The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The Tower was several hundred feet tall at least, and from my room at the top I could see for miles; the whole vast landscape of Gargaz’s kingdom was laid out before me.

What remained of it, at least.

The Great Designer would have been appalled. There was devastation everywhere, and His works were in chaos. Plumes of black smoke were pouring from the secondary castles on the far horizon, and even at this distance I could see the flashes of magical weaponry as the Strangers tried to fight their way grimly north.

Did the Strangers actually enjoy this war, I wondered? Who could enjoy such carnage?

In the middle distance, swathes of fire, and I discerned piles of bodies—Orcs and men alike all jumbled together in vast fleshy heaps. Ten miles away, by the outer walls, a small herd of Orcs had been cornered, Strangers on all sides. As the poor creatures tried to escape, one by one they soundlessly fell. I couldn’t watch.

There were skirmishes just outside the inner walls. A few Strangers had broken through and were clashing with the Dragon-Men. I watched a Stranger caught in their breath burst into flames and disappear, and to my shame I rejoiced. Another Stranger had some kind of magical fire-repelling shield, but with two against one there was no way this alone could save him. The Dragon-Men took their time, toying with the Stranger like a cat with a lame mouse, incinerating first one limb, then another, a third, a fourth. The Stranger’s stumped torso writhed grotesquely on the blackened ground, shrieking, before finally, mercifully vanishing. The Dragon-Men twisted their great scaly heads this way and that, sniffing the air for more prey.

The Forest of Thorns lay quiet all around, a pool of darkness five dense miles in any direction. A few birds flew over it, taking care not to get too close to the branches. No barrier at all, Gargaz had said. I still found this hard to believe.

Yet as I watched, a Stranger simply stepped out of the Forest into the clearing by the gatehouse, as nonchalantly as if he’d been taking a pleasant afternoon stroll, and calmly dumped the lifeless body of a Black Unicorn on the ground. He brushed off his hands, seemingly completely unscathed. The Stranger looked around, paused, and strode purposefully towards the mighty iron gate.

Normally the Strangers, even if lucky enough to have negotiated the Forest, struggled with this; but the gate opened to him easily. He must have found some kind of magic key, I guessed.

A frisson of terror. He was here. Even at distance, I could see the Stranger was laden with swords and daggers and other weaponry I couldn’t recognise. Far below I heard the shouts of women, a rising hubbub. Trembling, I turned away from the window, lay down on the bed and put the pillow over my head. Whatever might happen next, with the Warrior Women, I couldn’t bear to see.

There is a story the Algori tell to lull the children of the World to sleep.

Once upon a time there was an evil king. One day, when his equally fierce and indomitable queen was away at war, his eyes fell on a young maiden, and because he was the king, and evil, and used to getting everything he wanted, he decided that he would have her, and that was that.

The maiden’s father was unhappy about this, so the king killed him with an axe. The maiden’s mother objected in the shrillest possible tone, so the king cut out her tongue and had her sent to the castle’s kitchens as a slave. The maiden’s brothers rose up against the king, and were summarily despatched into a Fire Pit.

The maiden’s true love was clever, a bookish young man, and he had no intention of dying. “You are the king,” he said, “and I cannot stand in your way. Take her with my blessing.”

“I don’t need your blessing,” said the king, “but thanks anyway.”

The maiden cried bitterly to think that her true love had forsaken her, as she was carried off to the castle. There, in the tower where she was held, she pined for her lost lover.

Of course, she was wrong. The bookish young man knew what he needed to do, even though there were no Algori to help him. A few days passed, and by then he had worked it all out. So the young man went to the castle, to speak to the evil king. He had a proposition, he said, regarding the captured maiden.

“What proposition?” roared the king, unused to being bargained with.

“A simple proposition,” said the young man. “I will bring you a visitor—a woman more beautiful still—and if you admit that this woman is more beautiful than the maiden you hold, you will keep the woman I bring you and let my beloved go.”

“Is that all? Why don’t I just keep both?” said the king.

“Trust me. You won’t want to.”

The next day, the young man returned with a visitor, a woman. Her face was cloaked. The two entered the king’s throne room.

“Your majesty,” said the young man, with a flourish. “I present to you the most beautiful woman in the world.” The woman threw back the hood of her cloak, and looked at the king. She smiled in greeting. The king did not smile. He looked back at her, frowning, and began to redden with anger. He leapt from his thrown, fists clenched in fury.

“What is this trickery?” roared the king. “You promised me the most beautiful—“

At this the woman raised her proud chin and stared at him with eyes like blue ice. “Yes, your majesty?”

The king suddenly stopped in his tracks, and the blood seemed to drain from his face. He slumped back on his throne, hands trembling, and sighed. “Yes. As I was just saying,” he muttered, “well done. You have indeed delivered the most beautiful woman in the world, beside which all others are eclipsed; the love beyond imagining, the water of life, the flower that shames roses.

“Welcome back, fair and lovely queen.”

Looking down from the Tower, I wished with all my heart that I was in a different story altogether. Perhaps a bookish young man would come to my rescue? It seemed unlikely. Or perhaps the fight would not happen. Perhaps Gargaz would use one of his clever mind-tricks on the Stranger, and perhaps this time it would work.

The historians amongst the Algori are particularly fond of the story of the war that was not a war. Some of it may even be true, they say.

It was long before the Strangers came, of course. There was an invading army coming from the south. Gargaz gathered his army around him, and he spoke. “We are at war, and we will win. But no blood will be shed.”

His men looked at each other, confused. How could there be war without killing? It was surely inevitable. And how could there be victory without bloodshed? “Have faith,” said Gargaz.

“When do we fight?”

“We don’t fight. We just watch.”

The men assembled on the castle walls, looking out. In the distance, the visiting armies of the south began to appear, thousands of men. The Forest of Thorns lay quiet before them, eerily still.

In the fields beyond the Forest of Thorns, women began to appear from their hiding places; first a few, then scores, then hundreds. The invading army paused before them, uncertain. The women began to search through the ranks of soldiers, this way and that; and each of the women had soon latched onto a particular soldier. From the battlements, Gargaz’s men watched through their spyglasses as the women berated the men, begged them, clung to them, embraced them, kissed them.

All purpose seemed to leave the army. At length, they saw the southern general approaching. He did not attempt to breach the Forest of Thorns. He raised his sword in surrender, turned away, and began the long ride back south.

“While the southerners left their homes to head this way,” explained Gargaz, “I went with a small force to their homeland. Only their women were left. The women were confused and angry. ‘What is this war?’ they said. ‘When will our men return? Will they ever return?’ I did not reassure them. I told the women that if they wanted to see their menfolk again, they’d better come with me; otherwise they may feel free to inspect their broken corpses at a later date, because I would slaughter them all. I gave the women some visions to help things along.”

“What visions?” piped up one of the soldiers.

“Visions of a future,” said Gargaz. “Imagine a woman, waiting endlessly for her lover to return from war. He never does. None of them do. There are no men left at all. She sleeps alone in the cold and dark. All too soon, her best years are behind her. She has to do all the work her man once did, and her own too. There is no love. Lovely young daughters wither on the vine, unmarried. No children are born. Visions of hell that will never leave them now. And the simple alternative.”

His men murmured assent, knowing this to be true.

“They took little persuading, after seeing all that.”

The southern armies never returned, and the World has been peaceful ever since. Until now, of course.

There are many tales like this. We all know the childhood stories of clever Hans and the evil king. We all know the legends of Gargaz and his armies, and his subtle control over the volitions of men and women alike, his ever-surprising aptitude for the unknown weapons of the mind.

If only the stories were real. If only fate was so kind in the real World. If only it was so easy to defeat the Strangers, with a sleight of hand or a clever trick of the mind. If only Gargaz could control them as easily as he controls me. If only nobody needed to die. But all the Strangers know is violence and terror, and they keep on coming.

The Algori believe they will never, ever stop.