Warning - graphically violent and sexual content
Battle Breaker
by Daphne Garrido
“She’s so fucking hot.”
Ossah didn’t know who’d said it, but she’d certainly known who they were talking about.
Her — She.
When those words were said without further context, on this ship, it was only one woman. The queen. The monster. The destroyer. Their fearless leader.
The Admiral.
Battle breaker — Count Morgan.
Niah was in combat with the Count. Her exam to join the ranks of battlegroup had gone poorly.
This was her follow-up evaluation.
If deemed unworthy, she would not live.
Count Morgan was one deadly throw away from ending her life, holding this poor girl in a headlock, fangs bared.
The whole battalion was rapt with anticipation.
Regardless of if this ended in sisterhood or death — it was sure to be a show.
Cromiron — the Count’s ship; the eternal vessel — had a combat platform designed for these kinds of test. Its outermost edges were the burned-in nightmare of every recruit. The number of bodies hurled from its heights were countless.
For eons Count Morgan had flown this ship, a terror from the deep, surviving on the revitalization wrought of taking life from youthful fools like the one before her now.
Ossha could tell the Count was almost through, this girl was toast.
She could see Calipé was aware of the fact as well, already crying — Niah, his sweetheart.
‘This is why you don’t sleep with recruits’, Ossah thought.
Before she looked back, she’d heard the snap. Those grinding, twisting cracks, Ossah watched Calipé’s face morph to that of horror along with them.
He would not look away.
If the Count was to hear, she’d have him too.
Ossah loved potatoes.
Something about them just felt sturdy; dependable.
She loved digging them out of the ground. This garden was her happiest place, her sweet escape. A peace was uncovered here, in this work, which brought her mind to stillness.
Ossah was a seer.
Like so many others born to this fate, she’d struggled greatly. Opening to such powers was a shock for any being. Yet, especially people so born into this cruel universe, caught by its whims, led to do terrible things for survival.
To have that trauma within and unlock so much at once — a strangest reckoning.
Being here, on the Chromiron, was a choice she’d made willingly. She’d become a part of this ever-living hoard of one woman’s righteous justice.
They moved in such brutal ways; this ship, the crew — its Admiral.
Ossah was born on Piàes; an oceanic planet.
Its people were one with the waves, the sea. Living on its shores, inside its storms, so near its beauty.
Their world had been taken.
Humanity — earthlings — they’d ravaged it all. They turned Piàes black, their plague so made to live upon it, within it.
Ossah was on this ship for revenge.
Alex had been drinking again.
This asshole had been the best Ossah could find interested in her.
People didn’t generally like seers. It wasn’t a good look, socially, to be with one. People didn’t invite you to their parties as often. You just stopped being treated the same. A bad deal, that even people who did like Ossah, weren’t willing to sign up for.
The whole idea, seen as trials they’d just rather avoid.
Whether Alex was too drunk to care, or a seer deep-down himself, he was into her — at least, into fucking with her.
Ossah had thought she’d take what she could get.
A part of her knew far better. That she should have just been alone, rather than wasting her time with this complete waste of space, feeling it tear her apart inside.
He was just good at manipulating her. Alex could tell how sad she was, he feasted on it.
A part of him enjoyed toying with her, making her hurt. His lies were pervasive. The deepest hurt she’d undergo would be knowingly enduring them. Being so high above his petty mechanizations, still compelled to take part for some false-hope of reward, things needed deeply but sought in the most wrong of places.
Alex was going at her again tonight.
She was ignoring him when she’d headed for the cafeteria, just get away.
Tonight will be his last — some voice in her head had spoken.
A seer’s burden.
Ossah ignored voices like this, generally, as they were often quite wrong. Though, she’d find herself steered by them no matter.
Whether she’d listen and abide, or just let them sit tauntingly in the back of her mind, they changed her path always. Her decisions to ignore or abide these requests, she suspected quite known by the voices themselves ahead of time.
As always, they seemed to be pushing her somewhere specific.
Those voice led her tonight, to noodles, spicy ones.
She wanted to gorge herself on something other than the ramblings of an ignorant, drunk, cunt-ass mother fucker.
Enjoying this sumptuous feast, ignoring the looks of those who’d seen the patch above her Initiate insignia — the one which marked her a seer — she’d heard the worst sound imaginable.
Alex’s voice, shouting across the cafeteria.
“There you are! You fucking bitch.”
She’d not responded at first, staying turned away, her heart stricken with anxiety.
“You’re pathetic! You know that?”
Ossah turned now — fire raging in her belly — eyes sharing this flame.
He’d taken a chair off the floor of the cafeteria, from a table with three stunned-looking cadets. His intent, unknown.
“You’re such a fucking weird bitch! We all see what you are!”
Her teeth were gritting — jaw held so tightly it hurt.
“You’re disgusting.” He’d spat.
There was some hearing of a sound, a finding within Ossha’s awareness of a change to the setting, this knowing of anticipation.
Then Alex’s head came clean-off.
A fountain of blood-spray covered the nearest cadet, head to toe, as the body fell limp.
It’s innards spilling slowly, as if crawling along the floor.
Ossha noticed the retraction of the chain-sword. Its blades falling back into lock with each-other, as its snaking cable reeled into the hilt so held in Count Morgan’s fiercest grip.
Hell’s Fury — her fabled weapon — feared throughout the galaxy.
For it to be used on this ship was a rarest occasion.
Ossha fucking loved it.
Her breath was stolen by her queen, as the chain-sword was sheathed.
Count Morgan had walked over to the corpse, lifted the head high, and stared around the room with most threatening eyes, at everyone but Ossha.
She’d shouted thunderously from her chest.
“Cunts like this don’t live on my ship!”
Her mind was gone. Ossha had been freed.
This woman, this devil, this god.
Count Morgan had led her from the scene. They’d taken her to their cabin. The shock of the incident had not obscured the oddity of this fact to Ossha.
She’d seen the chambermaids gawking, as if scared for her, like they’d be cleaning her blood from the walls soon.
Yet, Morgan’s strength had led her so. Ossha had been so taken by them. She felt some kind of deepest trust.
Now, sitting before this queen, watching her in the most private of spaces, seeing what so few others had been blessed to see — the strangest thing had happened.
Ossha had felt at home. For the first time since her world had been destroyed, corrupted so by humanity.
This dark queen, with their legion of the stars, they’d saved her — not only from humanity’s oppression of her peoples, but then from Alex, and now her own mind.
You’re her’s now — some voice inside Ossha had said.
Her own inner voice had responded back.
‘I know.’
They’d used her. She’d loved it.
Ossha wanted more.
Count Morgan’s body was too much for her, she didn’t understand how anyone else could take it, could handle being in their presence. The electric feelings running through her were unlike anything felt before.
Something broke inside her, a seal, unseen chains. Ossha’s mind was clear, at last, in the face of this presence so worth witnessing in all.
Some part of her seer’s sense had gifted her Morgan’s feelings, as she’d pleased them.
As she’d done exactly what they’d asked.
The way Ossha had felt their ecstasy at her touch, the way she felt it feeding back through her, over again, when they touched her in return. She would be lost to them forever, and she knew it.
This was all she wanted now; to be theirs in any way they’d wish.
Morgan had seen this.
They’d taken more, excited by her willingness to give, empowered by the way Ossha gave herself so wholly.
Their great waves, surging storms of energy, were the greatest feelings she’d ever experienced. They’d washed away her ever-spinning mind in ways she’d not dreamed possible.
To see their eyes upon her, to give herself in all, had created the darkest and most blessed place that could ever be.
Something within Ossha had been searching for this.
These assholes she’d looked for some connection with, seen as such pale imitations of the real thing, now that it was before her.
Morgan had held her around the back of the neck, gripping her hair.
Ossha knew what was to come.
She couldn’t wait.
Their fangs had sunken so easily, so deeply, so gracefully into the nape of her neck.
She’d never come so hard.
This battle was already over, Count Morgan was seeing to that.
Ossha watched from the distance.
Somehow, just as transfixed with each movement of their body, every breath her Admiral now took, as she’d been the night before.
Her mind was stillness. A pond without ripples. It would always be, when she was beside her master.
Ossha’s queen had taken her burden.
It had been them all along, those voices in her head. Some part of Count Morgan was leading her here, into their grasp, all along.
To have found it now, to know the pointless searching was over, to feel the power they held between them — herself, her abilities, now Morgan’s to wield atop all their own.
They would change this universe.
Humanity’s ways would end, or they would perish.
Piàes would live again, free of their wrath, their hate.
One way, or another.
It would be this beautiful destroyer, this fearless leader, this battle-breaker — who would make it so.
Ossha had always been theirs.
She wouldn’t have it any other way.
