001: Slave Queen

[Carnelia]

I had always wanted to see the world. I never thought it would be chained to the deck of a ship, as a human slave.

My sisters, in their infinite mercy, thought it best for me to travel this way--collared and cuffed, iron around my ankles and wrists forcing my head and back to be bowed in submission as is the way with royal slaves. Covering me in rags and a cape of course cloth, nobody notices the technology around my neck, forcing me to maintain this unnatural state.

Stuck in my human form, nobody recognizes me as the celestial Queen Carnelia Majere. I am simply "Stella."

It has been three weeks of back-breaking misery since we left Elfholm. Since then I haven't had a single moment of peace. My sisters meant to break me, to force me into grateful service, and when pain didn't work, they tried humiliation. Like a common human captured to become a pet of a royal dragon, I am transported in shackles, my neck forced into an unnatural angle as too-short chains bind my neck and arms to my feet, making it impossible for me to bend up higher than waist height. So I stand here, day and night, at the mercy of every free man and drake who passes me, laughing as I'm forced to humiliate myself before them, devoid of privacy, unable to take care of my most basic needs in peace.

Sisters. These drakaina may be blood, but they are not my family. Family doesn't chain you. Family doesn't make you beg for mercy or laugh when you weep for your lost children and husband.

"Dearest Sister, look, our ship is about to dock," Cosima, the one with the short hair and the eyes that only see inside you, calls to me but I refuse to acknowledge her. She tries to show me mercy, but considering she also allows our sister to chain and humiliate me, her occasional moments of mercy does not go a long way to winning me over.

I don't look up, refusing to play along with their little game. They like to pretend they are not monsters. I will not let them fool themselves into believing they are kind.

Vega, the most innocent-seeming of the trio, jumps up and down with a child-like innocence. She is the same age as I am and went through similar horrors as she wandered the streets not knowing she was a dragon, but unlike me, she didn't grow brittle and old in spirit, she grew soft and childlike, so lost in herself that she often seems detached from reality.

"Ohh, the birds are so pretty! Is this really home? Is this where we come from."

"It was once," a voice like sharp steel scraping against stone screeches near my ear. Lyra, the leader of the trio, and my biggest tormenter, pulls on my coarse hair, pulling my chin upwards so that I have no choice but to stare ahead to where her taloned finger points.

"Look My Queen," she hisses mockingly. "Gaze upon your homeland. Watch as our people slave away for their colonizers. Your mate," she spits the word from her mouth as if it were poison, "His family did this. He allows it to continue. These are your people and your union with him is a betrayal to your kin."

On the shore, others with skin as dark as mine, some even darker, move along slowly, loading or unloading cargo from ships not much different than our own. Many of them are cuffed and collared as I am, forced to do the labor in human form. Others have their wings clipped and folded behind them, their larger bodies used to do bulkier work.

"And these were the lucky ones," she growls close to my ear. "These are the ones that were not pure enough to be placed in one of those hellish facilities to have their souls fuel the hearths of the Terrans. How many souls warmed your fire Queen Carnelia?" She uses my chosen name only during the times when she wants to be especially cruel when she wants to call me a traitor and force me to see the evils in the world.

Like right now.

Looking at the state of the Sun Dragons on shore, I feel the heat of anger rolling through my body. The cuff and collars grow hot around my neck as I dig my energy deep into the shadows, letting them lend me power.

Rather than stop me, Lyra smiles.

"That's right, sister. Let it go. Let it all go."

My rage burns brighter. The other dragons on our boat start shouting, demanding that my captors do something about me.

But it is too late. Too late for them, too late for all of us.

Reaching deep, I pull on the shadows, letting them weave their way into my soul, I craft a nightmare of tears and anguish. As it reaches an inner boiling point, I open my mouth as the cuffs and collar fall away, made useless by my surging power.

"Yes, Stella, let it go, let it free!" Lyra pulls her whip from her hip and with a loud crack, releases it into my back. Roaring in pain, my mouth opens wider and the nightmare spills forth, skipping across the water, aimed at the boats along the shoreline.

"No!" I gasp as I watch the shadow creature born from my anger and fear rage from one ship to the next, consuming the souls of all on board, human and dragon alike, without discrimination. With each life taken, I feel a surge of energy strengthen me, growing my power, rocking my body with a type of pleasure different from anything I've ever felt.

"No," weeping, I beg for them to make it stop, for it all to end, but Lyra laughs at my sorrow.

"You didn't feel guilty while you rutted with that foul Terran, but you feel shame at bringing justice to our oppressors?" she scoffs.

"We will heal you in holy fire," Cosima preaches, her hands touching the sides of my face, her blind eyes staring into my soul. "Open to me, Stella. Let me in."

I feel the moment her soul touches mine. She takes a small sip. And then another, cooling my wrath and bringing my nightmare under control.

"The void is grateful for your service," Cosima bows. "Great Messiah, welcome home."