totalDomination(
target: Amefrid Amallark,
);
Now there was nothing but raw emotion. Simple and primal fear. Flashing vivid images of sharp objects, great heights, deep pools of black blood, shapes so distorted it was impossible to connect it to any real physical thing. So reduced was Amefrid that the Goddess Mother had stripped her of the ability to even think in language anymore.
So, she would do it for her.
Did she really have to spell it out now to her number one gurl?
They were both thinking these same things now, at the same time, for how could Amefrid perceive anything but exactly what Goddess Mother wanted her to perceive? Incapable of distinguishing anymore between herself and her Mother, Amefrid felt as if it was her very self that did the berating:
By every gram of grit left in her, Amefrid was finally able to tear herself out of total domination, attempting to try to plead to Goddess Mother with genuine authenticity:
I swear, I’ll do better! I’ll learn from these mistakes!
You do not have the time.
The flaying screech seared into Amefrid’s mind like the utter cold that felt hot to the touch, molecular blades of hydrogen bonded ice tearing through nerve like licking flame. Amefrid needed to scream, but her mouth was not allowed to move, so she couldn’t. This was just puppeteering though.
The Goddess had ended the Total Domination. It was beginning to upset Her Omnipotence to have her daughter’s mind so very close, and even though she held the entirety of Ami’s consciousness in her palm, and could discern the cancerous resentment that the Goddess had noted long ago, growing all this time, she did not deign to crush it, to simply have it smote by Power Word: Kill. She had even considered it- a single flickering suicidal ideation. She knew Amefrid was likely to betray her. Attempt a coup. It would be any rotation now.
Let her try.
Her Omnipotence would be eager to see how far Ami got. But it wouldn’t happen. Ami was too weak. And even the Goddess had to admit the privacy of her own mind should be sacred and inviolable, and so - she had just violated her own daughter’s mind. It made the Goddess feel unclean. Any picosecond longer of the unforgivable mind flay would have been intolerable even for the Goddess herself.
Simpler was punishment. Classical conditioning. Pain.
Mother please! I… I haven’t been myself lately!
There was nothing left for Amefrid but vulnerability now. All she could offer was her own truth. Not an excuse.
I was depressed!
Of course.
I just needed some time to recover!
Of course. Of course it was this one again. Of course, the first thing she’s allowed to think again is depression.
Depressed? You are the Princess Administrator! You rule Reath itself, in the stead of the God Empress of Elvankind! Tell me, daughter, what exactly is it that makes you depressed?
But it was not that the Goddess was unsympathetic.
Even in Her Omnipotence, even the God Empress of Elvankind herself had to admit that the climate of Reath had gotten unbelievably fubar, and it was understandable why her daughter would feel hopeless, defeated, and nihilistic. The Empress, after all, was once depressed too, both as an elvan queen, before her apotheosis- and before that even. It was much more so as a Godlike Being before her ascendance to elvan, but those memories from so long ago were no longer clear. Her Omnipotence didn’t care for those times, when she was still not quite a God yet. Not even an elvan.
She empathized with her own daughter. She had felt those things too. She just might still feel those things even now.
No.
She was not depressed.
She was a God.
How could a God be depressed?
How could Amefrid let herself be so weak?
She flayed her mind again.
Now the Empress replayed the exact moment she last complained about her depressive symptoms. And the one before that. And the one before that. Other madnesses: bipolar, borderline, bulimia. Again, and again, ad nauseam, and so Amefrid threw up. But since her mouth was not allowed to move, the sick just ballooned in her cheeks.
And…?
She was waiting. Something. Anything. Any spark of ingenuity, or grit, the kind that Senjya was showing every rotation in the airless deserts and cosmically irradiated wastes of Aryss. Anything other than yet another insipid excuse, or feigned malady, or complaint about the weather, one more time.
Amefrid’s mind and the very fabric of her being had been completely owned. She collapsed; her legs folded underneath and sobbed quietly. She was on her knees. Please. Please Goddess Mother. Please. She was now truly begging.
This was not behavior befit for a Princess.
I know the reason for your indolence.
Senjya couldn’t contain her glee, though her muscles were frozen too. Her psionic aura emanated faerie illusions of flickering violet and cerulean. Now was the good part.
Had she truly understood what exactly her mother had done to her sister, even Senjya would have revolted, and might have come to Amefrid’s aid. But it was impossible for Amefrid was now convinced every self-flagellating thought she just had was completely of her own making.
You choose to do nothing and only care to satiate your hedonism. You have grown complacent. You sit in Vyredia. Debasing yourself. Your narcotics addictions. Your pleasure soldiers. They are unfit for such wasteful purposes. Either use them strategically or consign them to labor.
Amefrid trembled. It was clear.
You know what excuse you tell yourself, Ami- it’s all going to end anyway. So why does it matter? There will be no God Empress of Elvankind, at all, eventually. I have nothing to aspire to. No future at all. No hope.
During these revolutions, she thought that every rotation.
Hope never to feel this again, Ami.
It was easier to staunchly repress a single mind flaying, but two or three in a row, back-to-back, there is simply not enough time – the single most critical psionic resource – to recover. Permanent damage was possible, but the Empress knew how to apply surgical precision.
Do not think that I enjoy this. Your Goddess Mother does this out of love. To purge the weakness from you.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The Goddess, having already totally dominated Amefrid, now had all the tools she needed to craft the most tailored and punishing mind flay she had made yet.
Every of Amefrid’s worst self-directed thoughts began to echo in her, a cacophony of self-derision and regret. The Goddess ripped out her shame and smothered her in it. Every nagging doubt. Every loathing of the self. Regrets for the same rudenesses to her fellow elvan that she couldn’t help but repeat, redundantly, but never did she correct her ways. Memories upon memories of mistakes upon mistakes, replayed, repeated, amplified.
Your own fault. Your arrogance caused this. Your hubris. And as she replayed every insolence, for every rebellious curse, every single time Amefrid had thought- I hate you, Mom! or worse, the Empress made sure to give her a good shock of hypothermic pain. Pain was worse when delivered at the point before total destruction, so unlike the previous flayings, sudden and quick, this was excruciating. The perception of cold was all hallucinatory of course. The Empress would never allow real physical harm to come upon her most adored creation. Yet Amefrid shivered so hard it looked to Senjya like a grand mal seizure.
The frustrations of the Goddess finally abated.
She sent Amefrid one last thought before releasing her from the grip of this second flaying:
You gorge yourself fat.
And this last insult was one that every daughter hated to hear from their mother, cruel as it was blunt.
Senjya had to tilt her head. Chubby Ami usually took pride in her voluptuousness, not that it mattered anyway because she could take for her pleasure any soldier she wanted, such was her right, but Amefrid had really let herself go. Wasn’t she supposed to be spending all her hours of every rote on coitus? But she still couldn’t burn that fat off? And here Senjya thought she was obsessed with pleasure. While she could not help but hold still, both in respect and by command, she psionically snickered, something the Empress was all too ready to permit Amefrid to perceive, all the more to humiliate the spoiled one.
The Empress had lied. She wasn’t just disappointed. This time, she was most certainly truly angry. It used to be that she just felt disappointment for both, but finally Senjya had begun to start showing results. Amefrid’s curse was the expectation put upon her.
Listen well to Senjya now.
This had come far too long.
She released Amefrid from the grip of paralysis. Amefrid, her physical mobility finally reclaimed, still could not do much but clutch herself in the fetal position, gyrating erratically in the graspless blank chamber, so utterly shattered was she. She could scream now but was simply too weak to do so. All she could manage was whimpers.
And she – it almost never happened that the Empress allowed another to do so in her presence – then gave Senjya the right to move and speak.
Senjya took to spoken language. Elvans liked to use it on idiosyncratic occasions. One obvious natural tendency was to laugh. Psionic laughter just wasn’t quite as satisfying.
“Bahahaha! Aah-ha-ha-HA!”
Senjya kicked off the wall to float face to face with Amefrid – once again locked in a hold person, now cast by Senjya instead – and stuck out her tongue, then she pulled an eyelid down, closed the other. Resisted the urge to slap her, that would have been too much. The Empress hated how childish Senjya could be.
“Guess who’s gonna be eating fruit now, sister.” Oh, delicious fructose!
Unable to resist revealing her grand plan in true villainous fashion, she reverted to hallucinations to save breath. She bombarded Amefrid with tedious analyses and exhausting snipes, her stagnating production, her excessive loss of soldiers, not to mention workers flayed to fraying for mere punishment.
I’ve returned home triumphant. I’ve slain the Aryssal Rogue Queen Sidarael.
She made sure to push her triumphs deep into Amefrid’s mind’s eye as deep as she could, all the better for her sister to weep from it. Once the Aryssal Rogues were all slain, then they could finally begin to truly maximize the profit of their new untrammeled realm.
When I hatch my new flight of dragons built from the mined ores of Aryss, I shall conquer the orcs just like I have conquered the rogues. Now Mother will choose me instead of you to be her successor.
Amefrid groaned. But she made it the snarkiest groan she could.
“Cunt!” So preoccupied Senjya was mentally with her psionic ranting, and nowhere near as talented in psionics as her mother, that gutturally, she could only utter the basest and crudest insult at what meager retort Amefrid could muster.
She couldn’t help herself and raised her hand to slap Amefrid, but it became frozen in place. The Goddess tsk-tsked and simply wagged her finger. Flaying the mind was fine, but no physical harm – real violence – was allowed. Senjya’s hand dropped to her side.
Amefrid could now hold Senjya’s gaze again instead of wincing and she stared defiantly back. Even now you cannot touch me, she thought. Know your place, sister.
Fine.
So Senjya continued. Her plan was simple. If they were going to conduct trade with the orcs, it had better be disruptive. In fact, Amefrid ought to thank herself, because in fact, she was the one who inspired her dear sister with this new plan. Maybe Ami could learn a thing or two in Aryss.
Enough. The Goddess had had enough of Senjya’s taunting. This would be all she allowed.
So Senjya fell silent, both in tongue and in mind, of her own accord, so that she would not be paralyzed in a hold person.
The Empress felt a pang of pity seeing her once favored daughter in this sorry state. But this was tough love. Amefrid couldn’t be allowed to continue as she had, or it would become an existential threat for all Elvankind.
The Goddess was glad that she did not plan on ever dying, for if she had desired the end, it would mean choosing one of these two cretins to succeed her. No. Better was eternal and immortal rule, thankless and joyless as it may be.
She had wasted enough time on this.
Senjya, I grant you Reath. Amefrid, you will now administrate Aryss.
What?
What?!
It was enough to rouse Amefrid from stupor.
No! Not Aryss! Anywhere but Aryss! Anywhere but that hell!
She was trying to overcome her own denial, but she couldn’t. Her fight against the deep serotonergic depletion deep in her gut left her defeated. This couldn’t be. This wasn’t real! This was a nightmare. This was a dream. She had to wake up! She physically slapped her own face as hard as possible. She had to wake up!
The Empress sighed. It sounded like a rattling wheeze deep in her ancient bones.
This is real, Ami. Accept it. You will not survive on Aryss if you don’t.
Good luck, Amefrid. But Senjya didn’t mean it, she hoped Amefrid would face every insurmountable problem with the same misfortune she had when she was stuck there.
Though still in shock, Amefrid gathered what little left of her wits she could gather, bowed deeply, and then took a grateful inhalation of precious, well oxygenated air, but that was the last thought of hers the Empress could bother to scry.
As suddenly as they appeared in her little bubble of power, her daughters vanished from perception, and the Goddess carried on the monotonous task of ruling.
The Elvans were descended from the Godlike Beings.
At the end of the Lost Age, before the last flame of the Godlike Beings were finally extinguished by the Catastrophe, their legacy was saved – the Eucatastrophe – by the advent of the elvans.
The dwindling final remnant of the Godlike Beings had lost the means to procreate. The androus Godlike Beings had all perished many revolutions before. Among the gynous that remained was the First Elvan Queen, the Godlike Being who was the first to commune with the spirits. Through magickally crafted cocoons that were placed inside the body, the First Elvan Queen delivered the miracle of elvan immaculate conception and birthed her clan. She shared her magicks with the final remnant, and together they became the First Elvans.
In communion with the spirits, and the spirits all in communion together, the elvans created the magick of psionics.
A Magickal Singularity of Consciousness.
Truest thoughts of others could be known, false thoughts of a deceptor’s creation could be inscribed. Profane meddling with the deepest and most sacred parts of the self.
The spirits whispered arcane secrets, and from these secrets the elvans unlocked ever greater magicks. The great Celestial Escalator could take the elvans to the void. And in the void the elvans birthed the dragons, which carried the clans across the void to their new realms of Phyros and Aryss.
With dragonbreath and carapace the first elvans conquered all Reath, taking the mutants they captured as their slave caste.
In the beginning the elvans ignored the isolated cases of aberrant ‘super mutants’, but after the revolt of Protorca, and the march of the Horde through the Red Path, the clans together swore to a unified and just cause of war.
Such defiance could not be unanswered. The elvans brought their dragons fiercely upon the orcans but could not raze them to the ground lest they exacerbate the Catastrophe and ruin what beauty there was left on Reath.
Orcan rule on Protorca could not hold, and the Horde fled to the vast expanses of Orca, the event known as the Exodus.
As the soldiers of the elvan race together marched to their doom on Orca, the Traitor Queen turned her dragons against her own.
The Traitor Queen emerged the victor of the War of the Clans, the last Queen of Reath, and declared herself the God Empress of Elvankind upon the annihilation of Phyros. Only two Queens – the Rogue Queen Talisa and the Rogue Queen Sidarael – survived the onslaught by fleeing to Aryss. The third Rogue Queen, Dannelle, had absconded to Phyros – seeking to adapt to the Catastrophe, to tame forbidden fire itself, by finding home in its final state – but she too came to heel, when the God Empress took her dragons across the void to annihilate the Clan Callethe.
But the Princess Senjya, taking the cause of the Goddess, orchestrated the assassination of the Rogue Queen of Clan Boucher, while the Rogue Queen of Clan Talauth was driven out into the Aryssal wastes. She had, after all, just announced that very deed to her Goddess Mother. How proud she must have made her Goddess.
Finally, with the orcan horde brokering for peace, the triumph of the Traitor Empress was complete, and now all elvans knew who their Goddess was.
Even though she wasn’t quite a God.
Not really.
But she was. She was one of a kind. The heir presumptive.
For even the Goddess Mother herself had to admit that by the textbook definition, the elvans were parasites.
This was what the Goddess wanted them to be. She hadn’t quite gotten them all domesticated yet.
It was the recording of a worker’s face being doused with liquid nitrogen, the tragic fate of one of the Rogue Queen Talisa Talauth’s spies that she smuggled aboard an Amallarkean freight dragon.
It was
She was.
Define God?
In the lingo of Psions, this was known as ‘cooldown’.
The Empress chose this specific torture out of an ulterior motive - to activate Amefrid’s brown fatty acid through the release of succinate - because Godslike Beings above she too had to admit Ami had really let herself go.
In fact, by most beauty standards Amefrid would be considered a buxom bombshell yet still, but the Goddess and Princess Senjya had truly warped images of the ideal body, their physical forms having been replaced by more spirit than flesh.
It appeared in Amefrid’s peripheral vision as the hallucination of a taunting emoji. The one with a closed eye, and a tongue stuck out.
Akin to thinking of the words ‘laugh out loud’, instead of the satisfaction of actual physical laughter.
That one. That emoji.
The irony was not lost on the Empress that Senjya lost far more, but at least she delivered results.
She could not simply die for her body no longer decayed. This could only happen if the Goddess were slain. Who would be the one doing the slaying though, Senjya did not know.
Not serious people.