The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A Thrall Perfected

By Saddle Rider

Chapter Two

Mara’s eyes opened slowly as though they weighed at least ten times more than they had the last time she awoke in her bed. Her limbs felt just as heavy and her mind felt as if it was struggling to free itself from a morass. She closed her eyes again and fought through feelings of betrayal and anger. She promised me I could choose. She promised me I could choose and here I am.

Her heart sank and she thought that as long as she stayed in the cocoon of solitude that came by doing her level best to not allow the world inside, then she didn’t have to accept the realities of it. She stayed quiet. She focused on her breathing. She remembered Bryana’s promise, for whatever that was worth now, and tried to focus on her future, whatever that would be.

She remembered.

Bryana said you’d forget.

That was enough to bring her eyes open again, more easily this time, to look up at the ceiling, noting that the wood above was darker than in her own little place. She was definitely elsewhere. She looked around, her neck only slightly stiff at the movement. Light streamed through the window, enough to tell her it was daylight and probably cloudy outside, but, with the unplanned loss of time, she found herself having to wonder if it was the same day she remembered when she rode out of town on a horse not hers.

The bed was large, feeling like an island unto itself and, from her place in the center, there was some protest from her body as she rolled from it and planted her feet on the floor. She put a bit extra thought into trying to stand up before she made the attempt, but it worked out well enough. The initial wave of dizziness passed quickly and, after a few tentative steps, she felt sure-footed enough to progress through the bedroom, through the small living area and towards the sound outside the open door.

Not far from her and the blanket of snow between them she saw Devin chopping firewood. Her movements were fluid even there. One piece of wood taken from the pile with one hand, placed in the center of the stump, then her arm swung in a half-circle, cleaving the wood in a single strike. Once done, she would pitch them into an already sizable pile and move on to the next. “Where’s Imir?”

“She just returned from a hunt. She’s behind the house tending to the kill. Even after your change we expect to be here for some time.”

Her limbs now completely feeling like hers again, she noticed an added weight on her right arm. Looking down, she saw a bracelet of burnished silver with symbols layered upon symbols. Her index finger ran over it, feeling the texture of it, wondering if she could somehow make sense of what was there. It had it’s own warmth and, touching it, she felt a sensation tickle her flesh not unlike the power that rushed through her when she took Bryana’s hand. She also noted that she saw no clasp of any kind.

Devin looked up form her work to watch her for a moment. “It is Her gift to you. The magic within is as powerful as She. It’s Her conduit to you. No magic in this land can remove it and no tools of man can damage it. If it were cut from your body it would become useless metal. It is forever.”

There was no reason to doubt her words. “Did we...get here the same way we got to the woods?”

“Through Her magic, yes.”

She wrapped her hand around it, feeling it move and feeling that connection again. “So,” she began, unsure of how else to express her uncertainty, “what happens now?”

“Your change will begin at Her pace. It’s not for you to decide.”

“How will I know when it starts?”

A flash of contentment crossed her features, “You will know.”

She walked towards Devin as the other continued to work apace, the snow just deep enough to leave prints with bits of grass showing. A simple glance and the woman seemed to be able to read the question on the other’s face and she smiled in what was the first genuine look of emotion that she remembered seeing from either of them. “This surprises you.”

Mara looked around the small cabin. It was a nice bit of land. She could hear a small stream in the distance and farther beyond than that she could see the profiles of snow covered mountains. The wind was mostly still and it didn’t seem much colder than before. She didn’t know where she was, but she was definitely beyond even the woods. She wondered at the limits of the magic. Could she be literally anywhere in the world? She suspected so, but, looking around, it was just a small, unassuming cabin sitting on a lovely piece of land covered in snow. “I guess. Maybe. I suppose I was expecting...”

The ax dropped again. “That we move on from one adventure to another without end? Sometimes that is the case, and, when it is, we serve. But it is often this. She sends us on tasks that She especially values. Not everything She does is something like requires us.” Another log met its fate with a sound that sounded like a rip of the air. “When we’re not needed we live a simple life in one of the places she has secured for us.” She again seemed to read Mara’s features. “She intends for us to live until we’re needed. As she told you, she has no use for empty things. That means cutting firewood, keeping our home, and all of the other things that normal people do that you wished to avoid.”

Her words bit into a soft spot and her voice carried that ire, “What makes you think…?”

“I am a slave, not a fool, Mara. With your own words, you say that you weren’t being harmed where you were and, yet, you took Her hand. You took it because you knew that your life was destined to be ordinary and you wanted more. Your life will be more in ways you cannot imagine, but it is also this. But even this is wondrous in its own way, and it is all thanks to Her.”

“I was you, Mara. I was you in every way, but I will bet that my life was even more meaningless and uneventful than your own. Even if nothing ever happened to you personally at that whorehouse, I am willing to bet that every night there was at least one thing to talk about, and share. There was a fight or you heard a story that amused or appalled you. Something happened around you that was worth laughter, disgust, or even mention.

“Not for me. I spent my days running freshly laundered linens that no one ever used into rooms that no one ever used. Little of note happened, much less nightly, that was worth sharing. Even if it had, I had no family to share it with anyway. All I and my fellows did was pass around the gossip from the High Houses and imagine what it would be like to be part of them. I did basically nothing, and I was paid well for it. It was boring, but somehow it consumes you. The routine becomes what you’re used to, then it becomes comfortable. Then, one day, you find that it defines you to the point where you don’t know who you are or what you would do without it.”

Mara knew the truth of that well.

“Then, one night, She came to me in a wash of light. She needed me and Her call wasn’t something anyone can truly resist. If She demands you, She will have you. Once I felt Her power, and Her need, and Her love, I was filled with purpose and peace. I wanted and ached for Her.” Devin didn’t try to keep that love and need from her voice. Even speaking of Bryana was like a chance to make love to her.

“Now, I am content in ways that no one who is not one of Hers can comprehend. I wait to serve. When I do not serve Her directly I am allowed to live as others do, but there is still that contentment, love, and purpose. I can sit and watch a sunset and enjoy doing so very much when, not so many weeks ago, I would have told myself I would never have had time to do before. She cleared away all the clutter of nothingness in my mind and my life by taking me.”

“I envy you this time, Mara. You’ll always be able to look upon it and relive it in your mind with joy, but the true turning only happens once.”

“Was Imir like you, too?”

“I was more in some ways and much less in others,” she said, making her way to them. Mara found the blood all over her hands and arms unsettling, but, then again, she’d always stayed away from hunting. She was not so naive as to think her dinner volunteered to die and do so cleanly, but she left it to others to do the gruesome work of making it ready to be put to the fire.

Imir seemed to know that, too and she looked sympathetic for a moment. “I apologize for my appearance, but dressing game is messy work and, given your conversation, not entirely beside the point.”

She supposed she shouldn’t have wonder at the notion by now, but she did. “You heard us talking?”

“Every word. Look at my hands, Mara.”

For the reasons she’d already considered, she had conspicuously avoided doing so.

“Look at them.” The words had the sharpness and force of a command that surprised her since they didn’t even raise their voice beyond a conversational tone in the midst of the mayhem when they reclaimed Salli. She forced herself to look at the bloody, still dripping mess that were her hands and barely fought off the urge to gag.

“There was much blood on them even before the morning that I slit the throat of one of Queen Evaline’s pages and attempted to murder her.” Imir’s dark eyes were untroubled by the shock that had taken hold of Mara’s features. “You seem surprised.”

She was. There were rumors that she’d heard from the bar, from people who claimed to work in the castle or otherwise be in the know, so it was more a shock that it was true and not just drunken bluster. It made sense to keep it quiet. It wasn’t in public, so there was no reason to create a panic by announcing it. “That really happened? You did that?”

She lowered her hands. “I did. And more. She was only the latest victim on the path of my life. I could fill the nearby stream with all the blood I’d spilled in my not so many years in the world. If I could have been haunted by the screams of my victims or the looks on their faces, I could never have slept again, but, I slept well with the peace of a job well done. That, and I enjoyed killing for its own sake. I had the power to take everything from someone and they couldn’t stop me. There was a thrill in watching the life fade from their eyes or of listening to that death rattle. I could do what I did because I possessed no conscience whatsoever. Now I do.”

“I do because I could not escape Mistress. She tracked me and took me as penance for what I’d tried to do to your queen. She is my conscience now am thankful for it every day. “I see the world in ways I never did before. I see people as people and see their value. I no longer see people as targets or things to be used.”

Mara saw the devotion and the certainty in those dark pools, remembering the gaze that she nearly felt on her body coupled with the sensation of metal at her throat. “But you would have killed me.”

“Because She demanded it and it serves Her purpose. I would not have taken pleasure in it.”

“You would have felt nothing at all?”

“Not true. I would have felt...” Her searching eyes suggested the search going on behind them for the right words. “Correctness and peace, but not pleasure. She took the bloodlust from me.”

That sat in her belly as a hard weight with jagged edges. She had done nothing. Part of the reason she took Bryana’s hand was because she felt like she was was nothing. Mara told herself not long ago that it didn’t matter if someone chose for her, but the one doing the choosing might just decide that she would kill a nothing, and she would do it with correctness and contentment, and no care as to what she left behind.

Suddenly someplace not just here not just now felt ideal and she had an urge to see if she could find that stream. “Is it all right if I take a walk?”

“You are not a prisoner here. Go as you please.”

Her hand went to the metal around her wrist and the sensation of it on her flesh and the power within it belied the truth of those words. She set out and after a few steps she began to hear the rhythm of Devin and the firewood once again. As she headed into the woods, she idly wondered how far she’d have to go before they couldn’t hear her anymore. Dismissing it, she let the pleasant white noise of the stream draw her. It was something soothing to focus on in the face of the uncertainties roiling within.

She found it, following a stretch of it that was fairly straight and she looked on to see how, in the distance it began to take this turn and that, like a snake navigating uneven terrain. Once in a while Mara found a rock and gave it a toss into the stream, breaking the tranquility with the occasional plopping sound. Finding something in that to keep her mind and her body busy, she collected rocks as she went and, almost as though it was meant to be, she found a gray-brown rock smoothed enough to sit on for a while with enough smaller stones around it to keep her going for a while.

Settling in, at first she just threw rocks into the water to watch them arc and splash into the water. After a time, she began to make a game out of things, attempting to skip them across as her grandfather had taught her, then aiming them at two rocks that were peeking over the surface of the water, then at the limbs of a half-broken, dead tree on the opposite shore. She could just tag a couple of the limbs that hung above the water. Mara pitched another and watched it skip before a voice brought her back to the moment.

Second thoughts?

Her eyes darted and her head swiveled to see who was there with her before her hand went again to the bracelet on her wrist and realized that no one was there with her as a being to touch or stand before. Rather than answer the question, she chose to pose a basic one of her own, “Where are you?”

Not far, she promised. I’m preparing things for you. The remaking of your body is a complex thing, steeped in magic and alchemy that’s beyond the other mage guilds, and most other mages. It, however, is well worth the effort. Imir and Devin have proven very useful to the world.

“You mean, to you.”

Her voice carried the timbre that came with sudden discovery. There are those second thoughts. But, yes, to me. I try to do things that benefit the world. Sometimes that means reshaping a horrible bit of humanity into something useful. Sometimes I do set out to save the world, and I’ve done it a few times now, as a matter of fact.

“Should I thank you?” Those doubts gave the question a caustic edge that Bryana didn’t seem to notice, or simply decided she was indifferent to.

No. I did what had to be done, as I always do. Sometimes saving the world means saving one person’s world, like helping to heal a paralyzed young man so he can have a full life. Sometimes it means just walking a girl like Salli home so she can have a life that she chooses and not one that circumstance forced her into.

“And deciding that someone needs to die.”

There was an honest chuckle to be heard then, as though Bryana chose to bow to the absurd. You act as though I have some insane compulsion to murder and will send my minions to kill anyone that sleights me.

“You don’t?”

It is a last resort, not a first. I will point out that your former employer is two employees short, but is still very much alive. I did not lie to you and you know I didn’t. I even demonstrated to you the ease with which they can take life if need be. You still made the choice that put you here.

But it is different seeing hands drip blood and know that you will be as indifferent to it as Imir.

Mara paused in slightly bewildered contemplation. “Do you see everything they do?”

When I choose to. When I feel the need to. For the most part though, they are free to live as they please until I have need of them. Even when I don’t look in on them or direct them, I know what they will do and how they will be.

She didn’t understand how that might be and just assumed that the magic was the answer in some way. “What’s the difference between them and some murderer on the street?”

You mean to ask me that, don’t you? What’s the difference between me and some murderer on the street? The answer to that is ‘nothing’ insofar as all people that do dark deeds of any kind are trying to meet their needs and goals, like money or power. The only difference is scope. There was a pause as she chose to change her approach. Tell me, are you fond of the queen? Do you find her a good, kind, leader, and a benefit to Erette?

She did and she dared say most would agree with her. “What difference does that…?”

She is a murderer as well. She has done things that lesser people would be imprisoned for. She has ordered those she rules by right to kill others. The man who kills a rival for his woman is doing it for himself. When Evaline orders people to their deaths or to do things that she has the right to have them do that others do not, she’s doing it for the greater good as well. She does these things for her people and her kingdom as much as anything else.

She shook her head, “So you’re the queen now?”

She has power to wield, as do I. I wield mine on her behalf occasionally, for I think of her as my queen in the same way as you do. Her kingdom is larger than mine by far, but we are alike in some ways.

There was a pause, her eyes briefly wide as she grasped the enormity of that throwaway comment and she touched the bracelet again, “The queen knows that magic like this exists in the world?”

She does, and it is to her benefit and to that of Erette that she makes use of all the tools at her disposal knowing others are doing the same. As she has put it so eloquently, we are a shield always and a sword only when need be, much like the army itself.

But, Mara, I do not think of myself as a queen, for that’s the path that leads to darkness that I came from. There was a pause that often came with the admission simply because she had never made peace with the person she was, and, to be blunt, she never wanted to.

I came from a place not unlike Imir. There’s at least as much literal blood on my hands as she had before I found her, and, metaphorically, much more. I want to be able to leave the world better than I found it when I pass, hopefully, many moons from now. Sometimes that means crushing enemies without mercy when they leave me no choice...or walking a young lady home from a whorehouse. I hope that, if the faith is true, that when the Goddess puts my soul to the scale, its evil will not outweigh her virtue.

Her voice turned suddenly scornful. Forgive me for waxing philosophical in so self-indulgent a manner. I’m not even religious, though one of my friends is and she’s clearly becoming a bad influence. Mara noted a subtle change in tone that suggested deep affection for that bad influence.

Yes, I will sometimes set you to tasks that you find distasteful now, but it will never be done with no care. I will not tell you that, when it comes to those distasteful things, that I will never benefit, but I will never be the only one that does. It will be for something greater, too.

“Like using us to undo the damage you’ve done?”

There was a pause again, this one drawing into something so long that it made Mara wonder if she was still listening. There’s truth there. The voice in her head seemed to honor that idea. We all use the tools at our disposal to make our way. I must say that you are surprisingly astute for a barmaid.

She snickered. “Because I’m a barmaid. I listen to people lie to themselves and each other all night, every night, from, ‘I’m secretly sitting on a fortune,’ to, ‘By the Goddess, that’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.’”

Mara laughed at that and thought she’d heard Bryana do the same as she found a hefty rock and pitched it, a little pleased by the arc she got out of that one. “It won’t matter what I think of why you’re doing whatever it is anyway, will it?” It wasn’t quite a question in the face of already knowing Imir and Devin long enough to know the answer.

Her response was plain, No.

Another couple of rocks flew in silence. “So...when are you going to start whatever it is you do?”

Soon. There were a few more beats of silence as Bryana let the answer settle. You know what’s interesting to me?

The pile of good throwing rocks was dwindling so she bent at the waist looking around to find some more. “What?”

That, in the midst of the doubts, you haven’t asked me to release you.

“You wouldn’t anyway.”

Oh, I might. I’d like to think that, if nothing else, our little chat has proven that I’m not without a soul and sense of decency. If you convincingly begged and pleaded as you sobbed for me to let you go, I expect I would. Why not give it a try?

Mara watched the water flow, imagining it as something without a care, wondering how much like that she would actually be in the end.

Perhaps because, as afraid as you might be now that it’s in front of you, this is still something that you want.

Anger propelled another stone as much as anything else. “It is so insane.”

To want to be more is insane? Then there is no sanity in the world and there never was. If we did not wish to be more, there would be no growth; no society. You took my hand because you wish to be more. You fear the price to pay and I understand. Much will change for you. You have seen that with Devin and Imir, and it is a step, but I hope that you have also seen that they do indeed have a life that is their own and, with it, there is a peace that those not like them will never know.

You will live the extraordinary life that you hunger for. It will be very different for you, but it will still be a life as you understand it now.

“What of my family?” She felt shame at the fact that she was so anxious not to become like them that she was on the cusp of abandoning them without as much thought as she felt like she was supposed to have given them.

Imir and Devin had no family to take them from, so it has not been something I’ve had to concern myself with. Do you wish to forget them? It can be as if you never knew them at all.

Mara hung her head in contemplation. There was so much of her youth that she still carried, and not in a good way, but most of that was circumstance, much of which was beyond their control. They were good people despite the flaws that scarred and shaped her that she hated. They were good people that loved her, and she loved them. It seemed wrong to just forget them as though they never mattered to her. “No, but how...”

Magic is a powerful force and offers solutions to a great many problems. You need not concern yourself with the details. You will be changed, yes, but I give you my word that the life you are left with that is still yours will include them in some way.

She sighed. “Guess I have to trust you on that.”

You can. If you are here, and you are. If you have chosen the path that makes you mine, and you have, it makes no real sense to make a promise to you that I do not intend to keep when, soon, I could simply wipe away your cares about them at all.

“I suppose...I suppose I’m wondering why you just don’t. Whatever you might do about that, it seems like the easiest thing is to just...” She ended the thought with a quick wooshing sound.

It would be. And you are most likely the first and last to enter my service with ties like that to the world, as, making accommodations for many beyond one would create great difficulties when it comes to the work, but you have offered yourself willingly and, the voice in her head turned unmistakably melancholy, we have met at a time when I especially cannot bring myself to part a mother from her daughter.

Mara didn’t understand the details, but the emotion she heard within them left her with some faith in the sincerity of the words. She rose and began her walk back to the cabin, unsure of what she’d do when she got there or what would happen, but she was out of rocks anyway.

I’m glad we’re having this talk, Mara. It’s beneficial.

“Oh?”

Well, since you did come to me willingly, I am happy for the opportunity to make the transition easier.

That didn’t seem like that was all their was to it. “And?”

And all of this anxiety and emotional upheaval is resistance in its own way and it’s easier to smooth all of that away if it’s on the surface.

She headed back to the cabin the way she came, feeling the need to ask whatever came to mind for as long as she could, even though she was already fairly sure of the answer. “Not raising an army then?”

Bryana laughed softly at the idea. Armies are cumbersome and costly. And even General Jaye would tell you that the right one person, at the right place, and at the right time, can matter more than ten thousand men and women. Triads are useful amongst mages. One acts with, not one backup, but two. I had considered creating one since Imir, but I believed it would take time to find the right candidates. Imir brought to me a willing Devin, and, you will complete the set.

“Like your personal collection?”

We’ll talk again soon.

Sensing the finality of the tone, Mara let it go and pressed onward as her anxieties crept back into the foreground. She’d read once that there was much uncertainty on the path to insanity, but, once reached, insanity became sane and then every step of the journey made sense.

Mara hoped that was true and not just its own little bit of insanity. With only a few trees between her and the small clearing upon which the cabin sat she could see that they were gone. The ax was in the stump and the wood was carefully collected into wood-framed, wire-mesh bin at the side of the cabin. To Mara, it looked both idyllic and ominous, almost like the too-good-to-be-true shelter that people in the more grotesque fairy tales just happened by in their hour of greatest need.

She didn’t realize how pleasantly warm the cabin was, or how cold she had been, until she’d stepped inside. She enjoyed the warmth surrounding her for a time before her ears caught the sound that a whorehouse barmaid and cleaner almost didn’t register anymore.

The sounds of fucking.

At any other time she could simply and almost literally switch off the sounds and go on about her day, but it was different here. The sighs and whimpers called to her, perhaps because those sounds were the only ones here now; no clinking of glasses, no boisterous storytelling, and no losing those particular sounds in a chorus of sounds of other people fucking. It was different, too, because the sounds had ferocity, sweetness, love, and passion. While she often heard ferocity, there wasn’t often room in that place for any of the others.

She took the few short steps to the doorway, her hand on the frame, then took the sight in. Imir and Devin were completely nude, their hands roaming one another. Their bodies were nothing short of sculpted as if by the greatest of artists. Every muscle was effortlessly defined, and, when they moved, the shadows played about those bodies to make it look even more like an artistic vision of two perfectly beautiful women making love even as they fucked like wild animals.

And the act before here eyes was absolutely a synthesis of that. Devin’s blond hair covered Imir’s right breast, not even trying to be quiet when it came to sucking that nipple as Imir’s hands touched and nails dragged the parts of her shoulders and back that she could reach while arching her own back at the sensation of Devin at her breast. Devin’s hand cupped itself firmly under her ass as she began to kiss her way down and Imir issued a plaintive command. “Eat me.”

“Soon, my heart,” she whispered. “Not that I need to eat you to make you cum, do I.”

This time there was more command. “Eat me.”

She rolled herself atop Devin and, as she stretched, Mara could see the length of her body and her large teardrop breasts with nipples darker than her already dusky skin, resting herself on Devin’s chest, giving the barmaid a look at Devin’s smaller breasts, large enough to add a curve to her shape and a bit more to spare as her hands reached up to slide under her thick black hair at the base of her skull.

They both knew what was coming and they smiled at one another a smile that Mara saw as the expression of two people deeply in love. It was playful, and warm, and, in it’s own way, the most truly human she’d seen them look. “All I need do is this, my love.” She let her nails gently massage Imir at the hairline and Devin’s grin reappeared as Imir released a full-body shiver so that even her toes twitched. “All I need to do is remind you of Mistress petting you.”

At the mention of Mistress, Imir moaned almost helplessly, eyes closing as those fingers went through her hair, slowly and gently, Devin wanting her to feel every moment of it.

Becoming the center of one’s world means that they do tend to fetishize you, but there are worse things to have happen to you, and it does make being with them an added joy.

“I know you love that more than almost anything, my darling. Remembering Her in your mind, Her fingers sliding Her power into your brain like that, licking Her pussy while She took you.”

Mara was quiet, afraid of ruining their moment “You just use them?”

Use them? I’m not directing what they say or do now. Does it look or sound like I would have to direct them to get them to make love to me? I’m responsible for them and what they do. Most of their lives they are gentle, and they are always beautiful. Of course there are times when I want them, and to show my affection for them.

The sound of Bryana’s voice was one of content resignation. Then there is the simple matter that I am mortal. If you could resist an attractive soul clamoring for even the faintest touch from you, you are of stronger stock than most.

An exceptionally sharp whimper from Imir bought Mara back to the scene, seeing her hips writhe and twist as though literally being fucked while Devin’s fair fingers could be seen caressing and moving between thick waves of hair as dark as a moonless night.

“Inside us; always inside us,” Devin purred to Imir. “Always part of us, even by just being who She made us.”

Mara wasn’t one to be easily impressed by scenes of sex because, honestly, she had seen rich men pay for tangles of bodies that looked like a mass of snakes twisting and turning on one another, but she looked on as Imir fucked herself with her own thoughts and, but she couldn’t stop watching her pussy helplessly let droplets of arousal fall. “They just...live in enthrallment of you?”

Me, she began, because mine, and, as we discussed, fetish. And they live enthralled with one another.

“Her slave. Her thing.”

At Devin’s words, Imir seemed on the edge of a precipice with nothing but shrieking pleasure below. With speed so sudden that Mara surrendered to a small start, Devin flipped Imir onto her back and hooked her arms around the darker woman’s thighs, holding her slightly above the bed before her eyes focused intently on Imir and her tongue licked as though those droplets of moisture were the only ones to be had anywhere. Imir moaned wantonly, getting what she’d demanded only after her mind was primed with the only thing she loved more than Devin.

Her dreamy eyes found some focus again at the sight of the bracelet, following it with them to the rest of Mara. Mistress wanted her for Her purposes. Mistress meant for her to become as they became. She was just beginning her journey, but it didn’t matter because there was only one end. She stretched her arm over the edge of the bed towards her. “Come, sister. Let me show you how much I love you .”

She looked at the proffered hand. There was temptation there. She looked down at the bracelet on her own wrist. She could feel it now. She could feel power running from it through her body and she took an uncertain half-step back. It was happening now, that much was clear and fear welled up within her. Before now, talk of loss and gain was abstract, but the moment was at hand and in that moment all there was was a fear of loss.

It’s all right. Feel it, Mara. Bring the fear forth and bring the uncertainty with it. Bring your life of cowardice and fear. Bring it so that we may know one another.

Mara was uncertain who she was speaking to in that moment; perhaps to both of them at once. “You don’t know me. You can’t love me.”

Imir wasn’t hurt by the comment, but she was wounded by the pain her sister was enduring. “I do love you, Mara. You are my sister. We are sisters in Her service, and, while I love Her above all others, my sisters are just beneath. Even so...” She closed her eyes and panted to indulge for a moment as Devin began to actively nurse her clit, “I swear to you that those are towering heights indeed.”

She does love you. I gave them one another so that they would still be human in the most important way possible. I told you that I did not want machines; empty slaves. Have you go through the motions of life without living it and feeling it long enough so that you forget things like love and tenderness, your soul will die and machines are all that will remain. And we must know one another so that I may know how to best change you and so that you may have direction when I do not direct you.

Mara felt confusion as a weight in her skull. “What does that even mean?”

“Come, sister,” Imir coaxed.

You’ll know, Bryana promised.

“Come share in our love and the love we have for those she commands us to love, and those that She cherishes.”

Bryana’s words meant nothing anyway and less than nothing in this increasingly foggy spiral. “What does…? Tell me….”

Imir misunderstood and answered accordingly as Devin began to kiss her way up that artisan-sculpted belly, seeing no need to speak, choosing instead to focus on loving her love. “If Mistress commands that we fuck, we fuck. And sometimes her mate likes to visit us wherever we might be.” Devin was finally eye to eye with Imir and they kissed deeply, with Mara being able to see their tongues entwine an instant before their lips met. When the kiss finally broke with a parting brush of lips, Devin finally found the urge to speak with a heated whisper. “I do miss him.”

“He will come when he can.”

“Then he will cum frequently.”

Imir smiled at the quip and kissed her again, still tasting her juices from the other.

“Like whores,” Mara whispered. Turning toward the door was a dizzying event. Her skin tingled all over now. She touched the silver at her wrist and she could feel the power almost vibrating against her skin when she did. She tried half-heartedly to pull it free of her, with no result. Anger and fear vaulted her forward through the door. “They’re really just whores.”

She stumbled off the porch, and the world around her lost cohesion for a moment before she found herself on her knees in the powdery snow, heedless of the chill. Her hands went to either side of her head, pushing, as if to try to push the tingling sensation from her brain that felt like an ever growing number of tiny sparks against her soft mind.

Release your fears.

“Goddess. Fuck. I traded one brothel for another.”

In a sense, I suppose that’s true, Bryana said honestly. You are tools. Do you think I simply make mine everyone I deal with or need something from? Do you think I threaten them all with death unless they comply? Some do not need or want money. Some would rather have an hour or a night with a woman of beauty. When that happens, there will be you to be that thing of beauty for them.

My mate is special to me, so he is to them. Yes. He visits as he pleases. Yes. When he does, she said with loving resignation to his nature, they seem to spend the majority of their time with their legs open at his pleasure, but it is their pleasure. I cherish him with my whole heart and so do they. What I love, they love.

See it and know it.

Each spark into her brain now seemed to carry its own image, following its own pathway to her mind’s eye where they all clamored for her attention, creating a dull pain behind her eyes as the image of her knees in the snow competed with them for dominance, causing her to close her eyes to flee from the pain and vertigo.

She saw herself walking walking perfectly manicured gardens with that man of shorter stature that he made up for with sheer power. She felt kisses that, after what must be thousands now, still made her heart beat just a little faster because there was always acceptance and love in those intimate touches. Mara felt it as though it were her and her fears began to quiet within her mind and heart.

The voice in her mind was stronger now, making itself heard and felt over the frenzy in her mind. What I cherish, they cherish.

She saw herself with Neral Jaye, leader of the combined military forces of Erette as they laughed together at a royal dining table while trading quick-witted, rapid fire barbs in an attempt to render the other speechless while the queen herself watched in amusement as some of the members of the other great Houses looked shocked and bewildered, laughed with the queen, or tried their best not to. Neral’s dark brown eyes were so playful. Love was in infinite pool. That one loved one did not mean that one loved another less. That was true of Neral. There was a sense of indebtedness with it. There was a sense of protectiveness that went beyond what she felt for her other, but the depth of need, passion, and love was just as infinite in its own right.

What I cherish, they cherish.

She began to feel it. It was so powerful a sensation that she gasped and lurched forward, one hand clawing into the snow to brace her as she gasped. All Bryana’s outward poise, calm resolve, and iron will masked the depth of her feelings for those she loved. Her heart filled with it. She could feel it as Bryana felt it. Her heart and spirit lifted with it. Her body was alive for it.

Her mind played before her Bryana’s lovemaking; a tangle of limbs between the man and woman she placed above so much, herself included. It was as animal and wild as anything Mara had seen the animals pay nearly a year’s salary to see, from Neral pulling Bryana to her pussy by the hair with Bryana so anxious to feast herself that all she could do in response to the pain was grunt and heave as she buried herself between the soldier’s legs to lick in all the ways she knew Neral loved, coiling her magic from tongue to clit just to know that it would make Neral cry from the pleasure. Bryana wanted her to feel that good and more because the one that loved her without hesitation or reservation as she loved that one deserved all that joy and more.

Tears fell from Mara and into the snow.

What I cherish, they cherish.

She saw Mistress, almost a Goddess herself, wanton as any whore, with her heels on Deres’s powerful shoulders, feeling full of his girth, seeing in his eyes the pleasure she was overwhelming him with, and all she had to do was rest her legs on his shoulders and...be willing, watching Neral over his shoulder, whispering filth into his ear as she held his ass in both her hands, fucking Bryana vicariously.

What I cherish...

“…they cherish,” she whispered.

Devin called to her, She does not have to command us in that, sister. Do you see? She could and we would obey because we are Hers, but he comes hungry and in need of our charms and, yes, we writhe and fuck at his whim, but it is because we love him.

She felt that, too, growing and spreading within her like a thick sweet, gooey syrup. She is within us. What she cherishes...

Her breath calmed and her mind began to still, truth beginning to flow with the certainty of that stream in the distance. “We cherish.” With those words came a flood of images of lewd tenderness that Deres had had with each of them, as well as the quieter moments where he wanted to know all about who they simultaneously were and used to be.

Mara knew Bryana’s demeanor masked a need and a passion to do right more often than not and make the world better where and how she could without quite so much arrogance to think that she could reshape all of it, and intellect enough to know that she didn’t know everything, so she shouldn’t try.

She reshapes your heart and mind to teach you how you should always be so that you know how to be in those times She does not direct us.

Mara blinked as, with each passing second, she understood more and more completely. It was why she felt Bryana’s love, righteousness and, determination. It’s why her mind saw the things she saw, and heard, and felt the things she did. Bryana’s being slowly burned itself into her mind and settled in, those parts of Mara that they settled over were consumed; snuffed out, and their remnants floating to nothing like wisps of smoke in the wind.

There was Mara, but there was also Bryana entwined with her. She knew what Bryana would want her to do and acting contrary to that was like disobeying herself and the Goddess at once. She knew what Bryana would think, and do, and feel, and she knew with ever greater certainty that she would be an added force for Her will in the world.

You understand now?

She felt returned to herself in many ways, but Bryana was there, weaving herself into every bit of who she was, burning away her doubts, fears, and all of her will that Bryana didn’t need for her to have. “Y-Yes, Mistress.” Not only was there an imprint of Her being on Mara’s mind, she could feel energy, thought, and will pass between her, Bryana, and the other women now as though, on a primal level, they were one being. Mistress had given her more than Mara could have dreamed already and she could feel those bonds and changes continue even now. In many ways she was still Mara, but Bryana lived in her mind now. In some ways she was Her.

Do you understand now how important you are and how much I value you?

“Yes, Mistress. I do.”

Tell me how you understand that.

Her voice was sure. “I know you now. You live within me and will forever.” She looked down at her hand in the snow, pink now from a touch of frostbite. She decided it didn’t matter, nor did the pain that came from it of the fact that she had been holding herself up on that one arm for too long now.

I do. You are my tools, but also my responsibility and my charge. I would not send myself into danger on a whim.

A thought occurred to Mara that amused her. Bryana sensed it, and could have looked upon it as she saw fit, but letting her hear her own resolve helped the shaping. What’s so funny?

“I wasn’t wrong when I stumbled into the snow. I am your whore.”

There was a brief pause and the response had with it a tinge of good humor, I suppose you are. Don’t worry, Mara, I won’t have you working brothels with pigs...unless it’s for some greater good in some way.

Mara thought of taking on man after, no matter how animal, unkempt, or simply filthy, and doing so no matter what they asked her to do and it gave her contentment and pride to do it because of who commanded her to. She loved Mistress completely. She trusted completely. Nothing that would have been asked of her would be too much. “The why doesn’t matter to me, Mistress.”

Even so, it matters to me.

And that was why Mara loved her.

Imir seemed both joyous and aroused. You understand now, Mara. You understand what we are to her and to each other. Come to us. Let us adore you.

There is still much to be done. Go play with your sisters.

The thought of being with them excited her almost as much as being able to respond to Her first command, “Yes, Mistress.”

She stepped back into the cabin, closing the door behind her, and moved in two strides to the doorway to see Imir atop Devin, kissing as she tugged lewdly on her right nipple, pulling it upward so that Devin would squeak in her mouth.

Come, sister. Their voices were in perfect unison. Join us here in body as you have in spirit.

She knew them. They were open to her and she knew them. Devin had been taken from nothing. In her own way she had been less than Mara. Devin hadn’t even had family to rely upon or to be with before Mistress found her. And Imir’s own dark history within her mind would have made the old Mara recoil, but, whatever any of them were before was meaningless now in the face of what they were now.

Her heart sang as they broke their embrace to come to her when she put one knee down on the bed. Juices found their own paths down her thighs as Devin pulled her dress over her head while Imir simply tore away the slip beneath to expose those full breasts to her mouth. Mara’s thighs shook.

The bedroom was warm, but, paired with the heat within her, it was blissfully unbearable, until she looked down and saw herself. She saw large breasts that sagged a little too much with a belly that did the same. She didn’t know what hurt her more in the moment, where her body held on to its bit of extra weight or where it let go and jiggled where it shouldn’t. Before today, she knew she wasn’t anywhere close to perfect and had sort of made peace with that, but she looked at it now compared to the bodies of the women so honestly anxious to make love to her and, for the first time, she hated the vessel the Goddess created for her to travel life, with every flaw was amplified compared to the angels with her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to both of them and to no one.

“For what?” Devin wanted to know. Sometimes they thought to one another. Sometimes they voiced. Sometimes they did both in the same exchange.

She felt trapped by her body, and like it didn’t belong to her. Indeed, she actively hated it. “I am disgusting.”

“You are not,” Imir told her with the certainty of Mistress’s command. “She will choose how you will serve Her. If she chooses to change nothing. you will still be beautiful and perfect because you are my sister in Her service and I love you. Know it. Feel it.”

Her mind opened and the pure, honest, adoration from both of them nearly made her faint. As it was, her heart melted and that heat that spread to her pussy. Her self-judgment washed away in an instant and she grabbed Imir by the hair and kissed her deeply. Imir returned the ferocity, reminding herself to tread carefully as she wrapped her arms around the other, lest she use strength an unchanged body couldn’t handle and she accidentally hurt her. The thought of doing so led to even a bit more caution on her part.

They were standing on their knees together kissing passionately and, when Devin slipped two fingers easily between Mara’s wet folds, Imir tasted another whimper. The intensity swept Mara along and she rode that current, drawing strength from it. An image came to her and she knew it as one that Mistress chose to share when She took Imir. It came back to her with crystal clarity, almost as she lived it herself. It was dominant and submissive. It was sexy and hot. It was loving in its own way. It was all those things and something within her demanded that she live it, like an itch that demanded to be scratched.

Her fingers wove their way through Imir’s lush hair, with Mara finding herself in envy of its silky feel, her fingertips lovingly caressing the flesh beneath. Mara’s touch became more sure and insistent as Imir slowly surrendered. “I saw Mistress do this to you when I followed you here. Did you cum? Did you cum just from that?” Mara’s breath caught as Devin’s fingers became more insistent and the very act of thinking of Her brought Mara closer.

“She did,” Devin said, in a tone that suggested that she was playfully tattling on the other. “I don’t think she could resist doing so even if She commanded it.”

Imir began to pant helplessly, having that touch upon her now and thinking of Mistress. Even so, there was some fight in her voice at the idea that she could somehow resist what Mistress wished. “I would...would...I would obey.” She cried out then as an orgasm wracked her to the point of near delirium. Her vision swam and all there was was the feeling of loving fingers. Imir trusted and followed those loving fingers from the bed and, once a shred of coherence returned she found herself bringing her gaze upward from her place between Mara’s legs, a meaty, dripping pussy with a prominent clit before her that demanded to be licked.

“Her fingers working into your mind; Her will and Her power. We remember that.” She looked between her thick thighs and she was still disgusted at the difference between them yet, in the moment, she was undeniably turned on by it. Here it was that, thanks to Her, Mara had this perfect thing at her bare feet, breath at her pussy, waiting to please. “Remember it through me. Do you love me as I love you?”

She closed her eyes and immersed herself in the physical feelings and emotional rush. “Feel what I feel at your whim and know the answer. I love you, sister.”

“If you love me, lick me like you licked Her that night She took you. Let me feel what She felt.”

Imir stuck her tongue out, saliva dripping to the floor like a starving dog before she drove it between those folds to pull out more nectar before beginning to slather that pussy with her tongue. Mara was already shaking as if in orgasm but she knew this was but a plateau. Devin pressed behind her, hands mauling Mara’s breasts and her mouth nibbling on Mara’s neck. Imir licked like she was surrendered to the irresistible. When she pulled back seemingly to decide the next path of attack she wanted to take Mara could see more saliva drip to the floor. It was so deliciously obscene that she shuddered at the sight.

So much so that the coherence of her mind only survived until the first seconds of Imir’s third attack before Imir lifted her to heights of pleasure that blotted out all else.

To Be Continued...