Thralls of the Dark Queen Part 1: Falling Into Bliss (2 page)

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Echo’s eyes shot open.

Echo panicked as she saw the sky was orange, fearing it was on fire. Yet her heart calmed itself as she realized it was only the early evening sky. She propped herself up by her hands, cursing herself for falling asleep. Her anger subsided a little as she turned to see her Alexia asleep as well. She let out a little breath from her nostrils, shaking her head a little.

We better get back before dark. Otherwise we’ll be camping out in the evening.

“Lexy,” she called out softly, nudging her friend. “Lexy, we need to get back before…”

Something robbed the sound from her mouth. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. Instead, her ears were filled with a shrill ringing sound. She brought her hands to her ears to stifle the noise, but it was to no avail, as it felt like the sound was in her head. All around her, loose pebble and blades of grass floated upward, and soon she found gravity was losing its grip on her.

She floated upward, her legs frantically kicking, meeting a strange resistance in the air as though she was floating through a waterless pond.  Meanwhile, her friends sleeping body floated upward as well. She felt her lungs screaming, calling out Alexia’s name, but no sound was coming forth. A light erupted from overhead. Echo felt her chest throbbing in anxious energy as the pair ascended up the beam of light.

Echo gaze turned upward. The light seemed to come from a massive portal with smaller portals circling it. It seemed part of some great massive triangular shaped thing. Echo’s mind raced to decipher its shape, but the hellish ringing grew too loud, the light finally encompassing the entirety of her vision.

It was an instant to Echo, but the light was gone.

She was splayed across a cold black onyx floor, looking upward at a vaulted arched ceiling. Touching her hands to the floor, she realized she could move again and pressed herself upward. She was in some kind of glass dome in a dark chamber with Alexia lying asleep right next to her. Her dome was part of a row of domes seeming to stretch on forever. In each dome were… Echo could not even begin to describe them. Most were men and women. Some of the most exotic and strange clothing she had ever seen. Others were bizarre creatures she could not even begin to dream of. Inwardly, she thanked the Gods there was at least glass between them.

She scurried to Alexia’s side, nudging her frantically with both hands. “Lexy! Lexy wake up!”

Alexia cooed softly as she awoke, her eyes closed. “I was having the most beautiful dream. We were swimming through a lovely clear sea and…” Alexia’s words halted as her eyes opened. “E-Echo? Where are we?” Her body bolted upward, her head swiveling madly in every direction.

“I-I remember we were on Merry-weather hill. We drifted off and I woke up. It was the dusk and there was light and this horrid sound and we were floating and… and…”

“And then what?”

“And then we were here! I don’t know!” Echo’s voice was rising despite herself. “I-I mean what is this…”

The floor jolted, eliciting a shriek from both of them. It descended down an onyx elevator shaft, the dim light of the upper chamber disappearing as the pair descended. Echo crawled closer to her friend, who took her hand. A warm comfort washed over Echo’s body as she held her friend’s hand, though she knew not where it came from.

Finally, the dome stopped. A series of lights illuminated the dome. A doorway of light appeared to the sound of a mechanized whirring, followed by an onyx catwalk seeming to materialize from the shaft walls to their dome. The glass before the catwalk seemed to melt and compress into an exit. From the doorway emerged two guards, men clad in black pauldrons, masked black helmets and thick leather shorts wrapped around their crotches, but wore nothing before their chests and abs, leaving them bare and oiled. They were armed with what appeared to be long pikes, but the tip seemed too small to gore anything.

After them came a woman clad in a long white dress and black shoulder cloak. She was pale, her head hairless save for two thin dark eyebrows over her luminescent gray eyes. Her small hands clasped together other over her midsection as she moved over the catwalk, her steps so subtle she seemed to be gliding over the floor.

Alexia and Echo stood, their hands stills grasping each other as they looked over the envoy before them. The bald woman bowed politely before them. “Greetings. I am Sulana-114. I am an artificial humanoid lifeform and vizier to Queen Nyxana the 1
st
: sovereign Queen of the civilized Galaxy. You two have been selected for the honor of being guests of our beloved and beautiful Queen’s court. Do as you are commanded and you will be cared for generously.”

There was an awkward silence. Sulana’s eyes shifted between the two again and again. “Do you understand me?” she asked politely.

Alexia cocked her head, a glare of anger flashing across her face. “I didn’t understand anything past ‘Greetings, I am.’”

Sulana smiled, squeezing her hands together tighter. “I…understand this is a shock to you both. Your world lacks the technology of our empire. You most likely did not even know of us before this moment.” She moved to the door out of the Dome. “I beseech you to follow me, and on the way I will explain.”

Alexia and Echo looked at each other, then back to Sulana. “And what if we don’t want to?” Asked Alexia.

The light hint of a smile faded from Sulana’s face. “You don’t seem to understand.” She silently motioned of the guards to flank them. “The queen has commanded me to bring to her audience chamber right away. This was not a request.”

The guard on their left flank lowered his pike and pointed it at Alexia’s hip. He pulled a trigger on the shaft with his finger, eliciting a white crackling bolt of light from the tip. It struck Alexia, sending a sensation of pain across her flesh. The other guard moved to Echo’s side and lowered his shock-pike to her rear, thrusting it tactlessly against her backside and eliciting a meek yelp from her lips.

“Move,” Sulana ordered. “Now.”

They were taken through a dark corridor.

“W-what is this place, miss?” Echo asked as they moved, her voice resounded through the empty corridors.

“You are currently in the Queens royal palace in the imperial capital of Argo, on the Planet Kysis. This is a holding place for new arrivals. Our patrols often bring many guests to entertain the Queen. She keeps them here until she is ready to…. entertain them back.”

The group entered a small chamber. “Throne room,” Sulana commanded to seemingly no one.

The automatic doors shut behind them and the chamber seemed to jolt and move. Occasionally, the lift felt as though it turned or tilted, occasionally stopping and resuming, as though going through a labyrinth of different shafts. Each time the chamber jolted to a stop and continued, Echo would squeeze Alexia’s hand tighter.

“You say ‘guests’,” Alexia found the courage to speak “but I don’t think you mean ‘guests’.”

“Then enlighten me,” Sulana asked. “What do I mean?”

“You kidnap us from our home, you threaten us if we do not do as you say. It feels more like we are prisoners.”             

“Prisoner; a pejorative term. Implies punishment or negative reaction to a social disobedience or disruption. That is not what your new role is.”

“Then what is our role?” Alexia asked, her voice rising a little.

The elevator walls suddenly burst into light as Echo and Alexia realized they were glass walls. The elevator travelled up a glass tube on the side of a massive golden palace. They looked outward to the city around them: great glittering spires and structures spanning for miles, all illuminated by the entire spectrum of color. Then there was the sky. It was night, or seemed to be, the faint glow off the horizon blending with a purple sky speckled with more stars than Echo could count.

A strange fear, but also a pleasant excitement, washed over Echo as she gazed into that star field:
It’s not our sky.

“You will know your role in time.” Sulana continued. “Usually new guests undergo processing before being taken to the Queen’s audience chamber, but the Queen has demanded to process you herself.”

Echo continued to look downward. She could make out the faint shimmering of the surface of water between the buildings. “We’re over a river.”

“Not a river, an Ocean.” Sulana commented. “Argo, and many other cities of our planet, are built over our Oceans. It is what powers our city. ”

“Powers your city?” Alexia commented, trying to distract herself from how anxious she felt in her gut.

“Yes,” Sulana remarked, seeming to be happy she could deflect the conversation. “Our empire has mastered the science of hydro-fusion. It may seem rather complicated to you, as your planet has yet to even discover fossil fuels, but basically it is the mastery of liquids to serve many purposes.”

Echo gasped, taking the majesty of the seemingly endless city, stretching off into the darkness as the faint glow of starlight reflected in the infinite ocean horizon. “Your people… to make all this from water, you all must be Gods.”

“Or witches,” Alexia remarked coldly. She looked back as Sulana, who was seemingly avoiding eye contact.

The elevator stopped at the top floor, the doors opening to a ravishingly decorated marble hallway. “This way please,” Sulana asked, resuming a once again polite demeanor.

They were escorted through the hallway, decorated with purple and red carpets and frescos depicting various scenes that appeared to be from their planet’s history. Great battles between clashing armies. Strange ships landing on new and uncivilized worlds.

Most of it seemed lost on the pair as they were taken through the labyrinthine maze of top palace floor.

They passed a group of noble-looking women. Alexia’s jaw dropped at their clothing, or what little there was. Strips of soft fabric covered their breasts, their hips adorned with jeweled belts that hung cloth downward to conceal their sexes. Their faces were subtly adorned with makeup, smooth concealer and a variety of colors of eye shadow. One of them, a brunette, eyed the two as they passed and whispered something to her friends, eliciting the group to erupt in a chorus of laughter.

Alexia felt a twinge of anger in her stomach. She knew not why.

The group approached a set of ornate golden doors that separated as they approached. Echo and Alexia entered with Sulana while two guards stood at the entrance, blocking any escape.

They were in a circular limestone foyer, another set of onyx doors on the opposite end of the entrance. Guards stood along the walls. They wore no helmets, or very little armor aside from hard leather armor over their hips and crotches, as well as leather greaves ,as red cloaks over their left shoulders and strange looking weapons that looked like short muskets to Alexia and Echo.

Echo’s eyes drifted over their hard, glistening bodies, disciplined from years of training. Hard pectorals that stretched out their dark nipples, abs smooth but rippling with muscle underneath. Echo’s flesh begun to feel hot and feverish, her legs rubbing together as her cheeks begin to blush. One of the guards, a blonde with a boyish looking face, caught her blue-eyed gaze and smirked back, seeming to relish her stare.

Echo leaned in towards Alexia, her hand tightening anxiously.

“I have two new guests for the Queen.” Sulana told the guard captain. “Please allow us to pass, she is expecting them.”

“Yes, great Vizier.” The captain replied, pressing a button near the onyx doorway.             

The three women stepped into a dimly lit chamber, clouds of smoke and the aroma of various alien spices filling the air. In the dim lights of the room, Echo and Alexia could make out the forms of people relining on divans and beds all about the room. As their eyes adjusted, they realized the people in the room were either naked or scantily clad. All about, naked flesh, both male and female, splayed together, naked bodies pressing against one another as they drank and conversed and smoked strange pipes.

At the end of the hall, atop of an ascending marble stairway sat an empty large Divan with one large armrest. It was lit from behind by a reddish and purple light being filtered through a stain glass window overlooking the entire chamber.

Sulana motioned the two to a pile of pillows that made up a makeshift bed, flanked by four guards. The pair sat upon in, their arms wrapping about each other.

“The Queen will be here in a moment,” Sulana then turned from them and left through a side door next to the staircase. 

The pair felt eyes travelling all over their bodies, gazes burning through their layers of clothing. A buxom woman with long blond hair blew out a cloud of smoke from her lips as she eyed Echo. She licked her scarlet lips as her free hand slowly rubbed down her stomach, traveling down past the tuft of pubic hair as her middle finger burrowed between her moistening sex’s lips.

Echo looked away, her cheeks now enflamed. Her mind raced through the years of sermons about the saints, how they would often come to bad cities. Cities of sin where the people engaged in lustful and sinful excess. How some saints would fall astray and debase themselves into acts of animalistic lust, then be struck down by the Gods for their immorality. Even as a child, Echo would always tell herself it wouldn’t be her. She would be resolute and steadfast and abhor such urges of the flesh so the Gods would let her into the nine heavens when she died a good faithful woman.

Alexia remembered those sermons as well. As a child, she didn’t think much on them. As a woman, she’d feel ashamed, as sometimes they’d get her wet.

The side door opened again as Sulana reemerged, taking a few steps up the stairway and stopping midway, before the purple, gold-trimmed divan. The sound of some kind of electronic trumpet filled the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said a mechanized voice. “Presenting Queen Nyxana the 1
st
; sovereign ruler of the known and civilized universe, and her champion and commander of the Kysian Imperial Armed forces; Akreon of Valgeria”