NOVEL WEB Chapter 30: In Which Our Names Have Somehow Gotten Even More Confusing, For Which I Apologize
I woke up lying on my back, something kinda heavy on my chest-- other than my breasts, the weight of which felt a little different than usual. I opened my eyes, and there was Sasha, using my breasts as a pillow.
Or rather, I guess it was Eve now? But she had the animalfolk body I had been inhabiting.
“...why’d you do that all of the sudden?” I had just been full-on submissive and tried to be a good girl for Mistress, and here she had swapped us back, and… what?
“Did you not want me to?”
“Why didn’t you just ask me first?”
“You probably would’ve thought I was messing with you.”
“...you did really feel guilty about it, huh.” I petted her head softly. “Did torturing that girl and then pushing me around remind you that that wasn’t really what you wanted to do?”
“...I was foolish to grab the reins from you the second time." Not an answer, exactly. "It’s more, I’d rather be your slave and us both be alive than us both be dead, if it comes to it. I’m hoping you’ll realize it’s better if I’m in charge, though.”
I frowned a little and scritched behind her ear. “Can’t we just work together, as equals?”
“Being equals isn’t a real thing.”
“...Could it be it’s just something you have zero experience in?”
“...maybe. Let's talk about it later, we have an urgent task to attend to.”
I blinked. “What urgent task?” She shifted to using her crossed arms to prop herself up on my chest, looking down at me, legs behind her, one kicking at the air a little idly.
“First, who’s in charge?”
I hardly even hesitated. “Me, for now.”
She nodded. “Okay.” As she said it, her demeanor seemed to change a little, her gaze appearing more submissive than dominant, the smile that slid onto her face a bit empty-headed. “My suggestion, Mistress, is that we head back into the garden and take the tunnel back into Princess Asperia’s harem.”
It felt weird for her to call me that. Not bad, exactly, I’d certainly prefer it over Master at this point, but…. “Huh, I really am trans, huh?”
“...what?”
“Transgender?”
“...I’m not familiar with that term, Mistress.”
“I’d prefer to be a girl than a boy.”
“Oh, yes. I’m aware.”
“You don’t have a term for that?”
“...why would we have a term for that? Ah, there’s a derogatory term for a slave that doesn’t want to be the same sex that their Master wants them to be, but it’s a bit archaic.”
“...huh.”
She stared down at me, blinking slowly. “Do you have terms for people who change their hair color, too? Or their skin color?”
“...No? Not that I know of, at least. Maybe because those things are easier to change, and taboo to change, respectively.”
“I mean, you’re going to a transmutationist regardless, so they’re all about as easy as the others… but I guess it’s taboo to turn people into animalfolk or vica versa, so I can’t say it makes a lot of sense here, either.” She seemed to be waiting patiently for something.
“What are you waiting for, Sasha… er, Eve?”
“Call me Sasha when I’m in this body. The subterfuge is important. I would like if you took the name Eve on, however, for the brief time you’re in that body, Mistress.”
“...Sure. But that it’s brief isn’t a foregone conclusion.” She smiled down at me in that flirtatiously dominant way for a moment, and then it was gone again, back to that dumb eager smile.
“Understood, Mistress! Ah, but now I got us off track. Ummm… what was it, oh! Did you like my plan, Mistress?”
“...What’s different about us switching bodies, exactly?”
“Sooo… Princess Asperia trusts you and knows how slave collars work, right? She should trust them too, so you can give me orders to look inside her mind without messing around with anything, and she’ll let me, and thus we do the main task she wants of us… once we’ve done the task she’s set for us, as long as we’re loyal, she’ll take relatively good care of us unless she sees a need to sacrifice us.”
“...not exactly an optimistic picture here.”
Sasha, I guess I was calling her, closed her eyes and giggled, poking at my nose. “Silly Mistress, of course I’m not optimistic. But you’re the one who didn’t want to murder her, and it was always going to be one or the other.”
“Couldn’t we just... leave?”
Sasha rolled her eyes, and looked down at me a little disdainfully, apparently already getting tired of her innocent dumb puppy act, or at least, getting tired of trying to put it on while she explained stuff to me. “Even if she didn’t need Mind Magic, the Hero From Another World is an important but replaceable pawn for her. Of course, there’s only one way to replace it… and I do imagine she has the resources to track us down and assassinate you… well, maybe she’d leave whoever was in my body alive.”
“...right.” I sighed. “I don’t think she’s that ruthless. She put herself in danger instead of her minions multiple times."
“Because I could’ve killed her at any point. Having her followers around just made the situation more volatile. It is strange she has no fear of death whatsoever, though… did she read what we’d do that well? Maybe she has some sort of prophetic ability as well, but is hiding it….”
“...That’d make sense, honestly.” I wrapped my arms around Sasha, and hugged her close. “Thank you.”
She smiled down at me dumbly, tail wagging behind her. “Of course, Mistress! Us being alive and together is very important. Can we go for a walk now?” Her face looked even more eager, almost comically so, and I laughed softly and petted her head.
“You’re so good at putting on acts… we should probably put on some clothes first.”
She sat up off of me, and walked over to put on the cute adventurer clothes that I wore last night.
“...you didn’t bring any changes of clothes for me? Or rather, that body?”
“Of course not. If we were running for longer, you’d need new clothes,” Sasha said without malice. “Might’ve been less conspicuous for you to be naked than in those clothes, though.”
I looked over at her in them, and smiled slightly. “Well, I think they’re cute.”
“I didn’t say they weren’t cute, Mistress, just… not a normal combination of clothing for a slave or for a real person?”
“There weren’t exactly classes on that when I got pulled over here. And using ‘real person’ for people who aren’t slaves kinda inherently undermines the freedom of slaves, you know. You have a change of clothes?”
She gestured to a bag in the corner, and I walked over, and in short time was dressed in a rather nice black dress, a bit wrinkled at first, but she started smoothing it out with magic, running her hands over me.
“Symbolically? I guess it does.” She patted the bed. “Sit down so I can do your hair up nice, Mistress? We want to impress Princess Asperia.” It felt like she was still in charge even when playing the role of a servant, somehow… but I did want my hair done up nice, so I sat down, and she brushed my hair, which felt good, and intertwined some black ribbons with pearls in them into my hair.
She pulled back a little to look at her work, and nodded, satisfied. “There. Let’s go straight over to the gardens, we’re less than an hour away.”
“...can you really find your way back inside the palace from there? Maybe we should take a more normal entrance.”
“Yes. I have an almost-perfect memory.”
“Eidetic memory? Well, except the things you blocked out?”
“Yes, obviously... Mistress.” The last word was almost an afterthought. She ran the brush through her own hair a few times, almost as an afterthought, her own appearance was never super important to her…
I took the brush from her, and stood up and brushed her hair more until it looked nice, like I used to do, and she held still for me, and smiled just slightly at the attention. “...that’s why you’re so good at picking up magic quickly. You can just memorize the exact shape, and recall it….”
“Yes. Usually, it’s better not to learn magic spells you don’t have a specific use for, so you’re less likely to get them confused, because casting the wrong spell at the wrong time can be really really bad.”
...guess I shouldn’t have learned Light. Well, I only half-remembered it. Hmm.
We ascended the stairs, and she took my hand as we headed out of the hideout into the sunlight, gently guiding me towards our goal while giving a very good impression of just an overeager and affectionate dog-girl happy to be on a walk, not dropping her act now that other people were around.
We got some looks as we walked towards the Garden of Eusthyne, and more than a few propositions to buy one or both of our attentions-- I guess as dressed up as we were in a bad part of town, they kind of assumed we were prostitutes. I flushed and awkwardly avoided such offers, and Sasha did a quick personality 180 and growled and foamed at the mouth like she was a berserker eager to thirst on the blood of those who were too persistent, while I gently dragged her off apologetically and said she was just getting retrained from being a gladiator.
In retrospect, not a particularly stealthy cover story, but one way or another, we wound walking back into Princess Asperia’s harem.
A few women were lounging around, including Valentine, who smiled upon seeing us and walked over, glancing over to another heavily tattooed woman who was painting her fingernails. Sasha, in the meantime, kneeled respectfully, tail wagging as she looked up at Valentine.
“Hey, Natasha, can you go tell Zince that Princess Asperia's fiance and their pet are back?”
She glanced down at her fingernails, did a couple more quick brushes, and nodded. “I’ll get right on it, Val.” And with that she dashed off. She had a nickname for her already!? Well, maybe that was just Natasha’s normal thing.
I… I literally had my own pet girl who was loyal enough to give up her freedom to ensure my safety right next to me, and I was fucking feeling jealous of Valentine again. I was glad Eve… that is, Sasha? ...I was glad the woman formerly known as Mistress didn’t have the ability to read minds right now. It felt weird to call her Sasha when I knew she really didn’t want that, but I guess one of us had to be stuck in that body. Not that there was anything wrong with that body! It was a cute body!
Valentine walked in closer, looking between the two of us with a raised eyebrow, and after a long moment, both me and Sasha nodded in unison. She looked just a bit confused, but then shrugged and smiled a relaxed smile. “I’m glad you two came back… I really want to be on the same side of things. I was worried you’d run off to Princess Adeline, honestly.” ...why hadn’t we run off to Princess Adeline?
Mistress didn’t respond because she couldn’t read my mind right now. I had privacy in a way I hadn’t really around her for ages. Well, what felt like ages.
It was weird.
“Yeah… it seems in our common best interest to work together.” I idly reached down to pet Sasha’s head, and she tensed just a little, and then nuzzled into it… did she not ever like getting pets, either? I resolved to ask her about it once we had some privacy. I looked over to Valentine. “Everything go okay on your end?”
“Oh, yeah.” She spoke more softly. “Half of us in the know were panicking and half of us were Very Calm And Alert after Princess Asperia went with you, but most people were never informed. I was crying, actually, I didn’t see a situation in which someone super important to me didn’t die.”
I blinked, a little surprised the big strong tiger lady cried so easy… but then again, I had tortured her into tears, hadn’t I? Consensually! I wasn’t a bad person! I inhaled, exhaled, scritching behind Sasha’s ear as I tried to calm myself down.
...which meant, having tortured someone, who I can safely assume did not want it, of her own volition rather than being forced this time, Sasha was a bad person. I didn’t know what to do with that conclusion. People could do bad things and not be bad people, I got that in theory, but Sasha had kind of done a lot of bad things.
She’s also someone who I had eaten so many meals with, cuddled with so many times, fucked and been fucked by, who had saved my life on more than one occasion, who had done her absolute best to make me happy… sometimes… it was hard to see her as just evil.
But if I wanted, I could judge and execute her when she was done reading Princess Asperia’s mind. I was feeling a different kind of tension than when I was submissive and without power. I once again had the power to judge and hurt people for real, and I was increasingly realizing I wasn’t comfortable with it. I didn’t want to be judge, jury, or executioner.
I shook my head a little. “How do you deal with being so strong all the time, Val?”
She blinked, then smiled easily. “I’ve spent a lot of time practicing being gentle with fragile objects. Like holding an egg.”
“...Hmm.”
Sasha smiled up at me. “You’ve never hurt me, Mistress! Except that one time where you threw an arrow through the body of that bandit who was attacking me and it went through them, hit me, and pinned me to the wall, but like, that’s not on purpose, you know? You were trying to help, and I healed up fine!” She licked my hand a little as if to reassure me it was fine and there were no hard feelings whatsoever, blinking up at me with that dumb expression.
I genuinely couldn’t tell if there was some hidden meaning she was trying to communicate, or if she was just trying to act like a dumb dog, which I hadn’t really been acting like at all around here… but maybe she didn’t with other slaves either, considering how respected she was?
I really hoped Princess Asperia got here soon.