Page 127 of Scorching the Alien Empire
A smirk tugs at my lips as my plasma claw hisses to life, the low hum a song of death. With a guttural roar, I spin, my molten blades carving through armor like an arrohawk piercing the clouds. Liquid metal spills from sundered torsos, gleaming rivulets cascading down their segmented bodies before they collapse in broken heaps.
The floor writhes with the dying—droids twitching, red lenses dimming as the last traces of corrupted energy drain from their husks. More press in, clambering over their fallen brethren in their profane quest to end me, heedless of their own destruction. Mindless. Unrelenting.
Fools.
I tower over them like a stampeding aurodon in their midst, an unstoppable force of nature—divine retribution. I am upon them before they can react. A single, brutal kick caves in a droid’s chest plate, sending it hurtling into its allies. They crash together in a tangled mass of flailing limbs and sparking circuits.
Clamps scrape against my thick armor, a bristling array of jerking limbs stabbing, grasping. They fail to pierce my father’s armor. Fail to hold me. They are nothing more than frail puffrios clinging to the hide of a hunting venefex.
My plasma claws carve through them, molten arcs of devastation. My boot drives forward, caving in another sleek, flat dome. Again. And again. The slaughter does not cease, nor do I. My heart soars with the carnage, the Rush a wildfire burningthrough my veins, exalting in the destruction. More droids pour in, filling the gaps as swiftly as I create them.
I welcome it.
With every strike, every rending claw, every crushing step, I climb higher, higher—unstoppable, divine in my fury. Silver-red smoke trails from my eyes, wafting through the superheated air as the battlefield drowns in fire and ruin.
“COME! COME AND BE SLAUGHTERED!” I roar, manic laughter spilling from between bared fangs.
My warvisor flashes with alerts—droids further back, raising their cannons. Their aim is reckless, desperate. Blasts rain down, some striking their own ranks, turning their metal frames into molten slag. Others whizz over their flat heads, hurtling toward my face.
Instinct takes over. My hands move in a blur, seizing the nearest droid, yanking it into my grasp. It spasms, twitching as I wield it as a makeshift shield. The incoming fire slams into its chassis, scorching through metal, the heat pulsing against my palms. What was once solid collapses into liquefied ruin, the frame disintegrating in my grip, molten rivulets pooling in the growing graveyard of its brethren.
I hurl the smoldering remnants like missiles. They crash into two advancing droids, their insect-like heads crumpling under the impact, red sensor lenses flickering stubbornly clinging to life I’ve already taken.
Clamps screech against my armor, scraping, clutching, seeking to overwhelm me. Sparks cascade around me as metal bodies press in, a metal tide desperate to drag me down, to force me to my knees. They cling to my scaled Sneachir cloak, a mass of writhing limbs weighing me down.
They seek submission.
But I will never submit. Never again.
“I am War Chieftain Dracoth,” I snarl, muscles coiling with unyielding strength. “True-born son of Gorexius and my noble mother. The greatest of our kind. Blessed by the Gods. Bonded to Princesa. Disciple of Ignixis. I WILL NOT YIELD.”
With a violent twist, I tear free, my cloak shredding beneath the strain. The clinging droids are flung from me, hurtling into their allies like flailing wreckage. They collapse in a whirlwind of screeching metal before shattering into a hundred broken pieces.
“War Chieftain,” Corsark’s thoughts carve through the haze of my bloodlust. “Scanners detect movement. They’re approaching our fleet, a trickle before an unstoppable storm.” His concern is palpable, reverberating through the connection.
My plasma claw sweeps outward, molten blades slicing through three droids with effortless precision. Their scorched frames collapse, severed in a single motion. “Hold until Princesa docks. No matter the cost, Corsark.”
“Understood.”
The response barely leaves him before a blinding flash erupts above my shoulder. A concussive force slams into me, the air splitting with the shriek of energy. My father’s armor—Ignixis’s final gift—reacts in an instant, a translucent plasma barrier flaring to life. The searing blast dissipates inches from my face, but the heat licks at my skin, burning the side of my neck.
Snarling, I retaliate with a brutal kick, my boot colliding with a droid’s chest. The impact sends it rocketing through the air, its shattered body crashing into the mass of its kin with a cacophonous clamor.
The corridor is a graveyard now. A battlefield choked with the broken and the burned. The ruined droids form an ankle-deep wall around me, a barricade of smoldering wreckage threatening to impede the beautiful carnage.
I smirk.
And leap.
Propelled through the air, I crash down deeper into the enemy ranks, boots crushing fragile frames beneath me. They falter, flailing, sensor lenses whirring in frantic motion. But before they can react, my plasma claws carve a merciless arc, molten edges rending through arcweave and wire.
They stagger toward me, limbs twitching, movements sluggish. Sputtering mannequins, floundering in the face of inevitability.
Pathetic.
Feeble.
They cannot stop me.
