A Standup Philosopher
patreon
Crown of Slaves Chapter Six
🕑 Added 2023-07-02 00:50:00 +0000 UTCCrown of Slaves
Chapter Six
######################################################
I had to admit that, once we were away from the slave market, I started to have fun. Shopping had, admittedly, never been something I loved doing. I preferred to go to stores with specific items, specific sections at the very worst, in mind. And, admittedly, I didn’t much care for shopping now, especially given my status as a slave unable to buy things as freely as I could have done in my old life, but spending time away from the estate with Nicky was enjoyable. Though she was well dressed, she had no emblems or other signs to indicate her rank or heritage, leaving her just one more young pureblood amongst thousands, accompanied by one slave amongst millions. She was more…playful than she was at the Estate, even in the privacy of her suite. While she still had to keep to a certain standard, I had a feeling I was truly seeing her for the first time, seeing what she could be without the binding chains and pressures of position and protocols. It was…nice. There was no other word for it.
What was also nice (though torturous) was helping her pick new lingerie and ‘social’ clothing. Much as one might expect from an entire martial culture based around a religious code that included the line ‘there is only passion’, non-military Imperial and Sith clothing (at least for those sufficiently able to afford it) is far different from the game. Starting at enticing and ending a half-step shy out outright nudity, it would be a dream come true for any hot-blooded appreciator of the feminine form. If I had to guess (and an educated guess at that), it wasn’t only to embrace the Sith ideals of hedonism and self-enjoyment, but also as an expression of power. Knowing that you can dress however you like, strut around a city practically naked, but have such power, influence, and prestige that no one would even dreamof commenting, never mind actually touching you.
I could certainly see the appeal of something like that. In fact, I did see the appeal in that. It wasn’t all that different from how much I enjoyed my ‘uniform’ back at the Estate, except it would be spiced with the knowledge that I was the one with the power, I was the one in control.
I immediately resolved to do some shopping her as soon as I had the funds. I was, by God, going to stroll around my Fury-class either entirely in the nude or in the sexiest clothing possible. That was still a ways off, however, and focusing on my gorgeous owner was the main priority right now. Fortunately, it wasn’t much of a chore. All I had to do was give my honest opinion of various outfits or singular articles of clothing, some once they were on her body and some as she held them up for inspection.
“No, no, definitely not!” I said, the instant she pulled a long, tight, midriff-bearing, leg-slitted gold-trimmed scarlet dress down from it’s display case, waving both of my hands in a definitively negating gesture. “It would look terrible with your complexion, the two shades of red would clash horribly!”
“I know that, Khai, I am not entirely without color coordination, you know.” She retorts dryly, and I felt myself flush in embarrassment, even as I frowned lightly in confusion. While she might be intending to ask me about how I thought the dress would look on a family member or something of the sort, the same problem that applied to her would apply to them as well. Though there was some variance in richness of skin tone amongst House Luwian, it wasn’t sufficient to prevent that issue. “I am considering it for a gift, and want your opinion on it’s cut and make in general, not for myself specifically.”
That made quite a bit more sense, and you nod understandingly as you give the dress a deeper appraisal. That it was made from quality material went without saying, but there was certainly more to the quality and appreciability of a garment than mere materials. You took a moment to give a brief prayer of thanks that the movers and shakers of the Empire had neither the taste nor the desire for ‘avant-garde’ fashion like the rich people back home did, and shuddered briefly at the memory of absurd nonsense like side-ways or upside-down dresses.
“It certainly looks fantastic to me. It could be garish, given the colors involved, but the red is deep enough and the trim is thin enough, and subtle enough, that it draws the eye and highlights the rest of the outfit and the lines of the person wearing it rather than simply being gaudy. It wouldn’t work on just anyone, though. You’d need a certain complexion and build to properly pull it off.” I responded finally after a long inspection, and she nodded with a pleased look on her face, a minute twitch of her hand summoning a hovering staff member to take it from her towards the counter. A counter which was laden with other selections intended for purchase. I had to wonder who she intended to gift it to, because there was no way it was for Kela. I liked my fellow slave a great deal, but she had neither the build nor the complexion required for a dress such as that. Which meant it was for a third party, and despite the knowledge that it was irrational and hardly my place, I felt a surge of jealousy in my heart, a light scowl marring my face. Despite our respective positions, it seemed I could feel quite possessive over Nicky.
Interesting.
I watched as she, apparently satisfied with her shopping for the day (or at least this store, Force only knew how much longer she would keep this up, and how many stores she would drag me through in the process), started to follow the woman. Still feeling somewhat vexed with the situation, and rather vexed indeed with whomsoever the dress was intended for, I rose and followed as well. We, or Asmu-Nikal at least, were bowed out of the shop with a promise that her purchases would be delivered to her home within the hour.
“Where next?” I asked, and she frowned thoughtfully for a long moment before looking over at me, giving me a long, slow, predatory once over. A grin, bordering on the maniacal crept across her face, and she beckoned me to follow as she changed course, heading towards one of the stores that she had previously been ignoring. In fact, I believe it was a store that she had quite literally turned her nose up earlier in our little expedition, and I felt a feeling of vague but profound dread. A feeling that only grew when Nicky decided to open the doors with a pulse of the Force rather than waiting for the motion sensors to kick in.
“Oh, Lana~!” she sang mockingly as she sailed through them, practically strutting now, and my breath caught at the name. Star Wars had never been prone to having common names, names that seemed to be shared between multiple characters, even in the extended universe. Of course, I knew that, logically, there had to be names that qualified as ‘common’ in a galaxy where cities could have the population of Earth at the time I died, and that the movies and games and books had focused far more on special individuals with special names than the proverbial ‘salt of the earth’ sorts. I knew that Lana could easily be the equivalent of Mary or Jane or Amanda for the Empire, but I still hoped…
“Asmu-Nikal. As dramatic as ever, I see.” A terribly familiar voice drawled as the blonde form of a much younger Lana Beniko appeared from deeper within the premises, eyeing Nicky with scant favor. “I had heard you managed to return alive from Korriban, so I suppose congratulations are in order for that. It’s a pity that the sacred homeworld couldn’t teach you how to be subtle or quiet.”
“Oh, sweet Lana, don’t tell me you’re jealous? After all, I’ve come and gone from Korriban and you, it seems, struggle still to convince those parents of yours to let you go at all. Still keeping you safely tucked away, are they?” Nicky simpered, actually simpered in response, and I realized that I was witnessing a battle, on of many, from a long-lasting war of social rivalry. Lana’s cheek twitched slightly as she tightened her jaw, smiling brightly back at Nicky with eyes that burned with aggravation. She looked over at me, mouth opening (for another dig at Nicky with me as the shovel, no doubt), before freezing as our eyes met. In that moment, I felt a connection snap into place between us. Thin, barely noticeable, flimsy compared to the one I had with Nicky, and I was sure Lana lacked the training or experience to recognize it for what it was, but it was there all the same.
“Well now, who is this?” Lana asked, sweeping past Nicky to examine me more closely, giving me several very frank once-overs, eyes lingering on my chest and my bulge before narrowing as they focused on crimson carvings that represented Luwian’s depravities. She stepped closer still, lightly tracing a finger over them, and I couldn’t help the slight shudder that swept through me at the mild shock I seemed to feel rush through me at the contact. “What is your name?”
“My name is…” I started to respond, blushing faintly, only to be cut off as Nicky swept in with a fierce scowl, pulling me away from her apparent rival.
“Her name is nothing to do with you, Beniko, and I shall thank you to keep your hands off of my slave.” She fairly snapped, and I could feel {Possessiveness} and mild {Confusion} radiating down the bond the two of us shared.
“Oh, calm down, Asmu-Nikal, I was simply trying to be polite. Perhaps if you weren’t such a cunt to everyone all the time, you might be able to recognize it when you see it. But then, I’m not surprised that you’d come into my property, act like the same self-absorbed bitch you’ve always been, and then get even more unpleasant than usual because you’re not the center of attention for longer than a heartbeat.” Lana bit back, folding her arms over her chest and glowering past me at the pureblood, and I couldn’t help but swallow reflexively as the Force began to swirl around the two of them, the air growing tense and sharp.
“Polite? You were practically devouring her with your eyes, and stroking her like a pet besides!” Nicky hissed, totally ignoring the personal attacks as she focused on what was, apparently, a far more important issue: Lana’s interactions with me. “If I didn’t know better, I would say that you wanted my slave for yourself!”
“And shouldn’t I, hmm? Every woman in the Kaas system knows of your dear, elder brother’s proclivities, every woman knows that the benefits of potentially catching the eye of House Luwian’s heir is not worth the risks, so why wouldn’t I want to take such a beautiful woman away from such a man?” Lana sneered, stepping closer and gesturing to the marks littering my skin. “Look at her! Look at what she has suffered at the hands of your house! To flog a disobedient slave is one thing, but even one as untrained in the Force can sense the atrocities that were inflicted on her presence! Better for her to serve me, at least she will live a life of service rather than finding herself torturously raped to death!”
{Outrage} and {Indignation} poured out of Nicky as she seemed to swell, physically and metaphysically both, at both the confirmation and the commentary. Beneath it though, I did sense a small but powerful throb of {Fear}. Fear of what, I wondered as I watched the ongoing disaster, smart enough to keep well out of it for the time being.
“Legacies of my father’s experiments, from which I recovered her,” Nicky retorted, which was something of an over-statement, given the experiments had already stopped long before she got home from Korriban, but I wasn’t going to point that out right now. “And she hardly needs you to protect her from my brother when she has me. Vestara is mine, my personal companion. No-one else is permitted to touch her, never mind take her or hurt her.”
Lana actually looked somewhat reassured by that, perhaps even mildly grateful, but my dear owner either didn’t notice it or ignored it as she continued ruthlessly.
“Besides, someone like you could never handle a specimen such as this.”
‘This’ was punctuated by her stepping close, hand ghosting it’s way down my body to cup and squeeze my shaft through the cloth shielding it from view, cloth that rapidly began getting much tighter than it already had been as I began to respond to her touch. She fondled me, smirking at Lana, who was blushing faintly despite a ferocious scowl as her eyes (a brilliant blue, I noted, and found myself lamenting the day they would become the orange-yellow of the Sith) locked onto my growing bulge. Still, I had now been more directly involved in this argument, and as aware as I was of my current position in life, there was only so much of this nonsense that I was willing to tolerate.
“That is enough out of both of you!” I barked, reaching down to pull Nicky’s hand off of me as I stepped away from both of them and folded my arms, adopting a stern expression. Both seemed surprised at my behavior, and Nicky actually seemed a little hurt, but I didn’t allow that to dissuade me. “The two of you are Sith or future Sith, the future heads of your own Houses. You are meant for greater things than a petty childhood rivalry! You are meant to help guide the Empire into and through the future, a brighter future, and you would carry out your destinies with less suffering and greater success if you would work together, or at least not spend all your focusing on sabotaging one another instead of serving our people!”
“Khai…” Nicky said warningly, though what exactly the warning was for, I wasn’t sure, and frankly I couldn’t care less at the moment. A multitude of exasperations had piled up on top of one another, not the least of which was the fear that I would lose one of them to this rivalry, something I wasn’t willing to contemplate.
“I will not be silent this time! You could be so much more than what you believe possible!” I rolled right over her still-born objection, a part of me fully aware of the fact that I should probably shut my goddamn mouth before I pushed my luck well past the breaking point, but I didn’t care anymore. I had reached my proverbial boiling point with this entire existence and everything that had happened since I began it. “Your brother is a brutish oaf and a fool, a blunt instrument with none of your father’s intelligence or your mother’s grace! I give it a couple of years, at the very most, before he’s a corpse! Gutted by a rival he pissed off, slaughtered by the first woman with actual power he tries to treat like one of his toys, or one of countless casualties on a battlefield, because he let his ego get the best of him and tried to take on an opponent well beyond his reach! Your little brother is barely more than a child, easy for you to displace as heir, and even if he isn’t a cruel lunatic like Tudalhiya, he inherited little of your parents’ brilliance either!”
The two girls stared at me, expressions of shock having transitioned to dumbfoundedness, and I was prepared to continue my rant, with the focus shifting to Lana, when the Force quaked around us. Dark Side energy, like an enormous pressure wave, swept across the city with an almost physical presence. We all felt it, to varying degrees, and I wasn’t surprised to see that Asmu-Nikal was impacted the most. She was, after all, the only one of us with formal training, and the enhanced sensitivity that came with it.
“That…that did not come from the Citadel.” Lana pointed out, eyes a bit wild and breathing a bit heavy, and I shook my head.
“No, from the west. There is only one thing in that direction that could cause such an event within the Force, only one place on Dromuund Kaas containing such quantities and depth of Dark Side energy.” I agreed, having weathered the event a little better, but still feeling on the breathless side of things. Outside, sirens began to wail, and I could see and hear and feel the panic as the city tried to react to whatever had happened.
“The Dark Temples. Something has happened with the Dark Temple.” Asmu-Nikal finished the thought, a note of distinct dread in her tone, and I couldn’t blame her. Especially since I knew exactly what disturbing the Dark Temple could lead to.
Time was running out.
Canon was coming.
###############################################################
Lord Aloysious Kallig, Grand Marshall of the Armies of the Most Holy Empire of the Sith, Right Hand to Tulak Hord, awoke with a start. Something had happened, something in the realms physical and spiritual alike, and he stretched out into the whorls of The Force with the instinctual ease that came from decades of training and carefully-honed innate talent. The result incensed him, and he rose from his bed with a thunderous expression of fury on his face.
Departing his chambers, he stalked through the halls, wrath wafting off of him as he hunted down the pack of fools that had dared to invade his home, his sanctum. He could feel their greed, their wretched, blind hunger for wealth and power. A hunger that far outstripped their means to earn it or take it, for they were weak. Weaker than his daughters had been when they had been learning to walk, and yet they thought themselves capable to robbing him? Of taking that which belonged to him, that which he had won through his own might of body and mind?
He found them, lingering in the dimly lit antechamber, and couldn’t help his baffled amusement as he beheld them. They were little more than a gang of pampered brats, the same sort of worthless churls that he saw die by the dozens on the battlefield, laid low at the hands of their entirely-unjustified egos, following a pureblood oaf whose intelligence could probably be measured in the single digits and whose only value to the Empire was likely his bloodline.
The group had barely a moment to notice him before he struck out in the Force, driving each and every one of them to their knees. The wisest ones submitted immediately, proclaiming their loyalty to him with a fervor that seemed almost unnatural, as if their minds had been entirely dominated, but cowardice (even if not commonly to this degree) was hardly an unusual reaction to those he confronted.
Their ‘leader’, though, tried to resist. The Force gathered around the boy, and despite the relatively small and pitiful presence he had to muster, Aloysious paused. Not because of the boy’s strength, of course, nor any sudden onrush of pity or generosity on his own part, but because of a small flavour to his presence.
It was a little known fact outside of the more powerful and discerning of Sith and Jedi, but an individual’s Presence within the Force could take on minor tints of those they interacted with. He commonly, when explaining it to the less aware and educated, compared it to scents for species and races with enhanced smelling. Everyone had their own natural, personal scent, but close or repeated contact with other individuals could cause the scents of those other individuals to ‘rub off’ on them and mingle with their own.
This boy had been around one of his descendants. Not one of his daughters, perhaps, but a daughter of his daughters. That could not be tolerated, the very idea of such a weak fool being in close proximity to a member of The House of Kallig was utterly unacceptable. He would discover which of them needed to be chastised for allowing this brainless boy to get close enough to gain a tint of their presence within their own.
A simple command has the brat’s former comrades leaping upon him, holding him immobile so that Aloysious could concentrate on the far more important, and worthy of his efforts, task of tearing the pureblood’s mind apart for the answers he sought. A task that was easy from the outset, because the mental defenses in his way might as well have not existed for all their effectiveness, and the cause for that was not simply the massive disparity in power and experience between them. No, it was clear that whoever had raised and trained this boy had utterly neglected to teach him how one properly warded one’s mind from influence or intrusion. It was disgraceful, and he could clearly see he would have to have a stern word with a few people about relaxing standards based on bloodline or race again. The Empire was a meritocracy, not one of those wretched star-nations where birth, rather than ability, dictated everything.
The boy’s childhood was thoroughly irrelevant and quickly discarded, as was his training on Korriban. Though briefly tempted to see just who had allowed standards to degrade, or at least refused to enforce them properly, he quite frankly cared only for the involvement of his own kin. He had other means to solve any problems with the Academy than this.
The boy began coughing blood, his presence in the Force starting to slip away as his ‘self’ fell apart under Kallig’s efforts, which intensified as his time to work shortened. The answer finally revealed itself from a time, not months ago, with the image of one of his descendants (he did no recognize her, specifically, but her features and the memory of her presence made it clear she was of his blood) dressed boldly and accompanied by the boy’s sister and a slave-girl.
Leaving the now-mindless corpse to finish expiring, he turned and headed back into the deeper portions of his palace, feeling quite relieved. He hadn’t thought any of his family would be so brainless as to involve themselves with trash like that, even for a fling, but the confirmation was satisfying. And, despite his age, he had to admit that his kinswoman had excellent taste. The boy’s sister was quite attractive, and seemed talented enough in the Force. Freshly returned from Korriban, in fact, and Aloysious had the feeling that she hadn’t made use of her family name to neglect her training.
Of course, that relief didn’t mean that he would be satisfied with the information that he had now. Once he tidied up the damage that his newest group of servants had caused in their ill-advised attempt to take what was no theirs, he would set about determining which blood of his blood had featured in the boy’s memories, and ensure that she wasn’t making a fool of herself. Even if sister was more competent, the family may not be worthy of so intimate a connection with his own.
Looking around his palace, he frowned again. Really, the amount of damage that had been caused even in that short incursion was just unacceptable. The ante-chamber was half in ruins, it looked like it could be some manner of archaeology project at this point! Well, the interlopers would find themselves putting to right that which they had so grievously damaged, and they would be grateful for it. Really, sparing them but putting them to work was an expression of profound generosity on his part.
As he started giving commands to his servants, young and old, he idly wondered what his descendant and her girls were up to at the moment. Nothing that would cause him any trouble, he hoped. He was getting to old to be chasing grand-children about and lecturing them about proper decorum!
############################################################
