Sal'An was not surprised that she did not see the princess again that day. Nor was she surprised that when she did next see her, it was alone, getting supplies for her and Zahra. Theirs would not be a long life, even if Korsephan left them alone, so Valna'a might as well enjoy what time she had.

After that, the two settled into their routine. Zahra did the majority of the housework, but Valna'a did her best to learn. Though she found it boring, helping was the quickest way to free Zahra up for the rest of the day.

Once the initial honeymoon period was over the two were often seen outside of Valna'a's quarters. Though the trips out of the palace did not last long as Zahra's status meant that they couldn't be themselves in public. Instead, the two were effectively restricted to the palace grounds.

While the grounds were relatively big they did not take the girls long to explore, so they ended up in the various buildings on the grounds. One of these was the fitness centre where Valna'a had learned her initial combat skills.

"I've had an idea. Now I cannot train with the military anymore and have to be careful who I can trust to spar with me here, you can me my partner." Exclaimed Valna'a with a delighted little shriek.

Amused by Valna'a's girlish glee at the thought Zahra did not give her answer any thought.

"That'd be cool. You can show me some moves for a change."

With that, they entered the building and, while Zahra looked round at the gym and its decorations, Valna'a found them some sparring uniforms. Not at all like the ones Zahra's brother had worn when he learned martial arts, these were skin tight, black, jumpsuits, complete with gloves, boots and balaclavas.

Holding up her headgear Valna'a explained the reason. This equipment worked as both a light armour and as a scoring system for sparring matches. They could also be programmed with the intensity required of the match and reduce points for a strike of the wrong power.

It was also highly distracting.

During the time the two practised together Zahra did get a lot better. Even able to push Valna'a out of 'automatic pilot' mode. Though never good enough to stand a chance of actually beating her during their spars.

Valna'a also arranged for Yslana to repair the damage inflicted by Korsephan, when Zahra was first captured.

Once the training and sparring was over the girls would go for a swim to cool down, followed by a shower to clean themselves up. Both found these activities a bit distracting as well and the two of them often misused the facilities.

One night, as the two girls lay in bed, Zahra finally worked up the courage to ask Valna'a about something that had plagued her mind since being brought to Cas' Mak'l.

"Mistress, may I ask you something?"

"I Think you'll find you just did." Came the reply, proving that however enlightened the elves considered themselves to be, they were still not immune to terrible jokes.

"And please call me Valna'a, when we're in private."

"I can't get used to using the names I long to call you, in private, in case I use one in public. You know that."

"You're my soul mate, literally, my people need to get over themselves."

"True, but if I were to get the attention of the daughter of the Clan Father with 'Excuse me, you ugly, fat, cow.' People would complain." Came Zahra's deadpan answer. After all bad jokes were not limited to elvan royalty.

"You BITCH!" Laughed Valna'a. "I'll get you for that!"

"See." Was all her girlfriend managed before the tickle fight started, which, of course, led to another session of love making. The question forgotten, for now

.

The next night it was Valna'a's turn to broach the subject.

"So, what did my worthless, mutant of a slave want to ask me last night?"

"It's a bit serious: Why do your people do what they do to their prisoners?

"You torture and abuse us, then heal us and give us time to recover. I Reckon you even drug our food, so we're not as psychologically traumatised by it all, as we should be."

With a rare look of pain, Valna'a cuddled closer to her partner, as though she was trying to borrow some of her strength.

"If I tell you would you promise to never tell another slave?" was her sombre reply.

"I can't completely promise, that, my Princess." Emphasis on the 'my'. "If I can use it to free my people I will. If not, I will keep it to myself. Even after we are free."

"That's fair enough. Though if we do escape, you are released from this oath.

"This is The Fall of the Younger Race:

"Before my people were the Elder Race. We do not know if they were always alone, or if they eliminated any other races they came across. By the time we knew enough about their history to ask, we weren't close enough for casual conversation. Not that we ever really were.

"The gods, as we initially called them, lived for eons as the only race in the galaxy. Exploring the stars, making scientific discoveries. That sort of thing.

"Eventually they discovered how to make themselves effectively immortal. The problem was that it required feeding on the emotions of other creatures. This left them with a slight problem. They needed a species to feed off.

"So they created one: Us.

"Created as an inferior version of themselves - we don't know if it was deliberately so, or if they couldn't make us the same -  they put us on a suitable planet and introduced themselves as our gods.

"Being the primitives we were at the time we believed them and, with their help, set up a religion to worship them. This gave them the food they needed and for millennia everyone was happy. Our race had a life expectancy of about ten thousand years, and they lived forever..

"As such a long lived race our generations were millennia apart, but they did occur, and each generation moved the race onwards a bit. Eventually we became knowledgeable to the point that we realised that our gods were not gods at all, just a more advanced race.

"This caused a bit of an existential crisis among our people and the collapse of our religion. Almost all of us turned our backs on our gods, and as we abandoned them, they abandoned us.

"It was at this point we learned that the Elder Race were not parasitic, but symbiotic. As we fed them, they fed us in return. Although we didn't live as long as them we lived a lot longer than we would without them. Our life expectancy plummeted to a mere thousand years.

"As you can imagine, my ancestors were none too happy with that and, while a few went back to the old religion, the rest started to research how to copy their immortality program. Along the way, we discovered other methods, but eventually we got close enough to theirs to declare a success.

"My clan is not one of the ones who stuck with the program until the end. The solution we settled with doesn't involve feeding the food source back. My ancestors were happy to be parasites.

"Of course, each process we discovered all had the same requirement. A race to feed off. This led to a huge number of newer races being created. Yours amongst them. As with us, you were all given your own planets and overseen by the clan that created them.

"My clan wanted a race that was quick to reproduce, tough enough to take the abuse we needed to give them and with enough mental fortitude to not break down over time. We created the race you call Orcs.

"Over time these races expanded to other planets, at which point the clans started experimenting with each other's races. This led to disagreements, and even war between the clans. Eventually we reached an agreement where all planets were fair game to every clan, except for the race's home-world. For example, only Clan Firestorm can take any creature living on Sol III.

"As you can probably guess our process is based on personal pain."

It took Zahra a few minutes to digest this, at which point she had even more questions.

"That is a horrific story." Was Zahra's only comment though, cuddling up to Valna'a in an attempt to comfort to her.

"To answer your next question. 'Why do we heal you, and give you time off?':

"It's purely selfish, on our part. We are not a quick reproducing race, so casualties are more of an issue to our survival than they are to yours. And raids risk casualties, especially when our targets are little minxes like you." Giving Zahra a kiss, she continued.

"The fewer raids the fewer casualties. Therefore, we need our prisoners to survive as long as possible. If we treated your intake the way, say Clan Blackblood do, you would all be long dead and we would have to replace you. This would lead to more casualties in two ways.

"First: We lose people on most raids. More raids equals more casualties.

"Second: More raids make us more of a nuisance to the Slave races and gives them more encouragement to increase their defences, hence more casualties per raid.

"It took us a fair amount of trial and error, but this is the solution we came up with to minimise the amount of raids we have to do. Though it's not perfect, as your  arsehole father proved by giving us a much higher return on our efforts.

"And yes, we will look to use traitors on other worlds in the future."

"That makes a sick kind of sense, I suppose." Replied Zahra. "But why does your clan take Humans, instead of Orcs?" 

"Orcs are a quick lived race, and while their constitutions make them excellent subjects for our needs, their shorter life span negates that, to some extent. Old age weakens them far quicker than it does your race.

"Also your race has a fantastic ability for hope. Once a creature loses hope, they soon lose the will to live, and the will to continue the struggle.

"We do still use them, however. In fact we use all Slave races that have become space fairing. And of them all Humans are best, for us. Even better than people from other clans."

"Wait, you do this to other elves?" Asked a startled Zahra.

"Of course. Any sentient being is fair game; we even use it as a punishment for some of our own.

"Any child born from two people is classified as member of the clan. A child who has one parent from a Slave race is a slave. So we don't usually mate with other races. My own mother was taken from a weaker clan."

"Wow! What's she like? Your mother."

"I don't know. I've never met her. It's a fair bet she would hate me, for the circumstances of my birth, and I would rather spare her that pain. I know her designation, and I keep an eye out for her, but I have never met her.

"Also, in our culture, letting others know I care about her would make her a target to be used to hurt me. For even one as delightful as me has enemies, in this clan." The last said with a slight, though sad, smile.

For once, Zahra was the last to fall asleep, holding Valna'a close and willing her love to help comfort her.

 

The days flew by and the two young women's love for each other only grew as time passed. Nevertheless, eventually it was time for Zahra to return to the prison for her next turn as food. This time Valna'a planned to stay with her for the entire one hundred and sixty days, comforting her after every trip to the torture chambers, though Valna'a delayed it to the point where Zahra was actually the last slave to return.

Before she settled in, however, Zahra had to report her activities to her commanders. Technically falling in love and sleeping with a Blood Elf could be construed as treason and Zahra wanted to get that information out into the open as soon as possible.

Walking up to her company commander, Major Brook Cooper, father of Corporal Cooper, whose body had been left behind on New Geneva, she spared no time in broaching the subject.

"Sir, I have to tell you something about what I got up to during the time away from here.

"After hearing it you may feel the need to court marshal me, it's that bad."

"Go ahead Lieutenant." Came the stern reply.

"As you know, the elves performed some ritual where they swapped over mine and Princess Valna'a's hearts. From that we have developed feelings for each other and are now deeply in love.

"I have also been sleeping with her during my last rest session.

"I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit, though if you execute me you will also be killing Valna'a."

"I See." Replied the man. "And how long after the start of the rest period did you start sleeping with one of our tormentors? "

"It was five days, sir. It would have been less, though, but Val was away."

"Val, eh? How many times did it happen?"

"I don't know, sir. I didn't keep count, but it was most days."

The shame of betraying her comrades competed with the joy of being with her soul mate, leaving her unsure of herself. Though adamant she would pick Valna'a over her people.

Disappointment in his eyes, the major side stepped her and addressed the room.

"LISTEN UP!" He shouted, before continuing in a more normal voice. "The lieutenant has admitted being in love with an elf and sleeping with her."

The room hushed as everyone waited for his next words.

"Who had five days?" Holding up an open hand to reinforce the number.

Various people cheered, others groaned.

Turning back to the stunned Zahra. "You've let me down, Lieutenant. I had you holding out for six days."

Zahra was now totally confused now.

"Princess Yslana explained what her brother did to you and the effects it would likely take. In addition, having seen you two together so much last time we were here we all knew it was only a matter of time before you became lovers.

"For what it's worth, you two totally have my blessing. As well as the blessing of ninety eight percent of those here. Religious fanaticism and old fashioned jealousy account for the haters."

"Thank you, sir." Zahra just managed to get out through the emotions

"Punishment wise: You owe everyone here a drink when we get home."

"Yes, Sir!"

With that, he pulled her in for a hug, and whispered.

"I know that you and Jane didn't exactly get on, but she did like and respect you. Moreover, she would have been pleased for you. "

"Thank you, sir."

"You're not the first couple to find love here, and you probably won't be the last. And we all consider Valna'a to be one of us now, so it's not as if you are dating an enemy."

With tears in her eyes, she went back to her platoon to get settled and to catch up with them. As she left the Major, Valna'a, who had been standing nearby, just in case, walked up to Brock and hugged him.

"Thank you, Major. That means a lot to both of us."

Then she rejoined her new family.