12. Xandor
Chapter 12
Xandor
Enlightenment
T he collar shifts back to orange, loosening my muscles, allowing me to breathe normally as the mind-numbing agony lifts. It feels strange without the pain now, filling me with an unusual sense of lightness, like I’m floating, lost without my anchor of intense suffering.
“Where do these masks come from?” The fragile one asks, waving my warvisor against the window. “The Scythians? It’s obvious you beasts lack the capacity for such technology.”
“The Gods.” I smirk at him, enjoying the look of exasperation on his face.
“The Gods,” the fragile one repeats, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Such nonsense! The beasts all say the same thing. Perhaps they have a leader caste we’ve yet to encounter?” he deliberates, looking towards his leader.
“Unlikely, they operate simple clan structures with the Fallen as their masters,” the soulless one replies, glancing towards my warvisor. “And those devices surpass even their ability.”
The fragile one turns to me with anger, his soft, round face twisting. “What is the secret of its stealth ability? How do you communicate over such vast distances, immune to countermeasures? How do the sensors function? Tell me, I demand to know!”
Our blessed warvisors, the envy of the known universe, none have figured out its secrets partly due to our noble Seekers’ sacred duty to return all lost ones, no matter the cost. The fragile one’s questions hang heavy in the air, his greedy Nebian thirst for knowledge written in his desperate glare. But there are no answers, only more questions.
“Each one’s a blessing from the Gods,” I intone, locking eyes on his stunned visage. My collar glows red again, scorching pain tears my gaze away, jolting me stiff as arcweave as the familiar waves of agony course through me.
The fragile one stalks closer to the window, impotent fury twisting his chubby face, making him appear comical. “You think you’re so clever, hiding behind your masks? But we Nebians have already surpassed it with our NeuroLink. We too can interface directly with each other and even with our technology,” he states in a hurried jumble of heated words. “A step beyond your masks, our ingenuity knows no bounds!”
My collar shifts to blissful orange, the secret to its automatic changing now obvious, yet the Nebian’s revelation leaves me stunned. “You’ve networked your minds? You are voiding fools to do such a thing,” I declare, overwhelmed with disbelief. “The Scythians are experts on cyber-organic integration. They will breach your network, then your minds.”
“Silence beast! You speak on matters your primitive brain cannot comprehend,” the fragile one roars, shaking with tiny silly fury. “Our laser technology is superior, our ships are superior, our battlesuits are superior. We are superior. If not for their overwhelming numbers and you, the Klendathian rabble, we would’ve already won this war!”
“I tire of this.” The soulless one stands, his face twisting with disdain. “It’s clear the barbarian has no knowledge of technology. But what he does know may reveal the Fallen’s intentions.”
“I’ve told you everything I know!” I call out, my voice growing desperate. Seeing the look in his soulless eyes, I know he’s on the verge of escalating my suffering to new heights.
“Last chance. What were your orders? Who were your targets?” the soulless one asks, with a tone hard as arcweave. The unanswerable questions stab my beating heart with icy anxiety.
“To forge an alliance!” I repeat, my breath quickening, sweat dripping anew.
The soulless one frowns. “So be it.” He nods toward the fragile one, who turns his attention to the ominous surgical robot. “Slice the rest of his arm off... slowly, piece by piece.”
The hulking robot hums to life, its mechanical limbs moving with powerful grace, typical of Nebian tech. My heart thunders in my chest as terror grips me, watching it stalk towards me with a laser cutter sparking red, a promise of agony.
Horror and frantic desperation urge me to speak, the words spilling from my lips. “What you do here is a dishonor to me and your entire species. I came in peace for an alliance, and this is how you respond!”
The soulless one spits, “Void your honor. What I do, I do for my people’s survival.”
I almost don’t hear him, only seeing the sleek, horrible machine before me. Its head focuses on the stump of my left arm, the phantom pain of it throbbing madly. With a raised laser cutter poised above, I close my eyes, grasping for Maru-Tok with desperation, the only solace left to me. But my frantic terror and awful anticipation of pain sends it spiraling out of my reach.
Lancing, cutting agony pierces my consciousness, obliterating all thoughts to pieces, leaving me nothing but maddening suffering. The laser makes a slow, torturous cut through my flesh, a few inches from my stump, just below my elbow joint. I roar out in torment, my mind driven to the point of madness, the Rush spilling from my eyes, desperate to escape, desperate to end it. But the orange-lit collar holds me firm.
The scent of my burned flesh and seared blood reaches my nose as the sliver of flesh plops to the ground, giving me a fleeting, merciful reprieve. “What were your orders? Who were your targets?” The soulless one repeats, his level tone at odds with my manic mind reeling from suffering and hazy consciousness.
“An... an alliance,” I stammer out between gulping breaths, shaking to the core, knowing my body is about to burn once again.
As expected, the machine renews its torture, lighting up my mind with agonizing suffering. The cut another inch further up my hateful destroyed arm. Wishing it gone entirely to rid me of this unbearable agony. My breathing becomes erratic, like my chest might burst, hoping it does. Then, when I fear I might pass out, the disc of my arm slaps to the ground.
I throw my head back, gulping for seared air, savoring a merciful moment devoid of brutal torture. “What were your orders? Who were your targets?” the monster in Nebian form repeats. I take my time answering, desperate for these precious seconds of bliss before I’m plunged once again into the depths of unending suffering.
“I... I,” I stutter, buying time, noticing the gleaming red laser poised another inch above my ruined arm. “Came for an important mission,” I rasp out, each word a struggle.
“Go on,” the soulless one presses.
“To deliver highchairs,” I finish with manic laughter, enjoying the pathetic fleeting defiance, the closest thing to victory left to me.
My laughter only intensifies as the laser cuts again into my flesh, the blinding red stinging my eyes. A blight to my life. It takes from me inch by inch, leaving me awash in unbearable torment. Already I can sense my mind teetering, lost in unimaginable pain, desperation and a useless burning hatred that clenches my teeth with such ferocity, I taste blood.
My arm is now almost down to just the shoulder. Numerous slivers of my flesh and bone litter the floor, covered in my sweat and blood. The stench of cooked flesh and singed blood fills the air. My body grows hot, but my skin is sickly pale, my life leaking out of me.
Yet the questions always come. “What were your orders? Who were your targets?” The soulless one repeats, the count lost to me. His tone grows impatient.
My only answer is manic laughter. I’m beyond words now. They’re useless things against the pain that never stops. Instead, my eyes meet his, wisps of gold spilling out, yearning to break free and crush their voiding faces, them and all the cursed Nebians.
The soulless one sighs, while the other chimes in with an eager tone. “I’ve often wondered if the beast’s fury originates from their optic nerve. May I proceed?”
“Very well, Decimux,” the leader replies, waving a dismissive hand.
I laugh, marveling at how such simple gestures and words could carry such heavy weight, each modest syllable a plethora of pain and torment to be endured.
The gleaming white arm of the robot shoots out, clutching my head in an unbreakable grip, locking me in place. Its other arm draws closer, poised with a thin, sharp device with fanned clamps resembling a deadly metal flower resting at the edge of my vision. My breath hitches, and I squirm, desperate to move, to close my eyes, but I can’t. The edges of the device have clamped my eyelids open.
The pointed needle appears a blur sitting before my eyeball. I tremor, awaiting the soul-crushing suffering. I don’t have to wait long as the needle shoots into my eye in an explosion of gut-wrenching agony. A powerless roar escapes my lips, feeling the device in my skull fanning out to sever my optic nerve. The sensation of my vision spinning before going dark is nauseating, and if not for the collar, I’d be puking onto the floor.
I weep tears of blood as the robotic arm retracts, taking my eye with it, leaving me a breathless heap of torment as the empty socket registers its loss with cascading torrents of agony. My skin burns with a pitiless effort to move, to clutch my wound, but even that is denied to me. I’m left with a hollow space where my sanity once resided.
“Hmm,” the fragile one muses, as the robot steps back a few paces. Through a dangling head and one blurry eye, I watch in stupefaction as the machine makes small incisions into my stolen eyeball. “How disappointing,” he declares as green lights emit from the robot’s chest, bathing my dissected organ. “Just a normal eye, sadly. Seems the beast’s secrets still elude us.”
The soulless one sighs as the robot deposits the remnants of my eye into a nearby bin. “What does it matter? Their flesh is weak compared to our robotics,” he interjects, sounding increasingly frustrated. As blood drips down my left cheek, I can sense his focus turning to me. “What were your orders? Who were your targets?”
“Alliance...” I rasp out, enjoying the quiet drip, drip of my blood onto the floor and the fleeting relief from having no parts currently being sawed off.
“Still, he clings to this delusion!” The soulless one says in frustration. “Decimux, give him a triple dosage of truth serum.”
“With all due respect, Praetorian Prefect, that amount may kill him.” The hazy response comes, the words like the sweetest elixir—a hint of the end.
“No, this one’s strong. He should survive the process,” the soulless one retorts.
Not if the Gods are kind.
I’m vaguely aware of the robot approaching, overcome by the deep throbbing agony of burning aches and torn body parts. It’s difficult to be certain. I feel a needle being jammed into my neck as a hissing sound of compressed air reaches my aching senses.
It prompts me to jolt awake as if from a nightmare, drawing in a deep breath through lungs that were too sore moments ago for such actions. My heart thunders in my chest like a stampeding herd of aurodons as the room warps and bends. The once sterile white now melds with deep shades of purples, blues, and reds.
The door to the medical lab turned torture chamber opens in slow motion, revealing the void of space behind it, churning in an endless mass of stars. But from the void steps the soulless one, transformed into a ten-feet-tall figure with the face of a venefex and the horns of an aurodon. He approaches in a swirling throng of colors with such slowness I wonder If I may die before he reaches me.
“I’ve disabled communication. It’s just you and me,” the netherworld spawn says, his words undulating, some syllables hastened while others slow, creating a confusing mass of noise. “Decimux isn’t a soldier like us. You think I want to do this to you, an honorable adversary? Tell me what I wish to know and I promise you a quick, clean death, Decimux’s experiments be damned.”
His strange words wash over me as my mind and vision swim, lost in a sea of colors. Then shapes form, conjuring from countless specks merging. They form a myriad of purple flames, positioned in a semi-circle as if observing me. I gasp, watching them flicker, drawing strength from their presence that fills me with a sense of soothing warmth.
Some flames shimmer, becoming more distinct, more real. Actual tears fall from my remaining eye as I recognize their faces. Astraxius looks on with a warm smile, his blue eyes glowing. Alongside him, my mother with her long crimson hair and father, who smiles, looking like a wiser version of me. Behind them stand my grandparents on either side, and their parents behind them, stretching on for eternity until they appear like twinkling stars among the cosmos.
“I can’t go on, I can’t endure this,” I lament, feeling the tears and blood spilling down my cheeks, my shoulders shaking, struggling to contain my overwhelming emotion.
It’s Astraxius who speaks, the one who practically raised me. “Just a little longer now, Xandor,” he promises with a look of sympathy, while my heart soars hearing his wise old voice again, wishing I could join him and leave this place.
The netherworld spawn awaits below, now appearing tiny at my feet. “You can go on, just speak the words and it’ll all be over.” His muddled voice seems so distant and pointless.
“Astraxius, take me with you! I can’t take this living nightmare,” I plead, my gaze boring into his and the others, a sign of my desperation.
It’s my mother who responds, her voice entering my mind, “In due course, my noble son. But first you must complete the cycle.” She beams, her red eyes full of love—a love I hardly knew. The bastard Scythians stole her so young.
“Yes, you can join Astraxius as soon as you tell me what your mission was,” the netherworld spawn chirps in the background.
“Haven’t I suffered enough!” I demand, my voice laced with righteous anger. “Who else has endured so much for so little? Noble son, you say? I am cursed.”
“And what of Rebecca? Would you leave her behind, lost and alone?” My father speaks his proud voice so strong and noble. How I wish I could’ve known him better.
“You have endured much, and for so little. To protect those that have left you to such a terrible fate. Why protect them? Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll release you from your suffering,” the netherworld spawn irks again with its distracting interjections.
“Look at me, Father! I am ruined! What love will Rebecca have for a husk of a warrior like me? Better for her if I pass on. Let her remember me as I was, before the sight of me breaks her heart.” The mention of Tyrxie wrenches my heart, wishing to spare her any of this pain.
“But you are bonded, Xandor, destined to be together, just like you and Krogoth prayed for.” Astraxius smiles, his long white hair blowing in the cosmic wind. “Even now, your love sends a portion of herself to aid you.”
A portion of herself? But the netherworld spawn interrupts my thoughts. “I will let you pass on. Just tell me what your masters’ plans are.”
To my dismay, the flames begin to flicker, followed by the vibrant colors returning to the bland horror of the sterile medical room. As the faces of my passed loved ones fade, my tears begin anew. “Please don’t leave me!” I plead, desperate for their support, desperate to end my misery.
“We’ll always watch over you, Xandor,” the collective voices echo through my mind, signifying the end of their comforting warmth. I already miss their presence as my racking pain returns with horrific clarity.
The soulless one stands before me, amongst parts of my sheared body, blood, and tears. “I won’t leave you, just answer my questions!” he demands, his voice raised.
Then, like a tidal wave, I’m hit with a force of blissful warmth. It flows through my body and my soul, washing away all my aches and agonizing pains as if I’m bathed in the green vapors of the majestic healing pods. A profound sensation of love and concern fills me, and deep down, I know this is part of my Tyrxie. I feel her warmth, smell her sweet scent, and a smile creases my lips.
“Decimux, what in the bloody void is happening?” The soulless one demands, turning to the observation window. “His wounds are healing, and his eye is glowing with strange colors!”
“I... I don’t know. It could be an effect of such a heavy dosage of truth serum?” The fragile one questions in disbelief.
I feel light and free, a surprising clarity opens as my mind expands to new heights and awarenesses. Clear visions come to me—no, not visions but futures, potential scenarios stretching out for eternity. Some are thick and long, almost certain; others fracture from the whole, mere unlikely possibilities.
They weave and undulate, crisscrossing, changing by my perception of them, and my awareness of them carries through time. It’s almost too much to bear. My mind reels from so much knowledge and perception.
One tunnel-like course, large and solid, each inch a sea of images and sounds, with countless branches spilling from it in various sizes. I focus, peering deeper, somehow knowing it’s relevant. “The Nebians will fall,” I declare, seeing all their core planets awash in blazing flames. “Endless cities in flames, your people screaming, bathed in self-immolation.”
“Self-immolation? Is this what you were sent here to do? How would you achieve such a thing?” The soulless one asks with heat in his voice, but I only hear him vaguely, lost in my trance. “Decimux, talk to me!” he demands.
“His pineal gland is lit up like a laser cannon. I’ve never seen anything like it before!” The fragile one replies, his tone growing frantic.
I push deeper into the tunnel of images, seeking more. “The Scythians lurk in the shadows, controlling, corrupting. By your hubris, you are condemned.”
I try to push further and deeper, seeking knowledge of my people’s fate. Seeing a hazy ring of four flames with a purple and a red flame roaring against one another in the center. The red flame repeatedly shifts to black, switching between the two colors, an uncertain future still to be decided. But the further I go, the greater the resistance, like pushing a boulder uphill, that grows larger with each step. The crushing immensity is too much for my brain to comprehend.
“But not you.” I turn my gaze to the soulless one, seeing the swirling golden-green mist blurring my vision. “You will die very soon.” I perceive two paths for the Nebian, both as thick as each other. They both bring a glorious smile to my face in knowing. “Someone very close to you.” I say little, unsure if speaking the future may alter its rightful course.
I laugh, seeing the distraught expression on the soulless one’s face. He knows! He can sense the truth of my words; the uncertainty eats at him. “Decimux, make it stop!” he roars, recoiling from my manic laughter and churning glare.
Then, in a flash, my collar blinks to black, snuffing out my awareness as I struggle to remain conscious.
Darkness consumes me.