Desa's feet started moving before she had time to crumple the note in her hand. Her feet touched the ground and her whole body started moving. Before she left the bar, she thrust out her hand to grab the alcohol bottle and leave a few silver in its place.

As the enchantment forced her body to leave and obey Sontarro's order, Desa felt her mind shutting down. It had almost become second nature for her to shield her emotions and thoughts whenever Sontarro sent for her.

"Wait! Where are you going?" Niam's voice called after her but Desa didn't reply. Her body had a mind of its own because of the enchantment, she wouldn't be able to stop, but she didn't want to anyway. She just tilted the bottle in her hand back and drank some more as she opened the door of the tavern to leave. If she was going to have hell, might as well do it while drunk.

Desa took two steps before the tavern doors opened behind her and Niam followed her out. She suppressed the need to sigh as he ran up to her side. "Why did you abruptly leave?" Niam asked.

Desa held up the piece of paper the order was written on between her index and middle finger in its crumpled state. "You're the reason I left." She said simply as she sipped from her bottle and kept moving.

From the corner of her eye she saw Niam's face take on a look of confusion. "Did you have to leave immediately? Couldn't you start on whatever it is tomorrow morning? Or at least say goodbye?"

Desa couldn't suppress her sigh this time. She wasn't going to answer but she felt the enchantment stopping her body. Of course, she couldn't lead anyone to Sontarro so her body refused to continue in the direction until she got rid of Niam.

Desa turned to face Niam. She took a deep breath to settle her nerves. It's not his fault, it's not his fault. She kept repeating to herself in the hopes that she wouldn't lose her temper with him again. "Niam, I have to leave and you can't come with."

Niam made a move to open his mouth but Desa held up a hand to stop him.

"No you can't help me this time, no you can't be my friend and no you really don't want to follow me wherever I'm going." She said in a tired tone. This had been a very, very long day of emotional fright trains. And on top of all that, now she needed to go to Sontarro when all she wanted to do was go home and cry herself to an alcohol induced sleep. It really sucked that she couldn't do that.

Niam looked at her like he was at a loss for words. "Did- did I do something wrong?" Desa briefly closed her eyes. It was really hard to communicate with people when she couldn't explain everything. She only ended up hurting herself, others and messing everything up.

"No Niam, you didn't do anything wrong, just think about what I said for working in this line of business." Desa stretched out the empty bottle to him, and signalled back to the tavern with her head. "Go and talk to her, I'm certain she would want to have you once she gets to know you, rather than a pile of gold."

Niam's mouth formed a small 'o' as his face blushed a faint pink at her words. He struggled to reply to her words but Desa cut him off again.

"Go." She ordered him softly.

Niam nodded his head as he clutched the empty bottle in his hands a bit tighter and then turned around walking to the tavern. Desa watched him as he opened the door and disappeared inside. She wanted nothing more than to go back inside and resume her drinking but as soon as Niam was out of sight, her body started moving out of it's own accord.

She put her hands in her pockets and started the walk to her least favourite place in Avilfell. The enchantment made it impossible to refuse a summon from Sontarro, whenever he sent for her, she had to go to his lair and report. An adequate simile would be that she was a dog on a tight leash at his beck and call.

Desa looked around as she walked, Sontarro's building was set in the dead center of town, so she had a while before she reached there and that did nothing to stop the apprehension crawling up her throat. She used that time to prepare herself mentally. Images of Aksel flitted through her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut at the flash of pain the images brought.

No she couldn't think about Aksel. The only silver lining about this was, she had done what Sontarro had asked of her, she had killed Aksel. If she had come across Niam and gotten the order for the summons before she had accomplished the task, there would be hell to pay.

Desa wanted to crawl in on herself like an armadillo and have a minute to digest everything that happened the past few hours. Her body didn't heed her wishes as her legs kept moving. Anxiety and sadness crawled all over her skin and electrified her nerves until they threatened to turn her into nothing more than a jumble of bones and pain.

Inhaling a shaky breath, Desa closed her fists. The alcohol in her blood helped to push the prickling at the back of her eyes away. She clung to the light headed feeling going around in her blood stream and focused on steadying her breath. Showing weakness in the lair always lead to more pain for her. Being detached and void of emotions was the only way she could cope with it.

Years and years of practice honed her to endure her moments in front of Sontarro but as she tried to bury down her emotions, the hilt of her dagger sticking out of Aksel's chest made desperation bubble out of her chest. She couldn't keep the immense pain hidden.

As the stone building came to view, she tried to have her neutral face match her insides. It was a losing battle. The three story building looked exactly like the ones sitting next to it, light gray stone, old wooden windows and matching shutters. Nothing about the building stood out, it looked exactly like the other residential buildings around it. And the location of it, hidden right at the heart of Avilfell was intentional along with the innocent facade.

Only Desa knew better than to trust the exterior when she knew just how corrupted the inside was. This was the hub for Sontarro's business. He had other buildings and stock-houses across the town but his lackeys reported back here. The top floor was almost never in use, keeping essentials for high paying customers and riches. The second floor housed Sontarro's living quarters, but she wasn't sure. No one was allowed up there. The main floor was a bootleg making operation which had started there but moved to a bigger building closer to the bazaar. Now it still worked to maintain the supply of high quality made booze to the buyers but not as vigorously as it once did.

Desa's body moved without giving her a second to compose herself before knocking on the dark wooden door. She kept her face relaxed and willed her eyes to show nothing. A minute later a forest sprite opened the door. He was hunched over like a willow tree with a dark mossy skin and no hair. His eyes were crinkled with age at the ends like a bark and he was wearing a neatly dressed pants and shirt like a servant.

Desa knew him, never had learned his name because in all her twelve years being enchanted, she had never heard the forest sprite before her speak. Not once. She didn't know if he was a mute or just chose not to speak but he had always been as silent as the night. She had taken to calling him Mossimer because his skin looked to have fresh and old patches of moss but Sontarro never ordered him around by a name so she could never learn his actual name.

Mossimer took an unsteady step to the side and held the door open to let Desa in. Once she stepped in, the heady scent of fermented alcohol hit her nose. It brought up years of unwanted memories with it, she knew if she continued down the hall, she would see large rooms filled with giant boiling tankards with bottles left to settle and ferment, along with rows of extracts and pipes connecting everything together.

She knew these rooms so well, this was where her habit of drowning her pain had started once she learned how blissfully numb the bitter taste of alcohol made her senses.

Instead of going down the hall, her body turned to the left towards the stairs to descend underground. Her steps made no sound as she walked down into the darkness. Desa stifled the panic rising up in her chest as her body forced her to go into the damp sub basement level.

Her enchantment required her to go to Sontarro's office whenever she was summoned. This was the place he took care of unsightly business. The walls reinforced with dirt between the steels made it harder for the unsuspecting neighbours to hear all the pain that was dealt in here.

Desa landed on the last step and passed by a hall lined up with iron doors to reach his office. She opened it up and stepped inside. The room itself looked like a well furnished business office more, than fit into the dungeons and multipurpose chambers adjacent to it. Dark mahogany desk sat before a wall of bookcases and a lush chair of black leather sat behind the desk.

It was empty. Sontarro was probably asleep and would be until the morning. Desa's feet propelled her body forward until she was situated next to the desk. Her body turned around to face the door and then her knees lowered her to the ground. She sat down with her legs underneath her and her hands on her thighs.

Desa felt her body relax into its position and she felt her mind retreat back with a weary sigh. This was how she would wait until Sontarro came to acknowledge her. In the first years of her enchantment, Sontarro hadn't bothered to specify how she was supposed to wait for him, so her body would force her to wait in this exact spot but standing up. She would be swaying on her feet from her exhaustion but never get to sit down or lie down for sleep.

One instance, when she was ten years old, Sontarro had taken too long to come for her and by the time he did, Desa had soiled her pants and consequently the imported rug in his office. Now she was allowed to relieve herself in the joined facilities in the room next door and she could sit down while she waited for him. Small mercies.

His orders and conditions always changed as he learned something new. A new change to her binding almost always ended worse for her, but she was actually thankful that she got to sit down as she waited for him.

Desa closed her eyes, she was so tired, so emotionally exhausted, it would be easy to have the alcohol swirling in her head lull her to sleep. Too bad her brain refused to shut down. What had happened to Aksel? Was he alright? Had her worse thoughts come to pass, had she actually murdered him? Did Mihram find Aksel's lifeless body when he went back into the house?

The imaginary scene made her breath hitch. She couldn't bear to inflict that damage, to kill Aksel and then have Mihram find his beloved friend's body... if that was the case, Mihram would definitely hate her if he didn't already. Maybe, just maybe he now hated her enough to kill her.

After meeting with Sontarro maybe she could go down to the docks. Seek Mihram out. This time she wouldn't have to ask him to kill her, she was sure. He would want to do that without being prompted. The probability of being free from this caged body gave her a tiny sliver of hope. She might've killed Aksel but she didn't hope to be alive for longer than this. She would die by the hands of Mihram, be atoned for every despicable, horrid thing she was forced to do. And if the creator was a generous one, maybe in the life after this she could be a free being.

The vision of soaring high up in the clouds as a white bird with the crisp cold air beneath her wings, her pristine feathers fluttering as she flapped them, just the dream of it was enough to give her a sense of peace that she slowly drifted off to an uncomfortable sleep sitting up.

Desa jolted awake, someone was coming this way. She didn't know how long it had been but she had managed to catch some restless moments of sleep drifting off as she sat on the carpet of Sontarro's office. Whenever her body felt like toppling over to the ground, the enchantment would flare up, uprighting her body into position and she would jolt awake.

It was a sad visual of trying to stand still while also battling with heavy eyelids. Now though, as she listened to the set of footfall coming down the stairs of the basement, her eyes were wide awake as well as every nerve ending on her body.

Sontarro was coming she was certain. His footsteps were the same ones she had memorised over years of anxiously waiting for him to appear before her. They were confident and precise, didn't drag along the ground but were a crisp click clack.

Desa calmed her heartbeat which was trying to race off ahead of her like they were in a race. The footsteps got closer like a crescendo to a music she didn't know when would reach the climax. They stopped and the click of the handle was heard before the door fell open.

Sontarro was standing there with his light brown hair that had a few gray hair at the temples, his light skin signalled to just how much he actually preferred to stay inside rather than going out. His head turned to her as he stepped inside the room and his eerily normal dull brown eyes settled on her. His mouth curved to a satisfied little smile before he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

"Glad you finally got the message from the courier I sent for you." He stepped towards his desk to rifle through a stack of paper as he talked to her like they were old friends and she hadn't spent the whole night waiting for him sitting up on the floor. "I was beginning to think the sprite boy Freyt hired was really bad at his job."

Niam wasn't bad at his job, it was actually Desa who had resisted to finish the job with all her might and come back to Sontarro. She wasn't going to admit it out loud but she felt bad for the blame falling on Niam.

Sontarro sat down on his lush leather chair with a creak. From this angle, Desa could see how he was missing the tipped elven ear on his left side. He had been missing that ear from the moment she had met him. Hadn't actually learned how he lost it. Some said a pirate had cut it off in battle, some said he cut it off himself because of how he went mad with his special ability.

Sontarro held out his left hand towards her in a casual manner with the palm up. He didn't have to tell her what to do. They had done this a million times by now. Desa inched over while still on her knees and placed her hand in his palm. His cold slender fingers clasped closed on her hand in a flash as he sighed and laid his head back.

He was running through her mind. Sontarro could read people's minds when he had direct contact to them. Just like Aksel was a water bender, Sontarro was a mind bender. He didn't have access to all of a person's memories, just the ones that they were strongly thinking about. Desa had been through this enough times that she knew how to keep her thoughts calm and not bring any attention to anything she might get punished for.

A flash of hurt pang in her chest as the vision of her stabbing Aksel in the chest ran through her mind. Sontarro knew how much she hated killing people so the hurt and pain she felt wouldn't surprise him. The memories of crying and running around asking for help and then crying in the street hunched over played through.

She didn't feel remorse or shame at having him see how weak and emotional she was after the job. He never cared about what she felt just as long as she finished the job. But her emotions got the best of her and the pain gave away to longing and that brought up a series of other memories.

The ones she didn't want Sontarro to see. She tried to not think about them but it was hard to silence a mind, even when trying to think of nothing, one tended to think of something. The moments of meditating on the roof, listening to Aksel's voice. Working on the dock with Mihram. Having a delicious smelling breakfast, spending the afternoons searching through books to find a solution for her curse.

Sontarro ripped his hand away from her as if he had been burned. Desa cradled her hand to her lap, she knew what was coming, she hadn't been able to hide what she was doing for the past one and a half week.

Desa didn't have to look up to see how angry Sontarro's was, she could feel his incriminating gaze burning holes on her. His chair screeched back as he stood up from his chair. It took a lot of control for Desa to not cringe and shrink back as he came closer. He could always order her to stand her ground and she hated not having even an inch of leeway to fallback on when he delivered blows.

"You still try to undermine me?" His deceptively calm tone whispered over her body. Desa didn't look up, she only looked down at the rug and counted the edges on the plush pattern. "After I gave you the permission to stay at a place you could call your own?" He had given her a gift, two years ago when she had turned nineteen, he had said instead of the lair, she could get her own place and stay there. This was his way of proving that it wasn't so bad being chained to him, he was giving her privacy. He took to sending out couriers to deliver his will and he saw himself as a benevolent employer because of it.

"Not only that but I send someone new every time you decide to wrestle out your frustrations and render them useless. Did I put an end to that? No. Because I believed that if that was what you wanted to do, to use the people I pay a pretty penny to deliver messages as punching bags, I could let you blow off steam." He stopped as he crouched down before her. His closeness irked the tiny hairs to stand up in alert but she didn't dare scoot back.

"I take you off the streets, give you clothes and a roof over your head. Pay you a decent wage. And what do you do?" Sontarro asked in a whisper. When Desa didn't answer, he grabbed her face in his hand in a painful grip to make her look up at him. His brown eyes were spitting fire, the pupils were shrunk in anger.

"You.." he seethed between his teeth. "You try to get out of your bindings whenever you have the chance. Not only that but this time you told someone else about it, I saw how he was helping you find a way out of the magic."

Desa tried shaking her head in denial but she couldn't with his grip on her face. "I didn't tell him." Sontarro gave her a mocking smile in disgust as he tore his hand away from her and stood up, turning his back to her. "I can't tell anything with-" she couldn't even say the word enchantment to him, "in place. I didn't say anything." She tried to explain.

Sontarro turned towards her in anger, his voice rising. "You seem to have found a way to tip him off, I saw how he was going through spell-books. Do you take me for a fool?" He roared.

Desa cast her eyes downwards. He had already seen enough evidence of her betrayal, her words meant nothing to him so she chose to stay silent instead. Sontarro started slowly pacing before her, "I saw how you played a mundane life with them. Having homemade breakfast and wasting your day away working at the docks like the common folk. We both know you are only fooling yourself by playing house." He gave a low chuckle more to himself. "You don't fit in with any of them, you never have and never will."

Sontarro's words cut deeper than he could have hoped for. She knew she was living in a blissful haze these past days, she knew it would eventually come crashing down around her but the truth that she would never have that crushed her heart into a grind with a mortar and pestle.

Sontarro tipped his fingers along the dark wooden surface of his desk in a series of clacks. The rhythm matched Desa's elevated heart rate almost to a beat. Sontarro exhaled a harsh breath. "I really, really don't want to be angry with you. You just bring it out of me." He paused but Desa knew better than to answer. "You did end up killing him, so it doesn't matter you told him."

He walked over to lean against his desk before her. Desa could see his black pants and shoes from her downward glance. His clean attire looked all the more pristine when she compared it to how she was covered in dirt and blood all over her skin and clothes.

"What matters is that you found a way to let someone know about your predicament when I specifically ordered you not to." Desa didn't try to correct him again. He wouldn't believe her even if she kept telling that she didn't say anthing for a million times.

"Don't lie to me." She couldn't lie with the enchantment in place. "Did you tell him about the magic and who I am?" He asked in lethal calmness.

The buzz of enchantment rolled over her body as she said. "No."

"Liar!" He yelled as he stood up from his place against the desk and delivered a rather vicious blow across her face. Her left cheek stung from the punch but she didn't topple over. Desa didn't make a sound as she kept looking down at his shoes.

"How does he know about it then? Tell me!" Sontarro roared.

"I don't know. He figured it out on his own." Desa said in a small voice. She was just so tired that she hoped that Sontarro's next blow would be strong enough to knock her unconscious so she could get a few hours of dreamless sleep to rest. But he didn't hit her again.

Sontarro crouched before her again so they were eye to eye. Desa flinched when she felt the feather like gentle touch on her chin lifting up her head. It always unnerved her more when he was gentle like this.

"He figured it out on his own?" He more so whispered to himself. He shook his head in a jerky movement. "It's not important, he's dead. He's dead." He kept reassuring more to himself than Desa. She watched as his brown eyes got a glaze over them as he kept whispering to himself, before he smiled satisfactorily. "We'll just have to run through the orders again to make sure we haven't missed anything."

"You can't tell anyone about how you are under my control, you can't lead or write or act out to describe any hints that can get you out of your enchantment or lead people back to me..." He kept going through orders until he could think of no more way to limit her actions. After every sentence, Desa felt the magic wash over her form as it installed itself with a new command in her body.

When he was done, Sontarro seemed more relaxed now that he felt more in control. Desa lost the tiniest bit of tension on her shoulders in reaction. She felt more at ease when he was relaxed.

"Now that, that is out of the way, we can focus on the fact that you still took too long in completing your order and tried to betray me." His mouth was still smiling but a dangerous glint came into his gaze. Desa knew where this was going. She was going to be severely punished.

Sontarro tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear almost endearingly and it took all of Desa's self control to not shiver in response.

"You know we could avoid this if you just stopped trying." He said gently as he held her face up from her jaw. Desa just nodded as she cast her eyes downwards. Looking at his eyes for too long always churned her stomach.

Sontarro sighed as he let her face go and stood up. He went over to his desk and rang a tiny servant's bell. He then sat down on his desk and kept going through his papers and ledgers. A minute later the door to his office opened and Mossimer appeared.

Sontarro didn't look up as he said, "Send Freyt and Zekla in." Mossimer bowed his head without a word and then closed the door.

Desa's whole body went rigid. He wasn't going to punish her himself. He seemed to notice her new posture and he turned to address her, "I'm afraid I'm too busy to take care of you today. Freyt and Zekla will have to do." He said nonchalantly. Like he was substituting two people that would accompany her to tea and not torture.

Just then the door to the office opened and two people entered. She knew them so well, she didn't have to look at their faces to know they were excited to see her. Freyt was a big orc who had a maroon tint to his skin with a hulk of a body and a chain hanging between his tusks. Zekla looked almost like a doll beside him. Her goblin form came up to his hip in her green skin and curly brown hair and slightly longer than normal nose. Between the two of them, she would much rather be beaten to a pulp by Freyt than Zekla. The miniature stature of the goblin woman did nothing to lessen the slow torturous damage she could do with a pair of sharp knives. Most of the scars all over Desa's body could attest to that.

"Ah good, you're here. Desa was just waiting for you." Sontarro said.

A bit longer chapter, hope you liked it!

Thanks for reading, don't forget to comment! I love hearing your thoughts.

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