The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

As much as I think being nude is only going to make me more vulnerable to whatever inky fun that Quillspawn might have saved up in case something like this happened, I just don’t have the time to find something that fits. Of course Yanuka would set me free to do her dirty work without giving me any clothes. I’m sure that she’s finding this just as amusing as everything else.

I don’t have any time to waste thinking. Yana is using that book, and probably the mirror that didn’t even get scuffed by my throw, to finish her plan. If she can make it rain ink, I have no doubt that she will. She defeated her antagonist. It would only be fitting if the conflict ended shortly after.

Of course, seeing as how her antagonist isn’t all that defeated, it’s not going to be quite that easy.

Carefully I pick up the daffodil and sniff it just lightly. It smells just like an ordinary flower now, but if I remember anything about the last time I was inked up and was given a flower, well . . .

A few sparks are all I need to illuminate the room so I can find the door. Once the door opens I know exactly where I am and I’m not surprised. I’m just down the hall from Yana’s study where she showed me the mirror before.

If that’s her place of power then of course she would do the ritual there. I can see her door from here, but I can also see Helena and Celia standing in front of that door. They look appropriate like that, Helena with her long hair and her long skirt to show off her black lacy thong, and Celia with her bed-head and that barely-a-skirt . . . Somehow they look right standing at the end of a hallway.

They must spot me as I step out of the door and onto the carpeted hallway, but they don’t react. My skin is still a pale peach, but I am supposed to be helplessly tethered in the next room aren’t I? Having helpless-help has some drawbacks I guess. Mind Bore’s robots might have helped her capture Jade, but Yana’s little inklings aren’t even looking worried. Taking this as a good sign, I just keep walking towards them and take another soft inhale of the flower. It helps me stay centered.

Why did Yanuka touch me like that? She didn’t seem to really care that much about me before and now she’s touching me and being delicate? Maybe she was just trying to show me some tenderness so I wouldn’t be worried that this was some sort of double cross. Considering how otherwise I’d just be cross . . .

About halfway down the hall a door opens behind me, and it’s the last woman possible that I want to step out. It makes sense that she saved her for a moment more suiting a finale, but I still don’t like the sight. “Quillspawn thought that even against the odds, during her big, final ritual . . . you might just come up with something, or something might come up with you. She thought I would be a good plot twist. The way you’re staring at me, I’m thinking she was right, huh?”

Susan had some ribbon wrapped around her legs, but it was nothing like this. Wrapped around both of her feet, around her legs, criss crossing between them, tying around her body, down along her arms, and a bow in the middle of her chest, is Alyssa. This time the ribbon is much more sheer and surrounded with puffy white lace. The look is even topped off with a pair of black inky earrings.

“Maybe . . . Still, she can call herself whatever she wants, and she’ll still be Yana. She can’t change that just by taking on a new name. I can take on a new name, and I’m still Sarah underneath . . . I shared that with you, even if I abused your trust . . . and I’m sorry.”

I step closer to her, and she steps closer to me. Her skin is so smooth and it glistens in the dim light of only the last torch by the staircase lit, and a spark I’ve kept floating in front of me. Her honey hair and her glistening green eyes remind me so much of when I had her feel the panties wrapped around her mind . . . but it’s not her mental panties in a knot making her like this, it’s that ribbon that goes right into her ears even if it’s not visible. Her pupils are shifting with overflowing ink.

“Sorry? You don’t need to be sorry, Sarah . . . Lucia . . . Whoever you are. Everyone will be Yana’s soon, don’t you see? Every book in Midas, every printer, every pen, every magazine, every box painted with ink . . . It’s all going to run black, and it will deliver them to her simple truth. The world will be revised, and I get to peddle in foreshadowing! I get to know the world as it’s written . . .” Alyssa hoods her eyes and giggles, coming to a stop five feet away.

“Alyssa, this isn’t you, but that’s okay. I forgive you, and hopefully, after all of this is over, you’ll forgive me too.” Before she can back away, make her ribbons coil about me, or anything like that, I shove the daffodil into her nose. As soon as I hear her first sniff I can’t help but grin.

First she stumbles back and then she whimpers with her eyes looking glazed and confused. Her whole face twists like something is wrong, but it feels so sweet, and then . . . the ribbon starts to turn from solid lace into thick dark liquid. It slowly pours off of her, and even drips out from her ears and her eyes like tears. Her body is stained back as it puddles at her feet, but it just accentuates the curves of her breasts, of her hips, and every pretty part of her legs.

She quivers, and whimpers as she starts to shake. The ink is flowing faster now, and it seems like there’s an impossible amount filling her. No one can have this much ink inside of them and have room for anything else, but it almost touches my toes and I take a step back just incase.

Quickly after it stops flowing out of her the dark stain over her body turns darker, and pools along the curves of her stomach and the graceful curves of her thighs before dripping down to the floor before soaking into the carpet.

The carpet isn’t red anymore, but it is safer. Keeping the daffodil in my hand I dash to her quickly as she starts to fall forward. Her naked flesh feels so good against mine, but I can’t let my mind wander there, to how gorgeous and sweet the curve of her back looks in the dim light with the colors less clear than the texture and the contour. This is hardly the time to remember how her ass feels to squeeze and knead how she clenches every time more lace is wrapped around her thoughts, more bows tied in place . . .

Her brown hair starts to tremble as she sniffles, and I hold her tight careful of the petals. “S-sarah . . . What did you just do . . .? I feel so exposed so . . . I never wanted you to see me like this again. You used me, you used me and then I was turned into bait. I never wanted to see you again and now I’m so glad. One second I’m reading a report on Yana N. Ritter, the next I’m having a good dream, and then it’s all soaked . . .”

I feel guilty for remembering the dream from its brief time on the mirror, but I wasn’t the one who asked to watch how Yana twisted her fantasies around. “I know, Alyssa, I know. After this is over, you can yell, you can scream, and you can cry. Hell, you can do all of that right now, but it just won’t help as much.”

“Help much . . . Nnn . . . It’s hard to remember the revisions she shoved into my mind, twisted things around to make me be a fitting distraction while she finished her incantation, but I know that you don’t have a lot of time. Even still, there might not be much for you to do. She’s a lot more powerful than she seems, she just likes to play games. She thinks that just doing things is stupid, she . . . I would tell you anything useful from the report, but all I know is that she’s a writer who just stopped writing for no good reason, her mother is dead, and all of her stories are romance. Well, besides this one.” She manages a weak laugh, and I hug her tight.

None of that strikes me as particularly useful, but . . . “Thanks Alyssa, that could help. For now, I’m going to try and do what little I can. I know you don’t have any clothes and you’re sick of being seen in compromising situations, so you can stay here, or you can run. Just be careful. She’s got three supers.”

“At least.” Alyssa forces a smile after pulling back, and kneels down onto the floor with her arms around herself protectively. “I think I’ll wait here. Give ‘em hell, Sarah . . . and what’s that silver light?”

“We can talk about that later. For now, I have to take down a witch.” After kissing her forehead I pull back and turn around to continue right down the corridor. At about ten feet away Helena and Celia spread out their arms to fill the way between me and the door. Their fingers lace and it looks like more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. “Come on . . . can’t you please just move out of the way? I want to help your mistress.”

They look at each other, back to me, and Helena speaks with a very amused tone. “We weren’t rewritten yesterday you know. Quillspawn is preparing Midas to be her seat of power. After the people of this city fall, no one will be able to stop her. If you come any closer, I’ll fill your mind again with so much ink it won’t fit inside of a swimming pool.”

Well, isn’t she the agreeable sort? As much of a copout as it is, I really don’t see what my choices are for dealing with them. I carefully set the flower down, and point a fingertip to both of their foreheads. “Please, just once? Maybe I could be convinced to switch sides seeing her perform the ritual?”

“You’re not that kind of woman, Sarah.” Celia pronounces my name as if she’s had every fact about me written into her mind a million times. “If you turned her down once, you won’t change your mind as long as it’s free.”

“Hmm, point. I guess I never realized how stubborn I am for being a nearly constant victim of mind control. Funny how these things work out.” With a grin I pull my hands back down to my sides, and then snap them both at once before clicking them like fired guns on a playground. From both of my pointer fingers fire off a single spark, but a thin silver trail remains between the spark and my fingertip.

I can’t feel any new connection to them. I can’t feel the core of their minds or what Yana has done to them. That’s not how my powers work. What I can sense differently now, is that the continued charge from my mental tasers is making them both shudder out of control and that’s enough for me.

Both of their lips part and they whimper and whine like I just thrust my fingers into them both. Helena’s sweet transparent panties and the high slit on her skirt make sure that I can see the results of her mind being turned into a hunk of scrap metal more and more with each passing moment. The latex top clinging tightly around Helena’s breasts shows the sweet signs of her nipples hardening tighter and tighter as more and more of the sweet silver light sears itself right through the ink in her mind, or hopefully at least her consciousness.

Their knees are starting to quiver, and I smile a little wider as Celia cries out long and slow, her eyes rolling up in their sockets. Just a little black melts from around both of their eyes . . . and they fall to their knees. When I pop the sparks inside of their heads, they crumple into an adorable lump of lace and latex.

Just to give myself a moment to savor the victory I blow a hard burst of air across both of the tips of my fingers and pretend to sheath them at my hips before picking up the flower.

Kneeling in front of them, I hold the flower up to Helena’s nose first and whisper just the word “inhale.” She does, at first with her mouth, and then her nose, and the ink starts to melt out and off of her just like it did with Alyssa. The only difference is that when the ink begins to melt towards me . . . it pools around me, as if it’s afraid. I make my feet spark, and it pulls back just a little more before it starts sinking into the carpeting.

I don’t have the time to admire Helena’s beautiful nude figure, even if I do have to say that her areolas turn back to the absolutely cutest shade of pink. The flower stays under Celia’s nose for a moment as I whisper the same, but I don’t wait to watch the ink melt away before stepping over them, and force open the door.

The first thing I see is Yana, dressed in an elaborate dress of flowing satin that almost looks like it’s dripping with ink. Her arms are covered with latex gloves first, and lacy ribbons wrapped along the length of them to flow down over her back. They are dripping, and the floor around her is dark black and wet with the puddle of her own power . . . and from the first sound I hear, Quillspawn’s moans, I think there’s more to it than just simply power.

“Nnnnaaa . . . Oooh yes . . . Suckle, sweet little Susan . . . All I need to do is just find the right . . . Mmmooooah! The right page! Then oh . . . ooooh fuck Susan you have a magic tongue when it’s dripping with ink . . . Then, a few words, and a few dr-drops . . . oooh goddess . . .” Yana trembles and clutches her desk tightly, whimpering. “Oh yes . . . Then, I’ll rewrite it all . . .”

“One little problem, Quilly . . . You didn’t even have your ink slowly fuck away the last of my mind, or even do anything besides keep me chained and out of your hair. If you really thought that was going to be enough to make sure I didn’t interfere . . .” I hold up my hands like guns again and let myself grin. “Well, then I’m insulted.”

All of the light in the room is red, and I can tell why. It wasn’t lit when I first stepped in, because it’s glowing, pulsing . . . but the ruby at the top of that grand mirror is lit from the inside as if it’s holding a small sun. Every time it pulses the entire room lights up with red. It’s an eerie light, but that’s all it is.

Yana’s groans are cut short as she reaches down and I can’t tell with Susan under her skirts, but it looks like she gives her a rather hard shove, before turning slowly and adjusting her skirts. “Gah! Can’t you see that your mother and I were enjoying a very special preemptive celebration? Mmm . . . It’s funny too if you think about it. Her body still resonates with the magic that they used on your mind all that time ago. Remember that, Sarah? The magic they used while you were still in her womb? Not for long, admittedly . . .”

As much as I’d like to get upset at her for using my mother like a sex toy, that isn’t exactly the issue here and I know it. “Yes, I remember. No thanks to you. I’m sure you’d rewrite that anyway, or is it better if the heroine has that big of a flaw? And is it that hard to find the page? Try the table of contents?”

“Pedestrian fool . . . A grimoire like that has no need of such a table. If one simply has the patience to leaf through with intent in mind, the right spell will rise. I’m getting rather close now. If you’ll delay your ‘heroic rescue’ for a few mere moments I can finish condemning your fair city. Then we can have this showdown you seem to desire.” She laughs, and leans back against her desk. “If you won’t give me the time, at least do us both the favor of putting your hands down! You look quite simply ridiculous, my powerless opponent. At least drop the flower . . .”

“I had a teacher in high school tell me once that if something was in a story and didn’t serve a purpose it shouldn’t be there. Tell me, do you think the universe is really that badly written?” Just like she asked my hand opens to let the daffodil drop, before I fire off another pair of sparks aimed right for her eyes.

Those wide black eyes, even the whites of her eyes now black, spread wide to an almost comical size before she reaches out her own hands, and flicks her fingers in the air. From between thumb and pointer finger a small black drop flies towards both of the sparks. The immediate reaction is a loud sharp sizzling sound and the sparks stay in the air as do the drops, both of them seeming to apply force, growing, fighting . . . before both pop with a sharp hiss.

Quillspawn’s eyes narrow and she takes a deep breath still trying to recover from my mother’s ministrations. Her chest is still heaving as if she was in the throes of a very intimate encounter. Sadly, it’s not from a pair of sparks, but that can still change. “Did you truly believe it would be that simple?!”

“Well . . . I hoped. Can’t blame me for hoping. And yes, I have my real sparks back . . . no thanks to you. I have to admit having your ink at my beck and call felt very nice, but I think I’d prefer the more hands off approach. Sorry, but I’d rather not need to dig myself so intimately into every person that I’m stopping. Though . . . it was fun.” This is nowhere near being over, but at least I feel well matched.

“Even if you never had much sense to begin with, at least you possess this much now . . . Very well. I suppose my machinations shall just have to deal with the delay you’ve imposed on them . . . No?” She brings her hands together, and her lack lips slowly curl. “If my mother could deal with you, I can.”

Quillspawn looks confident, except for her eyes. I don’t know if it’s new sight because of the silver inside of me again, or because this is a new sight to see, but her eyes look like they’re quivering almost as if something underneath them, inside of them, is shaking. Something has her on edge. Could it be the reactions that the ink had to my sparks? Could it be that even if she can stop my sparks she can’t overpower them and this game isn’t one on her terms?

Slowly she lowers her hands to her hips, and then with her hands spread flat, she thrusts them up into the air. Ink from the carpet, carpet in her room not from the hall, flies up towards me. I roll to the side in an attempt to escape from the barrage, but it soaks up along the length of my legs, and I can feel it warmly against my sex.

It feels nice, warm and soothing like a salve or a lotion, but I don’t want it there. I spark a hand and try to rub it away careful not to grind the spark into myself. Instead of making the ink try to move away, it thrusts itself deeply inside of me with a loud slick suckling. “Ooh fuck!”

Inside of me it starts to shake and shudder, forming itself to me and feeling like it’s spreading out, sealing along my slit, vibrating . . . I have to grit my teeth just to stay standing, and my eyes keep fluttering. “Did you know, Sarah, Silver Girl, whoever . . . That when a woman orgasms, there’s a brief moment where her mind is so open to anything, to suggestion, to command . . . that is deeper than any other natural ‘trance’ state? You learn a lot of interesting things during research for smutty romance novels . . . It’s a fact I know very, very well, and they say to write what you know, don’t they?”

Ooh goddess it’s too much! I can feel it stimulating every nerve, suckling and licking at once, making my most tender places scream and soak, it’s just too much! If she’s right then oh . . . I don’t have too much longer before she’s going to shove me careening over that edge and open wide.

Her ink isn’t omnipotent, but it knows how to move, goddess it knows how to write in my nerves so that they feel everything at once, so much that my toes are curling so hard into the carpet it hurts.

The only thing that comes to mind . . .

It has as much of a chance to make me slump over helplessly as the ink does, so I grit my teeth harder, and spark my pussy as hard as I can. My whole body clenches and shakes, and I fall to my knees with a scream, but the ink does quiver and . . . oh god it’s such a relief as it oozes out of me, and slicks slowly down to the floor. “Nnn . . . Then you shouldn’t have tried to write so much about my sparks . . .”

“That . . . That shouldn’t . . . Well . . . Fine! I guess that my little hallucination of your silver bubble was close to the mark. My apologies, I was simply going on conjecture. After all, you sparked and my mother’s ink didn’t . . . didn’t . . .” I force myself to stand, and whimper as color rushes into my vision.

“Your mother wasn’t dripping it. She was being a witch, Yana . . . And you might be more of a witch than I am, but that isn’t saying much.” Slowly I rise up a hand, and pop out a spark from every fingertip letting myself smile just a little at the sensation. “And your mother was a lot better at this than you were. After all, she made me agree to her deal even if I didn’t end up walking away winning everything. You could learn a lot from her.”

Her face twists and she screams, moving her hand in the air like a backhand. A large slick of the ink flies from her hand. “I have nothing to learn from her! I have surpassed her, and like her, I will bring you to your knees, confused and lost, and you will beg for the gift of my ink!”

All five of my sparks fly at the slick, and it bursts much quicker than the first two.

“You’re getting sloppier, too. You can’t manage to sound half as sophisticated as she can when you’re upset.” I slowly step closer to her, in a circular way to try and maybe get around her, maybe get to the mirror or . . . that gives me an idea . . . “Kneel? Beg? My mother may still be hiding under your dress, but I don’t do that when I’m still in control of my mind and . . . if you could do that, why don’t you do it? If you could so easily twist my mind into place, why didn’t you already? You could make me think I’d had my sparks back. You could make me even think they’d evolved . . . all of those things. But you can’t fry my mind? The Lady was a normal woman, and even she could mold me like putty.”

“I didn’t . . . because it would be a hollow victory! If I could simply – if I were to simply write you, my antagonist, into place, it wouldn’t be that good of a story! So I took your mother, your lover, the woman you wanted, her shrink and your lifeline . . . the woman you betrayed, the woman you failed . . . and I made them mine just like my once fanatical readers.” Quillspawn laughs, but it’s not a wicked-witch laugh like her mother, or even her own laugh I’ve grown quite accustomed to, it’s worried.

My own breathing won’t slow down, and I don’t think I can get any closer to her desk without being in tremendous risk of being turned into nothing more than a human shaped vial of ink. Still, I just don’t believe her. There must be a limit to her powers or something. She’s not acting right.

Either way, I can’t just let her get away with this. “What would you know of the proper way to turn a woman into the best subservient little darling? Olivia still grates on you even if you love her. You can pretend that you’re the perfect couple with no problems at all, but I can see past that. I was inside of The Poetess when she watched you at that club . . . Don’t know why I’m even wasting my time with you. It’s inefficient, pointless . . . I should just finish you now.”

Quillspawn pauses. For a moment, it looks like she’s doing nothing, but her clothes, something about them seems stiffened, as if anticipating, ready . . . and then she takes a deep breath, and her suit begins to pull into her, and flow over her, melting into her . . .

Sure enough my mother is face down in the ink, but I can’t afford to pay too much attention to her or she’ll be like that a lot more.

All of Quillspawn’s body is covered in slick black ink, and it looks like at any moment it could start dripping but it doesn’t. It just stays in place, making every part of her shine with black, from the top of her hair to the tips of her toes. I guess in a lot of ways we really are alike, our powers coloring us, twisting us, changing us . . . even if my sparks never really hungered, they changed me. I wasn’t the same woman before I realized how easy it could be to fry a mind.

None of that matters now. It all comes down to this, Quillspawn’s glistening body shining in the bright red light. Every curve, from her neck, to her hips is wet with her own power. For just a moment her nipples grow, and a little ink melts out of them, dropping down into the puddle. “Now, Sarah . . . It’s time we finished this. I’ll show you just how limited my powers really are.”

“Of course . . .” I see my chance, and I take it. Another five sparks move to my fingertips, and I launch them at the ruby. Reacting to the sparks and not their trajectory she backhands another slick towards me, but I roll under it towards her, and take the dumbest risk of my life.

Standing, I use my body to force her back onto her own desk, pinning her into the book. Her body is so slick, but the speed and her shock don’t help her balance any. My ink covered adversary screams in shock, but shock isn’t enough to slow her down. Already I can feel her ink wrapping around me, sealing around me, so wet and warm as it pulls my hips into hers, and I groan at the feeling of her ink slick sex arching up towards mine.

Every part of me is being covered by her sweet ink, and it’s making the world slowly grow darker and darker by the moment. Can’t let her do this . . . and I can only hope that the ink from her body is ruining the book as I focus on every part where our bodies meet, so many parts . . . and spark hard.

It’s the strangest feeling, her ink and my sparks sizzling against each other as I keep trying to grind her down harder, my leg sliding between hers and hers between mine, and she keeps trying to arch to shove me off of her. The effect is what feels like sharp little prickles of pure sensation sizzling across us, and our moans twine through the air as I try to press my sparks harder, and she keeps overflowing with more and more ink.

All it does is make the feeling stronger, I can feel the ink shattering and crackling along my scalp, feeling like electrified nails raking. I can’t help grinding down into her leg and whimper at the feeling of her slick leg sizzling and fizzing against my sex. I try so hard to grind back with the same tenacity, but if it’s starting to be too much for her she sure as hell isn’t showing it.

I can feel her shifting underneath me and I scream as she grinds just right against me, and I can feel her ink trying to squeeze me closer, pull me closer. Suddenly she shifts and twists in just the right way to roll herself on top of me.

“Oooh Sarah . . . S-s-silver . . . That was a really . . . really . . . foolish mistake.” The ink on the book tries to latch to me, but I just spark harder and harder . . . but this isn’t going to do either of us any good. We’re just pushing each other closer and closer to falling over the edge, and if she’s right then the winner will be the one who can hold out longer. My luck, and with how good I already feel, how close I already feel, that won’t . . . oh goddess that won’t be me.

Shuddering madly I reach a hand back to grab at the book and clumsily fling it down to the floor. Her pussy quivering madly against my leg makes it so hard to focus as much as mine quivering against hers, but I have . . . goddess I have to focus just a little longer, just until this is over, then ooh then the fun.

The book falls with a satisfying thud, and I coil a leg around hers, making her lose her balance before shoving her onto her back. My plan was to regain my balance and fall back against her desk, tear up the book page by page, but the way her legs move in response sends me falling right on top of her, and if I stop making my whole body glow and hum with sparks for a moment her ink will overwhelm me, and I can’t let it do that, can’t . . . Never had this hard of a time before, but I never held out this well before during something like this.

Her leg slowly slides up between mine anew, and her hands grab onto my hips grinding me way too hard onto her slick leg. Screaming I try to pull away but the reaction of her ink and the slickness holds me to her fast like a current, and I can’t shut it off, can’t stop it, or she’ll consume me, consume us!

“You c-c-can’t hhoold out forever . . . nnnn . . . Your sparks aren’t . . . unlimmMmmi-ted. You’ll start getting cold soon, and oh my ink can waaarm you up right into your soul . . .” Quillspawn tries to roll me onto my back and even nearly paralyzed with the pleasure of her ink making the sparks covering my pussy explode again and again I manage to stay on top of her.

My hands try to reach for her shoulders land on her breasts instead and I knead as hard as I can, forcing all of the current I can right into her nerves, making them travel, making them hit her mind I hope, oh goddess I hope. I can feel my thighs starting to shake and my body tensing in that way where I know soon I won’t be able to hold back, won’t be able to stop, and I cry out again as I press my palms as hard into her ink dripping nipples as I can.

“N-neeither can you . . .! Oh goddess . . . If I can . . . if I can just finish you off fiiirst then oooh you’ll . . . dissolve just like the ink, just . . . like . . .” She grinds me down into her leg harder as she presses her whole body against mine with all of her strength, and it’s impossible not to scream.

The red light keeps flashing, glowing bright and then dimming, and the popping sparks must make it nearly impossible for anyone else to see, but just a little ways away, just enough beyond my grasp . . .

Surrounded by ink , I think I could reach it, just maybe . . .

Yana screams and her hands on my hips start to shake. Just a little more and I know I would have lost it, I can already feel my own slickness merging with the ink on her leg. Her hands try to push my arms off of her chest, and with a soft squeal of relief, I flail my hand out farther to try and grasp at the stem. My fingertips just barely graze it, just barely . . . and then her hands are on my chest as she rolls her body to press her leg between mine harder. It feels too strong, too much, too . . . ooh too everything . . .

Just as I feel my thighs clench and my vision flash white, my whole body’s sparking feeling like it triples, the sparks flowing out of me as much as the orgasm, my fingers close loosely around the stem. My hand falls flat as I shudder and groan, slouching against her, trying to move but it’s just . . . just too much.

“It’s all . . . ooh it’s all over Sarah . . . You can’t fight anymore . . . and you know it . . .” She’s right. My body is exhausted, melted against hers, and I try to maintain the glow, but I’m growing cold, losing the ability to keep it up.

My lips curl into a lazy smile as I look up into her eyes, my face lying on the highest point of her chest as she kneads and arches against me. “Then just . . . one last request . . .?”

The ink from her body starts to pool off of her, and I can feel our bare skin kissing, rubbing as she continues to shift. It feels so good to just feel her warm sweat and sex covered flesh instead of the slick sizzles of the chain reactions sizzling over and over. I don’t feel wasted and helpless, just burnt out, just cold and exhausted. Could do more if I needed to, just not sure . . . “Of course sweet little thing. What last little wish can I give you before overflowing your head with ink . . .?”

I need to catch my breath. My vision is covered with splotches of light that glow whenever the mirror flares its ruby red light over the room. For how cold my body feels against how warm she is my lungs are burning up. Every breath burns a little, but it’s starting to get better.

My voice won’t work the first time I try to speak, but it just barely works the second, raspy with release and fatigue. “Take some time . . . to stop . . . and smell the daffodils . . .”

She almost manages to move her arm in time but by the time she realizes my hand is bringing the flower down over her nose it’s too late. I feel faint and weak from everything, but I do my best to try and keep the flower over her nose, to try and reach up to keep her mouth shut, and the moment she inhales is beautiful.

My hand falls back, and she lets out a loud gasp with her eyes opening wide . . . and the color starts to bleed. The black of her eyes slowly melts away to show a pearl green shade instead and I’ve never seen a look with so much fright in my life. All of her is quivering against me, and all of the beautiful darkness that makes her look so refined and immortal, somehow unstoppable, melts away into the floor.

Streaks of her hair color start to melt into the carpet revealing a bright shade of yellow underneath that’s almost blindingly bright. Every other moment, when the light of the room turns red, her hair looks so much like her mother’s but not quite.

Her pale skin turns even more, and her once black lips fade into a pink even more pale than the shade Dust’s lips have underneath the lipstick. Her lips quiver and I can see something in her trying to speak, but whether it’s the exhaustion or the shock the satisfaction is still just as fulfilling. I roll off of her with a slow groan, and slowly crawl over to the desk. It’s not the perfect thing to help a sex exhausted heroine to her feet, but it’ll do.

Down on the floor Yana stares up at the ceiling with nearly blank eyes. Tears slide down along her cheeks as the last of the black pools around her, quickly soaking into the carpet.

“Sorry Yana . . . Quillspawn . . . Your mother did the same to me, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but . . . you didn’t give me a whole lot of a choice.” Now that I’m standing I feel much better. My body is still feeling cool, but recovering from the afterglow I don’t feel faint. Maybe it’s the sense of victory knowing that the silver lining beat the cloud after all.

“Couldn’t . . . Spent so long trying to finish that last story . . . All of my sweetlings, I kept making them write and write, pour out all of the ideas . . . I used them, posed them, wrote them to the roles I couldn’t quite get right, but their work kept surpassing mine, and my ideas . . . were just ideas. Used to be able to write a book in a month, dripping over pages and pages, reforming it, writing it into someone’s mind and making them write it, but I . . . now I’ll never . . . This could have been my masterpiece . . .” It would only be sad if she wasn’t insane.

Even now I can hear in her voice and see in her eyes that she’s only disappointed she failed. She feels no remorse for the women she controlled or the lives she tried to twist into her own purposes . . . I know I should feel sorry for her, but I’ve had the choice she had. It’s hard, but she could have made the right one too.

Sighing I look around for something . . . anything . . . and smile brightly as Susan groans from under the desk. I look down at her as she looks up to me, eyes trying to blink open as she slowly looks around the room. “What . . . Sarah? What’re you . . . What’s she . . .? I was reading a letter at home, but this is not the couch. Something strange happened, I must have fallen asleep and then everything . . . why are you naked and glowing?”

I take a glance down at my own body and force a smile. The light from the ruby keeps pulsing, but it doesn’t affect me as much as the silver halo. I’m not sparking anymore, but I’ve sparked so much . . .

“I’m just feeling great mom, that’s all. Now . . . We need to find you and a few other girls some clothes so we can burn this place to the ground as soon as I can find something to break that mirror with . . .” Looking around the room nothing quite stands out, before I look down at the floor. “Ah. This’ll work.”

After it’s in my hands I walk shakily around the desk and slam the grimoire into the mirror again and again and again. It reminds me so much of the mirror Pink had scrawled across in the bathroom of that hotel so long back, but this mirror actually shatters after the tenth or so slam. The spine of the book feels like it must be metal wrapped in leather, but even so it takes a lot of work to even dent the thing.

When it shatters all of the pieces fall gracefully onto the floor, and once I’ve banged free every last piece from the frame, the glass shards on the floor melt through the carpet and the floor underneath making a fair amount of steaming holes.

Susan stands up and just stares at me, and then over to the naked woman on the floor, and the three in the hallway. A moment later she stares back, and I just grin. “I’ll explain everything. This was actually not really my fault. Not all of it. The nudity anyway. The fact that things are going to turn out okay? Is totally my fault. Now we need to find everyone some clothes, and then we’re going to find some matches. Sound good?”

The look on her face is incredulous at best and I can hardly blame her. When she speaks, her voice sounds so confused that I could have just said the sky is falling so we need to start digging and she would have agreed. “Sure. Sounds good.”

After I flick a few sparks at the motionless Yana I lead the way out of the room with the book held tightly against me to try to find something to wear.