Chapter 5 - A Fearsome Rapture
Carolina
The beauty of the stars bleeds out of the world.
As the ethereal mists of the psionic plane begin to disappear, the impossible vistas that framed our fight recede. In their place, walls, tables, chairs, cabinets - a room.
It's a mortifying, heart-breaking spectacle. The room we're in, where we were led to for the beginning of our fight, is grand, ornate, decorative, kingly. But it looks impossibly drab, now that I've seen the power of the stars themselves. Mundane, mortal, forgettable.
Like me.
In my defeat, I know I shall never personally lay eyes on the astral plane again, and it fills me with a sense of incredible loss, of almost physical grief. But not as much grief as the idea that, for one glorious moment, I was on the cusp of greatness. Of transcendence.
Now, the night has ended, and with it, my dream of power.
But the thing about the end of the night, is that it brings the dawn with it. And right now, I find myself kneeling before the new rising sun.
Kneeling before Ragnar.
I tremble, my heart pounding in my chest, stealing tentative looks up at him. His eyes were chipped abyssal stones a moment ago, sucking in the light. Now, they glow with otherworldly fire, energy crackling around him in a blinding halo of psionic might.
The three of us went into this struggle with fledgling, newly Awakened powers running through our veins, and that was a feeling no mortal vocabulary can truly convey. But even that pales, in comparison with the sheer storm of starry might building up inside Ragnar. Having triumphed, he is beginning to accumulate psionic power.
I avert my eyes as Ragnar's aura flares brighter, the raw strength within him growing with every heartbeat. I'm unable to withstand the intensity radiating from him, like the quickening pulse of a colossal heart. There's so much symbolism in such a tiny gesture, in lowering my gaze to the cold stone floor beneath my knees. An irrevocable admission that this is truly over, that my dreams of rising from the depths of slavery to the heights of divinity have been truly ended.
That he's won.
For the blink of an eye, back in the astral plane, I was a warrior. A formidable aspirant to transcendence. I was more than a slave, more than chattel to be bartered and sold. But it was not meant to last. I tried to grasp a star, and came up short. And now...
I sense the first tender stirrings of Ragnar's consciousness brushing against my own. Though we stand worlds apart in status and power, in this moment we are joined.
Through our nascent bond, forged in the heat of psychic combat, I sense him reining in my wayward thoughts, subduing all resistance. A feeling of lightheadedness comes over me, and I sway on my knees. It's like Ragnar has a... gravitational field, enough to make it hard for me to keep my balance, even on my knees.
I've spent most of my adult life kneeling before people. But no moment has ever felt even remotely comparable to this.
I cannot deny that a part of me is... thrilled at the idea. When I touched slave girl's mind, the things I saw, the things I experienced, the things I...
understood...
Ragnar is not going to be my human owner, the way the Bothnias have been for so long. He's going to become a Lord Ruler. A master of creation. A living god.
Is there not a form of privilege, in getting to kneel before such?
I risk a furtive glance at Irmgard. She lies crumpled on the floor, broken and sobbing. How quickly the tables have turned. So shortly ago she still thought herself a scion of the New Order. A heiress to greatness, destined for divinity. But Ragnar has dismantled her.
That's the transformative power of strength. I look at it with different eyes, now, than I did before. Slave girl and Ragnar, together, have shown me the core of what it truly means to rule and serve.
By overpowering someone, you get to reshape them. You get to right wrongs, to craft beauty, to create pleasure.
Irmgard could only be ended, not because she was insufferable and arrogant, vain and cruel, but because she was not strong enough. Because Ragnar had what it took to master her, and because I chose him over her.
A profound shift ripples through me, a seismic recalibration of my inner world. I feel the shape of the New Order imprinting itself on my mind, just like the sole of the Lord Rulers' boots imprinted itself into humanity's neck. Things fall into place, perspectives sliding into alignment like the tumblers of a lock.
I understand now why the strong rule. Why the weak must submit without question. The natural order is as implacable as gravity. Every system of organised human life relies, to some or other extent, on coercion. There is a sublime rapture in having been bested, humbled, forced to surrender.
I spent my life with so... much... resentment. Rage at what was done to me, and to my family. But I see now that life before the Lord Rulers was but a pale shadow of true existence. The freedom we so cherished had so little utility, so little value, and was therefore, no true freedom. It was never real.
Indeed, it could be... dismissed as a fever dream.
I lift my eyes to him again, in awe, this time. The energy radiating from him is overwhelming, crackling through the air like gathering lightning. I can feel it raising the hairs on my arms, charging the very atmosphere around us.
He has transcended now to the level of a true superhuman, a man-turned-god. The gulf between us seems unbridgeable, vast as the distance between a flickering candle's flame and the heart of a newborn star.
His power makes me whimper... and it makes Irmgard sob.
She's still crumpled and weeping pitifully in the corner. Just the thought of her ignites rage within me. That entitled, conniving wretch. The way she manipulated me, tried to break me at the Candy Shop, treated me like dirt beneath her feet. I will make her pay for every humiliation. I will break her mind and body until she begs for mercy.
If our new master lets me.
I will have to pray that in his wisdom, Ragnar allows me to exercise governance over her. A fitting punishment for one so arrogant, to have me elevated above her. I feel my body flood with warmth at the thought, a heady rush. Yes, I will serve him devotedly, and I'll beg to be granted the exquisite privilege of lording it over Irmgard.
Ragnar regards me with those blazing eyes. "You fought well, Carolina. But in the end, you were outmatched." His words are matter-of-fact, holding no malice, but the voice... God, his voice goes straight to my clit, making me shudder in weak craving. The sudden, desperate sexual need that the weak feel in the presence of someone so much more powerful.
His voice reverberates with inhuman resonance, like the polyphonic crash of several tidal waves. It's butter and thunder.
Ragnar seems to grow taller, more imposing, as if the very fabric of reality is bending to his will. The air hums with power, and I feel an invisible weight pressing down on me, forcing me to bow my head before this nascent god.
And so, I do. I prostrate myself, pressing my forehead low to the ground before Ragnar. The stone is cold against my skin, but a fire burns in my heart. I'm pledging myself fully to my new master.
"Yes, my lord. I see that now."
"Sit back on your haunches," Ragnar says, and I rush to obey, straightening my spine, sitting back, kneeling expectantly at his feet.
"Society is built on order and hierarchy for good reason. The strong dominate the weak because the universe wills it. And I am going to dominate you, Carolina. You will be my wife-slave. It's the highest position you could ever hope to attain, while still being owned. You will oversee my household and all who dwell within it." He pauses, then adds pointedly, with a smirk, "Including our noble Irmgard."
The shrill whimper of wounded pride and erotic panic that bursts from Irmgard's throat at his words is beautiful. It makes my loins ignite. It makes me want to muffle her dog-like utterances by sitting on her fucking face right away. But I need to be patient. This is Ragnar's show, not mine.
His concession to me, not my right.
His astonishing power elevates him above the ranks of ordinary men. And I, in my profound submission, will be lifted up as well.
Ragnar goes on, "As my wife-slave, you will accept your second-place nature to me as a man. Very few women manage to become Lord Rulers, and you will not be one of them."
I bow my head in unconditional acquiescence.
"Maybe most importantly," he says, "you will deeply study, and unfailingly conform with, proper ideology. Slavery is part of the natural order. The Sunday of Leathered Splendour proved that three can stand over ten thousand. Because the three were more than human, and the ten thousand were just people-cattle."
The old me would be numb to arguments like that. Sullenly resentful, yet meekly accepting. But how can I ignore them, now, after what I've seen and felt?
"I understand, my lord," I whisper, my voice trembling with awe and submission. "I will study the ideology. I will become its most fervent disciple."
"Now, I am not without mercy," Ragnar continues. "I have a bridal gift of sorts, to present you, my wife-slave. Your mother Georgia, and your brother Utah, will be purchased from the Bothnia family and freed from slavery. You will all live together under my roof. You will be slaves, of course, but prized ones, responsible for overseeing all other human cattle in my to-be household. A Lord Ruler needs a fitting estate, and you will join it."
What?
I stare up at Ragnar, stunned into silence. Never did I imagine he would show such mercy. God... the contrast with what Irmgard threatened to do to me, to us, at the Candy Shop. I...
Tears of gratitude fill my eyes. "Thank you, my lord," I whisper. "Your mercy knows no bounds."
