From slavery to servitude 11: shun thy sycophant

A day passed from when they had returned to the sleepy corner of her domain. Wind passively blew over the leaves, somewhat frosty as the sun increasingly gave way to the autumn's fall. No longer were the leaves unified in a green, bountiful tide. They were displaced among each other in shades of red, orange, and yellow, proving to still be devoid of crisp yet.

George was returned to the chamber of his sleeping. No words from him, none from her. Just his continuing serving. Or, so he thought...

The next morning arose up with a chill in the air. The sort that prompted the mistress into closing doors and windows when he was out in the dreamland. Unbothered by the coming fall of the year, she still preferred a toasty indoor.

When she came into his door in a fallacious step to the window, George barely moved his head, long into his servile attire in black and white. A suit stretching to the borders of his limbs, stopping just at the beginning of his hands and feet.

Done with the pretension of denying the chill in her manor, the mistress turns to George with a lone word on her lips "Sit."

"Yes...mistress..." He does so, an immediate acquiescing form. Said sitting sees a split-second of her face cringing away. The regret that masked her face frequently never quite left, fully relived every time he just...obeyed. Without thought. It feels like an eternity in her mind even when it was as gone as it came, leaving but the man already drawn into the lessons of yesterday.

A chair waddles from...he wasn't sure. It looked to come forth from the distant kitchen, one of them of metal and glass and a velvet cushion colored in a slight penchant to blackness. The presentation was the same, but this one was of gray metal, shedding the olive hue of its brethren.

But this one appeared from out of nowhere with a fleeting clone of vapor like his mistress. It dissipates with this anomalous variant supporting her grace with a 'pomp'.

"Now..." Her voice calls his slow craning head in her way. A stern, placid stare takes its place in her facial features as she gestures forward "...tell me."

"O-of course...mistress." He jolts slightly, quick to remember his place, head barely leaned downward "But, tell you what?"

"What you saw."

"I saw?"

"You know what I speak of, menial. Do not swath around the bush with me."

"Of course...I just thought that---

"What you thought matters little right now. Go on, I want to know what you saw, how you saw."

"Of course..." George looks away, his face subtly twitching "I saw what you wanted. From me. From my...demeanor"

Her eyes narrow another for another split-second "Go on."

"You brought me here to learn from the rest. The ideal servant for a graceful mistress. One willing to be beneath her. A servant to drag and pull whenever needed. One ready and willing to yield to her every order. Shackled to her will, bound to her word." Words he speaks spill with difficulty like he was caught between an arguing psyche of self between a shattered sense of affront long weakened and mindless prostration.

"Is that so? Is this what you saw around you at that time?" She asks, her elbow resting on her armest. Her wrist serving as rest for the chin. Her eye is implacable, glaring down the weary man. It was looking at one losing himself to the complacency of utter servitude like many under a darkened elf.

The twitch comes for another brief encounter with her view, much more obtrusive than the previous one. A wider, forceful grin looking out of an impulsive measure to mimic said others. His voice follows suit, haggled into gradual lighter pitches. A remnant of those who gladly followed the collars and chains "Yes. Y-your brethren, they all basked in the adulations of their servants. As t-they should. As you wanted to show me, r-right? Under your foot, a meager fledgling who had yet to--

"Alright, menial, that is enough--

"I see what you wanted out of me, mistress...a pet. A servant. A languishing thing to underneath your boot. I will submit, become that which you always--"

A third time came with the twitch of his visage, decisively twisted into a shattered, crooked smile. One she had seen so often. Men, once with a sense of self, broken, fragmented from what they were. Only for the pieces to be refitted into a servile creature. The fragments of self, the stout nature of some, the strength of others, the overall personality that led them up to their apex...discarded. Pieces irrevocably splintered and left to rot in the depth of their tangled psyche.

Seeing George sporting this face as he fell from his chair, left to crawl to her leg like a worm desperate for shelter, deliberately swarming his arms around her heels...

His expression, looking to mimic those of that forsaken place, broken, lost, consumed by the aberration...

His hands, meekly looking to round around her foot like she was some goddess...

Seeing the utter lack of dignity that he was imitating as he proceeds with all of this, transmuting into a sycophant to 'please' her, and the despair lingering behind his submissive squirming, lacking the touch she hoped to see roused...

"Ok, enough. Menial, on your feet", the dark elf snaps, gesturing him high. She had seen enough. Acted passively in her attempt to spurn him from this long enough. Stomaching this for a second more would probably prompt her to puke in complete disgust.

"Mistress, I long only to serve you in the way you--

"Menial, that is enough."

"I will languish under your heels if that is what you want--

"I said, enough."

He hesitates for a moment...only to remember how they were. How the one at the end of their leash was. The other one seemed more than onboard with the way he was to act. Surely this was but a feign for her to see whether he learned "Mistress--

"Menial!" Her voice seeps free from the implacable tone she held, her foot, threatening to stomp as it wrenches itself from the meek man's meager arms. Even in the depth of this 'sycophancy', George wasn't deprived of enough of his self-preservation to be blind to the tip of her heel looking to violently step on his arms. Likely brought forth from the harsh training of the past months that...oddly enough, seemed to compel him to meet pain over, and over enough.

It served as a proverbial edge that reinforced this instinctual response, the self-preservation, the self. One he tried to cast away by the vigorous exercise that he assumed was to shatter it.

Instead, it compels him to the contrary. It moves his hands in an instinctual reactivity, recoiling as he does in the hopes of pulling as fast as he could. That the foot didn't the marble floor never accounted on his mind, taken over by the lightning-quick reflexes swarming his arms.

A bigger surprise caught him looking at his hands as something slender slips between them underneath his chin. A single, poking sensation wrangles the whole of his attention, gently, but firmly lifting his head.

In his view was her displeased demeanor glaring him eye-to-eye with fingers joining the chin cupping. And a sigh "That damn ringyò...what I wouldn't do to have slapped that hülye smile off her face if my minion wasn't here..."

Her voice returns to that idyllic sweetness, snapping so outright from the sudden shout that compelled him upward...alongside her hand "You did what I intended you to see...but, your reaction is...subpar. Not that I should blame you with the leanzyò putting those stupid, fecal ideas in your mind like she was talking to the dumb thing she likely lashed to utter submission."

"Mistress?" Confusion slips from his tone, striving still to keep his current demeanor.

"I saw how disgusted you looked wandering in behind me, my dear Csaltòs. My minion. This was the lesson you were supposed to carry from here."

"What do you--mist--

"New rules, minion. I no longer want those lips of yours to spill that word again. I forbid you from doing so, am I clear?"

"Mis--w-why? Did I displease you? Do I not spell it with conviction?"

"No, my minion. It is the other way around. I seem to have been too subtle in my mannerism in that regime."

"B-but, you've shown me what you wanted from me--

"I showed you but gave the wrong impression. All in due time. For now, I order you, do not address me as your 'mistress' anymore. Ma'am sounds much better to my ears. You will call me by such."

His lips purse, struggling to coerce themselves into forming syllables to spell it out. It was too sudden for him. Too...impulsive. Not to her.

"Ay, ay, ay, I really was far too passive back there, did I? Still thinking of shoving yourself to the ground under my foot like they were. Well then, let me spell it out for you..." A kiss comes planting on his cheek. A warm, sweet-feeling, perfectly dewy smooch, quick to burn his face in intense heat. A faint hush of purple vapors seeps from the spot of her smearing lips.

It proves to be an effective antidote of poisonous ideas from his thought as the adjutant, yet spoken man cast away his reservation. A slight nudge, urging him, giving him the means to speak as one would a leader rather than a master. The forceful conversion he was in gripes with seconds ago were losing their grip, if not outright dispelled.

They strive to keep a losing grip on his mental, only to be dragged in the depth where his mind should have gone, to be consumed wholesale by the remedy that was her kiss on his cheek, a thing scorned by the more traditional darkened elf. It speaks a language that cannot be misinterpreted, mistaken, or misheard. 'No more sycophancy'.

The bleak lightless that blackened his eyes flashed a withered flash, one that was soon none too pleased to see the state that his morose demeanor had brought. It ate the darkness of mindlessness that fed him, soon returning to the front, an apologetic word from the man "I'm...sorry, but--

"But nothing." A simple smirk comes stretching her smacking lips, a brief display of appeal to her eyes...and a taste of his cheek between them "I see how fearful you were of them. Of what has become of them. And the disgust you felt underneath all of this. 'Why would she bring me here?' so loudly in your mind. I expected you to hold on to those, keep them close to you. And...for you to reasonably admonish me on that trip."

"Why then? Why bring me to a place like this? Part of me thought that...you seemed like you wanted more out of me than what I saw." His voice, dragged from this abyss of abhorrent subservience, wondered. Any ire he had to dispense was held in check, mostly by the regretful glimmer in her white eyes glazed in honeydew.

"Part of it was for me to get compensation. See, when one of us takes a man as her quarry, he is subtly scaled based on his immediate worth. From civilian to hero, the most direct measuring of worth is looked on. Seeing as I was the one with the right of first picking a 'weak and bland' little fledging like you(their words), I was due to compensation. A sum for my wealth."

Her hands swarm on his cheeks, she continues, a delicate voice paradoxically spewing bile "Why would I so callously drag you here, though? Simple I wanted you to see what many of my brethren would have done with someone like you. I wanted to show you what would displease me the most. Displease my mother. My sisters. My close cousins. All of us lilac-haired elves who prefer a more...proactive follower. I brought you here...as to show you how NOT to conduct yourself as my henchman. Everything you saw is everything I do not want to see, even a lick from your character. The struggle I watch you dangle in is not as to entertain myself in breaking you. Did you not notice how quickly you were to flee from this formal threat of pain my heel was about to inflict? Surely you must have, for it is what I want to see. This harsh regime is here not for my pleasure, it is to reinforce this person that you are. Indulge this sense of self. Build you up instead of breaking you down."

George blinks. And blinks again. It came fast to him, how rapidly he was to stray away like a warrior who's instincts guided him long before his mind had the foresight to compile what happened. It was a surprise. The few interactions with dark elves beside her taught him they wanted the opposite. Not a man that was more likely to skirt away from their harsh treatment "...are...are you sure? The others, they were..."

She nods once, a face split between a confirming glance and a vehement disgust "Yes. Yes, it is. Listen to me...I will not have my minion, my Csaltòs, becoming a squirming, groveling worm that knows nothing more than regurgitate the same 'yes mistress' over and over like a sniveling, wretched mouthpiece. I have no use for creatures like those of our distant cousins and that is no man I will have under my hand. If I wanted some pathetic, moaning human under my heel, I would have long drugged you, lashed at you, and overwhelmed you with poison to forcibly instill the love of submission."

"Hand? No foot? But, they used their--

"No. my dear Csaltòs. The men under the lilac chalice are no sycophant under one's heel, but a hand under our hand. Or, well, in this case, head. But, no point playing with words like this. The point is, that is to be your fate. A robust second of mine, beholden to none but my word. The one I go for companionship and assistance. The hardship I subject you to is to this end..."

"R-really?" George hadn't noticed how...influenced he was by her tone, the regal voice that carried these words. His shambling posture subtly shifted, moved by said words. Carrying himself as more of a subordinate by the strict regime of the previous days, he felt entitled to a more dignified kneeling, one knee on the floor, the other, in midair, leaving its sole to kiss the floor and a hand in midair.

He feels a longing to resume, to make himself better than the gutter employee of an industry that often demanded everything for nothing. Everything she did up to now was the opposite of what he had long experienced. Even the first days at her servitude were so much more gracious than the 'best' day at that lifeless factory. The worse of her reprimands, the deepest of her demands were nowhere close to the mildest of the foremen's who often were scarring within and without.

The more he thought, the more he rummaged her words and intent, the more it was clear. She wants more from him. More than the drone-like mentality that she showed him as they followed the dark mistresses in a leash...or him and the sea of indentured workers.

More than the submission of the ecstatic, yet monotony of their clone-like voices...or that of his and his old surrounding workers to the foremen's expectancies.

More than the carbon copy of their movement, constantly trailing behind the elves with nothing on their mind but their next order...or the way he was to accept any and every conceivable order, no matter the time or place.

He was to be her subordinate, not her slave, nor her pet. Someone to follow, not to obey. Someone to kneel when requested, not to grovel when ordered. Her minion. Her henchman. Her...Csaltòs.

"Yes. Yes, it is, my dear Csaltòs. I know the life your own species subjected you to. How dull, it was. I saw it clear as my lineage sees through our distant white-haired cousins. This simple-minded drone, I do not want in my domain. My mother did not want any from my father. And neither did my sisters. However long it may take, I will burn away. Literally. And metaphorically."

This new perspective finally sets George apart from his initial thoughts. When he was dragged here, he expected a repeat. When she began shaping him through impossible motions, he expected a pointless hardship. Now...now he wants nothing more than to feel worthy. To be this man she apparently sees in him.

Slowly, gradually, with eyes errant and a longing vibrant, his hand reaches out, looking to pledge himself. The lilac elf sees it, lowering hers as to make it reachable, softly taken in his palm as a smile, shed from the casual grin usually on her face, and the smirk that sometimes peeks from her lips hones itself.

"If...that's the case, then, I'd like to resume." He knows what he asks for. His body shivers at the thought of repeating the ordeal, even if it was coming anyhow. The perspective he is armed with soothes most of the phantom pain. The exhaustion. The sore muscles. Fatigue.

She nods, her handheld in his, eyes drifting away from his look as she speaks, "Of course, minion. That is why I took you from that smoke-stench place. That is why you are here, finally figuring out what I want from you. My ivory-haired brethren can have the 'higher ranking' slaves all they want. The rich buffoons, the over-inflated men bundled up in their metal cascades, they can keep them. They ruin them anyhow, making them the shadow of what they were. They made sure to tell me how they think I'm regretting this, thinking that I made a mistake going for the rabble..."

Her ivory eyes land on George, seeing the man wince about. Even though the new perspective warmed-over him, there was a bit of doubting her decision. Maybe not doubting as much as wondering. As he would learn later, much later, he wasn't exactly a prime specimen for elves like her. A grinning glimmer shines through her, burning away that jar "Do not worry, minion. Once I am done with you, they will wish they had a broader sense of 'quality measurement'. By our ancestral 'anyàks', they will. The poison they spat at me will burn on their tongues in envy..."

He would find out, much later, how true those words ring...