Slave Empire - Prophecy

by T C Southwell

Two Draycon guards manhandled Rayne from her cell, and a sting on the side of her neck warned her that they had given her a drug. As they hustled her down a passage to a smooth docking bay with a shuttle parked in it, a sickening rush of vertigo was followed by a strange detachment. She barely registered the trip to the surface, and walked between the guards when they dragged her from the shuttle.

  A room, a corridor and a busy chamber followed each other in a blur; voices spoke in strange languages she did not understand. She was led into a dim room filled with the stench of sweat and fear, a strong sensation of misery pervading the air. She tried to rouse herself sufficiently to take in her surroundings, noticing that the Draycons now wore masks.

  After a hissed conversation with a blue-skinned man, the guards took her into an empty area, leaving the other two Draycons behind. The blue-skinned man followed, armed with a gavel, and mounted a podium. Rayne shook her head to try to clear the fog in her mind and gazed around with unfocussed eyes. The short, tubby blue man whose bald pate gleamed under the bright lights clasped chubby hands and smiled down from his pedestal.

  Rayne started when she noticed the crowd seated in tiers of seats in front of him. A sea of masks stared up at the stage on which she stood. She shivered, aware of how little clothing she wore, and the horror of her situation seeped into her dull brain. Closing her eyes to block out the bright lights and weird masks, she swayed in her guards’ grip. They kept her upright when she would have fallen, and the auctioneer’s loud voice jabbed her brain, reviving her enough to understand his fluent Atlantean.

  “Lords and Majesties, crooks and cutthroats! I present to you a special piece of merchandise. A human! One of only two left in the universe; a lovely creature. Obviously reluctant, but then some of you prefer them that way.”

  A wave of chuckling swept the audience. The auctioneer stepped down beside Rayne and gripped her hair to lift her face to the light. She kept her eyes closed, too numb to fight.

  The man’s strident voice rang out. “Look at her! What a beauty! Descended from Atlantean intervention; a rare success. Who will start the bidding at twenty thousand? She’s worth much more. Look at the hair, the figure, the face! Come along gentlemen, imagine all the fun you can have taming her! And if you can’t tame her, have some fun killing her! You have money to burn! Give me thirty thousand, yes! Over there, fifty! Thank you sir; sixty there... yes? Seventy thousand I am bid. Eighty! Thank you sir; ninety over there... good, ninety-five? Yes! Any more bids? Come along gentlemen. Any more than ninety-five? Look at her! Any more bids?”

  The auctioneer paused, evidently waiting for those who had not quite made up their minds yet. Distant mutters mingled with the swish of a door closing and footsteps that approached her, and Rayne opened her eyes. A tall, black-clad figure with a dark grey coat and an intricate mask sauntered to the front of the audience. People stepped from his path, but she sensed it was not because of the two men in black and silver uniforms who followed him. A hawk-like silver emblem glinted on his chest as he stopped in front of the stage. The auctioneer stared at him, and the stranger nodded.

  “Sold! For one hundred thousand regals!” The auctioneer banged his gavel. “To the Shrike!”

  The Shrike raised a gloved hand, and his men climbed onto the stage to relieve the Draycon guards of their captive.