Chapter Text
“General, eh?” SkekNa squints with his one extant eye at the much larger Skeksis tangled in his bedclothes. SkekUng is a temperamental brute, but he respects skekNa after some measure, perhaps because the former knows in whatever counts for his heart that he himself could never have endured such mutilation, torment, humiliation as skekNa has had to bear up under. skekUng grumps loudly at the remark–as he does at most phrases directed toward him, as though the very act of attempting to communicate with him is a grave affront.
Yet, skekUng isn’t truly displeased in this instance. “Yes, you heard skekSo as well as I did,” the newly-dubbed General points out after a prolonged pause. “Long time coming, too.”
“Not an hour ago,” skekNa quips, his wince mostly one of amusement when skekUng turns over with a lurch to grip him by the throat.
“Stow your wits, one-eye, you’re a slaver, not an entertainer.”
“To think you believe me as crass as you. A mere slaver, indeed.” SkekNa nips along the underside of skekUng’s jaw with a vaguely bored look. “And yet, what is to be expected from one with such poor sense of decorum–”
“You haven’t seen poor decorum–”
“No ear for music–”
“And that’s to be forgiven, I suppose, given you’re but half-sighted–”
“–As suits a great General,” skekNa concludes with an unlooked-for flattery, stopping skekUng in his tracks. “Persons such as you, my lord, have no time for niceties. Other duties to attend to. Safety of the realm. Et cetera.”
SkekUng grumbles to himself, pacified, or perhaps “pacified” is not the right word. “Mhhmh. I do have a new burden placed on my shoulders.” His nibbling and pawing at the other Skeksis grows more aggressive. “Safety of all Skeksis. All my people.” He has the side of skekNa’s face in one talon, his weirdly short and unimposing beak on the other side, tongue flicking around the other’s vacant eye socket in what counts with him as gentleness.
“Well-deserved,” assents skekNa, half perversely enjoying the sensation and half repulsed by it. He tries not to flinch in either direction, toward or away. skekUng remained his ally those many hundred trine ago, through that brief but intense era of disfavor with the Emperor, when the slaver lost an eye to the peeper and a hand to a rather slower procession of flesh-eating crawlies populating a cleverly-devised airtight tube about his arm; skekUng brings him small animals for them to torment together for their mutual amusement, or they swipe the occasional Podling or even Gelfling that no one will miss; skekUng takes eyes at times, from the living or from the dead, and gives them to skekNa like a fizzgig expecting some reward. It is important to keep skekUng as a political ally, and for other reasons it is also important to keep skekUng. The inconvenience of the new General’s occasional lack of boundaries is a small price to pay, if “boundaries” is even a term that could ever possibly occur to skekNa within the context of his society and his place in it. SkekNa can beat the Podlings because it lies within his power. All skekNa can do, against anything that lies in skekUng’s power, is participate in it or resist it. At the end of the day, the suns have set and the suns will rise again and it hardly matters.
Anyway, he likes skekUng, as far as liking goes. They’ve rarely separated for more than half an unum during their many trine out rambling the lands, subduing distant and obscure peoples, occasionally depositing a perfunctory load of novel slaves and pets and foodstuffs at the Castle. Usually they stay just long enough to ensure the new help is properly broken in and has enough Gelfling tongue to take commands, then it’s back on the road. It’s more than fortunate, truly, that skekVar has been lost in this new Gelfling war. Good reason to return to the Castle, more fun when skekNa’s own are on the ups. They’ve been getting a bit tired on the road anyway, they’re not as young as they used to be when they baited nebrie for sport. The Empire and its enrichment can wait while this political kerfuffle around the Castle is sorted out.
“Ermh.” SkekNa inches back a bit when the General’s tongue slides along the margins of his eyelids, angling for the vacancy behind them. “Poor way to ensure safety of your people, skekUng. Your toxic drool could infect that–”
“It’s healed over, wear your stupid patch if you’re so bothered.”
“In my own fucking bed? Thought I could count on my esteemed associate not to stick his tongue in my eye socket.” SkekNa swats in annoyance, lightly, with one taloned hand.
“Fair enough. Give me one of your Podlings tomorrow. We’ll have some fun with it.”
SkekNa is quick to forget his brief discomfort as skekUng returns to chewing on his neck, grazing his own claws down the other’s back. “Much as I would like to agree with your plan, General–”
“Hm!” SkekUng’s attentions grow slightly more rabid at the use of the new title.
“–Gelfling and Podling now rise against the Castle.” SkekNa tries gamely to keep his voice level, unfevered. “We need to conserve the help. Can’t just torture and maim them willy-nilly.”
“Since when were you the responsible one, you half-demolished wreck of a Skeksis?”
“Neither of us are the responsible one, you drooling sadist. Perish the thought. I’m just slightly smarter than you.”
“Just slightly,” skekUng accedes with mild viciousness, the two now writhing together, “but I am stronger.”
“Agh!” SkekNa’s lips curl back from his teeth in somewhat pained and somewhat indignant pleasure as the other pins him long enough to penetrate him. “Yes–Well–Step carefully here. These–mmh–these lands–much changed, skekUng.”
“The lands can change around me all they want.
I
am the same.” There is something a bit off in skekUng’s eyes, as he stares down at the other with angry thrusts; and it crosses skekNa’s mind to wonder, ego-soothing new title notwithstanding, whether General skekUng might not be intimidated by the unprecedented situation. Someone had slain the prior General after all, someone had slain not just skekVar but three Skeksis within the course of one encounter. That someone was, arguably, Gelfling, but there was much more in play here, many more pieces on the board.
SkekNa is rarely gentle with skekUng (why would or should he be?). This seems like a moment to be gentle, insofar as skekNa is capable of that. He wraps his tail around skekUng’s and whispers so that his naturally shrieky voice is more palatable. “You are the same, my General. Same, but better. You have a new task, a new army. The world has gone mad. World thinks it can defy. Soon we will show them how wrong they are. Rest well tonight. Remember, you meet your army tomorrow.”