The(questionable) burdens of leadership of a troll Emperor by Noodlehammer

Chapter 7

"WHAT ASS-BACKWARDS SHIT HEAP DID YOU CRAWL OUT OF THIS MORNING?!" Tarnor shouted at the top of his lungs at the woman in front of him.

It took all of Khepri's willpower not to lean away from the man bellowing in her face at a truly abominably early hour. It had become an unfortunately familiar routine to be woken long before she wanted to be and yelled at before the start of another miserable day. Every single day, the Jaffa with the burn scar on his face would throw them out of bed, chew them out for looking tired despite the fact that he was the one who hadn't let them go to sleep until about five hours ago and then march them off for an exhausting run through the woods, only after which they would be allowed to eat.

It didn't help that the Jaffa himself looked far too well rested.

Years had passed since that first celebration(which was now hosted annually) and everyone currently enduring this hell knew why they were going through it. The Emperor had apparently grown tired of waiting for them to change their attitudes and had cooked up this idea as a means of breaking them out of it, something that Tarnor reminded them of every few days, along with assurances that something else would be tried if it didn't work and that they had the 'honor' of testing for the correct method.

Everyone knew that they were here because neither Emperor nor Empress had the patience to slowly guide them away from their beliefs of gender superiority and were going to grind them into the dust if that was what it took.

All of them being regular humans under Goa'uld dominion, they'd never been allowed any kind of martial training, so being placed under a Jaffa master had been a wildly unpopular move. Unfortunately, their grumbling and protests had only made the whole thing harder on them, quickly teaching them to keep their complaints to themselves.

Khepri had no idea how long they'd been at this. Day after day of exhausting activity with no end in sight. An endless stream of running, hiking, camping, hunting, fishing and a slew of other activities, many of which required cooperation with others. Of course, the whole thing was for the most part organized in such a way that the only people you could cooperate with was the opposite gender.

It was no secret what they were trying to achieve with this, but that didn't make it ineffective. Especially when refusal to participate was often followed by a lack of food and you couldn't eat pride.

But it wasn't just people from her village and the three male dominated ones(still a concept she found both baffling and infuriating), there were also some volunteers present. That anyone would volunteer to go through this was yet another baffling thing, but they did. It was mostly men, though there was also a smattering of women among them, all willing to go through this because they wanted to fight the Goa'uld.

Khepri had always believed that Bastet was a benevolent goddess that protected them in exchange for a few of their men, but this place had made her doubt that. There were many people here who had tales of Goa'uld cruelty, stories of how they forced people to work for them in terrible conditions, abducted their most skilled and most beautiful and many other things.

At first, she had been smug about it, claiming that Bastet was better than that, but then someone had pointed out that their world had probably not held anything of value to the Goa'uld, except for the people themselves. The man she'd been arguing with had said that after the mine near their village had run dry, the Goa'uld had all but forgotten about them, except for the occasional raid when they needed slaves.

Khepri had wanted to deny it, but she had to wonder how Bastet would have reacted if they'd refused to hand over the men. There had after all been times in the past where a few extra hands would have been invaluable in working the fields, but none had ever dared refuse.