This time the wait was even longer, but eventually the Dirac turned with a smile. “It doesn’t matter. When are you going out there again?”
“Within the next few days. I’m not sure I want to leave my slave again.”
The Dirac gave him a knowing eyebrow. “Just don’t get so distracted you forget your duties to your constituents.” He gave Mik'kal the wave that meant “we’re done here.”
Mik'kal rose. “Of course. I won’t.” He bowed. “I serve the Dirac Ortan.”
“And the Dirac is grateful for your service.”
His slave was quietly groaning, a sound he approved of. A touch on her cuffs released the chain and her hands dropped onto her back.
“Up.” He picked up the leash and tugged before she’d even stood, and she stumbled after him through the door and back down the hall.
25
Mik'kal
He didn’t speak on the way home, and thank the gods she didn’t try to, either.
The life force of the planet they called the nirza had both negative and positive sides. The nirza made a person aggressive and prone to fighting until it became fulfilled and content to rest, and then the positive side came out. But if someone didn’t learn how to control it, to tame it, the negative side of the nirza could also take over, running unchecked, never letting the positive side have a chance to open up.
The Adenję Trials were meant as a way to teach a person how to contain the negative and violent side enough to let the positive come out. The supplicant would spend time in one of the deep caves that dotted the planet. The deeper the cave and the closer to the planet’s core, the more the influence of the nirza was felt. The person was first overwhelmed by anger, often reliving perceived slights and insults, and responding with violent rage. Many people broke fists against the hard cave walls.
This anger would usually last a day or two, during which the influence of the nirza was so strong the person would neither eat nor drink. Often, they simply fell asleep in the middle of another rant, crumpling to the ground.
When they awoke, they’d find food and water nearby. From the mouth of the cave would come voices, quietly chanting and singing. The elderly Kaziri saw it as a duty to lead the younger ones to places of inner balance by sharing songs and meditations designed to help them push back the hate, accept the truth about themselves, even if uncomfortable, and embrace the positive. The negative thoughts could still flail about in the corners of their minds, but the trials gave them the tools to keep it under control.
For some people who didn’t feel the nirza as strong as others, this would be a reasonably easy exercise. For others more susceptible to the intense proximity of the nirza, there would be days of ranting and yelling before they began to pay attention to the persistent, steadfast voices echoing through the cavern. Those people had the highest need to learn how to integrate the two sides into their minds.
When Mik'kal asked what the Dirac’s nirza was saying, he wasn’t asking if the nirza had an opinion; he was asking the Dirac if his actions felt honorable and true, which is why it was such a personal question. It was a subtle distinction, he knew. A person chose a course of action, and if they were being true to themselves and honest, the nirza’s presence felt positive. If a person was fooling themselves or consciously choosing to do wrong, their nirza felt unsettled, and it wasn’t a feeling easily avoided or denied. It was why personal violence between Kaziri was uncommon. The feeling of wrongness was so uncomfortable that most people would never purposely go there.
And like lightning, the answer to what was going on flashed into his mind.
The Dirac had never had an Adenję trial, and because of that, the unchecked violent side of the planet’s nirza actually controlled his actions and thoughts rather than merely giving him an interpretation of his actions and thoughts.
Still, it was unimaginable a man as powerful as the current Dirac hadn’t gone through the trials. How could he manage effective governing without learning how to balance the positive and negative pulls? But his strange statement, and a number of other things that suddenly fell into place, pointed to that conclusion. Yes, he seemed balanced, but a sociopath can pretend to be calm and capable, and the smartest ones can pretend for a long time. The Dirac’s rise had been unusually rapid, and rumors had long circulated of ruthlessness toward opponents. Mik'kal, a powerful senator himself, had them quietly investigated but no evidence had ever emerged. Despite being unable to find any proof of wrongdoing, Mik'kal had observed with astonishment several times how opposing politicians suddenly retired, moved off-world, or even died.
By law, a person who hadn’t gone through the Trials yet couldn’t be elected, but there had emerged a quiet movement over the last fifty years that eschewed the trials, extolling the virtues of violence, calling the people who went through them soft and weak. Mik'kal had long suspected a few of the younger members of the Senate hadn’t gone through an Adenję Trial, merely faking or forging the proof, though he’d never been able to prove that, either. The deception would certainly be easier if they had the Dirac’s help.
Every young adult raised on Kazir, of every species, was supposed to have a Trial. In fact, everyone who moved to Kazir eventually needed to have one. No being could completely escape the influence of the planet.
He thought about the first group of humans. Was it possible they were much more susceptible to the nirza than anyone suspected? That could explain why they rose up as a group less than one solar after arriving, and before any of them were supposed to need a Trial. And the Kaziri people, whose cyclical need for violence had been growing before the humans got there, had met violence with violence and destroyed them.
He’d always been taught the Kaziri people were so horrified by the violence they turned away from it. What if the negative side of the nirza had been so sated by the violence it went dormant for years? The positive side would have had free rein and allowed for the tens of solars of rich intellectual and cultural development that had followed, which meant they’d finally been welcomed into the Allied Worlds.
Was it possible the Kaziri owed the humans a huge debt?
When Mik’kal and Mena reached the apartment, he pointed to a corner and told Mena to go there. She stood quietly, restrained hands at her sides.. He was pleased she didn’t fuss. He let her stay there while he changed clothes, his mind still chewing over thoughts.
He’d spent a week in the cave, almost frenzied with anger, breaking both hands. The pain hadn’t stopped him from having visions of doing violence, especially sexual violence, to females. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d fisted himself to spectacular orgasms while imagining what he could do with a whip to a soft female body, straining at her bonds, crying and begging for mercy he would never give. When he finally started listening to the meditations, and wresting back control of his mind, he was horrified with the darkness he’d seen inside. And when he emerged from the cave, the visions were stuffed into a corner, barred by a fragile mental door, and never spoken of. He had kept them at bay in the eight years since, satisfying that part of his nirza with rough sports and plenty of BattleSims. He knew he would always feel the influence strongly, knew there would always be darkness he’d have to push to the side, but he had always been able to confront reality with calmness and control and restrain himself from giving into the black void in his mind.
Until Mena.
She’d upended every bit of control he’d had, and he wondered how long he’d been ignoring his nirza when it would be unsettled or restless. He’d completely convinced himself his darker side had been tamed. Now, he knew it had simply been biding its time in the corners of his mind, and the less he satisfied it, the stronger it grew. By letting it out a little to feast upon Mena he’d satisfied and calmed it in a way nothing else ever had.
He needed her. But her words came back to him. He needed to take care of her, too.
“Mena, come over here.”
She came over at once and at his down-t
urned finger, knelt on the carpet.
Just the sight of her kneeling before him was enough to make him breathless, forgetting, for now, everything but her. Her skin was flushed and she was breathing rapidly. Her bright green eyes looked up at him. When she’d knelt, she’d parted her knees, and the skirt had fallen open perfectly to reveal her plump mound, and peeking out between the soft skin, he could see the hood of her clit.
He had some immediate things to take care of but couldn’t bear the thought of putting her away right now.
“Mena, I have work to do. You’ll stay here because it pleases me to look down and see your obedience from time to time.”
“Yes, sir.”
26
Mena
Mena was tumbling forward down a mental hill, and the end was nowhere in sight. She tried to grasp at concrete things—tried to find some reality to hold on to—but it kept slipping away. She didn’t know any longer what was reality and what was fantasy; what was fear and what was obedience; what was cruelty and what was… well, not cruelty. She didn’t really know what ‘not cruelty’ was.
She didn’t know what anything was.
His hand on her head at the Dirac’s office—the soft and shockingly comforting gesture—had tipped her upside down like an antique snow globe. Everything she knew and believed and hated about this man who called himself her Master had disappeared, leaving only uncertainty.
Was she reading way too much into his comforting gesture? If she chose to obey, was she going to be destroyed later when he reverted to type?
How had this happened? Everything she wanted in her life, and anything she didn't, was now irrelevant, tossed away to serve the whims of someone else. A man who controlled her life could let another man—a stranger—finger her, and she had no right to say ‘no’ or ‘stop’.
And yet…
There was that touch.
The afternoon dragged on while he worked and she knelt in silence. Eventually, she had to move her cramping legs, so she slid to the side and sat on one hip.
“Get back on your knees.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, Master. It hurts. Please.”
He stood. “Then up.”
She scrambled to her feet, awkward and stiff. He released her wrists from the cuffs and tugged her toward the bed.
“Please, Master, no!”
He ignored her as he placed her facing out, fastening one wrist above and to the side of her head, then the same to the other. Her legs were spread wide and fastened. When he stepped back, she was spreadeagled but still flat on her feet. He removed the belt around her waist and grinned.
She whimpered but said nothing as he bent over, reaching out to each wire around her ankles. His position brought his face to the level of her pussy. He left her ankles alone for a moment, parting the red skirt she still wore and pulling her mound toward his mouth. His long tongue darted out and found her clit. She gasped and trembled. He pushed closer, taking her clit in his teeth and gently biting. She shrieked as she struggled, the sensation too intense, and the ache between her legs unbearable.
He reached back down to the wires and flicked both of them, and her feet were yanked to either side. She was already held tight but knew it was going to get worse. He stepped close, so close she felt the heat of his skin, and his cool breath tickled her neck. She shivered. Then he flicked the wires over her head.
She was stretched as tight as a bowstring. The only part of her body that had any movement at all was her head.
He stepped back. “Now that is a lovely sight! I’ll enjoy looking at it all afternoon.”
He left her there as the sun traveled across the carpet. Her arousal faded as the time passed, only to be lit again when he would pass by and caress a nipple or squeeze a buttock. When her arms grew sore and she began making little noises of discomfort, he rose and came over to her.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
She nodded hesitantly.
He cupped her chin. “Good. That’s exactly how your master wants you to be.” His words were gentle, almost tender, and it was almost more than she could bear.
“You’re covered up too much.” He unfastened the skirt and it dropped, puddling underneath her spread legs, as red as the heat suffusing her limbs. The fabric over her breasts offered no resistance, either, as it slid backwards off her shoulders and onto the bed behind.
His hand caressed a cheek and trailed down her neck, over a breast, and down her stomach, leaving behind a line of tingling electricity. She wiggled, trying to pull away, because she knew what he’d find.
When his finger slid into her folds, the wet sounds made her face flood with embarrassment.
“The universe gave men a great gift when it created the female pussy. A place so soft and tender, yet tough and resilient. So full of longing, always aching to be claimed and speared by its master. And the clit—a bundle of nerves wired so tightly the mere brush of a finger ignites a fire not easily put out.”
His hand slid across her clit and her cry of need rose into the stone arches above the bed.
“For a master, the primary purpose of a slave’s pussy is not her enjoyment. It is for control and training. It is rewarded for obedience,”—he slid deep inside, and she gasped with pleasure—“and punished for disobedience.” He pulled his hand away and without warning, smacked her hard on her labia. She screeched in pained surprise.
“Now, the clit has a different function.” He turned his attention to the swollen and needy nub, and the sting of the smack faded away. Gasping, she strained against the wires, and her head dropped back in ecstasy. “By giving it the barest of stimulation, the master can increase the slave’s submissiveness by orders of magnitude, even against her will. She may try to hold out, to be strong, to resist, but this tiny bundle of nerves imposes its will on her mind, and she suddenly longs to kneel, to service his cock, and to offer up her body. Am I right?”
She was struggling to follow his hypnotizing words while her womb was turning inside out, but she caught the question, and in her frenzied state she had no ability to form a lie.
“Yes, Master!” she gasped. The twist in her gut tightened, rose up, and was about to engulf her mind.
“The other, more important purpose of the clit is to teach the slave that her pleasures are rare and precious, because his pleasure is the focus of her existence.”
He pulled his hand away just as the orgasm hit hard, but without any more stimulation it couldn’t finish. She cried out at the emptiness and pulled frantically on the wires, trying to pump her hips to get enough stimulation to finish, but it was futile. Her pussy spasmed for another minute, then relaxed, still empty, needy, and aching.
She hung from the wires, head drooping. He’d given her a ruin. She’d never had one before but knew instinctively what it was. A ruin was an orgasm cut off too soon, denying the person any pleasure, and was the ultimate reminder to a slave who controlled her very soul.
He smoothed her hair back from her face.
“You’re beautiful when you’re desperate. Are your mind and body still at war with each other?”
How did he know? How could he have known that telling her in a gentle, almost affectionate tone that she suffered for his pleasure, combined with the delicate touches that set her skin ablaze, and the ruin that brought her to the edge of sanity, would reunite her mind and body for the first time since she’d arrived?
She closed her eyes. “No, sir,” she whispered.
“Would you protest if I told you I’d like you to stay this way for a while longer?”
His words, his touch—they struck a submissive chord in her she was compelled to sing out loud.
“No, sir, I won’t protest.”
He smiled and stroked her cheek. “Then no words until I decide you’re done. You may make quiet noises.”
“Yes, master.”
He returned to his desk. Her cheek tingled where he’d touched it, for many minutes after.
Her shoulders and ar
ms hurt, her back hurt, she had to pee, and she was needy and desperate. Nothing had changed.
Yet, somehow, everything had changed.
27
Mik'kal
For the next few days, Mik'kal was so busy he had to ignore the alluring slave who dutifully cleaned the small apartment and knelt at his feet, or sat in the window, when she was done. He used her mouth three times every day before meals, and he went through the motions of spanking her, and fucking her pleasure hole, but it was almost like he was watching himself do it as an outside observer. His pushed aside the nagging presence of his nirza.
He was ignoring her because the prefabricated structures he’d ordered for the humans, strong enough to withstand storms, had disappeared. He’d even arranged shuttles to help the humans ferry everything down, despite what he’d told the captain on his visit, but the company canceled, and no amount of yelling or threats changed their minds. He placed a Zone of Silence around himself as he worked, not wanting to worry her, but he knew she watched him as he gesticulated with anger at the holograms while he made calls.
She was obedient for the first day, but probably sensing the lack of attention from him, soon started acting out in small ways. First she ‘forgot’ to thank him for letting her go to the bathroom, which he didn’t notice until later. Then she ‘forgot’ to ask permission to go at all. She emerged from the bathroom to his displeased countenance, dropped to her knees, and paled. For that, she received ten cane stripes and a punishment fuck, but when he was done, he stroked her back and wiped her tears, and her “thank you, Master” was accompanied by a small smile.
Tribute: Captives of Kazir Page 15
