“Hello?” came a voice that was too sweet to exist.
He tried to resist answering, instead fumbling with the keys now as his love-struck heart was bounding from one side of his chest to the next. The footsteps were so close, and he feared that upon turning around he would find a guard staring at him with slack jaw, ready to raise the alarm. But he continued to try keys and it paid off, as the next one thankfully opened the lock.
As he shoved the heavy door open and slammed it behind him, using his foot as a jam to silence the sound before closing it, he saw Talia in the corner of what many people would have considered a room fit for royalty. It wasn’t large, but the entire expanse of the walls was made from gold and sparkling gems, covered entirely with ornate decorations.
“Karthid? It’s really you!” Talia exclaimed with joy that quickly became heart-felt worry. She ran over to him and he met her, each of them with arms wide open. They hugged at first, as though making sure the other was truly there and not some phantom formed from desperation. They kissed after that, slow and welcoming instead of heated or sexual.
“Yes, it’s really me,” he said quietly, not wanting to be heard by the guards.
“I thought I’d never get to see you again!” she cried out, half shouting, half crying. There were already streams of moisture running down her face.
“Let’s keep our voices down,” he said, trying to hold back his powerfully surging emotions.
“This is one of the most private places in the whole city, from what the guard told me. I’m ‘sacred’ and no one is to disturb my ‘sanctuary.’”
“You really are one of the prizes then?” he said.
“I’m afraid so, and I guess you already know why you’re here,” she replied wistfully.
“To participate in this tournament of theirs. But, Talia, if you are a prize …”
Some glimmer of light returned to her face, as though the sun had started to rise again for a moment. There were no windows to the cell though, no way for light to enter or exit. It was just her own radiant glow. “Do you really think you can win?”
He made a sound that was almost a laugh, but darker. “You have not known me for long, despite our deep bond. I think you do know me enough to have your answer.”
“You really have hope, don’t you?”
“Yes. You should have hope too. There is nothing that would stop me from winning and preventing all others from taking you as some prize. You are so much more to me than that, and I hope you feel that I have already earned a place in your mind and heart that goes beyond some so-called sacred tournament.” The words tasted good in his mouth. “But there is one other thing we’re forgetting—I have come to free you now, and avoid the tournament entirely.”
Talia looked worried now. “There are so many people all over the place. And they have their best watching us here. Also, I was given a translator chip. The guard told me it would kill me if I left without permission.”
“It may be a bluff. Either way, we must find someone to remove it then,” Karthid said with confidence. But that quickly faded as he went to check the door and see if any guards were passing the courtyard. There was no handle, no lock, nothing at all that might be used to open the door. “What? No!” He had let his mind be clouded by his heart’s desire to be with Talia.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“There’s no way I can see to open this. I think we’re trapped here.”
16
-Talia-
If they were going to be locked up together and eventually discovered, Talia didn’t want her new found love to spend the rest of their time together in panic and desperation. He spent what must have been an Earth hour trying to figure out a way to get out of that golden cell. There was nothing that would give or budge, not even an inch. His hands were starting to get bloody from clawing at and hitting every surface to test it. Sweat was streaming down all over his body, his breathing labored and slow from exertion. It was a wonder to see any living creature with even that much stamina.
“Please,” she finally said, after letting him get it all out of his system, “Karthid, it’s no use. We’re together at least.”
“This is my doing,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t let any of the blame fall to you.”
Talia cringed. “I don’t want them to hurt you either.” Her eyes were blurry and she just couldn’t bring herself to look up at him. It felt like the whole world was ending, even though they had just come to this one. “I’ve already lost so much, and only just found you, and now they’re trying to destroy that too.”
“Look at me.” He put his hand to her face, touching her chin and bringing her gaze up to him. “You and I are fated, true mates, Talia. I love you. My mind, heart, and soul were all yours long before either of us were born. This cannot be stopped now by even the direst of circumstances.” He kissed her softly on the lips, the taste salty and warming.
It was such a beautiful statement that Talia couldn’t help but feel better. Of course, she wasn’t a fool and knew it was too good to be true. Karthid was just saying they would be okay to make her feel better, which was sweet of him.
“If they do let you compete, after finding you here I mean, and I don’t think they’re going to waste a fighter as good as you by taking him out of the tournament as punishment … you promise me one thing.”
His eyes were wide and he nodded enthusiastically, waiting for her to continue.
“Win, Karthid. Win for me. Win me.”
They fell asleep in each other’s arms that night, too exhausted and fearful to make love. Talia felt herself wanting the brawny alien deep inside her. She didn’t want to admit it to him, but it still hurt a little from earlier when they’d had sex in the prison wagon. Karthid was a perfect gentleman, at least where she was concerned. He didn’t try to have sex with her, as though he could sense she wasn’t ready for it again. They’d had their time, and hopefully more passionate bouts of steamy sex might come in the future. First, they had to get the hell out of this nightmare, alive.
When the door did finally open, there was daylight coming into the secured courtyard area. It crept in as an intruder through the golden cell doorway, bringing the surety of being found out, along with what should have been pleasantly warming rays.
“Do not move!” shouted a woman at the door. She held a tray of succulent looking foods and a golden cup. “Guards!” She dropped the tray and ran off quickly.
Next, there were more guards racing toward the doorway than Talia could count. “Wait!” she cried out, “you can’t come in here! I’m sacred!”
“She tried to prevent me from entering,” shouted Karthid. “I forced my way in here.” It was touching that the first thing on his mind was to protect her from any possible punishment, but Talia was not worried for herself in the slightest. Even if she weren’t protected as a sacred prize, she wouldn’t have cared. Any punishment would have been better than letting him be harmed.
They piled into the small cell and began to assault Karthid. There were so many of them that even he couldn’t do much to protect himself. There wasn’t room to swing a fist properly or to leap from place to place. They just slowly squeezed him into a corner and beat him with short jabs of their fists, and put boots to his head and body. It looked as though he might be suffocated before they apprehended him.
Karthid knocked one of them back every now and then, sending a guard onto his ass or stumbling away to the other side of the golden cell.
The whole time, Talia screeched at them to stop and get out of her sacred cell. She tried to invoke the power of the city’s council by shouting for them to hear her, but it didn’t get her any response.
Eventually, several of the guards worked together to carry the unconscious Karthid away.
At least, Talia hoped that he was only knocked out, but there was lots of blood and bruising all over him.
The door was closed without another word, and she wept alone for hours.
17
>
-Talia-
And there she remained, alone, without even the slightest clue about what was being done to Karthid. This went on for what she assumed was at least the entire day, but then she began to grow weary, unable to keep her eyes open any longer. Perhaps she was alone in that cell for days, for all she knew.
The anguish, tears, thumping heart beat that felt likely to shred her chest apart and render her dead and gone … it was all too much to take. By the time she felt herself lulling into sleep, Talia started to shout at the walls. “Let me out of here!” she screamed. “Is this your idea of sacred? You don’t have any idea what the word means! My love, our love for each other, me, Karthid, the human race as a whole—those things are sacred! You savage cavemen wouldn’t know what any of that means. I swear that you will not hold me. You can give me away to your winner as a prize if you like, but I will not be theirs. I will never belong to any person in all of the stars and planets, no one else but the brave and powerful man you took away from me.”
There was no response, of course. Talia was starting to become delirious and had half expected that the council was listening in on her, waiting for just the right time to respond and defend their backwoods society from her harsh words. That was all she had left, alone in her gilded cell, her cage away from the man she loved, away from the world that she’d left behind when those disgusting frog-faced aliens had invaded her life and yanked her away from everything she’d ever known. Away from everyone she’d ever loved.
“No one else ever wanted me this way,” she sobbed, throwing herself down upon the golden floor. There was a bed and a sofa, but she had no interest in such comforts. Those things wouldn’t help make her feel better. No, it was time to throw a pity party for one, no matter how pathetic it made Talia feel to do so.
Talia must have fallen asleep at some point, she figured, as she opened her sore eyes from her position on the hard floor. The fit of rage and tears came back into her memories, which she tried to forget about.
The female guard who’d seemed to be compassionate came in. She was holding her spear but did not brandish it at Talia, and still treated her with respect. “Hello, Talia,” she said solemnly. “You will want to know what happened to the man you were brought into the city with?”
“I would do anything to know that he’s alright. But, if he isn’t …” She fought back bitter tears. If they had killed Karthid just for wanting to be with her for what might have been the last time possible, she would go to the end of her life trying to get revenge upon them, if that was required. They would have to pay, in his memory. It was the way a warrior would want it to be, she decided right then on the spot.
“He is to compete in the tournament, just as it was planned. But they have beaten him severely for his transgressions. It is nothing short of a wonder that he was allowed to live. I think that had something to do with your love for him.”
Talia almost blushed, then felt stupid for that. She deserved to feel love for Karthid and there was no shame in it. Having this primitive guard say it out loud seemed like an invasion of privacy, and too much had already been taken away with all this ‘sacred’ junk. “So, he could still win, win me as well?”
“Yes,” said the guard, her pocked and scarred face letting through a little smile onto cracked lips. Her teeth looked like they were painted brown and green, probably from never having been brushed. “As I said, he has not gone unpunished. You will see. I cannot say any more. Here …” She walked over and waved a metallic disc over a section of the wall opposite the door. There was a whirring sound, that of machinery outside the wall. That entire side of the room shifted and slid back to reveal a stairway leading up into bright light.
The female guard walked onto the first step, her incredible height making it so she had to bow down to go up there. “Come,” she said as she gestured back at Talia. A dull roaring sound came down the stairs. As they walked upward, it became clearer. It was the sound of people, lots and lots of people!
“What is all this?” Talia asked with a gasp. At the top of the flight of stairs was a platform with a low wall around it. It looked out across a vast expanse of sand, in a circle. It was the size of several football fields at least. Around it were stands with seats, and it didn’t look like a single one of them was empty either. “So many people!” she shouted without thinking. “They’ve all come to see, well I assume, there’s going to be fighting?”
“Yes, we are warriors,” the female guard told her with pride, and puffed out her jaggedly lined chest with armor covering it. “This is sacred. You are a fine prize and many have volunteered to participate. Often, there are mainly slaves and captives put forth into the sacred arena. For your beauty,” she said with a sly smile, “all manner of men and women, of many different species, are willing to risk near-certain death for the chance of having you. Along with the other prizes and the glory of victory, of course.”
“What comes with that glory?”
“The winner becomes royalty, untouchable, higher than the council but without the ability to influence government, of course.” There was a loud horn blast, followed by cheers and screams from the crowd that were deafening even from such a height. The guard grew excited. “But now it begins. Goodbye. When I see you again, you shall be my superior. You also shall have a new husband, the victor. I hope for you it is your alien lover.” She left down the stairs, the door closing behind her as she exited the cell.
All the excitement, the cheering, the anticipation for who or what was going to come out into the arena first—it was almost like going to see a game of football or basketball back home. Talia hadn’t gone to any since she’d graduated university. While she had never been much of a jock, given her chubby body and the way that she used to shy away from conflict, it was always fun to be in the crowd and witnessing something so communal, tribal almost. It was hard to imagine herself being so modest now. Seriously, she was covered in some kind of high tech, bright pink alien body paint that barely left her any modesty. And she’d escaped from aliens, then been dragged all over this savage world with her new, badass lover from a whole other alien planet.
Being the old, shy Talia would never happen again. She felt that was a good thing.
Anyway, she knew this wouldn’t be anything like those old sporting events, but the feeling was hard to fight away. It was something ingrained in the human mind, apparently. The crowd went quiet as though there had been some invisible cue that Talia did not pick up on. A series of figures appeared through large gates in the walls around the bottom of the stands. They were aliens of varying colors, sizes, and of different genders from the look of them. Each of them appeared tough in their own way, and they held a range of weapons that looked like the kinds knights and medieval soldiers used to use.
18
-Talia-
For a silent moment, it was almost serene, and no one made a sound. A voice sounded came a speaker system, which was bizarre in its own right. There they were at a place that looked like it came right out of some ancient history book, and there was a PA speaker system set up around the place. Talia found it too easy to forget that these savages still possessed technology that put most of her own people’s to shame.
“We are the sacred council,” came the voice, but it was multiple voices sounding in unison just like they had when Talia and Karthid had first been brought into the city as captives. “Welcome, citizens of the mighty city of Baklofer, to your sacred tournament!”
The crowd erupted into roaring pandemonium, almost at the point of frenzy with how excited they were. Once they settled down, the council continued to speak.
“Blood will be shed for you, for honor, and for all who have fought and fallen on these very sands before you. The blood of worthy combatants will meet with the blood of our ancestors. Only one final victor will rise above it all, and they will claim their prizes. But the glory will be their ultimate reward!”
Then, a horn blew again and the combatants let out war cries, char
ging toward each other in no order. That set the crowd off again as they eagerly waited for the fighting to begin. The fighters weren’t paired off into opponents or anything like that, and there weren’t any rules from the look of it. Talia looked away after seeing one of them get their head cut clean off in the first seconds of the battle. She did not see Karthid in this group either.
She didn’t look back up until the maelstrom had died down and the horn sounded again. The crowd’s cheering stopped. It was over for now. There were blood and entrails, missing body parts, far too terrible for any sane person to want to witness. But these were savage people and this was obviously a planet of barbarians! Only one person survived that first fight, which Talia assumed was how it was meant to go.
“This is horrible,” she said to herself.
The next group of fighters contained one person she recognized instantly: Karthid! But he wasn’t walking normally. There was already blood and signs of injury all over him. They really had punished him with violence for going to see her in the sacred cell. The fact that he was alive at all only demonstrated how much these people wanted to see Karthid fight in their tournament. Yet, how long he could survive it, after being beaten and punished, that was another thing.
She cried out across the vast space to her beloved Karthid as he walked out into the arena with the other fighters.
He couldn’t hear her and evidently had no idea she was up there watching, from her stand up above the crowd and the bloodied sands of the arena. There was a sickening silence again, as the crowd eagerly waited for more senseless killing to take place. Talia wanted to reach out and touch her Karthid one last time, to let him know that she was there with him.
His rugged skin was a burning red beneath the brightness of the sun, with his complex tattoos shimmering and taking on a near life of their own, as he flexed and prepared for the onslaught that was to come. He didn’t look the least bit worried. His face was a mask of stern certainty. This was the way that he had to go, and there did not appear the be even one tiny iota of doubt going through his hardened, yet handsome, face. He wore nothing but his simple cloth pants of a black material, and the bandage had been removed from his chest, leaving a bold scar where the sand worm had bit him.
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