Page 49 of Scorching the Alien Empire (The Klendathian Cycle #7)

Through our bond, his crimson flame surges, flaring hot with frustration. It coils around my silver fire—raging, licking, consuming. It’s intoxicating—his seething fury bleeding into me, sending my heart racing, my blood pounding, my adrenaline singing in my veins.

I surrender to it.

Our flames roar, becoming one, bridging the space between us.

My senses sharpen—voices louder, glyphs clearer, every detail etched in perfect clarity. Time slows, the world stretching like honey. It’s like I’m truly alive. Everything else? Nothing but a hazy dream in comparison. I could laugh. I could cry. This feeling. This power.

I love it.

I’ll never give it up—my divine right. The daughter of the most beautiful Goddess.

Dracoth extends a hand, and my stomach tightens in anticipation. I ache to see his molten flames, to feel them scorch my flesh, to let them burn me down to my bones and warm me from the inside out, the way only Arawnoth’s love can.

A hush falls over the soldiers. We all wait, breath held. Watching. Waiting.

Nothing happens.

Dracoth grunts, his arm trembling, veins bulging at his neck like thick, coiled ropes. His face twists with effort, his fury palpable, looking like his head might pop off. Any second now, something devastating will—

A spark.

A tiny, flickering spark, feeble and weak, barely licking at the sealed door before sputtering out.

Disappointing. Embarrassing. Tragic, really. A little matchstick. A mere splutter. I’m suddenly reminded of those unsatisfying... encounters with Michael—all talk, no action.

His hands curl into fists at his sides, claws biting into his palms. A sharp exhale escapes him, frustration sharpening the edges of his crimson gaze as he glares at the unyielding door.

I let out a long, dramatic sigh, patting his arm in mock sympathy. “Don’t worry, I hear there’s a pill for this sort of thing.” I flash a sweet, innocent smile before delivering the final blow. “It’s okay, babes. It happens to the best of them .”

His glare could melt steel. But my cute smile is unbreakable. His eye twitches. I’ve won. Played perfectly.

Dracoth roars, his energy claws springing to life, blazing sapphire against the obsidian. “There are no them . There is only me!”

Touchy.

The heat kisses my skin, sending a pleasant shiver down my spine, but it’s nothing compared to Arawnoth’s love. A pathetic imitation.

Dracoth’s claws rise, poised to carve into the door’s seam. His rage is intoxicating—dangerous, raw, and utterly enthralling.

Then, the mood killer.

“Please don’t, War Chieftain!” Razgor cries, rushing forward like an overeager teacher’s pet, hands raised in protest. “We must preserve history,” he adds, desperation edging his voice.

For Arawnoth’s sake, it’s just a bloody spooky door.

I sigh. “Let me handle this, babes. Rest your little sparklers.” Flashing Dracoth a wicked grin, I lift a hand toward the sealed entrance.

The collective muttering dies. Breaths still. Anticipation crackles in the air. Thrilling. Their expectations, their awe—soon to witness my divinity.

I project the thinnest shield, pressing between the towering seams. It’s so fine even my bond-enhanced eyes can’t see it, but I feel it. A crushing weight presses back, squeezing my mind like twenty naked, snarling Dracoths dogpiling my skull.

Teeth clenched, I spread my fingers wide. My barrier thickens instantly, stretching taller, stronger. A terrible metallic groan screeches through the sterile air—like a drunken droid singing opera.

The immense door begins to tremble against my now visible barrier. Its silvery edges glint in starlight as the pressure mounts. Despite the strain, despite my reddening face, I smile.

A gap splits open. I summon another barrier, slamming it against the other side. With two pushing both ends, it’s already over. The metal shrieks in protest, trembles violently—and then something snaps. A mechanism. A thingamajig. Whatever it was, it’s dead now.

All resistance vanishes. The car-thick metal lurches open with a resounding thud .

The cheering space-knights is an even more satisfying sound. A sweet, intoxicating chorus of “ War Chieftainess! ” and “ Blessed Daughter! ” washes over me like the warmest bubble bath. Glorious. Shame my face is as red as cooked lobster.

“Impressive, Princesa,” Dracoth praises, the faintest smirk tugging his lip. A sight rarer than a positive bank balance.

“It’s just a door,” I lie, snorting dismissively. Though, truthfully, it was so much more—it was divine.

Then Drexios—the rude prick—ruins my moment.

“Little pink sorceress, a sight to see, an open door to destiny,” he lilts, spinning in a circle like an escaped lunatic before shuffling backward into the awaiting expanse, grinning as he goes.

My fists tighten as we trail his cackling laughter echoing from the darkness. The murder-bot fortress itself seems to mock us. Inside, the dim swallows everything. I can just make out the titanic walls looming ahead, the sharpening scent of chemicals making my nose wrinkle.

“Warvisors,” Dracoth commands, sliding his angular, silvered mask over his face. The others follow suit, donning their own like they’re playing Dracoth Says.

A pang of jealousy twists my gut. No pervy x-ray mask for me. If I did get one, it’d need to be prettier than these Easter-Island faced things. Oh! Like a masquerade mask—black lace, trimmed in gold.

Sexy-Lexie.

But it’s not to be, according to Dracoth, I’d have to earn one.

Something about running naked through a dinosaur-infested jungle on Klendathor or some such nonsense.

The Proofing , he called it. Yeah, well, screw that.

I’d rather be blind than dead. A little mole safely burrowed underground. Molexie.

The silence lingers, heavy, broken only by muffled breaths and the rhythmic clank of hundreds of boots striking metal in our wake. Dracoth sweeps his masked gaze over the dark, clearly seeing what I cannot.

“Psst,” I hiss at him, drawing his attention. “This is like the worst nightclub ever. I can’t see a thing.”

“Wrist console,” he reminds me with a grunt and a quick gesture.

My face heats.

Right.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks Babes,” I whisper, fumbling with my device, still not used to it. A second later, blue shimmers burst forth, casting the corridor in eerie, rippling light.

I wish I hadn’t.

The sheer vastness of the space is suffocating. Polished black metal walls stretch endlessly, engraved with harsh, angular glyphs that seem to drink in the glow.

Statues loom above—silent, watchful, inhuman drones from a demonic ant colony.

They’re weird and creepy, standing rigid, their four elongated arms ending in three thick fingers.

Flat, frisbee-like heads sit atop thin torsos.

But it’s their lower halves that wrinkles my face with disgust. Segmented, and long, like an ironing board draped in armored plating, dozens of spindly legs beneath—a grotesque mockery of Todd’s perfection.

Barf!

“Fascinating!” Razgor exclaims, his voice brimming with excitement, like a schoolboy on his first trip to the zoo. He sweeps his wrist console over the glyphs, his open mouth catching the eerie blue glow. “With this many symbols on record, we may finally crack the secret to their language!”

“Probably just a death warrant in fancy squiggles,” I mutter under my breath, my gaze sweeping left to right, searching for any sign of trouble.

Razgor, oblivious to my concerns and everyone else’s lack of enthusiasm, gestures upward. “Look! Statues of their actual forms! Insectoids? An offshoot of the Glaseroids? By Arawnoth’s flames, some might still be aboard this very station!”

“No,” Dracoth rumbles without hesitation, deflating Razgor’s hopes like a popped balloon.

“But... but how can you be certain, great War Chieftain?” Razgor stammers, his voice laced with disappointment, his last ember of hope flickering.

“The Crucible.” Dracoth’s answer is as blunt as a fortress wall and as clear as smudged mascara.

“Would you looky here,” Drexios’s voice echoes from the distance, dripping with amusement.

I lean forward in Dracoth’s muscular arm, my heart pounding. My fingers twitch, ready to summon a hundred shields—shields shielded by more shields—if it means surviving this nightmare waiting to happen.

“Scythian battle droids. Deactivated,” Drexios continues as we approach, rapping his knuckles against a machine’s flat, frisbee-shaped head. “Weird-looking voiders too. You boys ever seen ones like this before?”

His head snaps backward, hanging upside down croaking as he croaks out laughter.

Why is everything this guy does weird and annoying?

Not that I pay him much attention. My focus is locked on the array of murder-bots lining either side of the corridor.

They stand eerily still, metallic reflections of the statues above—only these ones are armed.

Insectoid in shape, as tall as me but much broader, with ominous barrels protruding from their three-pronged claw-hands.

“No,” Jazreal speaks up, scratching his head thoughtfully. “They’re not unlike the—”

“Exactly! Death Herald,” Razgor cuts in, bulldozing through Drexios and Jazreal like a runaway bowling ball of nerdom. The two massive warriors exchange a look, silently plotting revenge at being shoved aside.

“It’s obvious,” Razgor insists.

It’s obviously not, because I don’t have a clue what he’s rambling about.

“These are earlier models. Prototypes, perhaps, of the current Scythian battle droids.” He sweeps a hand over the armored plating covering the murder-bots’ arrangement of spindly legs like he’s unveiling an art piece at an exhibition.

“You can see in later models they improved the lower portion. These ones have weaker, more complex—”

“Destroy them,” Dracoth commands.

His voice slices through Razgor’s tirade like a blade. The sharpest, hottest knife carving away my growing anxiety.