7 comments/ 46243 views/ 44 favorites Daemon & Sunny: Prequel By: ladyofthemasque {Author’s Note: KatLady requested more, more, more of “Daemon & Sunny”. Since she has been patiently camped outside my castle for three months, I have decided to post as much of this tale as I possibly can,t hough it is a WIP, a Work-In-Progress, and thus not complete. In order to post what I do have of the tale, we have to start at the beginning, which doesn’t have quite as much in the way of erotica as what’s online already in “Daemon & Sunny” and “Daemon & Sunny 2”, but there will be more to come, including chapters that follow the action after D&S 2! Here’s hoping all of you enjoy the tale! ~Lotm} *************** CHAPTER ONE Tarkat II “Ow!” Sunny frowned. She was in the middle of a difficult, only partially legible translation, pouring over a shard of etched metal. Her employers, Saunders & Saunders Archaeology For Hire, would not like it if Sundrea Dannonee messed up this very important translation—and the sooner she got this job over, the sooner she could move on to another job. Because it seemed as if lately, the artifacts and sites they were investigating were getting less and less respectable; Sunny needed to be respectable, to earn a coveted, tenured Assistant Historian’s post at an Imperial University. She needed to concentrate. She didn’t need the sounds of zapping and another pained, “Ow—dammit!” The dig boss and chief archaeologist, Roster, scowled and strode over to the section of tent-covered jungle the sounds were issuing from, stopping just a foot or so from vanishing behind a clump of the wide-bladed Tarkatan grass that hid the cause of those sounds. “What the craker are you doing, Saumwe? Stop soddering off and get back to work!” “I’m trying! I uncovered a battered old box here…but I can’t pick it up! It keeps zapping me!” Sunny, bemused by the thought of a forty or so year old crash site having a box with a still-energized security field, didn’t see the stiffening of the dig boss. She bent her head back to the scrap of metal she was decoding, scripted in ancient Imperial. The most intriguing find, considering most of the rest of the remnants of the old crash were pieces of far more modern value. Some artworks that were as much as a couple centuries old, but this one piece of metal was etched with snippets of a language used commonly two thousand years ago, and only on the most formal Imperial occasions now. “If the damned box is giving you trouble, leave it alone. Go work in grid B-17! Go on!” Saumwe came out grumbling but careful to keep his dirty looks aimed away from the dig boss. Roster was known for his temper over botched work. At the artifact table, set up at the sealed edge between the dig tent and their living quarters, Sunny painstakingly decided the word she was working on was du’uhre, not du’ubre. Because to have written ‘…the one shall squall the other…’ made no grammatical sense. She should know, too. Ancient Imperial was her speciality—the reason why Saunders & Saunders had hired her, actually. Everything from the dialects spoken by the commoners, to the diadems worn by the royal family, and the meanings and inflections of each. The stately grace, the common sense wisdom—the Ancient Imperium fascinated her. Had there been an Emperor and Empress on the throne currently, she just might have been able to apply for a job as Historian to the Imperium—even maybe the most coveted post she could think of, Customs Keeper, though that was just a fantasy. The Astral Imperium was the oldest stellar empire in existence, even if there was only a Regent on the throne, the aging grandson of the last rightful rulers, who had died forty-two years before. The Imperium was still going, but it needed a new Emperor and Empress, and the powers they wielded, to refresh its spirit and restore it to its glory. That glory was slipping, fragmenting back into the original world-kingdoms that had been forged together to form the Imperium. Everyone knew roughly how the Emperors and Empresses were chosen: everyone knew that the Matrix chose and created them. Deep in the distant past, a man and a woman of some long-forgotten world had either uncovered an alien artifact, or had created an artifact on their own, no one knew, that had given them Ultimate Power…the power to assert their will on the natural order of the universe and alter it as they willed. It had been a good thing that the Matrix had chosen two inherently good people, who had intervened in an interstellar war and bound the warring worlds into a united whole. The Matrix had then passed, not from parents to children, but to another couple, who had held that alliance together and added more worlds and another chosen pair added more, until the Pax Imperium coalesced out of the alliances, and the Matrix-chosen pair at that time were declared Emperor and Empress, and given the right to rule over the Peace of the Imperium. The Matrix always chose good-hearted, wise people. Sometimes it had taken a few years for the Matrix to choose, between the deaths of the previous rulers and the revelation of the new…but not until this last Interim, as they were called, had the wait lasted so long. There was talk now of making the post of Emperor hereditary, of crowning the Regent’s son when the Regent got around to dying. Sunny thought that would be a serious pity, because a hereditary ruler, as history so often proved among the smaller, king and queen ruled stellar empires within and without the Imperium, did not always make a good ruler. It wasn’t her choice though; she was a historian, an anthropologist of the past, not a politician or ruler of the present or its future. She marshalled her concentration, and worked on the next few words. It took her another hour, even with the use of her topographical scanner and the use of her portable comp’s resolution re-creation programs, to puzzle out the next few. ‘…reeur saubets du’uhre mukrah, yo’se mukrah…’ ‘…the one chooses the other, and the other…’ Sunny frowned. Now why does that sound familiar? She sat back in her camp chair, the permacanvas creaking softly, and blotted at the sweat beading on her freckle-dotted forehead. The tent was stifling, but at least it and the repeller post, glowing in the center of the tent, kept the bugs away. The big bugs, on this hot jungle world. She let her mind wander, to let the familiarity of the phrasing surface on its own in her mind, barely hearing the muttering from beyond the wide-bladed, ten-foot-tall grass clumped not far away. She knew Roster and the younger Mr. Saunders, the employer of this particular mission, would ignore her, because when she was deep in her work, they knew that she ignored them. Still, their hissed conversation distracted her. “…you sure?” “It has to be. Only the—only it could have a powersource capable of surviving so long—the box is too small to have a energy source capable of lasting this long, not without being practically all battery. That and we can’t touch it. It’s said that it cannot be touched by any other.” “Yes, but would that apply to the box it’s kept in?” Saunders argued back. “Craker! We don’t even know if it’s kept in a box, between!” Cannot be touched by any other… Her mind, picking up that stray bit even as she worked on puzzling out her real task, clicked. A line of antiquity snapped into view in her mind. “That which Cannot And that which Can Be, Touched if by Thou And Made if by Thee, The One Chooses the Other, And the Other Chooses the One, What cannot be Touched or be Made— Can always be Done or Undone.” It was the Riddle of the Matrix. Sunny’s sharply intelligent mind suddenly knew what they were looking for. Why they were looking for it in a half-buried jungle wreck roughly forty years old. Why she felt uneasy about her current task, employed with Saunders & Saunders. She heard them shifting, Roster and Saunders, and quickly leaned forward, instinctively resuming her usual posture of elbows on the table, the shard of metal in her hand, altering her face to the one that she had when she was deep in thought about something…instead of the startled one she knew it had metamorphosed into for a few moments. “Sunny. Sunny. Sunny!” She jumped and blinked, looking up at them as if indeed startled out of deep thought. “Sorry—you wanted something, Dr. Roster? Mr. Saunders,” she added with a quick, polite nod. The middle-aged man looked less trustworthy than his older brother, the other half of their partnership. She held up the shard as they exchanged a quick look. “You know, it would help if the dig workers could find more shards like this one. I don’t have enough to work with to place this one small piece in any larger context accurately.” Mr. Saunders smiled indulgently down at her, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He glanced over at his archaeologist dig-boss. “You told me she was rather single-minded at times.” Sunny managed a gamine grin. “You should’ve heard my mother calling me to supper. She wouldn’t even bother to call my name, but would call one of my friends, and they’d get my attention more directly. Did you want something?” “Mr. Saunders has graciously given everyone the rest of the day off,” Roster informed her. “It’s too hot to work any longer,” Saunders said smoothly, though the day was no hotter than any of the others they’d spent here in the past three weeks. “I figured we could all use a small break, refresh the braincells, that sort of thing.” They want to get me out of the dig tent, so they can figure out what to do with the ‘zapping box’ Saumwe uncovered. She’d cultivated her ‘oblivious attention’ in order to give her an excuse to avoid the coarser company of the archaeology assistants working the dig—she wasn’t nearly as absentminded as the impression she’d given these people to avoid having to deal overly much with them. She was hard-working, enthusiastic and meticulous when she wanted to be, and she’d let those traits show through, because those helped keep her paycheck going. She showed some of that now with a brief nod. “That’d be very nice—thank you, Mr. Saunders. I’ll be right in, as soon as I’ve tagged and boxed the rest of these.” “Go ahead and leave them here,” Roster suggested. Sunny shook her head, glad she had given the impression of being methodical. “You’d yell at me if I did that, and something happened. Don’t worry—it won’t take me more than fifteen, twenty minutes. I’m too interested in having a half-day to let my mind wander back to work,” she added on a joke, and turned her attention back to the younger objects spread out around her, dismissing them with a friendly wave and her customary reassural. “Everything’s in good hands!” They stayed a few moments, then turned and crossed the section seal between the covering of the dig tent and the entirely enclosed, somewhat cramped quarters the dozen members of the archaeological team lived in. Her fingers flew over the keyboard of her comp pad as she logged in tagging numbers on the artifacts and double-checked their tagging codes with the electronic grid designations dissecting the dig grounds, and the lockable storage crates they were packed and secured in each time the dig’s workday was over with. As the dig researcher, she had to have access to the artifacts placed into the crates, so her thumbprint was in the crate scanners along with Dr. Roster’s and Mr. Saunders. She wished there could be some sort of diversion as she worked, because she knew Saunders and Roster were most likely watching her on the dig’s security scanners, and they wouldn’t be happy about her wandering over to grid A-5 in her excited curiosity. To find the missing Matrix! Whoever brought it back to Impera and the High City, the great palace complex at the heart of the Imperium, would be showered with galactic-sized attention, great favors…could select at will her next position! She wouldn’t just be an Assistant Historian, she might even be able to swing Customs Keeper— What are you thinking? Sunny chided herself as she put a two hundred year old, gold-leafed statuette into its slot in the packing crate, wrapped in foldfoam for protection. You wanted to get your next position on your own merits. Going, ‘oh, gee, um, here’s the Matrix,’ isn’t going to do that for you. That’d be almost like stealing anyway, because you know Saunders is looking for the Matrix himself. …Though I do have the gut feeling he’s looking for it so he can sell it to the highest bidder. There are some people who’d pay the price of a small world to be able to get their hands on it, and experiment to see if the Matrix could be forced to grant them the power of Emperor-godhood. She was wrapping the last item, the scrap of metal etched with a piece of the Matrix Riddle, when she heard it. It took her a couple seconds to identify the sound, but she heard it several times. And froze as she recognized it belatedly. Blaster fire. From the other side of the dividing plexene wall. Dig pirates. They’d fought off a similar attack just a week ago; a group of ‘antiquities dealers’ that had been interested in acquiring whatever someone else had gone to all the trouble to dig up, so that the pirates themselves didn’t have to expend the effort. Her heart skipped a beat, jumping straight into doubletime. Her first thought was for the Matrix. If they find it, it will fall into the wrong hands— Since the nearest cover to hide her from the door in the wall was the clump of grass hiding that particular grid, she dashed around it. Just in time, too. No sooner had she dived behind it, dropping to her knees in the turned-over dirt next to the pit Saumwe had been working on, then she heard one of the energized blasts rip through the plexene wall and smash into the table. Peering wide-eyed through the broad leaves, she looked at the scorched semicircle that used to be her comp, scanner, and half the table, and quickly removed her hand, hiding. She heard more blasterfire, then silence as she turned around, facing the other way. The nearest sensor stake was dark, telling her that the security and positioning system the stakes were linked into had been damaged or destroyed. Which meant none of the pirates likely knew she was back here. Sunny had a few moments before she was discovered. Breathing hard, trying to breathe quietly, she peered into the pit of earth that had been exposed and brushed away. A plain, pewter-colored box, made of the easily electrifiable mineral puterium and indeed battered and scuffed, lay at an angle, its sides exposed but not loosened at its base. Aware that it had zapped the dark-skinned Saumwe, Sunny reached out to touch it anyway. The appearance of the tin, not even half the size of a human head, was a disappointment—it looked too plain and battered to be anything of value, when most of these puterium ‘keepsake’ boxes were scrolled and jeweled and highly decorated. But Saumwe was shocked by it, so there must be something valuable about it… Gingerly, she brushed her fingers against the metal. And froze in shock…because she hadn’t been shocked by it. It had to be the box Saumwe, Roster and Saunders had referred to, because there wasn’t another object in the pit here in grid A-5. Curious, confused, Sunny brought both hands to the box, searching with her fingertips for the edge of the lid, a release catch of some kind. She found one down by the dirt, proving the box had impacted upside down during the crash that had formed this dig. Prying it carefully free—she wasn’t an archaeologist, but she’d taken enough courses in similar studies to know how to handle an artifact properly—Sunny righted it gently, setting it down in front of her, the pirate attack all but forgotten. Picking up the dirt brush Saumwe had discarded, she brushed at the dirt on the top of the lid. An image appeared, one that made her suck in a sharp, awed breath. The double-twined ouroboros. Symbol of the Emperor and Empress, sigil of the Imperium—it was a cremation box! The Emperor and Empress always died together, of old age…and their bodies always instantly deteriorated into white ash, as if seared in a fire so hot, not even the normal snips and pieces of remains were left behind. That ash was then placed into a box marked with two tail-devouring, serpentine dragons, one in white, the other in black, each other’s tails in their mouths, bodies looped and entwined to form an intimate circle on a grey background. The dragons were cracked, since the lid was deeply dented, even torn in its center, a chunk of metal missing, revealing the inner lid under the black and white onyx of the inlay. A missing piece that looked like it might have been the scrap she’d been examining so intently. Even as she touched the inlaid, cracked stone, ran her fingers over the subtle scales carved into the mineral, something stung up into her hand. She jerked it away reflexively…and stared as the lid parted and rose…on its own. A glistening, glimmering, pulsing white light spilled free, its beams finding and striking her knees, her torso and arms, all the way up her braided hair to her freckled face, shining on her. For a moment, Sundrea Dannonee stared into the heart of bright Eternity. An instant, that was all, but it was an eternal instant. She was staring at the upside-down, untouched, battered, dull-grey box wedged in the dirt when the pirates, much better armed this time, found her. They prodded her unresisting body up, sealed a slave collar ribbon around her throat, and argued among themselves as to whether or not to rape her for themselves, or sell her. A scan of her body showed her healthy, intact, and most important, a virgin. Judged passably pretty, though not of the first quality, especially not with the vacant expression on her face, they decided to sell her as a sex slave, and sell most of the others that had survived the attack as labor slaves. While Roster, Saunders and the others were forced to unlock the sealed crates and gather up all the valuable, sellable items for the pirates, their leader took her back to their landing shuttle and locked her unresisting, dazed body into one of the jump seats. Tovedd She came back to full awareness in a shipboard cell with one of the other three women that had been working with her at the dig. Monrica, a seventeen year old pre-college student, had apparently been judged pretty enough to be kept ‘pristine’ along with Sunny, though her good looks were spoiled by her weeping-reddened eyes, and she was definitely not a virgin. She talked desultorily with Sunny, lapsing into long stretches of despairing unresponsiveness that explained why the girl hadn’t thought it strange Sunny hadn’t spoken or reacted other than automatically for a full day. Sunny spent most of the next two days keeping herself silent company—which was better company than Monrica, who couldn’t enter into a conversation without bewailing her enslaved status and start crying again. Sunny spent half of her time pacing the small cabin with its bare-minimum comforts of bunkbeds, blankets, food dispenser and facilities tucked into the corner. She spent most of her time, whether sitting, lying down or pacing, entirely in thinking. She had seen something within the box. But she couldn’t remember what. She remembered turning it over—she remembered thinking about the scrap she’d deciphered matching a torn out piece in the middle of a…in the middle of a… In the middle of the uprighted lid, at the least. But she had been vaguely aware of her surroundings, and had remembered seeing the uninspiring underside of the box, back upside down again, the dirt around it undisturbed, when the pirates had found her. Daemon & Sunny: Prequel The door opened in the middle of their second day, the constant, low-level rumble of distant stardrive engines silenced, replaced with the quiet of a starship in orbit. Light brighter than the dim amount they’d become used to poured in, making both women squint, and a silhouetted guard ordered them out. Monrica cowered back with a scream, and the guard did something that made her gasp and dart off the lower bed and out the door. When Sunny lagged, trying to get her unusually sensitive eyes adjusted to the light before moving into it, she found out why the girl had moved so obediently. Pain seared out from the collar clamped around her throat, a brief but clear warning that disobedience would not be tolerated in any way. Hurrying out, stumbling until her eyes adjusted, she was herded into a shuttle and taken with several dozen other slaves, male and female, familiar and stranger, down to a sprawling city, and from there herded into a transport and taken to a large building. The pirates that had captured them went down the line with the slave traders, culling a few for heated bargaining, tossing out more quickly agreed prices for those deemed of lesser quality. She was one of the ones glossed over. “She’s a healthy virgin,” the man who’d captured her offered. “She’s not pretty,” the richly dressed man he was speaking to scoffed. Stinging her feminine pride. “One hundred credits,” the merchant offered. The pirate leader laughed. “Two hundred! And that’ll cover the cost of feeding and transporting her!” “One twenty.” “One eighty.” “—Split the difference, one-fifty?” “Done.” And they moved on. Her only bright spot was hearing what Saunders sold for. Fifty credits. He was deemed poor labor quality—even the youngest male student digger was deemed better quality, because at least the teenager had kept in shape with the labor required of an archaeological dig, and Saunders hadn’t lifted anything other than a cleaned-off artifact. Roster, with his Archaeology Doctorate, was one of the ones barted over, selling for over four hundred credits, because his knowledge could be used by fencers to more accurately price artifacts and antiquities for his masters. Her own academic credentials, a thesis paper away from her own doctorate, were deemed less important than her physical credentials, which were judged adequately attractive, if dirty, and valuably virgin. Culled out by a gesture and the painsticks of the slave house guards, she was herded with a dozen other young women, human and even some that were alien, away from the warehouse-like room they had been brought into and up a spiralling ramp to another section on another floor. It wasn’t richly appointed, but it was a definite flight of steps up from the bare metal walls and thin pallet of the pirate ship’s holding cell. Collared, white-clad slaves, all female, ruthlessly removed all of the newcomer’s clothing and herded them through a decontamination arch. Those who resisted were shocked into obedience. Having had one taste of the pain collar locked around her neck, Sunny cooperated. A slave house was not a place full of good opportunities for a successful escape, anyway. She didn’t know how she would escape, but Sunny preferred to think in optimistic terms. If I don’t, she thought as she was herded naked into a communal shower room and ordered to scrub, I’ll turn into a watering pot like Monrica did…and I’d like to think I have more dignity inside of me than that… They hadn’t had adequate bathing facilities at the dig site, just whatever they could sponge bath, and an occasional bucket sluice, since the remote site had guaranteed the facilities were primitive, and the water supply limited. When she and her fellow slaves were prodded into a showering room, Sunny, who liked being clean, scrubbed with a willing vengeance, determined to find what pleasure she could in her dismal situation. As the sweat, dust and grime sluiced away with the soap lather, running down her body and trickling down into the drains, she stared down at her skin. Sunny was barely average in height for a human woman at five and a half feet. Her face was somewhat heart-shaped, her mouth full, her features feminine—her full curves not exactly the fashionable willowiness currently popular—but her hair and eyes had been her best feature. Bright, rich, blue-green eyes that could flash turquoise when she was irritated or aquamarine when she was pleased, and authentic auburn hair, with large curls that fell to her waist, to her hips if stretched out while wet. Her worst feature were her freckles. They had appeared shortly after her birth and had increased as the amount of her skin had increased, robbing her of her naturally fair skin and replacing it with a disaster of cinnamon proportions on whatever parts were consistently exposed to the sun. Or the tiny, light brown dots had sprinkled her skin. As if rinsed away along with the soap that came out of dispensers clamped to the multi-headed showering columns, most of her freckles were now gone. Where her arms, exposed in the short-sleeved shirts that had been cool in the heat of the jungle, had been covered in freckles…there was now only a line of them, roughly an inch in ragged width, that curved out from the outside of her arm, looped once around her bicep, then continued down along the outside of her elbow and the edge of her forearm, ending at the outside edge of her wrist, where the freckles scattered out and faded out. Both arms were looped in open, horizontal spirals and long vertical trails As far as she could tell, craning her head and peering at her collarbones, her freckles spilled down in two more lines, dropping down just to the inside of her arms…and they curved around her full breasts, outlining them and curling up to loop over the tops of her aureolas before again fading out. Outlining her nipples prominently. The trail split just to either side of her breasts, continuing down, following the indent of her waist before flaring out down over her hips and dotting their unusual, incredible way down to her ankles, circling the outside of her thighs at midpoint with the same spiral-cuff motiff as her arms, then falling straight down the outside of her knees and calves before petering out at her ankles. She leaned in under the spray, wiping water from her eyes, and swiped at the smooth metal of the soap dispenser so she could peer at her face. The curved, water-smeared surface distorted her features a little…but her freckles were gone from most of her face. They outlined the slight widow’s peak in the center of her hairline, wavering between a fingerwidth and slightly wider as they followed her hairline around, passed in front of her ears, and fell down the sides of her neck, ducking under the dark metal collar before spreading out to crest her collarbone and drop to circle her breasts. Turning around, she peered over her shoulder. Freckles rose up from the base of her spine and parted at roughly mid-rib to spread up and pass over her deltoids to create the spiral effect down her arms. The entire effect was exotic, and it caught the attention of the enslaved women around her, both the new ones and the auction house slaves. A couple of the white-clad ones conferred among themselves, then a pair of them came over with scrubbing rags and scrubbed her skin with a special exfoliating crème, rubbing hard enough to make her squirm and gasp in pained protest. When they pushed her under the water to rinse off, her skin was red and tender…and the trail of freckles remained. Sunny was tugged out of the water and to a corner of the room, where four other women had been segregated. They were more conventional in their beauty, blond and fair, dark and devastating, and two variants between, one strawberry with a faint, normal dusting of freckles, the other golden and almond-eyed. Like them, Sunny was ordered to lie down on one of the leather-padded benches while a muscular woman rubbed crèmes and oils into her skin, soothing it after the harsh treatment given by the exfoliant. Ohh…I could get used to this. Even though the collar irritated her throat, she had to enjoy the expert massage—Sunny had never been massaged or pampered before. The second oldest of five in a farming family, she’d worked to afford supplementing her education scholarship with room and board at the university of her choice, which had been a quarter of the way around her homeworld from her family’s modest home. Luxuries were research books, and the occasional sweet, not massages or the manicure and pedicure that were being given to her by two more white-clad slaves. Her hair was softened with a salve, rubbed dry and carefully brushed out. She was still being ministered to, taking longer because of the time needed to counter the harsh effects of the exfoliant, when several of the new slave girls, still being put into skimpy white togas designed to show off their sellable assets, screamed. The same slave merchant that had bought them had strode into the preparing room, a pair of bodyguards clad in garments almost as rich as his own following behind. A contemptuous glance was all he gave the screaming, half-naked maidens. He conferred with the slave woman who seemed to be in charge, the one with the goldcloth sash angling down over her tunic-clad body, then strode over and examined the five ‘special’ women, brought to their feet still naked by their attendants. Two of them were crying. One looked ready to cry. The other looked angry, and showed it by spitting in the merchant’s face. She choked when he gestured and her collar was activated. Then the slightly plump man was standing in front of Sunny. He frowned down at her freckled lines, grabbed one of her arms and rubbed at them as if they could come off. She jerked her arm free, disliking his touch. His brown eyes lifted to hers, and she schooled her expression into neutrality. He didn’t gesture for her collar to be activated, but instead smirked. “One hundred fifty credits…and I think I can sell you for twenty times more. For that, I thank you, my rare treasure of a find. But you are still only a slave.” Dismissing her with a glance, he turned away, gave orders to the woman in charge, and left the chamber. Still naked, Sunny was taken to a solitary room, one entirely padded and lacking in even so much as blankets on the bed-shelf. There was nothing in the room, she realized slowly, that could be used to commit suicide with. That worried her. Not that she would—she was as eternal an optimist as her nickname suggested, if a practical one. It was the fact that this level of valuable slave would attempt it so much that the room had to be padded and threat-proofed that suggested the need for suicide; that the people such sex slaves were sold to were extremely unsavory in their sexual practices—so unsavory that some girl in her position would choose death over slavery based simply on her fears. Sunny wasn’t going to kill herself. Life meant hope, and life meant a future chance to escape. She paced a little while, because she liked the exercise, then lay down. The room was just warm enough, the ventillation just subtle enough, that she was comfortable enough to fall asleep. …She was the White Dragon, curving around, but she had not yet entwined her Black mate, had not yet caught his tail. She was the next completion of the Circle, the next formation of the Matrix, but she was not yet complete. She had touched, but she had not yet been made. She was that which could not, and was still becoming that which could be. But the Circle was not yet complete, and the White Dragon continued to curve into her patient, sinuous arc. She had Eternity to be complete, after all, and until then, Eternity would continue to strive to Be… The odd dream vanished when the guard at the door woke her abruptly, rudely, with the order to come out and get bathed and prepared for sale. She was hungry, starving actually, since the stale nutrient bars on the pirate ship had barely been edible, let alone palatable. Sunny was herded still naked back into the preparation room; her nakedness didn’t bother her as much as it did some of the girls dressed in the white ‘sale’ togas, which only covered one breast and shoulder, leaving the other bared. Her homeworld, Craida, had ritual nakedness built into its nature-worshipping religion, where the celebrants on certain warm-weather holydays paraded through their hometown streets clad in nothing but sandals and painted flowers, vines, feathers, scales and other images from nature as they walked their way to the celebration, which was usually held like a giant picnic in some field. Her last time home, two years ago, she’d painted her body in spiderwebs, spiders and the bugs they ate—or rather, she had painted some of her body and some of her sister’s body, who had in turn helped her to finish the intricate festival-drawings—and had first walked that way in her sandals to the town center, then walked back with everyone else to the field of a neighboring farm for the ceremony and celebratoin. Right now, the only thing she was being painted with was clay, to clear out her pores. Someone did come around with bowls of stew and spoons, and she did get to eat, then was herded back into the showers to wash off the mud, apply a special softening soap, and back out again to the bench to be massaged and oiled again. Clothing was brought for her and the other four, but not the standard togas. Instead, they were girdled with chains low on their hips, and a long swath of white silk was tucked into it to form a barely covering loincloth, the panels in front and back falling almost to the floor. They were also given triangular breast bands, tied behind their backs and their napes. She was given the smallest triangles of white cloth, ones that barely covered half her breasts and barely reached behind her back with its shorter ties. They revealed the curving ‘horns’ of her freckles around the outside of her breasts, the triangles barely supporting her curves and covering her nipples. Her hair was brushed out until the curls threatened to crackle and frizz, smoothed with a quick gloss of some polishing oil, and she was kept waiting on her massage bench as the women were sorted out by the head preparing slave, and herded off in groups of five, first the barely passable ones, then the modestly pretty ones, then the good-looking ones. Sunny’s lips were glossed, her eyes outlined with kohl, her cheeks dusted with enhancers, and the front edges of her hair rolled and twisted back into a small clip, to expose the exotic outlining of her freckle-edged face. Then, one by one, the other ‘special’ women were escorted out. Leaving Sunny for last. The gold-sashed woman came over and tipped up her chin as the almond-eyed girl was being herded firmly out. “How did you get those freckles?” “Why should I tell you anything?” Sunny returned as calmly as she could. Her belly was a mass of fluttering butterflies. She was determined to get through her sale with dignity, and trembling or cowering was not dignified. Neither was open defiance, either. She imagined she was as regal as Craida’s priestess-queen, whom she’d seen once at a festival, being carried in a gilded walking chair through the streets on Harvest Day. The gold-feathered woman had looked serene, calm and smiling, nodding to the crowd regally. The older woman answered her. “Because the more you tell us, the better your price will be.” “Do I get a percentage cut?” Sunny retorted dryly. The head preparations slave struggled, but her mouth twitched up into a smile for a moment. She marshalled it back down into a firm line. “No. Are they tattoos?” Sunny lifted her chin slightly. “I have always had freckles.” Her answer was completely honest. It satisfied the woman a little. “Is the patterning hereditary?” “I don’t know. I’ve never had children.” “—Did your mother or father have a freckle pattern like this?” the woman asked impatiently. “No.” Satisfied in full, the woman straightened, releasing Sunny’s chin. A few minutes later, she, too, was ushered out of the room, one arm each in the grip of a male guard as soon as she passed out of the preparing hall. They paused in the wings behind a curtain-backed stage. Sunny shook her arms free. When the guards made to grab her again, she gave them her most regal priestess-queen look and faced the ramp waiting for her up to the stage, and the heatedly bargaining audience that could be heard beyond. The bargaining hit its climax, and there was a smattering of applause, most of it disappointed at having lost but still incongruously polite, given that they were applauding the sale of a sentient being. Then she heard the slave merchant’s voice speaking up again, amplified through the hall beyond. “And now, lords and ladies, gentlebeings all, the last slave of this day’s auction. An exotic ruby for you to peruse, one to become the jewel in someone’s lucky crown. She was found at an archaeological dig, a historian, one perhaps capable of more than just your sensual pleasuring, capable of also the evaluation of your other artworks as well, for I tell you, this woman is a living artwork herself!” The pirates must’ve found my stellar passport, which has my occupation in it, Sunny guessed. Must be tough, walking the fine line between salesmanship and craker-shoveling. Her mouth twitched. Sunny sobered quickly enough, though, for the merchant continued, and her guards prodded her forward. She shook off their arms and walked up the ramp under her own power. Shoulders straight, chin level, with all the courtly poise she had learned in her Imperial Etiquette courses at the University of Craida. “This jewel of the auction is a healthy, twenty-three year old virgin, five feet six inches in height, one hundred forty-five pounds in weight, with measurements of thirty-eight, twenty-five, thirty-eight. Her hair is naturally auburn, her eyes aquamarine, and her freckles, I am told, are natural. See this exotic beauty and judge for yourself!” he announced as Sunny stepped around the concealing curtain and came into view. “Bidding starts at two thousand!” She was a pace ahead of her guard escort. It made her look like a queen with bodyguards, however scantily clad, for whatever reason she had appeared. A number of the richly garbed men and women seated among the tiers of tables arranged in an arc around the curved stage drew in sharp, appreciative breaths. Sunny was going to get through this with her dignity intact, no matter how humiliating it was to be sold. Slavery was supposed to be illegal within the boundaries of the Imperium, though there were some independent worlds that still clung to the barbaric trade…but with no Emperor, no Empress to enforce it rigidly, the illegal slavehouses had become more and more prevalent, more and more visible in the past four decades. She surveyed the men and women—mostly men, but a few women—as several of them immediately started heated bidding. Their voices weren’t very loud, but they did contain tightly controlled competition and definite interest. Three thousand was reached and passed quickly. By the time six thousand credits was exceeded, the bidding was down to five: four men and a woman; they bid soberly, dropping from a hundred credits each raise to fifty, then to twenty-five. The merchant ordered her to turn around for them, to show off her whole body and drive the bidding a little higher. When one of the guards reached for her arm to ignomously haul her around—Sunny quickly and gracefully placed her hand in his, and moved around him, forcing him to turn with her, to promenade, as the stately dancing move was called. When she came back between the two men, she held up her other hand. Startled, the other red-garbed man took her hand, and led her around in a circle the other way, completing the figure-eight and displaying the freckles rising up her spine and parting over her shoulderblades, the way the lines cuffed her upper arms and thighs with a sharp spiral twist. Daemon & Sunny: Prequel The bidding increments jumped back up into the hundreds. Eight thousand. Nine thousand. Sunny watched as two of the male bidders dropped out. The woman spoke with her companion, murmuring in the man’s ear. Sunny, watching them, suddenly could hear the quietly murmured words…though they were several yards away. “…What do you think, Jammis? Does she look trainable enough for my establishment?” The man eyed Sunny’s dignified posture. “She doesn’t look passionate enough to fully train…and not spirited enough for anyone to enjoy breaking. If the bidding goes much higher…” The woman was a Madam, Sunny realized. She looked at the next buyer. She did not like the glitter of anticipated cruelty in his eyes, and shifted her gaze away, to the third one. He was speaking with his table companion, too, as the bidding dropped down to smaller increments again. Again, she could hear their words. “…Ten thousand is a bit much to pay for a concubine, though she is magnificent.” A concubine—better to be a concubine, Sunny thought, than a whoreslave or…or a plaything for that one. The chances of good treatment and eventual escape are better! “She is unique, Ambassador,” the man’s companion pointed out. “She has grace, and bearing. A fitting present for the prince’s coronation. Twelve thousand would not be too much to pay, to get into his favor.” Yes—bid the twelve thousand! Bid it now, so everyone is shocked into silence! Sunny thought at him, though she wasn’t psychic in any way, and didn’t think the ‘Ambassador’ could hear her hard-willed thoughts himself. To her surprise, he raised his hand slightly. “Twelve thousand!” It shocked the room, alright. The slaver repeated the number, looking around the silenced room. “Twelve thousand… Once…twice… Twelve thousand….sold!” The one with the cruel eyes had dismissed the thought of buying her for that high of a price with only mild disappointment, and the Madam wasn’t going to outbid such a determined jump. This time, the guard on her left didn’t grab her arm. He held out his hand. Her dignity still shining, her grace courtly, her relief temporary, Sunny placed her hand over his and let him escort her from the auction stage. So long as she pretended she was some Great Lady from the Imperium’s past, she could pretend she hadn’t just been sold to become the sexual present of some prince, and maintain her dignity. He led her down a different hall this time, his companion following behind, and into a room where the two guards seated her and stood watch over her. They waited fifteen minutes at most, then the door entered and the man that had bought her strode in. Sunny remained seated—she wasn’t sure if her legs would work immediately, because it suddenly hit her this man owned her. He owned her now; certainly he had the small controlbox to her collar in his hand, for he stopped in front of her, frowned down at her, and jabbed the button. She gritted her teeth against the short, sharp spasm of pain. “As you can see, I now own you,” the man said without much preamble. “You have two choices. Either you can obey and cooperate…or you can suffer.” He jabbed the button again, holding it for a little longer. Sunny gasped and grabbed at the collar—all that got her was pain in her fingers where they were inserted under the flexible, thick, ribbon-like edge, as well as pain radiating out from her neck. He released the button and regarded her. “I would prefer that you cooperate. Failure to cooperate will result in punishment. Cooperation, however,” he added, thumb hovering over the button, then shifting aside deliberately, “will result in more positive treatment. Kinder treatment. Do you understand?” She looked up at him and pictured just for a brief moment doing to him what she had done to the suckerbug that had crawled into the living quarters of the dig encampment back on Tarkat II. She didn’t care that she was barefoot now; it was still a lovely thought. “Yes. I understand.” “Excellent. I am Lord Crellan, Ambassador of the Ruyikan Empire. I have bought you to present as a gift of my people to Prince Daemon Astorre…or rather, once he is crowned, the new King of Astorr,” the ambassador informed her. “You will become one of his concubines. If you perform well in his bed, he will look with favor upon me. If you do not, he will look upon me with disfavor.” Lord Crellan narrowed his eyes. “If it is the latter…you will suffer from my own disfavor, as well as His Highness’s displeasure. I have a certain…influence in the Astorran Court.” Sunny got the impression he meant ‘spies’. “The life of a concubine isn’t all that bad,” he continued smoothly. “I understand His Highness’s reputation is favorable in such matters, and as there are over a hundred concubines in the saeda of his palace, you shouldn’t be bothered all that often. As opposed to, oh, having been bought by a Pleasure House. Or someone with barbarically cruel tastes. Which can still be arranged,” the ambassador warned her. “Cooperation will get you the greatest number of comforts; I suggest you follow that course.” He looked over his shoulder at a pair of guards dressed in clothes similar to his point-sleeved, braid-decorated jacket and breeches, if much more modest in decoration and quality. Before the guards could come for her, Sunny rose and followed the ambassador of her own free will. Now was not the time to escape, not while she was still within the grounds of the slave house. Nor was there a chance to escape outside, for they entered an attatched parking garage, where she was herded into a hoverlimo, the same one the ambassador was riding in, the two Ruyikan guards keeping close to her to make sure she couldn’t escape. Lord Crellan studied the woman. She was indeed an incredible find, unusual enough to be exotic. His decision at the last minute to find a better concubine, one that was a virgin to fit with Astorran tradition since it didn’t matter among his own people, even the exorbitant price he had found himself paying, was worth it. He hoped. He’d paid enough to assassinate the former Astorran king and his firstborn heir, because they had been stubborn about aligning their empire with his own. The queen of Ruyikan was recently widowed, and interested in the seven worlds that the Astorrans ruled over, interested in adding them to the eleven that had come under her sway with her last marriage alliance. If the new king of the Astorrans wouldn’t sign the binding treaties that were going to be proposed to him, then the bachelor prince might be able to be swayed towards a merger through marriage. He’d heard the prince liked women quite well; first the ambassador would try softening him up with this one, putting the prince into a favorable mood towards Crellan. If that didn’t help, he would try less pleasant, less civilized means to acquire what his queen wanted. “It is a two-week journey to the heart of the Astorran systems,” he said, addressing the quietly sitting woman as the hoverlimo headed for the spaceport. The Astorran Empire was associated with the Imperium, but towards its border. There was another set of allied systems between it and the Ruyikan Empire, and once Queen Maedra had Astorra in her grasp, the worlds between the two would fall more easily, carving a fair chunk out of the side of the dying Imperium. “In that time,” he continued, “you will learn how to behave, according to Astorran customs. You will also be expected to study certain sexual techniques through the materials that will be provided to you, so that you will not be a disappointment to His Highness. “If you attempt to escape while you are still within my ownership, my guards have been ordered to kill you rather than bother to take you alive. Do you understand?” Okay…so escaping will have to wait until we get to Astorra, and I’m handed over. And the longer I behave and obey, the more lax their security will be, she added, counselling patience. It wasn’t the sex she objected to; if she had to, she would go through with it, though Sundrea came from a world that strictly regulated sexual contact to coincide with the cycles of their natural, bodily rhythms, as a part of Craida’s religion and its people’s religious duty. It was the slavery she would not stand still for. Sunny wasn’t going to get herself killed in the attempt, however; she valued her life more than that. While I’m alive, I have hope, and while I live, there’s a chance to escape. “…I understand.” Her calm, quiet dignity drew out a speck of reluctant respect—at least the woman wasn’t kicking and screaming, or weeping. He eyed her, wished for a moment he could risk taking her himself, if it weren’t for that virginity thing Astorran custom insisted on, then continued. “One more thing.” He smiled slightly. Briefly. “You may not have realized it yet…but you are a slave. You are a thing, and I own you. I do not care what your name was before. I own everything about you, including your name…and your name is now ‘Deena’.” Sunny said nothing, just shrugged. She looked out the window at the buildings passing by, enjoyed the soft leather that was sticking to her mostly bare skin, and wondered what in Natura’s name had happened to her freckles…and what had happened to the Matrix after she had been taken away from the box before she could discover if it was linked to the missing Matrix after all. CHAPTER TWO Her quarters on board the ambassador’s staryacht were actually comfortable. Tasteful, even, with simple but quality furnishings in the small bedroom and slightly larger, attatched sitting room. She even had two maidservants who made sure to rub crèmes into her skin, brush out her hair a thousand strokes and rub a smoothing salve into it to keep it from frizzing with so much brushing, and to make sure she ate and slept…and studied. Astorran culture was slightly more like the Ancient Imperium than not, especially in its formalities; those, which were within her historical speciality, were easier to master than the parts that were different, and the parts that were different were interesting enough she didn’t mind learning them, for the most part. The ‘sexual training materials’, however, were another matter. They were predominantly Ruyikan…and very uninspiring. There were three main kinds of position, a maximum of fifteen to twenty at most in variations, the female submissive almost to the point of dormancy. Even as a virgin, Sunny had studied sexual reproduction courses in her primary education years back home, lessons that had been far more imaginative than this stuff. About the only interesting thing were the ‘internal contraction’ exercises, something she hadn’t known a woman could do. For a culture that apparently had sex frequently enough to buy and sell sex slaves, they weren’t very inventive, in her opinion. Her own culture was a mixture of freedom and rigidity. Nudity was a ritual matter for certain holy days—the conjunction of Craida’s two moons in summer, for instance, which was the painted-nature festival—and clothing worn for protection against the elements, and as addornments. Sex could be undertaken at any time, but certain times of a woman’s month were considered to be better for certain things. The beginning of the month was reserved for ritual sex, encounters associated with prayers for good luck, good health, that sort of thing. The middle of the month was associated with conception and hopes for family, and the end of the month was reserved for pleasuring; a woman’s mense time was considered the only taboo. And sex wasn’t supposed to be undertaken at all until a man or a woman had undergone a religious ceremony purifying their natural spirit for it. Given that she hadn’t been all that interested in anyone, Sunny had used the excuse that she hadn’t yet gone through the purification ritual to turn away the few men whom had been interested in her that way; a more convincing excuse at times than the real one, which was that she had been so busy with her education, with studying to win and hold her scholarship, she hadn’t had any time for the ritual, let alone the sex. Her culture at least, for all that it ordained sex for certain things only at certain times, was a lot more inventive than the Ruyikans’. Her menses started on the third day on board the ship. Which meant when they got to Astorra Prime itself, she would be towards the end of her prayer time, and getting very close to her conception time. That worried her a little. The women of Craida could tell when they were in danger of conception when they didn’t want to get pregnant, aware naturally of their cycles more than most of the inhabitants of other worlds, but as a concubine-slave, she wouldn’t exactly have the right to say ‘no’. Sunny hoped that, if circumstances forced her to have sex, Craida’s Goddess, Natura, would hear her prayers during it to win her freedom. They arrived the day before the coronation. Clad in a flowing, loose, concealing Ruyikan robe in an unattractive shade of brown, her hair pinned up and covered by a veil, Sunny was escorted among the ambassador’s entourage into the royal palace on Astorra Prime. The palace was spectacular, with frescos and bas-reliefs and carvings framing stretches of plain, painted wall for contrast, colors everywhere, tiny, intricate details where there were details and lots of contrast between round archs and doors and square walls and vertical pillars. There were also numerous courtyards—they had to walk what felt like two miles from the grand front entrance to the diplomatic wing, which consisted of three stories of balconies on three sides overlooking a blooming orchard. Fruit trees perfumed the air. Each side of each level was one whole interconneted suite, with enough room for the ambassador’s whole party; they were led to the uppermost floor of the central wall. Sunny’s room was small, and shared with the two Ruyikan women who had been attending her all the while. She was left there while the ambassador and his aides went to the formal reception and dinner. She couldn’t even go onto the balcony, though she could see the garden from the windows looking out onto the balcony. There wasn’t much time for admiring, though, for her body was put through a ritual of oil and mud and scrubbing that probably would have done the preparations for a ritual purification back on Craida proud. She was even hustled into bed at a fairly early hour, to make sure she made up for the difference in day-cycle between shipboard life and the local time, which was a few hours behind, to make sure Sunny got her ‘beauty sleep’. As much as she wanted to lay awake tossing and turning to have the proverbial haggard look and dark-circled eyes…she fell quickly asleep. …Day was turning into night. Around the White Dragon, the brilliant light was darkening, but she was not afraid, and continued her bending, her arcing, her searching for her mate. For where else would the Black Dragon reside, but in the darkness, where all was black? It had been a long time since night had turned into day; it was about time day turned into night… Astorra Prime Sunny couldn’t shake the feeling that she had dreamed of something important. But the coronation would take place at noon, and she was bathed and oiled and crèmed, massaged and brushed and manicured, garbed and pinned and painted. By the time her two attendants were done, she was allowed only fruit juice for brunch, and that through a straw, to keep from messing up all but the tiniest smudges of her lip glossings. Her hair was styled intricately, with a loose topknot and tiny, looped braids, held in place by golden haircombs; her eyelids had been dusted with gold and aquamarine, her naturally rosy lips needing only a gloss to keep them glistening moistly, and a touch of contouring blush to accent her cheekbones. Her gown was Astorran in design; it was very fitted, had in fact taken the whole journey to be properly fitted to her curves. The rounded collar was adjusted over her slave collar, the closure fastening down the right side of her breasts, down past her waist and hips, all the way to her right thigh. The skirt fell straight and narrow, the cuffs wristlength and fitted, and her hose opaque and golden cream, hiding all but the rim of freckles around the edges of her face. The slippers were aquamarine, the same color as the gown, matched fairly well to her eyes, and both were decorated by thin scrolling flowers woven in golden thread on the slippers and floor-hemmed gown. To be able to present her as a ‘gift’, Lord Crellan ordered her covered even more, in a Ruyikan floor-length, full-body veil, opaque and golden, one that covered everything but her eyes and threatened to trip her as she walked to the coronation, surrounded in the center of the ambassador’s entourage. It forced her to take almost shuffling steps, though she held up the front of the veil as much as she could, surreptitiously. The Grand Hall was just that—grand. Scarlet pillars capped in jade green and gold at capitals and bases. Gothic-pointed arches painted with the sky in its full cycle, from cloud-edged day near the entrance, to silver-starred night over the waiting, gilded throne on its dais a very long walk away. Between the two, with the fresco blending around its edges, was a crystal dome somewhere between the throne and the midpoint of the hall, and she studied it with quick glances, since she had to watch where she was going or risk tripping on her veil. They were escorted to seats not far from the front. The wait wasn’t too long, though Sunny was beginning to feel the need to get up and pace, to do something since she’d been sitting patiently through her preparations all morning long. When the musicians started playing, and the choir started singing the Astorran anthem in their native tongue instead of the trade tongue of the Imperium, placed across from each other in musician’s alcoves above the pattern-tiled floor, she forced her impatience down, to settle and wait. There were too many people between her and freedom to contemplate flight. When the warriors strode in, the historian side of her started comparing the ceremony to the coronations of the Emperor and Empress of the Imperium. In that ceremony, too, there was an honorguard, but this one looked to be all male, whereas the Imperium selected its honorguards from among both genders, based solely on ability, which in truth had little to do with strength or size. The first warriors were clad in little more than ornate loincloths, the next ones in trousers, the ones after that wearing vests, and on through what she belatedly recognized were archaic styles of uniform for the Astorran army, one pair for each era as they marched in two columns up the sides of the aisles. They stopped a pace past the front row of chairs brought into the audience hall for the ceremony, and their weapons, ranging from archaic swords and axes at the front of the line, to blasters at the back, were drawn and crossed over their chests, one for each hand. The man her Astorran etiquette lessons had revealed was the Grand Chamberlain stepped forward and banged his ornate, metal-capped staff against the polished stone floor, just as the anthem ended with a flourish. The man’s voice rang out, echoing well in the accoustics of the hall. “All rise and bow, to His Royal Highness, Prince Daemon Davol Astorre, rightful ruler of Astorra!” Sunny rose with the rest of them, as the prince in question entered the hall, clad in white: white cloth boots, white trousers, and a fitted white jacket with matching white gloves. Gold braiding and frogging decorated his clothes, contrasting with the tanned skin of his face, and the waist-length fall of his straight black hair. A handsome man. One with something about him, something sensual, so that even in such formal circumstances, he moved with a grace that Sunny found captivating. Looking neither right nor left, he didn’t stop until just a yard from the steps leading to the dais. A woman in a robe, half day-sky, half night-sky, waited for him halfway up the quartet of steps to the throne. She began invoking the god of this world, Astor, to witness this solemn ceremony being performed in the Grand Hall as its prince and future king dropped gracefully to one knee, his head bowed before the forces the high priestess represented. Sunny watched with avid interest, no longer quite so bored.