Weekly Drabble #209: Tell Me a Story (Patreon)

With the prompt of "masks on vacation" from uberdrops, we return to the ascendancy, where the Warlord returns to his quarters after a long, tiring day to discover he has a visitor. I was originally going to include the tale of The Fool and The Serpent here, but I thought it would fit better in a later update. In the meantime, enjoy!

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Tell Me a Story:

The Warlord’s guards tilted their head in respect as the master of the Black Fleet passed by them, returning the gesture. Each of them was tall and wide, made more so by their armour. They were former Unhall slaves, the results of generations of forced breeding for size and power, intended to be sold to heavy gravity worlds or for tasks necessitating muscle. Unhall’s slaves were not like those of Allonis or the Takashi Guilds, bred and sculpted from the genetic level for specific tasks; they came from prisoners taken in raids, those not valuable enough for ransom and too valuable to simply dispose of, press-gangs that never worked their way out of their subservient position or those that a pirate had taken a liking to and then tossed aside once their master or mistress grew bored with them. Those prisoners and their descendants had been made to serve the pirate princes and princesses of Unhall by whatever means their overlords desired, whether it was being used as bullet fodder in boarding actions, sweltering in mines and factories where flesh was considered cheaper and easier to replace than automation, or in beds and brothels. All too often, how unpleasant the lives of Unhall slaves could be were matched only by how short they were.

Until the day the Black Fleets arrived above the planet and the Warlord set his legions loose. In a single day, the pirate kingdoms of Unhall fell, the former rulers of the world destroyed or put to flight as their slaves, many for the first time in their lives, knew freedom. The Ascendancy had swelled by tens of millions as former slaves willingly joining the crusade, each of them utterly loyal to the man who’d cast down their tormentors and freed them from enslavement. Amongst the Unhall, they called him Chain-breaker. They would die for him.

And if they won’t, they’ll still die.

The Warlord stepped into his quarters; aboard the great city-ship, they were more like estates, but modestly decorated with little pretense or self-aggrandizement. That time in his life was long past. Some days it felt those memories had come from another man’s life entirely, one remembered distantly, like a movie or slideshow that he had not lived, but only seen..

There was someone in his waiting room. She was on the couch facing the door, with her feet up on a footrest and her arms stretched along its the sofa’s back. “Lady Virago,” he said, tipping his head in greeting.

“Warlord.” Her duty jacket hung open, her braids undone. Even in such a casual repose, she remained breathtaking, a tribute to her gene-sculptors. If he ever met them, the Warlord would thank them most sincerely for their work. Helfer was not the first general or admiral he’d had, but she was first among their ranks. She’d been born to be nothing but a pleasure pet and servant, but she’d become so much more than that. Every time he saw her, or any of the converts that served upon the Black Fleets, he was reminded of how far anyone could rise. Even a man from another life.

Yes, he would thank them in all sincerity... and then he would kill them for everything else that they’d done.

Killian rose from where she was sitting, approaching him. He reached out and touched her cheek. She smiled, leaning into his hand. It was said that he was the only man that Virago would allow to touch her, but that wasn’t quite true– he was the only person. “You should have let me finish off the Grand Alliance,” she told him. “They’re vermin.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “They are. But I think they can be redeemed, or at least made use of. I’d prefer to have them inducted as willing and intact members of the Ascendancy, but if their Caliph is foolish enough to reject my offer, then I will break them. We can pick up the pieces from there.”

“Do you think he will?”

The Warlord unbuttoned his coat. He could easily have had servants for this; other men and women in his position might have used them, but he didn’t require such things. He hung the jacket up, looking down at his right hand, flexing the fingers. That hand looked completely natural. It was warm to the touch, it felt hot and cold, pressure and pain like any other man’s hand, but it hadn’t been flesh and bone for years. He had lost that limb at the end of his old life. “Pride makes men do foolish things,” he said as he unfastened his collar. That lesson was one he’d learned, far later than he should have.

“Men do foolish things,” she told him.

“Yes,” he answered. “We do.”

Her perfect eyes glinted. “Like killing a man who would have supported your cause for the sake of a single slave?”

“Considering how it all worked out, I’m not so sure that it was that foolish...”

She smiled in the way she only did for him, following him and waiting outside the bedroom as he changed from his martial attire into something more casual. It was as if a mask had been dropped. Or, Killian though, almost all of one.She reached out and touched the plate that covered half his face, her immaculate fingernails tracing along the laser-etched silhouette of the serpent’s skull engraved upon the dark metal. Just as he was the only human she would allow to touch her, she was the only living soul that he would let touch his own mask, or the flesh beneath it. She met his eyes, both the dark green of the natural one and the faint glint of the one beneath the metal. He didn’t say anything, didn’t stop her.

She knew where to touch it, where the hidden catches were and she lifted it away from his face. Beneath it, there was mutilation. She’d seen his scars a hundred times or more, but each time was like the first. Each time the shape of them was different, as if his flesh slowly shifted and twisted beneath the metal that hid half his face. The disfigurement covered that side of his face, from his nose to past his ears, from his jawline up to his temple and his right eye... it wasn’t milky, as if it were damaged and blind. It wasn’t an evocative black or some cosmetic bit of coloured artistry. It was discoloured and shone wetly, like a layer of oil that had dribbled into a cup of milk.

No bullet had done this. No blade, no burn, no laser, no chemical, claw, poison or mutagen found on any world of man or a thousand others could have made those marks.

No healing regime, transplant, regeneration therapy or medicine could heal what had been done to him, and his features were warped into a perpetual grimace, the damage to his flesh causing him pain that never ended. No, not just pain – agony. She didn’t know how he could withstand it. A thousand times a thousand other men would have broken, but the Warlord was not any of those men.

Carefully, she touched his scarred visage, an intimacy only she was allowed. “Tell me a story,” she breathed softly.

“What would you like to hear?”

“Tell me the story,” she pleaded. “The Fool and the Serpent.”

He smiled, the untouched side of his face turning up into a warm smile. The other half became a hideous, pained rictus. “The Fool and the Serpent,” he agreed with a nod. He poured himself a snifter of brandy and one for her. It was one of the few vices he indulged in these days. He sat down in his atrium. The windows looked out into space, the stars twinkling occasionally as one of his armada briefly blocked them out.

The Warlord sat down and Killian took a seat beside him. For the moment, she wasn’t General Helfer, nor Lady Virago nor anyone but a young woman, sitting with the man who’d given her the one thing in her life she’d never before had: a choice. So she sat with him, ready to listen once more to the tale of the Fool and the Serpent as the stars shone and twinkled around them.