Chapter Three: A Taste Of Power
Slave Girl
The new order is built on old truths.
Ancient truths, elder to culture and superstition, belief and tradition, elder to thought itself. They're truths etched in our very biology. No, even deeper than that -- they're the inevitable consequence of a universe bound by scarcity.
The perpetuation of life is only possible through death. Everything that lives, eats, or is eaten, a constant energy transfer, a perpetual combustion that fuels the great engine of the world.
This duality reverberates downward, into every nook and cranny of our lives. Life and death, triumph and defeat... power and submission. Both need each other to exist.
The Lord Rulers have freed us of the illusion that it was ever otherwise. The old world was a pantomime, an exercise of self-delusion, and it needed to be broken and remade. The new world, this rising world, is so much truer.
So much harsher.
And so much more pleasurable.
I've never been more grateful for it than I am at this moment. It is Master's will that I administer the test, that I referee the fight between the three new fledgling stars. I'm as proud as a girl without a name could ever be. I'm perfect in my submission.
I am slave.
Like I told Master, when the three psionic fingerprints of the candidates were imprinted in my brain, it's sad that only one will be allowed to ascend. But I understand that it's also necessary, because the new order is built on old truths.
Ability is utility.
Utility is value.
Value is dignity.
Dignity is freedom.
And very shortly, once the dust clears from the battlefield, a new individual will join the ranks of the rightful masters of this world, an extraordinarily able being with extraordinary freedoms. And as for the other two, well...
They will have the honour of fuelling the great engine of the world. Not with their deaths, because the Lord Rulers are inherently merciful and compassionate, but with their slavery, the truest form of slavery ever conceivable in existence. After all...
The perpetuation of power is only possible through submission.
***
Carolina
The astral plane shimmers around me as I enter, reality bending and twisting into impossible shapes.
Ethereal mist coils around my ankles with every step. Towers of jagged ice loom into the sky above me, and the shifting sands of the desert ripple like a tidal wave far below my feet. The stars move in the night sky like hands on a clock.
To my left, fractals of emerald light form a translucent wall of sharp edges and steep angles. To my right, an impossibly vast vista opens up over a black hole, density itself, a lobe of pure darkness enveloped in a ring of fire.
It's... lysergic. No other words fit.
And in the center of it all, a girl kneels, surrounded by the shifting mists.
Her presence is both a balm and a blade. Just by looking at her, you can sense the hedonism the new order reveres so much. There is something primally and unspeakably sexual about an enthralled girl, kneeling in submission, lowered and folded down, open and inviting, ready for use.
But in truth, she's so much more than that.
There's an... aura, about her. I know she is a slave -- no, to be more specific, I know she is slave, and that gives the scene something of a paradoxycal nature. How can a kneeling personification of slavery itself feel powerful?
And yet, she does feel powerful, to me at least. A small, kneeling figure, at the literal epicenter of a vortex of cosmic power and breath-taking imagery. An avatar for the Lord Rulers and their new order, and the overseer of the fight to come.
That's it, I realise. She feels powerful in much the same way that the moon looks bright in the night sky. It undeniably does... it's just not the one actually producing the light. It's merely reflecting that of the sun.
And slave girl is reflecting, or channeling, or embodying, a sliver of the power of her master. Of a Lord Ruler.
It... takes my breath away.
I've been practicing with my fledgling psionic powers, whenever made possible -- the combined demand of service to the Bothnias and Irmgard's mind games have made it very hard for me. I've tried to project my thoughts outward, to sense the minds of people around me, the very basic stuff.
But here, in the astral plane, even my nascent and diminutive powers feel amplified. I sense the psionic energy buzzing around me, I sense Irmgard and Ragnar, their own power, the way in which they differ from each other, and from my own.
These are inhuman concepts, and so putting them into human words is limiting, but my power feels like gritted teeth and nails digging into palms, a hand closing into a fist. Muscle tension, dogged resistance, motivation out of spite, a memory of hardship. My own psionic energy sees myself as prey that refuses to be broken by her predators.
Irmgard's is... fire. It burns with ambition, hunger, lust... and hatred. She is a sexual predator, down to the bone, a true disciple of the new order. Nothing gets her going like prevarication, like flaying a slave's mind, like snuffing out a slave's humanity in the grip of her small, dainty, feminine hands.
She is the femme fatale, the striding panther, the coiling snake, warm without and cold within. Smart, and charming, and utterly without mercy.
And Ragnar... well, he's a man.
His power is a surge of crackling energy that makes me jolt every time I tentatively brush it. It's the calm, poised, self-assured confidence of controlling masculinity. The certainty and singularity of purpose of a conqueror.
I've always known, rationally, that few women rise to become Lord Rulers. That men are simply better at this than we are. But it's only now that I feel it, not as a concept, but as a physical sensation.
I've always thought of Ragnar as a clever, mild-mannered, compassionate young man, someone far gentler than the new order prescribes, bookish and a little timid at times. But in here, with his essence made manifest... he feels like a man.
My hands clench into fists, determination steeling my resolve. I want to prove myself his equal.
For all that, for all the wonder and curiosity I've felt exploring our respective psionic fingerprints once we ascended up here... it all fades, next to the sliver of Lord Rulership being channeled through slave girl.
You can study a candle up close, but when you step outside and the sun blinds you, you'll know what true light is, what true power is.
The light from a candle is a self-contained thing. You can see where it begins and where it ends, you can isolate it, contain it, move it around. But sunlight goes where it will. It flows over any barrier, like a river bursting over the banks. It inundates your perception. You can close your eyes to it, but you can't touch it.
This is what it feels like, to be in the presence of a mere fraction of a single Lord Ruler's power.
How do you deal with that? With the knowledge of how truly outmatched a mere mortal is, compared to them? We're just insects. Minuscule, insignificant, below notice. It's hard to hold on to my rage at the new order, when all I feel is awe.
Would I...?
If I win, I'll be the one wielding such power. Would I actually do it? Could I do it?
I don't know if I mean that last question in terms of physical possibility, or morality.
Slave girl speaks, at last, snapping me out of my reverie. "There are a thousand lords," she says, solemnly, "and one. Only one of you will be allowed to ascend. That is a tragedy, but it's the ineluctable will of the cosmos itself. The other two of you will have the privilege of feeding the great engine of the world."
Confusion ripples outward -- in a very literal, physical sense, for our emotions translate into direct energy in this liminal place. They flow with the sand, reflect across the fractals and the towers of ice, swirl inevitably towards the black hole.
Slave girl gives a faint smile. "Let me be clearer, then. You need not fear the fall. The two of you who will succumb, will soon find out that in surrender, there lies ecstasy unimagined."
There it is. The balm, and the blade. The hedonism of sexual submission, the eroticism of the conquest and resulting subjugation. It's basically rippling outward from her in pulses, like a beating heart.
Well. Personally speaking, I think I've experienced enough slavery for a lifetime. I aim to emerge from this one triumphant, and free. To rescue mum and my brother. To give Irmgard some degree of comeuppance. And after that...
I don't know what I'll do after that. One step at a time. One problem at a time.
My body tingles with anticipatory energy as I tap into my own deep reservoir of psychic strength, preparing myself for the impending battle.
I brace myself, ready to face the storm, as slave girl claps her hands once, the sound echoing through the astral plane until it's louder than a crowd's applause.
