The princess makes a fine show of roleplaying as a maid, perusing her own wine collection and presenting several bottles for me to choose from. I play my own part, acting as though I have strongly held opinions on which vintage is most ideal for the occasion. She fetches us glasses and pours for the both of us. We lounge on the couch together directly opposite Canina’s favorite mirror, clinking glasses and toasting to each other.
We down glass after glass of wine, both of us loosening up, me in spite of myself. Our conversation drifts from topic to topic, keeping things light and far away from pain-inducing thoughts.
We concoct fake palace intrigue to have decreasingly serious conversations about. Some of the other ladies simply must be put in their place, it seems. And oh, how I cannot believe the impudent behavior of the other maids! I vow to punish the worst transgressors most thoroughly for distracting my precious Canina from her duties.
We start talking gender, steering clear of detailing too much of our own pasts. Still she and I make a game of one-upping each other with increasingly outlandish proposals about the relationships between men and women until I command that we solve our problems by assigning servants to the task of inventing at least ten new genders before winter. Make it an even dozen. And while we’re at it, won’t that mean we have to rewrite the laws governing marriage and inheritance? Such complexity, we’d better get started immediately, shall we?
We mark the time by the number of empty bottles left on the table. We lean in close to each other as if we were co-conspirators. My hand rests on her thigh. Her head falls to my chest. I stroke her hair as we chatter, forgetting to steel my heart against the affection growing within.
I can’t remember the last time I felt able to let down my guard like this. Despite this day not quite feeling like the role reversal it was proposed to be, it’s been nice. Our reflections at least still look the part—an elegant lady in black holds her favorite maid close—though I cannot help but wonder how I’d look with a lip color that matches my dress. My maid and I make eye contact through the mirror.
“Look how drunk those women are.” I titter with unselfconscious amusement.
Canina’s flushed face turns directly toward mine. “Drunk and beauty full.” I’m flattered that she would pull her gaze away from the sight of herself to admire me. With a breathy, alcohol-tinged rasp, she whispers, “you should take advantage of your maid right now.”
I lean my forehead against hers, slurring my own response. “Haven’t I been taking advantage of your bottle opening skills?”
“I mean you should ffffuck me, My Lady.”
I gasp in mock outrage. “I won’t have such filthy language from…” I burst into laughter, unable to finish the joke.
“It’s your right. Your right. To claim your housemaid as your consort,” she insists. “Every time you want.”
Trying to muster up some sobriety, I put on my serious face. “I don’t know. You’re really drunk. I don’t feel right about that. And I wouldn’t use an authority at you to demand sex.”
“Why not? I would.”
“No you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t force yourself on me. You haven’t yet.”
“That’s because you’re real! Ah…” She looks embarrassed, as if she shouldn’t have said that. “But I guess I still could, huh? Maybe I should.”
“Maybe I couldn’t stop you if you did.” I am way too drunk. Stupid thing to say. It’s just so hard to imagine sweet Princess Canina taking advantage of her position over me in this way.
“Maybe I like that,” she replies, her hand moving up and between my legs, the pressure of her fingertips eliciting a wordless response both physical and vocal, her hand encouraging the tent in my dress and helping me imagine the scenario much more easily. “You don’t have to be stuck with this thing. You know, right? Goddess can fix you the way She fixed me.”
“I don’t need her fix.” My breathing grows heavy. Her face is so close to mine, and I feel her hot breath heavy with wine. “I am not broken. My body is mine.” My penis twitches involuntarily against her hand. “Are you bothered by it?”
“Bothered?” Canina awkwardly crawls her way up my body to straddle my hips, grinding on the bulge in my dress through her own maid uniform. With her arms wrapped around my neck, she locks eyes with me. “Do I seem bothered to you?” She giggles. “If you really want it, then keep it. But please,” she punctuates her words by shoving her body harder against me, “use it properly.”
I try to push her away, but Canina is surprisingly strong for her size. She pins my arms behind me effortlessly with one hand while the other fumbles at my neckline to pull my dress down, leaving me completely bare from the waist up.
“Thank you, Goddess, for giving me the most beautiful present to unwrap.”
“Please, My Lady…”
“Noooo, I’m your maid,” she insists. “And you’re My Lady, taking what she wants from me. And when you make a mess, it will be my job to clean you up.” Lost in the fantasy, she pulls me toward her by the collar and clamps her lips to mine, her tongue intruding forcefully in a rough kiss.
I surrender. If this is what My Lady desires, I can do what I must for the sake of The Plan. I let her explore my body with clumsy hands without pulling away from her touch. She bites my neck while squeezing my tits lustfully, rocking her hips in time to a rhythm of her choosing.
I haven’t sought sexual gratification in quite some time, and however I feel, it doesn’t take long before I give her the mess she wants, leaving a sticky stain on her maid uniform.
“Now watch how good a maid I can be, Lady Velle.” The roleplaying princess goes down on me, running her tongue up and down my shaft, moaning lasciviously. “I love dick, Velle. And yours is so pretty, do you know that? Tastefully thick, just barely too long to fit in my mouth, and such pretty feminine curves. I can’t believe you’re really gonna fuck me with this thing. Ohhh, I can’t believe you plan to force yourself onto your innocent servant girl and use this on her.” With each word elaborating her erotic scenario, she works herself into more of a frenzy. “Why won’t you take no for an answer?”
I play my role. “It’s because I can’t resist you, Canina. And because you have to obey me.”
“That’s right.” The princess leans back, spreads her legs for me, and hikes up her skirt. “Tell me how hot I am, Velle.”
“You are the most beautiful maid in the palace, Canina. And that’s why… It’s why I had to make you mine.” I follow my cue, crawling atop her, pressing this dick she loves between her legs. “Nobody of my station compares. I only have eyes for this maid right here.”
“And I dare not deny My Lady’s advances! Regardless of how I feel, it is my duty to satisfy Lady Velle’s carnal urges.” She practically drools as she narrates this scenario with naked lust. “No matter how filthy.”
“That’s right. I’m going to force you to…” This would be my cue to make up something filthy. My head is desperately fuzzy from drink, and I struggle to concentrate on much more than sliding myself into her and moving my hips without slipping out completely. “…bear my illegitimate child. I’m going to impregnate a lowly maid because you’re so much hotter than my own betrothed.”
“And worse!” she insists, clearly uninspired by my idea of filthy even while her whole body quakes with each of my thrusts. “She has. Such rare. Perverse. Tastes.” I use my hands to tease her most sensitive spots while giving her the fucking she demands. If I can satisfy her quickly enough, perhaps I don’t have to discover what kind of filthy she wants of me.
Inspired by her actions earlier, I bite her neck, and that pushes Canina over the edge into a shuddering climax, after which I collapse atop her, drained.
“But still, even after ravishing my body, Lady Velle demands more.”
I groan in exhaustion.
“Though My Lady has made such a mess of me,” another giggle, “I must offer my body for further service. So tired… tired from ravaging me… and as her well-trained housemaid, I know exactly what she needs to perk her up.” How does she keep up all this improvised narration even while slurring and stumbling over her own words?
She extricates herself from under my limp body, moving out of my field of view while I lie still awaiting some signal about what she has in mind. To my surprise, she prepares a tea set.
Yes, tea might help perk me up, actually. “Thank you, Canina,” I say, levering myself upright.
“I’ve had so much wine,” she giggles. “Lady Velle’s special tea is already done brewing.”
What is she…? I watch, uncomprehending, as she lifts her skirt and releases a stream of piss into the open teapot. She sighs in relief as the stream fills the vessel to overflowing, leaving the serving tray to catch all the spilled “tea.” Oh no. She doesn’t mean that, surely.
With her dress a rumpled mess stained with—now several—fluids, with mine bunched around my waist, and with urine in the teapot, Princess Canina nevertheless performs a flawless, if drunken, imitation of a formal tea service. She pours a cup for me as well as one for herself.
“The aroma is fragrant, just as you demand, My Lady. Please enjoy.”
“Uh…” I’m grateful for the way the alcohol dulls my panic response but feel less so toward how it dulls my ability to think of a way out of this situation. “You first, Canina. I insist.” Call her bluff, maybe?
To my surprise, she picks up cup and saucer—both of which drip onto her lap from resting on the flooded tray—and takes a sip. “Bleh!” Canina makes a face. “It is definitely an acquired taste, My Lady. Too rich and decadent for someone as unrefined as me. But do not worry, I will not ruin our scene for you.”
She speaks a prayer. “Goddess, please let this become sweet, cool wine on my tongue.”
“Not tea?” I ask.
“No.” She smiles. “I really want to get drunker.” Tipping her head back, she downs her cup in a single swig with no sign of her earlier revulsion painting her face.
A trap, then. She lays a way out of this degrading spectacle through embracing her religion. I can pray to her goddess for the “miracle” of turning piss into wine, or I can cling to my pride.
I choose pride.
Just another kind of golden chain, I think to myself, unable to remember what that alludes to without pain. I tip the cup back and swallow My Lady’s hot piss. The foul, acrid tang clings to the whole of my mouth, but I force a smile. “May I have another?”
“Of course, My Lady.”
As she pours the two of us another serving, inspiration sluggishly illuminates my thoughts. “You know, Canina, I have always been impressed by the intensity of your self-love.” She consistently enjoys the way I praise her vanity. “I thought there was nobody else who could ever appreciate Canina the way Canina does, but it seems there’s one part of you where I have you beat.” I taunt her with a grin as I inhale deeply from my cup and pretend to savor the stench before taking another sip.
The princess pauses in her prayer for a repeat miracle. She watches me intently, almost in disbelief, before shifting her attention to her reflection in the mirror. I may have outmaneuvered her at last, finding where her pride makes her vulnerable.
“Oh no, you’re right. I need to… no, I deserve to learn how to appreciate even more of myself.” She braces herself, then shoots her untransmuted cup back in one go and gulps it down. She’s worse at this game of chicken than I am—her face twisting in distaste, unable to hide her true feelings—but to her credit, she keeps it down. “A-another…?”
“Please.” Even this I can endure. The Plan matters more than anything else. The trick is weaponized dissociation, not that I am inclined to teach it. If you’re actually happy with your life, it’s not a spell I recomm—
I scream in pain, my skull exploding into a thousand thousand white-hot shards. No warning for this one, I must have stepped hard onto one of my headache triggers. The world around me vanishes, scoured away by migraine.
Awareness only returns in momentary bursts of senses.
Now I’m on the floor, helpless, writhing in pain.
Now something crashes, shatters nearby.
Now, somehow, my head comes to be cradled in Canina’s soggy lap. She strokes my hair and tells me it’s okay. She begs me to stop trying to remember whatever I was just thinking about. She tells me to rest, assuring me that we’ll have more time to enjoy each other tomorrow.
She kisses me, and the taste of her mouth turns my stomach.
“Your Plan is a lie.”
“No.” I clench my fists. “I refuse to believe that everything I’m doing is for nothing. My whole life’s work! Do you have any idea—”
The other me waves her hand dismissively. “Alright, not completely a lie. More accurate to call it a perversion of the original Plan. You’ve combined the scenario we’re trapped inside with scraps of the true Plan such that you mean to accomplish the same goals as a housemaid of all things.”
“Instead of as a… what did you say our title was? Magistra? We were a sorceress of some kind?”
“I am a sorceress still, which is why we can speak like this.”
“Weaponized dissociation. It is a spell, and that’s why it hurt so much to think about.”
“Just so. Our magic is the center of what Natalia has walled us off from accessing. Or more specifically: walled you off from accessing.”
“So then how did we make this dream-shield of yours?”
“I had wards in place to protect my mind from the influence of a dead god. Of limited use against a living one, but not altogether no use. With the removal of those shackles sapping my magic, the wards cast just enough of a shadow on your unconscious mind that it could partition me off to build a more effective shield while you sleep.”
“Then why—”
“Look, there’s no value teaching you all the nuances of magic here. For our protection, you will have no conscious recollection of our conversations each night. I just need you to trust me so that I can help nudge you in a useful direction.”
No conscious recollection. Frustrating.
“Please save Her.” A third identical voice joins the dream: the part the false goddess touched, apparently, born from a memory of loving her.
“Shut up.”
“No. I know how little you think of me, but hear me out and I will quiet myself while you two conspire. There was a time when we cared enough about Her to risk the Plan to protect Her.” The twist of my sorceress-self’s mouth suggests this is true. “I would call upon you to listen to that part of yourself if you will not value me. She took that power without knowing what we know about dead gods. She’s absorbing more of it with brute force. My Goddess has already exceeded Her limit, and still She plans to devour more.” Tears run down her cheeks as she delivers her impassioned plea. “Do you hear me? My Goddess—Natalia—was not entangled in any Plan until we entangled Her. This is our fault. We have to save Her. Please.”
“Are you done?”
Priestess Velle clenches her fists in silence, then nods, resigned.
Sorceress Velle turns back to me. “Then let’s get to work.”