Space Crusaders

Chapter 3: Sisters in Thraldom

High Mistress Navigator Mokarah Mokhebaresh sat on countless luxurious cushions in the center of the esoteric circle of her personal sanctuary.

From this place, in this position, Mokarah communicated with the spirit of the corvette ‘Unrefusable Offer,’ on board which she lived.

For those who were not gifted with the Cursed Gift, the idea that an ‘inanimate’ object had a spirit made no sense. But most of the ungifted mostly did not even believe in their own spirits or souls. At least for most of their daily lives. But when they were close to death, either from natural or, well, less natural causes, suddenly faith became important also to them.

It was different for Mokarah; she never had an ounce of faith. Mokarah simply saw spirits, so faith was completely unnecessary. They just existed.

Everything that was, everything that was material, had a spirit. Every grain of sand, every atom.

That didn't mean that the spirit of a grain of sand from another part of the galaxy could scare you at night or that you could talk to it about the morality of the creatures living in the galaxy. They weren't that kind of spirits.

At least most of the time.

The fact that an object had a spirit simply meant that its presence was noticeable to those who were gifted with the Cursed Gift.

The Gift was a pathway to many abilities, and all were by definition unnatural.

It would be impossible to catalog or know them all, and knowing any of them would result in madness, at best!

And Mokarah tried her best never to stray from the one path her race had cultivated for countless generations - the path of astral navigation.

Ok, maybe she learned a few other techniques, but no one was perfect!

As High Mistress Navigator, Mokarah Mokhebaresh had one task aboard the ‘Unrefusable Offering’, one task, and one task only: to guide the ship through the non-material dimension so that it could exit it into real space at a planned point, or, when that was not an option, to return somewhere at all.

For those unaffected by the Cursed Gift, there was literally nothing in the immaterial dimension, no point of reference; even the point at which the ship had just traversed this space was elusive, let alone any point of departure.

Sure, the ship could always just leave immaterial space (or non-space, as it was commonly called), but without the navigator's directions, it could and would appear at absolutely any place in the universe and, even more frighteningly, at completely any time, future or even past.

But a skilled navigator could still see, hear, and feel the spirits of places in real space—the spirits of planets, stars, or even star systems. And it was towards them that the navigator guided the ship.

In non-space, the entire crew was dependent on their navigator; she decided how long the journey lasted and what maneuvers the ship should perform because only she saw what needed to be maneuvered against.

This was the art of astral navigation, in a nutshell.

And it was because of how important the role of the High Mistress Navigator was that Mokarah Mokhebaresh enjoyed special treatment.

"Hell, there's even a small cult of me on the ship!" Mokarah concluded thoughtfully, trying not to think of the even more creatures who were scaring novices with her in their respective departments.

Mokarah pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the reinforced doors to her sanctuary that were now slowly opening.

Mokarah was excitedly moving her snake limbs over the pillows. Her parcel arrived!

The strong door opened

First, the bald, obediently bowed head of the Kadrus guard slipped through it.

A moment later, his entire kneeling figure.

The Kadrus race were humanoids with reptilian characteristics; in fact, they were even born from eggs that then had to be incubated for several weeks before they hatched into small children, children who still had to be breastfed, although not for as long as other man-like races.

This meant that the Kadrus females had breasts, although, to be honest, they were usually so small that they could not be noticed.

The Kadrus had many variations; this guard here, for example, had an essentially man-like build; he didn't even have a tail; he just had scaly, hairless skin, and from his face leered sly reptilian eyes.

However, some members of that race had tails and more reptilian, even snake-like, features.

It was to such an ancestor that Mokarah herself must have owed some of her ‘charms’.

But Mokarah was not the Kadrus. True navigators like her belonged to the race of Voidlings.

In ancient times, Voidlings were as beautiful as the mythical Men. But only the viodlings could be true navigators, and over endless generations, their race lost its grace. i****t, intermingling with other man-species, and above all, the influence of the Cursed Gift have twisted their bodies and souls.

If Mokarah could stand up, she would probably be about six feet tall.

If she could ever get up.

From the hips down, both of the woman's legs resembled the tails of a huge snake. Mokarah could crawl on them quite efficiently and did so very gracefully, but when upright, she was never taller than about four feet. Her arms had a similar structure to her legs, so from the shoulders, they resembled a snake's tail, with the difference that at the height where someone else would have a normal wrist, the woman's ‘arm’ split into five smaller snakes that served as her fingers. It wasn't the worst possible anatomical solution, and in general, the limbs looked quite aesthetically pleasing. Mokarah herself wanted to believe that the hand was quite attractive. Apart from her four limbs, the rest of the woman's body was definitely more mankind-like: the voidling had wide, full hips, and the massiveness and strength represented by her reptilian ‘legs’ only made Mokarah's thighs and buttocks exceptionally prominent.

The Voidling also had a shapely bust consisting of not two but three large breasts. The woman's face was well proportioned, and her large purple eyes highlighted her light pink complexion.

Mokarah was personally very proud of having thick red hair on her head, which she had grown very long.

"Hail, O great one!" The guard began to sweeten servilely with his reptilian, forked tongue.

"Yeah... you got it?" Mokarah asked impatiently.

"Of course, O great one, your new slave is already here..." The Kadrus guard started replying but stopped when the Mistress Navigator hissed at him in irritation.

"Okay, shut up and show him to me; I want to see him, not you!"

The Kadrus bowed his head even more, which meant that he basically kissed the floor and then quickly ran out the door, and another figure was unceremoniously shoved into his place.

Mokarah's reptilian eyes widened, and the woman gasped in excitement as the shapely, tall Feyman came into view.

"f**k yes! They found me a yummy Feymen boy just like I asked!"

Mokarah never left her sanctuary, but that didn't mean she was completely unaware of what was happening outside it.

Oh, the Voidling knew much more than anyone wanted to know.

The galaxy was a f****d-up place, and among the stars, nothing awaited mortals except endless suffering.

The once great race of Men had degenerated, and their children were mostly worth s**t.

Mokarah looked at the handsome face of the Feyman, who was holding his hands close to his body, trembling with fear.

"Is the slave pleasing to you, O great one?" came the rustling voice of the Kadrus guardman.

"He's great; just f**k off already," Mokarah growled irritably.

One such shitty race were, of course, the Kadrus. That was what those f***s called themselves, while everyone else just called them what they really were—the Lizardmen.

"f*****g Lizardmen pirate scum, snake-like rot," the Voidling cursed in her thoughts.

The Lizardmen were one of the more numerous races, and one could say they bred like rabbits, but of course, the Leporians, the real Rabbitmen, would have had something to say about it.

“Meaning, they'd have something to say if they didn't end up as food for races bigger than them, which is basically every nasty humanoid race, including the f*****g Lizardmen, of course," concluded Mokarah in her head.

Not only were the Lizardmen very numerous, but at least in the distant past, they possessed their own form of the Cursed Gift. The techniques they developed were telepathy and mental manipulation. Fortunately for most modern races, this snake-like scum has long since lost most of these abilities.

However, someone once thought that mixing Kadrus and Voidling blood would be a good idea.

"Big mistake!"

A mistake that the descendants of this line, such as Mokarah, had to pay for with their own appearance to this day.

Oh no, Mokarah didn't want to have any more to do with the Lizardmen than she absolutely had to. It was enough that she was the navigator on their pirate ship and led it through the non-mater on subsequent and subsequent plundering expeditions.

Mokarah loathed these asholes and everything they represented, and she wasn't going to spend another moment with them if she didn't have to.

And she certainly wasn't going to get into any intimate stuff with them!

"I'd rather die than give birth to someone's egg!"

Mokarah longed for a normal and healthy romantic relationship, and she also wanted to have children with someone who looked ‘normal’ someday.

She wanted to have normal children.

Or at least more, not less normal.

With a bit of luck, maybe her daughter or at least her granddaughter will be born with normal legs if only Mokarah mates with a representative of some nice species.

Because there were also nice species, such as the Feymen.

The Feymen had a normal civilization, like one in which people had families, worked, and developed their passions.

And criminals went to prison.

Unlike the ‘civilization’ of the Lizardmen, where criminals ruled as pirate lords, murdered (often ate) their victims, took slaves, and did terrible things!

And Mokarah would spend her whole life with them!

For someone else living on a spaceship, sensibly counting the passage of time might be a problem, but not for a Voidling navigator. Mokarah knew perfectly well how old she was (in the counting system of the ancient Men).

Mokarah turned eighteen today! and taking advantage of her special treatment and position as High Mistress Navigator, Mokarah requested a gift for herself.

She was a navigator on a slaver's ship, so she asked for a Feyman male all to herself.

Mokarah reasoned that this way she would probably save at least this one male's life

"s*****y is wrong and terrible, and I think it would be better for at least one man to have a better life here with me. I will love him, and he will love me!" The young voidling explained to herself and then looked at ‘her’ Feyman.

"Hi, I'm Mokarah; what's your name?" Mokarah asked, smiling brightly at the trembling Feyman.

"Okay, he's afraid; it's normal; calm down, Mokarah; don't be pushy; don't read his thoughts," Mokarah repeated in her head. One of her curses was the fact that she could actually read the minds of someone close to her to some extent. Especially if someone was highly aroused or agitated. For example, the Lizarman guard's erotic fantasies about her were simply disgusting.

"I I..." The Feyman fell to his knees. "My name is... Fotios; please don't eat me! Don't hurt me!" The man was crying.

The enthusiastic smile on Mokarah's face faded, and the Voidling's empathetic powers now left the young woman with no doubts that Feyman thought she was just another monster.

"Don't read his thoughts! Don't read his thoughts, or you will cry! Damn, that was such a bad idea! What was I even thinking..."

Mokarah carefully crept closer to the crying male.

Male…

"Wait..."

Mokarah had not fully consciously touched the Feyman's mind with her powers.

"A female... Fotios was her husband's name, which she has been using since fate separated them during the raid. Her real name is Vasileia. She pretends to be a male for fear of rape."

Dejected, Mokarah curled up into a ball, hiding her face in her snake arms, and began to sob over her hopeless fate.

"I'm a f*****g monster; what was I thinking?" The girl exclaimed as the makeup she had put on for this birthday was flowing with tears.

This went on for some time until, at some point, Mokarah felt a gentle touch of fingers on her shoulder.

"um...Mistress Mokarah?" Vasileia said uncertainly. Mokarah slowly sighed and sniffled. She tried to wipe her crying face with her snake fingers, but it wasn't that easy.

"Oh, it's okay, Vasileia, I won't eat you or r**e you," she said, and then she prepared herself to be mentally hit by an even greater wave of fear from the Feymen female.

"You know..."

"Of course I know; I can read your thoughts, and no, I'm not doing it on purpose; you're literally screaming in fear in my head. No, I'm not a monster; I'm a Voidling, the navigator of this ship. I've spent my entire life in this room since I was bought as a baby and placed here. I will spend my whole life here, which will be very, very long."

"I..."

"You don't think I'm disgusting; that's really... nice, thanks. No, I won't turn you in; I couldn't turn you in to those pirates. Yes, I know what they do, but I never have to see it. Now that you're here, I can't just hand you over to them. I wanted a male, a partner with whom I could share many years of my life and maybe have children, but well, it is what it is. I hope we can still be friends...?" Mokarah lifted her tear-swollen eyes and looked hopefully at Vasilei.

"Don't read her mind! Don't read her mind."

Mokarah could feel the fear and growing despondency of the woman across from her. The Feymen female looked around the exclusive chamber; the knowledge that this was to be her prison for the rest of her life was slowly killing her spirit. Just feeling something like that was scarring Mokarah inside. Voidling swallowed.

"Do you want a hug?" she suggested. Feymen hesitated for a moment but finally nodded.

Two sisters in s*****y cried into each other's arms until sleep overtook them.