The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Shop of Unearthly Delights

Chapter 5: Bewitched

* * *

Aoife was not having a good day.

First, one of her Familiars had informed her that a client had used her spell, and that, furthermore, he had used it far more than he’d been able to.

After investigating on site, she realized that he had somehow managed to replicate the potion she’d sold him, and was entrusting the morons he was creating with it to create more morons, in a never-ending, exponentially expanding, plague of morons.

And as if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, the fucker had gotten the drop on her and sprayed her with the moron potion. Twice.

Somehow, she’d managed to gather her rapidly dwindling wits about her and run off. The bastard shouted something after her, but she didn’t really catch it. She wondered if he wanted to fuck her…

No. No, she couldn’t think about that. Con… con… fuck, what was the word? It was so hard to think with this pink mist filling her silly little brain. No. Shit. Her brain was not silly and not little. Now what was that word…? Con-sin-straight? That sounded right.

She was proud of herself for thinking of it, but she didn’t let that distract her. She needed to con-sin-straight on what was her Focus. That should keep the mist from in…infer… infel? Infesomething her thoughts.

She imagined the crystal. It was a crystal ball, perfectly carved, perfectly smooth. There was a burst of amethyst inside of it, like some kind of inverted geode. She’d learned her first spells with it. It was her Focus; her mental rock with which to rest all thoughts on.

There, now that she had her Focus in her mind, she wouldn’t have to worry about thinking about stupid bimbo things. She wouldn’t have to worry about thinking of big squishy titties. She wouldn’t have to worry about thinking of big hard cocks and yummy cum. She wouldn’t have to worry about thinking…

Fuck. This wasn’t working.

Aoife stumbled down the stairs. Oh, if her dearly departed mother could see her now, she’d shake her head in shame at how foolish and weak her daughter had become. At how she couldn’t even hold it together under a simple magical assault. How her tits were so small and her hair so short… but now that Aoife thought about it, there was a surefire way to fix that. Maybe that man could make her…

God fucking, shit fucking, hell-and-back-around-again, fucknuggety DAMN IT! She was a witch! She was smart! She knew about… numbers and stuff.

Yeah, numbers, she thought. Numbers are good. Aoife gritted her teeth and started mentally counting as she made her way down the stairs.

One. Two. Three. Four.

This was easy. This could keep her mind working.

Five. Six. Seven. Um.

Fuck, what came after seven? She thought about it. Six came before seven, and if you combine them, you get… sixty-seven! That was it. She still had her brain. And after sixty-seven? …Sixty-Nine, maybe? She thought that sounded right.

Heh. Sixty-Nine. She giggled.

Sixty-Nine. Sixty-Ten. Sixty-Eleven…

Aoife burst through the door of the stairwell and stumbled down the hall. She was feeling dizzy. All this counting was wearing her out.

She needed some way to countact… contract… to stop the effects of her potion. She needed to find something…

And find something she did.

There it was, in the hands of some woman with black and red and blue hair. A bottle of something. Aoife was fairly certain she recognized the potion. It would prevent stuff from messing with her mind. It would make her immune to the pink mist.

But there was something else it was supposed to do… what was it? Damn. She couldn’t remember. Oh well, it probably wasn’t important anyway.

The woman holding the blue potion was talking to a man. Distracted. Good. Aoife mustered all the willpower she had left to spring forward and grab the potion out of the woman’s hands. Then, before the woman could react, Aoife opened up the bottle and drank it all.

It was good. Damn good. Even as she drank it, she could feel the mist receding and her thoughts returning. She was becoming her again. It was a great feeling.

She closed her eyes as she finished the potion and enjoyed the sensation of just being herself. And when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the shocked face of the man that woman had been talking to.

Immediately, she felt a warmth fill her chest, and she knew, with a certainty she’d never known before, as if it were just an obvious fact of life like the color of the sky, that this man was her master.

Wait. Her what?

Numbly, she realized what she just drank. Servis Luxuriarum. An elegant potion. Perhaps the single most effective “love” potion ever created, if you could call it that.

“Oh. That’s what it also does.” Aoife said, stunned by the monumental weight of the mistake she’d just made. “Motherfucker.”

* * *

“Um?” Travis asked the woman in front of him. She seemed just as stunned as Beth and him by what had just happened. “Are you OK?”

“I’m your sex slave,” the woman said, as if she couldn’t believe it. “I’m your sex slave now. That… shouldn’t be OK. But obviously it is, because of the Servis. Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Beth said. “I get that. But more importantly: what the shit, lady? You just grab things out of people’s hands and drink them?”

The woman glared at Beth. “You’re a slave too?” she asked.

Travis jumped as he felt Beth grab his arm and pull herself closer to him. Almost protectively.

“Proudly,” Beth said. “We came here to stop the bimbopocalypse.”

The woman cocked an eyebrow. “You?” she asked. “What, were you planning on nullifying it by turning everyone into a sex slave?”

“Well, if that’s what it takes…” Beth muttered. “And that’s a pretty dismissive tone to take with your master.”

The woman’s face went bright red, and she looked at Travis. Then she looked at the floor. “Sorry, Master,” she said.

Travis cleared his throat. “It’s, uh, it’s OK,” he said. “You know about the Servis?”

“A potion with three broad effects,” the woman said. “It establishes the first person you see as your Master, whom you feel incredible attraction to. It rearranges your priorities so that the conclusions drawn from that premise are of a higher priority than most, though not all, others. And finally, it creates a ward that prevents mental manipulation unless both you and the master consent to it. It’s one of the most effective love potions, because it doesn’t alter pre-existing mental processes. Instead, it introduces new premises and lets the mind naturally draw conclusions from them, thus preserving the personality of the subject.”

Well, that was thorough. Travis blinked. “OK,” he said. “That was… wow. Um. Who are you?”

“My name is Aoife,” the woman said. “I’m a witch. This…” she waved her hand in the general area of everything “…is my mess.”

“Eva?” Beth asked.

“Aoife,” the witch replied. “Ee-fa. It’s Irish.”

“What do you mean, this is your mess?” Travis asked. He wasn’t sure he trusted this woman, even if she seemed to have become his sex slave.

Aoife hesitated. “I brewed the potion, and sold it to this douche. Rich. I thought he’d dumb-up a girl or two and be happy, and I’d have some decent money, so whatever. But then he somehow managed to make more of it.”

“And this led you to… decide to drink Servis?” Travis wasn’t sure he followed.

“No… Well, yes, in a way, Master.” Aoife seemed embarrassed. “He sprayed me with it. I wasn’t thinking straight. I recognized the potion, but all I could remember was that it blocked mental manipulations, so I drank it. Then once I was back to my normal self, I, well, remembered the rest of it.”

Beth could barely stifle a laugh. Aoife glared at her.

“If I may… why are you two here?” the witch asked.

“I was sent here,” Travis told her. “I work at this shop…”

“Fuck!” Aoife exclaimed. “Your Maroney’s protégé, aren’t you?”

Travis was taken aback. “I, uh, I wouldn’t call myself a protégé. More like an employee.”

“Shit,” Aoife muttered, folding her arms and shaking her head. “I should have known he’d poke his nose into this. That’s what he does.” She grimaced. “And for once, it’s a mess his shop didn’t cause.”

“Instead it’s a mess you caused,” Travis pointed out.

Aoife frowned. “Yes. I was going to fix it.”

“But instead you got sprayed with bimbo juice!” Beth said. Her mouth was open in a massive grin. Aoife glared at her again.

“Well, it needs to be fixed anyway,” Travis said. “We used that neutralizing powder, but all it did was cure the women who’d been sprayed by that particular bottle. So, that means we have to use it on every bottle. Um, right?” He assumed Aoife would know more about this than him.

The witch cocked her head quizzically. “It shouldn’t,” she said. “That’s not really how it’s supposed to work. Just because you put a potion in different bottles, doesn’t make them different potions. That doesn’t make any sense. Then again, nothing about this makes sense. Rich shouldn’t have been able to replicate my potion at all.”

Oh lord, Travis thought, she’s actually stroking her chin as she thinks. That’s actually kind of adorable.

“Unless…” Aoife’s eyes widened in a moment of realization. “He didn’t replicate it! He only mimicked it!”

“OK…” Beth said. “You’re gonna have to walk me through the difference there.”

“A magic potion is more than just the sum of its parts,” Aoife explained. “There’s rites and lesser spells that go into it, along with the ingredients. Simply replicating the chemical composition wouldn’t make a new potion. However, if someone believed it enough, and had a bit of minor Talent in them, they could subconsciously push the new solution into the mimicking the function of the original, simply because they share a form. It’s Sympathetic Magic.”

Beth grinned at Travis. He sighed. “You didn’t call it.”

“Did to.”

“You got Sympathetic Magic right, you didn’t get how it applied.”

Beth stuck her tongue out at him.

“Of course, you realize this actually makes our job easier,” Aoife said.

Travis did not realize that. “How?”

Aoife didn’t seem capable of containing her grin. “All we have to do is find the original potion, neutralize it, and the rest will follow suit.”

“And how,” Travis asked, “do we find the original potion?”

Aoife’s grin became outright predatory.

“We find Rich.”