Page 85 of Scorching the Alien Empire
Arawnoth gazes upon the abyss. His molten eyes blaze like twin suns, the raw power of creation itself burning within them.
Then, he reaches down.
His colossal hand descends, a falling continent of fire and hatred. The space around him buckles, flames cascading in waves. Heat beyond comprehension howls through the void.
He seizes the entity.
A mere pebble in his grasp.
Arawnoth’s hands slam together with a force beyond imagining. A clap of pure obliteration shatters through the air, a nebula of destruction colliding at hyperspeed.
Revenge!
Exultation floods me—blazing, overwhelming. For all its manipulations, for all its so-called power, the entity is snuffed out like a mere znat. A fate too quick, too kind.
Then—my blood freezes.
A slight tremble in Arawnoth’s clasped hands.
Barely noticeable at first, but now it is shaking.
“Absorption,” the ancient voice whispers—a murmur, almost lost in the hissing steam.
Dread coils in my molten core. That word—that accursed word—an ominous harbinger of what is to come.
Smokey tendrils coil from Arawnoth’s fingers like fiery wraiths, drawn toward the abyss. Faint at first, but growing stronger with each flicker of dying light. His molten hands dim, tongues of flame unraveling into red threads, twisting and vanishing into the nauseating blackness.
A wrongness permeates the air—profound, incomprehensible. It grips my soul, shaking me to my core. Even Arawnoth is powerless before this twisted entity.
“ERADICATION.”
The ancient voice booms, cold and vast, as more of the void seeps between Arawnoth’s failing fingers.
What was a mere trickle becomes countless rivers of molten light, threading through the void like pulsing golden veins. The flames die, the light dims, the void grows.
It feeds.
Desperation propels me forward. I press my hand against Arawnoth’s immense foot, pouring my heat and fury into him, willing him to burn brighter. But I am mere embers before a colossal sun that heats the universe.
Arawnoth still burns, but the heat flickers, unsteady, like a fire gasping for breath in a vacuum. The entity is leeching him, thread by thread, stealing his divine essence as though drinking a star dry.
Still, Arawnoth fights. He lifts the entity toward his mouth, his immense form trembling under a weight even he was never meant to bear. The air itself warps around him, boiling away, the surrounding void collapsing inward as though the universe is suffocating.
He draws breath.
A soundless howl echoes across the abyss—a void-wind so powerful that it shreds reality itself. The pressure crushes my chest, as if invisible claws are pressing me into the fabric of existence itself. My ears ring with a high-pitched whine, my vision swimming in molten haze.
Arawnoth exhales.
Not fire—an explosion of pure annihilation.
A tidal wave of molten storms surges forward, but the instant it touches the entity, something shifts.
“PURGE!” the entity howls, and the molten storm implodes.
“Destroy it, Arawnoth!” I plead, my voice a desperate prayer.
The flames do not engulf the void. The void devours the flames.
