Dark Lord in Chains 5

I was faking being unconscious, but since the attention of the visitor would no doubt be on my poor panicking healer, I kept my eyes cracked open, only to see a sexy redhead enter the room. 

“Aria, why are you alone here?” asked Emma as her eyebrows furrowed, her tone urgent. “Where’s Isolde? She was supposed to be guarding you, even if he’s chained!” 

Aria’s answered with a shrill, panicked tone. “I sent her away!” Luckily, it was her usual reaction to being confronted, which was why Emma didn’t reach with anything other than an exasperated sigh. “She was going to ruin my hard work because of her temper.” 

“I understand,” Emma answered. “But still, you should at least reached me. You shouldn’t stay alone with him. We can’t trust him not to have any trick.” 

Aria’s shoulders stiffened immediately, because while Emma’s words appeared concerned on the surface, her usage of ‘you’ instead of ‘we’, combined with her emphasis, turned it to yet another subtle stab of Aria’s lack of combat ability and her weak personality. 

It was a bitchy move, though it didn’t make it any less true. Emma had used the probability of me escaping as an insult, unaware that I had already made great progress on that front thanks to Isolde’s and Aria’s personalities. 

Also, despite her indignation, Aria yielded immediately rather than pushing back. “I cast a sleep spell on him,” Aria said panickedly, trying to defend herself. I had to keep myself from sighing, because with the interference of the chains, casting such a spell effectively without killing me was very difficult. 

Luckily, Emma was an Elementalist, therefore didn’t know the intricacies of casting healing spells with such a great interference —I only did because I had to cure myself far too many times during my rise to power. Trusted healers were in short supply in Dark Lands. 

However, it wasn’t her lack of suspicion that caught my attention. No, it was the sudden glint of satisfaction in her eyes, one that reminded me of an assassin about to ambush her target, only to find her target passed out drunk. 

Interesting…

“Are you finished here?” Emma asked, trying to sound casual, but her tone betraying her excitement, one Aria missed easily, distracted by her own distress. “You should go to prepare for dinner then. Her majesty requested your presence,” Emma said, this time a slight bitterness invading her tone. I was willing to guess that she had been left out of yet another dinner invitation, something that frustrated Emma immensely. 

It was a detail that I noticed. As time passed, Emma was being isolated from public events more and more, something I noticed even from my cell based on the schedule of my interrogators during evenings of big events. They weren’t stupid enough to discuss that next to me, of course, but I was willing to bet the cracks I managed to carve in my chains it was Queen Sapphire’s making. She clearly didn’t appreciate an attractive redhead constantly next to her prospective son-in-law, creating gossip. 

Emma hated it, of course. “Yes, I just need to tidy up and lock the door.” 

“I’ll handle it,” said Emma. “You shouldn’t be late.” 

“Okay,” Aria said before she dashed away, in a hurry to disappear, once again making me sad about her preference for long, loose skirts. I would have loved to watch her run away in a short plied skirt. 

I turned my attention to Emma. Her clothes were the first thing I focused on, mainly because of the divergence from her usual style. She was wearing a long skirt not too different from Aria, but her blouse had a deeper cleavage than her usual preference as well as sticking to her body tightly, making me think that the bullshit story I had told Aria wasn’t entirely incorrect. She was probably trying to woo Lancelot when Sapphire decided to use her as an errand girl. 

I wasn’t surprised when rather than going away, Emma stayed in the cell, looking at me pensively. She was far too excited —though managing to conceal it from Aria— about the supposed sleep spell on me. That didn’t prevent me from feeling apprehensive when she pulled a small potion bottle from her pocket. 

The lack of killing intent was the only thing that prevented me from making a mad dash to remove my chains despite the impossibility of doing so. However, that made me curious about her objective, especially when she crouched next to me and fed me a potion. 

It surprised me, especially when I used the limited magic I had access to for a quick diagnosis —poison detection was another must-have of the Dark Lord kit, at least if the Dark Lord in question wanted to see the second week of his reign— only to realize it was a simple herbal remedy that would make me sleep rather than a magical potion. Since it didn’t have any magical properties, it wasn’t affected by the chains.

She sat on the chair and closed her eyes, trying to calm her mind while I quickly dispelled the effects of the herbal sleeping tonic, feeling curious about her plan. I made a point to act like I was asleep, my breathing controlled, occasionally shifting and mumbling as well. Playing possum was another underappreciated art. 

Meanwhile, I decided to give her a bit of shock, and shifted in my ‘sleep’, which displayed the rather impressive tent Aria’s halfway treatment had left behind. Emma’s growing eyes made it worth it, pushing her out of the pensive mode she was feeling. 

She wasn’t the only one to be surprised, though. I was no less shocked when she crouched next to me, Unlike her, however, it was less to do with the erotic implications of the view —through the resulting cleavage was spectacular enough to make my shaft throb— and more about the fact that she had just unlocked my chains. Not letting out a shocked gasp strained my acting abilities, as she just gave me a chance to escape without the slightest prompting. I wondered what she had in mind. 

I received my answer in a moment later, when she forced several potions down my throat, first one to deepen my sleep magically —which I dispelled in an instant thanks to renewed access to magic, easily disguising the flare underneath the magical tribulation the potion had caused. 

Her next action managed to shock me further, because she fed me three bottles of potions to weaken my mental defenses. 

Three bottles of highly illegal and dangerous dark potions… 

It wasn’t my first encounter with those potions —though rarely on the receiving side— so I dispelled their effects with the same ease I had destroyed the earlier sleeping potion. Maybe even easier, because they might be insidious, but they were rather fragile. Still, their effect was highly dangerous, with the possibility of risky complications including memory loss. They didn’t want to use it on me, because they were afraid of my memories about the Sacred Core being compromised. Three of them were dangerous enough to damage my mental abilities permanently if I hadn’t dispelled their effects. 

It seemed that Emma had a different idea. She pressed her hands on my temples, closed her eyes, and flared her magic. A sudden presence pushed against my mental shields. 

I let them collapse under the slightest pressure, suggesting that her plan was successful, amused by her audacity. 

Mind magic was dangerous, even when applied by a master to a complete novice with no magical training. I was far from a layman, and she certainly was not a master, if the clumsy way her consciousness permeated into mine, bright and slow. At that moment, her life was in my hands. Just a flare of my magic, and she would end up brain-dead. 

I didn’t do it, of course. While destroying one of my jailers would have been amusing, it would be a pointless act. Counter-attacking to see her own memories was equally out, because it would put me at her mercy unless I wanted to destroy her completely. 

Feeling curious, I decided to let her play, trying to feel her intention. Her first target was obvious, the location of the treasure, something impossible for her to find with her meager abilities. It wasn’t her fault, though, as even disregarding my vast experience, the home advantage in mind spells was insurmountable. It was hidden in the depths of my mind. They needed to destroy my whole mind to reach that nugget, and considering the fail-safes in my thoughts, it was impossible. 

There was a reason Queen Sapphire never tried that. Why Emma thought a couple of illegal potions would help her succeed, I had no idea. I decided to play with her a bit, though. I created a magical treasure chest in my mind, one with a huge glow and spiky chains, and seven huge locks. I hid it behind a few curtains, but created a path of breadcrumbs for her to follow. It didn’t have any benefits, but tempting her to go around in my mind like a huge treasure hunt was too entertaining to ignore. 

“It’s here,” she murmured excitedly as she found the huge chest, treating me like a useless novice. When her mental presence pressed against the chest, I created seven keys and placed in different memories, before pushing flashes of them into her mental probe after a minute, giving her confidence that she had found the way to unlock my memories. 

Her mental presence dashed forward in my sea of consciousness, uncaring —and probably unaware— of the damage she might have caused if the mental potions had worked as she intended and crippled my mental abilities. Then, she found the first key, sunken into a memory fragment. She let her consciousness permeate it, intending to remove the key…

Only for a shocked gasp to escape her mouth and jerk out of the memory —a memory of a particularly entertaining night I had spent with one of my lovers. It wasn’t even in my bedroom, but in the middle of the corridor, where any passerby might see me as I rammed my big cock into her entrance…

Emma didn’t last a second before trying to pull out of my mind hurriedly. I decided to give her a gift, and pushed the memory fragment into her mind as she pulled back —after making sure I copied another instance for myself, of course. She pulled back in hurry, so much that she physically stumbled back, her eyes wide but unfocused while the memory fragment played in her mind again and again. 

She was clearly too shocked to stop it, but along with her shock, a thick blush spread onto her face, while her nipples hardened enough to peek through her blouse thanks to her lack of a corset. I smirked openly, aware that she was not in a state of mind to focus that, not when her gaze fell on my erection after seeing it on work. 

Understandable, as I was rather proud of the effects I had on that memory, slamming inside my lover repeatedly while she cried with pained enjoyment, forcing herself to take my full length. 

Despite her arousal, however, Emma managed to gather her wits in a moment, and pressed her hands against my temple once more, her mental presence immediately rushing to the projection of the chest. She pulled the key from the memory fragment, but as she did so, her arousal pulsated in my mind —another disadvantage of a mental probe, unless the attacker put good care, they might reveal much more than they intended to. 

When she touched the lock with the key and the lock evaporated alongside the key, her elation shone, her arousal dimming slightly. Still, despite that, her determination was flickering.  

I wondered whether she had the courage to continue?