Page 259 of Scorching the Alien Empire
I close my eyes, a crooked smile playing on my lips.
As long as I get my happy ending... They can watch all they want.
Chapter 48
Dracoth
A Dream of Fire
I’mdreaming.
A world of flames and molten stone. I know this place—Arawnoth’s realm.
Tempests of living fire scour the land, lashing against me with world-ending force. Ash and sulfur choke the skies. The heat should kill me. It doesn’t. Itfeedsme. Fills my lungs like magma, surging through my veins with godblood ferocity.
My flesh does not burn.
Instead, my muscles thrum, cords of arcweave sinew coiling beneath my skin. My heart pounds, and with it—divine rage. It’seuphoric. This is what I was always meant to be. Who I am.
A titan of fury.
But something’s changed. Once, the flames were mine—born of vengeance, hatred, hunger. A fire I couldn’t control.
Now. They dance for me. They curl around my limbs like a lover’s breath. A rage contained which does not burn, does not spread. Not chaos—a weapon in my molten hands.
I raise my arms and laugh, lungs blazing, joy bubbling up from a place so deep it tastes like oblivion. Ash rains down. Rivers of fire roar. Scorching heat floods over me in waves, scouring away weakness and doubt.
And I feel him. Everywhere. Arawnoth.
His essence thrums inside my molten heart. He is the source of creation. Of fire. Of war. The forge of life. And I—his chosen hammer. His avatar made flesh.
I will honor his blessing. I will sear any who stand before me and scatter their ash to the solar winds.
Krogothwill be consumed. I’ll tear out his spine, string it with the rest, and wear it proud on my belt of bone.
“In your honor, great Arawnoth!” My voice echoes across burning mountains as volcanoes rupture the sky, spewing molten fury into the stars.
Then—a shadow.
A behemoth crashes from the flaming heavens, landing with such force the world buckles beneath it. Eruptions chain-react across the horizon.
“Arawnoth...” I breathe steam. Boiling. Reverent.
He rises before me—blinding, terrible, divine. Every inch of him radiates like a thousand suns compressed into molten form. My fire is a candle beside his inferno. He burns with such intensity, I struggle to meet his gaze, but I do not falter. Iamthe fire.
He unfurls wings of flame vast enough to eclipse stars, like a celestial behemoth of molten fury. They stretch beyond theflaming skies in the vast emptiness of space, igniting the void itself.
Then he moves.
Arawnoth extends a hand—mountain-sized, dripping liquid crimson. The atmosphere bends. Cyclones of fire scream through the skies as that limb descends. I brace, body tensed, skin blistering under the heat of creation itself.
But he does not strike.
The volcanic fingers open—unclenching like a mountain sighing—and reveal a figure cupped within the God’s palm.
“Ignixis,”I whisper.
My heart stumbles in its rhythm. That old gas-cloud. But not ancient. Not now.
