Zarah, tethered in the half life of a magic construct, couldn't properly die. She still flinched as her Owner’s fist left a dent in the dueling building's red brick facade.

“It JUST CANNOT go on this way.”

Her Owner’s tone made Zarah hurt somewhere deep inside, much more than the still healing lacerations from another lost duel. More even than the class rankings on the other side of the dueling hall, showing them barely on the board at 19. They had mattered to her at one point. They still did, but nothing compared to her dedication for the one who held what used to be her soul.

“I’m sorry, Master,” Zarah tried. 

“I know, that’s just– being sorry isn’t enough!” Master just barely didn’t yell, “You can’t keep doing this. I’m so incredibly frustrated with you.”

She had held herself together for as long as she could, but it was starting to become too much. The ritual had made her deeply sensitive to her Masters feelings, and the displeasure cut deep. The ever-present heat between her legs felt disgusting. She felt herself curl inwards.

Master punched the wall again, leaving a weave of cracks in the stone, before making eye contact with her familiar. Her brows rose as she noticed the shimmer in Zarah’s eyes.

“Oh not this again now–", her Master groaned. “Stop feeling sad.”

The words were laced with intention, and Zarah’s emotions responded. She smiled. There was no need to fake it. She wasn't sad.

“Yes Master," she spoke cheerfully.

Instead of relief, Master pushed her forehead against her lower palm. The display didn’t affect Zarah. She was happy. Her Master had made it so.

“Ahhh fuck, fuck fuck fuck. No ignore tha–fuck.” Another wall punch and then a deep breath.

A crouch lowered her to Zarah’s level, and she put her fingers on her temples and closed her eyes.

Suddenly, Zarah’s emotional landscape shifted again, and the anxiety, sadness, and shame came rushing back. She’d been a shitty familiar and they'd lost a duel, there was nothing to be happy about. And the whiplash was going to give her a headache.

Master took another deep breath and opened her eyes. They had this beautiful shimmer about them, as they always did when her Master used magic. But this time, they held the extra shimmer of frustrated tears.

She looked her over again. Exhaustion as well. 

“Look," her Owner said quietly,"let's just go back to the dorm, get some rest, we can talk about it in the morning.”

Zarah got up to follow her Master. The soulbond told Master much more than it told Zarah, but she felt enough to know that her Master’s frustrations ran deep–deeper than after the string of other losses they’d shared since they started their first Magus dueling class a few weeks ago. Things were reaching a breaking point.

She scurried after the entire way back, trying to put the anxiety into a box, trying to stay one step back and to the right like her Master preferred, trying to turn her submissive feelings into success at a role she’d explicitly fought against her entire short life as a person.

The hallways in the magus dorms were nicer than the apprentice dorms had been. The magical candles were fancier, the walls covered with murals and tapestries memorializing Sinslar and his epic quest to lead the Resistance against Philosopher-King Jovian. When they’d first come here, after the ritual and before Master had given her back her name, before everything had started going wrong, they’d stood here and admired them, admired the history that led to their bond. It all looked so much less magical now.

She hurried after Master into their room. A single large bed and a pet bed Zarah’s Owner sometimes had Zarah use for naps. A comfortable reading chair with a floor pillow next to it. A bookshelf containing everything from The Fundamentals of Magic to Larry Puffer and the Hateful Old Crone. Enough furniture to create a cozy space, but none the centerpiece.

It was on the shelf above her desk that Zarah’s Master kept her most precious possession, and Zarah stared at them wistfully. A collection of four notebooks, written the day after the Ritual with the aid of a memory clarity spell. They recorded everything the ritual had told her Master about Zarah’s original makeup, her “template”. Next to it, a fifth book, being filled twice a week with new things–memories, personal growth, new tastes and habits–to ensure that Zarah had a chance at change and development as well. 

Recording it wouldn’t make it so, but they’d act as an anchor point for her Master, to help her stave off the intentional and unintentional corruption that would often gradually turn a familiar into something… less. The effort required to maintain it was a constant reminder how much her Master cared for her, and the effort she put into her wellbeing.

Zarah was distracted from her reflection by the ever increasing heat between her legs. The dueling and the associated stress had tamped it down, but now that they’d crossed the threshold Zarah’s ears twitched and her tail began to sway. Her Master had put her almost permanently “in heat”. Being in their room seemed to make it even worse. Zarah blushed as she crawled instinctively over to her Owner’s legs and wordlessly begged for attention. Master’s trousers were such a lovely texture to rub against, and Zarah hoped that later she’d be allowed to hump them. 

The submission came easier here, in private. Master once told her it was something that already existed inside her–that she’d seen it during the ritual, and magnified it.  Zarah had no reason to believe it was a lie.

So she sat by her Master’s legs and rubbed her cheek against her Master’s perfect hip, letting her need shine in her body language and her movement. It would be so nice to just have one little rub to take the edge off.

Zarah felt Master begin petting her head, and the arousal suddenly mattered less. Warmth suffused her entire body, and everything seemed to take on a rosier color. Warmth bloomed from her heart, and Zarah let the affection almost overwhelm her. This, this intimacy, this was perfection. She felt herself sink.

“Come on little kitty,” her Master said, “let's get ready for bed.”

kitty, of course, was a magical construct so she didn’t exactly need to remove her makeup. But she accompanied her Owner to the bathroom all the same. A few quick spells, and She was ready for bed too. 

They got under the covers, and kitty did her best to still her squirming. But then her Master started scratching the back of her ears, and all hope was lost. she began panting, balling her hands into fists to try and keep them from doing something that was forbidden by rules but not by magic, crossing and uncrossing her toes all the while.

But then the words came.

“You may hump, little kitty.”

kitty pushed herself against her Owner, seeking contact with her whole body. her hips began to flex against her Master’s perfect thigh, and she let out a high pitched whine.

“There we go, good kitty, let it all out.”

kitty felt pleasure radiate out from her molten core, until moments later her entire body felt the explosion as the orgasm tore through her. she didn’t get this every night, and some nights it got taken from her at the last minute, but that only made moments like this more perfect.

she felt a little sentimental in the afterglow.

“Thank you, Master. For the orgasm, for your original mercy,” she whispered, ”and for being such an incredible magus. And for not giving up on me.”

kitty thought she felt just a hint of guilt pierce through the ordinarily one sided mental connection, but decided to bury the resulting anxiety under her submission. If her Owner wanted her to know something, she would tell her. There was nothing else to it.

kitty woke up in the morning to her Owner’s eye staring her down.

“Morning _____”

At kitty’s confused look She giggled.

“Oh right.”

Her eyes glowed for a moment, before Zarah understood what had happened.

Her Owner grinned.

“I wanted to experiment with not letting you notice.”

Zarah blushed, and hid in the crook of her Master’s neck.

“It’s weird, Master. It’s not really different, but also not the same at all.”

Some of the embarrassment diffused as her Owner scratched the back of her neck.

“What does that mean exactly?”

Zarah thought as she cuddled.

“I don’t feel any less submissive, if anything I feel more submissive after realizing how deeply you twisted my awareness. But the kitten/Owner self-talk definitely has a certain edge to it.”

Her Master regularly took Zarah’s name and gave it back. 

She’d still never given her back her own.

They got up for breakfast. Zarah chose a flowing dress and tall heels to make up for her newly short stature. Like all of Zarah’s clothes it radiated “concubine”, but was classy enough and elegant enough that–worn well–one could append “treasured” to the front of that description.

Compared to how many familiars ended up, “treasured concubine” was pretty good. Still, perhaps because Zarah had been so prideful as a human and an apprentice, it was never easy to walk out the door with, and the steady discomfort of being seen as what she was now followed her. It marked her, as someone who had fought, but fought and lost. She wasn’t a loser–mostly because her owner had forbidden her from thinking of herself that way–but she was someone who had fought all her life, never given up, never surrendered, always persevered, until the one time it counted the most.

Still, that knowledge was one of the burdens her Owner wanted her to bear. She took a deep breath, rubbed her cheek into the masterful hand that always seemed to appear when she was struggling like this, then let that hand drag her by the collar out of the room.

They finally made it to their last class of the day, Familiar Utilization. Zarah knelt in her spot next to her Owner’s desk with a barely suppressed grunt. It had been a long day, and for a moment Zarah wished her Master had chanced the mental consequences of removing her ability to feel cognitive exhaustion. Trying to understand their classes without being able to cast magic herself was difficult and, together with Master’s mood, placed an emotional and intellectual burden on her magical consciousness.

Her Master looked similarly beaten down as she sat behind the desk. Still she tapped her leg, and gave Zarah the silent permission she needed to break form and lean against it. Just like every other time, the simple act of kindness unwound something in Zarah’s soul.

Master was clearly still thinking about the duel yesterday, and their struggles as a pair in general. In truth whenever it came time to do magic, Zarah and her Owner just couldn’t seem to resonate properly. It was just worst in the dueling ring, where time pressure and intensity kept her owner from working through the dissynchronicity with pure magical aptitude. 

Today’s lecture was about familiars with non-human styles of consciousness, something that could happen on purpose or because of gradual drift through deliberate or unconscious transformation. In people this would be considered actual insanity, but since familiars were magical constructs unconstrained by the laws of either physics or ethics, a creature that perceived the world in only two dimensions was perfectly serviceable, as long as it channeled magic.

When class was over, Zarah followed her Master as she walked with their professor to his office. The conversation, inevitably, was about their continuing struggles as partners.

Master gave Zarah a glare that made clear she’d heard Zarah’s thoughts through the magical bond, and Zarah remembered that they definitely weren’t partners, and that it was now her Owner’s professor, not hers.

They crossed over the threshold, her Master’s professor walking up to his desk, to place down a stack of papers, her Owner following and staring thoughtfully out the window behind it.

“So what do you recommend I do?” Her Owner began.

Master’s professor sighed. He stroked his own familiar, a songbird sitting perfectly still on his shoulder.

“There’s a reason so many Magi make their familiars effectively brainless. You have a tremendous potential resource here, with a familiar that has enormous magical potential but also a personality template that is extremely talented at wielding it. But if you can’t get it to align itself behind you, then that template hurts rather than helps you. “

Zarah, standing by the door with neither professor nor Owner paying her any mind, felt the first stirrings of anxiety at that. 

“Precisely modifying that much consciousness is hard, of course, but you’re an incredible mage. Still, you’re prone to making the situation more complex–think about trying to fix a wooden sculpture by sawing small pieces off and gluing new pieces on. Too much mess and you’ll have to scrap it entirely, and then it’s back to blank familiar land.”

The anxiety started escalating, and her Owner pushed a wave of calm over their mental connection even as the professor continued.

“So, my recommendation: bold cuts. I know you like that you can talk to it. But if it loses conscious thought but retains magical instinct that’s still much much more than an empty shell.”

Her Owner ran a hand over the professor’s desk, following the grain of the wood. Zarah’s thoughts lazily followed it.

“Mmmm, what are the limits of that?” Master asked.

Why didn’t her Owner defend her? Why didn’t she disagree?

“Well,” the professor continued, “it’s not going to comprehend complex rituals, so it’d be less of a cognizance buffer and more of a force multiplier. But you already have plenty of cognizance and, well, your current results speak for the necessity by themselves.”

Zarah felt herself beginning to shake, despite the calm. The professor’s familiar was still perfectly still. A hand reached back towards her, and Zarah grasped it like a lifeline.

“Thanks professor,” her Owner spoke, “I’ll think about it.”

They headed back to the dorms in silence. The tapestries took on a new menacing look.

That quiet only lasted until they made it to their room. Zarah couldn’t contain her feelings anymore.

“You’re not planning to–“

“Stop.”

Zarah’s body froze.

“I’m not ready to have this conversation now,” her Master continued, “but remember this isn’t exactly new information, and that I’ve put a lot of effort into maintaining you as close to personhood as I can.”

The freeze compulsion left, and Zarah hid in the pet bed, any sort of heat or arousal knocked out of her by a roiling ocean of anxiety.

The next afternoon was an ugly repeat. If anything, Zarah’s bubbling, barely restrained anxiety only made things worse. Where before she pushed in the wrong direction and counteracted her Master’s will, today she’d actually dragged her feet–failing to follow crucial impulses because she was scared of doing wrong.

Zarah didn’t even regain consciousness until they were already back in their dorm–her physical manifestation had taken so much damage.

She was greeted by a pissed off Master.

“I know what your problem is.”

Zarah’s ears pressed against the top of her head.

“Master?”

Her Owner lifted up her hands in front of her face, palms down, making an even surface.

“Somehow, you still think this is some kind of partnership. That you’re some kind of partner to me.”

It was a punch to the gut. Zarah looked down uncomfortably. “Well–“

“This isn’t,” her Owner interrupted, “a partnership.”

“Of cour–“ Zarah began, trying to salvage.

“It’s not an uneven partnership either.” Her Owner lowered one hand slightly before continuing. “It’s not at all a partnership…” 

She closed the hand into a fist and put it in her lap .

“…because you are not a person.”

Deep-rooted hurt screeched in Zarah’s mind, and the broken shards of her former strength went into a desperate offense. Her voice was a determined whisper as she lashed out.

“Do you really, really think I EVER forget that I am not a person?” 

Her owner looked almost shocked at being questioned.

“Yes?” Her Owner spoke the word like it was obvious. “When you’re 'helping' me with casting. When you take my magical intent, and instead of harmonizing with it you think you’re back in fucking YEAR TWO as the hot shit UPSTART and you try to echo that speed casting shit you always did!”

The comment cut something deep in Zarah. Whether induced by the transformation or by their power dynamic or Zarah’s loss of magic, hearing her Owner denigrate her former self like that… She felt her own imminent panic attack growing, but for now she was in fight or flight mode and she’d never chosen anything besides fight.

“Oh yeah, little miss PRIVILEGE? Taught optimal efficiency from the age of fucking five!" It felt good-years of envy and pushing and fighting and hurting all pouring out. “SOME of us had to make our own way.”

Zarah’s head felt like it was buzzing, her Owner’s rage coming strong over their mental direction.

“Yeah, and I worked non-stop from that age!" Master slammed her fist into the wall. "I gave you plenty of time to pick someone else! But you LOST.”

“Having regrets?” Zarah shot back, increasingly agitated. “Strong words from someone basically talking to themselves right now!”

“LOOK. You can either figure out how to be a fucking familiar,” her opponent was shouting now, “or I’ll fucking cut you out of that fucking shell and put a blank slate into it. And then next time I’ll actually be talking to myself.”

The noise buzzing in Zarah’s head became overwhelming. She felt frozen, as the woman in front of her took a deep breath, centered herself, and approached and placed a hand on her cheek.

“Look, Professor Gravson is right, we’ve got to do something,” the woman spoke, “I care for you, you know that.”

When Zarah didn’t respond, the woman in front of placed her arms around her and gave her a gentle hug.

“Shhhh, it’s okay. We’ll get through this. I’m going to turn your senses off for a minute. We’re both going to calm down. I want you to think about what you want. And why it will be different from what we’ve already tried.” The voice was gentle, like a doctor delivering a  terminal prognosis. “And if I do have to make cuts, I’ll do my best to be gentle.”

Zarah lost her sight and her hearing and control of her body, and the wave of panic overtook her.

By the time she was able to piece her thoughts back together again, Zarah had lost any sense of time. Her senses were still all closed off. So she spent the time thinking. It hurt. None of the possibilities were pleasant. But gradually, she knew what she needed to do.

She tried to tap her hand against something, to ask for her awareness back, but it was hard without a sense of touch. Instead she made as much mental noise as she could.

Suddenly her vision came back and she could hear again. She was on her pet bed, her Master watching her from her desk. Zarah shook off her drowsiness. She really didn’t want to do this, but it was time. While she still had a chance to avoid “bold cuts.”

She didn’t bother getting up. Instead she crawled over to her Owner’s desk and placed herself into a deep bow, forehead on the floor, arms in front of her with her palms on the ground as well.

She looked up, seeing her Master’s perfect face filled with quiet concern.

“I…” Zarah took a deep breath. “I need you to break me.”

Her Owner just looked at her, and Zarah took it as her cue to keep talking.

“If I learn something, you can record it in the book, right? If you break me the human way–If you force me to become what you need, to acknowledge deep in my bones that I need to follow you–no magic means no deleting of ‘me’. It would be more precise than any kind of magical surgery, and I’d be more useful to you than just a magical force amplifier.“

Her Owner gave her a sideways look. “Are you sure? I’ve made you more submissive… but this is different. This is growththe hard way. This is trauma.”

Zarah nodded ever so slightly. “I’ll probably hurt. A lot. But my whole life has been surviving hurt.” She took a deep breath, tried to gather her courage. “It’s better– It’s better than not being myself. And I– I love and I trust you. To help me reach the other side.”

She placed herself on all fours. This was too important. She needed to submit. The parts of her that struggled with that–it was the trauma of violent change, or excision of a part of herself. In the end it was an easy choice.

“Please Master, please, PLEASE break me. Shape me into a familiar that can serve you properly. Master.”

Something seemed to pass over her Owner, a certain determination.

“Alright.”

The next morning, the dress didn’t appear on Zarah’s body. Instead, she was decorated with a series of tattoos that only seemed to accentuate her nudity. There were bands on her wrists and ankles, lines framing her crotch. It was almost more humiliating for how borderline elegant it was. It wasn’t a crude attempt at degradation. It was a physical transformation, a statement of what her Owner wanted to inscribe on her soul.

Everyone would see her and see what she’d been reduced to.

Zarah shivered, and the anxiety came back. She felt its weight through her entire body. 

When her Master walked to the door, dressed elegantly in her robes as always, Zarah couldn’t make herself follow. Master turned around.

“You’re not going to like what happens if you get too far away from me without permission.”

On hearing that, Zarah noticed the subtle ringing in her mind. It had gotten louder when she stayed behind, and started to get louder again as her Master continued walking. Left with no choice, she rushed to catch up.

Stepping into the hallway felt like being on fire. Her Owner did good work. The limits of magic were fundamentally one of conception, and her owner had conceptual ability to spare. That meant that her tattoos weren’t just beautifully detailed, they also shone in the light and seemed to sway as she moved. All to draw the eye, to let the masses bear witness to her humiliation. To draw the focus back to her nudity, to her breasts and her sex, and to her status as an object, not just of magic but of sexualization.

Her Owner snapped with her right hand, and suddenly Zarah’s hands were drawn behind her back, together at the wrist. Another surge of humiliation rang through her. She wanted to disappear. But she needed to keep up instead. Since she had to be on display she tried to walk proudly, to carry herself with grace, but her Master’s pace and the spell holding back her wrists made it impossible.

Her hands clenched as she tried to shake off the adrenaline that coursed through her, dancing in her heart with the fear. She almost tripped twice, but managed to mostly center her breathing by the time they got to the first class of the day.

It got no easier when they entered the classroom. Her Master had Zarah kneel by her desk, then drove up the level of need in Zarah’s mind higher than she’d ever felt before. Zarah’s hips gyrated against her will, driven by the burning necessity to grind against something. Then Master placed her perfectly shaped, stocking encased calf right in front of Zarah. 

There was no order, there was barely even implied permission. But there was the aching need. And, on the other side of that bridge, the shame and humiliation of willingly debasing herself. Of humping a leg in the middle of a classroom she’d once been a star in. 

She stared at the calf, tried to look away, kept staring. Tried to think of something else, kept staring. Her hips twitched a little closer, circles now clearly being drawn in one direction. It would only take a little touch. She’d feel so much better. All it would cost her was her remaining dignity, and another helping of shame on the humiliation that was already coursing through her, barely held down by the unrelenting arousal.

Zarah only held out for five minutes before the twitching need, the grinding against air, simply became too much. She told herself she’d just rut against it once–just to get the edge off. Then it became twice, and too late Zarah realized she couldn’t stop. 

The shame and humiliation washed over her, and she barely kept from having a panic attack.

But she couldn’t stop. Worse, she couldn’t orgasm either. At some point her Master had placed a magical block on her ability to reach her release, and it meant she was trapped in a loop. She tried to sink into the rutting, into the pleasure of her core against her Master’s shin, but it wasn’t enough. She felt the eyes of everyone, human or familiar, magus or instructor, watching her, judging her, seeing what she had become.

A few tears slipped down tightly closed eyes.

When class was almost over, her Master did something that removed the orgasm block, and Zarah experienced the final humiliation of cumming all over her Owner’s leg in the middle of a crowded classroom. Zarah was now the kind of familiar she respected the least. She tried to remind herself that her Owner wanted this, to remember the joy of pleasing her, but she couldn’t reconcile it with the overwhelming emotional pain. The fact that her Owner had been the one to expose her to it added a searing cut to it all. 

She started to go into something resembling shock, and it was her Owner who pulled her up, bent down slightly to allow Zarah to brace herself on her shoulder, and then guided her back to the dorm. Zarah took little breaths, tried to hold herself still on the inside, tried to hold herself together.

It wasn’t until the doors closed that Zarah broke down. She flung herself at the only source of comfort available–her Owner–and grabbed on to it like her life depended on it.

Master held her and petted her hair and guided her through the tears. She clung, desperately, as her Owner sat down at her desk and wrote notes in her notebook, occasionally glancing down at a weeping Zarah and stroking her cheek.

When she finished and took Zarah to her bed, there was something else as well. A sort of deep rightness–obvious here where her hangups about the outside world were kept at bay. Here, in her Owner’s arms, where she could be lesser and still safe.

But already the fear of the next day ate at her.

That fear turned out to be justified. Her Owner decided the next morning to make her available to the rest of the student body. It was considered uncouth for a magus to have sex with a familiar in the classrooms themselves, but such diversions were pretty standard in the common areas. So, after repeating their routine for the day’s classes, Zarah was denied the safety of the dorm room and her Master’s arms, and placed in front of the room with a sign around her neck.

She knelt there, blindfolded, arms still tied behind her back, as magus after magus used her face and mouth to get themselves off. She hated the smell, she hated the textures. The dicks were too coarse, too hairy, the pussies too slimy. All the while she still had no idea what the sign said.

There was a kind of frozen horror to it. Like watching a close friend slowly lose a duel to an apprentice with a reputation for cruelty. The only choice was to push the feelings in a box. It didn’t stem the pain, like a soul rending itself in half, but allowed Zarah to go on with what she had to do.

This wasn’t the warm subservience Zarah had fantasized about while reading her steamy romance novels. It wasn’t even the loyal submission that her Owner had magnified during the transformation phase of the ritual. This was harsh, it was cruel, and it was meant to break her down.

Suddenly there was a click in her mind, a brush of her Master’s influence, and she could no longer escape what was happening by being dissociative and objective about it.

She gagged as the dick in her mouth touched the back of her throat, struggled briefly against the magical cuffs keeping her hands behind her back and tried to jerk away only to find herself stuck in place. Shame coursed through her, the jeers of her former peers magnifying themselves in her mind. She felt like she was being squeezed into a smaller and smaller box, a shape that somehow didn’t fit but must.

The dick pulled out, and came all over her chest. Something inside broke. She felt bereft, hopeless, and that finally started the tears. She kept going though, licking at the hole that had been placed in front of her, weeping all the while.

Suddenly strong, safe hands were gripping her shoulders, pulling her up, pulling her in, and then she was under a shower, getting hosed off, still weeping in the chilly water. It wasn’t until afterwards, dried by a spell and wrapped in a warm blanket, that the blindfold came off and she saw the look of love on her Owner’s face.

Zarah felt herself pulled in, the raw openness and emotional pain held by the one who owned her, mind, body, and former soul. She clung with everything she had, and her Owner held her. Broken, but safe. She felt attuned, empty, no will but that of her Owner. It was a perfect kind of intimacy.

“I know I could have made you at any point, but it means–” Master paused to stroke her hair “–so, so much to me that some part of you asked me for this.”

Zarah just whimpered and tried to squirm closer, deeper into her Owner’s embrace.

Master muttered a few words, and Zarah’s body felt softer, more malleable, better able to shape herself perfectly to her Owner’s perfect curves. It was exactly what she needed. To conform herself, in body and will, and to be held safe in turn.

Zarah woke up the next day in her Owner's arms, clingy, needy, seeking support that she instinctively knew she was going to need later. A hand stroked gently down her back, conveying a deep satisfaction.

“You’re doing so well, my little kitten,” her Owner purred, “and I’m going to carry you through to the other side.”

Zarah snuggled a little closer as her Master continued talking.

“You’ll be different, when we’re done. You’re already so different now.” It was a whisper, laced with reassurance. “It’ll get easier.”

The peace couldn’t last, and they had to prepare for the day. Zarah’s body was still covered with tattoos, though today her Owner decided that instead of leaving her naked she would decorate her with clear smooth underclothes. They looked something like underwear and a bra, and some braces around her upper arms and a clear corset, but of course without actually hiding anything.

If anything, it made Zarah feel even more displayed than before.

They walked out of their room and Zarah spent a moment worrying about what the day would bring, before finding that it didn’t seem to matter as much as yesterday. Instead she leaned into her Owner, and found comfort in the certainty that she’d be taken care of, no matter what happened.

That thought held her through the first half of morning classes, until a slight nudge from her Master put it to the test.

It was such a little thing. Just a nudge from her leg, just an extended leg, just the smallest point to a perfect shin. But Zarah understood what she had to do, and it was no small thing at all. But today was different: For the first time the fear that filled her in anticipation was carried–supported by the feelings of trust and submission that she now held close to her imitation heart.

She shifted a knee towards her Owner’s body, opening herself, moving herself into position.

Submission bloomed within her, warmed her, suffused her, enveloped her. She would suffer, for no other reason than that her Master ordered it. But just like yesterday, and the day before, it wouldn’t be more than she could take. It wouldn’t destroy her–change her, maybe, but she could do this.

One more shuffle of the knee, just the slightest contact. It felt muted through the clear, flexible covering over her crotch, but she could feel the pressure anyway. The ever present neediness radiated out from her core, and even that slightest contact of moving herself into position felt so so good.

Just like yesterday, if it became too much, her Master would catch her, just as she’d done last night. She’d be okay, she could do this.

She let herself go, rubbing herself against her Master’s calf. Burning under the shame of her former classmates watching her, swimming in the humiliation of what she’d become. With each rub the need that now always sat within her took over. She’d given up control, and now she couldn’t stop.

Worse, the clear covering meant that she was nowhere close to reaching any kind of satisfaction. She just teased herself. As her frustration built, her movements became more and more erratic, and she couldn’t help but grasp onto her Owner’s thighs for support.

The shame kept building as well. She knew it wasn’t really true, but at this point it felt like everyone in the room must be staring. Before it became overwhelming, a hand petted her hair. It delivered support, assurance, a reminder that she’d be safe.

That same hand helped her slow down to a teasing broil, and she managed to stay there until the end of the class.

When they walked out of class she clung close to her Master, needing to hold the vulnerability at bay. Her Master must have sensed it, as moments later a protective arm wrapped around Zarah’s outer shoulder, and her Owner pulled her in close.

“How are you feeling, my kitten?” her Owner asked.

“Empty. Full. Vulnerable. Safe.” Zarah struggled for a moment to find more words. “I feel very close to you, very oriented towards you, very… submissive, I guess?”

“Hmmmm,” her Master considered, “I think you’re in a good place. I was writing in your journal last night, and it was remarkable. I think we’d do much better in a duel now, don’t you little kitten?”

Zarah just nodded.

“But,” her Master continued, “I don’t want to settle. So I’m going to push you one more time today. Can you take that for me, little kitten?”

Zarah took a deep breath and let herself sink a little further into herself, then lowered her head. A slow blink, and two simple words.

“Yes Master.”

Joy and pride bloomed across their bond so strong that Zarah, even on the weaker end of the familiar-magus connection, was almost overwhelmed by it. She dug a little closer into her Owner’s sideways embrace.

From there the walk to the cafeteria was too short.

They walked in, and Zarah immediately felt her hands drawn behind her back. Her Owner stepped away, but a magical compulsion drove Zarah forward anyway. Something her Owner had installed last night? Something she could just do? She tried to say something, but found speech had been taken from her too.

Being subject to her Master’s considerable magical talents spoke to something deep that had grown larger and larger inside of her in the last few days, watered by her suffering and anchored by her Owner’s journal entries. She was changing.

Zarah shuffled to the center of the cafeteria. It was a huge, open space, considerably nicer than the apprentice cafeteria, and had dining space both for the magus class, on huge tables lining the walls, and for professors, in their own section at the far end. Unlike the apprentice cafeteria, which had a huge dueling circle in the middle, the half-as-large magus cafeteria had some extra tables and an elevated stage. 

It was that stage that Zarah found herself helplessly dragged towards. She wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when she got there, but everything so far had been about vulnerability, about suffering for her Master, about forcing Zarah to accept, intellectually and spiritually, that Sinslar’s former second best was now beneath personhood.

When she got to the center of the stage, the compulsion driving her forced her to turn around, then fall to her knees. She didn’t have a blindfold today, and she made the mistake of looking for her Master in the crowd. Instead she saw a sea of faces, many of them already staring at her, many of them hungry.

She heard a noise above her and glanced up, only to find four floating signs in a big square all around her. It showed the same message on four sides:

“Available for use.”

Zarah took a deep breath. It would be just like outside the dorm room, just a bigger stage, she could do this.

But then the first magus walked up, and Zarah knew that wasn’t true. It was a girl, someone whose name she’d forgotten, except as the face of the first person she’d ever beaten in a duel. It had been a demonstration, on the first day of class, meant to be balanced, harmless fun between two of the freshmen from less fortunate upbringings–two future familiars.

Zarah had wiped the floor with her. It was the start of her reputation as a menace in the dueling ring. 

The expression on her face said the nameless girl remembered that day just as well as Zarah, and now that–against all odds–Zarah was the only one who had become a familiar, she was going to get her revenge.

The first slap knocked Zarah off her knees and onto her side. The compulsion tingled in the back of her mind, and the girl kindly waited for Zarah to get back into position before slapping her again. Zarah dragged herself up, a little slower this time.

Zarah wasn’t a magus, she couldn’t defend herself.

The girl said nothing. Dirt didn’t get words. Instead she kicked her in the stomach, then followed that up with a kick across the shoulder. Zarah curled up, the pain temporarily edging out the compulsion keeping her in place.

She wasn’t a magus: She was below this girl she’d once so thoroughly trounced.

The nameless girl kicked her a few more times while she laid curled up on her side, then spit on her and walked away.

Zarah wasn’t a magus, and so she needed to kneel back up, because her Master had decided that she should be vulnerable and carry this pain, and that was enough.

The next few bodies were easier. Zarah let her emotions settle as a variety of magi and even some familiars fucked her face and otherwise took advantage of her body.

Her Magus willed it, so it was to be.

She let herself fall into the rhythm of the fucking and the servicing, and didn’t really pay attention again until a hand in her hair yanked her face up, into the eye line of one Lanelle Williams, a stick thin girl she’d been friends with in their first year. They’d shared similar backgrounds, similar struggles of overcoming systems of privilege that were fundamentally rigged against them.

That friendship had ended during the last week of their first year, when Zarah had been paired against her in their Introduction to Dueling final exam. Something had broken there in the ring, and by next year she’d become just another stepping stone on Zarah’s flight to the very top.

And her subsequent flight too close to a sun named Master. 

Zarah shook out of her daze enough to notice that Lenelle had that glint in her eye. It was the same kind she used to get when she thought of a particularly brutal combination of spells. That creativity had been delightful as her friend, now Zarah began shaking with fear instead.

Lanelle stuck her finger in Zarah’s mouth, feeling around, testing the muting spell. The whole time, staring into her eyes, staring through her, analyzing her the way she would any other magical artifact. It was eye contact without recognition, eye contact without the acknowledgement of humanity, eye contact without mercy. Zarah felt some corner of her insides–some corner of herself that still thought of herself a person–shatter even further. She felt alone.

She began to weep.

Lanelle stuck her finger all the way down Zarah’s throat, and Zarah choked, but still didn’t–couldn’t–make a sound.

Zarah saw Lanelle’s face go from interested to excited to sadistic, and Zarah began to be overwhelmed by the darkness and the fear. She tried to cower so hard the compulsion had to force her back into position. Panic ate at her mind and she managed to barely keep herself from trying to run. Suddenly a soft current of reassurance entered her mind. Whatever her Owner had done hadn’t taken away the fear, hadn’t blunted her emotions or changed her, but it had reminded her that she wasn’t alone, had instilled that as an unalienable fact.

That reassurance made her feel just a little better. Then Lanelle hiked up her skirt, hiked down her underwear, and peed on her.

At first Zarah was too stunned to even react. She blinked once. Twice. Three times. Then a deep sense of disgust and shame welled up and she couldn’t help but claw against her bonds. Claw against her skin. Anything, anything to try and get it off. Something through the bond kept her knees from lifting off the ground, the only thing protecting her from running painfully into the compulsion. 

Lanelle, above her, watching over her shoulder, let out a girlish giggle.

Whatever Zarah had done to her in beating her in that crucial duel, this was infinitely worse.

Zarah exhausted herself struggling, bent her head, and began to sob.

She felt a slight splat on her cheek, presumably as Lanelle spit on her, but she was too miserable to care. This was what she was now. Broken. Inhuman. Shameful. A Familiar.

She didn’t see Lanelle leave. No one else walked up to her either–she was probably too disgusting to fuck at this point.

An eternity later a lone pair of feet walked up. Luxurious slacks over boat shoes. Zarah took a shocked breath, there was only one person–she looked up.

It was Harry Williamton, formerly the class’s third best, but now at the very least the second. His familiar was wrapped around his neck, a boy from a lower class family that he’d paid for and turned into a snake. Where her Owner had taken her privilege and her status and fought to rise even above it, Harry had sat comfortably at the top of a mountain of privilege, and felt no need to move at all.

Zarah hated him.

There was even a rumor that his family had paid for infusions of magical blood when he was younger, to further strengthen his potential.

Zarah hated him a lot.

He started casting, and Zarah felt the incantation more than she’d heard it–one of the few advantages of being a Familiar. It was a pain spell, meant to pull out the physical sensations she hated the most and make her live it over and over again.

The subsequent agony took her breath away. It was pain in her armpits, her eyeballs, the feeling of splinters under fingertips, her funny bones against a steel pole, and more. Something came across her connection and it dulled a little, to almost bearable. But that only gave her the mental space to think about who was doing this to her.

It was Harry Williamton, and Zarah was a familiar. She was beneath him too.

He adjusted the spell slightly and now Zarah felt her very physical form distort, shimmering in and out at the edges. The pain was excruciating, going from something physical to something that seemed to blend her feelings and her brain into it as well. Anxiety filled her, fear consumed her, disgust drowned her. She tried to vomit and couldn’t.

The pain faded slightly and Zarah sensed Harry was distracted–he was casting again.

Zarah’s eyes shot open. This was a spell for a very specific kind of destruction–specifically magical artifacts. It would take a piece of her, and take it away permanently. She’d be lesser. She was already lesser. She was a familiar. How could even more be taken away from her?

Zarah screamed through the muting spell.

Just as he was about to finish casting, Zarah sensed another spell and not even a moment later Harry screamed and flew off the stage. Suddenly Candace was there, in front of her, working a delightfully elegant casting that immediately pinned a still stunned Harry to the ground by all four limbs.

“MINE.”

Another incantation, and this time Zarah caught the intention early enough to resonate. She was overwhelmed by gratitude and affection for her Owner and protector, and nothing felt more natural than amplifying the magic as Candace turned the air above Harry’s prone form into a solid sheet and dropped it unceremoniously on his head.

Her Master turned around and gave her a hug, ignoring the piss, the spit, the tears. Candace turned to whisper in her ear.

“Shhhh, I promised to protect you. I wouldn’t let anyone permanently damage you.” She stared into Zarah’s eyes for a moment and chuckled. “Well, besides me anyway.”

Zarah cried again, but this time out of love. She understood now. She was broken, but she was safe. She was Candace’s familiar.

“Thank you thank you thank you,” Zarah repeated, “for understanding me, for shaping me, for keeping me and protecting me. Thank you thank you thank you.”

Zarah finally noticed the other difference.

“And thank you,” she whispered,”for gifting me your name. Candace.”

Her Master hugged her tighter.

“I’d love to stay like this,” she said, “but you stink, and we unfortunately have dueling class right after this.”

Zarah took a deep breath, but the usual anxiety didn’t fill her, just peace. A quick spell cleaned both of them off, and then Candace bridal carried Zarah to dueling class while Zarah dozed into her shoulder.

They spent the first half of the class in the bleachers, but Zarah didn’t pay any attention. Her focus was on resting and on her Owner. Then they were called into the ring.

It was easy, all of a sudden. The duel began and Zarah felt Candace’s intentions the same way she’d feel the actual spell. And then she just stretched herself in that direction. Adjusted a little bit here, firmed up some magical foundation there, and then it would cast–perfectly and with an order of magnitude more force.

They wiped their first opponent in just the opening salvo. No–Candace wiped their first opponent, and Zarah assisted, just like she was meant to.

Their next match up opened the duel with a Lyrconian Portal Maneuver, something Zarah had studied extensively when she was a human. She gave Candace a tug, shared her awareness and knowledge, but didn’t try to make a decision, didn’t try to force a correct response.

Candace did something not quite like what Zarah would have done, but Zarah felt it and went along all the same. No discord, no spell-stall, just execution. And it worked perfectly–thanks to Zarah’s warning Candace’s distortion field melted the space around the destination portal just as it appeared, and their opponent’s attempt to keep their body from melting distracted them long enough for Candace to cast a finisher, leading to another victory.

Zarah felt pride and approval across the mental connection, and it was all she could have ever wanted.

They walked off the dueling field, undefeated and unscathed. Candace spent the rest of class cuddling her, whispering sweet nothings in her ear, telling her how proud she was, and Zarah in turn spent that time whimpering and expressing her gratitudes.

Her Owner again gave her the gift of carrying her home. They stopped by the rankings, where the joy on Candace’s face made it clear they’d started going up again.

Zarah wasn’t sure how much, and she didn’t check. It wasn’t her concern anymore. Instead she tucked herself deeper into the crook of her Master’s neck, and let the sense of peace carry her home.