Page 46 of Scorching the Alien Empire
Drexios laughs, crimson Rush leaking from his eye in curling wisps. He lunges with a flurry of sharp, clawed strikes, each one aimed at my face. His claws whistle through the dim, purpleglow, their ferocity punctuated by the bated breaths of the onlookers.
I step back, shifting my body and swatting his assaults away with ease. Holding back my own retaliation, content to see what power and skill my father’s former Second possesses.
I find little.
Compared to Jazreal, or my grueling training with the graviton belt, Drexios’s attacks are pitiful. His strikes, though fierce, are like falling snowflakes—slow, clumsy, and predictable.
His frustration grows, evident in his grunts and the wildness of his swipes. His eyes flick to my legs, and I see his intent before he moves. Claws come from his left side, sweeping wide and low, aiming for the vulnerable gap behind my knee where the armor is weakest.
I react faster than he expects, leaping forward instead of back. My knee drives into his chest plate with the force of a Battlebarge at hyperspeed.
An ear-piercing shriek and a burst of sparks herald the success of my strike. The sheer force sends Drexios hurtling backward, tumbling through the air. His face twists in pain and shock as he slams into the marble floor, sliding before scrambling to regain his footing.
I could end him now, as effortlessly as Arawnoth’s gift would allow. But this one served my father. And he will serve me.
Groaning, Drexios pushes to his feet, clawed fingers tracing the deep, oval dent my knee has cratered into his chest plate.
“Oh, so big, oh, so ugly,” he laughs, spitting a glob of green blood onto the floor. “Fight, bastard!” he roars, his voice ricocheting off the towering walls.
Leisurely, I stalk toward him, my eyes blazing crimson and silver. Fury roars through my veins and sings in my ears.
Drexios stomps his foot, and his plasma blade leaps from the floor like a living thing, spinning high into the air. With theswiftness of a swooping arrohawk, he snatches it mid-flight and hurls it toward me.
The blade flashes toward me in a searing, blue haze, too fast to avoid entirely. I lower my head just in time, the spinning cyclone of death almost claiming my skull. Searing heat blooms across my temple, and the acrid scent of scorched flesh fills the air.
“End this, Dracoth!” Princesa commands from behind me, concern and irritation warring in her voice. “Or I will.”
My fingers brush the wound at my temple, finding no blood—just the puckered, cauterized flesh left behind by the plasma’s heat.
“He cannot win,” I assure her, my gaze locked onto Drexios’s smirking face.
Drexios chuckles, his laughter carrying a manic edge. “So smug and so certain, our wayward son. But strip away the flesh, just a cub come undone.” He taps a claw against his mechanical eye, his grin spreading wider. “That move? Learned it from the War Chief himself. Shame I didn’t take your eye.”
With a stomp, his second plasma blade leaps into the air. “Second time’s the charm!” he roars, catching it mid-flight and flinging it with blinding speed.
This time, prepared, I activate my plasma shield. The weapon collides with it in a cascade of blinding, blue sparks, plasma meeting plasma, distorting the air in a blurring haze. The impact steals the oxygen from the room, each breath growing heavier. With a quick flick of my shield, I send the spinning blade clattering harmlessly across the marble floor.
Fury erupts in my chest, and I charge him, my fangs bared in unrestrained aggression. Amusement dies in my molten veins, replaced by the raw, unrelenting need to end this farce.
“That’s it, shorthair! Show me what you’re made of,” Drexios taunts, leaping backward onto the raised dais of his throne.
I’m on him in an instant, closing the distance in a blur. My fists strike with relentless speed, each blow a blur of molten energy. Drexios, desperate, uses the height of the dais to his advantage, raining clawed strikes toward my face. But his movements are slow, clumsy—no match for the strength and speed surging through me.
I swat away his strikes with ease, my molten Rush boiling in my veins, surging higher and higher, far beyond what he could ever hope to match. Each punch I land jolts him further back, driving him higher up the throne. His retreat is frantic.
He teeters atop the armrest, sneering down at me. “Just die, you big bastard!” Drexios snarls, awkwardly bending to strike.
My hand darts out, clamping tightly around his leg. With a mighty yank, I send him crashing onto the throne, his back bowing violently against the armrest with a sickeningcrack.
Groggily, he tries to reorient himself, but I give him no chance. My hands seize the front of his armor, and with a roar of raw power, I hurl him over my shoulder. His body slams into the marble floor with the force of a falling meteorite, the ground splitting beneath him in a deafeningboom.
A wheezing grunt escapes his lips as he crawls away on hands and knees, dragging himself from the shadow that looms over him. Each rasp of breath is a painful struggle.
I extend a claw, stalking him like a venefex savoring a meal to come. My hand shoots down, gripping his so-called Chieftain’s cloak draped over his shoulders. The red-scaled material gleams dully in the purple light as I hold it up, a mockery of its former glory.
“You wear the cloak of a Second,” I growl, venom lacing my words as I lean close to his ear. With a grunt, I tear into the tough material, splitting it apart with a sound like frayed sinew. One half is wrenched free from his armor and tossed over his head like a veil of disgrace.
“Submit!” I bellow, punctuating the command with a savage kick to his midsection. The force sends him sprawling onto his back, his breath escaping in sharp gasps.
