Page 119 of Fractured Souls

The dark figure had evaded his blows, quickly disappearing from sight, leaving Nythian unsatisfied.

He just wanted to fight someone or something.

Behind him, Sarkiss began to stir, and Nythian was filled with terrible rage; he had a sudden and overwhelming urge to kill the bastard, but he gritted his teeth and held back, because the soldier in him was bound to Tarak’s orders.

The noble’s eyes snapped open, and he stared at Nythian with pure malevolence. “You fucking soori bast—”

Nythian pulled himself across the floor and slapped Sarkiss hard, sending him back into unconsciousness. “Shut up.”

He was in a foul mood, there was no doubt about it. Maybe it was because Sarkiss and the cursed Xargek had caught him off-guard, had pushed him further than he’d thought possible.

That was his fault for getting cocky.

He was still fuming over it, still weak from blood loss, still enraged by Sarkiss’s words, which had struck a nerve.

He wanted to destroy something.

Cursed temper.

He couldn’t go back to the Mhyndin just yet. He didn’t want Alexis to see him like this, still seething from battle.

She’d been traumatized by vicious Kordolians, and deep down, he was just the same as them.

He rose to his feet, excruciating pain shooting through his body. Shadows entered his vision as he became lightheaded, swaying a little on his feet. Having run out of exogenous protein, the nanites were starting to cannibalize his own flesh.

The stench became overpowering, especially to his sensitive nose. Blood, guts, acrid Xargek-venom, dredging up deeply-buried memories.

The flashback hit him hard, bringing him to his knees.

He cried out in pain, clutching the sides of his head.

Suddenly, he was back in the Flatedge, staring at the the ancient ice-encrusted road that had once been a highway for wheeled vehicles.

He sat on a crumbling stone pillar, watching the road and waiting… he wasn’t sure exactly what for, but he was always waiting. For as long as he could remember, he’d felt as if there had to be something more to this pathetic existence of his.

And he was only about ten or eleven revolutions old… he didn’t know the exact rotation of his birth, because he’d been abandoned.

That was what Reum, his sometime-carer, had told him, anyway.

The road stretched out into the vast nothingness of the Vaal, where the savage beasts and fierce hunters of the mysterious Lost Tribes roamed, occasionally killing each other.

That was what the slum-dwellers told him, anyway.

They all told him these things, but as he grew older, he’d come to realize that the rumors and tales of the slums weren’t always true.

One thing was certain, though.

This nameless highway was a road to fucking nowhere.

His stomach rumbled angrily, hunger gnawing at his insides. He stared down at his scrawny arms, unable to remember the last time he hadn’t felt hungry. Maybe it was the time he’d caught a sick terbechor at the edge of the Vaal. The creature was scrawny and weak, its deep green scales falling off in places, but he’d roasted it over a small fire and sucked the meat right off its bones, before eating the bones themselves.

The memory made his mouth water.

As a freezing wind whipped through his tangled hair, bringing with it hard, stinging flecks of ice, Nythian caught sight of a figure in the distance.

Was he imagining things?

No. It was a man, dressed in nothing but a pair of sleek hide trousers. As he drew closer, Nythian could make out more details. The bladed weapons at his back; they weren’t the dark-metal swords of the Empire, but something else. Broad shoulders, muscular chest, intricately braided white hair. A viciously curved claw hung around the hunter’s neck, probably a trophy from a szkazajik or something.

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