“She only deserves such a fate.”

An empty medical bay in the deepest night. Machines whirled around my cot. My limbs laced with monitors, my vision thick and hazy. There was an artificial vein hydrating me, but my dry lips clung to each other as I struggled to speak. "Who said that?"

Even that was too much. I was in a very delicate state. My recovery was a slow and torturous ordeal. The priestesses had put me on a round of drugs thicker than the Maiden's, or else the pain itself might have killed me.

They'd rebuilt my implant from the ground up. My skull was cut open, and my brain exposed to the air. Though I was not conscious for the event itself, I still dreamt of it. Hands and wires, little sparks beneath my eyelids. They told me it was a miracle I was still alive, that a broken implant often caused an implosion that would kill not only me, but all those near.

"It is an awful, awful death for everyone," the priestess said. "Thank the Highmothers you were spared."

They told me that our womyn had prevailed and the insurrection had been crushed. That the rebel Kasra was dead.

I cried. "She could have been useful," I said, "and yet I…"

"Calm yourself, Slavebreaker," she said, over my bedside. "You are not to be punished. There are some circumstances, Highmothers save us, where it cannot be helped."

Yet something was not right.

When the drugs lulled, often I woke to the sound of someone speaking. Snatches in the night. The side effects of the drug stream colored my vision in prismatic light. The priestesses and white-robed slaves glittered and malformed. My skin was very sensitive. I cried when they touched me — especially when I was bathed.

Forced upright, naked, while a priestess gently lathered up my spine. Conscious thought was rare for me at this time. I remember, once, looking down between my legs. There was a delicate shaved cunt, pink as a rose.

"Is something the matter, Slavebreaker?"

All my ability to control myself was gone. Emotion leaked from me like a cracked vessel. My breath became suddenly short and I trembled. The priestess paused her ministrations to cradle my head in her arms. She pulled me close and reassured me with a high, gentle voice that there were no rebels. That my mind was still recovering, and there might be moments where I was convinced of danger. She echoed the mantras. 

“There is nothing that will hurt you now.”

In her hold, I cried. I could not speak, fearing my tongue would betray me. I feared no danger. I feared no death. It was something else that moved me, some strange elixir of confusion and grief and disconnect from my skin.

“You really think you’re in control?”

Another night. My head was cold and light — when repairing my implant, they'd been forced to shave off all my hair.

“It is a great sorrow, Slavebreaker,” I’d been told. “Your sacrifice shows the depth of your love. It will, given time, grow back even more beautiful.”

Eleno had been here all this time, of course. It would not do to separate a Slavebreaker from her charge in such a dire time. It would have been like severing a limb on top of everything else. 

Now, she emerged from the darkness. Gaunt, slack-jawed, her glass eyes like the slope of a curved helmet. I was too weak to move on my own. But I was always strong enough to command her.

My back arched for easy entrance. Eleno leaned over my bed and inserted two fingers inside of me. 

Beneath my skin, something untwined. The surface of my naked stomach bulged, a serpent wriggling just under the surface. I could not help the relief when Eleno pulled back her fingers, and they were dripping charcoal.

It had not forsaken me! Her fingers went into my mouth, and I sucked at the cum like a calf at a teat. It had only sensed danger and retreated further inside. I collapsed back against the covers, spent. My eyes were closed.

"And what will you do next, Slavebreaker?"

“Wha–?”

Eleno stood above me. Had I pulled her closer? She was like a big dumb statue, perfectly still and stony, and her eyes were trained on me. When had I called her? I —

I could not remember. My head pounded. My head burned. I — I needed more drugs. My emotions were leaking through, and I was making noises. Little pained kitten mewls from my throat without my knowing it. My will and body were not aligned. Eleno stood so very close. There was still alien cum beneath her fingernails.

I returned to Laodike. At the ship's entrance, my Labryades waited. They stood as a solid line, identical, at attention with their faces blankly outwards. Some of the horrid emptiness went away at once, with my fresh implant flooding their senses.

Behind the Labryades were the domestic slaves, just as will-less if not so impenetrable.

I walked past without addressing any individual. "Prepare my supper."

The dining hall was a cavernous thing, intended for grand banquets and executions. The ceilings stretched far above my little head as I sat, hunched from pain.

Silverware clattered as I cut through a jellied crustacean cube. I took a single bite, and my stomach turned horribly. I did not want to eat. The drugs had a disastrous effect on my stomach, and eating anything filled me with horrible nausea that seemingly burned through the mucus and up into my rib cage.

But to the outside observer, it simply looked like I pushed the platter away in a fit of selfish disregard. "Take it away."

From my spot at the head of the table, I could just see Eleno at the corner of my vision.

The other slaves scurried to obey my will, their movements clean and organized. The table was cleared, and soon yet more would arrive with further courses that I could not stomach. 

I tapped my finger against the table. "Does it upset you —" Tap, tap. "— when I waste food?"

No movement.

"I'm only curious." Tap. "Did you eat well as a rebel? Lots of meat and fresh vegetables?"

I paused to take a sip from a silver chalice. "Do you miss it? Meals around the fire with your comrades? Meals with… Kasra?"

She was good — not even a twitch of an eyelid. 

Oh, but I could see it. Whatever it would take, I would find the moment when she would corpse. When her silence would break, and she would cry that I had no right to speak that dead lover's name.

"Wasting meals means nothing to me, of course," I said. "I need only think it, and a dozen slaves will cook for me what ever pleases my fancy. Who cares if I toss it all on the floor?"

I tilted my head. "Pour me a drink."

It was quite curious how she still obeyed. Her thoughts were just as malleable as all the other empty shells. I felt nothing different, would have suspected nothing.

"Did you ever perform plays with the rebellion? Do a breeches role or two?" I took a sip. "You seem very well adapted to acting."

My slaves brought me a silver platter of oysters. They set it down before me, and I did not even spare it a glance. I was looking at Eleno. She stared back at me with that vacuous expression of her kind. The hall was filled with a fishy and salty scent, a reek that would curl even a fisherwomyn’s nose. 

I leaned forward. “I know.

"I know what you are," I said. "I know that you are only biding your time. I'm sure you believe you fooled me. But I did not fall for that display. I did not order you to kill Kasra. I did not want her to die. I wanted her to live, so that I may enslave her, twist her into something she would've loathed. Same as I have done to you.

"I wanted to make examples of all you rebels, bend you to my will, so that there would not be a soul alive who could resist the truth.

"You have no escape, Eleno. Your lover died for nothing. Your sorry scheming has only sown more suffering. You will only suffer, unless you serve me as you were meant to."

Sometimes, when you look at something for so long, unchanging, your mind will conjure a movement. Minds do not enjoy stillness. They do not like silence. Laodike, my beautiful ship, was always loud and always moving. It was not like this hateful thing in front of me, the slave Eleno, who was pretending so well. I saw her armor vibrate beneath the heat of my gaze. I saw something where there was none.

"Say something."

Slaves did not speak.

"Fuck you," I said. "Stop playing with me. Do you know who I am? What I am capable of? I own you. I do not care if your little rebel brain is still pulsing inside of there. All of you is what I am. Do away with your little act, and I will not have to go any further.

"You do not want to know the depths of the humiliation I will place you under."

The smug thing. She was the same, always the same. Fucking with my head, staying silent when I wanted her to speak, to scream, to cry. She had done it before. She knew how it made me boil.

My hand moved without my thinking. It tossed the platter of oysters right at her stupid, unmoving head.

“I am in control here!" I cried. "I am the master of all I survey! I am Slavebreaker, and you will obey me, you stupid whore!"

The platter rolled down the floor. Juices dripped off the surface of Eleno's breastplate, and down the hem of her tunic. I thought it was the same for me, until I realized the salt was only angry tears.

One time, I laid her a trap. In the bleeding desert of Omphalos I erected a spiked hinge of steel and buried it in the sand. I took a communicator that I had pilfered from one of her rebel underlings and set it off across the rebellion's frequency. It was crude. I hadn't known Eleno as well then as I know her now. It was just as likely that she would smell the trap and steer clear. I figured they might lose a scouting drone or a couple disposable underlings.

But she herself came — and she came with a passion and a fury that left me breathless. She came crying for her comrade. The moment I revealed myself, and pronounced the rebel long dead to her, Eleno's entire bearing shifted.

I described the girl's capture. I described the process she was undergoing at that very moment — her head encased in steel, her mind dumped in an industrial line. Little rebels had no need of the artistry of the Maiden. Little rebels were crushed with all the other indoctrinated souls. "She'll never have another thought again," I said, "and she ought to be grateful for it."

Eleno’s expression fell. Why? I thought. Had she known this girl so well? Had she been that useful?

“Their name,” Eleno said, “was…”

I do not even remember. She attacked me. She tricked my Labryades into the trap, and the steel jaws cleaved them in pieces. I felt them die, a sudden hum.

Eleno was clever. She was always so clever. How had I not seen it before? How could I have been so foolish? And now she was alone with me, in the depths of space, where no one could stop her when she decided to strike. I had to remind Eleno that, awake or not, she was mine. That I would do with her what I pleased, and just as there was no one to stop her from killing me — there was no one who could stop me from ruining her.

"Hail Slavebreaker Winter of Juno! We bless you with a fruitful return! Please accept these gifts from High Priestess Odelgarde."

A robe of translucent silk. Two white and shimmering gems. A rare flower to bring cheer to the metal landscape of my home. Did she know, I thought as I dangled the diamond clamps, that I kept no pleasure slaves?

My pain was still considerable. I was instructed to wean myself — but every night the supply waned, my dreams grew distended and horrific. I woke with all my sheets soaked in sweat.

One such night, I called her over to my bed. A sharp wave passed through my chambers, and she stepped up at once. I suppose I ought to have sent her to sleep in the communal space with the other Labryades. Was it wise to allow her to watch over me as I slept?

Her strong arms cradled me until I was settled in my brocade chair. I leaned over my knees, certain that I was about to throw up.

Through the stars of my vision I visualized my slave as I wanted her to appear. The robe hung like a phantom across my mirror. I mustered my voice. "Dress."

Eleno rippled in the reflection. She was already in the nude — I was not foolish enough to leave her armed. Through my pounding head I watched her back muscles flex as she lifted the garment.

A call to a second slave. On the other side of Laodike, a domestic stepped from her upright closet and into the black hall. Her flat shoes walked in a precise rhythm to the kitchen where she was to prepare me a drink. The ceilings weaved like threads in the dark in the corner of my mind as Eleno pinched a jewel between her fingers.

She cradled her breast, and I could feel the heft of it as if I felt in my own hand. I felt, too, the stab of pain as she brought the clamp down — before I filtered it out.

I made her dance for me. The domestic was pulling out ice with tongs, dropping each cube into the glass. Tink, tink. 

Eleno was a sorry excuse for a dancer. A form too large, too ugly to appeal to the aesthetic eye. Her movements were stiff and jerky, and I had a little vision for how to correct her. I was not a dancer.

But I forced her on the same, because I knew she would hate it. The rebel who carried such notions as being a man now resplendent in glitter and shaking her tits for my amusement. She rolled her hands over her chest, bending so that they hung down. The robe fluttered like translucent wings around her toned body. The diamonds glittered in the low light. Every bounce made the clamps twinge painfully. She leaned over, her face against mine. I urged her to be still.

I could have searched her eyes, waited in the forced serenity for the flicker of spirit to bring itself to the forefront. What good would it have done? I knew already.

My eyes were on her body, which belonged to me even if her mind were not caged. Her limbs moved at my will, to run one hand down the length of her stomach and into her slit. The other to fondle herself. My mind was split open, and I felt all of the pleasure. It was delirious how sensitive I could make her. How I could siphon off that sensation and make it my own, and how my own pleasure at seeing her so debased could in turn drive her harder and wetter, more compliant, more perfect for me. I would break her. She would not get away with this. 

My domestic brought my drink. As soon as the liquid touched my lips, I realized I had been dying of thirst. My throat burned. I had been so focused on Eleno's sensations that I had neglected my own needs. I drank greedily while Eleno massaged her deformed clit. My hips rolled with her hips. How much hatred must she hold beneath her placid exterior? How much could she recall?

“So, do you often carry a flask of extra strong spirits into the desert?”

Ah, that night. I hoped she did not remember that one. Even though I had been busy staring at the flagstones of their rebel hold, I could already tell that Eleno was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed and that smug way of hers.

“When I am dealing with you, yes.”

I should not have spoken at all. The rebels may have captured me, and Eleno may have thought herself worthy of a victory lap, but I had no intention of playing their games. Even as we spoke, my backup was arriving. This little hold of theirs would be flooded with slaves of their former comrades, and the streets would run red.

Eleno laughed. “It was fun. We should do it again.”

My head was bowed in fury, not shame. Not shame. My hair formed a curtain between the two of us, and I clutched at my knees. I would have moved further away from Eleno — not as a sign of weakness, of course — but I was chained to the floor. “Is this your idea of torture?”

“Is it working?”

When I said nothing, only continued to imagine her gruesome death, she went on — “I'm just curious. Do you always turn that color when someone calls you 'boy'?”

“You're imagining things from a drunken stupor. You said no such thing. And I had no such reaction. We fought to kill in the bleeding desert of Omphalos— nothing more.”

“Of course,” Eleno said. “Maybe we should do it for the first time, then.”

The fizzing drink downed so quickly wreaked havoc on my stomach. Foam spilled out of my mouth, and all over the carpet. I came to sudden wakefulness — I hadn't realized I was drifting off to sleep. Eleno had frozen in her dance. She was sweating so profusely that the delicate garment clung to her skin. Her mouth was open, panting, and her dark empty eyes pointed at the ceiling. I murmured something to her, an order I could not recall, and crawled back into bed. No slave came to clean up my mess until I came to awareness in the morning. My room stank of it.

But the conversation at the rebel base — which I did burn to the ground in the end — was not the first night we had spent together. The very first time I had her in my clutches, I'd left her awake. Foolish of me. We were out far from Laodike, in an abandoned city once ruled by men. I waited by the fire as my ship came on its slow way to meet us. Eleno was tied up with leather rope, a bit between her teeth.

I roasted an alien bird on a makeshift spit. It dribbled fat into the fire as I sat, cleaning my knife. I observed the sliver of my severe reflection in its side. “No one will find us until Laodike comes.”

Eleno grunted.

“Do you comprehend what that means? I will say it slow, if that will help.” I ran my thumb along the edge of the blade. “I hate you more than I hate anyone in the world. Even your other rebel scum do not compare. You are arrogant. You are delusional. You speak of love, of peace — and yet you so insist on returning the male race. How can you believe such contradictions? You make me sick.”

If she wanted to speak, it would do her no good.

I said, “Anything I do, I can blame on the battle. I will not have to report to my superiors until after you've been processed. Until then, you are mine." I hummed. "A slave does not need five fingers on each hand, necessarily," I said. "It does not matter if its back is scorched and peeling, so long as it can still obey.

"Or how about some bruising? A purple throat will be hidden by your armor. A bootprint on your abdomen — quite a work of art, don't you think? A rib or two — what is a rib or two while we wait?"

Eleno had stopped wriggling. Her face slouched, and it would not do. I put my blade against her throat and forced it upwards. "You will look at me while I am speaking."

Her eyes blazed with anger — but she did not speak any longer, not a grunt or a whimper. This infuriated me. I did not say these things for her to absorb them mutely. I wanted her anger in twin with mine. I wanted her to hate me with every fiber of her being, so that the transformation to come would be all the more savory.

I removed the bit. "Tell me how I should hurt you."

She did not speak.

“Tell me.” I kicked her, and she fell over. She lay, half-dressed against the rubble. Her golden shoulders emerged from her tattered garb, and even the dirt could not obscure their strength. She breathed deeply, she swallowed great puffs of air– and she was silent.

“I am being kind,” I said. “I am giving you this autonomy you speak so highly of. Tell me how I shall torture you, or–” I paused. “Or I’ll simply slit your throat.”

She shut her mouth so that she was not even breathing. I kicked her again, and she did not moan. I went on, describing all the ways I would make her feel the most exquisite pain before her inevitable demise. The knife in my hand shivered; I was too emotional to risk the cut, and potentially sever the bonds. When the suns descended through the crags of upright buildings, and our fire became the only beacon in the dark, I hoisted her by the scruff of her neck.

“It is cold,” I said. “I will not have you die of exposure.”

And all through the night we slept beneath the same cover, her arms bound, her back against mine. I was so tense that I did not sleep for many hours. I lay awake, aware that my greatest enemy only had to turn over and strangle me as I had threatened to strangle her. Creatures swooped in the darkness, strange calls in the night.

I woke to find her gone.

The wind howled in my ears as Laodike descended and my Labryades marched off the deck. I knelt on the ground, discarded leather cord gripped my hands. Why? The question assaulted me at all angles. Why, Highmothers help me, had she left me alive?

"Because I know." That's what she said, when I confronted her next. I’d tracked her down personally, not a formal mission, and found her at the same rundown bar I had met her in. Despite numerous raids, it continued to exist. There Jag Eleno leaned against the bar, holding a knife to my throat.

“Do not bother,” I said. “My slaves have infiltrated. If you try, they will kill everyone they can reach.” I paused. “Know what?”

“What you are,” Eleno said. “Want to be. Could have been.”

She was speaking nonsense. I was not here to play her games. I told her that I was holding this bar hostage unless she came with me.

“It’s a nasty plan. Clever,” Eleno said. “Unfortunately for you, this bar’s just as full of rebels. And we’ve spotted every one of your moles. You won’t get a single head on a pike before you get smoked.”

“A likely story.”

Eleno pointed over my shoulder. “That one– grizzled woman in the cloak. Hasn’t spoken a lick since she gave her order.”

I scowled.

Eleno pointed to her left. “The young one with the twin braids– trying far too hard to look innocent. I would have thought you’d wanted older women for your purposes, though.”

She was a domestic, actually. Not that Eleno had any right to know. I glowered at her as she propped an elbow up on the bar. “How about we call it even? I’ll buy you a drink.”

The indignation– the humiliation– rose up within me. I moved without reasoning, and it could have caused my doom. My knife went dashing up towards Eleno’s face.

She caught it against her wrists.

We were two angry bulls, horns locked together. The tip of my knife wavered in front of her nose. 

She laughed. “Oh? May I have this dance?”

“One day, Eleno…” I growled, “I’ll have your head.”

“Sure, sure– we all go eventually.” She smiled. “Until then, call me Jag.”

"Faster, slave!"

The bath was thick with steam. I lay in a thin pool of water, glossy indigo tiles against my bare back. My slave was licking between my legs. My body ached from the endless fucking. Time had lost all its power. Eleno had not tired, so neither would I.

There was something strange. Through the thick fog, I could hear a voice. I could see nothing, but I could hear the moans of some wanton whore. One of those useless concubines, consumed by her own lust. I hated it. I covered my ears as I came to try and muffle it, but it only grew louder.

And then the lying there, hands against my shorn skull, panting. I stared up at the cloudy cover and wondered if I was enjoying myself. Eleno dutifully continued on, preparing me for my next climax. I did not order her to stop. This was not about enjoyment, anyhow.

The moans filled the chamber again. All over the ship, slaves went about their duties. When lust stalled my higher functions, I felt them all. Flashes of fingers on knives, knees against metal floors, wiping. Eleno licked at that rosy bloom between my legs.

I had tried many things with Eleno, searching for her limit. I had raped her with the rod. Forced her onto all fours and inserted it into her slave-cunt. The metal hotter and hotter with every shock. Eleno had tears streaming down her blank face, but she did not break.

Swift flat function. Rows of boots on the ground. I woke in my empty bed. I was dressed by slaves. I was fed by slaves. I conducted reports. I controlled, every idle thought a discipline. They streamed through the halls of Laodike like blood in her veins. The High Priestesses praised me for my swift recovery, to which I would smile and profess it was by the grace of the Highmothers alone that I stood here. 

And every 15th hour, when my sleep cycle began, Eleno would peel from her routine tasks as a faceless Labryade and become my vessel.

I had to. It was my only option; Eleno could not betray me, I could not let her go. Let the charade continue on for the rest of my life, if that was what had to be. I would make her suffer through her awareness. I would make her yearn for the bliss of obedience. I would remind her what she lost.

In my empty bed, Eleno slept beside me.

Slaves went in shifts. In the middle of my sleep cycle, the turnovers began. In their stalls, half emerged and half entered. I felt their lights blink out, and the others rise in their march to their duty. Eleno stared back at me, her head draped across the pillow, her face dumb and open.

I kneed her hard in the stomach until she rolled off my cot.

My hands gripped at the tubes of my artificial vein, activating it again. I did not rise from bed at all that day. I lay on my back naked and I remembered a speech Eleno had once given. The rebels had hacked the airwaves, however briefly. Through the warring signal Eleno stood tall and proud, her voice deep and resonant. Her hair was slicked back, her face ruddy and real, a gun strapped over her broad shoulder. For the first time it occurred to me that Eleno was not simply my enemy — she was their face, their hero.

"You can raze a forest," she said. "You can poison the land until it reaches the very depths of the soil. But one day, something will grow. It may be ugly. It may be a weed, or stunted fern, or some monstrous thing that feeds off your destruction — but you will not stop it. You can kill it before it grows. You can strangle the seedlings. But every minute that passes is another minute where freedom breathes through the cracks.

"You say that men are evil — that we do not deserve to live." Eleno scoffed. "You think you can poison the land and only grow flowers? Life will come in forms you cannot even imagine. It will be strange and twisted and — yeah, you might think it's a weed. You can kill the body, but you cannot kill our souls. You believe in souls, don't you?

"Can you do it? Can you reach inside me, and truly say that I have a woman's soul? That I am mistaken? Can you look at every one of the lives you destroyed and say, well and truly, that their souls are not like mine? Like yours? Can you —?"

“I—I can’t…” I gasped through a cold sweat. Drool leaked from my open mouth. The drugs at this point were black market acquisitions, laced with something that made my pussy burn. I had my fingers buried in my slit, and I was begging, craving for a concubine to save me from the cage of my recollections.

My throat was as dry as a desert fire. Her tongue found its way inside, tender and wet and warm. I clung to her armor, my spit all over her breastplate. “Fuck…fuck…”

To the violence in the heat of Omphalos. My Labryades dead all around me, my body breaking down from the pain and the loss and the rage. I fought relentlessly on. I suppose, for a moment, I had really thought this was going to be the end. Either Eleno fell, or I went with the angels. Highmothers help me, I was thirsty. I was beyond all thought. The sand slurried around, finding chinks in my armor. I kept on trying to link to my slaves, reflexively, and was met with only a wall of red. The hum of a dead connection.

I stepped backwards. Though I heard the hollow chunk, I had simply assumed it to be a figment of my imagination. The thrush of Eleno’s light armor as she swung at me again.

“Why can’t you see!” she cried. “Why can’t you see what’s right in front of you?”

My feet found empty air. Eleno charged me, and I had nowhere to go but down. A notch had opened up amongst the shifting sands, blasting cold, damp air from the pit of the planet. Eleno and I toppled into it.

We fell in a grapple, her hands hugging my waist, my legs tangled in her jumpsuit. We rolled. She compulsively tried to tuck her head away, butted beneath my chin. I cradled her tighter against me. The sudden burst of cold rattled my joints; we rolled down a diagonal chute onto a stony floor.

The trap door shut out the light.

“Where are we?” I sat up, my head ringing. My helmet was dented by the impact, digging painfully against my temple. I threw it off, spit sand and hair from my mouth.

“Hell if I know…”

From my belt I pulled out my arclight and lit it above my head. Eleno crouched against the wall, her head drooping. There was a spot of dirt on the tip of her nose.

We were in a dirty, brown tomb. Stone coffins sat beneath layers of glittering sand; it fluttered as I walked. The walls were scratched with ancient, illegible language. A black doorway loomed before me.

When I took a step, Eleno jolted. Her hand fumbled with her ray-gun— I believed she had, despite her best efforts, a concussion.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I will not kill you in a place like this.”

“You don’t kill,” she reminded me.

“And what good would it do me to capture you now?” My voice was cool. “I would have to drag around your limp body, a dead weight, as I search for the exit.”

“You’re not the most reasonable of people.”

I ignored her. “The natives of Omphalos constructed labyrinths beneath their cities, in the early days of our reign. They hid their men in the dark, where they lived out their blackened, secret lives.”

“And then…?”

“We won.” My voice echoed in the hollow air.

Eleno stumbled to her feet. She kept her shaky hand on her holster. “And where is the exit?”

“Why would I know that?” I snapped. “These places are worthless. We did not even bother to level them.”

“Got any water on you?”

I paused. “A flask.”

“So, we’re doomed.”

“As if your sort has any idea of what doomed is!” I folded my arms. “Get your hand off that gun. Until we find the exit—”

“We’re buddies?”

My lip curled. “Sure.”

We plunged, my little light held high, into the darkness. There was no rhyme or reason to the space. Halls that looped in and around each other, facilities left untouched and rotting for a millennium. All around us were the bodies of men; bodies revered, held in stone coffins, sand in the crooks of their carved names. Eleno was a constant tension. Often, my eyes would catch the unnatural shape of her in the corner of my eye, via a shadow on the wall, and I would have to force myself to restrain the flinch, the sudden urge to kill or throttle.

I was good. I was patient. If I destroyed her now, I would not live to see her kiss my boots.

It was Eleno’s idea to mark the paths we had already taken. We burnt a scrap of fabric and smeared the ashes on the walls. Eleno’s eyes glittered in the little burst of flame. I thought how handsome a womyn she would have made in some unborn world.

She saw me looking at her, and the speckle of mirth in her eyes vanished. “I wish you had killed them.”

“Who?” I said, before I recalled the comrade whose capture had led us here. Then, “What good would it have done? She is gone either way.”

“It’s ghoulish.”

“And what’d you expect us to do? Someone must attend to the menial toil. Would you rather we let the slaves suffer, minds trapped in unwilling bodies?”

“Do you really think that?” Her voice was bitter. “That there will always be a hierarchy with a bottom to fill?”

It was such a strange, stupid question that I could not fathom an answer.

We came at last to a staircase sloping upwards. Eleno lifted her hands and cried, “Finally!”

It was not an easy trek. We climbed, hefting our heavy bodies up it in a desperate snail’s trail. For what seemed like hours we trudged, the arclight off to conserve battery, the only sound our labored breathing and the scrape of armor against stone. We did not speak, but Eleno’s dumb words had set a spark of anger I struggled to tamp down. What did she know? Silly girl with her Utopian visions of equality. How would she like it, should her fantasy come to pass, and she had to waste her freakish strength shoveling shit for all time?

Eleno set a hand against the trap door. She pushed, but it did not budge. “Fuck…”

“You’re doing it wrong,” I said. “Let me see.”

Despite my superior strike, it still did not move.

I turned on my light again, and we both scrabbled around, prodding every inch of stone for some mechanism to open the door. There did not appear to even be one. Eleno shot her ray-gun, scorching the rock.

The door did not budge, but something else shuddered.

“Do you smell… something?” Eleno’s eyes shifted between me and the unyielding door.

“No,” I said reflexively. But there was— subtle in those first moments, something sweet and tangy that clung to the back of the throat.

“It’s…” She smacked her lips. “It’s really…”

I turned up the light.

Eleno’s pupils, despite the sudden bright flare, were engorged. She stared back at me. Her face broke into a grin. “You’re— you’re funny!”

“Huh? How?”

“You’re— you’re so—” She gestured around her head. “Sausage in a little— too small, too—!” She burst out laughing.

How dare she! “Fuck you, rebel scum! You’re stupid, and— and—” I laughed, too.

I could not stop, in fact. Raucous laughter, uncontrollable muscle spasms. I breathed more gas with every one, growing the more intense. Heaving with manic glee, I gripped Eleno’s shoulder and pushed her down the stairs.

“Fuck— hahahaha— fuck you, too!” She kicked at my legs.

We both went down. At the foot of the stairs, breathing in dirt and dead ashes by every wheezing lungful, we lay. My hair fell lank and dirty across my face; my cheeks ached from smiling, and my abdomen even worse.

“How much—ha!” Interrupting myself with my own peals. “How much energy are we w-wasting?”

Eleno’s stomach growled. “A lot!!”

“Think we’re doomed now?!”

“Y-yeah!”

“Then…” I grinned with teeth, struggling to even sit up. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Aren't you the big important Slavebreaker? Pfft— You figure it out!!”

“That does not sound like the conviction of a hero!”

It was a nightmarish scene, us squirming like worms in the dirt, unable to control the cadence of our voices or the sway of our bodies. Sweat turned our skin sticky, the dust coating us to our tongues. 

The sensation was vivid, but I did not often think back to it. To remember the scene was to remember how it ended…

For this moment of despair was ultimately fleeting. I did not know that. Eleno's profession of weakness was a Pyrrhic victory, a satisfaction I could not enjoy, for I was going to die with her.

She lay flat on her stomach, still grinning. “Guess I'll just fucking rot here! With you!”

“I don't want to rot here!”

“Then get up,” she said. “Find a way out!”

I did not.

“At least I'll be in good— good company!!”

“Yes!” I said. “With a thousand bones, exactly where those men were meant to be. Buried!!”

“You don't have to do that now,” Eleno giggled. “No one can hear you.”

Eventually, the effects of the gas faded. We were left in pain, heads rolling with thirst, staring up at the cavernous ceiling. We waited for the darkness to take us and hold us tight.

Drip.

“Did you hear that?” I said.

“Hear what?” Eleno said, though she went quiet.

“Water.” I sat up.

“So that we can delay our deaths a bit longer?” She scoffed. “Leave me out.”

“No, you idiot. The water has to come from somewhere.”

Drip, drip. We stalked it like predators in the jungle, our bodies stooped and aching. Drip, drip, until Eleno's boot found a puddle. Not even — a damp spot, a little circle of indented sand, darker than the others. We looked up to where it streaked down the wall, and blinked. I turned off the arclight. The sun, hardly a glimmer, was peering down at us.

“Okay,” Eleno said. “But how do we get up there?”

It was a dilemma. I stood, my eyes searching. In the dim light, I swore I saw something, an indentation in the rock.

I pointed. “Up there.”

Eleno saw it too. “But how are we going to reach it?”

“I don't know.” I frowned. Eleno frowned too, her nose crinkling. I wanted to slap her. She was so foolish. I was tired and starving and thirsty, and I wanted nothing more than to get away from Eleno, whose very existence made my blood boil.

“We could…”

“We could what?”

“I'm the stronger one,” she said. “No offense. But if I stood right under it, and you stood on top of me…”

“Don't be ridiculous. And let you drop me?”

“Why would I drop you? And let us both die?”

“You are not the most reasonable person,” I said.

As I climbed on, Eleno was a solid wall beneath me. Her calloused fingers gripped my ankles. She stared up through my legs, and the amused glitter was back. 

I fingered the chink in the wall. I could not see anything, but I felt the click. “There’s something in there. I don’t know what it's supposed to—”

My foot slipped. A sudden shudder beneath me, and my mind reared in alarm— I should have known! Of course she would betray me!

“Hey, now!” Eleno caught me, pushed my leg back where it rested. But the tremors did not cease. It was not Eleno who shook; it was the labyrinth.

Everything went asunder. It was as if we were in a small box, and the one who held it — a strange, mercurial goddess — had simply turned it over. The vertical wall went horizontal, and then downwards. We screamed and grabbed at the chinks of the rock and the wind wooshed around us in a horrible typhoon.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Eleno cried. She grappled for the switch— but it was to no avail. We were already too far down. The light was growing. It seared in my eyes, which had so long adjusted to that deep, enduring darkness. I missed the darkness. In that moment, I wondered why I had ever wanted to leave it.

I covered my face. I did not want to see Eleno, splattered across the rock face. I did not want to die like this. My eyes closed, my body braced to sear itself away in some ancient, ever-burning heathen flame.

The end felt an awful lot like sand.

“Gah!” I sat up, and staring back at me was the sunset. The desert of Omphalos was bathed in violet and peach, a golden wash over its sandy dunes. My throat burned with the sudden dry heat. There were tears in my eyes.

The danger averted, I collapsed back down.

Eleno laid beside me. Her tongue ran slow across parched lips. “Still got that flask?”

I lifted my arm, the flask a shining diamond in the sky.

“Good boy.”

It clunked against my breastplate.

We ended up shoulder to shoulder on a great stony outcropping as the sun descended, and we both struggled to signal our respective ships.

Eleno’s legs dangled off the side— so casual, despite the lethal drop. Her bearing was exactly that of my younger self, sitting on the wall watching the ocean, shoulders hunched eagerly forward.

I pulled my flask from my belt. She snatched it from me before I could say anything, and took a long swig.

"You can't have it all!" I smacked her.

“What? I’m parched after all that!”

“Give me—” I grabbed it, but she held on tight. I dragged the flask, Eleno’s arm and all, to my mouth.

She admonished me for being greedy, and turned her back so I could not take it again. We bickered, snatching drinks one mouthful at a time. We drained it dry.

"You are an asshole!"

"And you're not much of anything," Eleno said, "when you're not acting as a hydra of terror." She took a final swig, and pitched the flask off the side of the rock. 

I gasped. 

She laughed at me. "You'll get another!"

"Is this revenge?"

"I don't need revenge — especially not from you."

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re just as much of a victim as the rest of us.” She stared out over the ledge; her tone was ponderous, academic.

That wasn’t true. Had she forgotten all of the unforgivable things I’d done to her people? I did not want her to forget them— so I listed some.

The forced inspection— Eleno had struck first, being a thief and all. She brushed away the processing of rebels, the executions I’d organized. The threats of torture? Knife to her throat? She only joked about finding it erotic.

“And the girl that I sent away? That brought you here?”

“You’re awfully intent on getting on my nerves.” Eleno sighed. “Listen— I know, deep down, you believe you’re doing a good thing.”

I grew indignant. "It is not what I believe, it is the truth. And if you weren't so stubborn you could —"

She was staring at me. She was smiling. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”

"And — and you are not!"

More bickering. More inane, drunken slurring. Was this a dream? I think I was dreaming.

She asked me, “What’ll happen if you…y’know?”

“Speak clearly,” I said. “I am not a mind reader.”

“If you… caught me.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “Well, you are strong, able-bodied. Though it would send a message— I would not want you as a concubine.”

“Thanks?”

“You would become my Labryade.”

She was quiet. “Will it hurt?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “You won’t feel anything but pleasure.”

“You would make me a girl.”

“You would become whatever I wanted. Your will would be subsumed into my own, and there would be little purpose in untangling the two.”

“So— yes?”

“You would not be a womyn,” I said, in a strange sort of consolation. “You would be a slave.”

Eleno was silent for a long time. I checked the status of Laodike. When she spoke again, I was startled by her tone.

“I really tried to stop it.”

A breeze chilled the sweat on my forehead. The stone was purple in the dark. Eleno's silhouette was lit with a thin strip of sun, the tip of her nose and eyelashes white. An arm across her bent knee. “What could I do? I tried to bury it. I tried to follow the rules, be a good girl. I tried to break them— but I was still stuck there, in that shell.”

Eleno spoke about her past. I listened in unnatural silence as she described her secret scurryings, her heretic realizations. The first time she saw a man in an old fairy story, she had cried. “I saw him— and it was me. I knew it, even if I could not speak it. Even if the mirror taunted. Even if I couldn’t say so, I knew then— I would make myself into what I felt inside. What else could I do? Let it fester? Die?”

“Yes,” I said, hushed. “You should have died.”

Eleno looked at me.

I struggled to justify myself. “Every womyn struggles with that,” I said. “Do you think even the most devoted servant of the Highmothers does not, at times, wish she was not shackled to the weight of femininity? That she does not wonder at a world where it is different?”

She blinked. “Every woman?”

"I have. And I am as representative of a loyal servant as you will ever find." I glowered at her. "I have suffered every day within the cage of my body. And still I stand here. It is not that you are a man, it is that you are weak and —"

"And everyone feels this way?" There was a lilt of humor in her voice, though I did not see why.

"Of – of course."

She crawled towards me. Her face, red from the sun, dotted with freckles like stars, grew larger and larger. "What would you have done, Slavebreaker, if you were born a man?"

"I would not have been. I would have been detected in the gestation period and terminated swiftly."

Eleno laughed, a soft throaty thing beneath her breath. "Yeah…"

Right up against me, her face in my face. The sarcastic mirth melted away, leaving something else. Something strange, some marrow-deep sorrow from the dredges of Eleno’s soul. "I wish I had been," she said, "but I'm glad you're here."

There was a sudden paralyzing fear in my heart. Why was I worried, suddenly, that Eleno was looking at me? Why did I feel that I was beneath the lens of a viewfinder? That there was a light shining through my rib cage?

I thought, at first, that she was about to fall. Off-balance, moments away from her death against the faraway ground. Instinctively, I set out a hand to catch her. “Careful —”

But instead, with the brush like the wind off the skin of the tide, Eleno pressed his lips against mine.