Page 304 of Scorching the Alien Empire
Theblisteringwindscreamsaround us, clawing at my hair like a thousand horny Dracoth fingers. His arms wrap tight—molten stone and hunger—pouring heat into me until I feel like a lava cake mid-eruption. Todd clings onto my shoulder, wee booties gripped tight, clackers clacking with chubby fury. His Wrapper-Tok streamers flutter behind us like confetti from a sugar-fueled apocalypse.
Dracoth’s boots thud against the open hatch of the sleek Smurf ship, engines thrumming beneath us. Laser fire cracks overhead—scarlet bursts slicing through smoke like the galaxy’s angriest rave.
The planet stretches beneath us—a half-rotten fruit. One half—wild and feral. Serrated yellow forests. Rivers of violet crystalslicing across bruised terrain. The other half? A murder-bot tumor. Towering obsidian factories belch acid-green smoke into a storm-choked sky like the world’s trying to quit a forty-year vape habit. Mountains weep molten slag, their peaks torn open like a shredded corset.
A swarm of murder-orbs streaks overhead like deranged golf balls. They blot out the blazing blue sun, escorted by a dozen Void-panes—black monoliths that pulse and shudder, vomiting molten blue volleys at our pressing fleet. Air bends. Reality hiccups.
“Fucking murder-bots!” I shriek, teeth grinding so hard I swear a molar cracks. My eyes flash like silver-crimson stars, the scorching air whipping the misty-fury from my face.
I thrust out a hand, summoning a web of divine shields. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. They shimmer into place just as a wave of blue bolts crashes down—splattering harmlessly like neon bugs on a windshield.
My smirk wobbles as the Nib ships return fire—red beams refracting off my shields in a dazzling mess of rainbow chaos.
“Hah!” I bark. “Whoops.”
My face heats like the rest of me. With a flick, I shift the shields to protect our fleet instead, wrapping our vessels in divine warmth.
The fisticuffs? Pure art.
Smurf ships dance like ballerinas on speed, carving through the retreating murder-orbs with crimson precision. Enemy shields flash—brilliant blue-purple pulses—then blink out as their metal bodies split like evil oranges on a butcher’s block.
The Void-panes last longer, their blue fire slamming against my divine barriers or missing entirely. But one by one, their shields collapse in flashes of violent violet. Hulls tear open wider than my wallet at a boutique sale. They stagger with ribbony life, puking more plasma, then fall apart like soggy toast in the rain.
I laugh—raw, euphoric, manic.
This is it.
Dracoth’s fury and ecstasy synced with mine, our bond igniting like twin suns. My eyes stream divine fumes. My blood sings with power. Delicious carnage everywhere. Victory’s burn in my nostrils. Time stretches, honey-thick and golden.
This is what it means tolive.Not survive. Not endure.
Burn.
Dracoth—my murder husband—feels it too.
His pervy mask leaks crimson-silver plumes, eyes locked on the battlefield below. No doubt, he’s commanding the bone-through-the-noses with nothing but wrath and his galaxy-sized brain.
The space-knights advance in razor-precise formations. Their new Smurf-tech—red shields and blasters—slice through the metal tide like a cleansing wave tearing through a barf-slick floor.
The Armxians—or whatever they’re called—lurch forward. Twisted, four-armed cybernetic horrors, like someone duct-taped circuit boards to rotting meat. They spew blue fire beside the usual creepy, skittering murder-droids. But they fall just as fast—shredded by laser arcs or ripped apart by blazing crimson claws.
Above, Robo-Nibs clash with swarms of murder-orbs, beams threading neon webs across the sky.
Then the advance stalls—Dreadforges.
Towering war machines emerge—spined backs bristling with cannons. They stomp through forest and factory alike, every step quaking the land. Their maws belch rivers of molten blue, claws shoveling metal, flesh—anything—into a glowing core. And from it... birth. Monstrosities. Wriggling horrors, fresh-screamed and barf-inducing.
Molten death spews in all directions—a tsunami of sputtering sputum that melts everything it touches. Whole squads vanish. Mostly the desperate freedom-fighting Armxians. But the bone-through-the-noses hold. Crimson shields locked tight, the inferno breaking against them like waves crashing against a cliff.
Then—Dracoth growls.
It starts low in his chest, rumbling through mine, before it tears free—an animal quake wrapped in wrath. His eyes—silver and crimson—blaze like twin supernovae. And he locks onto the nearest Dreadforges.
“Burn,” he murmurs, and the heat of his breath against my ear sends shivers down my spine.
His free hand rises. The air screams. Reality above the battlefield tears like paper soaked in lightning. A seam opens in the sky. And through it pourliving suns.
“Do it, Dracoth!” I shout. The sacred ashes on my forehead burn with exquisite pain. My skin cracks with light, divine energy seeping through like molten silver. The runes on my chest aren’t just glowing—they’re singing, a chorus of gods cheering us on. “Kill them!”
