Chapter Text
“Really? You want to make ME a goddess?”
“It wouldn’t change our contract.”
“Oh, so it’s just a fetish. One slave goddess, coming right up!”
“Nice save, Trin,” Yarra commented dryly.
“Hm?”
“Oh come on, it’s sooo obvious! Simon’s giving you a shard because he totawwy WUVS YOO!” Yarra started making obnoxious kissy sounds.
Trin scowled. “No, he just values me as a tool! The L word has nothing to do with it!” She snatched the shard from Simon.
Nothing happened. Everyone was staring at her.
“So, uh, how do I…?”
“Feel the pull of the shard,” Riala said, “let down your barriers, and let it suffuse your soul.”
Trin breathed deeply, and brought the shard against her chest. Her brow furrowed. Nothing continued to happen. She lifted the shard, turned it in her hand to examine it, and then suddenly started slamming it into her chest with both hands.
“NOT like that, you’ll break it!” Riala yelled, grabbing the shard back from her. She cradled it gently, imposing herself between the shard and Trin with her body. “Fucking gremlin…” she muttered.
“You didn’t feel a pull at all, did you?” Aka asked.
“Nope!” Trin replied proudly. “It must have been able to tell what a monster I am!”
“So what, there literally wasn’t a single goddessy thing about Trin for the shard to be drawn to?”
“Have any of us actually –seen- Trin’s soul?” Varia mused.
“But how is that possible? Aren’t the shards supposed to be the building blocks all of reality is wrought from, or something?” Carina asked.
“Yes,” Robin said, “King Alonon claimed that reality is made up of purity and lust in various configurations, and the divine and dark shards appear to be some form of physical representation of those extremes.”
That got Riala thinking. “So if a divine shard didn’t recognize her at all…”
“Trin must secretly be a dude!” Yarra proclaimed.
“It means,” Robin said curtly, “that it might be more productive to try an Incubus King’s shard. Whatever the implications of that might be.”
“You still got that shard from Stineford?” Aka asked Simon.
Yarra’s eyes gleamed. “The one from the schemey slimeball with the body doubles who duffed it in his first real fight? Yeah, that’d be perfect for Trin!”
“No, it’s fully absorbed. I still have the one from the Erosian orc though. But how do you feel about this plan, Trin?”
“Hey, I’ll try anything once! Hit me!"
“I’ve barely had any time with this one, we should really wait until it’s a little tamer.”
“No way, I can’t take that much suspense. Lay that gravy on me right this instant, old man!”
-
“The most important thing to remember is that this shard isn’t like the divine one. It won’t come to you, you have to take it. But once you do, you have to hold it at arms’ length. Struggle against it. Make it become you, not the other way around. Discipline. Temperance. These are essential.”
-
(An alarmingly short time later)
-
“Trin! You’ve had three serums! Those are for Iron Cudgel!”
“I’ll be a living god!”
-
“The foyer is COMLETELY on fire!”
“What kind of dastardly villain could create so much chaos so effortlessly!?”
-
“Oh thank the Lustlord you’re back!” Yarra said as Simon entered the recently extinguished foyer.
“What happened?” Simon asked.
“It’s Trin! The shard got to her. She’s gone completely off the rails, look!”
Out in the courtyard, Trin was struggling with Lynine, as the other harem members watched on, horrified. She had the busty noncombatant in a headlock. “Give me a chocolate fountain and every brunette in Arclent in the next fifteen minutes, or the Titty Elf gets it!” she yelled. Her voice was rough, bestial.
“Elfy Tits, noooo!” Qum cried.
“Trin, stop this!” Simon said sternly.
The thing that was Trin turned to face him. “You think you’re strong enough to control me? Hyaaah!” Her dark power swelled outwards, a presence pressing against everyone in the courtyard. But the enchantments on her caught the worst of it. Her enslaving spells glowed molten, and almost at once, they began to give.
Lynine flinched where the burst bindings lashed against her, and managed to shake free of her captor, but Trin just laughed maniacally, eyes alight, not even reacting to them cutting and burning her flesh. “I am INVINCIBLE!”
Lynine scampered to safety. Yarra scowled. “Now!” she yelled.
Robin nodded. The sigil under Trin’s feet activated. Her laughter suddenly strangled, Robin’s disabling magic trapping her in place.
“Vhala, take the shot!”
Up on a parapet, Vhala fired the ballista. A jumbo-sized Arrow of Purity slammed the nascent Incubus King in the back. She crumpled.
-
“This is bad,” Yarra said, because somebody had to say it. “If Trin’s been taken over, what can we do about it? The shard’s part of her soul, we can’t just cut it out.”
“It happened so quickly,” Lynine said sadly. “Poor Trin, she was doing fine yesterday. But then just, poof…”
“Yes, supposing that she’s succumbed entirely, I’m at a loss for how we could remove the foreign influence without also destroying her personality.” Simon looked even more tired than usual. “Riala, options.”
“I’ve only got one, and it’s both experimental and dangerous.”
“Hm.”
“Robin and I have been looking more broadly into extradimensional spaces, and I’ve theorized that every soul has a kind of associated ‘selfspace,’ a spatial representation of their symbolic contents.”
“So this is a facet of the tower?”
“No, the two aren’t contiguous as far as we know, but that’s the right idea. Think of it this way. If the planet were alive, the Tower would be the ‘selfspace’ of the world. And I’ve been working on a spell that could hopefully theoretically get a person in there. Possibly.”
“And if we were to go into Trin’s selfspace, you think we might find the Erosian Incubus King in it?”
“Or a representation of him. Either way, it could give us a more precise and informed way to alter Trin’s soul compared to just using your powers from the outside.”
“And I’m guessing that the dangerous part is that it’s full of monsters?”
“Maybe. This is all theory still. But my larger concern is that this space is generated by the target themselves. What if assaulting him in there is like fighting somebody inside their own imagination? I don’t think that our strength would count for anything at all inside Trin’s head. The only one who might have a prayer would be you, because of the bond you have with her. Sure, she broke her contract, but she’s still a member of your harem, and that’s some –powerful- goddamn magic. Maybe you could lean on that. Maybe you could find her.”
“So I’d be going in alone.”
Riala sighed. “It would be a substantial risk.”
Simon looked over at Trin. She flinched slightly in her sleep, her body, still lightly bleeding, bound by another of Robin’s sigils in a room beneath the castle.
“Do it.”
Riala nodded, and touched his forehead lightly. “Hooking you in. Remember, be ready for anything.”
“I bet she’s just pulling a Megail,” Orilise muttered. Her voice was a lasagna of resentment over condescension over worry.
He fell to his knees, consciousness and lucidity fleeing him. The laser beams from Megail’s eyes singed the hairs on the back of his neck, and his last thought was to idly wonder if Orilise would still be alive by the time he got back.
-
Simon landed. The sound of his boots hitting stone tile shimmered off into the distance and died there.
He saw, around him, a number of pillars, carved of the same ebon marble that the floor was. Each was like a tower unto itself, many metres across and stretching upwards, far upwards, the dark grey of featureless stone barely visible against the gloom until, inevitably, it was lost entirely. Simon had the sense that he was inside of a vast space, a kind of unthinkably large chamber with a roof far above and perhaps even walls, far, far further off in the distance.
Perhaps. The gloom obscured his vision of the horizon as well, and it was aided in this endeavor by a cold, pervasive mist which clung low to the ground and was brisk against the skin. Simon suspected that these columns were regularly spaced throughout the chamber, but as he could only see the two closest to him, he had no way to be sure.
Janine’s uncle was slumped against the nearest column. Eyes wild, skin clammy with terror. To his right, a trio of young Yhilini men who Simon didn’t recognize, leaning against each other, stumbling along and glancing this way and that, looking for all the world like they’d gotten lost down an alley on the way back from the bar. Simon seemed to be invisible to them.
“Trin?” he called.
The sound was lost to the dark, not even an echo returned.
Except.
The mist stirred. “This is your fault,” it whispered.
“Trin?!” he shouted again.
“You shouldn’t have left.”
“There was never even a rogue Incubus King, was there, Trin?” he asked tiredly.
Behind him, a rustling. The red-skinned Erosian orc charged, a mighty battle cry issuing from between his curved fangs. Simon turned, and blew the construct away with a single flex of his essence.
“Nice try, but he didn’t look anything like that.”
The dagger slid into his shoulder smoothly, soundlessly, as if it belonged there. He cried out, and wheeled to grab at his assailant, but Trin was already merrily dancing away, fading back into the mist before he’d even really begun to react.
He could have killed someone with a blow from that angle, easily. But Trin was no warrior. Or perhaps that hadn’t been her intent.
“Where are you!?” he yelled.
“There is no Trin,” the mist said, ahead of him. “Not anymore,” he heard from behind.
That was his problem, he thought.
“She has been consumed,”
This was all Trin.
“Obliterated.”
All of it. Every pillar, every dark cranny. All Trin.
“And you’re next.”
Simon picked a spot. He thought about Trin, everything he knew about her, every moment they’d shared, every fibre of that dark cord that connected them through his shard. He gathered his power, and struck.
The mist parted in a wave. Trin was thrown off her feet and landed, hard, on her back in the centre of the space it had cleared. Simon clenched his fist, and inky tentacles erupted from the ground, binding her tightly before she could rise.
Simon walked over to Trin. The impish creature smirked at him. “Oh no, you GOT me. I’ve been overpowered by the bigger, STRONGER Incubus King. Whoever could have predicted it???” If Trin’s hands were free, she’d likely be holding one up to her forehead dramatically like a stereotypical damsel in distress. Her eyes gleamed. “So, what are you gonna do to me now? Break my arms? Wipe my memories?? Kill me?!?!?” Trin’s chest was heaving in anticipation.
Simon sat down, tented his fingers, and served Trin with his most fatherly ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed,’ expression, the one that Robin called a ‘Level 5’ (though Robin also considered his resting face to be a Level 2).
Trin stared at him.
He stared at Trin.
“Oh come ON, do SOMETHING! I fucking stabbed you, that’s really not worth anything???”
“Trin, I’m not a fool. I know there’s no torment I could POSSIBLY inflict on you that you wouldn’t find a way to get off on. Boredom, on the other hand…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Back to staring. She lasted about a minute and a half before she started trying to wiggle out of her bindings, and then not much longer after that until she caved entirely.
“Okay FINE,” she said, exasperated. “What do you want?”
Simon gaped at her. “I want to understand what’s going on!” He felt the cut in his shoulder ache, the seeping feeling of blood down his back. “This seems to be far beyond what you normally get up to.”
She sighed. “I pretended to be dominated by the Erosian Incubus King and then committed a bunch of felonies in and around the castle.”
“Yes, I understood that much! WHY?”
“You think –I- fucking know?”
Simon rubbed his forehead. “Trin, this is important.”
“I’m an agent of chaos! There’s no ‘reason’ behind it!”
“And yet everyone targeted this time is someone who is either in at dire risk of caring about you, or already does. A strange coincidence, that.”
Trin looked at the ground.
“You’re really not going to punish me?” she asked quietly.
“Why do you want me to punish you so badly?”
“So that I don’t do it again!” she yelled. “You can’t just do NOTHING!”
“I’ve already said why I don’t think that’s going to work. But if it’s something you’d enjoy…”
“…”
“Trin? Is that something you think you’d enjoy?”
“Yes already! I want you to punish me!”
Simon unclenched his fist. The tentacles binding her retreated back into the ground.
“Then how about we make a deal? I’ll ask you questions, and if you do your level best to answer them, I will spank you.”
“Deal.”
Simon hesitated then, and looked around. “You don’t have anything to sit on in here, do you?”
“Oh, right! I’ll just…” She concentrated briefly. A sturdy wooden chair appeared next to Simon. It looked comfortable-ish, but wildly out of place. “There.”
He sat down. The chair squeaked a symphony. “Rustic,” he said simply. The dark lord hoisted Trin up and laid her across his lap, face down. He pulled her pants down, his manner businesslike. As he did, he noticed all the little details of the chair, varnish scratched and worn away by years of regular, mundane use. “This is a real chair, isn’t it?”
“What? Oh, you mean like, it’s a copy of something that really exists...” Her head and hands dangled languidly over the edge of Simon’s lap. She ran a trailing finger along the grain of a chair leg curiously. “You know, I don’t remember it from anywhere, but it really does seem like it is, doesn’t it? Weird. Hey, could you make me count them?” Trin wiggled her pert little butt at Simon, her hip bones digging into his leg.
“What, the spankings?”
“Ye.”
“…”
“…”
“You are free to count the spankings if you desire.”
“Oh come ON, you KNOW that’s not what I meant!” Trin pouted.
Simon rolled his eyes.
“ONE!” Trin gasped. Her body practically lifted off of Simon’s lap. “Heh, wow, I knew stabbing you had to count for something. You know I can always tell when you mean it, right?”
Simon ignored her. “So, Trin, how are you? In particular, how have the last couple of days been going?”
“Since I took in the shard, you mean? I feel strong, I guess. And big. But also a bit frustrated that I’m not actually strong or big. I think that last bit is just the orc though.”
“And the rest isn’t?”
“I don’t think so? I definitely am stronger now, and I’ve never exactly been short on the inside, yaknow? Hm, that sounded dirtyTWO!”
“When did you first start to consider lighting the castle on fire?”
“When I started doing it.”
“And had you ever considered doing it before then, in the past?”
“Sure, lots of times. Just standing there between missions, I think I’ve gone through just about every way that you could destroy a castle. I get so bored, you have no idea. One time I was even thinking about trying to convince you to switch out the banners for more flammable ones. I had like, a whole script.”
“So you wanted to, but you didn’t.”
“Yeah, that’s THREE!”
“So, you’ve been bored. Are there any other needs you have that aren’t being met?”
“Man, I don’t know.” She crossed her arms, rolled her eyes. It was awkward, given that she was horizontal and Simon couldn’t see her face. “I’m alive, I’m getting dicked regularly, everything else is just window dressing, right?”
“What do you want, Trin? Right this moment, -right now-, other than for me to hurt you?”
“Oh my GOD, SHUT UP about ‘what I want’ already! Haven’t you figured it out yet? Look around you!” Her words fled out into the chamber around them, still stretching off into itself far past what the eye could see, and died there, just as Simon’s had. A pair of Ardan nobles dressed for the ball were slowly waltzing past, unconcerned. Eventually, they vanished into the mist and the stretching silence. “There is no real me,” she said bitterly. “It’s all just masks and mirrors and copies and shards, alllllllll the way down to the bottom. So there’s nobody for you to placate, nobody whose permission you need. Just tell me who you want me to be already, so I can be that! Instead of waiting until I ruin everything!!!!” the little slave mage yelled.
Trin slumped over his legs, fingertips grazing the dark marble.
“That’s the only thing I ‘‘‘want’’’," she sulked. "You were my owner. That was like, your -one- job.”
Simon put his hand on Trin’s shoulder. She was definitely crying, he could feel it in the way she breathed. But he figured she’d prefer to be spared the perceived indignity of looking him in the eye while she did it, so he didn’t flip her over. Instead, he said seriously to her back “I want you to be any version of yourself that doesn’t hurt or endanger the other people who I care about. That is the one and only thing –I- want. So, do you think there’s a Trin somewhere in here who’s smart enough to do that?”
That surprised her. “Smart enough?”
He smiled. “Trin, I’m not asking you to be a good person. I’m just asking for a reasonable facsimile of one. That’s something you’re good at, right? Acting?”
Trin had stopped crying. She nodded, more to herself really.
Simon bent over, closer to her. “Want to know a secret?”
Trin yelped as he brought his arm down in another swing, by far the hardest yet. “THREE! No, four, shit…”
“Pretending was all most of us started out doing,” he whispered.
Trin snorted. Both of her cheeks were red and tingly, the right one far more so from the fresher blow. There were, again, tears in her eyes, but this time they were nice wholesome physical-pain tears. “Even Cumdump?” she asked, incredulous.
“Everyone –except- Qum D’umpe.”
“...Fine, whatever. Just don’t count on me becoming a friggin priestess or anything.”
He nodded. “Yes, neither of us are morons. That has been established already.”
She rubbed her backside. “Well, I think that one just about cured me. If we’re going to keep this spank train going, can we take it outside? Of my head, I mean.”
“Sure. Not quite getting the right sensation in here?”
Trin got off of Simon’s lap, and put her pants back on. “No it’s not that, it’s super crisp. It’s just like, I’m kinda wondering, am I going to remember anything after you leave? All else being equal, I’d rather remember it.”
“You know, that’s a good point. I’m not even really sure if –I’m- going to remember it.”
She stuck out her tongue in distaste. “I sure hope we do! Imagine if all that horrible feelings bullshit turned out to have been for nothing! Bleh.”
Simon nodded. “Mhm. Wait, what was your name again?”
Trin laughed, and punched Simon playfully in the shoulder. “Oh thank the hells! For a while there I was worried you’d gone soft on me. Well, I mean, you’ve been pretty soft for a while now, but that’s normal for a man your age. Like, emotionally soft, is what I meant.”
“I’m going to figure out how to wake us up now,” Simon said.
“The noodle’s gone floppy, is what I’m saying. Honestly it’s been roughly in the ‘al dente’ range for as long as I’ve known you, but now it’s outright ridiculous. Just a piece of overcooked pasta, waving in the-”
-
Simon woke. He was lying partially on top of Trin, and otherwise on the floor. He huffed, and tried to get up.
Trin’s tiny bloodied hand clamped around his arm.
“Could you… just stay for a bit?” she asked, softly. “Please?”