Page 85 of Fractured Souls

Amused? At a time like this?

Assholes. Nythian was out there on his own, fighting a giant sand worm, and they didn’t seem worried in the slightest.

The worst thing was, there was nothing she could do about it.

Alexis’s heart hammered wildly as she looked outside. It was all dust, red plumes billowing into the blazing sky.

Boom! Muffled sounds of struggle reached her ears, but the ship didn’t shake or reverberate.

She couldn’t see Nythian at all. Damn dust.

Where the hell are you?

The dust in the center started to darken, coalescing into a long spiral that twisted up toward the sky. It solidified, becoming distinctly serpentine, complete with deep purple scales and tiny arms and fins!

“Hreeek!” There was that awful roar again.

“That’s one irritable beast right there,” one of the warriors chuckled. “I’d be pissed off too if someone used my home for target practice.”

His words barely registered as the creature rose up in the air like a cobra. It had to be at least thirty feet tall, its thick, conical body all flexing, writhing muscle.

“We could just fire a blast at it from the ship,” the other warrior said as he stared at the creature. “Much easier just to vaporize the thing before it gets too frisky.”

“We’d give away our position, idiot. Let him handle this and pay attention to how he does it. We might have to slay a few ourselves.”

The creature reared up, extending to its full height. A pair of fanlike appendages flared out on either side of its vast head.

It opened its massive mouth, revealing sharp yellow teeth and—Ektans was right—strings of viscous mucus.

“Where is he?” Worry squeezed her heart like a clamp.

There.

She spotted a dark figure standing in the midst of the swirling dust.

Nythian?

It was strange that this big, powerful warrior could suddenly look so very small.

The beast completely dwarfed him, and yet there was something almost insolent about Nythian’s demeanor as he stared up at it. He stood with his arms completely relaxed, not bothering to draw any of his weapons.

What the hell are you doing, Nythian? At least shoot it or something…

Alexis was beyond frustrated. She wanted to go down there and shoot the damn thing herself.

Abruptly, the beast went very, very still.

Chchk. Then it snapped its mouth shut, making a strange clicking noise that sent a ripple of revulsion down her spine.

It swayed back and forth, then…

Whoosh. The dust exploded, a great wavefront of red rolling toward them like a tsunami. She only just saw Nythian’s dark form being swallowed by the serpentine creature’s gigantic mouth before everything disappeared in an opaque blanket of red.

She couldn’t see anything now.

Something was terribly wrong.

“No!” she cried, banging her fist against the window. She turned to face one of the warriors, who had raised his pale eyebrows in mock-surprise. “Is this some sort of sick fucking joke? Aren’t you people going to do anything? That thing… could… ”

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