The rusted ceiling rail screams with the grind of metal that glides along it roughly, chains reaching down to hooks that sink deep into the thrall’s flesh just under each shoulder blade. Ice cold water drips down from long black hair, hanging down in drapes from the human-shaped meat's lolling head. The pilot’s entire body is soaked from its latest session in the tank; simulated drowning for just shy of eight hours, strengthening its specially infused lungs with each and every almost-death. The suspended body shivers violently as it is lowered down from the ceiling, multiple rail tracks carrying all sorts of cargo about the Necrosanctus’s lower deck; the walking carrier-fortress which lurches in its journey to the front.

“Look at you, dear. Awake for me already, you’re usually playing the corpse when I have you brought to me, with such an awfully convincing performance too.” Fingers clad tight in soft black lambskin leather seize the lowered pilot’s chin and turn its face to inspect that meek, fearful expression. No more hate to give, perhaps, but its Lady will know for sure by the end of this meeting.

“I-I-I’m f-freezing, my Lady,” speaks the delivered thing, its skin a sickly pale hue from the ice cold water of the tank and its hair a mess of black tendrils. “Can… can this be e-enough? C-c-can we try the field test now?”

Lady Vain purses Her lips, circling around the pleading project with the resounding clacks of Her platform boots’ square heels. Every step echoes in the cold, metal space; the training room is an unkind, unfeeling box. This is a monstrously hostile place, and the Lady is the only source of warmth in its entirety. Her, and a searing poker. “You are not yet ready for your beast, dear girl, because you are yet to fully embody the perfect mirror to its elegant, loyal savagery. If you truly hunger to become its heart, then you must strive to discard all but that which awaits you in its cockpit. You’ll be welded shut in there, you know. You’re to be nothing but a monster’s organ, beating dutifully to pump my own sanctified blood into its systems until the day comes for you to return to your Lady’s side.” Firm, gloved hands grip the first hook and pull it indelicately from the thrall’s tender flesh. An arm hooks around the pilot from behind, a contrast of matte black and iridescent white, to hold that sagging flesh in the confines of its neoprene wetsuit as the second hook is swiftly pulled.

Then, Lady Vain lets go of Her pilot. Gravity compels the weakling onto its knees in a wet thud, head hanging low enough for that dripping hair to skirt across the scuffed metal flooring. “Pleash…” It begs, a thick rope of candy red blood mixed in with spit hanging from its bluish lower lip; the thing bit its tongue hard upon dropping to the ground.

“Who are you to make demands of me, hm?” Clack, clack, clack. “Am I talking to a resistance fighter, a pilot captured by the tyrannical empire she seeks to help destroy? A warrior, biding her time during capture, hoping to be rescued… or perhaps figure out some as of yet unknown method of escape?” The project’s bloody tongue is pinched hard between the Lady’s forefinger and thumb, and the woman drags it forwards on its knees by the sensitive muscle alone—straight to the window overlooking the hangar bay.

Still shivering, the girl who struggles in vain to recall her name on the best of days stares out at Vanity in the hangar, eyes sparkling with yearning to become nothing but its Lady’s weapon and let this torturous transition subside. “N-no! No, please… my Lady I… I don’t want… I’m not… I-I just…” Her eyes bulge against the dusty glass pane, staring at Vanity's absurdly long claws made to cleave her former comrades—killing blades meant just for thrall. It sees within their perfect lustre the glint of destiny and remembers the dogma of its Lady’s sovereign state.

“Empire… Empire!” The pilot chants, blushing fiercely into the hand that holds its cheek and lightly squeezes it while it drools against the glass.

“Not a rebel, then, but an imperialist weapon. Loyal to the blood I’ve gifted you. Isn’t that right, pilot?” One of the first Lady’s living vessels cocks Her head and smirks, Her white dress becoming smeared in red as the kneeling pilot is pulled against Her thigh.

“Yeeeaahhh… I think… I uhm…” Its breathing growing erratic from the scent of its torturer’s impossibly pretty dress—like moonlight woven into a fabric—and the thrall succumbs to a self-imposed stupidity that shields it from the shame, the loathing, that would eat at it long into the night during its first 200,000 wounds or so. “I’m loyal, to Her… to You… to the blood. To the Empire! We… we’re all bound by ancient law, r-right? Pacts and witchcraft a-and—”

The thrall is struck so hard on its cheek that it crashes down onto the steel below in under a second, expending all the oxygen from its lungs and spitting a long line of red across the room.

“666,665. Witchcraft is a rebel word. You are not one of them, are you? The kind that resists Her, that rejects the gift of order? That denies the entwining of blood because they fear the magic their feeble, all-too-human sensibilities cannot fathom the divinity of? Weak people, who do not trust their own flesh enough to enhance it, because they know that they’d lose to the lust of heretical temptations… you’re not like that, are you? You’re loyal, you understand the hierarchy of choice. Don’t just tell me, girl, show me.” Lady Vain slides the toe of Her tall black boot under the weapon’s cheek, lifting its head enough to assume eye contact with the fading flesh that reawakens against the sanctified leather which resides above it in the chain of order.

Vain’s thrall uncrosses its eyes and scrambles back onto its knees, the left of its face marred by the fingers that struck it sore. It prostrates itself deeply at the Lady’s boots and presses cracked lips against the recently serviced leather. Then, its bloody tongue snakes out slowly to polish the footwear in that cherry coat all good Ladies should sport.

“The word you were looking for is Hemomancy,” the woman states calmly, pushing Her boot out as She watches the mind-broken tool that used to say such hateful things to Her now lap at that boot She presents like its busted tongue is nothing but a well-trained rag. Obedience can be hammered into even the strongest of minds, but this girl came pre-baked with all the right footholds for a confident sorcerer like Lady Vain to sink Her talons into; in another life, this boot-blacking bondslave—eager chattel for the empire it once felt so determined to destroy, one confirmed kill at a time—was an ace pilot. Her flashy resistance mechsuit, Aethôn, was once a member of the core guard for the leader of the rebel forces in the Abyssian front. Both forces pull from the same dead mythology for their killing machines’ names for the simple reason that these inordinately expensive metal frames come from the very same manufacturer; it would betray the empire’s noble doctrine to forbid their opponent in bloody battle such a vital resource. Prolonged strife is the perfect state for the devout state of Lady Sanguis, because their greatest of harvest rituals require mass sacrifice; rivers of rebel blood become fertiliser for the crops that would otherwise never grow in this barren continent.

Thrall nods gratefully for the education it is given, its now limited vocabulary being restocked with only terminology important to serving Her. It tries to recall its first thousand wounds with an embarrassed, youthful smile as its tongue smears oxidising red against the side of its master’s heel.

The first wound was a scalpel cut against its cheek, the headstrong ace spitting on her Lady’s divinity so foolishly as the woman made a point to sample its inferior blood and spit back.

The fiftieth wound was made with a pair of heated tongs, pulling tooth after tooth as the sleep-deprived pilot attempted to fight its own fatigue to scream as it rightly should. It felt its sanity fraying already, and the loudspeaker in the corner made sure to remind it of that wretched dogma. One must honour the blood.

The seven-hundred-and-twenty-first wound was when the pilot began to question its ability to hold out any longer, not as a prisoner but a person. It had given into the torture hundreds of wounds ago, but by this one—a puncture in its inner thigh made to bleed until it no longer could and played with by curious lambskin touch—it found that its own name tasted wrong in its mouth, like the thing it had been reduced to did not deserve to dirty the name of such an important and accomplished hero.

The thousandth wound was when Lady Vain saved Her thrall, and it began to crave the rest of its transformation with a treacherous heat igniting within its loins. Sometimes it would falter and beg, but it became too malleable to fight its own need to please Her. This was the wound in which its neural port was installed, metal spike boring deep into the back of its head in a single pneumatic blast—gas powered piston making skull and grey matter disappear like a magic trick. Technology can be arcane in its own right too, sometimes. The parts of thrall’s brain that were removed were replaced with blood-infused sensory mesh that lined the inside of the port that was screwed into place by loving leather hands. Not only did this new addition to the pilot’s head allow it to interface with Vanity in a singularity of being the lost ace would claim to share—but could never truly reach—with her redundant Aethôn, it would also allow Vain to adjust its sensitivity to pain, and splice out any memories that proved too much during the next few thousand wounds.

The frequency of these sessions intensified, and what would once be unspeakably painful to the wound-doll soon became mundane touch. Before long, it would see its tally increasing by the hundreds each session, leaving the training room with a body so broken you could barely call it human. That word began to feel heavy as lead, and so the thrall learned to shirk it along with the pain.

“You’re daydreaming, I can sense it in my blood. I need you to focus when you’re serving me, weapon.” Fingers curl into thrall’s hair and pull it up onto its feet with surprising strength—that, and the living wound-encyclopaedia has simply lost most of its weight.

“S-sorry. Was… thinking about all… all the times you hurt me.”

“Do you like being hurt, pet?” Vain turns flush, it’s no secret that she enjoys inflicting the hurt for Her part. The woman is a woundsmith, Her bloodied dress tantamount to the butcher’s apron; a fitting analogy given that She’s already sampled the thrall’s forearm, wound 455,001, and found that while it paired decently with a good Cabernet Sauvignon, the aftertaste was too indelibly sad.

Thrall tilts its head and looks over Lady Vain’s shoulder to avoid Her gaze. Something in its very blood resonates with that deep metal itch in the back of its head and Vanity’s pilot returns its gaze to fix upon its Lady’s. “I ah… y-yes. And no? You… always find ways to push it out of its comfort zone and discover new limits… it’s impressive! You’re amazing and-and I deserve to be hurt so it’s okay either way, r-right?” The tool’s hopeful little smile turns Vain on like nothing else, culling Her patience in forestalling this next wound any further. Under any other circumstances, the Lady’s role in this next stretch of training would be considered to be the lowest in the power dynamics at play, but Vain is not a normal woman; She is arcane, Her esotericism as entwined in Her eroticism as Her blood is with the thrall’s.

“You may come in now, Miss Leonaire.” The woman smirks in approval when She hears the door slide open almost immediately. Kris Leonaire, of Leonaire Steelworks and Engineering, appears just as impatient to get this underway; her restlessness, however, is due to wishing for this unbearably cruel task to be over.

“I don’t think I can go through with this, lady. You’re fucking depraved, I… shit I can’t even look at her.” The young engineer lowers her head, the sight of the thrall making her feel queasy as Lady Vain sets it down and orders it to stand.

“You’ve already aided me once, girl, designing such a flamboyant steed for my menials to saw the wings off and reduce to scrap before this one’s very eyes. Such a thing of vanity, that gaudy beast, she put so much of her pride in it just as I’m sure you did. Apologies for dismantling one of your greatest, dear, but my artistry demands—”

“I don’t give a shit about the fucking mech, you psychotic witch. I… I knew her… this is too much.” Kris tries to regain control of her breathing after getting worked up, resting an elbow in each palm as she paces in the cramped space of the training room.

Again, Lady Vain assumes a malevolent smirk that tells anybody looking Her way—presently only the thrall, which pays almost no attention to the old flame that curses under her breath only feet away—that She’s loving this. “Oh, dear girl, I’m well aware. You cosied up with a rebel who rejects our customs, and now you get the chance to make it right.”

“Fuck. You. Lady. I ain’t part of your empire, remember? We’re a sovereign state too, and so long as we keep making your weapons and your airships and your fancy-ass knives and fucking forks you can keep your blood curses well away from our turf, yeah?” The Leonaire engineer seethes with rage, but pulls back when she lifts her head to see that swirling, blood red gaze that meets her glower; rumour suggests these creepy Imperial Hemomancers can thin your blood with just a look.

“You’re in my ‘turf’ right now, young lady,” speaks the woman who looks just as young but is most assuredly much older, “and so I expect you to keep the peace too. You’re representing your entire family, after all. Your whole little independent nation.” Vain strokes Her tool’s wet hair, the thrall finally noticing Kris due to the raised voice and needing the touch to tether it.

“Yeah but… this is hardly impartial. What you’re asking, it goes beyond coercion, it’s a threat. You know what it means if you set foot on that beach. Damn witch… telling me to keep the peace.”

Vain reaches over to run a lock of Kris’s messy brown wolf-cut between Her fingers and the engineer brushes Her off with a scowl. “I’m offering you a chance to avoid all that unnecessary conflict. It’d end rather swiftly in newly drawn agreements but we both know you’d lose family, and more importantly, pride. Do this and our encampment shifts west instead. It’s less secure but our wards are second to none, so I can still work with that. It just depends on what price you’re willing to pay for your own. This thing you refer to like it’s still a woman, and not something we just indulge the pretence to when the mood strikes, was never your family. I heard the story from my pilot before these sort of memories began to fracture, she told me you broke her heart. Clearly not, rebel aces are such a dramatic lot… but now you have a chance to finish the job.”

“Fuck is wrong with you? Asking me to treat this… thing… like I did her.” Kris finally looks up at the thrall and makes eye contact with it, seeing almost no trace of the cocky little shit she called ‘babe’ in another lifetime. Vain’s pilot stares at Kris, almost recognising her; in this way, they make a matching pair. The thrall feels a tightness in its gut, like the words it just heard should wound it. Not yet, Lady always declares those.

“My Vanity project here, its ego is so soft right now. Like putty, you see? I have inflicted so many deliberately placed and drawn out wounds upon its body and soul in tandem, I’ve been positively surgical in my ministrations. I take this work very seriously, and better still, I enjoy it. This is a special number, the six sixes my religion uses to signify the completion of our Lady Sanguis’ dissection. So many pieces She was cut into, and now these pieces live on inside of us purebloods. I don’t expect an outsider like you to parse such matters, but still, I believe this to be the most important of all the wounds I’ve given my weapon here. It is the finishing touch. Only the finest sting will do, a wound upon the last vestiges of ego that shelter in the corners of her soul where they think I won’t find and snuff them.”

“And… you’re gonna achieve that by making me fuck my lobotomite ex? My family doesn’t believe in therapy, I’m gonna be a wreck for… well, like I said, I… I can’t do it. Dammit, woman, just… this is deranged. You’re… you can’t… I’m not…”

Before the Leonaire family’s youngest engineer even registers the movement—despite those commanding clacks—she feels the smooth lambskin fingers rolling over her bare shoulders, caressing them softly. The woman is too distressed to shake off the Lady this time, simply eyeing up that broken thrall with a sense of guilt building up inside of her destructively.

“Just relax, dear. You didn’t seriously believe I was expecting you to perform this heroic act without chemical assistance, did you now? I’m not so cruel as to burden you with that, look.” One of the black hands vanishes and re-emerges holding a glass syringe encased in ornate brass, filled with an effulgent red blood that is unmistakable in its identity. “Just a small shot of my sanctified blood, diluted with the samples we took of yours earlier to prevent shock. It’ll be out of your system by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, I promise on our great Lady Herself. On Empire, bloody and honest.”

Kris stares at the tiny syringe in disgust, but finds herself between a rock and a hard place and seeking any potential saviour. “What… will it do?”

Vain grins, biting fang-like canine into her rich red lip. “It will make you hunger. Your lust for my thrall’s body will carry you through your task automatically, more or less, and by the time it’s over I can so easily mesmerise you as my temporary thrall into forgetting the sordid affair entirely.”

The girl sighs, flicking her eyes between the salvation being offered and the old flame that barely seems to hold anything salvageable in its bony frame. “Fuck… but she’ll remember. That’s the point, right? To traumatise her with something from her old life… betraying her so viciously… yeah?”

“Yes, Miss Leonaire. Reshaping a soul is no easy task, they die quite easily if you’re not careful. I require a thrall, not a husk. I’m going to use your body, what you symbolise, to finish my product. And you’ll walk out of this carrier with a family that loves you and not a single casualty among them wrought by my forced hand. It’s up to you, really, but I think you’ll find my blood will rob you of the responsibility you fear. We both know that’s your real issue here, because my thrall stopped being the girl you dumped years ago now. It’s time you both moved on, hm? Think of this as closure.”

“That’s such horseshit…” Kris spits onto the ground, eyes crunching shut as she lifts her arm. “Just… fuck you. Stick it in quick.”

Lady Vain chuckles, the throaty hum sticking in Kris’ ears like warm honey at this distance. “As you wish, my darling.” Ignoring the proffered arm entirely, the woman jabs the medical tool directly into Her final pawn’s neck, pushing Her thumb into the injector with a delighted hum as She feels Her blood gushing into the gullible subject’s flesh so wonderfully. It already took to the sample, so it mixes in without any fight from the other’s blood cells and begins to corrupt Kris with a burning heat that has her vision start to blur.

The engineer buckles, and the Lady catches her. Her Lady? “I uhm… god, that’s fast…” With a lilting giggle that tells the Hemomancer just how quickly the high of Her special blood has begun to take the youngest Leonaire, the brunette leans back into her Lady’s stained outfit eagerly. “Ffffuuuuck, I’m high.”

“Actually, you’re drunk.” The Lady corrects Her hireling thrall, loving the way that her skin now radiates such heat, even standing in a refrigerated space like this while wearing only a tank top. “You’re going to feel a rush of hot, right between your thighs. It’ll be so overwhelming your legs won’t hold you for a few moments, and then you’ll suddenly feel like you can do anything. Invincible with my generous gift flowing in your veins until it’s all used up.” Two digits wreathed in that baby-soft leather press down firm against the inebriated engineer’s groin, and Kris sighs longingly into the air with breath you can trace the journey of.

“Feels… goood… crap, I… I can’t…”

“You can’t stop this now, you’ll be little more than a hungry animal soon, a dumb mongrel desperate to rape whatever prey is placed in front of it like it’s attempting to breed hybrids with the ill-suited mate. That thrall there? It’s so far beneath you I could scarcely call you the same species. Look at it, don’t shy away now.” Vain uses Her other hand to grip the bucking girl’s face and guide it in the direction of the disassociating pilot, which has stood adrift without its Lady’s instruction.

“It’s… p-pathetic… goddd… I hate it.”

“That’s right. Utterly defenceless, just a poor imitation of a girl I’m sure you still care for. An insult to her image, a self-defacing whore that’s infinitely hurtable. Unforgivably rapeable. It needs punishing for not being stronger, don’t you agree?” Lady Vain’s tone is low and sultry, seducing Kris via voice and blood and truth. She holds the girl close, like a mother, nursing her perception into the proper state.

Kris struggles against the rhetoric in Vain; it is a short little war, without the munitions required for any coordinated effort to take place. Her morals are quashed in a single burst of figurative rifle-fire, and by the time she’s back in the room all she can think about is how much sense the Lady is beginning to make. She’s above this wretch, this inhuman freak that wears her ex’s face. It needs to be taken down a peg, staring at her with that dumb, doe-eyed look on its stupid, tortured face.

“I-I… ahhhh… ahhhhgreeee… fuck… fuck her… c-can I… can I…” Her mind is leaking out between her thighs, just as the Lady promised it would. The heat is all-encompassing, the burning dyke rutting into the air desperately as she sweats through her clothes like she’s entered an oven.

“Go ahead. Fuck her.” Lady Vain releases Miss Leonaire from Her hold and steps back, leaning against the wall with a rush of blood coursing through Her own singing body. The culmination of Her work, and She gets to watch, savour the scene and burn such beautiful betrayal into Her refulgent retinas forevermore—Empire willing.

Kris stumbles forwards with a violent and uncoordinated lunge, just barely making contact with the thrall as she tackles it down onto the floor with the intense snarl of a predator asserting dominance over its prey. A knee pushes down against the thrall’s groin as Kris pins the struggling pilot’s arms with a hot growl. Perhaps surprisingly, the thrall puts up what little resistance it can, terrified by this unknown creature mounting it and having no clear instruction from its Lady on what to accept or reject. It kicks, and Kris beats on its face until that fighting leg just spasms weakly instead. Thrall’s nose is broken from the random wailing, a deep laceration on the bridge seeping red. Kris’s nostrils flare as the hunger overtakes her, tongue spreading out over that gushing red and tasting the pathetic weakling’s sanguinity… along with the true prize: more of Lady Vain’s own moreish essence mixed within.

“A-ah! Get… g-get off!” The nameless thrall feels too broken to push, trying instead to bite Kris’s cheek only for the blood-crazed beast to copy the idea and sink her teeth into the other’s lower lip. The two share something close to a kiss as Kris begins to fuck the weakling with her knee roughly, determined to make it mate with her.

“That was a poor choice of phrasing, thrall.” Lady Vain stifles Her laughter, not batting an eye to the sight of Her property being mauled by the fuck-hungry animal that wears its former lover’s flesh. “Don’t you recognise her? Kris Leonaire, your first and only lay as I understand it. Pitiful, and I was led to believe that cocky aces got all the sex they could ever dream of handed to them on a silver platter. I loathe romantics.”

Thrall stares deep into those dilated pupils hovering over it, then takes in the full face with a slither of understanding that grows into a fissure deep within its chest. “Oh… I-I ah… stop!” The recognition is a wound.

“666,666.”

With newfound fight, the thrall crawls out from beneath Kris’ hold only to be pushed unkindly against the wall. The engineer climbs over that creaking neoprene and pulls her cock out, smacking the thrall’s bloodied face with it hard enough to make the pilot-in-training see stars. Her hand grabs the pitiful whelp’s throat as she presses the drooling head of her throbbing erection against its mangled lips. “Suck. Bite and I kill you.”

Thrall whines, wanting to tell its former flame, its one and only, that it has greeted death before. Still, the fear persists, and it opens its mouth slowly only to find its mouth suddenly rammed with hard, twitching flesh that has it salivating unwillingly. Kris treats the thing’s throat like a fleshlight; it’s nothing but a hole for her to conquer. This is closure, she reminds herself, watching the stupid cunt her ex became gag and wretch against the physical manifestation of her superiority. Kris is power incarnate right now, slamming her hips so hard against the other’s face it almost rivals the beating from earlier. Thrall has to focus on its breathing lest it pass out from the lack of oxygen reaching its lungs, still clawing at the invincible alpha’s legs with nails freshly grown in after last month’s plucking; not sharp enough to find any purchase against those hard denim thighs.

A horrific mixture of gurgling and squelching fills the room, accompanied by the growling pants of Kris Leonaire in her merciless assault. Her hips grind up close and she presses her boot down onto the thrall’s cunt, stepping down as hard as she can while pumping ropes of her tainted love down the submissive thrall’s gullet. When she slides out, cleaning herself off with the gasping wastrel’s own face and hair, Kris sighs out in exhaustion before landing down in her drifting fucktoy’s lap. She straddles it eagerly, still hungry, taking a swing at the damaged goods’ ribcage to snap it out of that the haze that tries to carry it away from its punishment.

“Hhhate you… need you… ffffuck you… love you…” Kris pushes the thrall’s head against the wall, her sweaty hand covering the tired creature’s eyes as she imagines this as nothing but a waste of flesh. Not her… no… she’d never do this to her. This is just meat, and Kris is insatiably hungry. Her stomach growls like a lion, compelling her to taste just a little piece of her prey to make sure she doesn’t starve. Just fucking the thrall isn’t enough to sate this compulsion in that accursed blood purported to be divine.

“I ahhh… ffforgive me… you’re… you s-smell ssso…” Still shielding her victim’s eyes and pressing it flat against the wall, Kris shifts to get more comfortable in her straddle before dragging her nose up the crook of the thrall’s neck indulgently. Her eyes roll, and in this moment she knows she cannot fight the compulsion to taste. The blood demands it, this is what it means to be an unrefined Seeker Thrall. There is no Empire to chant for, no Lady to admire, no comfort in loyalty for one to appropriately covet. There is only flesh, and blood overflowing.

Dull, human teeth sink into the surface of the thrall’s neck. Kris is not physically the beast she has mentally become, she has no Perfected Self to speak of. Her hunger persists, however, and through gnawing that ignores the pained cries and wheezing from the being having its body torn into by dull incisors, Kris manages to break the skin.

A taste like finely aged wine gushes into the engineer’s mouth while the thrall tries to remember all the good times they shared. The memories are shot dead in a line by a firing squad of sensations; the short, hot exhales from Kris’ nose against her gushing neck, the searing pain in her flesh from teeth that know not how to stop, and the warm muscle that laps so eagerly at thrall’s lifeblood like it doesn’t deserve to horde it all away inside that frail, wasting form.

“Mmmghh…” The thing that isn’t currently Kris latches onto that fresh neck wound and sucks feverishly as the thrall turns white as a sheet. It’s a horrible mess that flows down past the hungry mutt’s chin, she’s bitten down to the carotid artery and barely registers the severity of such a killing blow. All she can do is hunger. The thing she loved, that once loved her back, slowly fades into a cold darkness while she enjoys the flavour of its death.

“Heel, pet.” Lady Vain suddenly instructs the beast, watching with relief as the partially-sated Leonaire slides free from her meal and drops onto her haunches obediently enough, head tilting back and forth as it attempts to fight the compliance in its blood.

Vain approaches. Clack, clack, clack, clack. She assesses Her property’s latest meeting with the reaper, and decides to stop it dead. Pinching the fingertip of Her long glove, She pulls down to remove the left one entirely and presents Her arm to her thrall with a glowing red stare. “I do so hope you’ve learned from this; your former life no longer holds anything to return to, only by my grace are you saved. Every time you hurt, I will make it all better. Drink, pet.”

The dying thrall’s eyes light up at the sight of an arm covered in deep wounds all the way up to its elbow. Teeth much sharper than Kris’ sink into the woman’s forearm and puncture it thoroughly, thrall gulping up as much as it can get away with before being pushed away by its Lady. With Her long, rich red nail—filed into deadly points—Lady Vain etches a rune into the deep neck wound Her pet yet wears, and watches it begin to seal up with a temporary seal of rapidly congealing blood. “There, you’re going to be okay. Ah, there we are. I was wondering when.”

Thrall’s eyes leak like faucets, its heart breaking in its chest a thousand times as it tries to make sense of its 666,666^th wound. It weeps loudly, with dry sobs that fall into its owner’s hand as the woman’s bare touch holds its face up gently.

“There, there. Let it all out. Only I can heal you, remember this. Both your body and your spirit are mine to reshape, to salvage. You love me, Vanity.”

The blubbering thrall’s eyes widen more than they had when it was being eaten alive, and it perks up with a smile that shines through the ceaseless rain. “I love you, Lady! Vanity… I… that’s my…”

“It’s your name, you share it with your other half down in the hangar. If we can recycle what’s left of the engineer in this lesser thrall’s rapidly emptying head, perhaps it can even work maintenance for your magnificent coupling of metal and bone.”

The Leonaire thrall tilts its head, sitting forwards and whimpering at the dying understanding of what this means.

“Yes, that’s correct. I lied to you, rather dramatically so in fact. The threat against your family was genuine, but you were the price they were made to pay. On paper you’re a hostage, they don’t have to know that your humanity has been stripped down to its bare essentials by this improper thralling process that makes a useless, rutting bitch of you. See how much care and effort I’ve put into remoulding this one? Taking shortcuts never pays off, nor does attempting to shy away from the responsibility of our tough decisions. I’d call this a lesson, if I still thought you capable of learning anything beyond simple tricks. Oh well, I cannot claim to be disappointed by your actions, you performed adequately for me in the end. Good girl!” Vain reaches over with Her gloved hand and ruffles the sitting creature’s hair, Kris’ vision blurring from the praise as she slobbers intelligence down her chest slowly.

“She’s scary.” Vanity remarks timidly, shying away from the lumbering beast she once felt something more than fear towards.

Lady Vain cackles, pulling Her hand back and watching the ruined thrall’s head bob down. “It’s more afraid of you than you are of it, you’re an imperial pilot now, Vanity. This thing’s just a tool I used to finish my weapon, like a whetstone. We should not fear tools, but it pays to treat them cautiously so as to prevent accident.”

Vanity nods emphatically, loving the wisdom of her Lady. This woman is the only teacher she’s ever known, everything that came before was a storm of falsehoods. “Yes, my Lady. I’m your weapon, an imperial pilot… ehehe… are… what are your orders, Lady?”

With a confident, vain smile curling against her deep red lips, the pilot’s handler speaks thus. “We have exactly what we need to break your old leader’s defensive line now. Let’s get you better acquainted with your real body, Vanity.”

“Yes, my Lady.” There’s a thrumming in Vanity’s chest, the beat of war’s drum pounding her soul into constant submission so long as her Lady’s blood keeps flowing within. It’s enough to make anyone loyal.

Empire!

Empire!

Empire!