A Thousand Lords And One Ch 03

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.

"Now," she says at last. "Begin."

***

The words stop.

No more fumbling around in the dark, trying to understand the most basic elements of a power we barely understand. No more translating superhuman experiences into human terminology. No more mind games, dreams of a better life, or fear of the future.

All of that stops now... and the storm begins.

Irmgard ignores Ragnar and goes straight for me, her eyes blazing with an unholy light. Predictable, but mighty all the same. Her contempt for me slams into my ribs like a fist, driving the breath from my lungs, making me stagger backwards.

My mind reels. Irmgard bombards my mind with hammer blow after hammer blow, relentless and unforgiving. My family, torn apart, separate slave auctions, separate owners, a specific clause to prevent any further interaction between us again.

I see myself, led into the depths of Irmgard's mansion, past the oil paintings and marble floors and ornamental busts, into an animal cage barely large enough to contain me.

I see the concoction of drugs she'll spread over her feet like a cream, forcing me to lick it clean, to drug myself into ditzy, animalistic stupidity for her to better program me.

I feel her lithe and supple thighs entombing my face in a grip of female flesh, I taste the way her sex smells as it presses over my nose and mouth, mastering my breathing, demanding my worship.

I feel what it's like to be mentally flayed. Broken down into raw materials and remolded back up as an ornament on Irmgard's arm, a decoration, a voiceless, brainless pet for her to show off how talented a dominator she is.

The visions get faster and faster, blurring past me from every side. I stagger in the non-space of the astral plane, struggling to maintain a semblance of control. My defenses, woven from sheer willpower, shudder under the brute force of her assault.

I can sense Ragnar watching us. His psionic presence is a vortex of complex, entangled thoughts. Analytical. Intelligent.

Somehow, the mere knowledge that something else exists out of Irmgard's psionic onslaught is just the reality check that I need to get a second wind.

I meet Irmgard's imagery with my own -- I see myself ascendant, powerful and free, more than human. The ultimate rags to riches story, a bright and willful girl going from slavery to literal godhood.

But it doesn't do much, and it twists my stomach to realise why. These are deeply personal, and deeply positive images. They represent what I want -- to be free, to rescue those I love. I don't want to oppress anyone... I think.

But it's not actually striking back at Irmgard if I show her that. No, I need to destabilise her. I need to use my enemy's own tools to defeat her, even if I recognise that they are evil.

Maybe that should give me pause... but I'm sick of losing. Sick of kneeling, licking, sucking, serving.

And so, I strike back. For real, this time.

I imagine Irmgard, fallen from grace. Fine clothes stripped from her as she is pushed into the tube and clad in silky, translucent slave garb. Forced to belly-dance with a candelabrum finally balanced atop her head.

I take my own worst memories and twist them against her. I show her slave-catchers raiding her home, fastening a smart-band collar around her neck, driving her out towards the Candy Shop like a mere animal.

I show the liquidation team rifling through her family's possession, the busts being stored away for transport, the paintings being taken off the wall.

I show her shriveling and kneeling before my might, in the wake of my ascension to Lord Rulership, ready to get a taste of her own medicine. Ready for her higher cognition to be psionically flayed.

Our two projections hurtle and crash into one another with a collision of thunder and colour. It's like a hammer, striking a gong. The astral plane responds to the impact, its very fabric quivering as if alive, a sentient witness to our struggle.

Then, and only then, Ragnar throws himself into the fight.

Waves of psychic energy ripple in every direction like a violent storm, ethereal tendrils of pure, compartmentalised emotion, sexualised trauma and prevarication, shooting in every direction. Coiling around each other. Their luminescent trails painting the realm in vibrant hues and cascading sparks.

I'm not even following the fight analytically, not anymore. With the three of us locked in a life of death struggle, the emergent result is a whirlwind of dazzling light and colour. Instinct takes over, and I follow the rhythm of the fight, even as a remote part of my brain begins to grasp what's actually happening, at least vaguely.

Life feeds on life. There can be no life without death, no power without submission, no triumph without defeat.

Of course we sexualise all of this. Our worst nightmares, or the nightmares we inflict on others. It's in harmony with the universe. It demands us to fight, to suffer. Why reject it, when you can fetishise it?

When you can enjoy it?

There's no pretense, here. No politeness. Just sex, and power, and life. No matter who wins, our bodies will intertwine the same way that our minds are. The winner will fuck the vanquished into submission, just like we're trying to fuck each other's minds now.

To penetrate each other's consciousness with tendrils shaped out of our fantasies, our hardships, our fears. Here, in the heart of conflict, we are stripped bare, our true selves laid open for the universe to witness.

I check Ragnar's thrust -- a world of women on their knees, words turning into soft moans as they obediently suck cock in pleasure, accepting their diminishment together with men's cum in an act of dutiful swallowing -- and switch to the offensive against Irmgard.

I form a psionic lance out of every act of sexual prevarication and abuse I've ever seen. All the groping at Arthur's hands, my mother and I always ready for him to fuck at any point, Audra's feet mastering the three of us, everyone I've ever known who's been clapped into smart-band and driven to their knees and turned into a sensual pet for their former neighbours, friends, rivals.

And the sexual prevarication done to me. Irmgard's body pinning my own in the pleasure room, after working me up for an entire morning, prepping my mind to be soft and pliable when she decided to take my body. The part of me that hated her for sexually dominating me like that. The part of me that enjoyed it.

I take all of that, shape it into one sharp psionic lance, and I aim it straight at Irmgard's heart.

And then, throwing caution to the wind, ignoring Ragnar, I lunge.

For a glorious second, the smugness and superiority fades in Irmgard's eyes, replaced by shock. For a glorious second, I'm not the defender, gritting my teeth and standing my ground against all the abuse I've ever suffered.

I'm the attacker, the predator, and she's my target, the prey I want to pin down and subdue and mentally strangle until her voice is reduced into a whorish whisper.

Yes. That is what I want. The psionic lance effectively shifts into an extension of my arm as I acknowledge the dark hunger I feel now.

I want to dismantle this fucking bitch, piece by piece. I want to ask her if she likes the new order so much, when she's the one being stripped of humanity and reduced into an animal.

I want to hurt her.

For a glorious second, I want more than freedom for me and my family. I want revenge, and the ability to make it happen.

I WANT POWER.

Irmgard steps to the side, trying to dance away, but Ragnar's own energy interferes with her dodge. His masculine confidence, the physical manifestation of the imagery of female meekness and the inherently male-centric nature of the new order -- it trips her up.

It makes her move clumsy, half-dance, half-stumble.

I was aiming for her heart, and I don't get that. My psionic lance of trauma and rage and revenge and pure sexual power bumps against her shoulder, scraping it as I stumble forward, losing my balance.

It's not a real blade, so it doesn't break the skin. But it wounds Irmgard all the same. A psionic wound, releasing puffs of purple smoke -- I don't know what's pouring out of the laceration, but it's clearly done something, and for a glorious second, I get to enjoy the bone-chilling scream that comes from deep in Irmgard's throat.

But then, the glorious second ends.

I stumble forward, and forward, and forward, losing my balance. I fall to my knees, barely catching myself, but the tip of my lance brushes against something else, and it doesn't produce a wound, this time.

It... receives something.

And since it's an extension of my arm right now, that means I receive something, too.

A brush of consciousness, soft as a whisper. An accidental caress. Another essence, not Irmgard's, not Ragnar's, bleeding into mine. But there's no one else here, how could that be...?

No. That's not true.

I barely have time to process the realisation when I suddenly feel it. This is slave girl. It's her mind. I've accidentally touched her very identity, her psionic fingerprint.

Every memory she's ever had. Every second she's ever lived. Every thrust she's ever taken, both the physical and the mental kind, as the personal slave, not to another person, but to a god among mortals. To a higher being of immense power. To a Lord Ruler.

I can sense all of it, like a distant tsunami swelling over the horizon, drawing closer and closer to the shore. I can feel all of it, crawling up my psionic lance.

Crawling up my arm. And closer, and closer, and closer.

"Oh," I say, muted, stupefied. It's all I get the chance to say... before the levee breaks.