“You are not seriously wounded, and the crown remains yours,” Wilshire grinned. He had a habit of saying stupid, obvious things. Archon liked him because he was young and had absolutely no guile. He said almost everything that came into his head, and had given away several plots against Archon entirely by accident. Wilshire was the verbal equivalent of a canary in the coal mine of Archon’s existence.
“Find her,” he growled.
“Find…”
“The one who stabbed me. Find her.”
Archon expected Wilshire to go skittering off to do his bidding, but apparently the aide had other ideas. It seemed today was going to be a day where every weak underling who should be giving in to Archon’s will instead challenged him.
“Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a hunt, sire?”
Archon shot his aide a dark look. On the one hand, Wilshire was right. Having his men find the female did defeat the purpose of the hunt, and it was unsporting besides. He would normally never have suggested such a thing. He knew how to hunt almost every kind of prey on almost every kind of planet.
He was off his game.
The human had rattled him. He didn’t even know her name. She was nobody. An insignificant peasant, a rebellious subject who deserved to be incarcerated with the rest of the people once she had given her body to him. And yet, here he was, totally turned around by her.
Archon had once fought a boarbear, a beast which stood ten feet high, had massive tusks, and equally massive claws on a body which was both furred and armored. That thing had done less damage than the diminutive human.
It was his fault. He had respected the boarbear. He had failed to respect his human prey. She was obviously more wily than he had imagined such a creature would have capacity to be.
Humans were hard to respect. Group living, soft-boned, short-lived, there was little to recommend a human. They were prone to a whole host of diseases. Some of his soldiers were still showering in case they had caught something from the humans in the brig.
Speaking of the brig, there was the most obnoxious din coming from that region of the ship.
“What the bloody blazes is that sound?”
“They’re protesting, sire.” Wilshire was at his elbow with a handy answer. Apparently the aide had been doing some reading on their new captive species.
“What the testicles is protesting?”
“It’s where humans get together and proclaim very loudly that they don’t like something.”
“Does that work in their social structure?”
“Rarely. But occasionally. But more often than not no. But sometimes, yes.”
“Very clear," Archon growled.
“Did sire's mother not tell him…” Wilshire trailed off, his voice fading into a whisper as he realized he had made the ultimate faux-pas and referred to the abhorrent rumor that Archon had actually been born of a woman.
“Sire’s mother is not a subject for discussion,” Archon growled, admirably restrained, all things considered.
“I apologize profusely sire. Would you like me to lie down so you can stamp upon my head?”
“That will not be necessary,” Archon sighed. “See that this story goes no further than this room. I do not need the entire ship knowing that I was shanked by a barely sentient female a fraction of my size.”
“To be fair, humans are incredibly sentient. Often to their own detriment. They are capable of having existential crises.”
“What are those?” Archon sighed the question, caught between annoyance and interest.
“They’re when you ponder your own existence, and the fact that it will end, and then wonder why you exist at all, and perhaps end up so anxious you can barely move until someone distracts you with cake,” Wilshire read from an electronic document of some kind.
“What is your source?”
“An ancient text known only as Oorban Wackipediah. All of human knowledge was stored here before, well, before now.”
Archon was allowing himself to be distracted. Could it be he was reluctant to begin the hunt? No. That was not it. He wanted that human female more than he had ever wanted anything besides the crown of Archaeus itself.
It was something else keeping him there in the medical bay, some resistance to returning to the hunt. It was a bad omen to be stabbed, and he had been battling with bad feelings ever since they landed at the palace and came in contact with the insufferable General Naxus.
“It’s fine,” he told himself.
“Keep calm and carry on,” Wilshire piped up cheerily. “Ancient Earth saying used in one of their many intra-species wars.”
“That’s enough of the human history, Wilshire.”
“Of course sire. I will refrain from educating or enlightening you further, sire.”
A high-pitched yelp followed as Archon cuffed the aide over his deserving ear. He was not in the mood for insolence, not even the well meaning kind.
It was time to go hunt a human.
“There she is.”
Archon’s surveillance tech pointed to a dot amid the green. Archon had given in to technology a little, because time was of the essence. He couldn’t let the human get away. The idea that she was down there on the planet, thinking she had managed to best him was completely insufferable to him.
Archon was not used to being shanked or shamed, and as a result he was very determined to set what he considered to be an unnatural wrong somehow right. He no longer merely wanted the human. He needed her. He craved her, as only a king with a bruised ego can crave possession of a wayward subject.
His head was full of plans to best the human, and things he would do to her when he had her in his grasp. He would fuck her, of course. But that was not enough. There would be more, so much more. He would make her wail in pain and beg for his mercy. He would break her down until she trembled whenever she was in his presence. He would chain her. He would keep her captive. He would toy with her until he grew tired of her - and then he would discard her.
Even as he thought these terrible things, Archon knew his heart was not in all of them. But he had to pretend it was. Even for himself, the illusion of brutality had to be maintained at all times. Mercy was weakness in the eyes of the common man.
“There what is? That could be anything. A tree. Or a shrub,” Archon scowled and squinted at the place he thought the soldier was pointing.
It was taking much longer to locate his quarry than he had imagined it would. The infrared scanners had not been operational during his abduction of the villagers, because the heat from the dragon sent them into overdrive and damaged them. That meant they were limited to much more traditional means of finding a person - looking at pictures taken from orbit and comparing movements across them.
“Enhance,” he said, as much to himself as to anybody else. He tapped on the screen and with each tap, the picture zoomed in and the resolution somehow became higher, until the image of a young human woman with brown eyes and brown hair, her face daubed with orange clay, and a small bone ring piercing her right ear, and another through her septum, was revealed.
There she was. As plain as day, albeit slightly pixellated. He felt a pang at seeing her face again, still contorted in that rebellion. She was looking up in the captured image, no doubt staring at the ship which retrieved him. He expected to see an expression of horror twisting her pretty features, but if anything she actually looked somewhat… annoyed?