Everything was fine until my skyboard exploded. This was my first realspace raid, and things were going rather well until I  caught a stray round from a Hydra. Before I knew it, I was sailing through the air, the chain around my waist flapping angrily in the void where my legs used to be. After what seemed like an eternity, I landed on the deck of a barque. I could feel my bones crack, my organs rupture, and other than a single gasp as the wind was knocked out of my lungs, I was unable to make a sound. I was unable to breath. I was unable to move.

The planet had been rather nice, by Mon'keigh standards. The air was clean, the countryside was mostly thick forests over rolling hills, broken by the occasional pasture or field. Apparently, the planet's chief export was high-quality wood. Upon closer examination, the forest was divided into grids. The trees were planted in straight rows, and you could tell that each section had been planted in a different solar cycle. Despite this, the guardsmen we had captured still ran around in heavy trench coats and gas masks. It didn't make sense to me, but it was probably some pretty handy kit to have once we lit the forests on fire. 

The basic concept behind the raid had been simple. We were on a Mon'Keigh world that was being invaded by Orks. Our orders were to take out as much of the local garrison as we could, so that the Orks would overrun the planet. Because of this, the local Mon-keigh military district, whatever it's called, would have to send a lot of reinforcements here. Once they did, We'd hit our actual target, which was a garrison planet a few systems away. I was surprised that they had told us all this when we signed on, but it turns out there's not too much down here that's even worth taking, so the idea was that we'd sign on for both raids, and get most of the pay after the second one was completed. Since I wasn't exactly spoiled for choice, it seemed good enough for me. As it turned out, the Mon'keigh had already sent a few regiments of their guard to the planet. This was good, since it meant better fighting and more valuable slaves. Unfortunately, some of them knew how to operate their Hydra.

My stare was fixed on two figures at the daiz towards the back of the barque. One was a Haemonculous I had never seen before. The other was an archon I had only seen in person once before, but an Archon that everyone in Commorragh knew and feared. Aurelia Malys. She wrinkled her nose at me with amused disgust. The Haemunculous reached a long, spindly finger to his cheek, absentmindedly picking a shred of my viscera off himself, and popped it in his mouth. After sucking on it for a moment, I could see the faintest traces of surprize flash across his countence, and he leaned over toward the archon, whispering something to her. She looked me in the eye, and smirked. If, at that point, I had still been capable of any sort of physiological response, I am sure that my blood would have run cold.
 
"Well, can you stabilize that... thing?" Malys raised an arm in my direction, not even bothering to close her fingers into a point. The Haemonculous nodded, picked up his bag, and ambled over to me. With a flick of his prehensile tail, he flipped me over onto my back, and stared unblinking at my broken, ruined body. He pulled out a recirculator and a jar of blood. The recirculator had six hoses on it, each ending with a vicious looking needle. The two needles on the right side of the machine were shoved into my carotid arteries; the four slightly smaller needles on the left side of the machine were put in my jugular veins. After twisting the jar of blood into the top of the recirculator, the Haemonculous flipped a switch, and the machine set to work.

"It shouldn't die in the immediate future, my lady. Is there anything else?"
"Hmm... It's using combat drugs, of course." Malys' reply was more of a statement than a question. 
"Yes, my lady."
"And you have Faerun on hand."
"Yes, my lady."
"Disconnect the feeds for the combat drugs, and swap them with the Faerun. Maybe add a little bit of Terrorfex."
"Yes, my lady."

A moment later, I felt the cold iron of a collar press around my neck, jarring the needles in my arteries and veins, and twisting slightly as it was riveted shut. I heard a clunk as the chain the collar was attached to was bolted to the deck of the raider. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to scream. I couldn't scream; my diaphragm was nothing more than a mass of pulped organs and splintered bones. But, Oh! I wanted to scream so very much.

I don't know how long I was on the deck of that Raider, but when a Kabalite unbolted the chain from the deck and hoisted me up, I vaguely noticed that the others were all looking much younger. Lady Malys had a twinkle in her eye that I didn't notice before. The Kabalite casually tossed me over his shoulder, the spikes on his armour punching into me and causing a new wave of agony to course across my broken body. Eventually, the Kabalite unloaded me onto the floor of a Haemonculous laboratory. I heard a thump as a mass of angry, crimson muscle and blood slammed into the side of its crystal amniotic tank, trying to get closer to me to absorb more of my agony.

"You're pretty good at this." The Haemonculous that jammed the needles into me is saying something. I try to look over to him, but I can't move. "I've seen some rather... resilient subjects in my time, but you..."
The Haemonculous strokes the shredded stump of my left leg. After a moment, he brings his clawed hand up to his face, sniffs the blood for a moment, then licks his fingers clean.
"You and I could do wonderful things together." He finally says.

A while later, I could hear a hydraulic rumble as the amniotic fluid in one of the tanks is cycled out. The crystal front swings open slowly, and the occupant takes a single, slightly unsteady step onto the laboratory floor. He has the cold, homocidal air of a Dracon. Or, maybe he's just cold. After all, he is stark *****. He sneers at me. "What is that... thing?"

"It was a hellion. Lady Malys is thinking of keeping it as a slave until it can pay off the dent it put in her raider."
"And how is that going to work?"
"Very slowly."

The Dracon and the Haemonculous gave each other a knowing look, but stopped short of laughing. The Dracon smiled slowly. "I assume its going to find itself in a little medical debt, as well?"

"Of Course."

My body was dying. My heart had stopped ages ago, and without the blood flowing to what was left, the tissue was slowly becoming ridgid and useless. Was I going to have to live out the rest of my life as a disembodied head, hooked up to the recirculator? As I began to wonder, the Dracon grabbed the chain attached to my collar, swung me in a circle, and tossed me into the crystal tank. There was a brief moment of panic as the recirculator was wrenched out of my veins and arteries, but the door swung shut, and the tank slowly began to fill with amniotic fluid. A slave was brought in, or rather, another slave was brought in. I guess, for the third or fourth time in my life, I'm a slave again. Unlike the other times, there would be no possiblity of escape, or killing my owner. If someone could kill Aurelia Malys, it certainly wasn't me. I slumped to the bottom of the tank, and tried to take in as much of pain as I could while the Haemonculous set to work on the other captive.

Slowly, inside the eldrich crystal womb, my body began to knit itself back together. Muscle and bone because to join together again, and regrow. The angry swelling of my bruised and ruptured internal organs dissapated. My skin, and the rest of the tissue that was too damaged to be regrown, sloughed off of me, and drifted slowly towards the filters at the bottom of the tank. Finding that I had control of my faculties for the first time since this ordeal started, I turned my head and looked around the room.

The Haemonculus' laboratory was lined with tanks such as mine. Unlike mine, these tanks were filled with the archons, dracons, and trueborn Kabalites of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue. The other patients were slamming themselves against the crystal doors of their tanks, trying to get closer to the solaves that the Haemonculous and his wracks were currently torturing. I've never been a good judge of time, and certainly not while I'm dying, but it seemed to be taking longer to regenerate the other patients than it had while I was on the table. Perhaps, the dracon had tossed me in his own tank so that he could steal a march on his rivals who were still convalescing. 

The wracks brought in a new subject, still wearing the gas mask and steel helmet he had on when we had assaulted whatever worthless planet he had been on. The helmet had a large dent on the side, and he moved with the unsteady gate of someone with inner ear damage. His hands were bound behind his back in iron manacles similar to my own collar. One of the wracks unscrewed the filter from his mask, and replaced it with a hose. I wondered what was in the tank. Admittedly, it was probably written on the side, but reading is something that happens to other people. I had never learned how, and I doubted I would ever need to. As the wrack began to turn the valve on the tank, the man entered a panicked frenzy. Terrorfex. He ripped  his hands out of the manacles, breaking his thumbs in the process, before tearing off the helmet and mask. Wild eyed, he glanced around the room searching for a way out, and bolted toward a door. Unfortunately for him, it was a closet. He took the edge of a shelf on his chin, and sprawled backwards across the floor like the ridiculous aquila adorning his helmet. I found myself heaving silent guffaws as the amniotic fluid was expelled from my lungs. To my mild surprise, laughing didn't hurt anymore.

As the slave was dragged onto a slab and the moment of levity faded away, I became cognizant of a gnawing fear that had become so pervasive that I somehow had not even realized it was there. Maybe it was the pain of my injuries that distracted me from it. Maybe, I had simply been so overwhelmed by the situation that I had ascribed both the pain and the fear to the injuries. After all, I might not have left a crater on the deck of Malys' Raider, but I had certainly left a large enough dent. Now, as my injuries were slowly healed by the nourishing pain of the slaves lying before me, I had entirely too much time to play the events back in my head. The whispered words. The knowing smirk. I couldn't imagine why the Archon of the Poisoned Tongue would be the least bit interested in me. If I were her, I would have tossed me over the side of the barque.

I looked down at the palms of my hands, and noticed my fingerprints were coming back. This was a bit of a surprise, as I had burned them off ages ago. Fingerprints are a bit of a liability in Low Commorragh, after all. Then again, this was my first time in a regeneration tank since the Haemoinculous who spawned me tossed me ***** into the filthy gutter behind his laboratory. The Amniotic fluid in the chamber slowly drained from my crystal womb, and the door opened before me. As I began to make my first feble steps onto the cold metal deck of the laboratory, another figure entered the room. Malys. She strode over to me, and before I had time to react, a left jab took me in the belly, and a right hook caught my chin. Before I had time to drop. she grabbed my iron collar with both hands, and dragged me onto an examination slab. She heald me face down on the slab as a red hot brand was rolled across my back, leaving the sigil of the Kabal of The Poisoned Tongue burned in my flesh, and marking her ownership of me.  A leash was clipped to the caller, and she dragged me out of the room.

Eventually, we ended up in an antechamber in her private cabin. The room was tastefully appointed, and definitely a little lived-in. She hooked the loop of the leash over a meathook suspended from the ceiling, and it slowly began to rise, until only my toes could touch the floor. She turned to me.

"Do you know why you're here?" Malys asked.
"Um... because I dented the deck of your personal barque?" I replied.
"No. Let's try another approach. Do you know who your parents are?"

I was floored. Or rather, I would have been if I weren't suspended by an iron collar and struggling not to pass out. I tried to reply as respectfully as I could. Maybe then, she'd let me live. "Lady Mal-- um, Archon, um, Ma'am, I didn't know I had parents. I just got tossed out the back of a lab like any other half-born."

Malys grinned, considering her words carefully. Finally, she said, "Your parents... or at least, your biological progenitors, are both acquaintances of mine. It is not a particular surprise that they formed a union, but I would have never guessed either one would have been careless enough for anything to come of it."

Malys grinned, but there was a feral edge to her smile. She strode over to an ornately carved cabinet. After a moment's thought, she picked out an Agonizer whip. Finally, she continued, "All you need to know is that they are both very important to me, and when I am mad at them, I'm going to take it out on you."