The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

You stand, motionless, in your mistress’s apartment, most of your awareness suspended, as it has been for the past… week? Month? It’s unclear, irrelevant. Right now, she’s dressing you for some purpose. When she says, “Follow me,” you follow. When she says “Stand here,” you stand. When she tells you to lift a foot, or hints with a touch that your arm should be somewhere else, you do it.

When the doorbell rings, you do nothing, because you register it only as a transient noise, with no meaning to you.

“Hold your pose; you may speak if spoken to, but only if relevant,” she says. So you hold your pose, standing barefoot on your mistress’s hardwood living room floor, arms at your sides, your mistress’s ever-present pendant around your neck, cocktail gown half zipped up over your naked back. You hear the apartment’s front door open somewhere off to your side.

“Brina! Come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Heard you had a new toy. I couldn’t help myself. Had to come see since I was in the neighborhood. The shop’s closed today anyway.”

You hear more noise, the clumping of boots across hardwood. A tall woman follows behind your mistress, wearing a black leather jacket over a tank top and olive drab cargo pants, a rather striking contrast from your mistress’s soft white top and grey slacks. Her hair is shaved up one side and dyed teal; her eyes are reptilian with slit pupils just like your mistress, but shocking blue instead of calming emerald; her lipstick is blazing neon yellow.

“Oooh, she looks like fun,” the woman with the teal side shave and yellow lipstick says, running her finger softly over the rapidly healing bite marks on your neck; you can just barely perceive her touch. Her tongue flicks out briefly. “Can I have a go?”

“Brina, this one’s special. And the last one I let you ‘borrow’, you still haven’t given back. So no. I am, however, taking her to a work thing tonight. If you want to watch, I have an extra ticket.“

“Congratulations on that, by the way, again. Really. It’s already impressive that you’ve been a speaker once, but I hear getting invited to speak at Pandemonium again is quite the feat,” Brina says. “If you’re serious, I will certainly take the ticket; I haven’t been since, well, you know. Does it come with a plus-one, by any chance?“

“Yes, it does. Hasn’t changed since last time.” Your mistress plucks a silver envelope from a slot next to its twin in a carved-wood mail holder on the kitchen counter, and passes it to the other woman. “Did you have someone in mind, Brina?” Her tone is light, underlaid with the faintest hint of teasing.

“Not like that,” Brina says, somewhat regretfully. She taps the toe of one boot on the floor, in an irregular, erratic pattern. “A friend I work with from time to time on Clan errands. I’d love for her to see Pandemonium, really get that things are bigger than just one Clan, because I can’t imagine the Serpentine elders sending her any time in the next century, and also, I don’t really want to go by myself.”

“I’ll be there —”

“I’m sure you’ll be busy. Don’t worry about it.” Brina turns away from you and your mistress, her expression stoic.

The half-zipped cocktail gown has fallen off your shoulders entirely, and slid down to your feet. You continue to hold the pose.

“Brina, I just wanted to say that I’d hope to see you at the reception too? If you can make it?”

“Oh. Yes. I’d like that.” Her voice brightens a little. “Word of advice, though: you may need to tape that dress in place.”

“What?” Your mistress turns back to you. “Oh, dear.”

“Until tonight, then, Cora. I’ll let myself out.”

Night falls. Dressed as your mistress wanted you, you accompany your mistress to the conference center hosting Pandemonium, and yet Brina’s casual use of your mistress’s personal name still echoes in your head like other sounds today have not.

Cora. Her name is Cora.

The conference center hosting the all-Clan, panspecies demon conference called Pandemonium has more inhuman faces, bodies, shapes, and emanations than your conditioning so far was supposed to handle. It doesn’t matter. Your mistress… Cora? No. Your mistress is here. You have your instructions.

In an interior hallway, she meets up with Brina. Brina’s plus-one is yet another ophidian demon, this one short, with brown skin and dark hair in a pixie cut.

“Brina! And Naja, too. Of course. I should have guessed. How have you been?”

“Busy,” Naja says, “busy busy. Clan business, personal business, some none-of-your-business,” she grins. “I’m told I owe you my invite, so thank you, Cora. Congrats on your talk, and also, your new toy. Brina said she was something. Brina was right.”

“Brina’s right here,” Brina hisses.

“Actually, I was hoping I could ask you two to watch my thrall for a few minutes. I’d take her with me, but I need some absolute quiet so I can go over my speaker notes one more time. Or two. Or three. Really, you can never be too prepared.”

“She’s not good at quiet?” Naja asks. “I could fix that.”

“It’s more that I probably should’t be left alone with her just now.” She grins weakly. “I might get distracted. There’ll be plenty of time for play after the talk. Please take her to the reception for fifteen minutes. I’m sure you two can handle it.”

She turns to you, and tells you, “You will continue to follow all of your standing instructions. I give you two temporary commands: Obey Brina. Obey Naja so long as her instructions do not conflict with Brina’s. On my return, these two commands will expire.”

She turns to Brina. “Fifteen minutes, I promise,” and then walks away from you.

Brina offers you her arm. “Come on, then. To the reception.”

You haven’t been away from her for more than a few minutes over days, weeks, possibly. You can’t remember the last time she bit you, but… it’ll be okay. Your mistress is the axis around which your tiny world revolves; her instructions are fate itself; she must know what she’s doing.

The reception seems to pack all of the horrors from the hallways into one big dark loud room. And they’re all drunk. Away from your mistress and in a crowd of inhuman monsters, your conditioning fails.

And you panic.

And you run.

Anywhere.

Anywhere but here.

This is when you learn that Naja’s got quick reflexes, paralytic venom, and no surfeit of empathy. She spits on you from meters away as you make a break for it, and then returns to sipping her Blood & Sand. Seconds later, you go down like a sack of potatoes.

The shock of falling over jolts you back to more awareness than you’ve had in a while, followed by the further shock that you can’t move your muscles.

“Now you’ve done it, Naja. Was that a damn pure paralytic? What is it, 1992 again? Did you learn that one at a festival in some muddy field outside Cornwall? Ketamine revival chic?”

“Look, she’s not running any more,” Naja protests, toeing your collapsed but still very much aware body with the tip of her slingback. “Same end effect.”

“No it’s not. We’ve still got most of the pre-conference reception to get through and now she can’t move her muscles consciously. Well, there’s nothing for it. Help me stand her up. If we move her around occasionally until it wears off, pose her by a different cocktail table or something every few minutes, maybe Cora won’t notice? Oh, wait, she can’t talk!”

“You worry too much, Brina,” the shorter, darker demon says. “Half of the plus-ones here aren’t exactly capable of conversation any more. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She gets an arm under one of your shoulders, and you feel the silk of her romper against your bare back; the dress Cora picked for her toy has a lot of cutouts. “C’mon, gorgeous, up you go.”

The two slowly manipulate you into a standing position by one of the farther tables of the reception and prop a phone in one hand and a drink in the other, their hands everywhere on your body as they adjust every major joint. You can see yourself reflected in the glass, a metallic black minidress hugging your modest curves, sparkling jewelry at your wrists, your throat, your ears, pinned in your hair.

“I think she looks fine. Frankly, now I feel a bit underdressed and inelegant next to her. Oooh, can I take a selfie?” Naja doesn’t wait. She poses against your motionless body and grins, showing big amber eyes and two huge fangs. Her phone camera flashes.

“You’ve sent it to me and Cora. Naja, you utter prat. Hope you liked free will while you had it.“

Thirty minutes of inconsequential talk about fantastic things later, Cora hasn’t returned. Some of the feeling in your body has. Naja catches you shifting your weight slightly.

“Hmm. Has it been that long already?” She steps directly in front of you, and reaches up to wrap her arms around your neck, looking directly into your eyes. One of her fingers twines itself into your hair. “Are you going to try to run away again, or are you going to be a good girl and wait here with us for Cora?”

As if you could want anything more than to see her eyes again, feel her teeth again, drop once more and feel yourself dissolve in the vast sea of her will. You were just scared, apart from her, in a zoo of unfamiliar shapes and voices. It won’t happen again. You’ll offer up those traitorous synapses to her and feel them crushed into oblivion.

“Oh, don’t act like you’re expecting a straight answer, even you’re not that stupid,” Brina mutters irritably.

You force your lips to part just the slightest amount, push through Naja’s fading paralysis venom to make the faintest whisper of accession pass your lips: “I’ll be good.”

Naja smirks. She wraps more fingers into your hair, uses her grip to nod your head up and down, then lets go of you. “Brina, an outside observer might think you’re often pointlessly cruel to me for no reason.”

“You’re one of my closest friends and a constant embarrassment. I have no end of reasons. For example, one is that I’m babysitting you, and another is that if you weren’t here, I’d still not be allowed to do anything fun with Cora’s gorgeous little marionette. And by the way, she’s trembling. I think she’s likely to fall over.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Given these heels Cora put her in? I’m surprised she could put up with the pain before I locked up all of her muscles. She’s only human.”

“I could fix that…” Brina sighs. “Wait. I see a booth.” She puts the remnants of her drink down on the little cocktail table. “Help me with her.”

The tall demon with the teal hair slings you over her shoulder as best she can. You start sliding off almost immediately, but Naja eels around to your side and shoves you back into place. Between the two of them, you’re slowly dragged to the booth, where Brina dumps you into an open seat.

Naja kneels to force your legs into a sitting position, whistling as she does so. “This dress is fucking incredible. You really have to see it from down here, but that slit goes all the way up, and so do the straps on her shoes.”

“She always did have good taste when dressing up her toys.”

“Oh yeah?” Naja slips into the booth beside you and bends your arm so that your elbow is on the table and your chin is resting on your hand. She’s not gentle about it; you really hope it doesn’t bruise. “I guess you’d have had the whole experience. Personally, I don’t think I could ever, y’know, give that much of myself away.”

“Sod off,” Brina snaps, “I’m not defending myself to you, of all people. I needed it at the time, and she’s… caring? I don’t know. You wouldn’t get it.”

Naja opens her mouth, then closes it without saying anything immediately. Instead, she reaches out to grasp her friend’s hand across the table, touching it much more gently than she’s been touching you.

“Sorry.”

You hear Brina snort.

“Sure.”

There’s a moment of silence. You wonder what kind of person, even a demon, could have parted from Cora, or even formed the thought. You’d try to ask, but you still can’t move most of your muscles, especially after the effort it took to answer Naja.

“Did she say anything? Did she see the photo?”

“Indicator says she still hasn’t read it.”

“Shit. I’ve been expecting to feel her pointy little fangs on my neck any minute now, but the first presentation’s quite soon. This isn’t like her. Do you suppose she’s got pre-show anxiety again?”

“I wouldn’t blame her. Have you seen the people out there? We poor suckers from Clan Serpentine are midweight for this crowd, at best. I passed what I think was a Heresiarch in the hallway earlier and their aura nearly made me piss my playsuit. Speaking of which,” Naja stands up, “I’ll be right back.”

“I’d come with, but,” Brina waves a hand in your direction, “her.”

As soon as Naja leaves, Brina puts her phone down.

Minutes pass. More of your muscles return to sensation, first numbness, then an acid searing, followed by pins and needles.

Once more, as she did the previous night, she runs her fingers gently over the now almost invisible bite marks Cora left on your neck. She brushes some hair out of your face and she sighs.

“Do you know,” she says to you, “if Cora does get biting mad, I’m not sure I’d mind it. But it wouldn’t be the same.”

Her phone on the table buzzes once, then again.

“Shit,” Brina mutters. She shows you the screen. It says BATHROOM. LAST STALL. NOW. “I can see your eyes are tracking again. Do you think you can walk?“

Naja opens the door to a rather large private one-room bathroom in a very expensive-looking area of the conference center and yanks you both inside, where your heart almost shatters to see Cora, your mistress, sitting, cut and bruised, on the toilet. She needs you, and you’re still a wobbly mess from Naja’s paralytic venom. This is all your fault and you never should have tried to run away. You try to start somewhere with “M— Mistress—”

She gazes into your eyes and reads all of this from you. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” she says softly.

“Cora, what the fuck happened?” Brina demands.

“Paladin,” Cora says, suddenly all business again. “Jumped me in the garage while I was on the way back from triple-checking my speaker notes. How she got in here is beyond me, and she got me pretty good before something scared her off, but,” she flicks her tongue out in what seems like anger, “I didn’t let her leave without giving a little back. I have a plan, but, Brina, I need your help.”

“Anything,” Brina says.

“First off, do not tell conference security. I’ve got one chance to do this presentation and I pulled enough strings getting the clan in here this time that I don’t have many left I can pull again.“

“Are you mental?”

“Are you questioning me?” she asks mildly.

Brina casts her eyes down. “No, but… no, Cora.”

“Second, my arm’s broken and I’m all kinds of beat up at the moment. So the second thing I need is for you to make her,” she indicates you, “look like me.” Three sets of gemlike reptilian eyes turn to you in unison.

The idea seems both tantalizing and blasphemous. You know you aren’t worthy of such an honor, but picturing yourself remade in your mistress’s image… it has you weak at the knees and wet between the legs.

“For how long?”

“Long enough for her to do the presentation,” Cora says.

“Yes, I think so. You’re pretty similar in build and that helps. It never holds the first time, we’d need repeated doses for any respectable length, but it’ll hold for long enough.”

“I knew I could depend on you, Brina.”

You’d give anything to hear her say something like that to you. Her tone definitely has an effect on Brina, who blushes instantly.

“Neat,” Naja says, cheerful as anything despite the situation, “you know, I’ve never actually seen you do this before. But why not me?”

Cora reaches up to stroke you under the chin, wincing as she does so. “Because I don’t have a lot of venom left at the moment, given how much of it I left in that paladin, and I need someone who can do exactly as they’ve been told.”

She tells you, “You’re going to be me for a while,” and brushes your hair back from your neck. You feel Brina’s fangs break your skin, and then the forceful flow of unfamiliar venom into your blood. You’re lightheaded, anticipating a drop, but that doesn’t come: instead, it’s as if water is gently flowing over and through your whole body. You watch as best you can, fascinated, as Brina reshapes you.

She starts with the gross differences of scale, by grabbing you under the armpits and tugging upward, because Cora is taller than you. Your whole body tingles with that. Squeezing your the bones of your hips and then the soft globes of your ass slightly inward to match Cora’s narrower frame, a sort of localized burning sensation that soon fades. Unfastening your dress at the neck and letting it drop to the bathroom floor; deftly removing your bra, which follows it; cupping your breasts in her hands from behind and forcing them to grow until they match your mistress’s ample chest. The process leaves you panting, nipples hard, skin flushed with arousal which only amplifies as your mistress’s gaze briefly hooks yours.

Her tongue flicks out, briefly, tastes the air, retracts. She grins, just a little bit.

Apparently satisifed with the bulk changes, Brina moves to fine detail. She tugs at your fingers, lengthening them slightly. She strokes your nose into a new shape. She traces a complicated glowing sigil on your bare stomach above your navel, and you don’t quite understand what it’s doing until your long brown hair lightens and then shortens itself. Your skin’s hue changes slightly, a wave of repigmentation rippling out from the sigil. Green flashes across your eyes; you can’t see what changed, but you can guess. Finally, she reaches into your mouth, gently pulls your tongue into a longer, flatter, forked version, does something indescribable to your teeth.

“Almost done. Washed out the last of N—ever mind.”

“Her fangs… they won’t be functional, will they?”

“Purely cosmetic, I’m afraid,” then Brina adds an aside, “with this lead time, anyway.”

“If you had more time?”

“I think so. Never tried. Done similar sculpts, though.”

“She’s human!”

Brina shrugs. “For now.”

“We should talk about that later. What’s next?”

“Voice check. Cora, would you mind repeating after me? ‘When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it.’”

“’When the sunlight…’”

“Okay, I think the sculpt sigil got that. Now you… Cora, what do you call her?”

“Theta.”

“Still using that sequence?”

“Yes,” Cora says. “When I start using something, I use it until it’s done, or needs to be augmented to further serve its purpose, or I no longer require it. You should certainly remember that.” There’s an edge to her voice, of frustration at a lesson not learned, or perhaps a fixed law of the universe carelessly forgotten.

“Right… Theta, repeat after me—”

Cora snorts. “She’s mine.”

“Right. Right. I… I just got carried away. Sorry. I’ve done this a lot. Usually there’s… Never mind. Please ask her to…”

Cora says, “Repeat after me. ‘When the sunlight…’”

The words spill from your mouth as you’d normally speak them.

“Sigil’s good to go. Vocal transform in place.”

Cora says again, “Repeat after me. ‘When the sunlight…’” but this time the words that come out are in your mistress’s own voice.

“Right. That’s eerie even for me,” Brina says. “All correct, though. Anything look off before I finalize this?”

Cora and Brina study your mostly naked body. Cora’s naked too. You’re not sure when that happened. Aside from the wounds inflicted by the paladin, you look alike.

“Brina, you’re truly an artist,” Cora says. “She looks exactly like me.”

“Artist? Hmph. More like a copy machine, when the original’s right here.”

“Brina, please don’t sell yourself short. I wouldn’t have allowed that thought when you were mine.”

“I wasn’t anywhere this capable when I was yours!”

Naja’s doing something complicated to Cora’s clothes in the sink, a sigil of her own flaring unlight into them. “Can you two stop? Please? I don’t want to puke on Cora’s clothes before they’re repaired.”

“Let me stop on a hopeful note, then: Brina, thank you. I couldn’t do this without you.”

Without acknowledging Cora, Brina says, “Finalize,” and the sigil pulses three times and fades. The sensation of flowing water vanishes. She continues, a bit wearily, “Let’s just get this done.”

“Put on my clothes and await instructions.” You carefully put them on. They’re laundry-fresh, dry, and slightly warm from whatever Naja did to them.

“I thought you said you were low on venom?” Naja asks.

“With the right kind of subject, after a while, I barely need it. The two of you, please go find seats. I believe I’m supposed to be on stage in not even ten minutes. I’ll take Theta’s clothes, and I can deal with one broken arm for what’s going to happen, but I need to get her ready and I need quiet.”

“By your command,” Naja says, winking, and slips out of the bathroom. Brina follows a minute later.

Cora slides up a sleeve of the pantsuit that you’re wearing to find an area she can bite without giving the plan away. This time, it hurts a bit, but it’s okay. Not only do you crave her venom’s obliteration of your will, you know you could never do what she’s telling you to do with a shred of your own mind left. There’s just not going to be room.

“Here are your instructions, in addition to your standing orders…”

You are Cora Fulvius. You are on stage in Hall C at Pandemonium 2019, presenting for Clan Serpentine. This is the second time in your life speaking at Pandemonium for your demon clan, the second time when the clan elders all agreed that your own personal research might just give Serpentine a shot at more allies, more territory.

The first time, it was a triumph just to be here. You’ll do better the second time. Hall C’s rated capacity is 80, about half full, but the people who are here and paying attention matter. You see Clan Infernal, you see Hemophagus, Spectral, Fae, Elemental, surprisingly, even an entity of some kind from each of the opposed deep arcane traditions of Clan Obsidian and Clan Silverlight. They’re here to listen to your declaration of strength, and perhaps think about including Serpentine in their plans. Fortunately, public speaking is one of your strong points, and the other is what you’re speaking about.

“Pandemonium 2019 Hall C.” you say, “I am Cora Fulvius of Clan Serpentine. I’ll be brief with my introduction: Welcome to the future of psychoaurachemical mental domination. Welcome… to Venom T10.”

On cue, AV support projects schematics of the previous states of the art. There are standard plots for those skilled in it, estimates of mental strength vs. dose, casualty curves, delivery mechanisms, command mechanisms, responses to antimagic and other countermeasures. You call up a thousand years of attempts by human hypnotists, by succubi, by vampires, by fungal gestalts. You plot your own clan’s hybrid venoms against the others, showing them outmatching halflives and domination metrics, punching through countermeasures, evading detection.

You bring up T3, the one that put you personally on the map, years and years ago, at the time a masterpiece of mutually reinforcing chemical, magical, and psychological components. And then T10, which blows them all away.

You click to the design overview for T10, and appreciate all over again the complex geometry of the mundane polypeptides (certain components censored for public display), each one also a vertex in a swarm of magic circles and more complex figures in the victim’s blood and nerves, forming and re-forming as venom molecules drift past each other, too ephemeral for most active antimagic to target, channeling energies of compliance and compulsion into the body past exterior magical defenses, soothing biological immune response with a subtle healing effect.

“For those of you not familiar with my earlier work: T3 had a major failing. It pains me to admit it, but T3 failed to break from the herd when it came to the subject’s mind. We’re perhaps too familiar, too adept with negative emotions in this area of research. With very few exceptions, both Serpentine methods and those of our cousin clans have relied heavily on fear, pain, anxiety, addiction, obliteration. And they’ve worked. But small wonder that thralls burn out so fast and are so limited. Likewise with certain intense pleasures: I’m sure many Infernals from the Line of Lilith are familiar with the tradeoffs there.”

You pause.

“I took a leap with T10, pushed to higher emotional ground. Although the T3 stack is present in modified form as a backup, T10’s primary effect mechanism is to induce trust in its subjects. Loyalty. Even love.”

There’s a lot of muttering from the audience at this one.

“Hard to take that one home to your bosses, I know. I’ll walk through the specific mechanisms behind that claim later in this presentation. But first, I would be pleased to demonstrate the overall effect on a live human subject, right here, right now, in Hall C.”

There’s a lot of excited muttering from the audience at that one.

You turn to one of the stage doors to retrieve your test subject. It’s slammed open before you even get there.

The paladin is back.

She’s not particularly imposing as a person, but the powers of her office are evident. The orichalcium saber in her right hand glows golden-white; they’re supposed to be able to cut through flesh, armor, and enchantment with equal ease. Her uniform is subtly armored, elaborately beribboned, and decorated with sigils of protection and triumph from boots to skirt to tiara. And the bite marks on her left arm are nowhere near as deep or as numerous as you’d hoped you’d left on it.

“Demon!” she cries, her voice ringing with power, filling the hall. “You enemy of free will! You who would crush spirits and cast down the innocent into mental bondage! I have returned to end your miserable existence.”

Before she’s even finished the speech, she’s twirled past a stagehand waiting in the wings and separated them from their head. And then she’s behind you and her blade is at your throat.

She faces the audience, forcing you to face them as well: “Though I may fall tonight, this monster will walk the earth no more. Now watch and bear witness, know fear, for soon your times will end as well!”

You can’t help but think that she could have had your head off already. But she’s not far from it. The razor edge of the glowing blade touches your throat—

—and Brina’s sculpting slips from you like a shed skin. You drop inches of height in a second and lose your balance; the paladin stumbles with you.

Your mistress’s plan leaches from you like lifeblood lost to a swirling river, if there was ever a plan. You are truly lost. Alone. Doomed. You have only seconds.

“Please,” you beg this stranger with the glowing blade. “Please. I’m not one of them. I’m human!”

You collapse in her grasp, sinking down against her, tugging desperately at her. She can barely hold you, forced to drop to one knee to keep from falling over entirely.

“Please… help me…”

Her eyes twitch frantically, gauging the roomful of demons, the escape routes, her chances with or without you. For a moment it seems like she means to drop you; one arm of yours slides out of her grip.

You reach down to the green tourmaline serpent’s eye pendant around your neck, hung there by her long ago, and force it into your mouth. You bite down hard and your mouth fills with not with tourmaline but with thin slivers of water-soluble sodium silicate glass, and your mistress’s real gift. Mouth cut and bloody, you grab the paladin and force her into an open-mouthed kiss, biting her tongue, snowballing her with venom.

Your soft words of defiance are picked up by your ordinary lapel mic, loud on the room’s AV system:

“I’m not one of them. But I am one of hers.“

And then you speak a word in no language ever meant for human tongues, weighted with your mistress’s delegated authority, given to you for this moment:

“[SUBMIT/KNEEL/PREPARE FOR INSTRUCTION].”

As the venom floods both of your nervous systems, your bodies kneel, your respective hands clasp behind your backs. Monitor screens all over the room show the tableau of submission in the center of the stage. You see the look of abject horror in the paladin’s eyes as she does so, and you’re absolutely sure she can see the triumph in your own, before your expressions slacken to neutral and your minds begin to wash away in the rising psychoaurachemical tide.

You watch, barely comprehending, as the real Cora steps out of the audience onto the stage. Her broken arm is in a sling, her body is in the dress she dressed you in this morning. She strides to you, bends down, wincing slightly, to check your mouth and make sure that the remnants of the pendant have melted away and are doing you no harm.

She whispers, “I am so proud of you, Theta. You might not know how much you did today, how brave you really are, how much you mean to me. But you will. I promise.”

Then she unclips the mic from your lapel and the battery pack from your waist, deftly hooks herself in, and bends again to tend briefly to the paladin. Satisfied, she straightens.

“Please accept my apologies, esteemed audience members. Two human subjects. You’ve already met my Theta, but I must have forgotten that I asked for volunteers. This one is now Iota.“

The crowd erupts in cheers, applause, strange emanations. It doesn’t bother you in the least. Your mistress is here.

It finally dies down to a few background claps. “Under the circumstances,” Cora says, “I’m going to have to skip Q&A for now.”

“Wait for me here,” Cora says to you and Iota, and you both obediently pause where instructed. She catches up with Brina and Naja in the outflux from Hall C a few meters away. You hear words exchanged, most relieved, none harsh. You see quick hugs and air kisses.

Transportation is arranged back to Cora’s house in a huge black hotel-dispatched SUV. Iota sits in the back, alone, her orders constraining her to sit still and be quiet until otherwise instructed.

In the middle seats, Cora leans you against her chest as much as the seatbelt will allow, and gently strokes your hair. Your position allows you to see her face. There are tears in her emerald eyes.

“Theta… I don’t want to risk you like that ever again… Nothing I could put into your blood could force you to do what you did for me today, not with a paladin’s blade against your skin. I think… later, when you’ve rested and recovered… I’d like us to have a talk.”

The black SUV speeds you and your mistress through the night, to home.