The Songs of Loss, book one : Armanth

Chapter 10- The Languori

"Do you know that fear will kill you?"

Lisa flinched, turning her head towards the voice without answering. Her mind was beginning to admit to calling herself Selyenda even though she tried, as often as she could, to remember that she was Lisa Beaufort, born in Paris, on Earth, seventeen years before. Despite her best efforts, it was becoming increasingly difficult; the last two weeks had been a terrible blow to her willpower. Under the supervision of Priscius, who himself came regularly to check on the progress of their training, Lisa, Cénis and Elena had lived under Sonia's merciless yoke. In the space of two weeks, her sole aim - and she was an expert at it - had been to ensure the obedience of all three of them. Simulated drowning, whippings and blackmail into docility followed one another, with lessons repeated to the point of exhaustion, as simple as they could be terrible and humiliating, to crush any hint of rebellion in the three young women.

The hardest part was that the treatment was turn them into animal. Always completely naked, except for their collars and the symbiotic Linci on their thighs, they had had to learn to beg and crawl for the right to eat, drink, or simply to get out of their cages and breathe a little air. In recent days, they had been forced to beg for the slightest privilege, their foreheads touching the ground at Sonia's feet. Priscius, highly satisfied, had in turn put them to the test, making them beg for their meals. He forced them to eat from his hand, allowing them to be petted and caressed without protest. Elena, the most stubborn of the trio, finally broke down several times and burst into tears. After previous attempts to pounce hatefully on Sonia and make her pay for her tortures, even the most rebellious and fierce of the three captives no longer had the strength to rebel. As for Cénis, under Sonia's playful and perverse cruelties, she had lost all her aristocratic nobility; she was reduced, like the two sisters, to having to accept being treated like an animal. Only Lisa had never made any real attempt to resist, except in her passive, prostrate mutism, from which Sonia would rudely and violently extricate her; yet it was with her that this stage of training worked best. It was also Sonia who used her as a lever for her emotional blackmail, abusing this tool to get each of the three captives to try to obey and submit on their own, in order to spare the other two the abuse she invented; when it came to torture and degradation, the educator was never at a loss for ideas. Her only limit was not to damage them physically; at least, not too much, and avoiding anything that might leave scars. It was rare for young women not to have their backs and buttocks reddened and streaked by the flat whip, but Sonia no longer used the goad and was now careful to ensure that Lisa was kept away from the loss-metal.

So far, sexual conditioning and the first courses in slave education according to the rules of High Art had not really begun; the three captives had barely been brought into contact with the men of the House, mainly Priscius, since the only other was the assistant charged solely with mistreating the captives, and stressing them. But while Cénis and Elena accepted, albeit under duress, the slaver's presence, contact and physical proximity, it was a disaster with Lisa. She shivered in terror and became tetchy whenever he brushed against her. Her panic was so violent that Priscius had given up insisting, but heavily reminded Sonia that he expected her to be perfectly successful in solving this problem, since apparently there was a customer who wished to buy her.

At this hour, only Sonia, and Lisa remained in the baths, still on their knees, trembling. Access to the baths, and therefore to the precious privilege of being able to wash, was ritualized and, like everything else, depended on their perfect obedience and docility. For the third consecutive day, Lisa, like the other two captives, had to spend most of the day on her knees, repeating over and over again, blindfolded: "I'm a slave"; and for Lisa and Elena, in their native tongue. It was nothing short of relentless conditioning to the point of exhaustion, with the educator and her new assistant taking it in turns to punish any weakness or hesitation with the lash, pushing the young women to the limits of their strength. Lisa had ended up haggard and dazed, her voice hoarse, like the other two; but she had earned the right to enjoy the bath, although still blind, like her two colleagues.