The Bonding Ritual Ch. 06-10

For a while, nothing happened and I thought that was it, but suddenly another lightning bolt struck the column to Isadora's left. The thunderstrike was louder, seeming angry as it coursed quickly through the pillar and down to the circle in front of me.

At first, I was curious about who this newcomer was, but then fear hit me as I recognized the new figure. It was the crazy blonde woman who tried to kill us. My heart started racing, but she knelt there like the others, naked, but there was a fire in her eyes. She wasn't happy to be here like the other two. In fact, she struggled against the chain that bound her, but it would not yield. I looked to see what word was written on her collar:

Rogue

Just as I read the words, I felt something squeezing my right arm. Something urgent was happening and my body was wrenched from the circle.

My ears rang as I suddenly woke up to screaming in my room. Two voices intermixed as my body came to terms with being awakened so suddenly.

In frustration and confusion, I yelled "Stop!" What I didn't expect was both voices and all movement to immediately come to a halt.

I turned over to look at what was happening. To my shock, Isadora stood in the kitchenette on one side, wielding a knife that she'd grabbed from the knife block on the counter. She was pointing it toward the other woman, none other than the blonde, who had her own wicked knife drawn. Both of them stood completely still as if someone pressed the pause button on both of them.

"What is the meaning of this?" I asked, only for both women to start screaming over each other. I caught a few words like bitch, slut, bond, and crazy, but nothing meaningful.

"Stop," I said, and again, both women immediately stopped mid-sentence

I didn't know what was going on, but both of them seemed to do exactly as I said. I decided to take advantage of that to get some answers.

"You, blonde woman, what is your name and what are you doing here?" I was getting tired of just thinking of her as the crazy blonde woman.

"My name is Celeste, and I'm here because I sensed this slut trying to cast her sex magic on you so I came to stop her. Wait, what the hell, why the fuck am I telling you this?" she grew frustrated, trying to move the hand still holding the knife, but she still seemed frozen in place.

"Drop the knife and sit down over there in the corner," I said, hoping I could take control of this situation.

"Why the fuck would I do that?" but just as she said that she dropped the knife to her feet and walked over to the corner, sitting right where I pointed. "What are you doing to me? I'll scream if you don't let me go, I'm warning you. People know where I am and they'll rescue me," her voice trembled.

"You won't scream and you will tell me only the truth from now on," I said.

She kept inhaling deeply as if she was about to scream only to let out the quietest, "Help me! I'm being held captive by some psycho slut and her thrall!" It was no use though as the volume wasn't nearly enough for anyone to hear.

"Stop calling her slut and that's not the first time you've used the term thrall. What do you mean by that?" I tried to get some answers.

"That... sex demon cast a spell on you so you do her bidding. You've been protecting her, so of course you are under her spell. Did you sell your soul to her for some action? You pervert, you make me sick," she spat the words out, her words oozing with venom and hatred.

"Ok, silence," I wasn't going to get anything from her just yet. She just sat there stuck in place, stewing for now.

I turned to Isadora, "Set the knife down and come sit next to me."


She set the knife down on the table in front of her and then sat down on the bed next to me. She was shaking, it reminded me of the night we met.

"Are you alright? Did she hurt you?" I grabbed her hands and put them in mine. This seemed to help, but there was definitely tension in her body.

"Yes, master, I'm fine. She didn't hurt me," she looked at the floor, unable to look into my eyes.

"You don't have to call me that, okay?" I could tell she was on the verge of crying. I leaned over, grabbed a tissue from my bedside table, and gently dabbed the small tear forming at the corner of her eye. "I don't know what's going on, but I don't want you to feel obligated to follow my commands, okay?"

She nodded, "What if I want to though?"

"If it is your choice to do that, then I will not take that away from you," I placed my hand under her chin, lifting it so she looked into my eyes. I wanted her to know it would be alright. I smiled and the tension in her shoulders relaxed.

"Better?" she sniffed and nodded. I handed her the tissue and she used it to clear her nose before settling down.

"Ok, so what exactly happened?" I asked her after she settled down.

"I bonded with you while you were sleeping," she said slightly nervously.

"I thought you said that both participants had to be involved in this?" remembering our conversation from the diner.

"Yes... normally, that is the case. However, I learned a version of bonding that is more... unorthodox than most girls learn in my world," she started, pausing for a moment as if thinking about what to say next.

"You see when we travel to new worlds, we are taught a basic bond based on our... area of expertise so that we remain anchored in the world we travel to. Usually, this is broken during the second trimester of pregnancy so that we can return home to give birth. We are also taught safety measures that allow us to break the bond in case of emergency. It can be painful to do and usually involves us immediately being yanked back into our world, but it can be done," she continued. "This requires a very simple ritual with both parties."

"Ok, but it sounds like that is not the bond that you performed, correct?" I clarified.

"No..." she looked down at her lap again, "As I said, I learned a more complicated one that is forbidden to perform. It requires one to fully release one's self to the other. It cannot be done unless there is a deep connection. If I had performed it and we were not fully in sync, I would have been instantly yanked back into my world and possibly ripped apart in the process."

I gasped, grasping her hand tightly in mine as she described what could have gone wrong, "Why did you risk yourself to do something so dangerous?"

"I just... knew you were the one. I could feel the connection so deeply, and the possibility of it not working did not seem plausible to me. I can't explain it," she said with such confidence.

"I would be devastated if anything happened to you. Please do not put yourself at risk like that, okay?" I did not want her to ever try something so dangerous ever again. I felt protective of her.

"Yes master," she replied, nodding.

"So why is she following my commands if the bond is between us?" I asked. I didn't even want to bring up the subject of the auburn-haired girl in the dream. I'd save that for when we were alone and could speak more on the subject.

We both looked at Celeste in the corner. She kept shifting back and forth, unable to speak with a scowl on her face.

"I don't know," she scrunched her face as if trying to remember the details. "It all happened so fast. I had barely made the bond when a portal appeared and she jumped out. She was about to attack me but suddenly stopped like some invisible force kept her from doing anything further. We started screaming at each other, then you woke up and stopped us."

"Ok," I placed my hand on her thigh hoping to reassure her. She shivered as I touched her, goosebumps forming on her skin. "I'm going to try to get some answers from this one," pointing to Celeste.

"Yes master," she replied again. I'd have to discuss this further with her after we figured out what to do with our visitor.

"Celeste, you can talk in a quiet voice again," I was afraid she was going to start spewing her anger at Isadora and was ready to silence her if necessary.

Instead, she started crying uncontrollably, "Please... please don't turn me into some bimbo demon like her," She was visibly shaking.

"Look, stop calling her names," I was angry that she kept talking to Isadora in such a way. "Maybe instead of judging others for the choices that work for them, work on learning more about yourself. Also, I have no interest in turning you into some sex slave, so relax."

"Please, just let me go. I won't tell anyone, and I'll leave you alone. Please..." she begged, but I wasn't sure I believed her.

"The bond is unbreakable. Somehow, you made yourself part of this by jumping in when you did. It's a good thing you didn't bring anyone else through, who knows what would've happened!" Isadora said.

That got me a little worried since there was a third person in my dream. Did someone else close by somehow get tied into this bond unwittingly? Also, why eight pillars? That seemed significant. I'll need to convey this information to Isadora later after we deal with this problem.

Celeste just began sobbing even harder. I kind of felt sorry for her even though she tried to kill us multiple times. Right now, she just looked scared and afraid. I grabbed a box of tissues and set them in front of her.

"Look, I don't know what we're going to do, but let's start with your story Celeste. How did you find us and get into my room?" I asked, hoping to get answers.

She sniffed, grabbing a tissue and blowing her nose before continuing, "I was using a scrying spell to listen for... her," Well we were making progress. At least she wasn't calling her names. "I've been trying to find her ever since the other night. It wasn't until now that I got a lock on her location. It was a simple matter of opening a portal after that."

I looked at Isadora, but she seemed perplexed, "We don't learn any other types of spells in my world. We are taught the bonding spell for our school and that is it. Only a select few talented women learn how to open portals to different multiverses, and this is usually later in life after they can no longer bear children."

All of this was a lot to take in. Multiverses, spells, and who knows what else. Every answer led to ten new questions.

"So what were you doing in the alley last night?" I asked, wanting to understand more about how this all started.

Celeste looked a little worried, "I was waiting for her to come through. We got information that one of her kind would be arriving and I was sent to make her my familiar or to get rid of her. After you ran, I tried finding you in that warehouse, but some... thing attacked me," Her eyes glanced to her forearm which had a large white bandage wrapped around it. "I tried to continue searching, but I was losing blood, so I left."

It made me furious to hear even though I already knew she attempted to take Isadora's life. Part of me wanted to punish her for what she did. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths to re-center myself. Briefly, an image flashed into my head of Celeste bent over my knee with her bare ass exposed, spanking her until it turned bright red. I felt Isadora's hand on my shoulder, which snapped me out of it and brought me back down. I looked over at Celeste to see her squirming as if unable to sit comfortably for a moment.

"You will never harm her or any of their kind ever again," I seethed with anger. I didn't like the thought of taking someone's freedom of choice away, but I could at least stop Celeste from doing these unspeakable acts against Isadora or anyone from her world again.

Celeste gasped and began to shake, overwhelming fear filling her eyes, "No, please, they'll kill me. What-What am I supposed to do?"

"No one forced you to join some crazy group that was hunting down women. There are always repercussions for the decisions we make and you'll have to figure that out. Now, who are 'they' and why are you doing this to her kind?" If they would kill her, they might try tracking us down as well. I needed to know what we were getting into here.

"The Order of Ebon has been tracking their kind down for centuries. We try to stop them from infesting worlds, spreading their ideals that destroy families and turn the men they come into contact with into sex-craved maniacs," she said. It sounded like some weird religious thing to me.

Isadora was getting visibly tense next to me, "What have you done to my sisters?" She couldn't hold back her anger anymore.

Celeste didn't answer, I guess it had to come from me, "Answer her." I wanted to know as well.

"We bind them as our familiar and then rehabilitate them to change their ways," she explained.

"So you take away their free will because you have different beliefs?" It was infuriating dealing with fanatics like this. I was also worried that I was doing exactly the same thing to her.

"No- Yes- Look, we help them so they don't continue with their destructive behavior!" she really seemed to believe this doctrine of theirs.

"How many?" I asked.

"I- I don't know. She was to be my first. I am new to The Order, I'm not privy to that kind of information," she said.

"So you've never bonded or killed any of her kind before?" I clarified.

"No!" she said emphatically.

I took a deep breath again. I don't know what I would have done if she had given me a different answer. This Order of the Ebon sounded dangerous though.

"Do you even know anything about the world she comes from?" I asked Celeste.

"Of course, we are taught that they train sex demons there to travel to other worlds and enslave men to their baser desires," Celeste was sounding more like a brainwashed cultist each second. They dehumanize their victims to make it seem like they are actually doing them a favor. I kind of felt sorry for her if this Order wasn't a bunch of psychopathic murderers that could come after us at any time.

"So who knows you are here?" I asked, wanting to know if anyone knew our location.

"No one! I swear! I messed up last night and I needed to fix it before meeting up with my handler! Not to mention I lost their weapon," she looked scared.

"Who is your handler?" I asked.

"I don't know, we are supposed to meet on Sunday for further instructions. We generally do not know much information about each other for our safety and theirs," she said. "We rarely meet face-to-face unless we are making a dropoff," I didn't want to think about what she meant by dropoff. This whole thing was making me incredibly upset.

"Where are you supposed to meet this person?" I asked.

"I will receive the instructions sometime tomorrow evening about where and when to meet," she said.

"What happens if you don't show up?" I continued my interrogation.

"They'll send a special ops team in to figure out what happened and clean up the mess," she said. I didn't like where this was going. We had to figure something out or we'd have even more of these crazies after us.

"Master, what are we going to do? We can't let her go. She knows where you live, but if she doesn't make it to that meeting, we could be in more danger," Isadora said, also feeling worried.

"Don't worry, I won't let anything happen to you," I smiled while looking at her, reaching up and gently cupping her cheek with the palm of my hand.

Turning back to Celeste, "She's right. You know too much about us, so what do we do about that?" I was just thinking out loud.

"Please don't kill me," she was scared again.

"I'm not going to kill you," I thought more for a little while. I would not resort to killing, but maybe I could give her some instructions for our protection, "You cannot communicate to anyone in any way about any information about us. I mean absolutely no detail of any kind no matter how big or small and that includes any communication directly or indirectly, magically or mundanely."

I started thinking more I was inspired to take it further, "In fact, you're going to learn the truth about her world and your Order. Not this indoctrinated bullshit you've been taught, but the real truth about all of it." I looked at her as she shook, maybe because of the commands taking effect, "You are free to go, but I expect you to come back here tomorrow evening alone with nothing that can track your presence or location so we can figure out how to unravel this mess you created."

I might not have the power to destroy The Order of Ebon yet, but I could potentially deprogram this one. I hoped the truth would set her free. Perhaps she would help to unravel The Order from within. Maybe she really would be the Rogue.

Chapter 9

I gave Celeste some additional commands to make sure she wouldn't harm us. I hated using this power over her, but she left me no choice after attacking us twice now. It still left me contemplating the moral implications. Also, I would really have to watch what I say around either girl.

I was aware that I could just tell Celeste to not hate us or to completely forget about us, but if she was going to change, I wanted her to put in the work. It also seemed that maybe we could use Celeste's education to find out more about what we were up against.

Before Celeste left, she tried taking the dagger back, but I told her to leave it. It had markings similar to the bracer around my arm and I wanted to examine them both further.

Isadora seemed to relax more as soon as Celeste was gone. She laid back in bed, resting against my pillow. I grabbed some spare pillows and put them under her leg to keep her injured foot elevated and put the ice pack on before diving into the fridge to see what kind of meal I could make.

"You were much nicer to her than I would've been, master," Isadora said. For some reason, ever since she performed this bonding, she kept calling me 'master.' I told her she didn't have to, but she wanted to for some reason. "She has a serious stick up her ass and has some serious anger issues. What she needs is someone to fuck her brains out and make her scream. I would've just commanded her to spread her legs and have you give it to her, maybe that would have calmed her down."

I bumped my head on the top of the fridge hearing Isadora say that. "Ow, shit," I exclaimed. After pulling my head from the fridge and looking at her, I saw her smiling, "She tried killing us and you think the answer would be to do... that?"

"I mean, I bet she is pretty hot under that thing she wears. Besides, repressed bitches are always the craziest in bed. It's all that pent-up energy and missed opportunities." She talked about it so easily. Her world was so much different from mine, or maybe it was just my lack of experience.

"I knew this one girl in college who was so uptight and angry from the moment she started. When she finally opened up, she was the biggest freak on campus. When she came back pregnant from her mission, she had the most wild stories along with homemade videos that would make hardcore porn look tame. She had these wild orgies with dozens of men fucking her in every way possible. In the three months that she was on her mission, she probably screwed a thousand men at least."

"Your college definitely sounds different from mine," I tried desperately to remain somewhat normal and not turn into some blubbering mess, but I could definitely feel the heat rise in my cheeks. I concentrated on making some sandwiches for us in order to keep my mind grounded. I'd have to figure out what sort of food Isadora liked and go to the store to buy some supplies.

"Well, our education system has to be focused on preparing us for what we'll experience. We are taught from an early age to get in touch with our sexual nature, love ourselves, and really get in tune with our body and mind," Isadora exclaimed.

"Wow, that is so different from growing up here," I laughed, remembering some of the humiliating things growing up. Many of those experiences were the reason I was so nervous around women. Although, Isadora was definitely starting to bring me out of my shell.