The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The ChameleonBand

Part 1

She can’t even think in his presence: she is nothing but a lusting, obedient, mindless slave. When his attention is elsewhere, though, or when he’s asleep, she can form her own thoughts and emotions, and realise that he is preparing her for something against her will.

And she can plan her escape.

Even in those moments, though, she finds she can’t act on those plans. Her body still obeys him, however much her mind may rebel.

DISCLAIMER

This story contains explicit sexual themes. If you are a minor, or if you are offended by writing about sex or non-consensual mind control, then this story is not for you. I suggest that you navigate somewhere less scary instead.

Blood and Gore Warning: There is a lot of blood! Hundreds of people die! It’s all part of the plot and the mind control, but only loosely connected with the sex. Nevertheless, Be Warned! If it all gets too much, skip over the sections in italics, which are only backstory.

It should be obvious, but this is a carefully constructed FANTASY. The characters in this story are not real. If you have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, then, again, this story is not for you. Go and look at some nice things instead.

And if none of that applies to you, then enjoy...

Something was wrong.

She distinctly remembered the way the clasp had worked. There had been no complexity—just a simple buckle, like any leather belt. Now, though, as she explored with her fingers and twisted her body to view the whole thing in the mirror, she saw no sign of a buckle, or even of a join.

She recalled turning it over in her hands: a toy, really, and yet also a thing of beauty, perfectly manufactured. Dense, luxuriously padded leather formed a collar the width of her palm, around which four ‘D’—rings were evenly spaced. Threaded through these was the narrower belt that would secure the device. It had been a simple belt-and-buckle, lending strength to the ‘D’—rings and ending with the expected buckle and holed tongue. Every stitch had been perfectly placed, the black leather thick but soft to the touch, unblemished.

Frowning, she used her fingers to methodically trace the whole circle of the band as it hugged her neck. The leather was seamless and continuous.

What the Hell?

With a thrill of fear, she ran to His kitchen and scrabbled through the drawers for something sharp.

Back before the mirror, she carefully manoeuvred scissor blades around the belt before pressing firmly. The kid leather compressed under the assault of the sharp steel, but unbelievably—impossibly—it would not cut. She couldn’t even make a mark on the edge, no matter how hard she pressed.

Her logical mind railed against the evidence of her senses. Leather didn’t change like this overnight. Solid steel buckles didn’t just blend back into their collar. And leather, no matter how rich its quality, could not resist a steel blade!

Magic! The word sat uneasily in her mind, alongside such idiotic concepts as witchcraft and demons. Was it possible that He was a magician and that she was the victim of some magic trick? But magicians just fooled the senses, didn’t they, making the mundane seem impossible, but this seemed frighteningly real.

Then the realisation struck her: He must be a hypnotist! He had put her into a trance, and all this was nothing but His programming. Yes, that must be the explanation. Her fear turned to anger at the cruel game He must be playing on her. She imagined herself lying there, at His mercy, helplessly repeating all His commands in a mesmerised monotone: Yes, I will obey. Yes, I will stay horny all of the time. No, I will not be able to remove the collar. The bastard!

And where was He now?

He had woken her from a nightmare-filled sleep, already dressed and ready to leave. Her mind reeling from confused dream memories, she had scrambled to a kneeling position. Then, naked before him, dripping with desire for him, she had listened intently as He listed her instructions for the day, exactly how He wished her to clean the flat and prepare herself for His return. Then, with no single move or word of affection, without even touching her, He had donned a coat and left.

As the door to His flat had clicked shut, she had leapt to her feet and proceeded to carry out His orders. First, she had stripped the bed and set to wash the stained sheets, replacing them with clean, tidied away the disarray and the remnants of their lovemaking (no: of His fucking of her, she corrected herself). Then, when all else was done, she had cleaned her own sore and battered body, allowing herself the indulgence of a long, scalding hot shower and a thorough clean-out of her sex and anus, using the equipment He had left in the bathroom for her. Throughout it all, even the house-cleaning, she had remained constantly, distractingly turned on. Showering and attending her most intimate places had been the worst, but her touch on her own body had given her no release: the sensation of massaging her tits or rubbing her throbbing clit was no more pleasurable than touching her nose, and even the fierce blast of the shower had done nothing!

Now that she had finally completed her tasks, she could consider how strange everything had suddenly become.

Strange that she had woken not in His bed with Him but curled naked on a rug beside it. Strange that she had not once thought to look for her clothes. Strange that even now, she could not bring herself to cover her nakedness, even with a robe or one of His shirts. Strange that she had unquestioningly done everything He told her and spent—what?—two to three hours cleaning the place like some skivvy.

And since when was a thorough colonic irrigation part of her daily routine? That section of her ablutions had been uncomfortable and disgusting, yet she had gone ahead and done the deed without a second thought. Just how thorough had the bastard’s hypnotism been?

And what was His name, anyway? She remembered seeing His full name on the dating site where they had found each other—a nice name, old-fashioned and dashing. She recalled rolling it around her tongue throughout their meal and afterwards at the bar, and shouting it over the pumping beat at the nightclub. Now all she could remember was an M. M- Mas- Master?

What the fuck?

And most of all, now that her jobs and her immediate panic over the collar were over, why had she naturally adopted a kneeling posture facing the door through which He would eventually return? Kneeling with her legs spread wide to expose her sex, hands behind her head and chest thrust out to present her breasts to her Master.

She needed time to think. She took a deep breath, relaxed and closed her eyes.

* * *

It was as if she looked down on the whole world, so high she seemed. The land she surveyed was a scorched one, though, ravaged by relentless sun and wind, a land no sane man would try to call home, and yet, her godly vantage point was in the heart of a city. The ziggurat she perched atop was flanked by lesser pyramids, then by temple buildings and the palace of her new lord, his citadel walls forming a jagged ring, against which the rude hovels and the bustle and squalor of his subjects lapped like a swarm of invading ants.

And invaders they were, this race of nomads-turned-conquerors. No crops grew in the city’s arid lands, and no livestock grazed. Instead, the city fed off the bounty of the fertile, prosperous, conquered kingdoms that bordered this desert nation, systematically robbing them of their crops, their meat and the enslaved lives of their subjects.

Her education had been thorough, as befitted a royal princess, and she knew much of the kingdoms that surrounded this land, though she had never visited them. Now she never would. The names of those nations were meaningless history now, soon to be forgotten, swept away by sand and death.

Her lost homeland was nothing, now, but the latest to fall to the whim of this nation’s warlord, the one they called The Render.

She squinted in the blazing light of the sun. Perhaps those shadows on the horizon far to the North were the mountains of her birth? She wondered whether the cities there still burned.

Now, as her lips cracked and her naked skin scorched, she longed for the cool mountain air of home, for the dancing rivers and the swaying branches of the trees, but she doubted she would ever see those lands again, even scorched and conquered as they were now.

In truth, she had little hope of seeing another dawn.

Beneath her, almost close enough for her to touch, were not her arms and legs tied, the macabre pantomime she had witnessed hundreds of times played once more. Again the high priest uttered the words; again, his knife slashed, and another slave’s pleas and screams died in a bubbling gurgle of lifeblood.

Her screams went on, though, voicing her fear and the horror she was witnessing. The slave now watching his own life pouring from his severed throat was her brother, Alexander, until recently the Crowned Prince of Syria.

* * *

She blinked in confusion as the familiar surroundings of Master’s flat reasserted themselves. She had never had a nightmare so vivid! She could still feel the terrible sorrow of witnessing the slaughter of her brother, the searing desert sun burning her flesh and the deadly thirst.

A dream. It had been nothing but a vivid dream. She didn’t even have a brother.

Did she?

Now that she thought about it, she seemed to be missing quite a lot of basic facts. She knew that she lived in the 21st century, with its internet, Netflix, package holidays, and climate change, but somehow, she couldn’t remember any of her family, or recall a home or a job.

She realised that a full bladder had roused her from the dream. She rose, stretched, and padded into the bathroom.

Soon, after a short drink of water (the glass thoroughly dried and put away, the kitchen again spotless), she again felt the compulsion to kneel, brazenly exposing herself to anyone who happened to walk into the flat.

The mat where she knelt bore two distinctly worn patches just where her knees went, as though a slave had knelt there for weeks, months, maybe years. Could it have been herself, kneeling there hypnotised into an eternal now, forgetting her past day by day? No: if that were the case, her skin would show matching calluses, and to her relief, hers were free of hard patches. So perhaps she could trust her memory that this was her first day here.

And yet she knelt, waiting. How strange, she thought, that she had been able to visit the toilet with no difficulty, and her investigation of her own knees had posed no problem. She could move her arms if she wished, say to scratch an itch, but moving from her open-legged, presented posture caused a growing dread and discomfort—a wrongness that she could only assuage by returning to her pose.

The door was only feet away. It might even be unlocked—she hadn’t tried to open it. She imagined herself running naked out of the building and into the street, shouting Rape! Kidnap! Slavery! Colonic Irrigation! It would be so simple! But even as she pictured the action, her body filled with the same horror and dread. No. She would stay here instead.

So she knelt and waited.

She was so incredibly horny! She wanted His touch, His words, His orders, even. Her nipples were hot little stones protruding from her breasts, and she was actually dripping on the mat! For a while, she had feared that she had developed some strange medical condition, but then it had struck her: it was the hypnotism again!

Bored and unable to address her desperate need for sexual release, she distracted herself by reliving the events of last night, searching for that moment when the hypnotism must have happened.

They had met at the restaurant at eight—that familiar, neutral ground, a simple safety mechanism for the first date. From the dating service, you knew the guy’s name and the neighbourhood they lived in, and you knew their face and what they had chosen to tell you, and that was it. The first date was usually in a public place—restaurant, pub, cinema -and was the proving ground of the relationship. From that starting point, both parties could decide whether to ditch, arrange a second date or maybe take the night further.

As an opening gambit, His choice of restaurant had been a giant point in His favour, expensive and popular, and the table He had booked had been the best. He had been dark and fascinating, outfitted to perfection, charming and funny and very sexy. The meal was perfect, and she hadn’t dared look at the price of the divine wine He had chosen!

He had passed the first test with distinction, so she had allowed Him to proceed to the next. The bar was a short taxi ride and a long-time favourite of hers. All neon and drum-and-bass, it was a retro cliche but well executed. Another excellent bottle of wine appeared, and the alcohol and her infatuation with Him had loosened her tongue. Perhaps she gabbled a little, but He listened attentively as she had spilt her secrets to him.

Returning to His flat had seemed entirely natural—His address had been far closer than hers, though right now she couldn’t remember either, and His hints at toys and games had been all too enticing in her state of mild intoxication. The kiss they had shared at His door had been a pleasant surprise, promising much more to come, His tongue sparring with hers, His hands exploring the curves of her waist and arse. His penthouse flat was just as impressive: classically beautiful yet fitted out with all the accoutrements of a top-flight 21st-century residence. Drunkenly, sitting beside Him on His couch, she had teased Him about the toys He had promised. So, with the air of a stage magician, He had slid open a drawer in the coffee table and revealed the collar.

She remembered turning the band over and over in her hands, impressed by its weight, by the quality of the leather and the perfection of the stitching and metalwork, and her thrill of excitement at what it represented. Apart from a few experiments with scarves and stockings, her sexual adventures—and they were many—had never once ventured down the leather-lined path to kinky. Though she understood the concepts of submission and dominance and had no aversion to such games, she had simply never played them. Last night it seemed that she was being offered the chance. Naturally, she had shrugged and said, sure, why not?

The collar’s kiss around her neck was cool and firm, and the moment He fastened that buckle had coincided with a frisson that spread through her, setting every hair on end and lighting a fire in her breasts and her sex akin to nothing she had known.

Her memories from that moment on were hazy. It was as though she had dove into the role of submissive with the dedication of a method actor. Like an automaton, she had responded to His every muttered command. And even now, she shivered with awe and lust at the memory of Him towering over her, her nipples hot marbles pointing proudly from her chest, her dripping sex crying for His touch.

His cock…

It had filled her utterly—body, senses and soul—its scent, its motions as He moved around the room before her, its taste as she drew it deep down her throat, and most of all, the feel of it penetrating her cunt and her arse.

Kneeling there now, she found herself silently weeping for Him to return, for His fingers to give her the throbbing clit the release she needed, and for His glorious, wonderful, godlike cock to thrust into her dripping, gaping cunt.

Her memory of their coupling had the dreamlike glow of a religious experience, yet she struggled to remember the details. Yes, she had begun by giving Him the deepest, most thorough blowjob she had ever given. And she had a hazy recollection of sexual position after sexual position, of the incredible feel of Him thrusting into her, and of coming and coming and coming. But she could not remember how it ended. Her next recollection had been of waking this morning, curled up on the fur rug at the foot of His bed.

In horror, she realised that the tears of joy she had been weeping must have smeared her makeup. She rushed to the bathroom and repaired the damage, then returned to her pose before the door. Her longing and her arousal did not subside, though. Frozen in place, she silently dripped onto the mat, full of lust and the need for release, unable to give herself the slightest relief.

He must have hypnotised her just before He put the collar on! That was the only explanation. He had hypnotised her and then made her forget it. Her wanton subservience, her actions today, her insanely powerful arousal and her inability to do anything about it, and her kneeling here like this, were all commands He had planted! The certainty in her mind did nothing for her predicament, though.

* * *

The king, her father, had died during the sack of Amasya, along with most of his court. She, among the survivors, had cowered in her chambers as the sounds of battle had grown louder and louder. Then, finally, the piled furniture that had served as a barricade across the doorway had burst open and, for the first time, she had met the followers of the conquering warlord. Bold, triumphant, angry men had swarmed into her private rooms, brandishing bloody steel and shouting in harsh barks as they bound the hands of their newfound prisoners. Then they herded them into the burning streets to join one of the lines of newly claimed slaves that streamed from the city.

Not she, though. Whether it was her fame or just her beauty that singled her out, the last sight of her family was their shocked faces as she was dragged away from them, a gag forced into her mouth and a black, stinking hood pulled over her head. That was the moment her screams began, at the unseen hands that bound and gagged her through the hood, at the sensation of being carried, blind and helpless, until they unceremoniously threw her onto some cart.

And there they had left her, her muffled cries ignored, as the cart rattled along towards this evil place.

She had not been alone on the cart. She heard and felt other bound forms around her, although she could not guess how many or if she knew any of them. Gags and hoods prevented meaningful communication, though the crowded closeness did lend a little comfort as the journey stretched into days. Their captors ignored them utterly, which was perhaps another comfort, But her hunger and thirst became agonies, and she was soon forced to add her own urine and excrement to the stench in which they all lay.

She had ample time to weep for her lost family, to dread the short and bloody future she might expect. However, her greatest dread was meeting her new lord, her thoughts never far from the stories she had heard.

Typically, campaigns followed a well-worn course. First, there would be a frantic but doomed attempt at diplomacy on the part of the threatened nation, desperate cries to their allies for aid and reinforcements (cries that abruptly stopped) and then the pitifully small bands of refugees with their tales of brutality and massacre.

Descriptions of the man himself were few—and hard to credit. Some told of a giant, twice as tall as any man, with shoulders as broad as an elephant. She had heard talk of a mane of hair that danced like black fire even on the calmest day, a face rent in two by a terrible scar and eyes that burned into your soul. None knew of his birthplace or his true name, but they whispered the honorific they had given him with racing hearts for fear that he could sense the very words. The Render! The warlord and warlock of The Rended Empire. Her rational, educated mind rejected the more excessive descriptions, but the mortal man at their heart was still undoubtedly one to be dreaded!

She sensed the change as the dirt road they travelled became cobbled stone, then as the rattle of the wheels echoed back from the walls of buildings, and a chorus of alien jeers joined the voices of their captors. Then, amid a crescendo of cries and laughter, she and the other captives were lifted from the cart and dumped, still tied, in the street. She, though, they singled out, cutting her ropes and dragging her away, alone. She was half-carried, her feet all but useless after days of bondage, over cobbled streets and then up, up a thousand steps. Finally, her limp body was lifted and lashed to this pole, her filthy clothes and the sack covering her head torn violently away.

She had expected a violent death, or a violent life of slavery, but even her darkest imaginings couldn’t have painted a picture as horrific as this reality.

* * *

She benefitted from an excellent view of the ghastly spectacle. To her right, a seemingly endless stream of her former subjects, hooded and bound, their clothes in rags or gone altogether, shuffled and struggled and cried out as their conquerers herded them up the long staircase that ran from bottom to top of the pyramid. Each slave’s hands were tied behind them, a single rope leading to the neck of their follower in the procession.

“No! Alex!” she wailed, “Alex, my brother!” Even as his life ebbed away, the two attending acolytes cut the rope linking him to the next screaming victim and pitched his twitching body down the monolith’s steep, fluid-blackened northern slope.

She closed tear-filled eyes. At that moment, she vowed that she would avenge the deaths of these hundreds of innocents, her family, friends and subjects. This macabre game would eventually end, and there would come a time when her captors’ throats were hers to cut.

The third acolyte performed his tasks with sadistic glee. He kicked and manhandled the next sacrifice’s body with brutal force until he knelt across the altar stone, head hanging over the side, and secured a rope across his back to hold him there. Finally, with a flourish, he pulled the sack away, and she witnessed the slaves growing horror as he surveyed for the first time the scene around him, the still-flowing blood that pooled below his bowed head, the priest to one side, pausing to sharpen his knife, the bound woman to the other. His eyes widened in recognition, then shied away from her nakedness. “Princess Eurydice?” his voice shook with disbelief.

The priest snorted. “Princess no more,” he sneered. “She, like you, is discovering the price of conquest. Her cost will be higher than yours, though, and far longer in the payment. “His accent was strange, but he spoke the royal language well. The following words he uttered, though, the same as he had repeated over every sacrifice, were of an altogether different flavour, words that seemed almost to resist their own formation, his throat straining to fit around strange guttural syllables as he slit the man’s throat.

Philinas. This one had been called Philinas, a servant employed in her father’s riverside palace. His eyes bulged in horror as, voiceless now, he watched his life’s blood gush over the intricately carved stone before him, spilling along blood-clotted channels to eventually run down the vast wall of the pyramid.

Once more, Eurydice wailed in horror. Once more, the priest’s acolytes threw her countryman’s body over the edge, to fall and fall, eventually joining the fly-ridden pile at its base.

Was a cloud passing before the midday sun? The day seemed to be growing dim. She squinted above her. The sky was as cloudless as ever, and yet...

“Mercy! Mercy!” The wails of the next slave drowned out the voices of all her fellows, their ragged line snaking down the towering range of steps to the desert floor. Her wails rose and rose as she grovelled pitifully on the final stair.

“Silence her!” commanded the priest, and the third acolyte, the cruellest of them, viciously pulled on the noose around the young woman’s neck, catapulting her forward into the front of the altar stone. She fell to the floor; her screams reduced to pitiful sobs.

Ignoring her now, the acolyte stepped forward and calmly spoke. “She is the final one, the seven-times-seven-times-seventh.” Though his grey, hooded cloak rendered him anonymous, it did little to disguise the muscular bulk of his body, the vast spread of his shoulders, and he spoke and moved with an assurance that belied his lowly status.

She felt as though she might burst with horror and disgust at these priests and their bloody, pointless rite. Seven times seven times seven of her countrymen and family! Her fury rose in her chest, and the words poured from her mouth, thick with hate and scorn. “Is this to be my part in this? The final sacrifice of your day? The climax of all your fun?”

They all turned toward her, their hooded faces without pity. “No, princess,” whispered the high priest, his twisted, blood-spattered face inches from hers, “but you will begin your role soon enough. Acolytes! Prepare the next!”

Did no one see the way the light was dying? The day had turned the colour of copper. She squinted into the sky and frowned in confusion at what she saw there. The sun’s disc danced and twisted as though she watched it from underwater—as if some unseen hand sought to snuff it out like a candle flame. A terrified moan escaped from her lips.

The fallen girl’s screams rose again as rough hands gripped her and tied her to the stone. Then, with a flourish, the priest pulled away the sack that covered her head. She laid there blinking in the light, her jet-black hair matted against her skull, blood flowing freely from a swelling cut on her forehead.

Eurydice’s heart froze in horror. “Laodicea? Is that you?”

The girl’s head slowly turned to look at her. “Sister?” Her eyes were dull, confused, perhaps from the blow on her head. “What is to become of us? Why are they doing this?”

Eurydice had thought she had no more tears to give, but she had been wrong. “I don’t know, Lodi. Maybe because they hate us.”

“Ah hahaha! This couldn’t be better!” the priest laughed. “Oh, Great and Beautiful Princess Eurydice, this is surely a great portent! Your own sister’s blood will be the closing of the spell!” With a flourish, he cut away the ragged remains of Laodicea’s dress, leaving her bruised body as naked as her sister’s. “Big sister, you think we hate you, do you? Why should we hate you? Did you hate your chair, when you owned such things, or the floors of your palaces? No! Why should we hate our property? We merely use you as we see fit. Anyway, I’ve chatted long enough. It is time to finish this!”

He prepared to continue his butchery. But as he turned, he finally noticed the change; the pale blue sky suddenly darkened to twilight, the sun dimmed to a dull, shivering ember, and Eurydice was surprised to see fear in his eyes. The knife seemed to have taken on a will of its own, writhing in his hands as if invisible assailants fought against him, and even the black obsidian blade seemed to twist and bend as he forced it, inch by inch, toward the princess’s neck. His face contorted in a rictus as he uttered the invocation, his very lips fighting the syllables they formed. Finally, the sharp tip touched her sister’s throat and bit. The blade moved no more, but a thick cascade of blood fountained from the woman’s flesh. Like dark honey it ran, flowing into the deeply sculpted stone and following the channels to the left and right that formed the circle carved there.

As the twin streams met and the ring was made whole, the scarlet blood seemed to set alight, spitting and burning back around the carved channel, the reaction jumping through the air and into the bleeding princess’s flesh.

Laodicea screamed, a cry of fear and pain and dread, and her body shuddered, legs and bound arms twisting and shaking grotesquely. Her pale flesh glowed as if lit from within, a light that grew and grew, soon rivalling the shadowy ember that was the sun. Her incoherent cries rose and rose as the ropes binding her burst into flame, then split. She rose, still screaming, her arms spreading to the sky, her flesh burning a blinding hot white.

And she was gone, only the echoes of her screams testament that she had ever been there. The priest, his knife still poised where her throat had lain, blinked in shock. The blade clattered onto the stone floor.

It was a long moment before Eurydice realised that the day had returned to normal. The sun beat down again as though the strange, frightening twilight had never happened. Far off, a bird called in the silence, and it was as if the nightmare she had witnessed, the deaths piled upon deaths, the hundreds of her subjects she had seen brutalised and murdered, had never happened. Where the deep, clotted runnels of blood had run moments earlier, there was nothing but clean, white stone, except for a glowing remnant nestling deep in the carved ring. There was not a single sign of the foetid tide of bodies that had lapped at the pyramid’s base. The priest’s eyes met hers. His robes, too, were clean and white.

“I didn’t believe it would work,” he whispered in the silence. “I said the charm and performed the ritual all those times, but I didn’t believe.”

“Believe what? What have you done?” She knew true dread now. They had given her the best vantage point from which to view this macabre, impossible ritual, and she suspected that she was about to pay the price for that seat. “And why am I here? What are you going to do to me?”

“He? Nothing.” The priest and his two principal acolytes turned in surprise, to where the third acolyte stood at the head of the line of slaves. With a flourish, he threw back his hood.

“My Lord!” the priest gasped, falling to his knees. Eurydice drew in a shocked breath as she realised who this must be. An unkempt mane of hair the colour of pitch framed a face that seemed hewn from the same rock as the pyramid on which they stood. His lips were full and red, accustomed to sneering, she thought, and a deep, puckered scar ran down one side of his face from temple to chin.

It was him! The Render! For a long breath, she was speechless with surprise as she watched him step around the altar and bend to pick up the fruit of his labour. Finally, she could compare the reality of him with the stories. In truth, he was a powerfully built man, with the broad shoulders and scars of a warrior, but his thick hair did not writhe, and his eyes were just eyes. The scar was real—and disfiguring—but it did not cut his face in two. It did pull on his flesh, though, turning his victorious smile into something grotesque.

And she realised what she must do. The steps were simple: escape; grab the knife from where it lay on the stone; bury it hilt-deep in The Render’s evil heart.

The first step was the simplest of all. If only she could break the ropes. If only her arms weren’t as weak as a baby’s after days of immobility. If only her hands weren’t as numb as death.

The Render knelt, studying the carved channel in the stone, digging in its depths with a fingernail. He rose, then, holding what looked like a loop of blood-covered thread, though the glistening crimson refused to stain his fingers as he turned and studied the fragile-looking circlet. In length, it was perhaps just long enough to fit around his head like a crown.

She blinked, and the thing seemed to change, its substance turning shiny, like silver, and as she watched, the loop became a delicate silver chain, then solidified into a single wire loop.

He spun the torc around his finger, and his eyes met hers. “Do you wonder what this is?” His voice taunted her, wild amusement dancing in his dark eyes as they searched her face.

She could not speak; the hatred and fury were so overwhelming. Kill You! Three little steps!

“This trinket is fashioned just for you,” he said as he spun the loop of wire, though now it was a ribbon of beaten gold. “All this, too,” his sweeping arm took in the ziggurat, the line of roped sacrifices-in-waiting, “in a way, I built the whole city for this moment.”

At last, words escaped from her lips, her pent-up emotion strangling them into a hoarse whisper. “A thing made of evil, like all your works. “Somehow, she found the strength in her arms to pull against her bonds. “Kill You!”

“Defiant little sparrow,” his features contorted into a crooked smile as he stepped forward, pressing himself against her. The band he held felt like cold metal as he stroked it down her cheek and neck and scraped it across her breast.

Her skin crawled. “Kill You!” she whispered into his ear.

The Render’s eyebrows raised in delight and surprise. “You are a defiant sparrow, aren’t you? Shall I give you your chance? Why not?” He treated her to another lascivious grope, then stepped back. “Priest! Cut her down!”

And she watched as the hooded cleric picked up the shard. The object of her desire danced before her eyes as its edge cut effortlessly through her bonds.

She fell, to lie helpless on the floor, her heart racing with fear. Then, slowly, slowly, her arms began to recover from their days of immobility. Weeping with the pain, she placed her palms on the stone and raised herself to balance on shaking knees.

“Do you want the knife yet, little sparrow?”

He held out the glittering blade for her, handle first, his expression serious—encouraging, even.

“I’ve played this game before, you know. I’ve nearly lost once or twice, and I have the scars to prove it: this beauty on my face, for one. Go on. Take the knife!”

And, incredibly, he let her take it. She turned it in her shaking hand, watching the sun glint from the facets of the obsidian, waiting, allowing time to return the feeling and agility to her muscles. Could this truly be happening?

“You have the only weapon. You have all the advantages. Try me!”

Her schooling in the royal court had included many hours of combat training, and he didn’t fool her. He was a trained warrior, hugely taller and more powerful than her. He was standing over her in a relaxed but ready stance. She most certainly did not have all the advantages, but she had two. All she had was the knife, and-

Surprise! Her lunge aimed squarely for the point just below his sternum, the easiest and shortest path to his heart. Perhaps if she had time to rest, or if her last drink of water had not been days ago, her thrust may have struck home. As it was, the blade drew blood and a sharp cry from him, but she found her wrist caught in his great fist and, with ease, he prized the knife from her.

“Well tried, Little Sparrow! Well tried! You almost had me, and now I bear another scar. Perhaps this war wound is my price for the conquest of your nation. And of you.”

She wept, her defeat bitter in her mouth. “I’ll do it yet. I’ll kill you someday.”

“I doubt it.” His playfulness was gone as swiftly as it had first appeared. “Hold her,” he commanded, and the priests took her wrists and handfuls of her hair. She stared defiance into his eyes and watched as he took the golden band in both his hands, manipulating the solid metal so that somehow it opened.

“For this device, I have slaughtered seven times seven times seven slaves,” he intoned, “in this collar, I have ensnared the blood and souls of your subjects, and with this collar, I will enslave you!”

“Nev—,” she said, as the thing snapped closed around her throat. The cold metal pressed against her skin, and something took hold of her soul.

Images, thoughts and feelings assaulted her. She knew experiences she could never have known, whole lives that weren’t hers. She knew the life of a peasant in her lost homeland, of a tradesman, a merchant, a royal minister, a prince. She saw herself as her subjects had seen her, sometimes the beautiful, graceful idol, sometimes the hated symbol of oppression. She saw hundreds of lives, humdrum or exciting, grindingly hard or easy and privileged. In every soul, she saw the coming war, felt the rising fear of conquest, the horror of capture and the agony of their forced march. And, over and over, she felt the sting of obsidian slicing into flesh and watched life draining away.

And for every death, she felt a growing force, a syrupy, scarlet awareness that grew with every sacrifice, a construct of the souls, the words spoken and the will behind the words.

The will of the Render.

Her eyes blinked open, and she beheld her God.

His face was a snarl of arrogant victory, rent in two by the terrible scar he wore and surrounded by a halo of black hair that writhed and danced like snakes in motion. His eyes bored into her, slicing into her soul.

Her God spoke, and He said, “Hold Her, or she’ll fall off the edge.”

She wept at the sound of his words, at their truth—terror of falling filled her, and gratitude that He should protect her with his priests.

And then, to her joy, He spoke to her. “Little sparrow,” He said, and she knew her new name, “do not be afraid. How can you serve me if you are so afraid?”

She sobbed in gratitude, and the hands that held her let her descend to her knees. “M, My L- Lord,” she managed.

“Good sparrow,” He said. He was pleased with her! Her sobs redoubled, even as her heart filled with love for Him. “Now, pick up the knife and hand it to my high priest.”

Still racked with tears, she wiped a hand across her eyes and found the knife where she had dropped it. Then, reverently, for her Lord’s lips had spoken of it, and it was holy, she took the blade and held it out for the hooded priest to take.

“Good sparrow,” her Lord told her again, and again she felt as though she would burst with joy. To her horror, though, He turned from her and began to descend the pyramid’s stairs, leaving her. Then, as he walked away, He commanded. “Follow me, little one,” and her soul thrilled in ecstasy as she rushed to obey.

“My Lord,” the high priest’s voice drifted down from the apex of the ziggurat, “what shall we do with all of these slaves?”

“Turn them into more collars, of course!” roared the Render without pausing his descent. The slave who had once, briefly, been Queen Eurydice scuttled behind, past the last of her doomed, forgotten subjects.

* * *

Footsteps! There was somebody outside the flat! A keychain rattled, and there was the sound of a key entering the lock. He was back! Thrills coursed through her body, adding yet more to the arousal she felt, and in a moment of panic, she desperately ticked off all of the tasks He had required her to perform for Him. Yes, all was ready for Him. She arched her back, forced her elbows back and her knees far apart to display herself all the more.