The Alchemist's Apprentice Pt. 02

Eva looked over to ask Maci if--Maci was gone!

A sudden surge of panic--where had the girl gone? Eva stepped up onto the bench, careful that her head wrap didn't shift, revealing the ears, and cast desperately about. She saw neither Jathan, nor Maci! Where had she--oh--oh shit.

Maci had circled around the back of the wagon and had been grabbed by one of the minders who had marched up with it for delivery. She was being dragged before the doctor!

Since Maci, and for that matter, Eva herself, were dressed like Low Quarter servant girls, she had no doubt that any pleas that Maci might have to check with the senior artisans would fall on deaf ears. Eva almost went to Artisan Karistine to help--but in a fit of ungoverned anger at Jathan--for reasons she couldn't fathom, she avoided the senior order members and marched through the crowd herself to where Maci, trying to explain herself, had been positioned on one of the stones.

The girl looked stricken--as did the others summoned up--this had to be horrid--but the four original penitents seemed, as Eva had thought before, oddly resigned to their fates. They didn't look happy--but a public chastising with such an instrument would be terrible and they didn't quite look like girls facing that would.

Eva burst from the crowd and moved to stand before Dr. Rinebach.

"Doctor! This girl isn't remanded to your punishment," she declared. It was the sort of thing she might've done inside the Enclave with the backing of her Mistress. Here, though, the man turned and looked her up and down.

"Ah--a second urchin," he said. "You will join your friend then."

Eva met his eyes with a snarl. "She's not under your--Hey! Let go!"

A woman who had been one of the cadre minding the wagon had grabbed her by the arm and was hauling her towards a stone another had laid down next to Maci.

"Master Jathan!" Eva shrieked--and then shrieked for real as the woman stripped off her headscarf, revealing her ears. Eva's eyes went wide. She moaned.

"What have we here--ohh, some wonderful punishment additions--" The woman cooed. She was removing the robe and where it fell, her tail came into view. Eva gave a soft horrified cry of embarrassment, flaring red. She looked at Maci who seemed similarly caught up, standing wide-eyed on her stone, looking terribly contrite.

Eva was well disciplined enough not to fight with the woman--but she was too overcome not to call at the top of her lungs for her master! When she begin to do so, something awful and nearly impossible to explain happened: her words became muffled jumbled soft sounds and her body obeyed the woman positioning her--even pulling her tail out from the hole it poked through--she felt a rivulet of urine flow down her leg and would have collapsed if she hadn't been held up by some force making her comply. The woman released her tail and folded the dress above it so her bare bottom was exposed.

Eva's vision was swimming in tears. She felt a shuddering horrible vulnerability--an exposed naked-ness that was unbearable. She gulped air and gasped and cried out--but all she could really do was stand ready for more commands.

"It's happening to me too," said Maci in a choked voice. "Whatever it is, it's GOT Task--and so it's GOT me!"

"I--I can't--" Eva started.

"Your ears and tail are a spirit bound to you in a way that is different but not entirely so to how I am bound with Maci," Maci said in Task's intonation.

"You can't resist because whatever has got is won't LET us resist. Not much, anyway."

Eva gulped. Ohhh--Oh!! "What--what is it?" she asked, hoarsely.

"I'm not sure. Old. Powerful. Bad."

Eva shifted from one foot to another. "We have to get Jathan," she murmured. It was harder to talk now, the crowd was settled in. She could feel her ears painfully erect--stretching out like her nipples. She could hear Vivian in the crowd asking why she and Maci were there--Artisan Karistine saying she wasn't sure and looking for Jathan herself.

"I can't take this," Eva said horsely.

"Me neither!" said Maci, angrily and also in tears. It was her voice and not Task's. "Task said to move around and observe it from another angle--I was the one who got too close. Foo!" She clamped her mouth shut as the Doctor called for silence.

"The formula taken from the ancient stones is to use this whip--or one like it--in the Golden Sequence! One stroke, one stroke, two strokes, three strokes, and so on--the next number being the sum of the two before it!" The Doctor nodded with satisfaction as the crowd nodded in some recognition.

"The positioning of the subjects is important as well--" he strode over towards Eva who was unable to control her sobbing and snuffling as he arrived.

"This girl appeared before me, attempting to upbraid me for having captured her friend!" He reached over and gave Maci a smack to her backside. Maci mouthed an "ow!" and made a whimpering noise. "Let's teach her a lesson! My four little minxes have been well prepared for this--but this one's ears and tail are too cute to ignore!"

He stroked a sobbing Eva with the whip, running it from the back of her head down her shoulder and then flank. She desperately wanted to cover her face, but couldn't raise her hands. She stared mournfully out at the approving crowd, her lower lip quivering. Her dress was only raised in the back, so when the whip slipped down over her tail, and she gasped in misery, another trickle of urine down her thigh, they couldn't well see it.

"Place your elbows on your knees, my bad little kitten!" He crowed. As she did, she could hear members of the audience comment approvingly on fetching-ness of her contrition or, worse, observe the erotic stiffness of her ears! Her eyes were wide and wet, and she was acutely aware of how pleasing her appearance must be!

"Now that the area to be addressed is properly expressed and presented," the Doctor said, tapping her bare bottom with the whip, "we will have our correction in two parts. The first will be the strokes to a count of five--that is one, one, two, three, and five! A full sum of 12. After that, a brief break where our naughty kitten may break position, stand and rub vigorously at her cute little bottom!"

The crowd laughed!

"Then for the second part, she will go back in position to meow to the count of twenty-one! That is eight, thirteen, and the afore-mentioned twenty and one. Should our adorable penitent obediently and contritely hold her position, she will have completed her sentence--"

"But--" he held his hand up to quiet the group, "should our misbehaved kitten break her position, reach back or otherwise fail to complete her sentence, she would come under the judgment of Adicia!" He pointed with the whip at the plinth. "We know from the legends writ on the stone that the girls would battle mightily to maintain their position and forego the discipline of the goddess of misbehavior!"

He stroked her buttock. "I think our cute kitten will fail--but perhaps she will demonstrate deeper reserves of obedience than I expect?

Eva was compelled to stand in the position--but she felt certain that, should she really fail in her will, she would break position and disgrace herself. A teardrop hung from her nose. Oh! This was awful!!

Worse: There was Master Jathan! He was towards the front of the crowd in a heated discussion with Artisan Karistine--Yes, apparently Eva had left her seat and gone up to the Doctor to demand the release of Maci, who, for some reason, had been captured poking about the rear of the wagon!

He had no idea some Art was at work! Oh!! She met his eyes in abject misery.

POW! "Aii!" A beat. POW! "Yii!" CRACK! CRACK! "AHH!! OH!!!" her howls rang out in the plaza. There was no containing her cries--they came as fast and sharp as the lashes. Her buttocks positively sang with lines of bright pain. Her tail seemed to have snapped itself out of the path of the whip. Had he struck it, she would surely have collapsed. As it was, the humiliation of yowling before the crowd was held for moments at bay by the wet explosions of fire!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Her knees felt weak, and she yipped at each of the strokes with no attempt at dignity! Oh, mercy--he wasn't finished!!

POW! POW! POW! POW! "MERCY!" she begged at the top of her voice--POW! He didn't grant it and she, at the end of her endurance, stood and grasped her bottom. She pranced in place, tears spiling! She imagined she must appear as a punished teenager--undone with a small count of strokes and only pink lines across her backside to show for her defeat. Through the blizzard of throbbing pain, she was aware of a desperate need to comfort her cat's ears. Under her skirts, her clit was as erect and hard as she had ever sensed it to be. Her nipples chafed, seeking to burst through her dress. Both of these awful reactions were concealed, but the awful cat's ears atop her head were a clear signal of her uncontrollably powerful arousal for those who knew how to observe it.

She tried in horror to will her hands to move to her head to flatten the treacherous additions she'd been given--but she couldn't bring herself to remove her hands from their paltry attempts to comfort her buttocks! The Doctor was pacing a circle about her, explaining to the crowd that following the demonstration, her well reprimanded backside would be displayed for them to see the marks by the whip were comparatively mild. Touching would be encouraged!

"Okay, spanked little kitty," he said to Eva, poking the whip up under her quivering chin. "Back in position for the actual trial. You may meow for us--but hold your pretty, pert buttocks in position. Understood girl?"

She gave a wretched nod.

"Our past two sets were three and five--so we begin with eight," he explained to the crowd.

The cracks came fast, and they were unbearable. Hunched forward as she was, she presented an inviting, defenseless target and he stripped her control from her with each lash. Her cries drove upwards in register as her will failed. When the mere beat of a pause came before the next set, her vision swam with too many tears for her to make out Master Jathan's face--but she presumed he was disappointed in her refusal to follow his orders.

She somehow made it through eight awful strokes of the next set before she collapsed to her knees, blubbering. Her hands gripped her buttocks. She moaned--and then she heard it--a sound like a crack--not of a whip, but of thunder.

Despite her haze of pain and shame, she turned and saw a woman had appeared standing atop the plinth--but what a woman.

She had bronzed skin, and her arms, breasts, sex, and buttocks were covered with intricate tattoos. She stood eight feet tall, and wore only sandals and a thong that disappeared between her painted nether-lips--on, and she wore a collar. Her eyes flashed with a luminous glow as she stepped down off the wagon, lighting on the ground and the crowd, struck silent, flinched back from her in a single motion.

She was striding towards Dr. Rinebach, who appeared frozen in place.

When the woman's gaze swept over Eva, she felt her sex fairly gush with lubrication and the butterflies of arousal in her lower stomach surged like a summer storm. She gave a soft moan of horror and need, closing her eyes against the terrible electric intensity in her.

The woman plucked the whip from Dr. Rinebach's hand. He offered no resistance.

"Where are my handmaiden's hosts?" she demanded of him, her voice reverberating off the walls of the plaza. "You've wakened me, you dirty whelp! My handmaids need homes in which to nest! This single scrawny offering is insufficient. Have you not prepared more? Do you expect me aroused and unclothed without my cadre?"

The doctor shrank in terror from her.

The woman--Adicia--aimed a kick at Eva's vulva. The flat instep of her foot connected wetly. It wasn't a hard kick--more disdainful than calculated to injure--but Eva wailed at the impact.

"Have you not completed the first set on others before moving to the second!?? Or just this pathetic one??" She readied another kick and it was Jathan who stepped from the crowd.

"This one is under my command, Great Lady. She is not the Doctor's. His application of your punishment to her was not intended to call her, nor is she offered to you--

Her eyes fell on him and his voice cut off abruptly. Eva felt a surge of terror, but she couldn't move.

"This age has forgotten how to speak for goddesses," she said, stepping forward. Her hand, its nails filed to sharp tips reached out for him. Eva was certain he was held fast by her gaze.

"I have not forgotten it, Mistress Adicia," said Maci in the intonation of Task's voice.

Her hand inches from Jathan's chest, she turned her head to look at the trembling girl.

"And you dare speak before me?" She laughed. "Such arrogance from such a small thing!"

"I do not dare, Mistress Adicia. I do as I must--it is not my wish nor an act I pride myself in. It is my duty."

"Tell me of this duty," she said--her hair seemed to fan out around her shoulders and glow faintly. It was reminiscent of the look of a hooded snake.

"Your twin is not here, Grand Mistress," said Task. "You are incomplete."

"I am unleashed," she said with a terrible finality.

She lifted her foot and placed it on the small of Eva's back. "My handmaiden will take this one and you," she spoke to Dr. Rinebach, "will prepare that one--" she pointed the lash at Maci, "that one. My servant will drive out the little thing if she must--"

Something got her attention. She faced the crowd.

"Who dares!?" Adicia demanded.

"I'd rather not have my work despoiled like you suggest Adicia," said a large woman, moving through the frozen crowd. "I may not be the finest of artists but I do consider my work to be artistic and your binding will interfere with this one's modifications," she said.

Eva looked up to see Dr. Emmas coming to stand next to where Jathan was frozen.

"This world is filled with those who know not their place before a goddess!" she thundered.

"I am sorry, Adicia," said Dr. Emmas, "that freezing art won't work on me. Terrible precautions I've taken."

"You shall host a handmaiden!" the eight-foot tall goddess shrieked in fury.

"I can't accommodate that either," said Dr. Brees. "My apologies, goddess. I'm alchemically altered to prevent spirit bindings."

Adicia stepped away from Eva, raising the whip seeming to be prepared to strike Dr. Emmas with it.

As she closed, however, Jathan seemed to recover his capability to move. He stepped between the towering goddess and Dr. Emmas. "We are well beyond your Age, Great Lady. Release my charge and please return to--"

The goddess spun. Her gaze was withering. She looked down at Eva. Maci had managed to interpose herself between the goddess and the kneeling girl.

"Remove yourself!" Adicia demanded. "My handmaiden shall have that one and she shall deal with these whelps while I prepare the others myself--"

"Can't," said Task. "But if you must, you may find that I--"

Maci's voice changed to that of her own, rising in alarm. "Task!? Task!?"

Something in the air seemed to coalesce around her body. IT had many swirling arms like a sea creature and its central mass opened like the vertical slit of a cat's eye or, perhaps, although vaguely seen, that of a female sex. Maci gave a soft cry as the thing sunk its tendrils through her skin and she collapsed atop Eva, who caught her before she rolled off onto the paving stones.

"INCOMPATIBLE," said Adicia in a vaguely distant voice. "FAULT."

Then she was gone. In a thunderclap of air rushing into the space where she had been, she vanished. The crowd, released from the paralysis that had held it, surged in all directions. Maci moaned in Eva's arms, and Jathan rushed forward to the two of them. Dr. Rinebach had fallen insensate. From the edge of the chaos, trumpets heralded the delegation of the Senior Hierophant.

"Task? Task? What--what happened?" whimpered Maci. "Where are you?"

Eva looked up, wide eyed into Jathan's face.

CODA 1 - EVA

"I thought it might try to merge one of its servants with me," said Maci from her bed in the main enclave where she had been taken. She spoke in Task's intonation. "Things have progressed in the Ages from last she ruled. I adjusted the spiritual formatting of Maci to be incompatible with her attempt at binding. It won't fool her again, though. The temporary fault probably only put her into sleep for a few hours at best."

Maci lay, feeling weak and had a distinct smell of powerful female lubrication from her skin. She squirmed in powerful sexual frustration: the handmaiden's lightest touch had been awful. Eva couldn't imagine what it would have been like to host the terrible thing.

Maci knew how she smelled, and Eva couldn't resist getting into the bed with her where Maci's embarrassment was heightened every so slightly by having her friend in close quarters with her. Eva cuddled next to Maci, caressing her. She was aware of her tail's tip licking at her arousal at her friend's discomfort. She couldn't help it, though. Maci was going to feel wretched for a while, no matter what, and Eva reasoned the girl got equal parts comfort from her friend's embrace as well as embarrassment from the intimate attention.

Maci's betrothed, the Artisan Tanaris, had been there immediately until his twin sister, Vivian, had chased him off to let Maci rest.

Now Maci's eyes were closed. She wasn't sleeping, she just lay naked, her legs spread and bent--an obscene position Task insisted on.

Eva felt a pat on her buttock. She looked up. "Oh, Mistress!"

Mistress Kava stood over her, a look of satisfaction on her otherwise stern face.

"Come, Eva. Let her rest alone for now."

Eva reluctantly gave Maci a kiss on the side of her neck. She caught a strong whiff of the handmaiden's scent and Maci gave an adorable whimper.

"I'll return when I can," promised Eva. She got out of bed. She wore pale pink pajamas, tailored in the back for her tail. In Artisan Tanaris' work room, Mistress Kava sat in an elegant chair and Eva knelt before her.

"Do you think you've cleaned a sufficient number of chamberpots?" Mistress Kava asked with a slight smile.

"I hope so, Mistress," Eva said.

"I think so," Mistress Kava answered. "I want to make you aware that there is an ongoing investigation. Journeyman Jathan has been tasked with a portion of it."

Eva glanced up.

"He has put in a request that you be allowed to assist him."

Eva blinked in surprise.

"Apparently he was impressed with your work in the baristette negotiations," Mistress Kava explained.

"Oh!" Eva blushed!

"I've decided to accede to his request. I think you have evidenced a broad competence as an assistant and could stand to learn things under his tutleage."

"Yes, Mistress," Eva said. "Will I still be--"

"You will still have plenty of duties with me. I am not giving you up."

Eva nodded.

"I do have one other related item--" Mistress Kava said, turning to look at a folio of parchments on her desk. "A report giving to me through its 'interpreter' by the entity calling itself Task."

Eva swallowed. That could be a lot of things, she told herself.

"It had its host send me a parchment following its disciplining of you two nights ago--"

Shit.

"I believe we should discuss the disciplinary control of our fantasies--or lack thereof," Mistress Kava said mildly.

Oh, shit. Eva scowled. When Mistress Kava beckoned her forward, though, she rose and made herself walk forward, drawing her dress off over her head.

CODA 2 - MOUSE

Mouse lay on Miss Lila's changing table, with her legs up in the horrible position. Miss Lila was rubbing a salve onto her buttocks. The lotion worked into her skin and radiated through her with a pleasant warm feeling that made her sometimes moan with pleasure, even though the attention was only to her bottom.