Page 106 of Scorching the Alien Empire
With that, he whips around, the space-knights hurrying out of our path as he surges between them like rolling magma.
He strides down the vast corridor with haste, his eyes leaking blood-red fumes into the frigid, sterile air.
Behind us, the space-knights carry out his orders. I glance back as they flood into the rooms, quickly followed by the ear-piercing zaps, bangs, and screeches. Doors ripped open. Walls are torn apart.
Dracoth’s gaze is fixed ahead, locked onto something deeper in the murder-bot fortress. But I can still feel his doubt gnawing through our bond.
I hesitate, then murmur, “Listen, babes... don’t let that prick get under your skin.” My voice wavers, uncertain if I should speak. “He’s just trying to save his—”
“What I was. What I am. Is of no concern.” Dracoth’s voice is a growl, cutting me off. His heavy armor clicks, his boots thud against the metal floor, each step heavy with pounding resolve. “Only vengeance matters now.”
I would be relieved—if I couldn’t feel the crimson thread of doubt twisting inside him.
Ahead, an immense door comes into view. Larger than the others. It caps the end of this vast corridor, the sheer size drawing my gaze upward to the numerous glyphs fading into the shadows stretching high into the unseen ceiling.
“Lifeforms ahead,” Dracoth rumbles, his masked gaze piercing through metal and shadow, his massive hand poised to blast something into oblivion.
I stiffen. “Lifeforms? What are we talking about here?” My voice drops to a frantic whisper, heart hammering against my ribs. “Flies or Godzillas?”
My pulse pounds as I brace myself, inhaling deeply, preparing to bury us under so many shields we’ll look like diamond-shelled turtles.
“Klendathians,” Dracoth growls, stepping forward. The massive doors groan, whirling open.
Inside. Rows upon rows of vats. A sickly green glow pulses from the chamber, casting the space in an eerie, faintly luminescent haze. Metal stalks stretch from floor to ceiling filling the vast chamber. They hold countless containers stackedwith mechanical precision—layered one atop another in an endless, suffocating grid.
The utter scale is horrifying. Like we’re ants wandering into a putrid, metal jungle.
It’s what’s inside that churns my stomach. Fetal-like figures curled and suspended in thick, green, viscous fluid. Some tanks hold monstrous, failed experiments—limbs fused, missing, altered, extra, and grotesque proportions. Wherever my eyes land, another heart-wrenching, deplorable sight awaits, another unimaginable combination that shouldn’t exist.
But that’s not the worst of it. I gag. My stomach lurches. Cold sweat beads down my back.
Some of them are children. Infants.
Those I turn away from. I can’t. I won’t. The sight is too cruel, too twisted.
“Arawnoth, let them be reborn in your divine image.” I whisper, hands clutching Ignixis’s ashes, the faint heat pressing against my palm—a small comfort in this waking nightmare.
Dracoth doesn’t stop. Doesn’t balk. He strides forward between the towering metallic columns, each step thudding with unspoken fury. Only his fuming eyes and rapid breaths betray the storm raging inside him. His gaze is locked ahead—to a raised platform bristling with deactivated terminals.
As we pass more of the tanks, I realize that most of the figures inside are healthy young Klendathian males. Curled up, they bob gently, suspended in the green fluid that both sustains and traps them. There’s an army of them being grown in this place, harvested like rotten fruits.
My throat tightens as I glance up at Dracoth, suddenly wishing I could see the man beneath the mask. Is this where he was born? Created? The thought sends a shiver down my spine. No friends. No family. Not even a childhood.
Just a weapon—a tool built by murder-bots, only to return and haunt them. Serves them right, the creepy sickos.
“So,thisis where they grow those crazy bastards,” Drexios’s voice slices through the tension with all the subtlety of a root canal.
The rude prick saunters forward, stopping beside a vat, his lips curl into a grimace as he peers inside. “Well, blast me out a Mutalisk’s asshole—if this isn’t a young Omoth.”
He glances back, grinning like he just found a long-lost drinking buddy at the bar. “Hey, you lot!” He jerks his chin toward the trailing space-knights. “Tell me this isn’t the same idiot?”
The space-knights move hesitantly, masked faces sweeping across the grotesque sea of vats, muttering curses under their breath, wrist weapons poised.
A few approach Drexios, slow and measured, as if they’ve just walked onto the set of a zombie apocalypse movie. They lean in, their faces mere inches from the glass.
“Aye... aye!” A long brown-haired space-knight exclaims, recognition dawning on him. “That’s Omoth alright. But didn’t he get vaporized on Argon Six? Remember that voiding short-hopper?” He glances at a nearby soldier.
“Gods be good,” A red-haired space-knight mutters, placing an armored hand against the glass, the eerie green glow bathing their masks.
