The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Aaaaand... done.” I breathed a sigh of relief, wiping the sweat off my forehead with one of my few clean work rags. I took the reverse side of the rag down to polish the reflective glass surface until I could see my wide grin, tangled strands of black hair, and dead-tired eyes staring back at me. “Raea, you absolute genius, you have done it again.“

At least, I was fairly sure I’d done it again. The physical component of my latest masterpiece seemed to be working just fine: a chronometer so small it could fit in the palm of your hand. The little arms were all ticking along; one for seconds, one for minutes, one for hours, even one for what day of the week it was. At the top of the contraption, I’d installed a metal clasp around which a chain could be hooked. Lacking one fine enough, I tied a length of twine into a loop around it, dangling the chronometer up in the air and giving it a few experimental swings from side to side.

“Fascinating,” I said, then promptly untied the twine and set the chronometer into the holder I’d finished fashioning that morning. The device could be worn on one’s person, but when that wasn’t the case, it’d be left in the holder, mounted to a wall, designed to have the look of a real, full-sized water clock’s austere tower. The shape of the wood was really just a box, but detailing the sides with patterns and carving all the ornaments to suggest the little clocktower’s shape was a task of time and tedium.

Fortunately, now was the fun part.

I glanced at the chronometer.

Well, fifty-three minutes from now would be the fun part. If all of the magical enchantments I’d built and drawn inside the round, silver casing and along its gears were correct, I’d find out then. If they weren’t, I’d also find out then.

Which left fifty-three minutes to kill. Fifty-two. I bit my lip, glancing at the dark outside the windows of my storefront, the bronze-colored paint lettering which read, in reverse, ‘Raea’s Arcane Crafts — Everything Made To Order, Everything One-of-a-Kind’. I’d spent nearly a hundred gold pieces on that sign, and gods be damned if it wasn’t working. My eyes drifted next to the large black slate which covered the front-facing wall of my private workshop; on it, white chalk numbers and letters listed all of the remaining orders, their orderers, their prices, and their delivery dates.

I’d been on a roll so far. The chronometer was number one—I’d cross it off in, ah, fifty-one minutes—but while the varnish had dried on the casing for it I had finished numbers two and three: an engraving of protection on G. Pridian’s wedding ring, due in three days, and a color-changing illusion embossed onto a pair of spectacles for the honorable T. Whitgrove, due in one day, respectively. Not difficult projects, but ones I’d had trouble squeezing into my schedule. And looking down the list... there were a dozen more to go. None of them due so urgently, I’d be able to choose from them almost at my leisure...

“No, Raea, bad Raea.” I clapped my hands on my cheeks a few times to shake myself out of that line of thought. No, I wouldn’t start another project tonight. My apprentices had been vicious as of late, telling me to get out of the workshop, quit working so late into the night, on and on and on. “And they’re right,” I reminded myself softly, “when was the last time you did anything fun for yourself?“

I looked at the chronometer, then muttered, “Three minutes ago.” The clock stood at fifty minutes left. I liked to work. It was fulfilling, it was exciting, it was an endless list of challenges to overcome. And that could be exhausting, but it was also wonderful, and worth staying up... forty-nine more minutes for.

I crossed my arms and sat back in my leather-padded working chair. No more jobs tonight. Forty-eight minutes to go.

I yawned, rubbed the back of my wrist against one twitching eyelid. Forty-seven minutes.

I pushed my right foot against the workbench so I could lean back the chair I sat in. Forty-six minutes.

I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. Forty-five minutes.

I lost my balance and fell forwards and yelped myself awake, catching my hands against the workbench to keep from falling onto the ground. I looked up at the chronometer.

Forty-five minutes. I groaned, pounded my fists against the table and rose defiantly to my feet. The only thing that would pass the time was work, so work I’d do. But looking at the slate... everything on there was time consuming, and delicate, and given how I’d just fallen asleep at my desk, maybe it wasn’t the best time to be working on a ‘explosively self-illuminating rapier blade.’

That left the in-box, the small pile sitting beneath my front desk where all the to-be-processed order forms sat waiting for me. I hurried out into the lobby, conjured a soft white ball of light to read with, then... I thought better of it. This was Virence, after all; why in the gods’ names hadn’t I put on our streetlights yet? I rushed to the front and scanned the wall: there, right by the door, I found the tiny button I’d fashioned by the dim white light that glowed from above my head. Depressing it would push in a little piston, causing a collision between a speck of diamond and a larger hunk of zirconium, sparking a mystical reaction which would spread through the insides and outsides of my walls and onto every… oh, hells, I just pressed it—

—and a few thousand tiny globes of light flared bright reds, oranges, and yellows to greet me. I couldn’t help but grin. Most lampmakers stuck to glass, while I found it much more convenient to work with steel ball bearings, clustering them inside of differently-shaped prisms of glass. Of course, it meant much more work and much finer work, condensing the enchantments and runes to be so small and so short that they could be written onto the surface of a ball no bigger than one’s thumb, but the result was worth it. It allowed the lights to glow as a gradient, moving from red at the bottom of a glass pillar up through the spectrum to yellow at its top, each tiny sphere casting a slightly different shade. I’d spent a month on those lights, and gods be damned if it wasn’t working. I still got compliments on the ingenuity of the design from my fellow artificers, and still received praise for their beauteous colors from my adoring customers.

Now that the outside lights were lit, joining the rainbow of magical hues coming out of the city at night, I turned to the in-box whose forms could now be read from. The first few, so the last orders of the day, were too plain. I’d give those to my apprentices. Deeper still came the tougher ones—a set of self-screwing screws, too much forcemagic for my liking; an oil portrait which could match the face of any viewer, I’d never been good with brushes; a vessel which could contain and release songs, well I’d never been much of a singer either. Half of the projects in this stack would be turned down. As genius of an artificer as I was, certain crafts were beyond me—I’d send them to my fellows instead, who’d reward me with a handsome finders’ fee.

Processing through these requests would normally be done in the morning, before the shop opened. I’d peruse through, find some suitable challenges, and update the slate as needed. That would require calling on the requesters to receive their deposits. But I needed something new. I needed something quick. Something fun, that could fit into a span of... however-many minutes.

And then I saw it. A folder marked for one A. Winstaph, deliver to 73 Golges Lane, Southern Virence. Only a handful of blocks away—they’d probably seen the lettering on the window and just needed to get a piece commissioned, I grinned to myself. The request itself was... well, it was perfect. The client, Winstaph, had provided their own instructions and blueprints for the final product. Some clients did this, but it was a bit of a rarity; such a thing generally indicated an individual with a talent for design but not execution, or one with the book-learning to divine a device and the enchantments needed on it, but not the magical-learning to create it themselves. Or simply a lack of materials. Whichever way, I was going to do it.

I sat back down at the workbench and checked the chronometer. Forty-one minutes. If I could complete this in forty-one minutes, I’d be able to rush-deliver it tomorrow, provided the client still wanted it. If they didn’t—no, I wasn’t going to consider that. They would want it, or someone else would instead. It was going to be glorious.

Thirty-six minutes. I’d combed through all the instructions, mostly spot-checking for any of the client’s obvious mistakes and gathering up the parts I’d need—thankfully, they were quite exacting with their demands and I was quite overloaded with some of the colored glass that was needed.

Thirty minutes. The initial construction was complete; simply a wire frame with the base glass inset.

Twenty-seven minutes. The lever mechanism was proving frustrating. I needed to fetch a much smaller pair of pliers to install it and the final hinges.

Twenty minutes. The first frame-substitute was finally in place. One wouldn’t have thought glass and steel could be so tricky, but...

Seventeen minutes. After the first, the second was a snap. And the lever seemed successful, even with the third and fourth substitutes as-yet incomplete.

Ten minutes. That was the whole thing physically done—I triple checked all the components before speeding on to the last pages of the instructions.

Eight minutes. I yawned, paging back and forth, staring at the sketches of arcane lettering... I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Seven minutes. Carved the first runic circle, onto the second. I was working entirely off the diagrams. No time to stop and check their work; if they’d made a mistake, it was on them, not me.

Five minutes. I worked as quickly as I could carefully on the rune for ‘listening,’ followed by the rune for ‘seeing’. One mistake and I’d have to start over completely.

Three minutes. ‘Feeling’ was nearly as difficult as ‘emotion’ was, to say nothing of ‘empowerment.’ I hadn’t ever drawn some of these runes before.

Two minutes. “Come on, come on... and...” I whispered to myself, bent over and squinting through my lens at the tiny incisions I made on the glass, willing the power of the word I whispered into the shape of the rune I drew.

One minute. Almost... almost...

Then, from all around the room, I heard birds twittering at me. Robins, specifically. And in an hour it would be sparrows, and an hour after that it would be bluebirds, and an hour after that it would be geese... the chronometer was working. I’d had to track down an illusion specialist and a bird-watcher, but the result had come together stunningly. My client, the amateur ornithologist, would be more than pleased.

But I was already past that project. I barely gave it a moment’s notice, other than a glance to see that I’d finished my real goal on time. I threw my hands into the air with a shout of glee, bouncing up and down in my work apron and even doing a celebratory twirl. It was done. It was amazing. It was...

... a pair of wire spectacles, with a lever to change between lenses of different colors.

“Hm.” I turned to the slate, to the order for T. Whitgrove which sounded very similar. But the Whitgrove order I’d completed that morning had enchantments graven to shift the lenses’ colors, not a physical mechanism. This was clearly distinct, and definitely for A. Winstaph.

But holding the metal frames in my hand... I had no idea what the runes I’d carved onto each of the lenses were meant for. They were bound to standard magically capacitive crystals; one soft, light lump of copper on each earpiece. Stylish yet functional. Like something I’d design. But the actual intent... that part eluded me.

I stole another glance at the chronometer in its miniature clocktower. Fifty-eight minutes til the next hour. And that meant I’d be getting five hours of sleep if I turned in now...

... which wasn’t that much more than four hours of sleep, if I spent the next hour figuring out the motive behind this piece. Grinning, I pulled the glasses over my eyes, looking through the base clear lenses. They weren’t bent or curved, like those made for people with impaired vision, so I was able to see fine through them. And these hadn’t been enchanted at all. That honor was reserved for the pairs of red, blue, green, and white colored lenses. I sat down, reached for the lever, and flicked it to the second position.

I blinked. Then I stood up—why was I sitting down? I still had to get the pliers for the project, and... oh, there they were. I snatched them up greedily, bent back over my magnifying lens and... “Wait, where’s the spectacles?”

I blinked. I was staring at nothing through the lens before me, what was I working on? ... oh, yes, the chronometer. I reached for the case to pull out the unfinished device.

I blinked. Why was I holding the chronometer? Oh. Right. Have to test the latch.

I blinked. Fool that I was, I was trying to tie a length of twine around a latch that wasn’t finished yet. Why had I even thought to... why had I finished the timekeeping mechanism before finishing the latch?

I blinked. Something was very wrong.

I blinked. Why was I standing? I needed to sit down and get some rest for... thirty-three minutes.

I blinked. Something was... odd, about the face of the chronometer. It was blue—the client had specifically asked for white. Then I looked around. Everything was blue.

I blinked. Why were my hands on either side of my head? Why was there metal between my fingers?

I blinked. What was the little lever my finger was pressing aga—

I flicked the switch and the world came back into focus. I took in a huge gasp of air, panting, reassessing my surroundings through clear glass instead of blue. The chronometer was out of its case, twine lay loose across the floor, the crossed-out items on the slate were half-erased...

The blueprints. I found them under a pile of scraps, scanning back and forth through the lines for... there. The blue lenses, I’d engraved them with an enchantment that would loop through a cycle of... ‘forgetfulness,’ ‘amnesia,’ ‘confusion,’ ‘deja vu’...

... it was ingenious. I hadn’t wrapped my head around the design before, but now I understood! Every blink of the wearer would refresh the enchantment’s ever looping process, interrupting the circular path it made through the runes and sending it back to the beginning again, and that would only enhance the sense of bewilderment the wearer was meant to receive!

... who would make a pair of spectacles that would confuse whoever wore them? I wasn’t certain, but now I was keen to find out. Winstaph wasn’t a familiar name. And twenty minutes of record-searching showed that they weren’t a repeat customer, either. Not a single request form in my entire archives for anyone with that last name.

“Very strange. Very very strange.” I paced around until a flight of sparrows started tweeting all around me, then I sighed in defeat. I’d just have to call on them the next day to ask about the blue lenses.

... and about the other three pairs. Which were just as much of a mystery. Unless... unless I figured them all out that night. Maybe seeing the whole picture would make it make sense. It had to.

But I’d only had my revelation about the blue-tinted ones after trying them. So... that left three more colors left to try, ones which would do who-knows-what to me.

And somehow, something about that was very exciting. I grinned and flipped the lever down to the fourth position. The room was coated in a shade of frosty white, now... but I didn’t feel any different. My finger pressed a little harder and—“Aha!” I’d pushed the pin inwards, apparently locking the white lenses in place, judging by the fact that they wouldn’t budge when I moved them with my fingers. The white pair was surely one to augment then, to be combined with any of the other colors. And since green was at the third position, just one away... I clicked the lever up by one.

Now I saw everything through a layer of pale, lime-like green. Which, while interesting, did little to sate my curiosity. I stepped forward, bending over to peer at the blueprints again, and my eyes strayed over the cover of the request’s folder.

Order for

A. Winstaph

Deliver to

73 Golges Lane,

Southern Virence.

I stared at the words on the pale yellow envelope, squinting, leaning closer, wondering why they sounded so...

Deliver to 73 Golges Lane, Southern Virence.

Without thinking, I grabbed the folder in both my hands and stepped briskly out of the workshop. And out through the front room, out of the front door, into the streets that shone with strange magical light, distorted by the pale green that I saw everything through. I turned on my heels and walked straight down the lane to the left, then down the first intersection I came to with another left. My feet fell bare on the cobblestone roads—I was lucky that it was only a short walk to Golges Lane.

... why was I walking to Golges Lane at an hour past midnight? It became obvious the second I looked down at the envelope in my hands:

Deliver to 73 Golges Lane, Southern Virence.

It made perfect sense. I had to deliver the request to the customer. And because I was wearing the spectacles, I could simply present those, too! They’d be so pleased with me, I was sure. So I hurried my pace and walked a little quicker, past a streetlamp where a few men were clustered together, chuckling to themselves.

“Hey, doll!” one of them called as I continued on the road, “Come back here, won’tcha?”

Come back here.

I turned around and walked straight to where I’d come from, stopping and smiling at the feet of the man who’d called out—a gentleman younger than me by a handful of years, oldest among his friends, wearing a fairly fine jacket. The three of them were staring at me, eyes roaming up and down my body with some curiosity—I stopped that quick enough, rolling my eyes and groaning with disgust. “I’m not some meat for sale, boys. The three of you should move along.”

“If you’re not,” one of the younger ones piped up, “how come you came back here, eh?”

I looked at him as though it were the most obvious thing in town. “Because he asked me to,” I said, jabbing a finger at the lead man.

He chuckled, brushing my hand away with the back of his own and taking a step toward me. “What’s a pretty girlie like you doing wearing an ugly thing like that?” he said, indicating my leather apron covered in pockets and grime. “Show us what you’ve got under there,” he grinned.

Show us what you’ve got under there.

My fingers quickly undid the knot behind my back, then my hands rose up to remove the apron from around my neck. It fluttered to the ground while the three gaped at me. I scoffed, lowering my hands, catching a glimpse of the folder I held—

Deliver to 73 Golges Lane, Southern Virence.

I turned around and walked away. There were more important things than dawding lin the street with strange men. I had a delivery to make. I had to make the delivery. “Hey!” the lead shouted after me, “Dollface!“

I still wore my focus on my right hand, a simple sapphire ring. Simple, but potent enough to cast a wall of force behind me; both keeping them from following me and keeping their words from reaching my ears by muffling any sounds. I couldn’t be distracted, not tonight, not from my goal.

It was two more blocks and four more turns before I hit Golges Lane, and eight houses down before I reached number seventy-three. I mounted the stairs one after another, stopping right on the doorstep, before my mind was finally free enough to compel my fingers to retract both the blue and white lenses from my face.

My heart was pounding in my chest, like it could’ve climbed up my throat if it wanted to. I’d nearly started stripping in front of three random men. I would’ve done it too, I knew, if they’d thought to ask before I left. It was terrifying. It was amazing. It was so, so confusing. Who would want these over their eyes? Who would ask for something like this to be made, who would pay for the privilege of owning them?

I looked down at the envelope, then up at the number on the door. I was here. I could find out. I had to know, now.

I rapped my fist against the door a few times. No one answered.

I knocked again, a couple times more. Still no movement in the house.

I sighed, glanced around at the empty, magically-lit street, then pounded relentlessly, four times, five times, six times, seven times, eight—

—I stopped myself from punching the woman who opened the door, her face twisted in shock and confusion. I hadn’t seen her before; one of my apprentices must have handled her order. But she took one long look up and down my body, at the folder in my hand and the spectacles on my face, before smiling wearily and brushing a lock of silvery hair behind her ear. “It’s a little late to be delivering an order, don’t you think?”

“Ah, yes,” I said, and bowed deeply for my intrusion. I bit my tongue after rising up, then asked, “What time is it, actually?”

The woman shrugged. “How would I know? You’re the one who’s been awake, it seems,” she said, indicating the luxurious fur robe that covered her from shoulders-to-knees.

“Ah, yes,” I agreed. “Sorry about that part.”

“No harm done,” she smiled. “You’ve been busy.”

I reached for the spectacles on my face, then she dashed forward and pressed her hands against them instead, fingertips touching my temples, her eyes looking into mine through the clear glass. “How are they?” she asked me.

“Miss,” I began, “I don’t think I know how to answer that.”

“Try your best,” she said around a smirk.

I thought about it, before I did. “They’re strange.”

“And?”

“Wonderful.”

She laughed. “Yes, I expected you’d think so. Did you come all the way here wearing those?”

“No,” I shook my head, “I was wearing—”

“—the green lenses?”

“And the white ones,” I added, “but, yes, there were these men and they...”

For a moment, she looked mortified. “Did they touch you?” she asked me, before I shook my head ‘no.’ The woman sighed. “Praise the gods. I don’t know what I would’ve done, if they had...”

She was close. Very, very close to me. I swallowed a lump in my throat. “It would have been my liability, miss. I’m not even on-duty.”

“And yet you came all the way here, just to deliver my piece to me...?”

I felt myself blushing. “Well, I couldn’t really say no...”

She laughed. I joined her with embarrassed giggling. “I expect you’ll be wanting your payment,” she said, and turned back into her home. “Allow me to fetch my purse. I won’t be long.”

“Wait,” I said, before she could go any farther. She stopped in her tracks, and I heard myself panting, felt my skin tingling. “Why did you want me to make these? What are they for? Who are they for?“

She spoke without turning around. “Have you tried on the red lenses?”

I shook my head, then realized she couldn’t see the gesture. “Why do you ask?”

“Have you?” she asked, again.

I cleared my throat. And again. And I put a hand over my racing heart. “No,” I said quietly.

“Do you know what it will do?”

“Not yet.”

She watched me from over her shoulder, the robe lowering to reveal the bare flesh of her collar. “But you want to?”

“Yes,” I said quickly.

I saw the edge of her smirk before her steps took her into the dark interior of her home—and peering after her, I saw the robe in a heap on the entryway’s floor. “Come in, then,” she called to me, “or you’ll likely catch a cold.”

I don’t think I’ve ever followed directions better. Or faster.

“Aaaaand... done.” I breathed a sigh of relief, wiping the sweat off my forehead with one of my few clean work rags. I took the reverse side of the rag down to polish the metal sheath until I could see my wide grin, tangled strands of black hair, and dead-tired eyes staring back at me. “Raea, you absolute genius, you have done it again.“

Two projects in one day had to be a cause for celebration. And the apprentices would want me to head home early... no, who was I kidding? One more job wouldn’t hurt. Nothing on the slate looked appetizing, so I found my way to the front room, turned on the storefront lights, and paged through the in-box until I found something that looked just right.

“How about this one?” I murmured to myself, glancing over the next folder in the stack. Marked for one A. Winstaph, deliver to 73 Golges Lane, Southern Virence.

And the request inside, it was... well, it was perfect.