Burdens and Thralls

The town of Berm was named not after some noble founder, but out of the shape and form of the hill it was built on. In the Bloody Days, when the last vestiges of the Empire were crumbling and little wars were common as winter rain, the town was founded more by accident than from intention. 

First there were a few trenches around an old trading post atop a small hill, then when the earthworks and palisades were thrown up, displaced locals, refugees really, started flocking to the site. Traders and merchants brought goods and services to the mercenaries stationed there, and carried letters out for the Empire’s soldiers that were deployed to keel the ground in force. 

Seasons passed and the ground was built up and leveled, farmers started working the fields to feed themselves and the warriors that were protecting them. 

As peace began to settle across the region again, won not through victory but the exhaustion of violence, with no Empire to return to, the town of Bern was rightly settled. 

Walls of stone and mortar had been built up, and a proper keep with its own second wall dominated the top of the raised ground. Its citizens were spread wide around the walls, and within, but nothing invites ruin like peace and stability... 

Rase found himself fidgeting with the leather strap looped through the handle of his club. The weapon itself was near the length of a man’s arm, from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and the band of leather didn’t seem to do much to keep it in his hand, but then again he’d never had cause to use it. 

No one, save the chosen of His Lordship, was permitted to carry iron or steel within the walls, and it had been that way since the conquest. Though his livery marked him as one of His Lordship’s soldiers, Rase was neither well born enough, or well seasoned enough to carry a sword in town. So, if trouble arouse, the club would have to do, the club or the small dagger he carried for eating. Those pieces of metal could be carried by anyone, but only outside of the keep’s walls. 

Tying and untying the thong was his habit, just as some he knew chewed their nails, or needed to constantly bite on the end of their pipes, or work a whetstone at the edge of their dagger. He should have been looking to the crowds, to keeping the peace, and to spy out any rebels, but it had been ten long years since the Founderlings and their allies had been driven out or put to the blade. 

He’d only been a boy then, and had not come to the town until after his father had called for him and his mother. As payment for services to His Lordship, Rase’s father had been given a plot of land and coin; he himself enlisted in the army not only in tradition, but from seeing the way His Lordship’s soldiers had run of the town. 

If one was a farmer, or a brewer, or any other tradesmen or laborer they would do well enough, but to be a soldier, proud, respected, and daring, was to be a cut above the rest. Half his life had been spent in the town, and in those ten years it was clear to him, as it was to everyone, the law of might ruled over all. 

A hard wind cut through the autumn afternoon. “Shits!” Rase looked up from his fidgeting to see a young woman, near his age, struggling both with her homespun robes, and a very full woven basket. 

“May I?” He may have idolized the authority that soldiering gave, but he saw no value in the crassness it bred in some that he knew. 

The ground was damp, fresh puddles filled the depressions in the road, and the air was still wet with uncertain drizzle. The woman before him was hindered by her mantle, the basket, and not by the weather. Her hood was up pulled low and he could not see much of her face, “Please.” 

She couldn’t look up to see him until the basket was in his grip, and as she did, Rase found himself staring into the softest gray eyes, pale as the sky, almost blue. 

“It’s this weather,” her nose was narrow and sharp, her cheeks were high, her chin came to a s point, and her smile was wide and inviting. “I thought it would be storming, but there’s only...” 

He laughed, “This. This miserable gray. I tire of it ever year, even before the nights reach their longest.” She shifted her garb and the wind whipped again, pulling the billowing fabric to the form of her body. Were Rase less taken by her beautiful face he may have noticed the hidden curves beneath her garb. “I wish the rains would come and be done with it. But, thank you, I think I’ve sorted myself.” 

She smiled at him again, her eyes looking deep into his, “But gray isn’t such a terrible color is it?” Her eyelids fluttered for one brief second as she reached out to reclaim her basket, and if there was some sort of connection happening between them, Rasw felt the moment passing, “I could, I could carry it for you if you haven’t far to go.” 

Her eyes were fixed on his, “Tell me, looking upon me, do you feel the urge to ease my burdens, knowing not my name, and sharing not your own? Would you so kindly ease the weight I carry and serve me now?” 

Her voice was gentle, teasing, almost musical as she spoke. Her smile was sharp with the edges of his flattery, yet he could not answer, nor could he break her stare. 

There was a shift in the gray of her gaze then, like the flicker of red flame dancing as she spoke, and Rase found himself forgetting where he was for just a moment. 

“Tell me, when you look into my eyes, do you wish to ease my burdens, and carry my labors good stranger? Are you so kind?” 

“Yes.” It was neither clever nor said with purpose, but the word came to his lips as surely as water flows downhill. 

He smiled, and the weight of the basket sat easy in his arms. It was filled with this and that, a blanket, some vegetables, some small other things, and perhaps a few clay plates that gave it some heft, “Where are we off to?”

They were still looking into each other’s eyes, separated only by the basket between them, “Isodora.” 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what the farmers call...” She laughed, “No, my name is Isodora.” 

He felt his cheeks redden and his own laughter come to him, “Rase, of His Lordship’s foot.” 

“So I see,” there was a dusky tone to her voice as she spoke, and she’d leaned in closer, “Tell me Rase, if you had far to go, would you not find it easy to bear this burden for me?” 

His vision seemed to blur at the edges, and the quiet, calm gray of her eyes once more seemed to dance with some hint of flame, red, bright, and inviting, “Could you not forget yourself in such a thing so simply done, and with such a good heart. It is no small thing to carry another’s burden, but it is no great deed to be as kind as you are to a stranger. Would you not follow me far, simply to ease my burden?” 

“I would,” he blinked as his voice took on a musical tone itself, a soft, misty quality, as though it came from far away to reach his own ears. “Besides, you cannot be so far can you?” 

Her hand brushed over one of his, “No, not so far away at all.” 

They walked through the growing drizzle, the wind at their backs, and they spoke of this or that as they crossed a small footbridge over a stream, and then down a hard packed road between two orchards. 

Isodora walked beside him, her arms crossed in front of her chest to keep her robes from flapping about. “I’ve only just come from the south. Friends here called to me, asking me to come stay with them, knowing I was for naught else but menial tasks in my home.” 

“I was ten winters aged when my mother and I followed father here. It is a pleasant land with weather truly baleful for one’s soul, but of little hazard to one’s person.” He knew he’d already talked about the weather with her, but as they made their way, he was truly at a loss for words to charm her or win a smile. 

“I’ve heard tell His Lordship Halrick was a mighty warrior, was your father one of his men as you are?” She pulled at the hem of her billowing robes as she walked, yet mud and grime had found a way to cling to it nonetheless. 

“He was a mercenary in His Lordship’s employ, not one of his proper army, yet won favor on the battlefield. I hope to one day do such a great service as well.” 

The load was not heavy, not compared to carrying the weight of armor and shield, or of the over think training weapons he had been forced to master, and while some men would walk the town with their mail, Rase both saw no point to it, and was glad in this moment he did not. 

“It is whispered that Lord Halrick has a taste for blood, that he was cruel to those he conquered, especially so to those with the blood of the fallen Empire. They whisper in other parts that he came with malice to burn out and put to the blade as many as he could.” 

She spoke with a blunt curiosity, the same everyone spoke of in chasing the ends of tales and trying to weave together stories. “But this is crass of me, I ought not ask you of your master in such a way.” 

“Truth be told, I could not answer. We were both of us but children when that happened, and I know my father only as a soldier who did what all soldiers do. I would hope he was not one for the slaughter of the innocent, but I’ve seen hard men, and from them alone I know well how war and battle could become a madness.” 

“Have you not...” her voice trailed off into the steady drum of the increasing rain. “No. I’m no warrior, none proven at least. Fit only to swing a stick when drunkard argue the cost of eggs.” 

Ahead of them, out in a wide field surrounded by a dry stone wall fit only to keep chickens in and nothing determined out, were several low buildings of wood and stone. 

“We are here. If you would come with me to my door and delivery me my burden, I would be in your debt.” She spoke as they walked forward, her words were easy, and he hoped she too felt whatever was in the air between them; it was a near tangible current that had hastened his step and enlivened his arm. 

As they crossed the field he saw an older man and woman working in the fields, tending to animals, doing something properly agrarian that he didn’t wholly know. Though his father owned farmland, he was not a farmer. 

“They are my friends, distant cousins of some sort. They are rebuilding their barn and have turned their house proper over to me.” These words came as they crossed the threshold into the low roofed house. 

It was two rooms, with a proper slanted roof. It smelled of herbs and the lingering scent of burnt tallow. The heavy light of the fading day shown inside, and red tinged coals sat hot in a broad brick and stone fireplace. It looked old, like something made when times weren’t as mean. 

There was a large table with thick legs and a smooth top made from a single piece of wood. “Would you place the basket on the table?” 

She asked this of him as she pulled back her hood, then pulled a long wooden pin from her hair, and it fell down in a thick black cascade. Rase found himself staring at it, at her, as she stood with her back to him. 

Isodora’s hair was the color of new twilight; what he thought was black was hinted with a lustrous purple, cleverly dyed or accentuated in some way that was beyond his understands. To Rase, women with their beauty tricks were a certain kind of magician, but perhaps considerably less dangerous than His Lordships’ wizard. 

“You’re quite thoughtful Rase, a kind man in a hard town.” She turned to him, and her robes fell away, “a good heart in a sour profession.” 

He stared at her, dumbstruck. “It isn’t every man who would take on another’s burden,” her hands fell to her massive breasts, no, her gargantuan breasts. They were not naked, she was not naked, a soft black dress, plain but elegant clung to her. Its neckline was low, and though he could not see it, it was hemmed under those heavy swollen tits and the straps were bunched to help support their considerable weight. 

This was why she’s truly struggled with the basket, this was why her robes were so loose and billowy. “I saw in your eyes who you truly are, and when you looked into mine you felt my touch. Look again and see.” Her hand danced up from her chest, like a snake rising to strike, and Rase found himself again looking into the quiet gray softness of her gaze. 

He let out a short sigh and felt a quiet, calming weight descending over his neck and shoulders. There was something there, a light behind a curtain, like a shadow cast on the side of a tent. He stared, looking, watching, remembering the way everything else faded away in those red glowing flashes. 

Some sorcery was afoot, but what did he know of magic. “I would let you see the eyes behind my eyes, I would let you see me again, but not now. Not when you would find yourself with your own pressing burdens, ones perhaps I can share and ease as you helped me.” 

That hand fell back down to her chest and Rase shook his head again. He felt disoriented, like his arms and legs had become light, but that there was a gentle weight pressing down on him, keeping him still, like there were hands on his neck or his shoulders. 

“Isodora, I have no burdens to impose on you.” He smiled, it was a sheepish sort of thing and as he stared at her chest, unabashed. Again, he felt his cheeks warm. 

“Perhaps you simply do not know what you carry, or what you will carry. We all have burdens,” her hands scooped under her breasts and he watched them rise, seeing clearly that they were the size of large, ripe melons. “And once you begin a kindness, it is often times very hard to stop.” 

“Would you not call your curiosity, your desires, a burden?” Her hands pressed her tits together, the creamy softness of her skin spilling up and out of her dress. “Speak not, simply think on it a moment, be in that moment and wonder for me, do you feel the burden of your curiosity.” Her hands moved slowly over her own skin, then reached out to him, just as she would were she to take his hands in hers, but they instead grasped only his gaze and pulled that in closer still. 

“The beauty of another can be a burden to one’s own mind. The lust for another can be a heavy weight.” Her hands returned again under her breasts to make them bounce in their fullness, “And I know of the weight of lust, do you not see what could compel such a burden in you? Answer not but stare, speak not but remain in this moment and gaze upon this sight, does not the burden of my beauty give rise to the weight of lust in you?” 

Rase couldn’t deny her that. The sight of her breasts, so close to falling out, naked and full from her dress, was working havoc on his imagination, and the heat of his thoughts was nothing compared to the stirring between his legs. 

Yes, he felt a keen burden now, in the back of his mind, tangible in his skull, and doubly so in his ever swelling manhood. 

Her voice had become lower, each word coming from her lips in a near purr, “Look upon my burdens, their weight, the size, their softness, could you not help me? Would you not lend me your strength as before? Answer not, but listen and gaze. Let my burdens become your world, let the softness become your thoughts, look not past me, look only at what you see.” 

His gaze had become bound in the motion of her hands and the rolling softness of her breasts. Each motion, each roll of flesh, soft and inviting seemed to hint at yet more of her skin, leading his eyes, keeping his eyes held on a sight he would not have rightly looked away from anyway. 

“You’re finding your own burdens are growing as you gaze upon mine, feeling the weight, the way such labors can drain you. You could find yourself succumbing to them now, ever so quickly, or mayhap your strength will abide you longer, to endure your burdens, pleasant as they may be, soft and heavy, warm and tiring in the fullness of your mind, would you not care to rest a moment under these heavy weights?” 

It had all become a slow moving blur, a subtle fog has rolled in over the edges of his world, not as before, not in the flash of her eyes and the lost awareness of all. It felt as though a long day were creeping to an end, and as she stepped closer to him, he found himself wondering what she’d just said. 

“Sit, my guest, my good heart. Let the weight carry you down and find some comfort, much needed under the weight, much desired under the strain of the burdens. Find comfort now, and let me ease your burdens as I can before you ease mine own once more.” 

Her fingers squeezed and massaged, and the soft flesh became more inviting to his eye. Though he could not think, he could not help put imagine letting his heavy head rest on their softness as she placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently down into a chair. 

“All is quiet here, close and warm, near to me,“ Rase found himself not merely sitting, but feeling that his body was sinking down with a heaviness that crept from the weight in his skull down into those limbs that had moments ago felt so light. 

“Rest your body, but not your eyes, let your mind be eased, let your thoughts be free to follow what you may see unto hearing, a word round and full, a fullness of voice that weights upon you, keeping you from floating away into dreams, not yet but soon, not until our burdens our eased.” 

His eyes blinked, and he realized that he’d been staring at her for a very long time. Perhaps more words had been said, he didn’t know, but in that moment he realized that his eyes had been bound to her breasts, and the dance of their flesh under her fingers, was captivating beyond words. 

He thought to look away for a moment, but his eyes did not embrace that thought and it left him as easier than it came. 

His throb, his ache, and the heaviness in his groin, the swelling stiffness of his cock and the ripe pulse of his fruits was pressing into his every breath, humming there behind her words, and somewhere between the sight of her breasts, lost in her cleavage but still tucked away safe and sound in his trousers. 

She was speaking, but the words were drifting in and out of his mind, bound like shadows in the foggy, hazy quiet that had started to swaddle him. Word by word, he was hearing less and less as she spoke more and more, and as his eyes began to close, she reached forward again, up from the slow massage of her breasts to grasp his gaze and keep it fixed on her. 

“Let the heaviness quiet you, but keep your stare fixed in its longing, give in to desire and give your mind over to only that, and only me. Is this not what you crave? Is this not all you can do now, not but stare?” 

In a waking dream he found himself speaking, saying yes, but hearing nothing, knowing not what words came from his lips but wanting from his heart to agree with her. It was as though the choice to do otherwise were somewhere at the edges of his fog but also close at hand. 

It was then that her naked breasts found themselves in his grasp. He held them, fondled them, and found himself sucking on them. To do so needed both hands on one breast, and then to the other. They had come forth with her words, when the sound of her voice had become a long sound, paused only for his agreement, and the more he gave his assent to her, the more of her breasts he saw, until finally they were naked, and her hands had taken his and placed them on her softness. 

There, the heat in his loins was like a beacon in the darkness of her voice and of her touch. He found the meaning of her words again and not just the sweet, soothing sounds that had come from her lips and filled the beguiled emptiness of his mind with what exactly he could not say. 

“Feel their heaviness and know my burdens, feel their weight and know why I need you. Your strong arms and steady hands, your gentle touch, your desire to aid me, only you can ease my burdens, only I can relieve yours as they build. Bear my weight as it were your own, and I shall take yours unto mine.” 

Her fingers worked the belt around his waist, then fell to the knot of his trousers, and as she worked it free, Rase’s hands felt the full and impressive weight of her breasts, and his face found their softness as she leaned forward in her work. 

He was smothered in her in that moment, and he longed to lose himself entirely in her huge expanse of cleavage. 

“You must ease my burdens in all things, in all ways, as you have wished and wanted, as you sought to when you knew nothing save my need.” 

Rase’s scarcely formed desires became his reality as his cock had found itself lost in her breasts. Even his aching balls were swallowed up in their massive warmth, and as she spoke, she rubbed them together, fucking him from base to tip. 

“Will you help me Rase, my good heart, my kind soul, help me as I help you now? Burden for burden?” He couldn’t speak, not for lack of want, but for the pleasure he was lost in. 

“You needn’t speak, let me ease your burden and your body will answer.” The creamy softness of her breasts was better than the silken hand of one of the keep’s maids. Delicate as she’d been, and enthusiastically giving as she had been with her touch in that linen closet, yes, she was giving and it had been wonderful, but not so giving as this, and she was not so overwhelmingly blissful as the feeling of those breasts. 

“Your body craves to answer, you long to lose this pressing weight, give me your burden, give me your answer.” His cock was lost in her from tip to base and he groaned, then bit his lip as the lightning bright pleasure of release started to build. 

“Bare my burden as I relieve yours, do as I ask of you, give as I give. Say yes now, speak through your flesh.” The world had long ago fallen back into the muted quiet of her gentle purr, and the fog had settled again along the edges of everything. 

Rase had found himself with her, as though he were a horse being walked, before being ridden. And were he a horse, he could have bolted, but there was no desire. There was no reason not to agree, to listen, to feel, to follow the sound of her voice even as her words became sounds that filled his mind like water into a cup and nothing else. 

Even as he started to cum, the whole of his manhood smothered by her breasts, he thought he could say no, renege on what she offered, but the sweet purr of her voice had convinced him he craved agreement with her, and his own heart longed to aid her. 

“Yes Isodroa, only tell me what you need.” His words came at the end of a shuddering breath, a sigh of relief as he found himself light, like a cloud in the sky, his body adrift in pleasure, his mind clear and sharp in that wash of ecstasy. 

“Sleep,” her fingers snapped in front of his eyes and he fell forward, his head resting on her shoulder as his cock began to shrivel. “Sleep and dream of my words as truth, sleep and dream of my voice as your own. I shall speak and you shall listen, I shall command, and you shall follow. Sleep, deep sleep in the embrace of my bosom.”

Lost there in her arms, his head resting on her chest now, Isodora began to speak, slowly telling him many things, many simple steps, many quiet whispers, all directions, all plans, all things he would know and believe as his own mind’s work. 

“Whoa there travelers, you’re not known to us now, what’s in the wagon?” Rase knew, not the details, but he knew to tell the captain to stop this one. It was, as the captain said when he gave the young soldier a knock to the shoulder, ‘finally a sign of some initiative’. 

The two men at the head of the wagon froze. Their faces were long and tired, their eyes hooded, and they were dirty from head to toe. “Traders sir, just bringing in some goods from the north.” The pilot was speaking, his voice was high, almost pathetic with the strain of fear. A club wasn’t a sword, but it didn’t have to be to ruin a man or take his life. “We said as much to the gate guards sir.” 

Rase’s captain nodded to one of the other boys, and he climbed up into the back and started to rummage about. “Well their dereliction’s their business, mine own business,” he coughed out a short laugh, “is to do my job. But maybe that’s what’s got you nervous huh? Fear that maybe you’ll need to cushion my evening later with a fine meal of coin in my pocket to keep you doing your trading? That it stranger? Don’t you worry though, we don’t take brides here, true as that.” 

No, Rase almost rolled his eyes, they didn’t take bribes. The dirty ones just took. His captain was a hard man, a bitter old fuck depending on who you asked, but he had an even hand in most things. 

“Just general provisions captain, some shit wine too.” A look of relief passed over the two on the wagon. Rase whispered to his captain, “Under the base board, look at the fidgety one.” The man who hadn’t said much had been more than a touch antsy, but without the words floating in the back of Rase’s mind, the instructions he’d been give, the task that she’d asked of him, he never would have know. 

“Up you go fellows step off the wagon and come to in a peaceable way now.” They did, and once they were off, the captain climbed up, lifted the board they’d been sitting on, and then removed an ornate golden box. 

“That looks precious to me sir, where’d you two get that?” Rase spoke as loudly as he dared without shouting, and watched the two men’s eyes flicker in and out of a confused fog. 

“Stole it out of an old temple near Blasted Bridge, north-wise, this side of the river.” The nervous one was still silent, and now he was fidgeting like he needed to piss. 

“Temples are bad news captain, could be cursed, might not want to open that yourself, maybe we should turn it over to Corun, maybe win us a little favor with it sir.” 

Rase’s words were his own, but he knew he was doing something specific, like he was following a torch through the fog of thought and memory. His own mind was following, like being led during a dance, and in all of it, it still felt as though these were his words, his thoughts, or at least something inside of his was saying it was. 

So, he stood there watching his captain, waiting for the man to say or do something that would complicate this part of things. “Tell me, you two, tell me where you got this so you don’t have to tell my betters, who I’m promising you, will make your sad dirty lives a whole lot worse.” 

The two men looked at each other and shrugged. They were all nerves and sweat and fidgeting fingers, and clearly confused about what else there was to say in the matter. 

They stammered, and they shrugged, and they gave a little more detail about the temple, where it was specifically, what they saw inside and what they’d already taken and sold up and down the road. 

It was an accidental boon they said, and they tiptoed around being career grave robbers as best they could. 

“Looters are you? Well, you didn’t loot from us but we’ll have a hard eye on you while you’re here. Get on with your business and keep your mouths shut. Maybe try and be gone sooner than not, huh?” 

The captain sent them away with a knowing smirk. Then, he made to set off to the keep, turned, and waved Rase with him. “Come along my boy, you deserve some of the credit it there’s any to be had. And you can tell the wizard all that these two cravens told us. Save me the fucking trouble.” 

Corun’s eyes were sharp and old, but in the face of a young man. His hair was short and close cropped, his beard was sharp, neat, also kept short, and his perpetual sneer was enough to make Rase want to hit him in the mouth with his club. 

The club, along with his dagger, that the keep’s guards had taken from him and the captain. It was magic, clearly, that had kept Corun this age, looking scarcely older than Rase himself. I was magic, clearly, that gave him this handsome and youthful visage, but the wizard’s eyes had seen too much, and not the least of what they had seen were his own acts. If His Lordship was a ruthless conqueror, then Corun the Wizard was an agent of wicked mystical ambitions. 

“Tell me... Rase is it...” he waved a hand, then smirked, and continued to speak, “what made you think to stop these men.” 

“They were strangers, the ugly sort too, and nervous, and once they stopped, the one was squirming like a fish on a hook my... sir?” He’d realized at that moment he had no idea what honorific belonged to a wizard. 

He laughed a mocking sort of laugh, and those old eyes were hard and cold, “Do you know what you’ve brought me then?” Again, he waved his hands, and the air seemed to shimmer. 

“No. But it seemed important, and when he said temple I thought it might be dangerous. You know, all those stories about cursed artifacts and such.” Those words had felt pulled from him, like they needed to fill the open space in the conversation, but they were words ready to be said, and as Rase spoke, the wizard smirked again. 

He was a smug, arrogant, and impossibly dangerous man, and Rase wanted to be out of his company even more than he wanted to smack the smug out of him. 

“You’ve shown wisdom young man, great wisdom, and delivered to me a fine treasure, a fine treasure indeed. See yourselves out now, and one of my men will see to your reward.” 

The wizard turned away. “Be gone” echoed behind them as Rase and his captain took quick steps to leave. The pouches of coin they received from one of that bastard’s lackeys made those quick steps jingle as they walked out of the keep and into the fresh air. 

The next morning Rase watched as the wizard and two heavily armed men in fearsome black plate armor rode out of the town’s northern gate. 

As they departed, Rase felt an almost crippling ecstasy flow through his body, and felt a profound weight building between his legs. 

Thoughts of Isodora flowed through his mind, memories of the softness of her breasts and the joy of her touch, memories of her words filled his mind, and in these past accountings he discovered his ache was not only to feel that touch again, but to be close to her, to see her, to hold her, and more than anything, to please her. 

It wasn’t hard to abandon his post, not after yesterday’s performance. He told the captain he was off to see about some things, and the captain’s smirk said he knew ‘those things’ had to be a woman. 

“Oh Rase, do tell, what was brought you to my door?” Her hair was down, and she wore no mantle, only that same black dress, and those same huge breasts greeted his eye and commanded his vision as soon as he saw them. 

The sight of their creamy softness made him sigh, it was like a yawn, and he felt himself floating almost, like half of his mind was no longer needed and could simply wander along until it found a daydream to occupy it. 

“You were right about the wagon Isodora.” She touched his shoulder and smiled. “I know, I know. Do come in my sweet, come inside and tell me everything.” He did as she asked, his eyes fixed on her breasts the entire time, and when he told her the story, including repeating to her what she had told him to do, he felt his heart flutter in the quiet fog of her world. 

“You’ve eased one burden, but tell me, would you not ease another for me?” From the moment he stepped into her abode her hands had fallen to her chest, and with a subtlety that none could imagine, she had freed them so his eyes could once again feast on their naked shape. 

His hands found her chest again, moving almost like a puppet’s would, guided by strings. The sensation of their weight in his hands, the feel of their flesh as she squeezed them gently only made his own burden grow, and he gasped with sudden surprise as her hand moved between his legs. 

“Tell me, has the wizard departed? Is he gone?” 

Her fingers massaged him through the thick fabric of his trousers, and his hips rocked forward, “Yes, he departed this morning.” 

“Good. You have played your part so well for me, you have eased this tremendous burden. Now my sweet one, look into my eyes.” 

He did, and as he stared into her pale gray depths, he watched as light seemed to sparkle to life, red, gentle, inviting as a warm fire on a cold night. It was not a hint, not a flash, but a glow, one that was irresistible to him, one that called his mind and his body; he wanted to lose himself in the light, to be one with it, the red warmth that erased all else, even her massive breasts. 

“Now the real work can begin.” 

Her father and mother were not lord and lady. They were not soldiers, or witches, champions, or people of power. They were simply old blood, descendants of the Empire, children of children that had settled in Berm. They kept old traditions alive, told old stories, and cooked with old recipes, but they were the progeny of no heroes, they were not the children of legends, they were just people. 

And His Lordship Halrick’s invasion had seen them killed, and her driven off into the night, a refugee of his conquest and his need for slaughter. It had been ten years, and in the interim he’d created the peace of fear, and the stability of cruel strength. 

But nothing invites ruin like peace and stability. In those ten years she had explored dark places, quiet places in the mind, and lost pages in ancient texts. In those years she had studied under wise and loving tutors, and found power from dark and mysterious ones, and now she was returned. 

As Rase looked into her eyes, caught up in her spell completely now, she brushed her fingers across his cheek. 

When they had first met, she lured him with a glimpse of this power and looked into his mind ever so briefly. The soft touch of magic left no lingers traces, not even to all seeing eyes. 

There, she saw his fantasies, and there she saw his character and his essence. It was a happenstance meeting that she would find her pawn on her very first outing, but good fortune was as common as bad if you knew how to see it as it was. 

What she had done to him not two days ago, the enthralling, was something she had learned early from a hedge witch, a dancer who used music and her own body to captivate others. It was taught to her again when she was much further along in her studies, by a much older witch, one who used the sound of her voice, the constant repetitive power of her words to stupefy and beguile the mind into cooperation. 

Neither approach was pure magic, or magic at all, and so it would not be detected by the wizard’s wards and his well known propensity for scrying. 

Corun was known to her, known by many of her teaches, and his paranoia, his role in Halrick’s dominion, and his lust for power were no secret to any practitioners of the mystical art. To get at His Lordship, the wizard would have to be removed, and to remove him, he would have to be tempted away. 

One of her teachers, her most recent and most sinister, had held the answer. A keeper of many lost treasures, she had agreed to part with one, to gift it to Isodora for a time if she could promise the wizard would deliver himself and the object back to her in turn. 

The two poor fellows on the wagon had been beguiled by a few kind words, a fair amount of coin, and a far less sensual enthralling to ensure their minds would remember naturally only some things and forget others. A lie was not a lie if the truth was wholly absent. An answer was an answer it if was the only one a man knew. 

She had bent them to her will in much the same way she’d reclaimed her family home form its current occupants. She hadn’t turned them out, simply twisted their thoughts to desire sleeping in the barn and serving as her laborers. 

It had all been part of the plan, and it was all going more smoothly than she’d hoped. Now, the wizard was gone, and now she had a soldier under her spell. But Halrick was no fool, and his martial paranoia was as sharp as Corun’s was for magic. She couldn’t send Rase into her enemy’s lair, blade hidden, mind sharp with the need to follow her commands, that would fail. 

She couldn’t set him against those odds and hope for victory, and while she knew there would be other ways, those would be more costly, those would be more bloody, and those would reveal her in ways she did not desire. 

There was no purpose to knowing the mind, there was no purpose to bending the will and mastering those arts, if in the end she would be reduced to such vulgar displays of power. 

In a dream he walked the halls of the keep. He smiled and nodded to the other men who stood the watch and walked the yard. He passed by faces he knew, and faces he didn’t, and finally came to the main hall. 

It was normal for any soldier wearing the livery to come and go. It was normal for any of them to do as they pleased, and as Rase walked to the corner of the main hall, he lifted a candle from a sconce in he wall, broke a small length from the bottom, then placed a small crystal orb, no larger than a human eye down into the base and replaced the candle. 

Then, he walked out and returned to her. 

“Come inside my sweet Rase, wake from the slumber of red warmth and find yourself rested in my presence and in my voice once more.” He blinked, and as he did, all memory of the day had left his mind. 

He did not care to remember where it had gone because he was back in Isodora’s presence, back in the sight of her huge, naked breasts, and filled again with a desperate burden of lust for her and the need to please her. 

Candles burned on the table, and her fireplace danced with bright heat and light. A crystal ball the size of his fist sat in a small golden holder on the mantle above the fireplace, it was like the one he had hidden, but much larger. 

“Look upon me Rase, what color are my eyes in this light?” He looked up from her breasts, his eyes having found them immediately following the words that had ended her spell, 

“They’re gray, like a lovely version of a dark day.” 

“You’re kind to say as much, but tell me, have you come to say sweet things, or,” her hands fell to her naked breasts as she started to press them together again, mimicking the motions that had brought him to climax in their silken embrace, “have you come to ease my burdens once more as only you can?” 

“I would,” there was a strain in his voice that came from his own burden between his legs as he looked up into her eyes once more, “I will, but I...” 

Rase’s vision fell from her eyes again as her fingers started to trace slow spirals about her round, stiff nipples, “Would you ask something of me now? Would you ask me to ease your burdens as I’ve said I would?” 

“Yes,” this ache was new, profound, and beyond what he thought his body capable of. “Please,” he whispered, desperation having drained his certainty and his confidence as well. “Breathe now Rase, look at my fingertips and breathe. Focus on your breath as my fingers dance about, letting your eyes grow soft now, just breathe and stare, relax for me as you let my voice sooth you again. I will help you, I will always ease your burdens, and I am doing so now my sweet one. Watch. Stare. Relax and find yourself within me.” 

He listened to her words, and again they started to become one long sound, like a hushed music floating through his dreams, and he felt his eyelids begin to grow heavy, fluttering as he sat still, his eyes being led in circles by her fingertips. 

“You’ve carried such a heavy weight for me for so long now, days without release, days with the weight of my breasts in your mind,” she began to massage them again, slowly rubbing and squeezing them, and every shift caused their size and their weight to become more pronounced, more obvious. 

“They are such a heavy weight, so full and compelling, teasing at you always, speaking to your lust, but not your desire. Relax, let go, your mind can rest as your eyes remain open, staring now as your thoughts grow quiet and fade away into the heaviness of my chest, filled with them, consumed with them, there is nothing in your mind because it is all before your eyes now. Let go and listen my sweet one, fall into my voice now Rase and sink between my breasts.” 

As before, she reached out towards his face with her hand, and closed it, pulling his vision and focus, pulling his gaze and his mind to her chest, and as she did, he felt his head become both light and heavy all at once, empty as a bubble, but with a pulling sensation once more at the back of his skull. 

“Your lust for these burdens is ever so great, and your lust is a burden only I can ease. And I crave your lust, I crave your touch, to hold, to support, to carry me in my deeds. Your hands are drawn to my breasts now, pulled by invisible bonds, irresistibly summoned to the softness of my breasts Rase, look at your hands, watch them move on their own.” 

He did see them move on their own, and more so, he felt them start to rise and move forward in jerking motions. They felt disconnected, separated from him somehow but not alien and not distant. As they slid under her breasts, she placed her hands over them, pushing upward, having him lift them. 

“Feel the weight of lust, feel my burdens, heavy as those between your legs, heavy as those cravings in your mind, but your truest desire is to ease me burdens, to serve me with all of your self, to be mine in every way, to give all of yourself to ease my every task and do for me all that you would. Do you not feel it? Is it not true?” 

The sensation of floating, the foggy silence of her world, and the smothering heaviness of her breasts made all else seem distant, unimportant, or wholly forgotten. 

“Yes,” Rase wanted to serve her, to please her, to do all he could for her. “Truly?” She pulled her dress the rest of the way down and was wholly naked before him. “Yes,” he did not realize that lust had blinded him, that she had enthralled him and beguiled his mind with her massive chest and her sweet voice, to say nothing of the lingering feelings of being wholly enchanted and ensorcelled by her, but it didn’t matter to him. 

His cock was throbbing, his balls ached beyond words, and he was so captivated and entranced by her that he simply couldn’t take her. All he could do as a small part of him wished he could simply mount her, was fondle and agree, stare, listen, and submit to the call and song of her voice. 

“Would you give me your body, to be one with me?” His belt fell to the floor as she pulled on it, “do not answer, simply be with me and feel it now.” 

Her hands brushed his face, before working to remove his livery, and then his under tunic, interrupting his ceaseless caress of those breasts that had so wholly captured him. 

“Would you give yourself to me and no other, in body, and in spirit?” He would have answered her again, but she stopped him as she undid his trousers. “Do not speak, simply feel the truth of your desires, feel your burdens, and would you not entrust them all to me, in service of the weight I bear. Knowing that you my sweet Rase, my noble and generous Rase, are the only one...” 

Her hand was on his cock as she eased him to the floor before sliding down on top of him, “you are the only one who can ease my burdens.” 

“Yes,“ he moaned, feeling the way his cock was swallowed by her. “Speak that word again my Rase, my good heart, my strong hand.” 

“Yes,” he gasped, as she began to bounce on top of him, fucking him, as though his cock was a sword she was sharpening. 

“Look at my breasts, place your hands on them, see them, feel them, only them, and breathe for me. Slowly now, breathe for me, and feel your burden building, mounting, knowing that only I can relieve it, only I can take it from you, and only when I say. Watch my breasts and surrender your burden to mine again, as before, lost in me, serving me.” 

He did, and as he stared, his eyes began to drift shut, lost in a dream of flesh and desire, of heat and passion, lost in the sound of her voice. 

Fingers snapped in his ear, and like an animal, he felt the urge to roll her onto her back and fuck her harder, faster, with a desperation that came only from obliging her wants, and her desires. 

“Would you give me all I wish my Rase?” The mass of her tits jiggled and bounced about under her own hands as she squeezed them, his palms planted flat, his hips bucking as furious as a beast. All he felt was a need to release, to let go, to spill all of himself into her, but no matter how fast he thrust, that final distance was too far. 

“Would you give your soul to me my Rase, in love, willingly, knowing that of which you give?” 

“Yes,” he grunted, yes yes yes yes yes yes, every thrust was yes. “Then I take what is offered, when you give your body, and I take what is offered when you give your soul, be released, be mine.” 

He came. It was not a climax of pure sexual desire, it was a release of all he was. His body quivered with pleasure as his cock spilled his seed, and his soul into her waiting body. 

He shivered in long orgasmic shudders of release as all he was left his physical form, and his mind found a softness of quiet, a warmth beyond words, beyond the tangible, because as his body slumped down, warm and still breathing, his soul was within her. 

Isodora rolled the empty shell off of her, then covered the crystal ball in a black velvet bag. Halrick would see their love making in his dreams, and would hear the incantations she had whispered when Rase was lost in his enthralled state, deaf to all but what she wanted him to hear. 

He would dream of this image, this young upstart embraced with her, her who should be his, as the whisper of her magic would tell him. All night long it would haunt him, tease him, demean him, torturing his ego, playing at his weakness, and with the wizard gone, there was no way of detecting or defeating the assault. 

That was what the smaller crystal Rase had planted was, a conduit to deliver what she had just done, and now it was time for the final steps. 

“You’ll lead a happier existence now than you would before, I promise you that,” she whispered into the empty shell of Rase’s body. He was not dead, he was not the undead either, but without a soul a body would simply fade away into death, unusually during that first night’s sleep. 

It would die faster, of a heart attack, or of brain trauma if the soul was forcibly taken, and that was why she’d had to enthrall, trick, and seduce him into giving it to her. Even a mind bewitched by true magic could not part with its soul willingly if commanded, but enthralled, the mind was still able to resist, to argue, to say no, but Rase had not been allowed that possibility. 

Not truly. Not as she had arranged things. Isodora pulled on her dress, removed several jars of oils, and herbs, and started her incantations. “Your body will be as my will, hard and unbreaking until my task is done...” 

His Lordship would not simply invite his death into his home, his wrath would demand it. 

“You!” His Lordship’s voice was deep and savage, like a bear that had been freshly speared but a long way from dead. “You dare covet what is mine!” 

Halrick was a tall man, a hard man, made more so by the seat of power, not softened by it the way so many other conquerors were. His eyes were bloodshot, sleepless, and mad with fury. “You insult me, you humiliate me, you, you dog, you cur, you fuck sop of a boy, you dare to take what is my right!” 

Four armed men stood around Rase as His Lordship stomped down the dais. Their swords were drawn, their blades sharp in the flames, their faces cold and hard as their chainmail. 

He had been dragged out of his home by them and thrown at the feet of the dais, barely dressed and silent. 

“You would fuck my rightful wife! You would show me what is mine, and spoil it before my eyes. You would spill your seed in what exists to serve me, to please me!” 

Rase stood stock still as the fuming tyrant grew closers, and with every bellowing word of insanity, the four guards become more anxious. His Lordship had no wife, and no gossip had reached their ears about this lad making time with any of Halrick’s favored women. 

Yet, each of them to a man could see, could almost feel what their ruler was saying and describing, as though his madness were capturing some shared dream they had all witnessed in the edges of their minds. 

They were all in agreement with Halrick, though his words were forged in the fires of madness. “I saw you. In the night I saw you. This last night, I saw you! Rutting like a dog, desecrating her beauty, spoiling her with your touch. You cad, you lesser thing, you...” 

Rase’s hand closed around His Lordship’s neck and began to squeeze. In less than a breath the four guards had set upon him, hacking and stabbing at Rase’s body, cutting flesh from bone, piercing him until the world had become wet crimson. 

Each strike was caught in the inferno of their lord’s madness, and each fell harder than the last as they all began to scream like animals. 

But the hand remained fast on Halrick’s neck. Until, with a sudden spasm, that strangling grip was pulled back, and the butchered body of young Rase fell into a pile of gore. 

But, in that hand was His Lordship’s throat, and it had been torn out as though by the fangs of a wolf. The flesh from collar to jaw was gone, and so too was the tongue. 

Alone in the candle touched darkness, naked in a brass tub of steaming hot water, Isodora slid a long, slender crystal phallus between her legs and closed her eyes. 

“Rase, my sweet, my good heart, ease my burdens,” her words were soft, like the hiss of steam, and she felt something shift inside of herself, as though her soul was letting go of a breath it had kept too long. 

She felt the crystal tingle and saw it glow at its base. It was smoother than glass, flawless in every way, and a deeper warmth started to spread inside of her. It felt like a touch, like his touch over her skin, his hands on her breasts, his lips on her nipples, and she wept with a delight beyond words. 

All was done, and he would be with her forever. 

Rase woke to her call and felt as though he’d been caught up in the wind, or on the water, and as the depths of sleep fell from him the feeling of being carried away was lost as well. Instead, he felt only warmth and softness, like sunlight had made itself whole and had wrapped around him. 

He reached out, and though there was not body to obey him, no fingers to move, no mouth to speak, no legs to stand on, he felt himself touching that sunlight and warmth and softness, and it went on for a time, but to Rase there was no measure of moments, no seconds or minutes, and then sleep came to him again. 

Isodora would call to him again soon, and he would ease her burdens as she commanded. That was all he was now, a soul caught in a crystal, existing at the pleasure of his captor.