by J G Jerome
He tilts his head for a moment before continuing. “The Elves’ technomancy is basically the ability to use their will to understand science, have scientific insights, and manipulate matter at the subatomic level. They used it to create a biologic nano-lifeform that could communicate with the Kraatchok and take direction from them. The goal was to enable faster healing. It worked fantastically for the Kraatchok. Over generations, enzymes in Sidhe flesh ingested from taking tokens from a spouse or concubine caused the nano-lifeforms to grow more powerful. The Kraatchok eventually learned to use them as weapons by leveraging the small electrical pulses and the ability to eat organic material. So, you were right that their powers are delivered via nanobots.”
Xerxes pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts. “For thousands of standard years, the Grey fought across the galaxy to subjugate all populated worlds and mine resources from the richest planets, moons, and asteroids. Approximately 50,000 standard years ago, the Elves were working on finding more efficient ways to travel faster than light, when they discovered the ability to travel to different dimensions. Think of it as quantum leaps across the universe or to different universes. They tried to keep it a secret, and I understand that they managed to succeed for roughly 10,000 standard years. The Elves found other dimensions with Elves and other Elven peoples - the ‘Wild Elves’ and the ‘Drow.’ They worked with the Elven peoples in this other dimension, and eventually settled a world for the Elven Diaspora. That’s when the secret got out.”
Xerxes nods to himself for a moment. Then he continues, “The Kraatchok were always rather oblivious to the rest of us. As long as there were Sidhe and Elves to breed, Elves to keep their ships running, and Dragons to fight for them, they didn’t pay attention. The Elves messed up by trying to save too many of their people. ‘Diaspora’ or ‘Exodus’ are appropriate words for how they left. Suddenly, the Kraatchok began to notice that there were only old, Elven men on their ships. They killed half of those in rages because, let’s face it - Elven women are a treat, and the Kraatchok wanted some. Eventually, one of the Kraatchok figured out that honey is better bait than vinegar - they found one of the youngest Elves remaining, K’lar, and gave him wealth, sex slaves of all races, and praise. Then they convinced him to lead them to where the Elves had gone. The poor bastard didn’t know. He did understand the basics of dimension traveling, but he didn’t have the coordinates to get there. So, he did the next best thing - he led the Grey fleets on a merry chase across multiple dimensions, hopping to different galaxies within each, and the Kraatchok were distracted for millenia raping and pillaging across the dimensions and galaxies of the universe, or universes. K’lar trained his progeny to dimension travel, and they grew very powerful politically over this time.”
Xerxes lifts a canteen and takes a sip before continuing. “Eventually, one of K’lar’s sons stumbled onto the correct dimension. An Elven patrol found them and destroyed them. The High Elven understanding of dimension traveling had progressed much farther than what K’lar knew during those intervening millenia. They were able to hazard a couple of guesses where the Kraatchok ship came from, so they sent out a fleet to hunt down the Kraatchok and kill them. That turned into a multi-dimensional war between the Elves and the Kraatchok.”
“The Kraatchok decided that K’lar’s family was sufficient to their needs for allies, and set about trying to kill off all the Elven people across all dimensions. Unfortunately for the Kraatchok, the Elven ships by this time were vastly superior in speed, maneuverability, and firepower. Fortunately for the Kraatchok, there were not very many of them. They had not given up their taste for Elven women, and started capturing them as sex slaves whenever the opportunity arose. Over time it became typical for there to be two to five Elven women kept on a ship. Eventually the Kraatchok started to win a war of attrition.”
“As this was happening, the Kraatchok sent out small exploratory vessels to see if they could find the new Elven home world. My father was assigned to one of those ships as a young Kraatchok. His name was Yordak, and he was twenty when he left his home port essentially as a lowest-grade enlisted man. He was uncharacteristically quiet compared to the normally boisterous Kraatchok. He was also unusual in that he treated all the other races with courtesy and respect. He trained with the Dragons to learn fighting. He trained with the Sidhe to hone his minor psionic abilities and defend against theirs. He had numerous affairs with the Kraatchok wives and daughters of his superiors. On the rare occasions he was allowed a night with an Elven lady, he would cuddle them and shower them with affection never asking for anything else in return. Eventually, each of them would welcome him for his kindness and become his lover. When he had served for five standard years, he was up for his promotion ceremony.”
“The tradition of the Kraatchok promotion ceremony was barbaric. The candidate would spend the week before the ceremony in drunken debauchery. The actual ceremony required the candidate to be stripped by his friends and then publicly mount a representative female of each race. The Kraatchok viewed women as only good for bearing children and keeping a home. The ceremony would start with a Kraatchok woman. They would never volunteer, so the result was always a rape. Then it would be an Elf from the slaves - also a rape. Then a Dragon - this usually led to a fight, but the Dragon was usually a young one to ensure the Grey’s victory. So, assuming the Grey won, that was followed by the rape of the young Dragon. Finally there would be the Sidhe. Sometimes a Sidhe would volunteer if she thought it would curry favor with a powerful Kraatchok. Otherwise...another rape. After ejaculating into the Sidhe, the candidate would take a bite of flesh from his Sidhe victim. Then one or more officers would spit a cloud of nanobots onto the promotion candidate to test his powers. The higher you rose in the ranks, the higher the number of officers spit their powers on the candidate. If the candidate survived the cloud, he was promoted.”
Xerxes takes another sip before he continues. “Yordak told me he prepared for his promotion ceremony by meditating and fasting for the three days prior to his ceremony. Two of his colleagues gave him grief about it right before he sequestered himself. He beat them severely. One of them died. When the time came for the ceremony, Yordak stripped and walked to the shuttle bay, where the ceremony is held. Everyone was surprised. The Commander called for a Grey woman to be brought. Ten of them stepped forward to volunteer. Yordak chose a woman of middle years and rare beauty among the Kraatchok, the Commander’s wife, Jadara. He slowly stripped her, kissing her and caressing her until she stood proudly nude before the assembled crowd. Yordak arranged her garments to pillow her knees, kissed her passionately, and then helped her kneel. He knelt behind her and cupped her treasures, which caused her to moan passionately. Father told me you could have heard a mouse breathing it was so quiet. Yordak entered her and pleasured her roughly. She screamed her pleasure, her fluids painted the floor, and Yordak finally came with her as both screamed their releases. Afterward, Yordak stood before Jadara. She took him in her mouth and gently cleaned him. Once she released his semi-erect organ from her mouth, Yordak helped her stand, picked up her clothes, and handed them to her. Jadara rolled her clothes into a tight ball, kissed Yordak again with passion, and then regally walked out of the shuttle bay.”
“The commander ordered the eldest of the Elven ladies, the 700 year old E’lora, be brought forward. As the Dragon guards escorted E’lora before the crowd, Yordak walked forward and greeted her with a kiss. He escorted her to the center of the bay and turned her to face the crowd, hugging her tight against himself. E’lora reached back to cup Yordak’s face and kissed him with blatant love and desire. He released her, and she bent forward at the waist to lay her palms on the floor. She spread her legs and pushed her treasures to Yordak, who promptly entered her wet folds. Her screams of pleasure made Jadara’s sound like the whimpering of a child. Yordack held her pelvis so her legs flapped in the air as he fucked her. She screamed her pleasure almost constantly, peaking four times. The last one took Yordak with her. Eventu
ally, he gently set her down onto her hands and feet. She gracefully spun and popped his member into her mouth to clean him. And then, like Jadara before her, she stood, and her Dragon guards escorted her away.”
Xerxes smiles widely as he thinks through the story. “No sooner had E’lora left the stage than my mother, Aradne, ran out in her ‘human guise’ to wrap her arms around Yordak. They kissed passionately until the crowd grew restless. He quickly stripped off her dress and like he did for Jadara, Yordak made a pillow for her knees. He mounted her, taking her maidenhead, brought her to two orgasms, and conceived me. Mother followed the same cleaning and kissing departure. Then four Sidhe ladies ran to Yordak. He selected Shawna after kissing the other three and thanking them. He stripped her, mounted her, pleasured her, bred her, and took a huge chunk of flesh from her shoulder. She didn’t even wait for the bleeding to heal before she turned to clean him. Yordak finally finished chewing and swallowed. Then he raised Shawna to her feet and kissed her. She grabbed her dress and was escorted out by a Dragon guard.”
“The commander was livid. He stormed up to Yordak and spewed out all the nanobots he had in him to the point that it made him weak. The cloud coated Yordak from head to toe. He skin turned raw and bled from the corrosives spit by the nanobots. He stood there until the nanobots cleared from his eyelids. He opened his eyes to find the commander standing five feet in front of him in a rage, weaving on his feet. Yordak launched forward and punched the commander in the chest, rupturing his heart. Since the commander had spit out all of his nanobots, his ability to heal himself was severely compromised. The commander of the ship slowly bled out into his own chest as Yordak stepped back to stand erect. He called out, ‘XO, the ship is yours.’ That didn’t necessarily cause a lot of joy. I don’t know if it was because the XO wasn’t revered or because everyone was distracted by the nanobots visibly absorbing into the raw skin. Once there were none left, Yordak’s skin healed in less than sixty seconds.”
Xerxes sips from his canteen again, “The XO stepped up to Yordak. Yordak saluted him and exclaimed, ‘Commander, by your leave.’ The new commander dismissed him, and Yordak disappeared. From that point on, he never returned to the Grey crew quarters. He lived among the Dragons with his four sworn ladies, appearing only for his duty shifts. Despite concerted searches by the Kraatchok and the Sidhe, none ever found his residence. That’s quite a feat on a relatively small spaceship. Yordak was expected to be strong with the nanobot abilities, but they never manifested. Whereas the Kraatchok would manifest smoky grey eyes, Yordak’s eyes would turn green. Rather than being rude and brash, he treated everyone with courtesy, respect, and even affection. When attacked in battle, instead of directing a cloud of nanobots to harm his enemies, they would just fall to the ground - usually to recover completely while being confounded by what had happened. That was the first and only mutation of the sort documented by the Kraatchok. They reported it. They analyzed Yordak’s blood. The Elves did all sorts of technology and genetic tests. They found nothing other than there was a slight difference in his DNA - a common chromosome pair thought to govern intelligence had an unusual configuration. He was the first of the Greens. And he was my father. We continued to hunt for the Elves for about a hundred years before we crashed here.”
“Our crash on this planet was caused by the new commander killing our Elven navigator in a rage. Then he killed the remaining two Elven ladies when they proved inept at navigation. E’lora was actually a trained navigator and dimension traveler. Yordak asked her to leave with their son rather than be caught and victimized by the Kraatchok. She created a dimensional portal from the ship to her home planet in her home dimension. Yordak kissed her and their son, and then E’lora and the boy stepped through. When the portal closed, the ship became unstable. The pilot fought the controls as we came out of faster-than-light flight in this solar system. The bridge crew desperately searched for a habitable planet in the system, and eventually found this one. The pilot managed not to kill us as we crashed. The Kraatchok raged at one another and killed the commander. The XO took over, and then someone killed him. The Dragons and Sidhe stayed hidden in their quarters, Yordak ventured out for his duty shifts and then returned. After days of infighting, a new commander eventually took control, and he sent out a patrol of Dragons. I was among them. We immediately met the Djinn. We attacked per our standard orders, and they killed one of us and wounded the other two. I took wing and headed far away to nurse my wounds. I knew wounded Dragons were fed to the crew, and I wasn’t interested in that fate.”
“Years later, I met other Dragons. They told me how Yordak got fed up with the destructive behavior of the Kraatchok. Some of the Sidhe and Dragons escaped. The Kraatchok punished the others. One of the Grey’s beat Shawna nearly to death. She was pregnant at the time and miscarried due to the beating. That was it. Yordak roused the Dragons and Sidhe, and they killed all the Grey males. Then the survivors packed everything and left the crash site behind. They eventually grew in numbers, and the reign of the Green Lords began. The Dragons took to the mountains shortly thereafter. Periodically one of your people would manifest as a Grey.”
I just look at Xerxes. “Damn.” After a bit, I have a question. “So how are there still Greys around?”
Xerxes shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m assuming the Kraatchak females had normal DNA. After generations of inbreeding and culling, it became a recessive trait. That’s about as much genetics as I remember. Maybe ask the Elves.”
I nod. “Wow. Okay, I need to finish the job Yordak started. Where do I find the Dread Lord?”
Xerxes says, “He already left for Camili with one of the female Sidhe. He is expecting you to show up so his remaining Sidhe can kill you. They are set up in that house in the crotch of the fork in the road. I broke open the glass tube that Zahra was in, and she escaped. They’re going to be rather upset at losing their prisoner. I expect they will want to impress their Lord.”
I nod for a moment. I turn to Ismael near the door. “From what you told me, that leaves five of them.”
Ismael is wonderstruck at Xerxes’s story, but he nods. “Yes. That sounds about right.”
Xerxes says, “The remaining female is wounded pretty badly. I doubt she will survive long.”
“Dalia!” Ismael whispers.
I tell him sternly, “We’ll get her. I’ll heal her, and the two of you can figure out what you want from life after that. Okay?”
Ismael agrees intently, “Certainly, Jack.”
I turn to the old Dragon and walk over to shake his hand in parting. “Thank you for the information, Xerxes. I hope to see you again.”
He responds, “I look forward to it, Jack. Good hunting.”
22 - Dalia
Ismael and I slip back outside and meet our two Rock Troll escorts.
When we meet them, Ismael explains the plan to the Trolls. They are to backtrack in the trees and cross the road where there are trees on both sides. They are to catch anyone that comes out the back of the house and hold them face-down in the dirt. Ismael and I will walk around the barn and follow the dirt street towards the main road and walk in the front of the house.
We put our plan in action. I think about waiting for a couple of minutes to give the Trolls a head start, but then I remember how quickly they move. Ismael and I slip between the houses towards the road. An older woman comes out of the house next to the barn carrying a basket draped with a kitchen towel. We manage to avoid detection, and she knocks on the door of the neighboring house. Once she has gone inside, we walk confidently toward the dirt street and make our way to the main road through town. I clasp my hands behind my back and Ismael places his right hand at the base of my neck as though he is guiding me.
About thirty meters to our right along the road there is a fork in the road. As Xerxes described, there is a small house in the crotch of the fork. It’s actually a little larger than many of the houses in the village. I reach in that direction with my abilities to detect living beings.
It’s more difficult given all the vibrant living trees, but the three Sidhe crouched under the trees are readily apparent. I quietly call out their location to Ismael.
As we get about ten meters away, Ismael calls to the closest in Arabic. “Hey! Yeshua! Do you have any rope? I had to bind this guy’s stump with his belt and then tie his other wrist up to it. The poor bastard had to hold his pants up with his remaining hand. It made getting up the mountain quite a labor.”
Yeshua steps forward. I see a glittering watchband on his wrist. The other two don’t appear to have one.
Ismael says, “Yeshua, I get that you’re in charge, but do you think you could not stand there like a stone and maybe do something useful for a change?” At that point we are inside two meters away. Ismael pushes me towards Yeshua, and I put him to sleep as I place both hands on his torso. Then I snag his left hand and sever the arm between the watchband and the elbow with the Elven blade. I have to take a second cut due to having bad form, but that second cut finishes the separation of the radius as well as the soft tissues. Then I deaden the nerves in his arm and heal it to a stump. Finally, I reinforce my command for him to sleep. He won’t wake anytime soon.
I turn to see Ismael choking out one of the Sidhe, and the other one is moaning on the ground holding his package. I will him to sleep and heal the injury done to him. Ismael’s opponent of the moment has a hand inside the sleeper hold Ismael is trying to put on him. I walk up, and he tries to kick me. I evade his attack and touch the middle of his forehead as I will him to sleep. He goes limp in Ismael’s arm. Ismael gently lowers him to the ground.
I find the communicator bracelet on each of them and cut the bracelets off their wrists.
Ismael goes inside, and I retrieve Yeshua and his severed hand. I drag him inside the house and drop him on the living room floor. I go back out to drag ‘groin kick guy’ inside. As I return outside to grab ‘choke hold guy,’ I hear a hoot from around the back of the house. I do my best to imitate it and then drag the ‘choke hold guy’ inside and close the door. Ismael is duct taping Yeshua’s arms to his body.
