So many smells. So much chaos in one little package. This is not going to help. We are in a precarious position as it is. Having lost the majority of our armies, we must focus on rebuilding. My king, however, can only focus on the vessel of his progeny. Having offspring is a surefire way to ensure ruin, as far as I am concerned, though of course, every king needs to provide a lineage.
I do need an assistant. I need able men. I need experienced warriors. I need disciplined, dangerous Essence soldiers. And instead I have this absolute mess of a small human female. I suppose I could have chosen a man, but handling a male seems like even more of a problem than a female, and Tyrant would not be well pleased if I brought a competing male onto the ship — as if any human male could compare to the majesty of the Essence king.
Lucky
He’s looking at me as if I’m something he found on the bottom of his shoe.
He’s really weird to look at. He shines. And he has scales. And a fin on his fucking head where his hair would be if he were a person. His eyes are wicked, they flash blue and green and gold and all the colors of the goddamn rainbow.
His body is…well, thick. And broad. And muscly, but in a covered in shimmering dragon scales sort of way. I can’t work out what he’s supposed to be. He has this air about him which makes me think it doesn’t matter what I think he’s supposed to be anyway. He is what he is. And what he is, is fucking massive.
His chest is bare. His lower half is covered in black pants. I can only imagine what’s beneath them. Something hard and scaled, I’m willing to bet.
Is he handsome? Yeah. Handsome in a SWAT team kind of way. All authority and danger, mixed with a hint of dragon and a whole butt load of what-the-fuck alien realness.
I told him I wasn’t afraid, because of the whole drug thing, but now I’m somewhat assuming that I’m having some kind of psychotic break. Why not. I haven’t had one of them before. I’ve had quite a few horrible things happen to me, but I’ve never completely lost touch with reality. I suppose there is a first time for everything.
“What’s your name?”
“I am Terrible.”
“That’s obvious enough, but what’s your name.”
“My name is Terrible. I am second in command to Warrior King Tyrant. I am the lord of Warkind. I am the general of a thousand elite warriors. I am the keeper of the sacred knowledge of slaughter.”
“Oh. Cool. I’m Lucky.”
“That remains to be seen.”
It’s funny because we’re both deliberately misunderstanding one another’s names. The fuck you is in the subtext.
“So you’re real?”
The question offends him. But then again, I get the feeling that absolutely everything offends him. Especially me. He doesn’t seem to like me. I am, apparently, some kind of inconvenience.
“I am more real than you are by every objective measure.”
I have no idea what that means, but maybe it means he’s real. I’m pretty sure that if I lost my mind, I wouldn’t confuse myself with my imaginings. Or would I?
“Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you're imagining everything that is happening to you. You humans are prone to delusions, but these circumstances are as real as they can be.”
My stomach growls. That’s how I know this is real. I’m hungry. You don’t get hungry if you’re imagining everything.
“So… why am I here?”
He makes a growling sound, as if he doesn’t like the answer to that any more than I will. It’s weird. He’s an alien, so obviously I might be reading his body language wrong, but I get the feeling I’m inconveniencing him or annoying him somehow. I never thought I’d be alien abducted. I definitely didn’t think I’d be alien abducted by someone who wasn’t pleased to see me.
“Did you bring me here?”
“Yes,” he sighs. “I brought you here.”
“Okay.” I nervously suck on my vape. It’s the only thing anchoring me to what might be reality. I finally unstick my eyes from Terrible and look around to gauge my surroundings. They’re… uninteresting. Deliberately so. The room is beige. There are beige floors, and beige walls. Probably a beige ceiling if I lift my eyes up… yep. It’s like finding myself in a loading screen on an old PC.
Then a door that wasn’t there a second ago opens, and another one of the aliens walks in. This new one has an even greater air of general self-importance. He looks me up and down, with an expression that seems to indicate some measure of surprise.
Just my luck, and it makes so much sense with the rest of my life that the aliens who abduct me are as confused by the experience as I am. I’m not really wanted, even when I’m specifically and individually plucked from the surface of my planet.