Allie cackled as the skeleton that dared fire on her caught fire itself, collapsing into a pile of smoldering bones. That must have been the eighth skeleton she'd lit up, and the only one to land a hit in the same county as her. And the skeletons were the only monsters even worth considering as threats in this place; she "fought" the slimes in the entry room in much the same way she "fought" the unlit torches on the walls.

 

Allie was almost disappointed. The job posting said the Sorceress's Tower was a high-level threat fit for a full party, but to her dismay she'd entirely called the poster's bluff. She was nearly to the Sorceress's hoard, and had yet to even cast a real spell.

 

She wandered over to the burning heap and kicked a bone to make sure it was dead. Satisfied, she turned to the doorway it was guarding. It featured a set of unreasonably detailed wooden double doors, seemingly locked, each sporting a bust of a topless woman gazing blankly upward. It was a bit much honestly. Allie decided she could three birds with one fireball by blasting the doors open with magic, thereby "defeating" the lock, incinerating the frankly unsettling doors, and getting the jump on whatever was behind them.

 

Choosing style over safety, she declined to find cover and merely backed up until she was just outside the range of her own spell. She raised the tip of her staff to form a line toward the doors, uttered words of power, and let her fireball loose. She covered her eyes before the spell could strike its target, and heard and felt the fire roar past her. Feeling that the heat had passed and the dust settled, she stepped forward through the smoky doorway.

 

What greeted her on the other side was neither a pile of gold nor an evil underdressed sorceress, but a magic circle painted on the opposite wall. She heard a snap, and before she could register that a trap had been sprung it was too late.

 

A wobbling ball of scintillating magical energy about her size bubbled out of the circle, stopping to somewhat stabilize itself once fully freed, before quieting the noise of its changing colors into a gentle, shimmering spiral.

 

"Fuck" was the last fully coherent thought the reckless wizard would be allowed today. The spiral turned and glittered and sparkled, and it pulled Allie's eyes into it, searching desperately and fruitlessly for its center. Her body slackened, and her breathing quickly leveled into a slow rhythm. She heard an impish chuckle from off to her left side. "Underdressed sorceress accounted for," she thought, not that she could turn her head to confirm the theory.

 

"Well well, it seems I've caught myself a very lovely prize~" said the voice, oozing with pride and very unsubtle desire.

 

Allie tried her hardest to force out a retort. "Fffuck youuuu... biitch.." She could already feel her thoughts turn to molasses, dragged down and down by the spell. Stringing together words was already a monumental effort for her. She didn't have a prayer of casting spells anymore.

 

The Sorceress entered Allie's peripheral vision and tsk-tsked her. "Now now, is that any way to speak to your new Mistress, dear? I didn't go to the effort of planting this tower here as bait only to be profaned by my quarry."

 

Allie attempted another retort, though her results were more questionable. "nnnh knew it was dangerous. hhigh-levvl threat. came alone annnywy..." She was slurring her words already. She needed to do something before the spiral's magic broke her mind permanently.

 

"Wait, so... your guild knew what I was doing and you came alone anyway?" The Sorceress seemed genuinely surprised. "Well, I guess there won't be too much brain to drain... This might not take as long as I thought~"

 

That felt like an insult. Allie thought that Allie from a minute ago probably would have understood that as an insult. Allie from right now, however, decided such decisions were too hard, and declined to make the effort.

 

After pulling out of that thought quagmire, she registered that the Sorceress had moved. She heard her voice directly behind her.

 

"Already so docile, so pliable, so soft and malleable for me. Such a good girl, sinking deeper and deeper into the spiral, into obedience, into submission."

 

The Sorceress placed her hands on Allie's shoulders and began to slowly rub, and she heard an unwelcome moan escape her lips. Her captor smelled of vanilla, cinnamon, and pine, with a hint wood smoke. It was a dangerously pleasant aroma, and she was dangerously low on resistance.

 

This was probably bad, but Allie's capacity for such worries had been bled from her, taken by the spiral like everything else. "Mmmn~" Her eyelids drooped to a lidded state, and under the combined assault of the older woman's ministrations, the comforting scent she inhaled on every deep, measured breath, and the inescapable fuzzy morass of her trance, she felt a heat rising in her face and in her lower body.

 

"Are you ready to be a good girl for me now, thrall?" The Sorceress whispered into her ear, and Allie felt the words before she could hear them. "~mmhmmm," she responded despite herself.

 

"Good," the Sorceress purred, "Now we can have some real fun..."