Page 274 of Scorching the Alien Empire
Stormcleaverhums in my grasp, thirsty. I stalk forward toward the hacking Krogoth. “Come,” I whisper. “I will sear your flesh and breathe deep of your ashes.”
Even now, Krogoth reacts well despite his pathetic limitations. He lifts his gaze, wiping the blood from his mangled face. Hand reaching for his four-pronged spear. Shield raised.
I strike—a brutal overhead cleave.
Krogoth dashes sideways. The ground splits beneath us.
He retaliates, spear thrusting out.
I catch the thrust on my circular shield—sparks spray, the jolt racing up my arm.
He coughs. A wet, helpless sound.
I deliver a brutal frontal kick into his midriff, driving the air from his lungs.
My molten strength hurls him across the slag-strewn ground. He skids, a blur of blood and ash, until the jagged stone tears his momentum to shreds. The crowd splits like lightning overhead—some voices erupt in thunderous cheers, others in desperate cries. They all feed me. This is the moment I’ve craved: Krogoth, broken, beneath my heel.
Another coughing fit wracks him. The harder I press, the more ash he drinks. A death spiral he cannot escape.
I pounce like a starving venefex,Stormcleaverhowling down with the weight of worlds. Prone, he barely scrapes his shield into place. Wood erupts in splinters, shredded by my wrath. The axe bites deep, nearly tasting flesh.
His arm buckles under the force, pain twisting his bloodied face. I follow with a brutal kick—air crushed from his lungs, forcing him to gasp in more of the searing ash. Yet somehow he rolls across the hissing fissures with startling speed, a battered revenant clinging to life.
I let him rise.
He staggers upright, breath ragged, black hair matted with sweat and soot. Ash and blood cake his body—a veil of suffering. But his eyes... they still burn. Purple fire, defiant, carried by the scalding, howling winds.
“Do you taste it, Krogoth?” I roar, charging,Stormcleaverraised high. “That’s the taste of death!”
My axe carves the air in a wide arc. He ducks low, thrusting his spear toward my thigh—but he’s slower now, drained. My shield slams down, trapping his weapon between it and the blackened earth. My swing shifts mid-motion into a brutal upward slash.
He releases the spear to save his neck, pivoting, shield raised. More splinters. More blood.
I become fury incarnate—raining blow after blow, an unstoppable titan of muscle and wrath. Krogoth splutters, retreating in a staggering dance. Narrowly avoiding some strikes, his shield splintering beneath others. I can feel him waning, slowing, weakening. His defenses are falling apart.
Soon it will end. Soon I’ll claim his head.
And yet... regret blooms—petals of poison. A flicker at first, it grows—festers into something bitter. A seething disappointment, halting my advance.
Krogoth breaks away, breath rasping, body a bloody ruin. His eyes flicker—a swirling storm of purple and hazel. Rock’s voice rings out, a lament—a mournful wail splitting the ash-laced sky.
No. This is not honor. This is not worthy—the contest of demigods that was promised.
“Take it,” I growl, tossing his captured respirator at his unsteady feet. “I will not have it said, Krogoth Star-Eyes was undone by ash.” I kick his spear toward him. “But by Dracoth, son of Gorexius!” My roar is joined by hundreds of thousands.
He stoops, hands trembling, and straps the mask to his broken face. I wait. Rush burning through my veins like rivers of boilinglava. He takes a gasping lungful of air, exhaling like a warrior almost drowned. His body stills. His spine straightens. The shuddering stops. Veins bulging. Muscles tightening.
And then... he lifts his head.
Yes.Yes.
Look at him! Those eyes—purple suns swirling in hazel stars—ignite again. His Rush flares, rising like a god’s breath on the wind. Power radiates in pulsing waves. I can feel it, sense it, thrumming beneath his skin. He’s climbing—reaching for new heights. Heights I’ve never faced.
He casts aside his ruined shield with a flick, flips his spear into the air, and catches it with a warrior’s flourish. From the weapons rack, he takes a new shield, nearly identical to the one I shattered.
He watches me. Not as prey. But as an equal. A rival. A predator.
A hush falls—one silence born from a million throats.
