When I opened my eyes to his hand covering my mouth, I already knew what he wanted.

I could see nothing in the pitch dark of my chambers, but I knew. I knew from the cold metal that rang against my skin. I knew from the pinprick beneath my skull, his presence holding me tight. It was a chilly, omnipresent force that held me down. I had no choice but to do what he said.

"Get up. I'm taking you with me."

"You — rebel scum!"

I was helpless. He hoisted me out of my bed, a hand grabbing at my hair, metal gauntlet scraping against my skull. I believe he drew blood. "You can't do this to me!"

"I am sick of waiting."

He flung me on the floor. His boot pushed beneath my nightgown, between my thighs. "If you can't figure it out yourself," he said, "then I'll do it for you!"

I gasped and protested, but what was I to do?

"I am taking you with me to the rebel base. We will lock you in the darkest dirtiest dungeon we have. I will shave your head. I will change your name. I will inject you with the essence of Man, and it will be irreversible."

He was playing with me as if I were a little doll. Fondling my breasts, rubbing between my legs. Tears streaked down my cheeks. This could not be! He could not make me into a man, not like he was. I was Slavebreaker. I was a womyn! A loyal, obedient womyn. 

It would not be my fault — even if I survived this, I would be forever altered. It would not be my fault. I would simply have to live with it, and my sisters would accept me. Of course they would have to accept me.

His hands around my wrists. Hoisting me over his shoulder. I kicked ineffectively against his breastplate, but still he grasped my back. His fingers found the crook beneath my white, feathery wings.

"I do not want this!" I cried as he continued to assault me. And it became something else — a mantra, that I repeated on and on. I did not want this. Therefore, it was not my fault. Therefore, no one would hate me.

He began to tear. The hollow, delicate bones snapping.

"You're mine now, boy," he said, rough hands covered in blood. "I can do whatever I want with you."

"No… No… I won't let you! I won't —"

My head swung with deja vu as I awoke. I shot upright, my heart pounding through all my limbs. Pitch black— but it was only a dream.

My white nightclothes were soaked in sweat; my covers had fallen away. I was oddly exposed to the night air. As I pressed my hand to my aching abdomen, my nipples were hard. Cold, and sweating. I panted, raking my hands through my cropped hair. It was a dream, only a dream. I’d had it many times before.

I blinked. It made no difference to my vision, of course. But I blinked, and blinked again. I shook my head, as if trying to rattle an insect from a vessel. I could not tell, at first, if it was only residue from the unreal world I had just escaped. There was a little hollow in my head, a part gone.

The call was on my tongue. Slave? Slave, come here.

But I did not want to disturb the blanket of night. I felt about the side of my cot and found my arclight. I held it over my head and let its halo pool around me.

A draconic shadow — my helmet — on the wall. Everything in its place, from the stand of paint and powders to my IV drip.

Eleno was gone.

I did not realize I was rising. My mouth hung open, my throat clenched in fear. My nightclothes slunk off the cot and flowed about me. I approached the mirror, its reflection dazzling my eyes.

“You naughty thing,” I said to it. “Get back here!”

The halls were just as dark and slumbering. I held my skirt to keep from tripping; one hand bunched in fabric, the other with the light held high. 

Darkness all around me, so deep as to be physical. Its velvet tendrils brushed my cheeks as I scoured the vessel. My disorientation was so deep, I do not know when I first realized my slaves had gone silent.

That oppressive clamor, rooted in the back of my mind? It was psychological kickback, my brain trying to fill the abscess their minds had left. My mind was ringing. They were gone, all gone.

All but one.

“What are you doing?” I said to the dark. “Come back here.”

Silly thing— her presence was now a throbbing, a sac that expanded and shrunk in rhythm. It strained against my walls. In and out, calling to me.

Nothing was left to impede my path; I did not even need the light. Soon I ceased to need vision at all, our rope a taut umbilical cord. My senses turned to a slow, sensual kaleidoscope, a blurring of fluids that could only mean her. 

My eyes did not see her eyes. But mechanics aside I did see her, did know her— standing in some desolate corner with ramrod back and head bowed, like a visit to the gallows. Her eerie stiffness reminded me of the first night I took her; as I drew close the space between my legs throbbed in time with her, drooling beneath the diaphanous gown.

“My slave!” I cried out, and threw my hands around her neck. “Ah… I ought to punish you, running off like that.”

I kissed her sloppy mouth, swollen lips devouring her icy skin. Sloping down, into the crook beneath her ear. I clasped her sex between the plates of armor. “What am I to do, when I crave your taste but you are nowhere to be found? Do you expect to leave your Slavebreaker starving?”

She did not respond to my touch; that was how I liked it. I groaned, forcing the command through my mind, to fuck back to me.

In resonance, something cold and hard pressed against my slit. My muscles clenched, gasping as I pushed through Eleno’s mind—

And found resistance.

She had braced her rod against my sex. The force of her mind was strong enough to make me stagger, scrape against the point. I was filled with a burning sensation. Something that pulsed, skittering in my veins, my throat.

Hatred.

Hatred like a rabbit to the hawk. Hatred like a rock unable to escape being slowly eaten by the sea. The hatred of the doomed towards its ender. Eleno had not wandered off in a fit of whimsy. 

She was free, and she meant to kill me.

I tore myself away from her stiff arms. Back down the hall I ran, tripping over my gown. Eleno did not heed the limits of her own body; her sockets popped, her boots rammed the floors. She was fast, so fast. She was nothing but sheer will, and I had no power to control her any longer.

“Stop!” I cried. “Stop this, I am— I am your master!”

Eleno did not stop. She did not waver. With what mental energy I could muster, I projected my image running forward while my body swung wildly around, ducking into a control room. She hurried on with her unseeing eyes.

I sank down to the floor. 

In the dark and the quiet, I threatened to fall apart. I wanted to sink my head into my knees and sob like a little girl. I held strong. I swallowed. The dim opalescent lights of the communicators glittered in my eyes; their pinprick lights, white and red, reflected off my clammy skin. I sensed Eleno as she stopped her pursuit. She knew I had slipped away.

Swift. Turn. Marching backwards. Vision scoping. I had to stay quiet.

I crawled forward on my hands and knees; blind fingers groping for anything that could be of use. I fantasized shanks and blades, a fully-loaded ray-gun awaiting my touch.

Ring!

My head shot up.

Ring! Ring!

“Not now!” I hissed. “Who is calling me at this hour?”

Eleno heard the noise— it bounded from every room with a communicator. It drew her, the dumb thing, like a moth to flame.

The closest room being mine.

I scrambled towards the wall, pale wormy fingers attacking the buttons. “Quiet, quiet!”

Punched in. Wrong button. “Ah—!”

Yes, Slavebreaker, the system intoned. Replaying message from…

"Sister, oh Sister is it true?” Gisal’s voice crackled.

No! I slapped at the interface, but to no avail. Gisal’s plea played through to the very end.

"They are spreading rumors —Slavebreaker Rascende told me you've been summoned to the Highmothers’ Temple! She said that you are to hold counsel with the Highmothers, to deliver them the slave that was once He-she. She said you'll be bestowed with a new title — High Slavebreaker!”

Eleno was stalking towards the noise, now. I flared my arclight again, my heart in my throat. I tripped over my skirts as I fled as far from the door as I could.

"She is full of falsehoods, is she not? It can't be true. It can't be true that they are bestowing you a new ship and three concubines bred for the highest ranks — they would not do that, not when I have always tried —”

A small hatch, meant only for menial repairs. The door burst open and Eleno saw me, squirming, crying, crawling inside with Gisal’s pathetic simpering rattling the walls.

"Do not take offense — it is only… Why, we grew up together! We were the same. There is no reason for you to — to be so successful, to become an immortal legend — with a feast in your honor — while I…"

I stared back at her slack-jawed. Her empty gaze met mine. That’s right, I thought. Hatred.

Her hand found my ankle before I fully slipped through. I lashed and I cried and something was pulled, some muscle or ligament– then I fell through the chute and out of her grasp.

I landed in some dirty maintenance room. Machinery hummed, but there was nobody there to serve me. The communications unit was ringing again, and I made no attempt to stop it. I stood, ragged. My gown was torn at the shoulder seam, baring my left breast to the air. Soot and dirt marred its white surface. I hovered my hands over my sex; Eleno’s rod had pierced it, just enough to leave a thin trickle of blood down my thighs. Half-folded, I staggered to the controls.

What was I to do? Where could I go? I checked Laodike’s course; we were hundreds of hours out from any habitable planets, let alone any liberated ones. I could contact a High Priestess, but…

My hands hovered. But I was supposed to be the greatest of my class. If I confessed to this, all that I worked for would be squandered. And if they should learn of my touching Eleno…

I left the control room, and back into the hall. No, there was nothing to do but to survive, to endure. What was I frightened of? Eleno was nothing but the dirt beneath my boot. Let her hate, like a worm hates the hawk.

Yes, Slavebreaker. Replaying message…

Echoing, cacophonous, through the ship.

Slavebreaker Winter has done well, said Highmother West.

Said North, She has conquered He-she, that who deceives us, that who pretends to be womyn.

Her hatred of the male race is remarkable, went East. Her tactics are effective. Her dedication to the cause is to be lauded.

West: I see no reason why she should not be vaunted.

East: Should be provided as an example of ideal womyn.

Obedient.

Clever.

Loving.

“No…no…” She neared me again; behind me, a silent phantom down the floor. I could sense her only through the shadow she cast in my mind. I took off once more into an unsteady run. “No, no you must understand—”

Highmother South interrupted. Yet, are your memories so short? Slavebreaker Winter ought to be catechized, not pampered.

Yes… said the others. Yes, there was that one thing.

For we know all that has happened,

Every misfortune that has fallen our servants.

She was so very young, said North. Does she even recall?

But I could not run for much longer. The hallway reached a dead end, my ankle twisted, and Eleno caught me. I screamed. I bit deep into her gauntleted hand, but there was no stopping it. Through my back, scraping my spine, the rod plunged. My blood gushed out onto the floor. My legs gave out beneath me, leaving me a puppet on the end of Eleno’s stick. I grasped it where it escaped my stomach; whimpering weakly, my hands slick and red.

“But I…”

She threw me to the floor. Over and over the rod plunged, poking holes into my thin skin. My back arched with every useless scream. "But I love you! I love you!”

A priestess found her crying on the beach. Sad, wet, skinny little thing, all covered in sand.

“What has become of you Winter? What makes you weep so?”

“Gisal said… she said that the Highmothers turn bad girls into little boys.” The tide tugged at Winter’s dress. “She said that if I’m mean to her, I’ll wake up ugly like them.”

“Oh, she was only lying. Don’t be scared.”

Tears in her little eyes. “It’s not fair…”

“What is?”

“Why do I have to be bad?” the child cried. “I want to be good. It will be really hard to be bad. It will hurt a lot. Why can’t I ask really nicely, and the Highmothers will let me wake up boy-Winter?”

I did not die. I lived on, Eleno’s plaything, to be bled and raped and ruined until her mindless body shut down. I lay on the floor and I moaned. How I wished to die.

“If you truly want to be good, you will never think this again. Banish it from your mind. Purge it from your flesh. There are no little boys, and there will never be any more. Remember: You are complete.” 

“I am complete.”

“You are love.”

“I am love.”

“To love is to listen.”

“To love is to obey.”

I sat up in bed. Mouth covered in drool. Deja vu. “Fucking dreams. Fucking every night. I—”

Went to breakfast.

Over the spread, I pronounced, “We can leave— whenever you want.”

I was giddy— overtired from restless night after restless night. I was too excited to even feel embarrassed. "Oh, enough of this. Come — sit here."

Eleno did so, settling stiffly on the chair at my right hand. I commanded my slaves to bring another bowl, and she ate with me as I spoke.

"The Highmothers expect us at their temple in 48 hours," I said. "We can make more time if I come up with some excuse — some emergency that means I may be late. But I won't say how late. Oh, won't that be rich? Leaving them hanging. The uncertainty will give us even more time. To get away, I mean.

"Again — whenever you're ready." I laughed. "Whatever you say is what I'll do. Why, I think if you told me to burn down the ship, I would do it in a heartbeat!"

I laughed — and I laughed, my voice echoing through the dining hall, down through the depths of Laodike. 

As she ate, the porridge would habitually slip from her spoon. She was very awkward about it. Spoon in bowl, spoon in mouth. Some of it slipped down her chin, leaving her drooling and messy. I leaned over to wipe it away.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," I said, “but don’t be frightened. I know it was not the real you.”

For, more often than the nightmares, I spent my night communing with Eleno in tender, body-warm bliss. In them, he offered me a choice. He said the old offer was still on the table (despite him trying to kill me shortly after). He said that there were no hard feelings, and the rebels would be happy to have me. That I would be good and useful and, maybe one day, beloved.

In my dreams, we were on the shores of Ucinda, and whatever happened there happened between us. He held me beneath the warm water, and hoisted my regrown locks into his fist. He slashed at them, and the hair wriggled like black snakes, lost in the ocean.

In my dreams, we sat across from one another in the sand. Our arms held out, crossed, twin needles in skin. I looked up, and his face was my face. I cannot tell where one ended and one began. He called me a name that did not exist upon my waking.

“You think I don't know. You think you fooled me, being nothing, feeling nothing. But I know better." I blushed. “Ah— you could stand to be more subtle, you know. With the dreaming.”

More porridge dripped from his spoon. I looked at the little puddle it left on the table, and a sudden surge of emotion filled me. Tears filled my eyes.

“Please—” I slid across the table, dishes scattering, to grasp at the sides of Eleno’s head. “Please, I know you do not hate me. But— oh, it was so real! I know you ought to. I deserve it. I deserve—”

In lieu of a finish, I kissed him.

Melted; the chair creaking and tipping, my robe opened, silked down my shoulders. I kissed the hair across his collarbone until it was black and shining. Swimming until my mouth reached between his legs and lapped at his cock. Hard tight thing between my lips, between his lips, sucking.

“Ah—” I gasped, feeling his pleasure. “Ah, I am almost jealous.”

His knees rose, knobby like mountain peaks. All his muscles flexed but his face as I, with a deliberateness and a fervor, brought him forth.

My time then came; he slinked upwards, pulling me beneath him. I hardly felt the steel floor beneath our sloppy bodies. I pushed him to kiss my breasts, and he kissed them. I pushed his fingers into my mouth, sucking them good and wet.

“Please… Jag…”

Solid hand, thumb beneath my jaw, brushing back my hair. Lubed hands, his hands, my spit, my hands, fingering the metal slit at my temple.

“Yes!” I arched my back, the mere touch a shock. “Yes!”

Slow pressure, pushing the implant. Slow steady pressure coaxing the pistil to part.

“Yes, yes!” I cried. “Fuck me! Fuck my brain!”

All dissolved; all but Jag and I, my twin flame, my slave, my pet, my brother. We were colors never seen. We were words never spoken. Him, plunging into my most intimate depths, him plumbing me at my disposal, under my control. Where did my control end and his will begin? 

Agh, mind-fuck, me-fucked, selfhood stretched, in and out. Moaning for more, head lolling in his hold. It didn’t matter. My every thought quivered in his wake. He left me drooling on the atrium floor.

Centuries ago, this room had been full-to-bursting with a thousand womyn, slaves in their wake; they displayed their gems at throats, carved marble warriors flexing at their disposal. There were so many a breath could not pass through the throng unimpeded. Beneath me was a mosaic of stars, and above was Jag redressing his armor.

“Wait—”

He stopped, helmet in his hands, held loose above his abdomen.

I said, “I’m sick of fighting. I’m sick of these circling, fruitless chases. There’s something you want from me, isn’t there? There’s something you want me to be."

I forced myself upright. I blinked, dumbly, at his boots. "Well — if it means an end to this pointless charade, then so be it.”

Shivering, I ran a finger through my cropped hair. It stuck flush against my skin. “Jag…”

I looked up to his lustreless eyes. I was like a freshly-born doe on my staggering legs, rising until we were standing face-to-face, chest-to-chest. A deep breath. My shoulders straightened, my head held high. I tried to retain my imperious voice, though the words were so difficult.

"Take me with you," I said. "I will come. The rebels may have my ship. They may have all my slaves, everything I know about every level of power. I will betray all my sisters. I will betray the priestesses. I will forsake their teachings. Only say the word… Only say the word, and I will be your prisoner.

“This is not a command. It is a request. I am— I am done giving commands. I want…”

My voice died.

It was not like how I’d imagined it. Jag had no facetious smile, no mocking insult to pass me. He did not take me by the waist. He did not kiss me again.

Well— one more order, for the road. “Dance with me.”

It was a slow, soundless waltz. His boots echoed in the empty atrium as I hugged my body to his. I laid my head in the crook of his, and we swayed.

Back and forth. I closed my eyes and I saw him smiling. What I wouldn’t give, what I wouldn’t become to see him, whole and smiling. Maybe the rebels, in their mysterious hovels galaxies away, had found a way to restore a slave, a pristine garden reborn. Jag had said it himself; the soul was unassailable. His gauntlets cut against my gaunt fingers. Back and forth. 

We danced until my worn body began to waver. I quivered, and still Jag held me. "Whenever you're ready," I said. "I'm only waiting."

Old habits died hard; a rivalry was a rivalry. I would not let go until he let go. He would be the first to blink, the first to show the truth. I had to see him still there, the fire to the smoke. I knew it already, that Jag had loved me— or, failing that, had seen something in me worth saving.

The tears came against my will. They dripped down my cheeks onto his breastplate, and from there to the swaying ground. He held me in slow, gentle circles. I cried. I cried uncontrollably, irrevocably, every suppressed desire and desperate wish expunged from me like a pumped stomach. I do not know when my fingers slipped out of his grip. I do not know when I crumpled to the floor, when I laid my head on the metal and retched with it, crying all I had left in me, shivering and cold alone.

"How could you be so cruel?" My voice wavered. "This is my last testament. Stop it! Stop mocking me. If there is anything left— do something, say something now. 

“Anything, anything. I’ll take it! The Maiden cannot have done its work so well. Not to someone like you." Oh, it was horrid. The most horrid feeling I had ever felt. “I have had enough. Disobey me. If there's anything left of Jag Eleno in there, if your heroic professions of the soul were more than empty words, disobey me!"

Above, glittering through the haze of tears, Jag Eleno stared blankly ahead, arms outstretched to an invisible partner.

Is it a mercy to kill it before it's born?

Is it a kinder existence to simply be the one leaked down the drain? Is it better, I could not help but wonder, to be a wolf who devours and devours but is never satiated? It must be better than being the lamb. All through the snowy fields I killed and killed but satisfaction never came. I think now I was never capable of it. Were that infinite kindness as powerful as it supposed itself, I would have been born into a world that would have me.

There is little I could say to justify myself. There is nothing I can do that would make you view me as anything but evil to the roots. The rebels will never forgive me. My own people, who I once loved, will recoil with disgust and horror when they see the depths of me. I tell you this. I tell you that I did all I could. I obeyed every law. I did what was expected of me, and I was loved for it. There was nothing else I should've wanted. It is a sickness that even the Maiden could not have purged.

But I would not know. Though it called for me, I did not go into the Maiden. I did not want to be repaired. I wanted to be free.

The Highmothers Temple was on a planet of lush gardens that had once been swampland. The waters had been drained and the whole world terraformed to make way for the sacred house. Hedges of feminine forms rose from the haze of misty fountains. Flowers bloomed on every surface.

Their slaves greeted us. They were of the most exquisite beauty; so much so they were impossible to describe. They led us inside, their gazes drawn down, their touches hovering just above my skin.

First, we were brought through a room laid out with an exquisite feast. It was beyond anything even I, so well-versed in the trappings of the highest echelon of our world, could fathom. My mouth watered and my stomach coiled. A slave looked at her feet and said, "Slavebreaker, would you like to eat?"

"I want nothing," said I, "but to deliver my charge to the Highmothers."

She smiled.

Next, we were led through a room of marvellous furnishings, the softest silks, the air suffused with warmth and lavender, and asked if we would like to rest. I refused.

We came now to the bathhouse, full of flesh. There were so many slaves they piled over one another, an endless tangle of breasts and ankles and fine swan necks. They reached their fingers toward us, sighing like birds. The walls were white porcelain dripping with the sweated mist of the hot baths.

"It will be an hour until the Highmothers will see you," my guide said. "Are you sure you will not be entertained?"

"I shall wait as long as needs be."

"You must be naked," said the slave, "in their presence. Shall I undress you now?"

I agreed.

My suspicions were correct — there was not an independent mind among the throng. I was the only thinking, feeling person in the entire temple. It was all endless winding caverns of slaves emptied of their wills. Had they not been, I doubt I would have been allowed so deep. Jag and the guide stripped me of my armor.

The tunic slid from the slave’s hands. "Slavebreaker…"

I stood in my nakedness without shame. The very air seemed to recoil from me. My skin, white from illness, dimpling in the sauna. White — save for the green pall cast by the pulsing cock that stood erect between my legs.

"Slavebreaker, there is something…"

I lifted my head, where my implant thrummed with an unnatural heat. "What?"

"Ahh…" She had no words for it. She’d never seen such a thing in her life.

What did it matter? The Highmothers had no cunts. They were only minds. Minds, held in fragile glass tubes.

I said, "There is nothing the matter. I will see the Highmothers, naked, as is tradition. There will not be a single thing to hide my soul from their glorious sight."

"Yes, Slavebreaker." She felt her knees. "You have passed every test. You'll be able to pass through…" She gestured to the tall doors that had the most important room from sight.

In those final moments before the end, I turned my slave, who had traveled with me all this way. His weapons lay discarded on the floor. But neither he nor I would need a weapon; it pulsed against my temple, the high keening insistence. Every thought that flowed through me brought my implant closer and closer to the inevitable implosion.

"Yes," we said. "Let them see me as I am."