Chapter 27
Viola
My master paused, allowing his words to settle over the assembled crowd before continuing.
“The subject’s nudity serves multiple purposes beyond mere humiliation.
Magisterian law requires that nothing interfere with the administration of justice—no clothing to cushion the blow, no barriers between correction and flesh.
More important, nakedness strips away the artificial constructs of rank and status that might otherwise cloud judgment.
Before the cane, a former president is no different from any other wayward woman requiring guidance. ”
I felt my cheeks burn as his explanation reduced my exposure to legal necessity, though I knew millions across the galaxy were hearing the same justification for my degradation.
“The correction is delivered to the buttocks for reasons both practical and symbolic,” Prince Hendren continued, his voice taking on the cadence of a lecture.
“This area can withstand significant punishment without permanent damage, ensuring the lesson is thorough yet safe. Symbolically, it represents the most private, vulnerable aspect of feminine pride—the part of herself a woman guards most carefully from masculine authority.”
He moved behind me, and I heard the whistle of the cane as he tested its flexibility through the air. The sound sent terror coursing through my bound form.
“By accepting correction in this most intimate manner, the subject demonstrates complete surrender of her will to masculine guidance. Today, Viola Herranofar will discover that true submission requires abandoning the last vestiges of pride and control. She will bear the signs of this punishment on her backside for a long while, as an intimate reminder of her misbehavior and its reward.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt him position himself behind my raised bottom, the cane tapping lightly against my tender flesh in preparation. The touch was almost gentle, but I knew it was merely the calm before devastation.
“Twenty-four strokes,” he announced to the crowd. “One for each month of neglect that led to Artemisia’s downfall. Let the correction begin.”
The first stroke fell with explosive force across the center of my bottom, the bamboo landing with a sharp crack that echoed through the yard.
The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced—pure fire that radiated from the point of impact through my entire nervous system.
Without the governor’s usual cushioning arousal, every nerve ending registered the agony with crystalline clarity.
“Ahhhh!” The scream tore from my throat before I could stop it, my body straining against the restraints as the pain peaked and then settled into a burning throb.
“One,” Prince Hendren announced calmly, already positioning for the second stroke.
I bit down hard on my lip, trying to prepare myself, but nothing could have readied me for the devastating impact when the cane struck again, this time just below the first mark. The overlapping pain created a storm of agony that made my vision blur.
“Please!” I sobbed, the word escaping despite my determination to endure silently. “Oh, powers, please!”
“Two,” came his inexorable count.
As the third stroke landed with searing precision just above the first, I understood with terrible clarity that my pleas meant nothing.
The governor’s suppression function ensured that my body could find no refuge in arousal, no chemical relief from the mounting agony.
Each stroke registered with absolute, unforgiving clarity.
“Three.” Prince Hendren’s voice remained steady as granite.
Through my tears I thought I could hear the crowd’s collective intake of breath with each impact.
I couldn’t help picturing them, though the mental image drew a new sob from my chest. Some must be watching with clinical fascination, others with discomfort, but in my imagination all remained transfixed by the spectacle of my correction.
And the Federation News Services cameras must be capturing every angle of my degradation, broadcasting my naked suffering across the galaxy.
The fourth stroke fell diagonally across the previous marks, creating a crosshatch of fire that made me throw my head back and wail. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry for what I did to Artemisia!”
“Four. Your apologies are noted, but they do not diminish your debt,” Prince Hendren replied, his tone carrying both authority and what might have been compassion.
By the eighth stroke, my bottom felt as though it had been branded with molten metal. Tears streamed down my face, falling to the stone below as my body shook with each impact. The restraints held me perfectly in position, preventing any escape from the methodical destruction of my pride.
“Please, Master,” I gasped between sobs. “No more… I… I was…”
But I couldn’t say it: I couldn’t admit I had made a mistake, because I knew I hadn’t, as mind-robbing as the pain felt. The cane whistled through the air to land with devastating accuracy. I screamed, my backside squirming the few millimeters it could as I desperately tried to sooth the agony.
“Nine.”
The crowd had fallen into complete silence except for my cries echoing off the stone walls.
And, I realized something else—a woman’s voice, speaking in a hushed but excited tone, fully audible to me now that I had focused my mind on it.
I felt heat rush to my face as I realized it must be a reporter for Federation News, narrating my punishment to the galaxy.
“As you can see in this very moving close-up of her bottom, Viola is beginning to lose control of her body, as generally happens during this kind of severe discipline. I imagine she’s feeling some gratitude to her master for making her relieve herself in the cell beforehand so that she won’t shame herself here on the punishment frame. ”
“Oh, no,” I whispered, feeling my head shake as if I could stop the woman from speaking or at least keep myself from hearing her. When Prince Hendren struck again, and I cried out, I did feel gratitude, strange as it seemed.
Then, as the terrible punishment reached its midpoint, something even stranger began to happen in my mind.
The physical agony remained absolute, but beneath it, I found myself sinking into a kind of psychological sanctuary that seemed to open out from that moment of gratitude.
Each stroke was shaping not just my tortured flesh, but the last remnants of my former identity.
President Herranofar was being caned out of existence, replaced by something simpler, truer.
“Twelve,” Prince Hendren announced as another devastating blow fell.
“Thank you,” I whispered, the words surprising even me. “Thank you, Master, for correcting me.”
“Extraordinary,” the reporter murmured. “Viola has just expressed her appreciation to His Royal Highness for this terrible ordeal.”
My words of gratitude seemed to echo strangely in the yard, my voice carrying a clarity that surprised me despite the raw hoarseness from screaming. I felt something shift inside me as I spoke, a strengthening recognition that this brutal correction was exactly what I had needed all along.
“She understands now,” Prince Hendren said for the cameras, his voice carrying a note of satisfaction as he positioned himself for the thirteenth stroke. “The true purpose of discipline is not punishment, but transformation.”
The cane fell again with merciless precision, but somehow the pain felt different now—still devastating, still beyond anything I could have imagined enduring, but no longer meaningless.
Each stroke was burning away the woman who had failed her people, revealing something underneath that felt more authentic than anything I had ever been.
As I screamed, to my surprise, an idea came into my mind: a way, as impossible as it seemed with my poor bottom in such fiery agony, to enjoy the scene—and to bind my master even closer to me.
“Thirteen.”
“Yes,” I gasped through my tears, my voice somehow growing stronger despite the agony. “I see it now. I was never meant to lead. I was meant to serve.”
Did I mean it? That was the idea, though: I didn’t have to mean it. Saying it, maybe especially if I didn’t mean it, opened up a new kind of possibility.
Performance.
I didn’t know if it represented a false performance or a true one, the admission of my abjectly submissive nature.
Maybe it was only an acknowledgment of a deep submission that was in the end one part among the infinite parts of me, former-president now-fuck-toy Viola Herranofar.
Whatever it meant, it sent a strange peace flowing through me even as the next stroke landed with explosive force.
My bottom felt like it was on fire, the skin surely bruised very deeply, but my mind had found a kind of transcendence in complete surrender.
I leaned into the cry that ripped itself from my chest, suddenly both letting out my body’s excruciation and performing my submission to my master.
“Fourteen.”
“I failed them because I tried to be something I wasn’t,” I continued, the words pouring out between sobs. “A strong leader. A decision maker. But I’m not strong. I need guidance. I need this.”
Prince Hendren paused in his methodical correction, and I could feel his eyes on me. “Tell the galaxy what you’ve learned, Viola. Help them understand what the Federation offers.”
I lifted my head as much as the restraints allowed, trying to project my voice clearly despite my tears.
“The Federation doesn’t conquer,” I said, my words carrying across the silent yard, somehow both meaning what I said and understanding it as a piece of propaganda that would further my new life—what I suddenly thought of, with a good deal of irony, as my new ‘career.’ “It liberates. It frees women like me from the burden of pretending to be something we’re not. ”