The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

When I woke up, everything hurt. But I wasn’t bleeding. It took me a few minutes, but I managed to half-fall out of the cart, stumble into the surrounding woods, and find a stream in which to wash out the uncomfortable, bloodied girdle and the rest of my clothes besides. I headed a little farther upstream to wash my face and hands, my feet and calves; any part of myself that I had bared was rinsed by cool water. Any part except for my arm, where my band of restraint stayed fast and dry. I touched my hand to it while I stood in the water, and my breath came as a shudder.

Then I went downstream, past the line where my clothes were drying, and vomited into the water. I held my own hair back while I retched, again and again, brought to my knees on the hard mossy earth by the bile burning in my throat. When I could heave no more, I spat the last disgusting dregs onto a stone and wandered back to the cart.

My horse was hungry, and disturbed, and very well annoyed with me, but he hadn’t run off in the night. From the trails in the mud that the wagon’s wheels had made, I saw that he skidded off the road at some point and managed to drag the cart (and my unconscious body) a few more meters before getting too bogged down in the earth to continue. I fed him some oats from one of the tied-off sacks in the bed of the wagon, then gathered up a pot and provisions for a meal of my own.

My stomach growling, I sat my bare bottom on a rock, started a small fire, boiled enough water from the stream to drink safely, then poured some more into a cup stuffed with mushed-up kendarine leaves. I gnawed into a chunk of hardtack. I drank some tea. Kendarine, same as ever—not that I was planning to sleep with anyone, but I’d just grown used to the taste. And the contraceptive was cheap, where proper tea leaves were not.

The kendarine also gave me an excuse—I told myself that the scalding tea was why I had to force myself not to weep. It was just the pain of a hangover and a long journey that was getting to me. I took a long breath, in and out, and I resolved never to drink a mug of ale again.

Your promises haven’t been worth much as of late, Truth.

I didn’t have the stomach to battle with my inner voice on such a point. But just the thought of ale, or mead, or any drink, or even a tavern made me feel even more sick. I thought of the barmaid whose face I could only barely remember, the name I didn’t know, the things I did...

I thought of how I’d kept the blasted focus in my possession. How I hadn’t tossed it out of the cart as I raced away, how I had brought it on this forsaken journey, how I had kept it in my home in the first place. I’d told myself, after the last accident, that dad’s advice was true. That it was important to keep the band—in case of danger, yes, but also that one day I might be able to use this curse of mine for something decent. That I might be able to hone it, practice it, train it and wisely use it.

But he was gone now. Had been for years. There was no longer anyone in my life to be so beholden to. No counsel to take, no decisions to weigh, no bonds to risk breaking. I was on my own, then. The responsibility to take an action fell to me. And over and over, I had failed to do it. Maybe that was the real curse I’d been saddled with: the inability to act, the incapability to try.

I couldn’t linger on the depression for long. The band on my arm prevented me from doing so. My mind raced instead to the next questions; where was I? How would I get home? Where was that town that I knew I could never be seen in again?

I would have to follow the road until I came to a switchback. Head the opposite way, pass wherever it was I’d stayed, spend another night and morning in the woods before reaching the farm the next day. Call off my hired hand, wouldn’t be able to recoup the down payment I’d already given him. Post a letter to Dess explaining myself, or coming up with some much easier lie...

It was all so much. My hands were shaking, my skull was pounding, but I made myself take another drink. I had to stay grounded. I had to keep focus. I couldn’t just sit naked in the forest all day while staring into the horizon.

Or maybe I could. Maybe I could just breathe deep and let myself go. Forget about the hunger and thirst and pains and vanish from this world into the next. Maybe that would be easier. Maybe that would keep me from harming anyone. Maybe that would make the world safer.

“... no,” I sighed. “If anything, Truth, you’ll keep ruining lives even when you’re on your next one. That’s how your track record looks right now. That’s how you are.”

My neck fell forwards, and I gazed into the reflection that swirled within the murky mug of tea. I looked miserable. I felt miserable. But worse than that, I’d done it again—I’d overstepped, I’d intervened, I’d stolen the keys to another’s mind and upended half their furniture, if not more.

I didn’t have the guts to make certain it would stop. But... maybe I wouldn’t always be this way. Maybe this could be a lesson. Maybe this would be that one last time I put the focus on and made a pile of horrible mistakes.

Maybe that was why I got up, threw on my clothes, packed my things and helped the cart out of its ditch before speeding down the road. Maybe that was why I ran my horse toward Jiralesh as fast as he was able.

The truth, though? I was just sick of being, thinking of, and looking at myself. By doing this—helping a woman I didn’t know, helping a kid I wouldn’t like, going on a trip that I didn’t want to be on—by trying, I’d be too busy to look at myself. Too stressed to think of myself. And I certainly wouldn’t be myself.

I’d be someone else, instead. And that was a woman I didn’t know at all.

The Division between Doloc and Jir-Qan wasn’t caused by one rebellious group with one heroic leader. Instead, the Dolocite nation was brought to its knees by dozens, maybe even hundreds of small insurgencies. All over the country, cells of free-thinkers were dismantling the socioreligious order that had held Doloc in stasis for thousands of years. Sometimes it was peaceful resistance, but most of the time, it was violent. If one was going to break the Pact and draw the wrath of a Pactkeeper, one might as well do some damage in the process.

The bulk of resistance was centered in the west, in the territories that Doloc would eventually cede to the Jir-Qannis. This was because the loudest movements against Doloc erupted in the cities of Jiralesh and Qanatar—hundreds of miles separated the two hotspots between north and south, but their shared fervor and lust for freedom would eventually bring them together. It was a commonly known fact, though not official, that the kingdom of Damea in the north backed these two most-popular resistances; they had been seeking to disrupt their ancient Dolocite enemies for years, and the Division would be the wedge that they drove.

Where Qanatar was a wide city, sprawling around rocky hills and over gentle dunes of sand, Jiralesh was a tall city. The mountain that it had grown against came into view far before I could see the towers and terraces that clung to it, or the bustling port that stretched to the coastline far below. When dad brought me, as a child, I remember feeling so dazzled by it all. The huge cliffs, the gleaming spires, the people who were just like me, except they lived halfway up a mountain.

Now, riding the wagon up the long cobble road to the city’s entrance gate, I just felt confused. Who had ever thought to take a city and drive it upwards? The ground was perfectly fine, there was plenty of room—why would anyone want to leave it?

I may have developed a more acute fear of heights than I possessed when I was fourteen. But, I felt I could stay away from the edges well enough. The place I was looking for, the focalist Rigorious’ shop, wasn’t in the wharf districts that crowded the ground—to get there, I would have to go higher up the mountain to the fourth terrace-level. For being a nascent country, I’d always felt that the cities of Jir-Qan had inherited far too many overly classist tendencies; the poorest folk tended to live near the bottom, and the richest tended to live near the top. Of the six levels of ascending terraces that made up the mountain-climb of Jiralesh, the middle-class properties and businesses began on the third level. The fourth level was squarely in that class, with some even-richer elements starting to crop up.

Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to ride my horse and cart all along the trails and switchbacks that traced along the edge of Mount Jirrin; though mining and dwelling inside the mountain were strictly forbidden, great machines had been built inside it to move travelers quickly from one level to the next. The Pact had forbidden such works of engineering and artifice—but now that Jir-Qan was free to do as it wished in magic and invention, the lifts that had long been dreamed of were finally constructed after the Division was complete.

Of course, no such good could come without a price. I had to pay a share of coin for each of the four lifts I took between the terraces, and I had to share each platform with other travelers who had been far less hygienic than I’d had mind to be. The churn in my stomach and the grinding of metal above us signaled each ascent, the platforms rising through vertical tunnels of carved stone, lit only by small magical sconces embedded in the cavern walls. The platform would shudder to a stop some minutes later, and I would lead my horse out by the reins with all the other passengers, then fumble around for a while looking for the lift that would take me another level higher.

Finally, once the sun was setting, I reached the fourth terrace and chartered a place in a stable for the horse and my belongings. Sleeping with the animals was forbidden, but I’d probably do it anyway—I had to conserve my coin to pay the fare for the lifts back down-mountain. I walked briskly with one bag under my arm, trying to remember the way on blurry memories and vague familiarities alone. The cobble and wood of the wharf districts had given way to brick and mortar on the first levels; now I walked through stone and marble, with roofs covered in colorful tiles canopying all above the endlessly twisting, ever-narrowing streets. I wasn’t going to ask for directions: to do so would make me look like the bewildered outsider I felt myself to be inside. And even with a mission of change in my heart, I still didn’t need that kind of attention on me.

This terrace wasn’t so enormous. From the ground it seemed as though it had to be, but on it, the size was no greater than a few villages crammed against one another. It was the density that was the problem; where ordinary villages (and even towns) had wide avenues, there was only one such street on the whole level. Alleyways and side-paths branched off of it like the roots of a tree, but at least those tended to point downwards and towards water. Here? There was no rhyme or reason, only sprawl that I could barely navigate.

It was near to nighttime when I found the place. From when I was young, I remembered it being much... bigger. The sign was still the same; a hanging wooden slab with an orange sun painted on with humanlike eyes. A frown was on one side, a grin was on the other. And the storefront looked newer and cleaner, but... still smaller. Was it just that I was taller, now, able to reach the top of the cramped doorway with an outstretched hand?

I leaned against the wood and read from the metal placard,

RIGORIOUS’ CRAFTS

FOCI AND MYSTIC SOLUTIONS

OPEN

SIX DAYS A WEEK

SUN-UP TO SUN-DOWN

Then I looked to the sky, and saw only the faintest orange light still coming from the horizon. Lanterns and lamplights were already glowing on this street and all the others. I sighed, and turned to go...

... then I thought to try the handle. Just in case the old man was still in.

The door opened with a soft click. A bell jingled dimly into the darkened store, and I crept in beneath that sound, shutting the door softly behind me. All was still. Not a thing was moving—even my breathing felt cacophonous by comparison. I swallowed, noisy, and called out, “Master Rigorious?“

No answer, save for the echo of my words off ringing metal and unpapered walls. My eyes were adjusting fairly quickly; I had been here in the day before, but it looked almost entirely the same to me now. Had Rigorious quit? Had he died? What in the saints’ names was I going to do if he had?

Find some answers, I supposed. If he wasn’t here, I thought I’d still be able to find the records from the purchases my father had made—those could shed at least a little light. I walked forward with a little less care and bumped my chest into something.

“Augh!” I stumbled back from that something, eyes searching in front of me for... nothing? I turned around, and back again, but there was nothing anywhere near chest-level. I tried to peer closer, or listen closer, or feel for anything magical... but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t think, not with a pulse in my ears and the band around my arm.

“Fine,” I muttered to myself, and twisted the restraint loose, holding its black loop in one hand while my body readjusted. It was easier this time; the more often I did it, the more acclimated I would become to the change in sense. And here, in a dark room, there was so little stimuli to disturb me. Just shapes in the dark, faint noises from outside, the sound of labored breathing...

I held my breath.

I still heard panting.

Carefully, I slid the restraint into my bag, while I let the same hand follow the almost-magnetic feeling of the focus sitting in the same sack. I hadn’t thrown it away, but now I was more than glad for that fact.

The last thing I wanted was to alert my secretive assailant to the fact that I very much knew they were here. So, while my fingers fumbled past a jar of preserves, I walked almost casually to the shop’s front desk. I pushed aside the clerk’s chair, glanced around, and dropped to my hands and knees: just like a common thief, looking for the stash of coins that was sure to be somewhere down here.

That’s what I wanted them to think, anyway. I wasn’t looking for the coins. In the time they were taking to prepare themselves to strike, I was sliding the band of silver and jade up my arm, squeezing it around my bicep, feeling the energy shudder into place within me, around me, all through the room and—

—right there. I could feel it on the other side of the desk, a rushing of magical power coating around the shape of a man, like rain pouring down around the outline of a porch’s awning. Another sorcerer, one trying to protect themselves. If they were smart, which I couldn’t gamble them not to be, they’d’ve felt the shift in mystic energy coming from me, which meant I only had now to act on that surprise.

I jumped up, ready to bellow the only defensive spell I could think of—

—but no one was there? I was staring at nothing, but I could swear I felt someone right—

“Got you!” A voice shouted, then came another word, then my vision was blinded with bright white light. I wrenched my eyes shut, seeing red through the lids, swinging my body towards the noise and throwing a fist their way.

But it wasn’t just one fist. Mid-flight, I felt that I couldn’t pull my arms apart, and then my whole weight pitched into the windmill of my hands and sent me colliding into a very warm, very tangible, very angry something. “Ow! Fuck! Gods!” he shouted.

I toppled him to the floor and fell down over him, finding what I thought were his legs and locking them in place with a firm, hard squeeze of my own, making him cry out again in pain. I opened my eyes just enough to see the light-bindings around my arms flicker once, twice, then vanish entirely as the mage’s concentration vanished, in favor of focusing on the string of profanities that came from his lips. In the same way, the magic of invisibility he’d worn over himself flickered out of existence, and I was face-to-face with a boy and his long, messy black hair.

He stopped his cursing and stared at me with eyes and mouth agape. “Hey, listen—”

I drove my hand down and clapped it over his lips, holding his mouth shut while he tried to shout more spells; only the words came out as muffled grunts. I held him there as his lanky body squirmed and twisted in my hold, before eventually, he gave up, too exhausted to keep testing my clear advantage of physical strength.

I exhaled, twitching and sweating from the adrenaline, rolling out the cracks in my neck before fixing him with a glare. “Who are you? Where’s the old man?”

“Mf mrr mrhm rff mrrr mmnn, mmnh mmr mhr mhhr mrr!” His deadpan stare gave enough of a translation: ‘If you take off your hand, then I can tell you!’

Scratching at the back of my head and thinking it over, I squeezed him a little tighter with my legs—then I rolled up my sleeve so he could quite clearly see my focus and the glowing hue of its green stones. His eyes widened. “Don’t try me,” I said slowly. “Because if you do, I won’t feel any guilt about using this on you.“

It was a struggle not to just let my magic loose on him right then. But I was able to push aside the feelings of need and craving to focus on the task. Finding Rigorious. I eased my hand off his mouth.

“Gods and saints!” He gasped for air, “You could’ve killed me, woman! I can’t believe my luck, of all the—”

I gently put my hand over his mouth again, listening to him mumbling out the rest of his incoherent rant before letting go once more.

This time, he took a few breaths before he dared speak. “Who on earth are you?”

I wagged a finger in his face, then tapped it against my focus for emphasis. “My questions come first. Where is Rigorious?”

“Gone!” the boy said incredulously. “He’s been out of the city for a week now, we put up a sign and—”

“There was no sign,” I said. My heart was falling from my chest and into the pit of my stomach. “When will he be back?”

The pinned boy pursed his lips in thought. He was older than a boy, really—probably about twenty years of age. A Jir-Qanni child conceived right after the Division, like so many others. “Well, I’m not really certain,” he said, “he didn’t say much about it, probably a couple more weeks?”

“Weeks?!” I groaned, “I can’t do weeks. I need him now.” I breathed deeply to catch my frustration before it festered into something much worse. “Tell me where he’s gone,” I said with forced softness.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where he’s gone,” the boy complained. “Master Rigorious just up and left. Said he was taking a vacation, who knows what that really means. He could be anywhere by now, as far as Damea, maybe even Keldia, way up north, or maybe—hey, aren’t you going to steal anything?“

I was standing in the doorway when he called out to me from the floor where I’d left him. There was only a moment’s pause, where I thought about answering, before I stepped out of the shop and into the night.

I needed a bar. I needed a drink. Hells, I would have even stopped into a whorehouse if it meant getting enough alcohol into my veins to be absolutely drunk.

The whole trip had been for naught. Days’ worth of travel, and for what? Rigorious would be back in a few weeks? Dess’s boy could have a prodigal outburst, the awakening of his magic, any day now. I needed to know what to do about it before that happened. But weeks? It was just too much time. What would I say to Dess? How could I go to her completely empty-handed?

How had I thought I could face her at all, with what I’d done in her mind still fresh in my memory? I groaned, covering my face with my hands. When I removed them, my blurred vision saw a sign that looked enough like a tankard to send me stumbling forward towards the light, towards the laughter I could hear from inside, towards—

“Hey!” I wheeled around to face the boy from before, his even-messier hair, his shabby blue cloak and his utterly tiresome face. “Where are you going?”

My body, exhausted as ever, leaned into the stone wall that I found myself closest to. “To get a drink,” I said.

“Well that much was obvious,” he said, sniffling, rubbing at a spot on his left arm. “I think you bruised me.“

“I think you got off lucky,” I replied. “Come to drink it off?”

He shook his head. “I don’t drink.”

“Funny,” I chuckled, “neither do I.”

He looked up at me strangely; now that he was standing, he only came up to about the height of my nose. “You don’t seem like you’re from around here.”

“I’m not.”

“Then where’d you come from?”

“A farm.”

Again, he gave me the strange and curious look. “Why’d you come looking for Master Rigorious?”

I shrugged, slumping a little more against the tavern’s wall. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

He apparently didn’t hear that part, because he kept talking. “You didn’t steal anything, so it mustn’t have been anything material you were after. Was it a special craft? Do you need a new focus?”

“No, and no.” I leaned down toward him so I could glare a few daggers into his eyes. “I came for his help with something very serious because he is a very knowledgeable man. But he’s not here. Which means I can’t get what I need. Which means I’m going to have to get what I want, instead—a drink.“

I’d almost made it to the door before he piped up from behind me, “Well, what if you had his apprentice instead?”

I laughed, one hand on the bar’s heavy door. “Not interested, kid.”

“But he’s taught me everything he knows,” the boy protested. “Master Rigorious took me in after my parents gave me up, he’s basically been teaching me for my whole life, surely that must be—”

One of my raised hands stopped him in his tracks. “Your parents gave you up?” I asked quietly, almost softer than the lute playing inside the bar.

“Sure they did,” he sniffed. “After the outburst, I was just too much for them to handle, so...”

I slowly turned his way. “After the outburst,” I repeated.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, yeah. I’m a prodigy. S’not that uncommon.“

I took a few steps toward him, bending down again, studying his face. Slim. Long. Just like the rest of him—no fat, barely even any muscle, all of it burned off as fuel for casting spells with any regularity. “What was your name again?” I asked him, while my eyes took stock of the sorry state of his shoes.

“I never said it in the first place,” he insisted, crossing his arms over his front.

I shook my head and sighed. “Just tell me, would you?”

“Callum. Callum Grislom.” He stuck out a sweaty palm toward me with a lopsided smile on his lips. “What’s yours?”

Against my better judgment, I took his hand and shook it twice. Callum’s fingers squirmed at the pressure of my larger hand’s grip. “It’s Truth.”

“Last name?”

“Just Truth,” I said. I turned to take one more longing look at the tavern. I thought it was probably going to be a mistake... but I really didn’t have any good options. And I really didn’t want to walk into that tavern, no matter how warm the light looked or how fine the beer smelled, even from just the doorstep.

But I was going to try, at least, to be someone else. If that failed, I would drink ale and mead til my stomach burst open, and then probably drink even more past that. Instead of walking into the bar, I lowered my eyes to the boy before me. “Callum Grislom, how would you feel about going on an adventure?”

When I saw the grin that split his face in two, I knew this was going to be a mistake.