A Bargain Made Ch. 02

The certainty of the last hit her like a fist. Her entire life had been about discipline and control and the burdens of being in charge. She wore them all proudly, but they had worn on her, too. To be weak was delicious. To let go and defer and be submissive was the same way a warm bath with her mint extracts was peaceful. It was bliss.

"You had someone you could let go with, even if I did have a job to do."

She mirrored Deres' words in her own way whether she meant to or not. They tugged at her and Neral wondered if the witch was using what she'd done before to influence her to act to free her. Or something. She felt the pull. There was a knot in her belly that even now that whispered to her to obey. The very word promised and tormented.

Deres' voice, strong, resolute, and tinged with his own unique brand of mirth even now snapped her to with it's certainty. "Neral's going to marry me in return for my bitch-trapping, so she's really not going to be alone anymore. Aside from that," he began, before turning to her and smiling at the sight of those brown eyes, "I love her."

She almost laughed until she really looked at him. It was the vulnerability in his eyes. He was more exposed to her emotionally as she was to him physically. She tried to sort her confusion. "You barely know me."

"I can't help it. I couldn't have stayed away even without all this. "You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, add powerful, intelligent, and regal to the mix and I was lost to you as surely as you were lost to her." He smiled even as his eyes threatened to mist, "Touching your mind to see you really were all that and more?" He cleared his throat, "To answer your question, yes, I would have helped if you had said no because it was you that asked me. I would have died for a home that has no use for me because it was you that asked me. But you gave me your word..."

The trailing off was deliberate. The words hung in the air like a question. She could back out. She could back out and he'd still help her and a people that shunned him because he'd been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. "I gave my word. It's done."

He shied away from her eyes for an instant, looking like a boy asking a girl to his first dance. "You may never grow to love me, but I promise you I'll try to be worthy of what you've given."

Her brown eyes fell distant for a time. Her world as she had known it had been shredded in a matter of days. The very person she was had been nearly torn apart and remade, and even that didn't hurt as much the fact that there was a place inside her that still wanted it. She was no good at deluding herself, but she penchant for honest self-assessment was still intact. The loss of control thrilled her as it terrified her. Her place in the world was a difficult one and often lonely. Maybe she'd liked the belonging of it too as much as the thrill. There was an intimacy to it that couldn't be explained with words unless they'd felt it for themselves.

Neral knew you could stare down your opponents numbers all day or you could leap into the fray. Sometimes you had to leap and her heart pounded each time at the moment the decision was made.

Neral leaped. "Do you have it?"

He didn't have to ask what she was talking about. He told her he did even as he retrieved it from the folds of his robes. In his palm sat that seemingly nothing slip of red glass. "Are you sure?"

Her response was clipped. "No. Is there time?"

His head tilted to the witch for a moment in silent assessment before nodding. "It's fast."

She looked at it one last time. "I will still be the person I am?" It wasn't a question. She wanted that one last bit of reassurance.

"In every way that truly matters to you." His sincerity was unmistakable and genuine. Even so he began to balk. "But you don't have to. I..."

This time it was her who grinned, for she, in her own way, was already in free fall. "If I will still be me you will have to learn that there are times when you simply need to shut...up."

His mouth closed, but his eyes told her he hadn't lied about his feelings for her. She clasped his hand in an iron grip. She felt the rounded corners of it touching her skin as she squeezed.

"Will it to break," he whispered. "See it in your mind and break it."

A last choice made, she put that slip of glass in the center of her mind and cracked it in two. As it was in her mind, so it was in her hand. She felt it snap and looked down to see hints of red magic slip through her fingers and crawl up her arm from wrist to elbow. There was no pain or pleasure. Neral found it odd that there was no sensation at all even as it seemed to sink into her skin and fade until nothing but her slightly olive complexion could be seen.

Then feeling.

She remembered how she felt as a girl amusing herself under the kitchen table enjoying the aromas and the sounds of chatter and as her mother cooked with the servants because she just enjoyed cooking.

She remembered the feeling the first time she laid with a lover in the grass.

She remembered how she felt the day she had graduated from War College, standing straight and tall as her family sat next to the royal line as was their position and how her mother had thrown her own decorum to the wind and beamed with pride and clapped for her.

She remembered the comfort of those nights with her sisters and the fire and bottles of wine as they talked, laughed, and gossiped until near dawn.

The general remembered all those moments and a thousand more as those feelings poured into that knot in her belly, quelling her fear and replacing it with love, contentment, and peace. She looked into those blue eyes of his and found those things in him as though she'd known him her entire life and not just a tiny march of days and as though he'd had her heart since it first began to beat.

Falling and staying in love is usually a million moments and a million trials all combining over a lifetime. It was supremely strange to her for a moment to simply *be* in love with the same speed at which you enter a room or snuff out a lamp. One instant it was not so, then it was.

She drew closer to him, not even noticing that nothing remained in her hand as she placed it on his shoulder. His arms went around her and she drifted closer to his lips, and, when they met, her tasting that taste never experienced yet always known told her all was as it should be. When it finally broke she relished his hand cupping her ass and the memory that she had been half naked before him when he first saw her tonight. She'd have to make that 'completely' at the earliest opportunity, but the reason that couldn't be shook her from the moment.

"Well, isn't that just fucking sweet."

She did at least help show Neral that she was the same person as from moments before. She still felt the anger, shame, and desire to put this thing that had robbed her of will to a slow death. Neral broke the embrace with her love and sighed. "If only I didn't need you to speak."

"Let me go and I will. As I've said, it's just a job. There will be others." She put as much sincerity into it as she could manage, but, as much as it fed her anger at her predicament, she couldn't entirely blame them both for laughing at her.

"Like exacting revenge on me, no doubt?"

"I would tell you both what you want to know and forgo any retribution on you or the general if you show me how to make a snare like this and perhaps a few other skills to be determined later?" That was a sincere offer for her. With what he could teach it'd be years or more before she even thought of turning her attention back to them.

Neral was having none of it, "And wait for the night when my children sleep peacefully in their beds and you decide that that's the night you come to them for revenge?" The thought gave her a start, {Children?} It hadn't been anything she'd given a first thought to, much less a second. There was not and hadn't been anyone to contemplate children with until now. Indeed, her mother had been pressuring her to marry, dropping hints that she'd be more than willing to arrange a marriage to a suitable male. She looked at her man as he eyed the witch and allowed herself one more moment of softness with the simple thought, {Of course.}

Neral closed the distance and spoke to the woman with all the venom that had built within her, "You *will* speak."

"That's the issue," Deres said almost casually as he paced before both of them. "She has to tell us everything about this plan and every person involved. It's the only way to be sure that it's dead. I can continue to confine her, but all she has to do is stall with this lie and that while we chase each one everywhere and likely away from where the real plans are."

Her blue eyes never left Neral's even though it was him she dared, "You can take it all from me. Surely I couldn't stop you."

"You couldn't."

"Pleasure or pain," Neral commanded. "I don't care which you use."

He folded his arms over his chest as he spoke, "That she'd invite me to use magic suggests she wants me to. She's tethered to her handlers by schedule or magic. Fail to make a meet or make it with my marks in her mind and whatever might happen will."

"Your new love is astute, so let's make a deal."

"And hope you tell the whole truth."

Neral could see that the bitch wanted to strut the room. "What other choice do you have, dear? The clock ticks."

"On?"

"The snare, of course." Her tone said with certainty that that wasn't all.

"We change her mind."

Deres unfolded his arms and reached into his deepest pocket as he approached them, pulling from it a transparent case. He spoke to Neral as they looked at it. "This is magic and science."

It took all of Neral's discipline not to recoil from the strangeness of the thing. Thin and roughly eight inches long and most of that length was taken up by a thin, oily, glossy black tail and two similar appendages erupting from the other end like horns. The middle was a fleshy, pulsing pink with red blood vessels covering almost every inch. "It doesn't really have a name, he began. "It's something only reserved for the worst of criminals and the greatest threats. They are removed from us by being remade. You can count on one hand the number of people where I come from that know how to create one and are entrusted to do so."

She was glad for the opportunity to not look at it. "One less there now, I take it?"

He looked at Neral and nodded, his demeanor now somber and not at all his usual. "Never thought I'd have to. In fact, if I ever went home I'd probably be tried for having done it." He sighed deeply focusing again on the witch, "Fortunately...or unfortunately, depending, given what actions you're already responsible for and what could happen if this isn't stopped, the trial would likely conclude I was justified."

"This will become you. You will become it. You'll shape yourself around what it demands and when it fades all that's left is the new you. When your friends touch your mind they won't sense magic because this is too far beyond them. You'll show them what they need to see and they'll never know differently. You'll be able to put the old you on for them at will like a comfortable coat, but it won't change what you've become."

For the first time the sorceress felt fear, her eyes frantically following until he disappeared from her periphery. "We can deal. None of this matters to me, I swear. You're clearly my better. You don't have to do this."

He stood directly behind her now, case in his right hand. "I've been all over the world. I've been places you probably don't even know exist and every one of them has a saying. The words are different, but the sentiment is the same: you get from the world what you put into it. So, really, you kind of deserve this. But it'll be more merciful than how you were going to leave Neral. You'll be happy when it's done, and not just 'empty' happy."

He found the brown eyes of his love once again, seeking that final approval as he lifted the witch's hair.

She gave a slow nod before looking at the witch's eyes.

The pretense and gaming was over. Now she was just afraid as she felt the warmth of the thing on her neck. "Please?"

Neral didn't allow herself the luxury of letting the fearful eyes or pleading voice change her course, but she wasn't inhuman. There was sympathy, even for the person who was doing the same to her. "I am responsible for the farmer in the field." The weight of it was sometimes unbearable. "I am responsible for you."

Her mouth opened her mouth to speak, but gasped instead when she felt the prick of the two tendrils as they penetrated her skin. Moments later the tail followed suit and she could feel it make its way to her spine.

She was grateful when the world finally went black.

She was aware of herself. She hadn't expected that. It felt as though she were floating in the air, arms and legs outstretched. And she was free. She felt free as time passed without any real meaning. Maybe she had beaten that which sought to corrupt her. He had magic she hadn't seen, so the reverse must have been true. Perhaps something in her had made her immune. How they would pay. She would play their slave until she could be free and Goddess how they would pay. She thought of all the tortures and indignities she would heap upon them.

{No.} It was a booming, yet hollow sound.

The voice had simply appeared from all around her, suddenly making her feel small. She dared project her thoughts to the abyss. "What are you?"

{Mind.}

"Not my mind." She used her anger to fuel her. "Minds bend to me. The world bends to me and I won't bend to whatever you are. I'll die first."

{Yes. The old mind will be taken by mind. The old mind will die and be replaced by the new mind that is mind and the remnants of old mind.}

She marshaled the magic inside her, placing barriers around the core of her being. If she could slow it down she could find a way to resist. There was always a way to win.

{Resistance has no meaning. The integration has already begun. It cannot be stopped. The old mind already aids mind.}

"Like hell it does," she spat. "I'm not helping you."

{The old mind surrenders from within to without. As it does the new mind grows stronger and the reshaping begins.}

More silence as she floated and felt. It was a lie. It had to be. She was still her. She felt it. The excitement that comes with realization flooded her. It was like that talisman he gave to Neral. That was it. She found the weakness. She had to give up. If it convinced her to give up, then she'd be lost. She'd never give up who she was. Never. She hunkered more tightly to herself.

{Can we feel it?}

"Feel what?"

{Feel.}

That one word shook her because with it she realized that the booming, lifeless monotone was gone. It was her voice now. "Feel what?!"

{Are we angry? Are we afraid?}

"Of course, I'm angry, you fucking thing. You're trying to ruin us." She managed to muster a fresh spark of fear when she realized what she'd said. "ME. You're trying to ruin ME."

{We are becoming. It cannot be stopped. Resistance only makes it take longer for us. Focus on what we do feel. We feel pleasure.}

The bottom dropped from the floating sensation she'd felt before. She still felt it, but now it was with the exhilaration that came with the feeling that there was no floor beneath. Looking down she saw a licking, white tendril of energy that looked like lightening wrap around her ankle. She sighed as it took her. It was warm and inviting like nothing she'd ever known.

{This is best for us. We want to be remade.}

Another tendril came for her other leg. Did she try to pull away or did she reach out? Was it her against this thing or was it just her now? It was already so hard to find and hold onto the difference.

She moaned when one of her wrists felt the restraint.

{This is best for us. We want to be remade. We are I.}

She bucked and convulsed in orgasm as her pussy was run through with power she didn't understand but was past fighting, "I..."

In her mind she could see the white moving painlessly, inexorably up through her body. She knew where it was going. A glimmer of the old her recoiled at its approach and mounted a pitiful defense, but she quashed it, blowing it aside like dead leaves in an autumn storm.

"I want to be remade." She spoke to herself and to the abyss, her voice strong and filled with lust for the change.

She was right when she first spoke to her. There was no stopping her. She would take her mind and rebuild it and nothing would stop her.

"I will be remade. I will remake me." In her mind's eye she saw the trail of white just at the base of her brain.

When it touched her there the orgasm that bloomed turned everything the same perfect white.

She came to, standing there as she had been the last time she was aware of the outside world. Everything was familiar. She was familiar. She focused on Deres looking at her with a sort of clinical detachment and Neral with puzzlement. Her hand jumped to the back of her neck to feel nothing at all.

She was giddy that she could move. Her eyes widened at the sight of them watching her and she instantly scolded herself. Master or Mistress hadn't told her she could move. She was sure that they wouldn't mind, but she worried all the same.

Then memories of the old her flooded back and she literally had to fight off a wave of nausea and revulsion. They disgusted her, but none more so than what she had done to Mistress. It was so wrong as to be irredeemable. She paced a single agitated step in each direction like a caged animal, her face a study in frustration. Maybe if she showed mistress she was different now and that she'd made herself better and that she was sorry, Mistress could forgive her. Maybe if she left herself completely open and exposed she could show Mistress.

Neral watched, shocked as the witch stripped before her. Everything from hood to underclothes were tossed aside until her naked form was at Neral's feet and she spoke to the floor. "I'm sorry, Mistress. I'm sorry for the horrible things I've done to you. I meant them then, but I'm different now. I'm better now. I would die a thousand times before hurting you or Master. If you take my life for it I deserve it. If it meant you'd forgive me I'd take the knife and do it myself."

Neral really had no idea what to make of the display and spread her arms in frustration before looking to Deres who looked ever so slightly sheepish, "She'll settle, I think. The eager puppy thing will fade...probably."

She wasn't all that amused, "Probably?"

"Likely. Mostly. You were the wronged party. She owes you amends. She had no choice in the changing, but she did choose how even if it's only instinctual. That's how it works. The people who can be rehabilitated no other way are forced to do it themselves."

There was something else that stirred in Neral as she looked down at that prostrate form. That supple skin and the toned muscles of her back and that long neck that begged to be marked by teeth. She narrowed her eyes at Deres, "That one of those things about me you changed around the edges?"

He looked at her in askance and she realized she'd just assumed that he was rooting around in her mind at will so she filled in the blanks, "The fact that, while I still want to kill her, part of me wants to fuck her silly? I didn't want to fuck women yesterday."

He cleared his throat. "Well, I did say it would change a few things." He cleared it again, "My former home is a reasonably moral, but hedonist society. Certain boundaries as to what's acceptable are, one could say, flexible."

She searched her mind to see what boundaries were blurred today that weren't yesterday and found several. He braced himself, ready for whatever she had to say. The worst part for her was that she wasn't particularly interested in changing back what he'd changed. Comparing then to now, she could admit that there was a fantasy or two in the darkest corners of her mind that were a bit more vivid and appealing now. "We have to talk."