Tag: adventuresofradicalprovocateurs

1545 06-47 Pretty hair for pretty girls^
1546 06-47 Eye liner, the better to be seen (edited)^
1547 06-47 Lip gloss, the better to be kissed^
1548 06-47 Rouge, to bring out your inner warmth^

EXPLICIT VERSION AVAILABLE AT https://patreon.com/TheRemainderman

“Penny Batonnoir!” Sindonie chided her. 

“I’m sorry Mistress!”

“Calm down and blame yourself, as I expect you to do with any feelings you have about how you’ve been treated the past week.  What do you think, will you be neglectful when you’re with the Queen?  Or will you girls help one another to make sure every inch of you is soft and appealing for Her Majesty when you bathe, before upsetting her?”

Unenthusiastically but sincerely, they promised not to be neglectful, turning away to rub the oil everywhere on themselves they could reach while frantically trying to stay covered.

“Good.  And in back.”

“In back?”  they asked, genuinely confused.

“Don’t even try to do it yourselves.”  And when they tensed up in shock again, she reminded them:  “Every part of you is in bounds for your Domina.  You belong to her body and soul, outside and… inside.  Such are the vows and magical bonds you have made with her.  Prepare yourselves accordingly to honor her.”  And then, as they reluctantly obeyed her, she continued:  “No skimping.  If I’m not satisfied with your work, I’ll do it myself, and believe me, the thought holds as little appeal for me as it does for you.” she shook her head and shrugged.  “I have to tell you, the talk has been that you girls already should have learned this lesson.  Did I hear wrong?”

They didn’t answer her in words, only by blushing, and on this occasion, she didn’t make them. 

Hair and Makeup

“Good girls,” she finally allowed.  “Back on the bench.”  She hummed, as she usually did, while she brushed and pinned up their hair.  “One last wedding gift for you.  I want you to look pretty.  When you’re with your Queen, help one another with hair and makeup.  At least to check one another’s appearance before presenting yourself to her.  Do you understand me, darlings?”

“Yes, Mistress Sindonie.” 

“I hope so.  If you present yourselves to the Queen with dry patches or loose hair or smeared makeup—” she shook her head, unable to even complete the thought, but communicating its gravity effectively as she lightly applied gloss to their lips—their fair complexions did not require anything bolder—and the faintest hint of color to their cheeks, before applying charcoal around their eyes.  The amount she used was significantly heavier than the fashion, but it was the look the Queen preferred in her girls, matching her own appearance.  Sindonie understood she had grown to prefer heavy black eyes during her centuries in Egypt, and had not been moved by more recent fashions to change her views.

Finally, judging her work done, she let out a relaxed breath, smiling at her girls in their mirrors.  “You girls look lovely.”  They blushed happily and thanked her as she ran a reassuring hand over their hair.  “You’re ready.  So here’s what’s going to happen.”  She smiled mysteriously.  “I’m going to walk out that door, and you girls are going to wait exactly one full minute.  Then you’re going to leave your towels here,” she nodded and repeated herself before they could protest, “Yes, I know you like to be modest…”

“I want to be…” Penny interrupted imploringly, struggling to even complete the thought, as if she still didn’t understand.

“A girl!”  Chas completed her thought for her, imploringly.

“I know sweeties.  But this is a special occasion.  Try to remember you are her girls, and she knows that—practically insists upon it—regardless of whether you’re dressed or not.  You have nothing to be ashamed of.  Your little cages are hardly bigger than a plump girl’s.  Believe me, you’re going to like what’s coming, so be in your very best mood.  The Queen has a very special and loving surprise for you, but she wants you to join her as you are.  Do you understand?  Will you obey?”

Put that way, of course they would.

Family

They emerged cautiously from the bathroom, with their hands held awkwardly in front of them, to find a pile of boxes wrapped in tissue paper on the table before Queen Channah, who was sitting on her lounge, so beautiful and perfectly-put-together the girls gasped involuntarily, their reactions clearly pleasing her as she gestured them to approach her. 

“Domina!” Penny gushed.  “You look so beautiful!”  And she did.  She wore a perfectly-tailored scarlet brocade dress decorated with gold medlars and brilliantly shined black boots higher than her knees, as revealed by the slits in her dress extending as high as her hips.  It had short sleeves and a fabric collar looser, but generally shaped like, the leather collars of the girls.  Her hair was swept up in a single ponytail high on her head which was held not by a ring, but an exquisitely-detailed gold tube tastefully accented with rubies.  And her long fingernails were painted black.  In short, she was stunning, beyond exotic, and tempting as a siren.  Her black eye-liner and -shadow matched the girls’, although her lips were redder than theirs.  Her eyes danced with merriment and mischief and those red lips were twisted in her favorite expression, a sexy superior smirk.

“You do,” Chas echoed, her sincerity as obvious as Penny’s.

“Oh, you girls are so sweet,” she complimented them, then sniggered.  “And so modest.  After the games we’ve played,” enjoying watching both boys turn as red as cherries.  “Oh, come here, girls,” she invited them, raising and holding out her arms toward them without moving, watching their nude forms, decorated only by the ensorcelled cages and collars she had locked them in, as they scurried over, neither one of them relaxing their modest posture even as they half-sat, half-flopped, on either side of her on the couch.  They smiled shyly and wiggled themselves more tightly against her sides as she wrapped her arms around them, pulling them into herself.   And finally, as she nudged them onto their sides pressed against her, their knees rising and crossing one another over her, they felt safe bringing out the hands they had been using for modesty.  “Put those hands on my chest, right between my breasts.  Go on, I want to see you holding hands for me.”  And when they hesitated one more second:  “Hands.  Together.  Now.”

Literature Section “06-47 Hella Honeymoon IV”—Part 47 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Continued from 06-46[X]—Abridged 1042 words::Explicit 1052 words—Accompanying Images:  1545-1548. Published 2025-03-31—©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.

1542 06-46 A nagging unease in the conscious mind…^
1543 06-46 … a vivid nightmare in the unconscious (edited)^
1544 06-46 Fighting to surface^

EXPLICIT VERSION AVAILABLE AT https://patreon.com/TheRemainderman

continued from 06-45

Bathing

Sindonie led Chas and Penny to the hidden doorway between the private chapel and the second step of the family’s private staircase, allowing them to return from the chapel to the Queen’s private quarters without going through any public spaces.  They did have to pause while Sindonie peered through a peephole to make sure no one was in the Great Chamber, and wait while Sindonie stepped through confirming visually and audially that the coast was clear, before she ushered them swiftly across the Great Chamber to the Privy Chamber of the Countess, shooing them into the garderobe while she made sure the human servants had prepared the baths properly and escorted them out of the Privy Chamber.  Finally, she summoned them from their end of the garderobe, right next to the door, where they had huddled to stay as far away from the creepy Earl as possible.  These days, the Earl spent most of his time chained to the privy hole at the other end of the garderobe, avoided by everyone who could avoid him; and the garderobe windows were kept open whenever the weather permitted to keep it smelling fresh.  The Countess’s clothing was neatly arranged on racks and cabinets in her Privy Chamber so she could avoid the garderobe, and its smell, entirely.

The bathroom—very specifically, a room holding two bathtubs, a water furnace, and pipes for filling and draining the bathtubs—was the only one of its kind for leagues in any direction.  Certainly, some of the King’s palaces had similar facilities; but they were rare, in the extreme, reserved only for the wealthiest and highest-ranked, like the Defalaises.

The girls sank into their baths, contriving to keep their blankets between them and their governess until they were in the water, sighing contentedly.  Truly, the baths were a rare and precious luxury the girls had not known until moving to Fensmere; and quite rarely before they turned 18.  They were only allowed to use the baths—and in fact, required to do so—now that they were adults because of their marriage to the Queen, who required her servants to be squeaky-clean and fresh.  So it was typical enough that Chas was splashing and soaking merrily the moment he settled in; but it highlighted that Penny seemed uncharacteristically subdued and distant. 

Sindonie frowned questioningly.  “Is everything all right, Penny?”

Penny glanced back at her, surprised and maybe a little embarrassed she hadn’t been aware her mood was so obvious.  “Yes, thank you, Mistress.  I think—I don’t remember it very well, but I think I remembered…. A nightmare—something about a bathtub, I can’t quite—”

“You certainly did.”

“I did?” she looked startled Sindonie would know.

“Yes, the men were talking about it.  Apparently you both kept sleeping, but your cries eventually became so loud, and your movements so violent, they spread to Chas and the two of you woke up the men.  It started early this morning.  Fortunately, Obedience was still in the room and scurried them out without waking you.”

The girls exchanged a wondering look.  “I can’t really… remember it exactly, only I’m sure I was in a tub, like this one…” she idly stirred the warm water back and forth, enjoying the way it felt running through her hands.  “But I could swear—it seemed really important I remember.”

“Obedience told the men it was the spiked wine, and that it had an especially strong effect on you because you were unused to wine.  Especially not Succubaean Hippocras.”

“What’s ‘Hippocras’?”

“Spiced wine.  Or in the case of the succubus, liberally spiced and spiked.  It’s a wonder you slept as well and as long as you did.”  Her face softened.  “But I’m sure you girls were exhausted.”  They nodded their agreement.  “Well, of course your main duty on your honeymoon will be to make sure your Domina is happy, but hopefully you will have some more opportunities for rest.”

“I’ll give you a few minutes to wash,” she told them.  “And when I come back, you’re to be dried and sitting right here,” she patted a bench facing two large mirrors on the wall. 

“May we get dressed first, Mistress?”  Penny asked.

“Nope,” she smiled impishly.  “But there’s a reason for that.  Cover yourselves with the clean towels next to your baths.  Do not touch those filthy blankets again.”

“Yes, Mistress,” they chorused, looking at one another curiously.

Skin Care

“Wait.  Two more things.  First, because your collars are ensorcelled, they won’t be affected by water.  They won’t absorb it, let alone be damaged by it.  So you can dip your heads underwater and should do so.  Second,”  She pointed to a pot of lotion made with sesame seed oil, beeswax, and honey.  “I’ll give you a few extra minutes to care for your skin.  Be careful to get it everywhere.  You want your skin to be soft and smooth for your Domina.  Everywhere,” she emphasized mischievously, imagining their reactions, as she turned and walked out, hearing them starting to speculate about what was going on as she closed the door.

When she returned, she found them sitting on the bench, each with one towel wrapped around their long hair, a second tucked under their arms, and a third around their waists.  Although as she entered, she caught a flicker of movement from their waists and guilty expressions on their faces.

She frowned at them, putting her hands on her hips, watching them turn redder but not volunteer anything, until she figured it out and her face turned sympathetic.  “Oh.  You girls haven’t even had a chance to talk about—” she gestured “—anything that has happened to you, have you?”

They hesitantly shook their heads, as she walked around behind them, making a tisking sound, and running a finger along the top of each of their backs, above the towels.  “Dry as a bone.  Why didn’t you help one another?”

She met their eyes in the mirrors, seeing the dismay and consternation about what to say etched on their faces, pressing her lips together to avoid smiling too obviously.  Then she gave up and laughed.  “We’re all girls here,” she insisted.  “There’s no reason for modesty.  And by the way.”  She moved up behind both of them, her hips and breasts pressing against them, resting her hands on their shoulders.  “I may not be your valide anymore, but I will always outrank you.  And now that you’re adults…” she ran a fingernail along each girl’s collarbone, laughing harder as they gasped, pulled away, and protested:

“Mistress Sindonie!”

She clamped her hands on their shoulders, holding them still, to finish her sentence.  “I have the same privilege as any of your other superiors, jawari.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mistress,” they acknowledged, tight as drums.

“Oh, relax, dearies,” she rolled her eyes, patting their shoulders and moving off them.  “My point is, next time you’re feeling squeamish about touching one another… think again.”  She sat down on a cushioned chair nearby and crossed her legs, raising her eyebrows expectantly.  “Go on.  Do now, in front of me, what you were too silly to do when you had your privacy.”

They swallowed and moved with extreme awkwardness and embarrassment as she enjoyed herself, not particularly interested in them sexually—such a thing wouldn’t even have been likely to cross her mind if their own reticence hadn’t caused such a scene—but mightily amused as they tried to hold their own towels in place while rubbing lotion onto one another’s backs.

Finally, covering themselves as best they could, they reluctantly turned to meet her eyes, hoping to meet with her approval.  She shook her head and stared pointedly.  “Did you use it everywhere?” “Ohmygod!”  Penny burst out, squeaking and covering her mouth with shock at her own sacrilegious outburst.

CHAPTER SIX PART 46:  “LE SACCAGE DE LA SALE BÊTE ROUGE (RAMPAGE OF THE DIRTY RED BEAST)”

2025-03-30 Literature Section “06-46[X] Hella Honeymoon III”—Abridged 1305 words::Explicit 1332 words—©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.

1539 06-45 Lady in London/Jariya in Constantinople
1540 06-45 Good girls in Christendom & dar al-islam
1541 06-45 Different Worlds… Different Lives?

continued from 06-44

“Why is qahwah a secret?” Penny asked, beginning to eat with Chas.

“First, because it’s an advantage.  We always prefer to keep our advantages over our enemies, for as long as possible,” Sindonie explained.  “Second, we always want to avoid unexplained contacts with other parts of the world that the humans don’t have.  Everywhere we go, we try to blend in and be like the hucows as much as we can.”

“Hucows?!”  the girls laughed.  “Is that like…”

Sindonie pinkened.  “Human cattle.”

“But we’re—”

Christendom, dar al-Islam, and Beyond

“Let’s stay on track, shall we?  Speaking Arabic as fluently as you both do, you can range from Spain to India and the Balkans to the ports of the Indian Ocean without raising an eyebrow.  In Christendom, you can be what you are, gentle English.  Your class was at one advantage the Countess intended you to have by selecting you. 

“But because you’re both so fair and pale, and you would have trouble blending seamlessly, in dar al-Islam—the Muslim world—your story will be that you are Saqaliba—from the Balkans.  The other option would be Circassians, but since saqaliba live amongst Christians, you’re less likely to be caught posing as a Saqlabi.  Either way, it’s a near-perfect cover for a mamluk or jariya because as Christians and pagans, respectively, Saqaliba and Circassians, like blacks, are preferred as slaves in the Western part of dar al-Islam.  Many if not most mamalik and jawari are Saqaliba or Circassian.  To serve the Queen outside Christian and Muslim territories, you would have to learn other languages.”

“Does she have operatives in Cathay?”  Penny asked, wide-eyed.  “The West Indes?”

“And beyond.  She has operatives everywhere there are people.  I’m told those include parts of the world no one in Europe has ever even heard of.  Now try your qahwah, girls,” she insisted.  And when they hesitated to touch their cups to their lips, she said:  “I know it smells harsh.  Try it.  With sweetening, you’ll come to enjoy it.”

And they did.  “I do love sugar, Mistress,” Penny admitted.

“I know you do, dear.  Now eat up.  Not rudely, but efficiently.  The human servants were beginning to prepare baths for you when I took your food.”

Honeymoon Advice

“Is there anything we need to know about our seclusion to be prepared, Mistress?”  Penny asked between bites.

“According to rumor, you girls have already learned most of what you need to know for the honeymoon,” she teased them again, watching them squirm a moment, a distant look coming into her eye as she doubled down.  “I remember when I first met each of you.  You did look girlish to me, as many children do.  But the way you evolved and grew… you’re both quite lovely and feminine.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” they chorused, turning redder.

“The Queen has a remarkable eye for transgender jawari.  I’ve met dozens of them and like you, most of them don’t even need makeup.  Your Svadhishthana Cages will help you look like beautiful young women by preventing the further growth of hair.  But to preserve your beauty, it will be important for you to keep eating carefully, avoiding male animal flesh, and using the herbs and spices as you’ve been trained, even when you are out on your own.”

“Yes, Mistress,” they answered.  “We understand,” Penny amplified.

After considering carefully for a moment, Sindonie continued:  “To answer your question, I know you’ve had a very hard week, and that you are struggling with anger and confusion about the changes.  Especially the cages, collars, and twisters, and… what she expects of you to serve her cause.”  Their eyes blazed with the truth of that, and their hurt.  “Oh, dear girls, I’m so sorry,” she reached forward, placing a gentle hand on each girl’s shoulder and neck to connect and empathize with them.  “Even I, who was not adopted as a child but came into the Queen’s service as an adult, have had to face—challenges.”  She bit her lip, shaking her head slightly but firmly as if rejecting something.  “Serving our Queen is not easy.  But the same can be said for any human King.  Their concerns are not ours.”

“Your honeymoon is a time for you to heal your connection with Her, to feel the joy of your union with Her, while learning your new relationship with Her.  Try to find other outlets for your anger, like working hard to serve her.  And sublimate the feelings you can’t work out, into your natural submissiveness.  In this respect, you are more fortunate than the mamluks.  We’ve given you all the tools we can to prepare you to be content, even joyous, in your service and obedience to her.  The mamluks have rigid honor where you have bent desires, but honor keeps them even more emotionally separate, from Her and from other humans, even as it protects their loyalty and fidelity.  You have… this.  There is no ‘honeymoon’ for the mamluks beyond what they enjoyed of your trials.  They are pushed out into the world, not sheltered at home from it.”

“Also, now that you are proven and sworn to Her, She can start to share Her amazing knowledge and experience with you.  You cannot even imagine the worlds she moves through.  If you can relax, and follow her lead, try the new things—like qahwah—that she tries to show you, you will be a richer and better person for it.  And, I am told, you will know dark delights that she only shares with her jawari.”

The boys shivered with both the warmth and the chilly thrill of anticipation, looking at one another, and then back at her, anxiously, seeking and receiving reassurance from one another and her eyes.  “Thank you, Mistress Sindonie,” they chorused.

Valide to Valide

“Good.  Here, stand up,” she urged them, walking to one side of the table and embracing both girls for a long, tight hug.  “With your initiation,” she began, her voice cracking as all three of them began to sob together, “With it, I will no longer be your valide.  For most jawari, that role would belong to the most-senior jariya; but for the two of you, your valide will be your Domina.  I promise, though, I will always be your governess, and I will always be here for you.”  With a final, intense squeeze, she implored them:  “Trust and obey your Queen and Domina and—” she could hardly say it “valide in all things.  Trust and obey her.  Promise me!”

“We promise!” they bawled, delaying their separation. 

But finally, she shook her head and backed away, wiping her eyes and waving vaguely toward the stairs.  “Come!  We’ve taken too long already.  Penny—no, you’ll want to keep your blanket around you—girls, please work together to bring the tray with you and set it in the Great Chamber.”

CHAPTER SIX PART 45:  “LE SACCAGE DE LA SALE BÊTE ROUGE (RAMPAGE OF THE DIRTY RED BEAST)”

2025-03-29 Literature Section “06-45 Hella Honeymoon II”—Accompanying Images:  1539-1541.  1142 words—©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.

adventuresofaradicalprovocateur tudor england femdom humiliation dominatrix succubus coffee jariya jawari governess honeymoon wedding polyamory valide mother chakra

1535 06-44 Penny begs Sindonie for breakfast
1536 06-44 A hive filling the whole world?!
1537 06-44 If She dreams the hiveworld, will it come?
1538 06-44 Even good transitions are hard (Sindonie, Chas, and Penny)

PREVIOUSLY:   Like a substantial minority of the biologically male orphans, slaves, and refugees “adopted” into Channah’s global family of proto-operatives, Chas and the slightly-younger Penny had been raised as transgender girls.  Upon Penny’s eighteenth birthday, they had undergone the hazing and trials to become jariya women:  For six days and nights they were guilted, punished, trained, seduced, subjugated, intimidated, cajoled, drugged, teased, confused, gaslit, sleep-deprived, tormented, and broken to the ultimate will of the succubae.  But unlike almost any of the orphans, their wedding to Channah as her 35th and 36th sisterwives—her first human brides in centuries—had comprised the last phase of those trials.  After suffering the Seven Indignities, the protracted ceremonies allowing the girls to demonstrate their loyalty and worthiness through their submission and suffering, they had finally been allowed to sleep.  NOW:

Graduation

The girls were awakened by the smell of hot eggs and bacon, their first hint they had been allowed to oversleep.  Blinking and rubbing their eyes like schoolchildren, they discovered the sun was well up in the sky, although from the North-facing windows they could not see its exact angle.  They were where they had fallen asleep the previous night, on futons laid on flattened pews in what they could not help thinking of as a private chapel but, as a desecrated church that had never been restored, had been taken by hell as a satanikoklus of the succubae.

Sindonie, their governess of a decade, sat smiling across from them on an uncovered pew.  As always, she was practically, if exquisitely, dressed, reflecting at once her personality and class.  There could be no doubt she was a member of the gentry, England’s lower nobility.  Her clothing was neat, to all appearances unworn, made of the finest cloths not reserved for upper nobility.  The girls could not remember ever having seen her disarrayed, or even with a scuff on her boot or a single hair out of place beneath her hood; certainly nothing as vulgar as being sweaty or dirty, no matter the temperature.  But typically for her, atypically for her class, she wore little or no jewelry, the cuts of her dresses were simple with clean lines, and she avoided fashions like tall heels or dress loops that would hamper her movements.

Between them stood a low table, cleared of the night’s empty cups and wine bottles, now filled with a silver tray loaded with the eggs and bacon they had smelled, as well as breads, sweetbreads, water, milk, sugar, and a hot pot of something having a strong and brisk odor they had never smelled before.

“Mistress Sindonie, is this for us?” Penny marveled.

“Yes, it is,” she beamed.

“And you brought it to us?!” Chas wondered.

“I did,” she nodded, cocking one eyebrow as if to say “can you believe that?”  “I even boiled the qahwah myself, because it is considered a secret of the Court.  So you’re not to speak of it to outsiders.”

Since they didn’t even know what qahwah was, they weren’t worried about spilling the beans, so to speak.  Instead they looked at one another, somewhere between dazed and amazed, before Penny asked quietly:  “Mistress, are we part of the Court of Lust now?”

She smiled again, warmly, and nodded.  “You are.  You’re still not quite fully married, but you have completed the trials—and before you start looking worried, don’t.  You’ve endured the trials and passed the tests.  The hard part is done, now it’s time for your reward.  You and the other members of your class will be formally initiated into the Court of Lust when you return.”

“Return?”  Penny asked, a little anxiously.

“Reward?”  Chas asked, a little hopefully.

“From your honeymoon with Channah!  Which is a celebration, mind you, my dour little Penny—a celebration for all three of you to bond in seclusion and seal your marriage—not a challenge.”  Meeting their eyes for a moment, and reading them instantly, she tossed her head to one side.  “Do your business, girls.  There’s a screen over there if you’re still feeling modest.  Although,” she snickered, “It may be a little late for that, from what I heard.”

Both boys blushed, intensely.  “Mistress!” they chorused in protest to their childhood governess, both opting to scurry behind the screen, holding blankets around themselves for modesty, doubly happy to escape from her sight.

“I’ll always be your governess, but you’re adults now, girls.”  And meeting their eyes as they returned, reading their minds as she so often seemed to do, she confirmed:  “It’s much better to stay near the food.  The chapel desperately needs a good airing-out.  Big George modified the top of the windows so they can be opened to vent,” she nodded toward a thin strip of glass at the top of the stained-glass windows where George had painstakingly moved grout and glass from their original stone frames to metal ones mounted on hinges, “but they have to be small and high to keep prying eyes from seeing inside.  So it will take awhile for this—” she smirked again, shaking her head and teasing them.  “You girls’… scandalous activities….”

They both opened their mouths to protest but shut them decisively, reddening again.

“I had to bring your food because the human servants couldn’t be allowed in here to smell the—evidence of debauchery in the chapel, or find it filled with naked men and girls.”  And without their having to ask, she again anticipated:  “Your Dominae left yesterday—”

“Yesterday?!” they chorused.

“Yes, you’ve been asleep almost twenty hours.  The men woke up earlier this morning.”

“Thank you for bringing us our breakfast—or dinner?—Mistress,” Penny bowed slightly in appreciation while Chas echoed him.

The Honeycomb

“You’re welcome.”  She had been preparing two cups, putting milk and sugar in them before pouring a brown, almost bitter, stream of steaming-hot liquid into the two cups.  “Qahwah,” she explained.  “Because you girls are soft and sweet, I’ve put milk and sugar in it so it won’t be too strong for you.  When you return from your honeymoon, if the Queen hasn’t taught you already, I’ll teach you girls how to make it for everyone.”  She giggled.  “You have to make it in the Countess’s bathroom, away from the eyes of cook and the kitchen maids.”

“What is it?”  Penny asked.  It was always Penny who asked.

“A hard little bean from a plant that grows far up the Blue Nile.  It gives you energy and sharpens your mind.  Now that you know who your Queen is—” she met their eyes briefly— “yes?”

“Yes, Mistress,” they nodded, still showing traces of the awe and anxiety they felt at the revelation.

“Penny told me,” Chas explained.  “Although I can’t imagine—”

“You won’t have to, not for long,” she assured them.  “The Queen will take you through the honeycomb in her realm to your honeymoon.  It’s how she and members of the Court travel around the world.”

“Where are we going?”

Sindonie smiled.  “I suspect I know, a particularly wonderful place she calls her natural cloister.  But I’m certain she’ll want to tell you, or more likely show you, herself.  The honeycomb is how the Court stays in communication with all our operatives, and the reason you were taught Arabic.  The honeycomb is also how the qahwah came to England, from the Queen’s palace in Cairo.  You know we have always discouraged you from drinking small beer, Chas?”  Chas nodded slowly.  “No discouragement required for our prudish little Penny, of course.  Whose example should have illustrated the truth, that small beer for breakfast and dinner doesn’t actually protect health.”  She shook her head.  “Now you can both drink qahwah instead.  Wine and spirits should be for celebration—or comfort—not for sustenance.”

“Why is it a secret?” Penny asked, beginning to eat with Chas.

CHAPTER SIX PART 44:  “LE SACCAGE DE LA SALE BÊTE ROUGE (RAMPAGE OF THE DIRTY RED BEAST)”

2025-03-28 Literature Section “06-44 Hella Honeymoon I”—Accompanying Images:  1535-1538.  1170 words—©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.

1532 06-43 Channah addressing her mamalik in her Cairo palace
1533 06-43 Channah addressing her jawari in her Cairo palace
1534 06-43 Channah addresses her children

EXPLICIT VERSION AVAILABLE AT https://patreon.com/TheRemainderman

continued from 06-42[X]

Her bridegirls, on their knees before Channah’s elevated throne, had together placed a fine silver chain around her left ankle, symbolizing her power over them, from which she hung the magical keys to their Svadishthana Cages, as they watched from inches away.

Smirking, she had then leaned forward and secured her second rings around their necks:  their Vishudhha Collars.  They appeared to be very similar to one another:  thick straps of soft white leather decorated with brass studs, each having a brass heart-shaped slave tag with their full name—Chastity and Penance, respectively—on the front, and the legend “Property of Countess Anne Batonnoir, Fensmere Manor” on the back.  Chas’s was slightly wider than Penny’s, while Penny’s had a gold chain decorating its lower edge.  At the ceremony itself Channah had laughingly declined to explain what the collars did, cautioning only that if they didn’t obey her, they would regret it.  But afterwards, while holding Penny in an uncomfortable and embarrassing position beneath her, she had explained this much:

“The Byzantine Mural is yours.  I made it, so it will always tie you to me, but it’s yours, defiled to you as part of our wedding ceremony like the anklet and ring you gave me.  And to the rest of the world, it’s cheap cast-iron.  The leather collar, like Chas’s, is also yours, with the usual powers.  What looks like a gold chain, however, is something altogether different.  But you knew that, didn’t you?”  He nodded quietly, having seen—and felt—the great sapphire set in the heavy gold collar stretching from the upper part of his neck to the tops of his shoulders.  “The Yoke and Star of Bethlehem are mine.  They are always connected to me, and always in my consciousness.  When I call to them, they call back; and they burn like the sun to me no matter how far away from me they are.  So I can always find them, and I will always be able to find you.  I am dressing you up in my property like a lord dressing his servants in his livery, or a pet owner dressing their pet.  The Yoke is as much my property as you are.  I am merely storing it around your neck, little girl, and letting it provide magical shelter to you, the same as my hamper offers you your bed when I send you to it.  Do you understand?”

“Ye—yes, Domina,” she answered, nodding earnestly and nervous lest Channah might suddenly pinch or throttle or otherwise assault her with her hands.  “I understand.  Thank you, Domina, for lending me your shelter.”

“Good answer, girl.  This,” she flicked the brass heart engraved with her name, “Cheap brass, is yours.  Entertainment.  Obviously not a part of my masterpiece.  Like the mural, like all my magic, my collar conceals itself to all but my courtiers.  But by my command, the secrecy of the collar goes further.  It can only be seen for what it is, by the five of us:  me, my two most loyal Duchesses Miryam and Rivqah, the metalsmith who forged it, and you—the person who has the most to lose by revealing its existence to anyone. Others will see it as just another service collar, when they expect to see you collared—probably, when I or one of my servants has you on a leash.  And they will see it as a girl’s choker, or even a tight necklace, when they don’t expect you to be collared.  Fortunately, your neck is feminine enough there’s no need for it to cover your Adam’s Apple, so I don’t need to worry about that. 

“The Yoke will not protect you, or any part of you, from harm by misadventure.  You can be hurt or killed like anyone else.  If someone outside my Court, or even outside the five of us, were to learn about it or get the idea whatever they see around your neck is valuable, say, from you—can you imagine how quickly they would turn on you for the most-precious stone in Christendom?”  She smiled with satisfaction, seeing she had understood the moment she was collared.  “And like your chastity, it can’t be removed by natural means or by other people.  Only supernatural means, by me.”  She shrugged.  “Or, since it doesn’t protect you, of course, by anyone on the planet willing to saw your head off.  So, I think you understand how very, very vital it is that no one ever get any idea of what you’re wearing?”  He nodded urgently, but silently.  “Good.  If I were you, I would also stay very close to my protectress.  The one person powerful enough to protect you if word of what’s around your neck were to get out.  The one person who can remove the collar without removing your head, and who actually finds you useful enough to lend her collar to.”

“Yes, Domina, thank you, Domina,” he dared to answer.

“It will prevent aging, and provide you safety from disease, infirmity, and the ravage of time, for as long as you’re useful enough to me to let you keep it.  Meaning your clean, tight, hairless skin will remain as vibrant and beautiful in a dozen years, even a hundred if you’re useful enough to me that I want to keep you in it that long, instead of moving it to a more-useful courtier.  Meaning you can remain as part of my court on Earth, as long my Ladies’ Maids.  Even as long as me.  IF you make sure to remain useful.  IF you apply yourself to every task I set you, for me.  IF you use your skills to serve my court.”  She snickered.  “So naïve, I can see you’re still as angry with me as you are fearful.  Doubtless you’re telling yourself you’d rather be free than immortal.  But I’m patient.  Sometime—not long from now, even in human terms—you’ll find you’ve become accustomed to the idea of living forever, even as a eunuch who suffers for his Domina.  And you won’t ever want to take it off.  I know you’ll want to remove the Byzantine Mural—of course, who wouldn’t?  But not this.  Eventually, you’ll do whatever I say to keep it on.  Eventually, you’ll do whatever it takes, no matter how repugnant or vile the task, to keep it.  Eventually, my Court and the other denizens of hell will be your only peers, because you will have outlived everyone and everything you know in this world.”  He shivered involuntarily at the thought.  “And then, little girl, you will be my perfect little pawn.  Allll mine.”

In exchange for her collars marking them to the world as her owned wives, the girls had knelt before her again and each given her a silver ring—actually a fine chain, soft and accommodating as they were expected to be—and placed it on a toe of their Domina’s left foot, symbolizing her superiority to them.

Their third exchange was in some ways the most intimate:  As they continued kneeling before her, heads bowed, each of them offered her a tiny silver-mesh globe like a miniature tea-infuser, as she cut a lock of each of their hair, enclosing it in the silver-mesh globe and hanging each girl’s egg from her waist chain, where they joined 34 others, each given to her by a previous sisterwife, and each of which, by giving her a part of their flesh, gave her the power to ensorcell them at any time or distance.  In exchange, she presented them with their Muladhara Twisters, or Intimates:  the special tools of behavior- and body-modification unique to them, that only she or—with her permission, as part of their play group—her friends would ever use on them, and that would only ever be used on each of them.  The first was a long, wicked, black wooden paddle, the black sticks upon which she had based their human surname.  Chas’s was engraved, “Chastity’s Lover Boy,” and Penny’s “Penance’s Bull Daddy,” prompting a round of guffaws and jeering comments from the assembled succubae, incubi, damned, and operatives watching the proceedings.  She also produced mysterious, elongated, jewel-encrusted gold ornaments—Chas’s diamond-studded, Penny’s ruby-studded.

For the breaking phase, rather than breaking a glass, while the girls were held down on the floor, Channah trampled them.  When Penny passed out from the pain, Channah rolled her eyes with a snort of disgust and sent her bridegirls to bed—that bed being her dirty-clothing hamper, which had to be forced closed by the men who escorted them there, for it be latched shut with the two of them crammed in it on top of her dirty laundry.

Channah and her Court then celebrated together all night long.  The next morning, and for most of the remaining two days and nights of the hazing, Channah put her housegifts through the Seven Indignities.  These began by familiarizing them quite intimately with their Intimates as she gave each girl a paddling.

By the end, she had reduced them to the most pathetic kinds of broken, simpering sissy sisterwives.  And the Star and Yoke of Bethlehem had begun to manifest their power, with intended and side effects alike.  Not the least of which, Channah suspected, was how it had permitted her to really feel, for the first time, the submissive joy of releasing all control.  And which she blamed for gentle Penny’s sudden, shocking, and thoroughly discombobulating outburst from his knees before her, in the final moments of their ceremony, that he loved her.

PART 6 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-43[X] Grimm Transformations VI:  Sexual Sorcery”—Accompanying Images:  1532-1534.  Abridged 1593 words::Explicit 1917 words—©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.

1519 06-42 Channah’s Vishkanya in Karnata Vijayanagara kneel to their goddess^
1521 06-42 Channah’s Kunoichi in Sengoku Kyoto kneel to their goddess^
1523 06-42 Channah’s Jawari in Safavid Tabriz kneel to their goddess^
1525 06-42 Channah’s Jawari in Ottoman Cairo kneel to their goddess (edited)^
1527 06-42 Channah’s Hetairai in Ottoman Athens kneel to their goddess (edited)^
1529 06-42 Channah’s Jawari in Tudor Cambridgeshire kneel to their goddess (edited)^

EXPLICIT VERSION AVAILABLE AT https://patreon.com/TheRemainderman

The hothouse flowers who did not show themselves suitable, by aptitude or preference, for roles as mamluks, became something else.  Those obviously unfit as mamluks, like Chas and Penny, were groomed for something else from the beginning.  Those who had been offered, but failed, their test as mamluks, like Frances, were given the opportunity to accept this alternative station, although few of them could bring themselves to accept such a disgraceful alternative.

For six days and nights after Penny’s eighteenth birthday, years of careful preparation and planning were brought to fruition as Penny and Chas were guilted, punished, trained, seduced, subjugated, intimidated, cajoled, drugged, teased, confused, gaslit, sleep-deprived, tormented, and broken to the ultimate will of the succubae.  If not perfected—every soul on Earth remained a work in progress as long as it lived, such was the meaning of Earth—the girls were reincarnated, or evolved, into the advanced form the succubae desired them to assume. 

In human languages—which were all the succubae had—there were no names for precisely what they were being broken to.  And certainly, the girls’ succubus and human minders had avoided suggesting any.  Had they been biological females, in England, “second-class wives with a bit of indentured servant thrown in” would not have been too far off the mark.  (And some particularly-cynical women might have been heard to respond:  “oh, an ordinary wife, then.”)  But the truth was, if they behaved themselves after their hazing was complete, Penny and Chas had every chance of being treated better than many wives in England; and would certainly continue to enjoy a higher material standard of living.  Indeed, the Countess fully expected and intended to preserve their loyalty without the help of the human secular and religious authorities and traditions that supported husbands and buttressed the institution of marriage against unhappy wives of humans.

In Channah’s most-ancient palace in Cairo, and her primary Western palace in Constantinople, two cities where Channah had spent a plurality of her long life, the hucows had a word for female sex slaves of males that in the time of the Abbasids, correctly described the female operatives in this group:  jawari (in the singular, jariya)—slaves for entertainments and pleasures.  The succubae, being intrinsically female masters, with overwhelmingly male slaves, extended the term to describe all sex-and-pleasure slaves of all masters.  As with the mamluks, her operatives sometimes used local words, especially in cultures outside or resistant to the Muslim world, to label themselves—kunoichi in Japan, vishkanya in India, hetaira, in Greece, with varying degrees of accuracy.

Queen Channah and three of her Ladies of Court—Duchess Miryam (posing in human form as her Lady’s Maid Mary), Duchess Rivqah (her Lady’s Maid Rebecca), and Sultana Mayaam (adopting incubus form as necessary to play the role of Obedience, a model sisterwife to Chas and Penny) took turns and cooperated, with the assistance of all of their retainers at Fensmere Manor, to maintain the unrelenting pressure on Penny and Chas for 144 straight hours.  Because the succubae could reach the girls even in their dreams, their only independence in that time was for those few, minimal hours of dreamless sleep they needed to stay alive.

The succubae had been training and enslaving humans—and Queen Channah had been married to her primary (“Di,” or “Great Royal”) husband, Húanglóng—for millennia.  He had taken countless humans as his secondary (“Shu,” or “Royal”) sisterwives during his limited time on Earth.  Yet in all her time here, more than 250 generations, training tens or even hundreds of thousands of jawari, Channah had taken only 34.  Partly because there were few enough reasons to want them besides pregnancy, which held little enough appeal for her.  Channah had tried unsuccessfully to conceive with two of her wives, borne 9 children by 9 of the others, and gleefully kept the other 23 of her wives in chastity for the rest of their mortal lives while using and teasing them mercilessly.

As the culmination of their 144-hour hazing, she had taken both of these girls as her wives—Chas as her 35th, and Penny moments later as her 36th—in a relationship as thoroughly unequal as its human counterparts, if more explicitly so, and with the biological sexes reversed.  By the wedding rites of the succubae, she had yoked them to her will, spiritually and magically, becoming their Domina (head of household), while making them her sisterwives (housegifts).  She’d actually never had two sisterwives at the same time before; but the term was used, whether they had sisters or not, to reinforce her greater importance and superiority while diminishing them, suggesting they were fungible, and implying they would be expected to cooperate or bond in any manner she preferred, rather than acting as if they had personal agency or were in competition with one another.  Let alone with her husband.

They were married in what had been the Defalaises’ private chapel at Fensmere, now desecrated into a satanikoklus, the hellish analog to a church or temple.  In the satanikoklus, the shroud between Earth and Hell was thin and porous.  From the moment Penny had been brought there, she had seen, heard, smelled, and felt the hot, humid air and burning red sandscape of the Hell of Lust all around her, recognizing it for what it was, and the succubae and incubi and damned there, for exactly what they were.  It was a thing not many living humans could see, her clearer sight a reflection of both her intelligence and her sensitivity.

The succubaean ceremony itself was ancient, its eight elements familiar or at least recognizable to most humans, comprising indenture (betrothal), veiling, invocation, exchange, cursing (blessing), indignity (affirmation), breaking (celebration), and seclusion (honeymoon).  Of course, it was the sisterwife who was veiled, and then tested.  The vows and rings they had exchanged were unequal, befitting their new positions:  Pledging to take her sisterwives in hand and dominate them, Channah had used her deceptively cute fingers and wicked-long fingernails to chastise them with her Svadhishthana Cages, Persian Gate for Chas, Byzantine Mural for Penny.

And as she did so, she had explained, condescendingly and embarrassingly, that as a succubus, she lived primarily off the virility and vitality of men, by drawing it from them and devouring it.  Whereas she had chosen them as ideal consorts precisely because they were not virile or manly to start with, and by chastising them she had rendered them as harmless and impotent as empty bladders.  “As long as you wear my cage, your virtue is safe.”  As she had explained more precisely to their mamluk foster brothers and longtime bullies when they celebrated with her, penetration was the real risk.  If they penetrated any part of a succubus’s body, it sapped the man’s vitality.  The body had a certain resiliency, of course; and could largely recover from limited contact with a succubus, although even a single encounter could result in feelings of lethargy for hours or even days.  But burn the candle any faster than that, and their life would drain away, swiftly and unrecoverably, even as the succubus’s victim thanked his lucky stars for her, one moment of bliss at a time.  “Which is why your Svadhishthana Cages will likely never, ever come off during your lifetimes.”  She mock-pouted at them:  “I have to protect you, my sweet darlings!”

Laughing at how uncomfortable and scared they already looked, she twisted the knife even harder.  She had done this to so many biological males, in so many conservative, judgmental societies, they had no chance to avoid her manipulations.  Their cages, she noted, would also perform one of the succubae’s favorite tricks, showing their partners whatever sex they expected the girls to have—and helping their partners act in a manner that confirmed and reinforced their expectations into convictions.  Giggling at their expressions, now of terror and horror, she explained how important that made it for her to choose pretty, slight, effeminate, and convincing girls like Chas and Penny to train as her jawari in the first place.

“The Mural is a crown of walls, and the Gate is a mountain pass.  This ring,” she lied evilly, “is a clever design of my own that destroys the testes slowly.  And until they’re completely gone, my victim lives in an agony of arousal.”  She chortled, loving their fear and sorrow as her broken males, and let them know in a sing-songy voice ending in a cackle, that that was as much as she was prepared to tell them about the metal devices she had locked around their most-vulnerable and -important boy parts.  They would simply have to wait and see what other effects they might have. 

Poor Penny had already discovered one power her Byzantine Mural had, that Chas’s Persian Gate apparently did not.  It had happened the first time Penny had been used and teased and ignored until she was out of her mind, and every time thereafter she had been brought to that state.  The succubae had been doing everything possible to simultaneously shame and excite her while locked.  At the crucial moment, it had whisked her joy away and transferred it to Channah and her other partners, multiplying their pleasures and leaving Penny in a state of desperation, longing, sorrow, and misery.  As long as the ring was on, her partners—no matter who they were—would enjoy the force of her pleasure on top of their own, while Penny would feel only the bitter disappointment and the eventual ache of losing out on one of the most  pleasant experiences in this world.  She had cried out and wept, bitter-astringent tears, every time the Mural had taken her joy during the ceremony.

PART 5 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-42 Grimm Transformations VI:  Broken Sissies”—Accompanying Images:  1519, 1521, 1523, 1525, 1527, 1529.  Abridged 1619 words::Explicit 1697 words—©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.

1520 06-41 Channah’s Thuggees in Karnata Vijayanagara kneel to their goddess^
1522 06-41 Channah’s Ninja in Sengoku Japan kneel to their goddess^
1524 06-41 Channah’s Hashshashin in Safavid Tabriz kneel to their goddess^
1526 06-41 Channah’s Osirian Mamlukes in Ottoman Cairo kneel to their goddess^
1528 06-41 Channah’s Desecrated in Ottoman Athens kneel before their goddess^
1528 06-41 Channah’s Mamluk cadre in Tudor Cambridge kneel before their goddess^

The Queen and Her Operatives

Always, she chose her orphans from among the most vulnerable, although the vulnerabilities she valued, like their strengths, varied depending on the purposes she had in mind for them.  The most sensitive, the most brutal, the most brutalized, the most desperate, the most desperate to please, the most isolated, the most social, the most insecure, the most self-confident, the most angry, the most calm, the most self-aware, the least self-aware.  Every human was endowed with some free will, some bit of conscience, some sliver of the holy ghost that could never be extinguished but only banished from this world by death. 

Some of those she chose—bullies and lizards like Cutter, Martin, Isaac, and Eleanor—were already far down the path to hell, as close to being destined for her Queendom as they could be on Earth because they felt nothing for others, couldn’t bear the successes of others, wanted to hurt others, or even wanted to obliterate everything.  But such people could only help her so far, with some things. 

Many tasks could only be accomplished with empathy, reason, wisdom, and self-awareness.  Those possessing such traits, the hothouse flowers, were the most difficult ones to raise successfully to their purposes.  It had taken centuries for the demons of hell to fully appreciate that no matter how much fun it was to wind up and unleash raging, violent sadists, narcissists, lunatics, and golems on the world, they could only advance the cause of reaping souls so far.  Faced with obvious threats to their communities, most people tended to come together, care for and protect one another, even sacrifice themselves for others.   Bringing out the best in people was the last thing they wanted to do!  Those were outcomes that hindered, rather than helped, the demons in their ultimate aims; however much fun it was to cause chaos.  What the demons needed were more insidious threats to humanity.  They needed threats that people could rationalize away or ignore, until it was too late and they were already being gobbled up by voracious hell. 

Rather than creating the savages who worked so well as their kapos in hell, and trying in vain to rely only on them in the more nuanced environment of Earth, the demons realized they would be better served by investing the significant time and empathy required on the front end to raise operatives with the abilities they needed.  No matter how challenging a skill it was for a demon to learn.  No matter how much patience they had to find.  It was something not every demon was capable of.  In all the demon realms of hell, it tended to absorb their brightest and most capable, those from their higher ranks.  But there were also individual differences within demon castes.  So the members of every Court charged with wrangling the hothouse flowers included a mix—a handful of the lower demons, a larger share of the middle, and a heavy dose of the highest ranks. 

And so it was that Queen Channah herself was involved with this project, especially when—as in England, in the 1520s—the succubae were establishing a new colony.   Partly because founding the cadre that would establish and give the colony its start was a particularly crucial step in setting it on the right path, but also because new colonies were only created when there was a particularly pressing reason for doing so.  Cambridgeshire had become her operating base, for now; joining the ancient colonies in Constantinople and Rome, and the medieval colonies in Vienna and Madrid, as the fifth in Europe.  Like most colonies, this one began at the outside and worked its way in to the heart of the Kingdom.  When it was time, when her agents were deeply embedded, their covers and legends secure, its focal point would move slowly, agent by agent, from Cambridge to the Royal Court in London.  But for now, they had only a limited, secondary presence there, which relied on Cambridge for its roots and legend; and behind that, vague stories about coming from the West.

It was the Star of Bethlehem that had decided Channah in favor of England, prioritizing it over Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon, Stockholm, and the other rising cities of Northern Europe, an area which had never been worthy of organized demonic focus before.  Gemstones, like certain other objects, held energy because they focused so much human passion, ambition, interest, and naked greed.  Their interaction with people, tending to draw out the worst of humanity, cursed them to become fell instruments of power.  The largest, which could become the focus of terrible violence and every kind of sin, were often legendary.  Like the Star of Bethlehem, the largest sapphire in the world, that had been “lost” at Bosworth Field in 1485. 

Any object could become a magical fetish if humans imbued it with enough of their hopes, fears, ambitions, wants, needs, and desires.  But almost none were more likely to do so that large gemstones.  Such naturally-occurring fetishes could be the most powerful substrate for deliberate ensorcelling, because if the sorcerer endowed them with a purpose congruent with their energy, it would add to or even—in the case of a deeply-cursed stone like the Star of Bethlehem—multiply the power imparted to it by the caster’s spell.

Revelation and Reckoning

To build their cadre, and later grow their colonies, the Succubae divided—or, they would claim, allowed their operatives to sort themselves by their choices and actions in response to tests (the most-critical of which they never realized they were being given) into two groups, which became formalized into assigned social roles upon their eighteenth birthday when they left childhood behind.  The rough boys—including all of the pathological future kapos the demons loved so much, and about half of the hothouse flowers—joined a class that would be identifiable across many human cultures, although only formalized and systematically sanctioned in a few:  Mamluks—slave-soldiers groomed for loyalty, command, and the exercise of power on behalf of their masters.  Depending on the cultures in which they were raised and operated, they might be called, or call themselves, local terms that were not a close match, but that captured at least some of the more-distinctive features of their caste or at least their skills, like ninja in Japan, Thuggees in India, and Hashshashin in Iran.

The flowers chosen as mamluks (never called “flowers” in front of humans) as cadres to establish Channah’s English bureau included Roger and Eleanor.  On their 18th birthday they either washed out or proved themselves and graduated into their adult role by the ultimate test of violence:  homicide.  The pathogens, like Martin and Cutter, took the same test, of course; but for them it wasn’t much of a test.  The real question was often whether they could contain themselves until they were ordered to kill, or whether—like Isaac—they would distinguish themselves by killing on their own, before anyone suggested them to do so.

PART 4 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-41 Grimm Transformations IV:  Master Killers”—Accompanying Images:  1520, 1522, 1524, 1526, 1528, 1530.  1162 words—©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.

06-36 1514 This one! (the adoption of Charles)^
06-36 1515 The boy is mine now. (The purchase of Penny)^
06-36 1516 You’re perfect! (the finding of Roger)^
06-36 1517 We’ve got you (the escape of Isaac [Esmeray])^
06-36 1518 Tricking the guards (Sindonie’s escape)^
06-36 1519 Buying in Bulk^

The Countess of Warwick

When the Countess married the Earl, and moved to Fensmere, she had brought her own entourage with her.  These included those she called nieces (Eleanor, Frances, Jane, Chas, and Penny), nephews (Roger, Cutter, Isaac, and Martin), and staff including her Lady’s Maids (Mary and Rebecca), carpenter Big George, and the children’s governess Sindonie.

Years later, came the day—Penny’s eighteenth birthday—when the Countess found out:  That the Defalais sisters knew her nieces were transgendered.  That Penny was teaching the girls even when they were being punished.  That in addition to Latin and religion, she had been continuing to teach them the subjects their mother had wanted them to learn, but Anne had forbidden to them, like grammar, Greek, Hebrew, rhetoric, philosophy, math, geometry, astronomy, and heretical ideas from Germany about the Church.  And that she had even let them dabble in some of the secret subjects Anne Batonnoir taught all her lost boys and girls, like fighting, spy craft, and the principles of magic.

She burst into Hellinore’s closet, finding Mary, Catherine, Beatrice, and Hellinore there.

“Hiding.” she growled. 

“With boys!” she raged. 

“Of… lower… station,” she spat in contempt.

“Aunt Anne!  I’m not a boy!” Chas began, looking stricken and betrayed, almost crying, and completely missing the point, bless her heart.

Penny looked guilty, ashamed, scared, a little relieved, and almost… almost, the tiniest bit proud, apologizing profusely and trying to explain she hadn’t meant to sleight her guardian, but only to help the girls, and pleaded to be allowed to continue.  It was a pronouncement as honest, and in its own way as misplaced, as Chas’s.

The sisters mainly looked terrified, as well they might have, although Hellinore, now 11, stoutly volunteered that when she found out Penny was transgender she had threatened to tell the Countess what they knew if Penny wouldn’t keep teaching.  It was a quarter-truth, at best, but strayed from the truth for loyalty’s sake, and would have been dead on-point if the Countess had been interested.

The Countess’s retribution was terrible and swift.  The five girls were birched in the Great Chamber, out of line of sight from the upstairs kitchen but in hearing range of half the house proper, to humiliate them as much as possible without allowing any of the servants ideas or feelings above their stations.  Of course, every decent or sensible servant but one fled the house the instant the birchings began, but the point was made, the girls embarrassed, and the stories spread.  Only the Countess’s carpenter, Big George, remained in the house, installing locks on all the girls’ closet doors, securing them against escape even while imperiling them from any fire or other calamity should one overtake the manor.  Then she locked her stepdaughters in their closets for days, having her lady’s maids supervise the servants who brought them food and water and changed out their chamber pots, to prevent them from showing the girls any additional or emotional kindnesses.

While the Countess herself, focused on attending to those she regarded as her own.  As always, the lowest in rank suffered the worst.  Even though, in this case, “lowest” was a relative term—at least as importantly, the three remaining offenders were from the Countess’s household, utterly beholden to her, with no other sources of support or care, nothing else to turn to, nowhere else to go.  They were all members of the gentry, the lowest rank of the English nobility, as far below the Defalaises as they were above the rest of the population.  But she had facilitated Sindonie’s escape, kept Chas from the orphanage, and bought Penny outright.

From the sisters’ perspective, they disappeared for days; and when they finally reappeared, the girls, at least, were subdued, almost timid, and in some kind of shock, more distant from everyone and everything around them, than they had been before.  If it had been secretly suspected in certain quarters on the manor estate before, that Penny and Chas were not quite what they appeared, it now became more or less an open secret that Penny and the tutor occasionally seen slipping to and from the manor to Cambridge—which did not allow women—were one and the same person.

Around the same time, the residents of the manor learned the King was planning to visit, a fairly rare event this far East.  Perhaps it was the stories of the progressive home built by three generations of Defalaises that attracted him.  But more likely, according to rumors that eventually even reached the older sisters’ ears, were that something else might have lured him here.  The same thing that had so impressed and befuddled the Earl and most of the young men in the county.

The Queen of Lust

Chas and Penny had been carefully selected for their respective adoption and purchase by Channah, the Succubus Queen of the Hell of Lust, who in her human guise had lately adopted the name Anne Batonnoir, married the Earl of Warwick, and now was slowly draining his wits and life away.  Since acquiring her wards, she and her vassals and collaborators and minions had worked together, like an orchestra, to mold and condition and train the boys—now girls—for the special purpose for which they had been recruited.  It was the same with all the thousands of the Queen’s wards, nephews and nieces alike, here in Cambridge today, and in innumerable other cities and villages and campsites scattered across the world since humanity had begun.

The succubae and their incubi had started the game with… certain advantages.  Reading and manipulating humans wasn’t just something they did, it was what they were.   And with every round of the game, every human soul they worked on, every human lifetime of experience they gained, they had continued to pull further ahead of their human prospects.  They could, literally, seduce and drain humans of their very life without even waking up.  How much more were they capable of wide awake in the flesh? 

Before they even set hands on the children—or occasionally adults—they wanted, the ancient, eldritch Queen and her Court had used their powers to discern things in their hearts and minds that neither the children nor any adult caretakers understood.  She did not adopt babies, but young children.  They were not just raw material like clay, indifferently mined from acres of the same ore to be given form by the succubae.  They were raw puppets, picked out from shelves stuffed to the brim with the world’s unfortunates, already animated by birth, already endowed by early childhood with the basic shapes Hell required.  All she and her servants had to do was to finish them, polish them, and set them on their paths.

PART 3 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-36 Grimm Transformations III:  The Evil Plan”—Accompanying Images:  1514-1519.  1115 words—©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.

adventuresofradicalprovocateurs tudor england renaissance venice operative spy espionage succubus orphan adoption prisoner escape rescue fugitive escape smuggling street troll guardian ward olivertwist dickensian

06-35 1508 Mary Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1509 Catherine Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1510 Adelais Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1511 Beatrice Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1512 Hellinore Defalais, A.D. 1524^

The Earl’s daughters were already starving for love and support after losing their mother.  But as sometimes happened, fascination with their stepmother seemed to eclipse Lord Robert’s interest in his own children.  The new Countess, famous for her work with orphans, was as interested in the girls as their father was disinterested.  But her interest—contrary to her reputation—was punitive and vindictive.  She seemed to go out of her way to magnify the disruptions in their life, communicating as forcefully as possible how unwelcome they were in their own home.  Although she could be a harsh, even vindictive disciplinarian to her own nieces and nephews, she also showed a warmth and fondness toward them completely at odds with her unrelenting, frosty hostility towards her stepchildren.

Talk of the remaining Defalais girls’ weddings, and even betrothals, soon sputtered into silence, replaced with dark hints and suggestions of futures in the nunnery.  It was decided that unlike their stepmother and stepsisters, the girls already had plenty of dresses and gowns to last them indefinitely, however they might compare with debutantes of lower standing—or even girls of lower classes.  Their education—something their mother had fought for and encouraged them in, something that made them identify with her even as it helped define their identities—was deemed wasteful for girls.

The girls’ governess—a close friend of their mother’s, who had been governess of all the sisters since Margaret the Younger had outgrown her nanny—was sacked for laxness, literally chased off across the front lawn with a broom by the Countess, huffing and gasping and staggering away as fast as she could while her former charges wept and pleaded uselessly on her behalf.  She was summarily replaced by Sindonie Manning, the longtime governess of her own wards, who at least showed them the same kindness she showed their stepsiblings.

The prestigious tutors also disappeared, their duties to be fulfilled as well as possible by Penance, one of their new stepsisters.  Not only had their stepmother decided she would be perfectly adequate to cover the subjects she considered appropriate for young ladies, but she thought it inappropriate for young ladies of their social standard to be socializing with men, especially younger men born into more vulgar classes of society.  Since a young student from Cambridge was seen visiting the house, even after the tutors were fired, the girls—and their governess—suspected he was teaching Penny what she was supposed to teach them. 

Fortunately for the sisters, Penny was as dedicated to her students as she was conscientious about her duties.  Although she was the same age as Catherine, the middlemost of the seven sisters, Penny became a bright spot in their lives, a way for them to feel connected with their mother, and a source of encouragement and support in the face of their father’s lack of interest and their stepmother’s unremitting hostility.

She became particularly important as an anchor for the youngest daughter, Hellinore.  Hellinore, although studious and accomplished, had tried even her parents’ patience, earning the nickname “the Hellion.”  With the Countess… from practically the moment the two were introduced, sparks had more than flown—they had exploded!  Anne Batonnoir didn’t spare anyone under her control the fury of her punishments; and the daughters had to suffer their detentions in their closets.  Hellinore, in particular, seemed to spend half her existence with a bottom nearly as angry as she was, memorizing every little detail of her closet, until Penny, feeling sorry for her and guilty, started bringing her books and candles and even teaching classes there instead of the nearby schoolroom, so that she could be included. Her sisters took the change in venue with remarkably little complaining, knowing all of them shared a common enemy, and the only difference among their punishments was of degree.  In truth, her older sisters might secretly have been relieved Hellinore acted as such a lightning rod for their evil stepmother’s attentions. 

She seemed to be able to take it, for one thing—unlike Adelais, who wilted and shattered when she drew the Countess’s ire.  One night, Adelais never came to bed, caught in the clutches of their stepmother.  Whatever Adelais had experienced, she refused to say; but she was never quite as bright or gay as she had been before.  While Adelais curled up and shrank, Mary became careful and neutral; Beatrice insistently cheerful and helpful; Catherine sneaky and resentful; and Hellinore… Hellinore became a terror to anyone small enough or—a category encompassing most everyone on the Manor—lower-ranking and weak enough she could bully.

Like his daughters, the Earl failed to thrive and bloom in his new wife’s garden.  Instead, he appeared increasingly listless and withdrawn; even prematurely aged.  Some joked, carefully, that it was his new wife’s energy; but most attributed it to vinegar and tragedy.  In some corners, surely far from Fensmere, jokes were made about someone called the “Earl of Quickjack,” but this one, at least, didn’t show the same signs of vigor that had been so loudly proclaimed at his wedding.

PART 2 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-35 Grimm Transformations II:  The Long Fall”—Accompanying Images:  1508-1512.  846 words—©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.

1501 06-34i Robert and Margaret’s Fairytale Wedding^
1502 06-34 Robert and Margaret’s Fairy Tale Life^
1503 06-34 Stormfall colon Hell in a Red Dress^
1504 06-34 The Earl’s Second Wedding, to Lady Anne^
1505 06-34 Mortified sisters at the second wedding^

Everything began the autumn of the haunting.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, fortune beamed on the Defalais family with a generous light reserved only for the luckiest.  Lord Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was one of the most powerful and prominent men in England, politically astute and well-esteemed by King Henry VIII.  Lady Margaret Mordaunt’s grace, charm, and beauty had been celebrated even before her debut at court, and even before tragedy and piety had cleared a path through her six older sisters to her marriage.  Her family’s title had gone to her younger half-brother; but she had brought estates of her own to join those of her husband’s.  Both families had joined the Tudor pretender at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and been richly rewarded with the plunder despoiled from those who had kept their oath. 

The couple’s courtship had been the talk of the court; their wedding, the event of the season; and their affection manifest, in the form of seven accomplished and (mostly) proper daughters:  Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, Adelais, Beatrice, and Hellinore.  The eldest were well-wed, the middle children hopeful, and the youngest naïve.  They enjoyed the best tutors their mother could arrange from among the faculty of nearby Cambridge University.

The family dwelt in splendor at Fensmere Manor, a newly-built seat ahead of its time, more luxurious and pleasant country estate, than drafty fortress for hiding in.  Blessed with health, wealth, education, position, strength, and even family, which all considered their birthright, their destiny was to blossom and grow, crowding out the needs and ambitions of lesser bloods.

Or so it appeared, until a tragic fall robbed the Countess of her life, the family of its joy, and England of one of its most precious gems.  The daughters lost their role model, their most ardent advocate, their fiercest defender, and their loving, attentive mother.  The Earl was distraught, distant, and thoughtless in his own grief, practically a second parent lost to them even as he lost his own way, leaving his daughters in the capable but uninspired hands of his servants.

Then SHE appeared:  Anne Batonnoir, a Lady of obscure family origins but great charity somewhere far to the West—Devon, Cornwall, or even the Pale.  Her brother Jerome was a Herald of Arms in service to the King, and she was well-respected throughout the English clergy as a charitable woman who helped them care for orphans of quality and piety.  Jerome had slowly achieved some minor influence at the royal court, and now she quickly achieved even greater influence at the Earl’s. 

None could deny her extraordinary beauty, magnetic charisma, or easy self-assurance.  Her spirit, body, and manner were indisputable evidence of her gentle birth and high prospects.  And men not inclined towards the counsel of their mothers pursued her with as much focus and intensity as their mothers displayed in trying to steer them towards more-eligible, less-interesting women like the Earl’s daughters.

Her first appearance in Cambridgeshire, like Lady Margaret’s final tragedy, coincided with an autumn of ill winds, momentous storms, and inexplicable losses.  As the weather grew colder, crops wilted; cattle were mutilated; people disappeared; and rumors spread, of fires spied and chants heard deep in the woods.  Of remote dances and orgies on the darkest nights, and unholy ceremonies when the full moon was in zenith.  Tales of demons and witchcraft rattled the unsteady and inflamed the superstitious.  And some—among them, it must be said, the most jealous and least charitable of women—whispered that Robert’s alacritous courtship of Anne was more than unseemly:  it was unnatural.

Still, less-suspicious women, and virtually all men, took one look at Lady Batonnoir and dismissed supernatural explanations.  Not that the men were likely to share those thoughts with their wives, but they did with one another.

If Lord Robert’s first wedding was a fairy tale, his second was a delicious scandal; and definitely the subject of as much gossip as his first.  Soon after they took their leave of the celebration, the guests near the stairs to the Great Chamber became excited, drawing other guests to them.

From above came the unmistakable sounds of a very passionate woman, being aroused and then, in turn, bitterly disappointed by her groom.  Within ten minutes the gentry of the whole county, and those few of their peers from elsewhere who had been able to attend the quick ceremony, learned not only that the new Countess was as expressive and hard-working as she was attractive, but also that the Earl was a quickjack who had already been accommodated twice today by his energetic new wife before their marriage was thirty minutes’ old.

As best the attentive crowd could gather, he had attempted to defile her just before the ceremony, only sparing her wedding dress by ruining his own breeches before he could get them off.  Even so, he had just barely and technically managed to consummate the marriage by penetrating her (ineptly and painfully, it seemed) before spending himself.  The guests, embarrassed, scattered to report their news to everyone they might come across, carefully avoiding the Earl’s mortified older daughters who were struggling to maintain their dignity in the presence of their father’s vassals.