The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Discipline and Reward

A Love Story

Disclaimer: Standard “free porn” disclaimers apply. If you are too young, or don’t like pr0n, or just aren’t into my kinks ... go away.

Chapter 17. In which our narrator makes the Gods very angry. Very angry indeed!

So (I said to Blake), about four thousand years ago I was looking in on one of my herd villages in Greece. What, Blake? Okay, I started domesticating my own breed of human beings somewhere between nine thousand and ninety-five hundred years ago. You have ... eighty-three minutes left to live. How much detail do you want me to go into here? Okay, good. So, four thousand years ago I was making my rounds, and when I went to check on my village in Greece, they weren’t there.

Every single one of them, man, woman, child, and toothless grandma, was on the road to Athens, of all places. In their minds I could see that they were going to the temple of Zeus to pay tribute. Now this sort of thing was a direct violation of my orders, but I couldn’t move them. I could get into their minds and tell them to turn around, but they wouldn’t do it. Something was controlling them.

I have to tell you that scared the living bejeezus out of me. I had been in complete control of my herds for over five thousand years at that point, and believe me I knew what I was doing. If there was something out there that could get a whole herd village to completely ignore me, that was a force to be reckoned with. So I tagged along for the ride to see what was going on.

Now, mind you, I figured this “Zeus” thing was a scam, just like all religions. I mean, I had seen countless religions across the eons. Humans populations are prone to catching religion the way that individual humans are prone to catching the common cold. It always starts out innocently enough, you know, like that little Vonnegut ditty:

Tiger got to hunt. Bird got to fly.
Man got to sit and wonder “why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep. Bird got to land.
Man got to tell himself he understand.

People just get tired of wondering “why”, or, just as often, tired of their kids pestering them with “why”, and they just make up any old thing to fill in the gaps of their understanding. That’s how fairies, sprites, demons, dryads, nymphs, monsters, and, yes, gods, come into “existence”. For some reason the god-memes are particularly virulent, and once a particular god-meme catches hold somewhere, power-hungry schemers use the meme to scam the guileless. And that in a nutshell, my friends, is how religions start. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen too many times to make a mistake about this.

But apparently I had made a mistake this time. My villagers had patiently waited their turn to enter the temple for about half a day. Of course, I could have entered the temple at any time, just by observing someone who was already in there, but I was still trying to figure out what had been done to my tribe. But instead I ran out of time. That evening, my villagers were ushered in, and I finally got to see who was scamming them so well that I had lost control of them. I expected to see some icon or statue of this “Zeus” character surrounded by priests, but that’s not what I saw.

What I saw was a freaking God! “Zeus” was really there. And he was so powerful. And so magnificent. And so awesome. And so glowy bright. And ... Fuck! He almost trapped me! I got out of my villagers’ minds and tried to figure out what the hell had happened.

Only the fact that I was “just observing” had saved me. If I had been actually riding one of those villagers I would have been as completely enthralled as they were. This Zeus was some kind of direct mind controller, and he was moving in and taking over!

After this fiasco, I managed to do some discreet poking around throughout the rest of Greece and found the same thing everywhere. By carefully limiting my time observing through any one human, I was able to find out what was going on. I discovered that there were twelve of these so-called “Gods” and that they had established a base of operations on Mount Olympus, far to the north of Athens, but they had temples, like the ones in Athens, all over the place.

These creatures, whatever they were, had real power, real magic as far as I was concerned. But I knew that they were not real Gods, that they were some kind of interlopers. How did I know they were not the real thing? Well, for one thing, I had been through this part of the world hundreds, if not thousands, of times in the previous seven thousand years and there had never been any hint of their existence before. Yet they claimed that they had founded and controlled Greece from its very beginning, and they made their followers believe it! Those claims were just as ludicrous as their claims to have created the whole universe, but their followers believed them with a fierce fanaticism.

I began to see that Greece was just a beginning for these “gods”. If nothing were done to stop them, they would eventually take over the whole world. And among humans, who could stop them? Any human that stood in the presence of one of these “gods” for more than a second or two was completely enthralled. They had no way to even think of fighting back.

And if these “gods” did take over the world, what would happen to me? I would have no refuge. Every human mind would be enslaved, including whichever human mind I happened to be living in at the time. If they were to find me and catch me unaware they’d own me.

The way I saw it there were two possible outcomes. The better case would be that I would just become one of their blissed out conquests. I’d live out a natural human lifespan and die, without ever swapping into another body again. The worse case would be that they would somehow discover, perhaps because I had told them, that I am a body-hopping spirit. Then for the rest of eternity I would be some kind of pet, maybe some kind of hunting dog, doing their bidding, enforcing their will, amusing my Masters and Mistresses with my cute little body-hopping antics.

I would love to claim that I wanted to save humanity just because it’s the right thing to do. And it’s true that what these bastards were doing sickened me. But the truth is, saving humanity was just a way to save myself.

Over time I found more ways to spy on them. Somewhere in my second century of observing them, I noticed that it took a couple of seconds for them to actually bewitch someone new. It took me more decades to work up the nerve, but eventually I decided to see what I could learn in that two-second window. I scoured my worldwide herd looking for someone who was a talented sketch artist. When I found my artist, I then found someone who was in the presence of one of the Olympians. In the riskiest move I had ever attempted in my whole multi-millennial life, I swapped my artist into that thrall’s body and swapped her back out again immediately.

The risk? Whenever I do one of these body swaps, I am involved. I have to go into the body. The risk for me is that I could have been wrong. I could have been enthralled instantly. But I wasn’t; my harebrained scheme actually worked. I was able to get the artist’s mind in and out in less than that time limit, that window of risk. Then I asked her to draw for me what she had seen.

This is what she drew. Look at it ... Yes, Blake, that’s right. It’s the classic “Roswell Gray” space alien:

That’s what the “Greek Gods” really look like. Like something out of the National Inquirer.

It was as much a shock to me as it was to you just now, but for different reasons of course. You are seeing something that you have always thought of as a comical hoax, and now you’re realizing that maybe it isn’t. For my part, back in the Bronze Age, it was almost the opposite shock. I never really doubted that the “Greek Gods” looked like ... well ... “Greek Gods”, but I was hoping that my artist would see some sceptre or wand or magic talisman that allowed them to cast their spells. I was expecting to see more than what a thrall sees. Instead I was seeing less. Just some kind of puny, man-like animal, not even wearing clothes, much less wielding magical tools.

It had taken me centuries to get that drawing, and now it felt even worse than useless. There was nothing to attack, nothing to steal. Just these puny creatures that somehow made everyone think they were gods.

To make a long story short, since I see that we now have only ... forty-seven minutes. Eventually, centuries later, I gave up on the idea of stealing their secrets. I decided that I was going to have to kill them. Now it became clear how I might be able to take advantage of that two-second window. These creatures were clearly not built for fighting. I imagined that a battle-tested swordsman could cut through one of those child-like bodies more easily than he could cut through another warrior’s neck. But how and when?

Truth to tell I worked on this for almost a whole human lifetime before taking action. I knew I was only going to get one shot and I wanted to get them all. My only chance would be a single event in which all twelve “gods” would be in close proximity to a human with a sword all at the same time.

It sounds impossible, but as it turns out it happened fairly frequently. One of the dastardly things these evil creatures loved to do was to take two Greek city-states, sometimes ones that didn’t even share a border, and set them off against each other until they started a war. I don’t know what they got out of it. Maybe they just liked literal blood-sport. Maybe they would place bets with each other on the winners and losers. Maybe they fed on the tears of orphans and widows.

In any case, one thing that you could always count on after one of these bloodbaths was that the “gods” would celebrate with the survivors. All the able-bodied soldiers on both sides would march to the foot of Mount Olympus to be “rewarded” for their “valor”. The soldiers would form up in rank and file, twelve abreast and as long as it took. Then each rank in succession would step forward and let the “gods” bliss them out, each soldier in front of one of the twelve gods.

After a couple of minutes that rank would be dismissed and the next rank would come forward for their turn in the Orgasmatron. And so on and so on until the whole valley would be full of very mellow warriors sitting on their backsides and really looking at their hands, if you know what I mean.

So how are we doing? Thirty-one minutes? Shit. Blake, long story short, about thirty-two hundred years ago I executed what I now call “G-Day”. During one of these post-war after-parties, I swapped my twelve best swordsmen into the blissed-out front rank with orders for each to take an immediate cut at the “god” in front of him.

Seven of my men succeeded! They got seven of the bastards, but that meant that five gods escaped. Then, in just seconds, the survivors struck back blindly. Blake, they blew up the entire valley, killed every flipping single one of those soldiers, burned everything to a cinder.

And then they went into hiding. Deep into hiding. So deep that they’re still in hiding today. Until the first time I heard Cynthia reciting her litany of natal “Gifts of the Gods”, I never even knew which of the bastards I’d killed and which had survived.

But even though G-Day was not a complete success, the gods’ panicked reaction was a stroke of luck. Because they had lashed out in fear and anger, because they’d killed everybody, there was no one to interrogate to find out what happened. The gods now knew they had an enemy, but they knew nothing about me.

Unfortunately I lost their trail too. As I said, they went into hiding. They abandoned their perch on Mount Olympus, took down every soaring edifice that they had build there. I never did find out where they went from there. And some time after that they started creating “demigods”: Hades, Ares, Hestia, Circe, Heracles, and others. I think they were decoys. I think they were trying to bait me into some kind of trap. It was pretty clear that they didn’t know what I knew, and they didn’t know what I could do. Otherwise they would never have had normal “readable” humans posing as “gods”. Needless to say, if they were baiting me, I never took the bait.

The Amazons were another scheme of theirs, but I never quite figured it out. After I found out, through Kynthia, that Themiscyra and the Amazons had survived Heracles’s enslavement, I thought maybe Themiscyra was their new base of operations. But when I finally got a look around the Queendom last year there was nothing that looked like their handiwork. Well, except for all the immortal warrior women. And all the glamour technology protecting them.

But on Olympus they had built amazing soaring silvery buildings and monuments. There was nothing like that in Themiscyra, even though such skyscrapers would not look out of place in the modern world. In any case if the “Gods” are hiding out in the Amazon Queendom, they are hiding very well. I didn’t find them.

* * *

“So anyway that brings us to my scheme, where Cynthia comes in,” I concluded, “Blake, I’m looking for another bite at the apple. We’re trying to kill the last five gods, or at a minimum flush them out into the open.”

Now Cindi stepped in. “And we would dearly love for you to help us do that. But you can’t help us if you’re a fucking corpse. Which you will be in ... eleven minutes. Please, Blake, please, I’m begging you. Please make the call.“

“First you have to explain how the end game works here. I’m not seeing it.”

So we did. We laid out all of our cards. Inside his head I could see that he was reluctantly satisfied. He didn’t like it. He thought it was too risky for Cynthia. He was right. But like me he couldn’t think of anything better. He nodded his head. He picked up the phone. He dialed the number. The countdown paused at “00:03:07”. Plenty of time, right?

I was in his head listening to the question. I was seeing the answer form in his mind, but he couldn’t say it. Oh shit! There’s no second chance here! In ten seconds he’d be dead!

I must admit I lost my cool. I shouted at him. ”Blake, you’ve gotta answer. It doesn’t matter that she’s here. Do you really want to be the first man in history to literally die of embarrassment? Shit. Cindi, cover your ears or something.“

Blake stopped her. “No. No, it’s okay. I’ve got it.” Then he spoke into the phone, “It was because of Majestic Woman. We were in, what, 8th grade? I knew I wanted to do some kind of public service. With the family fortune and expectations that meant philanthropy or law or maybe politics. But I decided I was going to be a superhero. And it was all because I had a huge, hopeless, fantasy fanboi crush on Majestic Woman. I had this schoolboy dream of someday being her hero, of saving her from danger. Heh, how ironic. The only person I told was my best friend. Thank you, Jacob. You just saved my life.“

On the phone, Blake’s friend drew the obvious, but wrong, conclusion about Blake’s “irony”, “Hang in there, Blake. Don’t give up hope. You’ll find her. You’ll save her. You’re my hero, man.”

“Thanks, Jacob. You’re my hero too.”

Blake ended the call. His face could not have been redder. He couldn’t look Cindi in the eye.

Cindi was beside herself. “Oh Gods, Blake. All those dozens of times, hundreds of times, that I teased you about trying to make me your ‘damsel in distress’. I didn’t know how much I was hurting you. Honestly, Blake. I didn’t know.“

“Cynthia, it’s been a long time since I was fourteen. It really never bothered me that much.”

“Oh, come off it, Blake. I’ve been walking around this world for almost twenty-five hundred years and I know that my inner teenager is not that far under the surface. She especially likes to come out to play when I’m arguing with Hippolyta. Don’t tell me it didn’t hurt, Blake. I know it did.” She was crying now. “Blake, you’ve got to forgive me. Please.“

Blake smiled at her and swept his hands in a grand theatrical arc, “Kynthia, Royal Princess of the Amazons, Daughter of the Queen Who Freed the Horses, I hereby absolve you of all guilt for the crimes you perpetrated against my inner child.” Then, sotto voce, he added, “Will that do?“

“You nut case!” She enveloped him in another aggressive hug, this time including a toe-curling, lusty french kiss. I wasn’t jealous, just, um, surprised.

“You know,” she said, still holding him, much too tightly, “there really was a time that you were my hero, my savior, but you never even noticed it.”

What?” Blake and I both replied in simultaneous surprise.

Even as she continued, she was all over him. I mean, really, did she have to? “When you offered to run interference for me after I killed those gang-bangers. Seriously, if you had insisted on doing everything by the book, I’d probably be chained up in a jail cell right now, and the whole world would know that it only takes one of these ...” She disengaged from him just enough to grab the steel cable that was currently sapping her superpowers. “... to defeat me. Thank you.”

“I could never have let that happen to ymmmph.” Another scorching kiss.

Okay, I had had enough by now. It was time to break up this tender moment. “Guys, this is all great, but we’re nocturnal when we are in Dubai, and it’s way past our bed time.”

In their heads I could see that both of them had forgotten I was even here. It was time. For him. To go.

Cindi looked at me strangely. She knew we were not done yet. There was still a great deal of planning we had yet to do, and Blake needed to be involved in it. She was right. “Look, Blake ... can we call you this evening? Meet you for dinner? We need to coordinate how the rest of this is going to go down.”

He agreed. Blake and Cindi made goodbye noises at each other. Soon Blake was on his way back to the hotel. Soon Cindi and I were back in Falkirk.

* * *

We were having “breakfast for lunch”, eggs and bacon. I was making toast and running mango and pineapple slices through the juicer. Cindi was wearing a wry grin.

“Don’t say it! I’m not jealous!”

“My Lord, you’re so adorable when you’re, um, ‘not jealous’. Seriously, what do you see when you look in my head?”

“I know that you love me, Cindi,” I muttered.

“And about Blake?”

I put down the knife and the fruit and let out a long tired breath. “He’s a friend who has a crush on you. You felt bad for him. You were glad he survived. You went a little overboard. Oh, and you’re grateful that I saved his life. It’s another in a long series of events that I was marginally involved with, that you are giving me full credit for accomplishing.”

“I guess it’s just hero-worship ... My Hero.”

I was ready to melt. How did she do that? “It’s all okay, Cindi. We’re good.“

She flowed up against me and gave me a steamy full-body kiss that Blake Warren could only dream about. “We’re better than good. Aren’t we, My Lord?”

“We’re great. We’re fantastic. We’re gonna burn those eggs if we keep this up. You better go back to them.”

“Yes, My Lord. Right away, My Lord.”

Life was good. Well, except at that moment ...

“Ah, crap.”

“What is it now?”

“Greg and Annette are screwing instead of sleeping again. I’d really like to have my wits about me when we meet Blake tonight.”

“Oh, leave them alone. We’ll be fine.”

To Be Continued in Chapter 18. In which the dominoes fall