Chapter Two
Kenner of the Darkwings sat on the gilded chairs their host, the High General of the Skatian Empire, had offered them when they joined him in his section of the Imperial Loge, the thick canopy of white silk embroidered in silver protecting them from the harsh Wallarian sun. His First Lieutenant, Arul, chatted with the lady who was seated between them, while Kenner carefully drank his chilled wine and observed the audience attending the day’s fights.
He would’ve preferred never to have set foot on the Empire’s soil, but the more reports of Skatian ships circling the Obsidian Ridge reached his hands, the more obvious it became that the Empire seemed to have forgotten what had happened the last time they had tried to make slaves out of Kinai. Putting up with these pampered fools for a few days in order to remind them the Kinai were still just as capable of turning their forces into ash as they were close to a millennium ago was preferable to an all-out war.
There was a reason why the Kinai kept to themselves, and that reason was best kept behind the jagged teeth of the Ridge.
And so, after the Council of Elders had arranged for landing and lodgings, the Darkwing Squadron had flown to the desert shores of the Skatian Empire and Wallaria, their capital. They had made a spectacle gliding over the city, their mighty wings manipulating the air currents for maximum effect, inspiring awe in their audience, before descending on a clearing made for them at the Central Square, shapeshifting mid-landing. No sooner had the Squadron settled down in the inn they had rented than a missive from the Imperial Palace arrived – an invitation from the Emperor himself, offering them his hospitality.
Personally, Kenner would rather eat a bag of nails, but it suited their purposes to accept the invitation, so the Squadron had packed up and moved into the luxurious suite prepared for them in the guest quarters of the Palace.
The suite was a study in opulence, but without much substance to it – a fitting representation of an Empire that had once had ambitions of planetary domination, but lost everything they had gained in the first wave of sweeping success because they allowed themselves to become engulfed in petty internal squabbles and vain power games.
Valuing trade over labor, the Skaians were the first and only nation of Elamaren to institutionalize slavery, and their dreams of conquest came from the need for a larger workforce. Since it was against their law to keep Skatians as slaves, they turned to the remaining four nations of Elamaren: the sooty Garn, who excelled at physically taxing labor; the limber, downy Makish, whose skills lay in hunting and woodwork; and the decorative Firuzians, a nation of artists, scholars and masters of fine crafts.
Only the Kinai had successfully fought them off, after showing the Skatians just how ill-equipped they were for the task of conquering a nation of people capable of shapeshifting into enormous, flying, fire-breathing lizards, of course.
Yet, despite this being their only large scale failure, it took only thirty-five years for the Skatians to be forced back to their homeland. By then, they had enough slaves to begin breeding them, which was far more cost-effective, so they didn’t take their failure at imperial expansion too hard. Concentrating again on their first love, they became the epicenter of trade between members of all five nations, which was why, five years ago, when the Star Alliance came to Elamaren, they had chosen Wallaria as the location for the Crossroads Portal.
It was a planet-wide shock when the first starship landed on Elamaren, settling once and for all the age-old debate of whether or not there was sentient life on other planets. As it turned out, there were at least another thirty-four species in their galaxy alone, but only three possessed sufficiently advanced technology to achieve interstellar travel. Those three planets formed the Star Alliance and joined forces to create a space station that would allow the people from all over the galaxy to gather in one place and trade goods and knowledge.
The Crossroads Space Station both earned the Star Alliance a great deal of money and successfully maintained their monopoly on space travel. After all, who would bother wasting money, time and effort developing starships of their own if all the benefits of having a space fleet were just a fee and a push of a button away? Anyone willing to pay the passage fee was free to use the Portal, and Skatians made a great profit from the plethora of new trading possibilities that came with having a Portal on their territory.
Which, Kenner suspected, may have rekindled some of those delusions of grandeur. His intel stated that Skatians both sold and bought slaves in the Crossroads markets, and a Kinai slave would probably be a highly sought after commodity, considering their potential as living weapons. The possibility was simply too dreadful to be ignored, which was why the Darkwing Squadron had put on their show, why they had spent the past week allowing the nobles of Skatia to fight amongst themselves for the right to host a celebration in their honor every night, and why Kenner, as Commander, and Arul, as his second, had been invited this afternoon to watch the gladiator fights in the Pit of Wallaria with the Emperor and the members of his inner circle.
Catching a whiff of the conversation Arul was having with Lady Esplyn shook Kenner from his thoughts. “He must be enormous to warrant such a name.” Arul, the charmer of the Squadron, feigned enthusiasm, an effort the woman must’ve appreciated, for she flashed him a sublime smile even as her eyes remained cold.
“She is at least five times my weight.”
Arul managed to look impressed. “A ‘behemoth’ indeed!” Kenner almost scoffed. That supposedly monstrous size was average among the Kinai, but then again, compared to the Skatians, with their fine, bird-like bones and barely-there flesh, everyone was gargantuan.
“Is she Garn?” Arul asked.
“Oh, no!” Lady Esplyn replied. “She is very new – and very unique. A recent acquisition from my last visit to the Crossroads.” She sighed wistfully. “I had the mind to make her one of my pets, but she turned out to be far better suited for the Pit,” she said. “Barely into her first year, and she’s already a crowd favorite.”
Another lady – Sangra, if memory served – laughed at that statement. “Your freak is but a chance occurrence riding a stroke of luck that is bound to run out sooner or later,” she said, patronizing words at odds with the sweetness of her voice.
“Perhaps,” Arul’s companion replied nonchalantly, with a charming shrug of her left shoulder, “But it won’t happen today. She’s fighting some Firuzian who spends more time with a pleasure-collar on than in the training yards.” She turned to Arul. “Why his whore-mistress insisted on this match is beyond me,” she told him, exuding concern and confidence, both very much fake, “Gilt doesn’t last long in the Pit of Wallaria.”
From the look on Lady Sangra’s face, Kenner deduced that she must be the whore-mistress in question. However, if the lady had any witty remarks to snap back with, she had to save them for another time, for the trumpets announced the arrival of the gladiators and the beginning of the opening fight for the day.
From a door to his right, Kenner saw the Firuzian fighter. Even from his seat in the royal loge, Kenner could see the man’s exquisite features, which were undoubtedly the cause of him being so thoroughly used for sex. His taut, flawless skin was put on full display, for the man wore nothing but a small piece of gold-colored silk to cover his sizeable privates, held in place by a set of two golden strings, one across his waist and one between his buttocks. An intricately decorated sword and shield were his only equipment, and Kenner knew that, despite Lady Esplyn’s comments, the man had to be a tremendously skilled fighter to afford to exhibit such bravado.
He looked to the left to see his opponent... and his heart skipped a beat.
She was beautiful.
She was of a height with the average Kinai and probably weighed the same, but unlike Kinai women, who were built with all the rough edges their men had, the fighter’s weight was mostly distributed in lush curves that made his mouth water – a round, pronounced backside, heavy breasts barely contained by the leather of her armor and a staunch, round belly. Her frame was strong and wide, and she clearly had well-trained muscles underneath the plump padding. Her skin that carried a strong tan and scars that spoke of her profession.
She would be so soft to the touch, he thought, so smooth to sink into.
“Few favor Hele’s particular brand of exotica,” Lady Esplyn cooed to Kenner, who only then realized that his fascination had showed more than was wise. “But those who do pay well for a repeat performance. If you wish, I shall have her sent to your quarters this very eve.”
Fighting the urge to choke the bitch on the spot, Kenner turned to Lady Esplyn. “One night is not enough,” he said, surprising everyone in the Loge, even himself. The thought of this resplendent creature being anything but free made his heart ache, and he felt an inexplicably strong urge to save her from these monsters.
“Do you truly fancy the beast so fervently?” the Emperor asked, highly amused by this turn of events.
“If Lady Esplyn is looking to sell, I will meet her price,” he replied simply. Arul looked at him as if he lost his mind, but Kenner ignored him. He may not have understood why this was important to him, but he knew that it was.
The Emperor of Skatia laughed. “Then we must make certain Lady Esplyn gives you a fair price,” the Emperor replied graciously, much to the barely contained displeasure of the lady.
She had no time to protest, however, for the trumpets sounded once again, announcing the beginning of the first fight of the day.