The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Vale’s head twitched and with the stiffness of that movement came pain. And with that pain came the opening of her eyes. There was a moment’s disorientation as she lay on her side, she tried to place where she was. Memory coming back to her from the day and night before filled in many of the pieces, but not all, like a book from long ago where she could remember scenes that she’d visualized and how they made her feel. She clearly remembered meeting Solos and the room of writhing women. Then heat burning her mind from the inside. Then fear because she felt she might never come back from that and that she might not want to. Then rage. Then fire that blinded her.

It all seemed a dream that she woke to know was real because she still felt the power of the talisman in her mind, diminished though it was. Even now the thoughts of what Solos wanted to be reverberated within her mind, tempting and teasing, and demanding that she tame herself for it. But the walls she had erected around the core of her being held. Vale also remembered bits of here, but the truth of that was more physical. There were the lingering sensations between her legs and her backside still stung. The wool of the blanket she was covered in prickled her bare skin and she debated for a moment to cover herself with it long enough to find her clothes. It’s not as if she hasn’t already seen it.

That decision made, she pushed herself up, ignoring the stiffness throughout and stood. She turned and saw her clothes in a neat pile behind her and Sylanna at one end of the cot, eyes closed, deep in weaving over a body. The veil she had in place since the beginning of their journey together restored. The presence of the stranger startled her, and the sharp intake of breath that followed drew a response from Sylanna who didn’t open her eyes, but her brows twitched.

“Who is that?”

Sylanna told the story as Vale dressed, pleased to have something largely matter-of-fact to focus on. The story was short though, so, when that was done, the silence that was inevitable set in. Ordinarily, Sylanna relished that peace, but now all she heard were the whispers of ghosts.

“Will she be all right?”

“Yes, though she needs better food than what’s here eventually.” She opened her eyes and met the other’s, hoping to remain clinical. “How are you? You seem quite lucid.”

She measured herself again. “Better. I still feel it. The talisman, I mean.”

“I can help you clear it.”

“No,” she said more quickly than she’d intended before adding. “It’s manageable. He didn’t...get the hold he wanted, but it’s powerful. The distance helps. That he didn’t get the grip he wanted helps.”

“Wanted for what purpose?”

She spoke, avoiding Sylanna’s gaze as she concerned herself with drinking her fill of their water and eating some of their own stores while treating herself to a bit of the hardtack and honey. “The man we sought is dead. I haven’t seen the body, but I have no reason to doubt it. I suspect it was punishment for what he’d done.” She then relayed the rest of the story, from Delvine to Vale’s own violation and escape.

“You did well,” Sylanna said with honest respect.

“Better than you expected?”

“Yes.”

Vale failed to entirely hide her amusement at the honesty. Or perhaps it was just the familiarity of it. “Thank you.”

“So he wishes to use the magic to expand his influence since he can’t use the woman. But it should be cleared from you. Such magic is insidious, especially if allowed to linger. It corrupted this Kel, and may do the same to you even in the diminished state.”

She thought about it before shaking her head. “If I touch it, it reminds me of how he wants me to be and what he wants me to do. I will need it when I go back.”

“Go back? In your current state? Absolutely not. I will not return to the guild to tell those that already have no use for me that I let their favorite die, be turned into a vegetable, or enslaved. He will be able to link directly to your mind. I believe I have the skill to take it from him, and that seems the easiest course. It only risks me and he doesn’t grasp what he has.”

She drank a last swallow and rose, wiping crumbs from herself. “He’ll feel that the necklace has a connection to me, and if I play the role he’d have me play, it should keep him from trying to melt me again like the last time, so it’s less risky for us both. It’s the only way I can think of to be fairly certain to get close to it. Do you have a better idea than ‘sneak in and hope for the best?’”

“Skip the sneaking part, burn the place down if it’s not already, and take it, but that’s clearly not what you have in mind.”

“I’m not opposed to that right now, but it’s the last resort. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want any of what he...promised...to happen to me, but in the end it’s just you and me right now and we can keep this between us. If we run, he either chases us or does what he wants to do and when we come back with help, the mess is that much worse. What we do, we have to do now.”

Vale was strong indeed. “You have a plan?”

“I believe so,” she said, looking at the sleeping form across from her. “I will go in directly while you sow confusion. But much depends on the strength of your witch’s brews.”

“Then we will succeed.”

Just now she found Sylanna’s arrogance a source of deep comfort. “Of course you would be so sure.”

Her haughtiness returned in force. “I know what I can do.”

“When you don’t even know what I will ask of you?”

She shrugged dismissively. “I doubt your mind could conceive of something I could not accomplish.”

She shook her head with resignation and the hint of a smile. “You are such a bitch.”

After a bit of laughter silence fell again and Sylanna chose the moment as probably the last one that would find Vale agreeable for some time so she spoke quickly. “Regarding last night, there is something that I must...”

“No,” she snapped.

Sylanna fell silent at once, the feeling she wished to express only amplified by the harshness of that single word. “Of course.”

Vale immediately regretted the tone at seeing the way that she recoiled. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to snap that way. I truly did not. Whatever you have to tell me can wait until we finish this, but we have no time for distractions.”

“Of course.” The words were firm this time. Vale was correct. They both needed to be focused. Now was not the time unburden herself to salve her own guilt.

She drew closer to Sylanna and took her hand firmly. “If you have to do something….” One of Vale’s gifts was that she rarely had to grope for words, but she found that she did so now. “If this goes poorly, and somehow it’s me against you, and you have to do what you have to do. Or if I end up like Delvine and you have to do what I don’t think I have to tell you that I will want you to do in that case, know that there is nothing to forgive and all I ask is that you not allow me to haunt you.”

“You, Denna Vale, would return as a shade anyway to speak to me of your forgiveness and love for all, and your hope so as to torment me with your sweetness.” She cleared her throat harshly. “But I will try my best to do as you ask.”

“Speak your plan.”

There were half a dozen guards at the closed gates now, all of them there with little sleep after spending hours putting out the fire, the barks of Adger and Solos still echoing in their ears. For a short time, it looked like the whole place might go up, but a shift of wind and some luck limited the damage. They weren’t told what to prepare for beyond ‘anything,’ so, between that and the fire, they decided through the chatter amongst themselves that some of Solo’s enemies had struck and would do so again.

With that in mind, they were expecting a dozen or more men to rampage towards the gate, not a single horse carrying a two women whose combined powers couldn’t overwhelm a beggar on the road. “Tell Lord Solos that Denna Vale needs him,” the woman said, putting a slightly desperate edge to ‘needs.’

One of the guards responded while the others looked on, shifting their weight as the women drew closer, slightly paranoid with the warning and their fatigue. Fortunately, it didn’t have to be their problem, as the guard returned, pushing the door open the rest of the way. Taking the hint that entry had been granted, they opened both doors and they watched them pass.

The courtyard itself was empty now with the people having fled or keeping themselves inside to make their deals. The inner gates opened opposite them. With Solos stomping forward, Adger to his left and a step behind, and another dozen or so guards in shields, swords and leathers, they weren’t just ready for a fight, they were spoiling for one.

Vale looked around them. She had burned a hole in the roof directly above the entry and her gaze followed the areas where the fire jumped as it sought to feed, and tracked the wild scorch mark back to several kiosks that were now wood scrap and ash. “Yes, you look, woman. Look at what you’ve done here and answer why you would come back here, though you did save me the trouble of coming to look for you. While you’re at it, you might want to convince me as to why I shouldn’t kill you.”

Vale thinned the defenses between herself and the poison of the talisman within her. There was fear in doing so, of course, but far less than when she saw and felt it trying to power through her hours before. It was familiar to her now. She knew how it wanted to shape her to be. Bringing that closer to herself was its own danger. Her heart sped at the thought of it, her nerves coming alive she reflexively ground herself into her saddle.

The danger came in that she liked the feelings; all of them, and if he decided to drive it into her before she had intended to take it on, she knew she wouldn’t resist. She let the feelings and words he planted drive her. Suddenly hanging her head, she dismounted slowly, allowing the sleeping woman she carried to come forward to rest awkwardly over the mount.

And there she stood, head down and hands before her so that all could see that she wasn’t attempting to conjure. He towered over her and she took a small step back in response, remaining that way until she looked up, to show him the shame in her eyes before being so humiliated by it she found the ground again. Finally, gritting her teeth, she faced him. “I had to leave. I had to escape. I thought I had, but it won’t leave me, Lord, and I’m not healer enough to rid myself of what you put inside me.”

Close to her now, he could feel what he always felt around the sluts now. They were all more alike than not. He put his hand to her cheek and lifted it. “And what is that?”

She tried to look away, but he wouldn’t allow it. She breathed hard, thinking of the day she left her mother’s home to not only bring her to the edge of tears, but to keep her from dwelling on the sensations that spiked with repeating the words she could feel. “I’m half-tamed, Lord. I saw what you did to her. It terrified me in the moment and I lashed out and fled.”

“I tried to undo what you did to me and I can’t. The women you ruined, I see them in my mind and I’m wet. I...rub myself and it only takes the edge from a while. You can fix it. You promised you’d fix it If I helped you.” A flash of imagination filled her mind and her gaze drifted to between his legs, and she hoped that he saw it. You promised….”

Adger was incensed. “Do you think you can try to burn down everything Lord Solos has tried to build and all is forgiven just because you grovel?”

He had her. He knew it. There was nothing this damn thing couldn’t do for him. The power swelled. So did his ego. So did his cock. “Quiet, Adger. I wish to hear more of the little lady’s plea.”

“You promised that if I helped you, you’d... help me.”

“What’s the matter, girl? You need that good fucking?”

“Yes,” she admitted, blushing.

“I know,” he said in exaggerated sympathy. “Not much market for your type in my line of work either. I guess that leaves you pretty lonely, huh?”

“I need... everything you have inside me; whatever of the magic you will share, and of yourself. Fill me. Shape me. In return, I will do all I can to protect you and aid in your desires, until there is no other desire in me but that one.”

She took a step to him, hoping he would feel her own ties to the necklace more strongly, and that he would only see himself as bigger and stronger, and her as all the more frail and weak.“You have seen the power, Lord. You have seen magic destroy minds and turn them into Delvine. You have shaped minds yourself and felt it turn them into docile creatures agreeable to fucking endlessly at a whim.”

There is a useful middle in that. It is one where you use your power to chain others to your will. It is where you use your power to make your desires theirs as if it were always so, but you leave them so that they may walk, talk, obey, and think of their obedience always as they do so.”

His cock thickened at the thought of using his power. More. And more. There was no end to the reach his influence could have.

“I will teach you how to chain others so that they may not escape your magic by teaching you how to chain me.”

Lost in the temptation of that Adger’s voice buzzed in his ear like an insect. He turned from the plump little thing to the direction of the bug, “What?”

Adger’s fingers swept her hair back. “The slave you released, Lord.”

That caught his attention and he moved to get a good look at her, somewhat surprised to see her again at all.

“Found walking the woods in circles, half dead. She looked like she would have come from here. I healed what I could and thought I would return her to you as an apology. If it is not enough, tell me what I have to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Wake her,” he commanded.

“Yes, Lord.” She scurried over and drew a pattern over her forehead, stepping back once she saw the eyelids begin to flutter open.

Once they were and he was sure she was aware, he shoved her off the horse with a smile and both hands, sending her off the horse and in a full circle spin before she reached the ground. She crawled backwards quickly, frantically looking about. So crestfallen she was at the realization of her return that she wailed in frustration that only garnered laughter from the assembled guards.

“Not nearly so brave now, are you?”

She glared. “Fuck you.”

He laughed heartily. “Can’t catch a break, can you? Get caught up and end up here to begin with, get the only opportunity you ever had or ever will, and that fails, too.” He leaned down to be closer to her. “You know the worst part? You know the part that will eat at your guts worse than anything when you’re back your cell? I didn’t forget you at all, but I’ve had such a busy couple of days that I just didn’t care anymore.”

“What’s one slave? There will be slaves like running water, so if the cold didn’t kill you, so what? You were free when there would be three to replace you in a week or you were dead and there’s the same three to replace you in a week anyway.”

“But all that happens is you get caught. Again.” He stood tall. “As for fucking me? No. Though I might get you used to your new place by letting the guards pass you around awhile.”

“But, Lord,” Adger began carefully, “is this not a coincidence, too? That this mage just stumbles across our missing slave?”

“How far would she have gotten anyway? By The Void, why would she even go far? No clothes. No food. And all the snow she can drink until it freezes her all the faster. Her best chance would be to linger close and see if one of the merchants took pity on her or hid in the back of a wagon to see how far it would take her. I fully expected to have found her in an hour or two anyway.”

His eyes found Vale again. He saw the shame that he saw in many a proper woman who couldn’t give themselves to a vile beast that was everything their mothers warned them about and then some fast enough, then slink away. He saw the need in her eyes as he saw in theirs. And she spoke the truth when she said she had the power inside her. She was already his. “Coincidences sometimes happen. As yesterday shows, even coincidences that aren’t offers opportunity, if you have the skill.

He looked into Vale’s eyes, “And the power.”

Ani woke.

There was, for a moment, the same fear that now felt like it had always been a part of her, the fear that came with feeling completely disconnected from anything familiar. Her neck craned around quickly, taking in her surroundings. This was certainly better than most of the places she’d been and it lacked the sense of dread bleeding from the walls like every other place she’d been. It almost looked normal.

And she was alone. She hadn’t been alone for weeks; not for a moment, and not for anything. If there weren’t guards, there were the women in the same position she was in. But now she was alone. She was tired, but between the alone, and the warm, and the feeling better than she had in a long while, including being able to feel her toes, she rose from the cot and was immediately drawn to the letter on the table resting under a silver pendant with a hash mark depiction of a predatory cat. At the center of the table there were a collection of foodstuffs and a skein of water, while, draped over the chair in front of her, was a cloak.

Lifting the paper, allowing the jewelry to clink on the table, she began to read.

Ani,

You seemed to me, in our brief interaction, reasonably educated, so I am assuming that you can read this. If you can’t read, there should still be enough here for you to figure out what you need to do. First, you need to restore yourself, so eat and drink, but be sure that you leave something of the less perishable goods for others who will eventually follow, as is the custom. But do not linger here, as, if plans fail, the ones who took you will surely search this place. Or others at least as unsavory as those you left will come because that’s who places like this are for.

After that, take the horse and follow the map on the back to the house you will find at its end. Show them the pendant and tell them that you need help. They will set into motion what needs to be done. Someone will come. They will bear the same marks as the pendant on a piece of jewelry and on their bodies. If we do not meet you at that home before they arrive, tell them your story. Tell them that where you came from is where Sylanna and Vale went and that help is required. That will fully repay any debt owed.

Go with them and they will take you home, wherever that may be. If we do not meet again, know that we wish you well.

Sylanna

Ani wrapped herself in the durable, dark cloak and took the seat before putting the pendant around her neck. She wasn’t free quite yet. A hundred things could happen between here and there, but there was a place to go and a plan. Freedom was so close that she couldn’t bear to linger here another moment. She could not sit and have breakfast while the cage door was open.

She stuffed the inner pockets of the cloak with some of the food, grabbed the water, and bolted for her freedom.

Ani was in the firm grip of guards at each arm as she was led into the bowels of this place, Adger before her, seemingly leading the way, but it was in the way he walked, that hint of swagger that told her that he liked these little moments where it was all his and he could pretend that it was always so. He liked the power he had, and, while he might have wanted more, he wasn’t man enough to grab more, as Solos would surely kill him if he failed.

“Not much of an adventure, was it?” He snickered as he contemplated it. “Spinning around in circles all night only to be found by someone who actually wanted to be back here. I hope you enjoyed your taste of freedom, as it was your last.”

“I’ll escape from here before you know it,” she promised, struggling mightily against those that would confine her.

“You didn’t ‘escape’ here even once. You were let go.” He opened the door leading to the cells before turning to look at her with the same disdain that he looked at all of them. He could appraise them for their monetary worth, but he never saw them as particularly desirable beyond that. Connecting to them at all was a ridiculous notion. “And you’re back.”

“But I hope you don’t sell early,” he said loudly enough to get the women to press themselves to the bars to have a look and the guards put her before them. “See, ladies? There’s no escape. She wandered the woods and was found nearly dead by our healer. She wasn’t healed out of mercy. She was healed to show you that wishing for freedom is pointless. Make the best of things and things will be far less unpleasant.”

Turning on Ani again, in the better light, he noted the sallowness of her cheeks and hint of green under her eyes. “Not much of a healer, is she? You really don’t look well. Tsk, tsk, I do hope you don’t die before you learn your actual lesson,” with a cock of his head towards the cell, “and before they learn the lessons you can teach.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “And what lesson is that?”

“They will see you broken. Lord Solos wasn’t lying about passing you around as the guards’ toy. When they are off duty, they will line up here and take their fill, and one of two things will happen: man after man and day after day and they will either watch you give up and take them all on with apathy and routine, like a machine. Or they will watch you grow to like it.”

He shrugged out his own apathy. “Either way, valuable lesson learned.”

“There is another option.”

Adger almost felt sad. They were almost always like this at first, desperate to believe that they could beg or threaten their way to a change of fate. “Do tell.”

“I handle the problems in my own way.”

Senses were easily duped. It didn’t even take much skill with magic to do it. Give the mind just a little push and it saw what it wanted to see and even felt all the things it expected to feel. They were prepared for the weak struggles of before. They would have been overpowered anyway, but it hit that much harder when shock and surprise were added to the mix. She took the now free hand of the guard at her left, pivoted her body with it and flung him toward the wall that he met face first. There was a quick expression of surprise and pain, then nothing as he piled himself onto the floor.

Even before that finished happening, her left hand continued in an arc until it touched the other guard’s forehead where she clawed her grip on him, driving her command as much anger as magic, hissing into his face. “Sleeeeeep.”

His face didn’t even register surprise before his lids snapped shut and he crumpled to the floor.

Adger felt talons at his throat and was pushed into the bars so that his breath fled him. This time he was the one who struggled fruitlessly. He looked down at this woman whose gaze burned through him as so many others had, but this one, it was clear had more than dirty looks to offer. “What are you?”

“More than you will ever be,” she said with unabashed pride. “I see fear in your eyes. Do you like it? It’s something different when it’s someone else’s fear, isn’t it? I admit, I always sort of did like being on this side of things. You were right about me in one respect though, I am sort of not feeling well. I have been holding this in too long, but now you can help me.”

Her mouth opened and he watched her throat undulate as though working something up from deep within. She squeezed his neck, pinched his nose with the other hand and waited for the inevitable. Her hold was so tight he could scarcely squirm and, when he had no more breath to hold, he saw victory in her eyes as long threads of dark fluid sprayed from her mouth and into his propelled by her desire and her breath.

He grabbed her arm, trying with all his might to pull it from his throat, but she was immovable. He heard sounds of terror and panic, realizing that the sounds weren’t coming from him, though they seemed to understand what he felt. As the sick filled his lungs, his terror quieted until he hung limply. His breathing was ragged and crackling as were the thoughts in his mind, disjointed and separated from one another as if those veins of black were now there, too.

She waited until there was a certain glassiness in his eyes before she spoke. “Spread that for me. Everywhere. To everyone you see. You must. There is nothing more important to you.”

She let him go and Adger put his hand throat, trying to bring forth what was within. “What will you do?

The only thoughts that he could reach came with her voice. “Spread it. To everyone I see. I must.”

“Go. Now.”

He hurried away and Ani turned her attention to the women in the cell who struggled to press themselves further into the walls and spread out as much as possible so that perhaps they could avoid her attention, gasping when they watched Ani’s rag dress become just so much green and gray merchant’s finery. Jacket. Blouse. Slacks. Fine boots. When they tracked their eyes upward they saw someone completely different, a woman with long, wavy black hair and eyes as blue as the blouse.

“Say nothing. Do nothing that might cause me upset and you all may well have your freedom. If I have to come back because anyone decided to ingratiate themselves to their masters, I will, but if that happens,” she said, with a flash of her true face, which made some gasp in shock and some whimper while others froze, “I will be unhappy, and then so will you.”

Sylanna left on the task of spreading more of the magic herself. Once the shock at the spectacle that took place before them wore off, some pairs of eyes found others, knowing full well which ones might want to upset the progress of things, with a glaring warning that they would pay a heavy price for trying.

Sylanna roamed. Hall to hall, room to room, spreading her gift wherever she went, the nature of the place making things easier. Everyone kept their own counsel and paid her very little mind, seeing in her stride that she had a place to go. Her mage’s eye tracked her gift, seeing it as a luminous trail and seeing where the fool that threatened her had been.

She was fine with the plan taking some time, but what concerned her most was the likelihood that Vale wasn’t up to the task. Sylanna doubted that she was in any event, not nearly as learned as Sylanna herself or some others in the guild, but even less able to do what needed to be done with the talisman’s power already inside her. Sylanna would use the disruption her magic caused to make a run for the trinket. And if Vale was in the way...

If she was one to pray, she would pray that Vale wasn’t in the way. Because she would do what had to be done and what Vale had asked of her. But, for now, she focused on the task at hand, knowing that those in the open air would need to be touched by her more directly so she decided to do some shopping.

He led her by the hand back up to his rooms. He could tell she was tame. It was in the way her fingers gently squeezed his. It was in how she breathed. He could tell she was wet already and it didn’t matter to him why. It mattered to Vale though. He had the power she sought and that a feral part of her mind craved. Right now, he was connected to it and she was connected to him, so she would go where it led. Magic was a pool shaped by its users and what it was used for. Right now, it was sweet and seductive, shaped each time it was unleashed until it was supremely effective at what it was being asked to do, user and magic shaping themselves to one another.

“I gave Delvine her own little room downstairs until we figure out finally if she can be helped or not. If not, it seems the best thing to do is to put her out of her misery.”

Oh. Right. What’s her name.

In the next lucid moment, his chest with the mane of tight red curls over that rippling muscle. She buried her face in it, letting herself scent his musk and float on her need until she sensed him begin to strip her and she pulled away just long enough to help him with that. Soon, she was naked yet again, save for her boots, the rest of her clothes strewn around the room.

“I know what you need, darlin’.” The bed sagged visibly when he sat on its edge, pulling his cock free. He looked wickedly at her, his cock bobbing in sudden anticipation of the promise that came with her drooling mouth.

Dropping to her knees in font of him and practically crawling the last two steps to the bed to his cock. It was everything one would have expected of a man who looked like he did. It was a thick slab of meat, almost like another limb that curved slightly towards his belly over heavy balls, wiry red hairs, with the nest of red surrounding those. They looked large enough to breed half of Erette before he’d have to rest. She rose directly over his cock and hovered for a moment before her bee stung lips made half of it disappear while straining to take more.

One hand hefted those balls while she tried to milk him with her mouth, each choking gasp dredging a fresh glut of spit in in her throat that she would loose the next time she tried to use it to suffocate herself. She was happy to bask in him and be close to what she needed. It would be so easy to give up and forget everything else. He groaned at the feel of her tongue rolling the head.

She could have made him cum like that and it wouldn’t have taken her long if that was what she wanted. The part of herself that she protected from the part of herself that wanted to be his waited because, as his control over himself wavered, so did his hold over the magic if she could strike at the right moment if she were strong enough.

His legs pushed against the floor as he watched her rise over him and slide her hand up and down his shaft. While others would grab that stalk with both hands and work it gently, this one wasn’t afraid to pull on it with some aggression.

“This is what you need, isn’t it?”

She had to regain herself for a moment before speaking, “Yes, Lord.”

He watched her hands not just tug, but roll her palms over it, almost as if she were working a stick to make a fire, but it was slow and sensual while she would curl her fingertips now and then so they would occasionally brush against the shaft or the head in random ways that would make him grunt like the beast he often appeared to be.

“I need you, Lord. I need everything you have, and in turn I will give you every thing I have. Give it to me, my Lord. Please. Please, please, please.” His heat fed hers, and the wavering within him continued. It was a fine tightrope her mind walked and an errant thought could tip it in a direction she couldn’t come back from. She had to keep the initiative while she had it. Without waiting for him, she hopped up to his lap and wrapped her hand around the cock almost as thick as her forearm. He felt the heat of her welcoming hole and he pawed her tits with one hand without quite seeing them while the other wrapped around hers and aimed at the heat between her legs. Two droplets touched the head before it slipped inside.

He decided quickly that he liked this one. She was snug around him and while she strained a bit at first to make him fit, she didn’t struggle like many other conquests did. Her eyes twinkled and the grin she gave him was lewd as she began to lift and grind into his lap. “Yeah, you need it.”

She rode the waves in mind and body, using those waves in the rhythm of her sex, thoroughly enjoying the fullness “We both do, Lord. We’ll give each other everything we need. Just feel good, Solos. Just feel good. Let yourself just be tame for awhile.”

He really could get used to having this one around. He’d domesticate her more or less like the rest, then she would use the magic as he commanded; all of the power and none of the risk. And she knew how to work a cock. He let his load build within and listened to the bed creak and felt that tight hole slide smoothly back and forth.

“Change me, Lord. It’s time. I need it. My mind is open,” she said as he grabbed her ass in both hands and helped him drive. “My mind is so fucking open. Change me as you will, Lord.”

He brought the power forth with some practice at measure. As with a physical fight, he learned that some didn’t need as much force to fall. He touched her mind and found it waiting. Her mind sensed the connection and she acted, piercing the link between them before he could try to overwhelm her. His eyes went wide when her hand clutched the necklace creating a physical connection that would not be so easy to break. Then, from her own mind, to his, she followed the trail into the talisman itself. He cried out in shock that felt distant now but she knew wasn’t. There was nothing to be done about that when she had to do this.

Exercising her will in this helped cleanse her of the fog within. The clarity of purpose drove her. And raw magic was something she understood. Within the talisman, she touched remnants of all those that infused it long ago, shaped it, and used it since, including the last with any sense of the magic. Vale felt his fear as life ebbed from him as it does in the natural course of existence. He touched the magic in those final breaths, and his confusion in not knowing how he might save himself added to the mix and Vale felt it all.

Then the magic remained open, waiting for a mind and a will until the man she first sought touched it, shaping it to pierce minds and seduce. Vale heard pounding in the distance again, knowing she was going to be assailed from without and knew it was coming from within as Solos’s mind came at her in a ball of rage, determined to push her out, then end her.

But she was already firmly within it.

She was within it and she knew what he wanted. He wanted power. He was seduced by the need for it even before she met him. At first, she was set to steel herself against it, letting him spend his anger until he had nothing left. She thought of the scores of women that he’d already taken and the pain inflicted without care and she got angry.

She thought of Delvine, left with less than nothing and got angry. She thought of the women crawling all over one another in the other room, seduced away from their families and their lives. Their minds now filled with dreams nothing like what they would have ever wanted for themselves. They all deserved better.

Vale’s anger grew to match that which rushed before her.

She thought of the fact that only two people stood against all of that and, if they failed it, would all just continue on until someone else stopped it. The world would not end, but, in the end, the world was just a collection of people, the world for each of them only really being their friends, their family, their hopes and their dreams.

All those worlds would be gone for many, some of them, like Delvine, forever. Unless someone stood now.

So she took her own ball of rage, her will, her own magic, and that of the talisman she held now, and rushed to meet his will and put it down.

Sylanna the merchant paced the main halls, doing nothing but waiting for the sign that it was time to act. She was certain that the other was still doing his work. When he had expended himself, he would be compelled to sleep. Between the two of them she knew that her magic might not touch everyone here, but the confusion she would create with it when they went wild would be enough to keep the others busy. She could then take a fair run at the thing and anyone that stood in her way.

Even if that someone was Vale.

She pushed aside her concern for Vale, at least for the moment. There was no sign that she needed help, which she could choose to take as a good or bad omen. Against her own nature and in deference to what she knew Vale’s response would be, she decided that no news was good news.

She already haunts me, Sylanna decided.

“What’s your trade?”

She turned from the voice in her mind to find what appeared to be another trader. He would have been nondescript in almost every way, which was probably why he wore the most gaudy, bright, mismatched clothes she’d ever seen. It stung her eyes to look at him. “I have no trade today,” she replied coolly.

“Because what I’m looking for is…”

“No.”

“Perhaps you can…”

She stopped walking and stared him down. “I have. No trade. Today.”

The man jumped in shock as though she’d struck him. While she had contemplated doing just that for the briefest instant, his jump followed a howl shock and pain from above them. Leaving him behind, she quickened her pace when she heard the stomping footfalls of heavy boots running parallel above her. Vale had made her move, now it was up to Sylanna to decide how best to support her. She prepared to use her own magic to spark confusion in all who had been touched so far, which should be enough to allow Vale escape while Sylanna doubled back to release the women and provide cover from behind if need be.

Most people kept on as normal as the occasional scream or fight wasn’t as unusual, as, say, someone with a stream of fire trying to burn the place down. She quickened her pace to the stairs, vaulting herself up three at at time toward the sounds of guards bashing at a door. Turning left, hands hot with mage fire at the ready, she saw two men who epitomized the nondescript brute bashing at the heavy door, the wood splintering away. “Stand aside,” she commanded.

They turned at the voice and, heedless of the glow in her palm, one grabbed the hunting blade at his side. “Fucking mages, what have you done?”

“Nothing much yet. Walk away and I’ll let you walk away.”

He took a step towards her.

She raised her hand.

Then she’d felt as though a glass shard had been driven into her brain. It sliced smoothly into the center of her mind and she staggered back, bracing herself against the wall to keep from falling and she struggled to stop her heart from leaping from her chest. It was so sudden and visceral that her veil rippled as she struggled to right herself.

The pain ebbed like the crashing force of a wave that moved beyond her. She was within the force, surrounded by it, but she found she could float within it. The talisman. If not for her own defenses she didn’t know what would have become of her. Dread crept in upon her. Vale, too had been caught in it, and, compromised as she was… Dead? Lost? Fuck.

A few extra seconds and extra breaths to see to it that she had righted herself, she turned her gaze back to the approaching threat and found the threat no longer approaching. He’d stopped. More than that, Sylanna’s head tilted in puzzlement as she looked at him, seeing his eyes staring off into some distant point. The other man seemed to change tacks, trying to stare through the door instead of kicking it down.

That which surrounded her was magic. She could feel it now, caressing every nerve and leaving a numb feeling at the base of her brain. Nothing that she could not handle, she stepped slowly to the head of the stairs, looking out at what she’d expected to see, but did not fully understand. The garish trader stood almost where she’d left him. The others that had their own business there and those making the place run were all the same: frozen where they stood, threads of magic weaving and binding them together like points in a spider’s web.

Now more intrigued than anything else she tracked back to the nearest guard. Stepping behind him, she placed her palm at the base of his skull, fingers spread, tapped her magic to ride the flow that surrounded and enveloped him and followed that into his mind. He was warm and the sky was a glorious blue. The sun warmed him and he had not a care in the world beyond where to spend his money next. But that didn’t have to be a concern now. He had all the time in the world to just be warm and at peace. At the moment, planning his future was more fun than actually making it happen.

Sylanna released him and touched the other man in the same way and the fact that every sense had touched something foul didn’t surprise her and was what she’d expected from the first one as she saw within him the sights, sounds and sensation of him bouncing madly on top of the woman she knew from him to be his brother’s wife. She also knew that it wasn’t a memory, but a desire. The creak of the bed was vile, though that was nothing compared to the ape grunts he made or the ridiculously over the top sounds of ecstasy coming from her. It was almost a caricature of sex.

She extricated herself from it gladly and used the simplest of magic to open the door. Before her was the magic flared between their forms like the fire from a star. From Vale’s mind it spread outward and Sylanna was momentarily awestruck by its beauty. She approached with all caution, uncertain of things in a way she had rarely been ever in her life. Close enough to them now to see her eyes closed and expression blank, while the man stared to the ceiling, blank as the rest.

She thought to try to touch Vale as she had the others and she felt a momentary fear of getting swept up in the flow of whatever this was by jumping headlong into the raging current over one of the quiet tributaries. The fear made her smile and she plunged headlong.

Sylanna found herself back inside one of the rooms of their guild safehold. They were as hidden from society as the mages themselves. Theirs burrowed deep within the grounds of an old castle well outside the capitol city, making use of the seemingly infinite underground maze works that all major castles in the land had to thwart intruders and allow nobles and their families avenues of escape when the land was ruled by blood feuds and naked power grabs. Sylanna found Vale in one of the small alcoves. There was nothing special about the room. Indeed, it appeared now as she remembered it. It was a small study or eating area where people went, often alone, to take a meal or meditate.

Sylanna saw Vale in the center of the room before a single wooden chair that had clearly seen better days. “Vale?”

“I’m here.”

“We are, yes.” She looked around, hoping to find some other clue than the chair, which seemed obvious in its importance. “But why here?”

“I guess because this...is the one of the safest places I’ve ever been.”

She scanned the room again unable to see it. “Here?”

“When I first came to our guild, I could do almost nothing, even after studying for more than two years.” I feared I never would. I feared being the mascot or an object of pity. I’d never get my guild markings and all I would ever be is a pleasant semi-public face of the guild running one errand or another forever. I’d have some safety and security. I’d have a decent life, but I would never be a mage.”

“It was so difficult for me to grasp even the first steps. It was hard to find help because not very many saw value in me, so if there wasn’t anything in it for them at the end, what was the point for them?” Her voice turned sad, “All I’d wanted was to succeed.”

But she smiled, “But then I broke that chair.”

Sylanna shrugged in indifference, but there was a hint of humor to be heard, “I, too, can break a chair.”

“Mistress Bryana tried to help me lift it and I shattered it into a thousand pieces, then she set me to picking up those pieces. She helped me because she wanted to. Because she saw value in me, asking for nothing in return beyond that I do my best and that my best to be better than the day before. I remember thinking that, if someone like her saw value in me, maybe there was.”

“She spent countless hours helping me until I could stand on my own.” She turned to Sylanna And...when we speak of it from time to time, she is never proud of herself for it. She never thought of it as some good deed done that she can congratulate herself for. She is proud of me. And this is the place where I found faith. In magic. In her. In myself. I don’t suppose you understand that.”

“The desire to be something that is your own? To not be a weak object of pity? That, Denna Vale, is a part of why I use the veils so that others see what they wish to see and not see me. I do not want to see their scorn or pity. I am proud of what I shaped myself to be. I used that in many of the wrong ways in the past. I understand that now, but I will not loathe everything about what I was or what I am.”

“I do not loathe you, Sylanna, though you certainly seem to invite me and others to.” She was curious now. “But why are you here?”

“Why are you?”

“I needed a place to be calm. I needed a place to regain myself. I touched the talisman as we had discussed. I felt his anger. I felt his desire to raze me to nothing. And I was angry. I was angry at him for all that he’d done and would do if we failed here.”

She was not an angry person by nature and feeling that rage at all was unsettling, much less directing its full force at someone. Such things had happened rarely, but there was always a certain cold calculation to it. They had deserved it. They truly earned and deserved what they would get from her. It wasn’t just a blind strike wanting nothing more than to see the other fall before her to nothing.

“When we struck, I knew that I was certainly the better of a man who knew nothing of magic. I pierced his anger. I could have turned him into those that ended up as the worst of his victims, but the desire to attack an animal as a greater animal frightened me. So I pulled back. The magic was shaped to seduce now, so I let it. His deepest wishes and desires. I know that he is held and calm, so I decided to afford myself the time to be able come to him in the same fashion.”

It seemed almost unfathomable and Sylanna didn’t hide it. “You don’t know? How could you not know?” The force of will in this little thing and her ability to project without truly being aware of it to pierce and control the subconscious was nothing less than extraordinary. The talisman and her own anger changed her, awakened something within her.

“Know what?”

“You have them all, Vale.” She smiled at the enormity and wonder of it. “I didn’t go through every room of this place, but I have no reason to believe that you don’t have everyone that was touched by my own magic, jumping from one to the next until you have them all.”

She was stunned silent and shook her head. “No. That’s just...no.” She turned away and looked to the chair that she once couldn’t lift without shattering it into a thousand pieces. As she looked more closely, she found that it wasn’t whole. As she looked deeply she came to realize that it was pieced together as a puzzle would be, with lines of force as the glue holding it all together. Looking more deeply, she found herself whispering what she saw. “A man on the beach. A woman with a home, children playing. All those pieces telling their own story within the people who held them.

She felt she could go deeper within each of those pieces and hopes and stories, but she began to fear that if she did, she’d lose the control she had. Sylanna sensed the anxiety, too, and did not dismiss it. “Be calm, Vale. There will be time to explore this later. Indeed, I encourage it. But stay in this moment. Stay in the moment where you are calm and in control. You can feel Solos in this place? You are tied to him here more than the others?”

She nodded slowly, reaching out. “He’s just outside.” She felt his happiness and serenity.

“Then I will see to any stragglers and prepare the women to leave this place. Unless you feel that you may need help.”

She thought again, “No. I think I will be all right.” She wasn’t sure of that all all, honestly, but Vale felt she could maintain the current status quo for a time, so long as she didn’t dwell on the enormity of it.

“Do not dwell on the chair,” Sylanna advised gently. “It is as it is and as it should be. Do not let it frighten you. No one is harmed. Let it be and focus on Solos.”

Suddenly left alone again, this place felt less safe than ever before, but that only served to motivate her to finally deal with Solos.

Solos was happy indeed. It had been a long time coming. He didn’t know how long, but he remembered many deals being made and more than a little blood being spilled, but it was done. His reach had been expanded. He had no desire for the world, only for a larger slice of it, and that he had. What he wanted was his and no one questioned his right to it. All there was now was to control it and enjoy it.

And, just now, he was thoroughly enjoying plowing a lovely body with a mane of hair flowing down her back an almost orange red while there were the hands and lips of two others on either side of him did their level best to amplify his pleasure. And in the corner on her knees was the plump little mage looking as he met her, save for a hand deep under her clothes, rubbing herself furiously, whining as she did so.

He liked having her around. She’d shaped herself nicely into a happy little pet, more than willing to help him in whatever he asked. He saw the value in her, as she was more learned in how and where to apply pressure other than brute force to get him what he needed. And now all she really craved was watching him with his women or being that woman. He really didn’t mind that either and she could suck well and she knew how to move those hips.

He plowed the redhead with such abandon that he grabbed onto the headboard with both hands to drive, sending her into a shrieking orgasm. So engrossed in the sensations in his cock he was that he hadn’t immediately noticed that that the talisman was no longer tapping in rhythm against his chest.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, Lord.”

“Mmm...yes, dear girl. Yes, indeed.”

“You can finish your good time as you please. I know that it always upsets me when reality intrudes when I was in the middle of a wonderful dream. After that, we can discuss what will become of you and your trades.”

“What will happen is that I’ll finish with this one and then you and I can have a go.”

“No.”

That confused him, but not enough to care. His lusty, dreamy gaze drifted over to her and that he saw the talisman around her neck, and that happiness was replaced by confusion and anger, “What the fuck? Give me that back.”

He reached for it and planted face-first and naked into the ground. There was no time. He had to get up. He had to move. It was closer, and if he didn’t move now, he knew he would be consumed by it, so he ran, his blood like ice despite the pounding of his heart and the ground he was eating in those massive strides. He miscalculated. He’d tested himself against this thing and he’d failed. He could turn and face it, but not like this, not while it had every advantage. He had to hide. He had to find somewhere to go until he could lose it and even the odds later.

His eyes scanned frantically, so consumed with escape that he had no time to devote to watching his footing. One bit of earth dipped lower than expected and he tumbled forward end over end. Pain shot through him from his twisted ankle and the various bits of the forest floor that bit into his skin. He bore the pain and tried to right himself, but the pain simply wouldn’t allow it. He may have actually broken the damn thing.

But the Goddess smiled upon him. Before him was an animal den. It was hidden by the brush and remnants of snow, but it was there. His peered into it for as long as it took for his eyes to adjust, keenly aware that the thing was hunting him, growing closer with every passing moment. No sign of anything alive within it, he crawled in headfirst, then turned himself to face outward, reaching around to pull down brush from around him and settled in, pressing his back to the dirt, so that it would have to come close before it had any chance of seeing him. He smelled whatever lived in this thing and knew that may well serve to conceal him.

The presence drew closer. It went from this wild malevolence as it stepped closer finding sharper focus until he could hear footsteps on the ground. One after the other. Calm. Measured. Without a care in the world. His eyes darted to and fro again and his hands groped the dirt for anything sharp or blunt that he might use if it found him and tried to get inside. Finding a stick with heft and point enough to use as a makeshift spear, he, for the moment, planted it in the earth as a pike and waited. Closer and closer until the steps stopped and a pair of green eyes peered inward. “Are you all right in there?”

Confusion reigned until he came to the slow realization that she was the pursuer. It was she who created fear and dread within because, even knowing it was her outside, it was all still inside. “Honestly, I understand hunting for food, but I never understood doing it for the pure ‘sport’ of it. It always seemed to me to be akin to killing something just to watch it die, and I find that...awful.”

“Either way, I don’t imagine it’s fun to be on the other side of it. Running. Afraid. Fearing you’re going to die. I can keep you here if you want, but I don’t want to. I can keep you here until you understand.”

“Understand what?” He could focus on a voice. That he could focus on. It was rational It was a lifeline. It wasn’t the paralyzing fear that filled him.

“That you don’t control the talisman anymore. You never really did.” She considered it. “Neither of you did. It was just a pool of magic opened at the right time. Or the worst one, and it waited for a mind. You shaped it, and used it with no understanding of the cost. There are things that I don’t understand about what has happened even now.”

She sat on her knees over the entrance. “But magic isn’t for mundanes to play with.”

“What do you want?”

“I want safety for the women. I want them free. I want them never to be taken from or brought to you in chains again, so that means you will be gone from here. You. Your men. All trace of you. I do not care where you go, so long you’re far, far from here. Go hunt, fish, or trap, but trapping people is off limits. Go somewhere and make your money and make your name to help others. Earn the nobility you pretend to have, Lord.”

This woman. This little thing daring to tell him what to do. He would get out of here. He would get out and she withhold learn hard lessons of what it was like to be hunted.

“Thought the naked man who is stuck in a dream in an animal’s den that might just as easily be a shallow grave. The longer I’m here, the more I could root around, which isn’t something I relish. I could find things here. I could find the things that you were certain that hid under your bed as a child. I could loose much upon you that would make this a beautiful memory.”

“While I am doing that, there’s still the matter of your body outside of this that needs to eat, drink, and truly sleep or else it will die, but I don’t want to do that. I would still like to part ways peacefully if we can agree.”

“And you will not try to hunt me. If you do, you just might find me in your sleep. Even the thought of doing so or trading flesh again will repulse you because when you think of it, you will think of all the pain you’ve caused.”

Vale leaned closer to the gap and opened her mouth. What came out was a sound that the damned would flee. It was as if the howls and death rattles of every animal he ever killed mixed with the sobbing and plaintive wails of all the women that passed his way in bondage. The pleas, the crying, the gnashing of teeth. The sound of it was so powerful, his eyes watered to free-flowing tears, even as his eardrums shattered and his bones shook. The scream did not end until he screamed into it.

His face was in the dirt. His body was quaking, and the tears simply would not stop.

“Can we agree?”

It had been a long ride for Petrik and his men to get from where they started to here. He hadn’t been happy to have been sent on the errand, leaving a comfortable manor and life to hunt a missing person. And his attitude hadn’t brightened with the cold nights, his days on the back of a horse and the incessant grumbling of the men with him. He let it go most of the time because they were good at what they did when it came down to it, and if the bitching kept them warm, so be it.

At the end of it all, he’d just hoped that he hadn’t been sent all this way for nothing. He wanted an answer and the sooner the better, preferably one that didn’t have him riding through miles and days more of creation to find the woman he’d been sent to find and he rolled his eyes at the prospect of the task stretching out. It had taken him long enough just to get to the place where he could trace Delvine’s route. Everyone who hadn’t seen her and the ones who had helped narrow the search.

On top of that, what he had heard from his superiors suggested that they were on the right track. This Solos had become unreliable of late. Thus far, he had broken no agreements, but he had made it clear that the current association wasn’t profitable enough for him. Petrik had been sent to renegotiate within reason. His employers valued reliability over money, and were usually willing to make accommodations up to a point. A little more money up front, the occasional bonus, or other incentive was usually enough to put these country rubes back in line.

But that one of their most reliable couriers had not made her scheduled check after heading in his direction did not bode well for Solos, or perhaps her. He would go there under the pretext of a renegotiation, suss out this Solos and his defenses, and find out what happened to Delvine. If she wasn’t there, he’d move on as much as he hated the idea.

But if she was there, against her will or not, he and the two dozen men be brought with him would act. It was only a matter of who the targets would be.

“Well, that’s something,” one of the men behind him said.

Taken from his thoughts by the observation, he looked ahead on the road to find half a dozen men on either side of the road sprawled on the ground with two women between them. Scoping the environment around them, Petrik saw that with the tree lines slightly more dense here it might have been a good spot for an ambush. His group closed on them. One was tall and lean, the other shorter and more rounded, but they both appeared untroubled standing next to their horses.

“How are you?” the shorter one asked amiably before she noticed them looking at the downed bodies before them. “Don’t worry about them, they’re just incapacitated. If you’re wondering what they were doing out here, they were waiting to try to kill you.”

“Well, then, I suppose I should thank you. And you are…?”

“No one you need to worry about, but my name is Vale. My companion doesn’t talk much, as she generally hates other people.” There was agreement in the taller one’s eyes. “I’m here to tell you that the path you’re on is closed to you.”

“And how do you know the path I’m on?”

“Where else would you be going but to Solos?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Fair enough. We have business with him.”

“Solos is no longer in business. He went out of his way to run afoul of mages, so he will no longer be a concern of this region.”

“Can I take that to mean that you’re now in charge of his interests?”

“He no longer has concerns here,” she repeated smoothly. “What will become of the fort ahead is something to be decided by others not us. The mages may take it. We could have use for such a distant place. Or the military may seize it to create a standing presence here, especially since many of Solos’s dealings were, shall we say kindly, not honest. All that matters to you is that there is nothing on this path for you.”

“Well, I appreciate your candor here, and, since you have been so straightforward, I’ll return the courtesy. Since you know of Solos, his work, and enough of why we were coming and where we were coming from to be here to intercept an ambush by his men and meet us, we still have business with him and you probably know what that is.”

“And, before I ask, I will point out that we have two of our own mages,” he said, pointing to two otherwise nondescript men in the back that nodded silently in greeting. So, now I ask, where is Delvine?”

“Delvine is dead,” Vale said with more than a hint of sadness. “Solos tried to extract information from her, it went poorly, and she’s dead.”

Petrik snickered and others follow suit, the smile looking unnatural on his face. “Do you expect me to just take your word for it?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Every bit of her burned in mage fire not mine, so there’s nothing to show you.” She couldn’t keep the melancholy from her tone now. “Solos was clear that she never shared with him or anyone else what she knew. The only thing I can offer to prove to you that she or anything she might have known isn’t a threat to you is the fact that your business will continue as it has. It simply has one less waypoint than it had before.”

“Why don’t you let us ride in and take a look for ourselves so that we can all see how out of business Solos is?”

“That would be fine. You’ll be able to see for yourself that there’s nothing left for you there.”

He weighed his next words carefully, “We have traveled far. Perhaps we could use a...waypoint.”

“To eat and rest before you return? That could be arranged. Call it a gesture of goodwill.”

Petrik decided to test the matter “My employers could also use a waypoint…”

“Then there had better be many more coming than just you,” Sylanna said, her tone every bit a challenge.

Vale elaborated. “We have no wish to be hostile, but what’s ahead isn’t for you to claim. We have sent word and there are already others on the way to hold the place while its fate is decided.”

“I don’t see you taking it,” Sylanna said with amusement. “Even if you do, it won’t be yours long. Our allies are closer than yours. So, you can turn around, as is my preference. You can come with us and take the bed and meal generously offered while you see that there is nothing for you there anymore.

“Or, we can go to war at any point you’d like, and then you’ll all die. Choose, but do so quickly as I, for one, would like to be done with this whole affair.”

Vale could not help but agree.