LIGHTNOVELONLINE How Quickly the Tide Turns
5/6 afternoon
She hadn’t expected the big quiet one to be the spy. Vanessa had quickly realized that Garrick Padfoot hadn’t been anyone special, but she hadn’t realized he was absolutely nothing but a patsy. Otto knew too much for someone they didn’t know anything about, and had too much power to ignore. Vanessa didn’t know who he was working for, but her guesses ran towards the grandiose “enemies to all life” types. The Burning Legion, the Scourge, or some new threat in a similar vein. Perhaps a new refinement of the trolls’ voodoo magic. If Irma was right, and Vanessa had no reason to doubt her, the necklaces were some of the most complex artifice ever devised. Otto was using them to do completely inane tasks and rape women; it just didn’t line up and that terrified her.
She was damn near certain that she was about to walk into a trap at the Night Watch camp, but she didn’t have any leverage. He’d showed less concern for her prisoners than most men show for their horse. Her only hope was that Tony, a major outlier among the victims she’d seen thus far, knew more than poor saps like Darcell. If he were a willing collaborator or an apprentice, Tony might be able to tell her what Otto’s long term goals were, a bit about his personality and capabilities, his likes and dislikes, his preferred titles, his sexual preferences, anything to give her a better idea of how she could serve her master. She was new to his service, seconds ago she’d have happily gutted him, but the idea seemed laughable now.
The Company Tech in charge of this transition was not subtle. He did not alter her memories or supply her with more palatable assumptions. He simply changed her emotions until she was happy to serve and be a companion to the man she believed Otto to be. If she hadn’t built up an image of an evil misogynistic boogieman, this would have been a lot easier on her.
She was a woman, and an attractive one at that. It was her place to serve at his feet in the way he seemed to desire, as a submissive piece of meat and perhaps a useful tool. It was so unfathomably hot to be given this opportunity to betray all of Azeroth for the opportunity to be a slave he’d barely lift a finger to protect.
She reached up and was somehow unsurprised to find a ruby pendant on a silver chain; her new most prized possession. She tucked it into her shirt. Most of her honor guards were her friends, and many of them were pretty enough. They certainly wouldn’t accept her revelation, not with all the venom she’d been spewing up to this point. Thankfully she’d kept the nature of the mission secret from the local chapter as a matter of operational security. Only her friends would need to be neutralized; she’d do anything to keep them alive so that at least the worthy among them might be pressed into slavery. It was the best she could hope to offer, the opportunity to be recognized and accepted as she had been.
She smiled down at her new companion and natural superior, still tied up for interrogation. She knelt down and whispered so as to not spook the two she had stationed outside. “I’m sorry sir, I didn’t understand my place.” Her carefully honed senses noticed another man simply appear in the room. Luckily she was already kneeling before her master, and the thought of what he might do to her already made her wet.
••••••••••
I came out of Fade when I saw the smudge that was Vanessa VanCleef kneel down next to Tony and begin undoing at least some of his bonds. “Hello Vanessa, tomorrow isn’t a great time for me. Any chance we could move the timeline up a bit?” I had stepped in close to her, speaking quietly so I wouldn’t be overheard by the two women standing watch outside.
To my surprise, Vanessa proceeded to bury her face in my crotch and take a long whiff before looking right up at me with bedroom eyes. “Of course, whatever you desire. What should I call you?” I had not been expecting this, that’s for sure. The girls I’d captured had all been more than willing if I made a move, but not this immediately and aggressively lewd. I wasn’t going to complain of course, maybe it was a side effect of purchasing her?
“Uh. My lord, when we are in private, or Lord Bismark. In public go with whatever identity I’m using at the time, so Otto at the moment, or sir if you really want to be deferential. All of them work.” Master was a bit overt unless someone was pretending to be a student of mine, and “my king” was so extra that only Lividia could possibly think it was a good idea. Being called lord or sir on the other hand? That could be hot, and if I maintained my fictional noble title it wouldn’t raise any red flags. “So I’m afraid you’ve made quite a mess for me with all this unpleasantness. Any ideas as to how we might clean it up?”
“Please don’t kill my friends, my lord. I’d prefer to press them into your service. Irma and Prudence are quite pretty when they put in a bit of effort; at least they should absolutely be allowed to serve you.” Wow. So she saw the options as death or capture. She probably wasn’t wrong unless she could gaslight them quite a lot, but damn. That was a quick transition.
“I’d prefer to keep death to a minimum, and I have limited resources for taking on new servants.” If I really needed to, I could in theory get enough necklaces to capture quite a few people in one go, but it would logistically be a nightmare. I could probably get away with taking amulets off of Vanessa, Mezzo, Lividia, Tony, Darcell, Annetta, Drusilla, and Tessa without taking down my little relay network. That would be 8 amulets, which would then be tied up with those 8 people for the next week. That was 7 days worth of new amulets I would definitely not be getting, as I would be positioning myself firmly above the maximum active necklace threshold. I’d kinda prefer to shove them in a box and then actually commit to using the next 8 days worth of necklaces on each of them in turn. 11 if I also included the orcs.
With this in mind, I turned to the resident poisons expert. “Hmm. Is there any way you could disable them, or get them isolated? If they can be rendered unconscious for long enough for me to pick them up, I can safely sequester most of them until we have the time and resources to dedicate to them. Around six of them could probably fit, maybe seven?” I gave her a whispered explanation of how the amulets worked in general, which seemed to get her a bit hot and bothered. Apparently she had a mind control kink; who knew? That said, she dedicated her life to mastering the art of mind altering poisons and drugs, and didn’t appear to be a user herself. It checked out.
Vanessa didn’t actually have a massive store of poisons with her. Broadly speaking she had ready to use poisons that crippled, killed, put to sleep, blinded, and dulled the mind. Normally she also had quite a few drugs that would make the imbiber relaxed, open, and honest, but she’d used the majority of those on Lividia, Tony, and Abby. She might be able to scrape together one heavy dose or two relatively light doses of that one. She could make others with local herbs from the farm, but tended to rely on a certain collection of recipes she was fond of because they had a long shelf life.
A plan was hatched. First, Vanessa took off her amulet. She was a bit surprised to find out that it wasn’t necessary to maintain control, which was a very good sign. That meant that her team also didn’t know about that tidbit of information. We could use this.
With Lillibeth’s assistance, I teleported back out of the camp and waited, watching with draconic eyes. It was time for Vanessa to put in her first day’s work in the harem.
••••••••••
Vanessa left the tent with Tony on her arm, his jewel swinging from one hand, and her own wondrous necklace in her pocket. “Don’t worry,” she assured her Silk Masks, “Once I extracted the code word to remove the thing, I was able to confirm that dear Tony here was just another victim. One given a bit more freedom and authority over his fellow slaves, but that’s not so bad. He was quite the goldmine, really, and a true Brother of the Defias.” They were dubious, but Tony did a good enough impression of contrition that they accepted it.
She strolled over to her new sisters, who were sitting quite placidly. She pointedly glared at any curious onlookers who tried to listen in until they cleared off “These two are minor nobles from Stormwind, intended to be sold back for ransom. They’d be sleeper agents for Otto, siphoning off funds, spying on his behalf, and giving him a place to stay. It’s a good plan, though he was obviously thinking with his cock.”
“The particularly fun bit is this.” She leaned in and whispered into the blonde’s ear, “Erich says to be a good girl and play along,” she unlatched the necklace as her lord had commanded her, and immediately put it back on. Vanessa caught a flicker of lucidity in her eyes as she focused for a moment; the drug was already starting to wear off. “They are loyal to the one who put the necklace on them. Aren’t you, Abby?”
“Yes, mistress. What is your bidding?” She slurred out just slightly too artfully; Vanessa wanted to know more about this one already.
“Welcome to the Defias, sister. You will serve us with all your heart to make up for what your family has done to our people. We will destroy Stormwind, and you will help. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“Oh yes mistress. Is there anything I can do right now?” She sounded so bright and chipper even through the drugs. Hopefully nobody would question it.
“Just wait, I need to deal with your friend first.” Vanessa turned and repeated the process with the other girl, who initially weakly tried to stop her, scratching vaguely with her fingernails, until she heard the orders from their mutual lord. She stared blankly through the whole process after that.
This one seemed further gone, which made sense. Despite her slight build she had entirely shrugged off a standard dose of happy powder, hardly even noticing its effects and proceeding to savage two of Vanessa’s silk masks. Oh, it had been nothing a few trollsblood potions couldn’t clear up, thankfully. After that, to be sure, she’d gotten a cocktail of mind rot, dream draught, and anesthesia from Vanessa’s needles, which had basically turned her into a vegetable. The fact that she could even walk and follow basic orders after that dosage was more than a normal person could have possibly hoped for after months of recovery. It had been what had prompted Vanessa to have Irma investigate for magic items, and she’d found only one.
“These two will need escorts back to Stormwind tomorrow. I’ll slit the throat of anyone who violates them like Otto did,” they were property of her lord alone, “but the rest of the plan could do quite a lot of work for us. We might even repeat it once Otto is handled, if my father approves. What else could we reasonably do with these things?”
The Silk Masks approved; the version of events she presented them turned this into a plausible victory for the Defias. Next she sent out scouts to investigate the area around the crossroads before dark. All three of the men in her squad, plus Prudence, a gorgeous brunette that Lord Bismark would surely take special interest in, operating individually.
She supplied them with cat’s eye elixirs, as was normal in poor visibility conditions. Of course, Prudence’s was laced with mind rot and dream powder. It would be a horrible tragedy when she went missing, but in actual fact she’d simply be collected by Miss Lillibeth. No lasting harm would befall her that wouldn’t be healed when she joined Lord Bismark’s harem. Her fellow scouts on this patrol would be stationed here to look for her, and try to figure out what happened, while the rest of Vanessa’s cohorts would split into two groups. One to return the girls to their families by dropping them off in Goldshire, and one to escort Otto back into Defias territory.
Not a single one would reach their destinations, and after a few days Vanessa would come back and collect the boys. All would serve, she had been happy to learn. The knowledge that she’d been prepared to kill her friends was incredibly hot, but the fact that she didn’t actually have to was reassuring.
Irma might be the only problem, as the only one with the ability to call her on her fabrications about the necklaces, but Vanessa had a plan for her.
