The Enemy Within
In the distant future, the Terran Prince Luca is captured by the hostile Khalian race and transformed in nightmarish ways.
by Hector Scofield. Edited and corrected by Ben243.
Dark clouds hung over the already gloomy, red sky of the planet Khal. A sultry heat hung in the air, everything smelled of sulfur and volcanic activity. It was not a good day for Prince Luca, who looked through the narrow hatch of the prisoner transporter at an inhospitable stone desert.
Not that the previous day had been any better, on the contrary: His defeat against the Khalian army had been devastating. Of thousands, only he and a handful of his soldiers remained alive, captured by the enemy to be presented as trophies for their king. At least that's what Luca thought. If he had only guessed what was really in store for them, he would have immediately tried to take his own life.
After two solid hours, they had finally arrived in the Khalian capital of Fencia, where the palace of King Brogian the First stood. It was located deep in the heart of an old inactive volcano, hollowed out and clad in dark glass.
Luca was roughly dragged out of the transporter and escorted at gunpoint to stand before their ruler by two Khalian guardians, large hulking lizard-like creatures with smooth, dark gray, delicate scales. They were clad in jet-black armor tailored from leather-like resin and adorned with gold ornaments.
While the guards were two heads taller than Luca, Brogian was at least twice as big. His skin was much rougher, covered with horns and fine, red cracks due to age. Instead of leather, he wore only a burgundy robe, beyond that he appeared to be completely naked. Even his cloaca stood out large and unashamed from his loins. Instead of a crown, he wore a pair of artificial obsidian horns on his head, which the ruling class had affixed to their heads in memory of their ancestors.
From his stone throne he looked down at Luca, who was covered in bruises and scratches, stripped of all clothing and forced by the guards to kneel before their king. Luca tried to refuse, but was easily knocked down with a slight push. He was exhausted. The fight had lasted for weeks.
"Prince Luca of Terra!" growled the king. "I'm glad to finally make your acquaintance!" Luca was visibly surprised. So the stories were true: The Khalians could speak the human language! Brogian read his face and replied: "You have grossly underestimated us! You thought we were just mindless reptiles with whom you would have conquered easily. The disdain with which your people looked down on us, was what made us despise your kind in return!"
Luca was more ashamed than offended. He knew Brogian was right about that: How many times had the young Prince argued with his uncle about this, and yet he had taken command of his armies against the Khalian anyway. The king continued, "Your father would have never been that foolish!" - "You knew my father?" Luca dared to reply, catching menacing looks from the guards in the corner of his eyes.
Waving them off, Brogian replied, a little nostalgically, "Knew?! We crossed swords! He was a great warrior, the bravest and most intelligent Terran I have ever encountered. We greatly outnumbered your people, but your father, King Ferdinand, proved to be a skilled strategist who was always one step ahead of us. He would, indeed, have nearly brought down the Khalian Empire had he not made a disastrous mistake at the Battle of Janem..."
The Battle of Janem! Luca was very young when his father fell on the marble islands of Janem. His body had never been found. "You killed him?!" - "On the contrary, my young friend: I saved him! Who do you think helped me to see through your stratagem!" Luca wasn't having any of that. He jumped up and yelled, his head red in anger: "HOW DARE YOU, TO DISGRACE MY FATHERS NAME!!!"
For this he got kicked in the ribs by one of the guards. Luca fell sideways in pain. Brogian signed for the guard to stop, before he could strike another blow. He then spoke, very calmly and grimly: "You will soon understand, young prince! You and your remaining comrades will soon be of great service to the armies of Khal!" - "I'd rather die!" - "A mercy you might actually long for yet!"
With these words he gave a sign to the other guard, who roughly pulled Luca up by the shoulder with his huge hands and pressed a jet injector against his neck. With a soft hiss, the young man was administered a clear liquid that incapacitated him in no time. He was then thrown over the guard's shoulder like a wet sack of meat and carried away, unable to move a muscle. Before he completely lost consciousness, he caught a glimpse of the king's smug expression out of the corner of his eyes.
***
As Luca slowly regained consciousness, he began to perceive some unsettling impressions beyond the darkness in his mind. Someone was screaming and moaning in desperation. The sickly sweet smell of decay hung in the air. And there was this pain! At first he couldn't really make out where it was coming from. But it was definitely there and seemed get worse. He felt the cold metal surface he was lying flat on, and tried to inspect it closer with his hands. But that wasn't possible!
A boost of adrenaline snapped him out of his daze. He opened his eyes and was blinded by what appeared to be ordinary overhead lighting. "Where am I?" went through his head. "What have these beasts done to me?" The wailing sounds seemed to come from beside him. He felt a vibration that suggested someone was lying next to him. Left and right.
Luca turned and found he was lying next to his comrade-in-arms, Captain Wyland. His head was shaved clean, even his eyebrows were missing. He had a metal harness strapped over his mouth, holding it wide open while a delicate robotic arm screwed around inside, removing his teeth one at a time. Luca had the impulse to rescue him, but he couldn't! He didn't have anything to help him push himself up. Luca was shocked to find that his arms and legs had been amputated.
Now Luca began to scream in wild panic himself. They were lined up side by side, like meat being experimented on with bloodthirsty machinery, sharing the same horrifying fate. What kind of sick game were the Khalian playing with them? Luca had no intention to wait and find out. He tried to free himself from his desperate situation with any available means, but not only was he missing vital body parts, he and his comrades were mercilessly fixed to their table with tight bands.
A robotic arm bent over Luca, ready to prepare his mouth too. When he refused, he received an electric shock from another arm, making him howl in pain before the horrific frame was rammed into him too. It strained against the very edge of his row of teeth, then forced his jaw open with small hydraulic metal bolts. When this was done, his teeth were also ripped out without any anesthesia. The pain was so great that he lost consciousness again.
***
He later found himself in an upright position. Was it all just a horrible nightmare? No! His mouth was not only deprived of the last tooth. His tongue had also been ripped out with all force. Saliva dripped from the maltreated throat that was left, because he could no longer swallow.
He was terribly cold, having been rid of even the tiniest hair. He hung in a metal frame that itself hung from on chains from the ceiling. Luca tried to scream in anger and desperation, but he was all alone in the room, which seemed to be something like a mixture of dungeon and laboratory.
When he had calmed down somewhat, he tilted his head back, banging against some kind of metallic contraption that resonated clearly. It seemed attached to his back and had not previously registered with him in his hysteria. He looked around and found only a small reflective surface in the otherwise dull room, revealing a strange device. It appeared to house a glass container with a glowing red liquid. Judging by the uncomfortable pulsating on his back, the stuff was pumped right up into it.
It was quite a while before Brogian paid him a visit. Luca snarled at him, but Brogian just chided him in return: "Well, is that the way a Terran monarch talks?!" The sadistic giant lizard savored the moment to the fullest, teasing and patting him, like a human child playing with a dead jellyfish, before finally condescending to explain Luca about his fate:
"I have studied the history of your people extensively. Did you know that your ancestors used to feast on the flesh of their enemies in order to absorb their strength? Barbaric superstition, of course! And yet: inspiring! As you know, you Terrans have a big advantage over us: You adapt to any environment more easily than we do. Khalians can't stand the cold, your atmosphere is poison for our lungs. And the fact that we can only articulate ourselves very limitedly without technical aids makes it much harder for us to form alliances."
He took an artificial pause to give more weight to his following words: "Remember what I said in the throne room? What I told you about your father! About the great service he rendered to us!" Luca just stared at him in sheer anger. "You seemed to have your doubts about my words. Perhaps you wish to see for yourself!"
He began to strip off his royal robes, much to Luca's horror and disgust. He then turned around, revealing his coarsely scaled back. Along his spine, fissures suddenly opened, cracking loudly and pulling aside dozens of threads of grayish mucus. Two large flaps of skin separated themselves from his back. They began unfolding towards the shoulder blades like a pair of grotesque wings, to reveal the interior of the Khalian monarch.
Between the innards, which twitched and throbbed repulsively, was a large, pale organ, bearing the same red veins as Brogian himself. It was connected to the rest of the body by multiple sinews, muscles, and blood vessels. But what made it different from everything else Luca could see, was what appeared to be a large, diamond-shaped pattern faintly etched into it.
It slowly dawned on him that the mark was a tattoo that vaguely resembled the sigil of the Terran Kingdom. When the realization finally set in, it not only broke his heart, it made him suddenly aware of the full scope of his situation. This organ was not an organ! Not in a natural sense! It was his father!
Luca screamed and raged, more desperate than ever, while Brogian closed his back, gathered up his robes and left the room satisfied.
***
Over the following days and nights, while Luca and his men floated in nutrient-enriched basins, their bodies underwent a seemingly relentless series of changes. Their skin had taken on a smooth, pale form, from which mucus was oozing. Their ears degenerated into small misshapen piece of cartilage, the ear canals were on the verge of disappearing altogether. His eyes suffered much the same fate, as they slowly dried up and regressed. At some point his eyelids could no longer be opened, as they too had grown together and fused.
Their mouths, on the other hand, grew and gaped, combined with what's left of the nostrils, becoming huge maws in which a foul-tasting secretion was formed and dribbled out of them, loose and sticky. Their penises bulged outward, growing larger and longer, growing into a sort of branching mushroom that hung from them, constantly twitching. The sensation of which felt strange, but not entirely uncomfortable either. Somehow it was the only thing that made this situation halfway bearable.
The insides of their bodies also noticeably underwent some massive transformations. After all, their purpose was not only to facilitate the Khalians' invasion of the Terran Kingdom. They also had to serve as viable replacements for those organs that were removed from Brogian's soldiers to make room for them.
Entire tubules pierced through their flesh and sprout outward like they were plants. After almost a month they were finally ready, freed from their basins with extreme care and implanted in their respective Khalian soldier. Like tentacles, the tubules instinctively connected, soon pumping fluid in and out of the new Terran organ.
Luca felt their nervous systems merging. In the case of his penis, it felt like it had just grown into a complex organism, akin to a small tree. Even the thick, pulsating hose that squeezed through his anus began to feel somewhat natural and normal after some time.
Another tube meanwhile melted onto what's left of his mouth and nose, and pressed a sweetish secretion down his throat, which immediately began to work inside him and was expelled in spurts through his anus.
Suddenly, Luca felt a firm pressure behind him that suggested his new Owner's back was closing. He was surrounded by dull noises, everything around him was pressing and quivering and pumping liquids through every possible nook and cranny. He also felt the movement of the Khalian, who left the laboratory with firm steps the next day and carried him to God knows where.
***
Luca had actually expected that his brain would now atrophy. Instead, it was increasingly filled with strange thoughts that were clearly not his own: He felt an appetite for strange meals whose name he'd never heard, but was suddenly very familiar with. He was also thinking about military matters, different than anything he knew. And something drove him to remember secrets of the Terran Army against his will.
Luca realized that his host, a Khalian General, was trying to access his brain to gain a tactical advantage against his enemy. Luca fought back, but the soldier knew how to help himself. Luca felt a violent surge of arousal one day, coursing through every inch of the grotesque roots of his former penis, like... there were no words for it. At least he didn't have time to think about it, was absolutely overwhelmed by the unbridled sexual ecstasy that coursed through his whole body.
It was only later that he became aware of the fact that the General had masturbated, and he felt a little ashamed. But not much! He craved for more, but his host refused him any stimulation. At most teased him with a short, tender caress over his hot cloaca here and there. Luca did his best to resist him. But over time his resistance broke and the information just ran out of him. For this he was handsomely rewarded. The general called one of his soldiers over to give him a ride. Luca knew somehow that this was the host of his former companion, Captain Wyland. But at that point it didn't matter to him anymore!
He only realized the magnitude of his betrayal when, days later, he heard a loud, muffled noise and strong vibration that suggested a bombardment. The Khalian Army has always had a severe shortage of explosive devices. So they wouldn't have fired any missiles if the target wasn't of incredible strategic value. Luca felt awful, which seemed to affect the mood of the general, who took a young infantryman to bed to cheer him up.
Some time later Luca had a vision. He stood with a proud chest before King Brogian, who pinned a medal on him in the presence of his entire troop. He could feel everything: The excitement, the pride, the scaly skin, the fabric of the uniform... He heard the tinny fanfares, smelled the sulfur in the air, tasted the leftovers of breakfast... and for a fleeting moment, he himself was proud and happy. Happy for the respect they paid them. Happy for the battle they'd won. Happy for the defeat of the Terran Kingdom.