To the Manor Passed Ch. 02

Another story from the vault, fresh and ready for public release! This one's really more of a coda to the first chapter, but I hope you enjoy regardless!

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Jasmine felt spectral eyes upon her from the moment she approached her Mistress' door, knew ahead of time that it would be the most watched room in the entire manor. The things that watched from the corners now, though, could not have been tethered to any specific room, were not ghosts in the same way that the denizens of the outer chambers were; Jasmine doubted that they corresponded to any given individual living being at all. More likely they had simply... always been there.

The door was not locked, though Jasmine would not have been surprised at all to learn that it had been, right up until the very second she had touched it. It glided open for her, the space within a simple anteroom, deep red carpet laid over dark wood trim, other doors leading off into more of the Mistress' chambers on every visible wall.

It stayed that way until the maid crossed the threshold. Only then did the boundaries of normalcy begin to blur.

It felt very much to Jasmine like she imagined vertigo must feel like, a dizziness beyond mere disorientation that hit her in waves and, by degrees, altered the way the room around her seemed. The floor fell away first, carpet literally sliding away beneath Jasmine's bare feet, descending as though it were the facade of some set, changed as the scene transitioned from one to the next. Jasmine herself remained in place, standing now on air as the plane of the carpet began to drift and spin below her, something that had never been moored to anything at all, no earth, no reality, nothing but the momentary illusion, now gone.

Below her were stars, throbbing in a dark sky that she had never seen before. The sensation of standing normally but with nothing at all to take her weight was somehow more upsetting.

The walls blurred, the doors along their surfaces coming together, slithering around corners to meet and draw into a single point, the sight like a drug-induced hallucination made real. It even opened wrongly, sliding upward like the eyelid of some terrible third eye, revealing the Mistress herself within.

Standing on nothing, the Mistress looked resplendent, clad in a black robe that clung to the thin curves of her body, the depth of color within it stunning and unreal, reminding Jasmine of those experimental pigments that absorbed light. Just looking at it felt like looking at something that had been photoshopped poorly.

'Ah, good morning, my dear,' the Mistress smiled from the thing that was once her doorway, the background of the room behind her little more than a churning mass of light. 'How was your night? If you're here then it can't have been too strenuous on you, none of my attendants would let you in if you hadn't impressed.'

Jasmine did open her mouth to answer, but the Mistress hardly seemed interested, turning back to the chaos of the space behind her. Her robe's long black tail followed along behind her as she went, descending further into this space that was not the manor anymore as she did. Naked but not cold, tentative but no longer frightened of what she would find within the Mistress' chambers, Jasmine followed.

Once the strangest things had come to pass, what did one have to lose in going further in?

The walls continued to blur as she approached them, each step a fight between her trust for her Mistress and the simple observation of empty space beneath her. The door frame persisted the longest, but it too dissolved into the interplay of light and dark that had been slowly swallowing the room since Jasmine had entered. Stepping through the second threshold and into the Mistress' chambers proper replaced the chaos with something more orderly, if no less confusing to look at.

A cauldron of stars below, spiral stairs wrought of thin and delicate glass descending into its midst. The Mistress was now more than halfway down, closer to the bottom of the celestial tower that had somehow come to rest, penetrating down through the middle of a two story building. The light of it all shone blue and white as Jasmine began her descent, through the layers of nighttime that had settled around her; starlight ran in rivulets over the brown bareness of her skin, a thousand luminous eyes gleaming out from the void.

She followed the pure black cape behind her Mistress down into the depths, its trail cutting a swathe of nothingness through the inexplicable stars. For a while there was only the sound of footsteps, her Mistress in heels, but eventually other noises rang out through the dark; songs that had no names, the clanging of distant bells cast from unknowable metals.

It became clear to Jasmine that the things she was descending toward were not stars at all, but points of light that were something else entirely. She had been in many rooms populated by ghosts before, she knew the feeling of unseen eyes drawing down her body, and drawing closer to these strange constellations, walking steadily toward the stars felt very similar. Something like a photo negative of the specters she was used to; luminous where the manor's ghosts hid in shadows, open in their surveillance, singing their existence to the world.

Insofar that what was down here, this vast and draining void, could be considered a part of the world above...

Reaching the bottom was like falling to the floor of a star-spangled well, surrounded by light that glimmered and moved, the very touch of it upon Jasmine's skin like the touch of the ghosts upstairs. Mistress seemed to move through it all unrestricted, the light glancing off of her robe as though it were trespassing, but for Jasmine the experience made it difficult to even walk straight. After an entire night of spectral caresses her body was overly sensitive and the ghostlight uncaring where it touched her; even the smallest of motions across her bared form seemed to her like a deep kiss.

'Do keep up, Jasmine dear,' the Mistress called over her shoulder once she overheard her maid panting to herself. It felt like the sound should echo in a chamber so large as this one, but it did not, instead sounding as though it had been whispered directly into Jasmine's ear. 'Time doesn't flow the same in here as it does out there, but I don't like to be kept waiting either way. You understand.'

The stars stroked at Jasmine constantly as she walked through them, light that kissed and licked at her skin with a distant intensity she could not fully describe. She forced herself to continue in Mistress' footsteps, though the temptation to stop and sate her aching pussy on even the cool regard of starlight was overwhelming. But the watching lights were just as much a part of the manor as the human ghosts above, things that, through one process or another, bent to the Mistress' will; not a one of the spotlights that breathed across her clit, or worshiped temporarily at her nipples, gave up enough pressure or attention to bring her over the brink that Jasmine had been on since the night before.

That didn't stop them from gathering focus as she progressed deeper into this hidden cosmos, however...

The stars knew where to shine on her, their wandering lights honing gradually in on the centers of Jasmine's pleasure; her chest, between her thighs, even the well of her navel, where she had always been secretly sensitive. There was no way to deny these twinkling eyes their sentience anymore; whatever they were, and whatever they intended, those lights were alive, observing.

Weighing up Jasmine as she walked, naked, into their midst.

When the change happened, the transition from one space to another, it did so instantly, almost randomly. The stars surrounding them flickered, changed color and rearranged themselves; suddenly the staircase they had descended was gone, the floor a flowing celestial river cast in the same pale blue as the stars themselves. They thronged now behind the Mistress, a single wall of glittering sapphire, marking out the sheer darkness of the lady of the manor's silhouette.

The Mistress allowed her robe to fall open, and within there were more lights, things that coiled and uncoiled. In their closeness Jasmine could see what they really were.

The lights were the smooth, glassy surfaces of countless sinuous tentacles, writhing in the dark spaces of the Mistress' clothes. They were eyes, and hidden, speaking mouths.

Every star was alive, and down here, in the heart of the manor, they composed something like the board of caretakers for the spectral throng above.

A curling tide of strange flesh, tentacles uncoiled from within the Mistress' robe, fanning out like the tails of her robe, veils of starlight that moved according to their own internal rhythms. They curled about her feet, drew up to drape themselves over her shoulders, rose to frame her rail thin body with a writhing, twinkling background. She stood in its center, its fulcrum, as though she had been born to be there.

'Welcome to the true manor, Jasmine.' The Mistress did not smile, but her expression was at peace in a way the maid longed to replicate. 'We don't invite many down here, but those we do... let's say that my employers here can see their potential from the first.'

'Potential, ma'am?' Jasmine's voice lay thick and strained in her throat, the physics of the chamber itself working to drag down and distort the words the moment they left her. It was the first time she had spoken since entering, and the lights brightened to hear her.

'A place like this doesn't just work, dear,' the Mistress said. 'The departed up above, they exist as they do due to the largesse of my employers, and that takes effort. So when my paymasters, with their... wider field of vision, see someone upstairs who might be of use to our little operation, in time, they want to meet them. They want to meet you, dear.'

'I... suppose I am at their service as I am yours, ma'am.' Jasmine would have curtsied, had she been wearing anything with which to do so.

'Precisely the kind of answer that will make you big in this business, my dear.' Clapping, the Mistress let her robe fall open completely, revealing a pale strip of a body beneath it, all but dwarfed by the immensity of the tentacled creature that... what, exactly? Clung to her back? Inhabited the inside of her clothes like some kind of symbiote?

It was impossible to tell.

'I am not entirely sure what sort of business you're bidding me enter, ma'am,' Jasmine answered, tremulously. 'I'm sure you can appreciate this... it's not something I can readily identify.'

'Of course! But I'm sure you didn't believe that a house full of ghosts just happens on its own. Somebody needs to look at the boundaries between life and death and think to themselves, "well, that won't do at all."'

Oddly enough, this idea was more dizzying than the alternative, that the manor had just been a piece of luck, untouched by thinking agents. That there were things that could even detect these sorts of things, let alone consider them malleable and within their power... Jasmine reeled to think of it.

And they wanted her?

'Come. Join our little commune,' the Mistress extended a hand, her nails immaculately painted and her forearm squirming with crystalline tentacles. 'It wouldn't even occur to my employers to use a vertical hierarchy here. We all just... are.'

The Mistress had never been overly familiar with her employees, the rather personal nature of the manor's punishments notwithstanding, and so to see her offering her hand now froze Jasmine in place for a moment. The fact that she herself was naked beneath her robe- and Jasmine had not even thought to sexualize her yet- was only an afterthought, the simple intimacy of her fingers outstretched, clasping at her maid's as Jasmine reached out and took that hand...

... She hadn't even thought about it, but very quickly, it was done, and the Mistress' soft grip guided Jasmine closer, the stars at peace and silent all around them.

'Good girl...' Mistress spoke in a whisper, lights trailing over her skin, Jasmine's, the encouraging caress of starlight drawing them ever closer, until her tentacles could reach out and embrace the maid.

They felt like silk and the rays of a spring afternoon sun.

Around her calves and forearms, her midriff, her neck, the tentacles curled about Jasmine's body and drew her the rest of the way in, not to the Mistress herself but past her, closer to the collection of lights that served as the foundations of the manor. They curled inward toward her, a tower leaning in to inspect its prize as she approached. She had never felt more like a butterfly pinned under glass than she did in that moment, inspected by countless inscrutable intelligences and worse, in the course of a literal job interview.

And she was naked. Jasmine was pretty sure she had had nightmares about this.

The whispering of many voices began to brew in the back of her mind, drowning out her Mistress' approaching footfalls, sweet and bright sounds that touched her hindbrain and stoked feelings of fascination within the young maid. There were not words there, exactly, or if there were, not in a language that Jasmine could understand, but the meaning came through in bits and pieces, fragmentary and drifting through the dark of her mind.

Mistress appeared beside her head as the tentacles held her, slithering over her body in warm waves, impossible to predict. They bore Jasmine up as the ghosts above had the night before, off of her feet and closer to the collected spotlights of the board. It was clear from the outset that the Mistress would only have a partial role in what was to come, but still she laid her hands on Jasmine's shoulders, comforting and unconcerned at their shared nakedness.

Jasmine, not knowing where in the glare bearing down on her to look, turned her eyes to her Mistress'. Tentacles roiled at the borders of her slim form, touching her far more intimately than they were touching Jasmine; a pair of them, thin tendrils the lengths of Jasmine's fingers, slid constantly over the tiny A-cups her employer bore, teasing the rounded pinks of her nipples, flitting over the slight curves there. More curled between shapely thighs, over her abdomen, several seemed to move inside the Mistress, active between her legs in a way Jasmine could not entirely see from her position.

'We've made a house of ghosts together, they and I. And they wanted to meet you...' Trailing, intimate fingers ran down Jasmine's body, strange counterpoints to the slithering tentacles. 'Who knows? You might be the one to find out what they really want...'

A delicate tip flicked over Jasmine's clit, overworked and still sensitive, and she bucked in the tentacle's embrace. Like water, the starlit tentacles moved with her, accepting and flowing around her motions so that Jasmine moved in space not an inch, no matter how she struggled. Patient and serene, the Mistress looked down at her, listening to her maid pant and squirm. When the spasm subsided and Jasmine stilled, the arch and royal woman leaned in and pressed her lips, just for a moment, to Jasmine's.

After the night she had had, the maid opened her mouth instantly, accepted her Mistress' tongue inside.

'Goodbye, dear,' patting her on the cheek, the Mistress stepped aside and surrendered her maid fully to the tentacles. If Jasmine had had the time to consider her words she might have been alarmed at the finality of it, but the squirming length between her legs went back to work before she had the opportunity. Thin and sinuous, it slid between the puffy softness of her labia, its tip looping around her clit and holding tight to it.

The result was only a gentle touch, not penetrative in the least, but more than enough to take Jasmine's breath away. The tentacle tugged, both drawing its length down the insides of her lips and pulling hard on her hooded, sensitive bud; Jasmine cried out, the sound swallowed immediately by the light that surrounded her, her pussy surging upward toward that familiar edge of climax.

Her dripping hole knew exactly where to go, and the warm, celestial touch of the thing working between her legs drew her toward it so very, painfully easily.

Slowly, with a casual air that truly drove home how much of a specimen on a table she was, the board drew Jasmine upward toward their now swirling central mass. The bowed constellation of watching stars drew their luminous gazes down her bareness, spotlights that swept along Jasmine's body like hot, loving tongues. Her toes curled, chest rising and falling with panting, desperate breaths as every moment drove her closer to orgasm.

The light grew in her vision, achingly reminiscent of the pale, eerie glow of Natalie's specter in the night. The response Jasmine had to it was almost Pavlovian, her pussy clenching down around nothing as she began to anticipate the cruelty of denial one more time. She rose, the board's whispering voices so close to coherence now, their glow all-encompassing, now a singular stroke that covered and teased her front, dark skin flushed with heat and sensation.

The tentacle at her cunt tugged her upward in waves, its glassy surface now slick with her juices and clasped around a swollen clit free of its hood. Her moans began to take on a whining, pleading edge, unsure of whether or not the lights could even understand her tone.

She was close, closer than she had ever been, a mere moment away from tumbling over into orgasm, when the board took her in entirely.

The stars parted, their shape something like a vertical, spiraling mouth opening up before her, and darted down, closing around her. Their whispers resolved into English the moment Jasmine passed the threshold, stentorian and singular, a chorus of blazing voices spoken in tongues of fire that now licked over her body entire.

You have not been granted permission...

They kept stimulating her pussy, working harder and faster within the body of the board than they had outside. The first spasms of climax hit Jasmine just as the stars closed in around her, the jaws of the board snapping shut. Their light held her pinioned, shone upon every inch of her at once, voice and touch and intent sliding over her skin, penetrating her through, right to the nerves...

Where the board held the impulses of Jasmine's precious orgasm frozen in place.

It went on and on, a plateau of pleasure without end. Was it enough? Was it a real orgasm?

She genuinely couldn't say.

Her pussy could not clench, not within the embrace of the light, her body trapped within the rising tightness of climax, in the beginnings of the first wave and unable to progress further. Desire still brewed in her, need unquenched by the low- too low- rumbling of sensation in her cunt. Tentacles ran their slick, writhing lengths over her body, the light kissed her endlessly, but no matter the stimulation, Jasmine could not ascend to the peak, nor subside back down to the frustration she had, unfortunately, become accustomed to.

Worst of all, within the body of the board, she understood what they wanted with her now.

'No...' She whimpered, unable to muster the will to yell before the patient, eternal light. She trembled, body twitching with feelings going on far longer than they ever had before. She shuddered, already feeling the board's light working its way through the whorls and convolutions of her frustrated, denied being.

For Mistress of the manor was not a person, but a position passed down over the many, many years that this land had been a hot spot for ghosts and a staging ground for whatever inscrutable plan her true employers had in their manifold mind. Like any high-ranked position there were rules, and expectations; there was an interviewing process, by which the board might find out whether the human body could be massaged into the form they desired.