was to him physically. She tried to sort her confusion, “You barely know me.”

“I can’t help it. I couldn’t have stayed away even without all this. “You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, add powerful, intelligent, and regal to the mix and I was lost to you as surely as you were lost to her.” He smiled even as his eyes threatened to mist, “Touching your mind to see you really were all that and more?” He cleared his throat, “To answer your question, yes, I would have helped if you had said no because it was you that asked me. I would have died for a home that has no use for me because it was you that asked me. But you gave me your word...”

The trailing off was deliberate. The words hung in the air like a question. She could back out. She could back out and he’d still help her and a people that shunned him because he’d been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I gave my word. It’s done.”

He shied away from her eyes for an instant, looking like a boy asking a girl to his first dance. “You may never grow to love me, but I promise you I’ll try to be worthy of what you’ve given.”

Her brown eyes fell distant for a time. Her world as she had known it had been torn asunder in a matter of days. The very person she was had been nearly lost and remade and even that didn’t hurt as much the fact that there was a place inside her that still wanted it. She was no good at deluding herself, but she penchant for honest self-assessment was still intact. The loss of control thrilled her as it terrified her. Her place in the world was a difficult one and often lonely. Maybe she’d liked the belonging of it too, as much as the thrill. There was an intimacy to it that couldn’t be explained with words unless they’d felt it for themselves.

Neral knew you could stare down your opponents numbers all day, or you could leap into the fray. Sometimes you had to leap and her heart pounded each time at the moment the decision was made.

Neral leaped. “Do you have it?”

He didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. He told her he did even as he retrieved it from the folds of his robes. In his palm sat that seemingly nothing slip of red glass. “Are you sure?”

Her response was clipped, “No. Is there time?”

His head tilted to the witch for a moment in silent assessment before nodding. “It’s fast.”

She looked at it one last time. “I will still be the person I am.” It wasn’t a question. She wanted that one last bit of reassurance.

“In every way that truly matters to you.” His sincerity was unmistakable and genuine. Even so he began to balk, “But you don’t have to. I...”

This time it was her who grinned, for she, in her own way, was already in free fall, “If I will still be me you will have to learn that there are times when you simply need to shut...up.”

His mouth closed, but his eyes told her he hadn’t lied about his feelings for her. She clasped his hand in an iron grip. She felt the rounded corners of it touching her skin as she squeezed.

“Will it to break,” he whispered. “See it in your mind and break it.”

A last choice made, she put that slip of glass in the center of her mind and cracked it in two. As it was in her mind, so it was in her hand. She felt it snap and looked down to see hints of red magic slip through her fingers and crawl up her arm from wrist to elbow. There was no pain or pleasure. Neral found it odd that there was no sensation at all even as it seemed to sink into her skin and fade until nothing but her slightly olive complexion could be seen.

Then feeling.

She remembered how she felt as a girl amusing herself under the kitchen table enjoying the aromas and the sounds of chatter and as her mother cooked with the servants because she just enjoyed cooking.

She remembered the feeling the first time she laid with a lover in the grass.

She remembered how she felt the day she had graduated from War College, standing straight and tall as her family sat next to the royal line as was their position and how her mother had thrown her own decorum to the wind and beamed with pride and clapped for her.

She remembered the comfort of those nights with her sisters and the fire and bottles of wine as they talked, laughed, and gossiped until near dawn.

She remembered all those moments and a thousand more as those feelings poured into that knot in her belly, quelling her fear and replacing it with love, contentment, and peace. She looked into those blue eyes of his and found those things in him as though she’d known him her entire life and not just a tiny march of days. She looked upon him now as though he’d had her heart since it first began to beat.

Falling and staying in love is usually a million moments and a million trials all combining over a lifetime. It was supremely strange to her for a moment to simply be in love with the same speed at which you enter a room or snuff out a lamp. One instant it was not so, then it was.

She drew closer to him, not even noticing that nothing remained in her hand as she placed it on her shoulder. His arms went around her and she drifted closer to his lips, and, when they met, her tasting that taste never experienced yet always known told her all was as it should be. When it finally broke she relished his hand cupping her ass and the memory that she had been half naked before him when he first saw her tonight. She’d have to make that ‘completely’ at the earliest opportunity, but the reason that couldn’t be shook her from the moment.

“Well, isn’t that just fucking sweet.”

She did at least help show Neral that she was the same person as from moments before. She still felt the anger, shame, and desire to put this thing that had robbed her of will to a slow death. Neral broke the embrace with her love and sighed. “If only I didn’t need you to speak.”

“Let me go and I will. As I’ve said, it’s just a job. There will be others.” She put as much sincerity into it as she could manage, but, as much as it fed her anger at her predicament, she couldn’t entirely blame them both for laughing at her.

“Like exacting revenge on me, no doubt?”

“I would tell you both what you want to know and forgo any retribution on you or the General if you show me how to make a snare like this and perhaps a few other skills to be determined later?” That was a sincere offer for her. With what he could teach it’d be years or more before she even thought of turning her attention back to them.

Neral was having none of it, “And wait for the night when my children sleep peacefully in their beds and you decide that that’s the night you come to them for revenge?” The thought gave her a start, Children? It hadn’t been anything she’d given a first thought to, much less a second. There was not and hadn’t been anyone to contemplate children with until now. Indeed, her mother had been pressuring her to marry, dropping hints that she’d be more than willing to arrange a marriage to a suitable male. She looked at her man as he eyed the witch and allowed herself one more moment of softness with the simple thought, Of course.

Neral closed the distance and spoke to the woman with all the venom that had built within her, “You will speak.”

“That’s the issue,” Deres said almost casually as he paced before both of them. “She has to tell us everything about this plan and every person involved. It’s the only way to be sure that it’s dead. I can continue to confine her, but all she has to do is stall with this lie and that while we chase each one everywhere and likely away from where the real plans are.”

Her blue eyes never left Neral’s even though it was him she dared, “You can take it all from me. Surely I couldn’t stop you.”

“You couldn’t.”

“Pleasure or pain,” Neral commanded. “I don’t care which you use.”

He folded his arms over his chest as he spoke, “That she’d invite me to use magic suggests she wants me to. She’s tethered to her handlers by schedule or magic. Fail to make a meet or make it with my marks in her mind and whatever might happen will.”

“Your new love is astute, so let’s make a deal.”

“And hope you tell the whole truth.”

Neral could see that the bitch wanted to strut the room. “What other choice do you have, dear? The clock ticks.”

“On?”

“The snare, of course.” Her tone said with certainty that that wasn’t all.

“We change her mind.”

Deres unfolded his arms and reached into his deepest pocket as he approached them, pulling from it a transparent case. He spoke to Neral as they looked at it, “This is magic and science.”

It took all of Neral’s discipline not to recoil from the strangeness of the thing. Thin and roughly eight inches long and most of that length was taken up by a thin, oily, glossy black tail and two similar appendages erupting from the other end like horns. The middle was a fleshy, pulsing pink with red blood vessels covering almost every inch. “It doesn’t really have a name, he began. “It’s something only reserved for the worst of criminals and the greatest threats. They are removed from us by being remade. You can count on one hand the number of people where I come from that know how to create one and are entrusted to do so.”

She was glad for the opportunity to not look at it. “One less there now, I take it?”

He looked at Neral and nodded, his demeanor now somber and not at all his usual. “Never thought I’d have to. In fact, if I ever went home I’d probably be tried for having done it.” He sighed deeply focusing again on the witch, “Fortunately...or unfortunately, depending, given what actions you’re already responsible for and what could happen if this isn’t stopped, the trial would likely conclude I was justified.”

“This will become you. You will become it. You’ll shape yourself around what it demands and when it fades all that’s left is the new you. When your friends touch your mind they won’t sense magic because this is too far beyond them. You’ll show them what they need to see and they’ll never know differently. You’ll be able to put the old you on for them at will like a comfortable coat, but it won’t change what you’ve become.”

For the first time, the sorceress felt fear, her eyes frantically following until he disappeared from her periphery. “We can deal. None of this matters to me, I swear. You’re clearly my better. You don’t have to do this.”

He stood directly behind her now, case in his right hand. “I’ve been all over the world. I’ve been places you don’t even know exist and every one of them has a saying. The words are different, but the sentiment is the same: you get from the world what you put into it. So, really, you kind of deserve this. But it’ll be more merciful than how you were going to leave Neral. You’ll be happy when it’s done, and not just ‘empty’ happy.”

He found the brown eyes of his love once again, seeking that final approval as he lifted the witch’s hair.

She gave a slow nod before looking at the witch’s eyes.

The pretense and gaming was over. Now she was just afraid as she felt the warmth of the thing on her neck. “Please?”

Neral didn’t allow herself the luxury of letting the fearful eyes or pleading voice change her course, but she wasn’t inhuman. There was sympathy, even for the person who was doing the same to her. “I am responsible for the farmer in the field.” The weight of it was sometimes unbearable. “I am responsible for you.”

Her mouth opened her mouth to speak, but gasped instead when she felt the prick of the two tendrils as they penetrated her skin. Moments later the tail followed suit and she could feel it make its way to her spine.

She was grateful when the world finally went black.

She was aware of herself. She hadn’t expected that. It felt as though she were floating in the air, arms and legs outstretched. And she was free. She felt free as time passed without any real meaning. Maybe she had beaten that which sought to corrupt her. He had magic she hadn’t seen, so the reverse must have been true. Perhaps something in her had made her immune. How they would pay. She would play their slave until she could be free and Goddess how they would pay. She thought of all the tortures and indignities she would heap upon them.

No. It was a booming, yet hollow sound.

The voice had simply appeared from all around her, suddenly making her feel small. She dared project her thoughts to the abyss. “What are you?”

Mind.

“Not my mind.” She used her anger to fuel her. “Minds bend to me. The world bends to me and I won’t bend to whatever you are. I’ll die first.”

Yes. The old mind will be taken by mind. The old mind will die and be replaced by the new mind that is mind and the remnants of old mind.

She marshaled the magic inside her, placing barriers around the core of her being. If she could slow it down she could find a way to resist. There was always a way to win.

Resistance has no meaning. The integration has already begun. It cannot be stopped. The old mind already aids mind.

“Like hell it does,” she spat. “I’m not helping you.”

“The old mind surrenders from within to without. As it does the new mind grows stronger and the reshaping begins.”

More silence as she floated and felt. It was a lie. It had to be. She was still her. She felt it. The excitement that comes with realization flooded her. It was like that talisman he gave to Neral. That was it! She found the weakness. She had to give up. If it convinced her to give up, then she’d be lost. She’d never give up who she was. Never. She hunkered more tightly to herself.

Can we feel it?

“Feel what?”

Feel.

That one word shook her because with it she realized that the booming, lifeless monotone was gone. It was her voice now. “Feel what?!”

Are we angry? Are we afraid?

“Of course, I’m angry, you fucking thing. You’re trying to ruin us.” She managed to muster a fresh spark of fear when she realized what she’d said. “ME. You’re trying to ruin ME.”

We are becoming. It cannot be stopped. Resistance only makes it take longer for us. Focus on what we do feel. We feel pleasure.

The bottom dropped from the floating sensation she’d felt before. She still felt it, but now it was with the exhilaration that came with the feeling that there was no floor beneath. Looking down she saw a licking, white tendril of energy that looked like lightening wrap around her ankle. She sighed as it took her. It was warm and inviting like nothing she’d ever known.

This is best for us. We want to be remade.

Another tendril came for her other leg. Did she try to pull away or did she reach out? Was it her against this thing or was it just her now? It was already so hard to find and hold onto the difference.

She moaned when one of her wrists felt the restraint.

This is best for us. We want to be remade. We are I.

She bucked and convulsed in orgasm as her pussy was run through with power she didn’t understand but was past fighting, “I...”

In her mind she could see the white moving painlessly, inexorably up through her body. She knew where it was going. A glimmer of the old her recoiled at its approach and mounted a pitiful defense, but she quashed it, blowing it aside like dead leaves in an autumn storm.

“I want to be remade.” She spoke to herself and to the abyss, her voice strong and filled with lust for the change.

She was right when she first spoke to her. There was no stopping her. She would take her mind and rebuild it and nothing would stop her.

“I will be remade. I will remake me.” In her mind’s eye she saw the trail of white just at the base of her brain.

When it touched her there the orgasm that bloomed turned everything the same perfect white.

She came to, standing there as she had been the last time she was aware of the outside world. Everything was familiar. She was familiar. She focused on Deres looking at her with a sort of clinical detachment and Neral who looked on with no clue as to what was happening. Her hand jumped to the back of her neck to feel nothing at all.

She was giddy that she could move. Her eyes widened at the sight of them watching her and she instantly scolded herself. Master or Mistress hadn’t told her she could move. She was sure that they wouldn’t mind, but she worried all the same.

Then memories of the old her flooded back and she literally had to fight off a wave of nausea and revulsion. They disgusted her, but none more so than what she had done to Mistress. It was so wrong as to be irredeemable. She paced a single agitated step in each direction like a caged animal, her face a study in frustration. Maybe if she showed mistress she was different now and that she’d made herself better and that she was sorry, Mistress could forgive her. Maybe if she left herself be completely open and exposed she could show Mistress.

Neral watched, shocked as the witch stripped before her. Everything from hood to underclothes were tossed aside until her naked form was at Neral’s feet and she spoke to the floor. “I’m sorry, Mistress. I’m sorry for the horrible things I’ve done to you. I meant them then, but I’m different now. I’m better now. I would die a thousand times before hurting you or Master. If you take my life for it I deserve it. If it meant you’d forgive me I’d take the knife and do it myself.”

Neral really had no idea what to make of the display and spread her arms in frustration before looking to Deres who looked ever so slightly sheepish, “She’ll settle, I think. The eager puppy thing will fade...probably.”

She wasn’t all that amused, “Probably?”

“Likely. Mostly. You were the wronged party. She owes you amends. She had no choice in the changing, but she did choose how even if it’s only instinctual. That’s how it works. The people who can be rehabilitated no other way are forced to do it themselves.”

There was something else that stirred in Neral as she looked down at that prostrate form. That supple skin and the toned muscles of her back and that long neck that begged to be marked by teeth. She narrowed her eyes at Deres, “That one of those things about me you changed around the edges?”

He looked at her in askance and she realized she’d just assumed that he was rooting around in her mind at will so she filled in the blanks, “The fact that, while I still want to kill her, part of me wants to fuck her silly? I didn’t want to fuck women yesterday.”

He cleared his throat, “Well, I did say it would change a few things.” He cleared it again, “My former home is a reasonably moral, but hedonist society. Certain boundaries as to what’s acceptable are, one could say, flexible.”

She searched her mind to see what boundaries were blurred today that weren’t yesterday and found several. He braced himself, ready for whatever she had to say. The worst part for her was that she wasn’t particularly interested in changing back what he’d changed. Comparing then to now, she could admit that there was a fantasy or two in the darkest corners of her mind that were a bit more vivid and appealing now. “We have to talk.”

He saw a chance to use the witch to dodge and took it, “When is your meeting?”

She looked up at him, eager to be of help. “Oh, that, tomorrow an hour after dawn at the place where the river turns south.”

“So you’re here until morning?”

“I was supposed to be,” the words stopped short as the lump in her throat made it hard to swallow, “working with her most of the night.” Her heart grew heavy again, “I’m so sorry, Mistress.”

Neral marveled at how he could shrug with just an eyebrow. Still, she couldn’t deny the urge and could think of no reason just then not to indulge if there were time. Still, she looked at him, “I’m settling in, too?”

He shook his head, “Still in heat from earlier and exploring something new.”

The next decades with him would be exasperating. She looked down at the witch, “Stay out of my head. Understand?”

She nodded, inching closer, eager to please. Beginning at her toes, the witch planted gentle kisses in trails up each leg as her nails dragged up the back of them, making Mistress shiver. Seeing it and hearing her breath shift as Mistress began to give in to her lust made the sorceress happy. She owed Mistress her devotion and all the love she could give. Her tongue left trails that reflected the lamp light as she made her way towards the hem of the gown.

Neral watched her work, thrilling at the submission radiating from the woman as much as the feelings she was creating in Neral herself. How could she not have liked women before? Her hands drifted to the fabric, holding it up past her belly button. So much for discipline and decorum.

No other invitation was needed before burying herself in Mistress’s mound, her tongue snaking upward to nurse and love and bat that clit back and forth, using the whimpers she drew from Mistress to drive her on as she looked up into her eyes. Mistress was perfect in all things and if she had to stay on her knees like this for the rest of her days making things right, then that’s what her life would be. She moaned as Neral took her by the hair, pushing the witch’s head deeper between her legs as she threw her head back in a quaking orgasm.

When the sensations finally faded Neral nudged her away, looking down to see her wetness smeared on the blonde’s lips and contentment in her eyes. Neral composed herself, the urge tended to nicely for now. “I have questions.”

The woman licked her lips clean wantonly. “Of course, Mistress.”

Shifting to a role of gentle interrogator, fearing that if she became too stern at this point the woman might break down, she knelt to her level. She certainly hoped that he who was her husband in all but name at this point was right in that she’d settle into something more normal and less lapdog, but it served just now. The incredulity of what came next was not lost on Neral, “After all that’s happened, I don’t know your name. Tell me your name.”

“Bryana, Mistress.”

More questions followed and Bryana looked at Mistress in adoration and answered them all. She was actually glad as the night wore on that she remembered the intricacies of the person she was so that she could help Mistress and Master to plot to undo what had been done as well as deal with those that plotted. Some of them would take time and planning to punish properly, but it would be done because Mistress and Master willed it and Bryana ached to make it so. That, if she thought about it, she actually owed them indirectly for her rebirth, was nothing to balance how they had been as responsible for her bringing harm to Mistress as she had. Her employers had wanted Neral to suffer.

Now they would.

That she could now think of her as Neral without feeling awkward at being forward without cause didn’t trouble her. She supposed it was part of the settling into her new self that Master Deres had spoken of. One name or another didn’t change feeling though; Bryana loved Neral with all her being and that she loved Deres drew Bryana to him as a moth to a flame, if only to be a part of what they had.

And when she took those steps out of the city proper just as light began to touch the horizon she knew she was taking her first steps in her new life and, by the time those rays faded to the sunset, she would be back with him.

With her.

Home.