Theo Campbell, 25-year old student and amateur hypnotist.

It wasn't the liveliest crowd, but Theo was smiling nevertheless. He liked being on stage, he liked performing as the Mesmerizing Mister Mysterious, master of minds!, and today was a good day for it. He had just finished the first outline of his master's thesis earlier that day, and he would be spending his entire weekend playing with his pretty girlfriend and her favorite spirals.

"Who dares test their will against the power of my eyes?" he asked the room, projecting his voice, making it as deep and booming as he could. 'The room', as it happens, was a student bar at 6pm, before the drinking really got started. He got a few curious glances, but at least no one was booing - rather, everyone who wasn't ignoring him were leaning back and sipping cheap beer. He recognized many of them, and a few had volunteered before, but no one was in the mood today. He'd expected as much, and played his trump card. "Well? Is no one brave enough to join me in a battle of wills?"

From the back row, a redhead put down a beer - craft beer, Theo noted - and spoke up.

"Ooooh, so scaaary," she said with a chuckle. "Sure, I'll 'test my will' or whatever."

"Well then, brave young woman, come join me here and we shall see who is the stronger!"

Theo smiled as the girl got up and walked to the stage. Anna was as beautiful as always, and played her part to the hilt. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a top with the logo of some metal band no one in the world knew about. She was maybe 5'6'", slim, and well-proportioned. She was not some voluptuous sex goddess, but she took care of herself quite well. With her c-cup boobs, a round ass, and a mischievous smile beneath freckled cheeks and a mane of red hair, she managed to shoot right past 'pretty' into 'sexy, with a side of cute.'

She was a plant, of course, as she'd been often before, when Theo suspected a slow night. He'd be paying for that craft beer once he stepped off the stage. The regulars knew, of course, but the hypnosis was real, so they didn't mind too much. Besides, on a slow day, Anna would let him hypnotize her top off.

Right now, though, she was squaring up in front of him, a playful smirk on her face.

"Let's skip the introductions. I'm Anna and let's see your mesmerizing powers or whatever." She was playing up her defiance, but he knew her well enough to see the smile on her face. It was nice to see - she'd been a little colder, lately, since his new girlfriend, but they were still friends.

"Ah, but you see, Anna, my mesmerizing powers are already working - Soon, you will no longer be able to resist at all." Theo was giving it his all, and he could see Anna smirk - she thought it was a bit much, he knew, but Theo enjoyed the larger-than-life persona of The Mesmerizing Mister Mysterious. At least _The Mesmerizing Mister Mysterious _didn't have to deal with student administration or bitter exes.

"Just stare into my eyes, Anna, and soon, my voice will fill you. Let my eyes draw in your mind - yes, i see it working. You might already be feeling it, resistance fading away, my voice and my eyes filling the void..."

It was a lousy induction, really, it'd never work on anyone else - but he'd hypnotized Anna often enough, so she fell into trance easily for him - in fact, he suspected that 'my voice will fill you' and 'stare into my eyes' had become unintentional triggers for her. He didn't really like playing up the whole contest of wills angle, with resistance fading away and all, but it made for a much better show than the more banal truth that people can mostly just choose not to be hypnotized. That said, it had caused quite a bit of embarrassment when people took it too seriously, and he was left gawking on stage, with an unhypnotized subject, sounding like a bad Doctor Strange ripoff

As he spoke, Anna was staring at him intently, her face slowly relaxing, her eyes losing focus, her body beginning to sway. He suspected she was playing it up a little, but he also saw the **** signs of trance - her eyelids fluttering, her breath slowing and her eyes dilating. Theo couldn't help but feel a thrill of power as he saw it, an erotic shock through his body. Not enough to get him hard - especially not on stage - but enough to thrill and excite.

"Yeess... your mind, it belongs to me now, Anna. Now, fall deeper, deeper into my power... with each word, let my voice sink even deeper into your mind..."

Theo droned on for a little while, letting the trance deepen while he worked up to the first tricks. Anna tended to be receptive to illusions. Turning himself, or some audience member, invisible to her tended to provoke a few laughs, and was a good warm-up act.

Before he got to it, however, he felt himself getting... woozy. At first, he thought he was simply falling into a light trance with her, a common enough occurrence, but the feeling rapidly grew more and more intense, making him dizzy. He swayed on stage, trying to clear his mind, get back out of the trance, when it became too much. He tipped forward, saw the beer-stained wood approach - and then the stage was empty.

SOMEWHERE ELSE

Theo blinked, squinting his eyes against the dawning sun. He was... on his back? outside somewhere? There was grass beneath him, tickling his arms and legs- wait, he had been wearing jeans. What on earth was going on?

Slowly, Theo got to his feet, shading his eyes against the sunlight as he got his bearings. He was in the middle of some sort of garden, dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt tailored perfectly to his body. Seven chairs had been placed in a semi-circle around him, and behind them the garden was lush and wild, full of flowers and flowering bushes. Beyond the bushes, he saw a short sandstone wall, maybe a few feet tall, and beyond it, a drop.

Moving closer to the edge, he found himself on top of some sort of giant tiered pyramid. Below him were four more tiers of lush gardens and even artificial waterfalls falling from one garden to the next. He was well over a hundred feet up, and at the base of the pyramid - no, his brain found the right word, ziggurat - was a wide, fast-flowing river, a belt of blue and green in a desert which spread forever around the strange building.

Staggering back, Theo turned to investigate the other direction. In the middle of the ziggurat was a short building, the very top of the pyramid. It was painted blue and inlaid with gold and Lapis Lazuli. A few steps led past the garden, presumably to a stair down, as well as up to a wide, dark entrance into the short building.

Before Theo could approach, however, a figure emerged from it. Even half-hidden in shadow, she was beautiful. She was tall, and almost naked, clad in only a very sheer white dress which clung close to her. Her silhouette showed long, graceful legs joining a wide hip, which swayed and rolled effortlessly. Above that was a perfectly sculpted and curvaceous abdomen and waist, which continued up to the most beautiful tits Theo had ever seen. Though they could only be vaguely seen, it was clear they were large, though not so large as to seem silly, and still perky and smooth. They seemed perfect for grabbing, for squeezing, for worshiping. For a moment, in the shadow, it looked like the woman had wings, but as she stepped into the dawn, that illusion disappeared.

Instead, Theo could see her perfect face, somehow both soft and regal, and framed by long, elegant curls. Her skin shone in the sun like burnished bronze, and would seem golden in the dawn light, if it hadn't been for the woman's headdress, which was of actual gold. It consisted of five golden bands wrapped around her head, the ends meeting and curving up in the front. In one hand, she held a long, slender staff topped with blue stone.

She gave Theo (and the audience) a moment to gawk, then smiled and got started. She held up her staff, and the tip transformed into a microphone as she started talking, seemingly into empty air.

"Welcome!" she said into her microphone, walking down the steps as she spoke. "I am your host, Ishtar, queen of heaven, goddess of sex and war. After much deliberation, I've come out of retirement just to give you all an amazing season of drama, sex, submission, and mind-breaking transformations. We're coming to you live from one of the wonders of the ancient world, a marvel dragged two and a half thousand years forward in time and modernized, just to serve as the backdrop for 6 long weeks of debauchery. Welcome, viewers, to HAREM HOTEL: HYPNO GARDENS OF BAAAAABYLOOON!"

With her spiel done, she turned towards Theo, flashing him a smile, showing off the brightest white teeth Theo had ever seen.

"And here we have our illustrious harem Master for the season, Theo Campbell. Theo here-"

"Wait, what? Harem? Master? Season? What's... what the fuck is going on?!"

Hearing his name spoken by this... this goddess, she had called herself, Theo had finally roused himself from his stupor.

Ishtar simply shot him an annoyed look and kept talking.

"As i was saying, Theo here is the Master for this season of Harem Hotel! He's an amateur hypnotist with a kinky side. He's stuck his toe in the water before, being Master to one girl at a time, but let's see if he can handle 7. But before we get to that, a word from our sponsors!" With that she turned her face to a different section of empty air and shouted "CUT! COMMERCIALS!" before returning her attention to Theo, frowning.

"Seriously? You weren't briefed? Why do I even work with amateurs."

"Briefed? what? Where am i?"

"That's the third time you've said what so far, Theo, try to keep up. You're on a multidimensional TV show called Harem Hotel. We're on the clock, so just sit down for now and I'll give you all the rundown later, more fun that way."

"what do you mean, 'you all'? what clock? ha-"

"No time, commercials over!" With that, her frown instantly cleared and her cheery smile returned. Theo, for his part, found himself pushed back and down into one of the chairs by some invisible ****.

"Welcome back everyone! As I was saying, we have quite a treat for you this season. Usually, we like to see our sexy subjects become their Master's slaves over the course of weeks as they fall to his dominant charms and our transformations -"

Oh no. Theo could already tell where this was going, and he felt a knot form in his stomach.

"But naughty Theo here has his own little TV magic. That's right folks - "

Oh no. no no no no, they couldn't, she didn't deserve that-

"He's got one prepared in advance! So let me introduce her, Theo's own, personal"

oh please no...

"nubile, young"

Theo hung his head in his hands.

"SEX SLAAAVE!"