Page 78 of Scorching the Alien Empire
I hate it—its mechanisms swirl and whine at the edges of awareness. Subtle, malignant. An infiltrator in our midst.
Beyond Drexios, beyond the flames, the stomping cacophony of screeching servo-gears grates my senses like claws on stone. An endless tide of metal, moving in eerie synchronicity, marches over the ruins of a dying civilization—Scythian battle droids.
Beneath the twin suns, they exterminate all: the injured, the females, the children. Their plasma cannons fire in perfect unison, an ocean of searing blue death. But mere slaughter is not enough. They turn their weapons upon every structure, every trace of civilization. They wash it all away.
With cold mechanical ruthlessness, they bathe towering fang-shaped buildings in plasma. The structures glow white-hot, like stars on the verge of supernova. Large chunks slough off until the foundations finally collapse, toppling like felled Draxxi great trees. The earth shudders, the impact echoing across the horizon, across countless worlds—forever.
My pride and elation rot at the sight.
Where is the honor in this? How can they be reborn in strength if we extinguish them utterly? No halls to remember their heroes. No chronicles to record our brutal lesson. The Scythians will cleanse everything, leaving nothing behind. Just like Sothis Prime—a dead, meaningless world in a dying universe.
Unease and revulsion claw at my gut.
No enemies to fight. No glory to be won. Nothing but dead rock and shattered bones. This is my doing. My fault. The realization sickens me more than the acrid scent of charred bodies and burning ozone. I heralded this. My divine gift of fire and death, twisted into absurd extremes by the machines.
The scale is too vast, too incomprehensible. Convulsive retching wracks my body, though nothing spills from my lips. The sound of my heaving is drowned beneath the roaring flames and the pleading screams of Nebian females and children.
“The War Chieftain cannot stomach the sight of such weak prey!” Jazreal shouts with mirth over the chaos, clambering up the smoldering wreckage of the Nebian Starcruiser. “We shall have to find better sport!”
I straighten, only for my blood to run cold.
Jazreal’s face.
Once marred like red parchment, now one side gleams with polished metal. Not just the skin—deeper. As if his entire skull has been reconstructed from arcweave.
Shock and disgust propel me backward. “Your body... is mechanical?” I mutter, my gaze darting to the Ravager Berserkers in the distance. Now I see them—many augmented, their limbs replaced with cybernetic grafts. Some so altered they no longer resemble my warriors, but bipedal echoes of the Scythian battle droids.
Jazreal laughs, the sound too sharp, too wrong. “The Sun accuses the moon of being purple.” He gestures to me with a smirk. “We follow your lead, War Chieftain. Yourenhancementsare the envy of us all.” He slaps my shoulder with a hearty grin.
I feel nothing.
No.
My insides churn. But instead of organs, instead of flesh and bone, I picture metal, circuits, and plasma. The thought violates me so deeply it sends my heart into a furious, thundering gallop—if it truly is a heart that pounds within.
Fury and panic surge in equal measure. This is a mockery of me, my people, the very essence of what it means to be Klendathian.
It does not belong!
This mechanical filth—this profane corruption—sickens me to the core. My claws extend with a sharp snap, and I drive them into my palms. There should be agony, but instead, there is only a dull awareness of damage. Green blood oozes—thin, too bright, too liquid. Like paint.
And beneath it—
I see it.Gleaming metal.
Twitching. Whirling. Mimicking the bones of my hand as if they are part of me.
A vile thing. Grafted. Invasive.
An affront to our sacred words. To Arawnoth’s teachings.
I refuse to be a slave! A metal puppet masquerading as War Chieftain—a thing, cold and dead, where fire and life should blaze in Arawnoth’s divine image. I would rather die than suffer this fate.
“Enough!” I roar, driving my claws into my throat. Flesh tears away, but there is no pain. Ruthlessly, I rip deeper, exposing circuits and tubes where veins should be, where blood should flow.
“What are you doing?!” Jazreal shouts, horror twisting the fleshy side of his face. He lunges toward me, hands outstretched, but he’s too late.
“Drexios, stop him!”
