Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron or its original Japanese version Golion. Both are the property of their original creators and/or importers/dubbers. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.
The Sindariin
Chapter Nine:
Sincline tied the sash of his robe and stepped out of the bedroom into his sitting room, carful to close the door behind him as quietly as possible so as not to wake his exhausted and sleeping bride. He walked over to a cabinet made of polished chalha wood and, opening it, withdrew a bottle of aged yarbara and a glass. He poured himself a generous helping of the blood wine and sat down on his sofa. He was in a foul mood. Fala had seemed so receptive to him earlier, he had forgotten that it was because of the dose of aphrodisiac he'd given her and not any great talent of his. A stupid mistake to make.
The Emperor sipped his wine while brooding over his already unhappy marriage situation. He didn't much like the prospect of having to drug his wife every night that he wanted a little sex and he didn't much like the idea of restraining her and disciplining her like one of the slaves in his Collection. Fala was not a harem slave and he shouldn't have to treat her like one just to get an orgasm. She had been so wet and responsive while under the influence of the aphrodisiac, if she could be like that all the time life would be wonderful!
He drained his first glass of the blood wine and pored a second. Fala's blood had tasted so much sweeter... But that presented another problem. The main motivation for her resistance of their second go-around was that his first little love-bite was causing her pain. That was a sentiment the Emperor perfectly understood, he lost interest in sex when he was seriously injured and in excruciating pain. Though, Sincline hardly considered a few teeth marks to be a real 'injury', certainly not something capable of causing 'excruciating pain'. But then, he reminded himself, he was not entirely human as Fala was. His father was Galran and from him Sincline had inherited tougher skin (though he didn't have scales, thank Menagroth!), a higher pain tolerance and faster healing abilities. His beautiful Altean wife, being a thoroughbred human, was not so lucky.
Perhaps for humans a little bite on the shoulder was a serious injury? He took another sip of wine and shook his head. It wasn't like he had taken a bite out of her jugular vein or anything. Fala was just overreacting, humans were not as weak as she was making herself out to be. He'd seen human slaves endure far worse than any thing he'd done to Fala this night. Hell! His own harem endured worse than she had. Yes, she was just overreacting, culture shock and all that jazz. She would adjust. She would. HIs mother had adjusted. Hadn't she?
Sincline paused in his contemplation of his difficult wife. Glaring at his own reflection in the dark red blood-wine he realized that he really didn't know anything about his mother at all. He knew she had been human, she had been Altean and she had been beautiful. But he had no clue as to what kind of woman she really was. He had always assumed she had been like Fala in manner and personality because the two so greatly resembled each other in appearance.
The Emperor stood, leaving his wine glass forgotten on the chalha wood coffee table, he left his suit of rooms and stalked down the corridor to his study. He sat down in front of his desk and gave a sigh that was little more than a half-hearted exhale. He opened the locked drawer in the desk and shuffled through its contents, his marriage contract which he still needed to make copies of and enter into official record, a contorted piece of metal that had been a souvenir of his first tour after graduating from the Imperial Military Academy, and various other things that could only be described as 'junk'. Until finally, flattened on the bottom of the drawer he found what he was looking for. The picture of his mother.
Nienor Hurin had been her name and she had been beautiful. Not by Galran standards, mind you. But Sincline had long ago realized that he didn't use the Galran yard-stick when measuring a woman's level of attractiveness. As much as he was Galran he was also human and preferred human interpretations of 'beauty' to Galran ones. Balled heads, flat chests and scales just didn't interest him, not the way long hair, peaked nipples and soft skin did.
It might be a tad disturbing to think, but Sincline had to admit that his mother was exactly what he liked in his women. Nienor's hair was long, strait and golden; longer than Fala's actually. It flowed over her shoulders and past her waist to vanish beyond the frame of the picture. Her face was round and youthful, she could not have been much older than seventeen or eighteen when she had given birth to him. Her lips were red and full, the kind that made men think of... well, never mind what lips like that made men think of doing with her mouth. It was the eyes that Sincline focused on tonight. Wide and round and reflecting infinite sadness. She had not wanted the life fate had dealt her.
The heterogeneous hybrid wondered if he had been one of the contributors to her sadness and a pang of something akin to 'guilt' curled around his heart. The Emperor found that he did not like the feeling one bit and wished it would go away. His thoughts returned to Fala asleep in his bed, exhausted from the rigorous work out he'd put her through. Would Fala never be happy in her marriage to him? Would she live in sadness as the wife of the Emperor of the Galra Empire just as Nienor appeared to have lived in sadness as the mother of the Prince Imperial?
Sincline sighed in frustration and leaned back in his chair, running one clawed hand through his long silvery hair that was wet with sweat and matted from being tossed about. He wasn't going to get any answers from staring at a picture. He replaced the photograph back in the desk drawer making sure that it was buried back under everything that had been on top of it and closed and locked the drawer. Then after a prolonged pause he opened it again. As long as he was up and couldn't sleep he might as well do something useful. Sincline took his marriage contract out of the drawer.
He made a quick stop back at his suit to change from his robe into actual clothing. Nothing as grand as he'd been wearing the past few days, just a pair of black trousers and a simple shirt, gloves and boots. Fala stirred just as he was once again leaving and the Emperor froze in mid-step. She blinked at him through the darkness, pulling the blankets up to her chin as if to shield herself from a possible threat.
Sincline felt the need to say something but he found that he didn't have the right words and those that he tried to say stuck in the back of his throat. Finally he managed to croak an unexpressive, "Do you need a healer?"
His wife shook her head, 'no'. He nodded, accepting the answer and trusting her to know the limits of her own body better than he did.
And then he was in the lift on his way down to the business wing of the castle.
On either side of him people flattened themselves against the walls in an attempt to keep out of the Emperor's way. He may not be wearing his sword-belt at the moment, but Sincline was still a deadly man to cross even unarmed and that was a fact those whom lived and worked in Demon Castle knew well.
He opened the door of his office to catch Gibra setting a tray of datadiscs on the desk. The General paused in mid motion.
"Ah, You Eminence, I would have thought you and Her Majesty would be indisposed for the remainder of the night."
"Its always night on Galra." His Eminence snapped. "Would you expect me to be 'indesposed' forever? What's this?" Sincline picked up the tray to examine its contents.
"Reports." Gibra answered dutifully.
"It takes two discs for you to give me a report on your preparations for the Lion hunt?"
"Well no... It seems that earlier today the Sluusvan shipyard was attacked by the Heracles terrorists... and destroyed."
By Amue's terrorist group. Oh, if there was ever a woman Sincline wanted to kill for the simple pleasure of drawing out a slow excruciating death it was that woman. Princess Amue of Heracles. Just the mention of her name made his hackles rise. He never should have left his men to kill her, he should have done it himself, he should have made sure she was dead. Instead he had left the pragmatic bitch to the firing squad and she had escaped, not only escaped but joined with a rag-tag group of escaped slaves lead by the younger brother of one of the late Lion pilots and together the two of them had organized what should have been a pathetic rabble into an efficient terrorist unit that has been causing him headaches ever since. Oh! How he wished that woman dead!
Sincline pulled his datapad to him and slipped the Sluusvan debrief in the pad's disc drive. He scanned the document noting the list of damaged and lost ships. The control tower, when it was destroyed, had apparently collapsed across a row of dreadnoughts reducing them all to recyclable scrap metal and not much else. Other ships had been damaged to the point of being rendered useless while more would take months to repair enough to be useful. The Emperor looked back up at Gibra.
"How will the damages effect your Lion hunt?"
"As I stated in my report," he indicated the second disc in the tray, "the Sluusvan attack will have no immediate effect on the Lion hunt. None of the ships I'm taking come from that yard. The biggest issue with it is the loss of possible reenforcement ships and personnel. There was a good deal of loss of life in the attack."
Sincline waved his hand dismissively. Death was part of a soldier's job description. "When can you leave?"
"My forces will be ready to ship out late tomorrow."
"Any sooner?"
"I do not believe that would be possible, Your Eminence." Gibra answered cautiously. Sincline had once been charged with the exact job the General was now trying his best to fore-fill. The Emperor should understand that it took time to organize and outfit a suitable fighting force for any mission and the larger the force the longer it took. Gibra hoped his sovereign wasn't already lousing touch with reality.
"Make it possible."
"Yes, sir." The General suppressed a sigh.
There must be something about wearing a crown that made people stupid. With most royals it could easily just be blamed on inbreeding but Emperor Sincline was probably the least inbred a creature could be. You can't really get a gene pool more diverse than one combined of two different genotypes. Perhaps it was the stress of trying to adapt to a role he wasn't yet used to filling. Commanding the Empire's vast Expansion Fleet had given the then Prince Imperial wonderful leadership experience but it had not prepared him for when he became Emperor. Ruling a country was far different from commanding an army. More paperwork, less action. More planning, less results.
"You're dismissed."
The General saluted and with a dashing about-face exited the office.
Sincline flopped down in his desk chair with a heavy sigh. It was just one problem after another. Stolen mechs, escaped pilots, marital strife and terrorist attacks. He had been Emperor for a little less than a week and already the heterogeneous hybrid was feeling despicably inadequate.
'You're a weak, pathetic fool.' His father's voice intruded on his already stormy thoughts.
"Shut up!" He snarled at the empty room. "I am not weak!"
Sincline stood and began pacing around his office like a caged beast. He prowled around the room, glaring and snarling at nothing, his mind racing with memories of his many failures to defeat Golion over the years and his father's mocking jeers and stabbing insults. There hadn't always been such enmity between them, no. The Emperor remembered a time when he had had a rather good relationship with his father. Before the problems on Altea, before Golion, before he started failing at everything, when he was still a successful warrior and leader. He had been the pride of the Empire! Daibazaal had actually praised him back then, not just praised him but actually deigned to hug him in public.
The heterogeneous hybrid thought back to his last fond memory of his father, before the animosity sprouted between them. He had just returned from a successful mission subduing a rebellion on... oh, he couldn't remember the planet's name, it wasn't important. He had swaggered into the throne room and presented the heads of the rebel leaders to his father. Four (or was it five?) human heads, stuffed and preserved and mounted on a silver tray. Daibazaal was so pleased with his success that he actually came down from the dais! He rose from the Golden Throne and descended the red-carpeted steps and gave his son a real hug, full of warmth and pride and fatherly affection.
And then Sincline had asked why Sadak was prostrating himself on the floor and what had transpired in his absence. That was when he learned of the problems with Altea. That was when he learned of Golion. That was when his relationship with his father crumbled. That was when he became a weak, pathetic failure.
He fell back into his chair. Ignoring his datapad and the reports that he had not finished reading, he picked up his marriage contract.
"I am not weak." He informed the small datadisc.
It did not respond. It was just a CD and, in fact, could not speak.
He heaved another heavy sigh and set to work copying the disc before having an aide enter it into official record. Then he had to deal with the issue of the terrorist attack on the shipyard and think of a suitable method of retaliation. Threatening to kill more slaves for every time Amue and her cell disrupted the status-que just didn't seem to be working and the loss of slave labor wasn't exactly helping the economy either. He needed to think outside of the box, something he wasn't very good at...
His computer beeped, informing him that it was finished copying his marriage contract and he withdrew the copied discs and place them in a tray to be sent to the Archive department. The original he placed back it its plastic case to be taken with him back to his private study upstairs. As he stared at the small data storage device in its plastic case he thought he should probably send a doctor up to look at Fala. She had said that she was alright, that she didn't need a healer but he couldn't help but wonder if she were just putting on a brave face for him, not wanting to show weakness. His lovely birde was really far more Galran in spirit than she would have liked to admit and Sincline looked forward to the day when she would realize it.
...
Fala counted to one hundred after Sincline had left. When she was sure he was gone, the exhausted Empress slipped out from under the covers and out of bed.
"Lights." She ventured. Nothing happened, the room remained as dark as the sky outside. She tried repeating the Galran word her husband had used when she had startled him awake earlier. The lights blazed to life illuminating the whole room.
She padded barefoot and naked across the spacious bedroom to stand before the full length mirrors of the closet doors. The Empress turned in the mirror, craning a stiff neck trying to see every inch of her body, appraising her condition and the damage her husband had done.
The bite on her shoulder was ripped wider by his inhumanly sharp canines and was bleeding. Streaks of drying blood ran down her scapula and over her breast, it colored her hair which was now tangled and matted. Long scratches from his claw-like nails ran the height of her back from the top of her shoulder blades to just above her buttocks. Her ass sported its own set of claw marks, these horizontal rather than vertical. Sincline seemed to fondle with his talons rather than his hands. The tender flesh between her thighs felt raw and burned slightly when she walked. Her thighs themselves were tired and bruised from her husband's relentless pounding, pistoning his hips in his efforts to reach climax. Fala wondered how women ever managed to enjoy sex.
But maybe sex wasn't supposed to be this way. Her partner wasn't exactly normal, hadn't he even said that she would enjoy it more if she were Galran, or something like that? Maybe with a human man, a full blooded human man, it would be different. Maybe with Kogane... Tears suddenly stung her eyes and Fala sank to her knees.
'Oh, Kogane, I'm so, so sorry!' The Empress rested her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and let herself weep. She didn't care that she was sitting naked in Sincline's room, she didn't care if a servant or slave entered to change the bloodied bedding and saw her disgraced form, Fala just didn't care anymore! As it happened, someone did walk in on her, but they weren't a servant or slave on the housekeeping staff.
The Captain of Fala's guard entered with two other members of her guard. The Captain saw her on the floor bloodied and sobbing and rushed to her side while snapping out quick orders in Galran. One guard crossed the room to check the hidden door between her chambers and Sincline's while the other poked her head out the door that divided the bedroom from the sitting room and called for someone else waiting outside. The Captain picked Fala up and carried her bridal style back to the bed.
The powder blue sheets were stained with the Empress' blood mingled with white stains left by Sincline. Long thin ribbons that looked suspiciously like Fala's fair skin curled in bunches in the center of the bed and she had to avert her eyes for fear that she might be sick. The Guard Captain, showing some empathy for her lady's emotional distress, set Fala's feet on the floor to free one hand. She puled the bedspread up over the pillows concealing as much as she could of the gory scene before laying the Empress back down on the bed.
Those that the other guard had summoned turned out to be her maid Marisol, a Galran doctor and his human slave whom had been a doctor on her planet before it had been conquered by the Empire. The Captain gave the Galran doctor a few short orders and stood at-ease by the Empress's side. It was the human slave that attended to Fala, the doctor pulling up a chair to observe and oversee her work rather than actually diagnose anything himself.
"He's not allowed to touch you." The slave explained. She opened a bag and withdrew gauze and antiseptic solution and began dabbing at the bite on the Empress' shoulder.
She winced at the sting of the anti-bacterial solution but was more glad to have it than not. Fala studied to woman tending her wounds, dark skinned and dark haired, she must have come from a planet that got lots of sun. It must be awful for her to now be forced to live on a dead sunless planet like Galra. Her eyes traveled from the medical slave to the doctor seated behind her. "If he's not allowed to do anything then why's he hear?"
"He's His Eminence's royal physician and is supposed to be teaching me Galran medicine." A look of vexation crossed her face and Fala wondered just how much teaching was actually going on. "I used to be a trauma surgeon back on Earth before it was conquered and when you came to live on Galra the Emperor asked for a human female with medical training. Well, it sounded better than what I had previously been doing, so I volunteered."
Fala wanted to ask what she had been doing in between Earth being conquered and becoming her doctor but decided that she probably didn't want to know. Instead she said, "I have some friends from Earth."
"Marisol." She nodded. "We met when HIs Eminence was interviewing us to be on your staff. Sit up please."
She obediently sat up so that her doctor could fasten a white gauze bandage over the wound with strong clear medical tape. "No." She said. "I mean before I came here. Kurogane, Seido, Shorty and Kogane; the Golion team are from Earth. Japan, I think they said, thought I don't know if that's a town or provence or what."
The doctor's hands paused in her ministrations. "The Golion pilots are from Earth!"
Fala nodded.
"Why the hell did they never come and try to free us!" Her hands fell away from the Empress and she stared at her in shock. "They freed Jarra and Amizone and helped Heracles! But they ignore their home planet when they have the strength and power to do something!"
Fala wasn't sure exactly what to say to that. She'd never even thought about it really. If Kogane had asked to take the Lions to Earth she would have been more than happy to go alone and save his people just as they saved so many others.
"The enemies of this Empire do not concern you." The Guard Captain snapped suddenly. "You are here to tend to Her Majesty's injuries and nothing more."
The human doctor instantly demurred and finished sealing the bandage over Fala's shoulder. "Turn over please."
She tended the rest of the Empress' scratches, scrapes and bruises in silence. Everything hurt but nothing was very critical or life threatening. When all her injuries had been cleaned and bandaged if it was needed the doctor gave her an aspirin and Marirol help Fala walk from Sincline's bedroom to her own. The Empress laid down on top of her soft and welcoming pink bedspread promptly fell asleep. The doctors both human and Galran were dismissed, Marisol was given orders to stay in case Her Majesty needed something when she woke and the Guard Captain stepped out. The two other guards she had brought with her loitered in the corridor outside.
"She looked allot like that Heraclesian princess." One was commenting.
"I was under the impression that the Heraclesian princess was supposed to look like her." The other replied.
"That's not what I meant." The first shot back.
"Stop that, both of you." The Captain snapped when she stepped through the door. "Our job is to keep her safe, not gossip about the royal couple's bedroom practices."
The two women snapped to attention. "Sorry, Captain!"
The Captain sighed and massaged her temples. "You're dismissed for now. I'll take this watch."
The two exchanged a look. "Are you sure, Cap? I heard Gibra's shipping out later today."
"Just go."
...
(A/N: Short chapter is short. )