Page 2 of Broken Triad
One day, we will darken the skies of Colossus itself with our Reavers.
I stare straight forward at the raised dais. We’re packed into the front row with the other soldiers who threw off false honor to join Obsidian’s forces.
They’re different than us. They have hope. Through the bloodshed and war, they can earn their Mate.
They felt her, just like us, in that one, endless moment, when the Bondthrummedand every Aurelian triad of our speciesknewthe one woman in the universe who could complete them. The one human woman who can sire our sons, who can give our lives meaning.
That vision torments me. Aurelians don’t speak of their Mates. It’s unlucky. I know not of what others saw, but their Mates must have been terrified, to have three alien warriors appear out of thin air in front of them, in a vision so real that returning to normal life must have felt like the dream.
Our Mate wasn’t scared. She was nervous, yes, but not scared, not freezing up or running like she did when the Scorp cut her down. She looked at us with curiosity, standing in front of her little wooden home in the grain fields, brown hair, a kind face, and she smiled…
Every time I imagine it now, her smile turns into the mocking jeer of her skull, and I am standing in front of her burnt, smoking home, the crops trampled by the clawed feet of Scorp.
I will never know her name. But I knewher,deeper than I have known any but my battle-brothers. I knew her, and I know what I lost.
When we felt her, my triad rebelled against our commanding officer General Gladinus. We tried to steal a Reaver, but he caught us before we could shift. His men pulled us from the Reaver and dragged us to the meeting hall where we were punished before the ranks.
We were stripped of command. My back was stripped of its flesh. The General refused to let us use a med-bay to erase the scars all over our backs.
When we broke free of the Aurelian Empire, we kept the white lines that cover our backs from the whips, another reminder of her.
Life is empty without a Mate. But when the Priests blessed us in the black waters from their temples, they stared at us as warriors, not as broken ghosts like all other Aurelians do.
The Priests told my triad that we have a part to play. That just as the War-God rose, just as I saw Obsidian in the flesh with his shifter-wolf triad, the prophecies are inevitable.
The universe must be bathed in blood.
The weak masses of Aurelians and humans must be forged into strength against the darkness, the thing coming to obliterate all life, to rain down horrors beyond our comprehension onto the universe. It is fated, just as we are fated to play our part in conquering Colossus.
My battle-brothers are the anvil.
I am the hammer.
We fight no longer for ourselves, but because it is the only thing that can be. Our bodies are animated by our destiny.
I used to believe in honor. Duty. Obedience.
I saw the truth of those empty words on the forsaken planet.
The Aurelian Empire had adutyto keeps its ships safe, instead of risking them through an Orb Shift, even if it meant saving the lives of ten billion human souls on a planet that declared Independence.Honormeant bowing down and doing as your commanding officer said, even if one of those ten billion souls was your Fated Mate.
The Aurelian Empire would have us obey as good little soldiers, following orders without thought, and we were punished brutally for doing everything we could to save her.
Now I believe in destiny. My triad are threads in a great tapestry. My hands move with the will of prophecy. My blade ignites by forces beyond my control, fated to plunge into the hearts of the pretenders to the throne.
Unless Obsidian rules from the throne of Colossus as decreed in the ancient prophecies, the universe itself will be damned.
Bolden is to my left. Khra is to my right. They have not said a word since I held the bones of our Mate and we roared to the uncaring sky. They do not even telepath to me. Their silence is not fueled by anger that as leader of the triad, I did not save our Mate. We all bled to save her.
It is not anger, not fire and life like before. Their auras are empty, like barren rocks hurtling through space, their only purpose now to smash against those who go against us. They do not speak, because there is nothing left to say.
There is a hiss as the back doors of the meeting hall open, the reinforced metal plates of the door sliding apart. The booted footsteps of the triad of Generals echo as they march through our ranks and take the stage.
We stand in rows, but there are spaces missing, triads with empty spots from their fallen battle-brothers. If we were in the Aurelian Army, incomplete triads would be put to pasture, given an honorable discharge, because only a linked triad can properly man a Reaver.
In Obsidian’s army, he’ll take any man, complete triad or not. There are not enough ships to go around. We have legions of young, battle-hungry warriors, but the Aurelian Empire has the firepower advantage.
We have something they don’t.
