The Iriduan’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Thirty-Two
Molly and a half dozen others who’d served Zaska now dangled over a pit of reeking venom, the deceptively slender threads of Uthagol’s web swaying as they struggled fruitlessly inside their silk cocoon prisons.
Uthagol had left their heads free so they could see and hear all that would happen to them, as well as hear the suffering screams of the others as they were tortured and raped, one by one. Uthagol had already told Molly that she would be the last, forced to watch the slow and agonizing suffering of all those who’d been loyal to her in Zaska’s name, not to mention Briana and Jenice, who would be taken down before her so she could endure watching Uthagol’s minions break them.
Instead of selling off any of the minions Namerian had handed over to Uthagol for some compensation Molly hadn’t been privy to, Uthagol kept them all. Some, she killed for fun. Some, she fed to her own minions, or her spindly males with their gaunt faces and dark, eerie eyes. Some, she kept for her own harem, drugging them into an almost zombie-like state so they obeyed her every command.
The rest, like Molly and the other females, she planned to press back into service in her brothel. Only this time, she would not leave their minds free. Her intention was to punish them all, then lobotomize them so they never gave her trouble again.
Molly heard all Uthagol’s plans for her, but she barely listened. She flinched and wept at the sounds of suffering from those who’d once served her, but her heart already felt numb. She almost welcomed the idea of being lobotomized into forgetting herself, forgetting her memories—forgetting Shulgi.
Not that she wanted to let the others come to harm because she’d given up on life. She still planned to escape, but in the last two day-cycles since the transfer of prisoners to Uthagol had been made, she hadn’t been able to devise an escape plan. Uthagol left them enshrined in their cocoons, forcing them to eliminate their waste all over themselves as they hung over a lethal soup of her and her males’ venom that would slowly and agonizingly kill them if their skin touched it. Even the fumes burned their eyes and lungs, and Uthagol would increase those fumes using heat beneath the vat whenever she wanted them to suffer more.
She didn’t feed them, and they were all dehydrated by now as well. They’d been weakened, and that had been entirely deliberate. Uthagol wasn’t taking any chances this time. Molly and the others had done significant damage to her operations when they’d escaped years ago.
Jenice moaned inside her cocoon, and Molly shot a worried glance her way, grateful to have a reason to look away from the horrors going on below them. Horrors she knew would be visited upon her and those she cared about most.
Jenice didn’t look good. Her wound had not been fully treated by the Iriduans, who’d tossed them into a transport vehicle as soon as they finished taking full control of the docks. Some of the other former minions of Sha Zaska had aided the Iriduan invaders in deactivating all the traps and security measures that hadn’t been of much use in stopping their invasion. Zaska’s former empire was now fully under Ma’Nah’s control.
Jenice probably had an infection, based on her paleness, flushed cheeks, and sweat-drenched skin. Instead of struggling in her cocoon like she had at first, now she dangled limply, moaning and muttering. The only movement in her body was her constant shivering. Dehydration was hitting her the hardest after her blood loss.
“Hang in there, Jen,” Molly said, worry now piercing her fog of numbness. “Don’t give up fighting,” she whispered just loud enough for the other woman to hear her.
“Tell Mog and Grun I’m sorry,” Jenice said without opening eyelids that had fallen closed nearly a day cycle ago and hadn’t lifted since, her words coming with effort through a throat that sounded dry as a bone.
“You’ll get to tell them yourself,” Molly insisted, wondering why she bothered to lie even as she felt like she couldn’t bear to speak the truth aloud. “We’re going to get out of here, Jen! I promise you!”
Jenice finally opened her eyes, what little moisture remaining in her body glistening over her irises. “This is my fault, Molly,” she rasped, her words coming slowly and with difficulty. “I own that. I hope you can forgive me someday.”
“Stop it, Jen,” Molly said on a sob, shaking her head as Briana murmured behind her in a reassuring but hopeless sound. “Don’t talk like that! You have to live long enough to grovel.”
Jenice’s chapped lips tilted in a weak smile as she wheezed out a chuckle. “I…I’m afraid I’m not gonna be able to get down on my knees anytime soon,” she finally managed to get out. “But I would do anything to make it up to you, Molly.”
She turned her head, grunting at the effort as she strained to glance back at Briana, who was dangling at their backs, between the two of them. “And to you, Bri.” Her eyes lowered to the torture chamber below, her smile vanishing. Her lids closed, tears sliding down her cheeks. “To everyone.”
She opened her eyes to meet Molly’s again. “Let them know I groveled in spirit, Mol.”
Molly shook her head fervently. “No! Jenice, don’t you die on me, you hear me! I can’t lose you too. I already lost….” Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t you die on me, damn you!”
“I love you guys,” Jenice said in a weak murmur. “Don’t ever forget that.”
Then she closed her eyes again, her head lolling to the side as her breath rasped slowly in and out between her slightly parted lips.
Molly struggled in her bonds, wriggling as hard as she could, crying out to Jenice to open her eyes again.
“Mol,” Briana said sadly from behind her when Molly finally ran out of energy, far too weakened by now to even cause her cocoon to swing on its slender thread. “I don’t think she’s gonna wake up again, hon.”
Molly didn’t want to acknowledge Briana was right, but she could see how bad of shape Jenice was in. The other woman barely breathed at this point, and the fumes from the venom hadn’t helped any of their lungs. With Jenice’s wound and advanced dehydration, she wasn’t likely to recover unless she was saved at this very moment.
Given the fact that Uthagol’s minions had stopped their gleeful torture of their current victim to watch Molly lose her shit, and were now mocking her and her dying friend, she sincerely doubted that anyone would make an effort to save Jenice.
Uthagol herself had said Jenice had never really been worth the trouble of breaking her into the service of the brothel. She hadn’t been concerned about seeing that Jenice’s leg was properly set and healed. She hadn’t cared at all. Why would she? Her slaves had always been expendable to her.
Jenice passed away several hours later, rasping out her last breath without another word to either Molly or Briana, or any of the others still dangling inside their cocoons, most of whom had sunk into their own despair and also didn’t bother to speak or even interact with the other captives. They all knew their time was coming. It was almost a blessing to remain in the cocoon rather than face what would happen to them once they were cut down.
Molly heard Briana shedding precious water through her sobs as she mourned Jenice, but Molly’s eyes remained dry. Not because she wasn’t stricken with more grief, but because she couldn’t make any more tears. She’d already cried so hard over Shulgi and now Jenice that she’d used up all her weeping.
Though Jenice had died blaming herself for their predicament, Molly felt like it was really all her own fault. After all, if she had only dealt with Shulgi on a business level, Namerian likely wouldn’t have made a move on Sha Zaska’s holdings. Shulgi himself wouldn’t have bothered to delve in the under-vents in search of Zaska. Life would have gone on with Zaska’s power and influence continuing to grow. Maybe someday, they could have all retired and moved to a Syndicate zone planet—one with lots of tropical beaches and sunny days.
Molly couldn’t even remember seeing a real sun. The last time she would have seen one would have been as a very small child on Earth.
Za’Kluth remained always on the dark side of a molten world.
She’d dreamed of what it would be like to walk beneath a warm but not scorching sun, her toes buried in soft sand, with the sound of the ocean licking the shore in the background as a gentle breeze carried the scent of flowers to chase away the brine.
She’d often wondered if that dream was also a memory because it seemed so real. Perhaps her last day on Earth had been spent visiting the beach. She’d probably splashed in the waves and searched for seashells along the shore.
Now, as she stared at Jenice’s peaceful face, her eyes aching with the need to shed tears she couldn’t make any longer, she felt her first bout of true homesickness for Earth since she was a child. She added mourning the family who had lost her—who had probably never discovered her true fate—to the mourning over Jenice, all of the others they’d lost, and Shulgi.
Always Shulgi, whose death haunted her the most, though she had known him for such a short time.
He really had been her home, for the far too few blissful hours she’d spent in his arms.
Uthagol’s minions were cutting down another victim, the last one before they would come for Briana, then Molly, when one of her males rushed into the torture chamber, chittering wildly. The sounds were too far below her for Molly to make them out clearly, but then Uthagol herself strode into the chamber, several more of her males trailing behind her.
She towered over them, standing well over eight feet tall. Her limbs were as slender as a human skeleton, though chitin covered them. Her torso was also very narrow and sylphlike. She had an austere humanoid face, though six eyes clustered above her narrow nose and thin lips. Sharply defined high cheekbones and a gaunt jawline where the skin clung to her mandibles created shadows on her face that made it look far too similar to a human skull.
Though she walked on two legs—bipedal like so many Syndicate species were—she possessed eight total limbs, her two lowest set of arms significantly smaller than the other four, and solely used to pull and spin threads from a seam in her almost concave belly.
She was graceful and elegant, according to some who either didn’t know how evil she could be—or simply didn’t care. She was also one of the worst monsters on Za’Kluth, and that was a high bar to meet.
Molly still reflexively shuddered in fear when Uthagol’s six eyes fixed on her, and the creature still seemed to tower over her, even when viewed from above.
“The dreg is on fire,” Uthagol said shortly, cutting off her male’s chittering with a sweep of one imperious hand. “I find that very… interesting. There has never been a riot of this level in the dreg since it was first established on Za’Kluth.” She swept a second hand towards Molly and one of her males rushed to cut Molly down, using a barbed hook to haul her cocoon away from the vat of venom first.
“I wonder,” Uthagol said in a thoughtful tone as her cold eyes studied Molly’s face, “whether this sudden chaos has anything to do with Zaska.” She spat the name out as if it tasted bitter to her.
As far as Molly knew, Uthagol still thought Zaska had existed. She believed him to be dead now, though, and Molly wondered if Namerian knew the truth and had decided to keep it from her, or if he’d never bothered to find out for himself if Shulgi had left a corpse behind in the under-vents.
Uthagol regarded Molly without a readable expression on her face as her male cut Molly from the cocoon. She chuckled when Molly collapsed onto her hands and knees at Uthagol’s expensively shod feet.
“Is it possible that Sha Zaska still lives?” she demanded as Molly sat back on her haunches with a groan, her eyes lifting to meet Uthagol’s defiantly.
Molly raised her chin. “Do you really think my master could be so easily defeated? He had multiple escape routes to choose from. The Iriduans found nothing in the under-vents because Sha Zaska escaped. But he will return for us. And he will punish you.”
Uthagol struck her casually across the face, rocking her head to one side. Then she struck her again with one of her hands on the other side, much harder. Molly fell over onto her elbow and Uthagol kicked her in the stomach several times as she grunted in pain and tried to curl into the fetal position.
“Sha Zaska has been defeated,” Uthagol snarled. “I don’t care if he still lives. His minions belong to the Iriduans now, and his slaves are mine. He doesn’t have the power to threaten me!”
Molly struggled for the breath to speak once Uthagol stopped kicking her. When she found it, she took a moment to spat blood that welled from the wound where she’d bitten her tongue. Her red-flecked spittle stained Uthagol’s silken heel and Molly chuckled weakly.
“He’s coming for us,” she insisted, determined to make Uthagol live in fear, at least for some time before she finally realized no one would come for them. “He’s so much more powerful than you know. He has minions everywhere. Powerful allies who owe him much, and he will bring them to help him destroy you, and the Iriduans of Ma’Nah. Even now, his retribution has begun. The dreg burns! You’ve said it yourself. Sha Zaska is already at work on his plan of vengeance!”
