Page 121 of Scorching the Alien Empire (The Klendathian Cycle #7)

Dracoth

A Dream of Fire

I ’m dreaming.

A world of flames and molten stone. I know this place—Arawnoth’s realm.

Tempests of living fire scour the land, lashing against me with world-ending force. Ash and sulfur choke the skies. The heat should kill me. It doesn’t. It feeds me. Fills my lungs like magma, surging through my veins with godblood ferocity.

My flesh does not burn.

Instead, my muscles thrum, cords of arcweave sinew coiling beneath my skin. My heart pounds, and with it—divine rage. It’s euphoric . This is what I was always meant to be. Who I am.

A titan of fury.

But something’s changed. Once, the flames were mine—born of vengeance, hatred, hunger. A fire I couldn’t control.

Now. They dance for me. They curl around my limbs like a lover’s breath. A rage contained which does not burn, does not spread. Not chaos—a weapon in my molten hands.

I raise my arms and laugh, lungs blazing, joy bubbling up from a place so deep it tastes like oblivion. Ash rains down. Rivers of fire roar. Scorching heat floods over me in waves, scouring away weakness and doubt.

And I feel him. Everywhere. Arawnoth.

His essence thrums inside my molten heart. He is the source of creation. Of fire. Of war. The forge of life. And I—his chosen hammer. His avatar made flesh.

I will honor his blessing. I will sear any who stand before me and scatter their ash to the solar winds.

Krogoth will be consumed. I’ll tear out his spine, string it with the rest, and wear it proud on my belt of bone.

“In your honor, great Arawnoth!” My voice echoes across burning mountains as volcanoes rupture the sky, spewing molten fury into the stars.

Then—a shadow.

A behemoth crashes from the flaming heavens, landing with such force the world buckles beneath it. Eruptions chain-react across the horizon.

“Arawnoth...” I breathe steam. Boiling. Reverent.

He rises before me—blinding, terrible, divine. Every inch of him radiates like a thousand suns compressed into molten form. My fire is a candle beside his inferno. He burns with such intensity, I struggle to meet his gaze, but I do not falter. I am the fire.

He unfurls wings of flame vast enough to eclipse stars, like a celestial behemoth of molten fury. They stretch beyond the flaming skies in the vast emptiness of space, igniting the void itself.

Then he moves.

Arawnoth extends a hand—mountain-sized, dripping liquid crimson. The atmosphere bends. Cyclones of fire scream through the skies as that limb descends. I brace, body tensed, skin blistering under the heat of creation itself.

But he does not strike.

The volcanic fingers open—unclenching like a mountain sighing—and reveal a figure cupped within the God’s palm.

“Ignixis,” I whisper.

My heart stumbles in its rhythm. That old gas-cloud. But not ancient. Not now.

He stands before me in his prime —strong, bare, radiant with all the proud beauty of his youth. His body is still seared with scripture, sacred words branded into flesh, glowing with such fury he’s barely an Elder at all. A being of pure light.

And he’s smiling. Paternal. Pleased.

“We’re proud of you, boy, ” he says, drawing out the word with that familiar, smug lilt.

My throat tightens. His voice—Gods, his voice. I never thought I’d hear it again. The words hit harder than any savage hammer blow.

“Your glorious destiny awaits, War Chieftain,” he says, baring white fangs in a firelight grin. “Though your name already echoes through the ages. Tell me, what price would you pay for a drop more glory? Your life? Our people’s future? The Blessed Daughter? The death of a God?”

“Riddles? Even here, even now, you old gas-cloud?” I ask, barking a laugh, just glad to hear his voice.

“Indulge me,” he insists, head tilting, green eyes glowing like emerald stars.

“I would sacrifice only my life,” I say, spine straight, chin lifted.

“Noble,” he nods, as if he knew before I did. “But what price would the Blessed Daughter pay, do you think?” His voice and eyes glint with mischief.

The question slides between my ribs like a hidden blade.

“I...” My voice catches, gaze falling. “I do not know.”

But I do. Somewhere deep, in the place I do not dwell long.

I remember her lashing out, shields crashing like thunder. The manic gleam in her eye. That raw joy she takes in domination, in breaking things—hearts, bones, wills. The divine ambition that pulses through our bond like a second heartbeat.

“Perhaps... everything,” I admit, bitter ash on my tongue.

“Bold,” Ignixis hums. “But who is the stronger? The warrior who dies for a cause...” He lifts one blazing hand. “Or the daughter who burns the world to own it?” The other hand rises.

“Arawnoth teaches—”

“Oh, no wiggling out of this one, boy, ” Ignixis laughs, wagging a molten finger at me. “I asked you. ”

My fists clench. This question—I’ve asked it a thousand times. It’s the same cudgel she uses against me, hidden beneath a smile. An impossible knot no claw can cut through.

In raw strength, in combat, no one matches me. But what is strength without the will to act? A blade without a hand to wield it is just a lump of metal waiting to rust.

“She is stronger,” I say finally, exhaling steam hot enough to peel stone.

“Oh?” Ignixis arches a brow. “You fear that answer because you fear what it says about you . That you’ll fall like your father. That the weakness is in your blood.”

Once, those words would have lit a firestorm in my chest. I’d have lunged for his throat. Now, they brush past me like smoke. I am no longer that wounded creature, snarling in the dark. I know who I am. What I am.

“Shall I tell you the truth, young Dracoth?” he says, not waiting for permission in his typical style. “You are wrong. But not in the way you think. No other— none —could have resisted the Voidbringer’s torments as you did. You are the strongest. The bravest. The sharpest. The most enduring.”

He spreads his burning arms, flames swirling like a storm. “None can stand before you. You are a titan of war. Arawnoth’s chosen. My proud son.”

The pride in his voice lifts something in me—something vast and vulnerable. “You honor me,” I whisper, voice cracking like brittle metal.

“Ah,” he waves a dismissive hand. “I honor myself .” A grin. “I had no small part in threading your needle through all those flaming pitfalls.” Then, his expression sharpens. The green fire in his eyes narrows. “You do possess one weakness, though. A weakness... that’s also your greatest strength.”

“Absurd.” I scowl. “The flames have boiled your brain.”

“Perhaps!” he cackles, wild and unrepentant. “Chaos dances in the light, after all.” I cross my arms, letting him ride it out. Eventually, he wheezes a laugh and straightens. “Ah... yes. Where was I?” He clears his throat. “Yes. It’s time for you to wake up. You’ve a trying day ahead of you.”

Arawnoth’s colossal fingers begin to curl inward. The sky shakes. Desperation rips through me. “Don’t go!” I shout, reaching up toward the burning heavens.

“I must, dear boy,” he says gently. “But know I watch over you.”

The fingers close tighter, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father slipping away again. “Will we speak again?”

“Oh, not for some time, I’d hope,” he chuckles, amused. “Remember this, young Dracoth: glory can take many forms.”

Arawnoth’s fingers slam shut. A molten fist crushing my heart.

But the hand resumes its fall. World-ending flaming gales and pelting lava crash into me, searing my skin and boiling the blood in my veins. I should be in agony—but I feel only purpose. My soul ignites, flaring higher and higher.

Until I am nothing.

Only ash, a single speck among billions of others.

“The cycle burns eternal,” Arawnoth’s voice booms like the dawn of creation, echoing through the inferno of my skull.

“Arawnoth!” I jolt upright in the tiny bed, skull slick with sweat, arm scraping the low ceiling of my quarters aboard Imperator’s Fist .

“Ahh!” Princesa shrieks, half-asleep, her sheen-blonde hair whipping about as she thrashes. “Murder-bots?” She blinks wildly, as if expecting a swarm of Seeker drones to burst through the walls.

“You’re safe,” I murmur, stroking her back, still marveling at the impossible silk of her skin.

“Huh?” she murmurs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Then why were you screaming like banshee?”

Banshee?

“Poor Todd’s little sugar-plum heart nearly exploded with fright,” she sighs, patting the bloated, comatose creature curled across her belly.

“Don’t let big meany-weany Daddy upset you,” she coos, as if the oblivious cyloillar were sentient. Todd blinks a single black eye... then promptly shuts it again.

The insect clings to her as she clings to me.

Since the clash with Krogoth and Rock’s, something in my Mortakin-Kis has changed. A welcome return. A flicker of the female I once knew—before the Divine Daughter. Before I lost Arawnoth’s fire. Before she tried to seize what was mine.

It warms me. Kindles a fragile hope. But a question gnaws like a burrowing wyrm: How long will it last?

The tendrils of betrayal still coil in my core—bitter and icy. A nausea that webs through my chest, robbing desire. Her gaze. Her voice. Her touch. Each feels... altered. Tainted.

Relentless thoughts torment me, a maddening pull between yearning and revulsion, devotion and doubt. A contradiction that shouldn’t exist. I teeter at the edge, staring into the abyss of what we might become. The weight of it—honor, doubt, grief—presses down like the peaks of Scarn.

And yet... I returned for her. I saved her—again—from herself. Reshaping the course of history. Was it mere happenstance? Her clever manipulations? The will of the Gods? Something else?