Eucatastrophist
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The story continues! This is the next installment of the The Shattered Ruby storyline, published with the permission of my client.
Tickling | Bondage | F/F | Mindbreak | Critical Role
In which Marion returns to her succubus mistress, and her professed devotion is put to the test...
Scene 6: A Test of Loyalty
Marion Lavorre lay naked on the bed, her crimson skin glistening with sweat and other fluids, her usually immaculate dark hair tangled and wild around her horns. But it was her eyes that drew Velouria's attention - those beautiful amber orbs that had once held such fire, such defiance.
Now they were glazed and vacant. A dreamy smile played across Marion's full lips as she lay splayed out on the bed, making no effort to cover herself.
"Mistress Velouria," Marion said weakly, her voice carrying that same melodic quality but stripped of its usual intelligence. "I've returned to you. Your servant has returned."
Velouria's purple eyes narrowed. She'd heard such promises before.
"Have you now?" The succubus circled her prey slowly, the train of her backless purple gown brushing against the stone floor. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the candlelight, her blue hair cascading down her bare back. "Tell me, pet, what happened beyond that portal?"
Marion's smile widened, her eyes unfocused.
"The demon tickled me, Mistress. For days and days. Tickled me everywhere..." She shuddered, and Velouria noted with interest that the shudder seemed to be one of arousal rather than horror. "I screamed and laughed until my voice broke. Until my thoughts broke. And then it rebuilt me. Rebuilt me for you."
"Mmm." Velouria noted as she approached the bed, coming to stand directly before Marion. She reached out with one elegant finger, tracing it along the tiefling's collarbone, watching for any flicker of resistance in those amber eyes.
Nothing. Just that empty, eager devotion. But the Ruby of the Sea had fooled people before, and had made them see exactly what they wanted to see while her brilliant mind worked behind the mask.
"I'm not convinced," Velouria said softly, her finger trailing lower, down between Marion's breasts. "You've always been so... stubborn. So strong-willed. How do I know this isn't simply another performance, my little songbird? Another role you're playing until you find your moment to escape?"
Marion's lower lip trembled with what appeared to be genuine distress at having displeased her mistress.
"Please," she whispered. "Please let me prove myself! I want to prove myself. I want to be good for you."
Velouria smiled.
"Oh, you will, pet. You will."
She snapped her fingers, and a long feather materialized in the air between them, floating lazily onto the bed.
"Take it."
Marion's hand shot out immediately, grasping the feather with an eagerness that bordered on desperate. She held it like a precious gift, her eyes fixed on Velouria's face, waiting for instruction.
The feather had been magically enchanted to be extra potent. No one in their right mind would want to touch it to their skin. Someone who was out of their mind, however...
"Now," Velouria purred, settling herself onto the plush chaise nearby, "tickle yourself."
There was no hesitation. No flicker of reluctance or embarrassment.
Marion raised the feather to her own neck and began to stroke it along the sensitive skin beneath her jaw.
The effect was immediate and devastating. Marion gasped with delight, her shoulders jerking up instinctively as the soft barbs traced across her throat. A a torrent of giggles escaped her lips, high and bright and girlish.
"That's it," Velouria cooed, leaning forward in her chair. "Keep going. Show me how well you've learned to surrender."
Marion's hand moved lower, the feather dancing across her collarbones, dipping into the hollow of her throat. Her giggles intensified, becoming breathless little bursts of laughter that seemed to bubble up from deep within her center. Her free hand clutched at nothing, fingers spasming as if fighting an urge to push the feather away, but she didn't stop. She kept tickling herself with unwavering devotion.
"Your armpits now," Velouria commanded.
Marion raised her left arm above her head, exposing the smooth, sensitive hollow. The feather traced along the edge of her armpit and she squealed, her whole body twitching as she dragged the soft tip through that vulnerable place.
"Hehehehe, oh gods, hahahaha!" Marion's laughter rang through the chamber, her knees buckling slightly as she continued her self-inflicted torment. Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes, but that dreamy smile never left her face. Even through the laughter, even through the obvious desperation to escape the sensation, she looked... happy. Blissful.
"Don't stop," Velouria said, her voice silky with satisfaction. "Keep going until I tell you otherwise."
And Marion did. For five minutes. Ten. She tickled her armpits until she could barely stand, then switched to the other side. Tears streamed down her ecstatic face as she ran the feather down her ribs, over her belly, giggling and squirming and never once asking for mercy.
By the time Velouria held up a hand, Marion was trembling, her crimson skin flushed with arousal, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath through the residual giggles.
"Give me the feather."
Marion handed it over eagerly.
"Good girl." Velouria rose from her chair, the endearment rolling off her tongue like honey. She circled behind Marion, noting how the tiefling didn't turn to track her movements, simply stood there waiting, trusting. "Now hold still. Hands behind your head."
Marion's arms rose immediately, her fingers interlacing behind her horns, pulling her shoulders back and leaving her body completely exposed, completely vulnerable.
Velouria let the moment stretch, let the anticipation build until Marion was practically vibrating with it. Then, she struck.
The feather glided up Marion's spine in one long, slow stroke, and her back muscles scrunched up in response.
"AHAHAHA! oh~ hehehehehe!" Marion's back arched, her muscles tensing and releasing in rolls as that impossible softness traced along her vertebrae. "Mistress~ hahahaha!"
She shifted her attention to Marion's sides, the feather flicking and swirling against those sensitive ribs.
Marion's laughter became something almost musical, rising and falling in helpless crescendos as Velouria painted invisible patterns across her body. Her hips bucked involuntarily when the feather traced along her waist, her whole frame jerking when it dipped into her belly button.
"You know what the demon did to you, don't you?" Velouria murmured, drawing close to Marion's ear. "It broke you open. Found all those secret places where you'd hidden your resistance, your pride, your sense of self. And it tickled them away. Tickled them until you couldn't remember why you'd ever wanted to fight."
"Y-yes mistress," Marion giggled. "Surrendering feels- hahaha! It feels-"
"Good," Velouria finished for her, switching the feather to her other hand so she could trail her fingers up the cleft of Marion's ass, feeling her cheeks quiver beneath her touch. "Surrendering feels good. Being tickled feels good. Serving me feels good."
Velouria stepped back, and Marion actually whimpered at the loss of contact, swaying in place like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"Turn around. Face me."
Marion spun so quickly she nearly lost her balance, her arms still raised behind her head, her body still completely on display. Her amber eyes were wet with tears, her breath coming in ragged gasps, but that vacant, adoring smile hadn't wavered for even a moment.
Velouria studied her carefully. The old Marion would have been watching for opportunities, planning her escape. But this Marion...
This Marion looked like she'd found exactly where she belonged. Still, there was one more test.
"You may lower your arms," Velouria said, settling back into her chair. "Come. Kneel before me."
Marion sank to her knees with fluid grace, shuffling forward until she was positioned between Velouria's spread legs, looking up at the succubus with worshipful attention.
"Tell me about your life before, pet. Tell me about what you've left behind."
A flicker of something passed through Marion's eyes, a distant echo of memory. "I was... the Ruby of the Sea," she said slowly, as if reciting facts about a stranger. "I sang. I entertained. I was famous."
"And?"
"And..." Marion's brow furrowed slightly, like someone trying to recall a dream that was already fading. "And I had... a daughter."
Velouria leaned forward, her purple eyes burning with intensity. This was it. This was the moment of truth. Marion Lavorre had many weaknesses, but none had proven more resilient than her love for her child. Even under the most exquisite torments, even when her mind had been twisted and her will eroded, that one bright thread of maternal devotion had remained unbroken.
"Your daughter," Velouria repeated softly. "Jester, yes? The little blue tiefling who worships the Traveler?"
Marion's expression shifted, growing slowly into something that even made Velouria gasp. It was maniacal. There was no other word for it. Marion's golden eyes blazed with a feverish light, her smile stretching into something sharp and hungry and utterly, beautifully broken.
"Jester," Marion breathed, and her voice had dropped into something husky and dark. "My sweet little sapphire. My precious, ticklish little girl."
"What about her?" Velouria pressed, her own smile beginning to grow.
Marion's hands came up, her fingers flexing and wiggling in the air as if she was already imagining them dancing across vulnerable, ticklish skin.
"I want to tickle her, Mistress. I want to hear her laugh and beg and squeal. I want to hold her down and tickle her little toes until she can't remember her own name. I want to bring her to you, wrap her up in ribbons, and watch while you break her the way you broke me."
She leaned forward, her eyes burning with zealous fervor.
"I want to be there when her resistance crumbles. I want to be the one stroking feathers over her pussy while she screams and giggles and finally understands that fighting is useless. I want to see that moment when she gives in, when she becomes yours just like I'm yours."
Marion pressed her forehead to Velouria's knee, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Please, Mistress. Let me give you my daughter. Let me help you add her to your collection. I want to show her how good it feels to surrender."
Velouria sat back with a look of genuine satisfaction. The demon had done its work well.
The old Marion would have died before speaking those words. She would have endured an eternity of ticklish torment rather than offer up her beloved child. That fierce maternal love had been the one wall Velouria could never breach, the one fortress she could never conquer.
"You've done well, pet," Velouria said, reaching down to stroke Marion's tangled hair. "Very, very well."
Marion pressed into the touch like a cat, a soft purr of contentment rumbling in her throat.
"But we're not quite finished yet."
Velouria rose from her chair, stepping around Marion kneeling on the floor. She opened an armoire nearby, which was filled wit shelves lined with tomes, vials, and various expensive arcane components.
"Do you know what these are?" Velouria asked, carrying her selections to a ritual circle that had been permanently etched into the floor near the room's far corner.
"Spell components?" Marion guessed, watching with fascinated attention.
"Not just any spell components." Velouria arranged them with meticulous care, each item placed in a very precise position in the pattern. "These are the ingredients for a Wish. The most powerful spell in existence. The reality-reshaping request that bends the universe itself to the caster's will."
She turned back to face Marion, her purple eyes glowing.
"I've been gathering these components for decades. Waiting for the right moment. The right subject."
"Me?" Marion gasped, wonder and adoration in her eyes.
"You." Velouria smiled. She crossed back to Marion, cupping the tiefling's face in her hands, tilting it up so their eyes met.
"The conditioning you've received from me, and from Xith-thalox, is powerful. It's reshaped your desires, and your loyalties, and your very sense of self. But it's not permanent. Given enough time, enough distance from my influence, you might begin to recover, and to fight back."
Marion's expression twisted with horror at the thought, and her lower lip began to tremble.
"No! No, Mistress, I don't want to! I don't want to go back!"
She released Marion's face and stepped back toward the ritual circle.
"When I'm done, there won't be any Marion Lavorre left to save. Just my beautiful, devoted, utterly corrupted Ruby. My sex assassin. My hunter. My precious, tickle-mad pet who lives only to serve me and add to my collection."
Marion crawled forward on her hands and knees, stopping at the edge of the ritual circle, her eyes shining with a desperate hope.
"Yes. Yes, please, Mistress. Make me yours forever. I don't want to be saved. I don't want to be fixed. I want to be yours."
Velouria smiled down at her, then turned her attention to the ritual.
The incantation was complex, nine hundred words in a language that predated the common tongue. The components began to glow as Velouria spoke, their inner light building and merging until the entire circle blazed with arcane energy.
Marion watched, transfixed, as the air itself seemed to thicken around her. She could feel the magic gathering, could sense the terrible purpose behind it. And she wanted it.
Velouria reached the final verse of the incantation. Her voice rose, filling the chamber with power that made the stones themselves vibrate.
"I wish for Marion Lavorre's mind to be permanently reformed, her personality and memories rewritten to serve me absolutely as my devoted slave, sex assassin, and hunter - obedient, eager, and loyal unto death and beyond!"
The world went white.
Marion screamed as she felt herself come apart at the seams. Every memory, every thought, every shred of her identity dissolved into raw potential. For one endless moment, she was nothing. Then... she was rebuilt.
She remembered her first meeting with Mistress Velouria, as an eager recruit who had sought out the succubus on her own, desperate to serve. She remembered years of training, of learning to hunt and seduce and capture. She remembered the joy of bringing new pets to her Mistress's collection, the satisfaction of watching their resistance crumble under tickling fingers and hypnotic eyes.
She remembered loving it. Craving it. Living for nothing else.
The old Marion Lavorre had never existed. The Ruby of the Sea had been nothing but a cover story, a false identity crafted to help her infiltrate high society and identify new targets. Her whole life before Velouria was a fiction, a role she'd played so well she'd almost forgotten it wasn't real.
But now she remembered the truth. And the light faded.
"How do you feel?" Mistress Velouria asked.
She looked up into those beautiful purple eyes and felt her heart swell with devotion so pure it almost hurt.
"Complete," she whispered. "I feel complete, Mistress."
Velouria smiled, extending one elegant hand to help her pet rise. "Tell me about your daughter."
Not a flicker of hesitation. Not a moment's doubt.
"She'll make a wonderful addition to your collection, Mistress," Marion said eagerly, her amber eyes bright with anticipation. "She's ticklish, this I know. I've known all her worst spots since she was a baby. Her feet, especially..."
She trailed off, a fond smile crossing her face at the manufactured memories. Memories of tickling little Jester not out of playful affection, but to test her sensitivity. To map her vulnerabilities for future use.
"Soon, my eager hunter," Velouria laughed. "But first... I think you've earned a reward."
She picked the magical feather up off the bed where it had fallen. The creature that wore Marion Lavorre's face smiled with anticipation and laid back on the cold stone floor, spreading her arms and legs wide.
The feather descended, and laughter - empty, blissful, utterly broken laughter - filled the chamber once more.
Tickling | Bondage | F/F | Mindbreak | Critical Role
In which Marion returns to her succubus mistress, and her professed devotion is put to the test...
Scene 6: A Test of Loyalty
Marion Lavorre lay naked on the bed, her crimson skin glistening with sweat and other fluids, her usually immaculate dark hair tangled and wild around her horns. But it was her eyes that drew Velouria's attention - those beautiful amber orbs that had once held such fire, such defiance.
Now they were glazed and vacant. A dreamy smile played across Marion's full lips as she lay splayed out on the bed, making no effort to cover herself.
"Mistress Velouria," Marion said weakly, her voice carrying that same melodic quality but stripped of its usual intelligence. "I've returned to you. Your servant has returned."
Velouria's purple eyes narrowed. She'd heard such promises before.
"Have you now?" The succubus circled her prey slowly, the train of her backless purple gown brushing against the stone floor. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the candlelight, her blue hair cascading down her bare back. "Tell me, pet, what happened beyond that portal?"
Marion's smile widened, her eyes unfocused.
"The demon tickled me, Mistress. For days and days. Tickled me everywhere..." She shuddered, and Velouria noted with interest that the shudder seemed to be one of arousal rather than horror. "I screamed and laughed until my voice broke. Until my thoughts broke. And then it rebuilt me. Rebuilt me for you."
"Mmm." Velouria noted as she approached the bed, coming to stand directly before Marion. She reached out with one elegant finger, tracing it along the tiefling's collarbone, watching for any flicker of resistance in those amber eyes.
Nothing. Just that empty, eager devotion. But the Ruby of the Sea had fooled people before, and had made them see exactly what they wanted to see while her brilliant mind worked behind the mask.
"I'm not convinced," Velouria said softly, her finger trailing lower, down between Marion's breasts. "You've always been so... stubborn. So strong-willed. How do I know this isn't simply another performance, my little songbird? Another role you're playing until you find your moment to escape?"
Marion's lower lip trembled with what appeared to be genuine distress at having displeased her mistress.
"Please," she whispered. "Please let me prove myself! I want to prove myself. I want to be good for you."
Velouria smiled.
"Oh, you will, pet. You will."
She snapped her fingers, and a long feather materialized in the air between them, floating lazily onto the bed.
"Take it."
Marion's hand shot out immediately, grasping the feather with an eagerness that bordered on desperate. She held it like a precious gift, her eyes fixed on Velouria's face, waiting for instruction.
The feather had been magically enchanted to be extra potent. No one in their right mind would want to touch it to their skin. Someone who was out of their mind, however...
"Now," Velouria purred, settling herself onto the plush chaise nearby, "tickle yourself."
There was no hesitation. No flicker of reluctance or embarrassment.
Marion raised the feather to her own neck and began to stroke it along the sensitive skin beneath her jaw.
The effect was immediate and devastating. Marion gasped with delight, her shoulders jerking up instinctively as the soft barbs traced across her throat. A a torrent of giggles escaped her lips, high and bright and girlish.
"That's it," Velouria cooed, leaning forward in her chair. "Keep going. Show me how well you've learned to surrender."
Marion's hand moved lower, the feather dancing across her collarbones, dipping into the hollow of her throat. Her giggles intensified, becoming breathless little bursts of laughter that seemed to bubble up from deep within her center. Her free hand clutched at nothing, fingers spasming as if fighting an urge to push the feather away, but she didn't stop. She kept tickling herself with unwavering devotion.
"Your armpits now," Velouria commanded.
Marion raised her left arm above her head, exposing the smooth, sensitive hollow. The feather traced along the edge of her armpit and she squealed, her whole body twitching as she dragged the soft tip through that vulnerable place.
"Hehehehe, oh gods, hahahaha!" Marion's laughter rang through the chamber, her knees buckling slightly as she continued her self-inflicted torment. Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes, but that dreamy smile never left her face. Even through the laughter, even through the obvious desperation to escape the sensation, she looked... happy. Blissful.
"Don't stop," Velouria said, her voice silky with satisfaction. "Keep going until I tell you otherwise."
And Marion did. For five minutes. Ten. She tickled her armpits until she could barely stand, then switched to the other side. Tears streamed down her ecstatic face as she ran the feather down her ribs, over her belly, giggling and squirming and never once asking for mercy.
By the time Velouria held up a hand, Marion was trembling, her crimson skin flushed with arousal, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath through the residual giggles.
"Give me the feather."
Marion handed it over eagerly.
"Good girl." Velouria rose from her chair, the endearment rolling off her tongue like honey. She circled behind Marion, noting how the tiefling didn't turn to track her movements, simply stood there waiting, trusting. "Now hold still. Hands behind your head."
Marion's arms rose immediately, her fingers interlacing behind her horns, pulling her shoulders back and leaving her body completely exposed, completely vulnerable.
Velouria let the moment stretch, let the anticipation build until Marion was practically vibrating with it. Then, she struck.
The feather glided up Marion's spine in one long, slow stroke, and her back muscles scrunched up in response.
"AHAHAHA! oh~ hehehehehe!" Marion's back arched, her muscles tensing and releasing in rolls as that impossible softness traced along her vertebrae. "Mistress~ hahahaha!"
She shifted her attention to Marion's sides, the feather flicking and swirling against those sensitive ribs.
Marion's laughter became something almost musical, rising and falling in helpless crescendos as Velouria painted invisible patterns across her body. Her hips bucked involuntarily when the feather traced along her waist, her whole frame jerking when it dipped into her belly button.
"You know what the demon did to you, don't you?" Velouria murmured, drawing close to Marion's ear. "It broke you open. Found all those secret places where you'd hidden your resistance, your pride, your sense of self. And it tickled them away. Tickled them until you couldn't remember why you'd ever wanted to fight."
"Y-yes mistress," Marion giggled. "Surrendering feels- hahaha! It feels-"
"Good," Velouria finished for her, switching the feather to her other hand so she could trail her fingers up the cleft of Marion's ass, feeling her cheeks quiver beneath her touch. "Surrendering feels good. Being tickled feels good. Serving me feels good."
Velouria stepped back, and Marion actually whimpered at the loss of contact, swaying in place like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"Turn around. Face me."
Marion spun so quickly she nearly lost her balance, her arms still raised behind her head, her body still completely on display. Her amber eyes were wet with tears, her breath coming in ragged gasps, but that vacant, adoring smile hadn't wavered for even a moment.
Velouria studied her carefully. The old Marion would have been watching for opportunities, planning her escape. But this Marion...
This Marion looked like she'd found exactly where she belonged. Still, there was one more test.
"You may lower your arms," Velouria said, settling back into her chair. "Come. Kneel before me."
Marion sank to her knees with fluid grace, shuffling forward until she was positioned between Velouria's spread legs, looking up at the succubus with worshipful attention.
"Tell me about your life before, pet. Tell me about what you've left behind."
A flicker of something passed through Marion's eyes, a distant echo of memory. "I was... the Ruby of the Sea," she said slowly, as if reciting facts about a stranger. "I sang. I entertained. I was famous."
"And?"
"And..." Marion's brow furrowed slightly, like someone trying to recall a dream that was already fading. "And I had... a daughter."
Velouria leaned forward, her purple eyes burning with intensity. This was it. This was the moment of truth. Marion Lavorre had many weaknesses, but none had proven more resilient than her love for her child. Even under the most exquisite torments, even when her mind had been twisted and her will eroded, that one bright thread of maternal devotion had remained unbroken.
"Your daughter," Velouria repeated softly. "Jester, yes? The little blue tiefling who worships the Traveler?"
Marion's expression shifted, growing slowly into something that even made Velouria gasp. It was maniacal. There was no other word for it. Marion's golden eyes blazed with a feverish light, her smile stretching into something sharp and hungry and utterly, beautifully broken.
"Jester," Marion breathed, and her voice had dropped into something husky and dark. "My sweet little sapphire. My precious, ticklish little girl."
"What about her?" Velouria pressed, her own smile beginning to grow.
Marion's hands came up, her fingers flexing and wiggling in the air as if she was already imagining them dancing across vulnerable, ticklish skin.
"I want to tickle her, Mistress. I want to hear her laugh and beg and squeal. I want to hold her down and tickle her little toes until she can't remember her own name. I want to bring her to you, wrap her up in ribbons, and watch while you break her the way you broke me."
She leaned forward, her eyes burning with zealous fervor.
"I want to be there when her resistance crumbles. I want to be the one stroking feathers over her pussy while she screams and giggles and finally understands that fighting is useless. I want to see that moment when she gives in, when she becomes yours just like I'm yours."
Marion pressed her forehead to Velouria's knee, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Please, Mistress. Let me give you my daughter. Let me help you add her to your collection. I want to show her how good it feels to surrender."
Velouria sat back with a look of genuine satisfaction. The demon had done its work well.
The old Marion would have died before speaking those words. She would have endured an eternity of ticklish torment rather than offer up her beloved child. That fierce maternal love had been the one wall Velouria could never breach, the one fortress she could never conquer.
"You've done well, pet," Velouria said, reaching down to stroke Marion's tangled hair. "Very, very well."
Marion pressed into the touch like a cat, a soft purr of contentment rumbling in her throat.
"But we're not quite finished yet."
Velouria rose from her chair, stepping around Marion kneeling on the floor. She opened an armoire nearby, which was filled wit shelves lined with tomes, vials, and various expensive arcane components.
"Do you know what these are?" Velouria asked, carrying her selections to a ritual circle that had been permanently etched into the floor near the room's far corner.
"Spell components?" Marion guessed, watching with fascinated attention.
"Not just any spell components." Velouria arranged them with meticulous care, each item placed in a very precise position in the pattern. "These are the ingredients for a Wish. The most powerful spell in existence. The reality-reshaping request that bends the universe itself to the caster's will."
She turned back to face Marion, her purple eyes glowing.
"I've been gathering these components for decades. Waiting for the right moment. The right subject."
"Me?" Marion gasped, wonder and adoration in her eyes.
"You." Velouria smiled. She crossed back to Marion, cupping the tiefling's face in her hands, tilting it up so their eyes met.
"The conditioning you've received from me, and from Xith-thalox, is powerful. It's reshaped your desires, and your loyalties, and your very sense of self. But it's not permanent. Given enough time, enough distance from my influence, you might begin to recover, and to fight back."
Marion's expression twisted with horror at the thought, and her lower lip began to tremble.
"No! No, Mistress, I don't want to! I don't want to go back!"
She released Marion's face and stepped back toward the ritual circle.
"When I'm done, there won't be any Marion Lavorre left to save. Just my beautiful, devoted, utterly corrupted Ruby. My sex assassin. My hunter. My precious, tickle-mad pet who lives only to serve me and add to my collection."
Marion crawled forward on her hands and knees, stopping at the edge of the ritual circle, her eyes shining with a desperate hope.
"Yes. Yes, please, Mistress. Make me yours forever. I don't want to be saved. I don't want to be fixed. I want to be yours."
Velouria smiled down at her, then turned her attention to the ritual.
The incantation was complex, nine hundred words in a language that predated the common tongue. The components began to glow as Velouria spoke, their inner light building and merging until the entire circle blazed with arcane energy.
Marion watched, transfixed, as the air itself seemed to thicken around her. She could feel the magic gathering, could sense the terrible purpose behind it. And she wanted it.
Velouria reached the final verse of the incantation. Her voice rose, filling the chamber with power that made the stones themselves vibrate.
"I wish for Marion Lavorre's mind to be permanently reformed, her personality and memories rewritten to serve me absolutely as my devoted slave, sex assassin, and hunter - obedient, eager, and loyal unto death and beyond!"
The world went white.
Marion screamed as she felt herself come apart at the seams. Every memory, every thought, every shred of her identity dissolved into raw potential. For one endless moment, she was nothing. Then... she was rebuilt.
She remembered her first meeting with Mistress Velouria, as an eager recruit who had sought out the succubus on her own, desperate to serve. She remembered years of training, of learning to hunt and seduce and capture. She remembered the joy of bringing new pets to her Mistress's collection, the satisfaction of watching their resistance crumble under tickling fingers and hypnotic eyes.
She remembered loving it. Craving it. Living for nothing else.
The old Marion Lavorre had never existed. The Ruby of the Sea had been nothing but a cover story, a false identity crafted to help her infiltrate high society and identify new targets. Her whole life before Velouria was a fiction, a role she'd played so well she'd almost forgotten it wasn't real.
But now she remembered the truth. And the light faded.
"How do you feel?" Mistress Velouria asked.
She looked up into those beautiful purple eyes and felt her heart swell with devotion so pure it almost hurt.
"Complete," she whispered. "I feel complete, Mistress."
Velouria smiled, extending one elegant hand to help her pet rise. "Tell me about your daughter."
Not a flicker of hesitation. Not a moment's doubt.
"She'll make a wonderful addition to your collection, Mistress," Marion said eagerly, her amber eyes bright with anticipation. "She's ticklish, this I know. I've known all her worst spots since she was a baby. Her feet, especially..."
She trailed off, a fond smile crossing her face at the manufactured memories. Memories of tickling little Jester not out of playful affection, but to test her sensitivity. To map her vulnerabilities for future use.
"Soon, my eager hunter," Velouria laughed. "But first... I think you've earned a reward."
She picked the magical feather up off the bed where it had fallen. The creature that wore Marion Lavorre's face smiled with anticipation and laid back on the cold stone floor, spreading her arms and legs wide.
The feather descended, and laughter - empty, blissful, utterly broken laughter - filled the chamber once more.
