The sudden flash and the subsequent violent strobing cut through his pleasure-daze like a blade. Instinct and the warrior’s hyper-vigilance that never fully slept, kicked in.
He sat up a little straighter in the reclined chair, his eyes narrowing as he looked over Kaitlyn’s shoulder. The crowd’s attention shifted as one—a wave of excited murmuring rising. A single, brilliant spotlight speared down from the darkness of the vaulted ceiling, illuminating the center of the U-shaped tables—a circle of stark white light on the polished stone floor.
Into that circle stepped a figure.
He was tall and painfully thin, with skin like translucent blue ice, through which darker blue veins and the faint shadow of bones were visible. Perched precariously on his head was a tall, conical hat of vibrant pink. A long, crimson cape flowed from his shoulders, pooling around his thigh-high boots. He moved with a theatrical, exaggerated grace, sweeping into a deep, flourishing bow towards the assembled women.
“Ladies of Salimba Prime!” His voice was a reedy tenor, amplified somehow to fill the vast space. “Tonight you will be mesmerized and hypnotized—awed and amazed!”
All around the hall, women clapped and cheered. The men seated beneath them remained utterly silent statues of flesh.
We’re just furniture here, Braze thought grimly. You don’t expect the furniture to applaud.
“All the way from the misty moors of New Grovenshire,” the trainer continued, straightening up and spreading his arms wide, the red cape flaring like wings made of blood, “I have brought you a beast so fearsome, so magnificent, you won’t believe your eyes! Yes—it is a Kriver! The most feared and fearsome predator in the entire known Universe!”
Another round of applause, more eager this time, followed his words. The trainer bowed again, a smirk playing around his thin, blue lips.
“Please stay very still in your seats, for we don’t wish to upset her. She’s in heat at the moment, which makes her a bit… testy.” He paused, letting his gaze sweep over the audience of women. “A fact I’m sure you can all identify with.”
The line drew predictable giggles and knowing laughs.
Braze’s jaw tightened. This was a fucking circus—a grotesque, dangerous circus. He had a bad feeling about this beast—this Kriver. He had never seen one but their bloodthirsty reputation for ferocity was well known. It didn’t seem likely that this male had actually trained one—they weren’t supposed to be trainable at all.
But no one else in the crowd or at the Empress’s table seemed in the least bit worried. They were all leaning forward, their eyes fixed eagerly on the spotlight, waiting for the beast to appear.
They didn’t have to wait for long.
“And now,” the trainer intoned, his voice dropping to a dramatic whisper that still carried, “For your viewing pleasure… the Kriver!”
From within his cape, he produced a long, black whip. He snapped it once in the air and the crack was like a gunshot, sharp and final.
The response was immediate.
A deafening roar filled with pure, primal power, shook the very air. It was a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the center of Braze’s body. From a dark archway across the hall, the beast bounded into the circle of light.
Braze’s breath caught and every muscle in his body tensed. Every instinct he possessed screamed DANGER!!!!
The Kriver was a nightmare fusion of evolutionary horrors. It stood on four powerful legs that ended in paws like a grizzly bear’s—each claw a curved, black sickle longer than Braze’s hand. Its torso was massive and barrel-chested—covered in a short, sleek pelt of iridescent black fur that shimmered with hints of deep purple and green as it moved.
But where a bear or big cat would have a neck and head, the Kriver’s body surged upward into a cluster of thick, muscular tentacles—eight of them—each as long as a man was tall, writhing and coiling around its central mass like furious serpents. At the tip of each tentacle was not a sucker, but a snapping, beak-like mouth filled with needle-sharp, rotating teeth.
And in the very center of this whipping nest of appendages was a single, massive eye—glowing with malevolent, intelligent amber light.
It roared again—a multitude of sounds coming from the snapping beaks at the end of its tentacles—and its stench reached Braze’s nose. This living nightmare smelled of wet fur, raw meat, and fresh blood—not a comforting combination.
Braze stared at it in horror. It was a predator built for utter devastation. And there was nothing—no cage, no force field, not even a rope—between it and the front row of tables.
The trainer, however, seemed utterly at ease. He paced around the perimeter of the light, his whip held loosely in one long-fingered hand.
“Observe, ladies, the precision of the Kriver! Its tentacles are not mere limbs—they are independent hunters—each with a mind of its own, yet they obey my mind!”
He stopped and pointed his whip at his own ridiculous pink hat.
“For my first demonstration, I shall ask my sweet pet to remove my hat. Not with violence, but with the delicacy of a maiden plucking a flower!”
He stood perfectly still and stared at the beast. Did he have some kind of mental control over it, Braze wondered? How was he making his orders known?
However he was doing it, it seemed to be working. The Kriver’s central eye fixed on the hat and suddenly, there was a blur of motion too fast to follow. One tentacle lashed out and retracted in the same instant.
