The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The warrior maiden Azonia á Bien sat in the street with her head in her hands. She couldn’t believe what she was letting herself in for, but she knew that she didn’t have any realistic choice. If she was to free the people of the Aœlaian Lands from slavery and salvage the honour of the whole Bien tribe, she needed mithril armour with which to force her way into the warlock’s tower. Mithril was a magical metal, she knew, and the elves regarded it as a fragment of the soul of their ancient Engine Gods. But a part of the magic meant that it would not resonate with the wearer’s soul if stolen, and a part of the Elven religious lore meant that mithril could not be bought or sold, only earned for certain types of work.

It sounded crazy, but if she was to save her people from generations of ignominy, she would have to do some work that was payable in mithril. That meant inventing a completely new scientific device, defeating a dragon, founding an entirely new genre of poetry or school of art, discovering the true name of one of the first gods, or…

She had been incredulous when the blacksmith told her that modelling could be paid in mithril. It had taken a while for her to realise that he expected her to sell her body in order to earn the metal she needed. It’s an art, of course, and one thing where only the customer is in a position to determine whether her performance would be original enough to merit a payment in the soul alloy. The thought made her sick, but she couldn’t back away now. Dennery the master smith was awaiting her. And there was always a chance that a few weeks wasn’t enough time to gain a complete understanding of elven body language. She could have misunderstood his intent, and she only hoped that was the case.

As she looked up, her confidence was restored by a fraction. Even sitting slumped in an alleyway, unable to bring herself to reach her destination, she wasn’t surrounded by darkness and squalor. The elven cities were built underground. Every wall and floor was composed of finely cut rock, smooth enough to avoid tripping but rough enough to provide good grip. The veins of darker or lighter rock put the casual observer in mind of marble everywhere, even when the rock was really a relatively cheap basalt, and every alley was lit by organic-looking veins of luminiferous crystals. Only here, a mile below the surface, could the alley behind a bar be a landscape of beauty. She dried her eyes with a cheap linen handkerchief, gathered all her confidence, and strode onwards.

When she arrived at Dennery’s workshop, she held her head high. For all she was dreading this, she knew that it would be the right thing to do, to sacrifice her own dignity to save that of her family, her neighbours, her entire tribe. The room was lit by more crystals than she’d ever seen in one place, but not overly bright. Instead, the ceiling and walls emitted a diffuse blue-white glow that left every inch of workspace well lit and shadow free. The shelves were like some kind of library of engineering, with bolts and rivets, nails, nuts, and rings, ingots of a dozen different metals and all the strange and terrifying tools of the jeweller’s art arranged neatly row by row. There was so much variety that Azonia couldn’t begin to take it all in, but even to her untrained eyes it was clear that there was an underlying order to the arrangement. The middle-aged elf could probably reach for the right shelf to select the exact tool he needed for any job, not even needing a pause to think of which shelf that tool might be on.

“So…” she looked down at him, hoping that transgressing some cultural mores might not make her situation any worse than it already was, “Where do we start?”

The elf was so slender that from a distance, you might take him for a tall, slim human. But up close, Azonia could look straight over the top of his head and the delicate limbs, arms as narrow as a rapier blade, became all the more evident. He was old, impossibly old by human standards, but his skin was only faintly lined and his whitening hair hung strong and straight in a long plait that went to the small of his back. His clothes were ornate, a dozen layers of fine silks to keep him comfortable in the relative chill of the deep caverns, but still allow him to remove one layer at a time once the forge started heating the room. The elves’ disdain for thick fabrics was one thing Azonia still couldn’t bring herself to understand.

“You seem nervous,” Dennery’s voice was soft, and his tone polite if a little formal. She still got the irrational feeling that he was talking down to her, but then that was only to be expected from an elder of a race that often lived to a hundred years, and two hundred wasn’t entirely unheard of. “I can assure you, I’m not going to force you into anything if you change your mind. I will always abide by the Doctrine of Fair Exchange. I asked you to be my model for this work because mithril is a very special metal. The positioning of each ring on your skin must be aligned with your body’s chakra and cosmic flows in order to allow the metal to resonate with your astral body. Therefore the only way I can construct armour of this type is to build it directly on your body, to test every ring as I add it. It is a job which counts as modelling by the definitions of the court, but at the same time, it is a job which nobody else could possibly do—and that is the clause which allows me to make your payment in mithril.”

“Though I’m sure you realise, it is not exactly common for an armourer to pay a warrior for the opportunity to make maille to fit her, and you suspect I have an ulterior motive here. You would be right in that assumption, in fact there are three reasons I have offered you such a beneficial deal, quite apart from the gold which you are paying for the forging itself. Firstly, I am a craftmaster and a genius, and I have earned considerable sums of mithril. There is little, however, on which these coins may be legally spent. I have no need for legendary artworks, prostitutes, or to make greater donations to the temple. In terms of what I can buy with it, your gold is worth more to me.”

“Secondly,” he counted off the number on his fingers before Azonia could ask, “I am a scientist, and a student of the properties of the soul alloy. There are some experiments I would very much like to perform on a human subject, in the process of creating your armour. I promise you, this will not harm you at all.”

“And thirdly, a reason I could not admit outside the walls of my own workshop. I wish your quest to succeed, even though I gain nothing from it. Both because I admire your determination, and because I find you attractive and personable—insomuch as a human can be, of course.” The words sent an involuntary shiver through her, but she knew it was something she could deal with. She was fit, with well toned muscles from a lifetime of fighting and real work. While her physique didn’t really match the voluptuous ideal that was currently considered beautiful in the cities above ground, she was proud of her body.

No, it wasn’t a problem. She could cope with one more aged lecher ogling her if it was the only way to save the reputation of her people.

“I can live with that,” she gave a half-hearted shrug, but only then realised that she should have focused more on the experiments he wanted to perform before giving an answer. Well, how bad could it be? “What do I need to do?”

“First, you’ll have to strip,” the old smith’s confidence had returned, and he said it as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about the demand.

There was an awkward pause for a second, as she stared with disgust at the old elf.

“Well, come on then!” he urged, “These chains need to fit exactly, and they have to be in contact with your skin.” Azonia knew the smith was taking advantage of her situation, knew that she was right to be disgusted at the thought of his eyes—and hands, too—running over her exposed body. But at the same time, his words were supported by everything she’d read or heard about mithril.

Dennery would get his thrills from watching her as he constructed the armour, like a dressmaker who experienced a little too much pleasure in taking a lady’s measurements, but she couldn’t deny that she needed his cooperation.

“Very well,” she drew herself up as haughtily as she could bear, unbuckled her cloak to let it fall to the polished stone floor, and began unlacing her tunic top. “Do what you must.”