COMPANION Chapter 1

Looking through the glass at his captives, Klorel remembered how frightened they had been when his Serpent Guards first marched into their city. The screaming and the fires started soon after. He remembered the smell of it all. The smell of flowers from their gardens, burning stones, and fear all mixed together. It aroused him. He watched the humans as they stood all crowed together at one end of the room. As if their physical closeness would protect them. It would only make it harder to get away once the killing began, but they could not see that. A door opened behind him then, and Teal'c entered with one of the physicians.

"My Lord, I have examined all the captives, and they are perfectly healthy."

"Excellent." Klorel acknowledged without turning around. "Teal'c," he called, beckoning the Jaffa to his side. "Are there any you want?" he asked.

"No, My Lord." Teal'c replied.

"You did not look."

"There are none." He said again.

"Very well. Tell the Jaffa they may pick if they choose to, then kill the rest."

Teal'c bowed and left the room, leaving to physician to wait to be dismissed. Klorel however, ignored him and continued to watch the humans below him. He watched the Jaffa enter the room. He watched as the humans crushed even closer together. He watched as the Jaffa began pulling people from the group. He watched as the women struggled and were dragged screaming out the doors. And then he watched as a woman attacked one of the Jaffa. Her movements were swift and unexpected. She was quite beautiful, he realized. She managed to grab the staff weapon away from the Serpent Guard and kill him with it before the others noticed anything.

Klorel gazed on as the events that followed played out in a still silence on the other side of the glass. One of his Jaffa turned and shot her. A clean kill, directly in the chest. Her body was propelled backwards by the force of the shot and then fell to the ground. Another woman ran forward then, tearing away from the Jaffa who tried to stop her. She knelt beside the body of the dead female, reached out and closed the dead one's eyes. Then, with a graceful motion of her hand, the living woman drew a sign in the air over the corpse. The Guard who had previously been restraining her, grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. He struck her then, sharply across the face.

It was his momentary anger at the Serpent Guard's violence that brought him out of the dream-like reverie that he had been observing the scene in. The Guard brought up his hand to strike her again but before he could, Klorel brought his own hand down on the control panel in front of him.

"Jaffa kree!" His voice reverberated throughout the room below and the humans pressed even closer together.

"Itt shak lar yo." bring her to me he snapped. The Guard, who had snapped to attention when he had hear his Lord's voice, roughly shoved the woman in front of him, but when she did not keep walking, he once again grabbed her arm and dragged her from the room.

Below him, the Jaffa returned to their selections. They once again pulled women, and in some cases men, from the mass of people. Klorel however, paid no attention to them. In the last moments before she was pulled from the room, she had looked up at the window he stood behind. And for more than an instant she stared at him. He had met her gaze, then let his eyes slide over her body. The Jaffa had dragged her from the room then, and he had turned away from the window; his mind and body on fire.

"My Lord?" a voice behind him questioned softly.

Klorel spun around. "Why are you still here?" he demanded. Before the physician could explain, the door opened and the Jaffa entered, along with the woman. She was pushed her to her knees in front of Klorel and the Jaffa saluted.

"No. No." Klorel said in the language of the woman's people as he walked forward, towards her. Placing his hand on her shoulders he gently drew her up to her feet. "There," he said, "now I can look at you."

He took her chin in his hand and turned her face to the left. It was then that he saw the blood. His hand reflexively tightened on her face and she winced. It was barely perceptible, but he saw it and quickly loosened his grip.

"Why" he began, turning to the Jaffa, his voice soft "is she bleeding?"

The Serpent Guard said nothing, his eyes flitting from the woman's bleeding temple, to his Lord's face. "She must have been injured in the attack My Lord."

"No." Klorel responded. "She is bleeding because you hit her." The anger in his voice grew increasingly evident with each additional word that passed his lips until, at the last word, he raised his hand and directed a blast from the hand device directly at the Jaffa's chest. The man flew back and slammed into the wall. As the unconscious man slumped to the floor, Klorel's attention had already returned to the woman before him. She was young, and beautiful. He reached out his hand and stroked his fingers over her cheek, down her neck and across her collarbone. He could feel her shaking under his fingers, but he truly could not tell if it was from fear or something completely different. Slowly then, to gain a reaction from her, he moved his hand down until his palm was covering her breast and gently squeezed. Before he could see her reaction though, the physician spoke, diverting his attention.

"My Lord, our examinations show that this female has already belonged to a man." Klorel turned at those words, and not bothering with the hand device, struck the physician across the face. The large man fell to the floor and Klorel stood over him, breathing heavily in anger. "And now," he grated from between clenched teeth, his eyes flashing an unearthly light, "she will belong to me."