Page 54 of Scorching the Alien Empire (The Klendathian Cycle #7)

Dracoth

Copycats

M olten fury courses through my veins, a searing river of wrath threatening to consume me.

This day—long, brutal—each passing second another gut-wrenching loss, another grotesque revelation.

The weight is almost unbearable. A shattered legacy.

A birthright that once promised endless glory, now reduced to self-inflicted genocide.

Our females—ripped apart, butchered, defiled. No longer just false visions meant to break me. No, the truth is here, all around, written in blood, reeking of terror.

And I am responsible.

A clone of the one who gave the order. The one who fought like a brutonous to tear the heart from our own people. My father—no. My predecessor. War Chieftain Gorexius.

The ancestors weep at my very existence. A mockery made flesh—the worst of us reborn, a hemovyrn haunting the living.

I am no different from these clones.

They fall in their tens of thousands, like crimson rain.

A downpour of human blood, each drop a tear I cannot shed.

There is no place for softness inside me.

My blazing hatred burns away such weak things.

Only the hard and the strong remain. I am fire, a creation of war, and I swear on Arawnoth’s molten heart to exact bloody and savage vengeance upon the Scythians for these atrocities.

My warvisor-enhanced senses flood my mind with data. Exact number of emerging clones. Heart rates spiking. Adrenaline flooding their systems. Rush wafting from their wild, manic eyes. I was right to warn Jazreal and Sarkoth and to form this defensive line.

The Gods demand more blood this day.

From the opened vats, monstrosities crawl.

Their grotesque, twitching movements reek of agony.

Some have no legs. Few bones. They tumble from such height they splat across the metal floor with a sickening wet slap.

Fleshy innards explode, slicking the ground in viscera.

Like rotten fruit falling from Draxxi Great Woods—except these were meant to be warriors, not waste.

“THAT IS. FUCKING. DISGUSTING!”

Princesa’s voice cuts through the carnage, her silver-crimson eyes wide with horror. Her beautiful face twists in revulsion. I tighten my hold on her, a fierce instinct to protect not just her body, but her mind.

Most clones emerge intact—physically, at least. Their bodies lack honed muscle, their skin unmarked by battle scars.

Some move slowly, their expressions blank, their hands wandering over their own faces, as if discovering their own existence.

Some prod at each other, stroking skin with childlike curiosity.

Then the others appear.

Fangs bared. Claws extended, gleaming in the dim red light. The rage-filled ones leap down as soon as their tanks crack open. Rush-fuming eyes dart amongst the emerging throng, bestial visages sizing up prey.

They pounce like venefexes from the shadows with claws aimed at throats and eyes. Thousands of them moving in a murderous crimson wave of snarling, sneering fury.

“Kill the aggressors!” My voice thunders above the chaos.

The air erupts with screams. Growls of suffering and ecstasy. The sickening wet sounds of flesh being torn apart.

Rush-fueled maniacs rip into each other like wild animals, their bodies already oozing rivers of green blood from a dozen skin-flapping claw slashes.

Others sink fangs into throats, tearing flesh from bone even as life drains from their victims’ eyes.

But there are no victors here—only butchers.

The moment one clone rips out a throat, another descends, gouging out his eyes, feasting upon the still-warm flesh.

My gut churns with revulsion. Honorable battle reduced to a mockery of the lowest savagery.

Below even beasts—they fight not for food, purpose, or even survival, just a murderous instinct twisted to insatiable heights by the Scythians.

They corrupt all that is sacred, taking our essence and warping it into the grotesque.

Only the blistering heat from hundreds of my disciplined berserkers’ arc blasters grants me a shred of relief. The air shimmers with the relentless hail of plasma fire, each bolt slicing through the crimson carnage.

Azure bursts strike like miniature suns, melting the lunatic clones as if hurling ice into the volcanic chasms of Scarn. They squeal in pleasure as they dissolve, their lifeless faces frozen in monstrous ecstasy as their bodies liquefy into steaming, red-blue puddles of organic matter.

The acrid stench of melted flesh and burning blood floods my lungs. The rhythmic thrum of zaps and death screams echo in my ears. I lift my own arc blaster, aiming at the charging lunatic clones, their attention turning to us, the source of their destruction.

Princesa summons her barriers with arrogant elegance, first separating the attackers, then halting their advance with translucent shields at ankle height.

How clever my little human female is. She does not block our fire—only their charge, tripping them into a churning mass of snarls and flailing claws.

With each murderous clone devoured by the heat of a thousand suns, she screams in glee, demanding more. Her intoxicating pleasure roars through our bond like something primal—something insatiable, ravenous, alive. A Goddess of Death, reveling in slaughter.

It is absolute.

My warriors—the finest in all the galaxies—do not balk.

Even amidst this depravity, they fight with precision.

Every blast is measured, every plasma shield an unbreakable seamless barrier of protection.

Brother guarding brother. The bonds that bind us, forged in the crucible of war. This is honor. This is battle.

Not a single lunatic clone reaches our ranks. Their forms melt away under our relentless fire, leaving behind puddles of molten goo. A moat of suffering surrounding us, the closest one steaming many feet from our position.

A tense silence lingers, punctuated only by the hushed breaths as warvisors sweep the area, confirming what my instincts already know.

No more threats. Only the docile clones remain—thousands of them, wandering aimlessly, bending down to inspect their fallen kin, their faces unreadable despite the bloody carnage all around.

“I got that Omoth right between the eyes!” Drexios barks a laugh, lowering his arc blaster, tension loosening in his shoulders.

“So much for being reborn in Arawnoth’s divine image,” He smirks, shooting Princesa a mocking sneer as he waves a hand over the cooling river of multi-colored glop.

“Unless Arawnoth’s divine image resembles a puddle of steaming goo. Hah!”

Princesa stiffens in my arm, her fury igniting white-hot. “You dare blaspheme, Drex-iot!” she shouts, her eyes glinting dangerously, simmering with silver-red fumes.

Drexios doubts the depths of Princesa’s religious zeal. But it plunges deep into her core. I can feel it blazing through our bond, through her very soul. It’s entwined in her essence now, an inseparable part of her being.

He plays with fire. She could crush him in an instant with her divine powers. She would laugh while doing it, and no one—not even I—could stop her.

With Arawnoth weakened, my gifts are gone. Perhaps never to return.

Yet Drexios, the reckless fool, continues. “Void your blaspheme—”

“Silence!” I roar, my voice shaking the metal beneath us.

Drexios’s red eye flares with defiance, his fangs poking out from curled lips. But I am molten, unyielding as the peaks of Scarn. He finally averts his gaze, feigning to inspect his arc blaster.

“You,” I command, gesturing to Drexios, Razgor, and the warriors flanking him. “Follow me.” My gaze sweeps the lingering clones, still milling about, dazed. “The rest—escort them back to the ships.”

“War Chieftain!” they respond in unison, clamping their fists to their armored chests. Without hesitation, they disperse, moving to herd the wandering clones together like snarlbroc farmers.

Through my warvisor, I project my thoughts to Jazreal and Sarkoth. They, too, encountered cloning facilities—forced to purge the lunatic clones after Razgor released them. I order them to bring back the survivors and to search this accursed labyrinth for more.

There could be tens of thousands of trainable clones left, soon to be packed into the Ravager’s Ruin and my old Scythian Battlebarge. Enough to seed new warbands. Perhaps there are other stations like this one hidden in the backdrop of space?

Or are these the last?

A sobering thought. Am I staring at the final remnants of my people? Extinction, the cost of our folly, our cowardice? Now I’ve truly rejected the Voidbringer’s twisted offer, will it erase us entirely?

By Arawnoth, I will not let it.

I swear on the ancestors—I will lead the shattered remnants of my dying people against the Voidbringer. It will rue the day it created me. The day it corrupted my predecessor. The day it was spat into existence.

Princesa shifts in my arms, gaze flicking over the steaming carnage. “As much as I’ve enjoyed this... riveting experience, babes.” Her voice is laced with sarcasm, but her eyes are sharp. “Now that we’ve got what you came for, how about we get the hell out of this creepy place ?”

Her words pick up intensity, her last syllable a pointed glare.

Got what I came for?

For answers too bitter to swallow? Is that all that remains?

My gaze drifts to the nearby exit. The one leading deeper. The one the terminal hacker tried to obscure.

“No,” I mutter. Something lingers. A pull, faint as a dying ember, gnaws at the edges of my mind “There’s more.”

Princesa groans loudly. “Brilliant, more nightmare fuel. Just what I needed to top off this delightful day.” Then she gasps, eyes widening. “Poor Todd. He’s probably plotting revenge for being abandoned this long by his parents.” She sighs. “I hope he doesn’t poop in Sandra’s shoes again.”