Chapter 10- The Languori

(If you prefer Wattpad to read, you can find the novel here : https://www.wattpad.com/story/78722854-the-songs-of-loss-book-one-armanth )

“Do you know that fear will kill you?”

Lisa flinched, turning her head towards the voice without answering. Her mind was beginning to admit to calling herself Selyenda even though she tried, as often as she could, to remember that she was Lisa Beaufort, born in Paris, on Earth, seventeen years before. Despite her best efforts, it was becoming increasingly difficult; the last two weeks had been a terrible blow to her willpower. Under the supervision of Priscius, who himself came regularly to check on the progress of their training, Lisa, Cénis and Elena had lived under Sonia’s merciless yoke. In the space of two weeks, her sole aim – and she was an expert at it – had been to ensure the obedience of all three of them. Simulated drowning, whippings and blackmail into docility followed one another, with lessons repeated to the point of exhaustion, as simple as they could be terrible and humiliating, to crush any hint of rebellion in the three young women.

The hardest part was that the treatment was turn them into animal. Always completely naked, except for their collars and the symbiotic Linci on their thighs, they had had to learn to beg and crawl for the right to eat, drink, or simply to get out of their cages and breathe a little air. In recent days, they had been forced to beg for the slightest privilege, their foreheads touching the ground at Sonia’s feet. Priscius, highly satisfied, had in turn put them to the test, making them beg for their meals. He forced them to eat from his hand, allowing them to be petted and caressed without protest. Elena, the most stubborn of the trio, finally broke down several times and burst into tears. After previous attempts to pounce hatefully on Sonia and make her pay for her tortures, even the most rebellious and fierce of the three captives no longer had the strength to rebel. As for Cénis, under Sonia’s playful and perverse cruelties, she had lost all her aristocratic nobility; she was reduced, like the two sisters, to having to accept being treated like an animal. Only Lisa had never made any real attempt to resist, except in her passive, prostrate mutism, from which Sonia would rudely and violently extricate her; yet it was with her that this stage of training worked best. It was also Sonia who used her as a lever for her emotional blackmail, abusing this tool to get each of the three captives to try to obey and submit on their own, in order to spare the other two the abuse she invented; when it came to torture and degradation, the educator was never at a loss for ideas. Her only limit was not to damage them physically; at least, not too much, and avoiding anything that might leave scars. It was rare for young women not to have their backs and buttocks reddened and streaked by the flat whip, but Sonia no longer used the goad and was now careful to ensure that Lisa was kept away from the loss-metal.

So far, sexual conditioning and the first courses in slave education according to the rules of High Art had not really begun; the three captives had barely been brought into contact with the men of the House, mainly Priscius, since the only other was the assistant charged solely with mistreating the captives, and stressing them. But while Cénis and Elena accepted, albeit under duress, the slaver’s presence, contact and physical proximity, it was a disaster with Lisa. She shivered in terror and became tetchy whenever he brushed against her. Her panic was so violent that Priscius had given up insisting, but heavily reminded Sonia that he expected her to be perfectly successful in solving this problem, since apparently there was a customer who wished to buy her.

At this hour, only Sonia, and Lisa remained in the baths, still on their knees, trembling. Access to the baths, and therefore to the precious privilege of being able to wash, was ritualized and, like everything else, depended on their perfect obedience and docility. For the third consecutive day, Lisa, like the other two captives, had to spend most of the day on her knees, repeating over and over again, blindfolded: « I’m a slave »; and for Lisa and Elena, in their native tongue. It was nothing short of relentless conditioning to the point of exhaustion, with the educator and her new assistant taking it in turns to punish any weakness or hesitation with the lash, pushing the young women to the limits of their strength. Lisa had ended up haggard and dazed, her voice hoarse, like the other two; but she had earned the right to enjoy the bath, although still blind, like her two colleagues.

In the warm, humid, peaceful silence, the educator whispered close to Lisa’s ear, in French, much to her surprise. The Athémaïs accent was pronounced, and some words were a little hesitant, but Sonia seemed to speak this oh-so-foreign language with ease.

– Fear will kill you. I know the world you come from, through slaves like you who have told me about it; I also know several of your languages, as you can hear. Fear exists in your world, just like ours, just as brutal and ruthless; the same fear that broke you, for the same reasons. I also know that you survive it in your world just as we do. So you can conquer your fear…

The educator came to crouch opposite Lisa, reaching out a hand whose thumb grazed then slowly redrew the angle of her jaw in a sensual caress. Her face was now so close to Lisa’s that the latter could feel her breath on her skin.

“Had you been abused, before you were captured here?”

The young woman swallowed, teeth clenched.

“Yes. Yes, mistress. Two… or three times. I sold my body. To… to buy drugs. So people thought… they could help themselves.”

“And take you by force. Nothing more or less is going to happen here; the only difference will be your fear, little earthling. Men here may like to take a slave by force, and we won’t find anything wrong with that; but nobody likes to be raped. A slave who doesn’t like being taken by a man, no matter how brutal, will not take it well; the haunting will gnaw at her and destroy her. If this happens, she’ll be good only for being sent to do domestic chores, and one day, eventually, it’ll kill her.”

“Do you mean… they’ll kill me?”

“If you become useless for anything, yes, you’ll be killed.”

Sonia’s hand slipped gently under Lisa’s cheek to subtly caress the hollow of her neck, under her ear, causing her fingers to quiver slightly, goose bumps betraying an involuntary reaction of intoxication. She had moved closer again, almost lip to lip with the young woman, whose fearful, hesitant pout, blushing slightly, bore witness to the emotion that had overcome her. Sonia’s voice became a sensual whisper, as caressing as the slow movements of her fingers, as she continued:

“But if they killed you, it would mean you were too stupid to understand and that I’d been wrong about you.”

“Wro… Wrong? About what?”

Lisa breathed faster, her heart pounding. She could feel the fire in her face. The educator’s voice was an almost frightening enchantment, so close to her that she could feel the warmth of his body. She was familiar with his scent by now, which she was picking up with too much acuity at this moment. Normally, she would have been all the more frightened, but she was experiencing a fascination that disarmed her. Sonia smiled, reading her protégé’s emotions openly, helpless in her hands.

“On your intelligence and your will to survive, slave… Was I wrong?”

Lisa didn’t have time to answer; would she have been able to when her breath was taken away by the tumult of her emotions? Sonia’s lips had just touched hers; pressing down with her hand, she forced her jaw, so that the little redhead couldn’t refuse and surrendered without resistance. The educator slid her free hand over the young girl’s hip, then to her loins, and with an impulse, forced her to press herself against her. Lisa had the brutal sensation that all her senses were exploding in an irrepressible reaction, as if, after weeks of being muzzled, Sonia was ordering her body to free itself and unleash an irresistible outlet of eroticism. It was the first kiss the young Earth woman had ever exchanged with a woman; a kiss that was constrained, passionate, almost cruel. Apprehension mingled with fascination in a moment of abandonment that she wanted to refuse and deny with all her might, but in the face of the educator’s art of pleasure, which embraced and held her firmly, it was like trying to escape the hypnotic gaze of a wild beast ready to pounce; Lisa didn’t stand a chance. The only respite came when Sonia abandoned her lips, not without a greedy lick, and repeated:

“Did I make a mistake?”

At the same time, the educator closed her arms around the young girl to prevent her from escaping. She began to tremble.

“N… No…. No, mistress.”

Lisa, disoriented by her blindfold, tried to catch her breath, her heart racing. Sonia’s warm arms imprisoned her, sending more violent shivers down her spine. Her hands came to caress and redraw the whip marks on the young redhead’s back. The educator was testing her acute sensitivity; for her helpless prey, it was almost painful and only heightened the terrible, revolting sensuality of the moment. Sonia began to play with the lines of the fine scars, exploring them carefully, continuing her conversation with an almost playful detachment:

“There’s a man who likes you, who can and wants to buy you. Jawaad is looking for a slave like you and you’re rare, very rare on Loss, Selyenda. Jawaad is rich and powerful, he has his own Slave Garden; thousands of men work for him. You’d be happy and well treated if you belonged to him; you couldn’t wish for a better master, little slave…”

Without ceasing to speak, Sonia continued her caresses. Her hands slid back down to the hollow of the young woman’s loins, in a sensual massage. Still as close to her face as ever, her mouth grazed the corner of Lisa’s lips in a sensual, slow, lascivious kiss, followed by a gentle, delicious exploration of her jawline. Lisa lost her breath and finally moaned. The sound that emerged from her throat was an ambiguous plea, which she immediately regretted having let escape, so obvious was it that it betrayed the desire that was devouring her, even as she wanted to deny it with all her might. Sonia was delighted by her vain struggle, and continued:

“But fear can make you lose everything. Fear will make you incapable of understanding and accepting the fate that awaits you. You can’t escape it; neither you nor your sister. The Dogmas of the Council forbid leaving a redheaded woman free; either enslave them or kill them. If you’d been born on Loss, you’d have met the same fate anyway. So, yes, you’re from Earth; yes, you may find what’s happening to you unjust; but you have no choice. Forget your world, you can never go back. If you refuse to accept your fate, you’ll die, because no one will have mercy on you.”

Sonia again placed an authoritative hand under Lisa’s chin, and she immediately flinched, her body burning, trembling like a leaf, to hold her face to hers, breath against breath:

“Have you understood, slave? Are you smart enough to accept learning not to be afraid anymore?”

There was silence. Lisa remained mute, haggard, her lips barely moving, as if she were trying to form syllables but no sound could come. Sonia waited, her other hand caressingly stroking the girl’s belly and side with obvious art and pleasure. Blowing through her nose, betraying her own desires as they deliciously invaded her, her gaze suddenly ignited with a sinister, disquieting blue fire. In her mind, as sharp as it was tortured, the leads of the plan that had emerged over two weeks earlier continued to weave. This moment, which she had skilfully foreseen, the idea of achieving her goals and the expected steps to get there, had a violent and powerful erotic charge effect on the educator; as delicious as the beauty of the emotions and abandonment of her helpless pupil melting under her caresses. She contemplated pure desire, which would almost have touched her heart if it hadn’t been as cold as steel. Reliving this emotion gave her an exhilaration bordering on delight.

Lisa managed to answer, but in a hoarse whisper. Her voice was muffled and altered by Sonia’s ever more lascivious and insistent caresses, almost forcibly extracting arcs of pleasure that made her whole being quiver and buck.

“Yes… yes, mistress. I… I am…”

Sonia sketched an unhealthy smile, releasing another breath of delight through her nose.

“So, that’s how I’d make you free, slave. Freer than you’ll ever know…”

Brutally, she tipped Lisa onto the paving that covered the edges of the bath, to take back her lips in a new kiss designed to gag her. She wanted to taste the young woman to her heart’s content and had no intention of admitting the slightest reluctance on her part. Holding her back with her weight, she forced her arms behind her back, then guided her, keeping her stretched and arched, offered in a sensual posture that forbade her to move. With one hand on her belly, leaning over the young girl’s frail body, she watched her for a long, silent moment, letting her taste the delicious, agonizing pangs of apprehension; then she slid down to her crotch, placing a kiss on her lower abdomen, filling her lungs with the floral scent of the young earthling’s Linci, which made her body a source of delicious, bewitching perfumes.

Sonia gave Lisa her first carnal lesson in abandonment, playing with her body to the point of ecstasy. She only agreed to let her breathe hours later, far into the night and only after, for her last cry of pleasure, the young girl had finally begged for mercy in a bewitched, defeated and lascivious voice, coming to snuggle up against the educator.

 

***

From that night onwards, Sonia didn’t let Lisa find her sister and Cénis until very late: they slept every late evening in another, much more comfortable cage, this one now in the dormitories of the slave house, and no longer in the cellar gaols. It wasn’t a privilege, even if they took it that way, but the next stage in the High Art process.

Time was beginning to lose all meaning for each of them. The three captives wore the padlocked blindfold practically all the time, and blindness disorientated them. To add to the loss of reference points, certain habits had been completely broken, such as variable meal times and access to the baths. No longer did any of the slaves answer their questions; they were spoken to only to give orders. When they were assembled for the night, they were gagged to prevent them from communicating. Unaware of each other’s fate, they could only sense each other’s presence, and then only by touch and smell. Each was thus plunged into a constant apprehension of the immediate, completely disoriented by silence and blindness.

Sonia was in charge of this phase of their training, which was quite similar for all three captives. They were regularly offered to the hands, caresses and massages of the estate girls assigned to look after them. The day passed between waiting on their knees, baths, posture or walking exercises repeated over and over again, and lessons repeated like leitmotivs, continuing the conditioning designed to make them accept without question their status as slaves and animals of pleasure and distraction. Classes were still punctuated by orders forcing them to expose themselves, walk, kneel, wait standing, lie down, offer themselves; it seemed endless.

Regularly, in the midst of these ceaselessly repeated exercises, their senses were once again stimulated by intimate caresses and the use of oils with aphrodisiac and intoxicating virtues, until they were brought to the borders of orgasm, as patiently as necessary, to leave them thus languishing. Then the exercises would begin again, harder and more difficult; and the play, the caresses, the excitement would begin again and again, night and day, forbidding them to sleep until they felt unwell.

Within a few days, they were exhausted again, both physically and nervously. Their bodies were so aroused that after four days, the slightest caress or solicitation would send them into an uncontrollable tizzy, begging to be relieved of so much desire and burning. But of course, their pleas were in vain.

Cénis tried to resist, but she gave in first, so Priscius quickly took charge of the young aristocrat, who was so distressed that she was losing the little sleep she was allowed, at the effect of these stimulations on her deepening loss of control. Of course, the slaver had no intention of taking her virginity, but she had to be ready and willing, to the point of losing all restraint, to be taken at last by the man who would buy her. So she was handed over to two assistants, who had orders not to touch her virginity and knew their business. Under Priscius’ supervision, she was manipulated like a doll, caressed in every way, guided to offer her hands and mouth to the desires and orders of the men who played with her in such a way that, between silences, expectations and sudden contacts, she could never anticipate who, when or how their caresses and attentions would be carried out, plunged, blind and powerless, into a long, forced initiation into the arts of sexuality.

Of course, every hesitation or attempt to evade on the part of the young Eteoclian was inevitably punished: flat lashes, followed by a long period of enforced immobility, tied up uncomfortably and deprived of the next meal.

For Elena, who was not accustomed to being named Athenae, the objective was the same, but Priscius had left Sonia and her assistant in charge of preparing her so that she would be unable to resist the moment he took her for the first time. The first sexual use of a slave-in-training was of great importance: she had to be totally offered, too sensitive and inflamed to resist the man who would use her, but she would have to be taken both gently and roughly enough to realize that she was only an animal available to the pleasure of her masters.

Given Elena’s temperament and fiery resistance, it hadn’t been so easy to prepare her for this. Eventually, however, she too gave in. The art of Lossyan drugs and ointments, patience, the use of skilful caresses and the erotic torture to which she’d been subjected had taken their toll on her willpower, after two weeks of conditioning; but even at the height of the ecstasy that finally freed her from her frustrations in a violent orgasm, she’d resisted proudly, never surrendering completely, as if she had to be conquered all the time and as if taking her must necessarily be envisaged as a battle, even if she knew it was lost in advance.

From a certain point of view, for Priscius, this fighting spirit was a quality that further enhanced the superb redhead’s value; despite this, Elena had experienced whippings, immobilization and meal deprivation more than once. Stubbornly, she had continued to resist as best she could, even to the point of occasionally biting or hitting one of the men assisting Priscius. The latter had made her pay dearly for these mistakes, but admitted, with some patience, that it was ultimately a lesser evil given what he managed to obtain from the most beautiful, feisty and feminine of the three captives in his lot.

Finally, but the slaver had expected it, the failure had come from the frailest and most fearful of the three, Lisa. He was nonetheless annoyed and frustrated.

Sonia, alone, had prepared her in the days leading up to it, for almost a week, leaving no one else this privilege, except to watch over her pupil when she had to look after the other two. She made no secret of the pleasure she took in playing on the senses of the young woman she was pushing to the limit. She had pushed her art so far with Lisa, with such acuteness, that when she considered she had finished, the slightest touch, the tiniest caress made the little redhead react with languid, pleading moans; but no sooner had she been brought into the presence of Priscius and his assistants, than their scent provoked immediate panic.

The slaver had tried to force things a little and, failing to take the young earthling, had tried to caress her and enjoy her aroused body, but she had burst into tears, tetanized by terror. Neither the slaver’s gentleness, nor his blows, nor his anger made any difference, and Priscius sent her away, insisting heavily that Sonia repair the damage as quickly as possible.

Back in the dormitories, Sonia delivered a masterful slap to her student, who was crying in panic, blindfolded and stunned by the blow; but at least it calmed her down a little and made her more attentive to the educator’s words.

“Breathe! You’re still not free, and you never will be. I’m going to speak to your body, since I’m free to prepare you and your mind won’t listen. You’ll have to give me all your trust, whatever happens, whatever you endure. Can you do it?”

Lisa was slumped on the floor, tremors still shaking her body frantically, but the slap had forced her to emerge from her nightmares. She looked up, dumbfounded:

“I… I don’t understand? Why are you asking me?”

Sonia smiled an unhealthy smile. She knew full well that Priscius’s failure had been predictable. In fact, she had done nothing to avoid it, since it served the plan that had been germinating in her mind ever since she saw Jawaad’s interest in the redhead. She leaned over the girl, breath against breath again.

“Because what awaits you is up to you to decide whether to endure it or give up. Enjoy the fact that I’m giving you the choice. It’s a rare thing in the life of a slave.”

“How… how can I choose, without knowing anything?”

“Good answer. I’m not asking you to choose what’s going to happen to you, but to choose to trust me, whatever you have to endure from now on.”

Sonia gently ran her hand over Lisa’s sore cheek, causing her to react immediately with a slight, tender and almost involuntary movement in response to this contact. She remained terribly sensitive, even after the moment of panic spent with the men; sensitive and deeply tamed by the past days of attentions, tenderness and sensuality to which Sonia had subjected her. Without taking any particular pride in it, the educator would have found it hard to lie about the fact that she felt affection for it, although the word was inappropriate; but whatever her feelings and goals might be, she had long been unable to rationalize or even reason about her own feelings, including those that motivated her to devote herself so much to this young redheaded earthling, so knowingly deceiving Priscius.

Lisa’s response was a little slow, as she lost herself to the still stunned educator’s caress. So Sonia approached again to whisper, each syllable caressing her pupil’s with her lips:

“Will you trust me, slave?”

Lisa’s voice was a whisper, fearful as much as spellbound:

“Ye… yes, mistress.”

 

***

Sonia dragged Lisa into one of the rooms in the estate’s cellars to lock her in, and disappeared for the rest of the day and night, leaving her alone. For her project to succeed, she needed a very specific and, in his way, very rare material, which Priscius was unlikely to provide. She would have to steal it. She’d done it before. Few lossyans knew how a slave with a Linci whose unmistakable scent clung to her skin could deceive dogs, and how she could move about discreetly and illegally, if she knew how to hide. It took her all night to gather what she would need for the task ahead.

When she returned to Lisa in the morning, after a detour to wash and get ready, no one knew she’d disappeared. Sonia didn’t sleep in Priscius’ apartments, but in a private alcove in the slave dormitories. An advantage for her, where the slave owner’s favorites saw it as a sign that the educator was scorned by their master; something they would never have dared mention in front of her, especially since Magenta’s disturbing disappearance three weeks earlier.

Sonia had prepared everything; now she had everything under control. All that remained was to complete her masterpiece.

Languori is essentially physical and psychological conditioning taken to the extreme. The very first stage involves total sensory isolation. The slave who undergoes it is fitted with a thick, totally opaque leather mask, which also seals off her hearing and olfaction, and whose integrated gag only allows her to breathe. The captive is then totally restrained so that she cannot injure herself with her inevitable bursts of terror; then it’s just a matter of waiting.

Lisa’s first panic attack wasn’t immediate, in fact Sonia was surprised: it usually happens quite quickly. The young Earthwoman had clearly accepted that she had to trust her, and had allowed herself to be taken in without flinching or rebelling, but despite this determination, three hours later, the terror began. She even came close to knocking herself out by banging her head in the air.

She endured six more violent panic attacks late into the night. The gag had a purpose: her screams of distress would have panicked the whole estate. All this time, Sonia had not taken her eyes off her, and Priscius had come to witness the beginnings of the conditioning, to see what progress had been made. This was just the beginning; the first few days would be more difficult and risky. The aim of this stage was for the slave, by dint of panic and vain struggles, hobbled, blind and deaf, devoid of any sense of smell, to eventually give up the fight.

Such treatment eventually leads to a kind of catatonia, where the subject stops fighting and gives in totally, resignedly, practically letting herself die. In other circumstances, this would have been a slow, relentless and cruel form of punishment; but even Sonia, who knew a lot about some of the worst abuses lossyans are capable of, had never heard of anyone using this technique for a slow death.

The educator knew perfectly well what Lisa was going through. It was the sixth time she’d performed Languori on a slave; but more importantly, she’d undergone it herself and had subsequently been taught all about it. The young redhead found herself locked up in the most terrifying of prisons: her own body. She was totally isolated, the only sounds she could hear were those of her heart and breathing, and she was drowning in the tangle of her thoughts, which with each passing hour became spectres, ghosts, monsters haunting her ever more deeply, intimately, intensely. In the end, when she stopped struggling, there would be nothing left but her and an immense black, empty ocean with a slow, steady beat. She would then feel as if she were slowly dying and falling into dark, cottony abysses; madness would not be far off either. Sonia, who had already lost her identity before experiencing the Languori, had not escaped this. That day, having lost all memory of her birth name, she had even stopped remembering that she had ever loved.

After two days, Lisa reacted only by reflex, and Sonia deemed her ready for the second stage. She removed her gag and fed her a thin, liquid soup. The young woman allowed herself to be manipulated without reaction and, in the solitude of the cool, silent room hidden in the cellars, Sonia was able to continue her work. In any case, the Languori was so secretive and so feared by the slaves, who of course knew all about it – everything quickly became common knowledge in the household – that they would have done anything to keep as far away as possible from where the educator officiated. Even without knowing the details, most lossyans knew that it was a cruel, even sadistic practice, and that one in three slaves on whom it was attempted did not survive it.

Lisa found herself hanging with her back to the wall, wrists and ankles bound in chains that pulled her apart. Thus exposed and offered, she was still masked, and thus unable to hear, see or feel. Annihilated by sensory isolation, she no longer even tried to fight back, reduced to the state of a panting doll. Sonia felt nothing but satisfaction that things were going according to plan; the conditioning could begin. For the next four days and nights, without ever allowing her a respite longer than the time she needed to drink a little, Sonia used on Lisa a skilful and cruel dosage of hallucinogenic drugs, altering her memory and awareness of time, and other aphrodisiacs; the use of fine acupuncture needles purposely placed in very sensitive and painful points, keeping her in a perpetual state of tension; and finally long, expert and patient sexual stimulation. In this way, she awakened the young earthling’s instinct to survive and fight, and then kept her helpless, devastated pupil in a state of heightened physical and nervous sensitivity, under permanent physical and psychological stress, on the verge of breakdown. She deliberately put her through an endless ordeal, a constant and ecstatic form of torture that drugs and abandonment made impossible to escape, control or fight.

Lisa’s agonized screams and pleading cries, muffled by the gag, did nothing to change this: step by step, each followed to the letter, Sonia pursued her task without the slightest hesitation or scruple. Like putting together a scattered jigsaw puzzle, the educator shattered and reformatted all remaining resistance, terror and instinctive reactions of the young earthling, putting her through her paces. The depth of this skilful torture was such that it melted into the hallucinations of drugs and exhaustion, as much as into erotic stimulation and caresses, until Lisa could no longer distinguish reality from her visions, pain from pleasure.

It was during this second stage that Sonia knew she had to watch out for the second risk. Captives who had survived sensory isolation without losing their minds could very easily plunge into the most irrecoverable dementia at this stage. She herself remembered that she was already totally lost, so much so, in fact, that she had finally survived it because madness had found no place to nestle in her already completely ravaged mind anyway.

At the end of this ordeal, in which Sonia had hardly slept any more than she had allowed Lisa, who in any case wasn’t even really aware of her waking and sleeping phases, the educator removed part of the mask, freeing her mouth and nose. The young girl could at last regain her sense of smell; it was almost brutal. Sonia had taken care of her own cleanliness, but the young Terran had just spent over a week without being able to breathe through her nose. She almost choked, almost as if she were drowning, before regaining the sensation of perceiving smells and perfumes. The first scents to come to her were those of Sonia nearby, whom she knew well, and those of Jawaad. She had a brief, weak reflex of panic, without really recognizing them.

Sonia let Lisa react and wonder. Although the young redhead could at last smell and speak, she was still blindfolded and her ears plugged. The educator had risked a great deal to steal the dirty cloths that had been worn by the taciturn master merchant, but for her own purposes she needed them, and wouldn’t have asked for them; indeed, she had found her escapade to steal them amusing. Now she could move on to the third stage.

Sonia resumed her skilful work of torture and stimulation, aided by the drugs. But from now on, Lisa was constantly breathing in the odors that the educator was careful to place as close to her nostrils as possible, so that the air was drenched with them, night and day; she always fed her pupil as summarily as possible and ignored her pleas. Lisa’s pleas were few and rarely intelligible. She called, whispered and cried sometimes in French, sometimes in Japanese, a language Sonia didn’t know, but she was too overcome by conditioning and drugs to have enough willpower to even think of escaping her ordeal, even if she could. She endured it meekly, resigned to the point of no longer being aware that her life was anything other than this ecstatic, endless torture populated by shapeless ghosts and unfamiliar odors. In the perpetual sensory chaos in which she was kept, Sonia patiently taught her to associate these fragrances with these skilful and cruel mixtures of pain and mingled pleasure, until she drowned in a succession of second states and endless sexual ecstasies.

In three more days, Lisa could no longer breathe in the scent of Jawaad or Sonia without reacting instinctively, her senses on the alert, in delicious and distraught apprehension of the ecstasy to come. The educator was satisfied, her plan was going perfectly. Normally, she would have used cloths soaked in the scent of Priscius and his men, but she had been careful not to use them. They lay in a corner, far from her workspace, tossed in a basin of water to wash away the odors so they wouldn’t interfere with her task.

Sonia left Lisa in this second state for another three days, gradually moderating it, giving her pupil ever longer periods of sleep and rest, before removing the mask, leaving her only blind now. But even with her hearing restored, the young Terran was no longer struggling. Suitably used, even the use of pain or the slightest sensual incitement provoked in her an immediate reaction of lascivious eroticism. She surrendered to it without even realizing it.

Sonia untied Lisa from the wall, laid her down on a soft sheet and gave her a long wash. For a few weeks, her skin would retain the marks of the shackles, as elsewhere, the reddened marks of the needles that pierced her. The lukewarm water, the caress of the sponge, the gentleness of Sonia’s cleansing gestures put Lisa in a second state; she reacted a little, but without force, and let herself be done meekly, abandoning herself calmly and lasciviously.

From now on, as she would discover soon enough, Lisa would no longer be able to regain control over the sensitivity of her body; whether she was afraid or not would make no difference. The slightest caress or attention would speak to her senses, not her mind, to tame and subdue her. Although she would retain her fear of men and the deep wounds of Batsu’s tortures, the Languori would leave an indelible imprint on her that was far more profound, powerful and intimate. It would become an integral part of her identity.

Sonia, however, decided to complete her work for three more days. She watched over the girl alone, almost like a lover, settling her on a thick, comfortable bed. Lisa slept most of the time, fed again by the educator’s hand with fruit, cereals soaked in fresh milk and cookies. With surprising tenderness, but never allowing her to utter a single word, Sonia tended to the wounds and abrasions caused by the long days of torture the young girl had endured, then continued her long and skilful sensual work of stimulation, always keeping Lisa on the edge of ecstasy, overcoming her exhaustion. In any case, the young earthling regularly fell into semi-comas, so exhausted was she.

Finally, to crown her success, Sonia had Lisa stand up against a wall on her own, when she had enough strength to stand, and she whipped her. The instrument was long and slender, a snake-whip which she used progressively, first as a caress, then with increasing force, until the final blows almost tore the young woman’s skin; yet, even under the most intense pain, Lisa plunged back into the delights of irrepressible pleasure. She finally collapsed to her knees, in tears, ecstatic, overcome by pleasure.

Sonia had succeeded. She had created a perfect Languiren. Priscius never knew.

After all those days of intricate, skilful torture to accomplish the conditioning, Sonia had left Lisa, still isolated in the cellar room, to recover and finally get a good night’s sleep. She had ordered her to remain silent, and the young Terran had still not, obediently, uttered a word. For the time being, she slept, a little feverish, and would probably not wake up for a whole day.

Priscius, who had come to visit Sonia and supervise her work, leaned over the sleeping Lisa, snuggled like a kitten on a comfortable bed. As a precaution, Sonia had left her wrists shackled and held tightly to her collar, to prevent her sudden terror from making the wrong move and injuring herself.

Priscius remained dubious as he watched the little redhead wisely asleep, even though he had given his consent. Sonia had been convincing and self-assured, a quality he appreciated in his precious and competent estate; but the price of the drugs she’d used on the Languori were worth a trained girl in themselves.

“So, I await your report, my slave. Did you succeed?”

The educator disagreed with a slight shake of her head, displaying an almost perfect disappointment of conviction on her face, which rarely expressed anything other than a disquieting sensuality.

“She hasn’t succumbed, and her spirit will recover from the ordeal, but fear forced her to resist; the damage caused by Master Batsu was too great. She could make a passable companion slave, or even be used for domestic chores; but even if she remained docile and more sensitive to caresses and attentions, she could never abandon herself to a man.”

At his words, Sonia knelt down in a perfectly enticing and sensual movement. Her voice suave and lascivious, her gaze slightly lowered, she continued:

“I have failed in my task of fulfilling your will, master. I accept the punishment, which I wish with all my heart.”

Priscius burst into a fit of rage at his educator’s venom-and-honey-tinged plea. Sonia had deliberately provoked his anger. The slap he sent her way threw her back two meters, immediately causing her nose to bleed, stunning her violently.

“Of course you failed, you idiot! Batsu knew perfectly well and played me right to the end! You should have realized, as I did, that this girl wasn’t worth all the effort and gold spent to train her. You’ve wasted your time, you’ve wasted mine! Oh yes, you’re going to be punished, and you won’t soon forget it; but be relieved, it’s nothing compared to what I promise Batsu at the first opportunity! I’ll make him eat his deception and puke it up from here to the steps of the Rift! I’m going to ruin him, tear him apart and, when I’ve had enough, I’m going to have his guts ripped out and put on display in an alleyway with his tripe as a necklace! I’ll kill the bastard! And you, get out of my sight! Get the hell out of here! And you’d better make sure the other two are perfect!”

Sonia didn’t wait and got to her feet, staggering a little, to quickly leave the scene, still proudly arrogant with remarkable stubbornness; but she wasn’t going to linger, that’s for sure. She’d achieved her goal and didn’t care if Batsu had to pay for the frustration that still made her master thunder and swear. Even the promise – and she knew Priscius wasn’t going to forget – of her forthcoming punishment slipped on her without any emotion.

To tell the truth, only Priscius’ violent slap had had the slightest effect on her; an effect that would have further fueled her master’s anger, for Sonia savored the pain as if it nourished her and made her even more alive than she was at the moment. Her nose was still bleeding on the way to the garden, where she returned to look after the slaves’ education, but even this discomfort was a delight to her, as much as the taste of her own blood.

 

***

Night fell, lazily engulfing a sun whose glowing rays licked the walls of the dormitory, where the household’s slaves in education dozed off. Some were still whispering, others, exhausted, were already snoring.

One of them, whose thigh served as an improvised pillow for a Cénis huddled like a child, stared out into the dusk. Elena had given up trying to count the days, and her fellow Eteoclian had simply given it no thought. Lossyans, she learned, pay far less attention to the passage of time and its measurement than Earthlings.

Still, Elena would have liked to know how much time had passed since her arrival at Priscius, within the walls of this slave garden she considered a prison, however comfortable it had now become. Despite their isolation and the treatment they’d endured over the last few weeks – she couldn’t give a clear estimate in terms of time, and wearing the mask that had kept them blind until the day before hadn’t helped – she’d made as much progress as she could in her meagre mastery of Athemais and in her knowledge of this world and this people. It had been difficult to learn more from Cénis, as there had been so few opportunities for discussion. As for her little sister, Sonia had taken her she knew not where.

Mirra, the slave who chaperoned them when Sonia was away, had at least agreed to confirm that Lisa was well, without going into any detail, of course. But concern gnawed at Elena, as much as a dark anger: she’d finally given in, and she blamed herself.

Not that she hadn’t done everything in her power to resist the training; she wasn’t an idiot, she’d understood that she was risking her life, but the way they’d gone about breaking her was in line with the rest of her opinion of what Priscius and his clique were doing to her: it was nothing short of physical and mental torture, and it had only fuelled her resentment, coupled with a worry that bordered on anguish. What were they doing to her sister in the meantime?

The door to the slave dormitory swung open and Sonia was pulling Lisa along on a leash. Elena jumped to her feet, tugging on the chain that bound her collar to the wall of her bed and making enough noise to wake the less sleepy, starting with a shaken Cénis, who had just lost her pillow. The educator’s gaze, blue and cold as ice, stared at the floor. With a grimace of anger, Elena complied and fell to her knees, the position that the slaves awakened by the noise all assumed more or less quickly in turn; but the eldest kept her gaze riveted on her sister.

“Lisa…”

It was only a whisper as she stared at her. She stood, slightly haggard and absent-minded. Naked, of course, Lisa had still lost a little weight but seemed to be doing rather well, even if Elena could now count her ribs. The educator had given her a final grooming herself: her hair was brushed and she smelled nice. She gave a faint smile, her eyes lighting up a soft green at the sight of her older sister, and this reassured her. Sonia let her when, as she attached the leash to the wall, Elena caught her sister in her arms. Only her eerie blue eyes betrayed a strange, equivocal reaction. One could almost have mistaken them for genuine tenderness and possessive jealousy.

“Now go to sleep!”

The educator left the dormitory at once. It was then that Elena caught sight of her back.

So it was true. She’d heard rumors from the girls on the estate that Sonia had been chastised by Priscius in front of the household slaves. Those in training had not been allowed to attend. Given her understanding of the local languages, she still largely doubted what she had thought she had grasped, but here, the proof was – literally – displayed before her. From shoulder to lower back, the educator’s back was streaked with deep, wide marks, purple to a sickly purplish haloed in smoky blue, criss-crossing in a pattern that sent a shiver of horror down Elena’s spine. She wondered what Sonia could have done to be whipped like that, and how she could remain so seemingly stoic.

For a brief moment, the young woman had a more sympathetic view of the educator, realizing that despite her position, she did indeed share their fate; but she didn’t dwell on it, instead hugging her youngest daughter, quickly joined by Cénis. Lisa was still smiling, her eyes clear even though they were rimmed with fatigue. She snuggled tenderly against her big sister, letting out a huge sigh of comfort, and whispered ahead of the stream of questions she was about to be asked.

“I’m… I’m fine, Elena.”

Cénis understood. She had finally learned a few words of the two sisters’ language. Not that she really wanted to, but it came naturally. It was she who spoke, before the elder, as she came to place a kiss on Lisa’s temple:

“We were scared, you know; I don’t even know how many days we’ve been without news. Your sister could only have known that, according to Mirra, you were being treated well.”

Elena cut her off, still cradling her youngest tenderly:

“Are you all right? What have they done to you?”

“It’s… uh… I… I don’t know… how I could explain it to you. I don’t know myself. It’s… a bit hazy. I’m not sure I understand what she did to me.”

Lisa paused, and turning her slightly weary gaze, smiling tenderly at Cénis, replied:

“But…. it… it’s been 16 and a half days. 16 days and a little over 9 hours of… since this began.”

There was a kind of silence.

The Eteoclian found it hard to believe what she had just heard; and with good reason: the idea of measuring time was not common among Lossyans, and she couldn’t understand how the Earthwoman could have done it without any instruments. As for Elena, she didn’t seem to want to raise her voice, preferring to cajole her little sister with soft words and settle her against her, inviting Cénis to join them. There would be plenty of time to recount what had happened and what they’d done in the moments to come, until night, silence and sleep overtook the trio.

The most concerned was Sonia who, as usual, ignoring the painful twinges of the lashings, had spied on the trio in the greatest silence. Logically, between the drugs and the sensory isolation, time disappeared during the Languori. However, she could certify that it was within an hour or two of the moment when she had indeed separated Lisa from the other two; a measurement she should never have been able to make, even with instruments; and she had remained deprived of her senses for the majority of the time. It was a mystery that Sonia couldn’t explain, and one that would surely affect the Languori’s success, for it meant that there had always been a small part of her pupil’s mind that had preserved a bit of consciousness. She wondered if Jawaad could have seen all that potential too. She knew for a fact that he had seen Lisa’s nature and her gift as a Loss Singer. But had he noticed the rest of her potential where Priscius had been stupidly blind?

The educator raised a thoughtful glance into the gloom, almost with a smile, before leaving the shelter of the wall that hid her, then exiting the dormitory. She would have time – and she was patient – to understand how Lisa had been able to measure time in the midst of the torments of her torture, but she had other immediate imperatives. The next stage of her project presented many risks, most of which she knew well and would take on purpose, but this time they would place her directly in jeopardy; which amused her.

The idea that she was really going to betray her master, with the corollary possibility of the sentence awaiting any slave who betrayed his owner, crossed her mind as mere information to which she attached no importance.

Crossing the gardens, she headed for the kennels…