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Chapter Text

In the Maiden, Jag Eleno slept. 

It was not a peaceful sleep. It was the only sort the traitor deserved: blinded, drooling, bound. A catheter to handle the waste. An artificial vein pumping her with fluids and drugs that softened the mind into a compliant slurry. Laodike cut smooth through vast hollows of space until we were thousands of lightyears from the rebel base. When Eleno woke, all the worlds she had known– every scrappy, unimproved colony, every wild mixed savageland– would be so far away she could never return. But she would no longer be capable of caring.

I entered the chamber daily to observe her progress. I knelt before the Highmothers in effigy and felt the buzz of the implant at my temple, the tug that comes from contact with a processing slave. I could not see Eleno; the Maiden was a closed chamber, a sarcophagus of steel and light. I could only see a mask, a carving of the calm sweet face that would soon grace the rebel scum.

Still, I heard the pulse of the mantras. I knew them well. The priestesses had taught me thoroughly. Every child under the Highmothers recited the words at sunrise in neat rows, a tuneless song. Lay down your sword, lay down your heart.

Though it had been years since I’d had the routine, I was prone to returning to them in times of distress, like running a thumb over a worry stone. No need to fear change, no need to fear death, I thought. Death is welcome. Death will grant you a thousand angels.

You are complete, whispered the Maiden. You are love.

To love is to listen.

To love is to obey.

I thought about Eleno often in the waiting weeks. Never had I anticipated such a stunning defeat of the worst thorn in my side. A battle on the streets of Severina, a trap she’d thrown herself into without hesitation. A hero, she called herself. An idiot, more like. An idiot, a womyn-hater, a traitor to her kind.

Rebel leader Jag Eleno was captured at approximately 15:40 universaltime, Hypnalis Square, Severina of the Sanguine System. 

The plan commenced without obstruction. Labryades raided the black market where Eleno and comrades hid…

“It’s them!” An elderly womyn in a gray robe, hunched over her stall, pushed away her children. “Hide.”

A troop of Labryades marched through the dark alley. Their armor gleamed white and silver, their uniform masks turned forward, rods held at the ready. At the head of the party was a singular figure in onyx armor, gun at her hip and a frown on her grizzled face.

Under guise of a routine raid, I flushed out the rebel. My information on her habits was quite vast. I had ascertained, long ago, that she could not resist the opportunity to play hero.

Escape routes were blocked. A fight would only result in carnage in such a narrow space. The only hope for survival was to play as loyal citizens, unaware of the illegality of their wares. As the leader passed, many were quick to prostrate themselves, muttering mantras like scared children.

“Pain is temporary,” said one.

“P-pain is false,” went another.

“Pain is only the shedding of your old life!”

I found a child who did not bow as quickly as the others. The leader commanded for the Labryades to seize her. No permanent damage was done; only fright. The mere threat of the rod commenced her to cry very loudly. It did not take long for Eleno to show.

A laser blast whizzed past the Labryade's gauntlet. The sudden movement halted it before it could strike the girl, and instead the slave turned its head upwards.

“Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?”

She descended from a balcony in her bulky jumpsuit. Chestnut hair cropped short, goggles consuming her small face. I could recognize her at a distance. I could recognize her by voice. I could recognize her by the air she unsettled in her walk. The rebel scum.

Eleno approached the leader, swaggering in such a way to emphasize the ray-gun holster at her hip. “Who are you, now? I’ve never seen your ugly mug around.”

The leader said nothing.

“Whatever happened to the other one?” Eleno said. “The dark one? What’s-her-face? Always scowling?”

“Slavebreaker Winter is dead.”

Though it is an act of incredible skill and concentration to bid a Labryade speak, I did so. My deception was strong enough that Eleno did not suspect the subterfuge. 

“Her body was lost in the jungles of Gilmyn,” said the leader. “May she rest with the angels.”

Eleno had the gall to look disappointed at the news of my demise. Her face fell, and it was such a disgusting lie that I nearly revealed myself in anger. “Rude of her to leave me,” she said, more quietly than before. “I’d thought we had something special, her and I.”

She bargained for the life of the child. My puppet explained that the girl would come to no harm, of course, and at worst would be separated from her birthclass for a brief reconditioning— a great opportunity for such a backwater territory. 

Eleno grew angry. She tried to argue the same backwards ideology her kind always espouses. 

I had already anticipated her next move.

“Her life for mine.” Eleno smirked. “Wouldn’t that be great for a first mission? Bring in the face of the rebellion in chains.”

“There would be no chains.”

“How about it?” Eleno spread her arms. “Take me.”

A deal was made. 

But traitors are never to be trusted.

The moment the child was released from the Labryades’ grasp, Eleno moved. As quick as the flutter of an insect’s wing, Eleno unleashed her ray-gun. There was hardly any time to think or aim— but Eleno was so renowned for a reason. She melted the leader’s face off with a single laser through the helmet’s slit.

“Jag!” someone cried in sudden fear.

Down went the leader in a sizzle of dissolving flesh. It fell back and collapsed on the street in a limp, bloody heap. 

Eleno straightened up, returning her weapon to its holster. "Someone — bury this thing."

The people scurried to obey. 

Eleno commanded a presence that had the simplest of womyn falling into line. She was beloved by the criminal, the pathetic, the weakest ones. She styled herself as a liberator, as someone who freed helpless victims from the yoke of the Highmothers. As if her kind were not the ones causing the trouble in the first place.

Everyone in that alley was now joined in the same secret, stripping this body of its armor, burying it anonymously, and saying that they had seen nothing, knew nothing when the second round came. 

They paid the others no mind. A Labryade without a handler will simply remain static until reassigned. Eleno had released these people and allowed them to live to another day— the black market could be relocated, and no one was to be processed that day. They would continue, unmarred, in their wicked ways.

So, I launched the gas pod.

Violet smoke burst through the narrow alley. It was fast-moving and acting, and there had been no warning. Womyn collapsed like rocks at the start of an avalanche— one by one, at first.

Beneath their helms, all my Labryades wore breathing apparatuses that rendered them immune to the effects. Myself included. 

My slaves kicked the startled Eleno to the ground. Her bag fell in the scuffle and its contents scattered across the dirty stone. Little unlabeled glass bottles— as if the contents were not clear. Confidently I approached her, my every footfall deliberate. Eleno tried to cover her mouth, but what good would it do? I had her, at last.

I removed my Labryade helmet, and my raven hair flowed over my pauldrons. My breath was a sharp hiss through the apparatus, but my eyes were uncovered and filled with hatred. 

Eleno’s final words were slurred. “I… you…”

“You failed,” I said.

Her mouth bobbed, but nothing came.

“I did not die, despite your best efforts. You will come with me, and you will be made useful,” I said. “There is no use in fighting.”

She made a desperate burst forward, but her drowsy spirit could not hold the body. Her weakly grasping hand made for the bottle, the essence of Man. I scoffed at her. Beneath my heel, the glass shattered. 

“There is no need to fear change,” I reminded her.

Her expression was incomprehensible. All the posturing, all the lies melted away. I expected anger. I expected her to fight, or to succumb, at last, to reason. But all I saw was bone-deep sadness. “Guess that’s it...”

“Death is welcome, rebel scum,” I said.

“Guess I’ll be…”

“Mine.” I smiled. “You’re mine now, you foolish little girl.”

“I’ll just be…” Eleno’s fierce eyes grew dim. She laid her head down. Her freckled nose in the dirt. Her mouth lolling open. “You…”

An order given. A small ship landed, and from it flowed a battalion to round up the sleeping masses. The process was blisteringly efficient. Eventually, they would be processed as material, and particularly prominent or stubborn rebels might be sent along to the Maiden. I did not waste much thought on them. The remains of the market were lit on fire, so that it may never rise again.

I took Eleno into my arms. She slumped, like a child who had fallen asleep on my shoulder. My slaves stepped around me in orderly rows among the fire and the smoke, and I passed through them like a hand through water. I brought Eleno onto Laodike.

She was prepared by me, personally. Stripped bare. I checked every crevice to ensure that she could find no tool to slip or snap and scurry away again. I inserted my hand into her mouth, and did not remove the gauntlet. She was so deeply under that even the prick of metal, blood blooming inside her cheek, did not wake her.

"I'm sure you would rather death," I mused, "since you so insist on male treatment."

I’d practiced the speech a hundred times in my dreams, smoothed all the little quirks of emotion until it was nothing but the most bitter, most truthful twist of the knife.

I said, "What a shame. If that is truly what you wanted, you should have never been born." I tilted my head. "But, you are here. And you are a womyn, despite what you may insist. As such, you will join our ranks."

Calibrating the Maiden is a deliberate, finicky task. I was one of the chosen few trained to use it. When placed inside the vessel, the hook between the mind and body is softened; an implant installed, her mind rewired to flow with mine. It is a powerful thing that must only be used for proper improvement. To those who will not see the light, we must force open their eyes.

Eleno did not awaken. I almost wished she had. I wanted to see her wrench to startled life. I wanted to see her lash against her bonds in a gas-addled panic. I wanted to see that disgusting body of hers, sun-worn and hairy… I wanted to see it softened to something beautiful and feminine. I wanted to see it writhe.

But she did not rise. Her old self was peeled away, and her new being inserted swiftly and efficiently. A sweet irony: she was not a difficult subject. The most stubborn rebel scum the Highmothers had ever known, a delusional little girl insisting to be a part of a race long dead — and it was I who conquered her. Where countless others fell to Eleno's trickery, I remained steadfast. I had found Jag Eleno, the womyn-hater, the menace — and now she was nothing but a vessel for my will.

There was a reason, after all, they called me Slavebreaker.

Chapter Text

I must have you understand: it was not easy for me.

I was born on Juno, at the very heart of the Highmothers' domain. It was unremarkable — but only because every land touched by the Highmothers was equally as beautiful. It was an island, with white sands and an ocean the color of aquamarine. The waters were so fruitful we had no need to hunt or to farm. The priestesses caught fish in great nets woven of pale, strong rope and collected fruits and berries straight off the vines. The priestesses reared us all in communal, feminine harmony.

Despite this, I was not well-liked. The other girls were so very insipid, uninterested in the world beyond their white walls. The priestesses thought me standoffish. My fondest memories were not when I was surrounded by my sisters, but on the nights when I snuck out of the temple alone and gazed out upon the shore. I would stare at the wide moon reflected off the dark waters, and I would think of the world off-planet, where ships spurred endlessly on spreading our prosperity. I knew, for as far back as my memory stretches, that I was meant for greatness.

Few believed me, but it did not matter. I learned how to get along. With no sentiments to tie me down, it was easy to curry favor with the priestesses and form friendships in a strategic manner. When the time came, and starsailors came to pick the cream of the crop to join them, I was one of only two of my colony chosen for the prestige. Myself and Gisal.

My first job was at an outpost processing material. It was an exercise in boredom. Day in and day out I monitored the assembly line, searching for mistakes that I would then report to my superiors. But I was at the end of the line — there were never any mistakes. Only an endless parade of empty flesh. 

By the time the material had reached my section, all fight had left. Bound stock straight to the metal arms, their heads drooping with the weight of the machinery at their temples, the material only had to glide smoothly towards the light, where their assignments would come.

Fresh workers often turned ill, seeing what were once womyn reduced to such a state. I had no such weaknesses. There was not a doubt in my mind that these individuals — indoctrinated from birth with poisonous thoughts that would not prosper — could not have been rehabilitated. I was only glad that they did not have to be discarded, that they could still be of use. My aptitude was noted, and swiftly I was reassigned to the rod.

It was a wicked weapon — a long spiral of steel ending at a rounded tip. It did not gore, it did not cut. It was imbued with an electric power that would shock with intense pain, but would leave no mark or infection. I was now one of many that waited as the material was first led from their transport into the queue.

They shivered freshly-stripped in that dark place. They saw me and they would scream and cry and try to speak to me, to beg me to let them free. When they held up the line, I would strike.

My lack of mercy became my primary trait amongst my peers. I must confess that it brought me great joy. The only joy I ever felt. It was well known, whispered in the bunks at night when they thought I could not hear. Attendant Winter, they would say, has the makings of a Slavebreaker.

Slavebreakers had their own ships. They had their own Labryades, programmed to obey. They had concubines and sessions with the High Priestesses where they received orders straight from the Highmothers' mouths. They were the most revered of the military ranks. It was not a want, and even calling my ambition a need tells it too lightly. To become a Slavebreaker was a destiny, my only destiny. I would crawl up the ranks to that ever-swinging light. I would become a Slavebreaker, and I would prove myself worthy.

The worst job was at the nursery.

Should a colony be liberated, there would always be a certain proportion of children sufficiently young to not have been too sullied by incorrect ideology. It would be a waste to process them, but neither could they be allowed to continue on with their unsalvageable people.

The nursery was a highly controlled environment, designed at every level to ensure the babes associated our society with prosperity. Heavy emphasis was placed on the children's happiness. There were playrooms at every corner, sweets given for good behavior, and much praise and smiles all around. At the nursery, I was forced to act like a smiling buffoon, bouncing from one foot to the next to please some disgusting colony child who, had they been born a few years earlier, would have certainly felt the sting of my rod.

All my thoughts were on the future of these young things. Whenever I held a baby, I thought, What if this one grows up to be a Slavebreaker instead of me?

But I continued on. I continued because I believed — truly, wholly — in the Highmothers' teachings. Even in the darkness of the processing plant… when I gazed out at the waiting rows of naked womyn, their heads bowed, their minds rid of all thought and memory of the awful worlds they left behind… I saw my beautiful ocean and silver moon. I saw my home with its white temples and its beautiful girls, all the love and cooperation a society could hold. It was a perfect world we made.

"There are many who do not understand." A priestess spoke to me as slaves strapped on my pauldrons. "They are wrong — but they are as powerful in their wrongness as you are in the truth." She brushed back a lock of my hair. "It may frighten you. Never give up hope."

My head still ached at the temple; the skin around my implant had not yet healed, and the sight of it was ugly. A steel diamond, bisected down the middle, ringed with scabbed skin. The effects, too, were disorienting. I was compelled to push through my discomfort, however; my training had been deemed sufficient, and I was to be sent on my first mission.

I was the one directing the slaves as they laid on my raiment. My mind, schooled to serenity by thousands of meditative hours, could form orders, crystalline in my internal vision. I would let the command hang in its slow sloughing form before pushing it out — or something akin to that. A push is too small, too human to describe what I could do now. I pushed in the same way the seawater pushes at the sand. Through the Maiden-fed connection my Labryades would respond.

The sight of them was ever satisfying. How with only my thoughts, a single twitch of the eyelid, they would obey. Learning to use them was like learning to use another limb. And I relished the challenge.

They lowered the helm onto my shoulders, and with it erased the final flicker of my recognizable self. In the smooth waters of the temple I was reflected — a figure in jet armor, ray-gun strapped to my hip. I was only the leader of the Labryades, a beloved and useful hand of the Highmothers. I’d seen such a figure cutting through parades all my life, awe stirring in my chest. This one moved when I moved, spoke when I spoke– but not yet did it occur that it was me.

I did not dwell on the feeling. Soon, I was a guard on a ship, the illustrious Unicorn . It was a transport vessel heading for the Highmothers' temple — a daunting mission for even an experienced Slavebreaker, let alone her first.

The ship was laden with riches. Rare birds squawked beneath the silk that covered their glittering cages. Beautiful flowers sat suspended in glass cubes, to be re-planted in the finest garden in the Empire. Among these, unassuming amongst all the splendor, sat several hundred pounds of kimia — that which fueled the Highmothers in their glass vessels of repose.

All went well, to start. From the control panel, I merely observed the ship. My slaves patrolled the halls and, though the phantom sensation of their feet against metal floors made my teeth ache, I remained alert and professional.

"Entering Sector Flegmat," said the pilot beside me. "Ship will be landing in approximately twelve —"

Then, all the lights in the cargo hold went up red.

"Stowaways!" the pilot gasped.

Two small, black scurrying figures in the viewfinder. One of them passed very close to the lens. A womyn, black mask over her mouth, a lone curl loose from her hood. She passed before I could blink— the other had yanked her away.

The other…

"What…" I asked, "is that?"

I had only seen such a thing in books. Old photographic reproductions or, more often, illustrations in children's fairy stories. Those that menanced the young womyn with their overlarge stature, their bulging muscles and leering tongues (before the clever young girls inevitably defeated them).

The pilot stammered, “She’s – er… uh…”

Our species was once dimorphic, went a favorite audiolog of mine. An atavistic imperative encouraged reproduction, and therefore integration, between two sexes.

"And one of them yet lives?" I said.

The pilot swallowed sickly. "We must be mistaken..."

Click. "Catch them."

I watched the proceedings in all of its multi-minded beauty: my slaves tracking down the infiltrators upon the illustrious ship. Were they trying to reach the Highmothers' temple? To what end? Refugees seeking liberation? They were not worthy, no matter the intention. I would catch them, and I would offer them passage in exchange for their minds.

Well — the womyn, I would.

Hosts of Labryades encroached upon the hold. Every exit in the ship was locked in swift, brutal fashion. Armored heels clattered throughout the metal halls.

The intruders panicked, and they moved to destroy the viewfinders. From this, I got a good look at the strange one. I did not then realize the significance of the moment: the two black eyes staring dead fast into the lens before shooting it with a ray-gun in a blaze of light. I did not know, then, that this was the first time I gazed upon my worst enemy.

"What do we do, Slavebreaker?" The pilot turned to me — in times of distress, I had superiority.

"How long can one survive on the rations in the cargo hold?"

"Not long, Slavebreaker. There are no food stores — only salt, the parrots for the menagerie, and the kimia."

The kimia — invaluable to the Highmothers' survival.

"Then, they will not last long," I said. "We will make it clear that we mean them no harm, and if they do not believe us — well, they will only last a short time without water."

Even if they slaughtered the birds in their cages and drank the blood from their necks, they would still have to leave. And when they left, I would find them, and ultimately rake in the rewards for a job well done.

"We must get in a report to the High Priestesses."

"Not yet," I said. "Not until I have them."

"And the…" The pilot paused. "The…?"

I did not get a chance to decide what to do with that one. The alarms went up again — there was a hole in the ship's hull.

I ran with anger and panic to the controls. "What do you mean?"

“The stowaways — they must've had some sort of laser on them. They've cut straight through, and — oh, Highmothers forgive me —"

"What? What?"

"A second ship… There was another ship that took them."

We realized it at the same time: "These were not refugees from some ravaged wasteland," I said. "This was planned from the beginning. We’re dealing with…"

It was a flurry of panicked activity, to keep Unicorn from going down. This in and of itself was an impressive feat — I had the Labryades seal shut the hole, while the pilot deliberately unbalanced the ship to keep it flying upright. In this whirlwind, it was discovered that a portion of the kimia had gone missing.

The phallic half, aware of their innate inadequacy, instead used their brute power to build systems to ensure perpetual coddling. Once the mechanisms were in place, the machine became self-perpetuating. Womyn were denied their actualization, men were praised for their faults, and for untold centuries, none knew that theirs was a backwards, twisted mockery of Nature.

None but the four Highmothers.

“We are not weak, we are not unintelligent,” said Highmother East.

“Indeed,” said Highmother West, “we are stronger and wiser than the men.”

Highmother North said, “Men have destroyed the world they made.”

“They will destroy us all,” said South, “if we do not eradicate them first.”

The genetic signatures — what little was left in the remains of the hold — brought me to a seedy bar on a mining colony.

The air was thick with soot and dust as I stepped inside, surrounded by my retinue of Labryades. 

"All will remain where they are," I proclaimed. “I am Slavebreaker, hand of the Highmothers. This location has been found to be harboring rebels and thieves. We will not leave until those who have robbed Unicorn are brought to justice, and the stolen goods returned. All must obey."

The bar stood in distrustful silence. Dirty faces of mining womyn glowered at me as I stepped deliberately forward, the boards creaking beneath my boots. My voice was clear and strong. My hand was upon the rod. The noncompliance mattered little — the thief was there, already, and he was staring straight at me.

"You —" I pointed. “You will be inspected."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because I have willed it." I stepped towards the center of the bar where he stood, elbows propped up against the counter.

"Now, that's not fair at all!" he said. "Aren't we all citizens of the same empire? It's not fair that you get to mosey on up into this bar, and single me out like this." He smiled then — and his dark eyes glittered. "Why is it your will I should obey? I don't know anything about you, beneath that helmet. For all I know, you could be a man under there."

"Watch your tongue, scum, lest I rip it out." I raised my hand, and gave an order to my slaves. "Round them all up."

If he was so concerned about my being unfair, so be it. They would all be punished for what they allowed to exist. I looked him dead in the eye. "Better now?"

“They are warlike. They are facile and ruthless.”

“They crave nothing but to penetrate with their destructive organ.”

“And yet, even once they rule the world, they are not content.”

“I pity them. They are like dogs. But even dogs are capable of love.”

“Dogs do not know they are dogs, and good for them. A man knows he is a dog, and resents it.”

"You — you monster! Get your hands off of me!"

The Labryades were grappling with a mousy, curly-haired womyn. She whimpered as the grip tightened. "You — you can't!"

The thief looked at her warily. "Kasra…"

"He hasn't done anything wrong! None of us have. You can't just arrest us just because you feel like it!"

"I can do whatever I want," I said, still looking at the thief. "And what I want is to find that kimia."

The thief raised his chin to meet my eyes. "Go on.”

I reached out with the sharp talons of my gauntlet and plucked at the buttons down the front of his shirt. He was wearing something beneath it, some sort of tightly bound bandage. I sliced through it with my gauntlet like a knife, and he made no reaction outside of an unconscious shiver.

I said, "What are you, hm?"

He only grinned at me.

“We, those that are so capable of love, understand best.”

“They resent living, poor things.”

“And so we shall relieve them of the burden.”

“We shall make it painless.”

“It will be painless, to those who do not resist.”

“And what of the foolish womyn who remain? Those that worship the phallus?”

“If they must worship and grovel, so be it. They will worship and grovel at the cunt, and they will love it.”

“It will be a better existence.”

“We must understand that, in the end, it is a moral good,” said Highmother South. “The male has outlived his usefulness, and grown sour in his pathetic, frictionless state. He will be worse off if we let him live; we must show our great kindness, and cull the male species before it culls itself.”

It was not, in the end, a stunning first mission. I was praised for my dedication in tracking down the stowaways after their unforeseen escape, but the cost of processing every womyn in the bar was not well justified (they said). 

What was worse was how I had let the rebels escape. How I had let them take advantage of my shock and horror so that the mousy womyn could attack me in the midst of my inspection. How I let them skitter away into the night, and thus starting the cat and mouse chase that would define me for years afterwards.

But there was no staunching the horror. I pressed my hand between his legs, and instead of the violent weapon I had seen in diagrams, I felt…

Sometimes, on the darkest of nights, the priestesses would share a story with the children. Around the fire we would huddle, shaking with fear and cold from the shadows all around. Even the priestesses, usually so collected, would tremble to speak the prophecy. It had been passed from foresister to foresister— a terrible future to come if we were uncautious. If we let one slip through the cracks.

"He-she will come draped in the guise of womyn," said the priestesses. "He-she will behave like womyn, will speak like womyn, will look like womyn. He-she will be as one of us, and rise through our ranks through deception and falsehood. But he-she will not be one of us. He-she will not be of our beloved Highmothers, but of…"

The sight was burned into my memory: the priestess standing above the fire, her eyes wide and glistening towards the stars as her breath hitched. "Man."

This being of man would ruin our kingdom. This creature would wear a beautiful face, a sweet, sensual smile, a finely sculpted body — and all in the service of destroying what the Highmothers had built.

A terrible story — but only a story.

Men were not even born, not anymore. In the old days, it was a brutal affair. Infants tossed off cliffs and the like. But long had the technology advanced. Broodmothers scanned at every stage of sacred birth. A simple injection to terminate those who would destroy us. A terrible, terrible story.

Chapter Text

There are those who might complain about the Laodike. She was not the fastest of space-bearing vessels — she was quite old, in fact. Once a pleasure cruiser for some of the most renowned womyn of her age, she was now mine. And I was not one to complain. I loved Laodike. When I walked through her cavernous halls, I felt myself the surveyor of my own kingdom.

She was large, yes — too large for my modest retinue — and her lights were dim, and she often creaked and moaned. But she was mine, my reward, my personal property. She was the place I trained my slaves, the place the Maiden was kept. I loved her.

“Slavebreaker Aceline is dead.”

“So I heard.” I lay in my cot, trimming my nails. "And what does that have to do with me, Slavebreaker Gisal?"

Gisal smiled, her mouth especially red in the wavering hologram. At this hour, she was prepared for rest: a silk robe draped across her soft skin, lounged in bed with a concubine silently attending to her. "Did you hear how she died?"

"It was not in the report, no." My bedding was trim and sparse, my nightclothes a simple white gown. I had no interest in speaking to Gisal, but it was bad form to refuse a call from a sister, especially one of such similar rank as myself. But if Gisal was only interested in idle gossip, perhaps I ought to make an excuse…

"It wouldn't have been. I heard…" Ah, she was leaning in.“...it was one of her slaves.”

I must've made some sort of reaction, despite my best efforts — a roll of the eyes, perhaps — because Gisal hid a giggle behind her hand. "Oh, yes! She did not let this one cook for long enough. So impatient was she, Aceline released it from the Maiden before the process had fully set. Everything was fine until one day she turned her back, it grabbed her ray-gun and—" She mimed shooting her head.

"What a ridiculous rumor," I said. "If you release a slave prematurely, it would simply be brain-dead. Not a lunatic."

"It was entirely conscious, old programming and all." Gisal was smug. "Only pretending. Biding its time," she said. "How do you know what a poorly programmed slave will do? No one has been so stupid. Before Slavebreaker Aceline, that is– may she rest with the angels.”

"May she rest with the angels," I said, by a murmuring habit. Then, "I do not feel so bad. She only deserves such a fate for doing her duty so poorly."

"Slavebreaker Winter, are you truly so cold as your name suggests?" She mocked me. She always mocked me.

"We are given only the most sacred duty to pass along the Highmothers' wisdom," said I, "and she treated it carelessly."

Gisal mocked me again, echoing an old rhyme, though I hardly heard it. She changed her tune, speaking of silly things. She was having an elaborate gown designed for the upcoming eclipse ball on Juno. She wanted to show her devotion to her home planet, she said.

I nodded along. Gisal was concerned with image, with silly frivolities and the sensual fruits of power. I was distracted. I felt it, the crook between my brain and my skull. The Maiden was calling me to release my lamb.

I stood in the chamber in my ceremonial armor. At last, the moment I had been dreaming of was upon me. My heart raced and my thoughts were frantic, despite all my training. When the Maiden split open and I first glimpsed my new slave and all her — well, not glory — I nearly laughed.

Blindfolded. Her own drool glimmered down her chin and onto her naked chest. Her muscled arms bound to her sides. Her legs split so that the Maidenshand could penetrate— withdrawing now, her state of blissful transformation over forever.

It was said that, to a slave, pleasure becomes internalized. It is constant. The joy of service to the Highmothers so powerful that it supersedes all thoughts but that which their Slavebreaker commands. 

I could never know for certain.

What I knew was only what I could see: that the rebel scum was freed from her bondage yet remained blank and still. That she was naked before me. That her breasts, which she once tried so hard to hide in her self-hating shame, now rose and fell with her shallow breaths, nipples still hard from her processing. 

To love is to listen...To love is to obey...

With heavy clunks, the final bindings receded. The mantra slowed to a halt, and all that was left in the chamber was piercing silence. The four gazes of the Highmothers regarded us from above. My temple pulsed with concentric rings, bearing out in the psychic space, calling to its new charge.

Eleno moved. Her skin tanned from the light of savage suns. Scarred from countless battles. I saw now the ravages of her mutilation. She told me of it once, mockingly. How she pierced herself with the essence of Man and how it altered her forever. There was dark hair across her chest and stomach, down the inside of her thighs, like waves across her freckled arms.

I raised my hand. "There is no reason to fear. You are under the Highmothers' wings. Your mind has been broken, but your life has just begun. I am your handler, your Slavebreaker. You exist only in my stead.

"All that I am," I said, "you are."

She knelt before me, and I knew utter bliss.

With considerable restraint, I brought the slave to my chambers. I wanted to explore the depth of Eleno's utter ruin without delay. I had waited for far too long already. My mind danced with visions of forcing her to the cold chamber floor, molesting her under the watchful eyes of the Highmothers. But such a thing was not proper. There was nothing special about this slave — not anymore.

I was not like Gisal. I had, in all my years as Slavebreaker, never taken a concubine. They had been offered to me, yes. I had even indulged a sister's possession once or twice, for purely political motives. There was nothing about the class of concubine, with their forever-shaved skin and liquid doe eyes, that appealed to me. Why would I waste my gifts commanding a vacuous piece of meat?

It set me apart even from my fellow Slavebreakers. They spread rumors about me. They called me frigid, a liar. The phrase, spoken with tongues dripping with malice. "Slavebreaker Winter saves herself for the angels."

It was then that I realized I had little clue how to conduct myself in these matters.

I sat upon my cot in my ceremonial armor, and she stood as she ought: straight-backed and blank-eyed, awaiting my commands. Laodike groaned as she flew, and the sound of it bent the silence. I took a moment to drink in the sight of Jag Eleno, enslaved. I saw that cunt of hers with my own two eyes. I could still recall the feel of it against my palm.

"Do you remember," I said, "when you left me to die in that jungle?"

I let her silence hang for a luxurious amount of time — a little humor, for myself and myself alone.

"No. Of course not." I straightened up. I visualized it, stronger than I'd commanded any Labryade before her. She came at once to undress me: her hands under the crook of my elbow to undo the latches of my armor.

It was on the planet of Gilmyn — a lush environment with abundant natural resources, but too harsh for womyn to prosper. Across its surface there existed only remotely piloted equipment for siphoning and drilling, sowing and reaping. The only life that touched the place was the occasional party of researchers, carefully documenting the potential uses of the indigenous flora and fauna. Until the rebels made their base on the surface.

I was sent to cull them, and of course Jag Eleno was there.

"I confronted you, and you fled up that cliff." I crept up behind my slave, shed of armor in only my loose magenta tunic. I laced a hand across her jaw. "We battled. Oh, what a battle it was! And when I lay there, seemingly defeated…"

At the moment of her greatest triumph, Eleno had simply stopped. She stood above me, one hand on her ray-gun… and the other reaching out. "Come on," she said. "Enough of this."

"You sounded so very exasperated…" I toyed with her nipple. "So unhappy that I would not accept your pathetic rebel ideology."

Well, it wasn't quite like that. More like —

"Just come with me," Eleno said. "This isn't a trick. If you come with me, you’ll be better off. I'll make sure of it. I promise. 

"I have an escape pod. If you leave now, you'll be pronounced dead — leave a little blood, if we want to make it convincing— and we'll have plenty of time for you to adjust. I swear no harm will come to you. If anyone gives you a hard time, I'll kill them." She shook her head. "I know how you feel… I think, if I hadn't figured it out, I would have been just like you. Just a… ball of hatred. You construct the facade so well it becomes  you.

"But I did change. Don't you see? It's all made up. You don't need to be what they tell you to be. You don't need to be… this."

She gestured to me, lying bleeding at the edge of that sheer drop. I was shaking. "Fuck you."

Eleno stood her ground. "Don't have a compelling argument, huh?"

"Do not pretend that you know the interior of my soul," said I. "You and I have nothing in common. I am the finest of my stock, and you are a traitor. You failed to be a womyn, and so you mutilated yourself. You make us all suffer for your own incompetence — you destroy the world rather than change for the better. It's pathetic."

"If my very existence ruins your world," Eleno said, "then good riddance!"

As I mused my reminiscences, my slave stood in perfect stillness. I draped kisses across her nape. I thought about the future. Later… later, I would have her shaved.  Let the other Labryades do it: pin her down and raze away every bit of it until she could not hide her womyness if she tried. A little farce with all my puppets, indoctrinating their new sister.

I murmured in her ear. "You pushed me off that cliff, Eleno. You left me to die. Is that what a man would have done?"

Wounded in the depths of untamed jungle. I laid there, certain of the end. My arm was twisted and broken beneath me. Still, I scrambled for my dagger. Like all true womyn, I did not fear the end. Death would only grant me my just reward. I had served the Highmothers to the end — and I would've served more if it wasn't for that damned Jag Eleno.

"But I did not die." Through the fabric of my tunic it pulsed, a heartbeat in tune with mine. "I simply made a friend."

It had come from out of the brush — a slimy touch against my legs, an inducement that was at once pain and deep exhilarant joy. Delirious pleasure tingled my every limb, drowning out the pain. I could not slash it away. I could not kick, and my screams would find no ears. I was deep in the shadows, and even a miraculous ship passing could not spot me. 

So, I stayed. And I let the alien's induced arousal wash over me until my nausea faded. My wounds began to knit together. Jade slime crawled its way between my legs. I gasped, and the breath renewed us.

“How well, I wonder,” said I, “can you take its length?”

Eleno gave no reply– for she had no thoughts, no words. Only utter blank submission to my will. I slid the turgid parasite into her waiting cunt.

The thing bulged against her walls. Its innards which now laced my labia pulsed in pleasure and excitement. The parasite resembled a phallus in shape and size — but it was an ocean green, its texture slick and shining.

When I first realized the form my savior took, I had been mortified. I waved away my inexplicable survival to my peers with a somehow less far-fetched tale. I hid the injuries that I still sustained to ensure that no one but my own Labryades could undress me. And once returned to Laodike, I experimented.

Of course I first tried to cut it off. I grit my teeth against the pain and made a mess of the bath to no avail. It had conformed to me. Its tendrils crawled up my vaginal cavity and connected to my veins. I could feel what it felt. Like some sort of spoiled pet, it enjoyed the stroke of my hand against it.

There were many things I could have tried: fire, acid. Surgery performed by my Labryades in secret. I could have gone to the High Priestesses, if my shame would have allowed it. But the thought was mortifying. What would they do if I came, begging for them to cut it off? What would they think of me for hiding in the first place? I had allowed a creature that mirrors our greatest enemy into our sacred cavern.

I could not. And in the end I grew used to it. I was no broodmother – I had no use for my womb. Why not have this parasite fill the barren space? It had saved my life. In return, it was not much to allow it to feed off me and enjoy my caresses. 

This, however, was the first time I had used it on a Labryade — the only slave that deserved such treatment.

And she was enjoying it, the whore. I raped her with glee, with rough hands digging against her chest, pumping in and out of her hairy cunt. Her slick was mingling with the parasite’s down the inside of her thighs.

"This is how it feels…" I said, between thrusts, "to be one of us. How could you deny yourself such pleasure?"

A hand between her legs. Her clit was unnaturally large and stiff. How it must've felt with the Maidenshand pleasuring her —a machine designed to coax a normal womyn’s clit to pure, stinging pleasure! Her self-mutilation had made her all the more susceptible to our teachings.

How long did she last? Oh, when did she first fall? Could I have felt it, had I concentrated on my implant? The stubborn, misguided mind suddenly spiraling into endless darkness. Would I have felt my stomach drop? The pleasure of obedient orgasm?

My breath hitched. Eleno clenched around me. I wrenched my thoughts where I wanted: Eleno opening up as the alien’s black seed flooded her. Eleno letting her worst enemy breed her not with sophisticated instruments, but bluntly and fleshily. Like a dog. Eleno, overturned, her hair falling into her eyes, her breasts round and hanging beneath her malformed torso. I willed it. And so it was.

White and warm was my vision. It was as things often are in dreams — so very obvious to me. I was surrounded by the most beautiful womyn ever birthed. In a void of cloud they stood watching me, every crook of flesh perfectly shaped for pleasure on the eyes. I knew at once. At last, I had died and been granted a thousand angels.

I opened my arms. My hair, thick and heavy, always envied by my sisters, silked down my naked body. The first angel came to me. Her skin was like down, her hair ringlets of gold wire. I grasped her against me and she, with an eternal smile, rubbed her pussy against mine.

The afterlife in the Highmothers' domain was simple. I would make love to each one of these angels, and with each act another layer of sin would be stripped from my earthly skin. By the end, I would be nothing but light and devotion — and I would become as these angels, and continue to guide others to the same state of ultimate, feminine perfection.

The process had begun, and I could not help but weep. On and on they touched me, and I them, in every way our feminine bodies were meant to touch. Each and every one was so beautiful they stole the breath from my throat — until the need for air removed itself. I suppose that was a sin, too.

Before long, I did not even open my eyes to glimpse my next partner. I could not fathom them. They burned my eyes. My hips bucked against their forms — their bones hollow like birds, their throats too thin to form words. Who would need to speak in a perfect world? We would all know one another as intimately as I knew my slaves.

Yet I wished I had them, the words. The angels did not seem to understand… what I wanted… how I withdrew when their delicate fingers reached between my legs. Love had stripped that part of me bare, had reduced it to a rosy pink slit from which all our futures came. The angels wished to lick me there with playful, happy strokes. I was still weeping.

Every angel I fucked became worse. Their skin was like brimstone. Their caresses the cut of a knife. The smell fetid, the taste sour. It was not them that was so terrible. It was something inside of me, a sin baked too deep to reach. 

The bizarre logic of the moment was bidding me to search for someone. It was someone that, in the moment, was so obvious I did not need a name to pass my mind. Despite the pain, I forced my eyes open to search the faces that surrounded me. It was a face I would know, without question or compromise.

But I woke, and the knowledge went with me. The only thing I knew was my slave lapping at the base of the parasite.

My sore body sank into the covers, and I sighed with relief that the nightmare had passed. I stroked her hair with a rough touch. The room was thick with my musk. Through the dream, with Eleno so close, my arousal must have bled to the implant.

"Stop," I commanded.

But my mind was too scattered to muster the energy. She went on rotely up the length of the parasite.

"You're better than the angels, with that tongue of yours…" I stared up at the ceiling.

For a long time I laid in bed, my eyes still stinging with phantom tears. Eleno's wet sucking was the only thing to be heard. Her head dipped, and the parasite's tip bloomed… a slit peeled apart, and black cum dribbled from the tip. Eleno's teeth blackened with the stuff.

I sighed into the empty night. "I'll need to prepare for the ball…"

Chapter Text

There is an old law that states that only three slaves may be brought to any gathering by their Slavebreaker. It was necessary — some old priestesses would laugh and share tales of the last solar eclipse on Juno, where there were so many concubines and Labryades that no one could find their equal amongst the crowd. 

The courtyard was white beneath the sun. Magenta banners stretched between the temples, and there were many tables laden with fruit and meat and cakes as tall as I. There was a large statue in the center, a fair maiden with a unicorn at her knee. Eleno stood behind me, indistinguishable in her Labryade armor.

What need did I have to show off to my fellow Slavebreakers? I had accomplished my highest goal. There was nothing that could be sweeter than carting around her soulless body, forcing her to endure the noxious party same as I was forced to.

Slaves in white masks and flowing robes, split down the sides, carried trays across the courtyard. Their backs were ramrod straight, their minds clear and fresh as mountain streams. I took a selection of spirit from one of their trays as Gisal approached me. She gave me a kiss on the cheek, which I was obligated to return.

“Oh, sister!” She did not usually speak to me so informally– our sharing a home planet was hardly important in most matters. “So lovely to see your stern face under the sun yet again. Your armor…”

“Yes, Slavebreaker Gisal?”

“I seem to recall you wore that same set to the execution on Basilisk. Or am I mistaken?”

“Yes, you are correct.”

Gisal paused a moment. She glanced down at the near-naked concubine who hung from her arm. She had two more waiting at her beck and call. “Well, it does suit you.”

“As does yours, Slavebreaker Gisal.” She wore a cone hat with a trail so tall it brushed the cobblestones.

"Sister, when the moon encroaches upon the sun, and all the light dims," said Gisal, "you must dance with me!"

"Why?"

“I am simply so frightened of the dark! I should need your strong, encroaching arms.” She made a motion, a mocking pantomime, grasping her arms around herself.

“You are very funny, Slavebreaker Gisal,” said I, “but I do not dance.”

“I suppose not.” Gisal pouted. “Dancing does not improve your station.”

My sudden flare of anger caused Eleno to jolt behind me.

Gisal looked upon her for the first time. “Sister, you must watch yourself. The priestesses have warned that, after Slavebreaker Aceline–”

“Do not insult me. My control is quite thorough.” Beneath my armor, my friend twitched at the words. Yes, thorough.

A fantasy flitted through my mind: unmasking Jag Eleno for all to see. I would force her to stand naked beneath the statue and compel her to speak — speak of how she was always and forever a womyn, a mistaken womyn, and now she was only a slave. My slave. All of me, she would say, is Slavebreaker Winter.  

If Gisal was so concerned that my control was loose, I would gladly prove otherwise. I would rape Eleno for all to see, finger that freakish clit of hers. Have her humping my sabatons. Stick the butt of my rod in her mouth.

And Gisal, with her painted lids, losing her wicked smile. Her face, whiter and whiter, reduced to sheer horror at the sight. She would know then that Slavebreaker Winter was not a prude. Slavebreaker Winter was worse than that — she was a pervert, a heretic, a disgusting thing that used her Labryades as a receptacle for pleasure. Her sick, sick —

“Slavebreaker Winter.”

I had drunk too much of the spirits.

Before me stood a High Priestess — the High Priestess, I noted with a flush rising to my cheeks. High Priestess Odelgarde in all her silver-haired glory.

My body moved innately to kneel, but she halted me with a hand on my shoulder. “My dear daughter,” said she, “the Highmothers have seen your work, and they are pleased.”

She requested that I walk with her. Of course I assented. The eclipse was starting; the air grew cooler and cooler as she led me to the gardens. My heart raced but I did not speak. It was only proper for her to begin.

I was in the presence of the highest order a mortal woman could be — the Oracle of the Highmothers. Odelgarde spoke to them directly from their temple. Her purity was not just assured — it was a cultivated thing. She'd been bred for her role, and trained meticulously. It took a sharp, blistering mind to withstand the presence of the Highmothers.

 The thought that this womyn had seen the Highmothers in the flesh— what little flesh that remained— was enough to put me in a stupor. Had this hand, which now guided my arm through the gardens, touched the glass shell which housed Highmother East’s glorious mind?

“My daughter,” said Odelgarde, at last. “You have done a great deed.”

As she touched me, I could not help but think of the creature that burrowed beneath my skin. I wondered if it was possible that I could sully her with just my presence alone. Oh, why had I not cut harder? Why had I not dunked myself in acid rather than shame the High Priestess this way?

Odelgarde went on, “Your report has been received by the Highmothers. It was an act of great cleverness and bravery, capturing the rebel leader as you did.”

“I thank you, High Priestess,” I said, “but that is only my duty as your servant. I ought not be congratulated.”

"No, no." Odelgarde shook her head. "It is not just that."

"Whatever do you mean?"

The moon clipped across the sky. We were standing in the midst of a ring of vibrant red flowers. The unexpected dark had them closing their heads. Birds went quiet.

“Slavebreaker, you have single-handedly defeated He-she,” said Odelgarde, “and brought him-her under the wing of the Highmothers.”

There were no words to describe my feelings. All thoughts closed up like those flowers in the darkness. I thanked the High Priestess, and I knelt at her feet. She drew back my helm and kissed my forehead. She kissed my slave, too, with a serene smile on her beautiful aged face.

Odelgarde called an announcement, just before the eclipse reached its zenith. She raised the glass, and told the gathered of my great deed.

"Let us dedicate this day to Slavebreaker Winter," said she. "Our most dutiful servant."

I stood in the center of the courtyard, none too smugly, as those around me burst into excited (or perhaps jealous) applause. I looked over all their heads, and it could not have been better if they were worshiping at my feet.

We all craned our necks and raised our dark glasses. The slaves were kept from the proceedings, a ring of still bodies in white robes between the pillars of the temples. I stared up at the piercing ring of the sun, like a dilated eye gazing down upon us. Juno's aquamarine waters rolled distantly behind the gates. All was silent as I basked in my victory.

Then, someone shot me in the head.

The moon was receding, and all the world was slivered sunlight. There came a high ringing, not in my ears but in my mind. A hole burned in the side of my helm, heat licking at my hair.

"I hope you've enjoyed your entertainment for the evening!"

All my focus was on tearing the thing off my head so that it did not light me on fire.

"I hope you have fattened yourself properly on the blood of our stolen children!”

A slave stood on the dais of the unicorn statue, still veiled and masked, with the stolen ray-gun in hand. The moment it loaded the next shot, she made aim again.

My Labryade was my savior. I fell into Eleno’s arms, and she took the brunt of the next laser in the back of her armor.

The slave threw off her veil, and wild curls swung in the ocean air. "I hope you never have a moment of peace for the rest of your days!"

It was the womyn who had stood with Eleno, so long ago. She was hardly recognizable. The slave garb fell off her, the disguise shirked. She was like some sort of horrid fury of a long-buried myth. Oh, were she not one of us, she would have been beautiful.

“A new age is dawning!” Kasra cried. “Did you truly think you could destroy all resistance? Did you think your advanced instruments were a match for the human spirit? Your control is brittle. We, woman and man, destroy it by living! Your empire will fall,” she said — then, with a sudden, chilling pause, looked me in the eye. “And it will start with her.”

Kasra leapt over the crowd, and unsheathed a sword she had hidden between her legs.

The laser had hit the side of my implant. I tried to get away, but I could hardly stand. I tried to hide beneath the table, and Kasra merely clambered over it, swinging and raving. Juices and frosting like blood and guts sprayed my armor.

All around me, the slaves were unmasking. A rebel plot in the making — playing as mindless servants. They began to grapple with the Labryades, and the world was nothing but blood and metal.

My world of red only made the connection rawer. My slave protected me as naturally as if I were holding out my hands to break a fall. She put herself between me and the crazed rebel. I cradled my head between my knees.

As soon as Kasra whirled, and her sword was pointed at Eleno's heart, she paused. "Jag," she said. "I've come to save you."

For some reason, in the chaos of the moment, my mind fixated on the oddest things. I watched her through Eleno's eyes, her wild gaze that seemed to glimmer with trepidation and tears. Who was she to Eleno? Some fellow rebel, a comrade calling empty words to an emptier shell. 

When Eleno made no reply, the emotion shifted. "How could you do this to me?" Kasra rushed forward, her curved blade through the air. "You swore you would never let them take you!"

Eleno met her strike against the rod.

They began to circle one another. Eleno caught every one of Kasra's strikes, her stance never wavering. Sparks flew in the air. Kasra was relentless in her pursuit.

"You told me you knew a way out!" she said. "Was that a lie? A lie to make me feel better?"

They must have known each other very well.

"You were always so patronizing — always treating me like a delicate little flower. Well, I'm a grown woman! Can't you see that now?"

Through the pain and the panic, I worried that my slave would not survive. She was a brick wall — and Kasra would chip away until there was nothing.

"Remember who you are!" Kasra stared up into the emotionless Labryade mask. "We didn't work so hard for it to end like this."

Who was she? Nobody — there was nobody in Eleno's life but me.

She tried to strike at Eleno's head. Eleno, of course, caught it against the side of the rod. Electricity jolted Kasra, but not enough to slow her.

Kasra pulled back, her stance low and wide. "Remember…" she said between heavy breaths, "the night on the shores of Ucinda?"

Ucinda — the native name of a long-contested planet on the edges of our territory. Did the rebels have a base there? I struggled to imagine what its shore would look like. It was an ugly, shrunken place. Nothing like Juno.

Kasra's voice grew soft. "You promised me then you would follow me to the very ends of the galaxy," said she. "You told me that I was the most important person in the world to you. You told me that you would love me forever."

She was lying. She must've been lying. 

"Jag — are you in there?"

Lay down your sword. Kill her.

Lay down your heart. Kill her.

The slave garment hung from Kasra's body only by a belt of leather. Finally frustrated by the fabric that impeded her motion, Kasra sliced it off. She was wholly naked. She ought to have been dripping in blood on some traitorous altar. "You saved me, Jag. You taught me that life was worth what you make of it, that there was a world beyond the yoke. Jag, I won't leave here without you."

It was as if I had ceased to exist. Beneath the table I crouched, both hands to my head. The strike still sizzled. Blood leaked from my temple and pooled down my nose, into my mouth. My world was only through Labryade eyes, my thoughts only insistent rhythms. Pain is temporary. Kill her.

“Jag, let me see your face.”

Pain is false. Kill her.

Kasra changed her strategy. The sword fell to the courtyard ground, and she came up to Eleno unarmed. Since she was not a threat, my slave did not defend. She was able to reach up and pull the helmet from her head.

"Now…" Her breath against Eleno's breath. Her eyes in Eleno's eyes. "Do you remember me now, boy?"

The rod lowered.

It was as if, through the chaos of the battle, through the statue riddled with laser burns, through the blood that pooled in the chinks in the cobblestones, those were the only two people in the whole world.

"Come back to me…" Kasra's eyes filled with tears.

Death is welcome.

Kasra kissed Eleno. Her naked body pressed against the impervious armor. She kissed Eleno with passion, with desperation, with tears on her cheeks, with pleas flowing from her lips with every intake of breath.

Death will grant you a thousand angels.

Kasra pulled back, and her breath hitched. "Jag… Jag, I'm here."  

Eleno moved. One hand rested against the small of Kasra's naked back. Each bump of her spine raised. Glistening in the sunlight.

Kasra cried and cried. "I knew. I knew those bastards could never keep you down. I knew it —" She swallowed. "I love you."

In response, my slave plunged the rod up Kasra's stomach and out the other side.

Chapter Text

“She only deserves such a fate.”

An empty medical bay in the deepest night. Machines whirled around my cot. My limbs laced with monitors, my vision thick and hazy. There was an artificial vein hydrating me, but my dry lips clung to each other as I struggled to speak. "Who said that?"

Even that was too much. I was in a very delicate state. My recovery was a slow and torturous ordeal. The priestesses had put me on a round of drugs thicker than the Maiden's, or else the pain itself might have killed me.

They'd rebuilt my implant from the ground up. My skull was cut open, and my brain exposed to the air. Though I was not conscious for the event itself, I still dreamt of it. Hands and wires, little sparks beneath my eyelids. They told me it was a miracle I was still alive, that a broken implant often caused an implosion that would kill not only me, but all those near.

"It is an awful, awful death for everyone," the priestess said. "Thank the Highmothers you were spared."

They told me that our womyn had prevailed and the insurrection had been crushed. That the rebel Kasra was dead.

I cried. "She could have been useful," I said, "and yet I…"

"Calm yourself, Slavebreaker," she said, over my bedside. "You are not to be punished. There are some circumstances, Highmothers save us, where it cannot be helped."

Yet something was not right.

When the drugs lulled, often I woke to the sound of someone speaking. Snatches in the night. The side effects of the drug stream colored my vision in prismatic light. The priestesses and white-robed slaves glittered and malformed. My skin was very sensitive. I cried when they touched me — especially when I was bathed.

Forced upright, naked, while a priestess gently lathered up my spine. Conscious thought was rare for me at this time. I remember, once, looking down between my legs. There was a delicate shaved cunt, pink as a rose.

"Is something the matter, Slavebreaker?"

All my ability to control myself was gone. Emotion leaked from me like a cracked vessel. My breath became suddenly short and I trembled. The priestess paused her ministrations to cradle my head in her arms. She pulled me close and reassured me with a high, gentle voice that there were no rebels. That my mind was still recovering, and there might be moments where I was convinced of danger. She echoed the mantras. 

“There is nothing that will hurt you now.”

In her hold, I cried. I could not speak, fearing my tongue would betray me. I feared no danger. I feared no death. It was something else that moved me, some strange elixir of confusion and grief and disconnect from my skin.

“You really think you’re in control?”

Another night. My head was cold and light — when repairing my implant, they'd been forced to shave off all my hair.

“It is a great sorrow, Slavebreaker,” I’d been told. “Your sacrifice shows the depth of your love. It will, given time, grow back even more beautiful.”

Eleno had been here all this time, of course. It would not do to separate a Slavebreaker from her charge in such a dire time. It would have been like severing a limb on top of everything else. 

Now, she emerged from the darkness. Gaunt, slack-jawed, her glass eyes like the slope of a curved helmet. I was too weak to move on my own. But I was always strong enough to command her.

My back arched for easy entrance. Eleno leaned over my bed and inserted two fingers inside of me. 

Beneath my skin, something untwined. The surface of my naked stomach bulged, a serpent wriggling just under the surface. I could not help the relief when Eleno pulled back her fingers, and they were dripping charcoal.

It had not forsaken me! Her fingers went into my mouth, and I sucked at the cum like a calf at a teat. It had only sensed danger and retreated further inside. I collapsed back against the covers, spent. My eyes were closed.

"And what will you do next, Slavebreaker?"

“Wha–?”

Eleno stood above me. Had I pulled her closer? She was like a big dumb statue, perfectly still and stony, and her eyes were trained on me. When had I called her? I —

I could not remember. My head pounded. My head burned. I — I needed more drugs. My emotions were leaking through, and I was making noises. Little pained kitten mewls from my throat without my knowing it. My will and body were not aligned. Eleno stood so very close. There was still alien cum beneath her fingernails.

I returned to Laodike. At the ship's entrance, my Labryades waited. They stood as a solid line, identical, at attention with their faces blankly outwards. Some of the horrid emptiness went away at once, with my fresh implant flooding their senses.

Behind the Labryades were the domestic slaves, just as will-less if not so impenetrable.

I walked past without addressing any individual. "Prepare my supper."

The dining hall was a cavernous thing, intended for grand banquets and executions. The ceilings stretched far above my little head as I sat, hunched from pain.

Silverware clattered as I cut through a jellied crustacean cube. I took a single bite, and my stomach turned horribly. I did not want to eat. The drugs had a disastrous effect on my stomach, and eating anything filled me with horrible nausea that seemingly burned through the mucus and up into my rib cage.

But to the outside observer, it simply looked like I pushed the platter away in a fit of selfish disregard. "Take it away."

From my spot at the head of the table, I could just see Eleno at the corner of my vision.

The other slaves scurried to obey my will, their movements clean and organized. The table was cleared, and soon yet more would arrive with further courses that I could not stomach. 

I tapped my finger against the table. "Does it upset you —" Tap, tap. "— when I waste food?"

No movement.

"I'm only curious." Tap. "Did you eat well as a rebel? Lots of meat and fresh vegetables?"

I paused to take a sip from a silver chalice. "Do you miss it? Meals around the fire with your comrades? Meals with… Kasra?"

She was good — not even a twitch of an eyelid. 

Oh, but I could see it. Whatever it would take, I would find the moment when she would corpse. When her silence would break, and she would cry that I had no right to speak that dead lover's name.

"Wasting meals means nothing to me, of course," I said. "I need only think it, and a dozen slaves will cook for me what ever pleases my fancy. Who cares if I toss it all on the floor?"

I tilted my head. "Pour me a drink."

It was quite curious how she still obeyed. Her thoughts were just as malleable as all the other empty shells. I felt nothing different, would have suspected nothing.

"Did you ever perform plays with the rebellion? Do a breeches role or two?" I took a sip. "You seem very well adapted to acting."

My slaves brought me a silver platter of oysters. They set it down before me, and I did not even spare it a glance. I was looking at Eleno. She stared back at me with that vacuous expression of her kind. The hall was filled with a fishy and salty scent, a reek that would curl even a fisherwomyn’s nose. 

I leaned forward. “I know.

"I know what you are," I said. "I know that you are only biding your time. I'm sure you believe you fooled me. But I did not fall for that display. I did not order you to kill Kasra. I did not want her to die. I wanted her to live, so that I may enslave her, twist her into something she would've loathed. Same as I have done to you.

"I wanted to make examples of all you rebels, bend you to my will, so that there would not be a soul alive who could resist the truth.

"You have no escape, Eleno. Your lover died for nothing. Your sorry scheming has only sown more suffering. You will only suffer, unless you serve me as you were meant to."

Sometimes, when you look at something for so long, unchanging, your mind will conjure a movement. Minds do not enjoy stillness. They do not like silence. Laodike, my beautiful ship, was always loud and always moving. It was not like this hateful thing in front of me, the slave Eleno, who was pretending so well. I saw her armor vibrate beneath the heat of my gaze. I saw something where there was none.

"Say something."

Slaves did not speak.

"Fuck you," I said. "Stop playing with me. Do you know who I am? What I am capable of? I own you. I do not care if your little rebel brain is still pulsing inside of there. All of you is what I am. Do away with your little act, and I will not have to go any further.

"You do not want to know the depths of the humiliation I will place you under."

The smug thing. She was the same, always the same. Fucking with my head, staying silent when I wanted her to speak, to scream, to cry. She had done it before. She knew how it made me boil.

My hand moved without my thinking. It tossed the platter of oysters right at her stupid, unmoving head.

“I am in control here!" I cried. "I am the master of all I survey! I am Slavebreaker, and you will obey me, you stupid whore!"

The platter rolled down the floor. Juices dripped off the surface of Eleno's breastplate, and down the hem of her tunic. I thought it was the same for me, until I realized the salt was only angry tears.

One time, I laid her a trap. In the bleeding desert of Omphalos I erected a spiked hinge of steel and buried it in the sand. I took a communicator that I had pilfered from one of her rebel underlings and set it off across the rebellion's frequency. It was crude. I hadn't known Eleno as well then as I know her now. It was just as likely that she would smell the trap and steer clear. I figured they might lose a scouting drone or a couple disposable underlings.

But she herself came — and she came with a passion and a fury that left me breathless. She came crying for her comrade. The moment I revealed myself, and pronounced the rebel long dead to her, Eleno's entire bearing shifted.

I described the girl's capture. I described the process she was undergoing at that very moment — her head encased in steel, her mind dumped in an industrial line. Little rebels had no need of the artistry of the Maiden. Little rebels were crushed with all the other indoctrinated souls. "She'll never have another thought again," I said, "and she ought to be grateful for it."

Eleno’s expression fell. Why? I thought. Had she known this girl so well? Had she been that useful?

“Their name,” Eleno said, “was…”

I do not even remember. She attacked me. She tricked my Labryades into the trap, and the steel jaws cleaved them in pieces. I felt them die, a sudden hum.

Eleno was clever. She was always so clever. How had I not seen it before? How could I have been so foolish? And now she was alone with me, in the depths of space, where no one could stop her when she decided to strike. I had to remind Eleno that, awake or not, she was mine. That I would do with her what I pleased, and just as there was no one to stop her from killing me — there was no one who could stop me from ruining her.

"Hail Slavebreaker Winter of Juno! We bless you with a fruitful return! Please accept these gifts from High Priestess Odelgarde."

A robe of translucent silk. Two white and shimmering gems. A rare flower to bring cheer to the metal landscape of my home. Did she know, I thought as I dangled the diamond clamps, that I kept no pleasure slaves?

My pain was still considerable. I was instructed to wean myself — but every night the supply waned, my dreams grew distended and horrific. I woke with all my sheets soaked in sweat.

One such night, I called her over to my bed. A sharp wave passed through my chambers, and she stepped up at once. I suppose I ought to have sent her to sleep in the communal space with the other Labryades. Was it wise to allow her to watch over me as I slept?

Her strong arms cradled me until I was settled in my brocade chair. I leaned over my knees, certain that I was about to throw up.

Through the stars of my vision I visualized my slave as I wanted her to appear. The robe hung like a phantom across my mirror. I mustered my voice. "Dress."

Eleno rippled in the reflection. She was already in the nude — I was not foolish enough to leave her armed. Through my pounding head I watched her back muscles flex as she lifted the garment.

A call to a second slave. On the other side of Laodike, a domestic stepped from her upright closet and into the black hall. Her flat shoes walked in a precise rhythm to the kitchen where she was to prepare me a drink. The ceilings weaved like threads in the dark in the corner of my mind as Eleno pinched a jewel between her fingers.

She cradled her breast, and I could feel the heft of it as if I felt in my own hand. I felt, too, the stab of pain as she brought the clamp down — before I filtered it out.

I made her dance for me. The domestic was pulling out ice with tongs, dropping each cube into the glass. Tink, tink. 

Eleno was a sorry excuse for a dancer. A form too large, too ugly to appeal to the aesthetic eye. Her movements were stiff and jerky, and I had a little vision for how to correct her. I was not a dancer.

But I forced her on the same, because I knew she would hate it. The rebel who carried such notions as being a man now resplendent in glitter and shaking her tits for my amusement. She rolled her hands over her chest, bending so that they hung down. The robe fluttered like translucent wings around her toned body. The diamonds glittered in the low light. Every bounce made the clamps twinge painfully. She leaned over, her face against mine. I urged her to be still.

I could have searched her eyes, waited in the forced serenity for the flicker of spirit to bring itself to the forefront. What good would it have done? I knew already.

My eyes were on her body, which belonged to me even if her mind were not caged. Her limbs moved at my will, to run one hand down the length of her stomach and into her slit. The other to fondle herself. My mind was split open, and I felt all of the pleasure. It was delirious how sensitive I could make her. How I could siphon off that sensation and make it my own, and how my own pleasure at seeing her so debased could in turn drive her harder and wetter, more compliant, more perfect for me. I would break her. She would not get away with this. 

My domestic brought my drink. As soon as the liquid touched my lips, I realized I had been dying of thirst. My throat burned. I had been so focused on Eleno's sensations that I had neglected my own needs. I drank greedily while Eleno massaged her deformed clit. My hips rolled with her hips. How much hatred must she hold beneath her placid exterior? How much could she recall?

“So, do you often carry a flask of extra strong spirits into the desert?”

Ah, that night. I hoped she did not remember that one. Even though I had been busy staring at the flagstones of their rebel hold, I could already tell that Eleno was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed and that smug way of hers.

“When I am dealing with you, yes.”

I should not have spoken at all. The rebels may have captured me, and Eleno may have thought herself worthy of a victory lap, but I had no intention of playing their games. Even as we spoke, my backup was arriving. This little hold of theirs would be flooded with slaves of their former comrades, and the streets would run red.

Eleno laughed. “It was fun. We should do it again.”

My head was bowed in fury, not shame. Not shame. My hair formed a curtain between the two of us, and I clutched at my knees. I would have moved further away from Eleno — not as a sign of weakness, of course — but I was chained to the floor. “Is this your idea of torture?”

“Is it working?”

When I said nothing, only continued to imagine her gruesome death, she went on — “I'm just curious. Do you always turn that color when someone calls you 'boy'?”

“You're imagining things from a drunken stupor. You said no such thing. And I had no such reaction. We fought to kill in the bleeding desert of Omphalos— nothing more.”

“Of course,” Eleno said. “Maybe we should do it for the first time, then.”

The fizzing drink downed so quickly wreaked havoc on my stomach. Foam spilled out of my mouth, and all over the carpet. I came to sudden wakefulness — I hadn't realized I was drifting off to sleep. Eleno had frozen in her dance. She was sweating so profusely that the delicate garment clung to her skin. Her mouth was open, panting, and her dark empty eyes pointed at the ceiling. I murmured something to her, an order I could not recall, and crawled back into bed. No slave came to clean up my mess until I came to awareness in the morning. My room stank of it.

But the conversation at the rebel base — which I did burn to the ground in the end — was not the first night we had spent together. The very first time I had her in my clutches, I'd left her awake. Foolish of me. We were out far from Laodike, in an abandoned city once ruled by men. I waited by the fire as my ship came on its slow way to meet us. Eleno was tied up with leather rope, a bit between her teeth.

I roasted an alien bird on a makeshift spit. It dribbled fat into the fire as I sat, cleaning my knife. I observed the sliver of my severe reflection in its side. “No one will find us until Laodike comes.”

Eleno grunted.

“Do you comprehend what that means? I will say it slow, if that will help.” I ran my thumb along the edge of the blade. “I hate you more than I hate anyone in the world. Even your other rebel scum do not compare. You are arrogant. You are delusional. You speak of love, of peace — and yet you so insist on returning the male race. How can you believe such contradictions? You make me sick.”

If she wanted to speak, it would do her no good.

I said, “Anything I do, I can blame on the battle. I will not have to report to my superiors until after you've been processed. Until then, you are mine." I hummed. "A slave does not need five fingers on each hand, necessarily," I said. "It does not matter if its back is scorched and peeling, so long as it can still obey.

"Or how about some bruising? A purple throat will be hidden by your armor. A bootprint on your abdomen — quite a work of art, don't you think? A rib or two — what is a rib or two while we wait?"

Eleno had stopped wriggling. Her face slouched, and it would not do. I put my blade against her throat and forced it upwards. "You will look at me while I am speaking."

Her eyes blazed with anger — but she did not speak any longer, not a grunt or a whimper. This infuriated me. I did not say these things for her to absorb them mutely. I wanted her anger in twin with mine. I wanted her to hate me with every fiber of her being, so that the transformation to come would be all the more savory.

I removed the bit. "Tell me how I should hurt you."

She did not speak.

“Tell me.” I kicked her, and she fell over. She lay, half-dressed against the rubble. Her golden shoulders emerged from her tattered garb, and even the dirt could not obscure their strength. She breathed deeply, she swallowed great puffs of air– and she was silent.

“I am being kind,” I said. “I am giving you this autonomy you speak so highly of. Tell me how I shall torture you, or–” I paused. “Or I’ll simply slit your throat.”

She shut her mouth so that she was not even breathing. I kicked her again, and she did not moan. I went on, describing all the ways I would make her feel the most exquisite pain before her inevitable demise. The knife in my hand shivered; I was too emotional to risk the cut, and potentially sever the bonds. When the suns descended through the crags of upright buildings, and our fire became the only beacon in the dark, I hoisted her by the scruff of her neck.

“It is cold,” I said. “I will not have you die of exposure.”

And all through the night we slept beneath the same cover, her arms bound, her back against mine. I was so tense that I did not sleep for many hours. I lay awake, aware that my greatest enemy only had to turn over and strangle me as I had threatened to strangle her. Creatures swooped in the darkness, strange calls in the night.

I woke to find her gone.

The wind howled in my ears as Laodike descended and my Labryades marched off the deck. I knelt on the ground, discarded leather cord gripped my hands. Why? The question assaulted me at all angles. Why, Highmothers help me, had she left me alive?

"Because I know." That's what she said, when I confronted her next. I’d tracked her down personally, not a formal mission, and found her at the same rundown bar I had met her in. Despite numerous raids, it continued to exist. There Jag Eleno leaned against the bar, holding a knife to my throat.

“Do not bother,” I said. “My slaves have infiltrated. If you try, they will kill everyone they can reach.” I paused. “Know what?”

“What you are,” Eleno said. “Want to be. Could have been.”

She was speaking nonsense. I was not here to play her games. I told her that I was holding this bar hostage unless she came with me.

“It’s a nasty plan. Clever,” Eleno said. “Unfortunately for you, this bar’s just as full of rebels. And we’ve spotted every one of your moles. You won’t get a single head on a pike before you get smoked.”

“A likely story.”

Eleno pointed over my shoulder. “That one– grizzled woman in the cloak. Hasn’t spoken a lick since she gave her order.”

I scowled.

Eleno pointed to her left. “The young one with the twin braids– trying far too hard to look innocent. I would have thought you’d wanted older women for your purposes, though.”

She was a domestic, actually. Not that Eleno had any right to know. I glowered at her as she propped an elbow up on the bar. “How about we call it even? I’ll buy you a drink.”

The indignation– the humiliation– rose up within me. I moved without reasoning, and it could have caused my doom. My knife went dashing up towards Eleno’s face.

She caught it against her wrists.

We were two angry bulls, horns locked together. The tip of my knife wavered in front of her nose. 

She laughed. “Oh? May I have this dance?”

“One day, Eleno…” I growled, “I’ll have your head.”

“Sure, sure– we all go eventually.” She smiled. “Until then, call me Jag.”

"Faster, slave!"

The bath was thick with steam. I lay in a thin pool of water, glossy indigo tiles against my bare back. My slave was licking between my legs. My body ached from the endless fucking. Time had lost all its power. Eleno had not tired, so neither would I.

There was something strange. Through the thick fog, I could hear a voice. I could see nothing, but I could hear the moans of some wanton whore. One of those useless concubines, consumed by her own lust. I hated it. I covered my ears as I came to try and muffle it, but it only grew louder.

And then the lying there, hands against my shorn skull, panting. I stared up at the cloudy cover and wondered if I was enjoying myself. Eleno dutifully continued on, preparing me for my next climax. I did not order her to stop. This was not about enjoyment, anyhow.

The moans filled the chamber again. All over the ship, slaves went about their duties. When lust stalled my higher functions, I felt them all. Flashes of fingers on knives, knees against metal floors, wiping. Eleno licked at that rosy bloom between my legs.

I had tried many things with Eleno, searching for her limit. I had raped her with the rod. Forced her onto all fours and inserted it into her slave-cunt. The metal hotter and hotter with every shock. Eleno had tears streaming down her blank face, but she did not break.

Swift flat function. Rows of boots on the ground. I woke in my empty bed. I was dressed by slaves. I was fed by slaves. I conducted reports. I controlled, every idle thought a discipline. They streamed through the halls of Laodike like blood in her veins. The High Priestesses praised me for my swift recovery, to which I would smile and profess it was by the grace of the Highmothers alone that I stood here. 

And every 15th hour, when my sleep cycle began, Eleno would peel from her routine tasks as a faceless Labryade and become my vessel.

I had to. It was my only option; Eleno could not betray me, I could not let her go. Let the charade continue on for the rest of my life, if that was what had to be. I would make her suffer through her awareness. I would make her yearn for the bliss of obedience. I would remind her what she lost.

In my empty bed, Eleno slept beside me.

Slaves went in shifts. In the middle of my sleep cycle, the turnovers began. In their stalls, half emerged and half entered. I felt their lights blink out, and the others rise in their march to their duty. Eleno stared back at me, her head draped across the pillow, her face dumb and open.

I kneed her hard in the stomach until she rolled off my cot.

My hands gripped at the tubes of my artificial vein, activating it again. I did not rise from bed at all that day. I lay on my back naked and I remembered a speech Eleno had once given. The rebels had hacked the airwaves, however briefly. Through the warring signal Eleno stood tall and proud, her voice deep and resonant. Her hair was slicked back, her face ruddy and real, a gun strapped over her broad shoulder. For the first time it occurred to me that Eleno was not simply my enemy — she was their face, their hero.

"You can raze a forest," she said. "You can poison the land until it reaches the very depths of the soil. But one day, something will grow. It may be ugly. It may be a weed, or stunted fern, or some monstrous thing that feeds off your destruction — but you will not stop it. You can kill it before it grows. You can strangle the seedlings. But every minute that passes is another minute where freedom breathes through the cracks.

"You say that men are evil — that we do not deserve to live." Eleno scoffed. "You think you can poison the land and only grow flowers? Life will come in forms you cannot even imagine. It will be strange and twisted and — yeah, you might think it's a weed. You can kill the body, but you cannot kill our souls. You believe in souls, don't you?

"Can you do it? Can you reach inside me, and truly say that I have a woman's soul? That I am mistaken? Can you look at every one of the lives you destroyed and say, well and truly, that their souls are not like mine? Like yours? Can you —?"

“I—I can’t…” I gasped through a cold sweat. Drool leaked from my open mouth. The drugs at this point were black market acquisitions, laced with something that made my pussy burn. I had my fingers buried in my slit, and I was begging, craving for a concubine to save me from the cage of my recollections.

My throat was as dry as a desert fire. Her tongue found its way inside, tender and wet and warm. I clung to her armor, my spit all over her breastplate. “Fuck…fuck…”

To the violence in the heat of Omphalos. My Labryades dead all around me, my body breaking down from the pain and the loss and the rage. I fought relentlessly on. I suppose, for a moment, I had really thought this was going to be the end. Either Eleno fell, or I went with the angels. Highmothers help me, I was thirsty. I was beyond all thought. The sand slurried around, finding chinks in my armor. I kept on trying to link to my slaves, reflexively, and was met with only a wall of red. The hum of a dead connection.

I stepped backwards. Though I heard the hollow chunk, I had simply assumed it to be a figment of my imagination. The thrush of Eleno’s light armor as she swung at me again.

“Why can’t you see!” she cried. “Why can’t you see what’s right in front of you?”

My feet found empty air. Eleno charged me, and I had nowhere to go but down. A notch had opened up amongst the shifting sands, blasting cold, damp air from the pit of the planet. Eleno and I toppled into it.

We fell in a grapple, her hands hugging my waist, my legs tangled in her jumpsuit. We rolled. She compulsively tried to tuck her head away, butted beneath my chin. I cradled her tighter against me. The sudden burst of cold rattled my joints; we rolled down a diagonal chute onto a stony floor.

The trap door shut out the light.

“Where are we?” I sat up, my head ringing. My helmet was dented by the impact, digging painfully against my temple. I threw it off, spit sand and hair from my mouth.

“Hell if I know…”

From my belt I pulled out my arclight and lit it above my head. Eleno crouched against the wall, her head drooping. There was a spot of dirt on the tip of her nose.

We were in a dirty, brown tomb. Stone coffins sat beneath layers of glittering sand; it fluttered as I walked. The walls were scratched with ancient, illegible language. A black doorway loomed before me.

When I took a step, Eleno jolted. Her hand fumbled with her ray-gun— I believed she had, despite her best efforts, a concussion.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I will not kill you in a place like this.”

“You don’t kill,” she reminded me.

“And what good would it do me to capture you now?” My voice was cool. “I would have to drag around your limp body, a dead weight, as I search for the exit.”

“You’re not the most reasonable of people.”

I ignored her. “The natives of Omphalos constructed labyrinths beneath their cities, in the early days of our reign. They hid their men in the dark, where they lived out their blackened, secret lives.”

“And then…?”

“We won.” My voice echoed in the hollow air.

Eleno stumbled to her feet. She kept her shaky hand on her holster. “And where is the exit?”

“Why would I know that?” I snapped. “These places are worthless. We did not even bother to level them.”

“Got any water on you?”

I paused. “A flask.”

“So, we’re doomed.”

“As if your sort has any idea of what doomed is!” I folded my arms. “Get your hand off that gun. Until we find the exit—”

“We’re buddies?”

My lip curled. “Sure.”

We plunged, my little light held high, into the darkness. There was no rhyme or reason to the space. Halls that looped in and around each other, facilities left untouched and rotting for a millennium. All around us were the bodies of men; bodies revered, held in stone coffins, sand in the crooks of their carved names. Eleno was a constant tension. Often, my eyes would catch the unnatural shape of her in the corner of my eye, via a shadow on the wall, and I would have to force myself to restrain the flinch, the sudden urge to kill or throttle.

I was good. I was patient. If I destroyed her now, I would not live to see her kiss my boots.

It was Eleno’s idea to mark the paths we had already taken. We burnt a scrap of fabric and smeared the ashes on the walls. Eleno’s eyes glittered in the little burst of flame. I thought how handsome a womyn she would have made in some unborn world.

She saw me looking at her, and the speckle of mirth in her eyes vanished. “I wish you had killed them.”

“Who?” I said, before I recalled the comrade whose capture had led us here. Then, “What good would it have done? She is gone either way.”

“It’s ghoulish.”

“And what’d you expect us to do? Someone must attend to the menial toil. Would you rather we let the slaves suffer, minds trapped in unwilling bodies?”

“Do you really think that?” Her voice was bitter. “That there will always be a hierarchy with a bottom to fill?”

It was such a strange, stupid question that I could not fathom an answer.

We came at last to a staircase sloping upwards. Eleno lifted her hands and cried, “Finally!”

It was not an easy trek. We climbed, hefting our heavy bodies up it in a desperate snail’s trail. For what seemed like hours we trudged, the arclight off to conserve battery, the only sound our labored breathing and the scrape of armor against stone. We did not speak, but Eleno’s dumb words had set a spark of anger I struggled to tamp down. What did she know? Silly girl with her Utopian visions of equality. How would she like it, should her fantasy come to pass, and she had to waste her freakish strength shoveling shit for all time?

Eleno set a hand against the trap door. She pushed, but it did not budge. “Fuck…”

“You’re doing it wrong,” I said. “Let me see.”

Despite my superior strike, it still did not move.

I turned on my light again, and we both scrabbled around, prodding every inch of stone for some mechanism to open the door. There did not appear to even be one. Eleno shot her ray-gun, scorching the rock.

The door did not budge, but something else shuddered.

“Do you smell… something?” Eleno’s eyes shifted between me and the unyielding door.

“No,” I said reflexively. But there was— subtle in those first moments, something sweet and tangy that clung to the back of the throat.

“It’s…” She smacked her lips. “It’s really…”

I turned up the light.

Eleno’s pupils, despite the sudden bright flare, were engorged. She stared back at me. Her face broke into a grin. “You’re— you’re funny!”

“Huh? How?”

“You’re— you’re so—” She gestured around her head. “Sausage in a little— too small, too—!” She burst out laughing.

How dare she! “Fuck you, rebel scum! You’re stupid, and— and—” I laughed, too.

I could not stop, in fact. Raucous laughter, uncontrollable muscle spasms. I breathed more gas with every one, growing the more intense. Heaving with manic glee, I gripped Eleno’s shoulder and pushed her down the stairs.

“Fuck— hahahaha — fuck you, too!” She kicked at my legs.

We both went down. At the foot of the stairs, breathing in dirt and dead ashes by every wheezing lungful, we lay. My hair fell lank and dirty across my face; my cheeks ached from smiling, and my abdomen even worse.

“How much— ha!” Interrupting myself with my own peals. “How much energy are we w-wasting?”

Eleno’s stomach growled. “A lot!!”

“Think we’re doomed now?!”

“Y-yeah!”

“Then…” I grinned with teeth, struggling to even sit up. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Aren't you the big important Slavebreaker? Pfft— You figure it out!!”

“That does not sound like the conviction of a hero!”

It was a nightmarish scene, us squirming like worms in the dirt, unable to control the cadence of our voices or the sway of our bodies. Sweat turned our skin sticky, the dust coating us to our tongues. 

The sensation was vivid, but I did not often think back to it. To remember the scene was to remember how it ended…

For this moment of despair was ultimately fleeting. I did not know that. Eleno's profession of weakness was a Pyrrhic victory, a satisfaction I could not enjoy, for I was going to die with her.

She lay flat on her stomach, still grinning. “Guess I'll just fucking rot here! With you!”

“I don't want to rot here!”

“Then get up,” she said. “Find a way out!”

I did not.

“At least I'll be in good— good company!!”

“Yes!” I said. “With a thousand bones, exactly where those men were meant to be. Buried!!”

“You don't have to do that now,” Eleno giggled. “No one can hear you.”

Eventually, the effects of the gas faded. We were left in pain, heads rolling with thirst, staring up at the cavernous ceiling. We waited for the darkness to take us and hold us tight.

Drip.

“Did you hear that?” I said.

“Hear what?” Eleno said, though she went quiet.

“Water.” I sat up.

“So that we can delay our deaths a bit longer?” She scoffed. “Leave me out.”

“No, you idiot. The water has to come from somewhere.”

Drip, drip. We stalked it like predators in the jungle, our bodies stooped and aching. Drip, drip, until Eleno's boot found a puddle. Not even — a damp spot, a little circle of indented sand, darker than the others. We looked up to where it streaked down the wall, and blinked. I turned off the arclight. The sun, hardly a glimmer, was peering down at us.

“Okay,” Eleno said. “But how do we get up there?”

It was a dilemma. I stood, my eyes searching. In the dim light, I swore I saw something, an indentation in the rock.

I pointed. “Up there.”

Eleno saw it too. “But how are we going to reach it?”

“I don't know.” I frowned. Eleno frowned too, her nose crinkling. I wanted to slap her. She was so foolish. I was tired and starving and thirsty, and I wanted nothing more than to get away from Eleno, whose very existence made my blood boil.

“We could…”

“We could what?”

“I'm the stronger one,” she said. “No offense. But if I stood right under it, and you stood on top of me…”

“Don't be ridiculous. And let you drop me?”

“Why would I drop you? And let us both die?”

“You are not the most reasonable person,” I said.

As I climbed on, Eleno was a solid wall beneath me. Her calloused fingers gripped my ankles. She stared up through my legs, and the amused glitter was back. 

I fingered the chink in the wall. I could not see anything, but I felt the click. “There’s something in there. I don’t know what it's supposed to—”

My foot slipped. A sudden shudder beneath me, and my mind reared in alarm— I should have known! Of course she would betray me!

“Hey, now!” Eleno caught me, pushed my leg back where it rested. But the tremors did not cease. It was not Eleno who shook; it was the labyrinth.

Everything went asunder. It was as if we were in a small box, and the one who held it — a strange, mercurial goddess — had simply turned it over. The vertical wall went horizontal, and then downwards. We screamed and grabbed at the chinks of the rock and the wind wooshed around us in a horrible typhoon.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Eleno cried. She grappled for the switch— but it was to no avail. We were already too far down. The light was growing. It seared in my eyes, which had so long adjusted to that deep, enduring darkness. I missed the darkness. In that moment, I wondered why I had ever wanted to leave it.

I covered my face. I did not want to see Eleno, splattered across the rock face. I did not want to die like this. My eyes closed, my body braced to sear itself away in some ancient, ever-burning heathen flame.

The end felt an awful lot like sand.

“Gah!” I sat up, and staring back at me was the sunset. The desert of Omphalos was bathed in violet and peach, a golden wash over its sandy dunes. My throat burned with the sudden dry heat. There were tears in my eyes.

The danger averted, I collapsed back down.

Eleno laid beside me. Her tongue ran slow across parched lips. “Still got that flask?”

I lifted my arm, the flask a shining diamond in the sky.

“Good boy.”

It clunked against my breastplate.

We ended up shoulder to shoulder on a great stony outcropping as the sun descended, and we both struggled to signal our respective ships.

Eleno’s legs dangled off the side— so casual, despite the lethal drop. Her bearing was exactly that of my younger self, sitting on the wall watching the ocean, shoulders hunched eagerly forward.

I pulled my flask from my belt. She snatched it from me before I could say anything, and took a long swig.

"You can't have it all!" I smacked her.

“What? I’m parched after all that!”

“Give me—” I grabbed it, but she held on tight. I dragged the flask, Eleno’s arm and all, to my mouth.

She admonished me for being greedy, and turned her back so I could not take it again. We bickered, snatching drinks one mouthful at a time. We drained it dry.

"You are an asshole!"

"And you're not much of anything," Eleno said, "when you're not acting as a hydra of terror." She took a final swig, and pitched the flask off the side of the rock. 

I gasped. 

She laughed at me. "You'll get another!"

"Is this revenge?"

"I don't need revenge — especially not from you."

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re just as much of a victim as the rest of us.” She stared out over the ledge; her tone was ponderous, academic.

That wasn’t true. Had she forgotten all of the unforgivable things I’d done to her people? I did not want her to forget them— so I listed some.

The forced inspection— Eleno had struck first, being a thief and all. She brushed away the processing of rebels, the executions I’d organized. The threats of torture? Knife to her throat? She only joked about finding it erotic.

“And the girl that I sent away? That brought you here?”

“You’re awfully intent on getting on my nerves.” Eleno sighed. “Listen— I know, deep down, you believe you’re doing a good thing.”

I grew indignant. "It is not what I believe, it is the truth. And if you weren't so stubborn you could —"

She was staring at me. She was smiling. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”

"And — and you are not!"

More bickering. More inane, drunken slurring. Was this a dream? I think I was dreaming.

She asked me, “What’ll happen if you…y’know?”

“Speak clearly,” I said. “I am not a mind reader.”

“If you… caught me.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “Well, you are strong, able-bodied. Though it would send a message— I would not want you as a concubine.”

“Thanks?”

“You would become my Labryade.”

She was quiet. “Will it hurt?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “You won’t feel anything but pleasure.”

“You would make me a girl.”

“You would become whatever I wanted. Your will would be subsumed into my own, and there would be little purpose in untangling the two.”

“So— yes?”

“You would not be a womyn,” I said, in a strange sort of consolation. “You would be a slave.”

Eleno was silent for a long time. I checked the status of Laodike. When she spoke again, I was startled by her tone.

“I really tried to stop it.”

A breeze chilled the sweat on my forehead. The stone was purple in the dark. Eleno's silhouette was lit with a thin strip of sun, the tip of her nose and eyelashes white. An arm across her bent knee. “What could I do? I tried to bury it. I tried to follow the rules, be a good girl. I tried to break them— but I was still stuck there, in that shell.”

Eleno spoke about her past. I listened in unnatural silence as she described her secret scurryings, her heretic realizations. The first time she saw a man in an old fairy story, she had cried. “I saw him— and it was me. I knew it, even if I could not speak it. Even if the mirror taunted. Even if I couldn’t say so, I knew then— I would make myself into what I felt inside. What else could I do? Let it fester? Die?”

“Yes,” I said, hushed. “You should have died.”

Eleno looked at me.

I struggled to justify myself. “Every womyn struggles with that,” I said. “Do you think even the most devoted servant of the Highmothers does not, at times, wish she was not shackled to the weight of femininity? That she does not wonder at a world where it is different?”

She blinked. “Every woman?”

"I have. And I am as representative of a loyal servant as you will ever find." I glowered at her. "I have suffered every day within the cage of my body. And still I stand here. It is not that you are a man, it is that you are weak and —"

"And everyone feels this way?" There was a lilt of humor in her voice, though I did not see why.

"Of – of course."

She crawled towards me. Her face, red from the sun, dotted with freckles like stars, grew larger and larger. "What would you have done, Slavebreaker, if you were born a man?"

"I would not have been. I would have been detected in the gestation period and terminated swiftly."

Eleno laughed, a soft throaty thing beneath her breath. "Yeah…"

Right up against me, her face in my face. The sarcastic mirth melted away, leaving something else. Something strange, some marrow-deep sorrow from the dredges of Eleno’s soul. "I wish I had been," she said, "but I'm glad you're here."

There was a sudden paralyzing fear in my heart. Why was I worried, suddenly, that Eleno was looking at me? Why did I feel that I was beneath the lens of a viewfinder? That there was a light shining through my rib cage?

I thought, at first, that she was about to fall. Off-balance, moments away from her death against the faraway ground. Instinctively, I set out a hand to catch her. “Careful —”

But instead, with the brush like the wind off the skin of the tide, Eleno pressed his lips against mine.

Chapter Text

When I opened my eyes to his hand covering my mouth, I already knew what he wanted.

I could see nothing in the pitch dark of my chambers, but I knew. I knew from the cold metal that rang against my skin. I knew from the pinprick beneath my skull, his presence holding me tight. It was a chilly, omnipresent force that held me down. I had no choice but to do what he said.

"Get up. I'm taking you with me."

"You — rebel scum!"

I was helpless. He hoisted me out of my bed, a hand grabbing at my hair, metal gauntlet scraping against my skull. I believe he drew blood. "You can't do this to me!"

"I am sick of waiting."

He flung me on the floor. His boot pushed beneath my nightgown, between my thighs. "If you can't figure it out yourself," he said, "then I'll do it for you!"

I gasped and protested, but what was I to do?

"I am taking you with me to the rebel base. We will lock you in the darkest dirtiest dungeon we have. I will shave your head. I will change your name. I will inject you with the essence of Man, and it will be irreversible."

He was playing with me as if I were a little doll. Fondling my breasts, rubbing between my legs. Tears streaked down my cheeks. This could not be! He could not make me into a man, not like he was. I was Slavebreaker. I was a womyn! A loyal, obedient womyn. 

It would not be my fault — even if I survived this, I would be forever altered. It would not be my fault. I would simply have to live with it, and my sisters would accept me. Of course they would have to accept me.

His hands around my wrists. Hoisting me over his shoulder. I kicked ineffectively against his breastplate, but still he grasped my back. His fingers found the crook beneath my white, feathery wings.

"I do not want this!" I cried as he continued to assault me. And it became something else — a mantra, that I repeated on and on. I did not want this. Therefore, it was not my fault. Therefore, no one would hate me.

He began to tear. The hollow, delicate bones snapping.

"You're mine now, boy," he said, rough hands covered in blood. "I can do whatever I want with you."

"No… No… I won't let you! I won't —"

My head swung with deja vu as I awoke. I shot upright, my heart pounding through all my limbs. Pitch black— but it was only a dream.

My white nightclothes were soaked in sweat; my covers had fallen away. I was oddly exposed to the night air. As I pressed my hand to my aching abdomen, my nipples were hard. Cold, and sweating. I panted, raking my hands through my cropped hair. It was a dream, only a dream. I’d had it many times before.

I blinked. It made no difference to my vision, of course. But I blinked, and blinked again. I shook my head, as if trying to rattle an insect from a vessel. I could not tell, at first, if it was only residue from the unreal world I had just escaped. There was a little hollow in my head, a part gone.

The call was on my tongue. Slave? Slave, come here.

But I did not want to disturb the blanket of night. I felt about the side of my cot and found my arclight. I held it over my head and let its halo pool around me.

A draconic shadow — my helmet — on the wall. Everything in its place, from the stand of paint and powders to my IV drip.

Eleno was gone.

I did not realize I was rising. My mouth hung open, my throat clenched in fear. My nightclothes slunk off the cot and flowed about me. I approached the mirror, its reflection dazzling my eyes.

“You naughty thing,” I said to it. “Get back here!”

The halls were just as dark and slumbering. I held my skirt to keep from tripping; one hand bunched in fabric, the other with the light held high. 

Darkness all around me, so deep as to be physical. Its velvet tendrils brushed my cheeks as I scoured the vessel. My disorientation was so deep, I do not know when I first realized my slaves had gone silent.

That oppressive clamor, rooted in the back of my mind? It was psychological kickback, my brain trying to fill the abscess their minds had left. My mind was ringing. They were gone, all gone.

All but one.

“What are you doing?” I said to the dark. “Come back here.”

Silly thing— her presence was now a throbbing, a sac that expanded and shrunk in rhythm. It strained against my walls. In and out, calling to me.

Nothing was left to impede my path; I did not even need the light. Soon I ceased to need vision at all, our rope a taut umbilical cord. My senses turned to a slow, sensual kaleidoscope, a blurring of fluids that could only mean her. 

My eyes did not see her eyes. But mechanics aside I did see her, did know her— standing in some desolate corner with ramrod back and head bowed, like a visit to the gallows. Her eerie stiffness reminded me of the first night I took her; as I drew close the space between my legs throbbed in time with her, drooling beneath the diaphanous gown.

“My slave!” I cried out, and threw my hands around her neck. “Ah… I ought to punish you, running off like that.”

I kissed her sloppy mouth, swollen lips devouring her icy skin. Sloping down, into the crook beneath her ear. I clasped her sex between the plates of armor. “What am I to do, when I crave your taste but you are nowhere to be found? Do you expect to leave your Slavebreaker starving?”

She did not respond to my touch; that was how I liked it. I groaned, forcing the command through my mind, to fuck back to me.

In resonance, something cold and hard pressed against my slit. My muscles clenched, gasping as I pushed through Eleno’s mind—

And found resistance.

She had braced her rod against my sex. The force of her mind was strong enough to make me stagger, scrape against the point. I was filled with a burning sensation. Something that pulsed, skittering in my veins, my throat.

Hatred.

Hatred like a rabbit to the hawk. Hatred like a rock unable to escape being slowly eaten by the sea. The hatred of the doomed towards its ender. Eleno had not wandered off in a fit of whimsy. 

She was free, and she meant to kill me.

I tore myself away from her stiff arms. Back down the hall I ran, tripping over my gown. Eleno did not heed the limits of her own body; her sockets popped, her boots rammed the floors. She was fast, so fast. She was nothing but sheer will, and I had no power to control her any longer.

“Stop!” I cried. “Stop this, I am— I am your master!”

Eleno did not stop. She did not waver. With what mental energy I could muster, I projected my image running forward while my body swung wildly around, ducking into a control room. She hurried on with her unseeing eyes.

I sank down to the floor. 

In the dark and the quiet, I threatened to fall apart. I wanted to sink my head into my knees and sob like a little girl. I held strong. I swallowed. The dim opalescent lights of the communicators glittered in my eyes; their pinprick lights, white and red, reflected off my clammy skin. I sensed Eleno as she stopped her pursuit. She knew I had slipped away.

Swift. Turn. Marching backwards. Vision scoping. I had to stay quiet.

I crawled forward on my hands and knees; blind fingers groping for anything that could be of use. I fantasized shanks and blades, a fully-loaded ray-gun awaiting my touch.

Ring!

My head shot up.

Ring! Ring!

“Not now!” I hissed. “Who is calling me at this hour?”

Eleno heard the noise— it bounded from every room with a communicator. It drew her, the dumb thing, like a moth to flame.

The closest room being mine.

I scrambled towards the wall, pale wormy fingers attacking the buttons. “Quiet, quiet!”

Punched in. Wrong button. “Ah—!”

Yes, Slavebreaker, the system intoned. Replaying message from…

"Sister, oh Sister is it true?” Gisal’s voice crackled.

No! I slapped at the interface, but to no avail. Gisal’s plea played through to the very end.

"They are spreading rumors —Slavebreaker Rascende told me you've been summoned to the Highmothers’ Temple! She said that you are to hold counsel with the Highmothers, to deliver them the slave that was once He-she. She said you'll be bestowed with a new title — High Slavebreaker!”

Eleno was stalking towards the noise, now. I flared my arclight again, my heart in my throat. I tripped over my skirts as I fled as far from the door as I could.

"She is full of falsehoods, is she not? It can't be true. It can't be true that they are bestowing you a new ship and three concubines bred for the highest ranks — they would not do that, not when I have always tried —”

A small hatch, meant only for menial repairs. The door burst open and Eleno saw me, squirming, crying, crawling inside with Gisal’s pathetic simpering rattling the walls.

"Do not take offense — it is only… Why, we grew up together! We were the same. There is no reason for you to — to be so successful, to become an immortal legend — with a feast in your honor — while I…"

I stared back at her slack-jawed. Her empty gaze met mine. That’s right, I thought. Hatred.

Her hand found my ankle before I fully slipped through. I lashed and I cried and something was pulled, some muscle or ligament– then I fell through the chute and out of her grasp.

I landed in some dirty maintenance room. Machinery hummed, but there was nobody there to serve me. The communications unit was ringing again, and I made no attempt to stop it. I stood, ragged. My gown was torn at the shoulder seam, baring my left breast to the air. Soot and dirt marred its white surface. I hovered my hands over my sex; Eleno’s rod had pierced it, just enough to leave a thin trickle of blood down my thighs. Half-folded, I staggered to the controls.

What was I to do? Where could I go? I checked Laodike’s course; we were hundreds of hours out from any habitable planets, let alone any liberated ones. I could contact a High Priestess, but…

My hands hovered. But I was supposed to be the greatest of my class. If I confessed to this, all that I worked for would be squandered. And if they should learn of my touching Eleno…

I left the control room, and back into the hall. No, there was nothing to do but to survive, to endure. What was I frightened of? Eleno was nothing but the dirt beneath my boot. Let her hate, like a worm hates the hawk.

Yes, Slavebreaker. Replaying message…

Echoing, cacophonous, through the ship.

Slavebreaker Winter has done well, said Highmother West.

Said North, She has conquered He-she, that who deceives us, that who pretends to be womyn.

Her hatred of the male race is remarkable, went East. Her tactics are effective. Her dedication to the cause is to be lauded.

West: I see no reason why she should not be vaunted.

East: Should be provided as an example of ideal womyn.

Obedient.

Clever.

Loving.

“No…no…” She neared me again; behind me, a silent phantom down the floor. I could sense her only through the shadow she cast in my mind. I took off once more into an unsteady run. “No, no you must understand—”

Highmother South interrupted. Yet, are your memories so short? Slavebreaker Winter ought to be catechized, not pampered.

Yes… said the others. Yes, there was that one thing.

For we know all that has happened,

Every misfortune that has fallen our servants.

She was so very young, said North. Does she even recall?

But I could not run for much longer. The hallway reached a dead end, my ankle twisted, and Eleno caught me. I screamed. I bit deep into her gauntleted hand, but there was no stopping it. Through my back, scraping my spine, the rod plunged. My blood gushed out onto the floor. My legs gave out beneath me, leaving me a puppet on the end of Eleno’s stick. I grasped it where it escaped my stomach; whimpering weakly, my hands slick and red.

“But I…”

She threw me to the floor. Over and over the rod plunged, poking holes into my thin skin. My back arched with every useless scream.”But I love you! I love you!”

A priestess found her crying on the beach. Sad, wet, skinny little thing, all covered in sand.

“What has become of you Winter? What makes you weep so?”

“Gisal said… she said that the Highmothers turn bad girls into little boys.” The tide tugged at Winter’s dress. “She said that if I’m mean to her, I’ll wake up ugly like them.”

“Oh, she was only lying. Don’t be scared.”

Tears in her little eyes. “It’s not fair…”

“What is?”

“Why do I have to be bad?” the child cried. “I want to be good. It will be really hard to be bad. It will hurt a lot. Why can’t I ask really nicely, and the Highmothers will let me wake up boy-Winter?”

I did not die. I lived on, Eleno’s plaything, to be bled and raped and ruined until her mindless body shut down. I lay on the floor and I moaned. How I wished to die.

  “If you truly want to be good, you will never think this again. Banish it from your mind. Purge it from your flesh. There are no little boys, and there will never be any more. Remember: You are complete.” 

“I am complete.”

“You are love.”

“I am love.”

“To love is to listen.”

“To love is to obey.”

I sat up in bed. Mouth covered in drool. Deja vu. “Fucking dreams. Fucking every night. I—”

Went to breakfast.

Over the spread, I pronounced, “We can leave— whenever you want.”

I was giddy— overtired from restless night after restless night. I was too excited to even feel embarrassed. "Oh, enough of this. Come — sit here."

Eleno did so, settling stiffly on the chair at my right hand. I commanded my slaves to bring another bowl, and she ate with me as I spoke.

"The Highmothers expect us at their temple in 48 hours," I said. "We can make more time if I come up with some excuse — some emergency that means I may be late. But I won't say how late. Oh, won't that be rich? Leaving them hanging. The uncertainty will give us even more time. To get away, I mean.

"Again — whenever you're ready." I laughed. "Whatever you say is what I'll do. Why, I think if you told me to burn down the ship, I would do it in a heartbeat!"

I laughed — and I laughed, my voice echoing through the dining hall, down through the depths of Laodike.  

As she ate, the porridge would habitually slip from her spoon. She was very awkward about it. Spoon in bowl, spoon in mouth. Some of it slipped down her chin, leaving her drooling and messy. I leaned over to wipe it away.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," I said, “but don’t be frightened. I know it was not the real you.”

For, more often than the nightmares, I spent my night communing with Eleno in tender, body-warm bliss. In them, he offered me a choice. He said the old offer was still on the table (despite him trying to kill me shortly after). He said that there were no hard feelings, and the rebels would be happy to have me. That I would be good and useful and, maybe one day, beloved.

In my dreams, we were on the shores of Ucinda, and whatever happened there happened between us. He held me beneath the warm water, and hoisted my regrown locks into his fist. He slashed at them, and the hair wriggled like black snakes, lost in the ocean.

In my dreams, we sat across from one another in the sand. Our arms held out, crossed, twin needles in skin. I looked up, and his face was my face. I cannot tell where one ended and one began. He called me a name that did not exist upon my waking.

“You think I don't know. You think you fooled me, being nothing, feeling nothing. But I know better." I blushed. “Ah— you could stand to be more subtle, you know. With the dreaming.”

More porridge dripped from his spoon. I looked at the little puddle it left on the table, and a sudden surge of emotion filled me. Tears filled my eyes.

“Please—” I slid across the table, dishes scattering, to grasp at the sides of Eleno’s head. “Please, I know you do not hate me. But— oh, it was so real! I know you ought to. I deserve it. I deserve—”

In lieu of a finish, I kissed him.

Melted; the chair creaking and tipping, my robe opened, silked down my shoulders. I kissed the hair across his collarbone until it was black and shining. Swimming until my mouth reached between his legs and lapped at his cock. Hard tight thing between my lips, between his lips, sucking.

“Ah—” I gasped, feeling his pleasure. “Ah, I am almost jealous.”

His knees rose, knobby like mountain peaks. All his muscles flexed but his face as I, with a deliberateness and a fervor, brought him forth.

My time then came; he slinked upwards, pulling me beneath him. I hardly felt the steel floor beneath our sloppy bodies. I pushed him to kiss my breasts, and he kissed them. I pushed his fingers into my mouth, sucking them good and wet.

“Please… Jag…”

Solid hand, thumb beneath my jaw, brushing back my hair. Lubed hands, his hands, my spit, my hands, fingering the metal slit at my temple.

“Yes!” I arched my back, the mere touch a shock. “Yes!”

Slow pressure, pushing the implant. Slow steady pressure coaxing the pistil to part.

“Yes, yes!” I cried. “Fuck me! Fuck my brain!”

All dissolved; all but Jag and I, my twin flame, my slave, my pet, my brother. We were colors never seen. We were words never spoken. Him, plunging into my most intimate depths, him plumbing me at my disposal, under my control. Where did my control end and his will begin? 

Agh, mind-fuck, me-fucked, selfhood stretched, in and out. Moaning for more, head lolling in his hold. It didn’t matter. My every thought quivered in his wake. He left me drooling on the atrium floor.

Centuries ago, this room had been full-to-bursting with a thousand womyn, slaves in their wake; they displayed their gems at throats, carved marble warriors flexing at their disposal. There were so many a breath could not pass through the throng unimpeded. Beneath me was a mosaic of stars, and above was Jag redressing his armor.

“Wait—”

He stopped, helmet in his hands, held loose above his abdomen.

I said, “I’m sick of fighting. I’m sick of these circling, fruitless chases. There’s something you want from me, isn’t there? There’s something you want me to be."

I forced myself upright. I blinked, dumbly, at his boots. "Well — if it means an end to this pointless charade, then so be it.”

Shivering, I ran a finger through my cropped hair. It stuck flush against my skin. “Jag…”

I looked up to his lustreless eyes. I was like a freshly-born doe on my staggering legs, rising until we were standing face-to-face, chest-to-chest. A deep breath. My shoulders straightened, my head held high. I tried to retain my imperious voice, though the words were so difficult.

"Take me with you," I said. "I will come. The rebels may have my ship. They may have all my slaves, everything I know about every level of power. I will betray all my sisters. I will betray the priestesses. I will forsake their teachings. Only say the word… Only say the word, and I will be your prisoner.

“This is not a command. It is a request. I am— I am done giving commands. I want…”

My voice died.

It was not like how I’d imagined it. Jag had no facetious smile, no mocking insult to pass me. He did not take me by the waist. He did not kiss me again.

Well— one more order, for the road. “Dance with me.”

It was a slow, soundless waltz. His boots echoed in the empty atrium as I hugged my body to his. I laid my head in the crook of his, and we swayed.

Back and forth. I closed my eyes and I saw him smiling. What I wouldn’t give, what I wouldn’t become to see him, whole and smiling. Maybe the rebels, in their mysterious hovels galaxies away, had found a way to restore a slave, a pristine garden reborn. Jag had said it himself; the soul was unassailable. His gauntlets cut against my gaunt fingers. Back and forth. 

We danced until my worn body began to waver. I quivered, and still Jag held me. "Whenever you're ready," I said. "I'm only waiting."

Old habits died hard; a rivalry was a rivalry. I would not let go until he let go. He would be the first to blink, the first to show the truth. I had to see him still there, the fire to the smoke. I knew it already, that Jag had loved me— or, failing that, had seen something in me worth saving.

The tears came against my will. They dripped down my cheeks onto his breastplate, and from there to the swaying ground. He held me in slow, gentle circles. I cried. I cried uncontrollably, irrevocably, every suppressed desire and desperate wish expunged from me like a pumped stomach. I do not know when my fingers slipped out of his grip. I do not know when I crumpled to the floor, when I laid my head on the metal and retched with it, crying all I had left in me, shivering and cold alone.

"How could you be so cruel?" My voice wavered. "This is my last testament. Stop it! Stop mocking me. If there is anything left— do something, say something now. 

“Anything, anything. I’ll take it! The Maiden cannot have done its work so well. Not to someone like you." Oh, it was horrid. The most horrid feeling I had ever felt. “I have had enough. Disobey me. If there's anything left of Jag Eleno in there, if your heroic professions of the soul were more than empty words, disobey me!"

Above, glittering through the haze of tears, Jag Eleno stared blankly ahead, arms outstretched to an invisible partner.

Is it a mercy to kill it before it's born?

Is it a kinder existence to simply be the one leaked down the drain? Is it better, I could not help but wonder, to be a wolf who devours and devours but is never satiated? It must be better than being the lamb. All through the snow in fields I killed and killed but satisfaction never came. I think now I was never capable of it. Were that infinite kindness as powerful as it supposed itself, I would have been born into a world that would have me.

There is little I could say to justify myself. There is nothing I can do that would make you view me as anything but evil to the roots. The rebels will never forgive me. My own people, who I once loved, will recoil with disgust and horror when they see the depths of me. I tell you this. I tell you that I did all I could. I obeyed every law. I did what was expected of me, and I was loved for it. There was nothing else I should've wanted. It is a sickness that even the Maiden could not have purged.

But I would not know. Though it called for me, I did not go into the Maiden. I did not want to be repaired. I wanted to be free.

The Highmothers Temple was on a planet of lush gardens that had once been swampland. The waters had been drained and the whole world terraformed to make way for the sacred house. Hedges of feminine forms rose from the haze of misty fountains. Flowers bloomed on every surface.

Their slaves greeted us. They were of the most exquisite beauty; so much so they were impossible to describe. They led us inside, their gazes drawn down, their touches hovering just above my skin.

First, we were brought through a room laid out with an exquisite feast. It was beyond anything even I, so well-versed in the trappings of the highest echelon of our world, could fathom. My mouth watered and my stomach coiled. A slave looked at her feet and said, "Slavebreaker, would you like to eat?"

"I want nothing," said I, "but to deliver my charge to the Highmothers."

She smiled.

Next, we were led through a room of marvellous furnishings, the softest silks, the air suffused with warmth and lavender, and asked if we would like to rest. I refused.

We came now to the bathhouse, full of flesh. There were so many slaves they piled over one another, an endless tangle of breasts and ankles and fine swan necks. They reached their fingers toward us, sighing like birds. The walls were white porcelain dripping with the sweated mist of the hot baths.

"It will be an hour until the Highmothers will see you," my guide said. "Are you sure you will not be entertained?"

"I shall wait as long as needs be."

"You must be naked," said the slave, "in their presence. Shall I undress you now?"

I agreed.

My suspicions were correct — there was not an independent mind among the throng. I was the only thinking, feeling person in the entire temple. It was all endless winding caverns of slaves emptied of their wills. Had they not been, I doubt I would have been allowed so deep. Jag and the guide stripped me of my armor.

The tunic slid from the slave’s hands. "Slavebreaker…"

I stood in my nakedness without shame. The very air seemed to recoil from me. My skin, white from illness, dimpling in the sauna. White — save for the green pall cast by the pulsing cock that stood erect between my legs.

"Slavebreaker, there is something…"

I lifted my head, where my implant thrummed with an unnatural heat. "What?"

"Ahh…" She had no words for it. She’d never seen such a thing in her life.

What did it matter? The Highmothers had no cunts. They were only minds. Minds, held in fragile glass tubes.

I said, "There is nothing the matter. I will see the Highmothers, naked, as is tradition. There will not be a single thing to hide my soul from their glorious sight."

"Yes, Slavebreaker." She felt her knees. "You have passed every test. You'll be able to pass through…" She gestured to the tall doors that had the most important room from sight.

In those final moments before the end, I turned my slave, who had traveled with me all this way. His weapons lay discarded on the floor. But neither he nor I would need a weapon; it pulsed against my temple, the high keening insistence. Every thought that flowed through me brought my implant closer and closer to the inevitable implosion.

"Yes," we said. "Let them see me as I am."