The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Alcaeus climaxed at the exact moment his front door sounded. The noise he made, consequently, was not entirely that of pleasure. On the other hand, the raven-haired slut squirming beneath him also came, rearing up in the throes of passion, screaming ecstatically while her pussy clenched around his member, so the moment was not completely wasted.

“Oh! Oh, Master!! I love you, Master! I . . ai . . . aiiiiiihH!!” As he rose, the slave continued to clutch at him helplessly, kissing his face and chest. Alcaeus groaned and rolled over. Damn, he thought. Partially, this unspoken exclamation was in chagrin at the interruption, yet it was also made in sheer admiration for his slave’s pussywork. She was magnificent.

Though but recently purchased, she was blossoming as a slut. He was proud of her. He had been since he had first enjoyed her. She crawled atop him, eager to proceed with her rape. Alcaeus, though, grabbed a handful of dark hair and managed to pull her back—with some difficulty—whilst he concentrated. His psychic perception extended to the front of the house and made a rueful contact.

He would like to have continued fucking his slave, but he was not the sort of wizard who could ignore anyone knocking at his front door.

A man, he discerned, immediately—a woman he would not have been able to detect—and the wizard closed his eyes, touching the surface of the interrupter’s mind (who continued to knock at the door impatiently, so very rudely). A moment later Alcaeus sat bolt upwards in bed, eyes open, surprised at the identity revealed.

“Master?” the slave asked, sensing his mood change at last. She stopped her playful ministrations.

“Dress yourself,” he told her, “then go and greet our guest. Tell Lord Teuthes I will be down shortly.”

“Yes, master,” the girl said. She crawled off the bed, skin flush from their passion, her nipples still well engorged. Her black hair streamed down the length of her back, combed with obvious attention but no longer tied up in the intricate styles to which it had formerly been accustomed. Distracted though he was, Alcaeus still followed the flexing of her ass as she picked up her “dress,” which he had earlier removed from her with some force and entertainment, for the two of them. A mere white rag, open at the bottom and deeply cut in the middle, it was a simple thing, yet more than suitable for the simpler life she had chosen.

Within a moment she had drawn the rag over her head and smoothed it into place. She was beautiful.

When Alcaeus climbed out of bed, his slave knelt before him. “Thank you, master,” she said, looking up. “Thank you for using your slut.” Still nude and semi-erect, she gave him a well-aimed lick before rising to her feet, eyes never leaving his own until, with obvious reluctance, she turned about to leave.

As soon as she was out of the room, Alcaeus steadied himself with one arm to the bedpost.

He pursed his lips and breathed heavily between his teeth. He shuddered in pleasure and contented exhaustion. He had taught her that trick with her tongue. He himself had learned it but recently from a whore he had used in Utiae, someone he had known in a previous life. His new girl had taken to the lowly oral practice like candy.

All the same, he felt a tinge of regret.

It was Alcaeus’ custom to own but a single slave at a time, whom he would sell after no more than a year or two in his possession. He liked variety; moreover, he enjoyed the training process he engaged in with his sluts. He was proud of the fact he could sell them for considerably more money than he had used to purchase them in the first place. What was left unsaid, as much to himself as to others, was that he sold his slaves after only such a short time because he didn’t want to grow too attached to them. Such sentiment for a mind-controlled, erotically transformed slut could be misconstrued as weakness.

And that was the danger he felt with this one.

Splitting his concentration as his guild-brothers had taught him, Alcaeus went to his closet to dress, in somewhat more ample style than his slave. At the same time, his psychic presence traveled downstairs. Unable to follow the movements of his slave, he focused instead on his unexpected guest.

Senator Teuthes knocked again at the wizard’s door.

His teeth were clenched. His eyes darted this way and that, glancing about him nervously. His pulse was elevated. Beneath his outer cloak and clothing, he was sweating. Looking out through the man’s eyes, Alcaeus saw no bodyguards. Despite whatever apparent anxiety consumed him, the old lord had come without escort. This was unusual for a man of his station, regardless of circumstance.

At last, Teuthes heard the heavy door before him unlock.

“Greetings, my Lord Senator Teuthes,” the old man heard. A short and curvaceous slave girl stepped back to let him in. She lowered her head in deference. “My master, the Man-Wizard Alcaeus, welcomes you to his home.”

“I need to see Alcaeus at once. It is a matter of life and death.” Teuthes stepped in. His breath, which Alcaeus sensed through Teuthes’ own nose, suggested alcohol. Yet the wizard could tell the man was cold sober.

“My master knows you are here,” she said demurely. Though he saw her through another man’s eyes, the slave, his only servant, still looked lovely in her short, white slip and bare feet pressing against the stone floor. Alcaeus found himself growing erect again. “If you will accompany me to my master’s study, he will join you in a moment.” She bowed again.

The senator let out a worried groan but followed the slave. Alcaeus’ sitting room was lined with shelved books and tasteful furniture and art objects. He had let his previous slaves do all the decorating. His slave offered the senator some wine but he turned it down with a wave of his hand. He did not sit in any chair. The slave offered to take his cloak. Again, the guest refused.

Teuthes’ thoughts were frenzied and hard for Alcaeus to read. The problem, though, definitely involved a woman, that much he could tell without delving deeper than the wizard was comfortable. Though his magic only worked on the male of the species, a not-too-surprising number of the problems Alcaeus solved for De’s wealthy merchants and nobleman involved women. They came to him wanting to impress their ladies and their sluts with their sexual prowess, or they wanted a more masculine physique or an enhancement to their manhoods. Alcaeus always charged heavily for these types of enchantment.

This was not that.

Having ignored her efforts to please him, Alcaeus’ servant had moved into a corner with her head down and her hands folded over her abdomen. Teuthes paced back and forth, looking at the entranceway for his host. His tongue touched his upper lip. His hands opened and closed fretfully.

Suddenly, he stopped. The slave girl raised her head as he focused on her.

“Do I know you?” he asked, without brusqueness, with, in fact, genuine curiosity. “You seem familiar to me.” He approached but did not touch her face. Most men would have.

“I cannot say, master,” she responded. She accepted his gaze without discomfort. By now, she was used to men gazing frankly upon her. Indeed, as a slut, she took pleasure in being the frank object of men’s lust. “Perhaps you knew me when I was a free woman. I was the Lady Leusa Ioles.”

Teuthes drew back as if slapped.

“My God,” he exclaimed. “Leusa?” He took another step to the rear and stumbled. For a moment he seemed on the verge of running back the way they had come. Alcaeus read his mind: the man was genuinely shocked. Moreover, he discovered, the old lord was—and this was of interest to the man-wizard—disappointed in him, personally, Alcaeus.

For some reason, Teuthes had come to the wizard in the hope of settling a crisis. Alcaeus had not probed deeply enough to see what this crisis was, yet, but now, in seeing one of his social peers, one of his fellow nobles, reduced to slavery, and owned by him, a wizard, this problem had somehow been made worse. Alcaeus was intrigued, to say the least. He was also interested in what Leusa would do.

She was far from a stupid slave. She could clearly see the reaction the knowledge of her former identity had had on the old noble. The raven-haired girl guided the senator into a chair and went to her knees.

She did not lower her head, though.

“I am sorry if this news upsets you, master. Please know, I was not enslaved against my will. I was already a slave when my master, the Wizard Alcaeus, purchased me, for I had sold myself into slavery first, recognizing that I could never be happy outside of bondage and frequent and thorough raping.”

Teuthes was shaking. Alcaeus was afraid the old man might have an attack of apoplexy. “You cannot possibly know that,” Teuthes told Leusa, gasping. “You surely cannot remember your previous life.”

She smiled gently. “No, master. You are correct. I have no memory of being the Lady Leusa. But this is what I have been told, and who would bother to lie to a mere slave? My heart knows it is the truth.” Alcaeus entered the room then and Teuthes’ mind, fully. A flood of images swept past his consciousness, and a dread name floated to the surface: Noalassa. Uh oh, the man-wizard thought.

Teuthes wept. Leusa crawled forward and put her face to his feet, and drawn by sympathy she cried, too. Alcaeus, more than a trifle uncomfortable, put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I don’t know what to do,” Teuthes said, hiding his face behind his hands.

Alcaeus’ own lips trembled. Those were the words of the Lady Leusa, exactly, when she had been struggling with her desires, months ago.

“Tell me your problem, Teuthes,” he said, drawing up a chair and sitting before him. And as the man spoke, Alcaeus continued to probe deeply into his mind, to see what needed to be seen.

The previous evening, Lord Teuthes Stros of the Island and Republic of De, esteemed senator, had gone to bed at his usual time noting nothing amiss. An older gentleman, in every sense of the word, he had found at his age that he tired more easily, and in these past years since the passing of his wife he had been retiring earlier and earlier each night. There was no change in his habits that evening.

He went to sleep in his mansion confident and secure, surrounded by the luxury of his wealth and position, enveloped in the finest of linens and silks.

It was therefore an extremely jarring event for him to awaken an unknown time later in an uncomfortably rigid seated position, naked and tied to a chair. It was even more shocking to find that he wasn’t alone.

“You have offended me, old man,” a feminine voice spoke. “You must pay the price.”

Who? Teuthes thought. He tried to speak, but the gag he found inserted in his mouth prevented him. The bit fit disturbingly between his teeth and down his throat, and with another start he realized it must be a phallic design, a gag intended to degrade female prisoners and arouse female slaves. He tried to spit the humiliating object out but couldn’t. It was strapped in place behind his head.

His eyes were watering. Where am I? Where are my guards? He looked around and after a moment’s more confusion saw that he was still in his bedroom. It hadn’t looked right, likely because he was tied to the chair beside his bed that he almost never used, which he had certainly never sat in so rigidly and firmly, held upright by thick ropes.

A semi-nude woman stood a few paces from him.

Teuthes’ eyesight had diminished, yet even so he could tell the woman was beautiful, brazenly so: she was clad in a scandalously brief two-piece outfit, red and bejeweled, an outfit which, on the whole, resembled undergarments more than anything most women would wear in public, unless they were owned by men. The tiny bottom barely covered the woman’s front and behind. The even tinier top, consisting mostly of string, supported yet obviously revealed the loveliness of the woman’s ample breasts. Altogether, as it left almost nothing to the imagination, under other circumstances Teuthes would have considered the costume nothing more than what a slave girl would wear. But this was no slave standing before him. This woman’s rich scarlet hair was partially concealed by an elaborate headdress, interstrewn with jewels and gold chain. Expensive-looking heels adorned her feet. Both wrists were bedecked with gold, her fingers with rings. The woman gazed upon Teuthes with a mixture of contempt and absolute power, and at length seeing her face the old lord came to recognize her.

Noalassa, Teuthes thought. The woman-wizard! He struggled, futilely, as it happened, with the ropes holding him. His face grew almost as red as his captor’s hair and painted lips.

“Stop struggling,” the wizard said. “You cannot escape, and you will not be permitted to die of a heart attack.” She motioned with her hand, exotically. The rope around the nobleman’s throat tightened in response, and he lost his breath. He kept fighting for as long as he could, then as his vision began to go dark the rope slackened enough to let him breathe again. His nostrils flared wildly.

“I can wait as long as you can,” Noalassa said. Her grin was pure evil.

Teuthes continued to struggle until he blacked out. When he awoke again, his circumstances were the same as before, bound and gagged, the woman-wizard posing before him.

Minutes or hours could have passed.

This is about Eria Scarphn, the senator thought dismally, still trying to break free. All his friends had warned him. But he had had to say something. The whole affair had been wrong. Months ago, in a serious break from tradition, for prior to this event the nobles of De had largely been exempt from legal enslavement, the Lady Eria Scarphn, then the esteemed Head of House of one of the great noble houses of the republic, had nonetheless been reduced to slavery, publicly, on the very floor of the Deinian Senate, in fact. Teuthes had been present at the ceremony; and so aghast had he been at this disgrace, to the Senate, to House Scarphn, to poor Eria herself, and embarrassed by the terrible circumstances that had forced a noblewoman of her stature into volunteering for her own demotion, he had spoken out against the wizard performing the enslavement rite, Noalassa. He had insulted her, even, publicly.

He had been warned. Evidently, the woman held a grudge.

There was only so long a man of his age could fight. At length, Teuthes’ struggles ceased. “You thought perhaps that because you are a man, Teuthes, my powers could have no effect on you,” Noalassa said. Actually, Teuthes had thought this, for it was a well-known rule of magic, known even to non-magic-users like himself: spells cast by female wizards had no effect on men, and vice versa.

“I’m here tonight to show you how mistaken this belief is.” Once more, the wizard made another obscure sign with her hand. The door to Teuthes’ bedroom opened of its own accord.

Silently, a line of women entered the chamber, one by one, taking positions along the wall parallel to Teuthes’ bed. Teuthes’ heartbeat raced as the chair he was tied to pivoted to face them, again moving on its own.

The women were naked. Some were young, most were middle-aged. While some were pretty, few were so supremely attractive that they would be considered “slave beautiful.” For that reason, Teuthes suspected they were not slaves. Their eyes were open but their expressions were blank.

They looked as if they were sleepwalking, the lot of them.

“Do you not recognize them?” Noalassa asked, sweetly. He did not. “Shame on you. I will tell you who they are. They are the wives, daughters, and mistresses of the men you employ and the men with whom you choose to do business.” Teuthes’ heart began to beat even faster. Obviously still under the control of the wizard, one petite brunette took a step forward.

Like the others, her face was blank, her eyes apparently unseeing. She stared past Teuthes toward the wall behind him.

“For instance, this woman is Ianorae, the wife of your captain of the guard. She is the one who bakes you those sweetcakes you enjoy so much in the morning.”

A bolt of ice shot through Teuthes’ body. Yes, he did recognize her! Her nakedness and the empty expression on her face, combined with the unfamiliarity of seeing Ianorae in his own bedroom, had thoroughly disguised her. But identified by Noalassa, it was at once apparent whom she was.

“Your captain is of course unaware that Ianorae is here with us,” the woman-wizard said. “I have sent one of my property girls to seduce and distract him. As we speak, he is cavorting in bed with her.”

Noalassa put a ringed finger to her forehead, as if she could see this scene in her mind’s eye. She might indeed be capable of doing so, Teuthes realized, magically. “You should not later blame your captain for this,” she added. “No true man can long resist the wiles of my sex dolls. They could seduce and draw erections from the very statues of men.

“All the men in these women’s lives,” she went on, “I would have you realize, old man, are either still asleep or similarly distracted, some by my fucktoys, some through other means. Until morning comes, these spouses, fathers, brothers, and whatnot will not notice their disappearance.

“Their disposition, as you may now have come to realize, lies with you.”

The woman-wizard came to stand next to Ianorae. At a touch of her shoulder, Ianorae went to her knees in front of the senator. She then went to all fours, crawled forward, and, to Teuthes’ dismay, settled her wet mouth onto his naked cock.

With licks and caresses of her tongue, the wife of his friend proceeded to excite him, very much against his will. Her lips pressed closely down upon him. Teuthes pulled on the ropes again, straining back, trying to ignore the sensation, trying to break the ropes that held him through will alone; but he could not budge his position, and Ianorae’s mouth continued to work on him.

Within moments, he felt like he was going to pass out again. The pleasure he felt was nothing compared to the shame and humiliation.

Teuthes had not been touched like this in years, and even then rarely in so intimate a fashion. It was not as if he had never before used a slave girl—this was De, after all—but that had been long ago and in his callow youth; and to be honest he had not been even then, nor truly ever was, comfortable with the idea of an enslaved mind catering to his own. This attitude had made him an anomaly to many of his peers.

In any case, he had not felt the need of a woman since his wife’s death. If he had, then he might well have employed a slave, yet discreetly. But never a free woman against her will, and certainly never the wife of his captain, a friend of his! This was horrible. A nightmare.

Noalassa bent her head over the activity, examining critically. “Are you having trouble, my dear senator? Performance issues? I discern a certain lack of enthusiasm. I expected . . . more.”

She chuckled as she rose again.

“Rise, Ianorae,” the wizard said. “You have failed to interest your lord and master. What shall we do, eh?” Noalassa put a finger to her chin and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, coquettishly, as if thinking. “Ah, yes, well . . . since by definition a performance issue can never, ever be the fault of the master, axiomatically it must be the fault of the slave. You are simply not equipped to satisfy him, slut.”

“Please, mistress,” Ianorae said. Her voice was dead and flat, as mechanical as the sound of any engine in the city’s smoking factories. “Help me to please the Lord Teuthes. I beg of you. Change me.”

Noalassa held her hands in the air, gesturing as if accepting the inevitable. “Oh, very well. Very well, my dear, but only because you request it.” Damn you, Teuthes cursed at her.

The wizard closed her eyes and spoke in a strange lilting accent words Teuthes did not understand. She touched Ianorae’s face.

Ianorae’s lips changed.

They grew, expanding as the rubberized tires did on the coaches passing to and fro De’s busy streets. Their color changed, too, from unadorned pale flesh to bright, glossy scarlet, almost the same shade of scarlet as the woman-wizard’s hair. Teuthes watched in horror as Ianorae’s flesh rippled under the effect of the wizard’s spell, as the magic she summoned worked its way around Ianorae’s jaw line to her throat. Her mouth opened, and a tongue twice the normal length stretched out, wet with saliva.

“There,” Noalassa said when she was finished. The transformation had taken no more than thirty seconds. Ianorae continued to stand there motionless. “A fair improvement, do you not agree, my lord Teuthes?” Teuthes could say nothing, not even shake his head to the negative. Ianorae’s body remained the same, but her face had been utterly transformed.

“Proceed now, dear, and see if the old boy responds better.”

Ianorae went to her knees again, and in moments her mouth was at work, sucking him. Terribly, there was improvement in the performance: Ianorae was simultaneously tighter, stronger, and more adept; and it was not long before, to his everlasting shame, that Teuthes climaxed inside her, explosively.

Teuthes almost fainted. After a little while he felt a hand under his chin. His face was lifted.

“Satisfied?” Noalassa asked him. The senator couldn’t respond, even with his eyes.

“Of course, your captain’s wife will be unable to speak from now on,” Noalassa said. “Or, for that matter, spend any hour awake without her head in some man’s lap . . . her husband’s, his friends, any men on the street she might happen to approach. I’m afraid you’ve eaten the last sweetcake she will ever bake. Her interests now will be of another nature entirely.”

She touched Ianorae’s cum-stained face, tracing the outline of her new mouth. “Yes,” Noalassa said, “it’s too bad. The only purpose this mouth has now is to give blowjobs.” She patted Teuthes on the head. “But that sucking she gave you, that was worth it, wasn’t it?”

Change her back, please, Teuthes begged silently. Please, don’t do this to her. To any of them!

Noalassa had been smirking. Slowly, her pretend amiability drained away. He voice grew cold.

“If your honorable captain does not sell his wife to a professional enslaver within a week, I will be surprised. But perhaps he is the honorable sort, like you, eh? If so, perhaps, he will instead kill her, then himself. Or do you think he will be foolish enough to attempt to hide her condition?”

She shook her head. “He would fail. If isn’t murdered, one way or another, your friend’s Ianorae will doubtless end up in some enslaver’s stable within the month. She has been thoroughly, permanently ruined for freedom.

“You would like her changed back, would you not, my lord?” Teuthes nodded meekly.

“No. That will not happen.

“There are seven women in this room, not including this new slut I’ve created. You may consider her an example of what is to come. She is but from the first circle of your acquaintances. There are many, many more women whose forms I could explore. Have you an understanding now, old man?”

Teuthes nodded.

“Good. Excellent.” At a gesture from the wizard, two more of her mind-captives joined them. They went to their hands and knees, side by side; and Noalassa sat on them in front of the old lord, using them as a chair. “And you thought I could not touch you.” She made a dismissive sound in her throat.

“So. Let’s discuss your first payment, now, shall we?”

Leusa had said nothing throughout the story. Alcaeus could not literally read her mind. Yet still he knew what she was thinking: This poor man. But my Master can help him. My Master can do anything! With any other slave, Alcaeus would not have cared. But with this one . . . .

The problem was, he wasn’t sure he could help Teuthes.

“The Nycclethnim are not the kindest wizards on Ramanananan,” he said to Lord Teuthes, finally. “In truth, they’re the most spiteful woman-wizards you’ll ever have the displeasure of meeting, and the Woman-Wizard Noalassa, among their most powerful sisters, is one of, if not the worst, among them.”

He sighed. “What, exactly, do you want me to do, sir?” he asked.

“Help me,” Teuthes said, mirroring his position in front of him, their foreheads now separated by only a brief space. “Kill her. Save the wives, sisters, and daughters of my men.” His voice was heavy with emotion.

“I can’t do that,” Alcaeus said, simply. “The Nycclethnim are allied with my order, the Ainchonnim, to control the territories of De, Disten, and Western Dommodon.” Such cooperation between wizard guilds was commonplace since each, in their respective magical fields, could only affect their own gender. With collaboration between the female-dominated Nycclethnim and the male-dominated Ainchonnim, their dominion over this group of islands was uncontested. “The more practical problem is that my magic won’t work on her directly, anymore than hers could on you.”

“But . . you must be able to do something! I’m begging you!”

“You have a serious problem. I know Noalassa. She’ll do exactly what she said she’ll do. She’ll have the women in your life on the street outside your door sucking cocks despite any accommodation you might make with her. She’ll break any agreement. She can’t be trusted. And if you’re thinking about killing yourself, to keep her from preying on them, thinking your death will satisfy her and end things, I regret to say it won’t. She’ll enslave them anyway, out of sheer spite.”

Teuthes didn’t speak. His mouth sputtered. There were more tears threatening.

Damn it, Alcaeus thought. This was hard. He liked Lord Teuthes. Most of the nobles of De he could safely ignore or hold in contempt. The ones he truly didn’t like, he could extort money from without any feeling of guilt whatsoever. After all, the wizard guilds of Ramanananan really ruled the world, despite whatever the republics might popularly claim. But Lord Teuthes had always been someone he could hold in higher esteem. He had a good reputation. He cared for the common people in his charge. He hadn’t wallowed in the decadence of the state. He was a “Senator of the Deinian Republic” in the old sense of the term, in the chaste and traditional sense.

Alcaeus, no stranger to the use of slaves himself, or luxury (and not feeling a bit hypocritical about either), honestly admired the man. He could admire Teuthes for the qualities he knew he himself did not possess. Teuthes was not among the wealthiest noblemen in De—he was too honest to be rich, had taken too few or no opportunities for graft in his public career—yet he was one of the most well-liked.

It was his too well-honed sense of impropriety that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

Yet loyalty to the Ainchonnim prevented him from providing the old lord any overt assistance. Beyond that, there was his own safety to consider. Alcaeus was not afraid of Noalassa. But he would have been a fool not to be wary of her. Alcaeus glanced again significantly at Leusa.

Leusa Ioles had also been present in the senate the day Eria Scarphn had been enslaved. Weeks afterwards, she had also come to Alcaeus and sought his advice. The noblewoman had had needs that could not be satisfied with the life she had then been leading.

Alcaeus considered her a brave woman to have taken the steps she had. The precedent against noble enslavements broken, she had been more discreet than Scarphn. In a private arrangement with Daoxechent enslavers, Leusa had signed away first her noble status, then her citizenship, then ultimately her freedom. Alcaeus had retained an interest in the girl, and he had made his own arrangements with the Lords of Daox, in anticipation. After she was made a slave, he had purchased Leusa directly from the enslavers before she could be transported off to the Isle of Daox. She had been his ever since.

The slip of Leusa’s slave rag had fallen from one beautiful shoulder. The magical tattoo that bound her to mind-controlled slavery was revealed, circles within circles, unmoving to male eyes, yet, he knew, in constant motion to those of a woman. Even were that famous sigil not evident, Leusa’s body clearly made apparent her transformed status. She had been fed a diet of the Daoxechent slave paste. While she still resembled, in a sense, the noblewoman she had been, especially about her face and hair, her breasts and hips were clearly now those of a magical sex slave. It was not surprising that Teuthes had not recognized her. Her natural beauty had been enhanced to raw lusty perfection.

What a wizard like Noalassa could do to such loveliness was not worth thinking about.

But he had to do something.

“There is a way,” Alcaeus said, finally, reaching out a hand to clasp the knee of Lord Teuthes. “But you won’t like it.” He explained briefly. As he had expected, the senator was indeed aghast at the suggestion. His reaction was extremely negative. The cost, too, was prohibitive. Alcaeus had to charge him, he was again bound by the rules of his wizard guild to do so; but there was this advantage to the plan, at least: Teuthes would not care about the money afterwards.

Eventually, the predicament itself was the convincing factor.

“I agree,” Teuthes said. Alcaeus made all the arrangements. The next day, the old lord returned to Alcaeus’ manor in the company of two public prefects, who would act as witnesses, and an armed pair of city guards. Leaving Leusa upstairs, the wizard took them the men downstairs to his rarely employed ceremonial chamber.

A little more than an hour later, they returned.

Leusa gasped. The prefects and the guards were the same, but between them now was a youthful giant, a tall, burly man in ill-fitting pants, without a shirt. His features were chiseled. There was a wild look on his face; there was a wild look about his entire person. Though his chest was hairless, he somehow presented the impression of shagginess.

His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, as if wanting to throttle something, anything.

“You . . this is Teuthes?” Leusa asked Alcaeus, and the man-wizard nodded wearily. The spells had been exhausting yet thorough. “What did you do, master?”

The old Teuthes had been short, balding, and plump, a soft and inoffensive man. The new, young Teuthes was tall and strapping, long-haired and muscular. Viewing him, one expected to see scars. He saw Leusa kneeling, and the savage went for her, laughing, eyes full of lust. Leusa shrank back with a cry, but the guardsmen to either side of Teuthes successfully held him back. Unlike her reaction to most men, the slave girl appeared terrified rather than aroused.

Once again, Alcaeus’ assessment of her was reaffirmed. She was a far from stupid slave.

Teuthes’ wrists were held by shackles. He grinned at the prefects as they talked to him. “Per your agreement, you will be escorted now to the coast. You will be put on a boat to take you to Dommodon. From there you are on your own. You are never to return to the City and Island-Republic of De for the rest of your life, under penalty of death. Do you understand?”

“Fuck you,” the ex-senator said. “Bend over.” He spit in the prefect’s face.

The man wiped it impassively. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Teuthes said. He scratched himself rudely. “Can we hurry? I need to get some pussy.”

“Not in De.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Not in De. Blah blah blah. Fuck you.”

The prefects stood aside, and the guards pulled Teuthes to the front door. He made another playful lunge toward Leusa as they passed, causing her to flinch again. He licked his lips at her salaciously.

Teuthes was laughing as they took him out. The prefects spoke to Alcaeus briefly, then nodded toward him and left, leaving the wizard alone with his slave.

There were tears on Leusa’s face. “I don’t understand, master,” she said. “Why?”

“So long as he cared, Noalassa had him,” Alcaeus said. “She could inflict pain on him. Even in death, she could still have dishonored his memory. Now, she won’t bother going after his women.”

“Because he no longer cares,” Leusa said.

“She has no hold on him now. I stripped him of every kind emotion, every hint of conscience, any iota of remorse. In return, I’ve given him youth, strength, health, and the heartless attitude that will serve him well in his new life as a barbarian, pirate, or whatever else he decides to do with his time.”

I’ve liberated him, Alcaeus thought, and felt sick. Teuthes had no money: the cost of the transformation had drained his finances, deliberately. He owned nothing now but the clothes on his back (and Alcaeus had provided these as a gift, for the sake of decorum). On the other hand, what need had he of anything else?

He had might without right. Strength without mercy. Appetite without restraint. He was now the perfect savage.

Alcaeus was not fool enough to think all women were either man-loving submissives, like the former Lady Leusa, or man-hating harridans, like the Woman-Wizard Noalassa. He was well aware that women, like men, came in a spectrum of attitudes and beliefs, and they didn’t all revolve around men. What he had done to Teuthes was much like what had been done to Leusa, where the raw potential of her sexuality had been taken and enhanced, artificially pushing her to the one extreme and made perfect through slavery (he suspected a similar apparatus was at work in regard to the magical curriculum of the Nycclethnim, to turn them into such monsters). He had turned the good old lord into a young wild savage: fierce, uncouth, and uncaring, and as sexualized in his own way as any slave girl. He would either do spectacularly well in his new life, or he would get killed in a bar fight within the month.

Either way, the women in the old Teuthes’ life would now be safe.

“I don’t . . . I’m sorry, master. This is wrong.” Leusa put her head to the floor. “Forgive Leusa, master. She should not have spoken. She is a slave.” Still, she sobbed.

“I’ll be upstairs for the rest of the day,” Alcaeus said woodenly. He walked woodenly to the stairs. “You may do as you like.” He stopped mid-way up. He almost said something more to Leusa, but he didn’t turn around, and he didn’t say it. He didn’t know what to say. Because she was right.

The slave girl said nothing. Alcaeus continued on his way to bed, alone.