Mind Games 1 (1/2)

A man and a woman were walking through a particularly nasty blizzard. The wind was blowing so hard that the lumps of snow that pelted them seemed to be flying sideways. The fact that the pair were even able to tell which direction they were going was nothing short of miraculous, though it wasn’t divine providence that was guiding them. The man held a small magic compass in his hand, one that did not point north, but towards a specific predetermined location. This particular article had the designation ‘BH-01’ etched into the underside of its metal casing, though the meaning behind that code was revealed only on a strict need to know basis.

Such navigational equipment was something of a necessity for traversing the harsh Republic winter on foot, as was gear that would shield the wearer from the intense cold. That was why both the elf that was holding the almost-compass and the woman next to him were wrapped up like cocoons in thick white furs. However, the latter of those did not want to be bundled up like this. She quite relished the thought of once more experiencing what it was like to slowly turn into a slutsickle under her careless master’s orders, but her instructions this time around forbade it. Xera wouldn’t be able to serve as Boxxy’s eyes and ears if she was allowed to entertain her disturbing desires, after all.

The elf and the djinn continued traversing the blizzard for what felt like hours before it began to let up. The sky was still ominously cloudy and the wind was as strong as ever, but at least the snowfall had all but stopped. With visibility restored, the pair were finally able to lay eyes on their destination - a deep ravine that ran down an ice-covered mountain. Upon getting closer to the narrow canyon-like formation, Xera was able to spot a stone fortification of some sort built into the sheer rock wall. One that seemed more like a spike-covered burrow than a castle, and was completely inaccessible by foot unless one were stupid enough to risk climbing down the slippery cliff.

“This the place, huh?” mused the demoness. “Looks positively depressing.”

It was windy, damp, cold, and would only get a few rays of direct sunshine per day.

“I would certainly hope so,” Silus replied matter of factly. “Wouldn’t be much of a prison if it was a leisurely resort now, would it?”

“A prison? I thought we were going to a mine?”

Not just any mine, either. This hole-in-the-wall was one of the main sources of mithril and magical gemstones in the Republic, one of if not the most profitable government-owned facilities in the entire nation. It was located in the country’s western reaches, immediately north of the Clattering Plains where Fort Yimin resided. It was deemed such a valuable resource that the Republic were willing to throw away the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and conscripts just to keep it out of the Empire’s hands.

“Bitterhold is both,” claimed the elf. “It’s where the government sends our worst, most irredeemable criminals. The kind that are so far gone that execution is too light of a sentence.”

“So you instead make them dig the earth so they can quite literally work off their debt to society, huh? What happens if they escape?”

“They don’t. Bitterhold has had zero escapees since its inception seventy years ago. Once a prisoner enter this place, not even their corpse is allowed to leave.”

“My, aren’t you people thorough,” said Xera, her voice oozing with sarcasm. “What I fail to realize is how bringing me to such a place will convince my Master of your intentions.”

If Boxxy and the Foundation were to team up to bring down the shapeshifter’s oldest nemesis, then it needed to know they were capable of working with a monster. Not through enslaving them, but actual cooperation. That was why Silus Underwood had brought Xera out here to begin with. The djinn was to verify the secretive organization’s motives and methods in Boxxy’s stead, yet she had been brought to a place that supposedly excelled at keeping people imprisoned. Not the best of first impressions to say the least.

“You’ll see soon enough. They’re expecting us so our ride should be here shortly.”

About a minute later, Xera began picking up the sounds of scraping stone coming from the ravine, just barely audible over the howling wind. She didn’t even get the chance to ask what that was before a duo of massive lizards climbed out of it. Each was easily twice the size of a horse and had six clawed legs attached to their flexible snake-like bodies. Their overall appearance was quite similar to that of giant geckos, apart from the extra limbs and the quad-horned heads.

“These creatures are called slecs,” Silus explained. “They’re domesticated monsters that are used to ferry goods and people in and out of Bitterhold.”

That would certainly explain the strange saddles strapped to them and why they didn’t show even the slightest hint of aggression. In fact, though their size was intimidating, they didn’t seem to be built for combat at all. Their bright green scales looked way too soft to fend off blows, and the claws on their feet seemed to be used more for climbing than ripping people to shreds. They had toothed mouths, of course, but those were filled with the molars of herbivores, not the fangs of predators. It was hard to imagine such ‘soft’ creatures would survive long in the wild, though looks could definitely be deceiving.

“And before you ask, these are not the example I mentioned over the Comm-crystal,” claimed the elven spy. “Come, let’s not keep the warden waiting.”

He and the djinn climbed aboard a slec each, after which the creatures began expertly descending the sheer cliffs. Xera wanted to just float down there on her own, but Underwood claimed that Bitterhold’s defenses had orders to shoot down flying targets on sight and without warning. As their mounts brought them lower into the canyon, she began to understand why. A line of eight massive golem-operated ballistae rested upon Bitterhold’s ramparts, and all of them were closely tracking their descent. This was in addition to the standard suite of defensive magical wards that prevented teleportation, scrying, invisibility and the like, all of which made sure that slecs truly were the only way in and out of the place.

Once they arrived at the platform that doubled as the main gate, they got off the massive lizards and were escorted further inside by a smiling guard. Xera almost immediately noticed an odd atmosphere in the place, as neither the security staff nor the inmates seemed to bat an eye at her passage. Her sensual curves may have been hidden beneath her winter clothing, but the head poking out of those furs was that of a blue-skinned demon with golden crown-like horns. Surely either her demonic features or jaw-droppingly beautiful face would elicit some sort of reaction from a bunch of rowdy men forced to live underground, right?

Wrong. Because every single person she passed by on the way to the office was smiling. Prisoners of various races, builds and ages were walking around with heavy loads on their shoulders and goofy grins on their faces without uttering so much as a grunt of dissatisfaction. They also had a hazy, blissed out look to their eyes, almost as if the hard labor was a vacation. Which it most certainly was not, especially when it came to the material they were extracting.

Mithril was only found in exceptionally unstable and dangerous places. Anyone who wanted to liberate the precious metal from the earth’s grip had to put in considerably more effort than something like iron or gold. Not only did the extraction process require special equipment and an immense amount of strength and endurance, but also included a variety of supernatural hazards. Subterranean monster attacks, pockets of toxic fumes and discharges of volatile magical energy when striking the ore were but a few of the obstacles involved. The worst among those was without a doubt the sporadic seismic activity that caused frequent cave ins, which was probably the cause of those distant ground tremors that crawled up Xera’s spine.

It was safe to say that mining mithril was a task better suited to adventurers than laborers, which was partly why it fetched such a high price even in its unsmelted, unpurified form. However, this also implied that the inmates here did not have their Jobs stripped away from them as the law dictated. It was impossible to do an adventurer's job without adventurer Jobs, after all. Nor would they be able to do that work if they were bound by mana draining shackles as one might expect in these situations. Nor did they seem to have any sort of meaningful oversight, as the prisoner to guard ratio was somewhere in the neighbourhood of thirty to one.

All things considered, the place was so suspicious that even a five year old child that was a bit on the slow side would be able to tell something strange was going on.

“Quite the sight, isn’t it?” Silus asked Xera while they were descending a torch-lit staircase. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, all of this scum is being controlled through magical means rather than physical ones.”

“No, really?” she replied in a high-pitched sarcastic tone. “You mean it isn’t normal for ruthless criminals to happily perform hazardous and physically intensive labor for presumably no pay without trying to overpower these lax security measures? And here I thought they’d just grown to like this dark, gloomy place whose very name sounds depressing! I’m sure my Master will leap at the chance to join the festivities! Right after it rips out your heart and shits in your skull.”

“Don’t bitch at me, this place wasn’t my idea. Frankly speaking it makes me ashamed it even exists. Criminals or not, I would much rather see these people executed so their souls can move on rather than imprison them within their own bodies like this, but that’s not my call to make.”

“Is that why you seemed so nonchalant that my Master blew up your Foundation’s precious underground facility?”

“Something like that. My bosses were quite furious, but I was honestly relieved to hear that den of nightmares they called a think tank was gone. Relieved, but not surprised. The kind of ‘work’ that went on there was bound to blow up in the Foundation’s face sooner or later.”

“My Master wants you to know you should save your breath. It’s not going to believe for a second you truly feel that way about your colleagues.”

“It wasn’t as if I joined by choice,” he mumbled in response.

Silus Underwood had lost his life during the final days of the Calamity Conflict, just another casualty in the wake of Overlord Nagnamor’s rampage. This was not a fabricated lie, but the honest truth. However, the Foundation had revived him much like they had Boxxy, and Silus was thus ‘recruited’ into the group. He didn’t like the arrangement, but he was an FIB man through and through. Someone who understood why it was necessary to cross certain lines so that both the Republic and its people might prosper.

He understood, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

“What about this place?” asked the demoness next to him. “What sort of sick bastard’s in charge here?”

“You’re about to find out. We’ve arrived at the warden’s office.”

The elf and the djinn had been escorted to a small wooden building of some sort, more of a shack than a house. They entered through the plain looking front door, which creaked slightly as it was opened. Inside was a rather spacious office, though much like the rest of the facility, something was very ‘off’ about it. While there were indeed desks, chairs, cupboards and cabinets all over the place as one might expect, it was also home to hundreds of empty liquor bottles. Mostly wine bottles, judging by the stale stench in the air.

And standing in the middle of all that with a goofy grin on her face was the warden, a mature elven woman slightly taller than Xera. She wore a dark gray uniform bordering on black, with a long sleeved jacket on top and a tight skirt and dark brown leggings on the bottom. Her face was conventionally attractive and she was well stacked in all the right places, yet the feeling she gave off was more of a kindly aunt than a sensual seductress. She had long locks of oily, bright pink hair that rolled off her shoulders, but that was still somehow not her weirdest feature. Her left eye was an exotic silver color with a few speckles in it, while the right was a bright blue.

“Hello- *Slurp* -mister Underwood,” she said with a sloppy salute.

Okay, perhaps the strangest thing about her was the way she casually licked the entirety of her own chin with that abnormally long tongue of hers.

“Hello, ma’am,” Silus replied with a sharp salute of his own.

“May I ask who is your- *Slurp* -wonderful guest?”

“Warden Stain, I’d like to introduce you to one of the Sandman’s familiars. Miss Snack, this is warden Stain, the one who makes this place possible.”

“Oh, ‘Snack’ is it? *Slurp* You certainly know how to pique my interests!”

“My, quite the obscene woman you have here,” said Xera with a sneer. “Does she keep all these rowdy lads under control by using her mouth to pleasure them?”

“Hehehe… *Slurp* You’re about to find out, you sumptuous-”

“Stain, this demon isn’t a tribute,” Silus interrupted. “The Foundation is trying to recruit her and her master for a dangerous mission, but they need some reassurance my bosses will not go back on their word. That’s why I brought them here, where they can confirm your circumstances with their own eyes.”

“Oh-hoh! I see! In that case, I suppose I don’t need to pretend, do I?”

The warden didn’t even wait for the elf’s confirmation before she suddenly, for lack of a better word, dissolved. Her fair skin turned pink, goopy and partially transparent, her hair strands fused together to become a single gelatinous mess and her legs joined together into an amorphous blob. The uniform she was wearing sank into her torso and lower body, only to be replaced by a long princess-like dress made of bright red goo as her body expanded to about three times its previous volume. Her womanly curves remained more or less the same, as did her indecently grinning face and oddly colored eyes. Her arms extended downwards, growing smoother and longer while her hands and fingers merged into lumps of pink, resulting in her limbs looking like a pair of oversized strands of snot hanging off her shoulders.

It was immediately apparent this so-called ‘warden’ was a member of the slime family of monsters due to her gelatinous countenance. The presence of multiple pearl-like objects that floated around inside her that betrayed her higher species, as only queen slimes had more than one core. At the same time, however, there were far too few of them. A queen slime should have dozens if not hundreds of those, yet this one only had five.

“Mister Morningwood, allow me to reintroduce warden Stain,” said Silus. “As you can probably tell, she’s the queen slime around these parts. She’s an extremely rare variant, one that my organization hasn’t seen before or since coming into contact with her. Incidentally, she is over a hundred and fifty years old and has lived in these caves since long before the Republic built this mining complex.”

“Yet she’s also the overseer of a government-run high-security prison?” Xera asked with an accusatory stare. “Do you honestly expect me or my Master to believe you lot haven’t brainwashed her?”

“Let’s make something clear, you - *Slurp* - delicious-smelling morsel,” Stain interjected. “If anyone’s doing the brainwashing around here, it’s me.”

“It is? Wait, so all those people outside, they’re your doing?”

“That’s right. Every last one of those naughty children answers to me.”

“How?!”

The djinn knew just how difficult it was to maintain control of an enlightened mind for prolonged periods of time. The more one used mind magic on the same person, the more resistance each subsequent use would be met with. She didn’t even think long-term domination was possible until she learned of the Foundation and their Attitude Adjuster formula. Even then the process supposedly took weeks or even months to show any results. It was far from foolproof too, judging by how their pet project called ‘Zilla’ had been plotting to betray them for years.

Yet if everything Xera had been told was true, then that would mean Stain had been performing such a thing perfectly for the better half of century to hundreds of people at the same time.

“Come, step outside if you wish to see proof.”

The slime casually sloshed over to the door and went through it like it was the most natural thing in the world, with her two guests following closely after her. When Xera came out, she was met with the unblinking stares of a group of more than thirty people who had gathered outside without so much as a spoken word.

“Greetings, lovely Snack!” they yelled in unison.

All of them then reached towards their heads and placed a hand on their hats. Wait, were they always wearing hats? They must have been seeing as how their caps completely matched their clothes, regardless of whether they were prisoner rags or guard uniforms. So then how come Xera completely failed to realize they were wearing them? Thinking back on it now, she clearly remembered them being there on her way to the warden’s office. They just somehow seemed… not worth noticing.

“I am an overmind slime,” said Stain as she rolled around in front of the row of meat puppets. “Others sometimes call me a ‘People Tamer,’ which I think is rather apt, if not entirely accurate. You see, what I do is not mind control. I do not direct these children's thoughts or perceptions. I have conquered and devoured them, replacing them with my own. That is why, even though you see many bodies before you, there is but one mind.”

The slime paused while the gathered crowd then lifted their headwear all at once. This revealed that all of them had bald heads, and that each shaved scalp sported a fist sized blob of semi-solid pink goo with a pearl-like object floating inside.