You can’t turn your back on the lamia now. She’s already climbing back to the branch—if you take your attention away from her for even a moment she could grab you while you’re not looking.
At the same time, you know you shouldn’t look at her eyes. Look at any other part, her arms, her tail, pay attention to those and you’ll know if she’s about to grab you. Yet you can’t pull your sight away from her glowing eyes. So many thoughts blare that you have to stop looking, but with each new ring of color another of those thoughts are snuffed out.
You suddenly realize through the growing haze that the lamia has come much closer than you thought—she’s already on the branch, hovering over you. You try to move back but find you can’t move: you’re held in place by fear—no, desire—no, fear—desire—fear—the desire has a stronger hold as the edge of your vision ripples with the colors of her eyes. A desire for what, though? It’s hard to grasp your collapsing thoughts, but as you look at her glaring but ever more beautiful eyes a strong desire wells in you to apologize, to beg forgiveness of this lovely lady.
“Just what did you think you were doing,” the lamia hisses, “trying to push me out of this tree?”
Yes, whatever were you thinking? It was such an awful thing to do. You’ve forgotten that Bagheera was in danger—you forget about Bagheera entirely, as only the wonderful lamia and how nasty you were to her occupies your thoughts now, that and however you can make it up to her. Your head is swimming, rather drowning in her hypnotic spell, but even as your eyes droop and mouth hangs open, even as your body begins to crumple before her and she holds you up, you still try to mutter an apology.
“I . . . I’m s-sssorryyy . . .”
“You’re going to have to do more than that.” She pulls you close, directly before her, and her eyes glow like a sun shining hypnotic, swirling light that blinds you to the rest of the world. “I was going to let you be my lover, but now you’ll have to prove you are worthy of that spot, slave.” The lamia’s hypnotic colors sear your thoughts, leaving her the only thing real, the only thing that matters, and you accept her word and judgment.
“You will obey my every word,” she says. “You will have no belief other than what I put in your sunken head. You will worship the ground I slither on. You will have no thought but to please me.” Her eyes don’t glow like the sun—her eyes are the sun. The lamia is the sun. She gives life, her hypnotic eyes are the light, and you must do whatever she asks to stay in her good graces.
She lays you on the branch, hovering over you as her spell wipes out every last resisting thought from your hypnosis-stuffed head.
“If you are good, if you do as I say, you may earn back your spot beside me and feel my glorious scales around you again. If you don’t”—she leans closer until her face fills your sight—“you will remain a miserable worm hardly fit to even stand in the presence of your goddess.”
Her spell locks your mind in her power. You wish to please her, to worship your goddess and make her happy, prove to her that you deserve her. You have no remembrance of your life before her; all that remains is a vague notion that you once did a great wrong to her, and you must climb your way back to her good graces. It is your only object, to serve and live for her.
Sheesh. Wow. Geeze. Fig, that was, let’s say, a bit much, maybe? I’m gonna have to perform a tune-up on this thing to get us to another timeline, that was some ridiculous magic and it even overheated some of my machines and instruments.
Well, while I’m getting this stuff in working order again, you can go ahead and try to make your new mistress happy. Once my machinery is repaired feel free to jump to another timeline, though!
Duth Olec's Cuckoo Cosmos 