Erustra came screaming, her body desperately bucking against the dark magician’s cock, her cries of ecstasy a song backed by the steady beat of his balls slapping against her soft, yielding flesh.

She came again, and again, and still Evander hadn’t filled her, hadn’t blessed her, and yet somehow she knew her orgasms came not from what he was doing so much as the pleasure he was taking in it, her own pleasure bound up in the inky web he’d woven across her, in the harness for her soul that the tattoo represented.

She would continue to cum just so long as he was excited to be fucking her, and she had no say in the matter whatsoever.

She clenched her hands against the table and dug into the varnish of it with her fingernails, biting her lip against the flood of excitement and pleasure consuming her.

It was a wildfire in her head, falling on the trussed and tied parts of her personality bound into Evander’s web, spreading quickly and ruthlessly with every orgasm, more and more of her old self lost to the all-consuming heat as she came and came and came again.

Evander must have done something to himself to hold his control this long, she thought, and she realised there and then that he was doing this deliberately.

The dark magician had turned his magics into a weapon against her self, against her individuality. It wasn’t enough for him that she be compelled to offer him the truth; wasn’t enough that his tattoo had meshed puppet strings so firmly into her mind and libido that he could take her whenever he chose and she would like it.

And the more she came, the less of her was left to even try to resist.

“P-please-“ she managed, then her concentration was shattered as she came again, and as Evander came too, and her cry of lustful delight must have been heard well outside Evander’s laboratory, making the way he was claiming her known to everyone in earshot in his hidden undercity.

*

She was still shivering with pleasure. Erustra didn’t think the paralysis spell was still on her - after all, she’d been humping back against Evander as hard as she possibly could, pushing herself to take the very most of him inside her that was possible.

Evander himself was taking his time. He’d actually left the laboratory to wash his cock clean, and when the door re-opened he was strolling casually and confidently rather than moving with purpose.

He hadn’t told her to stay put, and she wasn’t at all sure he could tell her to do things and have her agree (though she was sure that was coming) but he’d been confident all the same that she would stay just exactly where she was - and to be fair to him, she absolutely had.

She didn’t feel like she had the energy to move. Everything he’d done to her, every wave of pleasure she felt guiltily complicit in experiencing and accepting, it had drained her.

Evander came back and placed one hand in the small of her back to steady his work surface, and Erustra couldn’t even muster the energy to kick out backwards at him.

She saw him dip his needle into the other inkpot, the one he hadn’t brought across for the first wave of work, the one she’d been helplessly staring at as she was fucked.

Clearly this one did something else. She wanted to brace herself against it, but she couldn’t muster the focus or the determination. His treatment up to now had exhausted her.

The needle stung her skin again, up against the shoulderblade he hadn’t worked on yet. Erustra was sure that when they were all complete, her back would be a single image, one that a knowledgeable wizard could decipher to see exactly what had been done to her.

Gradually, the new cluster spread out, reaching back toward her spine and the central core of Evander’s markings. She was already feeling various of her body’s muscles twitch, one at a time, as each new point in the cluster was added, like slim tendrils of magic winding through her from the marking to her muscles.

From time to time, taking much more care over this one than the others, Evander would reverse the needle in his grip, and he would prod at one of the points he’d marked with the blunt end. Erustra’s eyes would always cross at this from the mix of ache and pleasure.

At the same time she’d feel one of her limbs move, not a twitch but an elegant, fully-executed movement; a flex of the arm, a leg extending rock-hard and straight, a thrown punch, before the pressure was released and the limb collapsed weakly and lifelessly back into place.

This was evidently the most complicated part of what he’d been doing to her, at least so far. He was taking his time with it, double-checking it, and as time went on Erustra felt more of her energy coming back to her. Perhaps she’d simply lain on her belly and her bare breasts for long enough to catch her breath emotionally as well as literally.

With that in mind, she clenched her fist and swung for him…

…but only in her mind. Her arm, her shoulder, every part of her that would need to act for a successful strike, all of them sat unmoving and still, like a puppet left to one side with nobody to pull her strings.

Its strings, she corrected herself. A puppet with nobody to pull its strings. She was no puppet.

She was just, it seemed, very like one, and no more able to move nor respond than one. And, as Evander inked in another connecting tendril, this one running down to the cluster that now controlled her lusts and desires, the idea that she was merely a human’s puppet became one of the most delicious concepts she’d ever experienced, a desire she felt she outweighed almost anything else.

Her tongue. Her desires. Her body. All of these now were bound up and surrounded by the magic in the tattoo ink, a permanent anchor for a spell that made almost everything about her his own.

Evander took the hair of the back of her head in one hand and lifted it up, holding her by the scruff of the neck. Her inky bridle was growing, and as he continued to etch new ingredients into her spine, this time continuing his grand design up her neck, she felt a coolness settle into her bones, her blood, her very self.

As the chill spread through her body it became ice in her head. Erustra became slowly aware of everything in her head grinding, little by little, to a dead stop, chilled over and frozen.

Fragile.

Still holding the scruff of her neck, Evander drew his hand back, drawing her backward across the table. The varnished surface of the wood rubbed interesting, tantalising textures across her bare nipples before he had her far enough back that her limp puppet-stringed form fell to its knees, her torso upright only because of his hand in her hair.

She saw the world in front of her only vaguely; the thoughts in her head, frozen, were so sluggish and distant that she barely took in anything of what she saw, but Evander stepped in front of her and she could see his cock was still exposed, stood proud now in front of her eyes, and her head might be frozen but the heat in her tattooed loins was enough that this sight was very important.

She was aware suddenly of her slack jaw, of the saliva in it as her mouth came alive with desire, her eyes almost crossing as she tried to take in the entire cock.

She’d been ordered to assassinate this man. She had genuine fears about what he could and would do. And she knew from his own mouth he wanted to use her against her friends and colleagues.

Yet at that moment, the only thing she wanted, the only thing she could want, as her thoughts chilled and froze inside her, was to swallow his cock, and the only thing stopping her was that there was no hand on her puppet strings to allow her to.

And then he gripped her harder and lifted her head and brought it forward, her mouth opening hurriedly just in time to admit his cock and she found herself swallowing him whole, and the heat of his body against the chill of the spell meant his hard cock hit her cold, fragile thoughts and shattered them.

The puppet strings suddenly went taut with no thoughts or ideas left and her mind was filled with the same docile, tamed heat as her lust, and she began to suck, hungry, needy sounds escaping her lips as she slurped and coaxed and worshipped, yes, worshipped was the right word, the perfect word, a euphoria filling her head, light-headed and empty as it suddenly was, and there was nothing in the world that mattered so much as devoting herself to this magician, as giving him her everything and doing so utterly unconditionally.

*

"What is your name?”

“Erustra…”

She was at once utterly focused on this conversation and seemed somehow to be listening to it from a long way away, muffled, and absent. It was incredibly important and it was utterly unimportant. She didn’t know why it was both at once, didn’t understand. But she didn’t question, either.

She couldn’t question. Not Evander.

Her hands were folded demurely in her lap, her pants down around her knees from before she’d ended up kneeling. Her body was upright from the hip, but swayed slightly, and was held entirely by his hand around her chin, holding her eyes to meet his, filling her world with the confident, self-assured smirk of a dark magician who already knows his witchcraft has been entirely successful and is just waiting for you to realise in your turn what that means.

“Who are you?”

For a terrible moment she hung suspended by his hand, her scalp tingling with startled uncertainty, as he had asked a question that seemed to her to have no clear answer. She knew who she had once been. She knew what she now was. She was not at all sure that ‘who are you?’ was a question with a valid, useful answer attached.

Then she realised, as Evander waited without his smirk wavering, that she’d misheard the question. Had jumped to a natural conclusion. But the dark magician had instead said “Whose are you?” and this was a question with an evident and natural answer.

“Yours,” she said, and she felt her heart was so full of joy that it might burst at any moment, except that if she was to be of any use to him she must naturally continue to live.

“What are you?”

“An elven slave,” she said, and this was a little more complicated in her heart then the simple unalloyed joy of being his.

"Whose are you?”

“Yours.”

“Address me with the respect I am due,” he told her, and Erustra hesitated, mouth open, unsure which of the many rankings of honorifics he might subscribe to, let alone where he might place himself on the list, before she remembered how his lieutenant (captain? An officer in his command, at the least) had spoken to him, before her capture.

“I am yours, my Lord.”

“My what?”

“I am your elven slave, my Lord,” she said, and when one corner of his mouth turned up in a smile at that. It had been the right thing to say, which made her feel happier.

“You’re the first,” he said. “You won’t be the last.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“You’re going to help with that,” he said.

“Yes, my Lord,” she agreed, because agreeing was what a slave was supposed to do and she was a slave, but the tattoos at the base of her neck tingled and suddenly her mind wasn’t just mush, it was fertile ground, ready for an idea like that to settle and take root, and the roots of the idea grew downward and twined into her tattoos.

The lustful point at the base of her tattoo was alive now and the sensations from it were so strong her vision briefly swam.

“It’s only right for elves to serve humans, after all.”

“Yes, my Lord,” she said, and while it rang true it didn’t seem to take root in quite the same way. Perhaps something in her tone as she answered him made that apparent, because his attention sharpened on her.

“What’s only right?” he asked.

“It’s only right for elves to serve humans,” Erustra assured him, and in that moment, it was clear to her as it hadn’t been before that this was just true.

She wasn’t entirely sure why, but obviously humans outranked her. And her Lord Evander outranked all other humans, which was why she was his elven slave.

“I’m glad you agree,” he said, and he sounded completely serious for a moment. She knelt transfixed by his eyes, skewered on his gaze. “Not enough elves understand that yet.”

That wasn’t something she’d thought about, but now he’d said that she could easily see that it was another foolish deficiency of her people. “No, my Lord,” she said. “Not enough at all.”

His stern look became a laugh and a smile, and she squeezed her thighs together as her body was filled with delight that she’d pleased him.

“Whose rule do you follow?” he asked.

“Yours, my Lord,” she answered.

“Whose will binds yours?”

“Yours, my Lord.”

“Whose wisdom cannot be questioned?”

“Yours, my Lord.”

“Whose choice are you the agent of?”

“Yours, my Lord.”

“Whose happiness matters?”

“Yours, my Lord.” The questions were coming so thick and fast, but they all had the same answer, all pointed her in the same direction, all shaped her.

If all of Evander’s questions had the same answer, she was that answer; she was his, a toy when it pleased him to enjoy her, a tool when he deigned to wield her. She was bound to him by his magic, but she was also another option for him, when neither his magic nor this growing legion of followers was enough.

“Who would you die to protect?”

“You, my Lord.”

“Who will you live to serve?”

“You, my Lord.”

“What is the only thing you care about?”

“You, my Lord.”

“Who must you obey?”

“You, my Lord.”

“Who do you want to obey?”

“You, my Lord.”

“Who can you not disobey?”

“You, my Lord.”

“Who can you not resist?”

“You, my Lord.”

So much of this she had not understood, had not known about herself, until he asked, but the knowledge and the wisdom - his wisdom, which cannot be questioned - had been bound into her very soul by the tattoo, and when she heard each question in turn the answer was immediately and innately obvious.

“Who is your heart’s desire?”

“You, my Lord.”

“Who will you keep safe from all?”

“You, my Lord.”

“You will deal with any others who might slay me.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“You will guard my body with as much care as you will worship it.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

She didn’t know it, but her eyes shone with the light of worship, a zealot in the service of this dark magician, a lowly elf whose body and mind he owned entirely. Proud to wear his mark on her back; proud that he had branded her with the bridle that now steered her lust, her mind, her deeds, her soul.

She could still taste him on her tongue, feel the weakness in her legs that his fucking had created for her. She had been changed by him forever, and as she had been changed in his wisdom, which cannot be questioned, she knew the change was for the best in this best of worlds.

It seemed unreal that she would ever have opposed him.

Evander took the time to dress, this time, before he left his lab. When he did, he beckoned to her, and so she followed; but as she had not been told to rise she followed on all fours, her head down low, her buttocks up in the air.

“Let’s get you ready,” he said over his shoulder.

“Yes, my Lord,” she agreed, though she had no idea what he meant.

*

Evander had left behind both the undercity and the tower that stretched above it. With a couple of trusted captains he was out beyond the gnarled thicket line, scouting out the world around him.

Naturally Erustra was there with him. The uniform she wore now, superficially, was not unlike the padded tunic she had had before; rather than the sombre greens that were part of her ability to hide when moving through the wilderness, she dressed now in a deep red.

The leggings had been a little tighter, and so Evander had compelled her to cut them along the seams at each hip, and then to bore in new holes so she could lace them up, broad red Xs of leather thonging criss-crossing along the sides of her muscular, thick thighs.

The tunic, too, had been amended, the overlapping plates of soft leather armour missing one from what had been, and so her bare, pale midriff showed for her Lord and his captains to enjoy.

Much more striking, though, were the changes to the back of the tunic. This was almost entirely gone, such that from behind the shoulders and a thin collar were visible, but below that her back was bare, the cut of her leggings low enough that the entirety of Evander’s enchanted design was visible across it.

She didn’t just wear her Lord’s bridle, she carried his brand for all to see, if they only had the wit to recognise it. Which most would not.

Her vambraces had not changed, and her curved orichalcum blades had been returned to her, a necessary step if she was to serve her purpose as a guard.

She felt less effective as they moved through the forest than she had on the way in. Her senses were still sharp, still honed by years of training as well as her natural elven acuity. Yet part of her awareness was always, now, with Evander, was always watching for him, and watching his surroundings.

It made her worry, a little, that she would miss any ambush that didn’t come directly for him, especially any ambush by those as well-trained as her former colleagues.

It was such a shame none of them understood the true purpose of an elf. They were going to fight, she knew it. They were going to oppose her Lord, and she would do whatever her Lord wished of her in response.

She was not sure how long it had taken her Lord to mark and bridle her, how long it had been before she had been broken and had taken to the reins. She didn’t think it could be very long before the Captain sought vengeance for what he would assume to be her downfall.

No kind of downfall, of course. Rebirth would be a more fitting metaphor. Erustra could honestly say she was happier as Evander’s claimed slave than she had ever been on her own.

She wondered why this was so on her mind this time.

It was the third time, after all, that she had accompanied her Lord beyond the gnarlwood as a bodyguard, and she hadn’t been so confirmed in these fears either of the times before. It had been just a mild preoccupation, nothing more.

Was she picking up on something? Was there something out there which she saw just enough of to mark it out in her mind as a threat, without enough detail to know what she was seeing?

Or did she simply fear failing to do a good enough job for her Lord?

They had stopped an hour or so ahead of the last light before she could start to be sure in either direction. Evander had sent his captains off to hunt food and had turned to her.

“You could put up the tent,” he said, and then he grinned that crooked grin, the one that sent a charge of heat through her tattoo and made her understand anew why she was his slave. He seated himself on a stump at the edge of the clearing. “But something else would please me better.”

“Yes, my Lord,” she said, and moved toward him with the warmest and most willing smile imaginable. Her hands went to the base of her tunic and she drew her armour up slowly, letting her breasts spill free one at a time, maximising his reaction. She lived for that reaction.

Part of her mind, the part that was tasked to guard his body, was screaming at her, but she had orders, and they came from her Lord, and she would obey. And in any case his orders came from his wisdom, which was not to be questioned.

She sank to her knees four paces away from him, crawling toward him, rear high in the air, nipples brushing against the grass. She knew already, from experience, just how he liked her to approach, and she conformed to his desires - to his everything - just as closely as she could.

Her lips brushed against the toe of his boot in supplication, glancing up at him through her long lashes to see that slight twitch of the lips that meant he was pleased. She brought her knees forward, reached up with her hands to brace them on his thighs, and took his belt in her teeth.

It is an act of true dexterity to not only unbuckle but open someone’s belt using only your lips and tongue, but it had become Erustra’s favourite party trick in the time she had been with Evander for one simple reason; she could feel him harden against her chin every time she did it.

She rose up higher, coming up to his eye level, and without taking her eyes from his, she wriggled her too-tight leggings down to her knees, then off over her boots. She stood before him as good as naked, knowing the little bits of her armour that remained would titillate her Lord even more than if she were naked - a result she was more than satisfied with.

Then she stepped forward, hands on his shoulders as his found her buttocks, her legs apart, all but straddling him. He closed his hands, gripped, and pulled her down onto his waiting cock, and Erustra began to ride. As Evander liked, she was more than willing to do all the work involved, leaving him the pleasures of enjoying the experience, watching her behaviour, and letting his hands roam to grope or fondle just as he chose.

She didn’t care that his captains could return at any moment. Not when him using her like this would be such a good way for him to remind them of his power, his authority, his control.

She was his slave, and he could use her in any way he wanted; it was all she could hope for as an elf to be his slave, and she would uphold the honour he did her by keeping her for himself in whatever way she had to.

She gave only a little more heed to the concern that others beyond his captains might see. What was happening her was the true order of things, after all; not the natural order but what would happen once the natural order had been corrected by her Lord.

Erustra would have told you, had you been able to ask her and had she the authority to speak for herself, that she was aware of nothing but her Lord; of the way his cock felt inside her, of the urgency in his hands, of the soft grunts and hungry eyes that told her how well she was fulfilling her function as his slave.

She would have genuinely believed this, had she stopped to consider it. Yet this was not so; a tiny part of her, all but unnoticed as she gave herself to her Lord, noticed that the birds in the trees were quiet, felt more than heard the change in the texture of the wind rustling through the leaves.

That tiny part of her was able to translate these tiny clues, had a perfect picture of her surroundings of which she herself was entirely unaware - it simply was not her priority - until the very instant when the danger it posed to her Lord overwhelmed her duty to please him.

In a twinkling her orichalcum blades were in her hands and the downstroke of Iliandris’s curved sword was brought to a halt by the crossed blades.

Iliandris’s eyes met hers and she hissed “Traitor,” with horrified fury. Erustra rolled her eyes, too well enspelled now to even consider her old ally’s point of view.

“I’m sorry for the interruption, my Lord,” she said.

Evander, whose heart she could hear racing from the shock of the sudden attack, managed all the same to say coolly “Take her alive.”

“As you say, my Lord.” Erustra was already (regretfully) rising from his cock, though the moment and the mood were past. She drew her long leg up carefully, using the momentum of rising to drive Iliandris’s blade back, and stepped clear of him.

Then she swept her hands apart, slashing outward and sending her opponent stumbling back three steps. Erustra was on her immediately, almost her entire body exposed, aiming a booted kick. Iliandris turned slightly, taking the kick to a shoulder rather than her head.

Erustra had a clear idea in her mind; disarm her opponent. If Iliandris didn’t have that heavy blade, it’d be much easier to follow her Lord’s wishes.

The two had trained together for years, however, and as soon as she recovered her footing, Iliandris retaliated. One blade against two could be a challenging fight, but the extra weight of her weapon was an advantage in hands as fast as her own; she swatted Erustra’s feint aside in time to reverse her stroke, reaching inside Erustra’s other swing. The flat of the heavy scimitar caught Erustra’s wrist like a blow and the enchanted elf lost her grip, one orichalcum blade whirling away.

“I did as I always do,” Iliandris told her softly. “The blade is poisoned. Don’t do this.”

“You will not harm my Lord,” Erustra retorted. She saw Iliandris blink in confusion, startled. Watched her try to reconcile what she knew with this new, near-naked Erustra, so devoted to her Lord.

How wrong must Erustra have been for this correct behaviour to come as a surprise to someone who knew her best?

“You should have,” the other elf retorted. “Really, when this is done-“

Erustra felt her anger get the better of her. She advanced on Iliandris, swinging fast and frantic, seeking to overwhelm the other woman’s guard. Unfortunately this favoured the other woman, who didn’t have to move the heavier blade far to deflect each one.

As Erustra overextended herself, Iliandris kicked her in the stomach.

All the air went out of Erustra and she doubled over, clutching her belly with her free hand.

She’d been winded before and it had knocked all control, all direction, all awareness out of her; but this was different. This wasn’t her life; this was something that was important on a level she’d never understood before Evander put his bridle on her.

She staggered upright and lunged forward, forgetting her blade entirely - her Lord wanted this one alive - and tried to grapple. Her arms almost closed around the other elf, but she was still winded and there was no strength in them.

Iliandris quite literally shrugged her off, then struck out with the pommel of the sword, stunning her. Erustra dropped onto her well-cushioned rear, her head ringing, and she stared upwards, expecting the very worst.

What she saw instead was Iliandris stood almost frozen in position, feet well planted, blade raised to shoulder height, leaning forward from the waist - and beginning to sag above the waist, too, like a whole-body droop.

Evander had his hand out, almost in her face, just as he’d done with Erustra, and while she couldn’t see the warm glow of dark magic that she’d seen when Evander caught her, the same feel and the same energy crackled through the air.

Erustra found her arousal and excitement was back with a vengeance - back as if it had never gone away.

Above her, Iliandris was caught in a spell as surely as Erustra had been. She watched, fascinated, seeing what had been done to her from a new angle, seeing the muscles start to falter, seeing the shock and the confusion in her body language.

The heavy curved blade slipped from lifeless hands to the ground where it bit into the turf and stuck fast. Erustra knew with the poison on the blade the grass in a wide area would be dead within a day.

With a sudden last gesture, Evander closed his outstretched hand into a fist and pulled it back sharply. Iliandris’s eyes rolled back into her head and her limp body pitched forward, landing face-first in Erustra’s crotch, her mind lost in enthralled slumber.

Erustra cried out in excitement, bathed in pleasure by the backwash of the spell.

*

She was fully dressed again, and she was not sure whether her Lord had known that fucking her in public would bait in the watching Iliandris or whether it had been an accident.

Iliandris, on the other hand, wasn’t dressed at all, a fact Erustra was all too aware of with the other woman slung across her shoulders as she descended the tower’s stairs back into the undercity.

She walked with a purpose and a confidence born of her service to her Lord; he had given her a duty, and even though that duty included the final betrayal to a former friend, she would carry it out. She had to carry it out.

Inside Evander’s lab she rested Iliandris’s unconscious body on the table while she kindled a fire. Then she lifted the other elf again and carried her to the chains she had woken in herself, not so very long ago. Working methodically, she locked her former friend into place, leaving her suspended.

She stepped back to look over Iliandris’s bare form, and smiled. Iliandris wouldn’t be a former friend much longer, she told herself. Before too long, she’d understand too; she’d be an elven slave, just as she should be, and would understand why this was necessary.

And they would be friends again.

She kissed the other elf on the lips, turned, and went to tell her Lord that the captive was ready to become a slave.