Risky Alliance

Why am I here?

That question bounced around in Primath’s head as the scorching sun cast its blue rays down upon him. The white sands of the family’s private beach on the north shore of Lake Asher were blinding, even with the round pair of shades pinched atop the Regulian’s broad muzzle.

No one was here, except for some of the family’s bored slaves pretending to be busy. A white Vulpeculan washed the same glass over and over at the bar, a human swept sand away from stone footpaths always conveniently in the shade to protect his pale skin, and the manager of the property; a short, blonde Sirian with long, drooping ears kept on popping up to ask if everything was to Primath’s liking.

“Yes, of course,” Primath would say each time, but in reality, nothing was.

Quroth was ridiculously late and the urge to ditch the meeting was growing rapidly by the minute for Primath.

It didn’t help that Primath’s butt still hurt from being shot by the Claw. Despite the comfortable, rattan canvas of the lounger, no matter what position he found himself in, the still-healing wound aggravated.

The humiliation of that flashed again in Primath’s mind and he tried to distract himself by returning his attention to the slaves.

The Vulpeculan’s amber eyes flickered in the sun as he turned his gaze away from Primath. A small gust of wind brushed along the sand, carrying Primath’s scent towards the bar, no doubt he was catching a whiff of Primath’s scent.

Perhaps he would be intrigued in a little intimacy…

Primath was, of course, aware of the power discrepancy between him and the slave, something he would always respect. Rick was comfortable enough requesting and taking a medical leave after they made love, so perhaps Primath figured he was communicating consent well enough and explaining the dynamics at play so that they understood.

Perhaps he could do the same with a slave while still being a good advocate for their rights.

“Fucking hell…”

Primath turned to find Quroth standing above him with obnoxiously large shades covering up his eyes, sniffing at the air.

“Bro, I don’t want to smell your hormones, you should have cranked it before you came,” Quroth wrinkled his nose back in disgust.

“I can’t help it if my masculine musk has a mind of its own,” Primath chuckled. “You want to reschedule?”

“No, I’ll just sit upwind.”

Quroth grabbed another rattan lounger and dragged it across the pristine sand until it was to the right of Primath. He plopped down on it with a contented sigh and placed a beach bag down on the sand.

“Bloody Prey!” Quroth shouted at the bartender and clapped his paws. “Urgent!”

As the bartender had nothing to occupy himself with, he very quickly assembled a cocktail of vodka, tomato juice, melted meat tallow, and a raw egg, stirring all of them together with ice. As a garnish, he placed a toothpick with a slice of wild game jerky across the rim.

The brothers were silent as the bartender approached with the sole drink atop his serving board. Primath tried to avoid making his sniffing too obvious as the bartender placed the drink on the cup-holder attached to Quroth’s lounger, and while he was able to get a few good sniffs, the bartender seemingly unknowingly was staying downwind of Primath at all times and could not make out entirely if he was interested in him.

Once they were alone, relatively speaking, Quroth spoke.

“So, you got the dirt?”

“Who said I got any?”

“Don’t play coy with me, brother,” Quroth took a very long sip of his drink.

Either he’s hungover or on drugs right now.

“I know you didn’t go all the way to Haven just to come home empty-handed. Dad had some dirt buried there and it’s going to come out, spill it.”

“Bartender!” Primath shouted. “Could I have a Frozen Heart, please?”

The bartender rolled his eyes slightly, at least Primath thought he did. He didn’t want to piss off the bartender by making a long, tedious drink, he just wanted to delay Quroth from asking questions.

Taking out a pair of Ruby Fruit, the bartender slowly peeled the rough skin of them until the fleshy, soft insides were exposed. Next, the Vulpeculan placed the two naked fruits atop a cutting board and ground black, volcanic salt atop them. The mild, unpalatable toxins in the fruit leaked out onto the board and the bartender immediately plucked out the pit from the softened fruit before tossing them into a blender before the rest of its juices were leached out.

With tremendous dexterity, the bartender picked up a bottle of Ruby Fruit Brandy and Lupiad Vodka in one paw and a single bottle of pasteurized blood in the other. He poured, counting internally before putting the bottle of blood down and pouring the two liquors for a few seconds more and stopping. A scoop of ice was added as a final touch.

The blender was soon turned on, its motor echoing across the empty beach and causing Quroth to clutch his head in pain.

Finally, the drink was poured into a wide, round-bottomed glass and the bartender came over, handing it to Primath and once again seemingly staying as far away from the Regulian as he could and remaining downwind.

“Okay, we’re alone again,” Quroth grit his teeth. “You ordered a stupid, complicated drink and have it now, you have no excuse to back out of this subject now, okay?”

Primath sipped his drink. Truthfully, he could not stand Ruby Fruit, but the drink was tedious to make and heavy in alcohol so it made it worth the extra minutes he had to think about how to respond.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Primath said, showing that delaying a subject might not always result in a clever plan or an alternative solution. Sometimes you either decide to stay the course or you might lack creativity.

“Dude,” Quroth rubbed his nose and sniffed, “your lies are fucking reeking right now.”

“You can’t tell if I’m lying by my smell, that’s just a lie Regulian authorities tells humans to make them nervous.”

“Yeah but mix that with your sweaty palms, constantly avoiding looking me in the eye, and delaying the question with that stupid fucking drink of yours; yeah, I can fucking tell you’re lying or at least hiding something.”

Primath looked out towards the lake, watching the water ripple gently.

“You’re doing it again!” Quroth interrupted.

“Look, there’s complications-”

“So you do have something!”

“I didn’t-”

“You didn’t have to say it!”

“Let me fin-”

“Fuck off, just say what you got!”

“I SAID LET ME-”

“SAY IT!”

Primath’s arm moved on its own and Quroth was suddenly covered in the Frozen Heart. Quroth shivered, his mouth hung agape in shock at the sudden assault, watching the sticky liquor and syrup cling to his short fur.

Quroth threw his own drink back at Primath and the older brother didn’t even bother trying to cover his face. A hard clump of ice hit Primath right in the nose along with the torrent of tomato juice and protein.

There was no anger in Primath’s heart now. He just felt cold and let the cocktail drip down his whiskers and chin.

“What the hell is wrong, brother?” Quroth softened his voice. “I got three big sponsors to vote for you, you know that right?”

“I got one too,” Primath said quietly.

“Who?”

“Larga but…” Primath wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered, “...fuck it, Uloth can have it.”

“Uloth!?” Quroth planted his paws across his muzzle and rubbed his bridge. “Who got to you? Who the fuck got to you!?”

“Look, he’s a war hero with a perfect record and-”

“War hero!?” Quroth snorted. “Dad paid for his commission and he spent his entire career on a do-nothing outpost thanks to a little someone here fucking up our family’s rep with the Emperor.”

“Look, this isn’t about me or my game or-”

“It kinda fucking is. But hey, Uloth should be thanking you every day you spared him from seeing real danger, but nah, it’s all warrior poetry and acting like he’s a real military authority and all that shit. How can you fucking stand it?”

“I can’t but…”

Primath swallowed.

“Look, I can’t but…” Primath looked over at the waves, “...something came up.”

“Something?”

Primath unsheathed his claws and then sheathed them back in. He repeated this three times until Quroth finally got the picture.

“Seriously?” Quroth looked around the beach without so much as the slightest bit of convertness, wildly throwing his eyes and nose everywhere looking for Claw spies. His voice lowered to a deadly whisper. “You…you can’t be serious. Why…him?”

“I don’t know why they…” Primath retracted his claws again and then hid them, “...want Uloth to be CEO but that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

“Fuck…” Quroth scratched at his wrists. His fingers began to quiver, “...well, we can’t just let them win, can we? It’s a fair vote, they don’t have to know we did anything, right?”

“Can you guarantee that?”

“I-”

“They shot me in the fucking ass!” Primath growled and leaned towards his brother, a fleck of drool trailing from his lips as he exposed his fangs. “They shot me in the ass right in front of my office! Have you ever been shot in the ass before? Have you!?”

“I mean, uh…” Quroth shifted away from his brother, nervously lowering his head at the sudden show of aggression, “...that’s uh, the least dangerous spot to be shot, I think.”

“It’s not about that!” Primath snapped his jaws. “They were sending a message, they’re going to have my ass on a platter if I don’t stand down! They fucked me in the ass with that needler! They fucked me!”

“And so you’re just going to let Uloth win?”

“He’s not a bad person,” Primath sighed. “He’s an asshole but…you know. Whatever, let him have the stress, I’ll just make my game.”

“I need whatever shit you have on him for my plan to work,” Quroth whispered. “I can’t force a vote in your favor if you’re going to mope like this and hold out on me. I need to get the committed voters under Valerie’s influence to scatter. I want you to be honest with me, is whatever dirt you have enough to make Uloth lose every single vote?”

Primath rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky, “Yes.”

“What is it?” Quroth asked. “You don’t have to give me the evidence, but you can at least tell me, right?”

“Uloth’s the passive partner in sex and has extreme submissive fantasies.”

“Dude, what the fuck!?” Quroth flinched. “What he does in his bedroom is his business!”

Primath looked over at his brother with an incredulous look on his face.

“I mean, you’ll get burned if you spread that, we’d have to do it through a proxy account and-”

“Forget I even said it, I’m not giving the evidence. I should probably burn it.”

“Don’t!” Quroth placed his paw on his brother’s shoulder. “Look, you might have been shot in the ass, but Uloth is getting fucked in the ass and you want him to win over you?”

“Honestly? He can do whatever he wants in his bedroom. More power to him, it’s a stupid Regulian cultural obsession anyways.”

“Yeah, but what if, what if he was talking shit about you?”

“We all talk shit about each other.”

“I mean, like, trying to get you to kill yourself.”

Primath’s spine went cold.

“What?”

“When I got Tialo and Shiva’s votes, I also got a bit of access to Jolt’s servers and I decided to do a little digging on my family’s social media history.”

“Great.”

“Yours is boring as fuck, by the way. Half the time you don’t even embed the links to your development diaries correctly,” Quroth cleared his throat. “It’s better than the shit Daglow’s got alts for, he’s got one for a conspiracy theory that some kind of anthropomorphic mustelids secretly rule the galaxy and another for greenhouse coffee farming which I’m pretty sure for all of our advancements in tech is fucking impossible and another hole he’ll burn in the family finances.”

“Great, okay, our family has shitty social media reach.”

“But Uloth, on the other hand, has hundreds of alts.”

“For boosting his shitty warrior poetry?”

“No, for trolling you, especially after that talk show fumble,” Quroth paused. “Ever seen an account called ‘TRAD TIGER LIFESTYLE?’”

Primath forced himself not to shiver. It couldn’t be true.

“He’s been ordering me to kill myself…”

“That’s Uloth.”

“Bullshit.”

“I thought you might say that.”

Quroth opened up his beach bag and took out a stack of paper.

“Have a look at this,” Quroth placed it on Primath’s belly.

Primath snatched several papers from the top and brought it close to his face.

The evidence was clear from the first paragraph. Though Primath was more of an idea guy in his organization, he had some technical savvy, enough to recognize the ExtranetID hash on Uloth’s primary account and the biggest troll account. The screenshots were straight from Jolt’s servers, there was no mistaking it.

A slight breeze rustled the papers as Primath flipped through them, his grip growing tighter with every screenshot of a command to commit suicide, every insult to his appearance, penis size, and character.

Primath licked his nose and grit his teeth. He was used to brotherly antagonism, even outright betrayal, but he had always expected his brothers, if they were going to do it, they’d stab him in the chest not in the back under anonymous accounts.

Military honor…

After a while, the words stopped hurting him. Primath was now on the message history of the hundredth account using Uloth’s hash and it was always the same thing every time at this point.

“Flip to the last page,” Quroth said quietly, looking around. “And don’t let any of the help see it.”

Primath looked around, fingers suddenly quivering, and slowly pulled out the last piece of paper. His blood ran cold when he saw his own face staring up at him. A green Lacertan loomed above him in the picture, fingers tucked between his slit, in a sleazy hotel room with a heart-shaped bed. Primath’s eyes were slowly blinking with contentment at the Lacertan, his tail was erect behind him, he was eager.

“It’s a fake,” Primath whispered to Quroth.

“I know, look at your hand in it, you can see a few pixels of a rock that the real Regulian there is about to strike the Lacertan with. Original is from the war, footage from a massacre after an Imperial defeat, he just photoshopped your head on it and changed the location.”

“He could have gotten me fucking killed for this!” Primath crumbled up the last sheet. “How the fuck wasn’t he arrested for distributing Lacertan pornography!?”

“Jolt auto-modded him for it the moment he sent it but a combination of him playing dumb and using our family’s name stopped Jolt from escalating further,” Quroth cleared his throat. “That’s actually how the engineers found out about his online shenanigans.”

“You need…” Primath looked over at the bar staff nervously, “...to delete any trace of this from Jolt’s servers. All backups, everything. If…they…find out, they’ll have every excuse to kill me.”

More than they already do once I cross this river.

“Consider it done, brother,” Quroth paused, slowly blinking as he stared at his brother.

“That slippery piece of shit…” Primath inhaled deeply and growled, “...he went too far…too FUCKING…far…”

“I wouldn’t let him get away with that shit.”

“I’m not gonna,” Primath pushed himself off of the lounger and kicked a clump of sand, “I’m gonna burn that motherfucker. You want the dirt, you fucking got it. Just make sure it doesn’t come back to me and make sure it hurts enough that he blows his brains out with his service pistol, you got it?”

Quroth stood up and clasped his brother’s paw, bringing him in for a hug.

“By the Emperor,” Quroth chuckled. “It feels good when brothers work together, don’t it?”