Chapter 1: The Faked Death
The air in the throne room didn’t just smell of incense. It was thicker than that, a coiled presence that carried the dry, metallic scent of old blood and something sweetly rotten beneath the perfume. Princess Aura breathed it in like it was home. The smoke from the braziers swirled in eddies, cut through by the jagged light of dragon-shaped lanterns whose flames never seemed to burn straight.
She knelt on the cold obsidian floor, the posture one of perfect submission. Her father, Emperor Ming the Merciless, was a shadow draped in crimson silk upon the gilded throne. The throne’s high back wasn’t adorned with jewels, but with the actual, skeletal remains of those who had failed him. Their empty eye sockets watched the court.
“The Earthman is stubborn, father,” Aura said, her voice a calibrated instrument of respect. She let a thread of frustration show. Just a thread. “His primitive notions of loyalty are… tedious.”
Flash Gordon stood between two guards, his broad shoulders pulled back. Even now, with his wrists bound by energy-cuffs, he looked like he was waiting for the snap of a football. His eyes, a clear and stupidly honest blue, were fixed on Ming with a defiance that made Aura’s skin feel warm. He was a beautiful animal. Perfectly unbroken.
“Loyalty is a currency he understands,” Ming’s voice was a dry rustle, like scales sliding over stone. “We shall simply devalue it. Throw him in the deepest oubliette. Let the dark and the damp argue with his principles.”
Aura lowered her gaze to hide the spark in her green eyes. “As you command.” She rose with a fluid grace, the sheer panels of her gown whispering against her legs. She approached a low table where a servant had laid a decanter of violet wine and two crystal goblets. A peace offering from a conquered world. “A final drink, perhaps? A courtesy to his fading strength. Even a dog is given water before it is put down.”
Ming gave a slight, bored wave of his hand, his attention already drifting to a holographic report flickering above his palm.
Aura poured. Her movements were a practiced ballet. The first goblet, full to the brim, she took for herself. The second, she filled three-quarters. As her body blocked the view of the throne, the nail of her thumb—hollow and filled with a resin of Zothian dream-poison—brushed the rim. A dust-fine powder dissolved instantly, invisible.
She turned, extending the tainted goblet to Flash. “For your courage, Earthman. Misplaced, but not unnoticed.”
Flash’s jaw tightened. He stared at the wine, then at her face. “I don’t want your courtesy.”
“It wasn’t a request,” Aura said, her smile all sharp edges. She took a deliberate sip from her own glass, meeting his eyes over the rim. A challenge. A dare.
He was thirsty. She could see the parched line of his lips. The stubborn pride warred with basic need, and pride, she knew, was always more brittle. With a final, contemptuous glance at Ming, he took the goblet. He drained it in three long gulps, the muscles of his throat working. He handed the empty glass back to her, his fingers brushing hers. A shock, simple and static, seemed to jolt between them. His eyes widened slightly.
“Satisfied?” he growled.
“Immensely,” she breathed, so only he could hear.
It took ninety-three heartbeats. She counted. First, a slight confusion in his gaze, a blurring at the edges. Then a stagger, so slight his guards tightened their grip. He shook his head, like a bull trying to dislodge a fly.
“What…?” The word slurred.
His knees buckled. The guards grunted, taking his full weight as he collapsed, consciousness fleeing not with a fight, but with a slow, sinking surrender. His head lolled forward onto his chest.
Ming glanced over, disinterested. “He’s weaker than I thought. Remove him.”
“The oubliette, Celestial One?” one guard asked.
“The furnaces. He is wasted space.”
Aura’s heart hammered a single, triumphant beat against her ribs. She let her expression show a cool disappointment. “A pity. Such a waste of excellent raw material.” She placed her own goblet, still full, back on the table with a soft click. “May I oversee the disposal, father? I… find I have a newfound interest in the efficiency of our recyclers.”
Ming’s black eyes flicked to her, probing. She held her gaze steady, a blank page. After a moment, he nodded, already turning away. “Indulge your morbid curiosity, daughter. Report when it is done.”
The guards dragged Flash’s limp form between them, his boots scraping twin trails in the polished floor. Aura followed, her steps silent. They moved from the throne room into the labyrinthine service corridors of the palace, away from the opulent halls. The air grew colder, smelling of ozone and machine oil.
At a junction where a lesser-used passage dipped downward, Aura stopped. “This way,” she commanded, her voice leaving no room for question.
“The furnace annex is to the right, Princess,” the senior guard said.
“And I am taking him left,” she said, and now her voice was a silken whip. “My father’s word is law. My whim, within these walls, is his word made flesh. Do you wish to discuss semantics?” Her green eyes locked onto his, and he saw not a princess, but Ming’s own cruel intelligence staring back.
The guard paled. “No, Princess.”
“Good. Follow. Ask nothing.”
They descended, the path becoming rough-hewn stone, lit by pulsating bioluminescent fungi. This was a forgotten artery of the palace, leading to a private hangar her father had gifted her years ago. A plaything for a cherished, vicious child. Her sanctuary. Her prison.
The hidden fortress wasn’t a fortress in the traditional sense. It was a sleek, obsidean needle of a ship, grounded in a cavern so vast its ceiling was lost in gloom. Aura activated the gangplank with a wave of her hand. The guards hauled Flash inside, into a chamber that was the opposite of the oubliette Ming had promised.
It was all muted grays and soft, indirect light. A vast bed platform dominated the space, layered with furs and silks. The air was warm, gently scented with night-blooming jasmine from a hidden vent. There were no windows, no obvious doors. Just seamless walls and a profound, perfect quiet.
“Place him there,” Aura instructed, pointing to the bed.
They dumped him unceremoniously. One guard hesitated, looking at the luxurious cell. “Princess… the Emperor said—”
“The Emperor believes his Earthman is ash swirling in a furnace plume,” Aura finished, her back to them as she approached a control panel set into the wall. “And you will confirm that report. You saw the body consumed. You felt the heat. You will remember nothing of this ship, this place, or my alternative instructions. Is that clear?”
Her fingers danced across the panel. A low, sub-audible hum filled the room. The guards’ eyes glazed over for a single, unified moment.
“Yes, Princess,” they intoned together, their voices flat. “The Earthman is ash.”
“Go.”
They turned and filed out, their footsteps echoing into silence. The gangplank sealed with a sigh of pressurized air. They were alone.
Aura let out a long, slow breath. The performance was over. She crossed the room and stood over Flash. He was breathing deeply, trapped in the poisoned sleep. She reached out and traced the line of his jaw, rough with stubble. So different from the polished courtiers, the sycophants, the terrified prisoners.
“Hello, Flash Gordon,” she whispered. “Welcome to forever.”
She worked quickly, removing the energy-cuffs, stripping off his torn jacket and boots. She left him in his simple trousers and thin undershirt. He looked younger, softer in sleep. Vulnerable. She arranged him on the pillows, brushing a stray lock of blonde hair from his forehead.
From a hidden compartment, she drew out a slender syringe filled with an iridescent fluid. Memory wasn’t a book you could close. It was a tapestry, and you had to loosen the threads, one by one, before you could begin to re-weave it. This serum wouldn’t erase. It would soften. It would make everything before this moment feel like a half-remembered dream, porous and unreliable.
She found a vein in his arm, pushed the plunger. He didn’t stir.
Next, she moved to the room’s environmental controls. She lowered the temperature a few degrees. A slight, persistent chill would make him seek warmth. Her warmth. She programmed a slow, circadian light cycle—eight hours of soft “day,” sixteen of intimate “night.” Time, here, would become unmoored.
Finally, she sank onto the edge of the bed beside him. She studied his face, the curve of his mouth. Dale Arden’s name was probably the last thing on his lips before the poison took him. Aura leaned down, her fiery hair curtaining them both, until her lips were a breath away from his ear.
“You’re going to forget her,” she murmured, the words a spell. “You’re going to forget the sky you came from. All you’ll know is this room. My voice. My touch. And in the emptiness, you’ll find me. You’ll cling to me. And you will, in time, thank me for it.”
She straightened up, watching him. The only sound was his breathing and the almost imperceptible hum of the ship. The great, chaotic universe, with its wars and its heroes and its waiting lovers, was locked outside. In here, there was only the project. The slow, delicious work of unmaking a hero and assembling something new, something solely for her.
He would wake soon. Disoriented. Afraid.
And she would be there, a vision of solace in the silence, the first and only truth in his blank new world. The game was finally, truly, beginning.