by Tristan Vick
A slender Dagon woman with dark purple hair tied up into an elegant bun gazed back at her with a single good eye the color of cerise pink while the other hid behind a leather eyepatch. She had on fishnet stockings, knee-high brown leather boots, and a velvet coat with a green brocade collar and a plum satin lining.
The elegant jacket she wore had black lace accents which matched the stylish under-blouse, its deep cut V-neck surrounded by cascading ruffled folds. She adjusted her oversized cuffs with their brass-toned buttons, and smiled at Danica. “Ladgara Vassex? What in the bleedin’ empire are you doing here?!”
“Nothing much,” she said, waving her hand across her body nonchalantly. “You know, the usual, just trying to keep my hide all in one piece long enough to make my grand escape.”
Danica walked up to her as though she were going to slap the living daylights out of Ladgara, causing the woman to tense, but instead threw her arms around her neck and embraced her.
“You can’t begin to imagine how glad I am to see a familiar face.”
“I think your standards of what constitutes a friend are slipping, my dear,” Ladgara said, nodding down at Danica’s chest. Leaning in, she whispered, “FYI, your robe slipped open as well.”
Quickly closing her robe, Danica looked around, embarrassed by the thought of anyone having seen her breasts flop out.
“Nice to see the ole girls in tip-top shape, though,” she added, smiling coyly. “Always a pleasure.”
Danica blushed and then drew back. She shot Ladgara a curious look. “Seriously though, what are you doing here, Vass?”
Ladgara laughed. “Nobody has called me that in ages.” She shook her head and, motioning for Danica to walk alongside her, they strolled through the underground corridor together. “I’m afraid Novac Tamoran had some not so brilliant plan to try and raid a Nyctan cruiser. It turned out to be a troop carrier. He was taken into Nyctan custody and tossed in the clink and I was sold to IGS.” She fanned her hands and did a slight curtsey, just for show. “And here I am.”
“That blows,” Danica said. “The arena isn’t for the faint of heart. But I’ve seen you in a bar fight, so I know you can do more than hold your own. If you want any pointers, don’t hesitate to ask, b’cause I’d be more than happy to—”
Ladgara leaned in close to Danica, her chest pressing into Dani’s shoulder, her grin spreading into a wide smile, she cut her off. “You don’t think I actually intend to stay here, do you?”
Danica stopped mid-sentence and swiveled to face Ladgara. “Same old Vass. Let me guess, you already have an ingenious plan to get yourself out of here?”
Ladgara stopped and looked around, scanning to see if they had any eavesdroppers, and then turned back to Danica. “Be careful what you say in here, the walls have eyes and ears.”
They resumed walking again and Ladgara directed Danica into a small alcove. It turned out to be a quaint living cell. Nothing fancy. Just the basics. A bed. A toilet. A shower in the ceiling which rained down onto a cement floor with a drain off to the corner.
Once inside the room, Ladgara Vassex fanned her hands across the small space and announced, “Home sweet home.”
“This is what they gave you?” Danica asked, dumbfounded, unable to believe a woman of Ladgara’s stature would be given something so small and unaccommodating.
“I’m afraid that Arkadia’s Colosseum isn’t like the one on Arena City. As you can clearly see, this place is...how shall I put it, oh yes...primitive.”
“I see what you mean,” Danica responded, stroking her chin as she looked around the confined quarters. Ladgara slapped the wall and a Murphy bed folded down, revealing a hidden bunk situated right above hers.
“Here’s where you’ll be staying...roomie,” Ladgara said glibly, offering little in the way of explanation, other than a sly smile.
“Vass, you’re kidding me, right?” Danica stood looking at her with her mouth agape, scarcely able to believe that the two of them had to stay in a room literally the size of a watershed.
“I kid you not, old friend. But, think of it this way; we have all the time in the world to catch up.”
“I thought you said you weren’t sticking around,” Danica said, noting Ladgara’s slip up.
“No need to be so litigious, Cass, it’s just a figure of speech.”
Danica looked over at the sliding closet and, with Ladgara’s nod of approval, went over and opened it. Inside were thin strips of leather, a deer skin bikini, crab shell body armor, and leather wrapped sandals.
“For crying out loud,” Danica groaned upon seeing the outfit they’d provided for her.
“It was here when I arrived,” Ladgara informed her. “But there was no way I was going to be caught dead in something like that. Besides, it looks like you could use it more than I could.” She glanced down at Danica’s chest again and Danica looked down to find that the robe had slipped open again, exposing her breasts and perky, dark purple nipples.
She rolled her eyes and peeled off the robe right in front of Ladgara who simply watched with an ogling sort of amusement. Seating herself on the end of the small cot, she watched Danica wiggle and squirm her way into the leather bikini and fasten the crab armor to herself. Once she was suited up, she spun around, inspecting the strange get up for herself. She looked like a pinup girl for the Arkadian guard.
“Hopefully tomorrow’s match lets you have a trident. That way you can be the Queen of Atlantis!” Ladgara covered her mouth and muffled a snigger as she watched Danica grow red in the face.
“Oh, shut up,” Danica fired back, squinting at Ladgara.
“I do have to admit, though,” said Ladgara, eyeing Danica up and down, “you look sexy as Helios in that get up.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Danica said, waving a finger. “I know how you like to sleep around.”
“And you don’t? Come on, sweetheart, we’re both Dagon women. Promiscuity is in our nature.”
“Is that so?” Danica asked.
Ladgara rose up and drew close to her. “You don’t feel it?” she asked, taking another step closer. Their chests were practically touching as their gazes held with a building intensity. “You don’t feel the electricity between your thighs and the overwhelming urge to tear all my clothes off and take me right here and now?”
“Stop,” Danica whispered. She closed her eyes when Ladgara leaned in.
“Stop? That’s not like you. Have you changed so much, Cass? Or is it something else?” Ladgara folded her arms. “Don’t tell me you can’t get hard anymore.”
“No,” Danica admitted. “That’s not the problem.”
Ladgara drew back and shot Danica a stunned look. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve fallen in love?”
“Yes. Although I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” She held her own arms and swayed a bit as she tried to figure out how best to put it. “I mean, I don’t know. All I know is that all I’ve done over the past three years is make one terrible decision after another. The sooner I can move forward, the sooner I can leave all this bullshit behind me.”
“Good luck with that,” Ladgara said with a laugh, and she went over and sat back down on the edge of her cot.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Danica asked.
“No offense, Cass, but you’ve always made terrible decisions. It’s just part of who you are.”
“The name’s Danica, now,” she said, her brow settling into a frown. The more Ladgara used her pet name, the more she realized how much she didn’t like it. “Danica Valencia.”
She folded her arms under her chest just to drive the point home. It used to be cute and all, Cass vs. Vass, but these days she just didn’t feel like the same person anymore. Cassera Van Danica Amelorak was someone else entirely. A complete stranger to her now.
“Danica, then,” Ladgara said with a shrug.
“What are you saying here, exactly?” Danica pushed, fishing for answers, knowing full well she might not like what she
discovered. Ladgara looked at her with her vibrant pink eye, staring for the longest time.
“You’re reckless, destructive, and dangerous to everyone who comes into your path. It’s why Dakroth promoted you to Vice Admiral in the first place. You were his battering ram, with which he broke the back of the whole galaxy.”
“You honestly don’t believe that, do you?” Danica could feel her heart breaking inside her chest with every cruel truth that Ladgara shared. But she couldn’t deny the accusations. She had done terrible things.
All this time, though, her perception of herself as this strong and independent woman that could do no wrong had been a misconception born of hubris and blind obedience to a complete enabler. And what he'd enabled her to do was act out her worst possible self.
Danica had pride, sure. What Dagon didn’t? But this was more than a few mistakes she'd accumulated over the short span of a military career. She had sin after sin piled up that she needed to atone for, but instead all she could manage to do was become addicted to a silly drug and get herself beat up on a daily basis.
If she was being honest with herself, she genuinely thought this self-abuse would force her to come to terms with what she’d done. Not so much of an atonement as a serious pause to reflect on her past. But what she found was that, contrary to everything she thought about herself, she liked doing drugs, and she had such little self-worth that she actually liked getting the snot kicked out of herself on a daily basis.
Why? Because it reminded her that she was at least worth something to the fans who watched the gladiator fights. It was quite telling then, that Raphine had sold her off to IGS instead of locking her away in some rehabilitation clinic. She knew that the clinic would force Danica to wither away into nothing, while the gladiatorial matches might forge her into a new, stronger woman. But only if she put the past in the past where it belonged. Which is one reason she so detested her old name: it reminded her of a person she absolutely wanted nothing to do with.
“Let me ask you this, how do you come to find yourself back here, in the arena, a mere cycle from the previous time? What went so wrong in your life that you ended up back in the Games, of all the places you could have ended up? I’m no expert, but I’d say that’s the very definition of self-destructive.”
Heat flooded into her cheeks as she felt her temper flair. “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe you’re just a complete bitch and a royal pain in my ass!” Danica immediately regretted her words but was surprised when Ladgara merely laughed them off.
“Honey, that’s you in a nutshell. Ask anyone who’s ever brushed elbows with you and if they’re half as honest as I am, they’ll hit you with the cold hard truth.”
“The truth being?” Danica asked snidely.
“You’re unlikable.”
“Screw you!” Danica shouted, and she spat at the dust covered floor, her spittle landing between Ladgara’s feet. Ladgara merely leaned back on her cot and smiled at Danica as she stormed out of the room.
Shoving a large Dragonian out of her way, she growled, “Move it, leather neck,” and marched down the corridor the way she’d come. When she arrived at the gate, she grabbed the bars and rattled it. “Let me out of here!” she shouted. “Do you hear me? Let me out of here!”
“That one!” a voice called out.
Without warning, Danica felt a hand reach out and jerk her back. She was manhandled and quickly shoved into a line of three other aliens. Then handed a three-pronged spear, she was shoved out into the arena.
As her eyes adjusted to the brilliant light, she looked out at her two fellow gladiators only to see them piss themselves.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” That’s when she heard the terrible scraping, like the sound of a building coming down in a demolition. She looked up to see a two-story tall, spiny shelled crab. She sighed. “Perfect. Just bloody perfect.”
The giant crab opened and closed its pincers; its massive claws making a terrible scraping sound. There was a purple skinned, black tattooed alien to Danica’s right who appeared tough enough, but he dropped his spear and made a mad dash to the gate on the other side of the stadium. He ran directly under the crab’s abdomen and made it safely to the other side. Leaping up he flung himself onto the gate.
“Not smart,” Danica said, cringing. She knew what would happen because she’d seen it before.
With a loud zzzt, the man fell from the electrified fence like a bug falling from a bug-zapper. He hit the ground with a thud and before he could even regain motor function, the giant crab was standing over him.
The crab reached down and scooped the man up into its serrated claws. Unable to fend off the armored creature, he wailed with intense pain and then with a resounding crunch, his top half and bottom half fell away, landing in separate locations on either side of the crab’s spiny leg.
In the gruesome rending of the purple alien, the spray of his lime green blood had splashed across Danica’s mostly naked body. As the televid drone swooped down to get a close up of her wiping the green sludge off her blue chest, she ran her fingers across the humps of her breasts, collecting the green blood on her fingertips and then shaking her fingers, flicked it off.
Although she didn’t have much to speak of in the way of proper clothing, she turned her gaze to the gladiator to her left who stood beside her trembling with fear. Seeing as he had a full cloth shirt, she merely wiped her hand off on his back using him as a makeshift towel.
After smearing green blood all over his back, she slapped him hard and said, “Avoid the fences. They’re electrified.”
He nodded taking in her advice. When she smelled the ammonia scent of piss burning her nostrils, she made a sour face and looked down to find the orange skinned man next to her pissing all up and down his leg. The piss puddled at his feet and touched her sandals.
A sour look settled over Danica’s face as she took in the foul odor and the disgusting scene. Annoyed by the pants-pisser, she huffed and cleared her nostrils of the foul odor and then casually stepped away from him, leaving him to stand in his own puddle of urine all by his lonesome.
Men like him, she wagered, were probably best used as bait to distract the monsters so she could get a clean line of attack. Other than that, they offered little in the way of any value. At least as far as the rules of the arena were concerned.
After the replay of the purple alien’s horrific demise up on the big screen monitor, the arena erupted with cheers. As soon as the cheers died down again, the announcer introduced the audience to the “Traitor of the Dagon Empire, the Treacherous and Two-Faced Hag of Helios, Danica Valencia!”
She stepped out into the arena amid an eruption of boos and hisses and glared up at the audience. This wasn’t the worst day of her life, but it was pretty damn close.
She glanced to her right and found Ladgara leaning casually against the far wall watching through the slats of the barred viewing area.
“Nice trident,” she shouted from the sidelines, smiling at the fact that they’d managed to find Danica an actual trident. After all, it did complete the whole ensemble.
Unamused by her witticism, Danica scowled at her and mouthed the word, “Cunt.”
Ladgara smiled back and mouthed the word, “Flange biter.”
Another round of aggressive clacking of giant reddish orange claws—claws drenched in lime colored blood—brought Danica’s attention back to the threat at hand and she raised her trident and widened her stance in preparation for the inevitable fight that was about to ensue.
The throng erupted with cheers as Danica raced forward thrusting the trident outward. Sparks shot up as the trident scraped along the armor plating of the giant crab’s claw, which was nearly as hard as steel, and the crowd roared with excitement. It was shaping up to be a great day to be at the arena.
30
“Mistress Agnar, you must wake up,” Aidora said, shaking the sleeping woman. The ship’s emergency alarm blared noisily all around them and Onelle quickly sat up, threw up
both arms and gripped her head due to a bout of vertigo that seized upon her.
“Aidora?” she mumbled, still groggy, her satin sheets slipping off her bare green skin. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but whatever is happening it can’t be good. I heard screams out in the corridor.” Aidora looked fearfully over her shoulder toward the entrance which to Onelle’s shock looked as though someone had tried to pry open the doors. They were bowed outward and gashes scarred the metal from something like claws.
She made a mental note to maybe ease up on the pills before bed. The question going through her mind right now was: what if whatever had wanted in so badly had gotten in? What would have become of her? She shuddered at the mere thought of waking up screaming as the jowls of some ferocious beast devoured her alive.
“Quickly, my clothes,” Onelle said, snapping her fingers urgently and pointing over at her iridescent pearl dress still hanging on the back of the vanity’s chair. Aidora promptly fetched it for her and Onelle, rising out of bed, quickly slipped it on, forgoing any underwear. There simply wasn’t time.
Hand in hand they raced to the exit and when they got to the doors they found them jammed. Aidora tried to pry them open with all her strength, but it was no good. They wouldn’t budge.
“They’re stuck,” she lamented, giving Onelle a rather helpless and pathetic look.
As annoying as the girl’s weakness was, there was no time for a stern lecturing. Instead, Onelle grabbed ahold of the door on her side and said, “Here, I’ll take this side you get that one over there.”
Both women, applying their collective strength, pulled on the sliding doors together and managed to pry them another fifteen centimeters apart before they caught on their bent grooves in the floor and got stuck again.
“That should be enough for us to fit through,” Aidora said, cautiously squeezing into the crack. She pushed her way through the narrow opening with no problem and then turned and extended her hand for Onelle to take. Onelle took it and followed Aidora’s lead.