PREVIOUSLY: After a week of brutal wedding and coming-of-age hazing by the succubae, Chastity and Penance are finally enjoying their true honeymoon with Channah, starting with a long and frisky bath that both girls spoiled by getting overly excited. NOW:
While she taught them to bathe and massage her the way she liked, she watched them carefully, to see where they lingered and where they hurried, where they relaxed and where they tensed up, where their eyes strayed and where their hands strayed. Okay, their hands didn’t actually stray at all. They were waaay too nervous and respectful for that, although she suspected Chastity was on her best behavior trying to get back on Channah’s good side, and she wasn’t sure if the girl would be so careful in the future.
After they had dried her body, and theirs, she made them clean their jariya leathers with the soap and rags while she relaxed on one of the lounge chairs, feeling the gently warming air. Then she took them by the hands and led them back down the garden path. As they passed the sealed iron door, Penny asked: “May I ask you a question, Domina?”
“You may,” Channah responded, with a curious, amused look.
“Domina—may I ask, where are we?”
“Ohh… that’s a good question. Where do you think?”
“I don’t think this is… hell…”
She harumphed. “Certainly not.”
“But… does that mean it’s Earth?”
“Yes,” she nodded slowly. “Besides Heaven, Earth and Hell are the only worlds I know of.”
“And it… can’t be Heaven, can it?”
“No.” The answer was businesslike and curt, but Penny could feel the weight of continents’ worth of emotions behind it and immediately backed away.
“I don’t think there are any mountains this magnificent in all of England,” he began slowly. “Not so tall, anyway,” he considered, as she led them around the bend in the path, revealing only another length of path with cliff on the right and forest on the left, this one ending in a curve to the right.
“Is it Scotland?” Chastity guessed.
“No,” she shook her head.
“You said it’s high in the mountains…” Penny began. “But—it’s cool—but… not that cool. And the Alps are snowy… at least the tallest parts, aren’t they?”
“They can be,” Channah allowed.
“But this seems too verdant and green for the Atlas Mountains…”
“There are some beautiful parts of the Atlas Mountains, but we’re not there.”
“I don’t know,” Penny admitted miserably. “I’m not sure. Lebanon?”
She laughed. “No, not Lebanon. But I know why you’re stumped—there’s a bit of a twist. We’re in the Sierra Madre Mountains. And the valley you saw from the bathing pool was the Valley of Mexico.” She frowned. “Or… a valley close to it, anyway. I keep my vale here so I don’t have to worry about humans and their petty politics.”
She stopped and looked down at Penny, smirking. “Silence from Penny. That’s unusual. Are you still lost?”
“I—I’m not familiar with—”
“Are you lost, darling? Or has the cat got your tongue?”
“I’m lost, Domina,” Penny confessed miserably. “I’m usually pretty good with geography, I can’t believe I still don’t have any idea…”
She started them walking forward again, looking smug. “Chastity, I stumped Miss Penny.”
“Me too,” Chastity admitted.
“You’ve heard of the great Spanish conquest in 1521?”
“Conquest? Of Navarre? You’re saying we’re in the Pyrenees? Or—” Penny gasped loudly, practically sounding like he was having an asthma attack, causing Channah to laugh out loud again. “Of the Aztecs? In the Americas?!”
“Yes, good girl, Pleaser. The Valley of Mexico is where it happened.”
“We’re in the Spanish Empire?” Chastity asked, sounding both surprised and worried. Spain was, increasingly, an enemy of England’s; and although the two countries had been allies in two previous Italian wars—including when Penny—or rather, her predecessor—had lived in Venice—they were currently enemies in the War of the League of Cognac.
“No,” she assured him. “The hucows think we’re in some indigenous area… perhaps the Confederacy of Tlaxcala? Indigenous allies of the Spanish.”
“We’re in savage lands?!” Far from feeling reassured by Channah’s answer, Chastity was more upset—and not made any happier when Channah stopped again and burst out laughing, even louder.
Both girls looked at her, confused and upset with her reaction, as much as with the idea they were in savage country.
“Where should I even start? My darling dears,” she hugged them both tightly to her. “The vale is mine. My paradise. It has been for…” she shrugged. “As far as I know, no hucow other than my agents has ever come here. Since before the Tlaxcala or the Aztec or even the Spanish even existed. It’s a part of my domain!” And then when she saw they still didn’t understand she laughed even harder. “My sweet, innocent little wives, have you been sleeping?! Your Domina is the Queen of Hell. I don’t fear hucows—hucows fear me!” She kissed each of them, fiercely, on their foreheads, enjoying their embarrassed looks as she hugged them to her again.
“Darlings: Get it through your heads! You. Have. Been. To. Hell! You are hell’s own agents! And you’re worried about the Tlaxcala? The Spanish?! I love it so much that you fear the Tlaxcala more than you fear me.” She kissed Penny, and then Chas, on the lips, then paused, and began kissing Chas hard and long. Tearing herself away, she shook her head to clear it and announced: “The other point I wanted to make is, Europeans may think of them as savages, but try to remember, from my perspective, you’re all backwards savages arrived at the last minute, the whole race of hucows. Tomorrow—tomorrow morning, first thing when you wake up, I’ll show you how savage they are. I have something of theirs that no King or potentate in the Old World has ever laid eyes on. Something they invented and learned that Europeans—and Asians, and Africans—never even thought of. But tonight, we all need to get to bed. You two, especially, are running on pure adrenaline and… sperm? Testosterone? Whatever it is horny boys run on when they need sleep but are too stupid to take it. No more political talk. Apparently, with you two, even that makes me horny. And you two are certainly in no condition to satisfy me! I need to do some night-riding.”
And, thus delighted, she pulled them in tight, said: “Voilà! Tlalitlen Ichtaka. My house—our house!” With that, she walked them around the corner to reveal a sliver of her home, the vertical slice of it visible between the forest and the cliff, but impressive nonetheless. Made of brightly-colored and heavily-carved stone, the home rose three stories from the valley floor and was built into the cliff itself. The design of the house was open-air, each level smaller than the one below it like a miniature half-pyramid fused into the cliff. “I remodeled it about a hundred years ago. After the Mayans, and then the Aztecs, started developing real cities and buildings and their own architectural style…” she shrugged. “I don’t know, it just seemed right!”
“Did you say… Tlatin—” Penny struggled.
She spoke it again slowly as they stepped off the path into the ground floor: “Tlalitlen Ichtaka.” There were walls enclosing some rooms or halls, but there was enough open space for them to see glimpses of a beautiful garden to their left through rooms that were simply and practically, but exquisitely, appointed. There weren’t any furnishings approaching the edge of the house—for three or four yards from the edge of the roof the spaces were empty, which the girls would understand the first time it rained. Because when it rained in Channah’s Vale—and it rained often—it truly rained.
“Tlalitlen Ichtaka,” Penny attempted, getting much closer, and she repeated it for him twice more, until he got it right. “What language is that? What does it mean?”
“Nahuatl. The language of the valley—” she tipped her head backwards, indicating the valley opening out below the bathing pool. “The language of Tenoch, the stonemason who supervised the remodeling here. It’s not the literal translation but I understand it as ‘vale of the secret mouth.’”
“It’s quite… poetic,” Penny granted.
“Thank you! It is! And it… captures something about my home,” she observed, directing them to store their leathers in the exquisite wooden cases her servants had brought from the heteraslakos while Channah attended to her business in her castle, before leading them up two flights of stairs to her bedroom. It filled the third floor, except a small privy up against the cliff wall. And it offered a dramatic view overlooking the garden in front of the house and the woods and soaring cliffs that surrounded it.
The girls gasped, standing still, mesmerized by the sight, and Penny gasped: “It’s—it’s beautiful…”
“It’s paradise. My paradise!” Channah pronounced, something about the way she said it causing Penny’s tired mind to linger on all the complicated ramifications and layers to that. Almost, she gave voice to some part of her thoughts—she wanted to. She wanted to discuss them with Channah so she could understand her Domina better, and just because she wanted to get to know her, because she loved her. But even Penny, tonight—or at least, now—managed to restrain herself.
Instead, they simply followed Channah to the bed, watching as she tugged the blanket and sheets back—giggling at the way their tired eyes lingered on her buttocks as she leaned over the bed and warning them: “Be careful, girls. You don’t want to write any promissory notes your limp little peters can’t cash tonight, do you? Come on! Each of you, pick a side and curl up with me.”
They looked at one another in surprise. “Na—naked?”
And she laughed out loud again. “I don’t even own any nighties. But maybe I can pick up some dowdy widows’ nighties the next time I’m in England for you two prudes?”
“It’s not that! I mean—it’s not just—that,” Penny hemmed and hawed, taking the side nearest the garden after Chas chose the side closer to the cliff wall. “It’s—I just—” she turned red and finally managed, as she climbed in, modestly leaving space between herself and Channah: “I’m honored. You’re letting us share your bed, Domina! We’re not—”
“Hush,” she scolded Penny, pulling them both in tightly to her in a warm hug, the touch of her skin so exotic and forbidden in this context it almost burned. “You’re my wives, this is my bed, we sleep together.” She made out with each girl, a slow and sensual celebration of kissing, before she snickered. “Unless you’re being punished, of course.”
As it turned out, neither girl’s worries about sleeping with their Domina amounted to much when the three of them were so exhausted. They were all unconscious in seconds.
Literature Section “07-11 Demon’s Paradise”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 11 of Chapter Seven, “Channah’s Slavegirls: Pawns of the Court of Lust”—1747 words—Accompanying Images: 2032-2036—Published 2025-07-11—©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.