




PREVIOUSLY: Queen Channah has decided to take an opportunity to teach Hanim Qahramanah about how to train her girls, and combines the occasion with an early start to her honeymoon. The girls are blindfolded and gagged with their hands secured behind their backs and their legs cuffed. For reasons of their own, Channah and Fang seem intent on degrading their jawari in public, before legions of the damned. NOW:
“The next question for you is where you want to go. I’ve seen you staring at your fellow qahramanah….” Channah began.
They both looked at the glass panel where Hong had taken her jawari to begin their dance. They remained staring for a moment, mesmerized, at what Hong was doing to her jawari, and what her jawari were doing for their qahramanah. Indeed, one could hardly resist the urge to gawk at something like that. Esmeray finally tore her eyes away and looked back at Channah:
“I admit Hong… may be able to teach me something.”
“You think?”
“But… comparing myself to her may be too much… pressure the first time.”
“I’d tell you it’s not a competition, but, well… you’ve made it one. You can’t avoid her for long. However, I agree with you: you need to focus first on your own hive.” Channah shrugged. “And in fact, if you need extra practice time with your jawari, you may have it whenever their other duties permit. I will inform Fang the normal limitations on hetaraslakos time are not to apply to you and your girls until Hong agrees you are qualified to instruct them.”
“Until she—” Esmeray began, eyes flashing at Channah until she saw the logical trap there. Her shoulders relaxed as she backed down from trying to challenge something she had first taken as an insult. “Yes, Mistress.”
Channah nodded approvingly and swept her arm towards the opposite edge of the platform, the jungle gym. “May I suggest…?” Esmeray nodded her assent. “But before we take our girls to the edge…”
“Is that where we’re going?” Esmeray asked. “Perhaps the first time—”
Channah made a sound of negation. “We always take them to the edge. The very edge.”
“So the damned can see them?”
“That’s a consideration,” Channah agreed, “Although they hear, smell, and even feel everything we do here at a very visceral level, it’s even better if they have a direct line of sight as well. But it’s as much, or even more, about the experience of the girls. The first lesson they need to learn is how utterly, completely, and totally they depend on us. We are their mothers” (both boys stiffened and gasped, reacting instinctively and viscerally to that shocking suggestion, one they never would have imagined) “in the fullest meaning of the word: their protectors, their caretakers, their helpers, their managers, their teachers, their guides, their bond, their apron strings, their heart, their masters, their very world. They must learn that first.”
“How?”
“By taking away almost everything from them, reducing them to helpless, almost senseless, creatures. Having only enough control to hurt themselves if they do anything other than obeying us completely, and only enough sensation to feel and anticipate the consequences of their own actions.”
“By using these.” She produced four small, red rubber pellets from a small leather pouch, holding them out so Esmeray could examine them curiously.
“Red? Like the blindfolds and—”
“Exactly,” Channah agreed approvingly.
“But not in Fang’s gift?”
“They were in the fourth box. Too valuable and too vulnerable for hucows—except you, once you’re shown how to treat them—to be messing about with them, because unlike the others they’re heavily magicked.”
Esmeray looked at Channah, frowning, then half-smiling. “And…?”
“And what?”
“There’s something else. Something…” her face faltered. “Something you’re wondering how to tell me. Because… I’m going to hate it.”
“Not after you understand,” Channah dissembled, but admitted: “At first, you may be startled, but truly, you don’t need to be agitated.”
“I’ll—fuck.” Esmeray’s hands subconsciously moved to her waist as Channah gave a wintry smile. “The scarlet panties.”
“The scarlet panties. You’ve been wearing them three days?”
“And nights. It’s been disgusting.” She made a revolted face and shivered.
“Then you’ll be happy to be rid of them, won’t you?”
Esmeray turned crimson herself and strangled: “It’s mortifying.”
“It’s magic. Everything has a price. You know that better than most. And you’ll need to do it all over again next week. But first, attend carefully. We are about to make these girls ours—utterly and completely.” Channah held up her palm with the four plugs, picking up one with her left hand and using her right hand to catch Penny by the ear, startling her. “Be still,” Channah hissed, again intimidating the younger girl into compliance.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Penny, will you trust me?
I will, Qahramanah.
Do you promise?
Yes, Mistress. I promise to trust you.
Do you promise? I promise….
Blind, gagged, with her arms now bound behind her back, the words echoed through Penny’s head like a mantra, or a security blanket, she could only hold onto desperately. Panic tried to rise like bile from her gut if she would let it, so she repeated the phrase desperately in her mind, flipping back and forth like her own stomach was doing, sometimes feeling comfort, at other times, realization of her own anxiety. She had given up every bit of control she ever had, to move, to speak, even to see. Helpless, almost senseless, creatures. Channah’s words resonated too in her mind. The awareness of her situation settled around her like a stiff, chilly blanket taken from a freezer, that she could do nothing but wait: Wait, to be commanded or forced to the will of another—by her Domina, her Qahramanah, or anyone in whose hands they might choose to put her. Taking away almost everything from them… if they do anything other than obeying us completely.
Trust… she had promised to trust… It felt at the time like the exchange had been a mutual pledge, as Channah had talked about it: It was Penny’s place to trust, and Esmeray’s to protect. Only… Esmeray hadn’t actually promised to protect Penny. Had she? And even if Penny hadn’t promised to trust Esmeray, she didn’t have the ability to do otherwise anymore, did she?
Penny was helpless, utterly helpless as a newborn lamb who could barely even hold her feet, in front of a tigress who had asked her: Will you trust me?
What kind of lamb would say that to a tiger? And have meant it? What had she been thinking?!
I promise…
She had to trust; she had made sure to put herself in that position.
Only… now, in the worst moments, she wasn’t sure. Did she really? Or were her thoughts those of a child whistling to reassure herself against the dark?
Memories crowded her and crowed at her, pointing her attention toward the satanikoklus where she had been married, the futon in the private chapel, even the nettle field and the pigsty: A bed-wetting tour of all the places she had been taken advantage of, helpless to stop what was being done to her, what Her Grace the Countess of Warwick had wanted for her, demanded of her, commanded others to do to her. But I love her… she loves me… doesn’t she?
I promise…
Literature Section “06-77 Dance of the Qahramanat XII”—Part 77 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1152 words—Accompanying Images: 1657-1661—Published 2025-04-29—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.