The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A banging noise on the front door woke me from my unintended slumber. I’d been dreaming about the rain, the way it was falling in heavy blasts and softer rhythms, the drips it made when drops fell into the three buckets sitting on the floor around me.

I’d been dreaming about the fireplace, how I just needed to get up and add one more log to it, how I had to stoke the fire to a louder roar, how I needed to keep working, how I needed to stop dozing, how I still had to wash my linens, how I still needed to eat a decent meal.

I’d been dreaming that I wasn’t sitting there in my only armchair, that I wasn’t sweating and uncomfortable, that I wasn’t aching in my limbs, that I wasn’t pounding in my head, that I wasn’t cramping from the waist down, that there was some cure for it all that I had cast on myself, that I was instead lying on a bed of silk and sheltered from the autumn chill.

I hadn’t been dreaming about my creditors. I bolted up, quickly as I could, fixing my tunic back above my sore breasts and shouting to be heard over the storm. “Like I told Mister Dergott last week, my assets are not liquid enough to pay back these loans until after the harvest, so unless you are possessed of the ability to speed time along or grow crops in an instant, I suggest you return once I actually possess any gold to pay you with!”

I threw open the door to peer down at a shorter woman, nearing middle-age, shivering despite the enormous overcoat she’d wrapped herself in, with a braying horse tethered to the tree just beside my tiny porch. “Ah,” I said, faltering from my rush of indignancy. “I’m sorry, you’re not who I was expecting.”

The woman nodded knowingly. “That’s alright, dearie—might this be the residence of one Miss—”

“Truth?” She nodded, and the sigh I let free was both relieved and unnerved. I stepped aside to open my door wider and beckoned her inside. “Yes. Let me get you some tea.”

I should’ve gotten the fire going half-an-hour before Dess (“Please, dearie, Mrs. Temperance is my mother-in-law’s name.”) arrived on my doorstep. But the older woman didn’t complain; in fact, she was one of those sorts of women that seemed to have an impulse to tidy up and help with anything in sight, even in a stranger’s home. Maybe she couldn’t stand how unkempt my home was, maybe she got some bizarre pleasure from it, I couldn’t say. But in the time it took to boil water over my renewed hearth, the two of us had swept the entryway, placed three more buckets over wet spots on the floor, and thrown out three spoiled jars of food from my tiny kitchen in the corner.

I rubbed my left bicep unconsciously, twisting the band of black metal back and forth beneath my tunic’s sleeve. Dess didn’t seem like a mage, and certainly not a Dolocite one, so the worst fear I bore felt at least a little unlikely. She hadn’t complained at all that the only things I had to offer her, for a meal, were a fried floury lump that could scarcely be called ‘bread’, a small spread of preserves, and a cup of contraceptive tea.

“It’s the only kind of leaf I really keep on hand,” I’d explained to her sheepishly, rubbing the short and prickly hairs on the back of my head while my cheeks warmed up. “I’ve been meaning to get some more in town, but…”

“Don’t you worry your head over it,” Dess had replied with a wink, “I’ve actually grown to like the flavor of kendarine after so many years.”

We ate in silence, but I ate faster. I’d skipped breakfast that morning and worked through lunch, needing to get at least a few hours’ work in the fields before the rain rolled in that evening. I figured letting her get halfway through her ‘biscuit’ before I asked my question was fair enough to do. “How did you know my name, Dess?”

Her eyes smiled at me through the wide spectacles she wore. “Wouldn’t it be better to ask why I came here in this miserable weather?”

I thought about it. “No,” I answered. “I want the answer to my question first.”

“Well, dearie, the answers are interlinked.” She set her dish aside to where her saucer was resting, the kendarine tea still wafting white wisps of steam. I’d dragged out my only spare chair and my only wooden table for her to use. But given that neither matched the large, plush armchair I sat in, myself, the two of us must have looked a bit mismatched. “You see, I knew your parents,” she said to me.

“Mom and dad?” I smiled a little, then flattened my hands in my lap. “They never mentioned knowing any Temperances.”

“Oh, no, this was a long time ago, before the Division, you see. Before they’d adopted you.”

Oh. So she knows about that, too. My smile flattened and again, my right hand moved to my left arm. I found myself wishing I’d changed bands before opening the door. “You wrote each other?” I inferred; I’d at least remember a little bit about a regular visitor to my parents’ home.

“That’s right,” Dess smiled and dipped her head. “Saints bless them both.”

“Saints bless them,” I murmured, letting my neck bow perfunctorily as well.

When she brought her head back up, her smile was smaller, a little more fragile. “I only found out about… well, you know, before I went looking to find you.”

“Of course,” I nodded, “and that brings us to the second question?”

“Why I’ve come at all, yes.” Dess took a long breath in before letting it out in a much quicker sigh. “Your mother and I were alike in a few ways. We grew up in the same village, we worked in the same shop as young women, and… well,” she paused to take a swig from her teacup before giving a conspiratorial wink, “neither of us ever really needed the kendarine.

“We’d take it as a precaution, as I’m sure you can understand,” Dess said, and I did nod, “but when the two of us settled down with our husbands…”

I’d filled in the blanks already. “You stopped taking the tea,” I said for her, “but neither of you could conceive.” Dess smiled. That wasn’t such a bad thing now, infertility, but in the days before the Division? A wife not being able to produce a child was grounds for immediate dissolution of marriage, or worse. Even the act of taking kendarine would’ve been a risk for them. “And that’s where I came from.”

“As your mother told it, it is. She took you in after the Division, but it’s been some time before my Greschek and I decided to do the same.”

“A boy or a girl?”

“A boy,” Dess beamed. “Our little boy. He’s already four, I still can’t believe how quick they grow…”

Younger than I was. That must be nice. I forced my hand into the Saints’ Sign, two straight fingers, two bent, with the thumb stretched over them. I knew it would matter to her. “Saints keep him, Dess.”

“Saints keep us all,” the woman replied, making the Sign and deeply bowing her head.

“So did you come all this way for parenting advice?” I grinned, as her face came back into view.

Dess laughed. “No, dearie, no… well, in a way, I suppose I have.” She paused for a few moments, looking past me, searching for the words like they were written somewhere on the wall. “Well, our son, he… seems to be coming down with a little malady.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Dess,” I began to explain, “but I’m a farmer, not a physician…”

She shook her head. “Not an illness in that sense, Miss Truth.”

I blinked at her, then the piece fit into place within my thoughts. A cold shiver bit at the back of my neck. “You think he’s a prodigy,” I said, the word numb on my lips.

“Well, yes—I mean, Greschek and I have spoken to our village healer, kind fellow, I think you would like him, and you see, neither of us have any magic, not like…”

She didn’t need to finish the thought out loud.

Not like you do.

I took a deep breath and rose from my chair. I only spent a moment looking at Mrs. Temperance while I stood, bidding her to follow into my home behind me. “Did my mother tell you about that?” I asked, walking for the door of my bedchamber.

“Er…” For the first time, Dess seemed genuinely off balance, uncomfortable. It was only fair: anything welcoming had fallen out of my voice the moment she mentioned a prodigy. “Here and there, bits and pieces, you see…”

I opened the door and stepped inside, leaving Dess in the hallway while I bent over my chest of drawers. I returned a few moments later, holding a box made from dark, glossy metal. “Did she tell you what I was?” I asked, looking into Dess’ soft eyes, the wrinkles around each.

The woman held her tongue while I set the box down, then loosed my left arm from the sleeve of my tunic. “She mentioned, in her letters, dearie, that you were a prodigy,” she said. “Like our son is.”

“No,” I responded, cold and detached as I thought over what I would be doing. As I slipped the band from the thick muscle of my upper arm, and placed it next to its twin in the open box. I looked behind my shoulder and sighed. “Not like him. What is a prodigy, Dess?”

“I don’t know too much about all of that…” When I looked at her again, she seemed to know a little more. “W-well, they’re mages, sorcerers, and they get their abilities at a very young age.”

My hands were pulling the second band from its box: the same size, the same shape, only this one was silver, with four small beads of jade marking the circle like a compass rose. “And what kinds of abilities can prodigies have?”

“Any sorts, at least, that’s what the healer said about them. He wasn’t one himself, but he said they can have aptitudes, gifts for certain kinds of magic, or whole new, unique traits that other mages won’t possess.”

I nodded, feeling the weight of the band in my fingers, slowly rubbing it and feeling its power tug at my mind. “Every land in Ephaos is home to different kinds of magic. Northern sorcerers can bend cold to their will; the sailors in Tanfar can bring the tradewinds to their command; Keld wizards can summon up spells through stories, songs, art.

“But Jir-Qan is a young country,” I said, affixing the band below my shoulder. “We lack the traditions, history, and culture that shapes how our magic manifests. That is why we have prodigies: they are unique, bearing a kind of magic all their own, an infinite potential. Isn’t it poetic?”

Dess matched my smile, but hers was more eager than somber. “It is, yes. You know so much about our prodigies, Miss Truth, so do you know why…”

“Why he’s been feverish?” The silver band came into place. I twisted it, fixed it tight, and my body was awash with a burst of ephemeral sense from all directions and all space at once. The magic I’d kept stifled was back now, and all-too glad to see me. “Why he’s been acting out?” My body and mind were still adjusting to the presence of my focus, still trying to make sense of the impulses and instructions from the muscle I’d neglected for so long. “Why he keeps complaining about a feeling he can’t describe?”

“Yes,” the woman said with awe. “That’s exactly it.”

I took a deep breath. I could feel her. Her tentative excitement, heightened pulse, itching fingers, her worry and fear, her hope. And deep down, beneath all of it, was one thing resonating in my senses.

Her piety. Her reverence. Her devotion.

I took another breath and turned to face her; making my face a stoic mask. “Tell me this, Dess: do you and your husband still practice the Pact?”

I didn’t need the magic now flowing around me, through me, to know that they did. It was only logical. She seemed to be twenty years my senior, and would’ve been near my age when the Division occurred. Already grown, likely already married, given her mirrored relationship to my late mother. And before the Division, she wouldn’t have been Jir-Qanni.

She would have been Dolocite. And all Dolocites follow the Pact.

With her usage of kendarine, she wouldn’t have been a truly ardent believer. But she would have believed enough. Enough to continue practicing those parts of the Pact, those factors of her faith that she was devoted to, even after the Division cut the country and severed the bonds of the Pact for all denizens of the newly formed Jir-Qan Concordancy.

Dess wasn’t a revolutionary like those who made the Division necessary. She was a mother. She was a seamstress, if she’d worked in the same shop as my mother. She seemed kind enough, friendly enough. Simple enough.

Maybe that was poor of me to think. But these were the ones who still followed the Pact. Simple folks. Honest folks. The ones not prone to change and volatility, the ones not actively endangered by an oppressive body. The ones who already knew how to stay in line and keep quiet and never draw any attention to the few rules they disobeyed.

These were the ones I could use.

And so when she opened her mouth to speak, I already knew what Dess would say. “Oh, here and there,” was the beginning of it, “just the parts that we always did before, you know.”

I slid my tunic back up over my shoulder, cracking my neck in a circle and taking one step toward her. “The morning and evening prayers. The Saints’ Rites. The meal blessings. Those everyday things, yes?”

“Yes,” Dess agreed. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t question or complain at the change in topic. Because on some level, some very deep and very quiet level, a part of her recognized the authority that I bore, that my voice carried with each syllable. Because that part had been trained for more than twenty years to submit to that authority.

“But not just the everyday things,” I continued, coming another step closer. “You observe the festivals and celebrations. The days of fasting, the days of mourning. You keep a copy of the Pact in your home, and you know your favorite verses by heart. Yes?”

“Yes,” she said again. Dolocites were bound by the Pact. Raised from birth to follow its teachings, to obey its practices, to submit to each letter of the holy commands. It was a document with origins more than two thousand years old; anything that old and with that many hearts and minds devoted wholly to it would have to bear some amount of magic.

“But more than that,” I said, letting my voice come lower and softer, “you believe in the virtues of the Pact. The teachings. The way it can guide one’s life, the answers it can provide to any question or fear you might have. Yes?”

“Yes.” And that is what the Pact was. Magical law, mystic commands, both explicit and implicit, surrounded by layer after layer of parable and myth and metaphor. Part story. Part teacher. Part code of law, righteous conduct, moral justice. And for nearly every Dolocite for the last two thousand years, it has been their absolute and most foundational truth.

But all laws needed enforcers.

I had come close enough to see the shimmer of light in Dess’ irises. That pious, reverent, devoted part of her had come to the fore, eager and excited after so many years of disuse. Not that she had neglected it; no, Dess had been feeding it. Even though the Jir-Qanni had shaken off the mystic yoke, sliced through the ties that bound them, freed themselves from the oppression of the Pact, Dess and those like her still chose it willingly. Not out of masochism or some other, strange desire, but out of inertia. The Pact was all they had known, spiritually, perhaps even emotionally. For many, it was their routine and their rock. A habit they would never want to shake.

But that was fine. The small books they read from carried no magical impetus, no ancient power, no commands to compel their lives. They were unbound, and could not rebind themselves with mere paper. But… the binds had only been severed. A rope has a knot on either end to tie two disparate halves into one new body. When the thread between is cut, the knots still remain. The foundation is still present: hanging, listening, waiting for its use to return, staying strong and sturdy from the constant stimulus and nourishment of faith.

She was staring up at me, smiling in the same, kind way that she had been all evening. And yet deep down, and coming ever-closer to the surface, she was aware that our interaction had fundamentally changed.

I hadn’t wanted it to. I hated to do this. My hands had gone clammy and my fingers were numb. My throat and stomach had made knots of themselves. But if I didn’t do this, I would leave myself exposed. Found. Vulnerable. Or worse, I would let her drag me back in to the world I’d spent all my life trying to leave.

I inhaled, and exhaled, and with the band on the arm and the power in my body, I reached out to that deep, simple, and knowing part of her. I felt it. I knew it. And through the light in her eyes, it knew me. And I spoke a verse to her, one of the first. “This Pact is our way, and this Pact is our guide.”

“It is the Pactkeepers who will show us how to walk, and it is the Judges who will show us how to follow.”

“And?”

Her eyes glowed, and she bowed deeply to me from the waist. “The will of each Judge is the will of oneself,” she finished, voice flat and mind calm.

She couldn’t have ever encountered a Judge in her life. If she had, she would’ve known the presence and felt it as soon as I’d changed my armband. The willingness to relax, relent, and submit would have been conscious, not unconscious. Instead of feeling vague and blurry impulses, she would have felt utter and holy compulsion.

I had to imagine that my mother hadn’t told her what sort of a prodigy I was. If she’d known that I was born to be a Judge, she never would have come to me for aid. The less who knew anything about that, the better off I would be. And the safer everyone else would be.

I put a hand on her shoulder, and her eyes rose to meet mine. They were glowing with a light I hadn’t seen in years now, the sort of glow that burns itself into your vision so that even when you look away, even when you shut your eyes, it still haunts you and refuses to leave. “Dess,” I began.

Her mind and spirit were receptive to me. I could feel them reaching out, straining, hungry for guidance. I could feel just how much my own long-dormant desires wanted to give it to her. To bind her to the Pact once more, to teach her of respect and fealty, to bring her back to the way. To mend the break.

This is why I needed it to end. This is why I needed the band of restraint, not the band of power I wore now instead. I couldn’t be trusted. I couldn’t be safe. One moment of misspent focus and I might never want to restrain these powers again. I might want to keep my dominance, encourage their submission, deliver the commands and justice that all were so sorely lacking.

This is why I wanted to tell her to go home to her husband, to care for her son, to never think of the adopted daughter of her old friend again.

But maybe it wasn’t those pious, dangerous desires that gave me pause. Maybe instead it was something else—an idea, a hope, a conscience. Something I wasn’t sure I had at all. But instead of commanding her to go away and live her simple life without me in it…

“I’ll help you,” I told her. “Whatever it is that I can do for him, I will do.”

“Saints keep you,” she whispered in blind awe.

Yes. Saints keep me.

After that choice, I was able to break the spell without too much trouble—only first, I insisted that a fine follower of the way, one so weary in her travels, would be more than deserving of a bed to rest in. She fought me a little when she came to, demanding that I acquiesce and allow her to leave at once, but she backed down very quickly, and with many apologies and grateful thanks attached.

I settled into my armchair after she had laid down to bed. And holding the silver band in my hand, staring through its center at the dying embers of my hearth, I was awash not with power, adrenaline, or a mad and alien form of grace, but with cramps and aches and too many other pains to describe. And a very profound question on my tongue: “What have I just pulled myself into...?”