Page 111 of Fractured Souls

The Xargek paused, staring at Nythian with its triangular black eyes. Then it made a soft clicking sound and fell back.

Impossible.

Xargek didn’t submit to anyone.

How had these Kordolians managed to control it?

Slow footsteps echoed in his ears. A pair of black boots swam in his vision.

He looked up.

A Kordolian stood there, staring down at him with an all-too familiar expression on his face.

This Kordolian had cold yellow eyes and the sharp-featured look of the nobility. His expression was infuriatingly smug; he looked down at Nythian as if to say: you’re nothing.

Nythian knew that look all too well. There were some Kordolians who thought that the Lost Tribes and the Flatedge dwellers were so far beneath them that they wouldn’t even be worth spitting at.

“Your little uprising will come to an end eventually,” the Kordolian said, a cruel smile flickering across his lips. “You think you’ve won just because you killed Empress Vionn? Because you took Kythia? The Empire is much bigger than the Dark Planet, soori. This is only the beginning. You know why I’m bothering to tell you all this?”

Nythian remained perfectly still, not saying a word. The Xargek’s claw was still embedded in his shoulder, and his exo-armor had faded away in places, the nanites retreating to repair damage to vital organs.

The back of his neck hurt like crazy; it was close to the worst torture he’d ever experienced.

Suddenly, he was in another place and time… fully conscious and suspended in cold stasis fluid, lines and tubes running in and out of his body, his arms and legs restrained, his jaw sealed shut, eyes artificially wedged open, unable to blink…

Forced to watch an endless stream of violence as strange drugs and nanites coursed in and out of his system, as his true memories disappeared one by one.

His porous mind soaked in the violence.

Lived it.

Breathed it…

Until he became the violence.

Now his mind was doing it again.

The Xargek chittered away in the background, pulling him back into reality. He watched the Kordolian before him with a detached kind of coldness, which was at odds with the pure fury coursing through his veins.

Almost as if he were two people at once.

In the deepest, most secret part of his mind, he thought of Alexis, of what would happen to her if he died here. He quickly pushed that thought away, crushing the warm feeling that entered his chest.

She didn’t belong in this world.

He vowed to keep her away from it for as long as he lived.

And he was not going to die here, especially not at the hands of some delusional Imperial idiot.

“I’m telling you all this because you’re going to die soon, so it doesn’t matter what you know.” The Kordolian squatted on his haunches, still smiling. “In fact, the more you know that makes you understand that your existence means nothing, the better.” He reached out and pressed his bare fingers into Nythian’s wounded belly through the holes in his armor, digging into blood and flesh and viscera. His hand was Tharian blue, just like Alexis’s had been before Zharek put the patch on it. Now Nythian saw that the blue pigment extended up his neck and into his cheeks, and there was a scattering of blue scales across his cheeks.

A perfect Kordolian-Tharian hybrid.

The Kordolian extended his claws, tearing through delicate organs. He twisted his hand.

Nythian clamped his teeth shut, his fangs sinking into his lower lip, drawing bitter black blood.

He did not want to give this asshole the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

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