[Pavi Lake] Eternity's Enemy (Naledi)

[Skylar]

((Ah. I don't. I make two-dimensional sociopaths with the ILLUSION of depth. They don't actually have any. ))

Skylar had turned away from her, but with the arrogance in her words he spun around again and slapped her across the face. There was none of the rage that had just possessed his body, it was simply cold and painful. For Skylar's part, there was nothing indicating any emotion in the attack beyond the speed and ferocity with which he carried it out.

This was typical. This was exactly the thing he hated about Kelvics. "Reborn again and again to serve anyone who needs you, hmm? A love-starved whore begging for scraps of affection at any open door she sees, is that right? You know nothing... nothing! Slavery isn't some gift to be given and removed in a single lifetime. Once you bond yourself to someone, really bond, not that half-hearted Kelvic ritual, you find yourself desiring to give yourself to them beyond your own lifetime. You wish to serve them eternally, and your greatest fear is waking up and finding that they are gone. What do you know about loyalty, you're some stray cat. I don't even know your name and you profess loyalty to me?! Pathetic."

"I will test your false loyalty. Use that nose of yours, find me a body. Living or dead... we can fix the former soon enough. Succeed and I will allow you to live three more months." He held up his fingers for emphasis. "Fail and you die today. That is all."

[Naledi]

She saw the blow coming, but let it land. Besides, she probably couldn't have dodged it, anyway. A snarl-like grimace twisted her face, her eyes clenched shut. It didn't hurt particularly much, not any more so than the bruises forming around her neck. What hurt were the words falling on her like stones. For the first time since her encounter with him, anger bubbled up in her. She turned her head back to him and stood, the snarl still disfiguring her features, her sharp incisors bared.

"Somehow, now I understand what you said. Perhaps I will grow to hate you. You yourself probably know nothing of loyalty. If you use bodies like toys, transfigure your soul so that it is no longer completely tied to one, how loyal can you be? You deserted your own body. How could you stay loyal to a live person? Who are you,' her voice was getting louder, 'to lecture me on loyalties? You, who knows no bonds to anything?'

She was breathing hard, passion burning in her eyes. It had been a while since she'd been so angry. It wasn't an emotion she particularly enjoyed - it made you lose yourself too much. She preferred keeping her actions under control.

'As for you not knowing my name, did you ever care to ask? Well,' she scoffed, 'I doubt you care. Call me what you want. And about the body...' the girl said, her voice trailing off, her eyes still hard. She had no doubt he would kill her. She wasn't particularly afraid of that - it was more the idea of failing to carry out a direct order that perturbed her. 'You've as good as got one.'

[Skylar]

Skylar had already made his decision by the time she started speaking. He wouldn't kill her. That was no fun. Besides, the idea of wandering around in that body for an extended period of time made him queasy. No, no, he had a better idea in store for her. He would do what she wanted. He would own her.

Her criticisms completely unaffected him. He had simply suffered too many insults to ever feel the harsh sting of them again. Instead, he found her passion delicious. It was like a ripe morsel he could pluck and destroy. He wanted to see that fire die in her eyes and her body to become a limp puppet.

He had always desired to control situations, events, people, and he had nothing if not an endless wellspring of patience, but this was a sudden and more rabid need to break this thing's will and rebuild her to suit him completely. He rationalized to himself that it would be an experiment, but he knew the truth. Once he turned her into a tool he'd find an excuse to use it.

And once again his life of apathy and sedentarism would end, as it eventually must. He licked his lips. Why not?

Skylar wore a very nice coat, he removed it and placed it over the shoulders of the half-starved cat. He pushed her to the ground and lay next to her. His appearance was warped and strange. His skin was beginning to gray, his eyes were dead and his eyelids were baggy. His tongue was blackened and weird, and his skin had no warmth. He lay his head right next to hers, facing her.

Using his hypnotic powers, he injected a brief feeling of calm and sloth in the woman. It was a mild effect she could easily shrug off. If she wanted to. He whispered directly into her ear, his voice laced with hypnotic suggestion: "Ssshhhh. Trust me. Relax. I'm not going to hurt you. Trust me. Obey me. You do not want to defy me. You are my pet.". Individually they were weak suggestions, but considering he was preaching to the choir, they might have some effect.

His cold hand lay on her shoulder affectionately. His strength was in the simple fact that he knew she wanted to obey him.

[Naledi]

The anger in her fizzled and died as his hand touched her shoulder. There seemed to be music in her mind, a chorus of voices, all Skylar’s, all telling her senses to be calm and her body to relax. It wasn’t a particularly strong suggestion, but her mind could offer no resistance, and she was slowly being enveloped by a state of lethargy. Dimly, she felt a weak pulse of contempt at being called a pet.

Curling her legs up to her chest, she turned on her side to face him, slight confusion on her face. Stop it, she wanted to say. What are you doing to my head? Get out, you have no right to invade my mind.

‘Who are you?’ she asked softly, staring into his cold eyes. ‘How are you… this… I can’t…’ she whispered disjointedly, putting her hands to the sides of her head. ‘I don’t…’ she moved closer to him, and a part of her was repulsed when she felt no warmth. Her mind was drowning, like it was submerged in murky water. She hated being submerged in water, hated it over her head –

‘Stop it,’ she moaned quietly, clenching her eyes tightly shut. ‘Whatever you’re doing, stop it. I can’t… I…’ But her protests were receding. She wasn’t really fighting it, but she wasn’t submitting – she was in a strange limbo between giving in and shaking off, sinking and breaking the surface for air, torn between being completely his and rebelling and being her own. Just as she moved even closer to him, reaching up to touch his hand on her shoulder, she was afraid of what he was doing to her mind, the chorus of voices layered over and over echoing in her head.

‘Why are you doing this?’ the girl whispered, a dim fear in her eyes as she opened them to look, once again, into her master’s. Again, she asked disjointed questions, trust battling with reason in her mind. 'Who are you?'

[Skylar]

So she'd begun to notice his mental tampering hmm? Skylar hadn't predicted this, but it was almost inevitable. He had, after all, bombarded her mind with hypnotic suggestions over a very short period of time. Ordinarily, once you realize that you are being hypnotized, it becomes a lot easier to resist the mental commands.

But that's only if you want to resist those commands. And in the first place, Skylar had his own doubts this girl wanted even that. She was, after all, Kelvic. Skylar knew little of that young race, but he knew this much: They belonged in positions of servitude. They had no other purpose. Their free will, their ability to choose, all of that was superfluous. It should be stripped away, and Skylar was just the man to do it.

He was burning through Djed, but he didn't care. Her mind was in a state of confusion and ripe for the harvest. He moved in for the kill. "I am your master." He intoned, his voice smooth as honey. "I am called Skylar, and Ventiu, and Lee, and Janene. I am the Epicene Watcher, the Parasite among the Dead. I am Nuit. I am God." He used another hypnotic technique on her then: He flashed a split second hallucination of her being kissed, and of an endless warmth spreading across her skin. An endless pure warmth. In the next moment it was gone like it was never there. Like it had been a memory.

"You don't want me to stop, do you?" He asked, another suggestion. He licked his lips as he could feel himself burning through her mental defenses. One last push now. That's all it would take for now.

He implanted a thought in her head. Just a thought. From her point of view it would have been as if she herself had thought it, spontaneously. It was only one line:

I want to obey Master Skylar.

Skylar stood, offering his hand down to help her up. He was spent. Either it had worked, or it had not.

"Will you obey?" He asked, and there was no trace of hesitation in his own voice as he spoke.

[Naledi]

It was like a sudden tear in cloth. She was sure he could hear the sound. She could feel the memory of warmth tingling on her skin but knew the second she touched him she’d feel cold. She felt the overwhelming longing to just be near him, to serve him, to forever give any thought, any notion, any free will, only to him. At the same time, she hated herself, because this weakness and longing growing in her wasn’t hers, but it was, but not…
Then a rift opened somewhere in her mind, between the part of her that hated this and the part that wanted nothing more than to submit – and the latter was stronger. She felt the divide so acutely that it was as if there were two distinct personalities within her.

‘You don’t want me to stop, do you?’

And she shook her head. The hating part of her was being completely overwhelmed, and soon she didn’t even feel the divide any more – like it had never happened.

She’d once heard her father’s Akalak companion talk about his twin souls. They were opposites and the same, all at once. This felt almost like that – except both the personalities were horrified, and she felt herself crying as she reached for his hand.

One thought managed to penetrate the driving need to serve. Skylar. That was the first name he had used to introduce himself. The rest of the names were caught by the serving part of her like a net– Ventui, Lee, Janene, he is a Nuit, he is God – but the hating part of her kept that thought to itself, and the serving part knew only one name to call him by.

‘What do you require of me, Master?’

[Skylar]

Skylar would have almost felt pity for the poor, stupid girl. That is, if he felt pity. Which he did not. Also, it wasn't like this wasn't her fault. She had, almost quite literally, asked for it. Sure, she had no way of guessing at the full effects of his powers, but it was hardly his fault that he happened to be a hypnotist. He was just a man like any other, she could have seen this coming.

Besides, he'd given her fair warning. He'd given her exactly one chance to walk away. She hadn't taken that chance so now she had no other choice but to belong to him. He wouldn't even let her think anything else. Not any more.

He'd take that right away, just like every other one she possessed. He'd finally do something worthwhile to the wretched Kelvic race and create the perfect Kelvic: Unthinkingly obedient and mindlessly servile. The ultimate role model for the rest of her species, this new creature would be an absolute slave who thought only of serving him.

And she would be pleased to do so. No more of this crying nonsense. He would give her happiness as a slave that no lover would ever be able to give her. For the satisfaction of service was one that persisted even into silence and sleep and aloneness. She would be his, utterly.

He lifted her and brushed the hair out of her eyes and the tears from her face. "Stop crying." He said. A command without any hypnotic influence. The first of many. Soon he wouldn't need his hypnotism at all.

"My slave, this body begins to fail me. Let's go hunting."

[Book__wyrm]

Skylar: 5 hypnotism, 1 philosophy

Naledi: 1 investigation

Lore: Improvised Mind control, Kelvic bonding, Nuit body transfer

Interesting. I look forward to seeing more threads by the two of you.