Solution looked down at the papers spread out in front of her while sitting behind her own desk. ‘Inferior or not, my student is no fool. She was smart enough to know I’d need my own workspace and I didn’t even have to tell her.’ It pleased the blonde, beautiful monster so much that she even had a smile on her face for reasons other than the human prince prostrate in front of her workspace.

Solution held a paper in hand, reading over the crudely written text, lowered enough so that her eyes could view the humbled and fallen Prince of Chains. “Your handwriting is utterly awful, Prince of chains.”

She could see the fringes of a blush at the edges of his cheeks. “Right, ah, well my Lady, I didn’t have to write much myself, so my handwriting never really got better. I ‘can’ do it obviously, but it’s just not pretty, plus the script from the west flows very differently…”

Solution shrugged, “I don’t recall asking for excuses, slave. Or a response for that matter.”

He fell silent.

“Tell me, slave…” Solution asked with twisted sweetness, “no… show me… stand up, strip, and turn around.”

Sado felt his heart race, but he slowly obeyed, every inch he rose from the floor seemed to be in slow motion, he recalled a time in his childhood, climbing a tree. ‘I want to touch the sky!’ He insisted, and ignored his Duchessa, Lady Kaiji and all her protestations.

‘My Prince, the tree doesn’t go up that high, it just looks like it does because you’re so far from the peak!’ Kaiji exclaimed.

‘I didn’t listen then either… I was out of reach before she’d even finished speaking… climbed up, almost to the top… right… the sound of the branch, the crack… falling down, it all went so slowly. The sound of every rustling leaf, bending branch, the scream of Kaiji, it all stretched out so far…’ He thought as he turned around and pulled his garment over his head, he tossed the clothing aside, it seemed to fall to the floor as slowly as he’d fallen to the ground.

Then he was nude but for the golden collar. He heard her set down the document, the slight rustle of the paper, the sound of her step by step drawing close to him. His skin tingled, but not with desire, with dread.

He felt Solution’s hot breath on the back of his neck just above the gold that marked his place. Her hands went to the space between his shoulder blades. “Not a mark on you, slave. Were you healed, or did it simply never happen to you?”

Sado swallowed and almost choked with the haste of it. “I- Lady Solution, Prince Rasgen, most of the others, they were political rivals, not personal ones. After Prince Rasgen captured me, he didn’t allow any harm to come to my body. And this…” He touched the collar of gold, trying very hard to ignore the way delicate fingers stronger than adamantite, traced over his naked flesh, “made any others wary of doing so.”

“I see. So you’ve never felt the kiss of the whip… not really fair… is it, Prince of Chains?” Solution leaned close, he felt her bosom grace his back as her lips closed near to his ear.

“Wh-What?” Sado asked with surprise, unsure of just what to say, his eyes widened, despite her gentle touch, he felt a power behind them that far surpassed his greatest feats, and it was… disconcerting.

“I asked if it was fair, every single one of your people, all those you were responsible for failing, I promise you they were whipped at least once. But you, who is to blame? You who failed them all, get a clean back?”

“Put that way… no, it isn’t…” Prince Sado admitted, hanging his head, “I’m given a great deal more than I deserve here, I know that, Lady Solution. A chance to redeem my failure through service… to make things right….”

Solution laughed and grabbed his jaw from behind, she squeezed it tight, he tried to grimace through the pain, his body shaking from the application of her monstrous strength, applied to silence. “Make it right? You can’t ever make it right, Prince of Chains. Even if all that the Lady Aiwenor wants is accomplished, it will take years to gather your people again, those who survive. Many will bear nightmares of the lash, others will not return because they died in the mines. You’ve met Priceless, what do you think happened to her to make her so meek around men and until now, around her mistress? You’ll never make it right, because you can never undo it… and here you are, ‘clean’.” She laughed in his ear and released her hold on his jaw.

He didn’t turn around to face her, his head hung too low, “I know. You’re right, My Lady. Even having my ass handed to me by my mistress in combat, that was a real fight. I’ve…” Then the pain hit him like an exploding star as the leather raked over his back. His mouth dropped open, but he was too shocked to even howl in pain.

“That was one. Prince of Chains.” Solution said and drew the whip she produced, back into hand, rolling it up very slowly. “Just one, a typical ‘introduction’ is what… three to five? And that one was a mercy, I didn’t scrape flesh off the bone. But that ‘will’ leave a scar. Now thank me.” She said with a sadistic smile spread far over her face.

Sado felt his lungs heave violently as he took in air and expelled it again as if he were running a hard race. “I- what did I do…” Sado stammered out with shock.

“Many things, Prince of Chains, many things.” Solution set the whip down and walked over to him again, not behind him this time, she went to his front. She looked down the front of his body, he was never a shy man, and didn’t blush when she looked him over as a woman… or a man of those preferences. “Not a bad showing, as humans go.” Solution laughed at him and took his jaw again in hand, she squeezed and felt the bone nearly bend beneath her.

She kept it at just that pressure with her cold blue eyes piercing his flesh, “I still see it in you, Prince of Chains, your desire for my student, you can’t hide anything from me. You flinched though, under a single blow, you who didn’t flinch from any pain when you could hit back… felt the kiss of the whip when you couldn’t, and flinched. Tell me… Prince of Chains, do you think ‘she’ would flinch?”

She saw his eyes dart away from her own. “An honest man.” She said, spreading her smile inhumanely wide, “And yes, you’re right. She won’t. If you want to be seen by her… excuses are worth nothing. Your translation is correct, but your work would have to be entirely rewritten. Redo it, clean, neat, ready for publication. Then do the rest of the pages. You’re lucky that our god believes in brevity in these matters. He may be hard to please, but what will please him is always clear and succinct, otherwise you might have a vast tome and not a light afternoon read.”

Sado nodded slowly.

“Now…” Solution held up her left hand, “this is how you thank your superiors for correction, isn’t it…”

When she released her hold, he took the palm of Lady Solution, and quietly kissed it. “Thank you for the correction, Lady Solution. I will not make either mistake again. I will… do better.” He cast his eyes down, and as her left hand came away her right one came up.

“Now this one, slave, but as for what for… one day, perhaps sooner than you realize, you will understand why you show gratitude for the gift of that scar in the making that I have given to you.” Solution’s inhuman nature was on bold display a handspan away from his own, and though doubt filled his naked body, he kissed the palm of her right hand.

“Good, now get dressed, take your scratches that pass for western writing, redo them so that they are neat and ready for re-creation, then meet me in our little practice area afterward. Understood, Prince of Chains?” Solution asked while she went back behind her desk.

“As you say, Lady Solution.” Prince Sado said, clenching his eyes shut against the burning he felt across his back and trying to ignore the feel of blood trickling down his skin.

When Sado was gathering up the pages of work, he felt a rush of daring and asked her once they were in hand, “Did you ever… well, with the mistress?”

Solution laughed heartily, “Oh no, I’ve never whipped my student, Prince of Chains, I did much, much worse. And that’s why you’re nowhere near the man you’d need to be to impress her even a little bit. Now get out, I have things to do.”

Sado left without another word.

Contessa Lodira stretched out in bed the way she always did, arms over her head and toes down and out as far as they could go. She felt the comfortable warmth of her muscles adapting to her waking state. She felt her eyes flutter rapidly as the light of the morning peeked within her quarters. 'I'm sure the old fool is asleep. I swear, is that what age does to a man's vigor? Two minutes and then he's got to sleep forever. Ugh, well maybe I satisfied the old man enough that he'll let me go see the Prince again, I hate being out of the city.' She kept those thoughts privately to herself, and that was when she felt it. 'Wetness? What could be... no he's old, but he didn't piss the bed... and wait, no, it's stuck to my hair what...?' She wondered, and reached down to touch the wet substance, 'Sticky.' She thought with brief disgust before she brought her hand away and held it up over her head.

A drop of red blood fell from her fingers and onto her cheek, her eyes slowly spread wide with the horrifying realization. The Contessa Lodira screamed in terror, reached over to her husband, Minister Ulmin, and beheld his wide, dead eyes, the deep wound in his body and the blood that pooled around his corpse. Her beautiful mouth parted, and a scream for help filled the country estate, she called out again, and again, and again for the aid of servants or guards. Until she realized that no help was coming, and there was only one terrible reason why that might be...

That realization was enough to force her into desperate action to save herself, and desperate enough to try to ‘go’ for help that would not come to her. All she had was the hope that she was wrong.

Lodira sprang from her bed as soon as she could make her body move again, the rustling of the sheets as she flung them away was heavy from the blood, and it was a happy chance that the dead, pale, empty eyes of her deceased husband were concealed by her scrambling away. She tumbled to the floor landing hard on her side. She felt a pain in her wrist where she landed and kicked herself away from the bed. Her cries of horror didn't abate until she managed to clamber to her feet and rush to the door. She flung open the door, holding onto it with her left hand while bracing her injured, stinging right hand against the frame, she leaned out and screamed, "Help me! Someone help me! My husband! Murder! Blood! Someone!" They were her first intelligible words. She didn't notice the bloody palm print she'd left on the door frame, but she felt the heavy pounding in her chest as her heart raced a mile every minute.

It was the silence that allowed her to calm herself enough to move from there, she rushed to the nearest door, flung it open, and saw the guard dead with his throat slit, arm draped down, hanging from his cot. Blood trickled down his arm, his covers cast off as if he'd had a moment to fight his murderer, but not enough to do more than that.

She slammed the door shut, and ran to the next. Room by room she went, and found only bodies. The horror grew ever greater in her mind as reality settled when she was standing in the entryway and found only another deceased guard to greet her with a red smile at the throat and empty pale eyes still looking out in shock and disbelief at his own death. "I'm alone... oh stars in the heavens, by all those gods who watched in the night... I'm alone... all alone..." The Contessa felt her knees go weak, and fell to the floor of the estate that had become a graveyard. "Help... please..." She begged the empty house, and uncaring, vanished stars, and stayed there, kneeling alone, waiting for nothing.

Flies buzzed around the corpse, crawling over vacant white eyes, and all she could do was ask… “What happened… what happened… what happened…?” She repeated the phrase so often she lost track of her words, only watching as vacantly as the dead themselves in the various places around the house. Some had clearly not even had a moment, never knowing that they were killed until they had been. Others, from the flurry of sheets, had a second, or thrashed in death.

It wasn’t until the morning sun became the afternoon sun, and the light, that washed over her through the windows, struck her full in the face that she managed to move again. She rose to her feet, shakily as they were left numb from the way she’d been sitting on the floor, and staggered out into the daylight.

She stumbled her way to the stable, birds chirped on trees and leaves blew, everything about the world around her, moved on as if atrocity and slaughter had not taken place while she slept. Her beautiful hair was a tangled mess of blonde strands that dragged on the ground behind her as she struggled to make her way to where the horses hopefully still were.

She heard the horses inside from around the corner and relief flooded her mind. The faint knickering of horses that were hungry and had not yet been fed was like a lifeline to the drowning. She didn’t notice or care that her nightclothes and hair and the flesh beneath were all soaked in the blood of her husband. She rushed through the door, yanked a saddle from off the wall, threw it on as fast as she could, then flung herself up into it. She unbound the reins, and spurred it on.

‘Who did this… how could they have done this… why was I spared…?’ Questions rampaged through Lodira’s mind that she had no answer to, and which in her panic she was barely able to even ask, not until she’d been on the road for hours, and distance from the horror began to grant her a sense of calm she lacked while surrounded by bodies, blood, and buzzing flies.

It was that slow return of calm that let her ask another salient question at last… ‘How… how the hell am I supposed to explain this?!’ And to that, she had no answer either.