Submissionette 01: Slaves & Novices

The Headmistress held out one arm, snapped her fingers, and returned to all fours, groaning and crawling forward.

The fucker was finding his rhythm and self-confidence.

Sex is the great equalizer.

Lord Caternine strode toward the crying Novice, grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her out of line.

On a boot heel he turned, and together they marched toward—

"Eyes... forward..." the Headmistress said.

The measured click of Lord Caternine's boots receded.

Mirabella obeyed the Headmistress, the fucker fucked and the other beggar shoved his thick, curved cock into the Headmistress' mouth, which overflowed with wetness that gathered on the underside of the beggar's cock and dripped onto the floor.

A heavy door swung open somewhere, and shut, and the click of Lord Caternine's boots returned.

Mirabella snuck a peek. He'd come back without the Novice. But when his eyes unexpectedly met hers, they appeared afraid, and she ripped hers away and glued them back to the submission unfolding in front of her. She watched and tried not to think about what would happen, or what was already happening, to the disobedient Novice. First the girl in the sky blue dress and now this, but "You don't ask about the ones who fail," Olive had told her. "They are gone."

Lord Caternine rocked back and forth on his heels. His hands were on his hips and the skin on his neck was tight.

The two beggars had lost themselves in the moment, their cocks pumping in and out of Headmistress Harrow's pussy and mouth, both of which were nothing but sloppy, wet holes, yet still the Headmistress looked composed. It was the beggars who were out of control.

The remaining nineteen Novices were in control of themselves, at least, even as they stood rigidly straight, barely blinking and only occasionally shifting their weight as inconspicuously as possible.

The sounds of flesh hitting flesh and sexual wetness and shared moans filled the Hall of Submission.

Headmistress Harrow screamed out an orgasm.

Lord Caternine's knuckles whitened.

Mirabella swallowed, feeling the details of her fingertip against the sensitivity of her thumb.

The beggars slid lazily off the Headmistress Harrow's fucked body, stood straighter than they'd ever stood, growing in nobility with each passing moment, and bowed.

For the first time, Mirabella noticed their lack of smell. They looked dirty, but they weren't dirty. The Hall of Submission didn't reek of unwashed rags, potatoes and garlic. Streaks of smeared makeup stained the mens' faces, which were now angular and sharp-eyed. Now, they were even handsome.

"Lords Attenbrow and Ingliss," Headmistress Harrow said, no longer breathless, quivering or gasping. She rose to her feet, too. Lord Caternine picked up her robe lying on the floor, held it open behind her, and she inserted her arms into its furry sleeves. "The lesson is over. I hope you have learned it."

A hush descended upon the Novices.

"What separates slavery from Submissionettedom is a single night spent with a single lord. You have made it this far. What is but one more performance?" Lord Ingliss said.

"Yet already you have been granted mercy. Never forget that you were prisoners of war. You have been spared. You have been gifted an opportunity," Lord Attenbrow said.

"Nevertheless, some of you will still fail," said Lord Caternine.

"But for those who succeed," said Headmistress Harrow, "tonight will be your rebirth—perhaps painful, perhaps tiring, assuredly transformative—and tomorrow, when you wake, you will wake as the newest creatures of the King's stable: the freshest Submisionettes." She stepped forward, so that her lords were flanking her. "I wish you success. I grant you blessings. The rooms—" She pointed with the gentlest swing of her forearm. "—are that way."

* * * * *

The Novices marched in single file down straight hallways that led from the Hall of Submission to straight hallways that led to straight hallways that led to...

They could have been walking in squares.

Perhaps they were.

They passed heavy closed doors and no windows.

Headmistress Harrow and the three Lords, Caternine, Ingliss and Attenbrow, had once walked with them, but no longer were and thus the Novices walked alone, forward because there were no directions other than forward and backward, and backward was failure. They walked for a long time. Each one, Mirabella imagined, was anticipating what she herself was thinking about: her lord, her lord's commands, how she would fare, how she would perform, and what that meant in light of Headmistress Harrow's lesson, whether she had been advocating fakery, stressing the importance of trust...

Olive had not prepared her. She felt unprepared. She saw the same in the shaking limbs of those in front of her and sensed it in those behind. Some of them would be afraid, others excited, and a few of the nineteen would find it distasteful or stressful or full of piety, because already pairs of eyes burned with the pale fire of fanaticism, for if it is both sweet and right to die for one's kingdom, how much sweeter and more right it must be to be fucked for it...

They took another corner.

Mirabella felt her own head fill with the desire to please and therefore to win as well as the deeper and baser desire to fail and therefore to win by not giving in, because victory was always in a fog, and if it was possible to live on one's knees rather than die on one's feet, which of these victories was hollow?

They took another corner.

Mirabella felt the weight and fullness of her breasts and became newly aware of the softness of her pussy. Where she was from—her childhood flashed, unreachably, behind her eyes—toughness was a virtue and even women were supposed to be hard, mentally and physically, with lean, taut bodies and a keen instinct for survival, but there was always that one part of their bodies that would never be hard, that would always be soft, and, here, they could never attain the perfection of men...

They marched down the straight hallway alone and the straight hallway looked like every other hallway. They could have been walking in squares—

Until the doors opened, nineteen of them in sequence, and the Novices disappeared one-by-one into their depths like nineteen drops of mud into nineteen dirty puddles, and Mirabella was a puddle, too.

* * * * *

He was tall, thin and long-limbed, with black hair that fell across his face, revealing only one of his eyes, which was as unnaturally golden as the gaudy paint covering the walls enclosing the small room, in the middle of which stood a bed, and in which stood nothing else, unless one counted the window, which was large and uncovered and looked out at a dark garden of fruit trees whose branches merely distorted the rectangle of moonlight into which Mirabella, retreating, now stepped.

The man remained in the shadows, beside the shut door.

Mirabella heard him breathe.

She made sure her own breathing wasn't louder.

The man ran the fingers of his right hand through the strands of his hair, briefly revealing his second golden eye, before the hair fell across, draping it, again.

Mirabella's chest rose.

The man shifted his position. He was leaning against the wall. One of his legs was angled against the floor, but the other was bent at the knee with the sole of its boot placed flush on the golden paint of the wall. He hugged his body with his arms, whose elbows jutted out at acute angles, and he was rubbing his chin. Even in the shadows, he looked young—young and spidery—and with his one eye, he looked Mirabella up and looked her down and looked through her dress and peered into her soul.

"Blackmoth," he said. "I am Lord Blackmoth."

"Novice Mirabella."

She tried to curtsy as best as Olive had managed to teach her.

So, this was to be her lord.

"Mirabella," Blackmoth repeated, "Lucinda Ovida Pallerma Solis Heralda of the Mica Clan of the Granite Confederacy, captured at the Second Battle of the Opal Plains, motherless daughter of a dead man, husband of no one, still living because she had her wrist caught by a Royal soldier just as she was about to slit her throat to fall, a corpse, beside her sisters."

He pushed off the wall and in one stride was before her, his left hand clutching her chin rather than his own. "Praised be the king, Roybert the Third."

"May he live eternally."

He tilted her head up. "No one lives forever."

His skin was cold, his face illegible. Mirabella shook at the memories of her capture that his words brought back.

"He's a corpse now, too," Blackmoth said, "the soldier who saved your life. Caught a prostitute's disease and rotted away. Perhaps that's a comfort."

It wasn't, Mirabella tried telling herself. But it was. When the battle had been lost, she had passed the knife to her sisters and watched each of them take her own life. When the last one had fallen, she'd retrieved the knife, now stained with blood, and prepared to do as they had done and slice with it across her neck, but she hesitated; because of that hesitation, the soldier had flipped open the canvas cover, grabbed her wrist, twisted it until the knife fell to the ground, and pulled her away...

"I've studied you," Blackmoth said.

He let go of her chin and she let it fall to her chest, just as she'd been instructed to do by Olive, to look down, to keep her eyes below those of her lord. Blackmoth's boots glistened in the moonlight.

But she also dropped her head because she was ashamed: of letting herself be captured—of still being alive. For weeks, she'd lived without such thoughts, but tonight, of all nights, the shame had returned. Her cheeks burned and she felt an embarrassment to her family, her culture and her people. Every day she experienced was a day she felt she shouldn't have known, yet with every hour her desire to live only grew stronger...

Blackmoth blinked.

"I chose you," he said, "because it's rare to have a savage among us."

Although the word riled her, Mirabella kept her face pointed down, even as her upper lip curled into a private snarl.

Blackmoth traced its shape with his finger.

"Savagery can be appealing."

He pushed his thumb and forefinger into her mouth, and pinched her tongue. She resisted the urge—her natural urge—to bite off his fingers. He let go and ran the tenderness of his fingertips along the sharpness of her teeth.

"Even disciplined," he said, "an animal's an animal, no matter how pretty its dress," and he removed his fingers from between her lips and reached with his wet hand inside his black jacket. When he pulled it out, it was a fist. He opened the fist to reveal three seeds resting in his palm. One of the seeds was the purple of crushed blueberries. The two others were the colour of nothing.

He lifted one of the transparent seeds to his mouth, laid it on his tongue, and swallowed.

"Now your tongue, my savage animal."

Mirabella opened her mouth. Blackmoth laid the second transparent seed on it, and she swallowed, reminding herself that even Headmistress Harrow was tasked with obeying her lord.

The seed had no taste and no immediate effect.

"Turn for me."

Mirabella did, and felt Blackmoth's body bend over hers and his hand, the one holding the remaining, purple, pill, begin to work its way up her thigh toward her pussy. She remained uncomfortably still. Preparation, reading and Olive's lessons were one thing. A man's actual touch, especially there, in the soft place, her weakness, was another. It had been over a year since she'd been penetrated.

Blackmoth's hand slid the seed inside her, before his fingers pushed it deeper. "For the sake of your new profession," he said. "Praised be the Novice, Mirabella Lucinda. May she submit eternally."

He grabbed her by the hips and turned her round again.

His golden eye was glowing.

The moonlight dimmed.

When his hands slid from her hips to the outsides of Mirabella's thighs, the material of her dress felt coarse. When he fisted it and pulled it up, exposing her skin to the night air, the air was like a liquid flowing around the contours of her body.

She gasped, not wanting to drown.

The liquid filled her lungs and Blackmoth's face neared hers and its breath singed the tiny hairs on her face.

His tongue smothered out the fire on her cheek.

His eye was so bright that she shut both of hers so hard that her eyelashes oscillated.

Her dress opened. It dropped to the floor. Nakedness felt like swelling.

Blackmoth's tongue licked Mirabella's cheek, across her chin, and down her exposed neck and soft chest to settle in the space between her breasts.

Her eyebrows stopped oscillating and bloomed open, but what she saw wasn't the world, at least not as she knew it, but the world of light, the world as viewed from a point deep within a flame...

Blackmoth pushed her backward until her calves were against the bed. He pushed her backward until she fell and her back was on the bed. He pushed until her legs were spread and her arms were reaching toward him, clutching at his shoulders, his arms, lost somewhere in the indescribable brightness.

"Savagery."

He slapped her breasts.

She arched her back as she moaned.

He grabbed her throat and massaged the breath in and out of her lungs.

His cock stabbed her.

She breathed in the liquid air, no longer concerned about suffocation. He loosened his two-handed grip on her neck, letting her inhale, and raised his hands to her mouth, into which he inserted both thumbs.

She sucked the thumbs.

He fucked her.

She stroked his body with one of her legs, then hugged him with both, and, with her hands, explored his long, cascading hair.

With his forefingers he pressed down on the skin covering her closed eyes until spots of colour appeared and, dancing, coalesced in the central square of her mind. Pink and rusted red and crawling like salamanders, and blue in green in globules of the most exquisite yellow, fading, appearing. She wanted him to press harder and fuck harder and she hugged him harder and wrapped his hair around her knuckles...

He breathed heat.

Her pussy felt like water becoming steam.

The air around them was steaming, too, turning from liquid to pressure, first gentle, like Blackmoth's pressure on the outsides of her eyeballs, but quickly expanding and intensifying, and covering her exterior and penetrating into her interior through her pussy and her nostrils and her ears, sounding always like a hundred hunter's arrows piercing time, about to converge on a single, unsuspecting prey.

The anticipation tightened her muscles and constricted her pussy.

Her constricting pussy choked Blackmoth's cock.

He lurched forward.

He came.

The tips of his wet hair tickled her face.

And she came, too.

And what had been such indescribable brightness became once more a most ordinary darkness.

She ripped open her eyes.

She was lying on her back on the bed in the room with gaudy golden walls, draped only in the pale moonlight. Blackmoth was standing in front of her. His eye no longer glowed. Her dress lay, sliced open, on the bed beneath her. In his right hand, Blackmoth held a curved knife. He spun it round, palmed the blade and held it out to her.

She still felt the remnants of her orgasm between her legs, but the sensations themselves were distant.

"Take it," Blackmoth said.

Again Mirabella remembered the day under the canvas covers. The emotions were still raw. It was as if she'd ripped off a psychological scab. She closed her hand on the knife's handle and Blackmoth let go of the blade.

"Now cut me with it," he said.

Mirabella hesitated.

"Do not hesitate. Obey. To obey your lord, that is what your Matron taught you. That is your role. Submit to my will and obey. I command you, cut me."

He pulled up a sleeve and held out a thin arm.

Mirabella placed the blade against his skin, feeling the depth of his flesh and the bones, tendons and muscles within, and slid the blade across all, making a line that for a few seconds was invisible, before overflowing with crimson blood.

Blackmoth sucked in air through his teeth.

Mirabella took the knife away, unable, despite her best efforts, to read the expression on Blackmoth's face, which meant she was unsure of whether she'd made the right or wrong choice. He was correct, of course. To obey was the golden rule, but implicit in that rule wasn't there also a more important commandment, to care for her lord, to make sure he was safe, satisfied and comfortable? To cut was to cause pain, and pain was unwanted and dangerous. The possibility that she'd just failed her submission dragged itself through her mind.

"You are everything I imagined," Blackmoth said, lowering his wounded arm, letting the flowing blood gather in the creases of his wrist, and drip, metronomically, to the floor. "Caged but unleashable, potential personified."

"Was this my test?" The question, and the tone in which she said it, surprised even Mirabella herself.

Blackmoth leaned over her, placing a hand on either side of her shoulders. Some of his blood dripped onto her naked body. "There is no test."

Mirabella opened her mouth, but before she had a chance to say anything, Blackmoth continued: "There is only reality and unreality, doing and not doing. And together, we shall do, Mirabella Lucinda. For we are reality."

"Do..."

"Yes, Novice."

"Do what?"

His was a devilish grin. He straightened his body. For a second both of his eyes were visible. Then he drew his fingers through his hair, and the curtain came down on one of them. "We shall kill the king," he said.

And with that, he turned and left the room.

Mirabella remained on the bed. Her thoughts swirled and heart pounded. She didn't know if she'd even heard right, or, if she had, what Blackmoth had meant, and, if he had meant exactly what she thought she'd heard him say, why he would tell her, of all people, a stranger, a Novice, a woman he'd met but once and for less than one night. Was this a test? It had to be! But what was the solution, what did they—she pictured Headmistress Harrow and Olive and Lord Caternine—want her to say or do? Was her loyalty to her lord supposed to trump her loyalty to the king, was the solution to simply keep quiet, or was she meant to understand that even her lord was secondary, and her true fealty was to the crown, in which case the solution was to run into the hall, fall to her knees and scream that there was an assassin among them.

The door opened and Olive walked in.

"I passed a lord in the hall just now. I'm not suggesting he was your lord, but I'm not suggesting the opposite, either. And although I'm not supposed to say a word, I will say that he did not look displeased, Mirabella Lucinda."

Perhaps, Mirabella thought, she should tell Olive, but Olive simply sat down beside her, took Mirabella's hand in hers, squeezed it, and planted a motherly kiss on her forehead. If she noticed the blood on either the floor or Mirabella's body, she didn't let it show.

"Olive," Mirabella asked, "how limitless is a Submissionette's loyalty to her lord?"

"Getting slightly ahead of ourselves, are we not, Novice Mirabella? There's still a night's sleep and plenty of nerves tomorrow to get through. You're not a Submissionette yet." She patted Mirabella's knuckles. "However, for the sake of argument, I will say that a Submissionette's loyalty to her lord comes before all and runs deeper than anything."

"Argument?"

"Because some might disagree, but that's a heady discussion for scholars and not something to be pondered over by tired young women." She planted another kiss on Mirabella's forehead. She truly was proud of her. "The history of the Submissionettes, which you may come to know, is not as simple and straightforward as what you've studied in your preparation books."