VoC: B1 — 13. Masks and Masters
Added 2025-09-01 21:36:31 +0000 UTCLady Ashcroft moved through the establishment with the fluid grace of someone who belonged because she did. Past the animal enclosures, she entered the section that housed the indentured servants. The air changed the moment she stepped through.
PoV:
1. Lady Ashcroft (Our Sus Slave Owner!)
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Lady Ashcroft moved through the establishment with the fluid grace of someone who belonged because she did. Past the animal enclosures, she entered the section that housed the indentured servants. The air changed the moment she stepped through.
No scent of straw or sterile stone here—this space breathed comfort. Wide rooms, polished floorboards, blankets that had been chosen rather than rationed. These weren’t cages. They were homes. And they bore her signature, not her brand.
“Good morning, Lady Ashcroft,” called a middle-aged woman with intricate tattoos covering her arms—cat-folk, by her distinctive ears and graceful movements. “How did the negotiations go with the Drakmoor merchant house?”
“Quite well, Lyesa. They’ve agreed to your terms for the protective enchantments.” Ashcroft paused beside the woman’s quarters, genuinely interested. “How is your daughter adjusting to the academy with my recommendation?”
The cat-woman’s face lit up. “Wonderfully, My Lady! She’s already showing mathematical aptitude, and they think she may be a good fit for a career in banking. The instructors say she has natural talent.”
“Excellent. Make sure she knows the tuition for her advanced courses is covered—consider it an investment in her future.” Her smile was warm, genuinely pleased. After all, it truly was an investment. “Skilled Wizards and their enchanters are always valuable. She’ll make a killing in commissions, just make sure she doesn’t get snagged by the Adventuring Guild. You know their mortality rates.”
“Oh, most definitely not dungeoning, My Lady!”
Ashcroft paused beside a small cot, where a dwarven elder hunched over a copper filigree box.
“Did Marcus get your alloys sorted?”
“Aye, came in this morning. Purest I’ve seen. Just needed to know I wasn’t forgotten.”
“Never,” Ashcroft said, touching his shoulder once—light, but firm.
She moved on, stopping again to listen as a halfling woman quietly voiced concerns about her contract terms. Ashcroft gave her full attention, never rushing the words.
She didn’t need collars or chains. Loyalty, she’d found, was better forged through shared victories and promises kept.
Respect colored their voices—not fear, but something far rarer: earned trust. A bond that would outlast any contract.
Coiling around her waist, her snake companion shifted slightly, his head emerging near her shoulder to taste the air with a forked tongue. She absently stroked its scales with one finger—a gesture so automatic it spoke of years of companionship.
“Patience, Vasily,” she murmured to the serpent. “Business first, then we can properly greet our interesting new acquisitions. I know you’re hungry to taste more souls.”
Moving deeper into the establishment, she approached an ornate door marked with subtle ward signs. As her hand touched the handle, a soft chime sounded, and she felt the familiar tingle of privacy enchantments activating. The moment she stepped inside and the door clicked shut behind her, the sounds from the rest of the building vanished completely.
The office was elegantly appointed but clearly functional—rich mahogany furniture, expensive rugs, and walls lined with filing cabinets spoke to a serious commitment to record-keeping.
Marcus sat behind a large desk, carefully filling out forms with the precise handwriting of someone who took documentation seriously. Her steward of this establishment had his faults, but his loyalty was iron-clad. Although what the man was or wasn’t didn’t particularly matter in this meeting.
Ashcroft moved around the room slowly, her fingers trailing along the furniture with familiar ease. She knew this was her space as much as his, somewhere she felt completely comfortable. Her movements carried the same liquid fluidity as her serpent companion—deliberate, controlled, never wasted.
She ended her journey around the room beside the desk, settling back against it to face Marcus while he worked.
“Your performance was absolutely spectacular,” she whispered. Vasily uncoiled from her waist, slithering into her dress, down her figure to explore the familiar surroundings. “The way you played the concerned shopkeeper was superb.”
Her gaze searched every fold and crease of his face, searching for any hint of deception.
There was none.
“The perfectly timed interruption when he was about to be ejected before I intervened… Masterful, as always. Your information proved 100% accurate. Now, how was my performance, My Mistress?”
The question hung in the air for a moment, and then Marcus began to change. The transformation was slow and deliberate; not the rapid shifting of an emergency, but the careful unveiling of a new body.
Marcus’ features flowed like water, bones restructuring, hair darkening, and lengthening. His build became more slender, more unique, with a muscular elegance.
Within moments, the well-dressed shopkeeper had been replaced by a beautiful woman with sharp, intelligent features and eyes that held depths of experience—the city’s Grand Library bookkeeper’s sharp figure and face.
An orc by race, yet not by culture.
Ashcroft had never seen her true form, but had seen over a thousand faces she wore.
Madame Zorya stretched like a cat, working the kinks out of her back after maintaining an unfamiliar form. “Much better. Male bodies are so awkward—all those sharp angles, rigid postures, and other…uncomfortable bits.”
She fixed Ashcroft with a look of genuine pride. “And you, my dear, were absolutely sublime. The perfect balance of sophistication and mystery. I especially enjoyed your educational lecture about the indentured service system and fight pit introduction—you managed to sound both knowledgeable and subtly threatening.”
Ashcroft’s expression shifted subtly at the memory, her eyes cooling to something more calculating. “I have you to thank for all that I am, Mistress.”
“Mmm. Eight years feels like several lifetimes,” the woman whispered, head tilting with her reflective tone. “A fresh fifteen. Entering adulthood without family or support. Frightened, picking scraps from fishing nets… That young woman bears little resemblance to who you’ve become under my guidance. Your hard work shows.”
The scent of those foul, stinking docks, wet seaweed, and salted waters caused a small wrinkle to crease Ashcroft’s nose. The bruises she sustained daily. The dirt and sand. The hunger… It wasn’t a pretty memory to revisit.
Zorya stretched out her long legs, shins uncovered; Marcus looked small compared to the height of the unique Barbarian woman she’d taken the form of, and Ashcroft felt as if she were a child. Her mentor rose with a dancer’s grace, nonetheless, moving to a cabinet and retrieved two glasses and a bottle of something amber.
“I enjoyed the slight nudges you gave our young prince. It advances several points of attack across the bow.”
Accepting the glass, Ashcroft chuckled softly, staring into the pristine crystal. Her thoughts wove through every detail, linking everything she knew with all the questions she was burning to ask her mentor. This was as much a test as it was an information-gathering exercise.
“Marcus should be returning shortly with the report from the palace informants regarding the trail. I suspect you will not be joining me in tonight’s fight pit theatrics?”
“Unfortunately,” Zorya hummed with the faintest of smiles as she breathed in the fruity aroma before sampling it, “I already have a date with a marquess and princess. A party has been formally planned.”
“Naturally,” Ashcroft whispered, wandering to a particular place on the wall to slide her fingers down it in a serpentine pattern as Vasily wound up her leg to his hidden places. “The royals are inviting the merchant, low nobility, and influential figures in under the pretense of solidarity to test the waters, seeing where public opinion lies after the scandal.”
“Excellent deduction, my lovely,” her mentor whispered, dangerous eyes drifting from her glass to Ashcroft as the wall slid back to reveal a hidden room. “You’ve acquired the outfit I requested?”
“Without a hint of deviation from your specifications, Mistress.”
Ashcroft swooped in to pluck out a particular dress—deep blue silk with subtle silver filigree—and held it up for the woman she owed everything to.
“I am curious,” she said smoothly, “how you intend to bypass all the security measures to reach Lord Stephen and Princess Catelyn. These gifts you had me acquire paint a rather tantalizing picture… Princess Miriam?”
The orc woman’s body shook with a purr of laughter. “I taught you too well, darling. Just measurements and material, and you unraveled the ruse. You were wasted on those docks. I only wish I had found you sooner.”
“You honor me too much,” Ashcroft murmured, draping the cloth over her own form to admire it in a nearby mirror. “The youngest daughter of Princess Catelyn’s eldest sister… The one who betrayed her to the magistrate. That’s devious, Mistress. How did you find such a weakness to exploit within the royal family?”
Zorya set down her glass with deliberate care, the crystal ringing faintly as it touched the lacquered wood. “Princess Miriam,” she said, her voice softening into something almost girlish as she channeled her energy. “You know I won’t reveal such details so freely. You must be deeply curious.”
She stepped forward, accepting the gown from Ashcroft’s hands. Her fingers brushed the silk with the reverence of youth and scarcity—the kind of neglect the youngest often got in royal families.
Ashcroft’s brow arched as she took a step back to gaze upon the giant orc woman, holding the gown over her form. It looked like it was meant for a child, in contrast.
“And her mother? Won’t Princess Evelyn notice her daughter wearing items so extravagant that she did not purchase?”
Her mistress laughed, sounding eerily youthful as her eyes flashed golden when she slid them inside the mirror—a tell of a changling. “Not at all. This was a gift from you, after all, my dear. Another thread in the palace’s growing web of influence spun in your name.”
Poor girl…
Ashcroft’s smile became somber as Vasily’s tongue licked her ear. “Expanding our influence while gathering intelligence. I do enjoy efficient solutions. Though I would fear the retribution that could come if I presented myself in public in a way that would outshine other high nobility. Princess Miriam is particularly susceptible to that kind of feminine social pressure from her sisters and cousins. Unless…that is your goal.”
Zorya began unfastening the buttons of Marcus’s coat, her hands moving with idle familiarity. The fabric loosened around her frame—too broad now, hanging awkwardly. Her spine arched with a soft crack as her posture shifted, her bones reshaping, muscles relaxing, and her frame narrowing.
Her shoulders closed in. Her chest flattened. Her hips receded. Her height shrank rapidly—Marcus’s tailored pants slipping loose, boots growing clumsy and oversized.
Zorya’s skin lightened; her facial structure smoothed and softened, youthful fullness replacing the sharpness of age and wit. Long raven hair shimmered with health. And then came the eyes.
Two lilac irises stared out from the small, lovely face now taking shape—the rarest trait of the royal bloodline, unmistakable even in disguise.
She held the gown in front of her new frame, the size now perfect—a girl on the edge of womanhood, bearing every privilege of station but none of its power.
Ashcroft’s eyes narrowed slightly as she observed the transformation, her voice shifting from sorrow to calculation. “Though I confess… I’m curious about your true interest in our Titania reincarnate. Are you hoping to recruit him?”
Zorya paused, the gown half-draped against her altered frame. There was a flicker in her expression—interest, yes, but also amusement.
“It’s not always about the person, my dear,” she said quietly. “Sometimes, it’s about the gravity around them—the orbits. Damon is valuable. But the real prize is a foothold in Aurelian.”
Ashcroft’s gaze glittered. “Aurelian. The crown jewel of the kingdom. One of the wonders of the world, thanks to the Infinite Dungeon. Source of relics and innovations that’ve shaped entire civilizations and brought nearly every reincarnate eventually into the kingdom’s line of influence.”
Zorya’s voice darkened with genuine hunger. “Marquess Stephen commands a realm unto itself—his authority more sovereign than ceremonial. The Delmore family holds secrets and artifacts passed through generations… Wealth that makes our operation here look like a market stall off the docks.”
Her entire cadence shifted as she spun around and flashed her teeth at her, presenting the dress. “Won’t you help me, Lady Ashcroft? I cannot express my gratitude enough for your gift. Also…tell me, what’s your assessment of my dear cousin, Damon? And please, don’t leave out any details?”
Ashcroft’s smile brightened.
“I would be honored, Princess. Where should I begin?”
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[ Next POV: Aria ]
[ Theme: Our radiant little lich is basking in admiration…
but not all gazes are kind, and some watch for more than beauty.]
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