Prologue
Many thousands of years ago, deep in the Exion star system the first Draconian female entered the cave of ascension. She passed through the softly glowing waters, noticing tiny glowing blobs moving about in the water. Whether they were finless fish or worms was difficult to tell, for they had the characteristics of both as well as thin filaments growing out of their frail bodies.
Knowing the cave must be her divine destiny, the first queen forced herself to submit to the will of the gods. She walked slowly through the glowing waters, emerging a queen on the other side. Her people were equal parts awed and terrified when she disappeared beneath the earie luminescent liquid, for none had dared to pass through the glowing waters before.
Taking her rightful place as the leader of her people, all was well for a brief time. Soon her sleep became restless. A suspicion crept forward from the back of her mind, even as she felt something strange growing in her body. It moved around and playfully tickled her insides. Since she had no fever, nor evidence of disease upon her skin, horns or wings, the healers assured her that all was well.
Then the nightmares started, and she never knew a moment’s peace thereafter. Every day was a struggle to shut out the dark voice growing ever stronger in her mind. Once the symbiont took full control of her faculties, the young woman was forced to stand idly by while the creature wreaked havoc on her people.
From that day to this, every Draconian female had been forced to walk through the waters of ascension, thus becoming a queen in her own right. Those who failed to ascend were killed or sold into slavery. Death was preferable, since Draconian female slave could look forward to lifetime of torture by beings furious with their treatment at the hands of the Draconian empire.
A millennia slipped idly by, while the evil of the cave fell into myth. Ascension came to be known as a coming of age ceremony for young females and the Draconian were taught to love this sacred right, thus perpetuating the age of the symbiont. The first symbiont was long lived and few knew it still wandered the verse looking for plunder and warriors.
As the decades flew by, the queens grew discontented, fought amongst themselves and battled with each other over warriors. They seemed to grow stronger, crave chaos and feed off the misery of others. Little did the Draconians know, but the luminescent creatures floating in the waters of the cave of ascension were not some strange anomaly naturally occurring on their planet, but rather the spawn of a soul sucker that had been driven from a nearby world.
Meanwhile on Earth the environment was deteriorating, turning the oceans into putrid acidic cesspools devoid of all life forms. The lives of many males were lost in an effort to clean up the contamination, and then the worst-case scenario came to pass. A new pathogen emerged and locked onto the male genome. It took time to develop an antigen, costing more lives still. By the time it was said and done, the ratio of males to females was seriously unbalanced, there being four females to every male.
Just when humans were losing all hope of survival on their harsh world, aliens made contact with the peoples of Earth. They not only offered to help manage the environmental disaster, but also provided much needed medical supplies and food stuffs. In return, the aliens requested the one thing Earth had a surplus of.
Voluntary human brides were offered in exchange for the supplies. Many women were all too happy to relocate to a pristine new planet with an accommodating alien husband. It beat the alternative, which was living in huge crowded bio-domes.
A large group of human brides were stolen by pirates intent on selling them to the highest bidder. Incompetent fools that they were, they strayed into a spatial anomaly and ended up in Draconian space. Just when their situation seemed hopeless, they were rescued by Draconian warriors. The fight that ensued was one of mythical proportions, resulting in the ship and crew escaping back to normal space.
This is the story of those warriors and the human women they rescued settling a new home world under the protection of the Intergalactic Council of Planets. Unfortunately, the parasitic queen escaped as well. Now they Draconians are always looking over their shoulder, searching for the missing parasite and do all within their power to