It was late that night, after her rally, as promised, when Solution was busying herself with Prince Sado, that Nua summoned Kaiji to her bedchamber.

Nua sat on her bed in her nightclothes, a long single piece cream colored garment of satin, her legs flat on the floor, and waved her most devoted slave into her room immediately on arrival. Nua’s back was straight, and she was not watching her servant’s approach.

The hairs on the back of Kaiji’s neck stood up. ‘How… how have I displeased my goddess? Have I sinned? Have I done some terrible wrong… or have I done some wonderful right? It didn’t feel that way earlier!’ The questions rampaged through Kaiji’s mind like angry steers.

When she was near, Kaiji knelt at Nua’s feet, and with a quiet look upward and a subtle nod, barely perceptible, the demon elf lowered her face into the lap of her mistress, the hard bone horn rested on powerful, muscled thighs. Her dark purple hands were palms down on the mattress on opposite sides of Nua’s legs. The heart of the demon-elf began to calm, she didn’t need to say anything, it was enough that the right hand was at her lips where she could show her devotion. She felt the calloused hand of the wood elf, and the faint salty flavor of skin, and the tiny compression that came when her lips pressed into the hand.

A candle burning on the wall counted time for her, but with the burning of the wick, the burning question came too. Nua broached it before her. “Do you think my house sleeps now?” She asked, whispering the words quietly while looking down at her servant while still stroking her smooth skin.

“Except for Priceless… and any guards who are about, yes, mistress.” Kaiji answered quietly. “Mistress, are you worried about something?” She finally asked, “Your rally, your announcement… it went well. They will, how did you put it… march into hell behind you now. Just like me… they love their mistress, so you haven’t anything to worry about.” She emphasized her words by kissing the giving palm again. “But if something is bothering you, you can tell me… I’d sooner tear out my tongue than betray you.” Kaiji whispered and nuzzled her face into the hand of her golden goddess.

“I think Priceless would miss that part of you quite a bit, so it would be very cruel of me to ask that much of you.” Nua chuckled at the ribald joke she’d just made, and it drew a slight huff of humor from Kaiji as well, but it answered nothing and they both knew it.

“I called you here, like this, so that you’d be comfortable talking about what I want to say next. But we won’t be talking in this place, I want you to see something.” Nua said with a soft little voice that was intended to be comforting.

“As you like, you lead, I follow, my Lady.” Kaiji replied warmly, and rose in sync with Nua, who led her from the room. Neither needed the candles to light the dark, the senses of wood elf and demon-elf were sharp enough on their own. Nua wound her way down the stairs from one floor to the next, until they came out the back door, from the darkness of the estate, to the darkness of the night.

“This way.” Nua whispered and they walked over the faintly damp grass, the cool ground felt good against Kaiji’s bare feet, noticing that her mistress wore sandals she felt no envy, savoring the feel of the earth under her.

Not far from the main house, a minute or three’s walk away, stood a small building into which Kaiji had yet to venture. Nua led her to a double door, and opened it with a grand flourish.

Kaiji looked around, there were benches of black marble, expensive in even its raw form, and a long red carpet of bright silk leading between the opposing rows of benches down the center, dividing the room in two. At the stopping point, there lay a podium of cherrywood. “Welcome to my temple, slave.” Nua said, opening her arms to embrace the building.

“It isn’t finished yet, but I’ve had Freyjin focusing a great deal on it. It should be completely ready by the time I return from seeing Sobella to her final destination. Assuming I and my Breakers make it back alive.” Nua said it casually, though she kept in the back of her mind, ‘They’re the only survivors I can be sure of.’

Before Kaiji could object to Nua’s characterization of her potential demise, Nua forged ahead. “I brought you here to confess a terrible sin to you. I wanted to do it in a place that was sacred, not hidden from my god.”

She took Kaiji’s trembling hand and led her to a bench near the back of the room, and sat her slave down on the hard stone. “Mistress… you don’t have to…”

“I do. I do.” Nua said with a voice as solemn as her stoic, stony face. “I am a terrible sinner, and I am going to sin a lot more to accomplish my goals. And when they’re accomplished, I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop sinning.” Nua looked over at the dark wall, “One day soon, I’ll put up an image of my god, so all can see and know his glory. But if he were there now, I believe his eyes would look down on me in judgement.”

“Mistress…” Kaiji began, and Nua shook her head.

“Kaiji, I haven’t spoken much to you about my faith. But in it… the ownership of living people is strictly forbidden. We make exceptions for ‘necessity’ to which even gods must bow. But just by having you as I do, I sin. If the Dark Savior knew what I was doing, she would kill me without thinking. But more than that…”

Nua put her right hand below Kaiji’s face, and looked down at her demon-elf servant until the woman cupped Nua’s hand and brought it to her lips again, and Nua closed her eyes against the touch. “You remember what I said, about never letting you go…slave?”

Kaiji’s answer was quick and without hesitation or deception. “I clutch those words to my heart, every time I clutch my Priceless to my breast...mistress. Meeting you was the most terrifying time of my long life… but serving you, it’s been the happiest, most wonderful as well…”

Nua’s voice was sharp and thick with her own self recrimination. “Then it’s time you know what an evil sinner you serve. Take off my clothes, slave. And create light. You saw traces of it in the dim area of the steaming bath, but now you’re going to get a good look.”

The order was unexpected, but her hands were already moving while the thoughts were flowing. ‘Is she going to make love to me? Does she desire me? Is that something done as an act of faith to death worshippers?’ Kaiji’s questions ran through her head on a loop, but the flowing motion of her ever more practiced hands slowed down not even a little as Nua raised her arms up to be stripped. Kaiji bunched the cloth together, and raised the satin clothing over Nua’s head, and left her owner naked.

Nua turned around. “Use your magic, slave, look at me, closely. Touch me, closely, on my back.”

“Starlight.” Kaiji uttered the spell and released it from her upturned hand as soon as she’d set the nightgown aside, and her mistress’s back was illuminated clear as day. The faint glowing ball of white light washed over the skin of her mistress, bathing her like the sun did the world at dawn.

The intricate pattern of the symbol of her empire’s ruler was ‘impressive’ Kaiji had to admit, and she stared a moment longer than she should have because Nua promptly ordered...

“Touch me. Trace your fingers, and look close, you will understand me, slave.” Nua’s words were bitter, but even as they bit into the air, Kaiji didn’t feel that they fell on herself.

Nonetheless, she obeyed as Nua spoke. “Healing magic, slave, comes in varieties. If an injury, or say, a scar, is there long enough, it is just ‘part of the body’ and won’t go away unless the most advanced magics are used. So old wounds, old scars, they stay there, because that space is already ‘healed’ as far as low tier spells are concerned.”

Nua felt the delicate hands of her slave tracing over her, smoothly at first, then more tensely.

“Most of the marks are gone now.” Nua explained, My teacher ‘skinned’ most of my back away, and then carved what you see. But the scars she removed at the surface run deep, and since she only cut away what was visible. With your senses, it should be easy to know the truth.” Nua stopped talking when Kaiji’s fingers stopped dead the first time.

They then resumed, and stopped again a moment later, she traced place after place, stopping each time, then starting again, then stopping to trace a new one. She did this, until Nua was sure she’d found every scar every task master, overseer, and fun loving sadist had left in the course of mutilating her body.

When she was done, Kaiji knelt slowly to the floor. “You understand, don’t you slave.” Nua’s voice was rhetorical, Kaiji could tell that much with certainty.

Kaiji’s fingers froze where they were, no part of her moved except her breast as she breathed.

“Say it.” Nua ordered her with a clenched fist and through a clenched jaw.

“You… you were a slave, the most unlucky slave I have ever… ever seen in all my life. I’ve never felt that many marks. And for them to be so deep…” She stared at the naked back, a thousand little things fell into place for her. The uncommon knowledge of minute administrative tasks, the immediate savagery toward Prince Sado, and… the mistress’s purportedly absurd tolerance for pain. ‘That’s why… it all makes sense now, even how nice she was to us when she was drinking…’

“Yes, that was my life, for one hundred and fifty years and more, until I was set free by a miracle. Now here I am…” Nua stopped for a moment, her tongue caught on what she wanted to say, and so she tried again “Here I am… doing…”

Kaiji kissed her mistress’s back over the place where the scar’s remnants lay beneath the flesh. “I am luckier than ever I knew. I am amazed you didn’t beat me to death out of some petty revenge, knowing I once held the lash over others like yourself.”

Nua froze stiff, and another kiss fell on another scar. Kaiji gently whispered words that rebounded from the walls of the temple to strike her owner’s ears. “I always denied being a cruel mistress, never beating for pleasure, never punishing on a whim. But how could you stand me, mistress, how?” She kissed another scar site, the first she’d found. The places she touched, became holy sites, sacred spaces on the body of her goddess. Marks not of betrayal, but of common understanding. She kissed another place, and another, until she was down on her knees again.

The warm touch of Kaiji’s lips was a comfort, in spite of how she thought, and so Nua tried to discourage her affection. “I told you, Kaiji. I have ambitions, you’re useful to them.” Nua’s voice was cold, and her skin shook a little as if it were, despite the relative warmth within the temple to her undead god. “To achieve those goals, I will do whatever I have to do. That’s why you shouldn’t love me, because I will sacrifice you if I have to.”

Kaiji wrapped her arms around the front of her mistress from behind, pressing her forehead down to Nua’s back, “And if you sacrifice me… will achieving your goal, make life better for my Komestrans…?”

“Yes.” Nua said without a pause, offering a voice of iron dominion to meet the voice of silken softness that caressed her ear.

“Then do it if you need to. I’ll go lovingly to be sacrificed for that, better to do it feeling that way, than to go begrudgingly. Just look after my Priceless for me if that happens.” Kaiji felt the warmth of the skin of her mistress against her forehead, the tight, powerful muscles of her torso, like the statue of a goddess come to life.

“It would be easier for me, if you hated me, you know.” Nua broke slowly from the embrace and turned to face her servant. “But I can’t order that, can I?” She gave a sardonic smile to the woman before her.

Kaiji could think of only one answer. She lowered herself to Nua’s foot and kissed it, silencing her mistress. “No. It’s true, you bought me… but it’s also true that I love you, not like I love Priceless, but… if there can be a source for good for my fallen people, you are it. And as badly off as you were… well this isn’t that place. And you’re not those people… things are not the same… look at Sobella, she became the consort of a Prince. And I worship you in my heart as a goddess, and your warriors, all those who you took to face Bracer, are eager to go fight for you. With all of that, I can’t obey that order, my precious, precious mistress.”

Her face craned up from below, and though her voice cracked with almost desperate passion, she didn’t falter in her impassioned words, “Knowing you were a slave once too, that doesn’t make me hate you! It doesn’t make me resent you! It doesn’t make me doubt or question you and I don’t care if it’s hypocritical!” Kaiji exclaimed with great vigor, “It… I, I am happy, not that you endured what you did. But that I understand you more. I can think of nobody more fit to rule here, than someone who knows what it is to have not even her own natural born flesh anymore!” Kaiji rose to her feet, slowly, and took Nua at the shoulders.

“Maybe you were not always anoble the way I thought, but you are noble in the best way because of what you weren’t, and what you were, and what you are. If sin takes you to the top in this place, then sin. You’re not your god to have the power to snap your fingers and make things different. And I don’t know much about your Dark Savior, but you’ve talked of her as a butcher, and you’ll keep more of us alive. What good is it to take chains off the dead?”

Nua managed a mild laugh that had lost some of its bitterness. “I wanted someone else to know the truth, before I go out there, who could keep it secret, and I wanted…” Nua’s voice caught lightly, “I wanted you to know, you have a right to despise me for what I’ve done to you, and if I live, for the things I’m going to do.”

Kaiji’s eyes were alight with fanatical devotion at the starlight bathed mistress Aiwenor, pouring out her words of devotion as fast as they could come. “I pledged myself to you… for your sincerity in all things. If you need my life, my body, my blood, take it all, from slave, to mistress, to goddess… and even Prince, that is quite a journey. If ever anyone writes a story about your life and rise to power, it will almost be too much to be believed. But I will play my part in it, as Diana has done for me, I will do for you. Sin as much as you need, I’ll buy all the slaves you desire, I will work them hard, guide them, follow your rules, and, well, Sado told me what you said to him. I will help you, ‘drag us up from the muck.’ My Prince to be.”

“No, I won’t be a Prince of a city.” Nua said sharply, crossing her arms before her bare breasts and staring down at the devoted slave as resolution crystalized to reveal the depth of her ambition.

“Mistress, I don’t…” Kaiji stopped speaking almost as soon as she began, she saw the blue she loved become the holy golden light, and basked in its warmth.

“I will not rule a single city, I will rule them all. I won’t be a Prince, because I’ll be the Empress of these lands. And Komestra, will be my capital.” Nua held her right hand out, and Kaiji could not move fast enough to give it worship.