CHAPTER 88 INTERLUDE: THOUGHTS
//AN: Brief mentions of sexual abuse/torture but nothing explicit.//
Thoughts were such an interesting thing. No two were alike, even when they were about the same thing. Each was constructed completely differently from start to finish, every process unique to the person and circumstances.
But rather than trying to understand how one is constructed, it’s more important to learn what a thought is.
There are many different theories and ideas as to thoughts. To the more medically inclined a thought is a chemical reaction in the mind to external stimuli. Neurons and synapses fire in response to generate a certain reaction to something that happens or doesn’t happen as it were.
To the philosophically inclined, a thought is an abstract. Something to be pondered and meditated over and over for years on end before coming to some far-fetched and long-winded reasoning that serves no purpose other than stroking their own ego.
To Lurks? A thought was neither. Thoughts to her were representative of the soul. A representation of a higher function, an acknowledgment of sapience and sentience, not just a token attempt for one or the other.
They were also a great source of entertainment and satisfaction. Being able to read a thought, to feel it. Taste it. Ah.
A shiver ran up her spine and a smile bloomed on her face at the thought. And if that wasn’t an amusing occurrence to her.
Thoughts were one of the most primal forms of entertainment and satisfaction to her at this point. Whether that was an abstraction of her class or just her own personality speaking, she had never been able to figure it out. And honestly didn’t care to look into it any further.
Each thought was constructed entirely differently from person to person. And she could see each thought as it was in the making. From the moment their brain started churning, processing what information they could to try and formulate a response. All thoughts to her senses started out as a featureless cloud, waiting to be formed and colored and then set free to roam the skies.
As a thought was formulated that cloud was taken and molded into shape. The shape represented the physical aspect of the response the subject would have to a given stimulus. The shape itself was never entirely relevant, or at least there wasn’t a pattern or a scheme she had managed to figure out in regard to the physical responses. No shape had ever been formed again as far as she could tell, while some had certainly gotten close the shape had always been slightly different the second time. Slightly off as its experience with the stimulus was never identical. Although there was some connection between the intricacy and complexity of the design and the level of thought being formulated.
That wasn’t to say only smart or intelligent people formed complicated designs. No, stupid people would try to form those designs and would sometimes get close, but the shapes would then come out twisted. Wrong. Disgusting. The lack of aesthetics annoyed her to a degree she did not care to admit.
No, complexity wasn’t what represented intellect. Intellect was represented by how fast the shape could be formed and the completeness of the design. The most impressive thoughts that Lurks had ever come across were ones that looked simple in nature but had a dimensional depth to them that hid the true complexity of the mind behind the thought.
Drikith was one of those people. Each thought was almost infinitely complex by comparison to the average layperson. A tiny uncountable number of infinitesimally small geometric designs permeated his thoughts, each interconnected to form the whole. Where if even one piece was out of place or imperfect in its design the whole structure would fail.
A single imprecise moment would let everything collapse. And yet not once had that happened. The level of precision displayed to form the absurdly complex thoughts was so perfect that Lurks nearly felt orgasmic levels of pleasure just by being there when they were formed.
What she wouldn’t give to try and break him down.
The second part of the cloud was the color. The color represented the emotional aspect of the response. And with the color, there was a pattern she was able to determine. However, this probably had to do more with how her mind perceived emotions and categorized them rather than it being some form of enlightened understanding of the process.
Red’s tended to represent more aggressive and angry responses. Blues sad and repressed. Yellow, cautious, and skeptical. Green, naive, and trusting. White, acceptance, and impressionability. Black, closed off, and rigid. Compound colors represented the appropriate blends as well.
Green and blue formed teal. This one was a rather rare color, if only because it formed in rather unique circumstances. It was a depressed trusting of someone or something. Like having to trust a lord to run his fiefdom but he constantly kidnapped the village girls for his own entertainment.
Red, yellow, and blue made brown which represented confusion. When you tried to formulate too many responses at once the thought became confused and was unsure of what color it was supposed to take, so sometimes it took all of the responses at the same time, sometimes it only took one, and other times it didn’t take any and reacted purely physically without emotion attached.
Lurks’ favorite color though had to be purple. The combination of blue and red. It represented fear. The vibrancy of colors was determined based on the level of the emotion. The higher the emotion the more deep and beautiful the color was to her.
Fear was always a powerful emotion, it ruled the hearts of most creatures to some degree, and the mortal, and even some immortal species, were no exception to that. As such the purple the thought exuded was always deep, beautiful, entrancing, and powerful.
Seeing the thought-form and the purple slowly tainting the shape and taking over. The thought process would then become muddied and slow with the fear permeating every aspect of the brain, everything slowly getting infected by the color and curling in on itself and wilting slowly.
It just tasted so damn good.
Another shiver ran up her spine. Everything had fears, fears that lurked deep within their mind or things that were out in the open. The more cognisant a creature was the more powerful the fear it could feel.
That’s part of the reason why Lurks preferred the more intelligent individuals. Maybe not ones that were essentially booksmart, but ones that had a firm grasp on the world around them. But not rigid either, people that were… well-adjusted. Accepting, tolerant, and creative. People that knew how to think outside of the box. Their colors tended to be brighter, the shapes of their thoughts more intricate, and formed more quickly than their peers. Even without boons like [Accelerated Thoughts].
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
[Parallel Minds] was an interesting aspect of this as well. The subject could respond to even more stimulus with this skill and their thoughts were even more powerful as each mind would generally feel the same way about something. So the thoughts ended up layered and amplified. It was like a chamber of mirrors where the thought would bounce around and turn in on itself creating a kaleidoscope of the color in varying hues and intensity until it became too powerful to try and contain and everything broke down.
This had happened to many people under her. She had to be careful what she did with them or their minds would break and they would go brain dead, refusing to respond to anything anymore, their minds laying dormant until their physical death.
What she did to alleviate this burden was she controlled their thoughts to a degree. Making certain things overwhelm other senses. For example, she would show her pets their deepest, darkest fears from the deepest depths of their hearts and minds. She would amplify the fear they felt and have it resonate within them. But she muddied the response of that fear by tempering it and grounding it within something else.
What that would be purely depended on her mood at the time. Sometimes it would be tender and loving care. Sometimes sexual, sometimes not. Other times it was agonizing levels of torture.
Pain. Pain was an interesting thought that formed in people's minds as well. It came through as a flashing rainbow, almost like an explosion. It was interesting, but not her favorite thing to witness. But sometimes you need to see something explosive in life.
Lurks leaned back in her chair. She didn’t sigh. She didn’t express anything other than what she wanted to at all times. A sigh was a form of weakness to her, a lack of control over her physical thought, and a representation of the color of her thoughts as well. Both things she wanted nobody to be able to see, even if they couldn’t understand it the same way as she could.
Her newest pet came to mind, she didn’t repress the smile that came to her lips.
He was… interesting. He was special, purely because of his circumstances. Despite being from another world, his mind was not alien. Well, the shapes were wildly different than the ones she was used to seeing. But that normally wouldn’t have been enough to pull her attention to him. No, he was not a great thinker, his thoughts were average… maybe slightly above. Nor was there an infinite level of complexity to the thoughts like Drikith’s.
No, what made him interesting, was the absolute unwavering confidence that he formed thoughts with. Each thought comes through with crystal clarity, formed with care and attention. Although some of the shapes came out wrong or twisted, blinded by the perspective that he didn’t have a reference for.
But he was still confident in the result. And she didn’t fully understand why at first. But when she finally got to delve deep within his memories and pull out every single bit of information she learned the reason why that was.
She learned everything he knew about the world called Earth and the people living within it. Worlds like Kelthas were purely works of fiction there. Entertainment. And her pet had consumed vast amounts of that form of entertainment. As such he followed through expecting certain levels of tropes and clichés, as he called them.
This allowed him to act with surety in most things, he had foresight into how things could possibly play out to him. Or at least how he expected them to play out, even if things didn’t work out perfectly he didn’t fully allow such things to dissuade him from his current course. It was also making him take risks that most would see as unreasonable or dangerous. But so far he had managed to pull through on a lot of them.
And that’s why it made it even more intoxicating to put him through what she did. The absolute level of confusion and fear that permeated every part of his mind was so vibrant and powerful that it had been addicting in a way she had never gotten to experience before.
Turning his own thoughts against him in a way he couldn’t rationalize, using his confusion to choke him. His mind struggled to comprehend not the actions, but the why. And it was just. So. Fucking. Good.
Raping him had just been another way to break down the confidence just a little bit more, his mind just couldn’t, no wouldn’t understand it. Forcing him to like it? That had broken him so deeply that he repressed the memories to protect his psyche.
She could’ve forcefully pulled the memories back out and forced him to confront them, but doing so would’ve ruined him. He wouldn’t have been able to recover from that. His mind, for all his confidence, was surprisingly fragile. It hadn’t taken much to make him obedient. But it was a fun application of skill in trying to restrain herself just enough to keep from breaking him completely.
No, she’d let the memories slowly get dredged up from actions, a sound that his mind would associate with something else, reminding him of the trauma. A few words were spoken in a way that reminded him of her. Maybe a color or a taste that he would associate with a memory she had tainted. It would be slow and insidious. Creeping around him like vines, slowly choking the life and motivation out of him.
Already he wished for death so deeply and so profoundly it colored his thoughts, but forcing him to press it down and live through the trauma caused his mind to constantly explode with a myriad of fears and pain. It overwhelmed him in a way he didn’t have a reference for. No experience to fall back on and support himself with.
Something to tell him ‘This is how I should react.’ He struggled through every moment as his mind tore itself apart trying to hide from the pain and fear it was experiencing. His entire worldview was now completely tainted, it was starting to sink into his soul that this wasn’t just a story anymore.
He couldn’t overcome everything, even if he had a special advantage. What was even more amusing was how blind he was to the people around him. He thought he had a good grasp on the emotions and motives of people and yet he couldn’t see the big warning sign right in front of his face.
She had debated telling him, seeing him try and deny it, and then forcing him to see the truth of the situation. But Drikith had advised against it. So there wasn’t much she could do in that regard. Instead, she would just have to entertain herself by forcing him to acknowledge his own inferiority.
Beating him down constantly, showing him how weak he truly was, that the world derived pleasure from seeing him broken and would do everything in its power to make it happen. Because that’s all he was good for. Being a dummy for people to slam their fists and weapons against.
She impressed that on his mind multiple times until he slowly started to believe it. He didn’t even try to heal himself anymore unless it was a command most of the time. He was slowly starting to accept that pain was just a part of his life, an integral core of his function as someone living in this world.
She would enjoy ripping that belief from him and making him realize how easily he rolled over and gave up the moment things got difficult. How the realization would break him. He would be unfathomably angry and have no way to vent it, the tears of frustration he would cry as she would repeatedly show him how weak he was. How willing he was to just let himself be abused.
And even when that notion was removed that he should just let these things happen, he wouldn’t fight back because it had already been shown what would happen if he did. And he would desire the little bit of freedom of thought he’d been given back to the idea that his very thoughts and emotions were being controlled.
Even as he would be defiled or tortured, he’d accept it willingly, telling himself there was no other way. Trying to rationalize the injustices he was dealt, anything to make it tolerable to his frail mind and ego.
She couldn’t wait for the moment it all came together. Lurks had a plan. The play had to be set though, the pieces needed to be placed and the actors had roles they needed to fulfill still. But once everything came together all it would take was a tiny poke of her finger.
And everything would come crashing down around him.