Chapter 37 Scythro
“Fuck!”
Ghorak curses on an exhale, releasing all the tension in his muscles. Our little plan for escaping isn’t working out. The big guy has been flexing his heart out for a quarter of a drath or more, but the rusty chains encircling his body still refuse to budge.
He’s strong, but even strength has its limits.
“Take a break,” I tell him. “Conserve your energy. I’ll try to think of a different plan.”
“I’m sorry,” he groans wearily.
The dejection in his voice is palpable, and it makes my heart ache just a little. I know it isn’t his own imprisonment that’s got him down. He’s worried about the human female.
So am I.
I give the chained giant a friendly shoulder-bump. With my hands bound behind my back, it’s the best I can do for encouragement.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “We’ll figure something out.”
The words are spoken with a confidence I don’t exactly feel. So far, Ghorak’s strength and my powers of persuasion have both failed. That doesn’t leave many other options. The situation is looking bleak.
“If I just had some weed,” Ghorak mutters, “then I could probably do it.”
I have my doubts about that. Dreamweed tends to dull the will, not sharpen it. And I’ve never heard of it improving anyone’s physical abilities. Then again, considering how much of the stuff Ghorak smokes…
“We’ll be lucky if there’s any left,” I tell him. “Venim’s boys are hitting your stash pretty hard.”
Ghorak lets out another groan.
Ever since Venim departed with the female, the other thugs have been occupying their time with various forms of entertainment.
A few of them are wrestling. Others are playing dice for ore.
Most of them, however, are gathered around by the thrumwings, puffing lazily on weedstalks taken from Ghorak’s supply.
“Bastards,” the Grangorian grunts.
I can agree with that. And their boss is the biggest bastard of all. I lean back into Ghorak’s body and tilt my eyes up toward the overcast sky. A pair of screechers are circling high above us, dark specks moving across a field of gray. For a moment, my weary mind starts to blur.
Then a commotion jerks me back to reality.
Venim is returning.
With Jean.
The Znthian looks exactly as he did the last time I saw him, a few kethars ago.
He is clad in his chitin armor, with the exception of his helmet, which he left behind when he departed.
His orange face blazes against the drab, gray backdrop of the sullen sky, and his long hair whips on the wind like a shimmering blue banner.
Jean, on the other hand, appears to be completely naked.
Her bodysuit and mask are dangling limply from Venim’s free hand, swinging as he walks.
As for the human herself, she is draped over the Znthian’s armored shoulder, her bare bottom on full display for all to see.
It is a slightly darker shade of pink than what I remember.
Every alien in the camp stops and stares. Games of chance are abandoned. Weedstalks are dropped and crushed underfoot. My heart feels like it’s clawing at my throat.
What the null is Venim doing?
Once he’s close enough to make himself heard without shouting, the Znthian lifts the female off his shoulder and sets her down on her own two feet. Then he takes her by the shoulders and turns her around.
That’s when I realize she isn’t actually naked. Not entirely.
Her body may be devoid of clothing, but her skin is not completely uncovered. Two dark blue stains are covering the centers of her breasts, hiding her nipples. A third stain between her legs conceals her sex.
Venim has done what he said he was going to do.
He has sealed her.
“I am showing you this,” Venim says, glaring coldly at his men, “to show you the futility of attempting to ravage this woman. You can now put any such thoughts out of your mind.”
While I understand what the bastard is trying to do, the technique is questionable. Showing a bunch of sex-starved criminals a female’s semi-nude body is probably not the best way to dispel their thoughts of breeding her, even if it is technically impossible now.
And indeed, the males seem to be growing restless. Resentful mutterings rise from the little gathering. At least one of these reaches my ears.
“More ways to breed a female than her cunt.”
Apparently, Venim catches this as well. He gives the human another half turn and pulls her against him. Then, with gauntleted hands, he spreads her buttocks enough for everyone to glimpse the splash of blue between them.
“Her rear hole is also sealed,” the Znthian growls. “So don’t bother thinking about it.”
This elicits another flurry of mutterings.
One voice rises above the rest: “She’s got a mouth, don’t she?”
“Indeed she does…” Venim says.
He lets go of the little female, and she drops to her knees beside him.
Then he begins to remove his armor a piece at a time, dropping each item on the ground until his upper body is bare.
The brand of his condemnation is visible on the right half of his chest, a blue glyph emblazoned upon his orange scales.
The other side bears a different mark. A pair of crescent wounds, one on top of the other. Venim swipes his fingers through the blue blood and holds them up for the men to see.
“…She also has teeth,” he says, “and she knows how to use them. I wouldn’t recommend putting your cock in her mouth unless you’re okay with getting it lopped off in the process.”
This time, the mutterings have a different tone. Less resentment, more fear.
“Any questions?” Venim asks.
There are none.
“Good.”
He tosses the human’s clothes on the ground in front of her. Some of the men stand around and watch as she gets dressed, but most of them don’t bother. No point ogling her when they can’t do anything about it.
As for myself, my eyes are on Venim. I’m thinking about all the things I would do to him if my hands weren’t bound behind my back. I picture myself wringing his throat, slitting it, gouging out his eyes and feeding them into his smug, orange mouth.
Then, a whisper in the back of my mind: No.
Another way.
Find another way.
The voice is mine, but not mine; quiet as the softest purr, yet clear as the tolling of a bell. It is gone as quickly as it appeared, but the words continue echoing silently inside my skull.
Find another way…
What the actual null? Did Venim give me brain damage when he kicked me? I do my best to shake the thought away and focus on the here and now.
Once the human is dressed again in her bodysuit and breathing mask, Venim takes her by the arm and leads her over to where Ghorak and I are chained.
The little winged android is still lying on the ground where she left it a few kethars ago when she ventured into the mine.
She picks it up now and hugs it to her chest like a child hugging a doll.
Venim studies her for a curious moment, then scowls.
“I have work to do,” he says. “So I’m going to leave you here with the other prisoners. Remember to behave yourself. If you do not, I shall give you another spanking, and this time I won’t be gentle about it.”
The human’s blush deepens. Her eyes flare. Venim holds her gaze for a moment, then turns on his heel and marches off in the direction of the other men.
“He spanked you?” Ghorak asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she snaps. Then her voice softens, and she says, “Sorry. I’m not angry at you. I’m just… not in a good mood at the moment.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” says Ghorak.
After that, none of us say anything for a little while. I would like to, of course. I would like to know what happened on the other side of those rocks, but I know better than to ask. It’s none of my business unless the human decides to make it so.
If I could, I would hug her, but I can’t with my arms bound like this. Perhaps it is for the better. Perhaps the little female would prefer not to be touched by a male right now.
“He…”
She starts to say something, but her voice trails off.
“It’s alright,” I tell her. “You don’t have to say anything, Jean.”
“He didn’t rape me.”
I’m pretty sure that stripping a woman naked, spanking her, and then sealing her privates shut against her will is considered a crime under imperial law. All the more so if that woman is a wife of the Emperor. However, I think I understand what she means.
Venim did not breed her.
I hope that it’s true. I will not press her about it. She’s been through enough already. She doesn’t need an interrogation from me.
“At least you didn’t let him get away unscathed.”
“The bite?” she asks, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He made me do that.”
“He made you bite him?”
She nods. “He didn’t want to glue my mouth shut, so he did it that way instead.”
That is… unexpected.
I had thought Venim was only protecting the female because of Pharod’s orders. Now I’m starting to wonder.
“I think he’s crazy,” she says.
“He’s Znthian,” I tell her. “They’re all crazy.”
“We need to escape.”
“I agree, but I don’t want you to get another—”
I manage to cut myself off just in time, but the female can guess what I was about to say.
Her blush, which had been fading, now returns in full force.
She casts a furtive glance in the direction of the thugs to make sure none of them are watching.
Then she sets down her little broken android and holds out her hand.
Something glitters in her palm. Something small and flat and milky blue.
A throwing knife.
A crystalline throwing knife.
“Where did you get that?” I ask.
“Venim,” she says. “He’s got a bunch of them hidden away inside his armor, but I only managed to snag this one. Think it’ll work?”
I was unconscious during most of the action down in the mine, but I got a pretty good look at the aftermath. Venim cut those scuttlers to pieces with that sword of his. The throwing knife appears to be fashioned from the same material.
“Let’s see…”
I take the blade out of her hand with the tip of my tail and bring it around behind me. Then I start sawing the edge of it against the chain holding my wrists. After a few sareths, I check the metal with my thumb.
There’s a notch.
“It will work,” I tell her, “but it’s gonna take some time.”
She picks up her android doll and hugs it again. “How much?”
“I don’t know…”
Hopefully less than it takes us to reach Mount Bolguz.