The sunlight in Greece had a golden, flowing, almost tangible beauty like nowhere else on Earth. It poured down on the worn dirt path, baking the dust until it felt like brick beneath bare feet. It trickled in through the gaps between the leaves of the olive trees, turning each one into a cathedral of shadow that provided a welcome relief from the stifling summer heat. It radiated off the whitewashed buildings, making the tiny village of Elaiones gleam with an intensity so bright it was almost blinding. And it shone down on the long dark hair and glistening brown skin of Veena as she approached the centuries-old flagstones and began to walk toward the center of town.
She didn't look up or down, left or right, but she was nonetheless aware of the watchful eyes on her as she padded silently across the sun-warmed stone. She could sense the sentinels at every window, observing her with empty stares that belonged to them in appearance only, and she could feel the energies flowing through the air around her from the bodies in each house to the center of town. Veena wasn't a telepath herself, but you didn't live almost nine thousand years without picking up a little more awareness of the world than the average person. There was a subtle hint of shimmer everywhere, a sign of power at the heart of Elaiones that she couldn't ignore. Every once in a while, a tendril of it reached out for her, but Veena was confident in her magics. She knew they would stop any unwanted intrusion.
At least, any directed at her. The poor people in this town had already been very nearly hollowed out by the sustained application of telepathic pressure on their unprotected minds. How long had it been since they had a thought of their own? A week? Perhaps two? Not a long time when measured against the span of a human life, perhaps an eyeblink when held against the span of eternity, but far too long to be held without even the capacity to think for oneself. And Veena could tell there was yet more power still unexpended in the mind of their controller. The boundaries of this--this zone of will-deadening slavery--were those of Elaiones not because of a lack of strength, but because of a lack of vision. Even after years of education abroad, the owner of this ability still saw no farther than their tiny home.
Which meant that Veena had to be careful, she reminded herself as she got closer and closer to the heart of the telepathic storm that raged around her. The one thing she couldn't afford to do was educate her quarry about the potential scope of her dominion without giving her the moral framework needed to make ethical use of her power. She could simply decide to envelop the entire Earth in her control, numb the minds of every human being into blank, hollow servitude to her will. Civilization could not survive even a month of that kind of total emptiness, let alone the six or seven decades it might have to endure if Veena failed.
The stakes were high as she walked into the town hall and found a lithe, slender Greek woman sitting naked on a throne of living, breathing human bodies and masturbating as she watched a series of her empty puppets contorting and writhing in orgiastic bliss. "I don't know what you want," Korina Psyche snapped, the British accent she'd picked up during her education in England making her sound a bit like a caricature of an East End gangster in an old movie. "But you can fuck off, okay? This is my patch. Go find your own if you want."
Veena stepped delicately between the humping, grinding bodies all around her until she found a clear patch close enough to Korina to speak without shouting. She sat down cross-legged and unslung her namesake instrument, strumming a tune with an idle ease born of long practice. "Two years, Miss Psyche," she murmured, her voice cool and calm and elegant. "Two years you managed to rein in your power. What changed, mm? What made you decide these weren't people to you any longer? Because I felt the moment of your second birth from half a world away, and you weren't a monster then."
Korina tensed in shock as if she'd been slapped. For a moment, Veena thought the younger woman was going to order the mob to tear her limb from limb. But the power of the music was already weaving its spell around Korina's mind, walking her back from the precipice she'd brought herself to just enough to allow them to have a real and meaningful conversation. There was a subtlety to this kind of delicate control, a knack Veena had developed over the millennia. Too little, and Korina would simply deflect and project the immortal's probing questions. Too much, and she'd merely be a drone like all these others and that would only delay the day of reckoning that was bound to come when Korina's fury finally eclipsed her judgment completely.
"My father died," she said, the words bubbling up through a throat thick with bile. "Lost my mum when I was just a little girl, and my dad... he sent me away for years, you know? Said it was to educate me, but even before I got my powers I knew the truth. I reminded him of too much pain. But still, I loved him, you know? We... we only had a few good years together, right at the end when his health was failing and he brought me home. I could ignore all these others for him."
She gestured, and one of the participants of the orgy jerked to his feet like a puppet on a string. "But the funeral--oh, god, you've never seen so much sanctimonious pity. Every single one of them, coming up to me and paying their respects and mouthing all their hollow bullshit about what a kind man he was and how much he meant to this town and how if I needed anything, anything at all to just let them know and they'd move heaven and earth to help me. Inside, though...."
Another puppet sprang to his feet speaking Korina's thoughts through his mouth with a harsh croak that made her accent sound even more coarse. "Nikos here was thinking a weak, vulnerable girl of eighteen would be easy to manipulate. He was already planning my wedding, my pregnancy, and the surrender of my family's fortune while he took my hands and mouthed bland platitudes about grief and loss. And Evangelos... his pious pity masked such deep contempt. He couldn't stop thinking about what a burden the poor little blind girl was going to be on the village, how much work they'd all have to put in caring for me even after my 'operation' had made sight a little bit easier for me. All their kindness, all their cheerfully saccharine words masked nothing but selfishness and greed. I'd put up with it for two years--how much longer was I supposed to endure it?"
Veena sighed. "This isn't a solution," she said, her voice weary and a little bit sad as she tried to persuade the young woman without having to resort to drastic measures. "I know that humans can be flawed, but simply robbing them of their humanity gives them no chances to learn or grow past their weaknesses. You can empty out every mind that touches yours, but all that does is leave you alone in a world that never changes. That's not a life, Korina. That's a tomb." Her fingers kept strumming away at the strings as she spoke, but she held off from putting too much pressure on Korina's will. Everything she said about Korina's victims was just as true of her, after all, and the young woman deserved a chance to learn from her mistakes. To force her into compliance now would leave her frozen forever with the mind of a monster, and Veena believed she could be more.
If she truly wanted to be. "Oh, come on!" Korina snapped, rising to her feet with her fists clenched and her brow furrowed in anger as she spoke with her own voice again. "Have you ever been inside one of these things? They're all the same, you know. Nothing but petty fears and unimportant worries and the constant desire to eat shit fuck to keep their bodies going. So I took a few hundred of them out of circulation. So what? There's billions more where that came from, and every one of them is just like every other. The names and details change, but that's all."
