The Archivist of PermaMod Ch. 02

The Amrita

Saengdao splashed out of her bed as the first pink light of morning's sun bled through the bars of her solitary window into the main living space of her circuitous prison cell.

The PermaMod facility had been constructed as an addition to an existing structure - a stone castle that had been built over a thousand years before. The facility matched the architecture of the older structure - heavy stones cemented together to create a formidable structure.

All these stones had been set in place around Saengdao two years before leaving no door or other passageway for any individual to enter or leave. While Saengdao's prison stretched almost the length of the facility, there were only three places where she might interact with any other Wom.

The first point of access, of course, was the small cage that Saengdao could crawl into which, when entry points were sealed and she was appropriately restrained, could be detached from the narrow portal and moved about the operating facility on an articulated arm. This is the perch from which Saengdao was able to observe the goings-on in the facility.

The second point of access was the small barred window looking out east from the castle across a field and onto a heavily forested landscape. The climate was such that temperatures did not vary much over the course of a year, so fresh warm breezes often blew through the bars into the Seangdao's dark prison room.

It was underneath this small window that Saengdao's "bed" was positioned.

The entirety of Saengdao's prison was covered in about a half meter of liquid. In the areas where there was sufficient headspace for the archivist to stand or walk about, the liquid level was higher than her knees. Movement about the space was accompanied by sloshing sounds as she waded through the fluid.

Saengdao's "bed" was only a small submerged platform - just high enough, so that when she lay upon it, only her face, chest, and toes remained above the liquid. The platform was contoured exactly to Saengdao's body and her head was cradled to discourage much movement. So, it was rare that Saengdao inadvertently twisted her face below the liquid's surface as she slept. Of course, being a divine immortal being, drowning in one's sleep was not a lethal concern - uncomfortable, at most.

Given the density of the liquid and the buoyancy of Saengdao's body, her sleeping experience was actually extremely comfortable. Even though the bed was made of stone, she mostly floated above it.

The liquid, itself, was not water. It was called "amrita", a magical fluid which had a soft white glow that sparkled and cast constantly shifting waves of dim light throughout Saengdao's prison.

Amrita could hold spells. That is, it could be laced with any number of spells which could be activated by an array of triggering events. Saengdao had been informed of only one particular spell...

The predominant language of the Wom contains about 200,000 words. There were perhaps another 50,000 words that could be attributed to several local dialects. If ever Saengdao were to utter any single one of those words the spell embedded in the amrita would activate. She was never informed exactly what would happen, but she was warned that it would disable her in such a way that her body could be retrieved from the prison and dealt with in "an extreme and unpleasantly debilitating manner". As a witness to the proceedings at the PermaMod facility, Saengdao had no illusion that the specifics of "extreme" and "debilitating" could push the limits of imagination.

Obviously, despite her ability to do so, Saengdao never uttered a word.

No matter where in her prison she went, Saengdao sloshed through the liquid. It was almost always in contact with her. Almost...

When she sat up in bed and shook her head, the amrita drained from her ears and dripped down in large dollops. It seems that the cohesive forces of amrita were at least of the same magnitude as gravitational forces. So, as the drops of amrita drained from her hair, they coalesced to form larger and larger drops which splashed back into the pool. The effect was that after moments of sitting up her skin and hair would be dry.

Saengdao grabbed the bars of her window and walked up the wall underneath the window with her feet, counterbalancing, until her body was completely above the level of the liquid. Every morning she spent a little time doing this. She had no illusion that she could escape the spell held within the amrita by climbing out of it. She had no doubt that if she were to scream words from her prison window, the amrita would be waiting for her to climb back down.

She could easily prop herself out of the liquid for fifteen minutes. She could probably do it for three times that length of time under duress. But, eventually, her muscles would grow tired and she would have to drop back into the pool. Still, she climbed every day for a period just to stay strong for the possibility that she might one day use this as a means to escape.

As she hung from her window bars, she watched the activity down below. Seven new carboy style glass bottles had been added to the growing collection in the past day. There were now 32 of them. They were thick glass cylinders - their heights and diameters were probably a little over a meter. At the top, the glass sloped inwards to a long narrow tube with an opening smaller than Saengdao's wrist. Each was empty. Each capped by a cork plug. She had no idea what the purpose of these bottles were, nor why they were being collected.

As she watched, two naked slaves were led out into the field by a collection of sword-wielding guards. The slaves' shackled wrists were attached to a rope and raised by a pulley system until they were straining to stay on the tips of their toes.

A leader of some sort walked out into the field. She was unarmed, but seemed to be giving orders to the guards. After a moment of reflection, Saengdao recognized the leader, a local chief architect. She glanced back towards the two restrained slaves and noted that each was particularly well endowed. The architect was beginning to poke and prod the breasts of the defenseless women.

Saengdao's hands were growing tired and a wave of nausea crept over her as she watched the scene below - the architect and the big breasted slaves. She slowly slid back down the wall and into the pool, squatting deeper and deeper until she sat on the stone floor - the liquid up to her chin. As always, the amrita made her feel better. It was a living liquid. It vibrated around her.

There was a single tone from a bell that rang out into Saengdao's cell. She was being called to the operating room. A slave was being brought in for a modification. Saengdao stood up and let the amrita drain from her body. She brushed her waist long black hair with her hands, squeezing out the amrita in large drops. It only took moments before her hair was dry. She quickly wove it into a long braid.

She waded across her prison room to a small opening - about a meter square and half filled with the amrita. She knelt down and pulled herself inside, half swimming, half crawling. This tunnel led to a dark hall, lit only by the liquid's glow. Saengdao splashed along to another tunnel opening which she ducked into. This tunnel ended in a narrow vertical shaft with a small platform she could step up onto - out of the amrita.

Saengdao spent a minute shaking all the liquid from her body, then climbed up the rungs of a ladder. At the top, she placed her right hand in an imprint perfectly sized for her. After a moment a small steel door slid to the side, revealing her small observation cage and the brightly lit operating room.

With practiced grace, Saengdao shuffled backwards on her knees through the opening and into her cage. She placed her arms behind her and felt them press into wide metal cuffs that were waiting for them. With a clacking sound the cuffs closed tightly on her arms, trapping her. The steel door of the opening slid shut as did a matrix of steel bars neatly completing the perfect symmetry of her domed cage. With a sudden thump, the cage disconnected from its place by the locked portal and swung out on its articulated arm into the operating theater where Saengdao waited patiently, watching from behind her metal eye grates, for the next victim to be brought forth.

<>-+-

"...and so, I'd like her to continue to be a producer, but I want to move her to the front office as a display piece as well."

Dr Bitch entered the operating room with a mistress - her naked slave in tow, with mittened hands bound behind her back and a collar with a leash. The mistress was discussing the upcoming procedure with the doctor.

"I have never used Lady Door's services before, but I thought that this would be a good opportunity," the mistress continued.

A slave nurse entered shortly and knelt quietly on her pad.

Dr Bitch held up a parchment for Saengdao to see. Saengdao was able to accurately memorize a scene and refer back to it later to consciously pick out details. So, for example, if she looked at a document for a short period of time, she could later visualize what she had seen and actually read from her recollection the document that was provided.

According to the document, Mistress Miller (Millie) had brought her slave, Adelaide, to be silenced and decorated using the services of Lady Door and Madame M. Dr Bitch would help with the anchoring of a specially designed "gag plate".

In addition to the thick sturdy rings that Saengdao could observe piercing Adelaide's nipples and clitoris, according to the document, the slave also sported a large metal grommet in the center of her tongue, apparently rendering a hole over three quarters of a centimeter in diameter.

Adelaide seemed drugged somehow... Most likely using an aphrodisiac of some sort. Vaginal lubricant was dripping down her inner thighs - shiny in the lights of the room. As Adelaide was bound to the operating chair, the doctor took some glee in noting the slave's arousal - scraping a finger up the bound woman's inner thigh, then turning and wiping the results on Saengdao's knee. Saengdao, of course, remained impassive - simply noting the cool spot on her skin as the lubricant slowly dried.

The slave moaned - her eyes hooded. "Joséphine..."

"Who's Joséphine?" Dr Bitch asked Mistress MIllie.

"No one," she replied. "Well... she's fixated on a lover from her most recent life-dream. The more we raise her libido, the more she calls out to her imaginary lover. She's always mumbling something about this Joséphine person which is, obviously, unbecoming of a display piece."

Saengdao noted that Adelaide's eyes rolled about in an unfocused fashion and her mittened hands jerked at their bonds, reaching desperately for her crotch.

"Goddess!" Dr Bitch exclaimed. "She is productive! Nurse! Pan!"

The doctor turned a crank on the operating chair which forced Slave Adelaide's legs apart. A thick strand of lubricant oozed out from the slave's vagina slowly descending to the floor. The nurse rose from her pad and retrieved a metal pan, handing it to the doctor. It was then affixed to the chair so as to catch and collect future emissions.

The slave nurse settled quietly back onto her kneeling pad.

The door to the operating room opened. Madame M and Lady Door walked in laughing about some conversation they were having. The nurse immediately leaned over to press her forehead to the floor. Madame M gently placed a hand on the slave's back, greeting her quietly.

This day, Madame M wore a long black flowing dress cinched in the middle, accenting her body's contours, with a metal buckle corset belt. She had a black trench coat with spiked shoulders, white cuffs, and dangling silver chains. She stepped up to Saengdao's cage and slid an arm between the bars. Her hands were sheathed in fingerless gloves. Madam M gently scraped some dried residue from Saengdao's knee and whispered a greeting, complimenting Saengdao on the beauty of her arms, particularly pinioned as they were. Saengdao made a slight bow in acknowledgement. She became momentarily distracted, reflecting that she hadn't had to cut her own fingernails anymore. Perhaps, that was another spell mixed in with the amrita.

Dr Bitch scowled at Saengdao and Adelaide released another lust-filled moan. "Pourquoi pas ce soir, Joséphine?"

"What did she say?" Lady Door asked.

"She keeps regressing to some life-dream when she's under the influence of our aphrodisiac. She's speaking in some language from there," Millie suggested.

Saengdao felt she heard something familiar in the sounds that Adelaide made. Indeed, in a life-dream many different languages exist. But, while memories of the dream live on in the minds of the dreamers, the languages used there always disappear. Still, Saengdao felt like her mouth could form these words, though she had no idea what they meant. Nor would she ever attempt to form the words, for fear that some utterance might match a real word and trigger the spell in the amrita pool which covered the entirety of her prison home.

Saengdao collected herself and examined Lady Door. She was pulling a spool of heavy chain in a wheeled caddy. She looked around the operating room for a moment before pointing at Saengdao and her cage. "What is the purpose of this?"

Madame M explained that everything that occurs is recorded. She explained how Saengdao has a particular skill at observation - her ability to accurately recreate the order of events and describe a scene to perfection, her skill with the weaving together of words in a written form. Madame M also spoke of how Saengdao was salvaged from the mausoleum of the renegade Kite Witches and that her documentation skills had been lauded in that community for hundreds of years.

"Oh!" Lady Door said, somewhat shocked. She cast a brief, haughty glance at the caged archivist. "I didn't realize that the Kite Witches ever knew how to read and write. You've tamed her?"

Madame M just smiled and turned back to Saengdao's cage. Once again slipping an arm between the bars and lovingly stroking the top of Saengdao's head.

"She has only ever been an Arbor - she's so submissive," Dr Bitch replied, "she's like a defanged pussycat."

"How can she see with those plates over her eyes?" Lady Door asked.

There was a moment of awkward silence as Madame M continued to attend to Saengdao, only broken when Slave Adelaide let out another lusty moan.

Lady Door shrugged her shoulders and turned to Millie. "Do you have the nameplate?"

"Yeah," Adelaide's mistress said. She untied a bag from her belt and began releasing the drawstring.

"Then I'm ready," Lady Door said. "Dr Bitch? Let's get this operation underway."

<>-+-

After a bit of discussion, it was decided that Adelaide would be anesthetized during the operation. Mistress Miller emphasized that Adelaide's modifications were not meant to be a punishment. Indeed, she quite liked Adelaide's lusty moans. She definitely did not like, however, the constant calls to "Joséphine". And to that, there would be an end.

Slave Adelaide need not have the capacity for verbal communication, Millie explained. "And when Lady Door told me about her technologies... Well... I have to give it a try. If it works well, Adelaide may just be the first of many..."

By this time, with the nurse slave's help, Dr Bitch had put Adelaide into a state of unconsciousness. Still, the sleeping slave's chest heaved with breathy moans, her pierced nipples, stiffly erect, and the occasional dollop of lubrication dripped from the slave's lower lips into the collection pan.

Lady Door, meanwhile, was measuring out ten arm lengths of the heavy chain from its spool. "I'll need your services, M," she said when she was satisfied that the chain was sufficiently long.

Saengdao had been instructed to never document a direct quote from Madame M, so the spell that was recited would not be captured in the archive. However, the incantation was brief and with a simple touch of Madame M's finger to the chain, a link snapped, severing the chain where Lady Door indicated.

Millie handed the nameplate to Lady Door after presenting it for Saengdao's inspection as Madame M instructed. It was a metal plate about the length of one's hand. On one side it said "Adelaide", on the other "Conatus Mills". A hole had been bored through the metal at one end.

The broken link of the chain was slipped through the hole in the nameplate, and, after another small incantation, Madame M wrapped her hand around the broken link for a moment. When she pulled her hand away the link had reformed into a perfect oval with the nameplate permanently attached.

Lady Door began digging through the sizable pile of chain on the floor. "I should have kept this a bit more organized. Chain this heavy is a bitch to deal with when it gets twisted and tangled."

Dr Bitch chuckled, "Well... let's hook this slave up!"

<>-+-

"This weighs probably about 50 kilos." Lady Door stated as she pulled the end of the long chain up towards the unconscious slave's mouth.

Madame M suggested that Lady Door drape the chain over the back of the headrest to minimize the weight stressing the point of attachment.

"Good idea."

The slave nurse moved behind Adelaide and held her head, while the doctor pulled her jaws apart. A set of forceps was used to grip Adelaide's tongue. When it was pulled out from the slave's mouth, Saengdao was able to see the gaping hole in the middle, held open by a steel grommet.

Madame M began reciting magical phrases once more, taking the end link of Lady Door's chain and holding it up to the sleeping slave's tongue. There was a metallic click, and when Madame M stepped back, twenty five meters of heavy chain had been permanently fastened to Adelaide's poor tongue. The nurse had a towel ready so that Madame M could wipe the drool from her hands.

"Could you imagine having to walk around with fifty kilos welded through your tongue?" Dr Bitch laughed.

"It won't quite be like that," Lady Door said. She raised a strange piece of metal hardware - held it for Saengdao to examine.

The metal was mostly flat on one side - about the same size as one's index and middle finger held out together. The plate had four small mounting tabs protruding around the more curved end. The holes in the tabs were irregularly shaped - definitely not for screws.

The underside had three small frame arms originating from the outer edges of the plate and joining to form a very shallow pyramid shape with a hole milled for some sort of bolt at the apex.

"It takes quite a bit of magic to turn this on," Lady Door explained. "But once it is powered up, Adelaide will easily provide enough fuel to keep it on indefinitely."

Perpetual energy is not possible in a closed system. However, it is well known, a divine immortal receives energy from a higher source, outside the physical world. This is something that young Wom learn - a cautionary tale. It can come in handy when a cheap energy source is required, to tap the energy drawn from beyond into a divine immortal. It can also be exploited by the powerful to build great things at the expense of the freedom of those enslaved to provide the energy.

Lady Door reached under the hem of her knee length dress. She pulled down a silken undergarment, gracefully stepping out. She grabbed a link of chain near the end with the nameplate and tied the silk underwear through the links. "In lieu of direct communication, this provides authorization," she explained.

Next she pulled a velvet pouch from a pocket, which she unwrapped carefully. Inside was a smooth, black, narrow cylinder with rounded ends - it was a magic wand, of sorts.

Magic can be conjured in a variety of ways. Some, like Madame M, used the power of the spoken word to manipulate the gramarye flux. This method is considered more subtle and the technique requires extensive training. Another method - indeed, one of the most powerful - is erotic energy, which is fairly easily accessed but extremely difficult to harness with accurate, repeatable results. It is perfect, however, for Lady Door's task of manifesting and anchoring a small portal through the spatial continuum.