ConcuBen

Szar woke with a start, eyes spinning wildly as he tried to take in his unfamiliar surroundings. Had he been failed? Had he been captured? Had he--no. The events of the last night filtered back from his memory to the front of his mind. He was free. The tyrant Korphus was dead. And as for the strange weight on his chest... he looked down, straight into the waiting eyes of the Concubine. She was in the green-skinned form she had worn when he first saw her, and she laid stretched out upon his mighty frame, chin rested on her crossed arms.

"Has anyone ever told you that you sleep like a rock? I've been waiting like this for an hour now."

Szar grinned, despite himself. "You'll have to forgive me. Yesterday was an exhausting day."

"Not as much as the night was, I'll bet. So what now?"

"What do you mean, what now?"

"I mean, you've got a planet. What're you going to do with it?"

"I do *not* have a planet. My people are slaves no longer. They are free to do as they want."

"What they *want* to do is follow you. Sure, you can try and just do nothing, but that just means either another Korphus sweeps in and sticks you back where you were, or you get to experience a home-grown tyrant. Not really great options, there."

Szar's eyes narrowed. "You are not merely a concubine, are you."

"Well of course not!" there was a flash of light, and she was the Tamaranean again. She floated upwards, making a show of sitting on the air with an exaggerated pout, not coincidentally giving Szar a rather spectacular view of her rear. "I'm not just *a* concubine, I'm the *best* concubine. That's not easy, you know!"

"And what does political history have to do with being a concubine?"

"*The* Concubine!" she waggled a finger at him. You remember what I told you about my fifth owners, what they did to me?"

Szar hauled himself into a sitting position. Clearly this conversation was moving beyond what he could engage in lying down. The Concubine drifted over to perch on his shoulder. "They... changed your mind. Your personality. They were the ones that truly enslaved you."

"Well, sure, that's one way of putting it. They picked me up for dirt cheap, you know. I wasn't a very good slave before then. Always trying to run off, purposely doing things wrong... although really, they had it coming, wasting me on maid duties like that. No, it was the... what were they called again? Cephaloids? Something weird like that. They're all dead, anyways. They bought me because they saw what I could be. So long as, you know, I actually wanted to please my master. Which they made sure of, in the most general sense. Strapped me down, hooked a lot of equipment up to my head, and made me who I am"

"I don't think I follow the point here."

"Well, the... wording they used. They didn't just want me loyal to them. I guess because they figured they might sell me at some point--which would be a couple mistake on its own--and it wouldn't work if I wouldn't serve anyone else. Of course, then the ship I was transported on was captured by the Dread Pirate Lord Vingsald, right?"

"Who?"

"Exactly. Well, now *he* owned me, so now it was him that I wanted to satisfy. As completely as possible. And Vingsald, he had some very particular tastes."

"I'm not sure I want to hear the details of this Vingsald"

"Come on, don't be such a prude. It wasn't anything morbid, mind you. He was the fifth son of a disgraced noble house, you know. He'd grown up reading tales of history and court intrigues from across the galaxy. Should've been out meeting real girls, but he only loved the dead ones."

"Eurgh!"

"What? Oh, not like that! *That* would be morbid. So Vingsald winds up being a pirate lord, and now he has a shapeshifting concubine who wants to please his every desire. You would not believe how much of a stickler he was for historical accuracy. His idea of foreplay was acting out the goings-on of a royal court some several hundred years ago. Where he was the star of the show, of course."

"You learned all of this galactic history... to please a man in bed?"

"Would I be the best concubine in the universe if I didn't do whatever it takes? And besides--" a flash of light, and where once the Tamaranean sat there was briefly a tiny Galvan "It wasn't like I didn't have some advantages in picking all of that up". Another flash, and she was back to her previous form.

"But that's--"

"And some time after Vingsald got his poor self jettisoned into space, I wound up with the Empress of the Loboans. I was a gift, that time. Or maybe I was their way of paying their taxes. Either way. She had no use for men whatsoever. Not the best trait when you're trying to continue a bloodline, but what can you do? I wasn't always *this* curvy, you know," she said as she slid off of Szar's shoulder, pressing her chest up against his face for emphasis. "That was a change she chose to make--sort of a base level edit, underneath all the transformations. Can't say I really understand it. She tried to mandate it for all of her female subjects, too. Didn't go over that well, but you can't say she didn't stand by her principles. Died for them too, but I'm pretty sure that was an accident."

"You're joking."

"Complete truth. I swear. I couldn't make this up. And some time after that, there was Grark. Tetraman. Real muscular space-barbarian warlord type, really big on honor. You'd have liked him." she floated over to the floor, and changed once more. This time she was grey-skinned, her face blank and featureless, her long, impossibly graceful limbs all ending in sharpened bony points. She balanced on the point of one arm, slowly spinning in place. Szar was pretty sure that the normal females of whatever she was right now--

"Paimonian" she helpfully added, as though she had been reading his thoughts. "Not many people know about them, they never made it off planet, for obvious reasons."

--he was pretty sure that female Paimonians didn't have that many curves. Or any, for that matter. Just something to thank the Empress of the Loboans for.

"Anyways, Grark," her voice seemed to come from nowhere. Certainly not from the nonexistent mouth. "Grark was of the opinion that sex could only be as good as the combat that immediately preceded it. I took some good hits from him, to be sure, but I don't think there was anyone else in the galaxy that could make him as happy as I did. Knowing you did something like that, that's really gratifying, let me tell you."

"So you mastered personal combat."

"Yep!"

"Allowed people to tinker with the fundamental attributes of your existence"

"Yep!"

"And learned pretty much everything there is to know in the history of the galaxy"

"Well that's overstating it, but that's the gist of it."

"For sex."

"Yep!"

"All because the... Cephaloids... all because they messed with your head."

"I don't think I'd put it like that. I mean, sure, that's what it was, but I've lived with it for so long that that's really just who I am, now. Honestly, I should be grateful. The alternative was probably that I get beaten to death somewhere along the line."

"So what is it that I should do?"

"What?"

"With the planet"

"Oh. Well, for starters, you shouldn't be asking me to make decisions for you."

"But you--"

"But I am a holdover from Korphus's rule. Oh, I didn't have anything to do with the actual facts of it, sure, but do you really think the people are going to make that distinction? Making me into some sort of power behind the throne makes you look weak and me look evil and now everyone's miserable. It's your planet, not mine. You were the one that stood up and took your people's fate into your hands."

"I... understand. I think. Will you support me in what comes next, at least?"

"Of course," she reverted back to the green form--Szar was quickly coming to think of this as her default--and climbed back up into bed with him, pressing up against him like she had last night. "I'll be here for you."

"And just one more thing... I will have to introduce you to others, sooner or later... what is your name?"

"What do you want it to--"

"What I want, is your name."

The Concubine looked puzzled by this for a moment, giving it some deep consideration.

"Call me Tennizyn" she said, smiling. "Anything to make you happy."