Slave Woman's Grave Keeper Pt. 02

"You pierced her?" Evanescent asked.

"No. They are a manifestation of the disease," Morgana explained. "They have appeared spontaneously from time to time. That is how the disease proceeds when it is properly managed."

"What if the disease is not managed?" Evanescent asked.

Morgana cackled for a moment. "When we have time, I will show you my secret wing in the lower dungeon where I have quarantined some of the tainted. But for now... We must infect this one, and I must teach you how to manage the disease."

Without further hesitation, Morgana picked up a hose which was connected to the glass cannister of green ooze. The hose terminated in a strange nozzle with a trigger apparently for dispensing the contents. Morgana uncapped a long needle at the end of the nozzle.

The slave girl had begun to moan frantically behind her gag and attempted to rock back and forth. Tears began to slide down her face. Evanescent could not help but feel an annoying sting of empathy as her eyes passed over the bound woman. She was finely shaped with a pleasantly formed stomach. A tattoo marking her as a pleasure slave had been drawn upon her hairless mons. Her leg muscles flexed and fought the bonds which held them open exposing her womaness. This empathy! A weakness with which Evanescent had always fought!

Morgana pressed a button on the nozzle causing a series of strange runes to glow upon its barrel. She copied the runes stroke for stroke onto a piece of parchment. "If you will, please, verify that I have drawn these symbols correctly."

Evanescent tore her eyes from the struggling slave, looked at each of the lines that made up the runes, and nodded.

Morgana then quickly jabbed the needle into the slave girl's shoulder and pulled the trigger. It was over in less than a second. The girl had been infected.

"Unlike Karma, this slave will be much more closely monitored," Morgana stated as she carefully replaced the cover over the needle.

"How will you keep her from talking about what she has seen and heard?" Evanescent asked, feeling somewhat relieved that at least, the slave girl would live to see another sunrise.

"I've constructed a spell," Morgana said.

Whatever the disease was it seemed to have no immediate effects on the girl who continued to struggle in wide-eyed, mute horror as Morgana began a series of chants and incantations. Evanescent recognized only a few of the words and movements that Morgana made, and they were from a particularly dark school of magic.

Finally, a blackness shot from Morgana's hands - it was as though emptiness tore the fabric of reality - striking the slave girl in the chest with a black absorbing flash. Evanescent shielded her eyes for a second.

When she looked again, the slave girl was motionless, her eyes rolled back in her head. And Morgana had collapsed to the floor. Evanescent quickly knelt down and grabbed Morgana by the elbow who wearily struggled to stand again.

"I am not so young any more," Morgana whispered with a tortured cackle as she finally regained her feet once more.

"What have you done to her?" Evanescent asked, motioning toward the bound, unconscious slave girl.

"That's yet to be determined," Morgana cackled as she brushed dirt dust from her robes. "I didn't have time to customize a spell for her, so I chose something that would cut wide and deep. At the least, I have obliterated the art of communication from her brain." Morgana placed a shaking hand on the slave girl's chest. "She seems to be OK although... My only customization is that the only sound that will register in her brain as something with meaning is the word, 'Pet'."

Morgana took a moment to collect herself, and shortly, Evanescent wheeled the unconscious slavegirl from the vault and passed her off to guards who were instructed to lock her in a kennel and pack her with the rest of the Princess' dowry.

"What of Karma, then?" Evanescent asked Morgana as she helped her limp towards the Witches Quarters. There were rumors from dungeon guards about the Queen's Witch's secret quarantine dungeon. One which no one but Morgana has ever entered and then returned. Rumors of strange sounds - of the rattle of metal links - of voices shouting out, not necessarily in pain, but, it was suggested by witnesses, voices raised in ecstasy, perhaps with a hint of desperation. "If Karma is found, will you still be able to manage her infection?"

Morgana sighed. "The full moon is ten nights away. She must be found by then, in order to maintain control of the disease and only then if her current piercings are still intact."