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Dark Planet Pt. 01

By: arkadys_lyric



This is a continuation of Cell Mate and is largely story driven. Thank you to everyone who responded to my first story with encouragement – I know I said I didn't read comments, but I have reformed. I apologize to anyone who has enjoyed Cell Mate for taking so long with the sequel. I hope this is a worthy continuation. I will likely publish a third installment if there is still any interest. Thank you again.

*

I rolled over on the thin mattress pad, reaching out in the darkness for comfort. Something cool, hard and serpentine coiled around my hand and wrist and I relaxed, pulling it closer, nuzzling against its shapeless mass.

I had been plagued by nightmares for over a month now. I couldn't decide if the worst dreams were the ones where I was still trapped in a tiny cell on a barren prison planet run by sadistic guards determined to torture me till I broke, or the dreams where I arrived at my new home to find there was no way to possibly survive the horrors of perpetual night on a war-torn world of sightless monsters. I gasped in the dark as its tendrils enveloped my torso and twisted into my hair. After a moment of wakefulness I usually remembered that it was the dreams of Kragosa that frightened me most. I was wrongly imprisoned there for eight months and escaped less than four weeks ago but that didn't stop me from checking all the view windows on the small ship at every opportunity, paranoid I'd see a Kragosi or Union ship in hot pursuit. As for the sightless monsters, well, seeing how I was in love with one that sorta took the edge off.

A tendril fluttered by my ear, tickling. "You are still having these dark thoughts, these nightmares?" The sound was more melody than words, each note empathic and precise.

"Not on purpose," I answered, rolling to face Perikos as its tendrils tightened around my waist, careful to avoid one tender spot where I had stitches removed last week. 

"Perhaps not but obviously you are thinking these thoughts. No one else can make you dread your decision." There was more than a hint of guilt in Perikos' tone that made me bristle. I sat up.

"Look, I explained this before. Good dreams happen, bad dreams happen. I can't control them but it's normal." Woe betide anyone else unfortunate enough to try to explain the concept of dreaming to a Perikos. Quantum mechanics and H'ctian Rhythm Structure they can handle but try explaining the idea of subconscious thought to a Perikos and that's it. Forget about it. They barely sleep, let alone dream. Not my fault.

"Last we spoke of this we decided that if when we reach my planet you still regret your decision we will restock the ship will fuel and provisions and you can return to Rhydia Station."

That pissed me off enough to retreat to the bathroom, or what passed for a bathroom on a Kragosi ship. There was a wide hole in the floor I was sure I would fall into each time I needed to use it, a small mirror I'd moved from the surgical table and what looked like a long, wide trough and I originally supposed was a communal urinal but now I suspected was intended for washing something although I couldn't imagine what. There was also a long, narrow window from floor to ceiling on the far wall and a door that locked from the room I slept in. The room was actually pretty big for such a small ship, which I attributed to the girth of the average Kragosi guard. 

I reached for the faucet and a small measure of clean water filled the trough and I splashed it on my face. I had such a short fuse lately; the slightest things would set me off. I couldn't help but worry whether Perikos was trying to guilt me into staying or whether it was sending not-so-subtle hints that it was having regrets. I knew one thing for certain – all hope that whatever we shared was any less emotionally fraught and complicated than a human relationship went right out the window about forty-eight hours after takeoff.

We had used our time wisely, once we had recovered well enough to have conversations about something other than sex, fear and bullet wounds. My emotions had fed Perikos and I believe my decision to stay on board rather than going to Rhydia Station saved its life. Perikos in turn set my wrist and extracted a bullet from my gut and then stitched up the hole. We were safe, whole and uninfected. I didn't regret my decision now and I didn't anticipate regretting it, sunless planet notwithstanding.

Which was being a bit unfair, I suppose. The planet did have a sun and it rotated fully every eighty years. The Perikos were nomadic for a reason. Apparently life exits because of some very complicated geochemical thermal-type reactions under the planet's surface. The vegetation was technically fungus that fed off the planet's energy rather than from photosynthesis. According to Perikos the air has a greater oxygen concentration than Kragosa or Ferox 4, where I used to live. I didn't understand how it could but I believe it. It has water too although Perikos couldn't speak to its drinkability so I guess it's just there to moisten the fungus. For pretty obvious reasons I hopes it was clean and somehow vitamin D enriched.

Apart from all the concerns about whether I'd die of thirst or get rickets or whatever was possibly an even bigger worry. If I couldn't survive there then there was nothing for it, I'd have to leave. Not really a problem, at least not one I could control. No, Perikos and I had spent a pretty sizable chunk of the last week discussing the reason we met in the worst prison a convict can be held in by Union law. Regicide. Back on Kragosa Perikos told me it had killed its "king" (for want of a better term) to avenge the deaths of civilians during peace talks. Which was true but it neglected to mention that it was the leader of the Resistance against imperial control. I wasn't even convinced the Perikos had buildings. They were nomadic after all. Who knew you could have an empire and no infrastructure? Not me.

Apparently the king was six kinds of evil and unjust and had to be done away with, which sounds fine and all but all things are relative and the leader of the Resistance would say the guy he killed was evil. Perikos also expressed its worry that the King's second-in-command, the one who sentenced it to Kragosa, had taken over and picked up where the dead king left off. Murder and mayhem, which explained why we were making all due haste to get there in spite of my nightmares and my ever-expanding list of questions. Figured prominently among them was whether or not I could expect a cheery welcome or a flurry of blows from my new community of sightless, shapeshifting tentacle creatures. Perikos seemed disinclined to wager on their actual opinions, insisting that my role as its friend would protect me from any negativity or disapproval and that my ability to generate large quantities of delicious emotion would no doubt win the hearts of plenty. 

But I wasn't supposed to be worrying or having nightmares.

I heard a soft rap on the door outside. I turned my back to the door, looking instead out the window to see trails of light behind us as we traveled in hyperdrive. I still couldn't help but look out for ships from Kragosa.

"Please do not ignore me even if you are upset," said a voice in my ear. I tried to move away but wide black tentacles seized me from behind, spinning me in place and pressing me against the bathroom door. It was still locked.

"I am darkness and shadow. Do not bother trying to hide. I will be able to afford you little privacy on Perikos, you would do better to get used to it now so it will not come as a shock."

Thick tentacles held my arms behind my back just above my elbows. Pinning me or binding my arms was its favorite game regardless of what kind of conversation we were having. I felt another tentacle trace wide, lazy circles over the globes of my naked ass. Gee, I wondered what it would be like to have no privacy.

"There's no point in trying to talk to you if you don't listen to me or trust me. It's as simple as that," I said, feeling fingers of darkness reach around my sides to massage my breasts. No, I wasn't going to get distracted. It wasn't going to steamroll over me again just because it knew what I liked. I tried to focus on something else.

After a moment I heard its music by my ear again, although it didn't cease caressing my breasts or ass. "What you say is true. I have been unfair to expect trust from you when I have been reluctant to extend it myself."

"You don't trust me?" I asked, my voice slightly shrill. I hadn't really thought Perikos didn't trust me, I had been trying to make a point. 

A tendril barely thicker than a length a thread wound itself around my nipple and pulled it taught, drawing an agonized moan from my lips. No point in pretending not to like it anymore. 

"Forgive me, Little Shade, I was unclear. I was immensely pleased by your decision to return with me to my home. I was so pleased that I could not help anticipating disappointment. You might well change your mind about my planet or about me. I fear your anxieties will overcome you and I do not wish to keep you with me against your will."

"Against my better judgment maybe, but not my will," I whimpered as a thin tendril wound around my other nipple and I felt almost electric currents pulse through my entire body.

"As you say," Perikos agreed, stroking the creases of my thighs while carefully avoiding my swollen wetness. "Allow me to propose a compromise? I shall make no more mention of my childish fears and trust your decision and you will allow me to help you relax."

I shivered as a thick appendage wrapped itself around my waist, its tip dangling inches from the swell of my mound. "You can't possibly be hungry again. We did this less than five hours ago." My voice sounded hoarse and heavy with an air of protesting-too-much.

"You are correct, I do not seek my own satisfaction in this, only yours. Come with me to the bridge and I shall propose a game."

That sounded ominous, I thought, my thighs coated with my own arousal. Not like I had much choice though, since Perikos still held my arms behind me as it marched me out of the bathroom and sleeping quarters and to the cockpit of the ship. Perikos might have thought it was worthy of being described as "bridge" but I didn't share the sentiment. It didn't even have a proper-sized viewing screen.

Perikos stopped me in the middle room, facing the controls. "You wish for dreamless exhaustion and I wish to make amends. Here is my game: when I release you I will also release the artificial gravitation. You will have ten seconds to flee to the best of your abilities and then I will find you and force your body to climax until you lose consciousness. Would you like to play my game, Jayn?"

Oh hell, I felt my entire body flutter like a leaf in a storm and I felt a renewed deluge of dampness between my legs. When I spoke, my voice shook with need. "Y-you can change shape so I don't s-stand a chance…"

Perikos' music was elated, tightly coiled like a big cat waiting to pounce. "You do not stand a chance anyway but if that is your concern then I promise not to change my size or density until I have caught you fairly. Are you ready?"

No.

Perikos released my arms and I made a mad dash for the surgery, the only other accessible rooms being the two bed sleeping quarters and the small bathroom and I didn't want to find myself weightless in there. There was the cargo bay but there was no life support system in there. I dashed towards the surgery and felt curiously dizzy for just a moment before I felt my feet leave the ground. It was the oddest sensation and I'd only felt it a handful of times in my life. Every other one of them I'd been buckled in. I swam towards the table, thinking to hide behind it and keep the table between us when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It was pursuing with even more unnatural grace and speed than it usually did, like a sea serpent in water. I stifled a squeak and propelled my body over the table and found my back against the wall between the surgery and the brig. I had never been inside, avoiding it for obvious reasons but Perikos' mass was closing in and I was caught up in the thrill of fleeing. I hand traced over the panel and the door to the brig slid open. I pushed off the wall and floated inside.

The room was small, only just larger than the bathroom, but with no windows or bed. As in the bathroom, there was a hole in the floor on the far side and various brackets intended to be used for various restraints drilled into the walls. Perikos entered the brig behind me as I circled the perimeter of the room, kicking off the far wall and propelling myself towards the open door in front of me. 

My body collided something with a dull thud. The door had slammed shut just as I was making a break for it. I glanced around the adjacent walls for the exit panel but found nothing. No way to get out. I spun around to see the dark mass behind me, recalling vividly the moment I was first given to the Perikos to use, to feed from. The cage, the fear, the creature looming before me.

Dark tentacles captured my upper arms again, pulling them away from my body while two others seized my legs just above my knees and held them open. I tried to twist and turn away but I couldn't get any traction.

"It is quite a bit like your cell at Kragosa, is it not?" Perikos said as still more tendrils wound through my hair and around my neck, over my cheeks and between my breasts. "The difference, I suppose, is that this time there are no guards to interrupt us and no one watching me fill your body. It is just your body and mine and while I promise to make you scream and beg, I also promise that you will experience only pleasure." 

Still more tentacles held my waist and shoulders, my ankles and aching nipples. Perikos arranged my body so I floated on my stomach, with my face held down and my ass pointing up, soft and exposed. Without further preamble Perikos jammed a thick, long shaft into my pussy, ripping a throaty scream from my lips. For once it didn't try to silence me, perhaps because it promised to let me scream and beg. The shaft withdrew from my body with a wet sucking sound before it slammed itself inside me again. I tried to squirm, to adjust the angle of my body so I didn't feel so painfully full but I couldn't and instead received a short rain of sharp blows to my ass and thighs even as the shaft inside me widened and quicken its pace. It wasn't long before I felt the blurry edges of climax ripple through me and surprisingly the shaft pushed even deeper, holding still inside me while my hips bucked madly.

As I began to come down the tentacles turned me over and tightened their hold over my entire body. The tentacles above my knees now held my legs closed and arms locked over my head. One deft, thin tentacle burrowed between my thighs the cleft of my mound, teasing and flicking my clit. I shrieked, fighting against my living bonds.

"Too sensitive!" I yelped, able to do little else as the tendrils in my hair and on my cheeks stroked my head with impossible gentleness.

"Yes, I know. It is almost painful, is it not?" The tendril ground against my swollen nub and I howled at the intensity, unable to turn or move or get any traction or resistance held as I was above the ground in zero gravity. I came again and this time the wash of hot bliss laced with something sharper, scarier. Orgasming till unconsciousness seemed like a good idea at the time but it was very quickly becoming too much.

Perikos pulled my legs wide apart, holding my arms above my head like before. It squeezed and stroked my swollen breasts, twisting my body so it held me sideways, lining up its shaft at the entrance. I saw its darkness split apart, dividing itself into ten thinner, longer tendrils, each writhing and reaching for my wet hole at once. 

"Perikos, please, no! It's too much!" I tried to inch my body away from the tendrils but they engulfed me, several twisting and teasing and playing with my swollen clit and the rest tickling and caressing my puffy lips and just inside. My eyes rolled back in my head.

"I will stop when you have had enough."

Six of the thin tendrils grew in length, wiggling up inside me, rubbing and stretching my inner walls. "I just said I've had enough. I thought this was about my pleasure!" 

"We have long since established that I know what you need better than you do, Jayn. Beg, scream, protest if you wish but I will stop only when your body is exhausted from pleasure."

The tendrils tickled my cervix while pumping and pulling at my clit. My vision blurred again and I felt like I was falling fast and hard, like something sharp and dangerous was closing in on me.

Perikos turned me over and brought me to climax four more times before my memory gets hazy. I remember being pulled down on its enormous shaft over and over while my feet dangled pointlessly in the air and I remember being held upside down while its tentacles plunged into me. I also remember begging, making deals, asking it to use my ass like it had on Kragosa – anything to stop its assault on my aching, swollen pussy. And then I remember everything fading to darkness and feeling the slightest hint of remorse as I went, the smallest wish to have indulged in such ecstatic torture just a little bit longer.

I awoke, even more unsure than usual whether it was night or day. The door to the cockpit was open and florescent light bathed the metal floor of my quarters in an eerie oblong shaft. Not that I should complain about light. I got up, feeling the intensity of the night before between my legs as I hobbled onto the cockpit to find a familiar cloud of darkness at the controls. 

"Good morning," I said, hearing my voice crack, parched from the night before. 

A tendril coiled lightly around my neck to my ear and I heard Perikos' music, bright and pleasant. "Perhaps you mean good evening. Are you well? In any pain? Did you have any nightmares?"

"Evening huh?" I thought about it. "I'm okay. A little sore. And no, no nightmares."

"Then we have a remedy ready should the problem arise again," Perikos said, its tone too hot and smug to be teasing. "Also, you needn't concern yourself with bathing. I cleaned you after you lost consciousness. We have very little water left available onboard so I would prefer if we didn't waste anymore needlessly."

I raised my eyebrows but said nothing as I slide onto the metal pilot's chair. "How long now?"

"In eight hours we will be within range of the Perikos System and we will need to come out of hyperdrive. Given the planet's current coordinates, we will have no choice but to resume our old arrangement for thirty-three hours, until we get within range of the planet proper."

I nodded. We had already discussed resuming "our old arrangement" when we entered the Perikos system. This was the polite way of referring to the way we escaped the prison on Kragosa and eventually the planet. Perikos changed its mass dramatically and burrowed deep inside me, hiding from the harmful UV light in my womb. Not actually as harrowing as it sounded but fucking weird nonetheless. The problem was I missed it. I missed feeling so full, so bloated and strange, the feeling of it entering me and the feeling of it pushing its way out. I missed stroking the swell of my stomach and feeling Perikos twitch inside me. Mostly I missed feeling indispensible and sharing such a bizarre, wanton intimacy. We had talked about this in the long hours we drifted through space and agreed that when Perikos had to hide from the light of its planet's star, it would use me instead of the brig or the cargo hold, both of which were lightless. This would probably be my last chance to experience it – on Perikos I would be the one needing the protection and not the other way around.


Dark Planet Pt. 01



Close to eight hours later I was lying on my back on the mattress pad, Perikos entwining my ankles. 

"When we get within range of the planet I can resume navigating towards a secure landing pad. You only need to take us out of hyperdrive and follow the coordinates I gave you so I can pilot safely."

"I understand," I said, though once again I felt slightly ill-used. I suffered a chronic case of wanting to have my cake and eat it too, it seemed, since I wanted Perikos to use me for protection and at the same time I wanted to be uniquely useful in some other way than just a body cavity. Like knowing some special fact or procedure or being particularly adept at something helpful. At this point I seemed particularly adept at escaping life-threatening situations, which was a bit vague at best and anyway, I sincerely hoped that I seen an end to the use of that particular talent. 

I spread my legs wide open and tried to breathe evenly. I felt the slightest touch at my slit and then felt something thin push its way up inside me several inches, tickling my insides. The friction was almost painful.

"You are dry," Perikos reported, surprise in its tune.

That was certainly unusual. I was pleased with the idea of Perikos inside me again but perhaps my unsexy thoughts were intruding. "You could make me wet," I suggested breathily, trying to sound coy and probably coming off like an underage prostitute.

"Yes I could, but if we not come out of hyperdrive very soon we will miss the Perikos System entirely. I do have a solution, however."

I started to say that it really wouldn't take any time at all to get my juices flowing when I felt the tendrils at my ear and ankles leave me and before I knew what was happening my entire mouth was brimming with darkness. Biting down was unavoidable given how it stretched by jaw to fit its mass inside. The hard mound of blackness seemed to wriggle and roll against the wetness of my tongue as I reached between my teeth to feel the dense shape prying my mouth wide open. Suddenly my mouth was empty, as quickly as it had filled and the tendrils were back holding my ankles open, another at my ear. 

"Thank you, Little Shade. Your mouth never ceases to amaze me. I will speak with you soon and in the meantime, may I suggest you prepare yourself for landing and, if at all possible, pleasure yourself. I have grown so accustomed to gorging myself on your flavors I do not relish these next thirty-three hours if I must go without."

Without waiting for me to respond, the tendrils at my ear and ankles coalesced into the narrow rod that wriggled and burrowed inside of me. Perikos was capable of becoming so small I couldn't feel it but ever since it made its intentions towards me known and I made my arousal at those intensions clear in turn, it seemed to go out of its way to make me feel every inch as it slithered deep inside my belly. Perhaps I just wasn't used to it anymore or perhaps Perikos was doing it deliberately but it felt larger inside me than usual. My belly felt more swollen, more distended. I didn't look pregnant exactly but I felt very different and each step I took towards to the control console was heavier as I was acutely aware of the fullness of my body.

I sat down, looked at the Kragosi characters on the panel and remembered what Perikos had taught me. I disengaged the hyperdrive and quicker than I could shield my eyes, rays of bright, hot light flooded the ship from every viewing window, large or small. I quickly set the new coordinates to Perikos. I closed my eyes and traced my steps blind back to the sleeping quarters. I kicked my mattress pad over to a shaft of light from outside. I was pretty photophobic these days, living in darkness for nine months and in desert sunlight for two terrifying days but I figured that considering where I was going I'd better not turn up my nose at natural light where I could get it.

I curled up on my side, my belly pointed away from the light and lay there a few minutes in silence. Then I rolled onto the other mattress pad, out of the light. There was such a things as too much of a good thing, especially with no atmosphere to protect me. I pulled a thin blanket around my naked body and fell asleep stroking my swollen belly tenderly.

Over the next day and bit, I swear I tried to masturbate. Four or five separate times but solo sex was not my forte and honestly, anyone used to as much physical attention and stimulation as I was would have had a hard time getting off with only five single-jointed, stubby appendages. 

Besides that I lounged around in a state of advanced boredom. There was nothing to read, nowhere left to explore, no chores or busywork to do. Perikos had been on to something when it compared this stupid little cargo ship to Kragosa. At least every third night the guards let me go out into the quarry yard and try to break rocks, which admittedly was terrifying and difficult but least it was some kind of exercise. I was getting all mine pacing the perimeter of the ship, talking to Perikos like it could hear me, asking a lot of foolish questions about the planet and generally carrying on like a lunatic. Sporadically and as far as I could tell, not in response to anything in particular I was saying, I would feel Perikos shift or bump me from the inside, reminding me it was inside me and awake. The Perikos never achieved a fully unconscious state unless something was very wrong; any sleeping they spoke of doing consisted primarily of making themselves very small and expending as little energy as possible, which included thinking big thoughts. They weren't really experiencing an altered state of consciousness, however, they were simply choosing to limit their scope. Right now, Perikos' scope was probably just large enough to extend to where it was and why it was there. Fine by me, I thought, stroking my belly. That was all part of what I wanted.

Several hours later I found myself in the shadow of an immense swirling black orb. The blackness extended as far as I could see and from as close as we were, the heft of it blotted out the sun. It was the second planet from its sun and the only planet with sentient life in the Perikos System. Only one Union scouting mission this century had entered the System and returned. Not because it was particularly distant or the System itself was fraught with dangerous obstacles but because they had all made the dire mistake of landing on Perikos and demanding that its inhabitants swear an oath of allegiance to the Union Colonies or else consider themselves at war. Well, they were at war all right, except the Union had more pressing concerns, Perikos not being the only place where they had waged war lightly. Though they sent ship after ship carrying dire warnings to surrender before the Union sent its full force to bring the planet under control, each ship and all its inhabitants, save for one, mysteriously disappeared. According to Perikos, the Union had since sent discreet word to the planet that they had more pressing matters and did not consider Perikos to be a civilized planet full of sentient beings. Burn.

I stared into the colossal black globe in front of me and felt something closing in. I felt wave after wave of nearly paralyzing fear flow through my entire body. And then I felt something deep inside me shift again and I knew it was time. I padded next the metal seat by the control panel and crouched, keeping my legs wide apart. I felt something thick and blunt push past my barrier and I gritted my teeth as my body tried to force it out quickly and Perikos fought to take its time, to make me feel every millimeter of its separation. I was glad, I thought, feeling a sweat break out on my forehead and feeling my insides stretch and cramp. This was the last time I would ever play this part, feel this way in my life and the sensation of something dark and alien pushing its way out of my body felt sick and wonderful.

I felt its tendrils reach from inside of me to squeeze my labia, using them for leverage to pull itself out. It landed on the ground beneath me with a soft thump and I felt extremely empty.

Perikos swelled to my height and three times my width, wrapping itself around me like a human embrace. "Are you well, Little Shade? I missed you a great deal."

"Kinda hard to miss someone when you're in them, I would think." My tone betrayed my fondness, my relief that Perikos had missed me even though we were only apart a short time.

It turned me to look at the narrow view screen before us. "That is my home, Jayn. Everything I care for and fight for is there, except for you. You have chosen this world as your home as well, one that will be an enormous adjustment but ultimately I trust you will come to care for it as I do."

I thought that was asking a lot considering the turbulence I felt in the pit of my stomach at the very thought of living on a lightless, fungi-covered, war-torn planet as the only outsider. I might not be able to survive, never mind liking it. I'd even like to say I'd thought it over properly, planned accordingly and really knew what I was getting into but I knew better. I wanted to be with Perikos more than I wanted to risk being caught on a Union Colony and sent back to Kragosa. And if you were going to live on a non-Union planet, Perikos was as good as any. Better since someone I knew would help me and vouch for me.

The blackness tightened its embrace a moment and then released me, gliding towards the controls. "I will search for a particular location to land and then we will begin our descent."

I expected it to take several hours considering Perikos and I had no way of knowing geographically where we were from our place in orbit. It probably didn't help that we were flying a Kragosi prison ship and scanning for one particular docking station. I was jolted upright from my anxiety-haze minutes later by a tendril by my ear, its tune staccato with excitement. "We are confirmed for landing. We shall now begin our descent."

A thick tentacle coiled around my waist just under my bellybutton and pulled me slowly to the seat. The rest of Perikos seemed to be giving its full concentration to landing. I felt something building up inside me and I wanted to turn and run, to say I wasn't ready for this as I watched our ship begin to penetrate the atmosphere. Perikos must have sensed my fear because I felt the tentacle around my waist tighten but it kept its focus on the controls.

I watched the darkness engulf us as we descended. It was hard to make out how close to land we were but then I saw what I thought looked like an expanse of dense beige ringed with a deep, glowing red. The beige I imagined was the surface but something in and around it was definitely glowing a deep red, making it possible to make out against the otherwise black backdrop. The red light extended as far as I could see, as though it was coming from under the fields of beige. 

"Perikos?"

"Yes?" It said, not turning from the console.

"What's all that red light?"

"Red? What is red light? There is no light on Perikos." It sounded supremely unconcerned and continued to guide our landing.

Well, that might make things easier. At least I could see something down there. It couldn't be infrared because then I wouldn't be able to see it and it couldn't be emitting much radiation because then Perikos would know what the hell I was talking about. It must be natural. I was heartened.

We approached the docking station, or at least I thought we did since we were slowing down rapidly. It was all dark here, no fields of red and beige. Or so I thought, but then I saw the darkness scatter to reveal the same red glow around our landing pad. The darkness scattered. I felt a full body chill. Idiot, I thought furiously. Of course the darkness is going to move so I'd better bloody well get used to it. Now all that was left was to hope that Perikos knew what it was doing and didn't set us down in the middle of the other faction where we'd be promptly ripped limb from limb. Nothing wrong with dire cynicism if it keeps you alive, that's my policy.

I felt the ship dock, heard the metal moorings clamp in place but my mind was blank. This was it. The moment I'd been dreading since I made this decision. I could give Perikos a big hug and set a course for the Rhydia Station this instant and that would be the end of everything. And I might never have to set foot on the planet. 

"Little Shade?" The tentacle still wound around my waist squeezed harder still. "Are you well?"

I must not have faked being well, perhaps because I was used to using body language and visual signals when I lied. 

The blackness engulfed me, scooped me up and deposited me, still sitting, on the surgery table. It tangled into my hair and long tendrils stroked my back.

"You have my word we will not leave the ship until you are ready," Perikos said kindly.

"But your f-friends are waiting for you out there," I said, uncharacteristically earnest.

"They will wait until I choose to disembark. And I will wait for you. I will return in a moment."

For a second I thought it was going to leave the ship anyway but it disappeared into the cargo hold, returning moments later with something thin and metal hanging from a tendril. 

"I wish…to give you a gift" 

Its music was stilted, unusually awkward. I raised an eyebrow.

"These last weeks we have discussed many things. We discussed special memories you had of Ferox 4, of occasions where those who know you best have given you gifts."

Perikos paused again and I felt a blush creep into my cheeks at the sweetness and absurdity of the situation.

"I told you then that the practice of reciprocal gift-giving was not typical on Perikos. Perhaps in winning a military campaign we might allocate property or privilege to our generals as a reward for their service but that is often the extent. You are not just important to me for sentimental reasons. Your alliance with me gives me a tremendous advantage but as my guest you will have all the property and privilege, and indeed protection that I am offered. So instead I chose something impractical and which gives you no particular advantage. It is my hope that you accept it but I will understand if you consider it too trivial."

It raised a dark tendril up before me to display a small metal circlet. The metal was braided very delicately considering its density. It looked too dark to be really valuable, probably taken from the surgery or from one of the Kragosi guns or else from a cargo crate. It was too small for my neck and until eight months ago it would have been too small for my wrists as well. My left wrist still hadn't completely healed from its break nearly a month ago. 

"Thank you, Perikos," I said, trying to contain my mushiness. For all its talk of strategy and reciprocity and all that, the gesture blew me away. The Perikos never gifted their mates, not even when offspring developed. Come to that, they only gifted their offspring when they had proved their military prowess, just like everybody else. To have personally crafted something as "trivial" as a body ornamentation and present it to me now made my eyes water a tiny bit. 

The tendril holding it wrapped it around my right wrist, not without effort because it was so small, and then lingered over the clasp until I heard the snapping of metal.

"It is my wish that you never remove it," Perikos said in answer. Considering it was the only thing I was wearing and the only thing I was ever likely to wear again, that seemed reasonable. "In keeping with the reciprocal nature of gifting, you must give me something in return."

I sat on surgery table, nonplussed.

"You must promise you will do as I ask, regardless of the circumstances. You must promise that you will not leave my side unless I specifically request it. I will continue to control the nature of my feeding. In all other matters I am pleased to consider your opinion."

"I…" I felt trapped suddenly, frightened all over again.

"Jayn, I only ask for your trust. For your own safety you must promise to be obedient to me. This is no longer a question of pride or wills and it is not a game. This is not Ferox 4 and I cannot ensure your wellbeing if you refuse to heed me."

It was the truth and I knew it was. More to the point, I had every intention of basically hiding next to Perikos for as long as I could get away with it. There was nothing to be gained by arguing. "I promise then." 

There was a moment of silence and then Perikos wrapped my bracelet in its darkness. "And I promise to protect you, Little Shade."



Dark Planet Pt. 02



The sound when we left the ship was deafening. A discordant, unharmonious choir of undulating shadow called out at once to their returning leader. I pressed myself hard against Perikos, trying to hide my entire body in its cool mass. I couldn't understand anything in the mess, the music was too jumbled and the notes too confused. I could barely see anything at all against the dark horizon and the shadows except for the glowing red light emanating from the earth beneath the spongy fungal ground. The first thing I noticed was stupidly the only thing I had never even considered -- the gravity. On Ferox 4 I always felt flexible and well-balanced; on Kragosa I felt clumsier and heavier at first but as they starved me it didn't really last long and I adapted. The gravitational field on the ship seemed perfect somehow, or at least I never even thought about it. But here I felt much slower and heavier, like I'd gained twenty kilograms overnight. I struggled to keep pace with Perikos' easy glide but considering my lack of exercise over the past year, just walking was difficult. Perikos slowed down, gathering me close to its darkness and waited for me to catch up.

An enormous mass of shadow split off from the rest and descended like a serpent meters before us. I felt faint, dazzled by its size and speed and strangeness. And then everything went silent.

The dark creature before us sang out, its music joyous yet tense. I wasn't even aware Perikos could sing out loud; it always extended a tendril to my ear and its music was so quiet by comparison. This music addressed the crowd and this time I understood its meaning.

"Welcome back, Leader! We believed you would never return and lost all hope! You have done the impossible! How is it that you are well in spite of all you must have endured?"

A tendril pressed against my earlobe and I heard Perikos' words to its friend, spoken softly, addressing the shadow directly rather than speaking to the crowd.

"Thank you for your warm welcome. I shall tell you soon, my Second, for it is a thrilling story and I bear good news on my return. I brought back with me something --"

"An alien!" Boomed the enormous Shadow before us and I felt the press of a hundred sightless senses searching for me through the air. "You have brought an Other here, Leader, because you know times are meager and the Resistance needs --"

"Thank you, Second, but we are tired and we wish to rest before any formal greeting," Perikos interrupted quietly, its tone guarded, even dangerous.

"We!" Shadow's carrying notes reverberated off the ship, the ground, even my bones. Something strange, invisible but palpable was emanating from Perikos and Shadow must have sensed it because it took a different tact. "The Resistance struggles and now it has hope! You have come back as if from the dead, so glorious are you! How can I ask your people to wait when it would give them such hope?"

Perikos shifted a moment, coiling more tendrils around my back and shoulders. In the same soft tune it said, "Then tell them I only require a quarter hour to compose myself before I am ready to greet them again."

There was more pressing silence and this time it was Shadow's turn to say something quietly, for only Perikos and I could hear, except I couldn't understand it. It too was musical but it sounded like no notes or pitch I had ever heard before. I couldn't pull emotions or impressions or memories or anything like I usually could from the song.

Without responding, Perikos pulled me away, past the gauntlet of other Perikos and away from Shadow and around something that looked to me like a giant fungal tree. I strained to see it even in the red light, and struggled to pull my body along with Perikos. It pulled me beside the tree and I collapsed onto its soft, slippery trunk.

"They wanted to eat me, didn't they?" My voice sounded flat, vacant. I knew they would at first but I hadn't counted on the Shadow getting pushy about it. 

"They're not going to," Perikos said.

"Won't that make you kind of unpopular?" I asked.

"I anticipated that they would be shortsighted, that they would notice a creature as appealing as you are and would lose self-control. They would not understand what it could mean for us, for the Resistance."

"And what exactly do I mean for the Resistance? Because I was never really clear on that." I felt my temper flair up again. 

"Here war is won by whoever has the greatest number of expendable supporters, soldiers who live and die for the cause. Soldiers who volunteer to feed the rest of us when there is no other choice, no animals or prisoners-of-war on the opposing side. Compared to you there is little sustenance to be gained from one another anymore. You are a rechargeable energy cell, that, when used carefully, would never run out of fuel."

I sat there speechless. I knew I could help Perikos, certainly it had told me I could help with the war. But this?

"My pleasure and fear are your strategic advantage and all you have to do is convince your friends not to use me all up before you get organized, have I got it right?"

"No one else will use you," Perikos said, its tone dark, impatient. And something else.

"But you will?"

"Naturally. You agreed to feed me."

"Well! I…fine!" I blustered. The truth was I didn't like to think of Perikos understanding me in such terms. How human of me.

A thick tendril began to pet the top of my head. "Little Shade, calm yourself. You are so deliciously afraid you are not thinking rationally."

I took a deep breath and counted down from ten.

"The others of my kind sensed the incredible power and complexity of human fear when you disembarked. I anticipated this problem as well. Their hunger is great and you are as tempting as waving well-cooked flesh in front of a starving human. Difficult to resist."

Not exactly a pleasant picture but I got the point. "I get that they want to eat me, but what now?"

"Now they are assembling, waiting for me to speak to them. To promise them hope, justice and revenge against the King's Faction. They are curious about you, about why I am so protective of you. No doubt they thought I brought them a gift to honor my victory in escaping. Now instead they suppose I am being deliberately selfish and avaricious. The longer I delay explaining the situation to them the more volatile they become."

I shivered then and Perikos tipped my chin up to stroke my lips with the feather-soft tendril. "I know this frightens you. I will not ask you not to be frightened and at any rate I am not sure it would help. I only remind you to trust completely that I will keep you safe."

That was a tall order, I thought. I kept checking the horizon for sunrise and seeing nothing. I heard them now, not far away with the riotous sound. Perikos extended a tendril to help me up.

"You seem tired."

I stretched my neck and shoulders. "It's the gravity, I think. You better protect me because I can't run away for shit. I'm so heavy here."

Two thick tentacles scooped me off the ground and I felt my feet dangling in the air. "You do not seem markedly heavier to me," Perikos said, his song bright and warm.

Perikos carried me back towards a shallow ravine near the ship. The entire ravine was cloaked by chattering darkness. I understood very little besides a few comments about fear and food. My fear only intensified and with it, the volume of song in the waiting crowds.

At the top of the shallow ravine Shadow waited for Perikos. We drew closer and I could sense somehow that Perikos was as acutely alert as I was. We stopped before Shadow, who withdrew a short distance and Perikos turned me to face the mass of darkness. The outcropping we were on made a natural podium though I wasn't keen on being unable to quantify our audience. Perikos set me down next to it, encircling my wrists in darkness again. It let me retreat a few meters so I stood away from the crowds. A hush fell over them.

"I have returned." Perikos' music was unlike anything I'd ever heard as it sang out loudly, not the ear-tickling whispers to which I had grown accustomed. In those three notes I felt rather than inferred its miserable, murderous existence in Kragosa, its tremendous relief in discovering me and being allowed to preserve my body. Our escape from the prison walls, stealing the ship and returning here at all costs, it was all as bright and vivid as though I lived each day of it.

"I promised you all when they sent me away that I would return to you and I have. You have suffered great losses while I was gone, but no longer. We are united again from across many Systems and this time no one may stop us from our goal. We will take this world back from those who would slaughter our Friends to stay strong. From those who would oppress us, from those who think we owe them our lives for the privilege of being ruled. We will fight and we will triumph!"

The cacophony exploded from the ravine. It was hard to tell but it seemed joyous if a little bloodthirsty for my taste. It died away as quickly as it came.

"Congratulations, you have been marvelously successful in returning. Would you share with us the fruits of your success?" Shadow's song reverberated again in the silence. As the riotous grinding music roared again I decided it was fair to hate Shadow.

"Silence please." Perikos said, and the noise died away promptly. 

"I must begin by saying that my escape from Kragosa was not due to my own strength or cunning, for all the strength and cunning in the world are useless when the prison is carefully guarded with Light."

A very ugly sound rose up from the crowd. I felt like I had learned my first swear word.

"There was a creature at Kragosa with me, someone else who should not have been imprisoned, who agreed to help me escape. This creature is all but immune to Light and is not shaped like us, nor does it communicate as we do. It did have one unique and very powerful characteristic that allowed us both to escape: its feeling. Its species feels and reacts very strongly to stimuli which provided me with the sustenance I needed to survive. We formed a close bond and left the planet together. The creature decided on its own volition to return home with me because of the bond we shared."

"What is it?" A patch of darkness sang from the crevasse. 

Perikos paused and then said. "It is a human female, a refugee from the Union."

The din swelled again and Perikos pulled me closer to its side.

"We have encountered humans from the Union and they have always provided us with excellent sustenance." It was Shadow again. I was starting to think he and Brogn the Warden were cut from the same cloth.

"This human female is here as a refugee from the Union, not as their representative," Perikos said.

There seemed to be general assent that that didn't matter in the slightest.

"She is here as my guest," said Perikos.

There was a ferocious uproar from the crevasse that left me cringing and I tried to hide behind Perikos. Even I thought "guest" was pretty weak but the very idea that their leader was either entertaining company when he ought to be planning a war or else lying so feebly to deny them food was apparently intolerable for the rest of the creatures.

"Quiet, please," said Shadow, so I knew nothing I wanted to hear would follow. I was right. "Surely our Leader doesn't mean "guest". Surely we misunderstood. Perhaps he has…taken a mate."

The uproar was softer this time, more unsure. The dissenting songs were vocal to be heard distinctly against the din. 

"A human female?"

"No possible conception!"

"Unnatural!"

"Disgusting!"

For my part, all I could think of was Shadow's pronoun. He. Perikos never struck me as a sex but I never asked. Still though, my eligibility as his mate, their leaders mate, was in question. With good reason I suppose. We weren't mated by any definition that existed on this planet.

"She is not a mate," Perikos echoed my sentiments. Something about learning Perikos' masculine nature and hearing myself described as female…my stomach felt strange again.

"The human is my…Friend. We are companions, we share a close bond. I will not allow anyone to harm her." When no one cried out, Perikos continued. "As you will have noticed, as I tried to explain, she is capable of amazingly intense feelings of an emotional nature. To consume all the energy she is capable of producing would be lethal and wasteful. But by harvesting her with care we can utilize an almost endless supply of food. Our side will be stronger; we need not forsake our values of non-violence for our cause. No more of us need die and no more need go hungry if we use the sustenance she emits sparingly."

Yikes, I thought as the crowd sang out in cautious support. I hope Perikos intends to qualify that statement. He waited for the rest of the noise to cease.

"I have promised to protect her from harm and she has promised to allow me to feed. Anyone who touches her may feed but no one may touch her without my permission. She is to be considered my property, that no one should infringe on. Each of you knows that I do not break my promises. Please do not make me punish anyone for not heeding this warning." 

Double yikes. Property? I suppose it's better than rape, but still. Not to mention the melodies from below.

"How do we know you're not just hoarding it all for yourself?"

"That the human will help us all rather than just you?"

I couldn't tell how Perikos was feeling but I could imagine these attacks wounded him. I wished I could say something but I knew better.

"How dare you!" cried Shadow. I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "Our Leader has never broken his word, never given us cause to doubt. He struggled to return from a Union prison and now brings us good tidings and we doubt him! For shame!" 

I didn't like the way Shadow said "Union prison", to say nothing of its hypocrisy.

"Certainly, as an act of good faith our generous Leader will allow us a small sample of the power the human can generate," said Shadow.

The angry, hungry songs from the crowd agreed. I pushed my body closer to Perikos' mass but he pulled me forward, around towards the assembly, holding both my wrists together in one black tendril. Perikos positioned me so I stood in front of him, my body against his, between him and the crowd. I was so docile, so trusting I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. I tried to turn away, to run or hide but Perikos held me so tightly I might had been held by a vice. I tried to twist and struggle but thick tentacles as strong as steel held my legs shoulder-width apart and my arms were pulled over my head, the iron grip Perikos had on my wrists acting like manacles. My bracelet bit into my skin. I felt something poke between my legs and a wide, flat tendril covered the whole of my sex. My panic abated only slightly.

"Very well. Everyone is permitted providing they take very sparingly. If I feel my trust in this has been violated then the human will remain off-limits. Please do not be the one who denies their fellows such an exquisite sample. And please be very gentle as humans are soft by nature, particularly females. My Friend, as my General you may feed first."

I saw Shadow's tentacle begin to extend towards me and I feared I would faint dead away. 

"Please, please no! Don't! This wasn't part of it!" I whispered, too scared to scream.

Perikos massaged my scalp with gentle tendrils, as the one at my ear whispered back. "Shhh. You promised to trust me and so you shall. If you speak now I will have to silence you. Let yourself feel you need to feel. I have got you. Know they won't hurt you."

Shadow's thick tentacles extended out towards my body and my field of vision narrowed and became even darker for just a moment. I felt my legs wobble underneath me as though they would give out at any second but Perikos held my body still. 

One thick, ugly appendage, soft and vaguely unpleasant smelling wriggled through the air and across my naked belly. I felt something then, something roll through me like a wave of nausea as it left a trail of moisture on my skin. Not like slime really, more like an alien, intimate sweaty handshake. I shuddered but held my tongue. This was a fight for later because for now I was going to lose.

Shadow's rubbery limb brushed over my stomach up a few inches as it explored the swell of my breasts. My revulsion intensified as the tip of the tentacle clumsily clamped down over one nipple, twisted it awkwardly before releasing it. Then in trailed rapidly downwards like a bloodhound with a scent, back over my belly and down to my sex. Even though Perikos' broad tentacle covered my most sensitive bits and prevented any penetration, I could still feel its pressure, its alien touch through the barrier. I felt a horrible, humiliating pang of arousal as well as rush of disgust. What the hell was wrong with me? Clearly I was perverse enough to pant for anything offered, no matter how disgusting.

Shadow sang again to Perikos, like he did before and once again the music was so fast, foreign and complex that I couldn't understand it properly. I did understand it as a question about sweetness or maybe fruit. Something decadent or exciting. Perikos' answer was thoroughly understandable.

"Mine."

I felt the pressure of Shadow's tentacle ease and saw him almost seem to retract into himself like spring loaded blackness.

"May we?" I heard in song.

"Was it delicious?" asked another from the darkness.

"Nothing of any great worth," Shadow answered, this time so I could clearly hear him. Not that I was complaining, I'd really rather he never touch me again but fuck, talk about sour grapes.

"If you are slow and careful, you may," I felt Perikos say behind me and all other thoughts fell away as I felt a fresh flood of panic course through me.

For a moment I wasn't sure what I was seeing and then eight or more distinct inky arms rose from the crevasse and reached out towards to nakedness. Perikos tightened his grip.

I felt one trace careful, almost ticklish circles around my areolas while another stroked the area between my thighs just under my sex. A third poked at my stomach and my bellybutton while another explored my neck. Still more touched my hips and the backs of my knees, my collarbone and my right ear. My eyes rolled back again and I tried to keep my breathing normal. This time I didn't feel nauseated or sickeningly aroused but my fear wasn't pure either. I felt my heartbeat flutter and I felt something…off.

"Little Shade? Are you well?" Perikos' music was as soft as a whisper but it was all I heard. I felt a little surge of pure hatred, stringing rage and then I saw a blur of blackness in front of me and I didn't feel anything at all.

I opened my eyes to near total darkness. I was lying on the spongy fungus-covered earth and there was something long and narrow in my throat. My gag reflex went wild while I coughed up what felt like a medical tube of some kind. "Perikos?" I managed to choke through my hacking fit.

"Little Shade." He seemed to descend from above like a twisting spider made of shadows. There were no stars overhead and it was warmer than before. I couldn't see or hear anyone around. Perikos wrapped my torso, head and arms and thin black tendrils. "I was making sure you were breathing properly. I am sorry."




Dark Planet Pt. 02



Sorry didn't begin to cover it, I thought, feeling my head throb painfully. "What happened?"

"You…someone struck you. It was very quick," he said, as though that explained anything or made it better.

"How long was I out?" I asked.

"Five hours."

Five hours since we arrived. Since Perikos offered me up like a Claato buffet to anyone who asked.

"So," I said, standing up. I wanted to walk, to get some distance. I made it only a few feet before I bounced off a cool black barrier inches in front of me which only made my head throb more. "What is this?"

"It is me." Perikos said simply.

"Can I leave please?" My voice wavered more than I would have liked.

"No," said Perikos. "Shadeling, before we must go forth again I would speak to about what happened out there. I know you yearn to speak of it, to be furious with me and alleviate your anger and your guilt."

"M-my guilt?" My voice rang out in the dark, this time bristling and ice cold rather than wavering with tears. "What have I done to feel guilty for!"

The darkness that was Perikos ambushed me then, slamming into my body and lowering me gently on my back onto the ground beneath me. Five or more tendrils held me there, pushing down at me from above but from exactly where I could not determine. I tried to rise but he pushed me into the earth so firmly I could hardly wiggle.

"You felt guilty because you wanted my Second in Command to touch you."

Perikos showed excellent foresight in pinning me down because I went wild then, kicking and clawing and shouting to be let back up. I struggled like a turtle on its back but all I managed to do was wind myself in the struggle. 

"Jayn. I had hoped we were beyond such petty power struggles. Let us speak of this as equals."

"Equals!" I shouted, pulling and punching at the tentacles that pinned me to the ground. "This has never been about equality between you and me! You tell me how it's gonna be and I just bend over and let you use me however you want and I'm supposed to feel grateful! Then you turn around and tell me you want to talk like equals? While you're keeping me in here, holding me down? What the fuck kind of equality is that?"

Perikos was silent for a minute, perhaps forming his argument, I wasn't sure. Either way he was letting me get up a head of steam. Finally I heard it, its music soft and near my ear once like before. "I have always valued your opinion. I value what you say and think and how you feel. Sometimes I know things you do not about the nature of a particular situation and I must choose a different course of action than one you might choose."

"That worked out real well, didn't it?" I shouted, my throat growing hoarse. "Kept me real safe, didn't you? I'm supposed to trust that everything will be okay and I wind up knocked unconscious. Big fucking deal I guess if it wins over the crowd, am I right?"

"No," said Perikos. There was an edge to his music. "I am confident in my decision even though I would have preferred to have protected you another way. I believe I am quite right in thinking it would have been worth the perceived consequences to many members of the Resistance to consume you entirely at the first opportunity, either because they are xenophobic or because you are simply food to those who are starving or out of resentment towards you or myself. The reason does not matter. Almost all among them now realize I am not being selfish or miserly in protecting you. I do not want to withhold anything from them that could save our lives. You are not a threat to us but a treasure. I wanted to show them that."

"You couldn't have asked me? Or even told me before?"

"I was afraid you would respond negatively and I believed then as I do now it was for the best. I did not want to incite a physical argument like the one we are having now in front of everyone as it would have undermined my authority and your safety. You see, I do not allow anyone else to communicate with me as you do. You are disrespectful, loud and violent when angered. I am patient with your anger because I understand it, because its stems from our complicated intimacy and from your fear which are both things I can appreciate. The others cannot. That is why I cannot allow anyone else to witness what they would consider your insubordination. They would not understand it and they would not forgive you for committing it or me for accepting it."

"Well what about…what about the one that hit me?" I felt the right side of my face. My eye and temple were swollen and sore.

"I did not wish to dignify his offense by asking why he did it but I believe he was threatened specifically by you or by our intimacy. He was punished."

"Punished? Like, go stand in the corner?"

"He has been denied food and physical contact for the next fortnight. He may eat anything he finds when he is not on duty but nothing from the camp and no one is to feed him or touch him. Those who wish to please me will not speak to him except to issue orders. In addition, he is credited with betraying my trust and denying everyone else another opportunity to feed from you. Until war at least."

I paused a moment to consider the ramifications. One angry belt and then no food for two weeks. "Is two weeks long?"

"It is very long but quite survivable. I have lasted two months but death was near."

I knew the circumstances then and they were grim. No need to elaborate. "What about physical contact? Is that a big deal?"

I felt Perikos' tendrils pet my throat, my face and neck, the globes of my breasts and curve of my waist. "A very big deal. I allowed them to touch you because that is the only way they can possibly know you. That is how they see you, how they feel your body temperature, how they feed. When your emotions are very strong it is possible to glean some nourishment even without contact but for us, contact is everything. Touching is music, ideas, friendship, violence, intimacy and above all, feeding. If he had a mate, which I do not believe he does, that mate would not be allowed to touch him. That is censure and that is a harsh punishment but I believe it is fair. I do not wish for anyone to run away with the idea that violence or animosity towards our partnership will be tolerated."

I mulled that over. Possibly anyone who liked that guy and definitely anyone who felt the same were going to find a way to express their sentiments to me. It was only a matter of time. And Perikos was between a rock and a hard place. I would really rather he wasn't indulgent about his fellow creatures taking out their aggression on my body. But I had a hard time believing I wasn't gonna get it eventually, no matter how careful I was. That line of thinking brought me back to the beginning.

"So, are you lending me out to your soldiers to use up like a ten credit whore, or aren't you? Because I'm getting mixed messages."

The silence that followed was so long I braced my body to be hit again or at least shouted down. 

"It is complicated," said Perikos finally, the music even and quiet. 

I raised an eyebrow. Here we go, finally the truth. The small print I would like to have seen before I changed the navigation codes a month ago, before I got off the ship earlier today. Some honesty would be refreshing.

"We will need you." He waited a moment for me to argue. I said nothing so he continued. "Supplies are low. I would vastly prefer to keep you as my companion and never justify such indulgence. But these are my people and we fight for things that matter to us very deeply. I promised to do everything in my power to fight and to win. If they starve to death in combat then the war is over and then there is nothing." He paused again.

"I'm listening."

"And yet I am jealous. My possessiveness is not simply for your sake, it is also for my own. I do not just wish to protect you from harm, I wish to own you, to keep everything that is special and precious to myself. I have always shared everything I have had, always taken less and given more than my share. I will not do that with you, even if you wished it. So I must ask for your help. There will be times when I will need you to help me strengthen my soldiers. They will need your arousal, your fear. Your body, so little and sweet, belongs to me. No one besides me will ever fill your holes and no one else will ever hold you down. I ask for your help with the soldiers, I will even demand it in certain circumstances but know this: I will be the only one to ever use you as you need to be used."

I felt an odd little shudder below my bellybutton. 

"What you must remember, Sweet Shade, is that every fiber of your body calls to me, pouts and weeps and sings for me. You want to be touched inside and outside. You need me to own you, to use you." A thick black tentacle patted my sopping slit. "You liked being restrained in front of everyone. You liked being touched, poked and prodded, having your body explored against your will. I knew it would frighten you, even violate you but I also knew just as I was keeping others out of your body, I was keeping your sweet juices in."

A much smaller tendril snaked down my body and wound itself around my erect clit, tugging gently as I groaned in delight. 

"It explains your reaction to my Second in Command."

I twisted away then, trying to shield myself, hide my shame. I was disgusted at the time and was even more disgusted now. What was wrong with me?

There was a blur of motion and then my wrists and thighs were pulled tight over my head leaving me on my back, my dripping sex pointing high in the air towards Perikos' tendrils. Two descended and wound around the widest part of my tits. The tips affixed themselves to my rock hard nipples, tweaking and pulling and rolling while the rest of the tendrils squeezed and milked the fattest part of my tits.

"Why does it embarrass you so?"

"Because! Anyway, he's disgusting."

"That is why it arouses you, Silly Shade. Your desires are dark but there is nothing so wrong about wanting to be controlled. I was controlling you and you felt humiliated. You have a great appetite for humiliation when it comes from me, perhaps because you trust me. Your disgust aroused you because I forced you to experience his touch. It will not be the only time, my Little Shade and because I know that you really pout and swell for me, I will not be jealous." As he said it, two tendrils pulled at my puffy lips, pulling them apart till I was wide and gaping. I felt my juices begin to run down my ass crack.

"I will risk exhausting you even though we have business to attend to once we are done here. I am curious to know how much your body can possibly contain and today is the day we will discover. I will begin with one and we will work our way up."

He plunged a long, thick tendril directly down and into me, stretching my walls and eliciting a gurgling growl of pleasure. I felt another tendril pressing at my lips, this one narrower and it wiggled its way into my pussy, past the phallus already imbedded in me. It found its way, tickling my insides as it wormed deep inside me, writhing over my g-spot and coiling around the larger shaft. 

"How does that feel? Do you feel full?"

"Yes!"

A thick, heavy tentacle pushed past my teeth to fill my mouth. It was hard and smooth pushed all the way to the back of my throat, ignoring my gag reflex and opening a passage for me to breathe through. 

"Silly Little Shade," Perikos said and I felt the two shafts in my pussy withdraw and line up with the pucker of my ass. They were coiled around each other now like a corkscrew. "Breathe deep and bear down."

I did as I was told because there was no stopping it and I felt them press into me and felt like I was being split open. There was a thrilling pop of pain as he pressed past my ring of muscle and drove the shaft deep into me, slow and deliberate. The thin tendril wrapped around my clit plucked me like a harp string and I came down hard and fast before Perikos was even finished pushing the entire length inside my ass.

"We kept this empty before, didn't we?" Another thick, heavy tentacle traced the perimeter of my engorged slit before slapping it lightly. "You mourned your emptiness if I remember correctly." The entire tentacle pushed past my thick lips and inside, filling me completely. I wriggled and twisted like a fish on a hook. Another much thinner tendril pushed its way into my mouth to join the much larger invader. I felt my jaw ache already from the strain.

Four more tendrils positioned themselves near the swell of ass. They weren't thick but they were long and as I was plenty full already. Two positioned themselves at my asshole, intent on forcing their way inside. The other two began to push inside my swollen, already overstuffed pussy. I squeezed me eyes shut and gasped, willing my body to relax enough to allow for further intrusion.

"That's right, Little Shade. Relax and let me play with you. It wasn't so long ago you were fearful, do you remember?"

I saw another long tendril, this one wider than the other two that had just burrowed inside me. My eyes widened as it lined up with my hugely overstretched hole and began to press inwards.

"It always amuses me that you forget I have been in your body. In your womb, much of your large intestine, down your throat." As he said that the wide tentacle began to facefuck me in earnest, pressing its girth down my throat a few inches as it pounded at me, regulating my breathing with each thrust. "I can make myself larger or smaller, wider or thinner. I…how should I say…custom fit my body to yours. I know exactly how to fill you". The two tendrils now fully imbedded in my pussy now stretched me wide, holding me open for the new intruder. It snaked its way in and it was too much. I felt horribly, wonderfully, painfully split open. It pressed deeper, further in than either of the others and I felt another painful pop as it narrowed dramatically and pushed into my womb again. The tentacle widened on the other side to fill the space and I felt and saw my belly swell, full to the brim.

"My sweet stuffed Shade, are you so full you can hardly bear another moment?"

I tried to speak around the tentacle lodged in my throat but I could barely moan I was so crammed full and stretched from every angle.

"Good." 

And then the tentacles began to fuck me, every one of them, each at a different speed so that every second one of plunging home and another was pulling out. I lay on my back, arms and legs splayed and gave it up, let myself be agonizingly penetrated, filled to burst. I began to scream into the tentacle in my throat. The sound died in its thickness, hoarse, ragged and exhausted but the torture didn't stop until I came three more times.

Perikos withdrew from me one tendril at a time until my pussy and ass were empty and gaping. The one in my throat withdrew slowly. I coughed and felt lightheaded and dizzy from the intensity of it. The tendrils released my swollen, reddened breasts and my distended clit and I couldn't help but gasp.

Instead one large tentacle, as thick as my body wound its way around me gently, released my wrists and thighs and coiling around me bodily like an enormous snake.

"Ten."

"Wha-?"

"I managed to fit ten inside you. I am not dissatisfied but we will do better in the future. Your body is hugely pliable and elastic. Surely we can fill you fuller than that."

I felt a hot, wretched heat engulf my entire body and felt my still gaping ass and pussy contract at the prospect.

Perikos' music was light like laughter. "We will rest a moment and then we must attend to business outside."

Fifteen minutes later I was standing outside, Perikos holding me by the bracelet. He was issuing orders and I was trying to look unobvious instead of the Perikos equivalent of prime rib. What I really needed was water, a bath and a toilet but probably what I wanted wasn't topping the priority list. I tried counting down from fifty to distract myself. Fifty one-thousand, forty-nine one-thousand. Ugh. I just needed to wait till Perikos was done delegating tasks. Twenty-three one-thousand, twenty-two one-thousand. I tried not to think about rivers or rainstorms. Two one-thousand. Excellent, he was finished!

"Perikos," I whispered, leaning close. "I have to pee. I'll be right back."

Perikos didn't release my wrist. "Jayn, I don't think privacy matters more than safety in this instance."

"It does to me," I said. No way in hell I was going to have an audience.

"I am aware of your biological needs. You needn't feel ashamed or try to hide them."

"You must be joking," I struggled to keep my voice down. "Humans are aware of each other's biological needs too but that doesn't mean we enjoy each other's company, get the picture?"

"Jayn --"

"Look, no debates. I will be gone for less than two minutes. Our partnership or whatever will not last if I can't even get that much time to myself. Let go."

To my surprise, he did. I turned without looking back and made a mad, if ungainly dash for the jutting rock on the other side of the docking station. The red light was clearly visible from there and I didn't see any dark shapes or sacred looking spots. I felt like I was moving in slow motion with the heavy gravity. I wondered how long it would take me to adjust. More than a day, that was for sure.

I crouched down, relieved myself and found some clean fungus, if there was such a thing, to tidy myself with. I wondered vaguely if I would get an infection but I supposed one was inevitable anyway, what with everything around here being made of the stuff. I better get used to eating, sleeping and breathing spores or this world was going to be even more difficult to tolerate.

I stood up and was confronted with a blur of darkness in front of me.

"Look, I told you to give me a minute. Is that so hard?"

"Not a mate. Barely capable of higher thought. Repulsive and base." The notes were striking and flat. The rhythm was ice cold, fast and foreign. Not Perikos.

"Hurt our Friends, hurt all of us." I saw another shadow close in behind me. "Just ugly, Union meat. Stupid pet from that terrible Union prison. Used our Leader. We will fix it, show him how stupid, how ugly."

I tried not to be afraid and bit down on my lip, hard. If ever there was a time not to show fear, it was now. I couldn't be heard this far away and I couldn't outrun these things on Ferox 4 at high noon with my best sneakers on. 

"Leave me alone," I said, sounding a thousand times more confident than I felt.

"Or else what?"

"We will not!"

"Look," I began, trying to speak slowly, to keep my panic in check. "This can't be worth it to you. Killing me isn't going to solve anything."

"Solves hunger! Solves mating!"

Shit. I was in over my head. "We're not mates. We're not! But he would be angry if you killed me. I helped him escape the prison. The whole time he talked of coming home to lead his people. If you -- if you kill me, you'll disappoint him!"

Both the dark shapes were silent a moment, hopefully weighing the truth of my words. Anyway, I wasn't lying. 

"No," said the one behind me, it's dark, scratchy tune sharp, barely a whisper. "Stupid animal will not manipulate us. You have hurt our Friends, you will suffer!" I saw its mass raise up towards me like a tsunami and I turned to try in vain to run and then I heard it.

"Is there a problem, Friends?" Perikos' tone, sweet and familiar like sun-warmed honey echoed clearly from a few meters away. I could barely make him out in the dark but I recognized the singer, even if the song was anything but warm and sweet.




Dark Planet Pt. 02



"No problem, no concerns!" sang the one that just threatened my life. 

"Friends, do not hurt me by lying. You intended to defy my orders about the safety of my companion and now you deny your intent. Do my desires mean nothing to you?"

Ouch. Clearly ol' Perikos was no novice when it came to doling out the guilt. Not that I felt sorry for them.

"Not true!" said one.

"We did nothing!"

"You threatened Jayn," said Perikos. "Didn't they?"

"No," I answered. I sounded confident, much to my surprise. 

"Jayn, they -- "

" - it may have sounded that way but that's not what happened."

Perikos was silent for a moment and then turned his mass towards my two intended assailants. "Since I have her word you meant no harm, you may go. I hope to see you both for training tomorrow."

He waited until they had retreated a safe distance away and then scooped me up in the darkness and we rolled silently through the night, away from the camp a further kilometer until we reached the edge of a wide lake. I couldn't see any other beaches, though whether because of the size of the lake or because of the dark, I couldn't tell. Perikos set me down by the water.

"Try drinking and then bathe here. I will wait."

Sounded a bit terse, I thought, but water mattered more to me at the moment. I waded into the chilly lake water and cupped a fistful of water to my mouth. It was cold and more metallic than I was used to but soothed my parched throat and I didn't keel over from lead or mercury poisoning. Probably I was safe. I waded in a little deeper and began to scrub my hair and skin. Perikos was silent. It wasn't until I emerged, teeth chattering, that he spoke.

"Are you well? Is your thirst and comfort taken care of?"

"Yes," I said.

"You will want to eat soon but when I invited you I did not anticipate famine. We will have to learn which vegetation is safe for you to consume. That might take longer than is ideal."

"That's fine."

"You should not have lied, Jayn," said Perikos.

"Well, what I supposed to do? You put me in a pretty shitty position, making me finger them. They were already after revenge, for what I have no idea."

Perikos paused a moment, lifted me up again and headed back to the Resistance camp. "You are correct. I should not have relied on your testimony. Do not feel like you must lie for any of the others."

"Well, sorry but honestly it's the best I've got at the moment. The hope that maybe when they're plotting to snatch me from my bed and devour me whole they'll remember the time I could have thrown them under a land shuttle and they'll think better of it."

"If you are prepared to bear the burden of all my disciplinary decisions for good or for ill then I suppose it might work. Otherwise, I urge you to reconsider. Besides, you are a terrible liar."

"Bite your tongue! I'm a great liar!"

"Perhaps among humans. Any of our kind with any ability to determine speech rhythm, breathing, heat rate and perspiration for a human would be able to discern you were lying instantly. In short, every member of my species in the System. Do not bother lying. It is a pointless exercise and then next time I catch you attempting to lie, for good or for ill, I will expose it."

"Hmph. That's a little harsh, don't you think?"

"It is a simple matter to circumvent. Tell me the truth, always, regardless of the circumstances."

I shook my head, reclining against Perikos' body as he carried me back to the camp. "You don't want much, do you? Companionship, obedience, food, absolute honesty and willingness to be shared with homicidal alien armies. I seem to remember a Ferox 4 health campaign promoting awareness of unhealthy relationships, Perikos, and I think we qualify."

"Do you consider our intimacy dangerous then?" Perikos sounded genuinely concerned.

I snorted as he set me down and I plodded through heavy gravity the last hundred meters back to the camp. "No, you're the dangerous one."

"Perhaps," Perikos' tune was slow, reflective. "But may I point out the explosive nature of your temper and the tempting flavors you emit with most every step you take here? I must also admit that I did not expect I would ever during my lifespan meet an alien creature I would like or understand better than most of my kind or that she would be my savior from imprisonment. I would postulate that you are very dangerous in your own way."

I stopped and grasped one of Perikos' thin tendrils and traced its tip over the arch of my smile.



Dark Planet Pt. 03



The following week and half passed quickly, if strangely. According to Perikos we were mobilizing our forces. I found out a week after arriving on the planet that the "camp" we were currently stationed at contained fewer than one hundred…I wasn't really sure what to call them anymore, since Perikos was out of the question. Soldiers, maybe? Well, the point was there were hardly enough of them here to throw a parade, much less an insurgent strike force capable of overthrowing a corrupt government.

Before Perikos committed the murder he was imprisoned for, he left instructions to his rebel army to disband into multiple nomad contingents so they would be more difficult to track and stand a better chance of avoiding retribution. Apparently word came down from two messengers that out of fourteen smaller contingents, three groups had been wiped out entirely and two more remained unaccounted for. It was grim news for Perikos but his mood brightened as two intact camps arrived to meet us, tripling our current numbers. 

I stayed out of the limelight and therefore so did Perikos. I couldn't help feeling guilty, knowing he wanted to go out, raise moral and gather accounts of what happened in his absence but there was nowhere for me to wait but with him so the two of us stayed closer to the perimeter of the new camp. Perikos said we had to keep moving, that we would change camps twice a week or so.

I had a hard time thinking of the thick clusters of darkness dotting the otherwise barely visible planet as anything that could be properly called a "camp". There were no shelters; the aliens relied on mates and close friends to protect them while they rested and since there was no concept of night and day, they rested at all hours, off and on. There were no fires, Perikos informed me, and a great deal of superstition surrounded the very concept of bright heat, as though it would call into existence dreaded ultra-violet radiation.

The majority of the fungus I had encountered on Perikos so far was edible, at least the stuff that didn't look so unusual that I couldn't even bring myself to try it. Sure, the little white caps that looked like the button mushrooms my family used to harvest on our farm were poisonous enough that I was sick for nearly twenty-six hours, but the pinkish cup shaped fungus was actually pretty tolerable. It tasted kind of like bland, chewy honey. 

Perikos hadn't let me further than arm's reach since when I'd first been accosted and in spite of the fact it was a bit smothering, not to mention embarrassing at times, at least I was getting more answers. I was beginning to understand what the war was about, at least the rebels' point of view. It had a long, boring history that went back two hundred or so years, which I suppose wasn't particularly long by Perikos standards. Many adult soldiers here were older than two hundred years. At any rate, about two hundred years ago some rebellious upstart broke away from the main tribe and claimed that the current practice of consuming one another as punishment for every minor triviality was barbaric. According to him (or her, I couldn't be sure), long ago there had been other species on the planet within the past three hundred years but the Perikos' greed and expanding populations had driven them nearly to extinction and they had been forced to cannibalize one another to survive. He proposed a moderate shift, away from cannibalism, to a system of mutual assistance, where the strong would feed the week and the many would feed the few, ideally, resulting in very little death.

According to Perikos, none of that sat very well with the King, who was traditionally chosen because he was the strongest in body and will. To allow everyone access to him, thereby dwindling his strength away, was intolerable. He consumed the rebel himself, but apparently his teachings about barbarism and not cannibalizing your friends and neighbors disseminated to a wider audience than the king could have known, Perikos being one obvious heir to the new school of thought. Perikos had not been alive when it had happened but was strong in his own right, and joined a growing rebel faction when he was strong enough to be an asset. He rose through the ranks and made a business of capturing and trying to convert the loyal faction. He didn't even need me to point out the irony of consuming those who could not be converted to sustain his army of peaceful, non-cannibalistic rebels.

"It is hateful, dangerous thing, Little Shade, to put practicality before ethics, to go against one's own beliefs just so that one might live long enough to fight for them tomorrow. Killing for peace is both absurd and absolute reality for us."

I found it pretty interesting that it was Perikos who ultimately killed that king. There were neutral tribes, bands of so-called "civilians" who pledged no allegiance to the King but who found the rebel cause hopelessly idealistic and stuck to eating one another by way of punishment. Well, apparently the King had become paranoid and since one of the largest neutral tribes had warned nearby rebels of an impending attack by loyalist forces, he decided they were all in league with one another and were to be made an example of. Under the auspice of possible peace talks with the tribe, the King's forces had moved in and wiped out the lot of them. And Perikos tracked him down and destroyed him. Maybe he was just a really good guy, or maybe it was a case of "if we can't eat them, you can't eat them either", but regardless, by traditional custom, anyone who strong enough to best the king was the king. Regicide, which is what Perikos had been charged with, had plenty of precedent. Killing the king had never been illegal before; only attempting the kill him and failing merited any real punishment. Not only did the fact the Perikos should by all rights be king but his bravery in avenging the "civilians" as well as his martyrdom in Kragosa and his eventual escape, made him a pretty hot commodity among his followers. The air was often thick with music about lust, admiration, mating and glory, all of which was tinged with the song I learnt meant Perikos.

On the twelfth day after I arrived on the dark planet, Perikos was scheduled for another meet and greet of the two other contingents that had joined us. I felt something flicker across my face as I snoozed over the soft mudcaps. 

"Please wake up, Jayn. If I am to meet our reinforcements, you must complete your waking ablutions quickly."

I stirred, still expecting to see some hint of morning light and being met with only darkness. My eyes were beginning to adjust, at any rate, and I could make out the singular shape of Perikos' tendril in the near perfect darkness. I grasped it and pulled myself to a sitting position.

"These catnaps aren't enough, you know. I need actual, uninterrupted sleep. Probably more than I normally would because of the darkness."

"Understood. I will make certain your sleep is uninterrupted just as soon as this meeting is over."

I yawned and stood up, allowing Perikos' tendril to entwine my bracelet as he led me over the hill at the far perimeter of the camp. We had tried to stay away from everyone else but really there was nowhere to go, no shelter for me to hide myself away. Perhaps out of respect, everyone kept their distance and did not approach unless they had something urgent to say.

"Leader?" sang an oily voice from the darkness. Ugh, just what I needed. Shadow. "Leader, where are you going at this hour? Your people are expecting your address very soon!"

Maybe I was imagining the ugly, plaintive way Shadow said "your people", or maybe I wasn't. This guy was disgusting and shameless.

"Thank you, Second in Command, I am well aware of the time. Jayn and I need a moment of privacy -" 

"Leader, surely such…indulgence can wait?"

"It is no indulgence, my Second. We will not be long." Perikos' tone was brisk and cool to my bubbling fury. When Shadow was out of sight I practically snarled.

"How does an insubordinate, smarmy, egotistical, bigoted prick like that get to be your Second anyway? I hate him! Telling you your business, insinuating that -"

"That I would lead you away from the crowd and elicit you arousal in private, away from hungry soldiers?" Perikos' tone was sarcastic, since that had been our modus operandi since that first night I arrived. But there was something bitter there too, something regretful. Likely, he just felt guilty.

"Damn it, Perikos, don't let that complete fucking idiot make you feel bad for anything! He's just doing it because he hates me!"

Perikos led me over to the creek that ran downstream from the camp. No chance of my pheromones running up to the camp, since it had been a few days since I'd washed and I did smell like sex. I leaned gingerly towards it, not able to see where the bank ended and the creek began. I reached toward to cup the cool water in my hands and drink. I waded in, shivering, and washed myself without soap. I was just emerging to retrace my steps behind the large rock I used as a bathroom stall when I heard a shrill song over the hill.

"Leader!" The darkness was before us in the space of a blink and the song was urgent, anxious. "Leader, a fight has broken out amongst my tribe and I fear it will end in death! I've tried to stop it, but they won't heed me!"

I felt rather than saw the full force of Perikos' attention turn from me to the other. "You are?"

It said something that didn't make sense exactly, but names rarely did here. Something that felt smooth like heavy cloth and thick like cream. It was feminine, which I was pleased to say I was getting better at recognizing. "I lead Tribe Six!" I heard her say clearly, and remembered tribes two and six where the two that have joined us thus far. 

Perikos turned his attention to me again, a force I could feel as a warm surge deep in my stomach. "Can you wait?"

He meant could I wait for the bathroom and the answer was no, I thought, as I felt an altogether less pleasant rumbling down below. Perikos must have heard it too.

"General, can you not -?"

"Leader, I fear they will consume each other in the escalation! I fear it has already turned that way!" Her song was controlled in its fear, or perhaps it only seemed that way to me. I was distracted by a stomach cramp.

"Jayn, you will stay here until I collect you. I will not be gone long."

And just like that he moved in a blur of darkness with her back towards the camp and I had a second alone for the first time in nearly two weeks. I retreated behind my makeshift toilet stall and finished my business, dipping myself back in the stream to freshen up. 

I stood stalk still, up to my waist in cold water. I felt something nearby, something that was watching me. Maybe I saw the darkness move without realizing it or perhaps I was getting good at recognizing the attention of others but something was definitely there and it was definitely there for me. 

"Who are you?" I called out, sounding braver than I felt. I thought the first time I was accosted was just bad luck but now I knew there was very real foundation to Perikos' paranoia. 

Something moved against the darkness. Bloody hell, these things could kill me before I could even see them. Not fair, not fair at all. The water froze my legs but I didn't dare move any closer to it.

"I'm serious! Identify yourself or leave."

"Alien, you will come with me at once," the notes were clipped and bitter and I saw the creature they belonged to emerge out of the blackness, swollen to four times my size. I tried to contain my urge to scream, to run and hide. Trying to run was beyond pointless here anyway, not least because of the gravity.

"Look, you were obviously following me and you were here before P-Leader left to break up the fight, so you know I'm not allowed to leave. I have…orders not to leave."

"That does not matter to me anymore. You shall come with me this instant or I shall make you."

I tried to debate which would be preferable, Perikos' reaction when he found out I went with this thing of my own volition or the distinct possibility that resistance would get me quite badly hurt. I came to my senses and realized that wherever it was leading me, it was somewhere Perikos didn't want me going. I did the only thing I could think of doing, which was to turn and run.

I had moved less than five feet when I felt the weight of the creature's mass wrap itself around my torso, pull me roughly from my feet so my head plunged into the river water. It dragged me to shore before wrapping a thick appendage around my neck. 

"I understand that if I damage this part of your body you will not be able to speak. Do not give me a reason to do so."

As I felt the blood rush to my head as the creature dragged me away from the river and back towards the perimeter of the camp, I decided not to point out that my larynx wouldn't be all that got damaged if the tentacle cutting off most of my air lost its patience. 

It dragged me across close to the edge of the camp and I saw what looked like another tall, standing cliff face with a crevasse cut across it width-wise. Perikos would pass almost a kilometer from here on his way to retrieve me. I was fucked, I thought, as the creature rearranged my body to fit the entrance of the crevasse as it dragged me onwards.

Suddenly and with seeming revulsion it released most of my body except for the tentacle enclosed around my neck. I blinked into the void, my eyes watering under the strain as I tried to see what was before me.

I was mostly enclosed in what was essentially a hole in the rock, eight feet wide or so, stretching a few feet in front of me and a few feet behind before narrowing into a thin passageway again. The only thing I could discern was that there was now more than one alien presence in the cave. Maybe more than two.

"Now that you have me here, what do you want?" I whispered, partly because of how tight the tentacle around my neck squeezed and partly to show that I didn't need my neck broken to make a point.

"Very stupid, do you not feel him?"

I raised my eyebrows. What was I supposed to feel? Who was "he"?

"Idiot alien, right in front of you. Fix him." It was a different song, more feminine than the kidnapper. 

I strained my eyes again in the darkness and saw a small, shriveled shadow on the ground a few feet in front of me. It looked as though one of them had shed a skin and left it behind but this was apparently a creature not meant to be in such pathetic condition. 

"Okay, I see it. What do you want me to do about it?"

The tentacle around my throat tightened dangerously and I heard two hisses of anger behind me. "Your fault, yours! You will feed him!"

Shit. Can't say I hadn't expected it, but seriously, shit. Stall for time. I needed more time. "What do you mean?" I rasped through the tentacle at my throat. "Why me? Why is it my fault?"

"He was punished! Because of you! Sentenced to death for wanting better for our leader than an ugly, stupid alien for a mate."

Gah. The one who knocked me out in the crowd. I had never seen him before, I'd just felt the oddest surge of envy, of hatred. 

"Feed him!" a creature hissed behind me. 

"W-why don't you feed him?" 

"Leader forbids us!"

I coughed as it choked me. "That didn't stop you from bringing me here. I am no more allowed to violate laws than you are."

There was a moment of silence during which I hoped the aliens were considering the truth of my words. 

Finally, one spoke. "He will die and we have little to give ourselves."

"But P-Leader said he wouldn't die." I wondered aloud. Had he lied to me? The whole point of the resistance was not to kill one another, and starvation was a pretty jerk way to sentence someone when everyone at camp was hungry.

"Leader was wrong! He will die before we move camp!"

I looked down at the shrivel of blackness on the ground. He did look as though he was dying, as though whatever Perikos meant when he said fourteen days wouldn't kill him was wrong. Fourteen days seemed like just the ticket. Still, I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to touch it, I didn't want it to kill me by accident or on purpose for that matter. I stood paralyzed. What would Perikos think? Well, he was either wrong and so didn't want the creature to die or else was lying to me and then could go suck it for all I cared. More to the point, what did I think? I was all for Perikos sending the thing to bed without supper, but the death sentence for backhanding seemed pretty extreme. But it was certainly capable of violence.

"I will only do it if you promise not to hurt me. All of you." Then tentacle that had choked me release my neck and shoved me forwards another meter.

I heard the other two promise, however cold and bitter their music was. What I was listening for was my assailant's promise. I waited a moment, until I heard it, so soft it was only audible as it ricocheted off the stone walls on either side of us.  

"Promise."

I figured that was as good as it was going to get. I knelt down next to it, closed the distance on my hands and knees like I'd approach a wounded animal. I stretched my arm out slowly, extending my quivering fingers and it raised a feeble tendril to wind around my palm. Touch.

It felt limp and lifeless in my hand and I tried to focus on feelings strong enough to feed it. I didn't want to deal with arousal at the moment, not here, like this, so I focused on fear instead. Fear of them all going back on their word and swallowing me up whole. Fear of shadows moving in the darkness who were all faster and stronger than me. Fear that any second I spent away from Perikos would be a moment something else was waiting to pounce. Fear that I would never spend another moment with Perikos again.

I felt the tendril in my hand strengthen its hold and watched it grow as I scanned my brain for any semblance of fear. I was afraid of so many things I was sure I'd never run out. A billion things could go wrong just trying to survive in an alien habitat, never mind the fauna being after me as well. I focused on all of it, on getting lost, malnutrition, poisoning, radiation, a hundred different, probably inevitable ills. Getting recaptured by Kragosi guards. Someone killing Perikos. Everything on my mind came pouring forth, pouring into the creature that might have killed me if he could have. I didn't want it to die just because of me and not just because it would cause a backlash against Perikos and me. I wasn't just and I didn't need it on my conscience. 

I opened my eyes and the creature before me had grown to nearly my size. He no longer looked shriveled, like he would collapse in on himself at any moment. Instead he seemed to emitting a soft hum, cautiously jubilant. He released my hand and I sat kneeling before him as he filled up almost the entire width and height of the cavern.

"Thank you," he said, though his music didn't exactly exude gratitude. Like his friends, it sounded mostly bitter, but a touch incredulous as well.

"Well," I said, and then stopped, not really sure what to say. "Don't try to beat people until you get to know them to know whether or not they deserve to be beaten."

"You still do," his music was soft, oddly conflicted.

"Pfft. Fine, have it your way. I'm a disgusting parasite leeching off your Leader's grace. Can I go now?"

"I do not think you are a parasite. Clearly we are parasites for living off you. But Leader needs…more than you can give."

I raised an eyebrow. "Well, I can see you have a fixation. I should have supposed you all swing both ways. What Leader does or doesn't want isn't any of your business though. I don't think you really endeared yourself to him when you specifically disobeyed him. If you love him so much, do as he says."




Dark Planet Pt. 03



"Leader's orders would have killed him!" cried one who took me. Well, there was our voice of reason. Not much to go on, but true. Not a very loving thing to do.

"Look, it sounds like you guys have a lot to think about. I should be getting going."

"Not so fast," said the one I just saved. 

"Hey now, we should be reasonable about this - "

"I agree," he said, his music still conflicted. "I still despise you. Perhaps your generosity made me despise you even more. But I love Leader. I always will. So a favor for a favor. You have saved my life and I am not so weak I have nothing to give in return. There is a spy in your midst."

There were suddenly a hail of shouts from the two creatures behind me and I spun around so I could make sure they couldn't ambush me. 

"No!"

"Fool! We will be killed!"

He seemed to shrug it all off him. "Perhaps you should flee. I will fight until Leader refuses my strength. The spy reports to the King against whom we fight. We know this because the spy provided us a chance to feed in return for information about you. Who you are, what you do. I will tell the spy everything I know about you since I gave my word. I will not hurt you, also because I gave my word. I will not tell you who the spy is, because I gave my word. I have honor."

"I find that hard to believe. You're fighting the same war Leader is fighting but you're reporting to then enemy and you say you have honor?"

"I refused to give the spy any information about Leader, about the other tribes or anything else I know. Nothing about battle plans or strategy, thought I doubt the spy would want me for that anyway. The spy is far better placed to acquire such information."

"But you think you're honorable?" I was astonished. I supposed I loved Perikos too and even to save my own life I wouldn't sell him out to the enemy. And they weren't even my enemy, not really.

"Yes, I do," he said, clearly unabashed. "I promised I would not reveal anything about the spy's identity but I was intending to make its presence known so Leader can weed it out. Now I give you that information in exchange for your willing help. So go, tell Leader of the spy and no doubt they will be swiftly identified and dispatched and you needn't question my honor any further."

I knew better than to talk back when I was being shown the door. Without looking back I tore past the other two creatures, down the crevasse in the rock, stubbing my toe and knocking my elbows plenty along the way, until I emerged out into the air outside. Not only was I not dead, I had saved someone else and got some valuable information along the way. Now to hurry and find Perikos before he sentenced the entire camp to a week's starvation diet. 

I took off at an ungainly run through the fungal meadow ahead of me. I thought I could see the river a ways ahead. My eyes were exhausted from all the strain and I could barely make out anything in the darkness. A moment later I smacked into a patch of tangible darkness head-on. I bounced back, landing on my ass.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Look, I'm okay. Listen, because there's a - "

"A what?" The song was not Perikos' at all, but oily and thick, but without the usual sycophantic tones. 

"There's a big rally or address or whatever that I'm supposed to be at. Shouldn't you be there?" I asked, recovering quickly. Turn the tables whenever possible, that's my motto.

"It was delayed because of you," he answered, oozing hatred with every inflection. "I will see you punished for wandering off and interrupting our reunion with Leader."

"Can I ask you something?" I felt my temper flaring up at once. "What exactly is your problem? Are you an asshole by nature or is it just something I bring out in you? Is it jealousy? Does everyone at this camp want to mate with P-Leader?"

I could tell by the way Shadow swelled in size and seemed to crackle with electricity that I had seriously crossed the line. 

"I will make you beg forgiveness for what you just said to me!" His furious howl rung in my ears and I turned and ran. I expected to be caught and dragged away like I had been before but he must have decided to let me go, because I ran unimpeded as hard and fast as I could to the rock by the river.

"Perikos!" I called through shallow, labored breaths. "Perikos, where are you?"

I made out an odd blur of darkness by the hill and before I could worry about another chance encounter with some miserable native, the darkness wrapped itself around me in what might have been a death grip but felt much warmer.

"Jayn!" A tendril whispered in my ear, every note gushing with relief.

"It's okay, I'm fine."

Perikos did not release me but made a quick and thorough business of tracing my limbs and torso with his tendrils, as if wanting to ensure I was without injury.

"What happened, Jayn? Why did you leave after I told you not to?"

"That doesn't matter now, listen! There's a spy here somewhere and I think it's your Second in Command."

Perikos held me silently for a moment and then unwound himself from my body and positioned himself to stand beside me. "What makes you say this? Tell me what happened."

"If I tell you, you'll get mad at me or mad at them and there'll be even more misery and honestly it won't solve anything."

"Little Shade, you owe me honesty in this matter. If I must force you to speak of it, I will." I raised my eyebrows, less at Perikos' harsh words than the frightened tone to his music. I rarely heard him this anxious.

I sighed and confessed that I'd been taken to feed my assailant from two-weeks earlier. I even confessed that I did it willingly and that he kept his promise about not hurting me. I told him everything I knew about the spy.

Perikos was silent a moment longer. Finally, he said "I see no reason for you to suspect my Second. He has been loyal to me, to this cause. Just because he has been ungracious with you does not mean he has betrayed me. Not as others have."

That hung in the air for a moment while I digested it. Was he only talking about my three assailants? Could he be talking about me?

"Look, it won't help to punish them more. Two of them will just run away, they don't know anything anyway. The other one was going to die. He cut a deal but he worships you and your cause. He didn't hurt me and he certainly could have."

"You fed him willingly?" There was a cold note of accusation in Perikos' music. 

"Not like that, damn it. I touched him, it was fear related, it was nothing pleasant. Look, does the fact that you told me he would be okay when he was actually dying mean anything to you?"

"Yes, if I didn't doubt it. I certainly survived much longer than two weeks without food or touch and yet he was dying? Impossible."

"Actually, it was pretty possible. They were starving when we got here, remember? And he was weak and pathetic anyway. You're by far the strongest of your kind, remember? That's why everyone fawns over you all the time? And you're holding everyone else to your standards. How is that bloody fair at all?"

"Even if that were true - "

"Don't be obtuse, of course it's true! Look, just because you're scared or jealous doesn't mean you should take it out on me! I haven't done anything wrong! And forget about taking it out on anyone else either! Nothing like arbitrary draconian punishments to stifle a rebellion, am I right?"

Perikos paused a moment before winding a long, thin tendril around my bracelet. "Yes, you are right. I nearly killed a soldier needlessly. The loyalty of that soldier is not in question since you are alive and well." Several more thin tendrils brushed my hair away from my face and behind me ears.

"Thank you. Now, what about this spy?" 

"I do not know. I do not have any guarantee there is a spy or if there is, who it would be. I am sorry, but I cannot trust the words of those who have twice disobeyed me, regardless of the reason."

"But the spy is probably someone you know, someone you trust! And they've probably disobeyed you countless times, you just wouldn't know because they're doing it properly, not getting caught. I think your Second - "

"Jayn." Perikos cut me off, placing a wide, soft tendril over my mouth. "I am extremely relieved that you are well. When I returned to find you missing I became distraught and disbanded the address until you were returned to me. I knew you did not disobey me and leave the area of your volition. I am pleased you saved my soldier, especially without compromising yourself. But I do not wish to hear any further theories of betrayal at this camp without evidence to support it. Please, Little Shade, I have enough fears and concerns without suspecting my generals."

I nodded, feeling more than a little frustrated. If I was sure of nothing else, I was sure Shadow was reporting to someone else, someone who wanted to take Perikos down. I gave away something very intimate and in return I got information Perikos wouldn't let me use. I resigned myself to being his eyes and ears around Shadow. I was determined to get the information we needed to nail him to the wall. 

Perikos led me by the bracelet to go meet his generals. I was getting more used to being treated as a pet I guess or at least I was content to be led around and then ignored by everyone eager to speak to their great Leader. Not that I was in any hurry to be called upon to speak or answer questions anyway, so I hid behind Perikos' mass and waited until they were done singing to each other about oddly named landmarks and confusing coordinates. Suddenly I felt a sharp jerk on my bracelet and felt myself being pulled toward and held against his body, pinned between three clouds of darkness. I knew better than to struggle but Perikos hedged his bets and enveloped my hands and neck into his body, effectively immobilizing me. Judging my how excited I was to be introduced it wasn't a bad move.

"This is Jayn, a human refugee from the Union System of Ferox. I owe her my escape and continued strength and good health."

Two thick, meaty tentacles wriggled towards me, one coiling around the top of my head before running its mass over my face while the other slid itself up and down my torso, lingering near my breasts and armpits and tracing itself over my bellybutton. Maybe it expected an orifice, judging by its repeated attempts to push past it but the General was just going to have to live with disappointment. I did my bit by not shrieking or carrying on and instead emitting what I had no doubt was rich, gourmet fear. 

"Does it understand us?" One of them sang to Perikos. I recognized a cold, sterile femininity like the one that interrupted my bathroom break earlier. That made sense, considering she was a General but the question galled me a little, since she had clearly heard Perikos and I communicate down by the river.

"Yes, Jayn understands all but the most complicated of our names and concepts. Her brain is reasonably well-suited to understanding abstract concepts and as you can no doubt tell, particularly adept at accepting stimuli and producing emotion. I firmly believe we will owe our future victory to her cooperation."

I was glad Shadow wasn't here to hear Perikos say it. The tentacle roving over my face poked at my ears and ran its weight over my eyes and I couldn't stop myself from flinching.

"What is that?" asked the female again. I assumed by "that" she was referring to the reason I flinched though I also correctly supposed she wasn't actually asking me.

"Jayn, while only capable of a fraction of the sensitivity with her skin, is very reliant on sight as a sense organ. She can detect an object's apparent composition as well as infer distances and recognize others without touch." Perikos' music reflected a certain amount of pride and admiration, which was nice even if sight wasn't necessarily something I was proud of.

"It must be difficult for a human to adjust to lightlessness. It must be very dependent." The tone and rhythm were different this time and I realized the other General was speaking now. The music was more androgynous, more sympathetic.

"We share a mutual dependence," Perikos replied. "But since we are speaking of it now, how are you able to discern direction at all, Jayn? How do you orient yourself or tell us apart visually?"

I decided not to tell Perikos that I couldn't visually tell them apart, though I suppose I could have told them they were all different colors and they wouldn't have know the difference. I took a deep breath and hoped I wouldn't embarrass myself or him. How exactly would I explain without saying the word "light"? 

"I can see, actually, just not very well. I noticed when we landed that there is color within what my visual spectrum. I'm probably wrong but my best guess is that the geothermal radiation that allows vegetation to grow on the planet also produces a red…glow that my eyes pick up and that allows me to distinguish shapes and directions. As for telling you all apart, it is difficult but you all sound different and…feel different, if that makes any sense."

That revelation was met with silence. So much for not embarrassing myself. The two tentacles withdrew from me, somewhat awkwardly, but it wasn't a total loss. The pair of Generals finalized their plans about waiting for the speech Perikos was to give in half an hour and departed for last minute preparations.

"Did I say something wrong?" I asked as Perikos allowed me to twist out of his grip and face him.

"No, at least not to my mind," he answered, his notes light, almost amused.

"What happened then?" I followed Perikos as he glided towards a thick patch of darkness at the far edge of the camp. "I said something that killed the conversation."

"You humbled them. When you spoke they realized it was only out of courtesy that you and I allowed them to speak about you as though you were not sentient. I answered for you for their comfort, not because you could not answer for yourself. That you extrapolated the reason for your functioning visual organs based on the energy emissions from the planet – energy emissions we are hardly aware of, I might add – and that you are capable of distinguishing between us based on feeling is very impressive, even if they did not condescend to you."

"I'm getting better at it." I fought to keep the gloat from my voice. "It's getting to the point where I can know things about the speaker from their voice, their intonations. And a few times I've anticipated a mood or presence before I've seen them."

Perikos didn't reply and for a moment I thought nothing of it. Finally, a tendril reached out and wound around the metal of my bracelet. "I think I mistook your meaning earlier. I thought you meant you could distinguish between us based on feeling with physical contact. I believe I am correct in assuming my Generals supposed the same."

I thought about it for a moment. Touch was informative to a certain degree. It usually reinforced something I already knew. I told Perikos as much and he was silent for another moment.

"So you say that you can discern some things from voice alone?" The music was toneless, completely devoid of meaning and I furrowed my brow.

"Yes. How can that be a problem? You can read my mood from my tone."

"It is not the same. I do not 'hear' as you do, though I did not think the distinction was one worth mentioning to my Generals. My skin can physically feel the vibrations of your voice, the pitch, the speed and rhythm and emphasis. If two related speakers stood next to one another, I would certainly understand the intent of their communication – the "mood", as you say – but I could not know other things, such as sex or personality or unobvious intent. Not without touching them. And to be able to discern such things without being able to sense the location of the speaker, to feel malice or sense a presence without a voice or our own sense of touch is absolutely remarkable."

"Well, you know me. My brain is suited to understanding abstract thought," I said, though I smiled. All things considered, it was kind of cool to defy expectations by being more capable than anyone thought possible.

I felt a tendril reach out to stop me as we reached the gathering armies. 

"Can you feel anything about me? Without touching?"

"I think I'm probably pretty bias when it comes to you. It would be hard to disentangle my experience of you from whatever I'm supposed to be feeling," I said, suddenly shy at being put on the spot.

"It will not hurt to try, Little Shade," said Perikos.

I shut my eyes then, determined to concentrate, to try not to let my feelings get in the way. It was difficult. No matter what I did I couldn't get past the idea of him as this pulsing ball of warmth in an otherwise cold, empty world. Okay, maybe not empty but as far as I was concerned, it may as well have been.

"I'm sorry. I know what I think of you and it's kind of getting in the way of any real objectivity," I said.

I felt something thick and densely muscled press against the palm of my left hand. "What about now?" he asked again.

His skin was different. I felt every inch of darkness as though it was reaching out to me, touching me with such intensity that I gasped. The tendril in my hand tightened and my head swam slightly as different thoughts flooded my mind. His masculinity and my femininity were the first and I was confronted by the feeling of my own skin and the unbidden thought of myself suspended helplessly in the air, all three holes violated and I felt an accompanying sensation that felt for all the world like an orgasm that had nothing to do with my nether regions. Several more thoughts burst forth. First was a warm, tight heat and an accompanying heartbeat. The next felt like part of a longer story about an alien slave who became a Queen. Finally the idea of Shadow, oily and sycophantic. Not a traitor though, the idea came clear in my mind. 

"He is though, if you would just hear me out," I said aloud, jolting myself out of the strange trance.

Perikos was silent a moment longer, though the tendril in my hand didn't move. I wondered if he was concentrating too.

"Little Shade." Perikos' music was quiet, measured again. 

"Yes?"

"Little Shade, did you understand the thoughts I gave you?"

"I think so. They were feelings or sensations mostly, and then words right at the end. Though I could have been imagining it."

Perikos was silent again and I could feel my impatience growing. I was still touching him but I couldn't sense any revelatory thoughts. Well, maybe that wasn't strictly true. I thought I could feel consideration, weighing and measuring, calculation. Then again, I was probably projecting.

"What? What is it already? What's with the silent treatment?" I could hear the frustration in my own voice so I was sure Perikos wouldn't miss it.

The tendril in my hand tightened its grip again. "I am sorry, Jayn. I must admit I was lost in my own thoughts. You see, your skill is unprecedented."

"Bullshit. I mean, how can it be? You all can read each other through touch," I said.

"It is not the same. None among our kind detect ideas without physical sensation. It is impossible. Furthermore, your skin, while certainly receptive to appropriate stimulation, is not capable of functioning as ours does. You cannot discern movement, hesitation, delight, a minute change in temperature from a distance– the human nervous system is incapable of such things. So how then can you receive impressions from my thoughts or sense the presence of a hostile personality?"




Dark Planet Pt. 03



I thought about it for a moment, shuffling my feet as I glanced towards the still-gathering crowd. We didn't have much time. "I'm not sure. Especially about receiving specific thoughts. I have no idea since as far as I know there is no scientific explanation. But as far as sensing danger, that's just straight intuition. All humans have it, like a holdover from instinct. It's a good thing and it's hardly rare."

I felt a tendril slide over the back of my head to toy with my hair. "Shadeling, it would be better if for the time being we refrained from mentioning further this intuition. Your dependence on me and your supposed helplessness besides convinces others of their safety."

I snorted. "Their safety? From me? Even if I wanted to, what could I possibly hope to do to threaten anyone's safety?"

"Invade their thoughts. Their privacy." Perikos' music was soft, carefully neutral again. "And while I don't imagine it will come to that, please do not mention it to anyone."

"Right. Got it." It was lunacy to suppose there was anyone I would mention it to, much less to suspect it would ever get to the point I was reading alien minds in the first place. Even more demented than what I was about to do next. "So," I said, mustering almost as much courage as it had taken to get out of the ship the first time. "Should we go bolster some troops?"

Perikos was quite still for another beat before winding tendrils of darkness around my neck, wrists and waist and then compelling me forwards through the cacophonous clouds of black, towards the small hill they surrounded.

"We shall resume our fun then," whispered Perikos next to my ear and I felt as though a couple hundred tendrils tensed to try to snatch our words out of the air. "I hope this will be pleasant for you. If not, I will make it so. You offer us so much we can do no less than give you pleasure in return."

"We?" I asked, my voice sounding more panic stricken than I intended.

"Don't be afraid, Little Shade. We will all drink you in but only I will stroke you till your juices flow."



Dark Planet Pt. 04



He held me still before him as he sang about marching armies and victorious battle, new government and food aplenty. When Perikos was done he tightened his hold on my wrists, neck and waist and thick, muscular tendrils coiled around my upper thighs, pulling my legs apart and exposing my dripping heat. I was definitely achieving what Perikos had been training my body to do for nearly a month and a half. I was getting sex and fear confused.

I heard songs in the throng of darkness around me. There were sharp staccatos of longing, lilting notes of curiosity and rumbling, percussive outrage at my presence. I felt my pulse hammer in my throat as I tried to close my legs involuntarily but Perikos held me splayed wide before his followers.

"I can't do this. What if we lose control like last time?" I tried to whisper but it came out closer to a squeal as my breath died in my throat. Hundreds of tendrils, some hardly wider than a thread and others thick as freight cable, twisted and waved slowly toward me.

"My Generals and Second flank us. They will intercede if needed. This is necessary. You may try to fight if you wish, Jayn, since the futility may fuel your fear. Since I will not allow them inside you, your fear is extremely important."

The alien blackness seemed to reach at me as one and I did fight. I couldn't help it. I tried to wrench my wrists away, to close my thighs and cover my nakedness. I didn't even manage to hurt myself trying, there was just too little give. I felt my adrenaline surge as I felt cold waves wash over me again and again and I willed my pulse to slow since I could feel it thrum against the tendril around my neck. I was exhausted from trying to struggle and I felt dizzy, wholly disoriented as the first Other tendril touched me.

It stopped almost directly between my breasts, over my heart. I was sure it felt the vibrations from its beats in the otherwise still air. The other tendrils suddenly froze, suspended centimeters from me, some of them, waiting for the First to judge my worthiness or something.

The tip of the tendril slid from over my heart under the crease of my left breast, winding a cautious, gentle circle around it before resting its tip on my erect nipple. 

"Breathe, Jayn," Perikos said and until I heard his whisper I hadn't realized how long I'd been holding my breath.

The length on the tendril tightened slightly, just enough that I could feel its pressure and the tip wound around my nipple like a noose and tightened slowly but continually. I moaned at the mix of pain and pleasure and managed to shift my body enough that my breasts swayed, catching the tendril off guard. It slid away from my body a moment before it returning to wind around my nipple again before giving it an almost painful tug. I groaned loudly enough to startle several others.

"One moment, Friends," said Perikos. A thick tentacle I recognized as Perikos' drew up between my legs from behind me, getting between the waiting tendrils and my hips. From the tip it began to split in four, like an enormous lily in bloom. I felt my brow furrowing as I watched.

"Perikos?" I managed to keep it to a whisper this time.

He didn't answer me but the tentacle stretched its petals wide and enveloped the whole of my puffy, swollen sex. I cried out as Perikos's tentacle settled over me. I felt several thin, flexible tendrils poke up inside me as the tentacle took up its slack from behind me. Its thickness split my ass cheeks wide over it and I squirmed as little tendrils inside me wiggled again. I felt a much thinner tendril nudge my chin and I turned my head just as a long, thick tendril pushed itself into my mouth and kept going before stopping just short of my gag reflex. I felt the tentacle at my sex raise me off the ground and the others that restrained me assisted to try to take some of pressure off the cleft between my legs. I felt something narrow but painfully dry poke itself from the tendril between my legs into the pucker of my ass. I squirmed again, hopeless suspended, impaled and subdued.

"Break no skin and take only your share. You may touch anything I have not restricted. Enjoy, my Friends."

I felt like the night sky was falling. I was blinded completely by darkness. I couldn't make out notes or tunes anymore, just a strange white noise like running water. A very fine tendril of Perikos' pinched my throbbing clit and I shrieked, rocking helplessly over the tentacle I was suspended from. I felt every inch of skin was being touched, tickled or licked. If my experience the night of my arrival of was overwhelming, then this sensation of being perfectly covered and surrounded was almost numbing in its intensity. My thighs and knees, calves and elbows, the creases between my fingers and toes, the shell of my ear and outside of my nose were all stroked, pinched, rubbed and teased. I felt tendrils in my hairs, against my scalp, catching the drool at the sides of my mouth and stroking and swatting my swell my breasts and ass, the curve of my back, my nipples and navel, my armpits, collarbone and the nape of my neck. Perikos tugged at my clit again and I came before I knew I was on the edge. I felt my body begin to shake then, already overwhelmed by the physical attention and I felt other tendrils, other owners fighting to get at me, to feel my skin and drink in my arousal, my fear.

The penetrations in my pussy and ass began to grow, though not as drastically as I was used to from Perikos. I felt them remain mostly still within me, taunting me, holding me still on them while Perikos plucked at my clit again and again. I tried rocking my body back and forth over them, tried laving my tongue over the length of the tentacle in my mouth. I suckled at him, mewled and moaned at the stillness of my penetration but still he teased me. 

A moment later my breath was stifled as inquiring blackness before me invaded my nostrils. Oddly, it felt like water and I thrashed for a moment, unable to inhale. Then tentacle in my throat pushed deeper, past my gag reflex and towards my lungs. He hollowed himself out as he had done before, delivering air to me directly but the full assault on the rest of my body continued.

More than one tentacle rained down a series of light but stinging blows to my breasts, back, ass and thighs. Perikos' tendril strummed my clit again and I felt another wave of ecstasy crest within me as I came again. I felt my pussy flood the tendril between my thighs and I struggled in my binds, trying to rub myself hard against the slickness. I needed something in me, something blunt and big and rough. 

I tried opening my mouth even wider, anything to intensify my penetration instead of just hypersensitizing my skin. I felt a little foreign tendril search out the corners of my mouth and try to invade, sliding over the points of my teeth before moving to press upwards at the roof of my mouth. Perikos must have felt them also because he swelled in my mouth, stretching my jaw open painfully to expel the intruders. He kept my mouth open wide now and instead of burying himself deep in my throat, he began to pump, pulling almost all the way out of my mouth before plunging fully down my throat. I was grateful I could breathe through the tentacle because I had no hope of breathing around it. It wasn't my ass or pussy but at least some part of me was finally being taken properly.

I felt hundreds of thinner tentacles on my bottom half wind around my calves, ankles and feet and fold them or bend them, tease them and stroke them. They held my ankles off the ground fully so I needed to lean toward on the tentacle between my legs so as not lose balance. It forced me to expose more of my ass and even more tendrils kneaded, rubbed, massaged and spanked the newly exposed skin. I tried to shift, to relax my legs and hide my exposed ass but the tendrils in my hair held me still, winding around thick sections to subdue me. I felt dozens of thin, nearly ticklish tendrils caress every exposed bit of skin on my face and neck. Perikos pressed down hard against my poor, engorged clit just as the tentacles at my breasts squeezed hard and renewed their twisting, pulling torture at oversensitive nipples.

"Please!" I tried to beg Perikos but ended up nearly gagging on the tentacle fucking my throat, my plea lost entirely in its girth and speed. I felt my eyes watering, felt tears blooming from my blind eyes as I tried again to gain enough purchase to press myself down harder on the two small phalluses within me. It was much too much outside of me and not nearly enough inside me. Could a person lose their mind from need? Could you die from too much stimulus? I wanted to die, I couldn't help thinking, if I couldn't get him to fuck me like I needed.

"Please!" I couldn't understand my own words but maybe Perikos could. He had before. He had to know what I needed, what I was willing to do to get it. "Anything you want. I'll do anything." I tried to whimper into the only solid thing inside me, my gag.

Maybe Perikos had wanted me to beg or maybe he just realized I was nearing my breaking point, I didn't really care which. The soft, thin tendrils inside me began to expand, splitting me painfully till I could feel more than three of them wriggling, stiff and strong inside me, reaching deeply, ticking my cervix and holding me wide open. The tendril in ass widened without warning and I was sure it tore me but I didn't care. I don't think I was capable of feeling pain. It lengthened until I felt my guts cramp painfully. Perikos held me quite still for just a moment, paused all his internal ministrations for just a moment while I felt hundreds of tendrils turn me, twist me, stroke me and spank my nakedness. I felt him clench my clit so tight I almost screamed and then he began to pound into me, every insertion slick, deep and painfully thick. He rubbed me raw from the inside out and I remember feeling every Other tentacle at my body try to assist Perikos in fucking me. They forced me to split my legs as wide as I could and still I gasped from the strain. The ones in my hair yanked my head back so my chin pointed skyward and Perikos could plunge into my throat faster, less carefully than before. The tendrils at my breasts slapped and milked and choked up on the beads of my nipples and I only remember my memories fading when one thin tendril pushed past my cervix just as I felt something deep inside me cramp. I bit down hard out of shock on the tendril in my throat and the last thing I remember was something thin and coiling so tightly around my clit it felt like it was trying to cut off circulation. Then I remember seeing stars.

" --have no reason to suppose that this attack will work, let alone that we have the resources necessary for battle."

The air around me was cool but still and the surface was wonderfully soft. I had been dreaming about flying over the Chezza Valley back on Ferox 4 just after the Rains. So many colors, so many things in bloom. I didn't want to open my eyes to total darkness.

"You doubt Leader's strategy?"

"I doubt his experience. He is young."

That voice. Something about it. Where was Perikos? Not here, or they wouldn't be talking about him.

"If you intended to claim control of this regiment you should have done so before now. They trust him. He has fed them, prepared them and we will march in less than an hour's time."

"And if we are ambushed, rerouted or revealed as amateurs, idealistic child soldiers and nothing more you shall see it is because Leader has ignored my guidance in this matter."

Shadow! My eyes snapped open and I saw a darker patch of black only twenty meters away. I glanced around slowly, carefully. No sign of Perikos. Why would he leave me here? He hadn't let me alone more than twice in as many weeks and never longer than a few minutes. 

"You are so certain Leader is not ready for victory?"

"You are certain he is ready? Victory is not a matter of justice, it is a matter of skill and power and they remain to be seen. Ugly alien troughs are novelties at best -- they do not win wars," said Shadow.

I tried carefully to shift my legs to stretch but I felt my tears and soreness from what I was sure was only a few hours ago. I whimpered, louder than I'd meant to.

"What?" Shadow turned and I could tell without knowing how that he had noticed me, could feel my presence in the air. "What is it doing here?" Its music was shrill and abrasively loud.

"Sixth General was to guard it. I do not see her." The other creature answered. 

"Perhaps it snuck away from Sixth General. It deliberately disobeyed Leader!" Shadow's tune was louder still, its furious notes reaching a fever pitch.

I climbed to my feet, stubbornly choking back whimpers and groans of pain from my thorough use earlier. I strained my eyes to see if I could see Perikos nearby but it was just too dark.

"Alien! You should stay here and await Leader's return so he may punish you," said the one who wasn't Shadow. They were moving towards me slowly. 

"When Leader is unavailable I carry out all duties in his stead. I will punish it," growled Shadow.

"I do not think -- "

"I am First General, it is for me to decide!" shrieked Shadow.

I turned on my heel and began to run. I was too slow from the heavy gravity and everything between my legs ached and burn in a kind of wicked torment but I had to run. I fully expected to be stopped, tripped or grabbed -- they were certainly fast enough but neither of them interfered as I willed my feet to move faster, concentrated my entire being into sprinting as fast as I could towards a the sea of blackness ahead of me. I charged forward, not caring who I touched or collided with until something thin but strong wound itself around my bracelet and I fell forward from the sudden stop.

"Jayn?" Strong tendrils scooped me up and set me back on my feet. 

"Why did you leave me up there with Shadow?" I asked, aware we were fully surrounded by his soldiers. I didn't care. "I told you what I thought about him and you still left me alone with him!"

"Little Shade, I left you with Sixth General."

"Well, he's friends with Shadow then!"

"Sixth General is female," said Perikos.

"No one female was there! Just Shadow and whoever he was talking to. And you might be interested to hear what he was saying! He said -- "

"Come with me, Jayn. We depart in several minutes, you may tell me from the frontlines." Perikos bound me up in his mass and moved away from the crowd of curious (but not bloodthirsty or frightened) soldiers. I kept my mouth shut as a sort of goodwill gesture.

"What has upset you?" Perikos asked me when we had moved toward to front and were no longer being overheard. "You were wonderful at our rally but obviously you were very depleted. I felt you would rest better away from the noise and movement but I had some last minute arrangements to make. I felt so much more confident of your acceptance after how you handled the rally that I left you with Sixth General with explicit instructions to guard you and not disturb you unless there was some sort of emergency."

"Well, I don't know about any guard but when I woke up, Shadow and his friend were there and they were talking. They didn't notice me right away. Shadow kept saying how you were going to get everyone killed because you had no experience. He said -- he said you were all idealistic child soldiers and weren't powerful or wise enough to lead and then he found out I was there. I'm sure he thought I was eavesdropping on purpose and he really hates me -- anyway, he kept talking about how it was his duty as First General to punish me, I don't even know for what."

Perikos was silent a moment.

"How can you say that what he said doesn't matter? That he's not betraying you? How can you?"

Perikos was silent a moment more. "He didn't touch you?"

"No, but -- "

"Then I am more concerned with why Sixth General left you against my orders."

I didn't want to admit that I agreed that it was a valid concern or how privately relieved I was that Perikos hadn't just left me to nap on a hilltop somewhere, convinced my troubles were over. Perikos didn't have a lot of time to think it over though. He summoned the company to attention and gave them their orders.

They would be "marching" some twenty kilometers and then would charge a temporary loyalist outpost camp, capturing it for its strategic advantage. According to our information, it was the rendezvous point for some very important loyalists who had been moving along a series of subterranean caves to avoid proper detection. There were some mutterings among the troops that the King himself was hiding out somewhere cave system, thought Perikos said he didn't believe it. Today the goal was just to capture the outpost camp quickly and before anyone there had any time to escape and get the word out for reinforcements.

Perikos continued to carry me as he led the march. I squirmed a little against his mass, trying to get a vantage point where I could see both forward and back.

"Don't you want to talk to Sixth General then, if it's no problem with you that Shadow is trying to punish me for being human? Or knowing that he's the traitor," I added under my breath.

"I have no reason to believe my Second would betray me," replied Perikos quietly.

"But what about what I told you?"

"You have not told me anything he has not. He presents to my soldiers an attitude of complete trust and obedience but in private he has said, although with more deference, just as much. And since he did not strike you or actually attempt to harm you, I am afraid I cannot hear anything more against him."

"But I -- " I said.

"As for Sixth General, I am concerned. She is, however, trusted for her reconnaissance and intelligence gathering and as I do not see her now I must assume that she resumed her work against my orders. Perhaps she felt herself above receiving mundane orders from me and she will answer for it when she returns."

"Perikos, I -- "

"I appreciate your thoughts, Little Shade, but owing to the nature of today's military exercise and the anxiety I have towards it, I am disinclined to discuss such matters with you further. I hope you will respect my wishes in this."

I sat silent for a moment, willing my anger and frustration to burn out. I felt oddly tired again for having done so little or maybe it was just the clean, graceful movements Perikos made as he drifted forward, swiftly though without effort or turbulence. 

"Perhaps you should sleep the journey and I will wake you when we get within range," said Perikos after a moment of silence, correctly interpreting my even breathing and long, sluggish blinks. 

"I don't know why I'm so tired. How long was I out?"

"Less than three hours," Perikos answered, tracing slow, even strokes over my cheeks and the crown of my head as I stretched and rubbed my eyes. "It isn't any wonder you tired. Setting aside the lack of continuous sleep you have experienced and your body's natural preference for light as an indicator of wakefulness, the physical intensity of what you experienced at the rally, coupled with the nature of feeding, I am surprised you are capable of staying awake."

"Mmm. Did it work? The feeding?" I murmured, pressing my face into the cool, thick darkness of Perikos' mass.

"Better than my most optimistic expectations. You were capable of producing a great deal of emotion for consumption before you become insensible. All that chose to partake are full converts to the importance of protecting your body, not taking selfishly and respecting your importance to me and the cause. You enjoyed the experience fully and your body tolerated the intensity of the experience. Indeed, the only concern I have for the future is the correct way to ensure each such rally contains the opportunity for new and novel sensations of arousal and fear."




Dark Planet Pt. 04



"Hmm?" I felt the danger, the armies, the stars in the sky around me fade away. I felt my body cradled in Perikos' mass, felt the coolness of his touch on my face and in my hair. Strange, I thought, how Perikos' body felt so cool and yet his touch warmed my entire body, starting just below my bellybutton and pulsing outwards through me in little bursts of pleasure. What did he just say? "Why fear?" My words sounded slurred, even to me.

Perikos brushed my hair from my forehead and pulled me closer to his center. "I must never become complacent or you will cease to be satisfied and then I cannot feed. You need fear as much as I do, Jayn. Now sleep, and dream of me."

I was back in a cell in Kragosa, that much I knew but I was all but shrouded in darkness. The only pinpricks of light came from two camera lenses pointed down at me from the ceiling and I could feel the tension in the air. Something was going to happen.

Something enormous and extremely fast descended on me from behind, hurling me bodily into the cell bars -- the only place in the cell the camera lights couldn't reach. It wound itself around my body and the bars, immobilizing me while it gripped onto my pussy lips, holding them wide open so it could bury itself in me. I tried to catch my breath but it increased its pressure on me, smashing me against the bars. 

I saw a glint of reflecting light suddenly on the other side of the bars. Brogn, the Warden. He reached out a thick, greasy sausage of a finger and flicked my erect nipple with it. A sick little thrill ran through me as I pressed back against the darkness. Between a rock and a hard place.

"Someone help me," I gasped, pinned as the thing plunging into my pussy pressed me forward still, holding me tight against the bars.

"This is your sentence," Brogn panted in slurred, choppy Common. "To stay here, always in darkness, always watched, fodder for the Perikos. How long will you last?"

I turned my head then, partly out of panic, to try to glimpse at the thing fucking me, holding me captive with Brogn. The two camera lights went out then and we were in total darkness. The thing inside me released its grip on my arms and legs but a thick appendage stayed inside me and so I stood very still for a moment, afraid to move.

Suddenly it moved again, like a wave crashing down but this time instead of crashing into me it engulfed me, seemed to swallow me whole until I felt it covering every square inch of me. More panic rose in me and I curled up into a ball inside it, pulling my knees close and unwittingly granting it better access to my folds. The appendage inside of me held me still on its girth. I began to shake, completely enclosed and controlled and then I heard a steady, rhythmic tune surround me.

"Be brave. I am with you. I will be your everything here."

I woke up with a start, for a moment not knowing why. Perikos still held me. It was dark andas always when I woke up, the dark was nearly impenetrable. Then I heard it -- an odd, shrieking whine, grisly and horrific. Something was wrong. 

"Perikos?" I sounded more frightened than I meant to.

"We've been ambushed," he whispered back. Next his song was commanding, almost deafening. "Ambush! Retreat! Regroup!" There were other images, ideas. Too complex for my brain as I craned my neck forward and back to try to see what was causing that sound. It was getting closer. It was terrible, it scratched at the inside of my brain and I felt nauseated. Several flickering thoughts flew into my head. 

Being back on the hill, at the rally and totally surrounded. Realizing someone was trying to take too much? What as too much? How would I know? But I did, I felt everything closing in on me, felt prickling pain like incisors chewing me from the inside out. I felt everything that was me, every thought, blood cell, heartbeat and memory being pulled away, sucked into something else. Someone else. To fight, to murder, to cannibalize every aspect of another. I felt utterly sick.

I was jolted back to my own thoughts as I felt Perikos streak like lightening through the darkness. I folded myself against him and forced myself to keep my eyes open even though I couldn't see anything, couldn't tell where we were or what, if anything, was around us. Fear was good, right? Didn't Perikos always encourage my fear? I must have been doing him quite a service as I shrunk against him. 

I heard more shrieks like the ones before and more songs besides back where we had come from. The rest of Perikos' army wasn't far behind and some of them sounded as though they were fighting strong. 

Something collided with us then, something fast and I felt my head swim from the impact. Something hit him hard again, and then a third time and I couldn't stifle my screams. I couldn't see it, couldn't even sense where it was coming from. Suddenly I felt a hunger closing in, voracious and cruel like before.

"Perikos! Move!" I yelled, standing and clutching onto his slick form for balance.

He spun in place so quickly I lost my balance and would have fallen but a massive tentacle caught me at the waist and held me high in the air and out of the way of the blows. Perikos glided forward again, faster than I could think to hold on and I swayed and rocked high in the air. If I strained my eyes I could make out a field of rustling darkness below me that wasn't chaotic enough to match the tunes, the screams and chaos I knew was taking place. I felt Perikos take another blow down below. Why bring me into battle if he wasn't going to fight? Why lead the charge? I was holding him back, getting him hurt.

I blinked as something black and massive glided up to meet me where Perikos held me aloft. Its great mass swung towards me but Perikos pulled me out of range and then I heard the shrieking sound in my head again and felt panic flood me. 

"Perikos!" I felt one of them closing in. They would distract him trying to protect me and then go in for the kill. "PERIKOS!"

Something tore me out of his grasp, catching me around the ankles and flinging me through the air. 

"Jayn!" I heard Perikos' song, clear as spoken words. "I'm coming!" 

Something grasped at my waist, something vaguely familiar, but before it managed to gain any purchase, something else tore me away, flung me again by my ankles and I felt the sickening sensation of free falling without any way of knowing when my body would hit the ground.

Something cool that I was certain was not Perikos broke my fall and almost broke my head. It didn't so much snatch me out of the air as it softened the blow of me landing flat on the earth, but not by much. My head swam again, throbbed from the impact and I stumbled forward onto my feet and tried to crawl away from it. I felt my way forward in the dark until my hands ran up against the same mass in front of me as below me. I flung myself the other direction but I was too slow and only succeeded in smashing my shoulder against my newfound enclosure. I ran my hands frantically up and down the interior walls -- I was being held here, surrounded on every side. I looked up and couldn't see the stars and felt a jolt of claustrophobia. Captured.

"Perikos! Perikos, I'm here! Over here!" I shrieked, my head pulsing. The sound all but disappeared into the black mass that surrounded me. 

I strained my ears and I could hear the frantic, erratic tune as Perikos called my name over and over again. Why didn't he know where I was? Why couldn't he feel me?

I beat against the sides of the creature holding me, screamed as loud as I could until my throat seared and burned from the strain and I felt myself dissolving into furious, hopeless tears.

"Perikos! I'm here, I can hear you! Let me go! Perikos!" My throat felt as though it would bleed from the strain and suddenly the creature holding me jerked his body to the left, knocking me off balance. A thick tendril wound around my neck and choked the breath out of me before I could scream for Perikos again. I thought it would let up but little starbursts of light danced in front of my eyes as its grip tightened, gradually. If it was trying to kill me, it wanted me to feel myself dying, I thought, as I tried to pull it from my throat, tried to hold my breath even as I felt my lungs burn as they tried in vain to pull air into them. I was going to pass out, probably die and all I could think about was that I hoped Perikos would make it out of this fight in one piece.

When I opened my eyes again I was in darkness. I had gotten used to darkness over the last month because it meant Perikos. Now it seemed too tight, horribly intimate and I felt miserably helpless. My head and neck ached, as did my left ankle and something about the outside of my right ear hurt badly, almost like I'd been stabbed there.

I was leaning back against a rock face of some kind, no stars overhead either but as my eyes began to adjust, I saw small patches of red light scattered nearby, with small, conical fungal shapes bursting up from the ground. I tried to reach up to assess my ear but found something binding my wrists. I felt around in the darkness and noticed something itchy and thick like a rope wrapped around my waist and wrists. I had a few centimeters range of movement but not enough to reach my head. 

I turned my head gingerly and felt a fresh stab of pain at my ear but then I got distracted as I felt the rope at my waist connected to another bit of rope tied around my neck. I tried stretching to see how far I could move and found I only had a few centimeters give -- I couldn't sit up straight without choking myself. 

I heard the echoing din of stone scraping against stone and started badly. I tried to rise into a standing position but the rope around my neck must have been nailed into the rock somehow and the effort caused an odd sort of tearing sensation at my ear, followed by a worrying wetness. I sucked air through my teeth as I saw at least one shadow in this cave or hole or wherever I was. I knew it wasn't Perikos.

It moved closer to me and I saw another one move in to flank me. Was I just supposed to be someone's dinner? Would they interrogate me? And torture me? Considering how often they ate each other, I figured it was pretty much certain they would.

"Alien!" The sound came from the one to my right. "It is awake. Its bodily response patterns have changed," it told the other, who hovered in the shadows just outside my view. It was just too dark to make it out, even though I knew it was there.

"This was the treasured strategy? What is the point of it?" asked the other.

"Do not be obtuse! Can you not feel that? The terror? It is better than I have felt in my lifetime."

"Better than on the battlefield? Are you a fool?" the one to left taunted, it's tune disgusted.

There was a moment of tense silence. Then: "perhaps I have a distaste for killing, even justly. Far better to harvest these for food." 

I could only assume it was gesturing at me and I couldn't stop a fresh wave of terror from pulsing through me. I felt my body shivering but I was suddenly suffocating from the stuffiness of this enclosed space. I felt a cold sweat break out over my brow and upper lip.

"It is frightened," remarked the one on my left. 

"Now who is the fool? I told you why we had orders to take it. We have intelligence on it. It can understand us and apparently can make itself understood."

The one on my right closed some of the distance between us and I fought back a whimper. 

"Alien! What is your planet of origin?" Its melody boomed out at me in the low ceiling cave. I kept my mouth shut.

"Are you certain it understands you?" The other asked.

"Alien! On this planet a captured creature has two choices: it can ask for a swift death and hope it will be granted or it can beg for mercy from its new master, whoever caught it. I have caught you and no swift death will be granted. You have few options."

"Why do you speak to it as though it is one of us? Cattle is eaten, not bargained with." The other sneered.

I clenched my teeth shut, closed my eyes and thought about Perikos. About what he would do if he were captured and thought he was about to be killed. I didn't stand a hope in hell of fighting.

"Do not attempt to advise me further. It was your cruel nature that instructed our comrade to nail its skin to the wall. It might have died from the bleeding." The one on my right turned to the other. Shit, my ear. They had tried to nail me to the wall by my ear? It felt as though the wound had been dressed, however strangely.

"How was I to know it had blood? I was trying to immobilize it. At any rate, that created fear and is that not in our favor?"

"It would be more in our favor were we to encourage it to speak." The creature seemed to turn back to me. "Your Keeper -- the Leader, the Criminal -- has been captured. He will die, of that you can be certain. You have a certain affection for him, don't you? He has treated you well?"

The creature was lying. He had to be, there was just no way Perikos would let himself get caught.

"You may call my bluff, alien, but if you speak you might buy him time. We might even allow you to see him before he is executed. Now tell me, what is your planet of origin?"

I sagged in my bonds. If they were telling the truth I had little choice. I couldn't risk them killing Perikos without my intervention. I was unlikely to tell them anything useful because I didn't know anything useful. Still, no need for the exact truth.

"Kragosa," I answered, my voice barely a ragged whisper.

Something clubbed me in the side of the head and my vision swam again. Luckily or perhaps intentionally it wasn't the side where my ear had been hurt.

"Do not lie! It is plain you are not Kragosi. Where were you born?"

"The -- the Rhydia Station."

Something smashed into my jaw again and I tasted blood. 

"Try again, alien. If you lie again I will snap one of your bones. Where were you born?"

"Althea!" I blurted, not knowing why. My mother was born there. 

Before I had a chance to wonder whether the creatures had spotted the lie, I felt something thin like a whip close around my right wrist and twist it. The shockwave ran through my entire arm up to the nape of my neck and a tearing, gut-clenching pain shot up the whole of my arm. I screamed like a little girl and burst into tears.

Turns out I'm a coward, I thought, quivering against the wall I was tied to. The creature would break bone after bone, I was sure of that. I wanted to save the rest for the questions that would really get me into trouble, like the questions about what Perikos was planning and why I was important. 

"Ferox 4," I coughed, whimpering wetly into my hair.

"The Ferox System?" The one at my right queried, his tune arrogant, carrying. "A Union System, primarily occupied by humans. Are you a human?"

"Yes," I sobbed, wishing there was something I could do to lessen the pain.

"Very well. We will return tomorrow, human, to let ask more questions." I felt their attention turn from me as they began to drift towards where they had entered.

I wanted to say how desperately thirsty I was, how hungry I was, how badly hurt I was, to threaten that if they left me here like this all might be lost but that would involve revealing why I was valuable and forfeiting any chance I had of making it until tomorrow and maybe seeing Perikos again. Instead I sniffled and hiccoughed and tried to concentrate on anything besides my twice broken, throbbing wrist.

I heard something like a stone shift again and then all I could hear was the sound of own mewling sobs. What were the chances that they were lying? Surely Perikos would have done anything to prevent his own capture. And what besides ultra-violet light could hold Perikos? I couldn't see how they could have acquired any but then again they would have had the entire period Perikos was trapped in Kragosa to acquire some for just such an occasion. But in a cave? Though what if the rest of Perikos' unit had fallen? He wouldn't have run away and left them. More likely they were bullshitting me to get me to talk and it was working. I wasn't prepared to gamble a chance to free Perikos on the supposition that everything was fine. Everything was not fine. We were ambushed, there was a traitor and I was being interrogated. Provided I didn't die from dehydration or starvation before they were done with me, they were going to run out bones to break before much longer.

Something felt odd suddenly. Maybe there was a change in the air. I couldn't hear anything but I stifled my own sobs a moment and concentrated. I could sense something nearby. Something unpleasant, something that turned my stomach and I felt a little ball of fury surge up inside my chest before I knew the reason why. I saw the faintest trace of movement in the dark and then it clicked.

"Shadow. Come to gloat? Or is this punishment enough?" I wanted to voice to sound threatening and furious but I came off more pathetic, defeated. Fresh tears stung my eyes and rolled down my cheeks as I pressed myself back against the wall.

"Human." The tune was still oily but no longer assured or pompous. It sounded hollow, weaker than before and maybe a little surprised. "You sensed me."

"What the fuck do you want?"

He said nothing for a moment. The rage continued to boil up inside me until I wanted to scream myself hoarse again from the heat of it. 

"What the FUCK do you want, you bastard? You asshole! You're slime, you're nothing! You know what? Don't tell me what you want! Go back to your King and get your reward! You did fucking fantastic! He trusted you! He didn't even care that you insulted him behind his fucking back, that you're so obviously weak and pathetic and jealous of anyone better than you! He cared about you and you stabbed him in the back! I hope you fucking rot, you evil, cowardly, worthless son of a bitch!"

I groaned, catching my breath from my tirade. He didn't move, didn't hit me. I wanted to get up, to crush the life out of him with my bare hands. I felt my chest rise and fall with shallow breaths as I fought to keep from moving too much so I didn't strain my injuries. He wasn't worth that.

"If you lower your voice it will be possible for us to discuss this new…situation," said Shadow, his music hushed, calculated.

"And why would I want to do that?" I growled savagely, feeling my headache throb painfully from the movement.

"Because I never betrayed Leader -- "

"Bullshit!"

" -- and I am certain who did."

"Why the hell should I believe you, you lying piece of shit?"

The darkness was in front of me suddenly and I squirmed back against the wall, trying to stay out of reach. "The Loyalists do not know I am here. No one knows I am here."

"So?"

"They have Leader."

I chewed on my lip a moment. "It's perfect. They knock me around and then send you in and you do a real about-face and suddenly you want to be pals so we can work together for Perikos' sake and then when you get my trust you twist the knife, just like you did to him. Good cop, bad cop. It's perfect. Wish I'd have thought of it sooner."

"Human! I despise you as you do me and that is unlikely to change. But I love Leader, in spite of his inexperience, his idealism, his hopelessness. His foolishness, his predictability or perhaps I love him because of it. I have spent much of my life by his side, guiding him. I taught him of the rebellion, of the Other Path. I followed him until he was captured the first time and I awaited his return, training his followers and carrying out his orders. I have done everything he has ever asked of me and now he is a prisoner again! He will be killed!"




Dark Planet Pt. 04



"How is it he always gets captured and you always go free, huh? Why is it that anything that makes the rebel army strong is bad, if you're such a good, loyal soldier? Huh?"

He was silent again. "I am not strong as he is."

"Yeah? Well no shit."

"It was Sixth General." 

"What was?" Muscles in my neck and shoulder burned as I tried to keep myself as far from Shadow as possible.

"The traitor. We had a spy, a double agent feeding the enemy information. It was Sixth General. She took you from Leader. I tried to intercept but I could not."

I heard myself laugh, high and false. "You're trying to tell me that someone else betrayed Perikos and you tried to protect me? You must think I'm pretty goddamn stupid."

"No," Shadow said, his music steady, measured. "I think you are revolting, unpleasant and woefully stubborn but I do not think you are stupid. My reaction to your presence and your unfortunate timing in mine has given you every reason to doubt me. But suppose that Sixth General provided your earlier assailants an opportunity to capture you by drawing Leader away from you. Later, she was charged with guarding you but she had disappeared from the camp. I believe she had a report to make."

"But why -- "

"I have no idea why she did it. What power or favor would be bestowed upon her for such callousness? But make no mistake, human; I have no affection for you but I would do anything for Leader. Right now he is being held captive. He is much diminished. I could infiltrate his prison but not quickly enough to restore him so he might escape also, even by infusing my life into his. No, to rescue him I am certain I need you. Your energy is limitless -- with you he could fuel a worthy escape." His tone changed from resigned to pitifully bitter and I felt myself trusting his words in spite of myself. 

"Well then. Let me go and we'll get down to business. Where is he?" I said.

Shadow began to drift forward and back in an odd imitation of an anxious pace. "It is not that simple. Right now he is too guarded. The survivors from the battle have sent for reinforcements. If Leader is to survive then he must have enough force to guard his escape. Sending you in now would get him killed and likely they would feed off you until you were depleted utterly."

"So I'm just supposed to wait here till the time's right? He could be dying now"

"I believe they are interested in his murder, at least at this time. They will wait for the King. They will try to make it official, to look as though he was bested and there is no hope of further insurrection. Besides, we have no other option. I also fear that releasing you would raise the alarm among the guards here and we would likely be found and would certainly have no chance of making it to free Leader," Shadow said.

"I see. So instead, what? You tell jokes till they turn up tomorrow and then hide, then when they leave you come back and we keep it up till reinforcements arrive, all the while hoping Perikos can wait it out?"

"As I see it, we have few options besides. I will stay with you, since as much as I detest you, Leader values you above all else and would cast me out if you came to harm."

"Nice," I tried to scoff but ended up just choking on the pain from my wrist, ear, head and ankle. "Well, I'm probably not going to get into too much trouble until those guys come back. I'm kind of attached to the wall."

A thin, oily tendril reached out cautiously to touch the rope at my throat. "It is best if you stay restrained. You are not strong enough to break these bindings without assistance." He tugged lightly at the rope and it in turn sent an unpleasant jolt through the rope and to my wrist. I gasped and squirmed.

"You are already hurt." It wasn't really a question.

"Yeah. You must have seen it. They broke my wrist," I said.

"It is uncomfortable?"

"Actually, it's really painful. Second time in a month this wrist has been broken too."

"May I…may I touch it?"

"What? No!" I felt dizzy at the very suggestion of letting Shadow near my broken wrist. "That would only make it feel worse which would be the last thing I need."

"How long will it take to heal?"

"Too long," I sighed, shifting on the hard ground. "I'm afraid to set it in case I do it wrong and even when they're set properly, bones take too long to heal."

"I could set it."

"Are you kidding me? You barely even know what bones are, let alone how to fix them! Is this just an excuse to hurt me really badly without guilt?"

I felt something vaguely slimy and cool wind almost flat around my left wrist, around the bracelet Perikos gave me. "What the hell are you doing?" I asked as I felt it tighten its grip around my unbroken wrist. 

"I am assessing your bone structure," the tone was flat, almost purposely devoid of nuance.

"I said no. Let's just wait till -- ARRGGGHH!" A scream tore at my throat. Shadow had turned to my right wrist so quickly I had time to feel anything but a sickening crunch that resonated through my entire body just like the break had. I turned to be sick but there was nothing in my stomach to throw up. It took me five minutes or so to collect myself, to regulate my breathing enough that I could think about anything besides my wrist. 

"That was painful," I heard Shadow say after another moment. He still seemed to be pacing.

"Yeah," I moaned. What I wouldn't give for Union medicine right now. Anesthesia, sedatives, Calcorrex for breaks and fractures, anything but sitting here having to feel every second of it. "Thank you for setting my bone, even though I asked you not to. At least now it'll heal properly, when it finally does."

"You have other injuries?"

"Nothing you can help with. My ankle will heal soon but I just have to wait. My headache will go away in a bit -- I'm actually pretty lucky I keep waking up after all these blows to the head. And I don't know what they did to my ear after they put a spike through it but I don't think it's bleeding very much anymore."

My stomach rumbled then. I was starving. It felt like my stomach was eating itself.

"Why did you make that sound?" Shadow asked me. I felt my heart ache as I was reminded of Perikos' alarm at hearing my stomach growl back on we Kragosa.

"I didn't mean to, I'm just hungry. And thirsty."

"You need to…feed?" Shadow continued his pacing.

"Yeah," I said.

"What do you feed on? How long will you manage without?"

I almost laughed. I case I forgot who I was dealing with, Shadow wanted to make sure to remind me. "Without food? Not as long as I would back on Ferox 4. Ten days. Fifteen maybe. Without water? Probably not past tomorrow. I don't remember the last time I drank."

"It is water, then, that you drink?" Shadow's tune sounded almost nervous.

I began to giggle and couldn't stop. It was probably the pain, the fear, the sleep deprivation and suddenly feeling so thirsty I was afraid I'd turn inside out. "No, I drink the blood of innocents. Of course I drink water. Why do you think Perikos made sure we set up camp near the river and lake?"

Shadow seemed to stiffen when I mentioned Perikos and after a moment I did to. My tummy hurt from loneliness, from fright as much as it hurt from giggling and hunger. "I will see if I can find some water in this cavern." And then he was gone. I couldn't see him, couldn't even sense him. 

"Wait! What if you can't? Are you coming back?" I felt foolish and not for the first time pitifully weak but I couldn't help myself. No matter what I might say aloud I'd rather have Shadow here and loathing me than be left all alone in this place.

I waited for over an hour, wondering if I'd been duped. Maybe he was lying the whole time and I'd fallen for it. Or what if I'd just pissed him off real bad and now I was on my own, Perikos be damned? Or maybe this cavern connected to the others and he'd been captured and I really was going to die alone in here without ever seeing Perikos again.

After another twenty minutes I felt him again even though I couldn't see him. I nearly collapsed with relief. I really might have done if I had any real range of movement. "Shadow? Are you all right?"

He was moving slowly, much more slowly than usual and he was bigger than was strictly necessary in the solitary darkness. He was bigger than me even. "I am well. I located water and have brought you some. I am assuming you use your mouth to drink?"

My eyes widened in surprise and the corner of my mouth twitched a little. "Yes, my mouth. How am I going to drink it though?"

A tendril appeared at the corner of my mouth and I was reminded forcefully of our first encounters, particularly at the first rally. I felt an embarrassed blush creep into my cheeks as I remembered my reaction then. I didn't get off on helplessness, did I? Another freaky thing to add to the list of freaky things about me. Goddamn it, sometimes I wished I was anyone but me.

I turned my head to face the tendril by my mouth and parted my teeth. The tendril pressed into my open mouth slowly, almost nervously, careful not to actually touch me at all. I felt something wet and wonderfully cool begin to fill my mouth in a slow, even stream. I swallowed as fast as I could, gulping at the water that filled my mouth until my stomach began to ache and swell. Shadow withdrew the tendril briskly and stood before me, maybe waiting to see if I would grow bigger or sprout a third head.

"Thank you" I said, reveling in the feel of a lubricated throat. 

"For Leader." His music was gruff, almost shy and certainly abrupt. "Do you need to eat as well?"

I cast my eyes over the small amount of red light inside the cave. The far walls and the patch near the entrance contained some kind of fungi but I wouldn't know until I could see it closely whether or not they were edible. "I should eat. We'll make this less awkward. Could you pull up a few different mushrooms from each patch and just bring them over here. I'd do it myself but you don't seem to want to let me go."

"Do not be foolish," I saw Shadow move away from me and towards the patches of vegetation spread throughout the cave. "If I pulled the spike from the rock they would know something was wrong. The bindings restraining you are one continuous length. There is nothing to untie. Either I break the ropes and you are beaten or worse or else I pull the spike from the rock and they know for certain you have had help and the hunt begins. I will do nothing to jeopardize Leader."

I sighed. Fair enough. If our situation was reversed, I'd like to think I'd stick around and help but I certainly wouldn't untie him if I thought it would come back to bite me or Perikos in the ass.

Shadow returned and deposited a small pile of mushrooms and fungi caps next to my lap. I could make out several different sizes and shapes in the dim light. I twisted my body slightly so I was better able to face the pile. I could just reach them on such short lengths of rope. I narrowed my eyes. There were a few I'd tried before and found to be inedible or worse. Besides that there were four or five I didn't recognize and I could only hope were palatable. I reached for one of them, one that looked like a tiny beehive. I tried to reach my mouth with the rope but I couldn't even reach, even by trying to roll myself up in a ball. The rope around my wrists, neck and middle pinched and chafed badly and I was no closer to feeding myself. Frustrated, I tossed a cap ten centimeters in the air and opened my mouth but my aim was off and it just rolled away, out of my reach entirely. I shut my eyes and counted down from ten slowly, tried to calm myself. I will not cry again, I told myself. Not over this. For fuck's sake, I was no stranger to humiliation. Shit, sometimes it made me horny. But not like this. Not with Shadow. Still, there was little dignity to be gained by starving myself.

I squinted into the darkness, trying to make out his shape. It was difficult since he didn't seem to be moving much anymore. "Shadow?"

Something smooth and graceful moved, so close to me I had to stifle a gasp. "Yes?"

"I…um…well, I can't…reach," I muttered, as thought saying it quietly made the slightest bit of difference.

"You cannot reach the food I brought you?" 

"No, I guess I can reach the food. Getting the food to the mouth is a little more difficult," I bit down hard on my tongue. "It's the ropes! They're too short!" I cried out suddenly, humiliated again. 

"You are asking me to feed you?" There was something to Shadow's tone that I couldn't place. It wasn't disgust like I'd expected and he didn't sound smug exactly. It wasn't arousal by any stretch but the tone made me want to hide my face all the same. Though if I could do that I wouldn't be having this problem.

"Yes," I replied, so quietly I could barely hear my own voice. Shadow took my meaning, that much was clear. He took one of the small, conical ones shaped like a beehive from my right hand and then a moment later I felt something soft and spongy press against my swollen, chapped lips. I opened wide, taking the whole thing into my mouth and chewing thoroughly. It tasted like an odd combination of must, sawdust and one of the southern spices from Ferox 4 you only got when you went to the big city. Not good by any means but I'd had worse mushrooms since being here. Lots worse. I chewed thoroughly and swallowed and before long I felt another conical one pressed to my lips, same as before. I ate it too and Shadow fed me another. I ate seven more and I was past full really, not because they were really substantial but because I wasn't used to eating like I had before Kragosa. But I refused to stop until I'd eaten what Shadow had picked since I didn't want to have to ask to be fed again today.

Shadow shifted, moved a few meters away from me. "You are sated?"

"For today. Thank you," I added, not so much as an afterthought and more because I hated feeling weak and I particularly hated feeling weak around Shadow, even if he wasn't being the galaxy's hugest trouser stain anymore.

There was an awkward silence that hung in the air but I didn't want to break it. What would we talk about? Perikos? That would be ten different kinds of uncomfortable given the nature of our relationships. The war and what an epic bust that turned out to be? Ourselves? Like, "hey, I'm a female bipedal mammal that loves sunlight and you sure aren't any of those things. Want to talk about it?" Better to just keep my mouth shut for once in my life.

I sat against the wall for another ten minutes in silence. I tried to shift a little against the rock, adjust so that my butt wasn't falling asleep anymore and my arms kept circulation. The silence got louder. I felt like Shadow was looking at me, which of course he couldn't have been but even so, I felt his undivided attention on me. It felt creepy.

"What? What do you want?" I cried when I finally couldn't take it anymore.

"You are tired. You will enter a comatose state soon."

"More or less, yeah. What does that have to do with you?"

"I have also exerted myself and require a rest."

"Fine by me," I said, yawning wide. He was right, I really was tired.

"But before I do, I require sustenance."

That hit me like a brick. I don't know why, I didn't have a good reason. We were very probably trapped in this cave together and otherwise alone. He had fed me and brought me water. We were risking everything on reinforcements arriving and having the opportunity to get me to Perikos, which would necessitate Shadow's muscle. And I was pretty much the only safe snack on the planet and still it hadn't occurred to me. I knew my job was to feed Perikos and his troops, but it was always all about Perikos, not anyone else and certainly never Shadow. 

"The last time we tried this, didn't you describe me as 'nothing of any great worth' or something like that?" My voice sounded more hurt and frightened than I'd wanted it to.

"Our circumstances have changed. Likely I can survive without feeding for the better part of a month, just as you can but I will be weakened by it. It is not to our benefit to be weak."

"But you'll hate it," I said, completely aware of how feeble that sounded. Like I was only looking out for his best interest.

I felt Shadow reach out and gingerly touch the arch of my left foot. I was aware for the first time since our first meeting of how clammy he was, not quite slimy but not clean feeling or properly smooth either. I felt my stomach turn over, more in fear than outright disgust. He could do whatever he wanted to me when I was bound like this and there was sweet fuck all I could do about it.

"I provided you with sustenance, did I not?" I felt the tentacle at my arch split to coil around my toes. 

"Yes," I squeaked, trying not to pull away. I didn't want to make him angry. How had this gone so wrong so quickly? "But Perikos was jealous of others using my…" I swallowed hard, tried to find the words but they died in my throat. 

"Perhaps," Shadow replied, his tone unconvincingly light, though I imagined he had understood my objection. "Though as I see it we are at an impasse. I see no point in feeding in half measures when it is a simple enough matter to sate myself. You feel intense fear around the Loyalist guards but I cannot get close enough to you to feed adequately from those emotions without being detected. I could try to elicit fear from you myself but I am confident you would object."

He was right. I tried to imagine what Shadow might do to me that would elicit enough fear to satisfy himself with and nothing I could think of was tolerable.

"So we have one foreseeable option. I will have disregard Leader's wishes in favor of his impending escape. He may not forgive me," he sounded for a moment both incredulous and revolted, "but my conscience will be at ease." 

The darkness around me became thicker, more impenetrable and I felt the tentacle on my foot began to slide up my calf and inner thigh, leaving a thing trail of moisture in its path.

I couldn't stop myself, I squeezed my legs shut, hard. "I'm happy to hear you won't be losing any sleep over this but can't we come to some kind of compromise?"

When Shadow sang he was much too close, almost ambient. "What could I possibly gain from allowing you to limit my access?"

I began to shake now in earnest. Shadow had every reason in the world to use me hard and claim ignorance. He wanted to hurt me, I could feel it. I felt the tentacle I had caught between my legs thin out and poke at my naked sex. Even as I squeezed my legs together as hard as I could, I couldn't stop him. 

"Isn't there any other way we can do this? Whatever else you want, honestly, I'll do it. I swear." I felt an increasingly familiar sting at the corners of my eyes, heard the tremble in my voice as I pulled away as much as possible, pressed my back flush against the wall.

"I do not think there is another way, no. Though I do not mind if you struggle, if it enhances your fear." 

I felt the tentacle between my legs wriggle between my tightly closed lips and poke up inside of me, though only just. I closed my eyes, tried to think of something happy, something bright and far away but my imagination failed me utterly and all I could do was concentrate on how unnatural his touch felt, how the sheen of moisture from his skin itched at the inside of my tightly clamped thighs. My face was damp with tears, my nose was running and yet something inside me twisted, not completely unpleasantly. It only made me feel worse.