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.

(A/N: Happy holidays everyone. I apologize for the delay in updating. Hannukah came up faster than I had expected (they always seem to sneak up on me somehow), that is long since over but then there was shopping and present finding and/or making for my non-Jewish friends and that just reminded me that I still don't have a job which just depressed me which made me not really feel like writing much at all. I'm not very satisfied with this chapter but really I'm just happy I managed to finish it at all.)

The Sindariin

Chapter Thirteen:

Fala had never been so happy for her cycle to start in her entire life! The morning of her conversation with the Captain she had attributed the horrible cramps in her stomach and back as well as the sore muscle pains to Sinclin's rough treatment of her the previous night. But as the day had been drawing to a close and the Empress had retired back to her chambers for the evening she had discovered the blood stains marring her otherwise pristine white undergarments and had nearly jumped for her joy. After the Captain's off-handed comment about sons and heirs, Fala had spent the entire rest of the day in fear of the prospect of having to bear Sincline's monstrous offspring. When she saw the bright red spotting of her menarche the the Altean-born Galran Empress wanted to whoop and skip out of elation that she wasn't already carrying her husbands abominable demon-spawn.

However, this did throw into perspective her current circumstances. She counted herself lucky to have not already been impregnated by the fell Emperor, but how long would that last? Sincline seemed to like taking her to his bed every night, how long would it take him to really plant his despicable seed in her young lush womb? Fala did not want to wait and find out! She had to escape. For real this time. No more half-baked plans or ill-concived attempts that were nothing more than glorified acts of childish rebellion. No. She had to escape for real. Get out for real. Get away for real! Otherwise, when the Lions really did come to her rescue (if they ever did come)... when Kogane finally came to her rescue...

An image rose to the surface of her imagination. Black Lion tearing a wide hole through Demon Castle's walls, her beloved Kogane jumping out and racing through the halls in search of her, screaming her name in desperation to find his lost princess. He burst through the doors to her chambers and froze at the sight that he would see. Fala sitting on her sofa nursing an infant child with Sincline's blue skin and golden eyes... She would look up, her eyes shining with unshed tears...

"Kogane... I'm sorry."

With a snarl the Empress forced herself to end the sorrowful vision before it could become a prophesy of doom. She would not allow that to happen. She would not! She would get out before it came to that. Her menstruation offered her a little time, not much but a little. Her 'beloved' husband, as it turned out, didn't much care for laying with a woman during her cycle. Fala mentally scoffed. She would have thought that with all his blood customs and rituals he'd love jack-hammering it into her during this time of the month. But no, the pompous and self-obsorbed bastard was squeamish about sullying his cock with her moon's blood. And because of that, he had spent the past two days of her menstruation in the fearful and submissive company of his 'Collection', leaving her in peace.

The Empress felt a pang of sympathy when she thought of the women in her husband's harem. But it was a sympathy she just couldn't afford at present. Right now she had to focus on her own escape. Once she returned to Altea and Golion could once again be formed they would push back the Galra Empire, tear their way into the capitol and finally put an end to the fell Empire's reign of terror! But first she needed to escape, she needed a plan, a real plan.

It was for this reason that Fala now found herself in the castle library, the castle's public library. She had already tried the 'Executive Library' which was were federal records (as well as other documents not open to the public) were kept and was politely but firmly denied access by the security clerk. The Captain of her guard acted as interpreter for this little exchange and by the time Fala had finally given up all three of them walked away disgruntled and harassed. Fala decided that there must be something in the Executive Library that Sincline didn't want her to see (not that she could read any of it anyway) and she was curious to know what it was. But whatever it was, it wasn't relevant to her immediate plans for escape and so she wouldn't think on it. After she rejoined the Golion team and the five of them finally put an end to the Empire and its reign of terror, then she could come back to Demon Castle and spend as much time as she liked sifting through and translating whatever she wanted from Galra's dreadful records.

At present she busied herself in the public library poring over maps. She couldn't read any of the place names with which it had been labeled and a number of the symbols used were strange to her and took a moments pause to understand. The Captain of her guard hovered over her, asking every now and again if she could be of assistance and if Her Majesty was looking for anything in particular. Fala brushed off the woman's offers and severely wished she could just send her away entirely. Her constant hovering made the Altean-born Galran Empress nervous and edgy. She hadn't yet decided if the Captain was trustworthy of not (as if any Galran could be trustworthy, ha!) and she didn't want her running to Sincline and putting an end to her escape plans before she could even hatch them.

Fala was looking for something in particular, but she wasn't exactly sure what it was. Not yet anyway. She was sure she'd know it when she saw it. Mainly she was looking for two things: One, a way out of Demon Castle and two, a place that could be a likely location for Amue's rebel forces to build a base. If she could get out, she might be able to get to her rebel allies, if she could get to the rebels she could get off planet and back to Altea!

The Empress sat at a wide table with a dark surface made of crystal and glass. Projected onto this surface were detailed schematics of Demon Castle, blue-tinted white lines over a black backdrop showed her basic layouts, floors, ceilings, walls, etc. Green were hidden passageways, mostly servants passages or service ways for maintenance and such. Fala had considered these as possible escape routs at first but decided against them when she realized that they would be to well traveled by human slaves and Galran technicians to be of any real use. She had then thought about maybe passing herself off as a slave running errands for her master and sneak out fo the castle via the servants passages that way. But by now everyone in the castle would know her face and know she was not a slave (at least not officially a slave, Sincline sure seemed to treat her like one). No, if she was going to escape she would have to find another way out.

Demon Castle must have secret passages hidden in it somewhere. As distrusting and war-like as the Galran people were she could not imagine them constructing their castle without at least one secret passage for the royal family to escape through in the event of the castle being taken by an enemy force. She was sure one existed somewhere, she just needed to find it. That was why she spent hours poring over maps, floor-plans and schematics of the castle, ignoring the irksome cramps in her stomach and back. They were a welcome reprieve from the pains that her dear husband caused her. But getting out of the castle was only the first step.

Bright yellowish-orange lines marked electrical lines and power cables. These ran all over the castle in an intricate web, following similar patterns to the floorpans. Fala was sure this would be useful to know in the future (perhaps she could find a way to cut power to an area as a distraction) but it was momentarily irrelevant. What purpose was there in causing a distraction if you had nothing to do while your captors were distracted? No, the electric systems were good to know, but not very pertinent at this stage of her planning.

Cyan was the color for the castle's plumbing and piping systems and some of them looked big enough for a slender human to fit through it they crawled. The Empress filed this information in the back of her mind. She didn't much like the idea of crawling through a dirty pipe, but if that was what she had to do to escape, then that's what she would do. She just had to make sure there would be enough air in the pipe for her to breath. It would be pointless to escape the castle only to drown in her very own rout to freedom.

Once she was out she'd still need a place to go.

Putting her search of the castle on hold for the moment, Fala called up a map of the surrounding area. The flat cell image of Demon Castle's layout disappeared and was replaced by a three dimensional hologram of a topographical map. She really had to marvel at the technology of the Galra Empire. They might be horrible, evil, war-mongering, genocidal murderers, but gosh darned it, they had some nice toys! Of course, all this lovely technology that the Altean-born Empress was enjoying was probably stolen from other people and societies, the planets they concurred, the slaves they captured. She highly doubted any of it was actually developed on planet Galra by Galran scientists.

Fala set the computer to display the map with Demon Castle as a center point offering her a wide view of the area surrounding the fortress on all sides. The three dimensional hologram made it easy to recognize land-formations like mountains, cliffs, rivers, etc. But she could not read any of their names, the Galran characters curved along the banks of the rivers or climbed up the sides of mountains giving names and meaning to the places she viewed, but the Empress couldn't read them. Neither could she understand a good majority of the symbols used on the maps. For example, on any human map the symbol of a skull with crossed bones or just a skull by itself placed on a map would indicate a dangerous area, however, the horned skull was the emblem of the Galra Empire and so its appearance on the map did not indicate possible danger but rather marked the location of an Imperial base.

She traced a road leading away from the castle toward Nargothrond with her eyes wondering if it was the one she and Sincline had taken on their little outing. She also wondered how feasible it might be for Amue and Ryou to have made one of their rebel bases near that rode. She then dismissed this idea as silly. It would be to risky for the rebels to have anything of consequence in such a heavily patrolled area, right smack dab between the capitol and the planet's largest city. Amue wasn't that stupid.

But at the same time, Fala was sure that the rebels would have a base of some sort relatively close to the castle so that they'd be in a better position to offer help to Golion when they finally came to put an end to the Empire's evil.

...If Golion ever came.

Every day that went by without so much as a blip of news of the Lions filled her with a saddening sense of dread. What if the Lions weren't coming to rescue her? What if they couldn't? What if something terrible had already happened to them? What if they had already been killed? What if Kogane had...?

...

The 'Blood Eagle' was an ancient Galran torture where the victim is held face-down while two long deep gashes are cut into his back. The ribs are then broken off from the spine and bent outward giving the appearance of gruesome bloody wings the victem is then hung up somewhere and left to bleed to death. 'Blood Eagle' was not a literal translation of the actual Galran name for this process, it was the name the Altean servants gave it the morning they saw the man mounted on the castle ramparts. General Gibra fin Surkhal had a very low tolerance for incompetence and he had administered the Blood Eagle to the unfortunate Galran technician himself. The body was displayed from the castle ramparts as a warning to human subject and Galran soldier alike.

Raible couldn't help but feel a tinge of pity for the ill-fated Galran. Enemy though the man might have been, he still did not deserve the fate he was dealt. The old strategist paused to examine the body. It had been lashed by the wrists between two light-polls that ran the length of the castle battlements, the tought lifeless arms pulled the deep wounds open wider than they had originally been and offered anyone viewing the body from behind a ghastly glimpse of the reptile's vertebrae with the broken stumps of the ribs covered in dry and crusted blood protruding from it like gruesome crystals. The ribs, spread wide from the back, did indeed look like wings and Raible was disturbed to find that he found a measure of macabre beauty in the horrifying image.

Muttering a short prayer for his own immortal soul, the old strategist continued past the body and on to where he had been going before pausing to admire the despicable display. Galran supply ships had started to come to the planet, but they weren't bringing supplies to Altea, no. They were taking from the beautiful utopian world. Now, every crop that was harvested, every livestock that was raised went to the Galra Empire. Grain, vegetables, fruit, cattle, poultry, fish and anything else that Altea could off was now the property of the villainous Empire whom took what they pleased and only left just enough to keep the people alive and strong enough to work and grown more. Raible stepped into the General's office without bothering to knock or request permission.

Gibra glared up angrily from his desk, he seemed to have been in the process of folding what looked like a hand written letter around a dried and pressed flower and the strategist had to do a double-take. Intimate notes and pressed flowers clashed so strikingly with the image of the alien General painted by his Blood Eagle escapade that Raible wondered if he had walked into the wrong office and was currently being glared at by the wrong Galran commander. (That all looked the same to him.)

The General set his letter to the side and stood, walking around from behind his desk he planted himself squarely in front of the Altean Steward, his hands resting on his sword belt. "Is it your custom, Steward, to enter one's office unannounced? Or are you being deliberately impertinent?"

The old strategist matched his eyes, glare for glare and ignoring the General's question voiced his concerns, assuming him to be pissy because the human had caught him displaying something akin to a 'softer side'. "You are taking to much from the people. The Empire has plenty of planets under it control to feed Sincline's gluttony, Altea only has Altea. We cannot feed both ourselves and your godless Empire as well."

The upper corner of Gibra's golden eye raised ever so slightly, an action Raible had come to equate to the Galran version of the human action of raising an eyebrow. "I don't hear anyone else complaining."

And no one else would complain either, Raible knew. For some reason, thought he tried the General's patience to no end, the old strategist remained unharmed. Gibra did not hesitate to dish out death and pain to any other who questioned, challenged or just plain annoyed him. However, with Raible he gritted his teeth and bared it. The strategist couldn't even hazard a guess as to why. The only possible thing he could think of was that Sincline, knowing that he had been like a father to Fala, had ordered him not to be harmed. But that idea was preposterous! That would imply that the narcissistic sin-against-nature actually cared about Fala and considered her feelings. Hell would freeze over before that were ever true! But there really was no other explanation for why Gibra left the strategist unharmed after so many of his little bursts of insolence.

"May I remind you, Steward, that your pathetic little planet is now the property of the Galra Empire and no longer an independent governing body." The General continued. "Whatever goods that are produced on Altea are the property of the Empire and the Empire can do with them as the Emperor sees fit. You should consider yourselves privileged that His Eminence has not made the whole lot of you slaves. You enjoy the rights of any other citizen of the Empire. Your people can own their own property and have the protection of the Empire's military might."

"The Empire's military might that was still no match for five mechs and their rag-tag pilots." Raible muttered, forgetting for the moment that the alien's hearing was far better than that of a human's and he easily heard the remark.

Gibra grabbed the front of the strategist's shirt and lifted him up off his feet. He snarled at the old human offering an intimidating view of pointed teeth and sharp fangs. "Remember, human, that it is one of those same pilots that now sits beside the Golden Thrown as Empress of the Galra Empire. Golion's power will be added to that of the Empire's military and when that happens nothing will be able to stand against us! Nothing could stop His Eminence from crushing your pathetic little Leo Alliance and retaking the galaxy! Or even pushing beyond and becoming supreme ruler of the universe! Your pilots abandoned you. They stole from you and left you at the Emperor's mercy. Once our scientist figure out the secrets of Blue Lion we'll have the knowledge we need to take back the other four and your 'saviors' will die."

"What are you going to do with Blue Lion!" Raible gasped while clutching at the alien's iron bar-like wrist.

"Nothing." The General replied, plain and simple. He released his hold on the old man's shirt and let him drop to the floor, landing on his ass with a thump. "Once it has been studied, Blue Lion will be put back together as per the Emperor's orders. He does not want Blue Lion to be permanently harmed either."

Raible imagined several reasons why the heterogeneous hybrid would want Blue Lion intact and functional, none of them were good.

...

Kurogane yawned loudly and reached for another cup of what passed for 'coffee' on Heracles. Kogane had insisted that the Galran ship Amue had brought not be studied at the castle's own shipyard. He had feared that the ship might have been equipped with some variety of booby-traps for any possible enemies that tried to study it (basically them), so it had been moved to its present location at the Antigone Shipyard that was. And just because the Golion Chief didn't think that was security enough, he had also decided that one of them ('them' being the four original Lion pilots) be on watch at the shipyards at all time. This shift was 'Red Shift', Kurogane's watch as he piloted Red Lion. (Though it was also an amusing astrophysics joke that only Shorty seemed to get and was very frustrated that the others didn't find it amusing.)

This paranoia of Kogane's was getting annoying. Kurogane understood why he was acting so... crazy for lack of a better word, but understanding and being okay with it were two very different things. The Black Lion pilot and Golion Chief was in love with Princess Fala, madly, deeply, truly and all that other feel-good-fairy-tale crap. It was torture for him to think of her trapped on planet Galra in the clutches of the vile and lecherous Sincline. He wanted to rescue her, but he also knew that they couldn't just go bursting in guns blazing without a plan. He was a leader and a leader maintained a level head even in times of great strain and he was under great strain. If something went wrong with the ship they wouldn't be getting a new one any time soon and it would be even longer before Fala was liberated from her captivity and servitude.

The Red Lion pilot leaned back in his chair and watched the Heraclesian technicians bustle around the alien ship. Sipping his coffee, he wondered where they got all their energy. But then again, they were scientists, they were always awake when there was something interesting to be studied. He stifled another yawn and checked his wrist chrono-meter. Red Shift was drawing to a close and soon Green Shift would begin. Knowing Shorty, he'd probably throw himself into the fray of techs and scientists studying the Galran ship, that was sort of his thing. Kurogane liked simpler things, simpler tasks and simpler hobbies. He wasn't made for science and learning, he wasn't really made for all this war and fighting either, he was a Space Pilot, an explorer he lined to expand the edges of maps and meet new life and new civilizations and to tentatively go where no man has gone before. He had never expected to use any of the combat training they'd taught them back at the Academy.

But then Galra attacked. (Attacked Earth that is, Altea had not yet been discovered by the Earth's exploration division.) The next thing Kurogane knew every capable pilot was called to fight the invading alien force. It was the most harrowing and arduous battle in the history of the planet, it had also been the shortest. Earth just hadn't been prepared for an attack from a hostile alien army with superior technology and an apparent lack of respect for any and all life. Those that hadn't been killed in the battle were made slaves, Kurogane, Shorty, Seido, Shirogane, his little brother Ryou and Kogane were all captured by the same slave-ship. That was the last time the Red Lion pilot had ever seen his home planet of Earth.

His thoughts strayed to his distant home, war ravaged and torn. He wondered if anyone still lived there or if they had all been captured and taken to Galra as slaves. He knew the entire planet could not have been taken after that one battle, the Galran squads just hadn't had enough ships with them at the time. But if the Empire was anything, it was persistent. If Daibazaal (and now Sincline) really wanted to transfer the entire Earth's population to Galra, Kurogane was sure they could. Kogane had probably come to the same conclusion as well, that was probably why they had never returned to Earth after finding Golion. They had freed Jara, Mura, Sand Planet, Amazone and a host of other planets from Galran control, but never once did they try to liberate Earth. Kogane probably thought that the best way to help their home was to defeat the Empire once and for all. Chipping away at it one planet at a time as they had been doing with Jara, Mura, and all that others as they had been doing just wasn't practical.

Kogane seemed made for war. He was a natural born leader, calm in the face of almost certain death, calculating enough to exploit opportunities and enemy weaknesses but still empathetic enough to not become a monster. All this waiting was probably killing him. The calculating leader side of him knew that it was a necessary delay, that they couldn't do anything until they found a way to penetrate the energy barrier surrounding the planet. But his sensitive side, the side of him that was madly in love with the Princess was probably being driven insane. Kurogane couldn't imagine how the Black Lion pilot must be tearing himself up inside over his dilemma.

However, the Red Lion pilot's musing were abruptly cut short when a pair small hands covered his eyes and a young-sounding male voice exclaimed, "Guess who?"

"Shorty!" Kurogane leapt from his seat, pulling free from the Green Lion pilot's easy grip. "God, don't pull shit like that. You startled me!"

The diminutive Space Pilot turned hero shrugged. "Sorry. I just can't help my mad ninja skills some times. Maybe you should drink less coffee."

"T'ch, this isn't coffee." The Red Lion pilot scoffed and to emphasize his point pored the weak brown water out into a waste can adjacent to the coffee station, the disposable cup from which he had been drinking soon followed after being crumpled into a crinkled ball first.

...

(A/N: The "blood eagle" is a real medieval torture from Nordic literature. "Redshift" is (basically) light's equivalent to the Doppler effect. )