But I remain defiant before them, before everything. I banish all entropy. I am the War Chieftain, the son of Gorexius. Even the icy vacuum of space bows to my blazing soul. Like an eternal star, I burn forever. This is my glorious destiny, the one that was promised, bought with blood and death—Krogoth’s death.
Suddenly, a blazing enormity crashes through the burning heavens, like a world-ending catastrophe. Its molten surface makes my flames appear like mere flickering embers. It radiates with such swirling intensity even I struggle to meet its gaze. But I do not falter. I am the fire.
This molten enormity obliterates three of the human females, reducing them to smoldering mountains of cinders. A pang of loss ripples through me, but I banish such intrusive weakness that does not belong here. I watch, transfixed, as the enormity unfurls itself, looming larger, like a celestial behemoth of molten fury stretching beyond the flaming skies into the vast emptiness of space.
Its immense hands descend upon the final human female, gripping her shoulders, almost tenderly, but scorching her flesh. Her face melts away, her identity vanishing into oblivion.
Rage ignites within me, a visceral need to kill, twisting my features into a savage snarl. Is it my molten God’s actions or its molten flesh driving me mad? I cannot tell.
“Rise, and complete the cycle!” The voice booms like thunder, fanning the flames, shaking the cosmos. My heart surges as its blazing, continent-sized hand reaches toward me, consuming my flesh in a heat that shouldn’t exist. There is no pain, only fury.
Only hate.
“Arawnoth!” I roar, thrusting my hand into the air—surprised that it hasn’t turned to ash.
New awareness floods my senses. The blistering heat is gone, replaced by the cold, sterile air of the ship. A pounding headache makes itself known, soon followed by painful, rasping breaths through strained lungs and something like spoiled meat coating my tongue.
What happened? Some sickness? A powerful foe?The thought excites me.
“No. Not Arawnoth—just me, your long-suffering teacher,boy.” Ignixis’s voice grates on my ears like curdledboracksmilk.
The flesh-melting heat was preferable.
I groan at the return of the familiar, loathsome title:boy.No doubt I’ve somehow displeased the old gas-cloud again. My thundering headache, coupled with a boring, impotent lecture, is now imminent.
Scanning the room, I realize I’m sprawled on a bench in the medical lab—if such a dilapidated room can be called such.
“You bleat like a newbornsnarlbroc... I rue the day Arawnoth bid me to aid you,boy,” Ignixis spits. Seems today his poison comes in its natural, seething, venomous form. “Would that Arawnoth had scorched you to cinders for such idiocy.”
I sit up at his eerily accurate words, a flicker of surprise crossing my face. Ignixis lounges on a bench, his green eyes shifting between me and the blue, shimmering console.
“He did burn me to ash,” I mutter, examining my hands, grimacing at the multitudes of caked-in gore.
What madness is this?
A sharp cackle shakes Ignixis’s frail shoulders. “Don’t make me laugh,” he winces in pain, clutching his shoulder. “If you truly stoked his molten wrath, he’d have seared your soul and scattered your ashes to the void.”
I ignore his pointless jabs—there are too many unanswered questions to get bogged down by useless bickering.
“He spoke to me.” My gaze grows distant, recalling his words in that strange realm of endless fires. “He commanded; I rise... to complete the cycle.”
Ignixis’s gaze snaps to mine, a look of intensity narrowing his heavily tattooed face. “Good... Good,” he whispers, his voice laced with a dark eagerness. “Excellent. Arawnoth has spoken the sacred words. He has chosen you, young Dracoth. Just as was foretold. As I promised.”
His expression shifts to mirth, though it’s hard to be certain amid his shadowed features and sharpened yellow teeth.
But his words of joy fail to stoke the flames of my soul. Ignixis’s promise—the favor of our God—was always my destiny. Ever since my Proving, I’ve known my destiny is paved with greatness. I am the greatest living Klendathian, soon to be the greatest in all history, eclipsing even my noble father. I will prove it to myself and the entire universe when I crush the usurper Krogoth beneath my wrath. Then and only then will I feel joy in my molten heart.
“It seems your gruesome offering has pleased our God,” Ignixis cackles, a mad swirl of green eyes and yellow fangs in a sea of black.
What offering?
An acrid stench wrinkles my nose—the familiar stench of death. It clings to me like... like the jingling, grisly vertebrate dangling from my belt. I almost recoil at the shocking sight,my eyes widening before scanning the room for the source of trickery which placed it upon me.
I extend a long claw, pulling at the various sized bones, each strung together with bits of dried gore twisted around them like the roots of a long-dead tree.
Hemo-Tok.
The old Magaxus warrior tradition. An ancient rite, resurrected from history’s darkest depths.
