The First Spark

by T J Trapp

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  After leaving the Hatchery, Zera took them to the Drone Domestication Facility where they met the Drone Master, a stony-faced elf woman.

  She welcomed them, somewhat stiffly, Alec thought. “I heard that they tried to band you but that you thwarted them. This is where you would have come if you had remained banded. I would have taken good care of you and domesticated you thoroughly. I train about fifty new drones every month. In the New Haven, we have over ten drones for every elf. Most Mothers have at least one personal drone for both their pleasure and their daily needs.

  “It usually takes one trip of the five moons to domesticate a new drone. Once a drone is properly domesticated, its every desire is to please the mothers. After it is domesticated, we send it to specialized apprentice programs. Those with no special skills we use in the fields. Someone like you,” she pointed at Alec, “would be perfect for the pleasure houses. Someone like you,” she pointed at Erin, “would have been eliminated the first day. We eliminate all captured females. We raise more than enough females in our breeding program to provide all our new breeders.”

  “Where do your new drones come from?” Erin asked although she figured she knew one source.

  “We grow most of our drones in our breeding program. Sometimes we are short of males, so we cull the orb herds in the surrounding lands. Since we use females only for breeding, our breeding programs produce too many of them; we don’t need more so we don’t have to cull the orb herds for females.” She peered at Erin. “We don’t like to cull on your land,” she added.

  “Thank you,” said Erin. “I appreciate that.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that Theland is harder to reach than some of the other surrounding lands. Our yield is much higher in other places, like Gott or the Grasslands, so we only cull on your land when the picking is poor in other places.”

  “I don’t remember any episodes with elves coming to cull us,” said Erin.

  “Of course not,” the Drone Master said. “We send only a few coercer Mothers and their clutches when we do a cull. All of us have total control over an orb if we touch it, but a coercer wearing a ring can additionally influence an orb if it is within her sight. She can mentally encourage an orb in any direction it is inclined to go. Sex is the easiest thing to encourage, but sleep is next easiest – because everyone wants sex and sleep.

  “Depending on the orb and the strength of the coercer, it takes from a second to a minute to slide the orb into sleep. When we cull, our coercer will slide all the orbs she encounters into sleep. Then she will take the ones we want and leave before she wakes the others. She and her clutchmen put a neckband on the ones they take, and ankle chains, and then march them here. It is a very simple way to cull our herds on the surrounding lands. We let the herds breed, cull what we need, and leave the others.”

  Ask how she trains them, Alec thought to Erin.

  “How do you train them?” asked Erin.

  “As you would any animal,” the Drone Master answered. “A simple system of reward and punishment. The neckbands serve to assist me with both. The orbs are wild, but not very clever.

  “After I have trained an orb, it will continue to follow my directions. When an orb is fully domesticated, it has released its free will and would die before disobeying. By a single trip of the five moons, almost all orbs are fully domesticated and will obey without requiring continual contact.” She was proud of her success as an orb breaker.

  They walked along a row of clean pens about one arn wide and twice as deep; they were three-sided, with no gate or barrier on the front.

  “These are individual holding pens,” the Drone Master explained.

  “How do you keep the … orbs … from leaving?”

  “There are no doors – that serves to emphasize to a new capture that it has lost its freedom and cannot escape. We should have a cull crop returning in a few days, and we will put these pens to use, like the ones on the far end.”

  They walked down the row to the far end where each open pen contained a man. The men were dressed in simple clothes, like the loose-fitting clothes of the Grasslands, Alec thought. As the Drone Master approached, each man moved to the front of his pen and went down on his knees, eyes down. The Drone Master stopped at one pen.

  “Come out!” she commanded. The drone came out and kneeled in front of her. She touched him and said, “You were too slow and not respectful enough. Go and punish yourself!” She paid no more attention to the drone as he walked over to a specially marked post in the center of the pens, undressed, and then dropped down in silent agony.

  The Drone Master moved to the next pen. “Come out!” she said to the kneeling drone. She touched the drone and said. “Did you fully obey everything yesterday? You may speak.”

  “No Master,” the drone said. “I dreamt of my family and longed to see them again.”

  “Then punish yourself. You will not do that again.” The drone scurried over to the specially marked post, undressed, and was also on the ground in silent agony. Alec saw the first drone complete his punishment, dress, and return compliantly to his open pen.

  The Drone Master repeated the process with a third drone. The drone answered, “Yes, Master. I only want to serve you and the Mothers.”

  “You may return to your pen,” the Drone Master said.

  Turning to Erin, she said, “I give them pleasure for positive achievements, but obedience is something we expect – we do not consider mere obedience to be a positive achievement. We force them to discipline themselves until there is not a shred of wildness or independent thought remaining. Occasionally one of them will not give up the last little bit of itself, and so I direct it to kill itself with pain while the others watch.”

  Erin asked a question that had been gnawing on her. “The nomads on the Grasslands have slave neckpieces, but they use them to break people in a very different manner than you do. Why do they do it differently?”

  “We know they have a few. They must have stolen some of our neckbands.” The Drone Master shrugged. “I do not know why they do what they do. Sometimes we lose a neckband when a cull goes bad and the coercer must leave suddenly. Using the neckband to quickly break an orb into a slave is a very inefficient way to use it. They probably do it because they only have a few bands, and don’t know any better. We make our neckbands and have as many as we need. We use them in a much more efficient way to effectively train our orbs to be drones. If you try to break orbs too quickly or too harshly, about half die and most of the rest turn into mindless automatons. Those are useless to us – they can only comprehend simple instructions and rapidly forget their tasks. We would kill them as useless hunks of flesh; I do not know what the nomad slavers do with them.”

  Erin shuddered at the thought of what had almost happened to her.

  “We have used the bands for generations,” the Drone Master continued, “and we understand all the weaknesses of the neckbands and the ways some orbs can circumvent them. Marta, the Mother you first bested in the forest, is one of our strong young coercers, but she has not yet been on a cull. If she had been on a cull, she would have known to doubly secure new captives. Not only do we band a new one, but we also chain it for extra security. If she had used chains, your clutchmen would be on the inside of my pens this morning.”

  Zera touched the Drone Master on the arm.

  “We thank you for this informative tour and your answers to our guest Mother’s questions. But it is time for us to move on.”

  As they were leaving, the Drone Master turned to Alec.

  “You are tall and look strong. Maybe I will see you again soon.”

  Alec grimaced.

  Zera led them away from the drone domesticating facility. A sense of relief came over Alec as they left. If they had been captured, and taken here, escaping from the mind-numbing drone domestication would have been almost impossible.

  And the last statement of the Drone Master stuck in Alec’s head.

/>   ✽✽✽

  They approached a brightly colored three-story building.

  “And what is this?” asked Erin.

  “That is our Pleasure House,” Zera answered with a smile. “The best of the drones are sent here. Elf men are committed to their clutch Mother and won’t engage in carnal pleasure without their clutch Mother’s permission. But Mothers are free to couple or otherwise feed their desires with anyone they want. We like to use newly-domesticated drones. A well-trained one will do exactly as we desire. We can mentally direct them as we want. It can be heavenly!”

  Zera walked behind Alec and placed her hand on his rear, giving it a little squeeze. He tried not to flinch.

  “We have some time,” she said to Erin. “Your tall clutchman could take his ring off, and we could enjoy him in the Pleasure House together. He looks like, even without training, he could be pretty good. I wouldn’t couple with him without your permission, of course, but together we could have a little fun with him.”

  “He’s already trained and pretty good,” Erin said, a bit sharply. “I don’t think he needs any more training and I don’t want to share him.” She took Alec’s arm and Zera dropped her hand.

  The next stop was the Education Center.

  “Our collective history is stored here,” Zera told them. “The archives go back five hundred years or more – since we first arrived on this world.”

  They don’t have paper here, or much of a written language. How are they stored? Alec wondered.

  “There’s a large, beautiful, crystal structure in the center of the building, with many facets,” Zara said as if anticipating his question. “Our story is stored on it. I’ve never seen another one like it anywhere else.”

  “Are there any records older than that?” Erin asked, after being mentally prodded by Alec.

  “I have heard that the history of the broader elf multiverse also is stored here, but not many are interested in that, so it is rarely accessed. I have never bothered to look.”

  “We know what is important. Elves settled this world five-hundred-fifty-seven years ago to escape punishment meted out by the false dragon queen. We must wait one thousand years before the punishment will no longer be inflicted upon the descendants. All the orb herds on this world were planted by us five-hundred-fifty-seven years ago except yours. Your herd is descended from a small group of elves that did not like the rules at the New Haven and formed a second community. Then they interbred.” She sniffed in disgust.

  Nearby was another ornate building

  “This is our Harm House,” said Zera.

  Where they harm people? thought Alec.

  “‘Harm House’?” asked Erin.

  “This is where our elves come if they have been harmed. Injured. We rarely suffer from the diseases of the orbs, but our brave Mothers and their clutchmen do suffer from broken bones or wounds.”

  “Can you heal them?” asked Alec, momentarily forgetting that he was not supposed to speak.

  Zera gave him a withering stare and started to tell him he was an impertinent clutchman; then thought better of it.

  “No,” Zera answered, still scowling at him. “Currently we have no Mothers who can heal. Healing is a rare skill, and a healer is only born every few generations.”

  Let’s try – it might generate some goodwill, Alec thought to Erin.

  Erin then asked Zera if they could go inside. The first Mother they encountered had a compound fracture of her left leg that had been awkwardly set.

  “This is Henra. She is one of our coercers. She fell the other day and broke her leg. She will stay here until it heals, but her leg will always be deformed. She will never walk properly again and probably will have to find another occupation. A coercer must be able to go on patrols or culls, and she will not be able to do that with a crooked leg.”

  Alec walked up to her and touched her. Henra recoiled in shock at being touched without permission, by a clutchman, no less – or was he a drone?

  “We can fix this if you want us to,” he said.

  Henra decided that relieving her pain took precedence over protocol, and nodded agreement.

  Alec took Erin’s hand and laid his other hand upon Henra’s bare leg. He pulsed dark energy through the fallen mother. Then he let Erin guide him until he felt the rightness and moved the leg bones back into position. It was a messy and complex break; it took Alec several motions to get the bone, with its splinters and fragments, back into the right place. Then Alec used dark energy to strengthen it. In the end, Erin showed him the rightness of the job.

  “Your leg is back in the right place now,” Alec said to Henra. “It will still be sore for a day or so, but the bone and tissues are healed.”

  Henra gingerly tested the leg and found she could walk, with only a little weakness.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I will be forever grateful! I have an important engagement this afternoon that I could not miss. My drones were finding a litter to carry me, but now I will be able to get there on my own.” She smiled, pleased at her recovery.

  Zera led them away.

  “Are there others who need healing?” asked Alec. No longer scowling at him, Zera took him to other rooms, and they healed the broken bones and gashes of several more Mothers and clutchmen.

  “Are there no drones who need healing?” asked Erin, as Zera showed them back to the boulevard.

  “No,” said Zera dismissively. “We put down any drones that are injured badly enough to require healing. We have a plentiful supply of drones, so it isn’t worthwhile for them to take up time or space here in the Harm House. Besides, even if a drone does manage to heal, most of the time it can no longer perform up to our expectations. Then it is useless.”

  By this time, it was mid-day. Zera was about to suggest they return to the residence for a meal when a messenger came, bowed, and spoke to Zera.

  “They are ready for you,” the messenger said, with a sidelong glance towards Erin and her clutch. “They have decided to meet in the Audience Hall instead of the Disca Chambers because it holds more people. They are expecting that many will want to attend.”

  Zera turned to Erin.

  “The Disca is ready. They want me to take you there.” Zera’s clutchmen fanned out behind them, walking directly behind Erin and her ‘clutch.’

  So, we can’t escape, thought Alec as they headed towards the Audience Hall.

  31 – The Disca

  Erin had been alert during Zera’s tour of the city. Now she was on high alert.

  So far there have been no lies, but they know I would notice a lie, she thought to Alec. I think they are being truthful but deceptive. Be ready for something.

  As they approached the Audience Hall, Erin instinctively stood closer to Alec. There are a lot of elves inside the Hall, and their anxiety level feels very high, she thought to him.

  Zera ushered them through a gated doorway and into a broad, dark, entry passage. A second large, heavy door opened, and they were shown into the main chamber – a brightly-lit circular room with a high ceiling and two tiers of balconies. The room had space for several hundred people, Alec estimated. The balconies were full of clutchmen. The bottom tier only had mothers. Alec did a quick count: there were fourteen mothers arranged around the central circle.

  The elf Mother, Varra, stood in the center of the central circle. Alec noticed a stack of drone neckbands discretely placed by her side. The massive doors closed behind them with a thud.

  “Welcome to our Disca,” Varra said, and raised her hand as if in greeting. Immediately Erin could feel the lines begin to twist – a massive twisting, more powerful than any she had experienced. A coordinated effort from all the Mothers, she thought.

  Erin saw her two ‘clutchmen’ riders collapse, and saw Alec, even with his ring, stagger from the intense onslaught. She sensed with her ring and tried to untwist the lines, but the lines were two thick for her to do more than slow the twisting. She would soon be overpowered. She changed her effort an
d tried to untwist the lines around Alec. Her mind started to get foggy.

  The untwisting gave Alec a few seconds of clarity. Focus. A rush of air came down in a loud whoosh. Elves, both Mothers and clutchmen, were picked up by the whirlwind and thrown all over the hall. In the confined space between the balconies, little secondary vortices formed and the resulting whirlwinds continued to toss bodies around. The Mothers stopped twisting the lines and focused on ridding the vortexes. The lines thinned and smoothed. Erin’s mind, on the verge of blacking out, cleared. She looked for Alec. He was on the ground, knocked over backwards from the force of the downdraft, but moving. She ran to him.

  “Thank goodness you are alive!” she said breathlessly.

  As the whirlwind subsided, the Mothers, one by one, started another mental attack against Erin and her ‘clutch’. Erin could feel the lines starting to twist around her and grow thicker as the mother started coordinating their efforts.

  Alec stood and took her hand. “Fight them and I will feed you energy!” he said. He focused and pulled dark energy through his medallion and started feeding it to Erin. She started to smooth the lines. By now all the Mothers had joined in the effort against them. Erin was holding even but wasn’t gaining. Alec kept feeding more and more dark energy. She stopped the twisting of the lines but couldn’t untwist the lines.

  “I need more energy,” she grunted to Alec.

  Alec tried to pull more dark energy but could feel that his medallion was at its limit and about to fail. He sensed Erin’s stamina fading against the combined force of the Mothers. “I need more!” she cried, “or they will win!”

  His staff lay at his feet where he had dropped it when his burst had reverberated through the hall. He reached down with his free hand and picked it up. Alec focused through the medallion on his staff and felt the oscillating dark energy from the elves’ concentrator. He continued to focus the background dark energy through his medallion and now tried to focus the energy from the concentrator through the second medallion on his staff. He had never tried to focus two medallions at once. One mental lapse and his medallion would explode, killing him for sure.