Page 67 of Scorching the Alien Empire (The Klendathian Cycle #7)

Dracoth

The War Chieftain

T here once was a War Chieftain known as Dracoth. A giant. A titan. A warrior with thoughts, feelings, hopes... destiny.

Now?

Now those things are gone.

They have faded like mist on a summer’s morning, insubstantial and fleeting. Surreal tendrils of a life that maybe never truly existed. An abstraction, a construct to mask the enormity beneath. A comforting facade to shade from the blinding light. A shield from the inferno.

Now, it burns.

Molten rivers of hate erupt within me, unstoppable, all-consuming.

Every blow, every slash blurs into the next. Weightless. Inexhaustible.

I reave through the horde of droids, each strike an extension of my rage. Servo gears whine. Plasma blasts scream. Metal limbs skitter and snap. An endless song. All of it. War drums beating a rhythm of my life, my death.

Steam rises from my body, curling from the joints in my armor, mingling with the superheated air.

The Rush leaks from my eyes, silver-crimson plumes billowing into the haze.

I see nothing but light and fire, yet I do not need sight.

Not here. I feel them. The enemy pressing in, countless mechanical limbs grasping, clawing, snapping—desperate to tear into me.

A metal tide against the peaks of Scarn.

Through our bond, my ruby flame surges, burning ever hotter, reaching toward new, impossible heights piercing the darkness.

Princesa’s silver fire coils around its base—alluring, seductive, but tainted with her conceit, her arrogance.

Even now they flare brighter—the emotions that do not belong in me.

Spoiled borack milk churning my guts with revulsion.

I rip my focus from her. Pain lances through me, relentless, inescapable.

My body burns, a thousand white-hot needles piercing my flesh. From within. From without. It does not matter. The stench of charred skin clings to the air, mingling with the acrid bite of scorched metal, melted polysynth, and the discharge of ozone.

They are everywhere.

Jagged, serrated prongs screech across my father’s armor, grasping, gouging, desperate to reach the blazing flesh beneath. Deep gashes mar the plates, new scars forming over old ones. A new history etched in arcweave and blood.

A fate forged not by skill—but by endurance. By rage.

And my rage is eternal.

My white-scaled Chieftain’s cloak—once a symbol of command, of power—is nothing but shredded remnants, fluttering in the chaos like a dying war banner.

I lash out, plasma claws carving through the droids with ruthless aggression, molten metal spilling from their ruined bodies before they can even fire.

Another lifts its cannon—too slow.

My boot crashes into its chest, sending it tumbling backward, colliding with the others. They topple together, limbs writhing, servos whirring in panic.

I do not stop.

I vault into the air, plasma bolts streaking past me, barely missing as they rip through the ceiling.

Superheated debris rains down like deadly clouds, molten metal droplets sizzling against the floor.

I land, boots-first, and the writhing droids explode under my titanic weight.

Shattered limbs and arcweave plating scatter like shrapnel, the crunching pop beneath my heels a sweet symphony to my blood-pumping ears.

Manic laughter tears from my singed throat, a twisted, guttural croak that echoes through the haze of blistering air.

The droids know no fear, even as the corridor is littered with their shattered remains—thousands of them.

Their red lenses glint beneath flat, insectoid heads, their movements relentless, eager for more, eager to die.

Good. Let them come. Let us bathe in blood, Arawnoth’s pyres demand sacrifice.

An array of droid limbs shoots toward me. Slow, languid, as if moving through water turned to ice. Too slow for life. My plasma claws carve through their disordered ranks, a blazing blue blur of destruction.

Metal bodies twitch, thinking they’re still operational. Stalk torsos crisscrossed with glowing lines buckle before their top halves slough off from the bottom. Their skittering legs shuffle aimlessly, spluttering and toppling as their servo gears fade into silence.

Then, I see it. Something almost unbelievable in the haze.

A gap forming in their ranks. An end in sight.

It must be a mirage. Another temptation from the Voidbringer.

My armor’s shield erupts with bright, shimmering blue light. The searing hiss of plasma on plasma fills the air, blinding sparks forcing me to cycle to a new vision spectrum. I curse myself for the distraction, the lesson etched in the scalding, singed flesh on my neck and hands.

I almost falter, my standing leg wobbling as I slam a boot into the droid with the smoking cannon, shattering it into thousands of broken pieces. The countless wounds, the weight of my armor, the stifling burning oxygen—it all presses down on me like the volcanoes of Scarn. Sudden. Brutal.

But I refuse to falter. I will never submit again!

Princesa needs me. Even here, in this chaos, the bond tugs at my mind, cutting through the fog of my fury and pain. I sense her confusion, her rising panic. Outside these accursed corridors, the Scythians must be massing against us.

It seems endless war was always my fate.

“Is that you, you big shorthair bastard?” A voice calls out, distant, almost drowned by the skittering limbs and whirling gears of droids.

“This voiding steam...” A faint grumble.

“If you can hear me, you’ll want to cover your ass.

” Laughter, wild and cackling, reverberates through the ruined passage.

Drexios?

The fool! He should be protecting Princesa and our females.

Still, I set my shoulders, barreling into the droids behind me. Some are trampled beneath my feet, while others cling to me like znats on a pouncing venefex.

A series of metal clangs echo in the distance, faint yet familiar, like ballistic casings dropping on a floor.

“Smoky, smoky, explody, droidy time!”

His hooting is quickly replaced by deafening explosions.

One, two, a half-dozen. A chain reaction of destruction rips through the corridor, a blinding flash like stars going nova forcing me to shield my eyes.

Searing pieces of droids pelt against my armor, a heavy downpour of molten metal clanging against metal, each a deadly bullet that could kill weaker species. But not us. Not me.

I stand a titan amongst the ruin. Unbowed. Unbroken.

My claws slash along the backs of the partially melted droids still clinging to me.

Blue-gray smoke billows all around, faint, dimming red lenses flickering through the haze.

The sizzling, burning remnants of droids crackle in the blistering air.

Limbs writhe and whirl in their final death throes, no longer even attached to their cores.

“Oh, don’t you just love the smell of burning plasma?” Drexios loudly sniffs the charred air. “Or maybe it’s the stillness after the carnage. The voices which sung, now undone.”

Through the fog, I make out his silhouette, twin blades brandished from his back, their faint glow swallowed by the smoke.

“For now, at least,” he muses, before charging forward, his boots thudding over solidified metal and smoldering shrapnel.

The surviving droids—most missing limbs or dripping liquefied metal—whirl around to meet him.

Their movements are erratic, jerky limbs struggling to trace his path.

But he’s on them with a snarl, his blue plasma blades cutting through the haze, leaving shimmering afterimages in their wake.

The weapons slice through their arcweave armor like lightning through rain.

Sliced bodies thud to the floor, their lifeless forms crumpling like scraped junk.

Nearby droids raise their cannons at Drexios, their red lenses glowing with cold, mechanical intent.

Without hesitation, I charge into them, my claws carving molten ruin through their ranks.

Another burst of ionized plasma fills the air.

Together, through the blistering fog, Drexios and I dispatch the remnants.

He is a weaving blur of twin blades, darting like bioluminescent insects in the dark.

I am an unstoppable avalanche, breaking, smashing, crushing.

Each step is a droid splintered, each strike a testament to our unyielding will.

Then, the impossible. Silence .

The absence of skittering limbs and whirling gears feels almost wrong to my ears, as if the universe itself has paused to catch its breath.

My fingers twitch, my fangs bared, my warvisor scanning for more enemies that surely must be lurking nearby.

But there are none. Only our heaving breaths, the smoldering debris piled ankle-high, and the corridor’s bowed, crumpled walls where Drexios’s grenades had detonated.

“I might start believing you’re blessed by the Gods,” Drexios muses, his voice laced with awe, cutting through the sizzling tension.

“Or maybe you’re a ghost, a Hemovyrn seeking blood.

” His single eye takes in the carnage behind us.

The corridor stretches beyond sight, every inch littered with broken, melted droids.

Tens of thousands of them—a monument to my power, a shrine dedicated to my resolve.

“I live,” I croak. The words a rasping agony in my singed throat, barely audible.

“You look like a big ol’ pile of freshly cooked shit, War Chief,” Drexios barks, laughing as he swats at my armor, extinguishing blue embers I hadn’t noticed. “I’d offer to carry you, but that ain’t voiding happening.”

An absurd idea.

Yet, unease gnaws at my mind, the bond rippling with fear and concern.

It pulls me toward the exit of this metal-strewn purgatory.

Now, as the heat of battle wanes, a thousand wounds make themselves known—searing cuts, charred flesh, every nerve throbbing with pain.

Each unsteady step sends an icy dagger lancing into my mind, a reminder of the cost of survival.