Page 190 of Scorching the Alien Empire
A sea of warriors stands before me silent, their armor glinting like blackened stars under the fire-streaked heavens. Tens of thousands of Magaxus—Dracoth’s clan, my army. They pack the shattered industrial plaza like congregants in some war-born cathedral. The air’s thick—not just with whipping ash, but with grief, relief, and reverence.
It’s delicious, sending a full-body tingle of anticipation through me. I can hardly wait to stand where Dracoth is now, speaking the sacred words, bathing in their adoration and worship. But Mr. Frowny Face is hogging the spotlight, rambling on and on, praising the fallen’s valor and the victor’s courage.
Yawn.
To my left, on a dais of slag and metal wreckage, Dracoth stands tall—like a storm dressed in clown shoes. His dark-green-scaled cloak billows in the scorched wind, the edges singed by floating embers that lovingly warm my skin.
In the distance is a graveyard of silent machinery. Towering refinery stacks loom like bristles on a hairbrush, their shattered frames blackened by energy blasts. Some still belch thin streams of smoke, as if the planet itself refuses to kick a nasty smokinghabit. The fumes drift into the jet-black clouds that flash with ominous crimson light like a warning alarm everyone’s ignoring.
The once-paved streets yawn open into massive fissures, where a river of molten rock pulses sluggishly beneath the crust. Heat licks at my boots; ash dances on my tongue like tangy salt flakes.
I’m one of the few without a mask. The Klendathians in their scary, perv masks, and the space-hobos huddle together looking like kids playing apocalypse, wearing mismatched respirators over their different alien features.
I flash Sandra a reassuring smile, our gazes meeting through the crowd. She stands flanked by Jazzy and Drexios. Poor woman offers me a sheepish grin half-hidden by her mask. She clutches her gnomish clothes and cringes, not for warmth but to escape the whipping ashes.
I feel a flicker of pity. She’s stuck with dumb and dumber on this death ball of a planet. But not for long. Once I claim my rightful place, we’ll be sipping Cristal Rosé. No, an even more luxurious alien version—EleriumVosé—off my space yacht while we solar-bathe above some luxury ocean planet.
Ah. The dream.
Todd interrupts my thoughts, jostling my shoulder with the cutest little bug sneeze.
“Bless you,” I mutter, brushing ash from his cherub cheeks. Well, where his cheeks would be if he had any.
He croaks and curls into a pudgy ball, mandibles flailing like he’s offended by hygiene.
“You behave yourself, mister!” I scold, way too loud. A few bone-through-the-noses shoot suspicious looks. I ignore them, obviously. Todd’s way more important. He’s been a little gremlin since touchdown—probably itching to scuttle off and scoff more jelly sticks, the chunky menace.
Good thing he’s an herbivore, or he’d be skittering across the bier, munching on the hundred or so fallen space-knights laid out like action figures in a nerd’s collection.
Each body is wrapped in a bloodied banner, their cold, dead hands clamped to their chests. Laid out together are their scary masks. A couple of space-knights move between them carving runes into the metal with blue-sparking tools.
Right on cue, Dracoth raises his hand toward the bier. His voice booms like a thunderclap in a wind tunnel:
“We do not mourn those who died a glorious death.”
Not a shout. Adeclaration.
Amplified by war-horns blown by Jazzy and other important-looking space-knights, the sudden deafening sound echoing through my bones, stifling my spine.
“For we are the proud sons of Scarn. Werememberand honor our fallen brothers—how they lived, how they fought, how they died. These are the bonds that tether us still, an unbreakable shieldwall stretched across the ages. They fought with Arawnoth’s fury in their hearts, spilling noble blood, felling many before they fell. Their sacrifice is our freedom—our people’s glorious rebirth!”
A roar erupts from the space-knights, a sound so vast it shakes the rubble underfoot. Fists slam against breastplates in unison—an ear-splitting, thunderous clang that echoes off shattered walls and broken spires.
Not bad.I didn’t know Dracoth had it in him to speak that many words without threatening to rip someone’s spine out.
“We return their bodies to Arawnoth’s embrace,” Dracoth intones, his voice rolling like distant thunder through the ruins. “May his fires lift their souls to the ancestors, as we carry their sacred warvisors to rest in the Catacombs of Nardune. Let us etch their valor into the blessed metal.” He turns, gesturing toward a knight at the front of the crowd. “Zarkath. You wereKarznok’s blood-brother. Rise. Commit his flesh to the flames and speak of him, so we may honor his memory.”
Karznok?That name seems familiar, like the bassist of a death-metal boy band I’ve long forgotten.
A drumbeat begins—slow, primal, the rhythm of a hundred war-drums pounding as one. Zarkath rises, his brown mohawk whipping in the ash-choked wind like an advertisement banner. With a grunt, he lifts what remains of his brother Karznok—torn, bloodied, gaping where a heart should be.
Tears stream from Zarkath’s eyes as he clutches his brother’s lifeless body to his chest. For a moment, I nearly avert my eyes, a swell of pity rising despite myself. But I crush it. This whole ceremony is just barbarian cosplay. This is what the bone-through-the-noses signed up for anyway. As they say—live by the sword, die by the sword, and all that.
After what feels like eternity, Zarkath straightens, his body still shaking with silent, pathetic sobs as he stumbles forward, cradling Karznok’s corpse as he approaches the edge of the chasm. A jagged scar in the earth that winds its way through these broken streets like fishnets of the apocalypse. It glows with molten orange fire. The abyss pulses like a living thing, casting flickers of gold and red across the warrior’s armor.
“Farewell, brother,” Zarkath murmurs, voice trembling.
He lets go.
