Rend the Flesh I Wear
Posted on Thu Mar 5th, 2015 @ 12:58am by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Klav Thurn & Morgo Le'Shaad
Edited on on Wed Feb 28th, 2018 @ 12:51am
6,654 words; about a 33 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter IV: Rezer's Edge
Location: Prison Cells, Jericho
Timeline: After "Thurn, On Adversity"
OLD
"Proceed," he said, gesturing out from the prison. A couple of drops of an unknown dark, viscous liquid landed upon his raised, armoured limb, evoking a hidden grimace from Thurn. Not for the first time, he noted that Jericho, whilst imposing and a terrible cell for in which to be held, did little to boast of their powers or honour. Indeed, very little of what had been revealed to their guests succeeded in that manner, the Nautolan and her slaves seemingly buoyed and defiant even in their terribly weakened state as a result.
With a final glance to their prisoners, Klav Thurn vowed finally and firmly that things were to change for their aliit. One way or another.
NEW
Morgo heard them leave.
With eyes closed, her cheek resting upon straw and a gritty mixture that reeked of urine, Morgo pressed her ear to the ground and heard nothing below, but the steady, creaking moan of whatever ancient ventilation system Jericho still operated on. Beneath it all, six pairs of feet made their way out of the cell block, distancing into silence.
With a slow inhale through her nostrils, and a quiet exhale from her lips, Morgo opened her eyes to see dirt and straw scatter from the gentle force of her breath. In the space of the breath, Morgo deemed the contusions to her ribs immaterial, and her other injuries manageable. Various bruises along her body cried for attention as she laid on the prison floor, but Morgo waved the pain away as her mind turned back to the Mandalorian soldiers that had pawed at her with the all the grace of back alley boys, raring to spill in their pants at a single touch.
Morgo recalled their promises to be back for more of her, complete with unimaginatively lewd hand motions. Yet turning her half-lidded eyes on the only two jailers remaining, Morgo did not think there would be much of her left for the soldiers to rut into, if present company had their way. Morgo did not turn, but knew that the Human warden was watching, his unkempt locks swaying as his eyes tracked with a singular brand of hunger.
As fortune would have it, the only thing that had been thus violated was Morgo’s pride. Yet from the way things looked, her dignity would not remain intact for long if she tarried.
Running her gaze along the bent metal of his makeshift cane, Morgo wondered if he would use the instrument to finish the job if he himself could not. The injuries to his leg and jaw were extensive, and the bootleg bottle of Pharma was enough to pinpoint his method of coping with the pain—along with what looked like myoplexaril, a muscle relaxant to ease spasms. Morgo sniffed with unconcealed derision as she looked to his groin, dubious expectation coloring her pale eyes. A Dark Lord of the Sith in full tantrum mode would be hard pressed to command his prick to stand to attention under that particular cocktail of drugs, let alone this crippled jailer.
But Morgo didn’t doubt he would try. Flicking her eyes to the Trandoshan warden and catching sight of his missing scales, the wheels of Morgo’s mind turned and clicked into place. A Trandoshan would crave not her body’s pleasures, but the pain he could pull from it. And with that, a light went out in Morgo’s eyes. Letting them fall closed, a small smile upon her lips, Morgo thought it fitting both wardens seemed hungry for flesh.
For she was hungry as well.
Deeker tapped his cane idly on the bars outside the cell holding the Jedi pair. The Jedi man had a miserable look on his face where the dirt and sweat hadn’t already settled in. When he cycled in and out of lucidity, his expressions ranged from angry, to furious, to despair about his Ithorian partner’s rapid deterioration. The hulking Ithorian, who had been monstrous and brutal in the ring fight, seemed reduced to nothing now, refusing to eat or drink anything Deeker threw at him. The beast would probably be dead by the time the fancy ass Cult came down to join them in these cells, dead or alive.
Sucking something old and foul tasting from between his back teeth, Deeker spat it out without looking at it. He wondered if he would lose his other eye if the Ithorian died, now.
Kolk shouted and yanked his foot away from where the infected phlegm had landed near his clawed foot, rotating his large orange eyes to glare at his fellow warden. Deeker shrugged and laughed out loud, a rasping sound.
“I tire of your games. Watch it.” Kolk warned, though the warning lacked its usual heat. Once upon a time, the human and Kolk had scarcely gotten along, down here in the forgotten corner of the prison block. Their brutal punishment for their hand in drugging the Jedi prisoners and facing them off against each other, however, had the unintended effect of smoothing over the bumps of their interactions, these days. Once, Kolk might have fought Deeker for that insult. Today, however, Kolk was simply too tired.
Uncrossing his green, scaly arms, Kolk walked a ways further and leaned on the bars of the occupied cell, staring down at the Jedi in the far corner. The places where his scales had been ripped away ached, burning with the shame of his punishment. His Goddess had wiped away his many Jagganath points by now, and the only way Kolk would earn them back was by killing again. His clawed hands itched, and Kolk eyed the Ithorian prisoner with particular interest.
Bomoor's eyes fluttered as his lucidity rose once again, his head stalk shuddered as he attempted to raise his eyes from the floor. In the darkness, he saw the scaled legs of the Trandoshan and could hear his hungry hissing and slurring as he gazed into the cage. His jailers had become quite a fixation in his mind as the one constant in this place. He knew not whether it had been days or hours he had spent in their company but he recalled one time when they had returned bloodied and broken to their post. While he felt a great disdain for the two low-minded thugs, who barely held enough honour to be called Mandalorian, he realised that he found this change unsettling. He had often heard that those held captive would sometimes begin to respect those holding them but this felt like a deeper fear; almost as though Kolk and Deeker were a warped reflection of himself and Thane. Both prisoners on either side of the bars and both being forced to face their own mortality.
His head lapsed back down as his muscles surrendered their fight and his gaze fell to the ground once again. The fatigue began to consume him once more. He scanned the floor while he still could, barely taking in the new piece of spoiled food on the ground. But he took a mild double take when he noticed a strand of long blonde hair breaching through the bars from cell next to his, initially occupied by Thane alone. While soiled and tarnished by the sodden ground, flecks of gold shone in the dim light, catching the Ithorian's weary eyes. This was something else he remembered but he could not make the connections in time before he slid back into empty dreams.
Sparing a glance at the ailing Bomoor in the next cell, Morgo thought she saw him move, but when she'd turned her face, the Ithorian was deathly still once more. So instead, Morgo turned her keen eyes towards Thane, her unlikely cell mate. Quick appraisal of his condition was not encouraging, her gaze lingering on his battered hand. Two digits had been unceremoniously severed, the inflamed skin of them symptomatic of an infection.
Reaching out, Morgo picked up a smooth blue pebble beside her, rolling the stone between her fingertips. Throwing it, Morgo's aim was true as the tiny stone bounced off Thane's forehead. If the half-dead man did not respond to this stimulus, she knew he was already beyond her aid.
Dazed, Thane released a low, rasping moan at the momentary contact. His beleaguered mind plagued with doubts, his imagination had taken to conjuring images of familiar figures and faces to dance about his person, taunting the remnants of the ebbing fire flickering away within him.
Languishing in this cell, doomed to a pointless death, he had already been visited by the spectre of his favoured holocron’s gatekeeper in his delirious state, hearing echoes of Darth Bane’s rhetoric time and time again, his baritone almost bouncing off the rusted yet heavy bars, of how to truly embrace the power of the Sith, he would have to make a terrible sacrifice. He would have to make a sacrifice that proved he could rise above physical attachments to do what he must.
Even that Nautolan of Axion’s who had hissed and purred behind the murderer’s cloak had come to pay him a visit, Thane’s trembling body barely able to register whatever twisted delights his mind had concocted to come tumbling from her imagined mouth. Aside from the rumblings of his own endless self-considerations, he heard little. And even those began to bore or even elude him. After all, death was seemingly more inevitable, and his determination and will to survive had only offered him pain thus far.
Slipping away once more, a second shunt forced his eyes to shoot open, pain lancing up Thane’s body and his shattered hand splaying, abject pain flushing through his dying body. Reddened eyes opened, the blurred sight of yet another familiar phantom before him made him recoil, an act in itself which evoked yet more pain, Thane letting out a quick cry. She could not possibly be here, dirtied, golden locks and all - his mind once again had turned on him, the remnants of his unconscious spiting him in his final hours.
Deeker banged on the prison cell bars, mimicking the Jedi prisoner's pathetic sound with his own mockery. Once in while, the prisoners got like this. They'd rage, then recede within themselves, succumbing to whatever fever delirium they usually did. Once the prisoners reached this stage, thrashing about in their death-like trance, Deeker knew that death soon followed. Digging his finger into an ear, Deeker's green eye watched the Jedi man with a morbid fascination. Watching his prisoners die was about as entertaining is it got down here. And each prisoner died so differently than the next, it was so odd...
A quiet coughing turned Deeker’s head to the other figure in the cell.
“Water.” The woman prisoner breathed, “I need clean water.”
Deeker pushed himself off of the wall he’d been leaning on to get a closer look at the woman on the ground. As his one eyed roved over her black clad figure, the woman lifted herself from the ground, her slender arms holding up the weight of her body, her face upturned towards him. Tilting his head to the side, Deeker felt his dry lips stretch into a smile that ached. Now that the dry blood had flaked from the woman’s face, like one of those fancy beauty masks he’d seen on the HoloNet, he saw her clearly now.
Her golden hair, mussed and long, laid piled on her head, revealing the angles of her face and the pale column of her neck. Her eyes, rimmed red with noticeable shadows beneath them, betrayed her fatigue, yet her silver flecked eyes, startlingly clear and pale even in the dimness of the cells, watched him with rapt attention. What might have been perfect dark rose colored lip paint, was now smeared across one side of her face. Deeker imagined that the rest of that lip color was probably decorating the back of some Exile’s glove right now, from the strike of a slap across her face.
She looked thoroughly debauched, and the image of her stirred something dark in the pit of his stomach.
“What’s that, darlin’?” he said, pressing himself against the bars to her cell, ignoring the Jedi in the corner in favor of looking down at woman.
“Water.” She repeated, her smooth voice so starkly different than the rough baritones he’d been subject to without reprieve for months, here on this abandoned rock, “Clean water, not this contaminated waste water.” She clarified, a dry rasp to her voice as she fingered the edge of a clay bowl, cracked and leaking brown water.
The gall of her request sparked an ugly laugh from him as he ran a dirty hand down the rough stubble of his face, “I, uh,” he began, chuckling, “I don’t think you understand what kinda position you’re in, princess.”
“On the contrary.” She replied, quick as anything, “I think I understand exactly the position I’m in.”
Something in the way she’d said that hooked Deeker’s attention as he looked her in the eye, before his gaze strayed for a moment. Leaning on his cane a little heavier than usual, Deeker swallowed.
“Listen, little bitch,” He snapped, eye narrowing down at the woman, something about the way she talked—even the way she even sat—infuriating him, “You’re gonna sit tight and take whatever we give you. No words. No complaints. Just a nice ‘thank you’ from your pretty lips. Or else we’ll be taking those lips from you.” He sneered, unsheathing a knife from its place, strapped to his thigh.
The woman’s grey eyes followed the sharp edge of his blade with something like…longing, before she looked back up at him. Deeker frowned.
“And how do you suppose you’ll do that?” She mocked from the floor, her fringe of hair swaying with her movements as she shrugged, “Will you force me to bow my head to the floor with your cane, cripple? Beat me to death with your amputated nub of a limb?”
Anger colored his vision red, “I’m not amputated.” He blurted out, without thinking.
“No.” the woman said, looking thoughtful, “Not yet. But that is a rather terrible break in your foot. You’ll probably be on pain medications for the rest of your life, which will destroy your liver. Or, your Mandalorian doctor will choose to amputate. I don’t know about you, but I believe Mandalorians to be a cost-effective lot.”
A loud crack startled the woman, and Deeker watched her jump from the sound of his cane striking the prison bars with a force so strong, it was a wonder his cane didn’t snap. The wide eyes on her face, momentarily shocked, brought him no small amount of pleasure.
“You talk too much, woman.” He ground out between his teeth, as he fumbled in his jacket for the keys to her cell. Jamming the rusted thing into the keyhole with a ferocity that could have broken it, Deeker flung the prison cell open and stepped in.
He watched as the surprise on the woman’s face turned into something closer to alarm, and the smile on his face grew. An old split on his lip breaking as he did so, Deeker tasted blood as he watched the woman scramble back on her heels, like a crab, until she could go no further at the back corner of the cell. Pressing her back so closely to the bars, Deeker imagined she thought she might become the wall if she pressed hard enough.
“Deeker!” he heard Kolk hiss from behind him, on the other side of the bars, “You know you shoul—”
“Quiet, Kolk.” Deeker snapped, eyes still glued to the woman, reveling in the shadow of dread growing behind her pale eyes, “Thurn said to put her in one of the cells. He didn’t say what to do with her afterwards.”
The oversized lizard quieted, his orange eyes flicking from his fellow warden to the woman. Only one word came to his mind as he watched her in the corner of her cell—prey. For the moment, Kolk contented to stand by and watch, wary. He was not eager to be punished again at the hands of the higher Mandalorian ranks.
Deeker strode forwards in an awkward, stilted stalk—hindered by his limp and his dented cane. Anger drove him, until he was upon the woman, who looked up at him, a challenge mixed with trepidation in her gaze.
With a resounding crack, he brought the cane down on her head. He watched the flesh on her forehead open and red, thick blood dribbled forth. It was a while before the woman turned her face back up at him, new blood clumping one side of her fringe together in a red tangle.
“Do you want to hurt me, cripple?” She asked, low and conspiratorial, “Do you want to make me bleed, make me scream?”
Deeker’s eyes widened as he watched her shift slightly, under his looming menace, “Yes.” He bit out.
The woman licked her lips unconsciously, and his mouth felt dry.
“Then give me your water.” She said, her eyes lowering to the silver canteen slung around his neck.
The man felt almost mad with the instinct to kill her now, to hurt her until she had no jaw or tongue left to mock him with, to dominate her until she knew he was a man and her place was at his heel, bleeding.
In his eye, something predatory unfurled, “You wanna drink, princess?” he hissed, using one hand to support himself, and the other to grab at the canteen at his neck, twisting it open with an uncoordinated shaking.
“Drink then.” He spat.
Dumping the water on her head, warm from the heat of his body, Deeker watched with a hungry fascination as the woman angled her face up, closing her eyes to the stream of water that darkened her hair with its moisture and ran down her face, taking the dirt and blood with it. Her expression was peaceful, but almost wanton in her eagerness to open her lips to the clean water he’d poured upon her. He’d expected her to be outraged, not writhe like a desperately dehydrated flower under the first rains, after drought.
After the last drop had fallen from his silver canteen, Deeker watched, entranced, as the woman slowly opened her eyes to meet his stunned gaze, her long lashes spiking together, droplets of water still clinging to them.
“Now, was that so hard?” She asked, voice low, the clean skin of her face, wet.
His silence spanned many moments, as he simply stared down at his prisoner, his heart racing in his ears. So it was an eternity before he raised his fist to strike the woman again, and this time when she was down, coughing on her spittle, he slowly brought his boot down on her head of dark gold hair, pressing it down to the ground with a grim sort of satisfaction.
She did not resist. Instead she submitted to this humiliation, the side of her face pressing into the sodden ground under his slow grinding heel. The sound of his laugh was a higher pitch than usual, almost hysterical. He silenced however, when the woman turned her head back towards him, from the ground, so that his fetid boot now lay on half her face. She did not seem to care, however, as she locked eyes with him.
The heat of her stare, the intensity of it, even when his boot covered half her face, stole Deeker’s breath. Even as he watched her lips part, and the tip of her pink tongue peek out to lick the side of his shoe, he shuddered. One of her hands reached out to wrap her slender fingers around his good ankle. It was a simple touch, almost not even there. But then she slipped a tip of a finger just where his pant hem ended and flesh began. And the touch burned.
“Kolk.” He rasped to his fellow warden, not taking his eyes off the woman, “Kolk leave, now.”
The Trandoshan was startled, from where he had watched the proceedings with the female prisoner unfold. Strange enough, the woman seemed to be receptive to Deeker—a human male who Kolk knew, even by Human standards , to be an ugly specimen. It was all too suspicious.
“I cannot leave you alone with the prisoner.” Kolk protested.
“Leave!” Deeker shouted, “Gimme 30 minutes alone.”
From beyond the bars, Kolk seemed to mull it over, a strange growl like noise coming from his chest.
“Fine.” The lizard capitulated, walking away, “I will be right outside. Thirty minutes, you hairless dog, and then you let me finish her off.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Deeker muttered as he listened to the Trandoshan’s footsteps go down the hall and out the door. His fellow jailer was scarcely out the door before he was fumbling with the belt at his waist. It was a juggling act, trying to keep himself upright and undoing his buckle with one hand, but Deeker managed it. Blazing eyes looking down at the woman, he searched her face for a trace of fear, or even anticipation, but found nothing. She looked almost calm.
Breathing hard, Deeker bared his teeth at the woman beneath him, “If you bite me, you will bleed.” He threatened.
The woman scoffed gently as something slithered behind her eyes, too quick for him to recognize.
“So might you.” She sighed, defiant, her free hand reaching to her tangle her fingers into her hair.
As she pulled her hand from her hair, a dull metal glint was all the warning he had before a white hot pain seared from the back of his one good ankle. Feeling like a rope in his leg had been severed, he buckled—suddenly unable to stand. Distantly, he felt hot blood gush from what was surely a deep cut, collapsing on the woman’s body as his cane fell to the floor with a clatter.
“W-what…” he gasped, so out of breath he was unable to scream, looking into the woman’s face, so much closer than before. Her expression was devoid of the alarm, the fear, and the wanton lust he’d seen color her face before. Now, it seemed as if someone had pulled the plug and nothing but a detached sort of focus remained on her pretty features.
A sharp and agonizing pain pierced his belly as he felt her hand and something cold, trapped between their bellies where he lay on top of her, slowly slice him open from his navel upwards.
Deeker choked on his pain, on the violent feeling as if she were unzipping his flesh with whatever sharp blade she had in her blood-slippery fingers.
The woman lay beneath him, perfectly still and content as Deeker watched his blood drench her and spill to the floor. Dizzy with weakness, he struggled to push himself off her with his arms, but his palm slipped on his own blood, and the sickening feeling of his intestines sliding out from the gaping, gutted wound of his abdomen was enough to send him into shock. With a hysterical kind of panic, Deeker found himself trying to gather his warm, throbbing organs up again.
Vaguely, as his vision began to blur from the blood loss, he felt the woman spread her legs around his waist, wrapping them around him until her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, keeping him still as her blood slippery hands grasped gently at his face.
“Shhhhh.” The woman said softly, in a morbid imitation of comfort, “Don’t struggle. Don’t panic.” She soothed, her voice cool and calm as his own mind raced and raged, in utter shock.
His response was an intelligent gurgle as he watched her smile, face splattered with his blood. “I’ve severed your calcaneal tendon. You cannot run from this. You’ll lay here and bleed out.” She stated, voice warmer than he’d ever heard from her before as she grasped his face like mother would, her bloody thumbs wiping tenderly over his brows. Blood seeped around him, like a pool of red.
The last thing Deeker saw was the woman’s red stained face, pleased and confident as she coaxed death from him, her embrace a cruel imitation of a lover’s.
“You die pure.” She declared quietly, as if that was supposed to make his death right, and Deeker would have laughed if his heart hadn’t stopped before he could.
With the last of his sickly warm blood now soaking her to the bone, the woman pressed his dead face into the crook of her neck and closed her eyes, the copper tang of blood filling her nose. With a final sigh, the man breathed his last into the skin of her neck, his body going slack atop hers.
Morgo’s body leeched any warmth it could from the warden’s cooling carcass, and she wasted no time in reaching for his waist holster to palm his side knife. Closing her eyes, Morgo breathed in deep.
And then let out a blood-curdling scream.
With a start, Kolk’s ears heard the terrified cry of visceral pain from the female prisoner. The shriek coming from the prison cells, Kolk was instantly on high alert. The taste of her scream was not simply one of fear, but one that had the distinct, acrid taint of pain. It was a scream Kolk had wrung from countless victims before, to pay homage to the Scorekeeper.
With an enraged growl, Kolk burst back into the prison block at full speed. Kriffing Deeker had always been irreverent to his cultural practices, spitting upon his notion of a Scorekeeper goddess on many occasions. That Deeker was once again trying to steal a kill from Kolk, especially when he was so desperate to rebuild his points after the shame of their punishment, stung more than any insult Deeker had thrown at him thus far. And he would sooner gnaw off his own arm than stand by and let the crippled human take this kill away from him.
The higher ranks of the Mandalorians had taken his rifle away from him, as punishment for their actions against the Jedi and Zrad. They would not be allowed to participate in the coming battle Zrad had planned for Jericho, and Kolk had accepted this confiscation. A fellow Trandoshan had taken pity on him though, and given him a sabre—the same weapon Kolk now brandished as he reached the cell Deeker had entered to slake his lusts.
The black slits of Kolk’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the scene before him. The woman lay beneath Deeker, with what was surely the whole of her blood spread out around her. What Deeker was doing, lying between her legs, did not bear thinking about. Weakly, the woman turned her head to stare at him with wide, terrified eyes, tears and blood staining her cheeks, as she writhed on the floor.
Kolk roared with rage, his right to strike the killing blow upon the woman stolen. Wrenching the prison cell open, the Trandoshan charged inside and shouted, his voice trembling with the weight of his fury.
“You lied!” he accused Deeker’s hunched back, not caring if the man was apparently mid coitus, “You have taken this kill from me, you miserable cripple!”
Lifting his sabre to strike Deeker’s vulnerable back, Kolk nearly brought down his blade on the traitor when he spotted something strange and fleshy, sandwiched between Deeker’s body and the woman’s. What was that...?
The Trandoshan had no time to recognize what his eyes knew was wrong before the woman, her arm a blur of motion, sent a blade flying into him. Kolk roared in pain as he looked down to see a slim scalpel embedded in his thigh. With another flick of her arm, the woman whipped another blade at him. Kolk deflected it away with a slash of his sabre, the clashing metal twanging as Deeker’s knife landed at the on the ground.
Looking faintly miffed, the women drew her knees up and kicked the limp body of Deeker off herself with surprising force, sending the eviscerated corpse to the other side of the cell, slamming into the wall and sliding down beside the human Jedi, who seemed unaware he’d almost been crushed by a corpse.
Realizing that it had been a ruse, Kolk ripped the scalpel out of his thigh with a grunt and dropped the tiny blade to the ground. It fell with a bright clatter as he watched green blood gush from his thigh at a worrying rate. The pain, along with his old wounds from the beating, sent Kolk to one knee as he scrambled to master his agony.
Rising to her feet, the woman’s blond hair swayed about her face as she brought her hands up in a stance he did not recognize.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” She warned, eyeing the blood on his thigh which bubbled forth like a ground spring.
Kolk snarled as he lunged for her, forgetting his dropped sabre for the moment. Though he was old, Kolk was still stronger than the average human. This woman was thin and frail in comparison. Kolk had no doubt he could paint the walls with her blood if he could get his hands on her.
The woman dodged, quick as a whip. But in the cramped spaces of the cell, she had little room to run, and Kolk struck her backside. With a gasp, the force of it dropped her to the ground, and Kolk lunged again, aiming for her throat. She jerked her head out the way and instead, the Trandoshan grasped a handful of her soft hair in his claws.
Brutally yanking her forward, Kolk moved to disembowel her with his other clawed hand when the woman squirmed, procuring a new blade from her sleeve. Slashing through the hair he held her by, the woman rolled away, the bindings of her hair left on the ground. Kolk watched as the woman’s locks fell free, flying down her back as multiple items dropped from them. Without missing a beat, she threw her remaining knife at him, lodging itself in his eye with a wet squelch.
Kolk cried out in agony, releasing his handful of useless, golden hair, clutching at the blade in his socket. If the Trandoshan looked angry beyond reckoning, the woman looked like she was about to sit down and read the HoloNet news.
Kolk did not think as he rushed her, gripping her by her neck and squeezing as he lifted her off the ground, her feet dangling. She coughed, face red as he choked her, then threw her to the ground with savage strength, like he would a rag doll. With a crow of triumph, Kolk took advantage of her stunned state and gripped her arm between his body and his bicep, using his other arm to push against her head. Had she not resisted with all her might, the muscles of her neck straining against his iron strength, Kolk would have succeeded in snapping her small neck.
Instead, he felt her arm pop out of its socket under the stress, dislocating it. Beneath him, the woman shouted a hoarse cry of agony. Empowered by her torment, Kolk pulled even harder, hoping to tear the arm off completely. He shrieked and dropped her, however, when the woman ruthlessly dug her fingers into the stab wound on his thigh and twisted.
Taking advantage of his loosened hold, the woman rolled away to the farthest end of the cell and stood, her back to the bars, left arm limp at her side. As Kolk watched her, chest heaving with labored breaths and face flushed with battle, he couldn’t help but admire her slippery tenacity—simply refusing to die. It made her worthy prey and surely a kill the Scorekeeper would deem worthy of Jagannath points.
But now she would have to die. Even as Kolk felt himself weaken from the blood loss, the green of his ichor staining the floor where he’d lunged and leapt at his enemy, the Trandoshan picked up his sabre and charged. He would skewer her like the sow she was.
She stood her ground, eyes fever bright with adrenaline. Until, at the last moment, she sidestepped his strike, his sabre stabbing between the cell bars as he rammed his own head into them. With an almighty kick aimed at his hand, the woman shattered two claws and succeeded in disarming him of his sabre.
As Kolk stumbled back, his head aching and his hand throbbing, he saw the woman pick up the Trandoshan sword, too heavy for her to wield with one hand, and put all her strength into a finishing blow. Even as she swung with her dislocated arm, Kolk watched the lioness snarl through the pain.
With one slash the woman opened his throat—the blade’s edge so sharp, Kolk did not feel the sting of it until it was too late. With his orange-yellow eyes wide in defeat, he watched as his green blood sprayed across her face, specks of it staining her delicate features and black garb.
Her heaving chest and the defiant, upward tilt of her chin as was the last thing the Trandoshan saw as he locked eyes with his final enemy. Silvery-grey like those of the fearsome frist sharks of his home planet, Kolk looked into those pale depths and glimpsed… a monster within, before it slithered back under the dark ice.
And then all went black.
Morgo watched as the Trandoshan slumped forward, dead. As she fought to catch her breath, Morgo gripped the unwieldy sabre in her small hands to hide the trembling in her limbs. Looking down at the scaly hide of the second jailer, Morgo half expected him to get up again and throw himself at her.
Satisfied that he had indeed expired, the green ooze of his blood surrounding his head like a macabre halo, Morgo rolled her head around to inspect her useless, limp arm. It had hurt unlike anything Morgo had ever endured when it separated from its socket. Yet now, the unnatural angle of her arm now was reduced to a low, throbbing murmur in the back of her mind. Still, it could prove inconvenient if she didn’t rectify it now.
Sitting where she stood amidst the slaughter, Morgo bent her knees and drew them close to her chest. It took considerably effort, her dislocated arm protesting against every movement, but eventually Morgo succeeded in lacing her fingers together, gripping her bony knees. Slowly but surely, Morgo leaned backwards, keeping the lattice of her fingers tight so that her arms were pulled taught. With an audible pop, Morgo set her own dislocated shoulder with nary a sound, save for the unladylike hiss she gave at the sharp pulse of pain. For a moment, Morgo drew back and rested her forehead against her knees, before her downcast eyes caught the metallic glint of scalpel upon the ground.
Picking it up, Morgo finally stood and approached the Trandoshan carcass. Carefully flipping the body, arranging the corpse into the supine position, Morgo flung her leg onto the other side of his body, crouching so that she nearly straddled the Trandoshan. Stabbing her scalpel into the abdominal cavity of the Trandoshan, Morgo worked silently, cutting open his body as she would a butchered piece of meat, the slippery sound of ripping, wet flesh filling the silence. Removing organ after organ with surgical precision, Morgo worked deeper into his viscera with a calculated purpose, finally reaching the back of the corpse—where the kidneys might have been, had the Trandoshan been human, comparatively.
For there, where perhaps a human’s kidneys should have been, two enlarged sacs of fluid filled tissue hung. Smiling lightly, Morgo reached inside the green mess of the Trandoshan’s innards and nicked one end of the sacs’s ducts with her scalpel, quickly tying it sealed like a latex balloon, careful not to let any fluid escape—repeating the procedure with the other sac.
Trandoshans were known throughout the medical circles, not for their frequency of appearing on the slabs of the morgue, but for their bodies’ fascinating ability to regenerate limbs. Extensive studies had been conducted over the years, to pinpoint the exact mechanism that allowed the reptilian species to regenerate most anything that had been destroyed, hoping to replicate it in other species. It was discovered that Trandoshans self-activated a long string of dormant genes upon dismemberment, and that the genes in cooperation with these two organs that Morgo held in her hands, were responsible for the incredible regeneration found in younger Trandoshans.
The fluid within these sacs were mostly water, super-saturated with electrolytes, vitamins, and chemical compounds that encouraged healing. Her eyes looking to the dead Trandoshan’s face, Morgo did not doubt this Trandoshan was too old to regenerate most anything, these days. But his two organs nevertheless were still filled with sterile water, and packed with a great number of things Morgo imagined Thane and Bomoor would benefit from.
It would not regrow Thane’s lost fingers, Morgo thought to herself as she stood, the fleshy sacs in her hands. But it was a start.
And turning, Morgo surveyed the slaughter she had wrought within the tiny cell with shadowed eyes. Sprays of red and green mingled on the ground to create a muddy brown, so much like earth. Pieces of the Human’s gore littered the ground, one tract of his small intestine draped over an unconscious Thane’s lap. And here in the small corner where Morgo had systematically gutted the Trandoshan, laid a small pile of his organs, weeping his viscous blood.
Morgo’s hair had been cut loose from their bindings in the violent altercation, the dark blonde locks now falling about her face and down her back. As an unmarried woman of Dromachean nobility, it would have been unspeakable for her to be seen before men in such a state of undress—a scandalous declaration of sexual intent, to say the least. Yet strangely enough, Morgo did not feel the familiar twinge of panic—of compulsive need to hide her hair, to veil who she was behind masks and manners. It was oddly freeing, to be amidst this carnage, unbound in more ways than one.
Morgo did not doubt that the moment would pass, and whatever murderous haze she now floated in would be soon replaced by reality once more. But for now…Morgo felt the looseness of her limbs, the low hum of something just beneath the surface of her skin sing something lovely and perverse in her ear. For now, Morgo would enjoy the rare moment of stillness in her thoughts.
For the mind of Morgo Le’Shaad had a great many dark rooms. Navigating them took caution. Periodically airing one out took even greater caution.
Looking down at the mutilated corpses on the ground, Morgo considered the dangers of being around her when she did open a door to such a room.
And with eyes like the hollow death of stars, Morgo smiled like an open wound.
TBC
_______________________________
MORGO
▼ Dark Side Shift
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