The Eighth Question
by Bruce Kevin Jones
    aka Marcus Raidien Jones (Fursona)
    marcusraidien@hotmail.com

Chapter One

She led them along the stone and brick corridor, no scent other than her own a little while ago, and the rich stink of the tattered line of souls behind her. She felt her undergarments riding up and stopped to adjust them to better fit. Her head was bare allowing her lupine features to be easily recognized. She was of the larger stronger members of her species of the wolf-like Fenrir clans. Dark gray thickly growing hair covered her whole body, yet she wore bright vermilion silk bulbous pants stuffed into black, high topped boots that below the ankle, changed from hard shiny leather to soft closefitting velvet. The velvet boots were formfitting over her long feet, with Duralin soles. Like all of her species she stood up on her toes, leaning back into the thick pads of the balls of her feet. Not many races in the galaxy walked as the human-like races did, on the whole backside of the foot, most had far greater agility in movement walking on the toes. Her shirt was also of silk but had a more scarlet color. It was also large and roomy, the high collar with gold piping was buttoned snug to her throat. Over this she wore a Rubis encrusted gold Lame` crimson Duralin vest with many inside pockets. Rubis was preferred over the ruby since only Humans liked that stone. Rubis was far harder and had a softer color that varied in different shades within the same stone. She did not cover her tail or decorate it with baubles as others of her race had done; she instead brushed it to a plume of gray fluffiness. A wide and thickly jeweled leather belt supported both her pants, and the two chains to the sheathed Falchion that swung out, then slapped her left thigh as she walked. Carefully she entered a darkened room of squishing muck under foot and many sinks piled in metal dishes of rotting meats and the debris of unidentifiable refuse. The stink was worse here as she tried too late to breathe through her mouth, “Yuck now I taste it too,” she thought.
She brushed against a butter knife on the edge of the sink. End over end over end the silvery shaft fell in the air, toward the metal plates. They were stacked precariously one atop the other. It struck them and they too started to fall over. Now it came, a crescendo of many sounds, jagged stale ringing and flat off-key grating of nearly smooth surfaces dragging across one another.
She stood and stared after them wincing at the sounds they made, as each of the plates rang in, announcing her presence to the slavers. She began to move again, thinking of escape to save herself, and leaving these poor unfortunates to their doom. She stopped instead, turning to her new charges. “As quickly as you can, follow me up the steps of this scullery and out to the level above,” she said in a low whisper. She picked up a waif and started to ascend the first step. Groans of the slaves caught in her ears, as they tried to hurry their muscles to speed along after her. 

She thought to herself, “We’re not going to make it. What was I thinking stealing slaves from slavers! I’ve got to get out of here; they’re only going to slow me down.” She turned to the slowly moving slaves: “ Look we’ve got to go now, this isn’t a game. These Royants are evil and they will kill us all.”

The child that she held gripped her shirt tighter, as if the child’s hands had grown into the fabric itself. She moved up the flight of steps, staying away from the greasy walls and the dark gray drifts of dirt and filth that collected in the corners of each step. Her hands were free as the child clung to her; she used them to pull herself up each of the steps, disregarding the crud that her gloved hands grasped slapping across the stone. She was not beaten and abused, tortured and half starved, so she fairly flew up the steps--gaining the top in seconds.
“ Hurry up!” She loudly whispered to the climbing slaves.
The level above was only a little lighter than the scullery below. Here it was smoky, and had the smells of awful breath and the sweetness of lovemaking, lingering in the air. It was wide here. She did not stumble as she hurried into the room. Slumbering and still half-asleep, the drunken slavers were scattered about the room, hulks of fat and smooth bodies on clumps of verminous straw mats upon the floor. Naked and shackled playthings scurried away from the slobbery slavers still belching and farting, adding pungency to the closed-in air of the room. She made quickly for the far side of the high ceilinged dank and sweaty hall, only when she was across did she chance to turn and look back. A ragged line of the slaves followed after her.
“It was a gamble, but I’m really glad I took their shackles and chains off, they are almost silent on their pads and flesh of their bare feet”, she thought.
“Stop, Molvaenean. Get back, Female; you’ll not have our haul.” A gruff voice came from out of the shadows before her.
A large hairless man stepped out, a gash bleeding down in runnels from the top narrower part of his huge head. He wore only the leather loin clout secured by a wide metal buckled belt around his smooth barrel belly. His right hand was soaking in his own fresh blood, causing it to crackle as it was drying on the back of his hand. This was the guard that she had knocked unconscious earlier, when she had infiltrated this place. His breath was hot and sprayed her with stink and spit as he blocked her way. He was hideous even in this light; he lacked any actual neck. The prominent feature of his head was the lack of a nose, instead a long slit quivered with each breath as the air moved through it. His eyes were set far apart, each one in a zygomatic well-muscled bone socket on either side of his nose-slit. Like the ocular of a spotting scope, the triangular pattern of the triple lidded eyes completed the horrid head. But his mouth jagged toothed and much larger than a normal mouth opened, and for just a moment she thought that he was going to bite her. Instead he yelled a curse and alarm.
“All of you get up! This Molvaenean is trying to steal our slaves;” he called to the others of his race upon the floor of the room, beyond.
Quickly thinking she reached for her favorite weapon, the Banshee. Holding the short glass tube at the red end, she squeezed it slightly. The fat and orange skin of the Royant flattened to the concussion, the Royant took half a step back. 

But the sonic disrupter’s force beam lanced into his flesh, and a volume of bright lemon colored blood burst from his back like a spray from a garden hose, that has been kinked, then suddenly freed. The sound of the Banshee had drowned out his death scream. The room erupted in shock behind her; she stepped to the side, out off the way of the running slaves so they could pass her. A female ran past, snatching the child that was still clinging to her shirt like an ornament. 
The other Royants groggily got up and felt frantically for their own weapons, in the dark hall.
Heedless of the danger, the shackled females that had been the night’s party made it across the room, stumbling in their fetters as they followed the other slaves. One of the Royants came up with a machine gun and it sputtered its bullets into the back of one of the doomed girls. The bullets danced her around like a puppet; some of them going right through, as the Royant peppered her in the back. Some of the girls made it to the shadows, but the yelling Royant hurried after them, his gun spraying death upon the hapless fugitives.
“This bastard is going to have to die,” she thought to herself, a feeling of pure revenge on her mind.
She started to re-enter the room as the gun ran out of ammunition suddenly. She felt along the wall but instead felt nothing, as her luck so far had run out. She slipped on the Bansheed Royant’s blood and fell into space backwards into some broken place of the wall. The floor was strewn with sharp rocks where the Banshee had blown the wall to shards. The Royants were yelling in the room behind her. As she struggled to get up, something grabbed her sleeve.
The room beyond and the stink of the dead Royant’s intestines were replaced by the smell of grass and soil. It was bright light that shocked her, a fire engine red sun was straight overhead. Somehow she had engaged a teleportal to this high noon place. “Now where the hell is this Kaitreena Gjeorjhe?” she asked out loud.